1
25
98
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/563/30565/MEdwardsAE2202190-161024-02.1.pdf
7dfb03f98dec5e4c851be8133025505d
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
Edwards, Allan Ernest
A E Edwards
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Edwards, AE
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Collection concerns Warrant Officer Ernest Allan Edwards (b. 1924, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 514, 7 and 582 Squadrons. Collection contains an oral history interview, biography, list of 42 operations and photographs of aircraft and people.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ernest Allan Edwards and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
Operational notes
Description
An account of the resource
Lists 42 operations with dates, targets, aircraft, fuel, bomb loads, times and accounts of sortie for each one. Mentions Pathfinder marking, occasional air sickness, Master Bomber, number of aircraft lost on some operations, damage to aircraft on a few sorties and other details.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
A E Edwards
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Cover and seven page printed document
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
MEdwardsAE2202190-161024-01
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
France
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Stuttgart
France--Lille
France--Laon
France--Paris
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Karlsruhe
France--Nantes
Belgium
Belgium--Louvain
France
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Aachen
France--Dunkerque
France--Calais
France--Rennes
France--Tours
France--Lens
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Nucourt
France--Abbeville
France--Vaires-sur-Marne
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Creil
France--Le Havre
France--Brest
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Kiel
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01-14
1944-01-21
1944-01-27
1944-02-25
1944-03-01
1944-04-11
1944-04-18
1944-04-22
1944-04-24
1944-05-11
1944-05-19
1944-05-21
1944-05-25
1944-05-28
1944-05-31
1944-06-04
1944-06-07
1944-06-10
1944-06-11
1944-06-15
1944-07-02
1944-07-05
1944-07-09
1944-07-10
1944-07-11
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-27
1944-08-03
1944-08-04
1944-08-03
1944-08-07
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-29
1944-09-09
1944-09-11
1944-09-19
1945-01-31
1944-04-19
1944-08-08
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.
514 Squadron
582 Squadron
7 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of the Juvisy, Noisy-le-Sec and Le Bourget railways (18/19 April 1944)
Bombing of Trossy St Maximin (3 August 1944)
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Lancaster Mk 3
Martinet
Master Bomber
missing in action
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Little Staughton
RAF Warboys
RAF Waterbeach
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-1
V-weapon
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1279/17566/YPearceAT1874945v4.2.pdf
a2351da247af3b1b94f5f4679bb41f42
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
Pearce, Arthur
A T Pearce
Description
An account of the resource
140 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer Arthur Pearce (1874945 Royal Air Force) He served as an air gunner with 12, 170 and 156 (Pathfinder) Squadrons and completed a 44 operations. After the war, on 35 Squadron he took part in the June 1946 Victory flypast over London and a goodwill visit to the United States. It contains his diaries, memorabilia and photographs.
The collection also contains an album concerning his post war activity with the Goodwill tour of the United States.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Steve Allan and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Pearce, AT
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Bank Holidays, 1944
[page break]
PERSONAL MEMORANDA
Sgt PEARCE
[page break]
Bank CITY 6001
G.T. HOP 1293
N.S.D. CITY 3623
G.W.R PAD 7000
Parry G.I P 3832
TENY KIN 5052.
[indecipherable word] EUS 6292.
MESS Seiford 61.
K.C. SER 4200.
Club TEM 3135
[page break]
1944 JANUARY
1 SATURDAY
[deleted] GIP 5852, KIN 3032, UES 6292 [/delete]
7412
Stalag XX13 (84)
Germany
2 SUNDAY
J.W. Simmonds
3 Malmesbury Road
South Woodford
E. 18
SG Parry
189 Gipsy Road
West Norwood
S E. 27
GIP 3832
[page break]
3 MONDAY
FX.115112. LDG AIR. PALMER JJ JEa/AG.
825 R.N.A. SQDN.
c/o GP.O LONDON.
Joan White
238 New Kent Road
London SE. 1.
[underlined] 4 TUESDAY [/underlined]
14423672
4th Batt C. Coy.
No.1. IR.T.D.
C.M.F
[page break]
5 WEDNESDAY
letter from home, wrote home.
Irene Hudd,
28 Upper Kenton St
Thorne
Nr Doncaster
Yorks.
6 THURSDAY
letter from Flo
[page break]
7 FRIDAY
[blank page]
8 SATURDAY
letter from Flo.
[page break]
9 SUNDAY
letter from Mum
10 MONDAY
went to Belfast good time.
[page break]
[blank page]
[page break]
13 THURSDAY
[blank page]
14 FRIDAY
Leave. Sgt. Tapes Belfast
[page break]
15 SATURDAY
arrived at home
16 SUNDAY
London. Pleasant surprise good time
[page break]
17 MONDAY
good time
18 TUESDAY
good time
[page break]
19 WEDNESDAY
good time
20 THURSDAY
good time
[page break]
21 FRIDAY
good time
22 SATURDAY
saw Bill.
Ring. Lovely night
Cable
[page break]
23 SUNDAY
good
24 MONDAY
good
[page break]
25 TUESDAY
good
26 WEDNESDAY
good
[page break]
27 THURSDAY
good
28 FRIDAY
good
[page break]
29 SATURDAY
good
30 SUNDAY
Cable
good week end
[page break]
31 MONDAY
very good time
FEB. 1 TUESDAY
Worried browned off
[page break]
2 WEDNESDAY
still worried and browned off
3 THURSDAY
good tan
[page break]
4 FRIDAY
good time in county
5 SATURDAY
browned off
[page break]
6 SUNDAY
things going wrong.
7 MONDAY
Birthday [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted]
Smashing time
[page break]
8 TUESDAY
went to Parry.
Good time Joyce
Silvia
9 WEDNESDAY
Flos Birthday
not so good
[page break]
10 THURSDAY
[boxed X] trouble
Bad
11 FRIDAY
County. not so good
[page break]
12 SATURDAY
[deleted] Four indecipherable words [/deleted]
13 SUNDAY
still felt bad.
[page break]
14 MONDAY
Cable.
good leave untill [sic] last few days
15 TUESDAY
Hixon 2-45.
[page break]
16 WEDNESDAY
Met pilot [indecipherable word] and crew. O.K.
Wing/Co. Caulson
P/O Stevens
P/O Soo.
P/O Davies
17 THURSDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
18 FRIDAY
[blank page]
19 SATURDAY
Wals Birthday
[page break]
20 SUNDAY
[blank page]
21 MONDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
22 TUESDAY
[blank page]
23 WEDNESDAY
Marina Birthday
[page break]
[pages missing]
28 MONDAY
Roses Birthday
29 TUESDAY
Leighford
1 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
2 THURSDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
3 FRIDAY
plenty of cloud Bashing
4 SATURDAY
still cloud bashing
Stafford good time plenty of fun.
[page break]
5 SUNDAY
bags of flying,
good crew.
6 MONDAY
still bags of flying and doing grand job.
[page break]
7 TUESDAY
grounded.
Very good time
8 WEDNESDAY
plenty of cloud Bashing and Bombing
[page break]
9 THURSDAY
more Bombing
10 FRIDAY
went to Stafford with crew. very good time. plenty of fun.
[page break]
11 SATURDAY
dingy [sic] Stafford plenty of fun
12 SUNDAY
Cloud Bashing
[page break]
13 MONDAY
more Cloud bashing no time off
14 TUESDAY
went sick. Hospital
[page break]
15 WEDNESDAY
Hospital
16 THURSDAY
Hospital
[page break]
17 FRIDAY
Bombing.
Not so good Hospital
18 SATURDAY
Hospital
[page break]
19 SUNDAY
Hospital
20 MONDAY
[author indicates he’s in hospital]
[page break]
21 TUESDAY
[author indicates he’s in hospital]
22 WEDNESDAY
[author indicates he’s in hospital]
[page break]
23 THURSDAY
Hospital
24 FRIDAY
flying
[page break]
25 SATURDAY
Bombing
26 SUNDAY
Cloud bashing
Bombing
Pilot hurt.
[page break]
27 MONDAY
48 hours leave
3-31 Stafford
dispointed [sic]
Pilot in Hospital
28 TUESDAY
good time in county
[page break]
29 WEDNESDAY
Cluston 5.38
Pilot Bad
30 THURSDAY
easy time
[page break]
31 FRIDAY
pressure test
48 hours. Leave
5.48 Stafford
APRIL 1 SATURDAY
Good time.
hard going
[page break]
2 SUNDAY
Uaston 12.00
all was well
3 MONDAY
Browned off
[page break]
4 TUESDAY
[deleted] Met New Pilot Sgt [indecipherable word] [/deleted]
5 WEDNESDAY
nothing to do no pilot or Wireless/opp
[page break]
6 THURSDAY
[blank page]
7 FRIDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
8 SATURDAY
flew with madman.
9 SUNDAY
[deleted] almost killed [/deleted]
[page break]
10 MONDAY
very easy day.
A good night out.
11 TUESDAY
nothing to do.
[page break]
12 WEDNESDAY
Volenteered [sic] to go on Balls eye.
Good things
13 THURSDAY
easy time
[page break]
14 FRIDAY
still nothing to do.
15 SATURDAY
good time in town bags of fun
[page break]
[missing pages]
20 THURSDAY
good time at Dance
21 FRIDAY
end of long rest
Posted
[page break]
22 SATURDAY
back to Hixon New Pilot Sgt Keeler.
23 SUNDAY
plenty of flying
new Pilot O.K.
[page break]
24 MONDAY
cloud Bashing
25 TUESDAY
cloud Bashing Bombing
[page break]
26 WEDNESDAY
grounded bad weather good time in town
27 THURSDAY
Cloud Bashing bad Crash
[page break]
28 FRIDAY
felt bad. No flying.
29 SATURDAY
flying again
[page break]
30 SUNDAY
Bombing
MAY 1 MONDAY
Cine Bombing
[page break]
2 TUESDAY
Bombing
3 WEDNESDAY
night off. good time Plenty of fun.
[page break]
4 THURSDAY
grounded
5 FRIDAY
grounded
[page break]
6 SATURDAY
grounded
7 SUNDAY
grounded
[page break]
8 MONDAY
grounded lost leave.
9 TUESDAY
48 hrs leave. Stafford 9-48.
[page break]
10 WEDNESDAY
disapointed [sic] but had good time
12 + 13 11 THURSDAY
Claston 8-30 a.m. Met new “Wop” Flt. Sgt Stricket
[page break]
12 FRIDAY
Cloud Bashing
13 SATURDAY
Cloud Bashing
[page break]
14 SUNDAY
long trip bombing plenty of trouble every [deleted] the [/deleted] thing wrong. I was nocked [sic] out. Pilot in trouble but all ended well Balls eye.
15 MONDAY
lots of flying
[page break]
16 TUESDAY
busy night Mick killed
17 WEDNESDAY
hopes of leave. Steve got F/O.
[page break]
18 THURSDAY
13 days leave. Stafford 5.48.
19 FRIDAY
Joe home. very good times
[page break]
20 SATURDAY
plenty of fun [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] Flo. old feeling again but held my own.
21 SUNDAY
pleasent [sic] time
[page break]
22 MONDAY
good time with Sal. good time with Joan
23 TUESDAY
Stepney good time Good time with Joan, plenty of fun
[page break]
24 WEDNESDAY
went to Totenham [sic] took Joany out from bank. Plenty of fun.
25 THURSDAY
County plenty of fun
[page break]
26 FRIDAY
Stepney, baby. Good time
27 SATURDAY
took Joan and Betty out. Stepney. Party. good time but worried
[page break]
28 SUNDAY
went out with Flo. Jess and Joe, hard time trouble
29 MONDAY
Bad time
[page break]
30 TUESDAY
Bad for me
31 WEDNESDAY
Kings Cross 12-45 Doncaster 4.10 Boston Park.
[page break]
1944 JUNE
1 THURSDAY
Bill Charlie O.K.
2 FRIDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
3 SATURDAY
day off, Thorne Plenty of fun.
4 SUNDAY
day off Thorn More fun.
[page break]
5 MONDAY
Stones O.K.
6 TUESDAY
The day.
[page break]
7 WEDNESDAY
on Charge. got away with with it
8 THURSDAY
Fred got his Comision [sic] Thorne. Morends [sic]
[page break]
9 FRIDAY
Irene. Smashing girl a very good time plenty of fun. Pleasant suprises [sic]
10 SATURDAY
Background danger. Irene. Smashing time More fun Wally went home. Charlie, Bill Posted
[page break]
11 SUNDAY
“P/O Keeler”
12 MONDAY
Stones O.K.
[page break]
13 TUESDAY
Posted Sandtoft Pool
Epworth. good time bags of fun.
John got Married
14 WEDNESDAY
Epworth O.K. bags fun
Whiteheart Raynor.
Doreene
[page break]
15 THURSDAY
Hopes of Posting
Epworth good time Joan. Plenty of fun.
16 FRIDAY
Bill & Charlie Posted.
[page break]
17 SATURDAY
Epworth. good time Plenty of fun Peggy.
18 SUNDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
19 MONDAY
[blank page]
20 TUESDAY
Posted to Blighton
Met Engineer JOE.
[page break]
21 WEDNESDAY
Posted Ingham.
Bill and Charlie again
Castle
22 THURSDAY
Went to Lincoln good time bags of fun.
[page break]
23 FRIDAY
flying.
24 SATURDAY
flying
Lincoln good time plenty of fun
[page break]
25 SUNDAY
flying
26 MONDAY
flying
[page break]
27 TUESDAY
flying
28 WEDNESDAY
flying
[page break]
29 THURSDAY
flying
30 FRIDAY
flying
Lincoln good time
[page break]
JULY 1944
1 SATURDAY
Posted to Blyton
2 SUNDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
3 MONDAY
[blank page]
4 TUESDAY
[blank page]
5 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
6 THURSDAY
flying Bombing
[page break]
7 FRIDAY
Gainsborough. good time fun.
8 SATURDAY
Gainsborough. good time plenty of fun.
[page break]
9 SUNDAY
[blank page]
10 MONDAY
Lincoln. Gainsboro [sic] photo
[page break]
11 TUESDAY
flying
12 WEDNESDAY
flying Geordy killed
[page break]
13 THURSDAY
flying
14 FRIDAY
[deleted flying [/deleted]
Gainsboro [sic] good time
[page break]
15 SATURDAY
Lost Navigator
16 SUNDAY
Gainsboro [sic]. good time
[page break]
17 MONDAY
New Navigator. Flying. F/O. Yule.
18 TUESDAY
flying New Nav O.K.
[page break]
19 WEDNESDAY
Gainsboro [sic].
20 THURSDAY
flying
[page break]
21 FRIDAY
flying Bombing.
22 SATURDAY
flying
23 SUNDAY
flying Ballseye.
24 MONDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
25 TUESDAY
[blank page]
26 WEDNESDAY
Posted Hemswell 6.25. Lincoln
[page break]
27 THURSDAY
[blank page]
28 FRIDAY
11.15. Kings X.
[page break]
29 SATURDAY
[blank page]
30 SUNDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
31 MONDAY
Gainsboro [sic].
AUG 1 TUESDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
2 WEDNESDAY
Gainsboro [sic]
3 THURSDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
4 FRIDAY
[blank page]
5 SATURDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
6 SUNDAY
flying
7 MONDAY
Gainsboro [sic]
[page break]
8 TUESDAY
flying
9 WEDNESDAY
flying Dingy [sic] 8.30
[page break]
10 THURSDAY
[blank page]
11 FRIDAY
Posted to Squadron No 12. Wickenby
[page break]
12 SATURDAY
No.1. O.K. Cornfield “Falaise”
13 SUNDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
14 MONDAY
7. days leave Lincoln 1.55 Kings Cross 6.15
15 TUESDAY
good time
[page break]
16 WEDNESDAY
good time
17 THURSDAY
good time
[page break]
18 FRIDAY
good time
19 SATURDAY
good time fun
[page break]
20 SUNDAY
good time fun
21 MONDAY
Kings Cross 5.40
[page break]
22 TUESDAY
Guns OK.
23 WEDNESDAY
year.
[page break]
24 THURSDAY
[blank page]
25 FRIDAY
No 2. O.K. “Russelsheim”
[page break]
26 SATURDAY
[blank page]
27 SUNDAY
flying guns O.K.
[page break]
28 MONDAY
[blank page]
29 TUESDAY
No. 3. Cornfield O.K. “Stettin” Paddy killed good fellow real Pal
[page break]
30 WEDNESDAY
Lincoln good time
31 THURSDAY
[blank page]
1944 SEPTEMBER
1 FRIDAY
Lincoln good time
2 SATURDAY
flying
[page break]
3 SUNDAY
No.4. O.K. “Eindhoven”
4 MONDAY
Lincoln
[page break]
5 TUESDAY
No 5. O.K. “Le Havre”
6 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
7 THURSDAY
Lincoln good time
8 FRIDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
9 SATURDAY
Lincoln
10 SUNDAY
No. 6. O.K. “Le Havre”
[page break]
11 MONDAY
[blank page]
12 TUESDAY
No 7. O.K. “Frankfurt”
[page break]
13 WEDNESDAY
[deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] flying
14 THURSDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
15 FRIDAY
[blank page]
16 SATURDAY
No 8. O.K. “Rheine Hopsten”
[page break]
17 SUNDAY
[blank page]
18 MONDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
19 TUESDAY
[blank page]
20 WEDNESDAY
No 9. O.K. “Calais”
[page break]
21 THURSDAY
Lincoln
22 FRIDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
23 SATURDAY
No. 10. O.K. “[deleted] Calais [/deleted] “Neurs”
24 SUNDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
25 MONDAY
No.11. bombs back not so good. “Calais”
26 TUESDAY
No 11 OK. “Cap Griz Nez”
[page break]
27 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
28 THURSDAY
Lincoln 6.25. 7. Days leave.
[page break]
29 FRIDAY
Watch Bill good time Ted
30 SATURDAY
good time
[page break]
OCTOBER 1944
1 SUNDAY
Bill Home good time
2 MONDAY
Bank good time
[page break]
3 TUESDAY
good time
4 WEDNESDAY
good time
[page break]
5 THURSDAY
Reggie good time
6 FRIDAY
Kings X. 5.50
[page break]
7 SATURDAY
[blank page]
8 SUNDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
9 MONDAY
[blank page]
10 TUESDAY
flying F.A.
[page break]
11 WEDNESDAY
flying A.F.
12 THURSDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
13 FRIDAY
flying F.A.
14 SATURDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
15 SUNDAY
Posted to. [indecipherable word] Lincs
Binbrook.
16 MONDAY
flying Picked up new kite 190. Squadron.
[page break]
17 TUESDAY
Grimsby. good time
18 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
19 THURSDAY
No 12. O.K. “Stuttgart”
20 FRIDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
21 SATURDAY
Louth good time Watch.
22 SUNDAY
New Squadron. 170 Dunholme Lodge
[page break]
23 MONDAY
[blank page]
24 TUESDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
25 WEDNESDAY
No. 13. O.K. “Essen”
26 THURSDAY
Lincoln
[page break]
27 FRIDAY
[blank page]
28 SATURDAY
No 14. O.K. “Cologne”
[page break]
29 SUNDAY
[blank page]
30 MONDAY
No 15. OK. “Cologne”
[page break]
31 TUESDAY
No 16 OK. “Cologne”
NOVEMBER 1 WEDNESDAY
Party. Black Bull good time
[page break]
2 THURSDAY
No.17. OK. Dusseldorf
3 FRIDAY
Lincoln
[page break]
4 SATURDAY
P.F.F. ?
5 SUNDAY
Posted Warboys P.F.F.
[page break]
6 MONDAY
Warboys. 2.9. Kings X. 4.2. Joe. Good time
7 TUESDAY
Kings X. 6.40.
[page break]
8 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
9 THURSDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
10 FRIDAY
test OK. Dinghy Cambridge
11 SATURDAY
flying
[page break]
12 SUNDAY
flying
13 MONDAY
flying Huntingdon
[page break]
14 TUESDAY
Post. Upwood. Squadron. 1.5.6.
15 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
16 THURSDAY
[blank page]
17 FRIDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
18 SATURDAY
[blank page]
19 SUNDAY
flying
20 MONDAY
[blank page]
21 TUESDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
22 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
23 THURSDAY
flying
[page break]
24 FRIDAY
[blank page]
25 SATURDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
26 SUNDAY
[blank page]
27 MONDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
28 TUESDAY
[blank page]
29 WEDNESDAY
No 18. “Essen”
[page break]
30 THURSDAY
No 19. “Duisburg”
DECEMBER 1 FRIDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
2 SATURDAY
[blank page]
3 SUNDAY
No. 20. “Urfurt [sic] Dam”
[page break]
4 MONDAY
[blank page]
5 TUESDAY
No 21. “Soest” ears bad
[page break]
6 WEDNESDAY
No. Grounded ears bad.
7 THURSDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
8 FRIDAY
[blank page]
9 SATURDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
10 SUNDAY
[blank page]
11 MONDAY
leave Peterboro [sic] 3.58 Kings X. 5.25
[page break]
12 TUESDAY
good time Bank. Ted home Flo
13 WEDNESDAY
good time
[page break]
14 THURSDAY
good time County Flo. Dolly O.K.
15 FRIDAY
good time. Dolly
[page break]
16 SATURDAY
Ted good time. plenty fun
17 SUNDAY
good time Ted ship Dolly.
[page break]
18 MONDAY
Kings X 5.50 Peterboro [sic] 7.30
19 TUESDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
20 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
21 THURSDAY
No 22. “Bonn”
[page break]
22 FRIDAY
Mess Dance Audrey O.K. Pat.
23 SATURDAY
Peterboro [sic].
[page break]
24 SUNDAY
Sqd Dance Audrey OK
25 MONDAY
Dance Ramsey Audrey. O.K.
[page break]
26 TUESDAY
[blank page]
27 WEDNESDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
28 THURSDAY
No 23. “Opladen”
29 FRIDAY
[blank page]
[page break]
30 SATURDAY
No 24 “Cologne”
31 SUNDAY
No 25. “Osterfeld”
[page break]
Flight 8/113
RAF. Stockleigh Rd
Regents Park
London. S.W.1.
E Flight
6 Squadron
18 I.T.W.
Bridlington
Yorks.
Hut 55.
D. Squadron
N.1. E.AGS,
R.A F Bridgnorth
Salop
[page break]
11 Course
12 A.G.S.
R.A.F.
Bishops Court
N. Ireland.
Sgts Mess
R.A.F. Hixon
Sgts Mess
R.AF. Leighford
Sgts Mess
R.AF. Hixon
Sgts Mess
R. A. F. Boston Park
Lindholme
Yorks
[page break]
Sgts Mess
R.A.F. Sandtofts
Yorks
Sgts Mess
R.A.F Blyton
Lincs
Sgts Mess
R.A.F Ingham
Lincs
Sgts Mess
R.A.F. Hemswell
Lincs
[page break]
Sgts Mess, Red
Wickenby,
Lincs.
Sgts Mess
[indecipherable word]
Lincs
Sgts Mess
Dunholme Lodge
Lincs
Sgts Mess
Warboys
Hunts
[page break]
Sgts Mess
Upwood
Hunts
Sgts Mess
Wyton
Hunts
Sgts Mess
Warboys
Hunts
Sgts Mess
Wyton
Hunts
Sgts Mess
Graveley
Hunts
[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
Arthur Pearce Diary 1944
Description
An account of the resource
Memorandum items addresses of friends and acquaintances, mentions many days/evenings out and what sort of time he had in Belfast, Lincoln, Gainsborough and many others. Mentions various journeys and postings, lists birthdays. Jots down daily activities and feelings. Mentions crew and other he flew with and comments about them. Entries for days flying and activity. Entries for news of acquaintances and colleagues, some of whom were killed. Mentions posting to 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby, 170 Squadron at RAF Dunholme Lodge and to RAF Warboys for Pathfinders. mentions many targets from August to December 1944.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
A Pearce
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Multi-page booklet with handwritten entries
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Diary
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
YPearceAT1874945v4
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--London
England--Yorkshire
England--Doncaster
England--Lincolnshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Northern Ireland--Belfast
England--Staffordshire
France
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Calais
France--Le Havre
France--Falaise
England--Lincoln
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Germany
Germany--Cologne
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Essen
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Soest
Germany--Rheine
Germany--Rüsselsheim
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Düsseldorf
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-25
1944-08-29
1944-09-03
1944-09-05
1944-09-12
1944-09-16
1944-09-20
1944-09-23
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-10-19
1944-10-25
1944-10-22
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-02
1944-11-30
1944-12-21
1944-12-05
1944-02-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Steve Christian
David Bloomfield
12 Squadron
170 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
Pathfinders
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Hixon
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34306/EHarrisATStimpsonMC440128.2.jpg
007be2a9aa05150c276c9425e19c242c
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
Stimpson, Maurice Cecil
Description
An account of the resource
124 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Maurice Cecil Stimpson DFC (1921 - 1944, 155249 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs, documents, and pennants. He flew operations as a pilot with 156 Squadron and was killed 15 February 1944. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Tony France and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Maurice Cecil Stimpson is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/226992/">IBCC Loses Database.</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-22
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stimpson,
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
Postagram to Maurice Stimpson from Arthur Harris
Description
An account of the resource
The postagram congratulates Maurice on the award of his DFC.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
ACM Arthur Harris
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-01-28
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Oneprinted sheet with typewritten annotations
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EHarrisATStimpsonMC440128
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01-28
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
156 Squadron
aircrew
Distinguished Flying Cross
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
pilot
RAF Warboys
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34121/E[Author]GStimpsonMC431220-0001.jpg
2b0a1bd6fb896a0442cec4e7eaac0a89
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34121/E[Author]GStimpsonMC431220-0002.jpg
56fe82c2682c1f1eeb95678425be3dfc
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
Stimpson, Maurice Cecil
Description
An account of the resource
124 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Maurice Cecil Stimpson DFC (1921 - 1944, 155249 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs, documents, and pennants. He flew operations as a pilot with 156 Squadron and was killed 15 February 1944. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Tony France and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Maurice Cecil Stimpson is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/226992/">IBCC Loses Database.</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-22
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stimpson,
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
Telegram to Maurice Stimpson from Aunt Gladys
Description
An account of the resource
The message advises Maurice that a Swan Pen has been obtained and he does not have to feel obliged to accept.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Aunt Gladys
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-12-20
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One double sided typewritten telegram
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
E[Author]GStimpsonMC431220-0001,
E[Author]GStimpsonMC431220-0002
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-12-20
aircrew
pilot
RAF Warboys
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34120/E[Author]G-GStimpsonMC440201-0003.jpg
ad838b51bf50283b8704646ae1fc9e53
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34120/E[Author]G-GStimpsonMC440201-0001.jpg
28b35813b997de8060bf3fed1ef58231
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34120/E[Author]G-GStimpsonMC440201-0002.jpg
74ad3d55572cb64dc2f22a9824727c97
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
Stimpson, Maurice Cecil
Description
An account of the resource
124 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Maurice Cecil Stimpson DFC (1921 - 1944, 155249 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs, documents, and pennants. He flew operations as a pilot with 156 Squadron and was killed 15 February 1944. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Tony France and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Maurice Cecil Stimpson is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/226992/">IBCC Loses Database.</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-22
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stimpson,
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
Telegram to Maurice Stimpson from Aunt Gladys and Uncle Geoffrey
Description
An account of the resource
The telegram congratulates Maurice on being awarded a DFC.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Aunt Gladys and Uncle Geoffrey
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-02-01
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten envelope and one typewritten sheet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
E[Author]G-GStimpsonMC440201-0001,
E[Author]G-GStimpsonMC440201-0002,
E[Author]G-GStimpsonMC440201-0003
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02-01
aircrew
Distinguished Flying Cross
pilot
RAF Warboys
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/569/8837/AForsythR160214.2.mp3
8c957767bac5297ef7b0921f68b6b9c2
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
Forsyth, Robert
R Forsyth
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Forsyth, R
Description
An account of the resource
Three Items. An oral history interview with Robert Forsyth (1921 - 2018, 201802 Royal Air Force) and two photographs. He flew 13 operations as a navigator with 156 Pathfinders before the end of the war, Subsequently he served on 35 Squadron and flew on the victory flypast in 1945.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert Forsyth and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JF: It was just at the beginning of the war, the war started and I did this three-month course, and he said if I go down every Saturday morning to Drem airport, and he’ll fly [unclear] and they had down there a Tiger Moth so I went down there on a Saturday afternoon. Drem was just a grass strip field, it wasn’t a major airfield.
I: No. Were you in the Sea Cadets?
RF: I was in the ATC Sea Cadets and I spoke to the pilot and he said, ‘Sure, up you come’. I climbed into this Tiger Moth, it was a two-seater thing you know, a bi-plane.
I: Yes.
RF: And we went off and flew around North Berwick, and I wasn’t interested in flying, we just flew it along, we run onto some cumulous. I can remember going to Harrogate anyway. Then we set off to er ‒, it won’t be in my file because ‒, how did I come to 156 Squadron?
I: You must have gone via an OTU.
JF: Yes.
I: Operational Training Unit?
JF: Yes. OTU at Warboys, I think it was called.
I: Warboys.
JF: And we did Pathfinder navigational training there and then I was sent to 156 Squadron at Upwood, which was an operational squadron doing pathfinding with the squadron over Germany usually, and that was of course an exciting time.
Q: How many ops did you do with 156 Squadron?
JF: I only did about thirteen I think, if I remember right. I marked them in this thing, and then the war came to an end.
I: That would have been late ’44, early ’45?
JF: Yes.
I: So, you did thirteen ops with 156 and then the war finished?
JF: Yes, from various places in Germany.
I: But then you might have been involved in flying back prisoners of war and all this sort of thing?
JF: I had written down the places that were marked. These were the operations; Gelsenkirchen and Potsdam and places like that, which was a long flight Potsdam. Then the war finished, it came to an end, and oh, just before it ended, we were used to fly food to Holland.
I: Operation Manna, yeah.
JF: Manna, that was it, and we had a BBC man with us and I did a report to the BBC for this Manna thing, which was very interesting because it was ‒, the war was ‒, it was the day before the war finished and we were flying at very low level and dropping this food and the people were all out on their roofs waving.
I: Waving, what a wonderful thing that was for the Dutch.
JF: Yes, I remember we got a sweet ration, when you were for so long, I made it into a kind of parachute with my hanky and dropped it out the plane, hoping some boy would get it in Holland [unclear], how nice that was. How much they enjoyed getting it. They were starving of course, the people, so that was that. Then there was an interim when we was in no man’s land.
I: Op Exodus.
JF: Exodus, yeah, and we did that for a wee while and so did flights with the crew to show them what ‒
I: That’s right, ground crews went on these Cook’s Tours.
JF: Cook’s Tours, that was it, these are in this book. We went round, just short flights, to let them see the ‒.
I: Then there was the Goodwood, wasn’t there? There was the raid on Caen?
JF: What?
I: There was the Operation Goodwood. The raid on Caen. You went on that as well, didn’t you?
JF: Yes, we went to quite a few places and then the war was coming to an end and they decided to reduce squadrons to a hundred, ‘cause we were in 156 and this started a very exciting time for me. We were sent to 35 Squadron, the whole unit was sent to 35 Squadron, which is that photograph there, Wing Commander Craig I remember, and we were fiddled about for a while. They got us doing formation flying, which was very difficult with Lancasters.
I: Especially when you were used to flying at night, not formatting or anything.
JF: This was through the day and we went down each day over Harris’s offices and we had to be there at a certain time and had to be in formation, and other squadrons were doing that of course, and all this was to do with a fly past on VE Day in London. And it was rather nerve-racking for a navigator in a big squadron, and you will see photographs of that flight over London. As a result of that success, and apparently, we seemed to be the best at it ‒
I: Oh, that’s a big fly past, isn’t it?
JF: Flying over London. That was on the way to Buckingham Palace on VE Day, I would be about here you see? Rather nerve-racking for the navigator. Although we had to get there at the right time and so on.
I: Right, of course.
JF: So we did that and I’m sure it was as a result of that the RAF got an invitation from America, American Air Force, to celebrate their 39th anniversary of the formation of the American Air Force, which American Army Air Force, which later became the Air Force and that’s ‒, I have a big book there and that was an amazing experience because we ‒, and the whole squadron went and we went all round America, stopped at various ‒.
I: Goodwill tour and showing off the Lancasters.
JF: That’s right, we stopped for a week at various places, we laid the aircraft open for inspection and a great deal of hospitality, and taken round until we got to Los Angeles, where the final ceremony was, and they took us about there and of course, we’d stayed a week at each place which was very interesting.
I: For a young man, it was a tremendous opportunity.
JF: Yes, the hospitality was very good I must say, in fact, I wrote a bit about that and also to an American. I’m a member of the Forsyth clan and it’s quite strong in America, and ‒
I: So, you got involved in all of that.
JF: And amongst the one who writes in their newsletter asked if I’d write something about this tour of America.
I: Oh right.
JF: Along the lines of all the good hospitality we had, so I did that and you’ll find that in there too. That was our squadron. That was the formation flying.
I: So, there you were at the end of the war, when were you actually demobilized and sent back to civvy life?
JF: It was in November of, is that ’46?
I: ’46. November ’46.
JF: ‘Because I remember coming up in a plane to Glasgow and going in that night to the university to see the professor, to see if I could start on the architect’s course.
I: And they said, OK?
JF: Although you had to have so many attendances by Christmas,’ If you do it, well, we’ll take you on all right’, and so I saved a year on others.
I: Oh excellent.
JF: At night and evening classes. The very day I came home, I was in the university.
I: Excellent.
JF: And got started and finally qualified or course as an architect.
I: Right, and that was your career?
JF: That was my RAF career finished. Now after that came the ‒, a Scottish air show, and I went down there to see that and I joined their club.
I: Is that the one at Prestwick?
JF: Yeah, they took part at Prestwick and they had aircraft there, and I’ve got a photograph of one of them too. After that, I joined the official club.
I: Right.
JF: You see? And there.
I: So, you’ve kept up an active interest.
JF: The official RAF Memorial Club and I joined that. That was just my crew.
I: So that was you, so you kept the interest in aviation and developed your career as an architect?
JF: That’s right, I did that ‘til I retired and as an architect ‒, I put it in here, one of the things I was proud of, the school I attended in Glasgow, that happened to be a circular school, a secondary school, a very large secondary school.
I: Smithycroft Secondary School 1968.
JF: Yes, I was very proud of that.
I: It’s a lovely building, very aesthetically pleasing. Is it still extant today?
JF: No. They knocked it down.
I: They knocked it down? Vandals.
JF: No, no [slight laugh].
I: It was getting a bit aged.
JF: Yes.
I: Still, it was pretty avant garde for its time, wasn’t it?
JF: It was, yes, it was well thought of at that time.
I: Excellent. You got an architectural award for that I hope.
JF: I enjoyed doing that and I was in my own profession I became President of the Glasgow Institute of Architects. That was our crew.
I: Yeah, tell me about your crew. At the OTU, at Warboys, sorry where you crewed up, when my uncle crewed up at the 11 OTU at Kinloss, sorry 1902 at Kinloss, they put them all in a big hangar, wireless operators, you know, gunners, pilots, navigators, bomb aimers and they just found people they liked, and they liked the look of them and did well on their course and they formed a crew from there.
JF: Well, that wasn’t what happened at ‒.
I: You were actually posted to Pathfinders?
JF: Posted to 156 Squadron and there was always one or two planes failed to return, it was rather sad really and ‒, or they had a need to piece together crews, which they did, they introduced us to various people and would you like to join the crew of this chap? And I did this.
I: OK, so it was more that you were selected to join certain crews.
JF: We got on well together.
I: It was a similar thing but more concentrated in your case.
JF: And we formed a crew and we stayed as a crew.
I: And were you all an officer crew?
JF: No, the pilot was, of course, I wasn’t at that time, I was a flight sergeant. The engineer was a flight sergeant, actually.
I: And there’s an officer there.
JF: That’s him, and there’s the mid upper gunner and the wireless operator, they were flight sergeants.
I: And you had a dog. Was that the mascot?
JF: That was the pilot’s dog. It was just a dog he had.
I: And they had a lot of dogs, didn’t they? Following Guy Gibson’s example.
JF: [Slight laugh] Yes that’s right so we stayed together as a crew and we did very well, and then we had this dramatic change to go to America and that formed another crew. I had a different pilot then.
I: So, when you came back in November ’46, you were demobbed.
JF: Yes, but the thing about America was, we had to fly to America.
I: Yes, of course, via Gander and all over that route. It would have been the old ferry route, wouldn’t it? It would have been the old air bridge ferry? Prestwick, Gander.
JF: Being navigator, we had to stop at the Azores on the way because of the petrol, and I had to find the Azores, which is a very small island.
I: Gosh.
JF: In the middle of the Atlantic. The Azores has a very high mountain in the middle.
I: Volcanic mountain.
JF: Called Pico and my pilot was getting very nervous about finding this.
I: There’s a lot of distance done and there’s a lot of sea down there and we haven’t found the Azores yet, come on nav.
JF: [Slight laugh] that’s right, didn’t like the look of it, but we got there all right, then to Gander in Newfoundland.
I: Was there, in those days there was no real navigational aids of any sort, a beacon and dead reckoning I suppose
JF: Yes, and using the compass.
I: The sextant.
JF: The sextant.
I: The astrodome a lot.
JF: I’ve got that among these papers, I’ve got the log that I used, filled it in as I used it, you know.
I: That’s fascinating.
JF: If you want to take that away with you.
I: Well, I’ll have a look now.
JF: You know what it is now, I’ve told you.
I: Well, I think that more or less finishes this, so we’ll stop that now.
JF: Right.
I: And I’ll play it back just to make sure it’s taken.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Robert Forsyth
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bruce Blanche
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-14
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AForsythR160214
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:15:17 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Robert was in the Air Training Corps (Sea Cadets). From the Operational Training Unit at RAF Warboys where he did pathfinder navigational training, Robert joined 156 Squadron at RAF Upwood. They did around 13 pathfinding operations, usually over Germany, including Gelsenkirchen and Potsdam. Robert participated in Operation Manna, Operation Exodus, Cook’s Tours, and Operation Goodwill.
His whole unit was sent to 35 Squadron to do formation flying in the Lancasters in preparation for a fly-past on VE Day. They were subsequently invited to America.
Robert demobilised in November 1946.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1945-05-08
1946-11
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--London
Germany
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Potsdam
United States
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Vivienne Tincombe
156 Squadron
35 Squadron
aircrew
animal
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Goodwill tour of the United States (1946)
Lancaster
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Pathfinders
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
Tiger Moth
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/283/3439/AJonesPWA171207.2.mp3
b1161008fdc7ccbc2058d73a7d2e684d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jones, Thomas John
Tom Jones
T Jones
Description
An account of the resource
62 items. An oral history interview with Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs, correspondence, service documents, aircraft recognition manuals, medals and a memoir. He flew operations as a flight engineer on 622 Squadron Stirling and 7 Squadron on Lancaster. <br /><br />The collection also contains an <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2566">Album</a> of 129 types of aircraft. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Jones and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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
2014-12-04
2017-12-07
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
Jones, PW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 7th of December 2017 and we’re in Lincoln talking with Peter Jones about the career and life of his father Thomas John Jones DFC. I think just first of all it’s interesting to reflect that in this case Peter didn’t elicit much information from his father, which is exactly the same with my father, and also Jan’s, in that they might have touched on trivialities, but they didn’t talk about what actually happened.
PJ: That’s very true.
CB: So Peter, how does that fit with your feeling of the background?
PJ: [Sigh] I feel very sad, that he, that he didn’t talk to me about it, about what he actually did and had to put up with, and when I did find out, I was immensely proud.
CB: I can imagine.
PJ: But also, as I only found out twenty four hours after he had died, it was an absolute maelstrom of emotions, of reading the memoir that he’d written fifty years after the war, secretly late at night, when my mother had gone to bed - I wasn’t living there at the time - and he’d put all his memories in a WH Smith notebook.
CB: Had he, really.
PJ: And when he’d finished them, he just hid them with all his personal papers I guess knowing I would eventually find it, after his death.
CB: What do you think prompted him to write it? What age was he when he wrote it?
PJ: He was in his eighties when he wrote that; he died in 2004. I don’t know, was he trying to exorcise his demons? Was he conscious that he hadn’t been able to tell me what he’d done and how he actually felt about what he’d done? I really don’t know.
CB: He was awarded the DFC.
PJ: He was.
CB: So clearly he’d had some really horrendous experiences which were rewarded. Do you think that it, to some extent, he felt he didn’t want to look as though he was in any way building on the background?
PJ: Yes, I think he did. He was a very modest man; he was a very modest, self-effacing gentleman. He was a lovely dad.
CB: But never got on to anything to do with wartime.
PJ: Only the very light-hearted stuff. [Microphone noise] He would talk about that, I mean he relates various stories of some of the capers the crew got up to, but when it went to operational, no. No details.
CB: What were the most dramatic capers they got up to would you say?
PJ: Um, I’ve got a lovely photograph taken at Mildenhall when he was flying with 622 Squadron and it shows my dad and three or four of the other crewmen dangling one of their colleagues out of a first floor window. By his legs. [Much laughter] I think that would probably be one of many stunts like that in the day, you know, it, obviously it would be quite a safety valve, and they would thrive on the black humour, but it was a lovely photograph.
CB: This is out of context in the sequence, but I think it’s worth just talking about – how do you think they dealt with the stress?
PJ: Certainly black humour. I think everyone deals with stress differently. So, I don’t know. My father was a smoker. When you, I’ve noticed that a lot, so many photographs of airmen back in the day, and airwomen, of course, they’re nearly all smoking. I think they enjoyed going down the pub as well.
CB: I mean we’ll get on to your father in a minute, but you, as the archivist here, are covering a huge range of different situations and they, there are two things that come out of that in a way, one is the release from the stress, and the other is, we’ll touch on later, is the LMF, the lacking moral fibre bit, which comes up but is largely buried, but the release of the stress is a broad one and in practical terms, what was the main safety valve would you say?
PJ: High jinks. I think that it was the high jinks. We at the archive have got so many photographs of, wonderful photographs of crew, both aircrew, ground crew, WAAFs, having a really good time, it was an adventure. They were young people. And when you look at the photographs of them having a good time, and then just look at the, look at the face, and then look at the rank, they really don’t go together. You’ve got a very, very young man or woman, with a very senior rank and again that must have, must have really weighed heavy on their shoulders.
CB: There was a notion, there is still I suppose a notion, that what the war did to people in the RAF, but particularly Bomber Command, was make them grow up really quickly. Do you reckon you see that in some of the pictures that have been submitted?
PJ: Definitely. Yeah. Certainly some of the more senior officers, you can see it in their faces: they’ve aged. They’ve aged. I mean my father when he, in 1944, he was twenty three. He looks older. And I think they did go through the mill, and I think it did age them, certainly mentally and probably physically as well with some, particularly the rear gunners who had to endure such cold. It must have been pretty dreadful.
CB: And constant flight, fright.
PJ: Yes. Of which they never spoke.
CB: No. I mean my CO in the Reserve had a mental breakdown after being chased by a Ju88 and then shot down, and so the stress there was huge. But what would you put down to the fact that almost, very largely, people in all of the Forces failed to talk about their experiences in the war? What do you think was the background of that?
PJ: We’re looking at a different decade, aren’t we. It was the stiff upper lip decade. It was the decade where men feared to shed tears, other than in private. I think that’s got a lot to do with it. I don’t, would they share it with the rest of the crew? I don’t know whether they would. In fact I don’t think they would, share their fears with the rest of the crew.
CB: No. I just get a feeling, having talked to people, that the LMF bit actually destabilised the crew so there was a very good reason for getting rid of them quickly, but if, and if they spoke about it, the crew was destabilised.
PJ: Yup. I think it was a fear of letting the crew down.
CB: That’s it.
PJ: Definitely.
CB: And that’s bombers, so we’ve got wider scopes than that, which is difficult to fathom.
PJ: [Pause] Mm. One of the things that my dad talks about, is a particular incident where, I can’t quite remember the details of it now, the nearest he actually came to being killed, and he actually quotes - this is in a, in his notes that he wrote fifty years after the event - he actually writes in there and describes this event and he describes himself saying, saying aloud, ‘don’t cry when you get the letter, mum’, and then he suddenly realises that he may be on an open mike, and thinks oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but he wasn’t. You know, so I think that’s an example of again, fear of letting the crew down.
CB: Well I think we know, don’t we, that it’s clear from the four engined bombers but also from the, [throat clear] excuse me, two engined bombers, that the crew was the family.
PJ: They were. My dad describes them as being like brothers, rank didn’t matter.
CB: And they superseded all other relationships.
PJ: Indeed. Yeah, yeah. And because of the nature of the role that they were dealing with, they never made friends with other crews. They felt unable to, because they didn’t know how long they would know them for, and no thought was given to who had been in your bunk before you got in it. That must have been quite difficult to deal with.
CB: So in the Nissen huts there were two or three crews, and when one was lost then everything was picked up quickly, for replacement with another crew. Who they didn’t know either.
PJ: No. It must have been a terrible time for the ground crew, who saw so many come and go.
CB: Yes, and on ground crew, there are two aspects to that. One is losing their crew and their aeroplane, the other one is when the aeroplanes come back bent, or with horrors in. So what’s your perception of the ground crew reaction to that?
PJ: Well of course the ground crew always thought that the aircraft was theirs [emphasis], and they loaned it nightly to the aircrew and lo, you know, god help anyone that bent it, you know. But there was a lovely relationship between the flight crew and the ground crew, and I would imagine there was great banter. I know that my father thought the world of the ground crew. I mean they worked on his aircraft in the most appalling [emphasis] conditions sometimes, to keep it in tiptop condition and to keep the aircrew as safe as possible, or as safe as they could possibly be. But the ground crew must have gone through such terrible times, when their aircraft didn’t come back, you know. And it must have been there in the back of their mind that was it something that we missed? It’s terrible times.
CB: And the link between the aircrew and the ground crew would be the pilot and the engineer would it? Or what would be the main link – just the engineer?
PJ: I think pilot and engineer, yeah, but there would be camaraderie with the whole crew. I don’t know whether the ground crew actually were involved with trying to install the rear gunner in his turret because of course they struggled to get in there on their own.
CB: Yes, ‘cause moving on from there is the aftermath of an attack and removing crew who were injured, or dead. What was your perception of that?
PJ: Pretty grisly business. Very often it, I mean the rear gunners’ odds of survival were so few, so low, and it was quite common that the rear turret just had to be hosed out. Pretty unpleasant job.
CB: And the bits taken out as well.
PJ: Yes. One of the early things that my father talks about in his notes was when they first went to Mildenhall and they saw their first operational aircraft, and it was a, if I remember rightly, it was a Stirling, outside the Flying Control and it was absolutely riddled with holes. And as they walked round, round this aircraft, they got to the rear gunner’s turret and it was just a shattered mess of just shattered Perspex and bent metal, with lots of blood in it, and uniform, bits of uniform and hair, it was at this point my father actually quotes in his notes, ‘it was this point we realised we’d got to pay back the cost of our training,’ and it all became very real.
CB: Yes. Let’s just. That’s a good phrase, I think, that’s appeared in many cases, probably, which is the payback, so how did you perceive the crews’ attitude to that?
PJ: They were professionals: they were dedicated. They were airmen, trained. They were young men, it was an adventure, it was a job and they were young men under orders and they would obey those orders.
CB: Hm. And in a way they were completely detached, if they were at twenty thousand feet, that’s four miles above [throat clearing] where the effect of their ammunition, their bombs, is felt.
PJ: Yes, they’re kind of divorced from it.
CB: Detached.
PJ: Yes, all they see is fires, and explosions and then of course the flak, the searchlights, et cetera and the ever-present fear of fighters.
CB: On a slightly lighter note then, there’s if they make a mess inside the aeroplane, there’s a fine attached to this.
PJ: There was. My father actually flew three hundred hours, three hundred flying hours, before he got rid of his air sickness and squadron lore had it, that if you threw up in the aircraft you had to pay a fine to the ground crew and clear it up yourself. He actually, he mentions that his bank account was saved by a member of the ground crew who gave him any empty biscuit tin. [Chortle] I think that’s another reason why he liked ground crew!
CB: Then there’s the other aspect which is the filling of the Elsan, [clears throat] or not. [Laughter]
PJ: Exactly, or not! Yes, I would think so, or not. A filthy piece of kit, back of the aircraft, just near the rear turret which must have been pretty unpleasant for the gunner. They’d use anything rather than have to use the Elsan, including milk bottles or peeing down the flare chute or even into the bomb bay. But you know, it was desperate measures to have to go and use the Elsan.
CB: See how long it was before it froze!
PJ: Not long, at eighteen thousand feet! [Laughter]
CB: Now [throat clear] what about the interpersonal relationships of the crew? How did that work?
PJ: They were, as I’ve said, they were like brothers; rank didn’t matter. However, once they were operational, on an operational flight, it came into play. The rank did matter then and the skipper’s order was to be acted on, there was no messing about, when they were on ops, there was no, there was no overuse of the communications at all. Everything was spot on. They were professionals.
CB: I think one of the interesting things, looking at the log book and your details of the crew, is that they, the pilot was Royal Australian Air Force.
PJ: He was.
CB: And you also had a wireless operator who was the same, but you had two, he had two Royal New Zealand Air Force and two RAF, three RAF Reserve, RAF Volunteer Reserve. So how did that interaction go?
PJ: It seemed, looking at my dad’s notes, it seemed to work really well. There was no, they were a crew and it didn’t matter where they were from or what their backgrounds were. They were a crew.
CB: I’m going to stop just a mo. Now your father did a lot of ops, but we’ve talked about the aircrew, what about the hierarchy? So, there was a Flight Commander and a Squadron Commander, did you get much out of the notes on that, the relationships?
PJ: No, he does, it’s humour, in some of it. He doesn’t talk much about the squadron commanders although he does talk about when he joined 7 Squadron, that they’d just lost their CO on operational flying. He was replaced and within a fortnight the replacement had gone; had been killed as well.
CB: This is a Pathfinder Squadron.
PJ: This is 7 Squadron at RAF Oakington, yeah. Thinking that, looking back you think was the policy of the squadron CO flying ops a good one? You have to question it really, don’t you. It can’t have done the morale any good, when the boss cops it.
CB: Well presumably the Flight Commanders were Squadron Leaders and the Squadron Commander, ‘cause there’d be thirty aircraft, would be a Wing Commander, would that be right?
PJ: Yes. The quote that my father gives it was three Wing Commanders that were lost.
CB: Oh was it? Oh, I see. In sequence.
PJ: In sequence, yes.
CB: Any indication of whether the Station Commander flew with them occasionally, because Group Captains did sometimes.
PJ: Um, in his logbook there is one: Lockhart. He was, he flew, my father was Lockhart’s flight engineer for one op, other than that it was Fred Philips, DFC and Bar, who was my father’s pilot.
CB: I mentioned earlier the topic of LMF – the lacking moral fibre - did he, in his notes in any way refer to that, either by experience or hearsay?
PJ: He did. And he speaks, and he speaks with warmth about those that just had reached the end of their tether and couldn’t do it any more, and he says he felt sorry for them, but they were still airmen; they weren’t to be ridiculed.
CB: Any indication of their fate, fates?
PJ: Nope. No.
CB: Just stop a mo. I think, in restarting, it’s worth just exploring a couple of things and putting it into context. A lot of these things are written up and in this case there’s a lot from Thomas’ recollections, but the key is the being able to listen to the narrative that you’re delivering. And there are two topics: one’s LMF and the other is the Guinea Pigs. So on LMF, what’s he say there in his report? Notes.
PJ: In his notes he writes a paragraph about LMF in it and he writes: ‘some unfortunates, through no fault of their own, reach the point where they can no longer carry on. Irrespective of how many ops they’d completed, they were deemed lacking in moral fibre. I never knew or heard of any member of aircrew that had anything but sympathy for them.’ And I think, I would like to hope that was a general feeling amongst the airmen, they had reached a point where they couldn’t go on.
CB: Yeah. For whatever reason.
PJ: For whatever reason, yeah.
CB: What do you know about their fate, after they were removed?
PJ: He doesn’t mention a fate at all, he doesn’t mention it.
CB: Okay. And then the people who were badly injured, burned or amputees, what’s he got on that?
PJ: He says, ‘I remember some of the lads who had a tough time: the empty sleeves and trouser legs of the amputees, there were lads with no faces, noses and ears no more than shrivelled buttons, and heavy, newly grafted eyelids, their mouths were little more than slits in a face rebuilt with shining tightly stretched skin grafts, some had hands shrivelled and clawed like eagles talons. They sought no sympathy or favours, but carried on doing a job they could manage. When they went drinking with us, their laughter was as hearty as ever, their spirits unbroken,’ I’m sorry.
CB: It’s all right, we’ll stop. They carried on doing the job they were trained to do.
PJ: Yeah. And he goes on to say when they went drinking with us, their laughter was as hearty as ever, their spirits unbroken and no sign of bitterness. I do find it very difficult to read some of my father’s notes. Even though it’s now, what, thirteen years since he died.
CB: But it’s intensely personal for you.
PJ: Very.
CB: Which it was for all these individuals.
PJ: The notes that he wrote, he wrote in the first person, so it is as though he’s actually speaking to me from the page. Which he is.
CB: Of course, yes.
PJ: That was his idea.
CB: Well the Guinea Pigs, we’re talking about partly there, of course, we’ve interviewed as a group of people, I’m sure we’ve interviewed a number of those, and seen the effects of them and even these years later, some of them brilliantly mended shall we say, but always obvious that they’ve been injured in one way or the other, and McIndoe did an amazing job.
PJ: Fabulous man. And his team.
CB: And of course, there is now, indeed, not just him. There is actually a museum, isn’t there, down in East Grinstead now.
PJ: Yes, I really must go.
CB: In the County Museum, in the Town Museum, and there’s a memorial as well of course. There aren’t many left, but there were six hundred and fifty, in total.
PJ: Yes, it’s sad that we are losing so many of our ladies and gents now.
CB: Shall we now go specifically on to your father’s situation. Here, if we start with earliest information about him. So, he was born in 1921.
PJ: He was.
CB: In Birmingham, is that right?
PJ: Yeah. He was born on the 19th of April, 1921, at 35 Wrentham Street in Birmingham 1, right in the very city centre of Birmingham. The house that he was born in was a back-to-back property on three floors, and a cellar. I think now we would class these properties as slums; they were dreadful places. On the ground floor was a living room and a small scullery, the bedroom above was where his parents slept and then the bedroom above that was where the children were. My dad was one of three. They were, Edna was his, his older sister, and she had a bed of her own, whereas Dad and Ron, his brother, shared a bed. He would talk to me about these sort of things, and he always said that it was cold, bitterly cold, in winter, and they would snuggle up together and there were times when they actually had to sleep under coats. Another thing he would talk about was the fact that it was shared facilities for houses and I think it was six families shared two toilets, which would have made mornings rather interesting, I think.
CB: Out in the garden this is.
PJ: Out in the yard. Yes.
CB: In the yard.
PJ: My father’s parents were William Jones, and Amy Jones, neé Roberts. His father had served with, in the trenches in the First World War, but after the war he became a metal presser. His mother, obviously my grandmother, was a housewife. The family before my dad was of school age, thankfully moved south to Hall Green, which is quite a nice, leafy suburb, and certainly things got better for them down there and he went to, I think it was Pitmaston Road School, and he actually says in his notes that he rather liked school and, but I don’t know what age he was when he left school. I know certainly that he, when he left school he started an apprenticeship with the BSA, in Small Heath, in Birmingham.
CB: Well school leaving age in those days was fourteen wasn’t it, so apprenticeships tended to pick up from there.
PJ: Yeah. When war broke out he was too young to enlist, really. He joined the Home Guard, but I don’t know a lot about that, and I think he was determined to serve, because he was just fed up with sitting at night in the air raid shelter and watching his city burn. He describes in his notes how Edna would sob in, at the very back end of the shelter, frightened as, frightened stiff, as the bombs whistled down. But he was always the boy in the doorway, watching what was going on. Eventually he applied for service, and he applied for service in the Royal Air Force. Why he chose the Royal Air Force I don’t know. Was it the nice uniform? Was it the chance of flying? Why didn’t he choose the army? I think possibly why he didn’t fancy the army was because his father and his grandfather had both served in the army. His dad had served in the trenches and Walter, his, my father’s grandfather, had been out in the Boer War so maybe he’d heard grisly stories about life in the army, on the front line. One memory that I have of my dad when I was growing up, was that he wasn’t a good sailor. In the 1950s and 60s we would go on holiday to the East Yorkshire coast, or the East Riding coast as it was then, and we’d go to Bridlington, and during the holiday it would always, there would always be a cruise on the Yorkshire Bell or whatever the other ones were called, in Flamborough Bay, and I remember my father was always very quiet and rather green around the gills, [chuckle] so I think that was probably the reason he didn’t volunteer for naval duties. Um, I think, I need to go through his log book, but I’m pretty sure he went to Cardington first, in September ‘42 for aircrew selection. And interestingly, when I got hold of his service record, he was turned down - for aircrew - and I think he must have been pretty, pretty brassed off about that. What changed their mind, I really don’t know, because he ended up as aircrew and successfully carried out sixty four ops with main force and Pathfinder Force, so something must have impressed them. I think I have a very vague memory of my dad talking about the flight engineer’s position on Stirlings, which is the aircraft that he started on, as being very poky. My dad was five foot one, so maybe they changed their mind because they wanted small flight engineers! I’d rather think that they saw his potential rather than his size [laughter]. But I guess, like all of the trades, they needed engineers and here was an enthusiastic young feller who wanted to fly. Anyway, from Cardington he was posted to Padgate for his induction and that’s where he was issued with his service number, and like all servicemen it was a number he would never, ever forget. From Padgate he went to the Initial Training Wing, 42 ITW, at Redcar up on Teesside, and there he was billeted with Mrs Thatcher on Richmond Road, Redcar for six weeks and he talks about the capers he got up to with Ken Battersby and Chaz Curle, but most of all he remembers how icy cold it was doing drill on the sea front with the howling north, north wind and the spray from the North Sea. Must be pretty unpleasant. But anyway, he got through that. In December ’42 he then went to RAF Cosford, and there he, a quote from RAF Cosford, he actually said, ‘everything involved muck and mud down there.’ He says that in the first week of every entry it was spent on fatigues, peeling four foot high piles of vegetables and after every meal the floors and tables of the huge dining hall had to be cleared and polished. There was also guard duty but they didn’t mind it because everybody else had to do it. I suppose they’d all gripe but it had to be done, it’s just how it was. From there he went to start his engineering course at St Athan, by this time he was what, twenty two. I’ve got a lovely photograph of him at the age of twenty two, taken at St Athan, where he looks like a very, very young sergeant. He was a natural engineer. It never left him, he was a perfectionist in everything he did in later life. He drove my mother batty because he was plan, plan and then do, whereas my mother wanted plan – do, or just do. [Laughter] But he was a great planner. He was a perfectionist in everything he did. I think that comes from his RAF training and it was instilled in him how important it was. A lot of the people that he’d been at Redcar with were also at St Athan and he writes, most of the lads that had been on the ITW were at St Athan. He records in his memoir lots of names, Tommy Meehan, MacMeehan, John Mullins, Jimmy Cruickshank, Albert Stocker, Arnold Hurn, Jack Walker and John Gartland. And that they would be killed. Taffy Lightfoot and Roy Eames would go down over Bremen and that Billy Currie was shot down whilst still training. It was pretty terrible, and it was a relatively small group to start with, at the ITW, that so many would be killed, and so quickly. From there he went to 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit at Stradishall, and it was here that he experienced his first flight in a Stirling. He’d never been higher than a first floor window in his life and he really didn’t know how he was going to cope with it. And his description, I think, of his first flight is fabulous. It’s just something that you don’t think about unless you’ve done it yourself, in an aircraft of that generation, which sadly I haven’t but would love to. And he describes taxying to the runway and, ‘hesitating for a few seconds before beginning the mad dash to the other end and how the aircraft’s thirty tons lifted off the runway and it promptly began to sway from side to side and up and down. Looking back down the fuse, the wings actually flapped, the huge engine appeared to be nodding in unison, looking back down the fuselage the whole structure was twisting back and forth,’ and he says that the height didn’t bother him but after ten minutes the motion caused him to be sick and here he says it took three hundred flying hours before the airsickness settled down. Quite remarkable. I can’t imagine flying in an aircraft that’s doing that, but. It was at Stradishall that he was crewed up, and it was the same process that they all went through: all met up bumbling around in a hangar and sort of someone would come up and say fancy being my flight engineer or I need a rear gunner, and it’s a kind of odd way of doing things; but it worked! You know. I think it’s quite remarkable that a skipper could have, I don’t know, almost a special sense of who he’s choosing and certainly with Fred Philips’ crew, they gelled straight away. I mean the crew was Fred Philips who would become, was awarded DFC before he was twenty one and was awarded Bar before he was twenty two. He was an insurance clerk from Punchbowl, Sydney. Dave Goodwin was a New Zealander, he was the navigator, another Kiwi was Clive Thurstan who was initially bomb aimer, and he had an interesting nickname: he was known as Thirsty Thurston - I wonder why! The wireless operator was an Australian, called Stan Williamson. Ron Wynn who was RAFVR was the mid upper gunner, he was from Stockport. Joe Naylor, again RAFVR was the rear gunner, and interesting he was known by everyone, sorry, it was John Naylor, and he was known by everyone as Joe, or maybe I’ve got that the wrong way round and they did their first flight together on the 29th of September 1943. I can’t imagine what it was, what it would feel like, I really can’t. But having read the memoir, they became instantly, a crew, and gelled as a crew, immediately. And it was after thirty four flying hours at Stradishall that they were declared fit for operations and as I said earlier, that was when it suddenly became very real. On the 2nd of September ’43 they joined 622 Squadron at Mildenhall. They were flying Stirlings. The squadron converted to Lancasters in November ‘43. That’s where his log book starts to get very interesting. Whereas he’d logged his operations in quite detail with additional information added after the op, I think later on. He’s quite detailed, he notes targets and also notes the, sometimes notes, tonnage of bombs and the aircraft that took place and the losses. Having looked through a lot of log books they are all very different. They’re all of the same format, but every airman had his own way of putting things in. I love the fact that you rarely, rarely see a scrappy log book: the writing is almost identical in them all. Whether it was something that was taught at school, or whether it was something that was taught during their training, that they all seemed to have the same handwriting. They’re beautifully readable and they are fascinating books to look through. His first op was a gardening op, a minelaying op, on Skaggerat and he mentions that they had an extra man, for gardening ops, they had a naval, a member of the Royal Navy that would arm the mines before they were dropped and then it just goes on with I think, next we’ve got two ops to Hanover, the first of which they had to turn back due to engine failure, and then it was gardening again, but this time at Kattegat. And just, it’s not intense, the flying, really, right, having said that, I’ve just turned the page, [paper shuffling] and I’ve gone the wrong way round. Er, yup. He’s going to Ludwigshafen, Berlin, Berlin, Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Stuttgart again. His last op with 622 was on the 1st of March, the Stuttgart. And it was there that they, went, after that they went to Warboys and this is where they each learned a little bit of each other’s role so that should anything happen someone else would be able to carry out your role and not let the crew down and hopefully get home.
CB: Now Warboys was the night flying unit, so what were they there to do?
PJ: A lot of it was circuits and landings, obviously like the initial training but they were learning night navigation I believe as well, using a bubble sextant and things like that and that was the second sort of hat that my father wore. That he, he learned to do the, now what is it called, the navigating via the stars?
CB: The star shots.
PJ: Star shots, thank you. Yes. It was after that, that on the 4th of April 1944 they transferred to 7 Squadron, Pathfinder Force, at RAF Oakington in Cambridgeshire. Their ops started on the 9th of April with an attack on the railway yards in Lisle. This was ’44, so a lot of the ops here are French. This was running up to D-Day, and interspersed with German ops as well, but there’s an awful lot of operational flying on Normandy. [Paper shuffling]. Get these the right way round. On the 1st of July they start doing day ops, or daylight operations again it’s all French and they’re hitting communications, flying bomb sites, railway yards, oil plants and then he goes night flying again, over Germany, and then it’s back to France. Interestingly some of these ops they were flying two ops a day. On the 18th of July ’44 they did a French op, a flying bomb site, flying three hours fifteen minutes in the morning, then at night they were up again for three hours thirty five minutes attacking an oil plant in France. A lot of these French ops now in July, Fred Philips had been promoted to Master Bomber with 7 Squadron, so I guess it would have been even more intense with the crew than it had been in the past because I guess they weren’t dropping bombs and markers then scarpering: they had to hang around. Must have been pretty stressful. Going on to again, July. On the 30th of July, my dad’s log book shows that they were bombing the Normandy battle area. That’s followed by more flying bomb sites. On the 6th of August they were observing the artillery firing, 7th of August it was the Normandy battle area again, and it was the enemy strong points were being bombed, back to oil depots and then fuel dumps. The 12th of August 1944 there were two ops: in the day it was a fuel dump, four hours five minutes, and then in the evening they were stemming the enemy retreat. Then it’s back to flying bomb sites on a daytime raid. 29th of August 1944 was the longest flight that they ever did, and that was to Stettin in Poland, a total of nine hours and ten minutes, and my dad refers to this op in his notes by saying that it was the coldest he had ever been on an op and he felt so sorry for the rear gunner, because my father was in a heated cockpit and of course there was little heating for the rear gunner and of course many of them had a clear vision panel although they punched the panel out to see, so he must have been incredibly [emphasis] cold on that raid.
CB: Just before you go on from there, in his notes, what does he say about the bombing of the V1 and V2 sites, because they were difficult a to find and b to actually hit?
PJ: He doesn’t actually mention them, he doesn’t say much about them. It’s all in his log book with just a little note, he doesn’t actually describe physically attacking the V1 and V2 sites, and most of his descriptions are of Berlin and the Ruhr, which were of course the bread and butter targets, and nasty targets as well.
CB: Yes, so how did he feel, in his notes, about Berlin?
PJ: Like them all, he hated it. It was the big city. It was the place that Hitler did not [emphasis] want hit, but.
CB: So what was the significance of them being an unpleasant place to go? Was it more flak, was it fighters or combination of both?
PJ: It was a combination of both. I mean Berlin had massive, massive flak towers didn’t they, and the flak was intense. Um, he describes the noise when the curtain went back, in the briefing, when they followed the red line and at the end of the red line was Berlin and he just describes it was a loud groan. Really, no one wanted to go to the big city.
CB: So as the Pathfinder, now on 7 Squadron, the most accomplished ones would drop the reds, the newer ones would drop the greens, if Fred Phillips became the Master Bomber did that mean they ended up dropping reds?
PJ: Er, I don’t know, he doesn’t describe that. He does remember graphically being extremely uncomfortable circling the target for so long, on an open radio, you know, and he was very aware that they were the sitting duck, the aircraft that had to be shot down.
CB: And what height would they be flying then? Does he give any indication of that?
PJ: He talks about eighteen thousand feet. Whether they dropped for the target, I don’t know. He does describe flying over enemy territory at ten thousand feet, when they were, they’d been severely shot up over the target and they experienced severe [emphasis] airframe icing and the only way that they could gain height was to make the, was to jettison anything and they ended up throwing out all of the ammunition and the guns and they flew back to the UK at ten thousand feet, over enemy territory. Eventually, there was no way they were going to get back to Cambridgeshire, so they diverted to the first airfield available which was West Malling in Kent, fighter station, and ran out of fuel and piled into the runway. They wrote the aircraft off completely. And he describes having to get back to Oakington, from Kent to Cambridgeshire, on the train, in flying gear. [Laughter] There was no taxi in those days. No, but that was just one of the dodgy moments he had.
CB: Did the aircraft become unserviceable or a write off because he landed without undercarriage, or what happened exactly?
PJ: He doesn’t go into great detail, but it was written off, completely written off. I don’t know at the time whether West Malling had a concrete runway or whether it was still grass, I don’t know. But I can’t imagine the CO of West Malling being impressed as a Lancaster drops in very heavily. But they got away with it. They were, at Oakington, Fred Philips’ crew were known as the lucky crew. They’d been flying on a lot of ops by then and they were probably seen as one of the more senior crews on station and they were invariably late back, and usually peppered with holes and my dad describes in his notes, once, the fact that they were so late back that he later discovered they’d been written off and marked up as missing and he describes how they eventually landed and they were debriefed and then they went into the dining hall for their post-operational bacon and eggs and he said there was one of the, there was a WAAF in there and soon as they walked there in she burst into tears.
CB: And the relationship with the WAAFs, was that regular or how did it pan out?
PJ: I think it was, yeah, again, they had great respect for the WAAFs and many a young amorous airman could be put down by just one stare from them [chuckle].
CB: Does he make any comment, it’s an interesting point though I think, about the experience of the WAAFS who had relationships with the aircrew and constantly losing that person?
PJ: He doesn’t mention it, but I’m aware that it must have been very difficult. And I mean some of the poor girls got the reputation as being the chop girl because they’d lost so many boyfriends, or well, airmen who they’d had relationships with, and they got this dreadful reputation and that must have been really hard to live with.
CB: Absolutely.
PJ: And yet there are so many lovely stories about the relationship between the aircrew and the WAAFs. Stevie Stevens’ story is absolutely fantastic, in that, I can’t remember where he was flying from, he, he really enjoyed, loved the sound of the WAAF controller’s voice and then she suddenly just disappeared off the radio and she was never heard of again at that station. I think it was Scampton that he moved to and lo and behold, there it was, the same voice as he was requesting permission to land and he was so intrigued by this WAAF’s voice that he actually went to the Control Tower to see who she was and of course the upshot of that was that they married!
CB: Never looked back.
PJ: Never looked back and are still happily married to this day. Yeah. Some lovely stories.
CB: I think one of the interesting ones that emerged from interviews is the occasions where the WAAFs lined up at the end of the runway to wave off. Does he refer to that in any way?
PJ: He does. Yeah, he does, he said there would be a row of them, or a row of people on the Control Tower balcony and there would be, and he said invariably there would be, I think he calls it a gaggle of WAAFs, that would wave their handkerchiefs to them, but another person that he talks about was a little girl and he talks about this, a family that lived next to the perimeter track in a farm cottage, and he describes how the squadron would taxi round the perimeter tracks from their various dispersals, describing, and he described the aircraft as being like a row of ducks and he said just this roar and spit and hiss of brakes and he said there was this little blonde girl would appear at the back, at the garden gate, every time there was an aircraft on the perimeter track and she would wave to them, every evening. And he said without fail each aircraft that passed this little girl, the crew would wave back and the gunners would dip their guns at this little girl and he said he would love to know who she was, and after my father died I was researching his notes and I found out who she was.
CB: Did you?
PJ: Her name was Clara Doggert, if my memory serves me right, but sadly she died, but it would have been so nice to have met this lady.
CB: Yes. On a lighter note, looking at the log book, [bump on microphone] I think it’s quite interesting to see the entry that says NFT – Night Flying Test - and the timing. What do you know about the choice of timing?
PJ: Um, I hadn’t spotted that one.
CB: So the idea is that you take off at twenty three hundred hours, and you do your night flying test which takes an hour and ten minutes and why is that?
PJ: I think it would be because they would get their breakfast?
CB: They would get their fry up! [Laughter]
PJ: Good for them!
CB: After midnight! And I think this is one of the intriguing things there. I mean on ops obviously they were coming back because they were flying at night, but to do the night flying test.
PJ: They had a cunning plan!
CB: Yeah! Some of them had to be in the day so that didn’t work. Same title, but different time.
PJ: Yes. I think they’d become a pretty savvy crew by then, knew how things worked.
CB: So how many ops had they done when the crew left 7 Squadron?
PJ: Sixty four.
CB: Oh, right.
PJ: They had, by then they had an extra crew member because Fred was Master Bomber so they had a specialist map reader, of course H2S had come along by then so they were an eight man crew. The eighth man was a guy called Steve Harper who hadn’t done as many ops as the rest of them, so when the crew split up he wasn’t tour expired, and Steve kept on flying with 7 Squadron for a bit longer and he was very, very seriously injured by flak on an op. He survived, but he was seriously injured. Their favourite aircraft was PA964 and in less than a month after them, the crew splitting up, the aircraft was shot down and the entire crew were held then, as POWs. So the name ‘Lucky Crew’ was pretty apt. They got away with it. They never saw each other again.
CB: Didn’t they?
PJ: A couple of the Australians and the New Zealanders did, but the RAFVR chaps didn’t. And in my dad’s notes he does actually mention that and he asks the question, would I want to meet them again, and he actually makes the point of saying no. And the reason he wouldn’t want to meet them again, because he wants to remember them as being young men. He doesn’t want to see a load of old men, he wants to remember them as, how they were.
CB: I think that’s a really telling sentiment, as to why some people don’t want to open up about what they’ve done: it’s a memory that’s hurtful, in some ways, it’s pleasurable in others. But there’s a mixture of emotions, isn’t there.
PJ: But there is, and again in his notes, he hints [emphasis] at the, the difficulty he had with the number of civilians and children that were killed. I think he took comfort from being, with his role as a Pathfinder, that he was marking targets as accurately as possible to cut down on the losses, but he was, I think one of the reasons he couldn’t talk about it, were the civilian losses.
CB: Any reflection on the British civilian losses being on the opposite, receiving end?
PJ: No. The only thing he mentions in his notes is the, when he was a teenager in the air raid shelter and he also mentions walking from Hall Green to Small Heath one morning after an op the night before, after a raid the night before on Birmingham, and he actually mentions being fascinated by the effect of the bombing: that one house was a shell and yet the house next door was perfectly okay. One had no windows, the other one was intact, with an alarm clock still ticking in the window, and he describes a double decker bus, sitting on its nose, in the middle of the road. And he just describes this as being absolutely fascinating in an horrific way, and he couldn’t, just couldn’t work out why it wasn’t all flat and yet why would one building remain intact, as though it’d not been touched at all and yet the one next door was completely devastated.
CB: Just on that tack, what do we know about the composition of the German bomb load, in dropping bombs on Britain.
PJ: Well they were using twin-engined aircraft and certainly the bomb load that was dropped on this country was far less than was delivered to Germany.
CB: I was thinking of the composition of the load itself. So they’ve got high explosive and they’ve got incendiary. Because the RAF learned from that.
PJ: Yes, um, it was the incendiary that would cause the, the devastating fires, then you had also, certainly from an RAF perspective, specialist bombs for, that were used on specific targets. Like the Grand Slams, et cetera.
CB: Had father got to the stage of dropping those as well?
PJ: No. No, by the end, by the time he was on Pathfinders he was mostly dropping markers with a basic payload as well.
CB: ‘Cause his job was to make a mark, marking.
PJ: Yes. Primary job was to mark, mark turning points and targets for main force.
CB: So at the end of the tour, tours, two tours, effectively.
PJ: Two tours.
CB: What did he do then?
PJ: When he left, when he left Oakington, I think, I’m sure he went to Northern Ireland to, er, looking at.
CB: To Nutts Corner.
PJ: To Nutts Corner, 1332 Heavy Conversion Unit, and he was there from the 28th of December ’44 to April ’45. One of the things that he talks about is the warmth of the people of Northern Ireland. And he describes that when he arrived in Belfast he was kind of adopted by a family and given a late Christmas lunch by this family because he was a young lad; you know, sort of, he wasn’t that young by then, but he was so far from home, from his, from Birmingham. 1332 Heavy Conversion Unit moved to Riccall in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was an airfield to the south of York and just sort of north of Selby, and as a teenager I used to cycle out there and it was all still there, which was wonderful, knowing that my dad had served there, but that’s, I digress, and it was whilst he was serving at Riccall – he was the adjutant of the Engineering School there - he went to a dance in Selby, which was a little market town, and the dance was at Christy’s Ballroom, above a shirt factory, of all things, which I think was how they were in the day, and he met the girl who would become my mother. And she was a farm worker’s daughter, who was at the time working in service, as a maid for a quite a wealthy timber family that ran a wealthy timber business and actually where she was living at the time, working, was on the perimeter track of RAF Burn and later my mother would tell me how, as a young working maid, she would also go to the bottom of the garden, in the evenings. But anyway, my dad would cycle to Burn or to Hamilton, where my mother’s home was, and that’s four miles south of Selby, on his service bicycle. That wasn’t too bad, but then 1332 HCU moved to Dishforth and his weekly trips then were a hundred and twelve miles, on a service bicycle, in all weathers. I guess he was in love! [Laugh] Mad fool!
CB: Amazing what motivation there can be in that! What were they flying, 1332, that was a Heavy Conversion Unit, but.
PJ: Initially, they were on, at the time they had a mixture, I think, of Lancasters B24s, certainly the last aircraft my father flew in was B24.
CB: But what was their role? It wasn’t bombing.
PJ: I think, I think they’d gone over to transport by then, or certainly they were heading that way. But when his time was up at Riccall he went to Bramcoats, and there he was the Station Armaments Officer, and this is where his RAF career is kind of taking a spiral because he’s not flying, he hates it. He really [emphasis] wanted to stay in the RAF and pursue a flying career but my mother wasn’t having any of it, so that was the end of his dream of serving round the world and spending his days flying. From Bramcoats he ended up going to Uxbridge and after a medical and signing lots of papers he was given a cardboard box with a suit and hat in it. And he was demobbed.
CB: When was that?
PJ: Oh, I think ’46, I think. I’d need to look at the log book. But my parents married in February ‘46.
CB: And he was still in the RAF then.
PJ: Yes. His wedding photograph is in uniform.
CB: How did he feel about moving from operations, which were very intense and specific, in terms of being a Pathfinder Force, to an OC, to an HCU? What did he feel about that in his notes?
PJ: Um, I wouldn’t say he was bored. But -
CB: Frustrated?
PJ: Yes, frustrated probably. He did have the odd bit of excitement. I mean he talks about [bumps on microphone] one particular incident at Nutts Corner where he was a flight engineer for a young Canadian pilot. He said that this young Canadian was a flying boat pilot and he said lovely chap, really eager, and loved it, he said they were on final approach to Nutts Corner and my father kept looking at this pilot and the pilot kept nodding excitedly much as ‘I’m doing all right aren’t I’, and my father looked at him again and then looked down at the switch gear and looked at him again, and my father just gently leaned over and pushed the full throttles wide open to force an overshoot because he’d forgotten to put the undercarriage down! So the eager Canadian airman was having too much of a good time. Apparently his expression was one of hang dog!
CB: This was on a Stirling?
PJ: Yes, er no, it was a Lancaster actually. Because of course he wouldn’t have been on flight deck for a, with a Stirling. Yes, I can imagine the poor Canadian’s face. He thought he was doing really, really well.
CB: Amazing!
PJ: But I think he was disillusioned, my father was disillusioned: he didn’t want to be on the ground, he wanted to be in the air.
CB: So when he left the RAF, what did he do?
PJ: I really don’t know. As I say, my parents married in February ‘46 and initially they moved to Birmingham and also to Bath because my grandparents, my maternal grandparents lived in Bath for a very short time and then moved back to Birmingham, and then my parents ended up settling down in Selby and my father started working for John Roster and Son which was a paper mill. They were a Manchester based paper company and they had a satellite factory in Selby, and he worked there for years [emphasis]. I came along in 1954 and as I was growing up I remember that my dad was hardly ever at home. He, for years and years and years he worked six and a half days a week and he would always cycle to work and he cycled to work in all weathers, and I can still see him in winter with his RAF greatcoat with plastic buttons on it, he’d taken the brass buttons off, and he used his old gas mask, service gas mask bag, for his backup and there’s a really endearing image I have of him, cycling off in his greatcoat. Um, having said that he was never there, when he was there, he was a great dad. He always had time to read stories to me, and we would read things like the usual 1960s classics that every little boy read: Moby Dick and Treasure Island et cetera, and I have lovely memories of him reading those. Again, going back to his practicality, he used to build me all sorts. He made stations and tunnels. He made the tunnels out of paper pulp, from the paper factory, from the paper mill. So I always had a really good train set.
CB: A type of papier maché.
PJ: An early type of papier maché. Yes. It was very smelly as well!
CB: He worked as an engineer, presumably, at the paper mill.
PJ: He did, he did. Yeah, and he was there until I was in my teens and of course I changed from junior school. He was brilliantly supportive with my homework and he would spend hours helping me with homework and I remember one for some reason I was struggling with the coffee trade in Kenya and I now can’t forget it and he just sat down and we just went over it. He was an incredibly skilled artist - self taught - and sadly I never inherited those genes, although my daughter has. He produced some fabulous sketches.
CB: Amazing!
PJ: And watercolour paintings. [Paper shuffling]
CB: [Indecipherable] in 1979. Amazing, yes.
PJ: He started from nothing with his art, you know. He just used to doodle and then he just got better and better and better. An example I’ve got here today is the, this, his lionesses head and it’s incredibly [emphasis] detailed isn’t it, you can almost see every hair.
CB: Yes. As an engineer did he go into design engineering as well do you think?
PJ: I don’t think so, I don’t think so. I think he was possibly a bit of an innovator, when problems arose, which of course he would have had to have been back in the war, he would have had to have been very self reliant and that carried on with him. He became a model maker as well, and he produced a model that I still have at home that sits in my sitting room and it’s a twin engined compound engine. Stationary steam engine.
CB: Oh really!
PJ: And it works. It probably, well it worked. It probably doesn’t any more because I haven’t kept it serviced. But it has pride of place.
CB: Brilliant.
PJ: Yeah, it’s a lovely thing.
CB: So, you were a teenager when he left the paper mill. What did he do then?
PJ: He got a job as a maintenance fitter at Danepak Bacon, in Selby, and it was then that he actually started to only work five days a week, which you know, I suppose was luxury, really, but sadly he didn’t work there for a very long time because he was, the company got into difficulties and he was eventually made redundant. I think that [emphasis] had a big effect on him [pause] and after his redundancy he never had a job again, and he was made redundant before [emphasis] retirement age.
CB: So what messages did you get from his [emphasis] experiences and advice as to what career you would follow?
PJ: He wanted me to go in the RAF, and follow his footsteps, but I didn’t. [Laugh] My mother didn’t want me to. So I headed off in a different direction altogether.
CB: What did you do?
PJ: I went into acute healthcare. Well after a while, I went into acute healthcare. I had numerous, numerous sort of jobs first. Nothing too serious.
CB: Did you have some kind of vision of what your career was to be?
PJ: Initially no, not at all and then I met up with a few people who were working in healthcare and I thought yeah, that sounds interesting.
CB: So what did that involve?
PJ: It involved a thirty four year career working with anaesthetics and airway management.
CB: Tell us more.
PJ: I trained as an operating department practitioner and specialised in anaesthetic support and ended up working mostly with emergency patients. I specialised in emergency work in the end.
CB: Doing what exactly?
PJ: It was airway management. I used to work in, I was based in operating theatres but I worked in Intensive Care Units and then the resus rooms in A and E departments. It was the A and E work that I really did love. I worked all over the country. I started in Kettering and from Kettering I went to, um, where did I go from Kettering? To East Surrey Hospital in Redhill, then I went up to London and worked at Moorfields Eye Hospital, the Western Ophthalmic Hospital, Great Ormond Street. Then I worked in the St Mary’s Group, which was St Mary’s in Paddington, Mary’s West 2, St Giles West 10, Samaritan Hospital for Women, and then I got a little bit disillusioned with living in London, or maybe it was my then girlfriend who got disillusioned and wanted to move. So I got a job in Lincoln and a month later my then girlfriend who would be my wife and now my ex-wife [laugh] followed and I moved up here to Lincoln in 1987 and I’ve been here ever since. I took early retirement in June, July 2012 because I was just so disillusioned with how the NHS management worked, messing things up, and I really didn’t want to be part of it any more. I had two years where I didn’t do anything, really, and I saw a post, I think it was on the internet or something like that, about the International Bomber Command Centre and I read this post and thought that sounds really interesting. And lo and behold it was based in Lincolnshire, and so they were looking out for volunteers. So I thought well, I spent two years sitting on my bottom doing next to nothing, or once a week walking up the pub and I could be doing something a little bit more worthwhile and something that would reflect what my late father had been doing and I started on the project as a data checker. I was working with the, with Dave Gilbert who was doing a fabulous job recording at the losses and it was one of my jobs to check the accuracy of the information against the data and make sure that what was going to be put on the IBCC records was accurate. And it was fascinating but shocking, as well, going through the losses and looking at the ages of those that had been lost and also looking at the fact that an awful lot of those aircrew that had been lost were lost in training before they’d even got on the squadrons, and I was really shocked because I was, at the time, I’d been given a whole load of Canadian names, I’d been given about a hundred and fifty Canadian names, and the losses in training were higher that the loss, operational losses, for this particular group of airmen, and I thought, and I’m thinking where are these poor sods remembered. They’re not. Not really. There’s the odd little memorial in a hedge bottom, somewhere, which I think are wonderful, but there were so many lost in training that aren’t recorded. They’re not in Chorley. Mind you, Chorley was the record of the aircraft not the crew, wasn’t it.
CB: Absolutely.
PJ: And this is one of the reasons why I got so hooked on the project, and I think it was in January 2015 I had a phone call from the Bourne office asking me if I’d like to come on board as a paid member of staff, to work on the archive, and I bit their hand off. We were based initially at Witham House on the University of Lincoln’s campus. We were in a portacabin which I think my colleague describes as the nearest thing the university had to a Nissen hut, at the time.
CB: We remember.
PJ: You remember it well, [laugh] with the flexi floor, but in August 2015 we moved off the main university campus out to University of Lincoln’s Riseholme Campus, which is where we are today, and we work in the most beautiful country house and I think it just lends itself so, so nicely to the project. It looks, I [emphasis] think it looks like a Group Headquarters and when I first saw it I thought, yeah, I want to work there. But there are two things missing on that house: it doesn’t have a flagpole and it doesn’t have an RAF Ensign fluttering from the top of it. But um, beautiful house. Beautiful grounds and I am very fortunate that I’m now working with a fabulous group of people. Working with some amazing [emphasis] facts, figures, and dealing with amazing stories and artefacts and literally every day is like Christmas Day, when I open the post I have no idea what’s going to come through the door. But it’s also every day is an emotional rollercoaster, you go from the Christmas Day of opening a parcel and seeing these amazing artefacts and these wonderful memories that are sent in, or I’m listening to other recordings of fabulous stories, or heartbreaking stories that come through and it’s those stories and reading the letters, that a young airman wrote, hoping that no one would ever have to read it and of course I’m reading it because his parents did. And I remember reading one of those, it was from a young Canadian airman from Vancouver who had just started operational flying and he’d written the [emphasis] most beautiful letter. I found it remarkable that a nineteen year old could write such a mature letter. I was, I read this letter late on a Friday afternoon and I couldn’t get rid of it, and it haunted me all weekend. I mean, those letters were wonderful. But also we deal with the other side of it, in that I got into the archive about two hundred letters from a young airman who, before he joined up, had worked at Park Royal, in a printing works, and the letters that he was writing weren’t to his family, they were to his workmates, and so they weren’t sanitised and they were laugh out loud funny. My colleagues here will tell you that I was laughing, out loud, at some of these letters, and this particular airman was the Eric Morecombe of his day and I got inside his head and I got to know this man and reading these letters and he’s describing one where there’d been an influx of two hundred WAAFs on station and he actually says ‘the chaps are getting choosy’, with the WAAFs [chuckles] and you know, these were lovely letters and then I got to the last letter in this pile and I rang this chap up and the donor, the owner of this collection was from Bridgewater in Somerset, and I rang him up and said ‘I’ve just read the last of Peter’s letters’ [banging] and I said ‘what happened to him? Have you got any more letters?’ [Steps] And he just says, ‘well you’ve read his last letter.’ He didn’t come back. And that really hurt, because having read all his letters I thought you know, I’d got to know this man, he was a very funny man, and he must have been fabulous to serve with. But the project’s going really well. I’m in receipt of some amazing [emphasis] stuff and I do it in my dad’s honour.
[Other]: Yes.
PJ: Well, I hope he’s smiling down on me.
[Other]: I’m sure he is. You’ve given us a fantastic insight into your father’s experiences. Absolutely.
PJ: He was a remarkable man. He was a lovely man.
[Other]: Yes.
PJ: As I say, it’s been thirteen years since he died and, [pause] I still miss him.
[Other]: Course you do. I’m going to the loo. [Whisper] [Laughter] I’ll turn this off.
CB: It’s running. So Peter, thank you for what you’ve done so far. I think, in summing up we could cover a few other things, but what was your parents’ reactions to your career choices after the experiences of their parents, and your father in particular, in the war?
PJ: As I said, my father, I think, rather fancied the idea of me joining the RAF, as I did, but my mother put me off that. I don’t think my father was disappointed at all, in fact he was quite proud of the career path I chose, but interestingly, another career path that my mother put me off: I gained a Deck Officer Scholarship with Shell and my mother put the kybosh on that as well. [Laughter] She was quite, quite, um, she tended to get her own way.,
CB: What worried her about going to sea?
PJ: It was being away from home I think. Actually she was probably right because of course the British Merchant Fleet has gone. So I’d probably be redundant.
CB: As a Captain! [Laugh]
PJ: I doubt it! [Laughter] More like Pugwash! But no, my dad was proud of where I ended up.
CB: Of course. Well I mean it’s a very good thing to do.
PJ: And I really think he would be very proud of what I’m doing now.
CB: I bet, yes.
PJ: It’s a great project. I think that we are trying to turn back history, because Bomber Command and particularly those that flew were demonised and we want to tell the story of the whole of the bombing war, not just from British perspective, but we were an umbrella over the whole of the war. We want to hear the experiences of people on all sides and we are getting remarkable stories: we’ve got fabulous inroads into Italy with amazing stories from there. And, you know, going back to Bomber Command, I can’t, I really can’t imagine what it was like in 1945 when everyone was huddled around the wireless, waiting for Churchill’s victory speech and everybody was mentioned. Except Bomber Command. And I think that must have been a terrible blow to everyone that served with Bomber Command; a body blow. So many had been killed and what recognition had the government given them? None. What is a life worth? What was a life worth to them? You know, I think it was a terrible thing to miss them out.
CB: Did your father ever mention this matter?
PJ: I think he did once. I can’t, I wasn’t that old, and I’m pretty sure it was a conversation he was having with someone else, but he was pretty hacked off about it, he’s, I think his opinion of Churchill had gone from being very high to being very low. He was hurt by it, very hurt. Because he’d lost so many, many friends.
CB: Yes, you mentioned them.
PJ: Well that was just a few I think.
CB: Yes, that was just from his early days.
PJ: Exactly, it wasn’t from the later days.
CB: What was do you think his overriding memory was, of his service during the war?
PJ: I can tell you – it’s in his memoir, if you -
CB: I’ll pause while you look it up. Right, we’re re-starting now.
PJ: I can quote from my father, I remember him saying that all in all he felt he’d had a good war, he’d had a relatively easy war, he’d come out unscathed and that in a way I think he felt guilty because he had survived and so many hadn’t, but he then, in his notes, he reflects and he reflects asking what made them do it? What made them go on ops, over and over and over again, and he says was it the patriotism, was it the pride of volunteering being greater than the butterflies in the stomach, was it the fear of letting down the crew, or of the lifelong stigma of lack of moral fibre? And he says perhaps it was one or all of them, who knows? And then he follows that with what I think a lovely sentence.: ‘And what do I have to show for it? My discharge papers and identity discs, my flying log book and a few medal ribbons – and a thousand memories.’
CB: I think that’s extremely touching, it, it in a way, glosses over an important point which is not unusual for him, people like him to miss, which is: he got a DFC and nobody crowed about that but why did he get a DFC, what was the origin of the award?
PJ: I’ve never found the citation. I think possibly, of course, he was on a crew that carried out a lot of ops. I’ve found Fred Philips’ citations for both of his DFCs, for his DFC and his Bar.
CB: Which were earlier.
PJ: Which were earlier. Of course by 1945 they were dishing out quite a lot by then, weren’t they.
CB: What was the date of your father’s DFC?
PJ: I can’t remember.
CB: But it, was it a similar time to his pilot, his second one?
PJ: No, it was later.
CB: Later, exactly.
PJ: Which makes me think possibly the number of ops, or -
CB: Nothing specific. Could have been the end of the tour, the second tour.
PJ: Yes. That’s what I think.
CB: Would be nice to be able to get the citation though.
PJ: It would. I would like to see that.
CB: Right, we’ll pause there for a mo. Now we’ve already talked about the DFC and also the crew gelling together, but what sort of conversations did they have, in these circumstances?
PJ: One of the conversations that my dad did tell me about, and that was a conversation he would have with the mid upper gunner, Ron Wynn, when they were coming back, leaving the target on every op as flight engineer it was my dad’s role to walk the length of the fuselage doing a damage control walk, to see how badly damaged, or if [emphasis] they were damaged. And my dad would always use a shielded torch and Ron Wynn would always say, ‘Oi, you’re lighting me up like a bloody lightbulb up here, turn that torch out!’ And my dad would always reply, ‘If there’s a hole in this bloody fuselage I’m not falling out of it for you!’ [Laughter] And it would be the same conversation, every op, but there must have been more, there must have been more. Even in the, even in the sort of, the terrible times of the operations the humour was still there. Like in the breakfast before the op there was always somebody who’d say if you don’t come back, can I have your breakfast, wasn’t there, you know. There was always that, that lovely, lovely dark humour.
CB: Yes, it’s a trait where you deal with the danger, at the threat, and the horror of it, with humour.
PJ: Yes, but since my father’s death, I’ve spent over eleven years researching his notes and of researching his crew, or the crew that he served with, and I was fortunate enough to have made contact with Fred Philips in, who was living, still living in Sydney, and interestingly, when his flying career with the Royal Australian Aircraft, Air Force came to an end he joined Qantas and he eventually became the Chief, the Senior Training Captain, with Qantas and he was the first Qantas pilot to fly a 747 to Heathrow. Now sadly Fred died in October last year. The other one I managed to get in touch with was the mid upper gunner, Ron Wynn, still living in Stockport. After the war he’d been an instructor at Cranwell and I managed to speak to him on the phone and it was quite an emotional encounter I think, for him, talking to the son of someone he hadn’t seen for so long, but after the initial emotion he was very chatty. And after the conversation I had an email from one of his sons, saying how much his dad had enjoyed talking to me and hearing what my father had gone on to do, but then he said that the conversation had brought back a lot of memories and he wouldn’t want to talk again. I do hope that wasn’t too upsetting for him. But you know, I’ve gone through the crew and I now know what all but two of them did, after the war.
CB: One of the reasons was it, the link between the mid upper and the flight engineer was both were acting as lookouts, during this, but what was father actually doing as a flight engineer in his role?
PJ: In his role?
CB: So, start with take off.
PJ: At take off he would take over throttles so that the pilot could use both hands on the stick, for take off. During flight he would be constantly making fuel calculations et cetera, trimming the engines, shifting fuel between tanks et cetera, just to keep the stability and also keeping records, and as I say doing calculations because they didn’t rely on instrumentation for fuel, it was the engineer’s calculations, and woe betide if he got them wrong. My father could, could fly, he, it was again, going back to the Warboys experience where they did a bit of each other but I think it would have been straight and level flying, it wouldn’t have been landing, take off and landing, that sort of thing. Looking back at his, reading his memoirs, I think he did have a good time. I once went to the 7 Squadron reunion in Longstanton and when my, when his tour was up and they were going their separate ways they took their ground crew out, to the pub, The Hoops, in Longstanton, where they wouldn’t let the ground crew spend a penny. In his notes, my dad said it was worth the twenty four hours of hangover. And I dearly wanted to go and have a pint in The Hoops but it’s been knocked down.
CB: Oh dear.
PJ: But I did walk the streets of Longstanton, in the rain. One of the things that he talks about as well, is once on an aborted op they were returning to Oakington in a really vicious side wind and they had a sudden gust of wind and bounced badly on touchdown and went round again, and as they were roaring off, off the runway, the wind had sent them across the village at very low height and he can vividly remember seeing people staring up and people running away and he can clearly remember a lady running out of a house and grabbing a little girl, or her child, and pulling her into the house, out of the way. My father describes how they, they very narrowly missed All Saints Church in Longstanton and that when they touched down, got out of the aircraft, the rear gunner came, wandered around, and said to Fred Phillips, ‘if you’d have told me you were going to pull that stunt I could have taken that weather vane off as a souvenir!’ [laughter] But thinking as I was driving into Longstanton, it’s a long straight road into the village, the hair almost stood up on the back of my neck when I saw that, the spire of the church and realised that’s it! That’s it.
CB: In conclusion, because this is fascinating and it’s covered so many aspects of your experiences, and your father’s experiences. But thinking of father’s experiences with the research that you’ve been doing, and what he had written, what’s your overriding feeling about the story?
PJ: My father’s story or the story of Bomber Command.
CB: Your father’s story.
PJ: My father’s story. [Sigh] The little lad from, [pause] from the slums of Birmingham did all right.
CB: Can I translate that into a feeling of great pride?
PJ: Indeed.
CB: Thank you, Peter Jones.
PJ: You’re welcome
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AJonesPWA171207
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Jones
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:49:58 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-07
Description
An account of the resource
Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) speaks about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force). Peter Jones discovered a memoir written by his father, Thomas Jones, a flight engineer, just after he passed away. Peter talks about his father’s life and service during and post-war, some of the details in the memoir and memories of their time as a family after the war. There is much discussion about operations and post-flight details, how emotions, injuries and fears are dealt with, including non-flying personnel as well as those who flew. Peter’s own life and work, particularly on the IBCC Digital Archive is also talked about, and the way the stories of others are so emotive.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-09-23
1944-04-04
1944-08-12
1944-08-29
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Birmingham
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Berlin
Northern Ireland--Antrim (County)
Wales--Glamorgan
England--Warwickshire
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Second generation
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
1657 HCU
622 Squadron
7 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Pathfinders
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Oakington
RAF St Athan
RAF Warboys
Stirling
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1187/11760/PWatsonJ1501.2.jpg
5e82adc2824b4bab6c98c732b381cc02
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1187/11760/AWatsonJR180202.1.mp3
f81235f23e0bc02c8249edb6f60394e4
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
Watson, John Robert
J R Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. An oral history interview with warrant Officer John 'Jack' Watson DFM (b. 1923 Royal Air Force) his log book and photographs. He flew three turs of operations as a flight engineer with 12 and 156 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Watson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-25
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Watson, JR
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 2nd of February 2018 and we’re in Eastbourne talking with John Watson, Jack Watson DFM about his times in the RAF and before and after. So, Jack what are your earliest recollections of life?
JW: It’s quite a strange one really. I had to go to Great Ormond Street when I was about three years old to have my tonsils out. And my father was in bus work all his life. He, he was in the First World War driving an ambulance. The [pause] I forget the name of the unit now but I’ve got a picture of him somewhere with his, standing by his ambulance. And he was at this time driving for a company called Fairways. They used to drive down to Worthing from London daily. And he came to collect me and my mum in his coach and I can remember the cab was just half the, the bonnet was just outside. He sat me on the bonnet, put his arm around me and drove off [laughs] And in the back of the coach was a little pedal car he’d bought for me. And the other recollection, I can remember that quite plainly the other recollection we were living in Acton although I was born in Putney at my grandmother’s house. All the family were born there except my dad but I can remember the R101. I was out in the street in Brouncker Road in Acton.
CB: The airship.
JW: And watched the R101 go over. And I can still marvel at the size of it because it wasn’t all that high and of course it went on to crash in France didn’t it?
CB: It did. Yeah.
JW: And, but then my father was the manager, manager of a coach company running coaches from High Wycombe to Oxford Circus to High Wycombe and Guildford. And when Mandelson’s grandfather Morrison decided he would nationalise because London was full of one man buses he’d nationalise it all. In those days it was a bit cut throat but they did. They put a coach to Guildford in front of my father’s coach. One behind it. And of course customer loyalty only goes so far. They see a coach comes along. And of course they ran him off the road. But they gave my father a job as a chief inspector at Dorking. We moved down there for two years. And after that we went to, he moved, took him to a bigger garage at Guildford which is where he stayed through the war. And then while we was, it was I’d just left school and I heard about the Air Defence of Great Britain Corps which was the forerunner of the ATC and they were at Brooklands Aerodrome. And I told my father that I wanted to join it and there was, I think that he could see the fact that the war was coming on. I think the war had just started actually. Yeah. And he’d seen what went on in the war, he didn’t want his son — we had arguments galore. Eventually he relented and I used to cycle over to Brooklands, about a twelve mile run on a Sunday morning and joined the ATC , the Air Defence of Great Britain Corps. And it was very much, me a working class boy in amongst, there were a lot of well-educated young men there and I must admit I felt a little bit out of place. But anyhow I stuck it out. But then of course they formed the ATC and I was able to transfer to Guildford. And I wanted to join the Air Force badly. I wanted to fly. I mean I’ve, as I said, I wanted to do my bit and save the world but that’s a lot of nonsense. I [laughs] I wanted to fly. And I, again because I was serving an apprenticeship my father, ‘No. You’re not going to join the Air Force. You’re not going to.’ I kept nagging nagging nagging. In the finish he said, ‘If Mr Biddle,’ who was the one of three brothers who owned the printing company where I was apprenticed, ‘If he says you can break your apprenticeship I’ll agree.’ ‘Fine.’ So immediately I went and saw Mr Biddle. I said, ‘Look, my father has given me permission to break my apprenticeship but I need your authority as well.’ Well, of course I forgot that dad being in charge of transport when his buses were late he used to phone around to the different companies so that the men didn’t lose money and they’d known each for some time. Of course it came that neither of them would give me permission [laughs] So the following Saturday at the top of Guildford High Street was an RAF Recruiting Office. I walked in there and joined up and then went back and said to dad, ‘I’ve joined the Air Force.’ I think if they’d have realised it they could have but I don’t think they, I presented them with a fait accompli. Anyhow, I then got about a week later to go to Abingdon for an interview. And I walked into this office and there was a whole range of high ranking Air Force officers sitting around and in front of them was a huge table with a map on it. They asked me very, and funnily enough they said, ‘Why do you want to? Why do you want to join in the Air Force?’ I said, ‘Well, firstly I want to fly and the other thing is I want to get my own back because in Guildford although it wasn’t badly bombed there was one night a bomber went over. A German bomber and just, I think there was a searchlight at Stag Hill by the Cathedral. He got caught in that and he just dropped his bombs. They came down and one of them hit the house next door. In a terrace. One fell opposite. And I was sleeping in that room downstairs but it was the curtains had been pulled across. It was rather like a bit of a bay and the curtains were back a bit but the bomb going off of course blew all the glass and shattered it and shredded the curtains which saved me. So anyhow I, they started asking questions and then one of them said, ‘Can you find Turkey on that map?’ Well, you know it’s a big place Turkey, isn’t it? And there’s a piece of Turkey below the Dardanelles. That’s the only bit I could find. I suppose it was nerves really. And anyhow, he said, ‘Any more?’ I said, ‘No.’ Anyhow, they said, ‘We think you’ll be better off as ground crew.’ So I went out and I thought, right. Ground crew. Wireless operator. I can transfer straight to air crew. So I went in and I sat in front of this corporal and he asked me some questions. He said, ‘Do you know the Morse Code?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah.’ But the rotten so and so bent down and picked up a Morse Code key and said, ‘Right. Take this down.’ [laughs] And of course the only thing I knew about Morse Code was how to spell it. So he said, ‘I think we’ll put you in as a flight mechanic.’ So which is what I went in to and I was called up in September or August. August of ’42. Went to Blackpool. Oh, Penarth first and although you considered yourself fit they gave us your kit you never had the strength to lift it. You dragged it back to your billet, got changed, put your kit into a little suitcase with your name and address on. Sent it off home. And then we started doing the square bashing in Blackpool. Well, the first morning we all lined up and we started a run to go to from Blackpool north to Bispham. Five mile run. I met them half way back. And I thought this is ridiculous. So the next morning as we used to start off there were some steps up to some public toilets. So the next morning I’d got a penny in my hand. And they all ran and I ran up because I’d sussed this out. You stood on the lavatory seat and looked through the little window and you could see them coming back. As they came back I came down joined then on the back and then I was fit enough to do all the exercises that they were going through. And this, I got away with this morning after morning and, but I just could not see the point. I’ve never been a runner or a sportsman of any kind and I certainly wasn’t at that stage. But the little Irishman sergeant we had in charge of our squad had got his stripe, his third stripe on the strength of the way he’d turned out his previous squad. So he had something to prove and he was a bit of a martinet. But when it was raining, I don’t know whether you know Blackpool.
CB: Yeah.
JW: But there’s the three promenades. He used to take us on to one of them and he’d lecture us on women. Quite an interesting character. But he didn’t ask us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. When we went on the, so it was Stanley Park in Blackpool on the assault courses we were all in PT kit. He was in full uniform and he went with us and he ran the whole way there and back. I forget his name now but he was a real character. We went from there. When we left there we were put on a train. We had to go to Manchester and change. We weren’t allowed to take the kit bag and all the back pack off and we were, but when we changed there we then got on another train which took us to Wendover because we were going to Halton. And when they marched us from Wendover up to the camp with a kit bag on the back it was nothing. We were that, it really got us fit. And while we were there the, there was a chap there he’d been a drummer in a band and he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve found a set of drums,’ he said ‘We can form a drum corps to march the people down to the workshops and back.’ So he said, ‘You’re excused other duties,’ like Home Guard type duties. So that was it. It was going to be a get out of that. We wouldn’t have to go out at night. So we joined up and we had a practice room in one of the cook houses. And of course you gave a load of seventeen eighteen year olds a set of drums it, it was half an hour before he could make himself heard [laughs] And anyhow, he did. He did make us into a reasonable drum, we used to play these drum tunes. March them down to the workshops. March them back at lunchtime. Of course the advantage was you were at the lead so you were the first one in the cookhouse for your meal. And we used to go to Battle of Britain weeks where they used to go around the towns with an RAF, an RAF band. We weren’t allowed to play with the band. He used to the drumming with the band but we used to do, when they had a break we’d do our bit for the raising money for Spitfires. And while I was on the course for the fitter, for the air training mechanics course suddenly a notice went up on the board they were looking for flight engineers because obviously they were trying to take people off the squadron. They didn’t want to take too many because they were depleting their ground staff but equally the ground crews were watching what was coming back and thought well I don’t want any of that. So they were, except they would lower the standards like they did it didn’t affect me in that way and I applied. Went to Euston. And the night before we went to Euston a crowd of us went out and we went to see Lou Preager at the Hammersmith Palais and we got knocking back beers and stuff. The next morning we go for a young, there was a young flight lieutenant and I stripped off, I got on the scales he said, ‘Get back on them scales.’ I was only nine stone. Then we come to the dreaded holding the mercury up and after, after the night before I was [pause] and suddenly I was halfway through. I suddenly, and he looked around whether by accident or not I don’t know so I was able to take another breath and hold it up again and ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘You’ve passed.’ And I had to go back on the fitter’s course and passed all that before going down to St Athan for the flight engineer’s course and passed that with, with I think about seventy five percent. It was quite a, I was quite pleased with that result. And then we went up to Lindholme. Oh the first thing was the, when we finished our course for a week they sent us up to Ringway. Ringway. Where they were building the Lancs. To show us what was going on. And it was incredible. They took us all to Pointon. We all got off these coaches and we were met by all these girls. We all paired off and I met a fair headed one. I’ll never forget her name. Yvonne. She taught me more in that week about the facts of life and I thought well this is better than sliced bread [laughs] And so yeah the obvious happened. And I should have kept in touch. Her father was a manager of a printing company in Manchester. But I don’t know whether it was we didn’t think it was a proposition for somebody going into aircrew to get involved in a serious relationship. But anyhow we left there and we were sent back to St Athan. Then we, from there a couple of days later we went up to Lindholme and got all our flying kit and everything and then because I was going down to Faldingworth which was south there was only me and another chap going south. The rest, all the other people. So we had to go to Faldingworth with all the kit and then make our way from there back which was a nightmare. But anyhow we had a week’s leave and got back to Faldingworth and all shoved in a big hangar because my crew had been a Wellington crew. They hadn’t been on ops at all but of course they needed a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer. I walked in and I was just wandering aimlessly about. I hadn’t got a clue what I was looking for and this wireless operator come up and he said to me, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’re looking for a flight engineer,’ He said, ‘What’s your name?’ I said ‘John.’ ‘Right, Jack.’ And I became Jack. All the Air Force life and all my working life. And it’s only the family that call me John. And anyhow I was introduced to the crew. And it was, it was quite a strange thing really because we all took to each other straight away. The pilot was, he was a month, he was only nineteen anyway. I mean, we was all only nineteen. He was a month younger than me. And the first thing, we got to Faldingworth was two days later he said to me, ‘We’re going up on fighter affil, on familiarisation tomorrow. Only me and you.’ So we picked up the screened pilot and walked out to the aircraft [pause] and I looked and I said, ‘I’m trained on Lancasters. This is a Halifax.’ I said, ‘Not only don’t I know anything about this it’s the first time I’ve seen one.’ I said, ‘Where’s the screened, the screened engineer?’ ‘Oh, we haven’t got one. You’ll be alright. You’ll be ok. Just the three of us.’ Well, we took off and we were flying at about four thousand feet and he said, he called me up, ‘Engineer, I want you to change the fuel tanks,’ he said, ‘Listen carefully.’ I said, ‘Well, first of all where are they? The controls.’ ‘Under one of the rest beds in the fuselage.’ Because the Lancaster and the Halifax are two totally different aircraft. So he said, ‘Under the rest bed,’ he said, ‘There’s two levers each side,’ he said, ‘Now, listen carefully. Turn off the lever on number one on the port side. Turn off the number one on the starboard side. Turn on the number two on the port side. Turn on the number two on the starboard side.’ Well, something didn’t sound right there. But anyhow I thought well I’d better follow what he says. I don’t know how the system works. So I turned off the number one. By the time I’d got across to the other side the aircraft did a nose dive. I carried on and set the tanks and then it picked it up. Well, of course he told me he should have turned off number one turned on number two. He told me the wrong way. He apologised very profusely. I said, I said, ‘Apology would have been a bit late wouldn’t it if we’d been two thousand feet lower?’ And he couldn’t, he couldn’t have been more contrite. And as I say I cut the fuel but it soon picked up. Anyhow, from then on I never ever had a screened engineer go with me. I was always on, but when we landed I went to stores and got the manual for the Halifax. And I spent the whole, I never even go for any meal. I spent all that afternoon, all night going through that manual. The next morning when we went out to the Halifax again I knew what I wanted to know about it. But it was a stupid thing he did. And I should have had a screened engineer with me. Especially being a, a —
CB: A complete rookie.
JW: Complete. Yeah. I mean to, I can’t imagine what I was thinking to even agree to go. Because in the flight of the Lancaster you sit alongside the pilot. In a Halifax you sit with your back to the pilot. So the whole thing was completely different. But anyhow we got away with it. My guardian angel was sitting on my shoulder. But we, we went from there to, we got a posting to 12 Squadron at Wickenby. And it’s only about five miles so it was a crew bus to go, and as we drove in two Lancs were on the side of the perimeter track. One screwed into the back of the other. As they were taxiing around apparently one stopped, one didn’t. But luckily nobody got hurt from it. And then they took us to our billet. And I can see it now. Walked in the billet and it was as the crew had left. The beds were unmade. Sheets just drawn. And I looked over to the bed that I’d picked and it was the pilot’s name. Sergeant Twitching. And years later a chap, you’ve heard of Currie, the pilot who wrote one of the books, he phoned me up because I’d phoned him up about something else previous and he said, ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I’ve been asked to write something about strange happenings to people who were flying.’ And I told him how I’d joined and I said to him, I said the, I never forgot the name of that man, Sergeant Twitching. He said, ‘What an unfortunate name for a bomber boy.’ And when I went years after the war, I’m digressing a bit I went to Lincoln Cathedral and saw the volume and I asked them if they could open that book at this man’s name. I said I felt as though I needed to make some sort of tribute to him. And they were all killed. I think it was either Leipzig or Stuttgart. One of those. And anyhow we started off. Went on our first op and when we were, you were convinced that going from what the instructor’s told you that you were never going to make your first op. And it was at Brunswick on the 17th of January ’44. And we took off and as we took off nothing happened. We got our, we were going past I think Hanover and I looked down and the whole of the cloud, it was all cloud but it was all lit up with the searchlights shining through and I called up and I said, ‘Bill there’s a Lanc down on the right hand, on the starboard side there,’ I said, ‘He’s about three thousand feet below us.’ ‘Oh, that’s good,’ He said, ‘They’ll be watching him and they won’t see us.’ And I thought, cor what a man. What a pilot. You know, we’re alright here. We went to Brunswick. Got back without any problems at all. And we did, it was the next thing was on the second trip was to Berlin. An eight and a half hour trip. We called up at Wickenby on the way back when we was coming for to permission to land and they said yeah ok. We were in the circuit and there was low cloud. As we broke cloud, it’s unbelievable to think they talk about near misses, Another Lanc alongside of us on our port side broke cloud at the same time with about six feet between the wing tips. And our pilot, we went that way, he went that way. So, you know. Anyhow, we carried on and landed. And Bill called out, and he said, oh. ‘Clear of runway.’ And there was a few minutes silence and then a voice said, ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ And we had landed at Ludford Magna.
CB: Oh right.
JW: Which was an adjoining. In that sort of taking that evasive action thinking we were joining the circuit again we weren’t. Anyhow, they kept us for about four hours then before the let us fly back to, to Wickenby. And the next thing was that we did a trip to Stuttgart. And we had the most fantastic mid-upper gunner and he didn’t have a brain he had a computer. We were going in to, on the bombing run and he suddenly said , ‘Dive port, Go.’ Bill just went. And as we did I watched tracer go over the top of the aircraft. And we got, we got the, it dipped, it broke away and didn’t make another attack. We got back ok and our wireless operator said, ‘We owe our lives to Appy and Bill.’ And we, because we were so close a crew we didn’t have engineer and pilot it was Bill and Appy and Ollie. I was Watty. That’s how. But it worked for us because we all knew each other’s, as soon as we spoke we knew who it was talking. And we got back and the next thing we had was a raid, we were walking down to briefing and I was on my own and there was a spattering of [pause] this was in February, there was a spattering of snow on the ground. I was walking down to the briefing room on my own funnily enough. I don’t know why but I just, going through some trees and I suddenly stopped in my tracks. And it was the most strange feeling. I knew that if we didn’t leave Wickenby we wouldn’t survive. It was the most strange feeling. We went in and again the target was Stuttgart. And we got there and back without any problems. But two mornings later we were called into the flight commanders office and he’d got us all around standing in a row in front of him. I can see him now. He said, ‘You’ve got two options,’ he said, ‘You’re going to either volunteer for the Pathfinder force or we’ll send you.’ [laughs] Now, having experienced that strange feeling two nights previously that was the answer for me. The two navigators weren’t, the bomb aimer and the navigator weren’t all that keen but they decided to go along with it and we didn’t fly any more ops from there. We were sent down to Warboys for the Pathfinder Training Unit. And it was going to be straight, the bomb aimer was going to become the second navigator. The flight engineer was going to be the bomb aimer and also I had to learn some navigation. So we did all these necessary courses. About nine days I think we were there. Nine, ten days something like that. And we went in to see the navigation officer and he said to me, ‘Ask me some questions.’ I had to learn to take an astro shot with a sextant. I did that. And he said to me, ‘What’s the difference between a planet and a star?’ As, yeah a planet and a star. And I thought I don’t know. All I could think, going through my mind was, “Twinkle twinkle little star,” and I thought what an idiot. And I said to him, and I thought this is going to get [pause] I said, ‘A star twinkles.’ He said, ‘That’s correct. A planet is a steady light.’ And I thought it was [laughs] and I didn’t let him know that it was the nursery rhyme that got me out of trouble but it did. Anyhow, when was, we’d done all the courses we had to do the practice bombing with the triangle and the fuel and and you had to get to within about a yard of that. We did. But of course at two thousand feet having got it and hit it we then, this is, we was doing a bit of low level flying we came across a field and there was a load of sheep. Well they nearly beat us. As the aircraft suddenly came, all these sheep suddenly [unclear] from shock. But one of the instructions when, when they said after we’d finished when I was sitting chatting to one of them and he said what squadron are you going to?’ I said, ‘156.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘The rebel squadron.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘They’ll fly ‘til the cows come home but,’ he said, ‘Lectures or anything like that they can never get them in to them.’ He said, ‘As soon as there’s a stand down they’re off. And it was like that. It was like that. It was. They were all really, years later a friend of mine, I was sitting chatting to him he was, he was the same as the rear gunner. He flew with about ten different crews. One of the bravest men I knew as a rear gunner and I said to him, ‘How did you manage to do all that with all those different — ?’ He said, ‘All the crews on 156 were good.’ And they were. And the number of them who got killed because they didn’t finish when they could have done. Just went on like we did. You know. And but anyhow [pause] he said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘They can’t seem to do anything [unclear],’ he said, ‘But they’ll fly night and day,’ he said, ‘All week.’ But anyhow at that point they, because they’d transferred 156 from Warboys to Upwood, and Upwood which was to be a, in to a Warboys and we got to Warboys just as they changed. But we did quite a few. We never did any more Berlin trips. The first one we did from Upwood was to Essen and the next one, our thirteenth trip and it was, it was only a little sometime later that I realised this, we were flying in M-Mother. Thirteenth. That was the alphabet. Our thirteenth trip. It was Nuremberg [pause] and we noticed we were giving off contrails so we decided to lose height until we found a height where it wasn’t affecting us. But a lot of crews just carried on. I mean it’s not surprising that so many of them got caught. Some probably didn’t have a chance to, there was another crew of course Tony Hiscock was the skipper and he was, he was talking to me. He said. ‘Yeah, we had those contrails. We just, when the rear gunner told me we was leaving them,’ he said, ‘We just changed height until we realised we were stopping.’ But we never saw anything on that trip other than other than other aircraft going down which our gunners were reporting to us. But it was — oh, hello love. This is my daughter Suzanne.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Getting out of them.
JW: Yeah. And we, we had some [pause] a couple of trips where we were, on one trip we were coned.
CB: With searchlights.
JW: Searchlights. And I was actually on the bombing run. I was, ‘Left. Left. Steady.’ And suddenly the lights caught us. But Bill never hesitated. We were at eighteen thousand feet and he just went down in a dive and of course I shot up into the front turret. I was fixed. I couldn’t move with the gravity. He pulled out at six thousand feet and I come crashing down over the bombsight again. And ten minutes but he got us out of us. He got us out of the, out of the, those searchlights. And we then finished up,. We bombed. We went around again and bombed at twelve thousand feet. But it was another one we did was to Lens, and this was the night when the flying bombs were coming over. The V-1s. We could see all these lights coming below us and hadn’t a clue what they were but it was not ‘til we got back the next day but it was, it was in France. But going down we were going down at, going through at seven thousand feet. We came on the target so quick.
[recording paused]
CB: Right.
JW: As we were going I was giving him the instructions. Suddenly —
CB: As the bomb aimer at that time.
JW: As the bomb aimer.
CB: Yeah.
JW: Suddenly realised that we got on the target before we realised it and I said to him, ‘Dummy run, Bill. Go around again.’ But it was, it was years later before I realised what had happened. Came back. Coming on to the target and I could see all these black shapes going past me in the corner of my eye. Anyhow, that time I got the target on the marker. The target markers. Dropped the bombs and when I looked I thought to myself [unclear] the operational record books, one of the sheets I’ve got and when I looked I realised he didn’t go around again he did a u-turn and we were flying into the bomber stream. And I thought strange. How did we do that? Then I looked. In that turn he lost two thousand feet. We bombed from five thousand feet. Everybody else was coming over at seven but how we flew through all that lot. All the bombs going. I don’t know. But [pause] I’m just trying to find it. As I say it was the number of times. Three times at least on the bomb aiming run I called dummy run.
CB: We’ll just stop again. Hang on.
[recording paused]
CB: You bombed at five thousand feet.
JW: Yeah.
CB: And everybody else did it at seven.
JW: Yeah.
CB: Which was what you were briefed to do.
JW: Yeah.
CB: So this is part of your lucky escape —
JW: It is. Yeah.
CB: Series, isn’t it? Extraordinary.
JW: But, as I say on at least three occasions on the German trips I called dummy run, and not once did I hear one murmur of dissent from any of the crew. You read reports from people, ‘Oh, get rid of it,’ you know. But none of our crew did that. We had complete faith and trust in each other. But, yeah on at least three occasions we did a, we did a dummy run to go around. On one occasion when we were at Wickenby and I think that this is when we came to be on Pathfinders, because Hamish Mahaddie used to go around picking crews and he must have looked at this particular order and it was this. On debriefing it said we were six minutes early so we put the flaps down and did dog legs to lose six minutes. And this was on Stuttgart. I mean [laughs] but it was, we were told to get there and our pilot he always said there was a lot of talk about some of the crews were throwing their bombs in and either banking and then so that they didn’t actually fly over the target. And I know that when that happened Bill said, ‘What the hell’s the point of going all that way without going over and doing it properly?’ But he was, he was a fantastic pilot. He was a fantastic. He was the only man I have ever known apart from people like Alex [pause] Grimshaw? What was his name? The test pilot at Ringway. He did —
CB: Oh, Henshaw.
JW: Henshaw.
CB: Yeah.
JW: Well, I think he did it. He did a rate four turn on a —
CB: On a Lancaster.
JW: On a Lancaster.
CB: Crikey.
JW: And he did it to come up, we were on fighter affiliation and we were being attacked by a Spitfire but instead of doing the normal corkscrew he did this rate four. We came up behind the Spitfire. And unbelievably —
CB: In the Lancaster.
JW: Unbelievably the Spitfire pilot complained and he called, our CO called Bill in and he said, ‘You’ve got to stick to the rules.’ And he had, I think he had a grin on his face as he was saying it. Bill said if that had been a Messerschmitt we could have shot it down. Yeah. But he, and it was the most I can see it now. You’re standing there and you are horizontal but you’re not falling. Yeah. But he was, he was, we loved him. And when, when I looked to see that I think that report as I say going around to Hamish Mahaddie I think that he read that and thought well we need crews who are going to be there on time and this is what, this is what we’ve been looking for.
CB: Yeah. Extraordinary experiences. Yes.
JW: The, but then of course when we got to, I did one spare bod trip. I got caught. I think it was the flight commander. Wing Commander Scott. He was a New Zealander. His engineer went sick and two SPs came down and saw me. Engineer. Right. I had to fly with him. It was to Stuttgart again. But on the run in did the bomb aiming, came out of the target and I looked at the inspections bit and the cookie had held up.
CB: Oh.
JW: So I said to him, ‘Skip, go around again. We’ve got the cookie.’ Well, our own pilot would have been natural enough just to go round but what he called me. He was questioning my sanity as well apart from insulting my mother and father but you didn’t take any notice of that. So I said, ‘I’ll go around and try and release it manually.’ And there used to be a little flap above the cookie that you could pull back. A little slide and release the bolt that held it. And I’d got a, made a little sort of little light there. I was just, I suddenly saw the bolt start to shudder and pulled my hand back just as this thing shot across. He pulled the toggle on the instrument panel and dropped the carrier, the lot. Didn’t look to see where we were. He just opened the bomb doors. And he started weaving as we took off and he was still weaving until we landed. Oh, he was complete nerves. And —
Other 1: Gosh.
JW: Yeah. Wing Commander Scott. He was posted shortly after that. But I made sure I didn’t do any more of those. There was one occasion when they, knew they, what they were looking for a flight engineer. So I went up in the loft and [laughs] ‘Flight Sergeant Watson here?’ ‘No. He’s gone out. He’s gone into Peterborough.’ ‘Oh alright.’ And I was up in the loft like this. I lifted it up just to listen [laughs] because we had arranged we weren’t flying. I was going out. But I wasn’t going to do another, and I’d already done halfway through my third tour so I was well away to saying no. But the other —
CB: Would you class him as a dangerous pilot then?
JW: Who?
CB: Because of his nerves.
JW: Well, I didn’t. I didn’t have any confidence in him. I wasn’t, I wasn’t frightened at all but I thought to myself, no. I didn’t like flying with a strange crew anyway. None of us did. But that’s what made me admire my friend in Southampton. He was, the number of times he went with strange crews. But we’d done that lot and I thought well half way through a third tour because we finished a second tour, we was all in the Red Lion in Ramsey, and we were all celebrating and Bill came in and it was, there were never enough seats and we were all sitting around on the floor with pints of beer. And he said, Bill said, ‘How about carrying on?’ ‘Yes.’ So the next morning he said, ‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘We’re going to carry on.’ ‘Oh alright.’ But we wouldn’t have let him flown with anybody else anyway. So that was the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator, myself and Bill. As I say the two navs packed up and we had a range of rear gunners after he’d done forty one trips. And we finished the third tour and he pulled the same stroke again. So we was in a [laughs] we was on, the last trip was the master bomber trip to [pause] Munster. And it was a day like this. Really beautiful sunshine and we were just lying round and we got, this is a twenty second trip with these two Canadian navigators and there was an anti-aircraft gun. Obviously you could tell who the master bomber gunner was because brilliant daylight. Not a cloud in the sky. And the shell went off alongside of us. And I said to Bill [unclear] we went down five hundred feet and they put a shell in the same place. So when he did that we went back up. And they put one where we were. And this went on. It was [laughs] it was ridiculous really. But anyhow we got away with it but when, when we were sort of circling around doing, Bill was directing the raid one of the navigators came out from behind the curtain. He took one look. We were surrounded by shell bursts. And he said, ‘Jeez, let’s get out of here.’ And Bill said, it was the only time I ever heard him raise his voice, ‘Get back inside.’ And he scuttled back in behind the curtain. I mean, navigators never came out and if you came out like that and you see. Because it is a bit of a shock seeing those shell bursts. The first daylight we did got to the target and you could have walked on the shell bursts there was that many. And I thought we can never fly through that. But we did. Got away with it.
CB: How many times did you actually get hit by flak?
JW: About four times I think. Five times. But none of us ever got a scratch.
CB: What sort of damage did the aircraft —
JW: Holes in the bomb, in the bomb bay doors and some in the fuselage, but not enough to [pause] There was one that we did get hit and I think it took a bit out of the engine. It was on the raid Trossy St Maximin when Bazalgette got his VC. It was on that raid. It was such a heavily defended target. It was a bomb bay, V-1 bomb dump and as we went in we dropped. I think we just dropped the bombs. There was suddenly this hell of a bang. A tremendous noise and we just went into a dive and I thought we’d been hit but anyhow, I looked. We had a clear blister on the nose of our Lancs. You could put you head in and I could look through and I could see that the, both engines, all four engines were still in sync so there was obviously nothing wrong with them. So I called up and said, ‘Engines are ok. I’ll check Bill.’ I went up and he was ok as it turned out but he’d just, when that and they knew they’d got the range he just went into a dive but that took a piece out the side of one of the engines. But the engines still worked.
Other 1: Extraordinary.
JW: We didn’t even know there was anything wrong with it. But that was, going back to the Nuremberg raid when we landed we landed at Marham and on the way back as we left the target I noticed one of the oil instruments wasn’t working. Now, that could mean you’ve lost power. Anyhow, the engine, I didn’t say anything because I kept a check on it and noticed that there was no, the engine was not giving any reports of any failures so it was obviously the instrument that was at fault. So when we landed the next morning when we were going to take off again and the number of Lancs at Marham was unbelievable. It was just everywhere and it was a grass drome as well, the [pause] I said to Bill, ‘There’s no point in reporting this fault because they’ll never get anybody to —’ I said, ‘I’ll go out and check the oil to make sure there’s no lost oil.’ Because sitting on the engine that’s been going for eight hours I was covered in oil when I got back. Sitting on the engine dipping the tank. And it was, there was no loss of oil so I said to Bill, ‘No. There’s no point. We can take, we’ll never get away if we report that.’ And we took off. Got back and reported it when we got back. But the other thing was we had to take up on the flight from Upwood, we were going up on a night flying test and we were asked to take up a senior RAF [pause] I forget what rank he was now. Quite a high rank. Anyhow, suddenly one the port inners started. The starboard inner started playing up and I couldn’t control the pitch of the propellers so I said to Bill, ‘We need to feather it.’ He said, ‘Ok.’ When we landed he said, ‘What’s wrong?’ Now, I can’t tell you the name now but it was one of three things it could have been inside the nose, the hub of the propeller and there was one main one and I said, and one thing that they taught you when you went on Pathfinders, you’ve got to think quick and you’ve got to act. You can’t dither. You make a decision. Right or wrong you make a decision. And that way. And I said to Bill, oh it’s the so and so. So when we landed chiefy come around. The sergeant in charge of the ground crew and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Why is the engine feathered, skip?’ Bill said, well because this [laughs] he named the part that was broken. And the chiefy looked at him in amazement and said, ‘With respect, sir,’ he said, ‘How do you know that?’ And I could have wanted the ground to open up. ‘Because my engineer told me.’ But luckily I was right. I got it right. And it was at [pause] we had to abort one. We got they gave us the trip because we got within fifty miles of the target. We had boost surge. We just could not cure it. And when we got back I said, ‘I think there’s something wrong with the camshaft.’ Ha ha ha — that was the laugh I got from the engineering officer. But they couldn’t find it either. So they sent the engine back to Derby and they found a cracked valve which was obviously after the cam shaft.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo so you can have a bit of your coffee.
JW: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: On the Munster trip. Yeah.
JW: Yeah. We got —
CB: Yeah.
JW: Back from there. Landed. And we were walking back to debriefing and one of the rear gunners saw another crew came running up. He said, A signal’s come through to say that Cleland’s crew are to be taken off operations immediately and not allowed to fly on any more ops.’ We never knew why. Because we didn’t have one abortive trip. We’d always bombed the target. Everything. And yet the only thing I could think was that we’d been flying for fifteen months without any break.
CB: That’s extraordinary.
JW: And I think they thought that we were [pause] and I’ve often thought that they saved our lives. The next trip could have been.
Other 1: Easily.
JW: The one that we would have — [pause]
CB: How did you feel about that?
JW: Well, we were choked because we knew they were going to split the crew up. But we thought we might be able to carry on as a crew for a little while but within a week they posted us all off. They sent me as an instructor to a Wellington OTU. A flight engineer. They don’t fly flight engineers on Wellingtons. And that was really a case of I was there for a little while. Then they decided to post me to a Maintenance Unit. 56 MU. Except it should have been 58 MU. 58 MU was at Coventry. About twenty miles away. 56 MU was at Inverness. So I went all the way up to Inverness and I had an aircrew sergeant with me. He’d never done any ops because the war had finished as he finished training. He was going with me and he lived in Edinburgh and so he said, ‘Right. We can go to Edinburgh.’ We had three days in Edinburgh where he lived. Went off up to Inverness and we got out from the station and I can see it now. As we went through Perth and that area. Beautiful scenery because by this, it was an overnight trip. Anyhow, we found, couldn’t find what we were looking for. We couldn’t find the unit at all. We suddenly spotted an airman and I said to him, called him over and I said, ‘Tell me where — ’ ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘It’s in a garage down here.’ Which is what it was. A garage. And he said, and he said to me, ‘Watch the station warrant officer,’ he said, ‘He’s a bit of a martinet. He’ll find something for you to do.’ Anyway, we had to report to him so he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’re closing down.’ He said, ‘I don’t know why they sent you here.’ Somebody had misread [laughs] Anyhow, he said, well he said, ‘I’ll put you in charge of the police for a week.’ Well, they had about a half dozen coppers there. RAF police. And I walked in. I said to them, ‘What are you all doing here?’ Well, they said ‘There’s nothing to do.’ So I said, ‘Right, you three have three days off. You three cover the whole lot. Three days later you go on three days leave.’ They thought I was the best thing since sliced bread [laughs] But we got back from there and as I say I got to this other MU and it was at [pause] on the mainline.
CB: Near Coventry was it?
JW: No. This was, it started with an N. Not Northampton. Anyhow, I called up. Phoned up the unit and said, ‘Is there any transport to, out to unit?’ She said, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘On the station.’ She said, ‘On the up or down line?’ She said, ‘Well come out,’ she wouldn’t have known that which part.’ She said, ‘Look to your left. Can you see a black building about four hundred yards?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘That’s us.’ And it was where they made the lawnmowers. They made, well it wasn’t making them then but as we used to have to go in private billets as we were going down to them their lot was coming away and it was just a track. But all on bikes of course. But yeah that was quite a, and what I had to do there it was the Queen Mary’s there. The long low loaders. And I had to work out the next week how many were going to be off and with what fault. And I thought bloody silly. How the hell can anybody work that out? But it quite surprising. It worked. The system they’d got. So that so many would be off with flat tyres. So many would be off with this. And I had all these sheets that I had to fill in with all the, one for each of the loader. A lot of them were a way out in different places on locations. But then from there they sent me to Skellingthorpe and there it was, it was ridiculous. It was as though they’d forgotten you. In fact, you were just milling around. I did take over the, they couldn’t find anybody to take the sergeant’s mess over and I knew that you can’t run a pub which was what it was and lose money. And I discovered that they were getting five pounds to go to the NAAFI at Waddington to stock up from the [pause] So I said to the, saw the officer in charge of the mess and I said to him, ‘Can I have twenty pounds?’ ‘Twenty pound. What do you want twenty pound for?’ I said, ‘Well, people want to buy toothpaste.’ I said, ‘There’s none of that in there or domestic things.’ So got in the van, went over to Waddington and I spent this money and I thought the ration was Players cigarettes and I thought no. They’re going to be Churchills. So I bought a load of Churchill fags. When I got back I said to them, I said, ‘Sorry lads. The ration’s Churchill fags but I have managed to buy some Players. But I had to pay over the odds for them.’ [laughs] I made a fortune. I came home. After a week I came home. I had managed to pay somebody to look after the mess bar for me, and I came home with a suitcase with a little attache̕ case with two bottles of whisky and two bottles of rum in it and, oh yeah I made quite a bit out of that. In fact one night one of the ground staff, he’d been in the Air Force years and years. Before the war. He came in. He’d been in to Lincoln and he was, well he’d had quite a skinful. And he coolly asked for a pint and he held it up. He said, ‘That’s off. That’s cloudy.’ So I said, ‘Oh, ok sir. I’ll get you another one out of a different barrel.’ ‘Ah that’s better.’ So when the, the officer in charge of the mess came in the next morning I said to him, it was the, he was a warrant officer ground staff and I said to him, ‘Warrant officer,’ so and so, ‘He’s complained and said that barrel’s off.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We can’t have that, he said. We’ll write it off.’ But it was half full. I think there was about nine gallons in it. And the next night I knew there was nothing wrong with it. The same warrant officer came in. He was sober this time. Poured him a pint from the same one. Now, that’s lovely,’ he said, ‘That’s great.’ So I had nine gallons and I had three days of my demob leave on that barrel with some of the mates I’d met. Oh dear. Yes. It was, it was quite a, but because of the way it went I decided to come home on leave. I was milling around. I went and saw my governor and I said to him, ‘Can I come back to work?’ So, ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘You can come back.’ So I went back to work. And got paid for it. Not a lot but it was because it was only apprentice’s wage and, but about a fortnight one of my mates phoned up and he said, ‘Come back quick he said. They’re sending everybody home.’ So I went back, got demobbed to come home. But I had a couple of, a couple of near squeaks with the CO there. But the mess was just a hut and the bar was a cabinet which stood about that high. About that wide. And 12 o’clock at night I’m in there with a couple of other sergeants and we got bass sitting on our knees and the orderly officer walked in. ‘I said, ‘Do you want a drink, sir.’ Silly thing to say wasn’t it? I was under open arrest and in front of the CO the next morning. But I went round and managed to say, ‘You saw the bar was locked, the cupboard was all locked up, didn’t you?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ Well, because it was all locked up I got away with it. But another time I went home on I used to go on the pay parade on Thursday, special pay parade and go home. And I used to catch the quarter past ten from Lincoln because pay parade was about, no it was a bit later than that. The pay parade was at 9 o’clock. I had time to get paid because it was only a short pay parade, walk into Lincoln and get the train down to Kings Cross and then across to Waterloo and home. Now, I did this this particular week and then on this particular Thursday I’d just got in and a telegram arrived at the door. “Report back to base camp immediately.” I thought that’s funny. So I phoned up one of my mates there and I said, ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Oh, you’re in dead trouble. You were the witnessing officer at pay parade.’ He said, ‘Half the camp stayed for food that they weren’t prepared for. The other half went home and left the pay, the witnessing the officer with the money with all that money he didn’t know what to do with.’ Anyhow, I got back. I went round and I reported, saw the RTO at Guildford station. Reported to him and told him that I was allowed to go back and I’d, I said, ‘I’ve only just got home.’ This was the Friday of course. The day after. And got —
[doorbell and knocking]
[recording paused]
CB: We’re talking about the pay parade. The fact you’d gone home.
JW: Yeah. I got back. I got back on Friday night. Reported to the orderly officer and was put under open arrest. The next morning we went in to see the CO and he said, ‘You went home on Thursday, Watson.’ And he was a wing commander ground staff. Been in the Air Force about forty years. I said, ‘No sir,’ I said, ‘I went home on Friday morning.’ ‘Why did you go on the pay parade on Thursday then?’ I said, ‘Well, I knew that I wanted to get away on Friday, sir.’ He said, ‘But didn’t you read the DROs?’ Well, I knew that it was a crime not to read them but looking through the King’s Rules and Regulations the night before I discovered that it’s not a crime if you read them and forget them. So I said, ‘I did read them, sir.’ I said, ‘And it went right out of my mind.’ I said, ‘I just forgot it completely.’ And of course he went through and he said, ‘Watson, I know you went home on Thursday.’ ‘No. Sir.’ I said, ‘I left here and,’ I told him the times. ‘I caught the train down to — ’ and because I was in a billet which was just on the edge of camp, had my own room there nobody could see me leave. And I said, ‘I caught that train just after ten. I got to Guildford,’ I said, ‘And the telegram arrived as I got home,’ I said, ‘I turned straight around and came back,’ I said. ‘In fact, I reported to the — ’ Anyhow, we went on and he said, asked me another. In the finish he said, ‘Right. Watson, you stay here. Everybody else go out.’ And he said to me, ‘Watson, I know you’re lying.’ He said, ‘I know you went home on Thursday but,’ he said, ‘I can’t prove it.’ He said, ‘But you’re not going to get away with it.’ He said, ‘You’re going to do three weeks of orderly officer.’ He said, ‘If you go out of camp I will know.’ And I knew he would do as well. I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry sir but,’ I said, ‘You’re wrong. I did go home on Friday.’ [laughs] But it was complete bluff. If he’d have said to me, ‘Swear on the bible,’ I don’t know what I would have done. But, yeah. I did discover that, you know. You can read. If you can’t, if you don’t read them it’s a crime. But read —
Other 1: And forget.
JW: And forget. You can’t, you know the loss of memory, it’s [laughs] but, and I got away with it. But he never held it against me because he gave me quite a good report when I left. He signed my release book. The next —
CB: But you did have to do the orderly officer.
JW: I did, yeah. Religiously did and the funny, it was quite funny really because I went in the mess one night and they’d just had a delivery come in. I said, ‘You got any Guinness?’ They said, ‘Yeah. We got a crate in today.’ ‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’ll buy the lot.’ ‘You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Yes I can.’ And of course as a warrant officer and he’s a sergeant he’s not going to argue is he? I bought the lot. And then a chap came in. He played football for one of the Division One teams. Blackburn Rovers was it? And he sat down. I said to him, ‘Do you want a Guinness?’ ‘Oh yes please.’ So we sat there and but he was as wide a boys as me. He had got hold of you know the Lindholme dinghies that they used to drop the crew in? They had, they had the big main dinghy and then either side you had four flotation units. Two that side. They used to drop it so that it would spread and drift down to the crews that were ditched. He’d got hold of one of these and we sold it off. We even had the dinghy. I don’t know where he got it from but he got the dinghy. But our nerve failed us when we tried to get rid of that because we didn’t realise that all the surplus was going to be sold off after the war otherwise we’d have sold that and all. But —
CB: Who were the people who wanted to buy these things?
JW: All people in the camp.
CB: Oh right.
JW: Yeah. Other sergeants and other aircrew. And there I finished up there with twenty three German prisoners of war under my charge.
CB: On the airfield.
JW: Yeah. And they were quite clever. They used to make light bulbs and put ships and, and cliffs and lights inside the bulb. I don’t know how they did it. Built it up with the cliffs and the lighthouses in there and a little ship. Fantastic. And one of them made it, I bought it off him. It was a crocodile and in front was a little bird. And as you pulled it along the crocodile opens up and came like that and as it did the bird shot forward. I should have had enough sense to realise it was a money maker. I bought it for one of my friend’s little kiddies.
Other 1: Dear.
CB: What was their role? What did they do as prisoners?
JW: Cleaning and doing odd jobs you know around the camp. The American. The, their sergeant in charge of them he’d been, spent time in America and he spoke, spoke like an American. And I shall never forget he said to me we were talking one day and he was quite an educated chap and he must have been about a year or so older than me and he said, ‘I can’t understand the swear words,’ He said, ‘You talk about using the F word. F table,’ he said, ‘You know. It’s ridiculous.’ And I said to him, ‘Yeah. I agree with you.’ You know. He was always saying about language. The way it’s used. But, but he was, he was quite educated and he spoke without any German accent at all, and he was a [pause] I know that one of them one night somebody had taken some stuff out of the mess. And I just warned them. I said, ‘I don’t know which one of you it is but you’re in dead trouble if it happens again.’ It didn’t happen again. They did, they learned their lesson. But no it’s, as I say when it came to getting demobbed I was so disillusioned with the discipline and everything else that, and I knew I’d got an apprenticeship when we were on the, at Faldingworth taxiing round. Because aircraft were going off the end Faldingworth was a mud bath. If an aircraft went off the edge it would go down in to the mud to its axles and it would take days to get it out. So what they did they were fining crews a half a crown each which was half a day’s pay. So as we were taxiing around on the perimeter track I’m watching the wheel. I suddenly looked up and we were coming up against, it was, it turned out to be the engineering officer. He’d parked on the perimeter track and gone into one of the huts. And of course by then I said to Bill, but you can’t stop a thirty ton aircraft and the outside prop and it was one of those Hillman Tilts with the framework and the canvas and the outside was going over. It went right through all the canvas and ripped it and I thought I hope no one is in there. There wasn’t fortunately but Bill was on, he was pulled up for it. And I said to him, I said, ‘Tell them I was the one that was at fault,’ I said, ‘You couldn’t see from your side anyway and he shouldn’t have been parked there.’ ‘No.’ he said, ‘I’m the skipper. It’s my fault.’ And he got a mild reprimand. But that was the sort of bloke he was, you know. And as I say but it was [pause] we would have, well we’d have done anything for him really. We certainly wouldn’t have let him fly with anybody else if it had meant we had to carry on flying. Which is the reason we carried on. And it was years that we couldn’t find him after the war. Years later we tried to find him. And then my Appy, the mid-upper gunner phoned me up one day and he said, ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I’ve been told that Bill lives at a place called Hilmarton near Calne in Wiltshire. So I said, ‘Well, the next time I go down to see my sister I’ll go down that way. Well, Hilmarton is, it’s, it’s a funny little place. You go through and there’s just a little turning to the church. I didn’t realise we go down that turning. There’s a school and then houses, part of the village. I went into the pub and I said, ‘Do you know anybody called Cleland?’ I said, ‘He was, he was with BOAC.’ ‘No.’ Turns out, Bill said, ‘I don’t know how they didn’t know that,’ he said, because Frances, his daughter used to go and help out in the bar.’ Anyhow, I went into the little garage on the main road and they didn’t know. But they said, ‘I’ll tell you what, he said. In the little bungalow next door but one there’s a chap there. He knows everybody in the village,’ he said, ‘He can probably tell you.’ Knocked on his door. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘He lives just around the back here. The other side of the church.’ So we drove around and I knocked on the door and Bill’s wife answered and I said, ‘Does Bill Cleland live here?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Is he in?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘I said will you tell him his flight engineer’s here.’ She went in. He was, he was going, supposed to be going out to a meeting. But he said we’ll go and have some lunch. He was so pleased. And of course from then on we kept in touch and, but he’d gone on to, he’d been seconded. In fact we were both demobbed the same day. I met up at Uxbridge. And he’d been seconded to BOAC. He’d actually, he got the King’s, yeah the Kings Commendation while he was with, or the Queen I can’t remember which one it was. He got it for his efforts in flying. Because I know he said to me, he said, ‘You just sit there. Press the button. It takes you to that point. Press another button it takes you to the next point. ‘He said. Oh that’s when he told me he met the wing commander that I flew with as he was. He met him in Canada. He said, ‘We were both going through,’ He said, ‘I know that he recognised me. ‘He said he was a, he wasn’t a nice bloke at all. When they were on the squadron when you looked to see in 156 there was a little number of people who were doing all the master bomber trips. Who had been the master bombers and the, we eventually got on to them but, and Bill went in one day and he said they were all pilots because you had a room each of pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, engineers, wireless operators, air gunners and he said to this wing commander, he said ‘Is it fair that Cocky’s doing all the master bombing?’ He said, ‘Can somebody else take a turn?’ And I think he thought Bill was saying he ought to do it. He wasn’t. He was saying look, you know, some of the others can do it because it’s amazing that the same few were doing them and a lot of them were on dodgy mostly French trips. And anyhow he said, ‘Everybody out.’ He said, ‘Bill, not you.’ He said, ‘I’ll decide who does the master bombers, and their deputies not you.’ and Bill, ‘I wasn’t suggesting that.’ ‘Shut up. Get out.’ He said, ‘I know he recognised me but,’ he said, ‘He completely ignored me.’ And he didn’t do any master bombers himself because it wasn’t a very nice job to do. You know. You’re putting yourself, sticking your head over the parapet. But if you were briefed to do it. We did a couple of deputies and I know one of them we was doing it was on Frankfurt, we was the deputy master bomber. Daylight raid. And our mid-upper gunner suddenly spotted an aircraft in trouble above us. He called up to our skipper and we went up alongside of him. It used to be, it turned out to be one of our own. And they’d been hit by flak in the bomb bay and the engineer’s leg was hanging off and [unclear] hole in the bottom of the fuselage. The mid-upper gunner got out of his turret and stepped straight through the hole. They found his parachute, handed it in when they landed back so obviously, he was, he was obviously killed. The mid-upper err the engineer had been a medical orderly in the previous so he was able to show them to put morphine into him to stop the pain. He got the CGM for that. And after the war another one of the, of our Association lives in Southampton his father was killed on 156 but he collided with another aircraft. And he went, this pilot was in a home alongside them and they came in, knew him. They went to see him and he mentioned that and he said, ‘Yeah. I remember that when he came up alongside of us.’ He mentioned the fact that our, we went up alongside of him. We were the master, deputy master bombers.
CB: Could you describe what, how the master bomber, what his role is and how it works please?
JW: He, he was very often either he or the deputy would do the marking. They’d decide that first. Usually the master bomber would do the, he had a special like we did. You had an eight man crew if you were a deputy or a master. He would then go and mark the target having originally, you would have supporters dropping flares to illuminate the target providing of course down to the weather. And then that would light up, the master bomber would then go in low and find out the target, mark the target and then he’d circle around and he’d watch the way the bombs were falling. And if they were falling short he’d tell them to overshoot the markers and he’d call in the deputy visual centrerers which were following through the raid to keep those markers backed up. And we had backers up and visual centrerers, and he’d call them up and tell them where to drop the, if his markers were a bit off and then he’d direct the raid and tell main force. He called main force up, overshoot to the markers by two seconds to stop the creep back because you always got creep back. People always dropped their bombs short. As one, as Bill used to say, ‘If you’re going over for God’s sake do it properly.’ And you were there the whole of the raid.
[doorbell and knocking]
CB: Just stopping a mo.
[recording paused]
JW: He could, the bomb aimers were pretty good at it and the bombsight we had was really good. And he would then call up [pause] We had backers up, visual centrerers, backers up that would drop flares too because obviously they would gradually go out.
Other 1: Yes.
JW: You know, so he’d call up these people. Their bomb aimers were also good and they would be then bombing on, dropping their flares on the original flares. But if they were slightly off the master bomber would then tell main force. Sometimes they’d put a dummy one up about ten miles away but he’d tell them to ignore that and then he would call them up and say, ‘Overshoot by two seconds,’ to stop as I said the creep back. You always got the creep back. The newer crews used to be at the back of the [unclear] through the raid.
CB: Of the stream. The back of the stream.
JW: Always dropped their bombs short and you could see. You could see that by the way they were falling. So he would tell and they would adjust that and keep the raid going. When we went to the one at Munster, when we got there they was bombing and Bill really called it up and really coated the life out of them. Called them all sorts of things. Concentrate on where the bombers were going and brought the raid back to make it a successful raid.
CB: Why was there bombing creep?
JW: Probably inexperience of the bomb aimers. Nervousness. Perhaps when they were coming along they suddenly, I think it was a natural reaction that they dropped. They got the bombsight coming up to the target and if they think that it’s there but you had to get that, it was a [pause] The gradual was like a red cross on plastic about four inches by two inches that looked.
CB: On the bomb sight.
JW: On the bomb sight as you looked through that and that arrow had to go straight the way through and if it was, this was why sometimes you get thrown off course by slipstream or different things and if, if that happened I used to call dummy run. And then go around the target and come back again. As I say I think that happened about three times and this was on German raids but it was so concentrated and you were oblivious of everything that was going.
Other 1: Yes.
JW: It was quite incredible really. You know. But if you’re not concentrating that much it’s easy enough to press the bomb tit.
CB: So as the bomb aimer you effectively are in control in the last how long? Two minutes or —
JW: Yeah.
CB: Something like that.
JW: Yeah.
CB: And the master bomber you said goes down to make his mark.
JW: Sometimes they would go down. Sometimes they would bomb from the same height.
CB: Right. But then to control the raid.
JW: They’d fly around.
CB: They’d fly above it, would they?
JW: Yeah.
CB: Fly over above everybody else.
JW: They’d fly, they’re coming back at the same height, and they’re usually on the edge of the target and circling around.
CB: Right.
JW: And I mean it was a pretty dangerous job because there was quite a lot of master bombers got shot down because obviously they could pick them up on radar. They’ve got one aircraft going around and around and around.
Other 1: Yes.
CB: Now the master bomber marked in red did he?
JW: It depended. Mainly in red.
CB: And the follow ups would mark in green.
JW: Green. Yeah.
CB: Any other colours?
JW: Yeah. The reds and greens. Sometimes red and greens. Reds. But I don’t think there was any other colours.
CB: So how far back would the green be for doing the marking because this was for the re-energising of the marking wasn’t it?
JW: Well, the master bomber would call that up when he see the, if he sees his flares beginning to fade.
CB: Yeah.
JW: He’d call up and some of them were briefed to go in anyway.
CB: Yeah.
JW: But he would, he would control it from that.
CB: Now, when you did call dummy run what was the actual procedure for getting out and then rejoining the bomber stream?
JW: You just went. We just carried on. Bill, Bill would pull the, close the bomb bay doors. Go on, circle around and come back and join the bomber stream and then do another run on the —
CB: Would it be a standard procedure? You’d always turn left or always turn right or what would it be?
JW: I don’t know. I think we always turn left.
CB: Right. And you’d go out how far because the bomber stream’s quite wide?
JW: I couldn’t tell you that. I don’t know. That would be up to the pilot.
CB: I’m thinking on seconds. So, a minute or — to get out of the stream.
JW: Well, it’s difficult to measure or think about the time. We’d just do it until we get back in.
CB: Yeah.
JW: I don’t think it took that long.
CB: Because you can’t see the other aircraft.
JW: Oh no. occasionally you would see them if you come up. On one occasion I I looked out. I was down in the nose of the aircraft looking and I suddenly see this face in front of me. And I was looking at the rear gunner of another Lancaster. I called Bill up and we were so close to him it was, I could see him. See his face.
CB: What was his reaction?
JW: I don’t know.
CB: He didn’t wave?
JW: No [laughs]
CB: Hello mum.
JW: I think he was clenching his buttocks [laughs]
CB: Can we just go back to, because you’re a flight engineer but you’re effectively changed to do bombing.
JW: Yes.
CB: Because you’re trained as supplementary.
JW: Yeah.
CB: To a bomber, bomb aimer. Your lying prone and you’ve got your head straight down effectively with the bomb sight and the the —
JW: You’re oblivious to everything else.
CB: Yes. And you’ve got the blister that you’re lying in effectively. You’ve got your head in.
JW: Yeah. No. You only put that in afterwards.
CB: Right. So what is, what’s the pattern and what are you seeing and how do you react to what you see because you’re looking at the inferno?
JW: Yeah. You’re looking at, you’re looking at the marker, the indicators, target indicators.
CB: Right.
JW: And you’re getting your cross going through that, those markers and you’re concentrating on that, ‘Left. Left. Steady. Steady. Right. Steady,’ until you get that cross on there and then you press the button. Bombs gone.
CB: So, on your run in you’ve got two minutes effectively when you’re as it were in charge. The navigator is giving you the drift is he? How do you, how do you —
JW: It’s purely and simply, you either, the way the aircraft’s flying. The pilot is just keeping it if he knows you’re steady he’s going to keep that line.
CB: He knows what the drift is.
JW: Yeah.
CB: So —
JW: But you’re telling him that.
CB: Right.
JW: But when we went to, we went and did a raid on Nantes in France we did five. Five dummy runs.
CB: Did you really?
JW: Yeah. Because it was so difficult to see with cloud and everything else. And I think that’s in there.
CB: Is this daylight? Or —
JW: Night flight. Night.
CB: Night. Yeah.
JW: It would be.
CB: What I was trying to get at was there’s the, what you might call the professional aspect of this, of lining up and then calling, ‘Bombs gone.’
JW: Yeah.
CB: But what’s your feeling as you look down into this. Are you busy concentrating on the markers —
JW: You’re oblivious of everything else. I used to be concentrating so much that I didn’t even realise what was going on outside.
CB: So in practical terms there’s a huge barrage of flak bursting all around. Above, below and the side. You’re oblivious to that are you?
JW: Yeah. Yeah. If you’re doing your job properly. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
JW: Yes. And this is my, perhaps the feedback if suddenly a shell bursts near somebody and get rid of the bombs but —
CB: Because the navigators are actually sitting in a cubicle with a blanket hanging down so they can’t see anything.
JW: No.
CB: That’s what you meant earlier isn’t it?
JW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So it’s a bit of a shock to them to see what’s happening around them.
JW: Our other two navigators never came out. And it was the last trip that we were fated to do although we didn’t know it at the time when this, this Canadian navigator came out. I mean it’s a bit of a shock if you’ve not seen anything and then you see the shell bursts around you and know that one of those too close is curtains. I suppose yeah it did shake you.
CB: What was the main difference between flying daylight and flying in the night?
JW: Well, flying at night you couldn’t see other aircraft normally. Daylight you can see what’s going on. You can see the shell bursts. You can see fighters coming in. I know that my friend in, on his, it was on his last raid at Hamburg and he watched one of our aircraft go down. Funnily enough his brother lives in, when he’d seen that picture in the paper he got in touch with the paper and said, ‘My brother was on 156.’
CB: Really?
JW: ‘Can you give me that man’s name?’
CB: Yeah.
JW: They said no. They gave me his number. But he watched him go down and they were then attacked by a German jet fighter. And he said he watched it come in. He’d never seen anything move so quick in all his life. He was, the jet fighter opened up with cannons, It shot bits of the tailplane off and never touched Rupert.
CB: That’s the tail gunner.
JW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Extraordinary. So you had a huge variety of raids that you went on. The normal standard was thirty ops and then when you get on to Pathfinders what is the, what is a tour?
JW: When you went on Pathfinders, because of the extended training that you’d had you had to do two tours straight off.
CB: Right.
JW: And because on main force it was thirty trips then you had six months rest and sometimes they called you back sometimes they didn’t. You did another twenty. But on Pathfinders you had to do forty five. But like all of it they were the goalposts. You see I did fifty [pause] fifty two I think to do my two tours because they suddenly brought in a points system. You got five points for a German trip, three points for a French trip and then you had to do [pause] you had to get a hundred and fifty points to finish your first tour. So if it was all French trips it would be more than if it was all French err all German trips. But the, yeah it was, I know there was joke going around about it. If you get shot down over France is it only three fifths dead? Which is, some wag came out with that.
CB: In your case you got the DFM. When did you get that?
JW: It was first promulgated I think in November ’44. I got it in February. 1st of February when I was first noticed it, first notified.
CB: Yeah. ’45. And what about the rest of the crew? What did they get?
JW: The pilot got the DSO and the DFC.
CB: The DSO. At the same time?
JW: No. Different times. DSO, DFC. The two navigators both got the DFC. [pause] The mid-upper gunner got the DFM and the Belgian Croix de Guerre.
CB: Yeah.
JW: I got the DFM and the Croix de Guerre err the Legion of Honour.
CB: Did you get the Croix de Guerre as well?
JW: No.
CB: Oh, right.
JW: And, and of course the Pathfinder award. We all got the Pathfinder award.
CB: Yes. When did that come out?
JW: After you had, when we finished on the squadron.
CB: Right. And as well as getting the scroll what did you get as far as the medal part? There is, there is a, you get a separate badge for Pathfinder.
JW: Yeah. You got that. When you’d done six marker trips you got the temporary award of the Pathfinder badge. You were allowed to wear it on your, you weren’t allowed to wear it on your battledress.
CB: No.
JW: Because if you got shot down and they could see even the holes where [pause] that was your lot.
CB: Yeah.
JW: So, but that’s, as I say that’s the Pathfinder badge. That’s, after the war people were wearing it and some of the jumped up people in the offices said in the higher ranks, ‘You can’t wear that. You can’t wear that anymore.’ But Bennett was a lot cleverer than they thought because when he promulgated it it was promulgated as an award. Not as a badge. It’s an actual award. So they couldn’t stop them wearing it.
CB: This is Air Marshall Bennett.
JW: Yeah.
CB: The CO CNC Pathfinders.
JW: Yeah.
CB: Did you meet him many times?
JW: I never met him. You met him if you went, if you applied for a commission. Then you met him. But I wasn’t interested in a commission. A, it meant a drop in pay for six months and I didn’t fancy that [laughs]
CB: And then you changed messes.
JW: Yeah.
CB: You had to change messes.
JW: Yeah.
CB: We’ve talked a lot about the action but what about in the time off? What did you do then? Did you, did you go out as a crew?
JW: With the —
CB: Socially.
JW: The mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator, myself from the time we met we used to go. We were never out of each other’s company. We even arranged our leave passes. They lived in Newcastle. I lived in Guildford. But we managed to get our leave passes that worked when you, when you looked at it it went from Burradon which was just outside Newcastle to Guildford. So we’d get, when we had leave every six weeks we’d go to Newcastle for three days. We’d get out at Newcastle and say, ‘Oh, we’re going on to Burradon later.’ So you kept your ticket. When we got to, going back there after three days we’d go back to Guildford. We’d get down to Kings Cross and of course you’ve got, you’ve got to go over to Waterloo to get to Guildford. But we used to buy a ticket from Waterloo. It was only about a shilling. Something like that. And so we used to be able to go three days in one place. Three days in the other and —
CB: Overnight travel.
JW: Yeah [laughs] it was, but we used to, all used to go and so our leave was together. Going out we’d be out as a crew. We’d usually meet girls as well. So the only time we were apart is when you were in one corner they were in another [laughs] But we used to go out. We used to go out and drink. You never used, sometimes you did get a bit tipsy. You never went out to get drunk which is what seems to be the norm today. But you went out, you got drunk but because of what you were drinking. You didn’t sit there swilling it to get as much down you as you could.
CB: No. But was the social aspect of life on a squadron partly an antidote to the experiences of raids?
JW: Well, it’s, it’s like I say you used to go out every night you could. We were getting around about seven guineas a week I think at that time which was a lot of money. Beer at a penny err a shilling a pint you know. And —
Other 1: Chris.
CB: Right. We’ll turn off a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Seven guineas a week.
JW: Yeah. That’s what I was getting then.
CB: And beer was a shilling a pint.
JW: A shilling a pint. Yeah. But it was, some days you’d have do in the mess. Perhaps a dance or something like that but mainly we used to go out if we could. I know when I spoke about the discipline on 156, they decided, they had a group captain Airey there who was a station commander and he’d lost three court martials in a row. So that meant he had to be posted but they put in charge a man for discip. A disciplinarian. A man called Menaul. Menaul. And group captain Airey, he was an elderly man but he used to go out on ops occasionally and, but Menaul, I don’t think he ever did. One thing he did do I found out afterwards was when they were bringing prisoners of war back he’d do those trips all right. But on one occasion there was the mid-upper, Bert, Appy, Bert and myself and the rear gunner of another squadron, another crew. A chap called Ron Smith and we going up to Ramsey. To the camp. To the aerodrome. The first entrance you got to was the officer’s entrance what went past the station commanders house. And then you went on another couple of hundred yards to come to the main gate. But this particular night we’d been down, we weren’t drunk we’d been and had a couple of pints each. We decided to go in through the officer’s entrance and we were quite a way along it and suddenly a car pulled up behind us and a voice yelled out, ‘Airmen.’ We knew at once who it was so we scarpered. I went over a fence. The other, I don’t know where the other two went. And then the car, he was looking around. He couldn’t see anybody because it was dark. And the car drove off and then I heard a voice say, ‘Where the bloody hell has he gone to?’ And of course I was on the other side of the fence and walked up and frightened the life out of them. But then we carried on walking and we had to go past the airmen’s billets because this was a peacetime ‘drome so it was all brick buildings. But every time a car came in the main gate we were in open ground. So we had to go down on the flat. We knew what was going to happen. The next morning he had all the squadron into this room and bearing in mind his, his war record was I think one tour as a fighter pilot towards the end of the war and he insulted, he called us all the names under the sun. Now, at this time we’d got something like sixty trips in between each. Appy was fuming. But everybody on the unit knew who the people were except him. Even the adjutant knew. And two of Appy’s mates are sitting on either side of him holding him down. And if we’d have owned up God knows what he would have done. But he couldn’t do the whole squadron so, but do you know what? After the war that man, somebody was writing a book about [pause] I’ve not been able to find a copy of it. I had a copy but I leant it to somebody and I never had it back. It was, they were talking about the airfields in Lincolnshire and round in Cambridgeshire and he had, they’d, they’d interviewed him and he said in there that on that occasion we had gone up to his front door, frightened his wife, urinated against his front door. I wanted the book back because I was going to take the author something about, for libel. Slander. Whatever it is. But anyhow I never got the book back so I could never see it. But they’d actually quoted him verbatim in there. Saying that we’d frightened the wife, his wife and daughter and urinated against his front door. Now, what idiot could do that sort of thing? But that’s in the book. So if he had known who we were, this was written after the war our names would have been there.
CB: Extraordinary.
JW: But funnily enough a friend of mine who was on the squadron with me he lived in Brighton and he lived near Hamish Mahaddie and he went to see Hamish and he was talking about Menaul to Hamish. ‘Don’t talk to me about that — ’ so and so, he said. So he was not only liked, disliked by the rank and file he was utterly disliked by his peers.
CB: There are occasions when very, when senior officers, group captains did fly.
JW: Yeah.
CB: And that’s how they got them in the prison camps.
JW: Yeah.
CB: In some cases. So under what circumstances would they do it, and what would they do?
JW: It was up to them. They decided what they’d do, where they’d go and what they —
CB: And would they be the pilot, the captain or would they just be there for the ride?
JW: If they took over the crew they were the captain. But if they went as the supernumery the pilot is always the captain.
CB: Yes.
JW: Even if he’s a sergeant and he’s got flight lieutenants in his crew he is still the captain.
CB: Yeah. So these people would be flying as the pilot normally would they? The group captains.
JW: No. Not necessarily. They’d go along, you know.
CB: Just to get the experience.
JW: Yeah. Just to get to [pause] but I know that Group Captain Airey went on at least two or three. They weren’t supposed to so it was done surreptitiously.
CB: Might have been a good defence in the court martial.
JW: Yeah [laughs]
CB: What would you say was your most memorable recollection of being in the RAF in the war?
JW: Just the odd occasion when, to get away with as many trips as we did you had to fly a lot of trips where there was nothing happening. There was no, you know, you got away with it. You dropped your bombs you got back, and [pause] But of the probably eight or nine instances when we were attacked by fighters or got hit by flak [unclear] [pause] Probably the time when I looked up and see that bloody aircraft above us with his bomb doors open.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. You talked about the Nuremberg raid a lot of which was in bright moonlight. What did you see in terms of aircraft exploding?
JW: Well, we were, it was our second trip on the Pathfinder squadron so we were acting as supporters, which meant we were right at the front of the — with the master bomber.
CB: Right.
JW: And we were following three Mosquitoes that were doing a spoof raid up to Hamburg I think. Somewhere up there. And we were right behind them so we think we got that through before they realised where the raid was going to go. So what was happening was behind us. I mean the gunners were calling out and saying that they could see aircraft going down but where we were we, we thought it was dangerous because I think the last two hundred miles was a straight leg, straight down to Nuremberg and there were searchlights nearly all the way down there, but so, from our point of view being at the front of the wave of bombers meant that the fighters only took off when they were behind us before they realised where we were going.
CB: Yeah.
JW: And when we got down to come back, lower down in Germany by that time they were down on the floor refuelling. So probably that’s the reason why we got through again.
CB: What was your understanding of the term scarecrow?
JW: Well, they said they were sending up these huge it was like a big dustbin if you like coming up, and they were explaining but in actual fact what they never told us was though they must have known about it was upward firing, the up firing guns and we didn’t know about them. they weren’t, we weren’t told about it.
CB: The Schrage Musik.
JW: Yeah. It was [pause] I know on one occasion on, it was, I think it was on the Nuremberg raid, our mid-upper gunner told me this there was a, the wireless operator had Fishpond. What was called Fishpond. It was an offshoot of H2S and it would pick up fighters.
CB: Trailing behind you.
JW: But the fighter, the fighter disappeared when it got within a hundred and fifty feet, and the wireless operator and the mid-upper gunner were, he was telling him where it was. That he could see it. And then suddenly it disappeared and then Appy said that as we were flying along another Lanc alongside of us, and it used to go over about that sort of speed as you were going over. As it got underneath us it suddenly blew up. And what we think was that that fighter was beneath us firing at us and this other Lanc came in underneath and got blown up instead of us. That’s what, that’s what our mid-upper was thinking, you know. That’s what he thought. He said, it was the fact it disappeared from the Fishpond meant it was within a closer range to come off where it wasn’t showing up and he said this other Lanc, it was, it used to be ok, you used to see it going very slowly underneath you but as it did, as it went underneath suddenly it went up.
CB: Did you feel the blast?
JW: No. No. I don’t know what sort of, you know, I didn’t see the aircraft going under us.
CB: No.
JW: But him being the mid-upper gunner he was, he was up at the top. He could see quite a lot.
CB: You talked about the wing commander who flew in a weave. To what extent were you aware of LMF?
JW: I don’t know of anybody who was accused of it. All I know is that any aircrew never condemned anybody as LMF. It was only some little jumped up merchant in an office sitting behind a desk who’d never even seen a gun let along had one fired who decided this. But I can understand at the top stating it, because they said that if it was easy enough to just pack up the threat of LMF was [pause] but the way they treated them when they were. I mean people had done two or three trips. But not everybody’s the same, and some people just couldn’t. You know, it’s quite, it was quite terrifying really at times. Obviously. I don’t know what we’d have done if it, we were lucky enough not to get hit but, but even so you were quite aware of the fact that you could easily get killed if, you know. You put it out of your mind but you knew really deep down that that was, that was an option. You’ll have to excuse me.
CB: Yeah. We’ll stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
JW: Well —
CB: Now, you you also relied on the ground crew and you talked about the chiefy earlier. What was the relationship between the aircrew and the groundcrew?
JW: Well, that was, well funnily enough I don’t know any of their names. because we had [pages turning]
CB: The ground crew would often look after two aircraft.
JW: That is in, that picture is in quite a few places. And that’s the ground crew. I tried to find out the names of them and I couldn’t. I hoped somebody would be able to find them by publishing it but they couldn’t.
CB: And how did the, how did you get on or did you not talk to them much?
JW: Oh you, we didn’t socialise with them. As I said we didn’t socialise with anybody except our own crew.
CB: Quite.
JW: And it was only the three of us.
CB: Who did it. Yes. But the officers would tend to socialise separately from the airmen wouldn’t they?
JW: Yeah.
CB: Anyway.
JW: Anyhow, there’s [pause] When we were getting dressed we’d get our flying kit on.
CB: Yeah.
JW: We used to sing [pause] it was, I forget the artist who sing it. “My mother done told me when I was in knee pants.” [laughs] We used to sing that as we were getting ready.
CB: And then when you got to the aircraft what rituals were there there? Like watering the rear wheel.
JW: No. We never did that. I don’t think there were any. We used to, I know that with all the checks that we used to have to make, about seventy checks but all the ones outside I never used to let the ground crew see me doing them because I always thought they would think I wasn’t trusting them. So I used to walk round and you could, you could check them yourself without which let them see that you trusted them to do their checks as well. The ones inside the aircraft of course were ok.
Other 1: Was there a very close relationship between the ground crew and the flying crew?
JW: Not as close as you would think.
Other 1: Because there’s a huge amount of reliance or —
JW: Oh yeah. You trusted them completely.
Other 1: You’d have to.
JW: Yeah. I’ll tell you what though. One thing that was happening when we, we were going. A we were taking, got around, suddenly Bill said, ‘We’ve got no brake pressure.’ So he said, ‘Do we need it in the air?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well we can carry on then.’ I said, ‘Yeah’ You don’t use your brakes in the air do you? So the only thing we had to be careful of was taxiing around behind other aircraft. And we took off and when was it that [pause] it meant that when we got back they wouldn’t let us land there. They sent us over to Woodbridge. But on another occasion we were on the short runway and this is when I, you heard say, Bill flew the aircraft by feel as well. On the short runway and there was something wrong with the speed.
CB: Airspeed indicator. Yeah.
JW: Because it was showing a completely different reading on the, on the instrument to what was and he could feel that according to the reading you could take but he didn’t, he flew it without and by the feel and when he felt it could take off on the short runway and I knew that the airspeed cover had been taken off because I’d checked that myself.
CB: Yeah.
JW: And I said to him, ‘There might be an insect in there or something.’ Anyhow, I said, ‘Right. We’ll go through all the checks. Every check that we normally do inside.’ And one of them just in front of the door at the back was it was about that size. A rubber thing with a hole in and there used to be plugs put in that. So you had to check to make sure the plugs were out and I knew that if one was out they’d both be out. The only way I could check it was to sit with the door open and reach along the side of the fuselage and I could just reach it. I knew I could. So what I did I put my parachute on because I realised I could get sucked out. I had Bert hanging on my legs in the fuselage. Opened the door. And when I told Ed Straw who used to fly the Lanc that we’ve got now he said, ‘You bloody idiot,’ he said, ‘You could have been killed. If you’d have got sucked out,’ he said, ‘The tailplane would have hit you.’ I said, ‘I know. That’s why I — ’ Anyhow, I did try that and went on and did all the rest but I couldn’t see the other side. I said to Bill. I don’t know what I was going to do. He didn’t say anything so I thought good. But yeah it was quite funny really.
CB: And the result was?
JW: It was, it was, it was as I knew it would be. The plug wasn’t in there. But this was at ten thousand feet over Guildford.
CB: Oh right [laughs]
JW: And I thought if I fall out I could go home.
CB: Go home. Yeah. Ideal. Yeah. Did people fly with lucky charms?
JW: Yeah. I think they did. I used to have a white scarf I used to carry with me. A silk scarf. Because you couldn’t wear your tie because if you came down in the water it could shrink and choke you. But —
Other 1: Yes.
CB: And did you have any weapon on you?
JW: They issued us just after D-Day. They issued us all with revolvers.
CB: 38s.
JW: Yeah. The aircrew NCOs could only wear, they had to carry them in camp. But officers had to carry them at all times because they thought that the Germans might drop parachutists on to the aerodromes
CB: Oh.
JW: And, but the other thing that I had was a six inch bowie knife. I had them both tucked in me, in me flying boots because I always thought, it never occurred to me if we got shot down that I’d get killed. Didn’t occur to me that. And I thought, and afterwards we used to go on these three day weeks and I thought, I looked, we went out on a trip on the Rhine and I thought, you thought you were going to get across. You can’t bloody swim and you were going to get across there. What sort of daydream were you in? I mean it goes on forever. The width of it. Doesn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
Other 1: It does.
CB: When the war finished did you do any Cook’s Tours?
JW: No. No. We’d been slung off. We were taken off. In April posted away from the unit and never got near an aircraft after that. Oh. I went up. I went up once with, when I was posted, first posted to the Wellington OTU. And they wanted you to go up and they wanted somebody, you need somebody sitting in the tail of a Wellington. I said, ‘I’ll go with you.’ With the pilot and the navigator. We came down and had a look around over where I lived. But —
CB: Not in Germany.
JW: No.
CB: Where did you meet your wife?
JW: Oh, this was, we were working. Both working in the same firm. Works outing actually. We went. They took us all down for Brighton for the day. Two coaches. And we went in to, I didn’t even know she was working there, went in to lunch and suddenly this girl looked around and she had the most beautiful blue eyes. And I thought cor, you lovely blue eyes. Anyhow, I didn’t expect to ever see her again. But in those days the coaches used to go and park somewhere, then they’d come along the front, creep along very slowly and you picked your bus, your coach out and got on as it was going along. And when I got on she was sitting on the front seat. I said, ‘Anybody sitting with you?’ ‘No.’ It was a right curt. I thought I’ll sit down anyway. Got chatting and halfway back we stopped at a pub and had a drink. A couple of drinks. And we got the bottom of Waterloo Road, the factory was. We stopped outside there. We all got off the coach. And she said, ‘You’re not leaving me here on my own are you?’ I said, ‘No. Where do you live?’ She lived just around the corner from the Elephant and Castle. Anyhow, she said, ‘Come and have a cup of tea.’ So I was in there when all the family came back. They’d all been at the pub at the top of the road. Met the family. That was quite strange because when it comes time to say cheerio she went down and presented her sister and her husband had the bottom flat and they had the flat above. And I shall never forget, I said to her, ‘Can I kiss you goodnight?’ She said, ‘I’d have hit you if you hadn’t.’ [laughs] By this time although she was very curt to start with by this time we’d sort of got some rapport and I arranged to meet her again in a week. But when I got outside there was a rail strike on and so I couldn’t get back to Guildford but I was staying with my grandmother at Putney. I got outside and I thought bloody hell how the hell do I get to Putney? All I’d got in my pocket was a half a crown. And I hadn’t got a clue where I was. Anyhow, I walked up to the main road and I see a taxi. I hailed him. He said, ‘I’ve finished mate.’ I said, ‘Oh I’m in trouble, trouble here,’ I said, ‘I’m trying to get back to Putney and I don’t know where it is,’ I said, ‘I’ve only got a half — ’ ‘Get in,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you to Putney Bridge which was, I knew where I was then. And he did. And it was ever so good of him. But then we went out and then later on we decided to get married.
CB: When did you get married?
JW: In September the 1st on 1956.
CB: What was the company you were working for then?
JW: It was Cockayne and Company.
CB: Who?
JW: Cockayne’s.
CB: Oh Cockayne.
JW: C O C K A Y N E. The chap who owned it used to drive around. He used to have a chauffeur with a Rolls Royce and his chauffeur wore a peak cap, gaters, polished gaters. And occasionally he would come around. At Christmas usually he would come around and say hello to everybody. I forget his name now. But they had a factory in Eastleigh in Southampton. And we went down once to play football with them. A football match. Clever they were. Treated us all to a bloody great lunch. And then their team arrived didn’t it? We were playing football on a full stomach.
CB: Different people. Yes. Gamesmanship they call it.
JW: Yeah. Yeah. We were married for [pause] She died in 2013.
CB: Oh dear. Was she younger than you or —
JW: She was five years younger than me.
CB: Well, Jack Watson. A really interesting conversation. Thank you so much.
JW: I’m glad you enjoyed 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
A name given to the resource
Interview with John Robert Watson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-02
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWatsonJR180202, PWatsonJR1501
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:04:35 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
John Robert Watson joined RAF Bomber Command in 1943, volunteering after he witnessed his next-door neighbour's house being destroyed by a bomb. Against his father's wishes, John joined Bomber Command initially as a wireless operator, before transferring to a flight engineer course. Travelling to RAF Ouston, John flew in Lancasters and Halifaxes. His first operation took place on the 17th of January 1944, which he believed he would not survive. His second operation was to Berlin and featured another close call, in which he almost crashed into another Lancaster. He remembers his crew fondly, stating that they did well throughout the war because they trusted one another so much. Joining the Pathfinders force, John travelled from RAF Wickenby to RAF Warboys, changing crews and being put through extra training. Completing over 40 operations John recalls several operations, including one over Nuremberg which featured another close call. John was then moved again and became a flight instructor for Wellingtons. He also gives information regarding his crew, being a flight instructor, his scariest moment whilst flying, the impact of lack of morale fibre, and master bombers' role. He also gives several humorous stories of his time at RAF stations and his run-ins with higher-ranking service members. During his service as a Pathfinder, John received the Distinguished Flying Medal, the Legion of Honour and the Pathfinder badge. When he was demobilized, he became disillusioned with discipline within the RAF and continued his apprenticeship, meeting and marrying his wife in 1956 and living with her until she passed away in 2013.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Northumberland
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Nuremberg
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-01-17
1956
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
12 Squadron
156 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Medal
fear
flight engineer
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Master Bomber
mid-air collision
military ethos
Pathfinders
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Ouston
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
recruitment
searchlight
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1770/31049/BCleggPVLangAGv10019.2.jpg
1d0c0944df6a16ec9ee482f2cc95904e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Clegg, Peter Vernon. Lang, Alastair - folder
Description
An account of the resource
Fifteen items. Contains description of the terrible three, a biography of Squadron Leader Alastair Lang DFC, photographs, a portrait, details of his flight engineer, operational diary, correspondence, newspaper cuttings and extracts from his log book.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-02
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clegg, PV
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Headquarters,
Path Finder Force,
Royal Air Force.
14th March, 1943.
Dear Lang
I should like to offer you heartiest congratulations on your Distinguished Flying Cross which is well merited, and adds further laurels to No. 156 Squadron.
Yours,
[signature]
Flight Lieutenant A.G. Lang D.F.C.
No. 156 Squadron,
Royal Air Force Station,
[underlined]WARBOYS[/underlined]
[two newspaper cuttings]
On award of the D.F.C. to Fl/Lt. Lang.
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 Donald Bennett to Alastair Lang and two newspaper cuttings
Description
An account of the resource
Top - newspaper cutting mentioning Lang's award of DFC.
Middle - letter congratulates him on award of Distinguished Flying Cross.
Bottom - newspaper cutting announcing award of DFC to Flight Lieutenant Alastair Grant Lang.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
D Bennett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-03-14
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photocopied sheet
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
BCleggPVLangAGv10019
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--Huntingdonshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-03-14
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
156 Squadron
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
Distinguished Flying Cross
RAF Warboys
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/14954/EDonaldsonDWOCRAFFoulsham450331-0001.2.jpg
38b8229adb4c4630af76bd7adcd14ca5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/14954/EDonaldsonDWOCRAFFoulsham450331-0002.2.jpg
2e37f396aef60ce1de25d71fa6b478dd
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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
19
70185 A/W/Cdr. D.W. Donaldson, RAFVR.
192 Squadron,
R.A.F. Station,
Foulsham,
Nr. Dereham,
Norfolk.
To:- Officer Commanding, R.A.F. Station,
Foulsham, Nr. Dereham, Norfolk.
Date:- 31st March, 1945.
Subject:- [underlined] APPLICATION FOR A TEMPORARY RELEASE. [/underlined]
Sir,
I have the honour to apply for a temporary release from the R.A.F. for a period of from six to nine months. This is to enable me to work and sit for the Solicitor's Final Examination.
When mobilised at the outbreak of war in September 1939, I was a Solicitor's Articled Clerk. I had completed my articles and was working for and was about to take the Final examination in November of that year.
This release would only commence on the completion of my third and present tour of operations, and subject to my then not being required by the R.A.F. for the above period of six to nine months.
Attached are details of my service career since September 1939. My demobilisation Group is No.22.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your Obedient Servant,
D.W.D
Wing Commander,
[underlined] Commanding 192 Squadron. [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Application for temporary release
Description
An account of the resource
Letter from David Donaldson to station commander at RAF Foulsham requesting temporary release for a period of six to nine months in order to study and sit solicitor's, final examinations. Enclosed document listing his service since September 1939 which includes target towing, training, operational tours on 149, 57, 156 and 192 Squadrons, tours at 3 and 100 Group and Atlantic ferrying.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
D Donaldson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-03-31
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
EDonaldsonDWOCRAFFoulsham450331
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
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
England--Oxfordshire
England--Berkshire
England--Suffolk
England--Hertfordshire
England--Lincoln
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-31
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One-page typewritten letter and one page typewritten document
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Frances Grundy
100 Group
149 Squadron
156 Squadron
192 Squadron
3 Group
57 Squadron
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hudson
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Evanton
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Warboys
RAF West Raynham
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/295/3615/AWallerT151027.2.mp3
fabda2f9ca0e4a33deecf28b4415ef22
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
Waller, Tom
Tom Waller
T Waller
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Corporal Thomas Waller (- 2018, 1096366 Royal Air Force) a memoir and photographs. Tom Waller was a fitter/armourer with 138, 109 and 156 Squadrons and served at RAF Stradisall, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, and RAF Upward.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Thomas Waller and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Waller, T
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview with Thomas Waller. It’s at his house in Swanland. It’s the 27th of the 10th 2015. Approximately 10 past 10. My name is Dan Ellin and this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. So Mr Waller could you please tell me what you did before the war and before you joined the RAF?
TW: I left school when I was fourteen. Worked on the fish docks. I left there when we came to Swanland in 1936. I went to work at the Blackburn’s which is now British Aerospace at Brough. I couldn’t stand being penned in there so I came and worked in the local village grocery shop. Wednesday was our half day so when I was in town one Wednesday I went in to the recruiting office and joined the RAF. I came home. Mother said, ‘Why did you do that for? You’ll not pass your medical.’ So I said, ‘Ah. Let’s see.’ So I went for my medical and passed A1. And she said, ‘Well you couldn’t have done.’ But I never found out why. So I joined up. Went in for MT driver but I’d joined up just at Dunkirk and they’d lost a lot of armourers in Fairey Battles so I became an armourer. Hadn’t the vaguest idea what it was – came home on leave, home and my brother he was a flight engineer. Ground crew. I said, ‘What’s an armourer?’ He said, ‘Oh guns and bombs.’ ‘Oh I don’t want to do that. I’m not doing that.’ He said, ‘It’s good pay. Good promotion.’ I said, ‘Money’s not everything.’ Anyhow, I went. Got on the course. And the lad next to me said, ‘Well, I don’t want to do this.’ So we filed up and down. Up and down. The tutor came around and said, ‘You two can stop messing about. Get on with it because we know you can do it.’ So we did. So we passed out flying colours so went out there in the armoury after it had finished. An officer come along and says, ‘Those whose names I call out please step forward.’ My name was called out. Go for fitter armourer to Credenhill in Hereford. So my mate said, ‘We didn’t want to do that, did we?’ I said, ‘No. But we’ll have to go won’t we?’ So we went and we enjoyed it and we got through that course alright and then I was posted to Stradishall. 138 Squadron. SOE Squadron. I wasn’t there very long because Tempsford was its main base and they decided to put all the SOE section together. So they transferred me to Wyton. But instead of Stradishall sending me to Wyton they sent me to Upper Heyford. So, when I got there they said, ‘Where have you come from?’ I said, ‘Stradishall.’ ‘Well you’re not supposed to be here mate.’ I said, ‘Well I have a railway warrant for here.’ ‘Well, we’ll fetch you up a bed for the night and feed you and see.’ I was there for a week and then they said, ‘We’ve found out where you should have been. You should be at Wyton.’ So they said, ‘Get your kit ready and come down to the orderly room tomorrow morning. Half past eight. We’re flying you over in an Anson.’ Oh, I thought lovely. My first flight. Here I go. I got to the orderly room. ‘You’re going by train.’ It’s got a snag. They took me to the station. Stood there. Thought got to get rid of him and make sure he gets on the train. So when I got to Wyton they said, ‘Where have you been?’ I said, ‘I’ve been at Upper Heyford.’ ‘Well what did you go there for?’ I said, ‘Well that’s my railway warrant.’ You know. So he said, ‘Well have you come through King’s Cross?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said. ‘Have you been stopped by the police?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’ve got them at your house looking for you.’ So I said, ‘No wonder my mother was agitated.’ So I settled down there and then, you know [pause] I eventually got to Wyton and the lads said, ‘Oh you’re our new armourer are you?’ So, I said, ‘Yes sir.’ They said, ‘Right.’ So we got settled in. Got working on the aircraft and then came home on leave. Got back off leave. Just got to the guard room and there was a terrific explosion. All the people came out the guardroom, the guard chaps. There’d been an explosion there, hadn’t there. Now had I been, not been on leave I wouldn’t be here now. So I’m one of the lucky ones and the billets at night with all the empty beds. It was really horrible to see it, you know. So we plodded on. Carried on. And then I was transferred from Wyton to [pause] from Stradishall. I went to Wyton and from Wyton I went to Warboys. To 156 Squadron. Start of Pathfinder force. And then they transferred over to Upwood and I went over to Upwood. And then I was there till 1946 and I was sent to a satellite drome near Stratford on Avon. With a dummy four pounder in the bomb dump, fifty rifles in the armoury. I was a corporal and there was me and another lad there with nothing to do. So when demob come I was glad to get out. But if I’d been on a proper station I would have stopped in because I really enjoyed the life. So I came home. Went back to my job in the village. And then at that time I was engaged to a WAAF in London so I got a job with Barclays Baking Machines. Went down to their factory in London and trained to be a mechanic. Service mechanic for the area. So we came back home again. But my lady friend said, ‘I’m not going to Swanland to live.’ So that brought that up. So I did it but I had to give it up because I didn’t have the money to buy a car or a motorbike and doing all the villages. And I walked from Holme on Spalding Moor to Easingwould carrying a wooden box with all my kit in. And I were going, and I went to one place, Newbold. And you’re allowed an hour and a half to service a machine and when I got there I had a new blade to put on. There were only a bus in the morning and one at night [laughs] so I panicked. I got it on. So I gave the manager my address. I said, ‘If anything happens send me a telegram and,’ I said, ‘I’ll come over,’ you know. Anyhow, everything was alright, thank goodness. So, but it was having walking from one village to another and buses it was that awkward so I gave it up. And I came back to the local shop again. Met a local girl and got married. And then I went to work for a local multiple store. Cousins. Down in Ferriby. And I used to go into the shop on the corner, a big shop on the corner where, down where we lived on a Sunday morning to do the bale machine for him and sort his yard out for him. So one day he said, ‘Would you like to come and work for me? I’ll give you a pound more than what you’d do down there.’ A pound in them days was a lot of money. And I had four children then. So I said, ‘Oh yes. Yeah.’ So I came and I was there for nineteen years. And then he brought his nephew into the business and of course he fell out with everybody. Fell out with me. It was horrible to work in. I was fifty five then and I thought where I go from here. Anyhow, Everthorpe Prison was advertising for a canteen manager’s assistant storeman. So I applied for the job. Went for the interview and then I got a letter saying no. The other man was there. He’d been a manager but I’d never been a manager. Anyhow, on the Monday they rang me up. Was I still interested in the job? I said why. Well the manager walked into the canteen on the Friday dinnertime and walked out. He said, ‘I’m not doing this.’ So he said, ‘The job is yours if you want.’ So I did nine and a half years there and took early retirement. So then my hobby was decorating. So I had a little business decorating.
DE: Right. I see. So you, going back to when you were working in, in the grocer’s shop and you had your early day off on Wednesday afternoon.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Why did you decide to join the RAF?
TW: I just did it on impulse. No real reason. I just, I just thought I’d go, you know. My brother was in the RAF so maybe that was one of the things as well, like, you know.
DE: Did you consider any of the other services?
TW: No. Never. If anything it was always going to be the RAF. So I got what I wanted but I didn’t get the job wanted.
DE: No. Because you wanted to drive.
TW: I wanted to drive. Yeah.
DE: Why. Why did you want to drive?
TW: I was always interested in driving and I learned to drive when I was at the village shop so. But I never passed a driving test. Because when the war came in 1939 just, just as I was taking mine and I’d only done driving down country roads and I did my test in the town. And I’d never been in front of a policeman before. And in Hull, there was a street in Hull where it was just a snake of people because when we had the ferry you’d see people going down , down the outside to the ferry. The policeman was waving me on you see and saying, ‘You’ve got to go hadn’t you?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, They’ve got to move for you,’ you know. He said, ‘Well, your driving’s alright but you need more experience in the town.’ Well the war came so I kept my licence going and it became a full licence after the war so –
DE: I see.
TW: So me being a clever man, I taught my eldest son to drive. So I said to him, ‘Well we’ll finish you off at a driving school because I’ve never passed a driving test.’ So I got these people to come. So I said, ‘No. I’ve never passed a driving test. But,’ I said, ‘I’ve done my best so will you take him and finish him off.’ So they went and they came back and they both got out the car and folded their arms. He said, ‘You taught him to drive.’ I thought – here it comes. He says, ‘We can’t fault him anywhere. We don’t know how he didn’t pass the test. He said, ‘We’re putting him for his test straight away because he’s brilliant.’
DE: Wonderful.
TW: I always say to him now, ‘Now you didn’t listen to what I said to you? Did you?’ He borrowed my car once. He said he wanted to follow the RAC rally. I said yes. It was in November and it was snowy and icy. I said, ‘Go to Harrogate and Howard House but whatever you do do no go on the moors.’ ‘Ok dad.’ 3 o’clock in the morning a neighbour came down, ‘They’ve had an accident.’ ‘I’ll kill him,’ I said, ‘I’ll kill him when he gets home.’ Looked out the window when I heard this wagon outside a few hours later. Looked out. I said, ‘Look at my car. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.’ ‘Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.’ I said, ‘What did I tell you?’ ‘Well.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘But when you was driving the car you were in charge of the car. You should have done what I told you.’ So every time we go up on to the moors there’s an archway. ‘That’s where I had my crash dad.’ I said, ‘Don’t keep reminding me.’
DE: Oh dear. So the RAF didn’t want you to be a driver. They sent you on the armourer’s course.
TW: Sent me on the armoury course because at that time – Dunkirk and we’d lost a lot of armourers on Fairey Battles apparently. So, and they were short of armourers so that was it.
DE: So what did the course entail?
TW: Well, it entailed making little parts for guns and that and then you sort of went on to turrets and how to look after guns and how to sort the turrets out and that, then finished that armourers course, called out outside. Then this officer calls through, ‘These names please come forward.’ So we stepped forward. We all went to be fitter armourers. I went to be fitter armourer. Should have been general if I wanted to go on bombs but I was just fitter armourer but I ended up doing everything. You know. Bombing up and everything. So [pause]
DE: And what was it like on an, on an operational station?
TW: Oh it was fantastic. The spirit amongst the lads and that. Yeah. They were brilliant. And the aircrew were brilliant as well. Especially if they’d been in a hangar for a service. You saw the pilot, ‘Are you going up for a flight? Can I come with you?’ ‘Yeah.’ So, the first time I went up it was in a Wellington. Well that was by mistake because it had been in the hangar for a service and they took it out on to the airfield and revved the engines up and then they usually took the crew down to the dispersal points. So I thought well I can go down. Get a lift back. So I went and I thought he’s revving his engines up. Well it was running up. ‘I haven’t got a parachute.’ ‘Don’t worry. None of us,’ there were two other bods there, ‘None of us have parachutes. Don’t worry.’ So any chance after that I got. So the Lancaster was next. So I said to the pilot, ‘Are you going up?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ So I went with him. So I was felt real happy and light headed. I thought oh this is lovely you know. I got a tug on my leg and this chap said, ‘How long have you been up there mate?’ I said to ten. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘Plug this into the intercom. Plug this in to the oxygen because if we come down quickly it’ll blow your ears out.’ Got on to the pilot, this, told him I was up there. So, anyway and then we got out over The Wash. I thought – panic. Only one engine. I thought, what’s happening? What’s happening? So when we got back I said, I said to the pilot, ‘How did you manage to fly on one engine?’ ‘Oh don’t worry.’ He said, ‘That Lancaster can fly on one engine.’ He said, ‘Guy Gibson’s done it.’ I thought, I said, ‘Thank God for that.’ I said. But he said, ‘I’d forgotten you was up there mate. It’s a good job the chappie saw. Saw your legs hanging down. Because,’ he said, ‘It put me in a spin because I could have damaged your ears if I’d come down too quick.’
DE: Where were you? In the mid-upper turret?
TW: In the mid-upper turret. Yeah. Lovely. Lovely sight from out there. And then when D-day started we was called out because previous to D-day – well about six months before we took all the front turrets out of the Lancasters because it gave them twenty five miles an hour more speed. So when D- day started we was all called out of the aerodrome to put these turrets back in again. Drizzling with rain. Just getting, it was just getting light. So I was out of the nose of the Lancaster guiding this turret in and the sky turned black. And all these aircraft come over with the white markings on and I shouted, ‘D-day’s started, D-day’s started.’ The most fantastic sight. So, we got, we got all the turrets put back in again. We had to – the time I was in the pilot’s cockpit. No scaffolding. Health and safety today would go up the wall because the only scaffolding they had was for the engine people. So you had to climb out over the and crawl along a little but to the turret to guide it in and check if you wanted. If anything had happened inside. Check nothing loose. It was moving slow. Check that there were no oil leaks. So you had to take the cover off and check the oil pipes and that and put it back on. They’d grab you by your collar and turn you around and you’d go back in head first.
DE: That sounds like a really interesting job that.
TW: It was. It was really good. I really enjoyed it. As I say had I been on a proper ‘drome when the war finished I would have stopped in. I did really enjoy it.
DE: What other sort of things did they have you doing then?
TW: Being a gunner armourer I should never have been on bombs. But I was put on to a bombing up crew. I mean I didn’t know anything about the fuses or anything but I was putting fuses in and then we got – when we got Mosquitoes they couldn’t get four target indicator bombs on. So I had to shorten the tails till we could get four target indicator bombs on. So we got that sorted out.
DE: What were target indicator bombs like then?
TW: They were, well I think they were about two hundred and fifty pounds and that and they had about a hundred candles in. So when it dropped all the candles came out and should have burned but they didn’t. But we’d be, we got pressed for – Professor Cox came down and we helped him to perfect this so that when they dropped if they snapped everything burned. So we used to go to Thetford Forest. Got it on to a Lancaster. Go to Thetford Forest. Wait for it to be dropped. Go and see. Our fourth attempt was a successful attempt so we achieved something.
DE: So did you have four different prototypes then? Is that how it, how it worked?
TW: Yeah. You did one and put it to one side. Then marked it number one. Then number two, number three, number four. And of course when number four dropped it cracked but with having the metal rods down the cap it didn’t – it didn’t snap the rods. So it all burned when it fell.
DE: I see.
TW: Yeah. So, so we was coming back from Thetford when the war finished, one time, we said, ‘What’s everybody cheering for?’ You know. We stopped and asked somebody. ‘Well the war’s over.’ So that was nice surprise for us coming back again.
DE: So what were the conditions like on the stations that you were working on?
TW: The worst one was Stradishall because it wasn’t a proper ablutions. It was more open than that. Very basic. But the rest of them were fantastic. Beautiful toilets and showers and everything. And the barracks were good as well. There was, you used to get each station I’d been on after that there were the parade ground and then there was four blocks at each corner of the parade ground. Four blocks of houses. For people, for the crews. The airmen to be in. So then you went off to your, on to the ‘drome and then you went on to your armoury and did your business.
DE: Right. So could you describe a typical working day then for me?
TW: We’d have breakfast and then start about 8 o’clock and you’d sort of check your turrets over and then go and have your dinner and then come back. And if there ops on you would, I would be bombing up which I shouldn’t have been and then you stood there for them to go off and if you was conscientious you were there for when they came back again. But that was the worst part. Waiting for them to come back again. ‘Cause you would think if yours was the last one in and it hadn’t arrived. You’d say, well there was another one to come in yet? Another one to come in yet? And he’d come limping in. Probably be shot up a bit and a bit of damage on the wings and that. Our aircrew were good. They never made any bones or anything if they were hurt or anything. Because one day we had the Americans come in. The fighters shot the ‘drome up right down the runway. Then the B17 came in. Got out, ‘Where’s the blood wagon? Where’s the blood wagon?’ Kissing the ground. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. My brother, my brother was all for, all for the Americans. I said, ‘Well, you can have them. You can go over there and live with them.’ I said, ‘From what I’ve seen of them I think they’re pathetic.’ Then we used to go to the pictures in Huntingdon. We was coming out one day and Clark Gable, the film star, was walking in. Oh there’s Clark Gable there. With it being Americans there you see. Huntingdon was the nearest with a cinema so they used to come there.
DE: So what other things did you do when you had an evening off then?
TW: Well, when I had an evening off we, sometimes my mate and I would go right around the villages and then we got to this little village of Benwick. So we stopped and went in to the pub and got a drink and went outside at the back because they had a lovely bowling green at the back. And we sat and there was a couple sat next to us. So they asked, ‘Are you from the local ‘drome?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Would you like a game of bowls?’ So I said, ‘Oh I’ve never played bowls.’ My mate said, ‘Oh come.’ We won them [laughs] and so they said, ‘Are you sure you’ve never played before?’ So I said, ‘No.’ I said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve managed to get the right bias on the bowls because you managed to get them through, you know.’ So, anyhow they invited us over to, for supper. And we used to go over regular and they had two boys and a girl. Now, the girl she’s what, she’ll be in her seventies now. We’re still in contact with one another. I made her a doll’s bed. She had two boys. Her boys had boys but she’s still got the bed. She said, ‘I might get a great granddaughter one day so I’ll pass it on to her.’ So we were regularly in contact with her because the family were fantastic to go to. You come home on leave, ‘Are you going on leave?’ He said. ‘I’ll come around night before and we’ll give you some eggs.’ Come home with some eggs. And sometimes you’d come home with a chicken. My mother didn’t know she were born. When I was going with a WAAF in the telephone exchange and they used to cook for themselves so if they got kidneys and I was coming home on leave they‘d give me the kidneys because they never ate them.
DE: Right.
TW: So mother would have my kidneys which was a luxury in them days. Couldn’t get them from the butcher and that. So she did well did my mother with eggs and that. But my brother was a rogue. I came, on the first leave I came home on leave he was home on leave. So, I gave my mother my ration card and the money. She said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘Well, my ration money.’ So she said, ‘Well Maurice never give me it.’ Give it me back. And do you know what he said? ‘It’s something that’s just started.’
DE: Oh. I see.
TW: I said, ‘No. It’s been going on since you’ve been in the forces so don’t talk daft.’ But her blue eyed boy could do no wrong could my eldest brother.
DE: And what was – what was he? Did you say he was –?
TW: He was an engineer but he had a painting and decorating business before the war.
DE: Right.
TW: But he was stupid. Get a lad to. Employed a lad to work when he should be working himself. And of course when the war started his business flopped because he had a load of credit. So after the war my mother said, ‘If anybody asks where Maurice is you don’t know.’ He went into partnership with a chap and I used to work with a chap at the bottom of the road here and his partner used to come to me for a box of matches and look at me because before the war I didn’t wear glasses. After the war I were wearing glasses. He’d look at me and he’d go outside and he’d be pondering. And he came every week. I thought well I know who you are mate but I’m not going to make myself known to you [laughs] Oh dear. So those were the days.
DE: You, you mentioned a bit earlier on about an, about an explosion.
TW: Yeah. That must, must have been when they were bombing up. Because I was coming back off leave so it had to be an evening one. And I just got through the gate and there was this terrific explosion. And the chap said, ‘By. Something’s gone up there.’ You know. So the next day we had to go out on to the drome. Looking in the crater. See if we could find anything. And three Lancasters looked like they’d been made of corrugated iron. All, every bit of them but I don’t know, as far as I can remember I don’t think the tyres had gone down. In the crater you couldn’t find a thing. And the only funeral from there was a WAAF driver. And she was stood at one of the Lancasters with a crew wagon and she was the only one that was killed. She was buried in Bransby churchyard.
DE: I see. And what had happened? Did you ever find out?
TW: All I can think of – it was a barometric fuse. ‘Cause they were very delicate and if they got knocked they could have gone off. And we had a lad from London and I don’t know how he became an armourer because he was thick. And he wasn’t in the billet at night so two of us said, ‘I wonder if it’s him.’ Tried to tighten it up and hit it with a hammer. ‘Cause if he had have done it would have gone off, you know. Because it was the only explanation we could think of ‘cause it couldn’t have gone up otherwise. But never did find out really. There was nothing to piece together to sort things out.
DE: Right. How did that make you feel when you were loading up the bombs?
TW: It didn’t bother me. You don’t. You don’t feel fear. I mean when you’re sat on top of the Lancaster you don’t think about falling off. In them days you didn’t have any fear in you. You was, you was bravado, you know. Fearless. No. It was a good job. I enjoyed it.
DE: How many people worked in the team that were bombing up these aircraft?
TW: It would be about four. It would be one upstairs winding the winch. Two or three downstairs. Especially if it’s putting the four thousand pounder on. To guide it so that it didn’t swing. Otherwise three could have done it because one upstairs doing the and the other two just guiding the bomb up till it got in to, as far as it could get. Until it go into its – I forget what they call it now. It’s anchorage.
DE: Right.
TW: Yeah. But Mosquitoes were the worst ones to do. Mosquitoes were the worst ones to do because you had to get in the back and wind the winch. Nearly crippled you.
DE: This was, this was by hand.
TW: All by hand. Yeah.
DE: Right.
TW: Everything was done by hand. Even the winches in the, winching them up in to the Lancasters. All hand winches. We weren’t modernised technically in them days.
DE: So it was quite hard physical work as well.
TW: It was. Yeah. But it didn’t bother you. You just took it as part of your – what you had to do and you just, you didn’t think about it. It was a job to do and you did it and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it anyhow so.
DE: Did you have any particular friends on any of the stations?
TW: One friend. But we lost contact after the war but we used to go out when we had time off on night time. We used to go out and cycle around the villages and as I say, going to Benwick. This couple. But that was the only one I had. But, I mean, in the group, the armourers, we were all friends and that. But you see you all go your separate ways and your lives change when you go into Civvy Street.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
TW: So you’ve got to adapt.
DE: What about the WAAF? Did you have anything to do with, with them?
TW: Well we’re still, we got engaged. We were still engaged when the war finished. And she came down for a holiday and she said [pause] I’d arranged for take her to see Richard Tauber in Old Chelsea. At the theatre. So we went there and when we came back there used to be an old man sat outside the Station Hotel. And I used to always give him a coin when I passed through. He was a really nice fella. And when, getting off the bus I wanted a halfpenny change but she wouldn’t get off the bus until the conductor come downstairs and give me a halfpenny. Then when we got home she said, ‘What did you waste money for? Going to the theatre.’ I said, ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, ‘I didn’t waste money.’ I said, ‘I treated you.’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen you for months,’ you know. I said, ‘Well what about you? I didn’t complain about you when you said you’d been here, there and everywhere.’ I said, ‘I’ve sat at home knitting a rug. I haven’t been wasting my time. But you’ve been gallivanting. You blamed me because you lost a pen because you had to write to me.’ I said, I’ve stood in – the girl’s on the phone, ‘Ringing you and you weren’t there.’ ‘I was.’ I said, ‘No you weren’t,’ I said. On Edmonton Green apparently there were four telephones and the girls on the exchange used to know me. ‘I’m sorry Mr Waller but there’s nobody there. We’re trying them all.’
DE: Oh dear.
TW: So I said I’m wasting my time. So it fell through. So we had a friend who’d been engaged and she’d packed in so she had, when you got engaged you could get dockets and units if you were going to get married. So we got our dockets and units so I managed to get a bedroom suite and two fireside chairs. I bought them. So it’s just before I went down to Edmonton. So I went down to Edmonton. She stood outside the gates of the factory, followed me home to my lodgings and then knocked on my door. And then they said, ‘There’s a lady at the door for you.’ I said, ‘There can’t be.’ She said, ‘Well she’s asking for you.’ ‘What the devil do you want?’ ‘I wondered if you’d like to take me to the pictures tonight.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Clear off.’ I said, ‘I’m not taking you anywhere.’ She sent a great big Pickford’s van down to my, our house to pick some stuff up. I mean the fool. She must have been a fool because I mean, she didn’t know what she was going to send for. And my mother didn’t know anything about it. When this chap got to the front door. ‘What do you mean you –?’ He said, ‘You mean to tell me I’ve come all this way for nothing.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re supposed to be collecting like.’ Anyhow, I wrote to her and said, “Why did you send a Pickford’s van down to our house for?” I said, “You didn’t want a Pickford van. A little pickup would have been done.” So she wrote back, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, don’t forget I paid for the bedroom suite. I paid for two fireside chairs. I paid for the tea set we had.” I said the rest of the stuff will just go in a cardboard box.” I said, ‘Just send for a little pickup.’ But you see her father was a police inspector and she thought it might frighten me a bit but it didn’t. So the Pickford van come. He said, ‘This is all I’ve got to pick up is it?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ It was the same man that came before.
DE: Right.
TW: So he said my God. I thought I was coming to fetch a great big mansion box but a little portmanteau thing, you know. But she was [pause] I don’t think I’d have ever married her if it had gone on. She was a bit a one for herself. You know. Yeah.
DE: Sounds like it.
TW: And I was always wrong. And there was me. I had sore fingers from knitting. ‘Cause you couldn’t get canvas in them days so you used to wrap wool around a wooden ruler. Cut it. And then you got the right set. So you knit, put it in, knit a stitch and turn it around. Made some lovely rugs. I was very good at knitting. I knitted my first son’s christening shawl when he was born. Yeah. My sister was useless but I’ve got, I’ve got my mother’s genes because she was court dressmaker was my mother. But she would never help me because when I was growing up I wanted to be a dress designer. Oh no. No. No. No. I’ve dressed dolls as brides and they’re all over the world. I can make them ever week. People wanting them but my mother wouldn’t help me one little bit.
DE: Oh.
TW: And my sister couldn’t even, couldn’t even knit. It took her all her time to sew a button on. I could do the lot. In fact up until my children starting school I made all their clothes for them.
DE: Ok.
TW: Yeah. I was an industrious little lad. Used to have a nice decorating business. Go out at night decorating. And then when I retired I was with the prison service. They said, ‘Are you going down to London for a retirement course? They’ll explain all the things to do for getting a job and that.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘No. No. I’m not going.’ I said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ ‘What do you mean?’ they said. ‘Well I’m going to do my decorating.’ ‘Oh, you’re going on this course.’ I said, ‘I’m not going on a course.’ I went on the course and I made twenty seven quid. I said, ‘What?’ Because I went to the cashiers. They said, ‘How did you get the tools?’ So I said, ‘I went on the bus.’ They said, ‘No. You went by taxi.’ ‘I didn’t,’ I said, ‘I went on the bus.’ ‘No. Taxi. You got a taxi back as well. When you go to London where do you get a taxi to?’ I said, ‘I didn’t. I walked.’ ‘No you didn’t.’ I said, ‘I walked.’ He said, ‘What hotel did you stay at?’ I said, ‘I didn’t stay at a hotel.’ I said, ‘My brother lived at Hatfield so,’ I said, ‘I commuted each day from there.’ ‘Oh no. You stayed at a hotel. Now that looks a good one. You stayed there’ And I thought, afterwards I thought well that’s all over the country happening. It’s an eye opener sometimes. And that was in the prison service. No. I don’t know.
DE: Strange.
[pause]
DE: I’m just having a look at my notes.
[pause]
DE: Was the, did the different stations feel particularly different? I mean you say you worked with an SOE squadron and you worked for Pathfinders.
TW: No. They’re all types sort of thing, you know. There was no sort of difference in it. The only difference was Wyton. The bomb dump was at the other side the main road.
DE: Right.
TW: But the rest of them were all on the ‘dromes.
DE: I see.
TW: No. But they were all the same, there was no difference in them. Just because they were different squadrons. There were no, the routine was more or less the same all the way through.
DE: Ok. And the target indicator bombs that you were experimenting with in Thetford. Were these the sky markers? Or the –
TW: The sky markers. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
TW: Some some used to drop them in the cloud. A break in the clouds. And others used to drop down on the ground. And they were in different colours so there was a Master Bomber up above directing so if Jerry lit a decoy they’d change the colour. ‘Don’t bomb on red. Bomb on green.’ ‘Don’t bomb on green. Bomb on yellow.’ I wouldn’t like the Master Bombers job. To be up there all the time when the raid was on. Circling around.
DE: Yeah.
TW: No. I enjoyed it though.
[pause]
DE: And you say you, you chose to be demobbed because –
TW: I chose demob because I was on a satellite ‘drome. I had nothing to do and you just got bored. There was nothing you could do about it so you were glad to get out of it in the end. But that’s to say if I’d been on a proper ‘drome I would have stopped in.
DE: Right. I see.
TW: But I wasn’t so –
DE: What was the demob process like?
TW: Dead easy. Mind you I’ve always had a query with it. My demob. Because the medical officer examined me. Went and fetched another doctor. And I wondered why. So I’ve now developed an irregular heart beat so whether that was coming on then I don’t know but I’ve had this sepsis into regular rhythm.
DE: Right.
TW: When I was ninety two. Put me in the cubicle. ‘My God. We’re sorry. We shouldn’t have done that to you at your age.’ The cut off point’s ninety. I said, ‘Well it’s too late now isn’t it?’ He said, ‘Well you won’t get it done again. It’s back to normal. Its back to its regular beat again.’ Yeah. So they can’t do anything about it.
DE: Did you have much to do with the RAF medical services?
TW: No. Never.
DE: No.
TW: I’ve never bothered anybody. British Legion or anybody. I’ve bought my own wheelchair. Bought my own mobility scooter. I’ve a step son won’t part with a thing. He had a leg off. We’ve a wheelchair in there. We’ve a zimmer outside. We’ve two stools. I said, ‘You want to send those back.’ ‘Oh I might need them.’ I said, ‘You won’t need them.’ He won’t part with a thing.
DE: I see.
TW: They’re stood there. Brand new.
DE: Some people are like that though aren’t they?
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. You were showing me before we started the interview this research that you’ve been doing.
TW: Yeah.
DE: About the Halifax bomber crash. Could you tell me a little about that?
TW: Well it happened. We lived in Swanland. We came to Swanland in 1936. My parents left in March 1944. So I came back and knew nothing about it and then and a guy in the village wrote a book and there was a bit about it in there. And we were out one day with the church on an outing and yon side of Gilberdyke there was this model of where Halifaxes had crashed and there was two sort of intertwined. So I said, ‘Something should have been done about those two chaps who were killed in our village. Anyhow, a week or two went by and nothing happened so I thought I’ll take it on myself you see. So I thought he’s buried in Bury so he’s got to be a local lad. Got on to the paper and that. No. Couldn’t find anything about him. There was nothing about him at the cemetery and nothing about him at the War Graves Commission. No address or anything. So I got on to the records office and they rang me up and said, ‘He comes from Nottingham.’ I said, ‘Well, its seventy years since it happened. Can you tell me where?’ ‘Oh no. He came from Nottingham.’ So I wrote to tourist the board in Nottingham and they gave me the address of the radio station and the paper. The local paper were like the Daily Mail in Hull. They were useless. Two little pieces at the bottom. One, the modern Nottingham paper was in the Bygones letters in back of the paper. Two lines at the bottom. And the radio station at Nottingham were brilliant. They did a magnificent programme. But they rang me up to say would I go on the station but I was away on holiday and my son took the call. They said, ‘Well, tell your dad we’ll read out his letter out he sent us. We’d have liked to have him on it but we can’t change a programme now.’ So they wrote to me to tell me what they’d done and then [pause] I’ve got a blockage [pause] So, I got on to the tourist board and they said he’d come from Nottingham. So Radio Nottingham put a programme out and I heard nothing. Now, the other pilot, he came from Tottenham and he’s buried and I knew he was buried near his parents. Now, the War Graves just had the address of the church where he was buried so London University took it over from me but they couldn’t trace any relatives at all then. And then about four months after I started investigating I got a telephone call one night. ‘When are you having the service? I said, ‘What service?’ ‘For the airmen you found.’ I said, ‘I’m not because I haven’t found anybody.’ ‘He said, ‘I’m a nephew.’ He said, ‘We’ve just found out from Australia.’ I said, ‘Australia?’ He said, ‘Yeah. Eastern Australia.’ So how it got over there. Whether he’d been on the internet and that I don’t know. So he said can you arrange it. So I arranged a new service and about fifteen came down. They said, ‘Oh we owe everything to you. We thought he’d been killed over Germany.’ And they said, ‘But we’re grateful to you for what you’ve done. We’ll keep in contact.’ So Christmas come. I got a Christmas card. I’ve written letters. I’ve never heard a thing from them. Now, on the Monday night after it was on television a cousin who knew him – she rang me up. She said, ‘Oh I wish I’d known. I would have been there. Can I come over and see you?’ So she came over and we took her over to show where it crashed and the plaque in the church. And we took her to the cemetery to his grave. And then she said, ‘When was you born? And we found out we were born on the same day so it seems as though fate decreed that I should find him you know. His relatives. And we were keeping in regular contact with her. And we found out that he was with the 1160 Heavy Conversion Unit from Blyton near Gainsborough where he was killed. And so he was killed just up the road from where we live now.
DE: I see. And what, what was it that made you think it was important to tell this story?
TW: Well I think everybody who was in the air force should be recognised if it can be. And being out on this car ride and seeing that I thought well something ought to be done so that’s when I set about doing it. But I didn’t think I’d come against so many brick walls. But you do but you get through in the end you know. But the point I can never understand why his wife had him buried in Beverley. Why she told his family he’d been killed over Germany. There’s something funny there.
DE: Yeah.
TW: And you see all those there was about fifteen came. None of them knew him. There was his sister in law and his brother. Well not his brother because his brother had been killed. But his sister in law there and his nephews and that. But none of them knew him. Even his sister in law didn’t know him. But this cousin she’s brilliant. She keeps in, there’s a photograph in there of her and she always readily comes. What I want now when this gets seed I don’t know how they’re going to work it at the spire. In the plaques. But he’s Cumberworth and so whether they’ll put 1160 Conversion Unit in or not or whether it will just be a plaque with C’s on. Names of C’s.
DE: It’s alphabetical. Yes. I mean –
TW: Yeah. Cause I know a lady in the village she’s been down and she’s found her father’s name. And hers is J so I thought C must be up if J’s. J’s there.
DE: What’s there at the moment is 1 Group and 5 Group.
TW: Oh he must have been in one of them. She’s got – they gave me their memory card to put on the computer and there’s a picture of her pointing to her dad’s name.
DE: Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So I think this gentleman will be on –
TW: Cumberworth.
DE: Cumberworth will be on the next lot of names that go up. Yeah. Yeah. Leslie Cumberworth.
TW: So if I can manage to get a photograph sometime I’ll get one.
DE: Yeah.
TW: I can get and get a photograph and send it to his cousin. She’d be really grateful.
DE: Yeah. I’m sure we can arrange that when the names are up.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So you said earlier you’ve never joined any squadron associations or any, any groups.
TW: I’ve joined the RAF Association.
DE: Right.
TW: Yeah. But Hull’s useless. Right from the very start, useless. They said they were short of money. So I did a mini market for them and I raised five hundred pound. And the lady who did the catering she did everything. Paid all her expenses like I do. Pay all expenses so everything you get is profits. I handed that money over to a flight lieutenant in cash and I’ve got a letter of thanks for a receipt. Where did that money go? I’m sure they’d have sent me a receipt if they’d got the money –
DE: Yeah.
TW: But I didn’t realise it at the time. It was afterwards I thought about it you know. And then I went down and I said I’d organise a competition. They said, ‘Oh you can’t do it because you’re not on the committee.’ I said, ‘I’m not joining the committee because I know what would happen. I’d end up doing everything.’ I said I like to everything. So, I said so I was working at Everthorpe then so I got a thousand copies done. So I said if you give every member ten copies you get a pound from every member. That’s a tenner each. If I give you a prize for the winner. So I gave them a lovely Parker, Parker pen and pencil set. That got pinched. ‘Cause they said I said to them when I went down I said, ‘Well you’ve got a prize to go with it so,’ I said, ‘Parker pen and pencil set.’ But it wasn’t there upstairs in the office.
DE: Oh dear.
TW: So I said, ‘Well have you started yet?’ So they said, ‘No. No. They said, so I started, ‘Oh you can’t start it. You’re not on the committee.’ So I said, ‘Have you started that?’ So she said, ‘No, not yet but,’ she said, ‘We’ll buy a prize out of what we make.’ I said, ‘No. I’ll give you another prize.’ When I do a thing I stand the expenses myself. I always have done. So I saw her a fortnight after. Four pound. I said, ‘You what? Four pound?’ I said, ‘I’ve done it twice and I’ve made over fifty pound each time.’ Then in 19 what 60s 70s fifty pound was a lot of money in them days. So I stopped going then ‘cause my son has joined as associate members.
DE: Yeah.
TW: And my daughter in law. Well the third time I went my daughter in law won the jackpot. You should have heard them. ‘You’ve only been here three weeks.’ I said, I went to the bar, I said, ‘Is this the way they go on?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, I said we’re supposed to be an air force group,’ I said esprit de corps, where is it?’
DE: Yeah.
TW: I said we’ve joined and paid our money. So I went in one night and I sat in this chair and this woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, she said, ‘That’s my chair.’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ She said, ‘That’s my chair.’ So I got up. ‘Well it hasn’t got your name on it.’ So I said, ‘I’m not moving.’ And this was how good our club was. We had a trip to [pause] the memorial down in London. Castleford invited us back for supper. And they did a fantastic spread. Absolutely brilliant. So we invited them down to our club. I went down on the Wednesday night when it was due. There was only me and another fella in the club. The chap behind the bar, he said ‘We don’t usually see you here on a Wednesday night Tom.’ So I said, ‘Well, where is everybody?’ ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Castleford are coming tonight.’ ‘No they’re not.’ ‘Yes they are.’ With that the door opened. They all walked in. So I said, ‘I do apologise but I said, ‘You’ve picked the wrong club to come to because this is useless. This club.’
DE: Oh dear.
TW: I said, ‘I’ve just come in,’ I said, ‘And it’s obvious they’ve forgotten.’ So they had to dash out and buy pie, pea and chips. No. I wouldn’t join no committee. I used to run a coffee morning every Wings week. We raised quite a lot of money. Got some good, one prize we had was a Hornby Double O train set. Folks said, ‘We like your coffee mornings because you always have a good raffle.’ I said it’s the people that you know they can get something from me. Where you go to you know.
DE: Yes.
TW: Very generous. You know.
DE: So apart from that Association what do you think about the way Bomber Command’s been remembered over the last.
TW: Very poor. Very poor. I mean the spire when it was opened. Did BBC do anything about it?
DE: I think –
TW: No. Only local stations. But BBC, I mean there’s all the people around the country in bomber command. BBC should have been doing that as well. I think their biased.
DE: Why do you think that is?
TW: Well, why weren’t they there? I mean you don’t seem to get much about the RAF or anything like that on the BBC.
[pause]
TW: I’m an old man. I do things differently. If I get a letter I answer it straight away. Anything that I’ve done I do it straight away but today it’s so lackadaisical. I mean this cousin of the airman. I sent some things about the Association and some photographs. A month ago. I’ve never had, I rang her up and said I’m sending you this parcel. I’ve never had a telephone call, an email or anything to say she’s got it. I just can’t understand folks.
[pause]
DE: Hello. I’ll just pause it there a moment.
[recording paused]
DE: That’s fine I’ve just started it recording again. Sorry about the interruption. Is there anything else? Any other stories that you think you’d like to tell us?
TW: I don’t think so because we covered it pretty well cause my memory is not as good as it was and I get, I’m talking and I go blank.
DE: I think you’ve done very very well.
TW: Yeah. So but I think no I think we’ve covered it really well.
DE: Just one other thing I think you covered it in the phone conversation when we were arranging this. What do you think about the stories of people like yourself and ground personnel have to tell?
TW: Pardon?
DE: What do you think about the stories of ground personnel? How well do you think they’ve been remembered?
TW: They haven’t. Because somebody was saying if it wasn’t for ground crew the bombs wouldn’t have gone off. But we haven’t been remembered. You never hear anybody talk about us. We’re just a forgotten crew. But I’m not worried because I did my best so. They rewarded me with a mention in dispatches so I can’t complain.
DE: Oh. How. What was the story behind that?
TW: I’ve no idea.
DE: No.
TW: All I can think it was because we helped Professor Cox design his target indicator bomb and alter the tail fins for [pause] to get the bombs on to Mosquitoes. I can’t think of anything else that I’ve done that’s deserving of it. Because getting out on D-day I mean that was just part of the job I think.
DE: Yeah.
TW: So [pause] and my grandson has my medals and my certificate because he’s a keen, very keen on what his granddad’s done. So he said, ‘Can I have your medals granddad.’ So I said, ‘Yeah. You can have that as well.’
DE: That’s wonderful.
TW: Because I know you’ll look after them.
DE: Yeah.
TW: So this is I’ll be able to tell my son. Show his photograph of his granddad and what he’s done. And he’s got my war memoir so he’s got that so. So I’ve got something to show him when he grows up.
DE: Wonderful. Right. So I’ll press pause there and thank you very very much.
TW: Pleasure.
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 Thomas Waller
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-25
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWallerT151027
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
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.hh:mm:ss
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:56:09 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas Waller volunteered for the Royal Air Force and hoped to be a driver. However, he undertook training as an armourer and was based initially at the Special Operations Executive 138 Squadron. He was posted to RAF Stradishall, RAF Wyton and RAF Warboys. He returned from leave on one occasion and had just arrived back on the station when a massive explosion occured. He helped to develop and test target indicators with Professor Cox. He recently undertook research into the details of a Halifax crash to make sure the airmen were remembered.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Cambridgeshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
138 Squadron
156 Squadron
bombing
bombing up
crash
final resting place
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
memorial
military living conditions
Mosquito
Pathfinders
RAF Stradishall
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
sanitation
Special Operations Executive
target indicator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2140/36880/PBerrillR20220222.2.jpg
62097c03b299cef6924cd09318ad6317
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2140/36880/ABerrillR220223.2.mp3
2088ba7a6b2a22a47d6746c6de108790
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
Berrill, Roy
R Berrill
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Roy Berrill (b. 1924, 189888 Royal Air Force). He was one of three Meteorological Officers at RAF North Creake.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-02-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Berrill, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Just check it’s recording. So, this is an interview with Roy Berrill for the IBCC Digital Archive. I’m Dan Ellin. It is the 21st of February 2022 and we’re in Easingwold in Yorkshire. I’ll put that there.
RB: Well, actually it’s the twenty, yeah the 23rd.
DE: Yes.
RB: Right. Are you alright there?
DE: Yeah. I’m just, I’m just, I want to just check that this is recording.
RB: Yes. Ok.
DE: So, Roy could you first of all tell me a little bit about your early life and I believe you were evacuated.
RB: Yes. I was born in Northampton and I stayed in Northampton until I was, I think it was twelve or thirteen when we moved. Had to move to London for various reasons and at which time I lived in Becontree and went to school in Barking Abbey Grammar School which was, wasn’t a mixed school. It was a school where the boys and girls were separated. Now, is that ok?
DE: Yeah. That’s fine.
RB: Is it working alright?
DE: It’s going fine. Yeah.
RB: Righto. My homelife was rather restrictive. My mother came from a strict Baptist family so I was really, well we were all very restricted as children but I was particularly restricted because I was a relatively weak child. I was always fainting and this sort of thing and I was no good at sports so there we are. But when I moved, when we moved to Becontree in Essex as I say I went to Barking Abbey School, Grammar School there and on the 1st of September 1939 I became an evacuee. I left home with my gas mask and a few changes of clothes and we went to school and then we were told at 10 o’clock in the morning we had to walk to Rainham Underground Station where we travelled right across London to Ealing Broadway where we caught a steam train which went to Bristol. We got to Bristol about the middle of the day. We had no food or nothing to drink and we still stuck out just outside Bristol Station not knowing what was happening. Eventually the train went on to Weston-Super-Mare and for the next three years I was an evacuee in Weston-Super-Mare where I lived in six different places as an evacuee. I took my, the equivalent of O Levels or what was then called School Certificate and I passed every subject including Latin but I failed at one subject and that was woodwork. I then stayed on at school to take my Higher School Certificate but the snag was that during that time the school was bombed and so the part of the school which we were sharing with the local people from Weston-Super-Mare half of the school got burned down. And there was another school then dumped on the same school so there were three schools in the same building and the night when they, the school, that part of the school got burned down I was supposed to be taking my Higher School Cert and we hadn’t got any exam papers. So they had to collect all the exam papers from the other school which was from London and then sit the exam. I seem to have passed that subject [laughs] and then at the suggestion of one of my brothers I applied to go to Queen Mary College, London which is now Queen Mary University I understand. I never set foot, I have still never set foot in Queen Mary College yet [laughs] But the college was actually evacuated to Cambridge where I was allowed two years to do a three year general degree and at the same time I had to do two afternoons a week with the other Cadet Force to train to be an officer. After one year I decided I didn’t like the Army so I transferred to the ATC, Air Training Corps and that’s how I got into the Air Force. While we were at university as I say we had to do these two afternoons a week and we also had to do fire watching and I spent the odd night on the top of King’s College, Cambridge actually looking for fires. It was a platform with no handrail of any kind right on the apex of King’s College Chapel. So that was an experience. However, I seemed to have passed my degree by the skin of my teeth and I had no sooner finished my exams than the Air Force called me up to see what I was going to do. And I said I wanted to be a Met officer because I was very interested in Met work at the time and they said, ‘Oh, that’s just what we want. Some more Met officers.’ So they allowed me to go and train as a Met officer at Kilburn in London. I did my training there and having completed the training and passed I was then sent to Warboys in Cambridgeshire as a forecaster to see how it was done and what happened. So I had a few weeks at Warboys and then I was moved to the next station at Wyton where I dropped a major clanger at the time. The point being I was supposed to be doing the observations for one night while I let the assistant go and have a bit of a snooze and I didn’t know anything about how you worked out visibility at night in the blackout and thick fog so I assumed that it was still foggy. I got a telephone call later on. He said, ‘Why are you the only station in the area that’s got fog? All the other stations around you are as clear as can be.’ Well, I couldn’t talk myself out of that one because I didn’t know how to do visibility at night. So there we are. But eventually I got transferred to North Creake and I’ve written a piece of paper which tells you about my, what happened at North Creake.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Do you wish me to read that out or —
DE: No. That’s, that’s fine if I can take a copy of that that will be good.
RB: Yeah. That’s your copy.
DE: Yeah. So, so how do you tell the visibility at night?
RB: You have to go outside and let your eyes adjust and you have to be sure you know where things are and you look in that direction. And very gradually your eyes do adjust to the dark and you can just make out what is going on. But it’s a very hit and miss sort of process.
DE: So you look for landmarks that you know are a certain distance away.
RB: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DE: Right.
RB: So I got to North Creake and a very interesting time while I was there. And one of the interesting things as far as I was concerned was I flew one morning on an air test with a, in a Stirling bomber and the pilot took me up just to have a look around while he was doing his air test and we came back down. And that night he went out with his crew and he was killed over North France by friendly fire. The Americans. His name was Tiny Thurlow. He was a Canadian and he was six foot odd and that’s why he was called Tiny. A nice chap. All his crew from his aircraft managed to get out. He told them to get out but before he [emphasis] could get out the plane blew up. So there we are. One or two other little stories which are of interest to me at least was after VE Day there was a tannoy over North Creake that said, ‘Is there anybody here who can speak German?’ And one chap said, ‘Yes. I can speak German.’ ‘Oh. How well can you speak German?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have a First Class Honours degree from Cambridge in German.’ ‘Oh, you’re just the sort of chap that we want. What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I have to paint the edges of the coals around the station to stop people tripping over it at night.’ I thought that was an excellent example [laughs] of how to use manpower. The other little thing is that is not recorded on that sheet is there’s, in a photograph there is a what looks like a long sort of covered affair and that is where we used to store the gas to blow up balloons. We had balloons which were supposed to ascend at a certain rate and you fuelled it up to a particular size which was measured with a piece of wire and you released it and it’s supposed to go up at a certain rate and you timed it and there was, you know. Thereby you could tell where the base of the cloud was. So that’s my basic experience of, of North Creake and subsequently after VE Day and VJ Day I eventually got a, this is after the war of course I got posted to [pause] Tilbury and they sent me up to Lancashire to get kitted out for the Far East. I went back to Tilbury, caught the ship, the Strathaird which set sail and we were told we were going to India. We got as far as Gibraltar, dropped the anchor and literally dropped the anchor down a pothole. So we lost an anchor and the ship can’t go through Suez Canal with one anchor. It has to have two. So we waited a week in Gibraltar for a second anchor to be brought out. Eventually we went through Suez Canal and while in the Red Sea I had Vaccine Fever which wasn’t very good in that temperature. And we got to Bombay and when we got to Bombay they said to me, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been sent here.’ ‘Oh, well we’ve got nothing for you to do here. You’d better go to Singapore.’ I said, ‘Well, how do I do that?’ ‘Oh, your ship is being diverted to Singapore.’ ‘Oh, righto.’ But they filled, there were about twelve of us on a ship with only twelve officers on. It was a forty thousand tonne ship and you think what happened to the rest of the ship. ‘Oh, we’re taking people to return home to Singapore.’ So we were filled up with Malays and Indians and goodness knows what. And within a matter of minutes the decks were red where they were spitting all their stuff having chewed betel nuts and what have you and, but as soon as we got out of Bombay it happened to be monsoon season so the ship started to pitch and roll and that sent all these, these people returning to Singapore below. We never saw them again. And I got to Singapore and they said, ‘Who the hell are you? Where have you come from and what are you doing here?’ And I said, I told them and I said I’d been sent here and they said, ‘Oh, well we’d better find something for you to do.’ So they said, ‘Oh, we’ll send you on to Japan.’ ‘Oh, thank you very much. How do I get there?’ ‘Oh, you’ll have to wait for a ship to come in.’ I said, ‘Well, when is that going to be?’ ‘We’ve no idea.’ So they said, ‘’Well, and while you’re here you might as well, we might as well make use of you. You’d better go to Seletar.’ Which is on the north side of Singapore Island and it was basically a Flying Boat base. Well, A, I knew nothing about the weather in Singapore so I didn’t know much about forecasting and I knew nothing about Flying Boats either. Anyway, one day I decided when I was off duty I would go back in to Singapore and down to the docks. Having got to the docks I saw a ship there and a bloke standing on the gang plank swaying, so I said to him, ‘Hello. Are you a British ship?’ He said, ‘Of course we are.’ I said, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Japan.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s what I need.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘If you want to get on you’d better go and get your stuff pretty quickly. We’re going this evening.’ So I dashed back to Seletar, collected all my gear which was at the laundry so wet or not I packed it all in and dashed back to the ship and got on it. Told nobody.
DE: Oh.
RB: Nobody cared. Nobody seemed to know. I got on this ship and we went, we got, we went to Japan via Hong Kong and we got to Kure and we were then taken by train to our station which was a place called Iwakuni. But you had to go through Hiroshima and I got to Hiroshima one year exactly after the atomic bomb. We then went on to where I was stationed at Iwakuni and I was there for just short of two years during which time we had, we had [pause] we were called the British Commonwealth Occupation err Occupying Forces. And on the station where I was were English, well British really and New Zealanders, Kiwis and flying mostly Dakotas and things of that kind. There was, there were two other British stations. One further down the line, one for Australians and then one on the north side of the island which was for Indian Air Force. While we were there I met Lord Tedder who came and he was going to the trials in Tokyo. Also while I was there there was a Japanese being taken to Tokyo to give his record of what happened and he was to be prosecuted. Well, the forecasting place where I was based was next door to a kitchen which was to provide food for people passing through and this chappie had a few minutes left to himself so he picked up a butcher’s knife and committed Hara-kiri actually in that kitchen. So he never got to Tokyo. Later on because all buildings were wooden we had an arson attack and the whole of the officer’s mess got burned to the ground and we lost two people there. I managed to get out in the smoke and we then had to be rehoused in another building which was really basically for the erks as it were. We hadn’t got any clothing and so we went to the stores and they said, ‘Well, here you are. Here’s some shirts for you and some trousers.’ We put the shirts on and they came down to our waist. They were intended for the WAAFs [laughs] So we eventually got kitted out and as I say we were stuck there for the rest of the time. And eventually one of the chaps who was a forecaster at North Creake. He happened to be at the same place Iwakuni so I knew him. He wasn’t a very nice chap but never mind. He went. He was demobbed, sent home and the other forecaster he was sent home. So there was a period for me when they did get another forecaster out when there were only two of us so it was twenty four hours on and twenty four hours off which was a bit of a trial but never mind. I found all sorts of things to do and I met up with a New Zealander who said, ‘You should come and live in New Zealand.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to come and live in New Zealand at the moment. I want to go home and get married to my [laughs] my fiancé,’ who I’d met in Cambridge. And then on one occasion as I say Lord Tedder came. Lord Tedder went on to Tokyo by train and his aircraft was going back to the UK so I got a hitch in Lord Tedder’s Dakota down to Hong Kong and had two or three days in Hong Kong which was an interesting exercise. But of course, how the hell did I get back? ‘Oh, well there’s a Flying Boat going back up to Iwakuni’ So I jumped aboard that. A huge Sunderland aircraft which I got in. I was the only passenger. So it was a very pleasant ride.
DE: Yeah.
RB: And as I say we, all our stuff came via Sunderlands from the UK eventually. While we were there for the first about six months all our food was tinned and then suddenly one day we got an aircraft that came up from New Zealand bringing fresh celery and we went absolutely berserk eating celery which was a wonderful change. However, as I say eventually of course I was demobbed but before I was demobbed they said, ‘Well, you’ve been in the Air Force a fair while. We think you might have promotion. But before you have promotion what else do you do besides weather forecasting?’ Well, as it happened I was interested in teaching other people who were illiterate and I didn’t know anything about illiteracy at the time so I started to teach them about numeracy. So they accepted that as a good reason to get promotion. So I was actually promoted to flight lieutenant when I came home. When I got on board ship to come back I was made troops catering officer. Of course, I knew such a lot about catering [laughs] Anyway, that was my job while I was on board ship. But the ship on the way back was constantly being diverted to places they hadn’t intended to go. For example, having got to Singapore we were supposed to come on home but we got diverted to Colombo first, then to Aden, then to a place called [Misawa] and some other funny place. Port something or other. Then through the Suez Canal and having got through the Suez Canal it was Christmas so as an officer I had to serve the troops with their chicken for Christmas dinner [laughs] Then we got diverted again to Algiers and eventually after, I think it was well over nine weeks I arrived home. I got, got got to the UK on the 5th of January and got married on the 10th of January.
DE: Oh wow.
RB: And I think that’s more or less my story.
DE: Yeah.
RB: For the time being.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Is that enough?
DE: That’s, that’s a brilliant start. I’d love to go back and ask you a couple more questions if that’s all right.
RB: By all means.
DE: Do you want to have a, have a drink —
RB: Yes.
DE: Of your coffee.
RB: Good idea.
[pause]
RB: You may understand of course that I live on my own. Although I have a number of people who come in and help me considerably.
DE: Yeah.
RB: So anyway. What were your questions?
DE: Well, it’s a little bit more about your, your role as the Met officer and forecasting. So you said here that when you were at North Creake —
RB: Yeah.
DE: You had, there were three other officers there with you and you worked shifts.
RB: Well, well, there were three. Three Met officers.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Including myself. Yes.
DE: And you worked shifts. One ‘til ten and then the next day eight ‘til one.
RB: Yeah.
DE: And then 10pm ‘til 8pm and then the third day you were, you were off.
RB: That’s it.
DE: What, and you’ve also mentioned setting the balloons and trying to check the visibility at night.
RB: Yes.
DE: What, what other, what other jobs did you have to do as a Met officer?
RB: Well, we had an assistant of course and it was their job, a WAAF to record all this information. And that information was sent to the [pause] I’ve forgotten what he was called. Sort of the local Regional Met Office and it was they who were required to produce the forecast for the flight. Wherever the Group was being sent. We were not allowed to alter that in any way even if we disagreed with it and I think I have explained in there on one occasion there was a significant difference where they didn’t realise there was a thunderstorm around which we did know and that stopped the flight for that night. I always went. I did the forecast with all the crew there and the officers who were also telling what the target was and all this sort of thing and I also attended the debriefing afterwards just to find out how accurate the forecast was. So does that answer your —?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. What was the atmosphere like at the briefings when you were telling them the weather?
RB: Well, of course, being 100 Group they didn’t do bombing. They were concerned with dropping radar interference. Most of. Window it was called and they were going for them at that time they would go and stooge around for about eight hours, dropping this Window. And of course, flying at the height at which they were which was anything between ten and twenty thousand feet they were very prone to the weather itself including icing which I’ve mentioned in there. So, whereas modern aircraft of course flying at thirty thousand feet and the other interesting thing to me is because I still follow the weather our forecasting was done at two thousand feet. We drew up a synoptic chart on a regular basis every three hours and every six hours for the country as a whole and, but nowadays of course the forecasting is done at thirty thousand feet with a Jetstream. Well, we knew about the Jetstream but we didn’t know anything about what it did or how it worked and we had no idea what it was all about. And we had a wonderful piece of instrument. It was on a pole and it was like a garden rake but with the prongs sticking upwards and you had to estimate what the height of the cloud was in this Jetstream and then you had to time it between each of the prongs. And you then had to calculate how fast that Jetstream was. But having done that nobody knew what to do with it. It was a ridiculous arrangement because you were looking at cloud at anything from thirty to thirty five thousand feet and this made the accuracy pretty hopeless. So there we are. Does that answer your question?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So did you get, did you get intelligence from, from the aircraft as well? I know they had Meteorological flights and some of the crews reported back wind speeds and directions and things.
RB: Yes. There were, I think it was four places that would send up balloons much bigger than the cloud thing and that had a series of each instruments dangling below the balloon which would record air pressure from which you could calculate the height, temperature, humidity, and the drift would tell you the windspeed. So that was, that was useful and mostly they just eventually the balloon would burst and we would lose that apparatus but occasionally they would be found perhaps in Norway or Sweden. So there we are. That was that. What else? One of them incidentally was fairly close to a docking we sent up from there. The other thing was some places at Docking I think it was they would send up either a Hurricane or a Spitfire suitably adapted with a, with a gadget on it that would tell you the height and the biometric pressure and they too would record humidity, temperature and they could calculate the direction and speed of the wind and what have you. So they just circled a way above the station to a certain height and that was it. And that was very useful because being in Norfolk you had that wretched North Sea stratas or haar or whatever you’d like to call it which was absolutely deadly from the point of view of forecasting. We couldn’t, we didn’t know anything about it to be honest and they still don’t know. They still get them. So anyway, does that answer your question?
DE: Yes. Yeah. That’s wonderful.
RB: Anything else?
DE: I can probably, I can probably look through and find something else. Yeah. So you mentioned the pilot, Tiny. How well did you know him?
RB: Oh, only, only socially in the mess. Not, not very well. I didn’t get close to many of the aircrew to be honest because they came and went. I was more interested with my colleagues in the Met office and in the air traffic control because that was all relevant as far as I was concerned, you know. Giving them QFE and QFC and what have you. And so I didn’t get close to aircraft crew. I did one or two of the ground crew. The maintenance people. I got to know one or two of them but I have no contact with them. Not now.
DE: No. No. Have you been involved in the, in the Memorial at North Creake?
RB: Not yet.
DE: Right.
RB: No. I think that’s one of the things that they want me to do. I have joined. I joined this 100 Group Memorial Group but unfortunately of course that’s all based in Norwich and I can’t get. I have no car now. I’ve only got a little electric buggy. I can’t go more than fifteen miles away from here. Anything else?
DE: Let’s have a look, see. Could you tell me a little bit more about your time when you were evacuated and your time at Cambridge? Where were you staying? Where were you living?
RB: Well, as an evacuee in Weston-Super-Mare as I say I had six places that I lived and the last one I lived in was a hotel which had many of the recruits that were being trained doing square bashing on the front. And the hotel was a crummy place. It really was disastrous. Eventually it had to be closed because the conditions that were there were really beyond anything that anybody ought to live with. I was there. There were two of us that lived in the attic but the rest were all Air Force trainees so, and that was it. The other places that I lived in as an evacuee varied enormously. One was where there were two ladies who used to be in charge of some sort of school or other. Very doctrinaire and didn’t think much of us [laughs] Anyway, but you want Cambridge as well?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Please.
RB: Well, I lived the whole time in King’s College, Cambridge. For the first year I was in rooms right next door to the Chapel so I could hear the organ playing and that was wonderful. And it was wonderful too when I had to do fire watching because you could hear the organ coming up through the roof. So that was very good but the conditions were not very [pause] There were three of us in two rooms. We had to share the rooms. We had one little gas fire and we were absolutely frozen the whole time. And, and as far as lectures were concerned for mathematics we had mostly lecturers from London University. For physics we had almost entirely people from Cambridge and those lectures were pretty useless in as much they didn’t tell you about what you should be learning. They were just entertainment as much as anything. For example, we were talking about sound and he had a block of concrete on the front desk and he picked up a piece of wood and dropped it on it. He said, ‘There you are. Noise.’ And then he picked up a series of these wooden blocks and he proceeded to play a tune to demonstrate that in fact noise in fact had got a note to it. Well all very interesting but not much help from the point of view of learning the physics of sound. And the other thing we had to do we were all compelled to do early, early computing.
DE: Oh really? Ok.
RB: We were forced to do one session a week to learn about cathode-ray tubes and what have you which nobody explained and I didn’t understand a word of it. But there we are. We had to do it. And then we had tutorials also in physics which again were quite useless. For geography I had tutors from my own college and they were good. Very helpful. We did a lot of interesting work including experimental survey work and that kind of thing. So that was good. Anything else you want?
DE: I suppose I should ask you what the living arrangements were like at North Creake. I mean you’ve spoken a bit about your time in Japan and on board ship. What was it like at North Creake?
RB: Well, I can’t remember the mess very much but the food was good in as much a lot of it was of course related to rationing as what things of that kind. We hadn’t very little butter or things. Stuff of that kind. So when we got on board ship eventually which had got loads of food from other countries one or two people just went stupid and were eating butter and all sorts of things and they made themselves ill. But what was the other thing? Food and —?
DE: Well, you know what, you know —
RB: The conditions we were —
DE: Yeah.
RB: Actually living. Well apart from being the Met office which was below the traffic control in a brick built place so it was relatively warm but the actual living area which was a Nissen hut which was, there was nothing there. You just had your bed and your washing kit and that was it. So it was very very basic. Oh, one thing I did do while I was there I got very friendly with the chap who did, I’ve forgotten what it was called but it was a gadget which you simulated flying.
DE: Mm Mm?
RB: So I’ve forgotten what it was called and I’ve got a —
DE: Link trainer.
RB: That’s it.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Well done. Thank you. And so I did have a go on that once or twice and which was interesting because I’d also while I was at university did have a flight in a Tiger Moth and that was great fun. We looped the loop and that sort of thing so I enjoyed that. Anything else?
DE: Well, did you fancy becoming aircrew?
RB: Sorry?
DE: Did you —
RB: No. I didn’t. They decided actually that physically I wasn’t really quite fit enough for that. Why I don’t know but there we are.
DE: So a couple more questions I jotted down when you were talking earlier.
RB: Yes.
DE: You said you had Vaccine Fever. I mean in today’s climate I should probably ask you what that was.
RB: Well, at the time when I was a kid all my brothers and sister were vaccinated. You know it was a vaccination against flu or whatever. I didn’t have it as a child so they decided I needed to be vaccinated if I was going out into the Far East. So they vaccinated me on board ship and that produced Vaccine Fever. And boy was I hot because the Red Sea was hot enough and I was sweating it out on my own in the, on board ship. So anyway, yes?
DE: And the other thing that I’ve jotted down you said you travelled through Hiroshima.
RB: Yes.
DE: Could you tell me a little bit about what that was like?
RB: Well, when I eventually I was stationed in Iwakuni it wasn’t all that far from Hiroshima and I went there two or three times. We were given tins of cigarettes. Fifty cigarettes in a tin. I didn’t smoke but boy did the Japanese smoke. They loved them and so I could barter without any money. Barter these tins of cigarettes for whatever I wanted. As a result I had enough tins of cigarettes to buy the material for my wife’s wedding dress and that was great because it was Japanese silk which was embroidered. And it was things of that kind but the actual town or the city itself was in a very very poor state. There were trams but they had managed to get to work but they went across bridges and you thought God that bridge is never going to support this tram but it did. It rocked and what have you and we got through. The people themselves were quite good. They weren’t, weren’t objecting to us particularly but of course there were a group of people who had been caught by the radiation and they’d collected together and isolated themselves on a little island in, in the inland sea. Oh, and one other thing too while I was there I think it was three earthquakes. One while I was in my officer’s mess, one while I was up in Osaka and another one which took place on the island to the south of us. And that was an interesting experience too. The one in Osaka —
[voice calling from distance]
DE: There’s someone, I’ll just press the pause because someone has arrived.
[recording paused]
DE: There was a visitor so I’ve started recording again. Yeah. You were talking about Hiroshima.
RB: Yes. As I say there was a group of people who had been caught by this radiation and had isolated themselves and they weren’t pretty to look at either. One day on my off day I was talking to a group and they said, ‘We’re going fishing.’ ‘Oh, I’ll come with you.’ So I went fishing with them and they complained about other fishermen. Fishermen from another island encroaching on their land, on their territory and so we caught them and we took them back and they were, they were sent to jail for for fishing in the wrong area. So that was quite interesting too. Anything else?
DE: Well, you said that there was an arson attack and the quarters were burned down. Who? Who was responsible for that?
RB: We know that it was Japanese but we have no idea actually who it was. There were actually three arson attacks. One where the fuel for the aircraft used to come in enormous metal barrels they stored there. And there was a whole storage there and somebody set light to that and blew the lot for God knows how long. I mean barrels were shooting up in the air. And there was another attempt to burn down the officer’s mess but that was caught in time to stop it. But it was the second attempt that burned the place down.
DE: So this was some resistance to the, to the base.
RB: Oh, there were one or two people who did object to our being there undoubtedly. The other interesting little sideline, if you can forgive me for this but when the arson attack took place there were certain of the WAAFs who suddenly disappeared from the officer’s mess back to their own quarters at night [laughs]
DE: I quite understand. Yeah.
RB: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Anything else?
DE: I don’t think so. I mean one of my final questions I normally ask is, is what do you think, what’s your opinion on the way the Second World War and the bombing campaigns have been remembered?
RB: Been remembered? [pause] Well, I hesitate to say this. There was a programme on the box the other day, I’ve forgotten what it was called but it followed an American aircraft, it was an American film needless to say who’d gone bombing over Germany and got shot up and all sorts of things and just managed to stagger back. There’s no such film for the British. And I find that you know it was the Americans won the war. It’s that sort of attitude.
DE: Yeah.
RB: And I find that very sad because the number of British people and I include the Australians and the Kiwis and what have you I think that’s a great shame that there’s no appreciation of what went on. I mean we lost a hell of a lot of aircraft. And the design of aircraft too was an interesting issue. I mean the Stirling bomber was a shocker. A terrible thing to land whereas the Lancasters and those they were great.
DE: Is there anything else at all that you can think of that you’d like to, to tell me?
RB: I shall do when you’ve gone.
DE: Of course. Well, I can press pause. If you think of anything else that you’d like to add.
RB: No. I can’t at the moment but little snippets keep coming back but I suppose one thing that did bother me quite a bit at North Creake was the maintenance of the aircraft was always done in the open air and the poor devils who had to service the aircraft must have been frozen stiff at times. How they managed it I do not know.
DE: But you were there ’44 to ’45 and that winter was really really bad. Yeah.
RB: It was a bit grim.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Yeah. Yeah. But there we are.
DE: I suppose as a Met officer you saw that coming and knew quite how bad it was going to be.
RB: We didn’t know how bad it was going to be but there we are. So [pause] No. I really, off hand I can’t remember much more. Oh I remember one occasion as that I was going on leave to see my fiancé and of course at that time there was a railway went right through to Wells.
DE: Yes.
RB: And I got from Wells to the camp of course by van. But I went down to Wells and caught the train to get back to London and I think we got about five miles out of Wells and ran into a snowdrift and the train could not move so we had to get out and walk over the top of the snowdrift to the next station and try and catch a train from there.
DE: Oh wow.
RB: Which we did and the curious thing is we got to Kings Lynn and when we got to Kings Lynn and travelled south there was no snow.
DE: Wow. Ok.
RB: Which relates in a way to something that happened long after the war when I was actually teaching in Guisborough.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
RB: And the staff used to play the Sixth Form at cricket for a day. It snowed in July in the middle of the cricket match.
DE: Wow.
RB: It’s something peculiar to that area. You know, stuck off the North Sea. So there we are.
DE: So you, so you were a teacher after.
RB: I came back home and I didn’t want to stay in the Air Force, in the Met Office because at the time you had to move every three years and I think it was about every ten or fifteen years you had to go overseas and I didn’t want my children if I had any to be constantly changing school. So I decided I’d opt out. I went to London Institute and trained as a teacher. I taught mathematics for nearly twenty years and then I became an inspector of schools for a time and I finished up as the senior advisor for further education, adult education, youth service. You name it. Jack of all trades and master of nothing [laughs].
DE: Yeah. Smashing.
RB: So there we are.
DE: Yeah. That’s marvellous. I’m going to press pause. If you think of anything else you’d like to tell me —
RB: Yes. Righto.
DE: Just give me a nod.
RB: Yes.
DE: And I can start recording again but that’s absolutely fantastic. Thank you.
[recording paused]
DE: So I’ve just started recording again. Yes.
RB: There was one occasion when the group from North Creake was required to fly to North Italy to drop Window to prevent any radar or what have you from the Germans as they were coming back north after the invasion of Italy and Sicily. Well of course that meant flying over the Alps which was a very difficult thing for Stirlings and, but they all got there with one exception and he was a squadron leader. He turned back. He couldn’t face it. I quite understand why because the height they were flying the danger of icing was extremely bad but they made it and they did their job. Ok?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Smashing. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Roy Berrill
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-02-23
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:53:53 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABerrillR220223, PBerrillR2022023
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
England--Cambridge
England--London
Singapore
Japan
Japan--Iwakuni-shi
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Roy was born in Northampton and was evacuated from Becontree in London to Weston-super-Mare. He gained his degree from Queen Mary College, London, which was evacuated to Cambridge.
After the Air Training Corps, Roy was called up to be a meteorological officer. Roy trained in Kilburn, and went as a forecaster to RAF Warboys in Cambridge before RAF Wyton and then RAF North Creake.
Roy recounts the death of Canadian “Tiny” Thurlow, brought down by friendly fire in Northern France. There were three meteorological officers at RAF North Creake, working shifts. The information recorded was sent to the regional meteorological office whose forecast could not be amended. He attended the aircrew briefing and de-briefing sessions. The 100 Group dropped Window radar countermeasure. Its aircraft were prone to icing.
Roy contrasts weather forecasting then and now, particularly with reference to the jet stream. He talks about weather balloons and the readings they took. RAF Docking sent up Hurricanes or Spitfires, fitted with new equipment, to take readings.
In 1945 Roy set sail from Tilbury on RMS Strathaird to Bombay, Singapore (RAF Seletar) and then spent nearly two years for the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces at RAF Iwakuni in Japan, passing through Hiroshima. A Japanese man committed Hari-kari and there were three arson attempts by the Japanese.
On his return, Roy was promoted to flight lieutenant. After discharge, Roy taught mathematics, and subsequently became a school inspector and senior further education adviser.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
100 Group
171 Squadron
199 Squadron
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
ground personnel
meteorological officer
RAF North Creake
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
Stirling
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/572/8840/AFroudJ160509.1.mp3
652f8a9f36625bbc3294d28ca088a96e
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
Froud, James
J Froud
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Froud, J
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with James Froud (1922 - 2019, 1801660 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 44 and 83 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-09
2016-05-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DP: This interview is being conducted for the Bomber Command centre, the interviewer is Dave Pilsworth, the interviewee is James Froud
[Other] Froud
DP: Froud, the interview is taking place at Mr Froud’s home, in, Runnymead Green, Bury St Edmunds on the ninth November, two thousand and fourteen, time [pause] is eleven twenty-five
[inaudible]
JF: I was in Kent, erm, I was, about twenty, I suppose, nineteen or twenty. I hadn’t been called up because I was in a reserved occupation, anyway, I went to, the erm, the RAF was very busy with, German invaders, fighters and bombers, and er, I thought I would go in and become a pilot, [background noise] a spitfire pilot of course, [background noise] and er, [pause] that was all very well, anyway I went [pause] to, London, for an interview, and I can’t remember quite where it was, but it’s a well-known centre, for the RAF, I had an interview, had a medical and then was put on the reserve list, and, I was reserved for a year, one thing that annoys me about it is, is that I, was issued with a little silver badge, which goes in your lapel, and, I very quickly lost that [laughs] which was unfortunate, so everybody thought I was skiving, anyway, not everybody, perhaps. I finished up going into the service, and I was called up to, Lords cricket ground for [unclear] and then we were put in some, billets which were fairly new flats, opposite Regents Park, [pause] one thing I had to have done when I was in very quickly, because I wasn’t very well, but I had to have a tooth out, having that out, must have upset me because I was then very quickly put into, a, sick bay which, was a house within, Regents Park, whether that house is still there I don’t know, and that of course, I missed the squadron that I was with, anyway, I was put in another squadron eventually, erm, [pause]
[inaudible]
DP: Interview paused
JF: Torquay, and er, eventually, failed the navigation exams, so I then went to Paignton, and repeated them, and failed them again, so I was then sent to Eastchurch, and er, remustered to [unclear] course, from there to Bridlington, Bridgenorth, and finally Stormy Down, which was a, flying airfield just perched on the coast, in the south of Wales, erm, from there, I think we met up, a number of members of air crew, bombers, bomb aimers, gunners, wireless ops, navigators and pilots and gunners, I said gunners, and we just made a crew up, you weren’t allocated a crew, you just sorted yourselves out, we then [unclear] we went to Market Harborough, were we flew in, [unclear] what did we fly in, Wellingtons [emphasis] [laughs] and from there, [background noise] we apparently went to Husbands Bosworth, which again was one of the operational, er, no, what where they called, the place, yes, it’s O.T.U, operational training unit, and from there, we went to Swinderby, and flew in Stirlings, which we didn’t like a lot, well I didn’t [laughs], and the next move was Syerston, for, changeover to, Lancasters, I stayed there about two months roughly, this was in May, nineteen forty four, from Syerston, can’t remember the antics we got up to there, but I do remember going to Nottingham, to a dance, just before we started flying, and er, came back, it must have been early afternoon, since it’s May, June, area, and er, we were on top of a bus, saw a Lancaster circle round and then it suddenly, nosed dived straight into the deck, not funny, what a first experience, we must have been absolutely stupid, because we didn’t take any notice, we carried on, and [pause] were then, er, finished some training there, which was mainly for pilots and I did a little bit, er, we went to Warboys, ah, no we didn’t, sorry, we went to Dunholme Lodge, from Syerston, and we were there apparently two months, er, let’s have a quick look through the book, switch it off for a minute
DP: Interview paused
JF: And this, [pause] in forty-four, so I was twenty-two wasn’t I, we finished on Stirlings, on the fifth of the fifth forty-four, and my next reference is, for Lancasters, and that must have been at [pause] Syerston, and that was on the, tenth of the fifth forty-four, my, record keeping may not be all that good actually
DP: Interview paused
JF: Circuit and landing, erm, Mitchell, was our pilots name, and the instructor was Flight Lieutenant Singer, and then, having done dual circuits and landings, we did solo, circuit and landings, and we did that at twelve thirty five so, ten fifteen we were doing the first circuit and landings, at twelve thirty five, we were doing solos, that’s the part of pilot, of course to fly, and I just sat there in the turret and looked out for enemy aircraft, over England, not a lot, I mean, so, most of [background noise] there was circuits and landings, circuits and landings, circuits and landings, all pilot practise, oh, there’s something I did, but erm, fighter affiliation, gyro, corkscrew, that was for my benefit [unclear] half an hour, no sorry, fifty minutes, that’s not half an hour, fifty minutes, and then [pause] [background noise] it’s obviously moved, [background noise] to Dunholme Lodge, [pause] it doesn’t tell you were it is [background noise]
DP: Interview paused
JF: And there’s a town in France, Aunay-sur-Odon, I remember the Wing Co saying ‘down the bloody drain’, you don’t have to put that in, [laughs] the next one was [unclear] [background noise] and the third one wasn’t so funny, they were two fairly easy ones, the third one was Wessling, Germany, where we were hit by flak, we got seventy holes in the aircraft, erm, [pause] we’d got back, we’d lost an engine, this is from memory, and er, the skip, control, the skipper did three over shoots, on the good three engines, it’s not quite so easy to fly an aircraft, is it, and erm, control called up and said ‘you are number twenty on the circuit, you’ve got the circuit to yourselves, take your time ’ more or less, erm, [pause] we actually lost twelve aircraft, from the airfield, [coughs], now, I’ve forgotten the number of the other squadron, both squadrons had lost six, now that’s a heck of a lot of people to be missing, but, we didn’t really know any of those people, we’d only been on this squadron, a short while, we’d done three trips and, we were billeted in Nissan huts, although we’d got a mess, to go to, we didn’t really know any, or very few of the other crews, we’d got another crew in the hut with us, two crews to a hut, they had survived that episode, and er, we can’t continue flying with 44 Squadron, which incidentally, was a Rhodesian Squadron, er, flying Lancs one and er, and Lancs threes, so, [background noise] we continued [pause] I don’t know whether I read [background noise] [unclear]
AP: Interview paused
JF: I can now, France and Germany, we went through Wessling so once we went through, I ducked down, so they didn’t spot me [laughs] they didn’t know we’d dropped the bombs on them [background noise] [unclear] forty-four, Creil, where ever that is, France apparently, oh, then we had a little go at Stuttgart, eh, the second one to Stuttgart, DNCO, that was duty not carried out, starboard outer US, return to base, oh this wasn’t nice, by the look of that, erm, where did we go then, Gavourres, France, Lyon, Lyon, is that correct, which is right the other end of France, erm, and I’ve got port engine, badly damaged, petrol tank holed, and, as far as I remember, that was a Lancaster below us, had, made a hole in the aircraft, erm, I remember, it actually hit, the tramways, that my ammunition went up, you know they went a bunch of mates to the rear turret, filled up from the bottom and stopped those working, it upset the navigator, the wireless op, the way through, that, fortunately nobody was hit [emphasis], er, but er, I’ve got, port engine badly damaged, petrol tank holed, Gavourres, Lyon, [unclear] [background noise] [unclear] where’s that, I don’t know, Gavourres, Lyon, now, we then, the powers that be had obviously wired up what, the bomb aimer, who acted as a second instrument operator, erm, I can’t think of the name of the set, [unclear] there was H2S and there was another one, and they, were good at operating them, so, they sent us to Warboys, there’s an NTU, I can’t recall what a NTU meant, it’s a training unit, and we just did er, five hours, thirty five with them, and that was a swap over to Pathfinder Force, erm, now my first operation, first two operations with them, were to Danzig and Stuttgart with Warrant Officer Price, so, I was obviously a spare gunner, I remember the chap whose place I took, mind you, he was killed later on or lost, [background noise] but, that’s life, here we go
AP: Interview paused
JF: [unclear], like that, like that, like that, then came up like that, so, so, you changed, er, if a fighter was coming in from here, you went like that, he missed you, and all the object of that corkscrew was, so that he couldn’t get a bead on you, he couldn’t, another set they operated was a LORAN, L-O-R-I-N [spelled out] and it’s still being used that type of radar now, in today’s aircraft, LORAN.
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 James Froud. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dave Pilsworth
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
2016-05-09
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AFroudJ160509
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:20:37 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
Wales--Bridgend
England--Yorkshire
Germany
France
France--Aunay-sur-Odon
Description
An account of the resource
James Froud wanted to be a pilot. He was interviewed in London and called up to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Having twice failed navigation examinations, he was re-mustered and sent to RAF Eastchurch for a gunnery course. From there, he went to RAF Bridlington, RAF Bridgnorth and RAF Stormy Down, where he crewed up. Jimmy went on to RAF Market Harborough where he flew in Wellingtons and RAF Husbands Bosworth, which was an Operational Training Unit. He flew in Stirlings at RAF Swinderby and Lancasters at RAF Syerston before joining 44 Squadron at RAF Dunholme Lodge.
Jimmy refers to some of his operations in France and Germany.
He was sent to RAF Warboys, a Navigation Training Unit, and swapped over to the Pathfinder Force. Jimmy refers to the corkscrew manoeuvre and LORAN navigation system.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
44 Squadron
air gunner
bombing
crewing up
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Swinderby
RAF Warboys
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/15128/MDonaldsonDW70185-150610-070001.1.jpg
20455e30e3112bfc1d095e05dc073cc9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/15128/MDonaldsonDW70185-150610-070002.1.jpg
16db9d35f04b4c5968c25fb3fe51adc9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/15128/MDonaldsonDW70185-150610-070003.1.jpg
0fd91d648b81c14fbaaec97709f7daf8
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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
53, LIMERSTON STREET,
LONDON, SW10 0BL
01-352 4460.
D.W.D.
D.S.O & Bar Awarded 14.5.43 and 17.7.45
D.F.C Awarded 7 February 1941
1939/45 Star
Air Crew Europe Star (With France & Germany clasp)
Defence Medal
War Medal 1939/45
Air Efficiency Award
(DSO, Bar & DFC have year of award engraved on back)
(Air Efficiency Award has name & [indecipherable word] on rim)
J.D. War Medal 1939/45
[page break]
RAF Service
53, LIMERSTON STREET,
LONDON, SW10 0BL
01-352 4460.
D.W.D.
RAFO (A.A OD) 13.8.34 – 31.1.37 ASTLd Hamble etc
RAFVR 1.2.38 – 2.9.39 Avro Cadet, BE2.A.
RAF EVANTON (Scotland) 3.9.39 – 26.4.40. Hanley. (Target Training).
RAF BRIZE NORTON (2 SFTS) 27.4.40 – 9.8.40 Oxford, Flying Training
No15. OUT RAF HARWELL 10.8.40 – 19.9.40 Wellington Training
No149 (B)Sqd RAF MILDENHALL 20.12.40 – 7.3.40[sic] Wellington. 31. Ops
Detailed to Air Ministry & British [indecipherable words] NEW YORK and ATFERO for Ferrying Duties USA Canada Iceland & UK. 8.3.41 – 28.9.41. Hudson and Wellington.
No 57(B) Sqdn. Feltwell & [indecipherable word] 26.9.41 – 20.x11.41 Wellingtons. 5 Ops.
RAF Hospitals Ely and Littleport & Sick leave 20.x11.42[sic] 9.3.42
H.Q 3 Group RAF EXNING 9.3.42 14.7.42 Staff-Group Tactics Offices
No.18. OUT RAF HARWELL & HAMPSTEAD NORRIS 15.3.42 18.1.43 Instructor 1, Op. Wellingtons
RAF WARBOYS (Pathfinders) 18.1.43 21.6.43. Flight Commander (WgCom) Pathfinders 23, Ops.
P.T.O.
[page break]
No 1667 Heavy Conversion Unit. RAF LINDHOLME & FALDINGWORTH. 21.6.43 – 14.12.43 Chief Instructor Lancasters.
HQ 100 Group RAF West Raynham & BYLAUGH Hall 15.12.44[sic] 12.6.44 Staff Air 1 & D.S.A.S.O 2 Ops.
RAF FOULSHAM, No 192 Sqdr. (Spec Duties) 12.6.44 – 6.9.45. CO Air [indecipherable word] & Signals Investigation Halifax. 21, Ops.
H.Q 100 Group RAF BYLAUGH HALL 6.9.45 1.10.45. (W/C. Ops).
Demob [indecipherable word] 1.10.45 – 25.x1.45.
[underlined] JD. [/underlined]
WAAF October 1939 – Feb 1940 Initial Training
RAF Bentley Priory H.Q. Fighter Command Feb 1940 – June 1940 Filter Plotter
Code & Cypher Training at OXFORD June 1940 – August 1940 ASO Code & Cypher Training ASO
RAF MILDENHALL Bomber Command August 1940 – Late Summer 1941 C&C Offices
RAF WYTON Bomber Command Section Offices Summer 1941 – Dec 1941 C&C Offices
H.Q Flying Training [indecipherable word] RAF CAVERSHAM Dec 1941 – April 1941[sic] C&C Duties
April 1941[sic] – [indecipherable word]
([indecipherable words])
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
Summary of medals and Royal Air Force Service for David and Joyce Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
List medals for David Donaldson including Distinguished Service order and bar, Distinguished Flying Cross. Medal for Joyce Donaldson, War Medal 1939-45. Lists RAF Service for David Donaldson from 1934 to demob in November 1945. Lists Joyce Donaldson's wartime service in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force from October 1939 to April 1941.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Donaldson
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three page handwritten document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Hampshire
England--Hamble-le-Rice
Scotland--Easter Ross
England--Oxfordshire
England--Berkshire
England--Suffolk
England--Norfolk
England--Exning
England--Ely
England--Huntingdonshire
England--London
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1934
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MDonaldsonDW70185-150610-07
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
100 Group
149 Squadron
15 OTU
1667 HCU
18 OTU
192 Squadron
3 Group
57 Squadron
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hudson
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Evanton
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Methwold
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Warboys
RAF West Raynham
RAF Wyton
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/18566/BDonaldsonDWDonaldsonDWv10001.2.jpg
e659658e154900f7d4343e1bb2de76be
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/18566/BDonaldsonDWDonaldsonDWv10002.2.jpg
4fb1ab9dbaff18e7847f9d780f84bdf9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/18566/BDonaldsonDWDonaldsonDWv10003.2.jpg
74c41a5565c8b25f2a57dbe678adb60d
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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
D.W.D
Born 31.1.15 at The Elms Peartree Avenue Bitterne Southampton
Education
1915 – Sept 1923 Miss Jane Mary Neale Nurse
Miss Dorothy Mary Blake Governess
Sept 1923 – July 1928 Newlands Seaford Sussex
Sept 1928 – March 1933 Charterhouse Godalming Surrey
May – July (incl) 1933 Mdme La Comtesse de la Rive
St. Avertin, Tours, Indre et Loire, France
October 1933 – June 1936 Trinity College Cambridge
Law Tripos Pts I & II
October 1936 – September 1939 Articled Clerk to Solicitors Messrs Stephenson Harwood & Tatham 16, Old Broad St. London E.C.3.
R.A.F
13.VIII.34 Joined Reserve of Air Force Officers Class AA2 (P.O. on probation)
Trained mostly at Hamble ATS. Avro Cadets [inserted] & B2 [/inserted] and Hawker Harts and variants One annual flying training at Hanworth Some ground training in London One attachment to RAF Calshot
1.2.38 Transferred to RAFVR
13.VIII.39 Appointed for a second 5 year term
[page break]
2
RAF (continued)
3.9.39 Mobilised and posted to RAF Evanton (Scotland)
No 8 Air Observers School later No 8 Bombing and Gunnery School.
Target Towing on Henleys
27.4.40 After applying to go on ops posted to No 2 S.F.TS (Service Flying Training
– 9.8.40 School) Oxfords
10.8.40. Posted to RAF Harwell No 15 Operational Training Unit – Wellington
– 19.9.40 Joined up with crew incl P/O Ken Lawson & P/O Gordon Woollatt, Sgts Bell [indecipherable word] Frankie Bullen & Lewis (N.Z.).
20.9.40 Posted to R.A.F Mildenhall No 149 Squadron.
– 7.3.41 Wellington ICs.
31 Ops
Dec 1940 Acting Flight Lt.
6.1.41 Engaged
Jan 1941 DFC.
8.3.41 Detached to Air Ministry for British Purchasing Commission, New York.
Went there by convoy in a Dutch Boat. Sent from New York to Montreal [deleted (P) [/deleted] (by train) to C.P.R . Air Services Ltd (Atfero). Ferried Hudson V to Gander Newfoundland (8 June) and thence to Prestwick 14 June.
19.6.41 Married to J.D.
Sent back to RAF to take a Wellington with special tanks out to USAF – Took aircraft to Kemble July and stayed with Bathhursts at Cirencester. Then to Nutts Corner North Ireland – Joyce joined us – then on 6 August to
[page break]
3
Reykjavik Iceland. Saw Churchill – signing Atlantic Charter with Roosevelt. 21 August to Gander Newfoundland. St Hubert Canada and on 27 August to Wright Field Dayton Ohio U.S.A. – over Niagara –
6 September took Hudson III to Gander and then to Prestwick.
26.9.41 Posted to 57 Squadron & then Methwold. After 5 abortive raids & one or 2 prangs went sick with flying strain (& fright). Posted to S.H.Q Feltwell (20.XII.41) in hospital at Ely and Littleport. 24/12/41 – 30.1.42.
Sick leave 31.1.42 – 27.2.42.
Lost acting rank of S/L & reverted to F/L.
9.3.42. Posted to H.Q 3 Group at Exning – Tactics Officer
Recovered acting rank of S/Ldr
15.7.42 Posted to No.15. OTU Harwell (G/C Fogarty) for instructing duties at Hampsted Norris on Wellingtons (W/Cdr T Rivett Carnac) – 1 Operation (10.9.42).
18.1.43 Posted to No 156 Squadron P.F.F at Warboys (W/Cdr T Rivett Carnac) – Navigator Ken Lawson
6.3.43 Flight Commander & W/Cdr.
23 Ops. D.S O. 15.5.43.
21.6.43.Posted to 3 [inserted] 100 [/inserted] Group as W/Cdr Air 1 (or DSASO) [inserted] Faldingworth Bylaugh Hall 1. [deleted] Ops [/deleted] Op in Beaufighter as passenger on [/inserted] instruction (20.XII 1943
12.6.44 Posted as W/Cdr C.O. 192 [inserted] (SD & BS) [/inserted] Squadron at RAF FOULSHAM
23 ops – 17.7.45. Bar to DSO
V.E Day 8.5.45.
22.8.45 192 Squadron Disbanded Flying Wing Radio Warfare Establishment
6.9.45. Posted to H.P 100 Group as W/Cdr Ops
1.10.45. Posted to 100 P.D.C Uxbridge
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
David Donaldson's CV
Description
An account of the resource
Service history of David Donaldson including postings, promotions and awards.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Donaldson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Frances Grundy
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BDonaldsonDWDonaldsonDWv10001, BDonaldsonDWDonaldsonDWv10002, BDonaldsonDWDonaldsonDWv10003
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--Norfolk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
100 Group
149 Squadron
15 OTU
156 Squadron
192 Squadron
3 Group
57 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
fear
Hudson
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Evanton
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Methwold
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Warboys
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/834/18899/YGeachDG1394781v5.2.pdf
10162827a32d552c966e4454065fa9f0
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
Geach, David
D Geach
Description
An account of the resource
<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/218400/"></a>52 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer David Geach (1394781 Royal Air Force) and contains his diaries, correspondence, photographs of his crew, his log book, cuttings and items relating to being a prisoner of war. After training in Canada, he flew operations as a bomb aimer with 623 and 115 Squadrons until he was shot down 24 March 1944 and became a prisoner of war. He was instrumental in erecting a memorial plaque to the Air Crew Reception Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. <br />The collection also contains a scrap book of photographs.<br /><br />Additional information on his crew is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/218400/">IBCC Losses Database.</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Harry Wilkins and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
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. 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
Geach, DG
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[blank page]
[page break]
GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
NO. 288
[page break]
[underlined] Wednesday 17th March. [/underlined]
Back in England again, gee! its great to be home, I don’t know how fellows must feel being overseas 10 years or so, 8 months was enough to make me feel really thrilled at the sight of old England again. Beg pardon! I should have said Scotland, for it was up the firth of Clyde we slipped and anchored off Greenock. It was a nice morning & the fields & hills looked really pleasant in the sunshine. As we slid along we were shot up by Hurricanes and Martletts from the Auxiliary Aircraft Carriers. There were quite a few of the latter, converted merchant men turned into A.C. Carriers, quite large some of them. Beside this, the usual swarm of naval craft lay around. Destroyers, & corvettes slipped past, & occasionally the sleek black hulk of a submarine would slide along; in the distance. There was a Catalina station, with quite an amount of activity going on. One of the “Cats” landed quite close to us in a flurry of foam, nice looking jobs! We anchored just by three aircraft carriers & the modern battleship Howe, there was quite an amount of Aldis flashing, but far beyond our limited 8’s. I was glad I was on guard as I had a fine view, whilst all the others weren’t allowed up on deck.
[page break]
We docked on the 15th about 3 pm and it was 24 hrs. before we got off her. Being as there were no large docks as at Boston & New York everyone had to be taken off in lighters, & there were a good few thousand to go ashore. The lighters seemed like little toys alongside the Queen Elizabeth, although in reality they were quite large two funnelled vessels. Pumping oil in was a large tanker she really was a size, a smart looking American ship, with the T of the Texaco Oil Coy. on her funnel covered by the grey war paint. We struggled into the boat in full webbing lugging the kit bag, that everyone had crammed with cigarettes, chocolates, cosmetics, & heaven knows how many with stockings, for everyone at home. Quite a delay ensued before the lighter was packed to capacity, then away she went. My God as we passed alongside the Q.E. we could get an idea of her size, she was immense. As we drew further away, & saw the cluster of ships around her, dwarfed to doll size, looking like a duck with a swarm of ducklings we realised what a prize it would make for Jerry U Boats. No wonder they had claimed to have sank her, that made us laugh when we were on it. She really had a rakish cut, though, and as we neared the dockside, gazing back through the [deleted] Deff [/deleted] half mist, I was glad I had had the opportunity of travelling on the two largest ships afloat.
[page break]
On the dockside we had the inevitable hours wait with packs, full webbing on, but being as it was our priviledge [sic] to moan we indulged in it to the full, & were cheered by it. The troop trains were drawing away and at last our turn came. Comfortable seats were taken, our mass of webbing crowded everything out of the way but nobody worried away we [deleted] wend [/deleted] went, into a lovely drizzling evening, it may sound dim, but were we glad to see the rain again, after months of continuous snow without a drop of rain. It must have appeared depressing to the Canadians, raining on their arrival, bearing out tales of the island when it always rains, that they had heard, but to us it was home & heaven. Everyone waved out of windows & from streets as we slid along, everything was so friendly. Some of the fellows tackled the canned rations they had of Beans & Hash etc. but I stuck to the Biscuit & Sweet ones. Into Glasgow we rattled, onto Edinburgh when the NAAFI gave us tea on the platform, & so to Harrogate. Here we were assembled in the [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] dim light & pushed into lorries & away we went to Pannel Ash, three miles out of Harrogate to a large school. Here we whizzed around getting bedding & filling forms and having an eagerly awaited breakfast. However I am getting tired so I’ll continue in my next entry.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday 21st March [/underlined]
As I said we arrived here at Pannel Ash, about 5.30 AM. on the 17th & they told us to be on parade at 8 A.M. to start the whirl of kitting, form filling and heaven knows what else before we went on leave. It sounded a line of bull to us, but the magical word leave was enough to keep us moving. We rapidly discovered that there were two of the biggest b-s I have seen here, & the two most influential. No 1 the C.O. and No 2 the W.O. I can truthfully say the C.O. or Sqdn/Ldr was the most illiterate fellow I have ever seen holding a commission. They say [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] he was an N.C.O. pre-war & just got a lucky push. The W.O. vies with him for our hatred, he is a fat red faced guy & a real nasty piece, just loves to catch one of us N.C.O’s with something wrong. It is something like a Gestapo purge, they are [deleted] [indecipherable letter] [/deleted] possessed with the idea, that because we have come back from overseas we are no longer fit for aircrew, are a pack of scare-crows, are unruly & undisciplined etc. etc. Admittedly the Guards could give us a few points on smartness but hell! we haven’t had time to get back into the rut of drill again. Our job doesn’t depend on whether we can drill smartly either, a point which they always try to hammer in.
[page break]
We have whizzed about filling in reams of forms, kitting up to the English scale once more, this was a scream Some of the fellows had thrown away nearly all their service kit in order to make room for their presents, & they certainly had some 664B action. When they can’t think of anything for us to do, we drill, with the C.O. binding continually. The latest purge is haircuts, & as mine hasn’t been trimmed for about 6 – 7 weeks I’m right in the line of fire, guess I’ll need a lawn mower on my mop. On the evenings that we can get away we generally walk into town to see a show, the trouble with this town is it is [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] lousy with aircrew. When we first arrived we were so tired that we got some bed hours in, & wrote letters with the old 2 1/2' stamp on again. It was quite good to write a letter, & in a couple of days get a reply come buzzing back. The family & Mary had a surprise as they didn’t think I would be home for a couple of days, Mary is trying to get leave at the same time as myself. We should be going on leave pretty soon now, yippee! will we hit the high spots, & guess I’ll be glad to hand over their presents after lugging them quarter way round the world & guarding them, ah! well it wont [sic] be long now.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday April 8th [/underlined]
Time certainly has flown by, but in a glorious fashion, since I made my last [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] entry. In the last couple of days we got packed, stowed our flying kit, & personal kit in the in the cellars & were all ready to move. The great day was Wednesday the 24th. and the coaches came to take us to the station. All the A.G.’s had gone a couple of days before, but only for 7 days, as they needed them, I felt sorry for them as we were all getting 14. After some waiting the train drew in, & we piled in heartily, it was well organised, all the London fellows were in one train those going South, Portsmouth etc in another, & Midlands & North a third. We got a good seat & old Fred Porce was opposite me so we arranged to travel on the Met to Plaistow together. On the journey we dozed & ate a little of the rations, & thought & made plans of what we would do on leave, then finally we drew into London, bang on! Fred had a monster kit bag crammed with tinned goods, & it certainly was a weight, we both had to drag it along to get on the Met. Sinking into a seat, not daring to remove our packs, for fear we wouldn’t get them on again, we soon became wedged, & I had the devils
[page break]
own job to struggle out, when we reached my station. It was really great to get home again, there was a great welcome, everyone saying things together & I know, I forgot lots of the things I wanted to tell them. Mary & my sister certainly were enthusiastic over the cosmetics, most probably be run in for hoarding.
Leave time as usual simply whirled by, shows & films, different people to see, & places to go. I saw Frank Pritchards mother, apparently I just missed him at Greenock, he went back on the Queen Elizabeth, they must have embarked the morning after we disembarked. Life always seems to be like that just missing people, well, I hope he likes Canada, one thing he won’t get the hellish winter conditions I had. I could kick myself missing the mildest winter England had for 17 years, & catching the coldest Canada had for 19 years. Anyway time flew, & yesterday it was time for me to return, they ran a special train for us, good show, & at 5 PM I met Norman & all the boys, & back we travelled swapping stories of leave. Harrogate once more, & in the Grand Hotel, where we were billeted when we arrived from Hastings, & so here I am.
[page break]
[underlined] Wednesday 14th April [/underlined]
We are ‘squaddied’ now, (placed in a squad) and waiting for the lectures to commence. Still the memories of our leave keep coming back to torture us, in heaven knows when we will be home again. Won’t be till after O.T.U. I’d wager, some fellows say we get some after AFU but I doubt it. Most of the fellows here whilst they are waiting for a posting are sent to Whitley Bay on a 4 week Commands Course with the RAF Regiment, I don’t quite know whether I relish the idea or not. The first few days we were back we didn’t do anything merely route marches, occasionally if we had a decent fellow in charge we would lay down in a field for the afternoon, but that wasn’t often. That state of affairs rarely lasts long however & we were soon put in a squad and commenced lectures. These are held at the Majestic Hotel, & we parade and march there each morning and afternoon. The lectures themselves are the same as they are anywhere the inevitable Signals, Armaments, Aircraft Rec, & Bombing Theory, they certainly cheese us, & I have a hell of a job to keep awake.
[page break]
There is quite a bit of P.T. as well, & we always have to run up to the Crag or thereabouts then turn off, for a general town of Yorkshire, around 5 miles or so. A fellow who was already in our room when we arrived, (a pilot on singles) is on the permanent P.T. squad, this is a hell of a racket. You are put on this when you have finished all the lectures. They parade in the morning in P.T. kit, or more often than not trousers, vest & jacket, then after roll call, go for a run by themselves to the Cing Café & sit there gazing at the view, & eating scones & supping tea till nearly dinner time, then they trot back for their midday meal. In the afternoon they repeat the process, maybe add a game of football, if they feel energetic, always ensuring that they finish in plenty of time for an early tea, & a quick get away to the cinema. Still you can’t blame them, they’ve been here nearly four months & I’d be really fed up.
Looking around at the thousands of aircrew here, & hearing of the thousands of Canadians & Australians at Bournemouth it amazes me. All these aircrew hanging around waiting to get onto operations and they can’t, & it goes right to the
[page break]
bottom of the ladder, to the fellow just joining up for aircrew who has to wait nearly a year after he has been accepted, to get into the RAF. If only we could clear the bottlenecks & get all these fellows on ops’ what a mighty bomber fleet we should have. Surely it isn’t the shortage of aircraft, we should be turning out enough by now. It must be a bottleneck at O.T.U. & AFU & not enough to cope with the flow of crews, or the most likely explanation they have been piling up here, owing to there being limited flying during the winter. I daresay there will always be the same situation here, though. As for myself I’m quite content, we have a decent room, Norman, Henry, Jack, & Ron & myself all together. There’s a wash basin in the room & a bath room next door, which is good. The food isn’t bad either, it is a rush for meals now that we are on [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] lectures. There isn’t much to do in town but go to the cinema I have been six nights running, but there’s nothing else available. One thing about coming in at night the lights are switched off at 10.30 PM by a master control, so we always creep in, in the dark, stumbling over things. Rumours of leave here are as prevalent here as at any other posting centre, but after a while we discredit them all.
[page break]
[underlined] Wednesday April 21st [/underlined]
Norman, Harry & myself are still here, but Ron & Jack are at Whitley Bay now, getting that cave man complex on the North Sea now. The went off in the traditional RAF style full webbing etc, & kidding us about our getting posted up there when they had nearly finished. Us not to be outdone assuring them, that there was an AFU posting on the way & they were merely clearing the dim ones out. I wouldn’t mind betting we’re “joes” though & get sent up there shortly. In the meantime we are just continuing with lectures, we have had one period of wet dinghy drill. We went in the swimming baths, belonging to a school, now occupied by the Civil Service. Being as the changing accommodation in the boxes is inadequate a lot of fellows changed on the spectators seats at the far end. There are a lot of full length windows, & as the boys changed & stood there in the altogether, quite a lot of the female Civil Servants opposite found a sudden lack of interest in their work. We have to don full flying kit and Mae Wests, & as a crew jump in & swim to the dinghy & climb in. It wasn’t so bad in the water, but when one went to climb into the dinghy, their weight
[page break]
soaked, with water, became apparent, & it really was a struggle to get aboard.
I have been with Norman to visit his Aunt & Uncle living here. His Uncle is in the Civil Service & took us to their club they have on the Ground Floor of a Hotel. Its a nice place with refreshment bar, dance hall, games & card rooms, we went to a nice dance there the other day. It is so nice to meet someone like that, because Harrogate is a hell of a place if one knows nobody. Being as it is crammed full of aircrew & soldiers, every place of entertainment is bound to be packed. There is nowhere to go but the cinemas really cos the dances are pretty dear. Most probably with the idea of keeping the services away, because the citizens really resent the troops being here, & hate the war being forced on them. It really is a “Forget the War”, town. The solitary Y.M.C.A. & a couple of small Forces Canteens do sterling service, but are overwhelmed & can’t cater for all their customers This leaves the troops at the mercy of the money grabbing café owners. The Copper Kettle being one, 2 small sausages & a few chips being 3/6’, out of an ordinary soldiers 2/6 a day its not even funny. Yes this town certainly wants re-organising & a few of the rackets squashed.
[page break]
[underlined] Tuesday 27th April [/underlined].
We are on the point of recommencing our flying in England we have arrived at our Advanced Flying Unit, at Bobbington near Stourbridge. So we did steal a march on Ron & Jack after all, I bet they are annoyed about it, but still most probably they will be posted soon. They called us all out together all our little clique, & when they said Bobbington we jumped for joy as most of us are Southerners and didn’t fancy going up North again. There was quite a dash around & quite a bit of bull with kit inspections & parades, clothing parades, & Heaven knows what else. Bags of waiting around & queuing as usual, arguing and scrambling for different things. At last all was done & our kit was left downstairs in the lobby ready to go next morning. We went out in the town to have a last night celebration, I am a bit sorry now that I have left there, as it was pretty good there, and I had some decent times with Norman’s Uncle & Aunt. Still there it is the training system doesn’t worry about individuals, & it is the only way I guess. Anyway after that last night we staggered in rather merry & noisy stumbling through the pitch black corridors of the hotel.
[page break]
Up the next morning bright and early, early anyway I dunno so much about the bright. With bull to the last we had to parade in full webbing and march to the station. We got fixed up on the train O.K. & commenced our first stage of the journey to Leeds. It was crazy weather, raining like anything, when we arrived at Leeds we were going to have a stroll around but the weather deterred us. The train to Birmingham was crowded & although we had a carriage reserved, bags of civilians crowded in & as there were elderly women & women with babies, we gave them the seats, but boy! was it a squash. At Birmingham we darted around unloading the kit & dashing over to another platform to catch the Wolverhampton train. We were beginning to look like porters after lumping the kit around all the time. The train had to wait a few minutes until we had loaded everything, the guard was a bit peeved but there was nothing he could do. Off we bowled and then found we had left Norman behind, nothing could be done then so on we went. At Wolverhampton there was a lorry waiting so we loaded it all on & climbed on the kit. We were rather shaken by the distance we were from the town through miles of country lanes until we finally arrived here.
They say that first impressions are often misleading, & I hope so, because our first impressions of this place is that it is a bloody awful station. We are in a damp Nissen hut with a concrete floor, that clouds of white dust rise from on the slightest stir of anything. Being ‘pupils’ as we are termed we aren’t allowed to eat in the sergeants mess, they say it isn’t large enough. We may go into there for letter writing etc. after 5.30 P.M Our meals are in the airmen’s mess, and we queue up amongst all the a.c’s and it is no exaggeration that we get less food than them. I have experienced it many a time the WAAF has given the fellow in front a ladle full, & had one ready for the next chap. Then looking up & seeing they are aircrew they tip half of it back. The mess is terrible and so is the food. All this we have found out in our few hours of being here, tomorrow we start the course. Our ablutions is a place not finished, no bowls or mirrors, just a line of taps containing freezing cold water – grim isn’t the word for it. By all accounts aircrew are disliked on this station by all & sundry from the Groupy downwards, we meet him tomorrow. – Norman has just rolled in he followed on the next train, had quite a shock when he found we had gone.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday May 2nd. [/underlined]
We have been here long enough to dislike the place entirely, & the sooner we leave here the better for all of us. On our first day we met the W/O in charge of the school, Alves his name is, & we didn’t take much of a liking to him. He gave us quite a few warnings with a long list of “Donts”, [sic] & impressed upon us how the “Groupy” disliked aircrew and was always ready to catch them out, then he marched us off to see the big noise himself. All the time he was marching us along in threes he was binding “Stop that talking”, and “Swing those arms”, just like the old I.T.W. back again, it gets a bit cheesing at this stage. We had the ‘welcome’ address in the station cinema a rather bare place that is still undergoing completion. The Groupy bore out all the stories we had heard about him, a rather mean faced individual. During the talk he broke off three times to tear a strip off a poor M.T. driver who had the misfortune to be starting his lorry & drowning the old man’s voice, what a type. Quite a lot of his talk was devoted to the subject of WAAF’s we weren’t to go around with them or associate to any given extent, & if he caught anyone near the WAAF site it would be too bad. Anyone would think it was a convent here, still from what I’ve seen of the WAAFs here, I can’t see anyone wanting to associate with them.
[page break]
Our day is quite a long one here, we rise & have our icy wash then dash over to the airmen’s mess to queue for our “breakfast”. Back to the hut to dash around making up our beds & sweeping the floors, then on parade at the unearthly hour of 7.45 A.M. Even at I.T.W. we went on parade at 8 A.M. nowhere have I seen it as early as this, a quarter of an hour doesn’t sound very much, but one can pack an awful lot into it in the morning. Lectures are from 8 AM. to 10.15 then a quarter of an hours break, lectures from 1.30 to 5 P.M. a half hour for tea, then back for an hours lecture 5.30 to 6.30. The latter is the worst of all I think, we have to dash from the classroom to the mess, which takes about 6 mins, queue for our meal, bolt it down then dash back to the classroom, all in half an hour, we’ll all be suffering from indigestion before long. Unless the instructor taking us is willing to let us off a little early then we are unable to catch the 6.30 p.m. bus into Stourbridge.
Each day we have an hours P.T. & there is a mad F.O. for the P.T. officer, at least we call him mad, he is one of these very keen types he used to be a champion swimmer before the war. The first
[page break]
time we went over the assault course, it was pretty gruelling. Twice round a half a mile track then into a veritable maze of climbing over walls, crawling under wire, balancing along poles ten feet high. One part was swinging along on a single rope across a pond until we were able to wrap our legs around a tree & pull ourselves in. The P.T. instructor a Cpl that was showing us got about three quarters of the way across to the point where the rope sagged the most & there he fell in. He had his long blue P.T. trousers on too, boy! did we laugh, needless to say he didn’t join in. Twice we have been on hellish long cross country the P.T. officer being bang on at running cracks along at a hell of a pace. Then he binds us because we dont [sic] do so well & shoots the bull about being fit for flying etc. We bind him back, & tell him to have a crack at aircrew it is quite a scream. The trouble is we generally arrive back at about 12.45 & have to wash & dress & dash for dinner in three quarters of an hour, so invariably we arrive back late for classes.
The NAAFI here is a pretty good one, we have our break there, they have a good selection of cakes. In classes we are doing all the old familiar Bombing Theory over again, & using the Bombing Teacher. We do our flying on Ansons, seems we are never free from them, I’m really cheesed of winding that undercart up & down.
[page break]
Yesterday, May Day, was our day off, not because the RAF favoured the Labour Party, but it just happened that way. After quite a bit of wangling they finally granted us the priviledge [sic] of getting off an hour earlier [inserted] Friday [/inserted] There was a bus running at 5.30 P.M. & we went into town on that & there caught a bus to Birmingham, we were able to book beds at the Services Club that night. Jimmy Selkirk, Harry & I went out on the beer as Norman had gone by train to Oxford as his fiancé was there spending her leave. We eventually found a pretty low dive & finished the night there. The next day we wandered around for awhile, then went to a cinema, & travelled back on the 9 P.M. bus to catch the 10.30 P.M. from Stourbridge to the camp.
The other day we had our flight photograph taken, we all agreed to look cheesed in it, to register our disappointment of this place, & it came out pretty well. We have been to the station cinema here, they charge us 1/- it isn’t too bad, if only they didn’t have rows of old seats on the same level. Because if one is sitting a fair way back it is impossible to see over all the heads on the same level as yourself. I wonder if we will get leave after this place, I hope so, there are the usual rumours floating around, first we will then we wont, [sic] I guess we wont [sic] know till it arrives.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday 7th May. [/underlined]
I should say roughly half our time has passed here, as most chaps remain here a [deleted] fortnight [/deleted] [inserted] month [/inserted] anyway roll on the next fortnight, & lets get to hell out of here. It is a fairly hum drum existence with the lectures & so forth. On Monday we had a pleasant diversion in the form of wet dinghy drill, in Stourbridge baths, I rather like it as we are able to swim about afterwards – Turning the large bomber dinghy over when one is in the water with full flying kit, will be some job in the North Sea, I reckon. It isn’t too bad in the baths, but then there is no rough sea or wind to contend with.
The F/Sgt in charge of us is a pretty good guy, pretty quiet, & got quite a bit of service in, he is thoroughly cheesed with the station. Beside the famous old Theory of Bombing lectures he takes us on the Bombing Teacher. We were up there the other day & looking from the open window, when old Alves went dashing past. Tom Alan commented “Old Alves is on the warpath”, boy! he must have had keen ears because he called us down & bound us rigid. For the Gunnery lectures there is an F/O A.G with a V.F.M. he is a Welsh chap, shoots a fair amount of lines, but is really a good type, his lectures make a welcome break. For the aircraft rec. there is a nattering little sgt A.G. who absolutely cheeses everybody, nobody likes him. The other chap a tall F/Sgt is a good egg though, livens up the epidiascope slides with an occasional nude woman.
[page break]
The map reading periods are O.K. too. the F/O who takes us did his tour out in Abyssinia, I believe it was on Valentine or some obsolete kites. Thinking of it, it must have been a pretty easy tour, but he is a good chap, a Flt/Lt D.F.M. who is also there, shoots bags of lines, but they are worth listening to & at this stage, we are ready to lap up all lines. A chap who ‘nattered’ to us the other day about ‘ops’ in the Middle East, said at the beginning of the campaign, the crack Italian liner Rex was in the harbour at Tobruk. They were briefed to attack & did so, but they were made to bomb with 25 lb H.E. naturally they were like pin pricks, & that night she whipped up steam & was away. An Air Commodore was slung out of the RAF for that. We went out on a lorry the other day for practical map reading, & drove around the lanes, stopped & had to find where we were & make tactical sketches. About three times we did this, & then had to change into our P.T. kit, that we had brought, leap out of the lorry & run the 3 miles back to camp. It rather reminded me of the hunt with the hounds leaping from the van & tearing down the road. We have been on Groupie’s parade, & he certainly is down on aircrew, the parade was a real bully one, bags of shouting & everything. He whizzed through the permanent staff without saying much, & when he came to us, he went really slow & bound practically everyone rigid, & the W.O. almost wore his pencil out, taking names.
[page break]
Yesterday was our day off again & once more we spent it in Birmingham. We were unable to get in at the Services Club & had to go to a large house converted into a hostel, it was pretty good. This week saw the commencing of our Flying here, I made three flights all day bombing exercises. The first one was Wednesday, & came off alright, there is a village fairly near the range & that made me twitter. It is a bit more awkward to bomb from the kite than from the Canadian Anson, because there is no perspex panel in the nose. Also the sliding panel is metal, not perspex, this necessitated having it always open, causing quite a draught. On Friday Harry Jamieson & I did two more flights with an ex-operational pilot F/O Ryan. It was pretty grim because he hadn’t the technique of the steady bombing runs, like the regular B.G pilots. The kite would be bouncing around necessitating us giving corrections & sometimes we would be nowhere near the target so we had to call ‘Dummy Run’. He would scream & bind & curse like the clappers, & said “It’s a bloody good job you’re not over a target”. That kind of stuff never gets anybody places though, & only leads to a bad exercise. We do a few of these Day Bombing trips, maybe some Night bombing, & then some Night Combined exercises. These are only cross countries but they give them the high sounding titles. We’re beginning to get really cheesed with all this training, no wonder chaps get stale, & lose all their interest & enthusiasm.
[page break]
[underlined] Friday 14th May. [/underlined]
Life still flows in its uninteresting way, we have done some map reading trips. We go on a small cross country of 3 legs, with the pilot & 3 B.A’s each who map reads one leg of the trip. They are O.K. if you get a decent pilot, who puts the Forces programme on the intercom, & is fairly tolerant with the map reading. I was up with ‘Taffy’ Evans & Norman Griffin the other day & we had a binder! Poor old Taffy chopped in the mire, by losing himself completely. The pilot was one of those tricky individuals who would fly the aircraft so a village was directly under the nose, & out of sight, & then ask you suddenly where it was. We coped anyway.
I had a good laugh the other day, whilst standing by in the flight hut for a day bombing exercise. There were a couple of chaps from the previous course there, also detailed for a bombing exercise. Like us all they weren’t very keen on it, but the antics of one of them kept me in fits. He was small with dark wavy hair, & a perfect cherub face, chubby rosy cheeks etc. looking about 17. Every few minutes he would pop to the door & gaze at the sky. Any cloud, no matter however small, was greeted with a beaming smile & the exclamation “Wizard” drawing out the last syllable, as it meant there was a faint hope of the exercise being cancelled.
[page break]
Whilst every time the sun burst forth he would scowl & slump disconsolately back in his chair, resigning himself to Fate. In the end they took off & so did we.
The lectures are still as binding & unvarying. Yesterday our “Chiefy” was taking us on Bombing Theory & although he is a good chap, he is a real lousy lecturer. Bombing Theory being one of the driest subjects in itself he succeeded in putting half the class to sleep in a quarter of an hour. Then a Sqdn/Ldr Education Officer from Group slipped into the room, & after listening for 10 mins, took over the lecture. For the next half hour, it even became quite interesting, & some points were cleared up, which I for one had been doubtful over for a long time.
So far rumours that we will not get leave at the end of the course have gained strength, I hope they turn out false. When the last few days arrive W/O Alves gives the Senior Man a list of the O.T.U’s to which we are to be posted & then the course is left to sort them out amongst themselves, I hope we get some decent ones.
Norman has had an old cycle of his sent up, it is quite handy for getting around on, and half the course use it. It might be a good idea to get one if I land on one of there really dispersed drones I hear about. I played a game of football earlier & am just beginning to feel the effects, so I’ll have supper at the NAAFI & turn in.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday May 20th. [/underlined]
We had our day off on Tuesday, & a crowd of us caught the bus outside the camp into Wolverhampton. The morning was spent looking around the town & then after dinner in a nice little café we found a decent park & spent the afternoon. After tea in the Forces Canteen above Surton’s we got down to a steady pub crawl. I have never seen a place like it, for so many girls of 16 – 17 in the pubs. Old Pete Rawlings had quite an amusing encounter with one, but this is not the place to disclose it. Anyway after closing time, four of us wandered around in a happy stupor till we sobered up a little & realised we had better look around for means to return to camp. We finally phoned a taxi who took us right into the camp, & off we bowled to bed.
As far as the flying part goes we are on the last stages, that of day and night cross countries. I don’t know which one the greater bind the latter gets it by a narrow margin, I think. It will be a relief to get to O.T.U. & go on a really organised X country. So far I have been on two day trips & five ‘scrubs’, it is an inoffensive word – ‘scrub’, but conceals a lot. When we are due for a day X country we hand our names into the Guard Room & then at 5.30 or 6 AM an S.P. rudely awakens
[page break]
us, to tear off for early briefing, breakfast & take off at 8.30 A.M. – there are afternoon X countries but I haven’t had the luck to get on one yet. It is binding to get up, see the rain, & knowing in advance it will be scrubbed, tramp 10 mins through the rain to the briefing room, & wait until they inform you officially it is cancelled. Now we are getting wise & only two going up, one with Norman’s bike to nip back & arouse the others if by chance, flying is on.
On a night cross country, our main function is winding the undercart. Actually we are supposed to do some infra red bombing, but no-one has been known to see the target, the pilot hates stooging around, & the navigator is chomping to set course. Consequently we sit & shiver in the darkness, maybe once in a while giving a beacon position to the Navigator, or taking over the controls while the pilot dives to the back. We had a little excitement on one trip when the weather was closing in over the airfield when we returned, but we got in O.K. The only good thing about it is we sleep the next day, & it breaks the monotony. A kite crashed the other day killing the occupants, they weren’t on our course. The S.S.Q. backs onto our billets though & the blood wagon was outside with the bodies in while they were getting things ready inside. It was a fairly sobering thought, but I guess we shall see more of it, the closer we get to ‘ops’.
[page break]
[underlined] 25th May. [/underlined]
Once more a change of address, I am now at my O.T.U. at Hixon, Staffs, having arrived here today. Most of us came here, some went to Whitehead & four to Lossiemouth. ‘Taffy’ Evans has gone to Whitehead & ‘Buntie’ Rogers, Norman, Jimmy, Harry, & most of our clique are still together. Naturally the Lossiemouth posting wasn’t wanted, there being no Scots on the course, so it was drawn for, I thanked the Lord my name didn’t come out of the hat.
Anyway the usual clearance procedure was got through & we were driven by lorry into Wolverhampton this morning. There was a couple of hours to kill before the train & we spent them in town. Although the distance from Bobbington to Hixon isn’t so great as the crow flies it took us a few hours by train with the changing. Transport came out after we phoned from Stafford station, & I was surprised to find the airfield was 8 miles, out from the town, at least – somebody had told me it was nearer than that.
We are all in the same hut, they are not Nissan huts, but kind of asbestos boarding & wood, on concrete bases, much better & larger than the Nissan hut. Each collection of huts is called a site & given a number, the site with the mess etc. is called Command Site, these sites are dispersed over a wide area, & are a considerable distance from the airfield. Apparently a cycle is a very handy thing, Pete Rawlings has one now.
[page break]
A course arrives here every fortnight, & we are No 17 course. After nearly a fortnight of ground training terminating with exams, we commence flying, by this time we have ‘crewed-up’ of course. This is the stage where we crowd of Air Bombers will finally split up, because inevitably after each of us joins a crew we shall go about with them, I shall be sorry, because we have been together a long while, but this breaking up of friendships happens again & again in the RAF as ours is an odd course number (17) we move to the satellite airfield, Seighford, when we have completed our ground training & finish our O.T.U. there. It is situated the other side of Stafford & is more dispersed than this, but there is a lot less discipline, as chaps say who have been there.
As usual on arrival at a new place, we have been pumping all the fellows that we can find on the various aspects of the course, & every conceivable thing attached to it. We haven’t collected much ‘gen’ yet though, beyond the fact that we parade outside the mess, after breakfast tomorrow, with the rest of training wing personnel, & then the S.W.O. will march us to the Training Wing for roll call. Apparently this is an everyday procedure & is fairly strictly adhered to. I have written off the letters to home & Mary as usual on arriving at a new station, with the address & what gen is available, & now I’ll close this entry and get into bed I think, then tomorrow I’ll start one of my last stages towards a squadron.
[page break]
[underlined] June 1st. [/underlined]
Things have changed somewhat since I last wrote. I have just returned from a compassionate 48 hr pass, which I went on when I received some very bad news from home. The C.G.I. said that I would have to revert back a course, so I am staying here on 17 course, whilst the boys on 17 go over to Seighford. We would have broken up anyway so maybe it is just as well this way. They finish their ground training this week and then my course commences the following week.
This O.T.U. course lasts approximately 3 months, after the fortnights ground training, it is all flying training with an occasional lecture slipped in. Half of the time, (the first half of the 3 months) is day flying, & the other or second half night flying. The exercises are similar in each case, we commence circuits & bumps with an instructor, then after our pilot has flown solo with us as a crew, we complete our circuits & bumps without the instructor. Then day bombing with a ‘screened’ or instructor pilot & a ‘screened’ Air Bomber after the first exercise, we do the rest alone, there are quite a few of them too. The same procedure is followed for gunnery & fighter affiliation, although most of the actual firing exercises are done with four gunners & a ‘screened’ gunner in one aircraft. Then we do a cross country with a ‘screen’, & afterwards another couple by ourselves, each longer in duration.
[page break]
The same procedure is followed for night flying, as far as is practical. Then at the end of the course comes the pièce de resistance – a leaflet [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] or “nickel” raid on France. I hope we are able to do one, as sometimes the weather prevents it & crews do a “bullseye” instead. This is an exercise over England, combining Fighter Command & the ground defences, except ack ack naturally. It isn’t that I am all that keen to see what the other side of the Channel is like, but I think it affords quite good practise, before going to a squadron and the real thing.
From what I have seen of the actual station here it isn’t too bad. The mess is about 8 minutes walk from our site, & the food is pretty good, (a lot better than Bobbington anyway) it is laid out fairly well too, & the waitresses serve us sitting down. The ante room & billiards rooms are quite large, & the station cinema, isn’t too bad, they are improving the latter I believe. Getting in & out of Stafford is rather a snag, there is a liberty bus from the Guard Room of an evening, but we are required to book seats the previous day by dinner-time, & as we rarely know that far ahead if we are going in, it is generally by taxi that we arrive there. At the moment I am acting as runner in the Discip Office until the next course commences, I wonder what sort of chaps they will be. Pete Rawlins has crewed up with the pilot that I originally had, he seemed a decent chap.
[page break]
[underlined] 8th June. [/underlined]
Well, I have been on the course nearly two days now. There wasn’t much for me to do last week stooging around in the Discip. Office, so I was given a 48 hr pass over the weekend. So I said goodbye to all the boys as they moved over to Seighford during the week end, though I shall see Norman a couple of times in Stafford if we can arrange it. I was lucky travelling into Stafford, I had just come out of the Guard Room with my pass, when an MT Corporal said “Going into Stafford, Sarge?”. So in I travelled in style, lolling back in the Groupie’s car, the driver was going to meet the Groupie at the station.
When I returned yesterday I had expected to find the billet empty, but I had switched my things to the corner bed, just on the off chance, somebody might roll in. They certainly had – a whole room of Canadians, pilots, navigators, and Air Bombers. On the whole they seem a pretty decent crowd, pretty noisy, but full of life and really generous & anxious to be friendly, I like Canadians quite a lot, anyway. I had to smile, because as soon as they found I had been on the previous course, they kept asking me all sorts of ‘gen’ about the course, in exactly the same manner as I had done a fortnight earlier. It was precious little I could give them. Then today we started the ground work, it was exactly the same as my first few lectures on the last course, they follow a strict pattern here.
[page break]
[underlined] June 13th. [/underlined]
I have arrived at a stage which will play a most important part in my immediate future – I am crewed up. In a bomber a man’s life is wholly in the hands of his crew members, and the closer they are together, and the better they are as a team, then the more chance of survival they have. I [deleted] a [/deleted] had always understood that considerably rare, and quite an amount of time was allotted at O.T.U’s for the purpose of selecting crews. Hixon has proved the fallacy of it, everyone starts the course separately as a course of pilots, & course of navigators or Air bombers – W/Ops etc. They remain in their classes for the first lot of lectures and hardly have any chance of meeting the various other categories of air crew, the only chance being in the mess or the billet. Suddenly like a bolt from the blue it is announced that everyone must be crewed up in two days or else they will be allocated by the instructors into a crew. A mad flap then starts, people go wandering about, staring into each others faces, vainly trying to sum up whether a person will be an asset to crew up with – or otherwise. Having experienced this on the previous course, I thought it best to let matters take their own course.
Friday night, I was sitting in the mess, after writing a few letters, having a quiet drink & waiting for the sandwiches to arrive for supper. At the next table to me, were two Canadian
[page break]
pilots from my billet, McCann who slept next to me & Cecil Kindt who slept opposite McCann. They had been drinking for a while and were both pretty mellow, as Kindt went out to get some more drinks he [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] leant over me and said, “Mac said would you join him at the next table”, so I moved over to where McCann was sitting.
We chatted for a couple of minutes, then he asked if [deleted] [indecipherable letter] [/deleted] I was crewed up with anyone. When I replied in the negative, he said “Well how would you like to sling in with me, and be my bomb-aimer?” I rather liked him, and so I had found a pilot. Cecil Kindt returned with the beer and we had a drink to it. Well, I think I had better put on record my impressions of Mac, as he is always called, & the other crew members. Len McCann, though I’ve never heard anyone call him Len, is only about 5’ 4”, and almost as broad. He said he has lost a lot of weight over here, & that he weighed 220 lbs in Canada, so he must have been tubby. For his weight & size though he isn’t so very fat, he has some superfluous flesh but is extraordinarily thickset under it. The amusing part of him is his neck which is very short & seems almost as thick as his shoulders are wide, actually he takes an 18 1/2" collar. The other fellows often call him for no reason at all, just to watch him turn around.
[page break]
He cannot swivel his neck as we do, but has to lift his shoulder & turn as one would with a stiff neck, yet the action is not a slow one; he takes all the kidding in very good part. In features he strikes me as very similar to the comedian Lou Costello, having the same cheery round face & turned up nose. He had his hair cropped right short in Canada & now stands up in a mass of wiry black bristles. With a short bristly moustache this completed my description of Mac, with whom I shall be for long time – I trust.
I asked Mac if he had a Navigator, & when he said he had one in mind, I told him of another one, who seemed quite a ‘gen’ chap to me. He was a Canadian & Mac knew him & told me he was a real farmer, & that he always ‘nattered’ nineteen to the dozen, so we didn’t ask him. On my advice Mac tackled the navigator he had in mind, just in case somebody else should snap him up. Nobody had, and he became our navigator.
His name is Ken Price, also a Canadian, and I cannot give a better description than say he is the exact image of Gary Cooper. It may seem as though I am rather a film fan, but the resemblance is remarkable. He is tall & lean, very quiet and reserved, and seems a thoroughly decent chap all round. By all accounts, from what the other navigators say he is a darned
[page break]
good man at his job.
Then this afternoon Mac introduced me to the wireless/op. he had chosen. Bill Bowery is his name, and he is English coming from Sunderland. He seems quite a keen type and knows his gen, his broad “Geordie” accent tickles us, but it is nowhere near as broad as Jimmy Selkirk’s was, or others I have heard. In appearance, he is about 5’ 8” well set, with straight auburn hair, brushed down, he seems to have an expression as though puzzling or enquiring over something, & that may be a good thing. Anyway there are four of us now, we shall get a rear gunner in a day or so, & the five of us do O.T.U. together.
Mid/Upper Gunners do their Gunnery School somewhere and then join us at the end of the course, generally in time for the “Nickel”. As we are flying Wimpeys there is no accomodation [sic] for them, & it would be a waste of time their coming here all through the course. Also in Fighter-Evasion Tactics the Rear Gunner gives all the instructions, as the co-operation between the pilot & him is the result of their training at O.T.U. The remaining member of the crew, the Flight Engineer we will pick up at our Heavy Conversion Unit, and then we will be a full crew of seven. I hope the other three members will be as good as these, & we should have a rattling good crew.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday 17th June. [/underlined]
On Monday we found ourselves a rear gunner. Mac had noticed a chap who looked pretty keen, but I had heard him ‘nattering’ away and didn’t go much on him. I had another one in mind, fairly similar in appearance to the above mentioned one, and pointed him out to Mac, so he told me to go ahead and contact him.
Nobody has asked him to crew up, and he agreed to pitch in with us. He is a pretty decent kid, he is only 18, I know I’m only 19 myself but he looks very young and he is only about 5’ 5” and slimly built. He is a Londoner and comes from fairly near me, the most important thing, he seems to know his ‘gen’ on gunnery pretty thoroughly. His name is Johnny Watson.
So there we are the five of us, who will do O.T.U. together as a crew and pick up the other two afterwards. Somehow I can’t help wondering sometimes what lies in store for us, and the ability of a crew counts for such a lot in emergencies. Still ours looks pretty good to me, even though it does seem rather early to say it.
At the moment we are completing our ground lectures, and then tomorrow we start our exams. They aren’t actually long ones, or terribly important, although if one makes a pretty poor showing they are liable to be put back a course. The only subject
[page break]
I am hazy on is gun turrets, I had hardly any instruction on them at B. & G. School, then here a couple of hours were devoted to it. As it happened I was at the back of a crowded class room, and the diagram being on the wall, well I just couldn’t see a thing.
We have had some lectures together as a crew although for the majority of them we remain in our aircrew categories. There is an old Wellington Mk I in the Airmanship Hangar, & is sitting on supports, so that undercart drill can be carried out. We scramble all over it, learning the positions of various things, petrol cocks, escape hatches, crash positions, oxygen bottles, dinghy releases, & a 101 other things necessary to learn in an aircraft. A couple of times we have scrambled out of it, on dinghy or baling out drill – hope I never have to use either. The Wimpey is a real battered old thing, but it was used for the “1,000 bomber” raid on Cologne. Apparently to make up a 1,000 aircraft they called on all the old kites at O.T.U’s & anything that could get airborne was used. If the public had only known some of the old kites that were used they would have had a shock.
The airmanship instructor, Sgt Peacock, did a tour on Lancs as a mid/upper gunner and saw quite a bit of action apparently. One would think he would at least get a crown at the end of the tour, but his is well overdue.
[page break]
[underlined] 21st June [/underlined]
‘Midsummer’s Day’ – it certainly has been glorious weather too, I’m afraid the long daylight evenings mean later day flying for us and consequently less evenings off. We officially started our Flying Course today, though our crew weren’t on today, we commence our circuits and bumps tomorrow.
The results of the exams were posted up today. I had done well in everything but Turrets, on which I made a horrible ‘boob’ – it was as I expected Macgillvray the Canadian pilot opposite me in the billet was cursing because his Bomb Aimer, another Canadian named Dodson, had come bottom in the B/Aimer course. Apparently Dodson is a bit of a woman chaser, & didn’t bother staying in to do any swotting for the exam. Macgillvray was giving forth “He wants to get down to some studying instead of getting on the nest so much”, and so forth. The most amusing part is that Macgillvray is one of the biggest wolves I’ve known. He has a stock of Tangee lipsticks & cosmetics, with a few silk stockings which he uses as bait for the women, - he says. I have never known him to part with anything in the fortnight he has been here & he has been with a couple of women. It is dead funny to hear Mac slang him about them, as Mac has very little time for women. He isn’t a misogynist but he just doesn’t bother. Anyway most of his remarks although screamingly funny are quite unprintable.
[page break]
We are all in ‘A’ Flight, a whole course comprises a Flight which goes round in strict rotation, as the courses commence Day or Night Flying. Our Flight Commander Sqdn/Ldr. Ford seems quite O.K. he gave us a welcoming natter, and was very much to the point regarding keeping the crew room tidy, punctuality etc. still he is quite right in stressing these points. This afternoon I squeezed in an hour’s practise on the Bombing Teacher. There is a system here where the various aircrew categories each have to put in so many hours practise on exercises relating to their own particular aircrew duties Bomb Aimers have to do 20 hours in the Bombing Teacher, 10 hours on the Link Trainer, and 6 hours operating a secret navigational instrument. Navigators have to spend quite a few more hours on this instrument than we do, and also take a certain number of astro-shots. W/Ops have to get [deleted] [indecipherable word] a stated number of Q.D.M’s fixes etc. & Gunners get so many hours, spotting turret training, and other exercises, I haven’t found out what the pilots do yet. All the exercises which are carried out on the ground, that is practically everyone’s except the W/Ops have to be fitted into our spare time. That is when we are hanging around the crew room & not flying, then we can nip across & tick off an hour in the Bombing Teacher or the Link. During the rest of the course, although we are flying most of the time, we still have some lectures, as crews on matters of general interest & importance.
[page break]
[underlined] 27th June [/underlined]
Sunday again – although it is very similar to all the other days of the week, here. We have a Church Parade, first thing, all the pupils fall in at Training Wing and then march to the airfield, along the perimeter track, to a temporary parade ground outside a hangar, its about 1 1/2 miles from Training Wing. Anyway all the station is on parade there, & we take our place, the Groupie then rolls up for the flag hoisting, inspection and so forth. The flag is flown on a double line & pully attached to the extension of the hangar roof, where the door slides back into. Today the S.P. that was doing the flag hoisting pulled the flag up O.K. then when he gave a pull to unfurl it at the top nothing happened. He pulled & pulled & still no joy, the poor devil got very red in the face as the Groupie was waiting to give the order “General Salute”. However there was nothing else for it, & shamefacedly he hauled it down, & not daring to risk it again, pulled it up already unfurled. After the salute we had to march off in squadrons to another hangar where the pulpit was an RAF lorry covered with the Union Jack and a piano, for hymn singing on. When this was over we were marched off dismissed, and then everything carried on as in a normal day. On all stations when flying is done there is no break for Sundays as they had in the peace time RAF, funny how one almost loses track of the days that way.
[page break]
Although we are still on the circuits and bumps stage we are about at the end of it, and will soon be onto some more interesting exercises. All of the crew except the Navigator fly on circuits & landings, & he is lucky not to, it gets pretty binding after the first hour or so. When we first started a ‘screened’ pilot flew with ‘Mac’ giving him the ‘gen’ and everything, and after a little while let him go solo. We were a little apprehensive, in case the short time given, wasn’t enough to let Mac become acquainted with the new cockpit layout. However everything went O.K. and then we continued on our own with circuits & bumps. It hardly seems as though we are off the ground before we are getting ready for the approach & landing. Some of the landings we bump up & down quite a few times & Mac [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] refers to these as the “Grasshopper Blues”. I sit in the collapsible seat, for the second pilot, & it is O.K. seeing everything that goes on, but I wouldn’t like to be in the W/Ops position, feeling the bumps & jarrings, without seeing what was what. For some of our circuits we go over to Seighford and do them there. Actually if we could fly continually we could do them all in a couple of days. However in order to make the aircraft go round, & keep all the crews at the same stage in training, we are allotted the same length of detail. Sometimes a crew does get ahead of the others by luckily striking good weather every time, & never scrubbing an exercise through snags.
[page break]
[underlined] July 4th. [/underlined]
American Independence Day – I expect all the Americans around here are making whoopee. There are always a lot in Stafford, they come from the large transit camp at Stone, a small town 6 – 7 miles from here. All American aircrew, I believe, entering or leaving the country pass through there.
We are making steady progress on the course, we have managed to get three bombing exercises done, we are a bit ahead in that respect but behind in Fighter Application & a couple of other things. As I said before it is a matter of luck sometimes the kites are U/S & that puts us behind on that type of exercise for a while, it pretty well evens up at the end though. On the first bombing exercise we went up with a ‘screened’ pilot & a ‘screened’ bomb aimer. Mac had never made bombing runs before, it is only pilots that have been instructors, & staff pilots at B & G schools who have that experience. The ‘screened’ pilot was there to instruct Mac on how to make the corrections of course, that I asked for, & various other little points. There wasn’t very much need for the ‘screened’ bomb aimer, as bombing is very similar on whatever aircraft one flys in. The main point, he was there to point out, was in the method of giving corrections of course. In Ansons the pilots could flat turn them, thus the sighting angle was practically round when you gave “steady”, and a good pilot could hold it practically as it was. However a Wellington has to have banked turns, consequently if the bomb
[page break]
aimer waits till the target is in the drift wires of the bomb sight & then gives “Steady” – the pilot flattens out and the target is then way off to one side, so it requires some practise to estimate when to say “Steady” thus making the target come into the drift wires when the pilot flattens out.
Poor old Mac has a hell of a time on run ups, he is so small that he can just see out of the windscreen. He watches the target whilst making his run up, & then when I give a correction, he slides down in his seat to kick the rudder bars, & his head is below the windscreen level, so then he has to pull himself up again to look out. He told us he is actually just under the height standard for a pilot but flannelled his medical.
We did a low level bombing exercise yesterday, & once more took up the two ‘screens’. My first bomb overshot by about 300 yds, & so did the next, I checked every setting on the bombsight, & all were correct, so I called the ‘screened’ bomb aimer & told him, & he could find nothing wrong. So I tried the third one & that was 300 yds overshoot again, then I realised I was taking a line of sight with the back & fore sights as for high level, whereas for low level bombing the back sight, & front beads are used. I told the screen & he told me to carry on & they would make the exercise a grouping one. That is by maths they discount the different sighting & work out where the bombs would have landed, using the front beads. The exercise came out to 47 yards so it ended O.K.
[page break]
[underlined] 10th July [/underlined]
The time is slipping past and we are well on the way to finishing our day flying. We had rather an amusing incident the other day, amusing that is to everyone but Mac. He always taxies rather swiftly & as we were passing the control tower, we reached the part where the perimeter track, dips a little. Consequently we gathered speed and started to swing, instead of throttling back & braking, Mac decided to open up the opposite throttle to swing us back. However he over-corrected and we swung back across the perimeter track & onto the grass the other side, in the direction of the runway. Again Mac opened the opposite throttle, and again over-corrected, & we crossed the perry-track once more & raced towards a hangar. Mac clamped on the brakes for all he was worth but it wasn’t enough, the hangar doors were fully open, & we struck the edge of them with our port main plane & sent them thundering across. It must have shaken the people inside to see the hangar doors suddenly move swiftly. From our point of view it was quite amusing, one moment there was hardly a soul [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] in sight, then with the same effect as if someone had kicked an ant-hill, people came pouring out from the hangar, & clustered around the kite. The pièce de resistance was the fact that we had cut clean through the ropes that held the Groupie’s flag & this was now drooped nonchalantly over our astro-dome. – Groupy took a dim view of it. Poor Mac sweated blood, but he only got a strip torn off, but the kite had a mains-plane changed.
[page break]
[underlined] 17th July [/underlined]
We had an enjoyable night in Stafford this week, as usual we got set into a regular pub crawl. Old Mac is all against this, he likes to get settled in at one pub and stay there all night drinking steadily. His words of wisdom are “Jeeze, you’re wasting valuable drinking time, going round looking for other pubs, - sit here”. I have never seen anyone drink so much, and affect them so little, it is amusing. He can knock back the pints and I have never seen him, what you might call drunk, merry yes, but inebriated – never. His personality is amazing everyone everywhere gets to know him, & all like him, he will sit and ‘natter’ with people for hours, and tell the most amusing stories of his life in Ottawa, and recount anecdotes of his numerous friends. He certainly is a tonic to have around. While we were in Stafford we saw the Gunnery Leader, he is an Aussie Flt/Lt, and a real lad when he is sober. Now he was out on the beer, evidently, & was strolling down the High St, with his hat on the back of his head, a dingy old battle dress on, & swinging, a gent’s black umbrella, rolled up (where he got [deleted] [indecipherable letter] [/deleted] it from I dont know). On his other arm was a real brassy blonde – he certainly doesn’t give a damn.
All our bombing exercises are finished and two of our three cross country trips, I have one more gunnery trip to do, and so has ‘Nipper’, thats [sic] what we call Johnny now. I rather like the Air Firing trips which are carried out in Cardigan Bay, then
[page break]
they generally fly to Rhyl, & fly at about 30 – 50 ft just a little way out from the shore. There are always lots of holiday makers there. Cecil Kindt had a strip torn off the other day, through an Air Firing accident. They were sent out over the Wash to fire so many rounds into the sea, this in itself is pretty boring and the gunners always look round for some sort of a target. His rear gunner spotted some sort of an old hulk and fired at it on a couple of runs. Apparently it was a wreck & their [sic] were a couple of divers, & salvage men working on it, & one leapt into the water, because of the bullets. God knows how the rear gunner didn’t see them, anyway they got the kite’s letter, phoned to the shore, & by the time Cecil landed the pressure had been put on Sqdn/Ldr Ford as he gave it to Kindt hot & strong.
Macgillvray has been providing laughs all round with his amorous adventures. Not so very long ago he met a nurse in Nottingham, a very nice girl by all accounts, a widow, anyway it wasn’t long before Macgillvray was staying at her flat. However he couldn’t get to Nottingham very much so he began associating with a WAAF Sgt here on the camp. One thing about him he admits openly what he is after, anyway she wasn’t that type, but after a little while with Macgillvray she was. Now she is crazy over him, & runs about after him, whilst he is very off handed. At the same time he meets an A.T.S. girl, on leave who lives in a house, a couple of hundred yards from our billet. It didn’t take him very long to string her along
[page break]
as well, so there he is with three strings to his bow at the same time – no wonder he looks a wreck. The amusing incident arose the other night when the WAAF Sgt saw him coming out of a corn field with this blonde A.T.S. She was furious & drinking with him the next night she said “Don’t let me see you with that – tart again,” which for her is a very strong word. Jokingly one night she said she was the “Three-hook Wonder”, hook meaning Stripes, Macgillvray, & Mac, who also knows her well, immediately changed it to the “Three-Hook Blunder,” & later cut it down to “The Blunder,” & so it has remained – poor girl.
They are a pretty decent bunch of fellows in this hut, we have had a little reshuffle in order to get crews together. Some of the original Canucks are in other huts, whilst Johnny, & Bill are now in here so we have all our crew. Macgillvray has his Navigator – Lance Weir, & his Bomb Aimer Dodson, both Canadians in here. Weir is a really decent chap, very quiet spoken, some of the boys kid him & call him “Toody-Fruit,” because he has a habit of rubbing talcum powder over his body. Frankie Allen, pilot, Yelland, navigator, & Tom Hughes – bomb aimer, all Canucks form another crew. Hughes is very decent, I have only one pair of pyjamas & when that was at the laundry he saw me dive into bed in the altogether, & asked the reason. When I [deleted] said [/deleted] [inserted] told [/inserted] him he tossed me a Canadian Comforts pair & said “Keep it, I’ve got five other pairs”, it was good of him. Their rear gunner Rose, an English chap is here, a small comical fellow, they call him John L. after the boxer Sullivan, because he wears long pants like him. Cecil Kindt, with Sam Small, navigator, and Macdonald, b/aimer, all Canadians, complete the hut.
[page break]
[underlined] 22nd July [/underlined]
We are now the senior course here, and have now moved on to become the ‘night-flying’ flight, tonight we expect to start our night circuits & bumps, some of the chaps commenced last night. They hoped to squeeze us a 48 hr pass in between the end of day flying & the start of night, but we were a little behind as a course through unavoidable incidents, so we had had it! I am sorry the day cross country trips are over, as I really enjoyed them, we generally flew to Rhyl, and I camera-bombed the pier. Then drill was done as if we were on an ‘op’ & that was our coast we were leaving. We then flew across to the Isle of Man which separated the enemy coast, & I would camera-bomb the quay at Ramsey. With a brilliant sun, & flying in our shirt sleeves everything looked lovely. The sea was a sparkling blue and invariably there would be a huge convoy spread about, a never failing source of interest to us. However we had been warned to keep well clear of them, as the naval gunners were very trigger itchy, and one of our crews had been fired on by an aircraft carrier. We would fly across the Isle of Man, head North, then turn in at the English coast once more, & return to Cannock Chase for a bombing exercise of 12 practise bombs on the range, & then return to base. The rations were pretty good, we always saved our tin of orange juice to drink on a morning after the night before it was very good, I suppose we will get the same on night X-countries.
[page break]
On the first one we had a ‘screened’ pilot, then the next one did by ourselves, the third & largest, we carried a full bomb load of 250 lb H.E’s filled with sand, except one which was live. This I had to bomb on a sea range with and photograph the splash. We had a ‘screened’ bomb-aimer/navigator on this one, an F/O pretty decent chap. [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] [inserted] He [/inserted] asked Mac if he would let him do some tight turns over his home in Aberystwyth as we were passing over it. Mac agreed but quickly retrieved the controls when he saw we were almost stalling.
For night flying we report to the flight just after 6 P.M. to see what is on, naturally it is broad daylight then. Then if we are not on till late we can go to the Station Cinema, as we did last night. It is the usual effort, it is in the lecture hall, when we first came the cinematograph was mounted on a large table, so if one sat well back, the noise of the machine drownded [sic] the sound track. Now they have built a brick projection box, and have provided a wooden platform for the dearer seats – with the usual front two rows reserved – Officers Only.
Looking back at my last entry, I see I have forgotten to mention ‘Pinky’ Tomlin. He is a Canadian Bomb Aimer, but his pilot, & navigator are commissioned, & his W/Op & R/Gunner are in another hut so he is ‘one alone’. He is pretty tubby & really loves food, he bought himself an electric [deleted] plate [/deleted] [inserted] heater [/inserted] to use as a grill, & cooks things from the numerous parcels he receives from home. He was a scout master back in Canada – not a bad chap, rather hail-fellow-well met.
[page break]
[underlined] July 30th. [/underlined]
Night circuits and bumps are almost completed for us – Thank God! – they really are binding. We follow exactly the same procedure as with our day flying, first of all with an instructor, then Mac solo’ed and we carried on by ourselves. The first couple of times were O.K. but then it grew monotonous staring out into the blackness, with just the circuit lights to relieve the unbroken darkness. I suppose an artist gazing at them would murmur “Pearls cast upon a black velvet background”, but to us they mean “Keep me under your port wing, and fly at [symbol] 1,000 ft.” The Dren lighting takes some getting used to, the flarepath lights are only 15 watt bulbs and are hooded and secured to give a 15o vertical, and 40o horizontal spread of light, only in a down wind direction. Consequently one can only see them, immediately facing into them, as soon as we have taken off we can no longer see them. It was funny when Bill first saw this, he is generally working on the radio, then he looked out of the astro-dome for the first time on night take off, and called on the A/T “Hey! they’ve switched off the flare path now we are airborne”. Johnny has the worst job, sitting right at the end of the kite, cramped in his turret, and feeling all the crashes and jars of landing far more than us. Every now & again, I go lurching along the catwalk with coffee for him. Bill was quite eager to sit in the cockpit, so I change places with him sometimes & listen to dance music on the radio.
[page break]
We get more time off now than we did on night flying, our day off now becomes a night off. So we have the day off after night flying, then that night off & the following day until 6 P.M. Should night flying be scrubbed the night before, then one can make two nights and two days out of it, providing one hasn’t put in a pass. On a couple of days off we have been into Birmingham and stayed at the Services Club. At least we did the first time, the second time they were full up, so we had to doze in arm chairs & so forth. Mac took me into the American Red Cross, I didn’t think we could go in there, but it was O.K. The food in there is very good indeed, I believe it is sent over from the States. I took Johnny in there on our second visit and he thought it was an excellent place, they are certainly superior to our Services Clubs.
There is another instructor in the Bombing Section now, a Sgt Bomb Aimer, just finished his tour of ‘ops’, Sgt Mason his name is, quite a decent fellow. He gave us a ‘natter’ on what life was like on a squadron at the moment. It certainly cleared up a few points and provided a shock. According to him it is a pretty odds on chance that a crew will get the chop before finishing a tour. On his squadron only about 4 crews finished, as far as he could recollect all the time that he was there. It certainly isn’t a rosy future anyway, still there’s always the chance we will be one of them to come through.
[page break]
[underlined] 5th August [/underlined]
We have only about a fortnight left before we finish here, one crew became well advanced so they were sent over to Seighford onto 17 course the previous one to ours. At the moment we are on Night bombing exercises, and somehow we always seem to be ‘joed’ for the very last detail. Consequently we hang about all night waiting to take off, and finally get the exercise in between 6 & 7 A.M. when it is beginning to get light. Then we arrive back in the hut to find all the others are up and have been for hours – they nicknamed us “The Dawn Patrol”.
Our first prang on this course occurred the other night. There have been some major prangs on other courses while we have been here, and a few minor ones [deleted] [indecipherable letter] [/deleted] on our course, this was our first major one though. We were circling the airfield waiting to land, when we saw a kite overshoot, prang and burst into flames, not far off the end of the runway, we couldn’t see much detail at all. So we continued to circle and await instructions, then all lights were extinguished and we were ordered to land at Seighford. Over we went and lobbed in then with three others crews, and naturally were wondering what had happened.
We had a meal in the mess, & then as there was nobody around to fix us up with beds, we had to doze on chairs in the mess. After breakfast, which was quite early,
[page break]
we decided to sleep on in the ante-room, as Hixon was going to phone when we were to return. However the C.M.C. had locked the ante-room, & said it was always out of bounds in the morning, and would make no exception for us – nice type. So we had to sit on the grass outside the mess for a couple of hours.
I met Derek Ashton over there, they will be finished in a day or so, & so would I if I had still been on that course. I couldn’t have had a better crew than what I have now, though. Ashton said they liked Seighford better than Hixon as there was no ‘bull’ there and it was a lot easier to get into Stafford. The only snag is, it is far more dispersed than Hixon is.
We didn’t get back to Hixon before 1 P.M. as we were held up for brake pressure. It turned out to be Carr’s crew who had pranged. They were making a flapless landing with an instructor, owing to trouble with the flaps. The instructor was flying it, and he approached too fast, overshot didn’t make it, and crashed on the railway lines, when the kite immediately caught fire. Luckily they were all unhurt except Sgt Mann, the ‘screened’ bomb aimer, he was burnt slightly on the face, and has been admitted to hospital for a short while. It seems Fate that he should get through a tour unscathed and then have this happen at O.T.U.
[page break]
[underlined] 12th August [/underlined]
Only a week to go, and then most probably we shall fly over enemy territory for the first time – on a ‘nickel’, I hope we do one anyway. The course is split practically in half with the first half slightly ahead of the others – we are in the latter. I said goodbye to Norman and the boys on 17 course, when they came over here, they have to get cleared here as well as at Seighford. Pete Rawlings was chatting to me about his skipper, he was the one I would have had on 17 course. He said he was a damn good pilot, but he would ‘natter’ such a lot on the inter-com. – I should have hated that.
We certainly get good meals on night flying, they have opened, a place especially for us near the cinema. It is a pukka little cook house, with a Cpl & two WAAFs, just for our flight. The Cpl is a good type & we get steaks & eggs for our flying meals, it is bang on. Although we are not supposed to officially, we go there for supper, if there is no flying detail for us that particular night. There is a real craze for cards now, & Hughes, Mac, Bill, Johnny & myself & various others, often play Blackjack & Pontoon, of a night if we aren’t on. We start in the evening & play till the small hours & then stagger down to see what Flying supper is. The Canadians are fond of playing “Shoot”, & have a school regularly in the locker room.
[page break]
If night flying is scrubbed for everyone, most of the boys turn in at 11 P.M. or so, in order to have the next day free. However Mac & a couple of others hate getting to bed at that time, preferring to turn in late, & sleep the following day, as if night flying was on. They generally get Pinky Tomlins, electric heater out, & cook things out of their Canadian food parcels. Mac is really amusing when he gets nattering about “Chicken soup with noodles”, & “weeners” & various other Canadian foods. Naturally they kick up a fair amount of noise, and the boys trying to sleep shout out uncomplimentary remarks to Mac, as he is generally telling an anecdote or a story about back home. Then he immediately bellows back “- this is a night flying hut, get out of that bed, you lazy so & so”. The amusing part is the following day, when they are all up & about, & Mac is trying to sleep through the noise. He will sit up & shout “Quiet, let a guy get some sleep”, & they laugh & generally Hughes will give him a shake & say “Come on McCann this is a night flying hut”, & various cracks until Mac aims a boot. They are a good bunch of boys though.
Another good thing about this night flying is that we don’t bother about the C.O’s billet inspection every week. We just put a notice on the door “Night Flying Hut – Do Not Disturb”, & funnily enough nobody does.
[page break]
[underlined] 19th August. [/underlined]
Our O.T.U. Course has now ended, the perk was last night when we did a “Nickel” to Rennes. The first lot of our course left a few days ago, they had to do a ‘bullseye’ exercise to finish as there were no “nickels” laid on. They got 10 days leave, & posted to Lindholme to go on Lancasters, that is where we will go, everyone goes onto Lancs from this O.T.U. We had another cross country to do, the usual long stooge right up to the Orkneys, with airfire and bombing at Caernarvon – what a farce.
Yesterday we were told that all the remaining crews would finish with a ‘Nickel’ that night, & we have to take up the kite we would be flying in and Air-Test it. The tail trim proved to be U/S on ours & another was put on, with another crew air testing it. At evening time we assembled in the intelligence room for briefing, it was a pukka briefing, like they have on a squadron, with the Sqdn/Ldr Intelligence Officer taking it. Then the C.O. & a couple of other officers said a few words, & briefing was over, they even had an S.P. on duty outside the door. We put all our personal belongings in an envelope with our name on it, collected our escape kits & foreign money, then off to the locker room to dress.
Half of the crews were going to St. Malo, and the rest of us to Rennes, we were flying the same track & course to Isigny at the base of the Cherbourg peninsula, & then to Avranches our next pin point, where we would continue our various ways. Soon we were all dressed, then into the crew bus & out to the kites.
[page break]
They were lined up together, & as R/T isn’t allowed on any ‘ops’ take-offs, a yellow verey was to be fixed from control for the signal to start up engines, then a green verey, when it was time for the first kite to start taxying out. The photographic vans drove out with the camera magazines, & the LAC, rather a gigolo type, who handed up mine, uttered the famous words “Wish I was coming with you”. Suddenly up went the yellow cartridge & the ground crews leapt into action, and the roar of engines shattered the summer’s evening. Johnny then called up to say none of the lights would work in his turret, & the spare fuses had no effect. This caused quite a flap, ‘bods’ went dashing everywhere, & both an armourer & a fitter came dashing along when it was a job for an electrician. During this time the green verey went up & the first kite taxied out, Macgillvray was next, on our right and he waved to us, as they went out, we were still waiting there as the kites on our left followed Macgillvray out, & soon we were sitting there alone. The Groupy came whizzing over in his car to see what the electrician was doing, but at that time one came along with the fuses that had to be changed inside the fuselage. So everything O.K. at last, we taxied out by ourselves, the others all having taken off. All the officers were on the control tower and they waved as we went past, then onto the runway, a green from the A.C.P. and off we went. The others were circling base to gain height, & there was 10 mins to go before setting course, so we were O.K. for time. We set course with them, & made up our height by the first turning point.
[page break]
It was quite dusk as we crossed the coast near Southampton, & it was quite dark when Ken said “We’re getting near the enemy coast”. I strained my eyes to peer through the darkness, & after a little while made out the long narrow neck of land, that I had memorised so well as the Cherbourg peninsula. Then I saw my first flak, the sudden whitish flashes on the ground, & after a brief while, the flashes (like twinkling lights but not so harmless). I felt a sense of false confidence, as it seemed remote from us, but the truth was there wasn’t very much flak, and nobody would have worried much. I told them we were starboard of track, & we altered course & soon crossed the enemy coast. Johnny said there was quite a bit more flak going up at the chaps behind us.
I pinpointed the river at Avranches, & after a while we came to the dropping place, it was 15 miles S.E of Rennes owing to the wind. We had to follow the bombing procedure, & drop them by a distributor in order to space them out. A sudden shout from Johnny caused a flap, & as he said “There’s thousands of them floating everywhere,” I cursed him as I wanted to give the order “Close Bomb Doors”. Eventually we shut him up and returned to base. It was an uneventful return journey, & we landed tired but happy (admittedly mainly because we were going on leave). Carr got quite a bit of flak over St. Malo.
We slept in this morning for a while & then got going on our clearance chits. Mac has met the Mid/Upper who has joined our crew, but the rest of us haven’t seen him yet. Tomorrow morning we will complete our clearance chits, then off on 10 days leave, before going to a Con Unit. So goodbye to Hixon.
[page break]
[underlined] 29th August. [/underlined]
Since I last wrote various changes have taken place. On the morning of the 20th, the day we [deleted] went [/deleted] left Hixon, we reported at the Adjutant’s office for our warrants & passes. He came out very apologetically & said a last minute change of posting had occurred, we were to go on Stirlings & report to a Con. Unit at Woolfox Lodge, after [underlined] 6 [/underlined] days leave. Losing four days leave didn’t seem too good to us, also we had heard pretty duff reports of Stirlings on ‘ops’. Still off we went – the orderly room had told us the Con Unit was near Cambridge & the warrants were made out to there.
I caught the evening train back, but when I went to the Cambridge R.T.O. they said Hixon Orderly Room had boobed, & Woolfox Lodge was near Stamford. As there were no more trains that night, I had to spend the night in the Nissen hut there, rather grim. In the morning I met Johnny & Pinky Tomlin, & we travelled to Stamford, we had to change at Peterborough and there met some more of the boys. At Stamford we phoned for transport, but it was a few hours before it arrived and we had [deleted] dinner [/deleted] lunch in the George Hotel. Mac & some of the others arrived here yesterday and are in the hut near to ours, and today we have been tramping around with our arrival chits, but as the course commences for us tomorrow we won’t bother to finish them. This course has already been on a couple of days, they were as unprepared for us, as we were for coming here.
[page break]
[underlined] [deleted] August [/deleted] [inserted] September [/inserted] 5th. [/underlined]
First, I had better bring my crew up to date, as we have a full crew now. Don Keeley the Mid-Upper Gunner, who joined us as we left Hixon is tall & very dark, his face has been sunburnt so much it leaves one with the impression almost of an Indian, he is quiet a good looking chap & seems very decent. Our engineer was allotted to us by the Engineering Leader, and is a Welshman, Jack Barker. He is about 5 ft 5” with a cheerful face, & crisp wavy hair, we haven’t had a lot to do with him yet, as quite naturally he still goes around with the engineers who came with him as a course, from St. Athens, I think I can safely say that we have got a very good crew, though.
This station is far more dispersed than Hixon was. It is cut in half by the Great North Road, to the East of the road is the airfield itself, whilst to the West are the living & communal sites. Our billet is a quarter of an hours walk to the mess, then from the mess it is a 20 min walk, to the other side of the airfield where training-wing is. There are no ablutions on the sites, and washing kit is stolen if it is left in the ablutions by the mess, so we wash from an old rain water tub at the back of the hut.
We have a ground course of a week to 10 days here, comparable to that at O.T.U. only bringing newer work into it. At last I have met the MK. XIV Gyro Bombright, the one I shall actually use on ‘ops’ – it certainly is a bag of tricks. In a day or so we will have our exams, & then commence our flying on Stirlings.
[page break]
[underlined] 14th [deleted] August [/deleted] [inserted] September [/inserted]. [/underlined]
The exams are over, everyone passed O.K. and we are now underway with our Flying Conversion. For the engineers, this is when they fly for the first time, as they pass out from there [sic] training school, and come straight here to be crewed up, without ever having flown before. It seems pretty hard on them, to have only a few hours air experience before they arrive at a squadron and go on ‘ops’.
Stirlings are the largest 4 engined bomber there is, and the cockpit is certainly a height from the ground. They have a long undercart, & it is quite a common prang, to see an undercart wiped off, as the aircraft have a tendency to swing & if one brakes severely & swerves, the undercart is quite likely to go. I have to fly as second pilot in there, and attend to boost, revs, flaps & undercart, it takes both of us to get the kite off the deck & they take a hell of a long run.
For a lot of our circuits and bumps we flew over to a Yankee airfield, they had Fortresses. We used to fly there for 2 hours or so & then return. Before Mac had soloed, he was taking off there, & the kite swung viciously & shot across the grass straight towards a Fort. There were some mechanics working on it, and they looked up to see a Stirling thundering at them, without pause they leapt off the wing, fell over picked their selves up & dashed off. If it hadn’t been dicey, it would have seemed ludicrous, however, the screened pilot took a hand, pulled at the controls, & we took off right over the Fort. Mac soloed O.K. a little later, & now we are on X-countries.
[page break]
[underlined] 22nd [deleted] August [/deleted] [inserted] September [/inserted] [/underlined]
Our Con. Unit is nearly over, & we shall soon be on an operational squadron, different instructors speak in glowing terms of their old squadrons, & advise us to try & get posted there so we don’t know where we are. At the moment we are commencing our night X country period, this is a tricky airfield to taxi on at night.
Macgillvray has been going out with a WAAF M.T. driver here, & at last it seems like the real thing he is talking seriously of marriage. When he left Hixon, “The Blunder”, went into Stafford with him to stay the night, & then spins a 48 hr pass with him at the Strand Palace. Macgillvray was half & half about telling her to go, however when he arrived here he wrote, & told her he didn’t want to see her again. She wrote back & said as soon as she got a pass she was coming to have it out with him. Then a letter arrived yesterday saying she would arrive in the evening, & would he meet her in town. Macgillvray religiously stayed in camp all evening, & every now & again the phone would ring for him, it was her, phoning from Stamford, & it was really funny to see him keep telling chaps he wasn’t in. Suddenly, the boys came in with the news, she had come out on the 10.30 P.M. bus, & fixed up with the WAAF Officer to stay the night. Macgillvray was off to his billet like a shot. [deleted] Next [/deleted] [inserted] This [/inserted] morning, the Blunder, was in the dining hall, early, & waiting behind the servery, when Macgillvray came in, she dashed out, & told him exactly what she thought of him, in a loud voice. Everyone listened interestedly, & the cooks even ceased serving in order to hear clearly, Mac went deadly white, & after a while walked out, with the Blunder behind. Anyway that was exit to the Blunder. We’ve certainly had some laughs here.
[page break]
[underlined] Wednesday [deleted] August [/deleted] [inserted] September [/inserted] 29th. [/underlined]
At last the time has arrived, and what a time I have had to wait for it, 2 1/4 years ago I volunteered for aircrew, & right up till now I have been training for the real job, & we have arrived at last on a squadron. It is a new squadron just forming, No 623, and we are stationed at Downham Market with No 218 squadron. We left Woolfox about 8 AM. on Monday, and caught the 9.15 AM. to Peterborough, where we arrived about 10.15 AM. Deciding to spend the day we trooped out and started off with a large meal in the Silver Grill, a very satisfying start. During the afternoon we looked over the Cathedral, and afterwards went to the cinema to see Tyrone Power in “Crash Drive”, pretty good. Another large meal at the Silver Grill then off on the 6.46 PM. to Downham Market. Naturally the trains were late and we reached Downham Station around 10 PM. & phoned for transport. When it arrived we threw the kit on, we were getting rather cheesed with it by now, after lumping it on & off different trains, and out we went.
It was rather a grim reception, they told us we couldn’t have a meal, & then we found out there was no accommodation for us. So we drove round in the dark in a lorry and they found room for us in ones & twos with the erks, it was pretty grim organisation.
[page break]
They locked our kit up in a hut, my overcoat & groundsheet amongst them, so of course it poured of rain during the night & the next morning. Being as the station is all clay like most of the Fen country, it was one helluva mess. Like all Bomber Stations it is horribly dispersed, & we tramped around miserably in the wet, with our arrival chits. The mess was large and new, & very bare, & the food just happened to be pretty grim, so I’m afraid we took a rather poor view of the station, things look a little better now though.
There is a rigged up cinema & I believe they have occasional shows there, but there isn’t a lot of entertainment available. The town [deleted] of [/deleted] or village of Downham is only 15 mins walk from the mess, but there isn’t much life in there. They have one rather ancient cinema with old films & a dance hall, that is always over crowded & 21 pubs, the latter is over shadowed by Stamford’s 63. I don’t think we will be going in there very much. There were three crews arrived from Woolfox together, Pete, Macgillvray & ourselves, Carr is travelling down too today, as he hadn’t finished his flying at Woolfox. We are binding for leave as most crews get it on arrival but our efforts haven’t been successful so far. Our first two ‘ops’ here are mining trips & the pilot was a second “dickey” (pilot) trip, before we start we have to do a bullseye though.
[page break]
[underlined] Monday 4th October. [/underlined]
Things are looking quiet a bit better now, the mess seems comfortable, & the food really is good. Up till Saturday we didn’t do much, mainly hung around & had a few lectures, & got our kit into the parachute section. This is a new idea, they have a large room, with lockers, & hang our kit up properly, to dry etc, also testing it each time, then when we want something we go & ask for it & they bring it out. If they have found any stuff U/S they tell us what it is so we can change it, it’s a good scheme. The essentials such as chute, harness, helmet, boots, & ‘K’ type dinghy, are laid out already when the crew is on ‘ops’. No waiting or anything its quite a good scheme. We drew our electrical kit & our new flying boots, from stores, there [sic] boots are the new type with leather boots as bottoms, they have a knife in the side to cut the upper off, should we land in enemy territory, & thus leave a fine pair of walking boots.
On Saturday our bullseye arrived and we were briefed in the afternoon for a 7.50 PM take off. We got away a few minutes late but with no mishap & climbed over the drome then set course for Bedford, this was the starting gate of the bullseye. About 15 mins after we left there, we were coned by about 20 beams & passed on to other cones. We were diving all around the sky but we were
[page break]
held pretty well for around 10 – 15 minutes, before we got out. At Portsmouth we were held for around 2 minutes, & again at Beachy Head, then we headed for the target – London. We came in over Croydon & Lewisham to run up to our target, Westminster Bridge. There were about four cones in action with about 30 beams in each, and they all had a kite in, jerking like mad. Whilst they were occupied we were able to slip in smoothly on our bombing run without interference. The searchlights blinded me a bit though and I was unable to get a good line of sight on the bridge, but took the photographs. The black out of London was pretty grim, there were bags of lights about, & the docks were clearly lit up along the river & so were the main railway stations. I don’t think I would fancy an attack on London though, the defences seem pretty hot. After London we went to Bedford again where the bullseye finished, so we had no engagements with fighters. From here to base then up to Goole and back on another I.R. stooge. It was pretty nippy & poor Johnny & Don in the turrets were frozen stiff. There were hardly any fighter interceptions I guess the fighter boys didn’t feel like playing. Anyway back to the bacon & egg, the usual natter with the other crews on various points & then off to bed, for a nice lengthy sleep.
[page break]
When we got up at dinner time yesterday it was to be told that we were operating that night – mine laying, it rather shook us. Briefing was at 4 PM. & we learned we were going off the Frisian Is. (a fairly short trip) & taking 6 x 1500 mines. Back to the mess in the bus for the operational meal, then over to the billet, where like old men we clamber into our long flying underwear. Even though it is all pure rayon lined it makes me itch, just not used to long legs & sleeves I guess after jockey shorts & singlet. Our next move is back down to the dressing room in the parachute section, where we collect our kit. We never put the stuff on otherwise we would sweat moving around & then it would freeze when we got up & defeat the clothing. Out to the kite in the bus then, dump the kit on the grass & everyone climbs in for their last minute check of their equipment. Whoever D.I’d the first turret did a poor job, because the reflector sight was left on & the guns weren’t loaded, so I got cracking on those & tested the tuner, then climbed down for my initial bombing check. The engines were run up, tested, then shut down again & we climbed out for a smoke and sign our various forms. The Wing Comdr & Sqdn Ldr drove out to give last minute tips & see if there were any snags, then we all climbed aboard again, fully dressed now, all hatches closed, & taxied out.
[page break]
The first aircraft was due off at 7.35 and took off dead on time, we were third, got the green from the ACP opened up & away we went. They are a bit of a job to get off with a heavy load & we didn’t miss the trees by much but we made it. We set course for Cromer, where we were leaving the coast, at 1500 ft, we were staying at that height so Jerry couldn’t pick us up, then climbing to 5,000 ft at the last moment to avoid any flak ships. Everything went fine, poor old Ken was sick again, he certainly has guts to keep flying and navigating when he is often queer. We had to climb quickly at the mining area, & the revs wouldn’t increase for the minute, consequently we nearly stalled. At 1500 ft with that bomb load we would [deleted] dive [/deleted] have dived straight into the waves, it was touch & go for a minute but worked out. The mines were dropped, one [deleted] f [/deleted] could feel them drop, & back we went. When we got back to Cromer there were lots of searchlights & they picked us up, but shut off when we flicked our nav lights on & off. They suddenly coned a single engine kite so we watched it like hawks just in case, there have been a lot of intruders around this area. There was a large fire about 50 miles off the port bow, enemy activity maybe. We landed O.K. though were interrogated & off to the mess, when the siren went so we had just dodged it, still we were safe then. A bang on supper then off to bed for another good rest.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday 7th October.. [/underlined]
Life is proceeding along fairly smooth lines, and we are pretty well settled in. The other night when we did our mining trip, the main force went to Kassel. Clarc Carr went with another pilot to get his second ‘dicky’ trip in. The pilot he went with had 23 trips in & was on the point of completing his tour, but they never returned. Poor old Clarc, he was one of the best chaps I have met, he never got in a temper with anyone, yet he was pretty tough, it’s a shame that such fellows have to go. It really shakes us when fellows we have been with for a long while get the chop, brings it home the hard way. They have sent his crew home on 3 days leave, I don’t know what they are doing after that, whether they are returning to ‘Con’ Unit to pick up a new skipper, or stay here as ‘spares’, the former would be better I should think.
Speaking of spares they grabbed Don, our mid upper to go in somebody else’s crew on Monday for the raid on Frankfurt, as their m/u.g had gone sick. It was rather a nerve I thought both asking a crew to fly with a chap they didn’t know, & worse for the gunner to fly with a strange crew. They did the same thing to Smith, Macgillvrays rear gunner, if they keep this thing up they will
[page break]
soon be doing away with the crews & just have a pool that they draw on, I always thought that if somebody was sick in a crew the whole lot was declared U/S. there is a word they have when referring to men they call them ‘bodies’ or ‘bods’, & how right it is, you are just merely a figure on paper. Every morning the big noise walks into the flight office & asks the flight commander “How many crews have you, fully operational?”, and then demands those that aren’t be made so in as short a time as possible. That is all they are interested in, is, how many crews have they available for an ‘op’, regardless of how much flying you’ve done, just recently some of the chaps have been on the main force 3 out of 4 nights. Anyway all kites returned from Frankfurt O.K. and Dan gave us a vivid description, it was very interesting but I guess we will be seeing all we want of it very shortly.
Tuesday night we were on ‘stand down’, but Wednesday we were briefed for a long mining trip to La Rochelle, right down near the Spanish border. There was a hell of a front expected at base around 6.30 so they were rushing us off at 5.50 & come back to meet the front over the Channel & battle through it. There was severe icing from 7 – 15,000 so we had to try & climb above it, not an easy job in a Stirling, the extent was possibly
[page break]
right up to the London area as well. The briefing & everything was terribly rushed & we tore around in a mad flap to get everything done, and we were all dressed & on the point of going out to the kite when they scrubbed it, what a life, tonight we were in it again but it was scrubbed once more.
Last night I decided I would see what Downham was like so I ambled in with the boys & was I cheesed. I had seen the [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] film on at the little cinema, so all there was to do was sit in a smokey pub, & swill lousy beer. At last the smoke made my eyes ache so much I came home. Macgillvray was on a short mining trip last night, & a Picture Post reporter was going along. They sent down 4 camera & news men, & took photographs of them having an operational meal & were going to take bags more in the kite, but it was scrubbed, what bad luck, a chance like that only comes once in a life time. The traditional RAF bull was in evidence, for the photograph they had a spotless table-cloth, cream crackers on the table, & a Cpl WAAF waiting on them. Actually we queue up for our meals & a long one at times & eat of [sic] bare dirty tables, & the only biscuits we see are hard dog ones. – We did our first day flying, here, today, took two kites up on air tests, we were doing a loaded climb but that was scrubbed, at least we know what the drome looks like in daylight now.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday October 10th. [/underlined]
We look like having our first leave in a few days we are officially due to go at 0700 hrs on Thursday 14th, until the following Tuesday midnight. The chaps generally get away on the Wednesday, & if they are very lucky & they aren’t on ops on Tuesday they get away Tuesday afternoon which is pretty good. I only hope we are that lucky, Mac has to do a second dicky & if he gets that in tomorrow night we may be on ops the following night (Tuesday) & mess things up a bit. Should it be scrubbed tomorrow, Mac will go Tuesday & we can go Tuesday afternoon, I am afraid we are unscrupulous enough to hope that the weather is lousy tomorrow night. He has got his Flight through at last, & is now ‘Chiefy’ McCann, it is well overdue, but the Canadians get back pay on crowns, one of the numerous ways they are better than the RAF, so he has about £16 back pay to come. The comical part is that after all this waiting & binding now it has appeared in P.O.R’s the stores have no crowns so he is unable to wear it – poor Mac.
Friday night we went on our long mining trip, off Bordeaux in the estuary of the Gironde. We took 4 1,500 mines a fair weight, our all up weight was 69,784 lbs. The briefing was at 6.0 P.M. it shook us but they were having a late take off because the room was nearly full & they were waiting for it to die down as the German fighters have an easy time in the bright moonlight. The bus took
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting showing a WAAF with a mine] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[duplicate page]
[page break]
us back [missing words] as our operation [missing words] wasn’t until 8.45 we had bags of time to fill in. Lots of Forts went over then & we watched them the next day we learned they had been to Bremen. We had our egg & at 10.25 the transport took us back, we didn’t have to struggle with our kit as we had taken it out in the afternoon. The run up & testing commenced, then shut down while we donned our kit & start up once more. We took off bang on time & 5 mins later set course. Old Petch who was the only other one beside us going swung on take off & hit his undercart against some iron rails for fog lighting & they wouldn’t let him take off, consequently we were the only ones from this station that went.
It was practically 10/10ths cloud down to the coast, it cleared there & I was able to get a wizard pin point on Selsey Bill, our crossing point. The moon was like a searchlight & we felt all naked illuminated up there, it set quite a bit after they told us it did, because there was the time of setting as seen by a ground observer, whereas we were at 12,000 ft. The cloud built up more & more over the Channel until it was 10/10ths again on the French Coast and we were unable to pin point. It remained like that most of the way, the least it was, was 7/10ths, approaching the target area it began
[page break]
to clear & I got down into the bombing hatch ready. I was determined to get my night vision up to scratch because if we couldn’t pin point we had to bring the mines back. The green indicator target on the VCP was glaring on my vision panel like a searchlight so I piled my long cushion over it. Then I wanted to see my target map so hopped to switch on the light for a brief second, next the cushion fell down & the light glared again, I dove back at that. I was hopping around like a rubber ball, & sweating lest I should miss the coast & be unable to pin point. Suddenly I saw it, it was pretty dark, I could make it out clearly though, then we passed out to sea over the first island & swung out to rear to clear the island defences. Then altering course we swung in for the mainland once more, I was straining my neck, thats [sic] the worst of the Stirling bomb aimers window, the Lancs have a beauty. After a bit I made it out we were heading up the Gironde estuary, so we made a left hand turn & came bang on the corner of the estuary, which was our pin point. Setting course on a D.R run we dropped the eg O.K. & set course home. Just after we left the flak began to open up on the islands & one searchlight probed around, but they weren’t near us.
Stooging along happily with thoughts of home & bed we were shaken by a show of
[page break]
flak suddenly thrown up. We had got a little port of track & were too near Nantes, they had some accurate heavy flak down there, because of the Fort raids on the U Boat Bases. Anyway they were too accurate for our liking the first burst exploded with quite a crash underneath us & burned the kite a bit. We did some hectic weaving & finally got clear, it was a sticky moment though that predicted stuff is deadly they reckon to get you on the first burst. Nothing happened on the way back beyond sighting another Stirling, the cloud thickened over England, & when we reached base they diverted us to Tangmere, although we could have got in. So we had to fly back all the way we had come down to the South Coast. Arriving there after 6 hrs 40 mins flying we found 11 other Stirlings there. We had a meal, & the guy told us you can sleep as long as you like they gave us good accommodation, boy! we needed sleep. Hardly had we laid our heads down when they dragged us out saying we had to return right away. Then we had to wait 3 hours before we were re-fuelled & away. Two squadrons of Typhoons scrambled while we were there, straight off down wind a lovely night. Flying back to base I could hardly keep my eyes open we had had no sleep for nearly 36 hours. We certainly slept well on return. Today there hasn’t been anything doing because of the lousy weather. Jack Spackly & Ron Winnitt have arrived here, they were with me from Manchester & all through Canada, I was glad to see them arrive here, they are in 623.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday October 24th [/underlined]
It is a fortnight since I last made an entry but I have been on leave during that time, & following my maxim of never letting work interfere with pleasure I made no entries in here. I had a fine leave, Mary was able to get the time off & that made it just right we saw a couple of shows, popped around to a few friends & had a wizard time. There was one disappointment overshadowing it though, Ken didn’t come on leave with us, it all began a little while before - . A fair number of times through his earlier training, so he tells me, and during the time we were with him at O.T.U. and on Conversion Unit, he was sick during trips. He tried hard, by doing everything he knew to overcome it, but unsuccessfully. Then on our first mining trip to the Frisians he was sick at the target area & we had to rush to drop them & there was a fair flap resulting as I have previously mentioned in the kite nearly stalling in. Poor Ken, he reckons he is to blame but I don’t think he has anything to worry about, out of the lot I think he did his job the best & the smartest. He was sick a lot on the long mining as well so he reported sick a couple of days afterwards to see what the M.O. could do.
[page break]
He was given some Anti-Air Sickness capsules, & tried them without effect, so the M.O. grounded him for a little while. Then they took Ken’s case up a little more & the Wing Comdr said he would have an interview with him. This was the position on the day we were going on leave Tuesday 12th, Mac also hadn’t done his second dicky trip. So Ken was hanging around all morning waiting for the Wing Co to say he would see him, & we were worried in case he wouldn’t catch the 3.51 London train with us. We left him waiting at the camp & told him to whizz down on his bike if there was a chance of catching the train, if not, to follow us down on the later train. On the road we got a lift to the railway station in an army lorry & had a cup of tea in the café next door. Waiting on the platform later, the [deleted] [indecipherable letters] [/deleted] train was almost due in, when Ken came dashing up. Everyone was overjoyed because we thought he had just made it, but he told us the Wing Comdr. had cancelled his leave and he had to remain behind to get 15 hrs Fighter Affiliation in, to see how often he was sick & then go before a Medical Board. My God! as if anyone wouldn’t feel lousy after 15 hrs. Fighter Affil. Also with the weather as it had been, a stinking yellow fog, there didn’t
[page break]
appear to be much chance of flying. It was a hell of a twist all the way round, and poor Ken was on the receiving end. There was nothing to be done, however, so off we had to go without him. I felt pretty rotten though seeing him standing there watching us go on leave, & having to ride back & spend a week by himself.
As I said previously I had a fine time, the days flew swiftly as they always do, & the last day arrived. I had arranged with Johnny to meet at 5.30 in Liverpool St to catch the 5.40 P.M. However he arrived up from Bristol early & came over to my place, so we travelled up together, & met Jack on the station. The train was very crowded & we had to bunk in the luggage room, at the first stop, Bishops Stortford, lots of people got out & we got a seat easily. At Cambridge there was about a 20 minute wait so the three of us got out for a cup of tea. A porter told us it wouldn’t be going for a while yet & we had plenty of time. We were only in the canteen for about 3 minutes and as we emerged, saw the train about a quarter of the way along the platform. I broke into a sprint with Jack about 10 yds behind and Johnny 10 yds behind him. Down the platform we raced, porters shouted out “Clear the Way”, and people skipped
[page break]
nimbly aside, luckily the platform was fairly empty. Some people shouted encouragement, other shouted “You’ll never make it”, but unheedingly we pounded quickly on.
One American soldier told us it was just like the races, first I flashed past, and he turned to watch me when Jack whizzed by. As he swivelled his head to watch him Johnny shot past, so he ran after us to see the result. Down the whole length of Cambridge platform we raced & closed the distance to about two yards, I had already selected the door I was jumping for, when we reached the blacked out part of the platform. There were no lights at all & it was as dark as the pit, I tried to maintain speed but cracked against a pillar and spun around like a top. So the chase was abandoned & we stood watching the tail light disappear into the darkness. We were in rather a fix as all our kit was on the train, none of us had hats & Johnny had no belt either. After hunting around & getting wrong directions from a few people, we contacted a porter, and old sweat from the last war, who was very helpful & took us to a fellow, who sent off a wire to the different stations telling them to take our kit off the train & send it to Downham. That done, with certain misgivings as to whether it would work out we went over to the A.T.O.
[page break]
Here we phoned the camp and told them we would be arriving late & fixed things up. That done we adjourned to a nearby pub & treated our helpful porter to a few. After that it degenerated into a regular crawl, hatless & hands in pockets we rolled round Cambridge. Greatly warmed by the beverage, we didn’t notice the hardness of the bunks, & I didn’t suffer as I did on the previous occasion I slept at Cambridge ATO. We travelled on to Downham on the 8.13 AM. next day & arrived about 9.15. As I feared they hadn’t any of our kit there, so I thought “Goodbye to that”. It rather shook the S.P’s in the guard room when we rolled up with no hats or anything, they didn’t say anything, though, I shudder to think what would have happened at a training unit under similar circumstances. Within an hour of arriving back we were flying on an air test, maybe they thought we would forget how.
We haven’t done much since arriving back, the weather has been pretty rough. The situation regarding Ken appears pretty obscure, he didn’t get much flying in as he predicted, now he is just hanging about to see what the score is. I hope they wont [sic] take him out of the crew he is such a decent chap. Its growing late & the other guys are binding for the lights out, so I guess I’ll put more next time.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday 28th October [/underlined]
The weather still remains duff, after days of rain, it has changed into pretty thick fog every day. The last time we flew was over a week ago when we did a loaded climb in “D”, we now have I for Ink, instead of D. For the time being Ken is out of the crew, we are all praying it wont [sic] be for long although we have another decent chap in his place, Les Gray another Canadian. The whole situation is pretty vague, Ken himself feels he would rather not go on in case he should be sick one time & we wandered into a flak area whilst he was sick. As for us, we would put implicit faith in him whatever happened, & I just hate to lose him. So nobody knows what is going to happen, we’re just keeping our fingers crossed.
To keep ourselves amused now quite a bit of our time is spent in seeing films, I have seen a couple of decent ones on the camp recently. The other day they had the power off all day, no electric light, wireless or anything, I certainly think they ought to get there [sic] fingers out with the lighting in the ante room, it is very dim. Last night seeking amusement further afield, Mac, Jack, Don, Johnny & myself went in the liberty bus to Kings Lynn. We had a good meal when we arrived there, & then saw a decent show, coming out from there, Jack, Johnny & myself
[page break]
went into a dance, while Mac & Don went to the Duke’s Head for a meal. I think they had the best of the deal, because the dance was pretty corny, & then when it finished at 10 P.M. we were tramping all over the town trying to find a place with something to eat without success, it was pretty grim.
We got back to the bus O.K. & off we went, by this time a thick mist had rolled in, add to this the fact that our driver had a fair number of drinks under his belt, & we went weaving all over the road. It wasn’t long before we went into the ditch, & a fellow raised a laugh by asking “Does this count as an op?” We lifted the thing out of the ditch, then he found he had taken the wrong turning so back we had to go. It took us 1 1/2 hours to travel a 25 minute journey, we heaved a sigh of relief when we arrived back here. It would be that night too that they had an ENSA show at the camp and who should be in it but Pat Kirkwood, I would have liked to have seen it. Our next leave is due on the 24th November & I have written to Mary & told her to book some shows up. It is rather a long chance, that we will be there on time, even providing all goes well. Still I think it is worth trying. Ah! well I’m tired we didn’t get much sleep last night so I’ll turn in.
[page break]
[underlined] Monday November 1st. [/underlined]
Friday was just one of those uneventful days, though the mist seemed to have lifted a bit, a few very keen types were speaking eagerly of the prospects of flying, but the main horde, including all of our crew, nearly, retired to the mess early & buried theirselves [sic] in the newspapers, springing up eagerly to get in the dinner queue. That evening we went into town to see an Abbot & Costello film, it wasn’t bad, with a simple meal of fish & chips, we wandered back, what an uneventful life this is. Saturday was no better, but we really put some work in on the kite harmonising all the guns. We made quite a job of it, having Bill & Jack run backwards & forwards with the harmonisation board. The only thing that marred it was the fact that both Johnny & myself broke our lateral levelling screws on the reflector sights, necessitating harmonising them over again. We have been informed that it is nigh on impossible to get any small nuts & bolts of that type, so we are waiting for them, meanwhile the kite is unable to go on ops without the two reflector sights harmonised. So a kite has to stay back because of two nuts & bolts. Just a classic example of the important part played by the small cogs in the big wheel.
[page break]
Yesterday the weather seemed to be better, but there was nothing doing in the morning so we put in quite a bit of work on the kite. In the afternoon though there was a sudden flap, to get as many aircraft airborne as possible, so off we went for our air test. We have a new kite now I Ink instead of D Dog that we used to have, yesterday was the first time we had flown in it. She seemed a pretty decent kite, if we can do a loaded climb on it, & see how much height we can get out of it, it will be O.K. In the evening I just remained in the mess & went over to the hut early, I just seem to be in a state of lethargy here, with no inclination to do anything. We tried to get the fire going in the hut, these stoves are grim things at times. All the time we are chopping fences down & scrounging wood & ‘borrowing’ coal from out of the dump opposite. Most times that we light it, huge clouds of smoke belch out in every direction and there is a frantic rush for the doors to breathe some fresh air in. Last night was an exception though, the fire lit right away, & it gradually warmed up until it was giving out a heat like a blast furnace. It isn’t very often that we get it to go like that though, still I am nearest to it, I had that in view when I chose my bed.
[page break]
Today we had quite an interesting time, the morning we spent going round the bomb dumps. Practically all the bomb aimers went out, and at the dump we saw how the carriers are fixed on, & then at the firing point how they are flared. It was quite a sight in the dump to see all the rows of bombs laid out in their rows behind the blast walls. The corporal who was giving us the gen set a 4 lb incendiary off for us to show us how they went, boy they certainly burn, they seem better than the ones the Jerries dropped on London in the blitzes. We handled all the equipment & all of it was quite different from the stuff we had been taught throughout training all that was obsolete a good while before. Finally we went out to the kites to watch them bomb up & then try the various ways of releasing hang ups, it was quite a useful morning.
This afternoon we flew again, to level the bomb sight, & then to continue to Goodestone for a bombing exercise. It went off pretty well, but I don’t know how they are going to figure out where bombs are where, because we didn’t have 3073’s and didn’t inform the range as we dropped each one. As there were at least four kites bombing, they seemed to be showering down. Most certainly there will be some news in the morning.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday 4th November. [/underlined]
There has been some flying recently but not a lot we have been up on a couple of air tests but on the whole the weather is still rather grim. We have been putting in quite a bit of work on the kite, Johnny, Don & myself have had our guns out & cleaned them. They were in a hell of a mess as they were packed with grease, then somebody borrowed our kite & the dope of a bomb aimer fired my guns, mucking things up well & truly. We have got them back again now. Tuesday afternoon they gave us a stand down, its funny no sooner do they say stand down & the fellows have started trekking into the different towns, when the old sun comes out & things are fine again, I bet they gnash their teeth.
All of us except Mac caught the 2.3 P.M. into Cambridge, had a look round, & a decent tea then booked our beds in the W.V.S. Afterwards we saw a show, then diving into a pub for a drink we landed in a flight passing out party. They had just finished their exams at Cambridge I.T.W. & were celebrating, when we entered somebody said “Here’s the gen boys”, at which I nearly fell over. Still they plied us with free beer so that was bang on, they also asked quite a bit about their future training & ‘ops’. Maybe quite a few lines were shot, but we had enough shot at us
[page break]
during our training so it was our turn. They all had bright blue uniforms, ‘bully’ white belts, close cropped hair, a general sprog appearance altogether. I shudder to think I was like that once, though not to such a degree, but I was & so must everybody who goes in for aircrew, we didn’t notice anything strange then. They had various toasts & I’m afraid I smiled a little cynically when one chap said “Goodbye to all exams and binding”. Still we had a good time, followed by a meal in a nearby café & then to bed. We rose at 7 AM. & went round to another W.V.S. place for our breakfast, then from there to the station to catch the famous 8.13 AM. to Downham.
They were taking a squadron photograph, & naturally Jack & I had to roll up late and miss being in it – such is life. Last night they had an ENSA show to which we went and surprisingly enough it was quite good, we almost got in without paying, but not quite, it would have helped our financial status quite a bit. Today we had to take the Flight Commander’s kite up an [sic] Air Test it, a doubtful priviledge. [sic] The bind was it was 12 midday when they rang the mess and told us & we were already in the dinner queue, so out we had to go & tramp back to the flights. We came down fairly late so didn’t go back again, but phoned into town & booked our seats for the cinema it was a good film, though I’d seen it before.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday November 7th [/underlined]
Friday was quite a busy day, in the morning there was a smashing lecture by a Dutch F/O who had been shot down in a Lanc. & had got back from Holland. We had been listening to him for about 10 mins & lapping every word, when they came in and dragged us up for flights affil. typical RAF. The bind was there were two crews in the same kite, ourself [sic] & Bennett. We stooged around for over an hour but the fighter didn’t show up, so back we had to go, I was pretty cheesed about missing that lecture though. They put us up again in the afternoon, & after a bit of stooging around, boy! that fighter could fly. I sat in the Wops seat all the time, listening to “Music While You Work” poor old Bennets Engineer was sick, he must be quite a lot because he had a paper bag ready with him. I felt a bit grim once or twice, because they were really throwing the kite around. I am O.K. if I can see out to see whats [sic] doing, but if I am in the middle of the kite unable to look out then its rough.
Ken has gone on leave at last, this was the one he missed when we went, he has gone to Iver, Bucks & to London. I have told him to pop in at my house I hope he does. Meanwhile he has let me ride his bike which comes in very handy at this blasted place. Friday
[page break]
night it was given out on the radio that F/Sgt Aaron who used to be with 218 had been posthumously awarded the V.C. The citation said his courage had never been surpassed, & by jiminy they were right. In absolute agony & with severest wounds he had diverted the kite on from Turin to N. Africa, where he died 9 hours after, it was a marvellous show! The air bomber who flew it & landed it, belly landing, with 4,000 lb still on received the C.G.M. & most of the crew the D.F.M. They arrived back from Gibralter not long ago, with tins of sugar & heavens knows what else besides.
All our trips recently have been in other kites ours was U/S, when we came down from a flip they found the tail plane was only secured with about 3 nuts & bolts, we nearly had it that time. Yesterday it was put serviceable again & we had to take her up for a couple of hours. It had rained cats & dogs in the morning so there was a stand down & we were the only joe’s flying, & Saturday afternoon too. We were caught in some hellish storms but dodged them, then found parts with clean weather, & played tag with the cloud tops it was good fun. I broke a bigué and then we couldn’t get the undercart down, so poor old Jack & Bill had to set to & wind it down. We all held our breaths when we came in but it didn’t collapse & we were O.K.
[page break]
The Wing Cmdr was attacked by a JU88 on a gardening trip to the Baltic the other night, & they claimed it shot down. Who is to dispute them, I bet they went nowhere near the thing, as everyone else thinks & its popular talk that the Wing Cmdr. may get a gong for it whether its true or not I don’t know. There is something funny going on Stirlings haven’t operated against a land target for a month now, & there are all sorts of rumours going around. We are going on Coastal Command, are going out East, are converting onto Lancs, are towing gliders, are only going to do mining trips, these are but a few of the speculations floating around, there certainly seems to be something in the air. The most obvious solution I think is they are waiting until a .5 mid under gun is fitted, we also have to operate this, quite a few jobs we have now.
It has been bitterly cold all day today, whilst harmonising my front guns I gashed two fingers & I didn’t feel it, nor did it start to bleed for a good while, my fingers were so frozen, it’s a real touch of winter. There are two fires in our huge ante room & that is the only method of heating the place. Consequently there is a circle of fellows packed tightly around it, & another circle around them waiting for someone to vacate a chair at which there is a mad rush. The rest of the fellows just have to hover around hoping to catch a glimpse of the fire or of moving into the outer circle.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday 11th November. [/underlined]
The cold weather continues, it takes ones breath away just walking down to the flight, I am glad there are no ‘ops’ on from this station nowadays. I wonder what is happening, it certainly is funny, Stirlings off ‘ops’ all this time, must be something behind it all. The rumours are flying as thick as ever, but nobody has any definite ‘gen’ at the moment. We will find out in due course I daresay. Yesterday we went on rather an interesting trip, an Eric, which is a daylight bullseye. Naturally the only defences we had to combat were fighters, & we didn’t have any engagements, so everything went smoothly. Our route took us across London three times, & pin pointing became very interesting, as I found the various places I know. The balloons were quite a sight, flying at their operational height, there seemed literally hundreds of them. Old Father Thames looked grand in the sun with the boats chugging slowly up & down, there was a fair amount of shipping off Tilbury & Grays & a convoy at Southend. At Chatham there were a fair amount of naval vessels, but nothing like peace-time. We followed the Thames up to attack our target Tower Bridge, there was a certain amount of difficulty in finding this owing to cloud that had rolled across. We eventually made it though.
[page break]
Being used to stooging along by ourselves at night it was a novel experience for us to see about another hundred bombers all around, on the same course & height. It was rather tricky at turning points, some kites E.T.A’s would be due slightly before one’s own & they would turn & come cutting across, diving underneath, or lifting above, there must be some close shaves at night, which the darkness hides. When we returned to base the weather had changed down so we had to stooge around for a bit, but we landed quite safely.
Our leave is due on the 24th, and we are beginning to make our arrangements, praying to the Lord, that nothing crops up & we lose it. I had a letter from Bill today, saying that old Bob Blackburn, who was in our room at I.T.W. had got the chop on his 13th over the Ruhr. He always maintained there was nothing in superstition & insisted on third lights, I guess it was just Fate that it should be his 13th, I hope he managed to bale out safely. We lost a crew the other night on a long mining off the Spanish border, Johnston was flying with them as rear gunner, it was his first trip. He was in Carr’s crew that is the second one gone, these mining trips certainly don’t seem to be such a stooge nowadays.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday 14th November. [/underlined]
What a hum drum life this is, & a cold one. Rush for breakfast, fight to get a wash basin then trudge down to the flights. Knock around in the Bombing Office for a while to see the score then out to the kite for a D.I. It’s a hellish cold job polishing the perspex on the first turret, especially the outside I have to mount a rickety iron ladder, & perched up there 25 ft in the air polish away vigorously with frozen hands, each movement causing the ladder to sway. We generally continue to get back to the flights at 11.15 AM. in time for the NAAFI van. Then back to the mess, with more chances than one of being called back for an air test, just as we are about to go into dinner. The afternoon’s procedure is very similar, if we aren’t flying, it is link or Gee, Astro or something, until we scuttle back to tea. Over to the billet, then, to coax a fire into the stove & all huddle round it. Gangs of fellows scour the immediate vicinity of the huts for wood, posts are pulled up & everything of an inflammable nature seized upon. There is a huge coke dump opposite & every evening sees a dozen fellows or more filling buckets & other articles. These stoves are quite our pride & we take an experts delight in raising a large fire in a short while.
[page break]
If we aren’t writing letters we are listening to records on a gramophone that Bill managed to ‘borrow’ from the W/T section, I wish we had a wireless here, though. Sometimes we attend an ENSA show, the one this week wasn’t so bad. Friday afternoon we had a stand down so Jack, Johnny & myself bowled into Cambridge again, following the routine of our previous visit, but not having the luck to fall into any flight parties again. So far this month we have gone in quite a few flying hours the weather has been lousy on quite a few trips. Last night we were stooging round in a rain storm trying to find a bombing target before we were recalled, Saturday night, too. The other day Mac, Johnny Don & myself went up with Wiseman’s crew for Air to Air firing over the Wash. After landing & unloading the blasted ammo. when it came to my turn the Martinet ran out of fuel & had to return.
The other day on our Air Test, Mac feathered the starboard outer to test it, but couldn’t unfeather it. After a few unsuccessful attempts we gave up & landed with it feathered, & got down O.K. too. If it isn’t the undercart refusing to come down, its something else. Still old I Item is quite a good kite now, & we can get a fair turn of speed from it.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday November 18th [/underlined]
Quite a lot of things have happened in the few short days since I made my last entry. First like a bolt from the blue came the news that the squadron was being disbanded. It was quite a shock we are supposed to be moving to Chedburgh shortly & there given individual postings. Everyone is thoroughly cheesed about it, we were just getting settled in here too, all the top bags, Bombing, Nav & Gunnery Leaders are fine fellows, one couldn’t wish for a better bunch, I guess that’s typical of the RAF when one gets a piece of cake, they aren’t allowed to eat it. 214 squadron which is at Chedburgh is coming here in our place & we are gradually breaking up. They say we are converting to Lancs & if so it may be time that Stirlings are gradually dieing [sic] out of Bomber Command & the Lancs taking their place. If we are moving in a few days, as the tale says, then it will mess our leave up, after all our arranging, its driving me nuts, we never get a leave that works out smartly. Johnnie Smythe a Nav. from Sierra Leone has had a letter from the people there saying they want to adopt 623 Sqdn. & have collected 100 to £150,000 for our benefit – phew! that’s over £250 per head ground & air crew, of course it would be used for the betterment of the squadron, building a wizard crew room, & various other things.
[page break]
The Wing Cmdr. has been up to Group to raise Cain, I don’t know if he has had any satisfication, but I & everyone else hope we stay here together. Monday night we had our Sqdn party, strictly bachelor, the air crew paid for it all, & invited the ground crew to show their appreciation for their maintenance of the kites. There was lots of beer & everyone was happy especially old Mac he was well under, a gang of them started down the mess before the party, then rang Downham for a taxi to take them to the party 200 yds away. There was a championship table tennis match between a couple of top notches in peace-time & then the winner issued a challenge. Ginger Morris who used to play for England, had been waiting for this to just bowl out & beat him. The only fault was Ginger had been imbibing heavily & consequently could hardly see the ball, so lost easily. At 10.30 P.M. it broke up and Mac got in at 5 AM. he had wandered over to the mess to shoot the bull & fell asleep there.
Poor Johnnie has been feeling grim and was very bad the other day & went sick, & they chopped him in dock with flu. Jack was also feeling bad but has recovered, but Don is in bed very queer & I feel it myself, what a crew, but this place is enough to give people all the illnesses under the sun.
[page break]
Tuesday night, six Canadians came & gave a concert show, they were a travelling party all [indecipherable word] & they put up quite a performance too. Last night there was an ENSA show which I thought rather good, so we haven’t done too bad for entertainment. Today held a big shock for quite a few people, Group came through to say there was a big do, & 218 & 623 were on the main effort. All crews available were put on, & after 6 weeks they thought it was a laugh & a joke, but realised it was true. Mac was due to go on a second dickie with Sqdn/Ldr. Overton, but it was scrubbed at the last minute as Overton’s Navigator was sick. Petch has gone with Flt/Lt. Willis, & Macgillvray with Flt/Lt. Nesbitt, I hope the morning saw them all back safe & sound. Apparently we are still an operational squadron, but for how long is the question. There is also a fair amount of mining & a new crew is taking our kite, so Don & I were out there this afternoon checking on the turrets.
The other afternoon we had a wizard lecture from a Lieutenant in the Navy. He had quite a few experiences to recount he had been on the Greton in the Graf Spee battle & in the U-Boat War, & seen quite a bit of excitement in the Med., he was very interesting to listen too. [sic] His story showed both sides of the picture too, we weren’t always winning. He said a good word for mining, the results of which were definitely assessed as 1 ship sunk every 11 mins which is good going.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday November 21st. [/underlined]
The squadron definitely is disbanded, though in the meantime it is fully operational. The Wing Co. leaves on Dec 6th to some O.T.U. I believe. Sqdn/Ldr Smith adding his D.F.C. to his D.F.M. is going to an O.T.U. also, - as a flight commander, he has both his tours completed now. The Navigator Leader has already gone, & the Wing Co. has been asking crews what squadrons they would like to be posted to, but nothing is promised. Anyway it appears we are remaining in 3 Group & not going onto Lancs, so that is one theory squashed. Right now we are just praying that nothing will crop up to cheat us of our leave, there are only two days to go. We have arranged to get on the 11 AM pay parade Tuesday & hope to catch the 11.48 AM London train.
Three kites were lost from here on Thursday’s trip to Ludwigshaven – one from 218, & two from 623. Poor old Ray Bennett was one, Johnny Smythe was his Nav. I only hope they baled out, F/Lt Wallis was the other & Petch was with him on a second dicky. That leaves only Macgillvray & us with complete crews from Hixon. P/O Ralph & F/Lt Nesbitt turned back with engine trouble, so it wasn’t too good for 623. It was even grimmer on Friday night, they were going to Leverhulme or something a small place just north of Cologne, & a pretty easy trip it turned out.
[page break]
623 only managed to get two kites off the deck, & there was hell to pay, there was quite a bit of finger trouble, though. They said Group sent through the bomb load too late, but then it was the armament officers first experience of bombing up for ‘ops’. Bombs were being sent out to kites that were U/S with engine trouble when others were standing there with engines running merely waiting for bombs, consequently most of them never got off in time. They told one chap to take off 5 mins after time & catch the force up, he told them what to do. Another just got off & set course over the runway in his take off. Wiseman was waiting for one more 1,000 lb H.E. when the Armament Officer said that’s O.K. take off without it, this made the C. of G somewhere in the region of the rear turret – Wiseman’s reply was rather flowery. So poor old Mac didn’t get off again & still has to get his second dicky in. All the kites got back safely but were diverted owing to local fog, one of 218’s was pretty shot up by flak, and pranged at Chedburgh. The kites that were on mining also returned safely. Nesbitt has been told that his tour is completed now, so they are screening him after 24 trips, still that’s enough for anyone, and if I had that number under my belt I would feel very contented.
[page break]
Johnny seems a lot better now, we have popped in to see him each day, & he is having a regular rest cure, he intends trying to come out tomorrow as he doesn’t want to miss his leave – nor do any of us – keen types. Ken & I went to the camp cinema the other night, quite a good show but the place is like an ice box. There is a real fiasco here, the water supply is being cut right down, apparently the camps normal consumption is 52,000 gals a day, & the water company will only supply 10,000 gals daily, until their reservoir rises. Consequently all water on the sites is cut off & we cant [sic] have any baths or showers, & now we have been informed we are not supposed to wash or shave in the mess ablutions. This means not washing or showering day in, day out, I wonder what the M.O. thinks of it! There are a couple of water carts that come round the sites & people fill up old cans etc. Even of we hand round all cans we are never on the sites, our whole day is spent down the flights or in the mess. The whole situation is preposterous and it’s a pretty poor show for an RAF camp.
I went into town last night, for the first time for over a week, it was a real pea souper of a night & we muffled right up. The film was quite a decent one, & a drink after made a little break out of the monotony.
[page break]
[underlined] Wednesday December 1st. [/underlined]
Another fair interval since I last made an entry, & for the old reason that I have been on leave, we arrived back last night. After all the sweating & heartbreaking we eventually got away on Tuesday, & we did sweat as I will account. On the Sunday, before going on leave, when I last made an entry there had been rumours of something big coming off the following day, as all Ground Crew N.C.O’s had been ordered to have their kites in really tip top condition. Monday dawned a thick misty day, visibility wasn’t more than 50 yds, Jack & I danced for joy as Mac couldn’t possibly do a second dicky that night & we would definitely go on leave on Tuesday, what a fine world it was. Down at the flights a rude shock was awaiting us there was ‘ops’ on that night & Mac was going as second dicky to Sqdn/Ldr. Overton. Everyone thought it must be a farce, it was bound to be scrubbed, the Met reckoned it would clear though. However out we went to the kite & gave it a thorough D.I. because Sgt Ralph was taking it. Gradually the weather cleared, and gradually our hopes sunk, because if Mac got his trip in we would be definitely on “ops” the following night instead of on leave. Every few moments we would gaze at the cloud formations & the fast disappearing mist & try to cheer each other up, although we all felt we had had it.
[page break]
We had found out all tanks were to be filled that meant Berlin or Italy & it all pointed to The Big City. Briefing was at 2.30 P.M. & off they went & I went out to the kite again, Johnny was still in dock as his guns had to be checked but Johnny Hyde the Gunnery Leader was out there to do them. At this time the sky clouded over really black, & everyone was certain the Met had boobed. When large drops of rain fell I could have danced for joy, but as though the Met had exercised a superhuman influence the skies miraculously cleared as take off time grew near. The crew came out to I Item & I spoke to the Air Bomber for a bit & happened to see the Nav’s charts, & Berlin it was. I wondered whether Mac was twittering inside, Overton was taking Les Gray, our Nav. who had only done a Nickel before. What a task without even having done a Mining to navigate to Berlin & back. When the actual take off started the weather wasn’t too good but they went, they scrambled at 5 P.M. & set course 5.30 P.M. with our best wishes. During the evening five kites returned early but old Mac wasn’t amongst them, they were mainly 218’s kites too. So off we went to bed, hoping to hear old Mac come banging in at about 2 AM he did. It had been a fairly quiet trip he said, cloud cover all the way, & no fighter sightings. Les’s navigation had been bang on & he was personally congratulated by the Groupie.
[page break]
There had been a lot of reporters and photographers there & someone said a B.B.C. chap, lots of lines were shot anyway, we listened to all the story & then sank back asleep. When the morning came it seemed as though our luck was really out, it was clear as a bell. Jack & I grabbed two bikes & dashed down to the Flights to see whether we were on or not. What an anxious half hour that was, the Wing Co. rang for P/O Ralph who was acting Flt/Comdr. then & he came out with lots of papers etc. our hearts sank, but then he said “Nothing on, only mining” we could hardly believe our ears. Back we tore & dressed up for pay parade & a speedy get away. We reckoned without Pay Accounts, with their typical efficiency they paid us at 11.45 AM instead of 11 A.M as it was supposed to be. So we missed the 11.47 train, still nothing mattered then we were off & going home. Scorning the RAF food we had a dinner in Sly’s Café then a drink & homeward bound.
I had a fine leave although the weather wasn’t so hot, that night (Tuesday) it was Berlin dunno if any Stirlings went but we didn’t send any at all. During the leave I saw quite a few shows, among them the new film “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, also read the book, both very good. We arrived back O.K. without any incidents we only stopped 5 mins at Cambridge so couldn’t recreate our previous escapade.
[page break]
Johnny was looking very seedy going home, as he had only come out of the dock that day, he wangled round the M.O. He came back looking fit though, we all seemed to have reduced our colds. Ken had been down to Pastow for his Medical Board, & has been taken off flying. So we have definitely lost him, it is goodbye to a fine Navigator & one of the finest fellows it has ever been my priviledge [sic] to meet. We are lucky to have an equally good chap to fill his place they are much alike in many ways. Old Jack Yardley the W/Op who is in our hut & also suffered with air sickness went down with Ken & he is also off of flying.
This morning we did the inevitable Air Test, it always happens the day one returns from leave. I Item is still here, someone buckled a wing tip whilst we were away, there are only four kites left now, they have ferried all the others away. So we should be leaving in a few days, but where to nobody knows yet, rumours are flying as thick as ever. One thing that is definite 214 Sqdn are arriving here on Monday so we will have to leave by then. It is so cold as anything today, there was a frost like snow this morning. If this weather continues & gets worse during the winter I would welcome a posting to Italy or somewhere warm. Talking of warmth, I think I’ll turn in, bed is the best place to warm anyone up.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting] [/inserted] [Duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting about the raid on Berlin with a photograph of the crew led by Flying Officer Wiseman, and including Sergeant Twydell, engineer; P/O Craig, Sergent Foreman, Sergeant Copley F/Sergeant Brasington, F/O Theriault, and Flight Sergeant Macgillvray, second pilot] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[duplicate page]
[page break]
[duplicate page]
[page break]
[underlined] [missing words] December. [/underlined]
The cat is out of the bag, & there were a few surprises in the bag too, the gen has been dished out as to where we are all going. We all leave tomorrow on the 2 P.M. train, except for those who were due for leave & they went today, (our luck was in we were the last ones to get away, all leave was cancelled after we went). The Wing Co. went a few days ago to 90 Sqdn at Tuddenham, & P/O Ralph, Macgillvray & somebody else are going as well. After all this time then we are parted from Mac, it’s a pity, we two crews have been together a fair while, we are the only ones from Hixon now. By the by. Macgillvray appeared in the newspapers, there was a large photograph of old Wiseman & crew being interrogated upon their return from Berlin, & Macgillvray was in as second pilot quite celebrities now. That B.B.C. chap was here he gave a hell of a ‘bully’ story after the 1 P.M. news the following day.
To resume we and about six other crews are off to Waterbeach to convert onto Lanc IIs. As they have Hercules engines, we wont have Jack, as he won’t have to take another course. Four or so of the crews have gone on leave, today as they are due for it & they arrive there a week after us. It came as quite a surprise we all thought we were set on Stirlings, it will be quite a
[page break]
bind, circuits & bumps & screened cross countries all over again, oh hell! There is a squadron there as well 514, I wouldn’t mind being put on that, pray to the Lord we are. Four chaps are being transferred to 218 Sqdn. Overton & Wiseman are amongst them, they say Overton will have to revert to F/O. Nickie Nesbitt went back to P/O & Vickers the Engineering Leader did also, daresay they will have ‘em back again soon though. Some of the postings were to 199 & 149 Sqdns I believe. Last night we were put on the main effort, right in the middle of getting cleared from here, quite a flap. It was only 2, 4 & 6 tanks and 8 x 1,000 lbs & 6, x 5,000 lbs, as it must have been to these rocket gun emplacements they are building to shell London. It was scrubbed though, the minings went & poor old P/O Puch got the chop, his B/A Sutherland was a good guy, they were only an a short mining, too, quite shaking.
The latest Berlin raid where they lost 41 two war correspondents are missing, one got back though, gee! if they were paying that reporter £200 for going on a mining trip, heavens knows what those boys were raking in. One thing is sure from the way the Lancs are operating nearly every night whatever the weather, our tour will be over pretty soon one way or the other. We were paid today & finally cleared from here, last night we went into town to the dance & to the Crown for a farewell ‘do’ before we said goodbye to the hallowed precincts of Downham.
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday December 9th. [/underlined]
This entry is being made at Waterbeach, another new station this is my eighteenth station since I have been in the RAF, like Crosby & Hope I certainly get around. We left Downham Monday dinner time, and in the rush I missed saying cheerio to Ken, and was sorry but I have written to him. As usual when they tell you transport will be waiting, there was none, so we walked it was about 15 mins to the billet. The tales of the billets etc. being good inside the camp are quite true, the only snag being we aren’t in the camp. Our quarters are in the inevitable huts “Con Sight” as we call it though it is listed as Conversion Site. The Con Unit (1678) is almost entirely separate from the squadron we have our own mess about 5 mins walk from the hut. The food is good, better than at Downham, but the mess is bare, empty & cold. Not being many crews here either, it is generally isolated, & not very cheering. The squadron have a smashing mess in the camp, with living quarters above, very handy, wish we were in it.
I think the most shaking thing is that breakfast finishes at 7.45 A.M. right on the dot, so we have to be up really early. Then breakfast over we wash & are supposed to be at the flights at 8.15 A.M. It is a 25 min walk too, so we have to start out in time. There is [underlined] P.T [/underlined] 8.15 till 8.30 AM. then lectures.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting with photograph of an Avro Lancaster II] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[duplicate page]
[page break]
The walking is rather a bind as we didn’t expect it here, poor Mac is looking somewhat slimmer, as he lost his bike at a [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] wild party, before leaving Downham. Tuesday was occupied with filling in the arrival chits as usual, then yesterday & today we have had ground lectures, weather permitting we may commence our circuits & bumps tomorrow. There was nothing new in the ground work, the bombing side of the Lanc. is simpler than the Stirling. We carry cookies on there now, there is no second pilot, so I have lost my comfortable seat. This is compensated by the much better bombing compartment, there is a fine huge vision panel in the nose, no more straining one’s neck to get a line on the target. One also enters the turret from the bombing compartment, so there is no chance of being locked in the turret. The performance of these aircraft are pretty good, especially speed & climbing power.
Tuesday afternoon we went into Cambridge, there is a pretty decent bus service to & from there. In the village there isn’t a lot of life but a couple of decent pubs do a good trade. I have just heard from Bill Taylor, & he tells me poor old Jack is missing now, he was on the same squadron as old Bob Blackburn who is now reported killed. Its pretty grim to hear of the old pals getting the chop, wonder if I’ll be alive at the end.
[page break]
[underlined] Monday 13th December. [/underlined]
The weather at this place is as bad as at Downham, I didn’t think there could be another place as bad. Mac’s day circuits & bumps are now complete & we are ready for a day cross country which finishes the day flying & then on to night c & b’s. I rather like the lay out of this station, it is very neat and compact, of course that is because it was a peace time station. I wish we were billeted in the camp although I understand the food in the permanent mess isn’t as good as in ours. On Friday the Duke of Gloucester came down to inspect the camp, we knew a full 24 hrs before who it was, the old grape-vine certainly defeats security. On the Thursday morning the Bombing Leader asked us who it was as he wasn’t able to find out. Our six crews were joined for a cheering party we had to line up opposite a line of WAAF’s at the gate & cheer when he left. I haven’t been on P.T. yet I have a hard enough job to get up in the mornings. Mac has managed to scrounge an official bike now, that is one thing he moves fast for. Every Wednesday they have a C.O’s parade and march past, there is a fair amount of bull here considering they have an operational squadron, I guess it is because they have the Con Unit still, yes, the more I think of it, the more easier 623 appears.
[page break]
[underlined] Tuesday December 21st. [/underlined]
We are now back on an operational squadron again, 115 Sqdn at Witchford near Ely. Our course finished here last [inserted] Sunday [/inserted] night and yesterday & this morning we were completing our clearance chits. It wasn’t such a bad place, & the work was pretty easy, the ground work was nothing new at all, except a new photo flash fuse. Our first flip was a day cross country at 23,000 ft, a really binding trip, 10/10ths all the way, just sit there and freeze about 25o below. Then after the night circuits and bumps, we were on a Bullseye, Sunday night. Or rather a Flashlight exercise, because the I.R. bombing is abandoned over London, & they have a target of three red lights to simulate T.Is, & at various distances of a couple of miles altogether were white lights flashing various Morse characters, so on the photograph, one could tell in theory how near the bombs would have landed. That trip was a cold one as well but we had a hot time with the defences, a solid belt of searchlights all the way round, & a hell of a cone sight over the target, we were picked up on our bombing run & they sure dazzled me. We rather preferred to remain at Waterbeach with 514 Squadron owing to the compactness of the station. They don’t operate such a lot, the other night they landed at Downham Market, practically all kites were diverted. It was a black night, & the Met boobed badly, all England almost was fog bound, & we have heard from reliable sources that 65 kites either crashed or had to be abandoned owing to weather. With the 30 kites lost that made 95 kites, the public will never know of that.
[page break]
The transport brought us by road from Waterbeach it is 13 miles & when we reached Witchford there was a howling gale & the rain was lashing down. Nobody knew where we were supposed to be billeted & we were driving around the place, dashing in & out of huts, until soaked to the skin, we eventually found one. Roger’s crew is in the hut with us, we are on 4 site & it is about two miles from the mess. I have seen some dispersed stations but this is the worst of them all, the mess is a 30 min walk from the flights as well, we certainly use Shanks Pony here, it is killing Mac he hasn’t done so much walking for ages. The usual thick mist is everywhere that is the trouble in East Anglia. Everything about the station & squadron seems to be grim, at one time it was a happy squadron & contented, but this station has got everyone down a lot; they have only been here 3 weeks. To give a typical example of the way the place is run, they moved here via Berlin. The crews were sent off to Berlin from this base & on return had to land here, what a fiasco that must have been, tramping round in the dark trying to find billets etc. Leave here is about every 12 weeks, its incredible, they don’t appear to worry whether you have any or not. There is no operational meal before ops, just tea & a couple of sandwiches & the rations are pretty small, & no coffee. No transport is organised to take us into Ely, & there are hardly ever stand downs, there appears to be a complete lack of interest in air crew, oh! well I’m too cheesed to write any more.
[page break]
[underlined] Monday 27th December. [/underlined]
Xmas is over now, & I’m none too sorry really, it wasn’t a lot to shout about. Now we are settled down a bit better, but its hard to shake off the feeling of being cheesed here, everyone is, the old chaps of 115 Sqdn, the fellows on 196 the sqdn that was here before, & ourselves the mix crews from 623. The Bombing & Engineering Sections are in the same room, the Bombing Leader is a decent chap, but I don’t see how you can get to know the other bomb aimers, they don’t make any advances or anything. We flew the second night we were here on another Flashlight exercise, & were getting around O.K. but as we were running in towards London for the target, all the searchlights began homing us away from London, so we realised there was an air raid in progress, & beetled back to base. There they told us over the W/T to continue with our exercise & we had to beetle up North & keep cracking around. The trip took us 6 1/2 hours & they didn’t give us any rations at all, I was absolutely frozen, & had an electric waistcoat on, but that didn’t keep my legs warm, I was glad when we landed. On Thursday night, Mac did his second dicky they have to do them on these kites as well, of all places it was Berlin again. Thats [sic] two second dickeys he has done there now, packing ‘em in alright. I think it is a terrible feeling waiting around for them to come back I would rather go myself, he returned O.K. there was one missing from here.
[page break]
On Xmas Eve afternoon Bill & I cycled the 26 mls to Waterbeach & back to collect the Xmas mail for about a dozen fellows, we could have used a truck coming back. That night we all went into Ely to the Lamb Hotel to commence the celebrations. What a night it was, & what a head I had next morning. On Xmas Day the officers mess invited us over in the morning then came over to our mess in the afternoon, it was more of a drunken brawl than anything else. Bags of broken bottles & glasses, it is grim like that, we were supposed to serve Xmas dinner to the airmen, but I felt too grim to go across. Our tea that night was really wizard, it was served buffet form, & there were sausage rolls, cakes, pastries, sandwiches, sardine on toast, spam & chopped egg, trifle & cream cake it was grand! There were two fights, because tempers were rather frayed after drinking. Afterwards we all tramped into town to have our Xmas Dinner for the crew, in the Lamb Hotel, it was pretty good, we were in bed pretty early that night. Boxing Day was very quiet, we had our turkey dinner at 7.30 P.M. it was well served, afterwards there was a dance in the mess. There wasn’t a single decoration in the mess for the Xmas just lovely & bare. Anyway that was the end of the festive season, & this morning we donned battle dress once more & got cracking on the same old grind.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding the raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [three newspaper cuttings regarding the raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding the raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings regarding the raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday 30th December. [/underlined]
We have made a start at the squadron now, they don’t waste a lot of time, last night we began ‘ops’ here with a trip to Berlin. The pre-briefing was at 1.30 P.M. & Les & I got cracking on the maps and charts before all the crews arrived at 3 P.M. for the main briefing. Our route was worked out to try to bluff Jerry in believing the attack was being carried out on Leipzig or Magdeburg. We went straight for those places and as Mossies opened the dummy attacks on both towns we suddenly turned north & headed for the “Great City”. Taking it on the whole it wasn’t a bad trip twenty kites lost when over 700 were sent.
The trouble with these early take offs is that we don’t get a meal before we take our kites away & start dicing. At the end of briefing there is a mad rush to grab a cup of tea and a couple of sandwiches at the back of the room; then down to the locker room to change. Out we lumber to the transports, & they take us to the waiting kites. Here we dump all our heavy kit & climb in to check all our equipment & run the kite prop to see everything is bang on. Then we shut her down, & climb out to complete our dressing, a few minutes for a smoke for those that need it, then 20 minutes before we are due to take off we climb aboard again & start up. As the time approaches we taxi out & take our place in the line, then one by one [missing words]
[page break]
Round & round we circle, then as the time for setting course arrives we make the last circuit and away we go. By this time we are at about 13,000 ft & generally by the time of crossing the English coast we are a little [deleted] of [/deleted] over 15,000 ft. I carry out all my Bombing checks & put the front guns on Fire, all ready for something, we begin our vigilance here, as the German fighters often operate right across the North Sea. At our turning point we are at our operational height of 20,000 ft, & we set course for the Dutch Coast. Approaching the coast the flak can always be seen coming up from Texel or other equally well defended spots. The cloud was 10/10ths awarding us a natural protection from the searchlights.
Every now & then along the south some place would start throwing up flak, if it came close we weaved but generally didn’t bother. Quite a few times a fighter would drop three flares, lighting up quite an area of sky, if they were too near for safety we corkscrewed quickly, with everybody searching the sky carefully. The searchlights would also shine on the clouds in large concentrations causing us to be silhouetted to any fighter above. Two markers were dropped on the route to guide us away from hot spots, we didn’t see the first, but the second at Leipzig was plainly visible. The dummy attacks had commenced & there were some red & green T.I’s & a few bombs, they were certainly throwing up some flak, we had to nip in between Magdeburg & Leipzig, it was very warm & we got away as soon as possible.
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings regarding the raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings regarding the raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding the raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings regarding the raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cuttings] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
Just after leaving Leipzig I had a momentary panic when three ME110’s came whizzing past us going the opposite direction to Leipzig, I guess they came haring back later when Berlin opened up. We were running into a head wind coming up to the target & I thought we were never getting there; the T.I’s were burning there, & the cookies exploding, & the flak was pouring up, although it wasn’t too heavy; but we never seemed to be getting any nearer. As we eventually approached I could see the glow of a large fire reflecting on the clouds. Then “Bomb Doors Open” – “Running Up”, “Left Left” “Steady” “Bombs Gone” “Bomb Doors Closed” & away we went. The return journey was much the same as the outward, but we found the W/Op had turned the inter-wing balance cock the wrong way & we had lost 200 galls. So we had the worry of whether we would be able to make it or not. We crossed the English coast O.K. and were trying to make base, when the fuel warning lights started to flicker meaning we were almost out. There we were at 400 ft to [sic] low to bale out & unable to use up petrol to climb, just expecting the motors to cut at any moment. Suddenly a drome appeared & we screamed in there without announcing or anything but we were down & that was the main thing. It was a P.F.F. place Warboys, we didn’t get the egg there & had to sleep in a chair in the mess, so it wasn’t so good, next morning we flew back to base, & had a badly needed sleep. There was one missing from here which wasn’t so bad, however that was our first major ‘op’ over.
[page break]
[underlined] Monday January 3rd [/underlined]
Well that’s another year gone and 1944 is here, I wonder if this year will see Germany out of it, somehow I doubt it, though I think she will be well on the way. Last Friday ‘ops’ were on, so we had visions of seeing the New Year in over the other side. Briefing was at 3 P.M. again and the target was Frankfurt, it was an attempt to fool the Jerries and make them think we were going to Berlin, somehow I don’t think it would have been successful, anyway just as briefing it was scrubbed and we didn’t cry over it. There was a New Year’s Dance on in the gym, so we went there and got pretty merry, eventually getting into bed around 4 A.M.
Getting up well the worse for wear in the morning we were shaken to find there were ops on again that night. Pre briefing was 1.30 P.M. but the main briefing wasn’t until 9 P.M. there being an operational meal before we took off. The target was once more Berlin, this time we were going in from the north with a dummy attack on Hamburg though I wasn’t so sure that that would fool them. Take off was at a quarter to one in the morning a hell of a while to wait up till. This time they sent the fighters out to meet us and the fun started right over the Dutch coast. The flak was as eager to greet us as ever.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding a major air battle over Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting showing a photograph of Hitler’s new Chancellery in the Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
About 10 mins after we had crossed the Dutch coast I saw a burst of tracer go streaking across the sky then suddenly flames burst out on a Lanc & she slowly peeled over & went spiralling down through the clouds, then a few seconds later a huge glow shot up – poor devils. It couldn’t have been more that five minutes afterwards when Johnny the rear gunner screamed “Corkscrew Port”, I thought “here it comes” & gripped on. I guess whoever they are they all feel a bit of panic at such moments, I know the flesh on my back crawled as I kept anticipating the feeling of bullets ripping into my back. However we dodged him, it was a JU88 who came screaming down and fired a burst at us, he broke off the attack though. The flak in the target area was quite a bit heavier this time & it was really close, the return journey took us a fair bit longer as we were pushing against the wind. There were quite a lot of fighters lobbing down three flares at a time, it certainly is a hell of a feeling when one is battling along in the dark, & suddenly one is lit up as plain as daylight, & the feeling that every fighter in the sky is leering down at you is no fun. Mac generally swears and corkscrews viciously. We got back to base without mishap, shot the lines at interrogation then trotted off to another bacon & egg meal. There were 28 missing on that raid out of about 450 kites so it was heavier losses, none were missing from here which was good but 3 didn’t take off, and 3 turned back. ‘We got to bed at 10.30 A.M.
[page break]
At 2 P.M. we were awakened by the Tannoy blaring for all Navigators to report to the briefing room at 4 P.M. for pre-briefing. My God! there were ops on again & we were feeling nearly dead from lack of sleep already. It certainly set me back when going into briefing the target map showed Berlin again, gee! three times in five nights to the Great City it was pretty rough. Take off was at 12.20 P.M. because we were fighting to avoid the moon, even then it wasn’t set when we took off, but it had set before we reached the enemy coast. Things were pretty lively because there was a ninety mile an hour gale blowing and we had to go straight to Berlin, with no dummy attacks, & boy were they ready for us. For miles around the target it was like day with lanes of flares and kites whizzing around. It certainly was hectic over the target, I was expecting a fighter attack at any moment, & when the bombs had gone I got in the front turret & scared old Mac by flashing the guns backwards & forwards. Altogether we were in the thick of it for nearly 25 minutes it seemed like 25 years. I thought we would never get clear of there. It took us 2 1/2 hours [deleted] for [/deleted] to reach the target & 4 1/2 hours returning, because we were battling almost head on against the gale, it seemed an eternity before we reached the French coast. We reached base O.K. & tumbled in at 10.30 A.M. & boy! did we need the sleep, we lost one from here & I believe 27 on the whole effort.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding the bombing raid on Brunswick] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cuttings] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [duplicate newspaper cutting] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding bombing raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [duplicate newspaper cutting] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[underlined] Saturday 12th January [/underlined]
Its quite a while since I wrote here, but as usual I have been on leave in the meantime. There were no ops on the Tuesday after I last wrote, but on Wednesday there were. It was to Stettin & the route was all around Norway & the Baltic, then the stream suddenly headed south to Berlin, where Mossies started a dummy attack & the main force suddenly swung west to Stettin. The trip was terribly long 8 hr. 32 mins at the minimum & it was cutting it fairly fine with a full petrol load. At the last moment the route was lengthened by another three quarters of an hour, so that if we had made the trip we would have landed in the North Sea, consequently all Lanc IIs were scrubbed, the I’s & III’s went though & only lost 15 I wouldn’t have minded going. The next morning at two hours notice we were told we were on 7 days leave & had to rush around to get away that day.
We returned Thursday night, & got to bed about 1 A.M., then as it was the 4th day after the full moon, we were sure there would be no ops. Because 4 days before & 4 days after the full moon is the moon period & there are no ‘ops’. However Chopper Harris shot us up by putting ops on, after the morning air Test we dashed off for dinner then Les & I went back for 1.30 pre-briefing. The target was Brunswick, the place that the Forts went to a couple of days previously. They attacked aircraft factories about 20 miles from Brunswick, & we attacked the town.
[page break]
It was a real daylight take off, & when we were approaching the Dutch Coast it was quite light behind us, so I was expecting a head on attack. The weather was quite clear so the searchlights were active, there was quite a cone on Texel, & three large dummy fires as well, they must have quite a faith in the dimness of Air Bombers to bomb there. Our route took us quite close to Bremen, & there was a T.I. marker there cascading yellow. Later as we were getting close to the target we had to come really close to Hanover, & they were pretty active there. She had a hell of a lot of searchlights and if anyone strayed across the old flak would poop up. The attack started when we were a quarter of an hour from there, down went the T.I’s & up came the old flak. At briefing they said it would be pretty quiet, and that the Americans had destroyed 150 fighters for us – lovely it sounded. However there was quite a bit of flak and damned accurate, & more fighters milling around there us & other crews had seen before. I saw four kites go down in flames, [inserted] & burst [/inserted] on the ground, it was really grim. There was a lovely fire burning a huge thing with the green T.I’s in it, then a minute later our load went crashing down to help the conflaguration. The return journey wasn’t so bad there were numerous red flares dropped that burnt for a very short [deleted] [indecipherable letters] [/deleted] while, not like the usual fighter flares. We landed at 10.20 A.M. came butting back to beat the moon rise, we lost Blackwell & Christianson two senior crews, which was pretty grim, 38 [missing words], it certainly was no easy raid.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding the bombing raids on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cuttings regarding the bombing raids on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting of account of an eye-witness of the effects on the citizens during the bombings on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[underlined] Tuesday January 18th. [/underlined]
The weather certainly is grim, we haven’t flown since Friday, there has been a thick fog, and these last two days it has rained, but tomorrow promises to be clear so I guess there will be ops on then. According to the Press the Brunswick raid was fairly easy, they certainly harped out some guff, one of them said there were no fighters over the target & the Luftwaffe was fooled. I was looking at the official list of combats & sightings over the target, & there really were some. One chap from here claimed a confirmed & a probable. Three times over the target Bill the W/Op. happened to knock our huge nose light on, it put five years on my life, ‘cos the first time nobody knew who did it, & I was crouched there with my hands over it, & cursing like a madman. F/Sgt Foggarty who was with us put up a damn good show, over the target he was attacked consistently for half an hour by fighters & an engine (stbd inner) hit by cannon shell. He feathered it and it fell right out, he came down from 23,000 ft to 7,100 ft before he could pull out, & had to stay down low all the way. He sent out an SOS because he thought he wouldn’t make it, & the Jerries followed our homing procedure identically. They homed with searchlights to a ‘drome in Holland, lit it up & gave him a green, luckily his Gee operated and he battled off in a hurry. He crash landed with 3 engines, one bust tyre, no flaps or brakes, & nobody hurt. The engineers right arm & leg were rendered useless over the target & he carried on, but they both got a gong. Beside the two we lost we had three kites written off through fighter attacks, Waterbeach lost two. Dimmock was one of them he came back from leave with me the night previously.
[page break]
[underlined] Monday January 24th. [/underlined]
Still no more ops, in a week, at least no ops that we have completed. Last Thursday we were on the Berlin trip, it seemed a pretty good route, but there was a terrific long sea leg up to Denmark. I hate that, I don’t mind baling out over land ‘cos you have some chance, but there is no sense in baling out over water as by yourself in a Mae West, a chap wouldn’t last a couple of hours. So the only thing is ditching, then if the kite is out of control & we are unable to ditch, we’ve had it. However soon after taking off we couldn’t see any other kites & Johnny & I were picking up opposite drifts from what they should have been. Suddenly Mac checked his compasses and found they were all haywire, we were well off track, and crossed the coast at Ipswich instead of Cromer. Then trying to steer a straight course we went round in a huge circle. It was impossible for us to go on so we tried to jettison fuel in order to land. Mac & Jack tried to jettison fuel to bring our load down, but were unable to do so. We had to jettison the cookie, and flew sixty five miles out from the coast & let her go. So back we went, & were we cheesed, & hate a turn back, it was our first. Jimmy Rodgers returned earlier with a U/S rear turret & W/O Robbins with a U.S Rev counter, Anderson got lost & bombed Wilhelmshaven & I believe F.O Ogden came back after 4 1/2 hrs we were airborne 2 hrs. We lost P/O Canning, on his 19th trip.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting on raid on Magdeburg] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[duplicate page]
[page break]
The following night we were going to Magdeburg, with a dummy attack on Berlin, by 15 Mosquitoes, & 20 Lancs (dont [sic] fancy that). There were 690 kites detailed, quite a few for a place that size, we were taxying out, & were almost at the flare path when the kite in front of us became bogged, it was old Howby in F, Freddie. The dim of an ACP let us get right on top of it, before flashing a red, so there was no room for us to turn & go round the perimeter in time to take off. There were other guys in the same position as us & there we all sat whilst the minutes ticked by & we were scrubbed, did we curse. In all eight kites didn’t take off & we lost one, Waterbeach lost four, which was grim, and they say six returned early, I don’t know if thats [sic] right, if so only six kites got to the target & back, it certainly was a chop raid.
Hardwick the chap who was at OTU with us has 5 weeks more [deleted] week [/deleted] grounded, he is cheesed. He gave us some news of fellows at OTU. Doc & his crew are P.O.W’s poor old Cecil Kindt had the chop, Chiefy Young is a P/O with 15 in & his navigator Shields has his W/O they have [deleted] [indecipherable letters] [/deleted] been doing O.K. Bouchard is O.K. with 9, old Towne is in jail, stripped for beating up a town low level. Mac met, Pat Macguire, who was Petch’s Navigator, in London, he said Petch was killed outright. They have an English chap who was a staff pilot in Canada. Ray Bennett was killed outright, but Johnny Smythe his dark navigator is a P.O.W. I don’t know about the rest of the crew.
[page break]
[underlined] Sunday 30th January [/underlined]
Everything was peaceful until Wednesday & then ‘ops’ were on again, bags of twitter, we beetled out to old G George to see everything was bang on. The weather wasn’t too hot & everyone was sure it would be scrubbed. When we found out it was Frankfurt, we were certain we wouldn’t go as before we had been briefed for it & hadn’t gone, sure enough it was scrubbed. The Forts went there the other day though, (yesterday in fact) 800 bombers, they certainly must have wanted to rub that place out. However the following night (Thursday) we were dicing once more & it was the old Faithful Berlin again. It seems strange but I have on obsession for that place, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I like it, that would be plain dumb, but I am less disturbed when we go there than anywhere else. Why I am at a loss to explain as it is the longest & hardest trip we will ever have to do. All I know is I wouldn’t mind doing quite a few there, I hope it isn’t a fateful fascination & we get the chop over there.
We had a strong westerly wind blowing behind us & the outward trip only took 2 1/2 hrs, whilst the return took 5 1/2 hrs. Our journey wasn’t too bad, we had a nasty moment when Les told Mac to turn on a course of 037o & Mac thought he said 137o. We were on it for 2 minutes before I saw a Lanc. cut across us & I queried our course.
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings regarding a gale over Berlin causing fires to rekindle] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[duplicate page]
[page break]
This caused us to stray over, Brandenburg I believe it was & by jimini their predicted flak was damned accurate. It burst at the dead same height about 200 yds in front & another lot off the starboard beam. Another few seconds & we were flying through the black smoke puffs. As we saw the P.F.F. flares go down (they were a couple of minutes early) the first fighter flares dropped. Some of the kites had obviously arrived early & been stooging around, waiting for zero hour, because the flak had been going up for a while already. By the time we arrived, we were in the blasted last wave as usual, there were scores of yellow fighter flares making a lane into the target & another one out of it. There was one fair sized fire going but not so big as I have seen, just after the W/Op watched my cookie go through the clouds he reported a huge explosion. I smile to think it might have been me, but one can never tell what happens in a concentrated attack like that.
Two minutes after the bombs had gone, Don the Mid Upper spotted a fighter, & called to Johnny to watch it. Then we heard Johnny’s excited voice over the inter-com, “Its a JU88, he’s coming in he’s crossing over now, get ready to corkscrew port, - corkscrew port go”. I was scrambling up to the front guns & just reached there in time. Our corkscrew was so violent that neither of the gunners were able to open fire, it also
[page break]
must have surprised the Jerry because he overshot above us, & skidded in a stall turn about 200 yds away from our nose. I remember thinking “My God what a bloody size he is”, somehow I had never realised how large a 66ft wing span was for a fighter. Anyway he was in the wing right & a no deflection shot my fingers squeezed & I nearly whooped with joy, when I saw the tracer striking the rear of the port engine & the [deleted] sp [/deleted] mainplane between the engine & the fuselage. Then he dived down to port at a hell of a speed & my little bit of fun was over. It shook me that I was the one to open the attack, as the B/A’s don’t often get a crack. I think it rather shook him to be fired at from the front as he didn’t break away there again.
The battle really started then, & it was a battle too. Up he came from underneath, & Johnny yelled “corkscrew” & opened fire, we could hear his guns shattering, & we were zooming around the sky. Johnny said he hit the port engine again, as I hit it previously & some sparks & flames shot out then subsided to a glow, I think everyone thought we had had it then, though I must hand it to that fighter pilot he really had guts. Round he would come firing right in close & both our gunners would return the compliment. We were corkscrewing violently all the time and my stomach felt as though it was being torn apart & my head smacked against the perspex. Mac & Jack were both thrown against the
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings of the Berlin raid from two eye-witnesses] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding the 12th major bombing raid on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
roof too. Every now & again a huge stream of tracer would pour across the top of us, & my mouth was dry with fear as I saw the cannon shells exploding at 600 yds. The gunners would be shouting “Corkscrew keep corkscrewing – here he comes again,” then the guns would chatter & we’d roll around. When it came to the break aways I kept praying he would come up to the front & I could get another crack but he never did. I would yell “Where is he?” each time but he would dive right down underneath & they would lose him, it was a separate sighting & attack each time. He made 7 attacks on us, I thought it would never end, on the third he hit us in the elevator trim. Then on the fifth attack a cannon shell exploded in the port wing & bullets ripped through the port inner nacelle. Though we couldn’t tell where the damage was we could only feel the hits. However we gave him quite a bit of punishment, we all hit him, & on the seventh attack, the glow in his engine suddenly became brighter & he dived down & that was the end of the attack, we claimed him as a probable. The whole engagement lasted 18 to 20 minutes it seemed like years, I had one moment of real fright in it. In the middle of a corkscrew with squirts of tracer everywhere I felt a violent blow in the left leg & thought “Hell, I’ve been hit” but it was all the heavy bundles of window that had shaken loose & crashed on my leg.
[page break]
We were at 18,500 ft when the attack started & were down to 13,000 ft at the end, the corkscrews were so violent, the Elsan came right out & was all over the floor & the ammo from one of Johnny’s tanks was all out. My God I was really thankful we had seen that through, one doesn’t often get continuous battles like it. Mac had a fair amount of work with no elevator trim but there was nothing vital hit and the kite flew O.K. We managed to get back on track but we were pretty late, everything went pretty well until it came to the part we squeezed between Frankfurt & the Ruhr. Everything was O.K. until some wicked predicted flak shot up about half a mile to the starboard, there were only three bursts then suddenly there was a Lanc. with flame pouring from the nose & three of her engines. She held her course for a short while, then swung round in a huge circle, came behind, assumed course for half a minute or so then plunged down, I hope they got out. I thought the return journey would never end, I hate it as long as that. We came out pretty well south of track, but we were back O.K. a fair few landed away through lack of fuel. The bullets that ripped through the port inner [indecipherable word] punctured the tyre, but we didn’t know, and landed with a flat tyre, swerved off the runway & there we were. The crash wagon & blood wagon tore out, & they insisted on us riding in the blood wagon.
[page break]
The M.O. insisted upon giving us some capsules, to make us sleep that night & wouldn’t let us go on ops the next night. He knew his ‘gen’ because when we woke we were pretty dizzy & weak from their effect & couldn’t possibly have operated. It was Berlin again, another 8 hr effort, it was a shambles here. They only got 9 out of the squadron airborne, & 2 of these returned, leaving 7 to go on to the target. Out of these 7 we lost 2 which is pretty grim, F/Lt. Aarvin & P/O Tyn were the ones missing. From the night before we lost F/O Harris & F/Sgt Morris, old Morris had been with us at Downham, they said he was in a dinghy, at least he was going to ditch, but they heard no more. Friday night, the RAF Bomber Command Band gave a performance here & was very good, Saturday there was a stand down we went to a camp dance. G George is U/S for a fortnight or so & we were going to take another kite tonight but they were so short of kites they couldn’t put us on. We are right hard up for kites now, two had a head on crash when taxying, nobody was hurt, but the kites are really ripped up. Another had incendiaries through it, they only sent 11 tonight, it was Berlin again, Chopper is really pushing ‘em in again. Old Foggarty has been awarded the DFM for the show he put up, I thought he would. So 623 has made a start here anyway. I wonder if we will be going to Berlin much more I should think it must be pretty well smashed up, they haven’t been able to get photographs for awhile.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting saying that the Battle of Berlin is almost won and suggesting that Breslau may be the new Capital.] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[duplicate page]
[page break]
[underlined] Monday February 7th. [/underlined]
A week has elapsed since I last wrote, a week of doing practically nothing. That Sunday raid on Berlin was the last op there was, we got eight kites off I believe, & lost poor old F/Lt Hicks. He was the Asst. Flight Commander in our flight, a [deleted] [indecipherable letter] [/deleted] ‘Newzie’ & a good chap it was his 24th. There were no ‘ops’ then for a few days & then the moon period commenced. Our kite won’t be serviceable for nearly three weeks so they have given us J Johnny, Hicks’ old kite it was U/S & he took another when he got the chop. Sqdn.Ldr [indecipherable name] the ‘Corkscrew King’ had a real do. They had a contact on the Monica & instead of corkscrewing as they were told he asked the gunners if they could see anything. They were looking down & said “No”, & a fighter sitting about 10o up gave them a long burst while they were straight & level. He raked them right along, the rear turret smashed, the mid upper had about 20 fragments pass between his legs. A couple of cannon shells exploded in the fuselage, the [deleted] [indecipherable letter] [/deleted] D.R. Master Unit was hit, a large hole in the main plane, one prop damaged, Boy! they were really shot up. The only one who was hurt was the A/B who had a small piece of flak in his behind. We have been informed that the old Groupie has detailed us for an hours circuits & bumps for the bad landing we made returning from Berlin. That was with a burst tyre. God knows what he wants, I don’t even believe he knows we were shot up.
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting regarding the raids on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting with a photograph of a Halifax III] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
It seems pretty definite that the German [indecipherable word]. is evacuating from Berlin to Breslau, its another 200 miles to the South East, surely they wont go there from here, it would be about a 10 hour trip. There is some talk that the tour is being reduced to 25 ops as they are pretty grim now with the Berlin trips, it seems pukka ‘gen’ I hope it is. During the week we have been doing loaded climbs on J to test her starboard outer now it has to be changed. We have also been trying to get some GH Bombing in but the weather isn’t so good. Yesterday we had the day off, they are giving crews a day off during the moon period. Johnny & I went home catching the 1036 AM. Sunday, & travelling back on the 8.20 AM. Monday, I had a wizard time.
On Saturday night we lost a kite on the Bullseye, it was Bishop who was at Downham with us. Poor old Jack Speechly was the Bomb Aimer, I had known him 18 months ever since Manchester, we did our training in Canada together, he was a rattling good chap. They had an American pilot with them, they were all killed, & they don’t know how it happened yet. The crash was found with them all in it, its really grim. That’s three of the crews that were with us at Downham gone now P/O Whitting Ginger Morris & now old Bishop, boy! I only pray we see the tour out & so do all the others. There’s nothing much happening, consequently there isn’t much to make an entry of, think I’ll snatch an early night.
[underlined] Sunday February 13th. [/underlined]
The moon period has definitely finished now and our period of rest is over. Once more ‘Chopper’ whipped a day off the end of it, we were briefed for Berlin & were out at the kites with about 30 mins to go before take off when it was scrubbed. The reason being the bad weather at base on return, it was pretty grim, & was a [deleted] poo [/deleted] wonder it wasn’t scrubbed before. I wouldn’t have minded the trip, because for a change it was a long trip out, & a short trip home. Last minute scrubbings are worse than some ‘ops’ I think after being keyed up all that time, still it shows there is still some of the Big City left there.
We haven’t done much this week, as the weather has been pretty duff, most of the time we tried some GH Bombing nothing came of it, owing to climate conditions. The other day we were up in a hell of a snow storm, all the time we were running before it & trying to find a way out. All the countryside looked pretty Christmassy with a coating of snow over the fields & villages. As I was in the rear turret all the time I was more interested in keeping warm. Our turrets got in grim condition during the moon period and we had to work like the devil all day to get it in shape. I was late for briefing through it and had a hell of a flap trying to get my tracks & maps all ship shape.
[page break]
All Jimmy Rodgers crew went to Cambridge on Friday, as two of [deleted] Jim [/deleted] Bishops crew were being buried there. It is terrible really four of them were married & a couple engaged, old Bishop was only married at O.T.U., I would never get married in war time for that reason. Looking at it soberly with all the chaps getting the chop it seems a hell of a mugs game still there it is.
There has been a fair amount of entertainment this week, we had a night out in Ely with a wizard meal in the KUMIN Café. On Wednesday night there was a dance in the gymnasium, then Thursday night we had a big social in the mess. They even went to the extent of polishing the floor, & in our grim mess that really is something. It went on until 1 AM. & there was bags of beer & eats, the food was very good, marzipan cakes, sausage rolls etc. £25 was allowed for it, so it should have been good. On Saturday there was another dance but I was cheesed with that & don’t think I will bother going again.
The siren is going now & there is some gunfire, be quite comical now, with us refraining from bombing Berlin owing to the met. here, & the Jerries using the same conditions to bomb us. They have left the bombs on the kites & only drained the tanks to 1500 so it looks as though they will be parking us along tomorrow. I guess now they have started again, Chopper will try & really finish Berlin, hope he doesn’t finish us.
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings regarding the continuing raids on Berlin and their effect] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[duplicate page]
[page break]
[underlined] Thursday 17th February. [/underlined]
All was quite [sic] until Thursday, when ‘ops’ were on again, & there it loomed on the briefing room chart, the [deleted] G [/deleted] Big City once more. It was another daylight take off, quite a sight to see all the kites streaming over the coast at Cromer. The first leg was a terrific long one up to Denmark, & it was quite light most of the way, but luckily got dark by the time we were crossing the coast. Those Danish islands can certainly poop up some flak, & I was glad when we hit the Baltic Coast. The last leg to the target was a terrific long one, straight to it, I couldn’t see that the Jerry would be fooled regarding the target, even though there was a spoof attack on Frankfurt-on-Oder. The P.F.F. boobed by sending the flares down before zero hour, & the flak certainly opened up. It was the heaviest I have seen there, I think he was relying more on that than his fighters. Running up I could see about six Halifaxes beneath us, they seemed quite happy as the flak was all bursting between 18 & 21,000 ft. We were carrying just one 8,000 lb cookie, which is quite a goodly size, it was handy in the way that immediately I said ‘Bombs Gone’ Mac could whip the Bomb Doors shut.
Bomber Command was trying new tactics this time the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd waves went one way, & we in the 4th & 5th waves went a bit south of them along another route. The idea was to split the fighter forces, & I think it succeeded we only saw two all night, one ME110 just after
[page break]
[inserted] [two newspaper cuttings regarding the raids on Berlin] [/inserted] [duplicate page]
[page break]
[inserted] [newspaper cutting about obliterating bombing techniques]
[page break]
leaving the target flashed across our nose. We ran into some flak though, getting off track a bit we stooged right over Magdeburg. Beside window there were two huge packets of nickels to throw out so I was sweating like anything shovelling it all out. Not much happened on our return journey apart from a few fighter flares & some rockets. We saw a kite go down in flames over the North Sea, I should hate to get the chop right back there. Two were lost from here, F/S Whyte who had 16 trips in & F/S Ralph who was with us at Downham. He had Pinky Tomlin, Petch’s old B/A, who arrived with a new skipper F/O Nice, beside losing his B/A he lost his rear gunner who went as a spare with Whyte. I hate this spare business they always seem to get the chop.
Yesterday we were briefed for Berlin, then scrubbed, then again tonight & were out at the kites before being scrubbed, the weather was terrible both days, yet they wait till the last minute before scrubbing it. We were read a message from Chopper Harris C in C. congratulating us on the progress of the Battle for Berlin. After the usual flowery comments on our ‘courage & steadfast spirit’ he said we were well ahead of schedule in the obliteration of the capital. He also said the Allied Command considered it the most important battle of all land, sea or air battles fought & yet to fight in the war. There was a long list of reasons of its immediate need to be liquidated, & he said he had to rush us to finish the job as the lighter nights and the Northern lights would soon be making their appearance. Well I hope there isn’t many more trips to be done there.
[page break]
22
[underlined] 60/520 [/underlined]
8
196
2443
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
Book 5, Return to UK
Description
An account of the resource
Fifth and final diary kept by David Geach chronicling his time training and on operations. He writes about his return from Canada on the Queen Elizabeth then his training in England which began with arriving at the Posting Centre in Pannal Ash, Harrogate. He was then posted to AFU Bobbington, training on Ansons. From there he went to O.T.U. Hixon and satellite station Seighford training on Wellingtons. He then went to Flying Conversion Unit Woolfox Lodge to train on Stirlings. Once training was complete he was posted to RAF Downham Market on 623 Squadron flying Stirlings on operations. When 623 Stirling squadron was disbanded he was transferred on to Lancasters. He was posted to Flying Conversion Unit 1678 at RAF Waterbeach to train on the Lancaster and then on to RAF Witchford where he undertook operations over Germany, including a number on Berlin. Covers the period 17 March 1943 to 17 February 1944.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Geach
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten diary
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Diary
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
YGeachDG1394781v5
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
Scotland--Greenock
Scotland--Glasgow
Scotland--Edinburgh
England--Harrogate
England--Whitley Bay
England--Bournemouth
England--Stourbridge
England--Birmingham
England--Wolverhampton
England--Stafford
Canada
Ontario--Ottawa
Atlantic Ocean--Cardigan Bay
Wales--Rhyl
England--The Wash
England--Nottingham
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
England--Cannock
Wales--Aberystwyth
Scotland--Orkney
France--Saint-Malo
France--Rennes
France--Isigny-sur-Mer
France--Cherbourg
France--Avranches
England--Southampton
England--Stamford
England--Cambridge
England--Peterborough
England--Bedford
England--Portsmouth
Netherlands--Friesland
England--Cromer
France--La Rochelle
France--Gironde Estuary
France--Nantes
England--King's Lynn
Italy--Turin
North Africa
Gibraltar
England--Thames River
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Berlin
England--Ely
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Hamburg
Norway
Netherlands--Texel
Germany--Bremen
Denmark
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Brandenburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Hannover
England--Sunderland (Tyne and Wear)
Poland--Szczecin
Poland--Wrocław
England--Southend-on-Sea
Italy
Atlantic Ocean--Firth of Clyde
Poland
France
Ontario
Germany
Netherlands
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Bedfordshire
England--Durham (County)
England--Essex
England--Hampshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northumberland
England--Sussex
England--Staffordshire
England--Worcestershire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Warwickshire
England--Selsey (West Sussex)
Wales--Caernarfon
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
David Bloomfield
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-03
1943-04
1943-05
1943-06
1943-07
1943-08
1943-09
1943-10
1943-11
1943-12
1944-01
1944-02
115 Squadron
149 Squadron
1678 HCU
196 Squadron
199 Squadron
214 Squadron
218 Squadron
30 OTU
514 Squadron
623 Squadron
90 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aerial photograph
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
Catalina
Conspicuous Gallantry Medal
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
entertainment
fear
flight engineer
Gee
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hurricane
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Me 110
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Mosquito
navigator
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Downham Market
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Hixon
RAF Lindholme
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Seighford
RAF Tangmere
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Warboys
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Witchford
RAF Woolfox Lodge
Red Cross
sanitation
searchlight
Stirling
target indicator
target photograph
training
Typhoon
Victoria Cross
Wellington
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/106/1011/BBriggsDWNealeWv1.1.pdf
517c696d7b7ef0bf110c35395391be88
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Briggs, Donald
Donald W Briggs
D W Briggs
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-27
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Briggs, DW
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. The collection consists of one oral history interview with flight engineer Donald Ward Briggs (1924 - 2018), his logbook, memoirs and 16 wartime and post war photographs. He completed 62 operations with 156 Squadron Pathfinders flying from RAF Upwood. Post war, Donald Briggs retrained as a pilot flying Meteors and Canberras. He eventually joined the V-Force on Valiants and was the co-pilot for the third British hydrogen bomb test at Malden Island in 1957.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Donald Briggs and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined]Tribute to a Pathfinder Captain [/underlined]
Squadron Leader William G. Neale DSO DFC Croix de Guerre
1912-2001
It was April 1944, and I had just completed the Flight Engineer training course at R.A.F. St Athan S. Wales. Shortly after arriving at R.A.F. Lindholme near Doncaster to commence training on the Halifax bomber, about twenty or so of us new Flt Engineers attended a “crewing up parade”. The crews were lined up in sixes awaiting the additional member to make a full crew of seven. The pilot in each crew broke away and approached our group. I was asked for by name and stepped forward to meet Flying Officer Bill Neal. He know from my training records that I had some limited flying experience through accompanying pilots on air tests following engine changes etc. Bill explained that his crew had all completed one tour of ops and they had been selected to go to a Pathfinder Squadron directly after four engine bomber conversion. He explained what it all meant and what the duties of a Pathfinder crew would be. Bill asked me if I would like to join his crew and I accepted without hesitation. And so it was that fate decided that I should sit alongside this outstanding pilot for the next twelve months!! All the crew were commissioned officers but Bill promised that he would do his utmost [?] to get me commissioned after completing a tour of ops. That evening I received my “initiation” into the crew at one of the local “watering holes”!! I was not allowed to buy any beer!!
As our training on Halifaxes proceeded I quickly realized my extremely good fortune in becoming part of this very experienced bomber crew. In fact on our first night navigation exercise, an engine suffered a burst coolant header tank, quickly overheated and had to be to[sic] shut down and the propeller feathered. Bill calmly and skilfully carried out his first night landing on three engines! Of course he must have done numerous single engine landings as a flying instructor on Wellingtons.
[underlined]William G. Neal (Bill to all the crew) First impressions [/underlined]
I was approaching my twentieth birthday and Bill was almost twelve years my senior. His mature friendly nature and jovial personality transmitted a feeling of well being in all who came into contact with him. I personally regarded Bill as my mentor and felt that he was the one who would get us safely through the war.
His leadership qualities were of the highest calibre, namely: great courage, example, coolness under fire, tenacity, professionalism, and the ability to maintain high morale in his crew. Above all, Bill was a superb pilot!! We were all encouraged to stay fit and healthy and our skipper set a good example by playing squash regularly!
[underlined] Operations and Training [/underlined]
[page break]
Having completed training on the Halifax, the next stage was our introduction to the magnificent Lancaster. This was accomplished at the Lancaster Finishing School RAF Hemswell nr. Lincoln. It was only a short familiarisation course, both day and night flying, and Bill was immediately “at home” with this superb aircraft! So now we were all set to join The Pathfinder Force and proceeded to the PFF Navigation Training Unit at RAF Warboys nr. St. Ives Cambs. (only five miles from RAF Upwood). It was a very short course lasting only four days. We flew a training sortie each day consisting of navigation and practice bombing. During this course I was taught how to use the bombsight, how to give corrections to our pilot, and after practice in a synthetic trainer, dropped smoke/flash bombs on a nearby bombing range. The reason for the flight engineer having to become the visual bomb aimer in a Pathfinder crew, was due to the normal bomb aimer or observer being fully pre-occupied on his radar (H2s). He would probably have to mark the target indicators (Ti’s) if the “Master Bomber” called for them.
On the 25th May 1944 we arrived at Royal Air Force Upwood to join No. 156 (PFF) Squadron.
[underlined] Our First Crew on PFF [/underlined]
[underlined] Flying Officer W.G. (Bill) Neal [/underlined]PILOT and CAPTAIN (one tour of ops on Wellingtons and recent flying instructor at RAF Harwell, Oxon)
Sergeant D.W. (Don) Briggs FLIGHT ENGINEER (ex NCO aero engine fitter)
Pilot Officer Alan Lewis NAVIGATOR (one previous tour of ops)
Flying Officer George Hodges 2nd NAVIGATOR and H2S RADAR OPERATOR (one previous tour of ops on Wellingtons)
Flying Officer John Carrad WIRELESS OPERATOR (one previous tour of ops on Wellingtons)
Flying Officer “Jock” McViele [?] MID UPPER GUNNER (one previous tour of ops)
Flying Officer “Paddy” Kirk REAR GUNNER (one previous tour of ops)
The settling in period for the crew before commencing operations, was about two weeks of intensive training flights. These involved mostly radar navigation, practice bombing, fighter evasion which gave Bill some “corkscrewing” practice (we had a Spitfire making simulated fighter attacks from astern). Needless to say the gunners had their guns safe!! They were able to get live firing practice later on a sleeve being towed by special aircraft – even I had a go after being shown how to operate the guns in the front turret!!
During our training on the Halifax at Lindholme, Bill had very kindly given me an introductory flying lesson (I had never handled an aircraft in flight before!) After taking my place in the pilot’s seat, he showed me how to maintain the correct nose altitude for level flight and how to use the roll control to level the wings also make gentle turns. Once we were established on the Squadron we had a training commitment in navigation and bombing to fulfil. This was necessary in order to “hone” our skills and maintain the very high standards demanded of PATHFINDER crews. During most of these flights Bill and I would change places and under his close supervision, I would take control of the big Lancaster – what a fantastic feeling! By
[page break]
giving me plenty of handling practice, Bill, being a very responsible captain was ensuring that someone was capable of flying the aircraft in emergency. Thus I can take pride in saying that my first flying lessons were given by the excellent Bill Neal!! It’s worth noting that no Lancaster on the squadron was equipped with dual controls, which is why it was necessary for the pilot to vacate his seat to allow me to fly the aircraft.
We were now declared “fully operational” and on 11th July 1944 Bill called us together and said “we’re on the Battle Order for tonight chaps”! We lost no time in getting our flying kit on, then carry out a thorough check of our aircraft that we would be flying on the raid and by a short air test. The aircraft would then be prepared for the operational sortie by our ground crew (they were a dedicated band of men and took great pride in their own Lancaster). The fuel load was usually maximum. Then last of all would come the bomb load on special trolleys quite often towed by a W.A.A.F. The bombing up team would then winch the bombs/flares/Target Indicators into the bomb bay.
After a few hours rest in the afternoon it was time to attend a mass briefing. The target for our Op No. 1 was to be the marshalling yard at TOURS in Southern France. With all the flight planning completed we sat down to a good pre flight meal then made our way to the locker room. The air gunners had to wear plenty of warm clothing, as the outside air temperature at twenty thousand feet could be -10oC[?] and very little heat from the aircraft system reached the turrets. Both gunners were issued with electrically heated thermal suits and gauntlets. The rest of the crew wore thick rollneck pullovers under the battledress jacket and of course everyone wore fleece lined suede flying boots. Each crew member had his own parachute harness and chest[?] type parachutes were issued separately. We then boarded coaches and were dropped off at our own aircraft. The ground crew were already at the aircraft and the Form 700 (servicing record) was presented to Bill for signature. After the obligatory external inspection including an inspection of the bomb load and removal of safety pins, each crew member took up his position in the aircraft. It was my job to start all the engines when our skipper gave the order, and we had a precise time to start taxying. To see twenty or so Lancasters in a stream round the perimeter track was a thrilling sight!! There was always a crowd of station personnel by the side of the runway to see us off (lots of W.A.A.F.’s!!) It was vital that each bomber took off precisely on its allocated time. When it was our turn, Bill entered the runway lining up the heavily loaded Lancaster as close to the end as he could. At the end of the navigator’s countdown, Bill used to say “OK chaps as the earwig said – EARWIGO”!! as he advanced the throttles to full power accelerating down the runway for a perfect take off. Ask my ex Lancaster crew member and he will tell you what a wonderful sound those four Merlins made at full power!! I suspect the “earwig” saying was not only routine but superstition also, but it was part of every operational take off for our crew.
Once we had set course and were climbing to operational height the “butterflies” disappeared as we all had plenty to do. The flight engineer’s log had to be completed every half hour, recording all engine gauge readings and that fuel usage was according to plan. It was vital not to show any light in the cockpit. Bill’s flight instruments were dimly lit by u/v lights directed on to the luminous dials, and I had to use a torch with a very small hole in the blacked out glass when filling in my log.
[page break]
Both navigators worked under black out curtains. We had a very strict microphone discipline in a bomber crew. If a mic. Was left ON after saying something there was a hissing noise caused by oxygen flowing into the mask[?]. It was essential to keep the intercom quiet in case the gunners reported a night fighter and called “corkscrew (port or starboard) GO”. Our skipper Bill was a strong chap and could certainly throw a Lancaster around!! On my very first op with the crew I had my “baptism” in the form of two fighter attacks. Paddy our rear gunner saw the fighter before he could get in close and during the violent corkscrewing the four brownings in the rear turret made a noisy “clatter”. This was exciting stuff for the new crew member!!! In both attacks the fighter’s shots went wide and he broke away.
On this sortie and several more night ops to follow we were part of the “illuminating force”. This meant that we were one of the first to arrive at the target and would drop a stick of very bright parachute flares to enable the Master Bomber to visually identify the aiming point. He would be either a Lancaster or a Mosquito at a low altitude and would then drop cascading target indicators (mixed reds and greens). Further pathfinder aircraft were required to “back up” the marking by dropping more TI’s. Later in our tour we took on this role. Although anti aircraft fire (flak) on our first series of French targets was not intense, German targets were very heavily defended. Our first German target was Hamburg (op no. 13!!) and as we prepared for our bombing run the barrage of flak looked terrifying. Just as I was having doubts whether we could get through it, Bill said “don’t worry it always looks worse than it really is and the puffs of flak you see are the ones that can’t do any harm”. I felt slightly better!! The flak guns were radar predicted and the Germans had developed accurate height finding equipment. To make their job more difficult we used to fly a “weaving” course initially until the actual bombing run when the aircraft had to be held steady apart from small left and right corrections from bomb aimer to pilot. This is when we were most vulnerable to predicted flak and being "coned" by searchlights. Even after bomb release we still had to maintain heading until over the target and the photograph taken. This was a great relief to all the crew as it meant that Bill would usually dive for a few hundred feet then climb again and so on, until well clear of the target area. Our route away from the target was always planted to keep us clear of heavily defended areas, however, the threat from night fighters was ever present. Some ME110 fighters were fitted with upward firing canon. The pilot would fly formation below the bomber (in a blind spot to the gunners) and fire upwards with devastating results. In our Lancasters at the bomb aimer’s position there was a rearward facing perspex scoop through which we used to drop bundles of “window” (each containing millions of thin strips of silver foil to fog the enemy radar screens). I used to spend as much time as possible with my head down looking through this perspex in case a fighter was underneath.
One of the most sickening and demoralising sights was to witness a bomber aircraft being shot down. The bomber would be spinning down in a mass of flames and when it impacted (possibly with a full bomb load) there would be a massive explosion and fireball. Our navigator would make a note of the time and position, then we tried to put it out of our minds. Throughout our operational tours this experience was to be repeated many many times. We felt great sadness at the loss of our comrades, but thankful that we were spared.
It was a relief to be back over friendly territory on the way home and once we were
[page break]
crossing the North Sea the gunners could relax slightly. The aerodrome lights of Upwood were a most welcome sight and the controller had his work cut out fitting all the returning Lancasters into the circuit. Bill invariably brought our machine in for a well judged landing, tired though he must have been! Our ground crew were there on the dispersal to greet us climbing out of our trusty Lancaster and were always keen to know which target we had bombed. WAAFs with mugs of hot coffee laced with rum and the Padre having a chat as he handed out American cigarettes!! Then followed a debriefing by the intelligence officer and other specialists. Many times I remember walking back to the Mess for breakfast as dawn was breaking!
Some ops were very long flights (see record of operations following) and one might well ask “how did you stay awake and fully alert the whole time”? Well we had the option of taking “wakey wakey” pills as we used to call them. They were actually Benzodrine tablets (a stimulant) and most of us took them.
The remainder of our operation followed the general pattern previously described, however, we flew many daylight ops particularly in support of our ground forces on the Normandy Battle Front. We also attacked flying bomb sites in the Pas de Calais area using a special method. Six Lancasters flew close formation on a Mosquito equipped with “Oboe” (an extremely accurate blind bombing device). At the same split second the bomb left the Mosquito every Lancaster released its full load of bombs. Thus the V1(buzz bomb) site was totally obliterated possibly saving the lives of many Londoners. Ops 2, 3 and 4 were carried out on successive nights but were all fairly short trips to targets in France. On 14th October 1944 we flew a daylight raid on Duisburg in the morning, and with hardly any rest, attacked the same target that night! The target was an armaments factory in the Rhur and was heavily defended.
After completing my first tour (40 ops) having already had my commissioning interviews, sure enough exactly as Bill had promised, my commission came through. I was now able to join Bill and the rest of the crew in the Officers Mess.
At this Bill had completed[underlined] two tours [/underlined] of ops and decided to keep going as did Johnie Carrod, George Hodges, and of course myself (I wanted to complete two tours also). However, Alan Lewis (nav), Paddy Kirk and Jock McVitie (the two gunners) decided to “call it a day”. Thus our crew became:-
Flight Lieutenant (later Sqn. Ldr.) Bill Neal DFC Captain
Pilot Officer Don Briggs Flight Engineer
Flight Lieutenant George Hodges DFC H2S Radar Operator
Sergeant …..? Archer RCAF Navigator
Flight Lieutenant John Carrod DFC Wireless Operator
Flight Sergeant (later Warrant Officer) …..? Patterson (Mid Upper Gunner)
Flight Sergeant Eric Chamberlain Rear Gunner
And so we pressed on! From then on every op except one was a German target. We flew some very long trips (two of them were over [underlined] (eight hours)[underlined] Our longest flight was to Stettin
[page break]
On the Baltic coast – almost to Russia – eight and a half hours! That was stretching a Lancaster endurance to its limits I seem to remember.
We bombed Chemnitz and Dessau in Eastern Germany and of course on 13th Feb.1945, we were sent to Dresden. The firestorm was an awesome sight.
On the 24th March 1945 I flew my last operational sortie with Bill – it was a daylight raid on a Rhur target!
No words can do justice to the piloting skill, leadership, and fearless tenacity, coupled with the ability to maintain high morale, of our Captain, Comrade in Battle, and good friend, William G. Neal – Bill to all of us in his Lancaster bomber crew.
It was an honour to be part of his team, and I shall be eternally thankful that he got me through the most dangerous era of my life. Sadly, Bill Neal died on the 22nd November 2001. I shall miss him enormously.
[underlined] RECORD OF OPERATIONS [/underlined]
OPS 1 11th June 1944 Lanc III “J” (NE120) TOURS (M/Yards) 5hrs 55min.
OPS 2 15th June “ Lanc III “B” LENS 2hrs 20min.
OPS 3 16th June “ Lanc III “A” RENESCURE 2hrs 05min.
OPS 4 17th June “ Lanc III “H” MONTDIDIER 3hrs 30min.
OPS 5 24th June “ Lanc III “K” MIDDEL STRAETE 2hrs 15min.
OPS 6 27th June “ Lanc III “J” OISEMONT 2hrs 30 min.
OPS 7 2nd July “ Lanc III “J” OISEMONT 2hrs 50min.
OPS 8 7th July “ Lanc III “J” VAIRES (M/Yards nr PARIS) 4hrs 25min.
OPS 9 10th July “ Lanc III “J” NUCOURT 3hrs 00
OPS 10 12th July “ Lanc III “J” TOURS 5hrs 05min.
OPS 11 14th July “ Lanc III “J” PHILIBERT 3hrs 05
OPS 12 18th July “ Lanc III “J” CAGNY (Battle Front)
Wg.Cdr.Bingham-Hall Sqn. 2hrs. 50
OPS 13 28th July “ Lanc III “F” HAMBURG 4hrs 55
OPS 14 30th July “ Lanc III “K” BATTLE FRONT (Low level) 3hrd 05
OPS 15 3rd Aug. “ Lanc III “J” BOIS De CASSAN 3HRS 35
OPS 16 5th Aug. “ Lanc III “F” FORET De NIEPPE 2hrs 05
OPS 17 7th Aug. “ Lanc III “J” BATTLE FRONT A/P 5 2hrs 45
OPS 18 9th Aug. “ Lanc III “F” FORT D’ENGLOS 2hrs 20
OPS 19 12th Aug. “ Lanc III “D” RUSSELSHEIM (nr FRANKFURT) 4hrs 20
OPS 20 15th Aug. “ Lanc III “J” EINDHOVEN Airfield (Holland) 2 hrs 55
OPS 21 16th Aug. “ Lanc III “H” KIEL 5hrs 25
OPS 22 18th Aug. “ Lanc III “E” CONNANTRE (M/Yards) 5hrs 20
OPS 23 25th Aug. “ Lanc III “J” RUSSELSHEIM 7hrs 20
OPS 24 29th Aug. “ Lanc III “J” STETTIN (Our longest flight) 8hrs 30
OPS 25 31st Aug. “ Lanc III “D” LUMBRES 2hrs 35
OPS 26 15th Sept. “ Lanc III “J” KIEL 5hrs 05
[page break]
OPS 27 16th Sept. “ Lanc III “J” MOERDUK Bridges (Holland) 2hrs 55
OPS 28 20th Sept. “ Lanc III “J” CALAIS Area A/P 6B 2hrs 10
OPS 29 23rd Sept. “ Lanc III “J” NEUSS (DUSSELDORF) 3hrs 30
OPS 30 25th Sept. “ Lanc III ”A” CALAIS Area A/P IC 2hr 55
OPS 31 26th Sept. “ Lanc III ”A” CAP GRIS NEZ (CALAIS) 2hrs 30
OPS 32 27th Sept. “ Lanc III “A” CALAIS A/P 11 1hr 50
(Our shortest Operational Sortie!)
OPS 33 5th Oct. “ Lanc III “K” SAARBRUCKEN 5hrs 00
OPS 34 7th Oct. “ Lanc III “J” KLEVE (Flak damage to port wing) 3hrs 20
OPS 35 14th Oct. “ Lanc III “J” DUISBURG (RHUR) 3hrs 30
OPS 36 14th Oct. “ Lanc III “A” DUISBURG 4hrs 10
(Twice in one day!!!)
OPS 37 18th Nov. “ Lanc III “J” MUNSTER (Plt. Off. Don!!) 3hrs 50
OPS 38 28th Nov. “ Lanc III “J” ESSEN (RHUR) 4hrs 30
OPS 39 30th Nov. “ Lanc III “B” DUISBURG (RHUR) 4hrs 25
OPS 40 5th Dec. “ Lanc III “J” SOEST M/Yards (End of my
First tour of ops!) 5hrs 40
OPS 41 6th Dec. “ Lanc III “J” OSNABRUCK 5hrs 15
OPS 42 29th Dec. “ Lanc III “J” COBLENZ 4hrs 15
OPS 43 2nd January 1945 Lanc III “J” NURNBURG 7hrs 40
OPS 44 4th Jan. “ Lanc III “J” ROYAN (Nr. Bordeaux) 5hrs 05
OPS 45 5th Jan. “ Lanc III “J” HANOVER 4hrs
OPS 46 14th Jan. “ Lanc III “J” LEUNA (Morsburg) Oil Plant
(Diverted Tangmere – fog at Upwood) 8hrs 05
OPS 47 16th Jan. “ Lanc III “J” ZEITZ (Oil Plant Nr. Leipzig) 6hrs 30
OPS 48 28th Jan. “ Lanc III “0” STUTTGART
(Flew with Flt. Lt. Williams) 6hrs 00
OPS 49 7th Feb. “ Lanc III “J” GOCH (Bombed from 4500ft) 4hrs 40
OPS 50 8th Feb. “ Lanc III “B” POLLITZ (STETTIN) 8hrs 05
OPS 51 13th Feb. “ Lanc III “J” [underlined] DRESDEN [/underlined] 7hrs 45
OPS 52 1st March “ Lanc III “J” MANNHIEM 5hrs 05
OPS 53 5th March “ Lanc III “J” CHEMNITZ 7hrs 40
OPS 54 7th March “ Lanc III “J” DESSAU 7hrs 50
OPS 55 8th March “ Lanc III “J” HAMBURG 5hrs 15
OPS 56 12th March “ Lanc III “J” DORTMUND 4hrs 25
OPS 57 15TH March “ Lanc III “J” MISBURG Oil Refinery 6hrs 20
(Nr. Hanover)
OPS 58 16th March “ Lanc III “J” NURNBURG (3 fighter attacks) 6hrs 50
OPS 59 19th March “ Lanc III “J” HANAU Nr. Frankfurt 5hrs 45
OPS 60 20th March “ Lanc III “H” HEMMINGSTADT (Nr. Heide
30 miles South of Danish border) 4hrs 35
OPS 61 22nd March “ Lanc III “J” HILDESHIEM (Nr. Hanover) 4hrs 25
OPS 62 24TH March “ Lanc III “J” HARPENERWEG (RHUR) 4hrs 25
[page break]
[underlined] NOTES [/underlined]
Operations printed in RED were flown at night. Those printed in GREEN were daylight operations.
[underlined] Forty one [/underlined] operations were flown in Lancaster “J - Johnnie” (that would be “Juliet” in present day international phonetic alphabet).
The most concentrated months were August 1944 (eleven sorties), and March 1945 (eleven sorties)
Author: Flight Lieutenant Donald Ward Briggs, DFC RAF (Retd.)
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
Tribute to a Pathfinder captain
Description
An account of the resource
Tribute to Squadron Leader William G Neal Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross, Croix de Guerre, 1912-2001. Describes how Don Briggs met and was crewed with Bill Neal’s crew who having completed one tour had been selected for a second on Pathfinders. Describes training as well as Bill Neal’s piloting and leadership qualities. Notes that Bill Neal gave Don Briggs the opportunity to learn to fly. Describes first operation on 156 Squadron Pathfinders to Tours in France in great detail including being engaged by night fighters. Describes various Pathfinder techniques and attacking V-1 bomb sites formation on Oboe-equipped Mosquito. Describes operations over Germany with reference to ant-aircraft fire and night fighters. Explains that some of the crew including Neal and Briggs volunteered for a further tour completing a total of 62 operations. Ends with a list of all 62 operations.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Donald Briggs
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Eight typewritten pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BBriggsDWNealeWv1
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--Cambridgeshire
France--Tours
Germany
France
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1944-06
1944-07
1944-07-18
1944-07-30
1944-08
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-15
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
David Bloomfield
156 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944)
bombing up
crewing up
debriefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
fear
flight engineer
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Master Bomber
Me 110
military service conditions
Mosquito
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Oboe
Pathfinders
perimeter track
pilot
promotion
RAF Hemswell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
searchlight
superstition
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
target photograph
training
V-1
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34119/E[Author]DStimpsonMC440201-0003.jpg
9b8a43041e9397bd52a35b98d520c06b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34119/E[Author]DStimpsonMC440201-0001.jpg
78961ab0a348a32ebc6852da4d6abbf2
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34119/E[Author]DStimpsonMC440201-0002.jpg
bc7e0a10ecc702fb5fc8a84d2d37e831
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
Stimpson, Maurice Cecil
Description
An account of the resource
124 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Maurice Cecil Stimpson DFC (1921 - 1944, 155249 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs, documents, and pennants. He flew operations as a pilot with 156 Squadron and was killed 15 February 1944. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Tony France and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Maurice Cecil Stimpson is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/226992/">IBCC Loses Database.</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-22
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stimpson,
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
Telegram to Maurice Stimpson from Doris
Description
An account of the resource
The telegram congratulates Maurice on his grand achievement.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-02-01
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten envelope and one typewritten sheet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
E[Author]DStimpsonMC440201-0001,
E[Author]DStimpsonMC440201-0002,
E[Author]DStimpsonMC440201-0003
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Doris
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02-01
aircrew
pilot
RAF Warboys
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1566/27654/YArthurEG431155v1.1.pdf
0f2478218672e23a6e81aa8b128c359a
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
Arthur, Eric Garnet
E G Arthur
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-01
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
Arthur, EG
Description
An account of the resource
33 items. The collection concerns Eric Arthur (1923 - 2019, 431155 Royal Australian Air Force) and contains his diary, an audio recording, a newspaper cutting, and 30 photographs. He flew operations as a navigator on 627 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Eric Arthur and Alan Arthur. It was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[black and white photograph of five airmen in front of an aircraft]
RIC WITH GROUND STAFF AT WOODHALL 1944
[page break]
[RAF Wings]
627 SQUADRON [underlined] PARTHFINDER [sic] WINGS [/underlined]
WORN ON LEFT POCKET
THERE WERE 3 PARTHFINDER [sic] SQUADRONS – OTHER 2 HAD LANCASTERS
AUS 431155.
[signature]
N.Y May. ‘44
1943-1945 PAGE 1 to 199
1946-1996 PAGE 200 TO 216
1997- PAGE 216 TO
1923 – PAGE 230 TO 254 LIFE SUMMARY
1946 POSTWAR PAGE 255.
[page break]
[blank page]
[page break]
[header] NAME – ADDRESS – TEL [/header]
Miss L. Buck. – 8 Wellington Rd Oxton Birkenhead Eng. – [blank]
Mr & Mrs G. Duncan-Brown – “Glenleigh” Kingmoor Rd. Carlisle. Cumberland. – [blank]
Mrs J. Bolton (BOB’S PARENTS) – Tailem Bend. Sth Aust. – [blank]
Mrs C. Clark – 31 Snowdon Place Stirling Scotland – [blank]
Miss Evelyn H. Currie – “St Rogwald.” Blackbank Gretna Carlisle. – [blank]
[page break]
[blank page]
[page break]
[header] NAME – ADDRESS – TEL [/header]
Mr & Mrs Stinson Studio – Suva – [blank]
Mr & Mrs W. H. Shaver – Box 459. Midland Ontario. – [blank]
Mr & Mrs R. W. Rose – 110 Glenmore Rd., Toronto – [blank]
Mr R. W. Thorn & Mrs J. Cameron. – Collingwood Ontario – [blank]
Mrs C. W. Tyson – 15 Westminster Rd. Summit New Jersey. – [blank]
Mr G. M. Shepherd. – Navana Ltd. 29 New Bond St. London W1. – [blank]
Mr C Bennet. – Navana – [blank]
Mr H. Samson. – Kodak. – [blank]
[page break]
[blank page]
[page break]
[inserted] [underlined] 1941. [/underlined] OUR BROTHER COL MISSING IN FLYING IN BLIZARD [sic] IN CANADA
MY ARMY CALL UP NOV 1941 AT AGE 18.
ARMY TRAIN TO ADELAIDE AND GANLER CAMP
[underlined] 1942 [/underlined] TRAIN TO GELONG BUSH CAMP
PUCKAPUNYAL ARMOURED DIVISION
[underlined] 1943 [/underlined] JUNE TRANSFER TO RAAF POINT COOK THEN AIR OBSERVER COURSE 2 2 AOS MT GAMBIER [/inserted]
[underlined] 1943. [/underlined]
Posted from 2 A.O.S. on Nov 30th. – beginning 3 AOS Pt. Pirie Dec 6th.
Xmas ’43 – 3 days’ leave in Adelaide with Glenn Cliff. Xmas dinner with the Berry family. [inserted] (GLENN CLIFF – ANOTHER TRAINEE) [/inserted]
[underlined] 1944. [/underlined]
Jan 1st. Glenn & I celebrated New Years’ Eve in Pt. Pirie – show after midnight.
Jan 4th Bombing examinations. Phoned John [inserted] DOBSON [/inserted] at Gambier on his return from U.S.A.
Jan 6. Temp 112 to 115 – warm at low level, 600’ bombing.
Jan 7. 4 details at low level.
[page break]
beginning at 7 AM take off. Mighty hot!
Jan 8. 3 days’ leave, - Glenn & I in Adelaide. Swimming at Glenelg.
Jan 11. Began gunnery, flying in “Battles” in afternoon. Bombing exam results – 87 percent – 9TH
Jan 22. Glenn & I visited Williams family. – swimming at Glenelg.
Began Astro. Nav. on Feb 3rd – weather still hot.
Feb. 5th. Aileen Berry’s 21st.
Feb. – Continuous night Astro. Nav. flights.
Feb 14. 42 Course interview with C.O. (W.C. Hedlem).
[page break]
Astro exams began Feb. 26th – finishing course on 29th.
Mch 2. Beginning of 9 days’ home leave.
Glenn & I stayed at the S.P.F. hostel.
Mch. 4. Travelled by Bonds to Gambier.
Mch 5 & 6. On leave at “Colwyn”
Mch 7. Left for Melbourne – with Mum & Joy at flat. Peter born at 11.40 P.M.
Mch 9. Called on Glad & Peter with Joy & Mum.
Mch 10. Return to Adelaide & Pirie.
Mch 13. Glenn in hospital.
[page break]
Mch 14. Beginning of 3 weeks extra course. – flying etc. & gardening.
Mch 19. Glenn out of Hospital Church with Brenda, Clarrie & others.
Continuation of Day flying.
Mch 27th. Trip by plane to Gambier for Court Martial [inserted] NOT FOR ME! WAS CREW ON THE AIRCRAFT. [/inserted] – leave for 1 day at home.
April 1st. Pre-embarkation leave began. At home ‘till Tuesday 11th.
April 11th Left for Melb. at 1 AM. – stayed at “Stratton Heights”
April 12 Reported to E.D. at M. Cricket Ground. Issued with overseas equipment.
[page break]
April 15. March through Melbourne at head of A.T.C. lads.
April 16. Called on Pascoes. Tea at Glenn’s & dance at his club. Wrote home – Posting overseas definite.
April 17. Dinner with Bucknall family – Win & I to a show in town.
April 19. Dance at Leggetts’ with Glenn & lads.
April 20. Show at “State” with Lilian Pascoe.
April 22. Lectures by returned chaps. Final issues of equipment Evening at flat with Bob Bolton, Jim Allsop & Alan Boase!
[page break]
April 23. Spent the day with Ron, Joy & Lilian – drove to Upway. Saw Auntie Lil and Sid.
April 24. Final embarkation preparations – ‘phoned home Received letters from Mum, Dad & Rev. Fearon. Anzac Eve – dance.
April 25. Called on Uncle Dick
April 26. Parade & March past of all overseas draft before the G.O.C.
April 27. Early parade & prep. of gear. Leave from mid-day – called on Auntie Bess. Tea with Win Bucknall – concert, Luna Park and “Ye old Galleon.” A Grand night!
[page break]
[underlined] April 28. [/underlined] Early embarkation parade – arrived at ship at 11 o’clock.
We steamed from the Melb. wharf at about 1800 hours.
Glenn Cliff, Bob Bolton, Wal Brue, Jim Alsopp, Alan Boase, Alan Beavis & yours truly joined in a fitting farewell to Melbourne – for how long? We only wished we knew!
April 29 Our first day at Sea found us more or less satisfied, but mostly wandering with our minds many miles away.
The sea began to become rougher, but the “Mariposa” did not roll much, so I slept as well as usual. – but from 7 P.M, a little earlier than I used to.
After a few days at sea we were becoming used to
[page break]
the strange “refrigerator” taste of the food, & the most unusual 2 meals a day.
May 1. We sighted New Zealand in the late afternoon, but continued straight between the two islands, passing Wellington to port at about 9 P.M.
From here meals seemed to improve, but we only ate because we had to – the monotony of the trip and the really tasteless food were most depressing!
On Teusday [sic] May 2nd, we were given another vaccination and crossed the international Date Line. – thus Teusday [sic] was repeated and we were almost a day behind “Aussie”
The sea continued to be fairly calm, much to our disgust, & thus added to the monotony of our trip.
[page break]
May 4th. This was my 21st
I did not forget it, I guess, & soon after breakfast, opened the small parcel which Mum had sent me in Melbourne, and asked me not to open ‘till this day.
It was a grand surprise, & meant so much to me – with letters and cards. It was not exactly a “happy” birthday but was one which I shall never forget. The book enclosed in the parcel, from Mum & Dad, was a mighty fine one – “Combat Report” and I was soon enjoying reading it. Guess it was read by most of my cobbers before the close of the trip – thanks to the two most wonderful People in the world!
May 5th. We steamed into a mild storm, and our
[page break]
speed was much reduced.
May 7th
Mothers’ Day – a very impressive service on deck.
May 8th. We passed the Pitcain [sic] Islands – weather warmer & day fine. 18 hours behind Victoria.
Days passed and we listened to operational lectures, read & played cards - & of course spent [underlined] some [/underlined] time sleeping!
May 12. 15th day at sea – weather became warmer & we changed into shorts & shirts. We also began some washing, but had very little fresh water, so soon left it alone.
May 13. We were all rather pleased to see a Mariner
[page break]
flying boat circling the ship on a patrol flight.
May 15. I met Laurie Hall, of Penola – he was on our draft, but 3 courses ahead of me in training.
We expected to sight land before sunset on Sunday 14th & as was our usual custom after our rather early dinner (1600 hrs), we soon found ourselves reading on the starboard deck, using life jackets as pillows etc.
The sea was very calm & the air rather misty – Wal Brue, Bob Bolton & I then settled to resting on deck & listening to the piano broadcast from the Padre’s office & then a short religious service.
After settling in our cabins at about midnight, we were able to catch about six hours
[page break]
sleep before being awakened by some claims that land was in sight. The ship’s engines had been throttled back, & thus it would take some time to reach the harbour, so guess I did the best thing & turned over to sleep a further hour.
However, it was not long before I was out on deck, & was able to watch our progress into Panama harbour for about an hour before breakfast. As we continued, the welcome sight of the numerous green islands was really grand – gosh! how green everything appeared. And how refreshing after 18 days at sea.
I would certainly have liked a movie to record the colour combination – red rooves & mottled cliffs.
As we moved to berth at the wharf, the whole harbour
[page break]
showed signs of much activity with jeeps & military vehicles of all kinds & numerous ‘planes in the sky.
It was not long before an announcement – “No leave for RAAF personnel” – settled us to being satisfied with what we could see from the boat, which was not very much, I’m afraid!
So, it was another early night to bed – it was sultry so we slept on deck again.
May 16. soon came along & the morning soon passed uneventfully. At 2 P.M, we sailed from Panama & began our trip up the canal – 50.27 miles. It had been warm & steamy during the morning but the sky was now overcast & stormy.
We followed our progress
[page break]
up the canal with much progress in our geography & it all proved mighty interesting.
The cutting was not as wide as I expected, but the whole proved a wonderful piece of engineering & at this time of the war is best left undiscribed. [sic]
We were lifted about 90’ in the 3 locks & then lowered again to continue into the Atlantic. The boat was held steady in the centre of the canal by cables & electric trains which were controlled by negroes.
These negroes were just as one had seen them in the movies – “baggy” clothes, big hats & huge boots, and to finish it off, they mostly carried ancient umbrellas, as it was now raining!
We made good progress
[page break]
& at about 9 P.M found ourselves at the wharf at Colon.
Steady rain was falling, when we made our beds on the deck under the main open deck. – we had little trouble in falling asleep, once more.
At about 2 AM., Bob Bolton woke me by yelling something about “WATER” – and gosh! was it raining! I’ve never heard rain come down like it, & of course we were soon in the midst of a swamped deck, & quickly gathered blankets and all, and after some strife, found our way to our cabins.
However, we came thru’ O.K. & were O.K in the morning.
May 17. We expected to set out for either Boston
[page break]
or New York this day – which it was, we had not been told!
We witnessed the flying of all types of planes before we began moving again at about 2 P.M. - & so we left Colon and headed for the Carribean [sic] Sea.
May 19 was the next day on which we saw land, - only a small island or two, but quite good to see after a couple days at sea again.
We passed between Peurto [sic] Rico and Hispaniola at night, it seemed.
We had estimated the sun to be directly overhead at this latitude.
Our course was then made direct for Boston - & as far as we were concerned,
[page break]
the sooner we arrived, the better.
May 20. This was the last night on which we were still able to see the Southern Cross. The trip continued O.K in quite calm waters, & time passed rather quickly with lectures, medical & Pay Parade etc.
May 22. We began preparing for our arrival at Boston – and came into the harbour at about 3 o’clock.
The city band was out at Boston to welcome someone – guess the Yanks we had on board, but we were soon tossing coins on the wharf & everyone soon knew the “Aussies” were there!
Once again we had
[page break]
to remain on board for another night - & little happened before be [sic] turned into bed at the close of our 25th day at sea.
We were now 14 hours behind Melbourne.
I had written quite a few letters during the trip, but was disgusted to find at this stage that we were unable to mention anything at all about our trip - & as they would not pass the censor, I tossed them all out.
May 23.
We made an early start this morning and disembarked quite early. This was the first time we had set foot on Mother Earth since leaving Melbourne. – next time I go on a boat I shall
[page break]
take a box of soil so that I’ll always be in sight of land! We were soon on the train and heading south to New York.
The country was very interesting & the whole of it through which we passed, was very green & rather thickly timbered with weeping willow, & elms etc!
Our train trip took us thru’ Brooklyn & in the distance we were able to see New York’s skyscrapers against the skyline! A grand sight for the first time. - & we sure were all eyes!
We arrived at Fort Hamilton per ferry at about 4 P.M. - & soon settled into our quarters.
Of course we were all rather anxious to get away
[page break]
on leave, but found we could not go until the following day, so were quite content to settle into bed quite early to prepare for a good week, & little sleep ahead!
May 24. – Wednesday.
This was our first day on leave in New York. – we left Fort Hamilton at about 5 P.M. after gathering all the final pay we could; my financial situation now being quite fair.
Our first port of call was the Anzac Club. – which we found later to be of wonderful assistance to us. Here we were able to get a concession ticket to stay at a hotel – the Century for the night. As we had
[page break]
not yet had tea, we were soon bundled off to a Service Club in E56 st. [sic] near Central Park. – what a place to find after being in N.Y. for about an hour. However, all was O.K & Bob and I soon sought a good feed & after being given pamphlets about the city & being told as much as possible too, we set off to find our hotel!
This was relatively simple & right from the beginning we found the city very well laid out, & its streets simple to follow.
It was about 1 AM. when we were shown to our room – we had heard all about tips & had it “sewn up”, so sent the lad off with his 10c. tip – no trouble at all!
However, we were then
[page break]
wondering if we should happen to find a milk bar open at this unearthly hour. – certainly not in Melbourne, but maybe we could here.
O.K! we set out to find one –
But gosh! we bumped right into Broadway, & what a surprise we got!
Everything was open – drug stores, milk bars, theatres, jewellers & all!
What a show! – it was then after 3 AM before we returned to the hotel.
It impressed us as a really amazing city right from the start - & we went looking for a milk bar!!!!!!
May 25.
We found our
[page break]
way from the Century & began walking in search of the Gramercy Park Hotel, where Mrs Gilkinson lived, - it was some distance but we had too much to see to notice it.
Bob & I had quite a chat to her & arranged to see her again in the afternoon.
We returned to the Anzac Club for lunch - & spent the afternoon wandering about the city before calling for Mrs Gilkinson. She took us to Miss Beaty’s – for “supper” as they termed it! She is a most delightful lady & helps entertain many of our chaps – Bob & I enjoyed it all very much.
This is where John met Mrs Gilkinson & her
[page break]
daughter, Jane!
Bob, Wal Brue & Hilton Bruce and I visited a theatre later – we obtained free tickets for it, but were not at all please with the show, so left half way through, & spent the remainder of the night, ‘till 12, on Broadway!
We stayed at the S. Army hostel this night.
May 26.
We arrived at the Anzac Club early this day to arrange for a billet for the weekend. – this was soon fixed O.K. and we left with the Padre & others for a tour of Rockefeller Centre.
We had lunch at the 2 in 1 Club, & soon
[page break]
buzzed off to obtain free tickets to “Pin-up Girl” – at a theatre on Broadway.
This was an excellent show – stayed at the Century again!
May 27. Anzac Club had arranged for us to go to stay at Summit – about 25 miles from N.Y - & we left the city at 11 AM.
Bob & I were still able to stay together – we were doing well that way, & I certainly enjoyed being with him. He proved to be one of the best, so I was mighty lucky to have such a cobber – it made a mighty big difference when there was so much to do, & we both enjoyed doing similar things!
This was a grand
[page break]
break for us, & we looked forward to staying with the people whom we were to meet at Summit, in the green, thickly wooded hill country of New Jersey!
Mrs Henderson met us in her car at the station, & at once made us feel quite at home.
It was a grand day, & after we had settled in at her home & enjoyed a really good lunch, Mrs Henderson, Barbara (aged 12), Bob & I set out for a walk to a Scout camp, which our host & young “Bo” were attending for the day.
We soon met Mr Henderson, & as Bob & I had much in common with him in the scouts, so all was well, - & we returned home together.
[page break]
In the evening we were taken to an excellent “movie show” - & spent some time at home later talking. They were very interested in all we had at home – family & all - & also in Australia.
They were both very good to us - & we sure were as near to “home” as possible.
May 28.
A really excellent day – visited the Presbyterian Church with Mr & Mrs Henderson and later drove to Surprise Lake. This was amidst thickly timbered hills & a delightful spot.
Took numerous snaps, & we all had a grand picnic & afternoon.
About 8 of the Henderson’s friends visited us in the evening & once again
[page break]
passed an enjoyable few hours. This was a wonderful weekend for us, & we sure did appreciate all Mr & Mrs Henderson did for us.
[underlined] May 29. [/underlined] Bob & I returned to Fort Hamilton – to obtain leave for a further six days.
[underlined] May 30th [/underlined]
Left camp early & first booked into the council club, where we stayed ‘till the end of the week.
From 99 Park Avenue we obtained tickets (free) for the Music Hall in Radio City & for NBC studios.
The Statue of Liberty was our next interest & we spent a couple hours to, [sic] at & from this really
[page break]
interesting monument!
We saw quite an amount of the city before we finally arrived for the 6 P.M show at the Music Hall – this is a continuous show, as are all “movies” in N.Y. It was a marvellous show, with “The White Cliffs of Dover” and a wizard stage show – the stage & theatre was colossal & I’d never seen anything like it before!
We visited the NBC studios at about 11 P.M. – mighty interesting & we were sure pleased to see the whole works of television as well as other radio programmes being broadcast.
This was in Manhattan – Rockefeller Centre – so up we went still further to the observation roof; about 60 stories. – it
[page break]
was a wonderful sight from up there at night, as everything was so clear & there were lights by the thousand – or maybe million?
Rather a late night, so let’s away to bed!
May 31st.
We were into the Anzac Club early again this morning & Bob & I were fortunate to obtain free passes to “OKlahoma” [sic] for the following night – what luck!
Also obtained free tickets to a show for this night and then visited the Empire State with Neil Bilney & “Pete” Curtis.
Bob & I then made our recordings to send home, & had them sent from Anzac Club.
[page break]
We then spent the remainder of the afternoon at the Hayden Planetarium – a really wonderful place – lecture on “Planets & Meteors.”
Had time to write home before setting off for the evening’s picture show – namely “Mr Sheffington”.
June 1st.
We were mighty pleased to receive our “OKlahoma” [sic] tickets from the Anzac Club - & then set out for a further tour of the city taking numerous snapshots. Bob soon became accustomed to using my camera – so I was in a good many which were taken.
We saw “The Little Church around the Corner” - & then to the Empire State. We could not use cameras up there, but Bob & I had a photograph taken & so, all was well. In the
[page break]
afternoon we visited the Hayden Planetarium – a wonderful place where we spent a few hours.
“OKlahoma” [sic] was a marvellous show, & one which I’ll never forget.
June 2nd.
This was our last day in the city, as we were to leave on billets to the country in the afternoon. Thus, Bob & I spent some time shopping & seeing all we could. I bought some “OKlahoma” [sic] records from Macy’s - & sent them off home, hoping they would travel O.K. Then souvenirs etc. & slippers for Peter!
After obtaining directions from Anzac Club, we left later in the afternoon for Summit, where we were to stay again with people for the weekend. We could not
[page break]
stay with the Henderson’s, as Mr. H. was away on Business – so we were met at the station by a Mrs Tyson who impressed us at once as being an excellent hostess!
We soon met all the family – Mr. Tyson, a mighty fine chap – “Wusty”, he was about 9. – Louise, 6 & Helen 4 1/2.
They all made us feel “at home” & we knew we were going to enjoy another excellent weekend.
We all enjoyed the evening at a show in a nearby township to which we drove in the Buick.
June 3rd.
Bob & I collected 10 petrol tickets allowed to us - & then helped Mrs Tyson with her shopping. We had a grand day – played baseball & then dozed in the sun.
Mr & Mrs Tyson took us out to dinner & then two
[page break]
WAG’s, Bob & myself spent a grand evening with four lasses who had joined us at dinner.
June 4th.
It was good to be able to sleep ‘till about 10 this morning, but then we had to bustle to church to get there in time. We enjoyed this very much & then after taking a few snaps, we set off on a drive to Princeton.
It was the first long drive Mr & Mrs Tyson had taken for a couple years, so were pleased that we could obtain the petrol tickets. We had a marvellous day – the weather was good & the country O.K. Princeton University & other well known buildings were very interesting.
We had dinner before returning late in the evening – a 40 mile drive which almost brought to a close,
[page break]
our weekend!
June 5th.
We were very sorry to leave Mr & Mrs Tyson and family, - had to be at camp at 10 AM. We certainly had hopes of seeing them again some day, whenever that would be – as they had done so much for us during the weekend. The children were well trained, & both Bob & I took a liking to them, and enjoyed their company very much.
However, we were soon back at Fort Hamilton & prepared to move on across the Atlantic.
June 6.
We made use of what time we had to buy a few articles at the canteen - & we were pleased to be able to buy some large boxes of chocolates which we posted to
[page break]
Mr & Mrs Henderson and Tyson.
We joined a ferry in the late afternoon & after steaming around the tip of Manhattan to the other side of the island, we embarked on the “Queen Mary.”
June 7.
When I awoke this morning we were already under way & almost out of the harbour.
Gosh! what a ship – we were only allowed in a certain section, so could not see much of it. Meal lines were terrific – there were as many thousand on board as there are miles for “Colwyn” to Pt. Mac D.; Breakfast carried from 6 AM till 12 noon – Tea from 2 P.M till 8 P.M. some show!
Meals were better than on the “Mariposa” & altho’ we had less room, all was O.K.
[page break]
June 8.
We were now beginning to find our way about O.K, & spoke with many of the Yanks – some of them had never seen our uniform before & quite a few were hazy as to Australia’s whereabouts. Could buy chocolate etc from the canteens, so we were not hungry this time.
June 9th.
The weather seemed to be becoming warmer, & so we were not sure what course we were on – we had spoken to quite a few Yanks, but many knew little, if anything of Aust.
Most of them were only a very ordinary type of chap, - some were really decent tho’.
The “Queen Mary” was certainly interesting to us & we saw all we could whilst aboard her.
[page break]
June 10.
Sea calm – glorious day
Spent from noon ‘till 3 PM on submarine watch from the bridge – was O.K. & now I have seen right over the ship! The view from the bridge is great – gosh! what a ship.
June 11th. Sea rough – weather cooler. “The Mary” swayed a fair amount causing many Yanks to take to the rails, but I guess we were used to it. We spent quite some time wandering about the boat – the beautiful veneers & panelling appealed to me & the huge dining room which was used as our mess, was really marvellous. We could easily notice that we were well north & so took to warmer clothing.
[page break]
June 13th.
Was pleased to find the ship had stopped rolling & we were at anchor in Glasgow harbour – had to remain on board ‘till afternoon to be taken ashore by ferry.
The “Mary” made a marvellous picture in the bay as we left her, & for the first time I realised how really big she was. We were well looked after by ladies of the American Red Cross – with doughnuts & tea. Our trip southward by train was very interesting & altho’ we did not set out until 10 P.M, we travelled for 2 hours in twilight before it became dark. It was amazing to see children out at that hour of the night, in broad daylight. The country was very green & hilly- & the homes rather quaint!
June 14th.
We slept well for a few hours on the trip, but at 4 AM it was light again, so we once again became interested in the countryside. It was not long after seven that we found ourselves at Padgate, & settled to quite a decent breakfast. We spent the day filling out the usual papers etc & listening to all sorts of lectures on “what to do & what not to do” etc.
Sent off a cable home – much cheaper than from USA. We found it pleasing to be using similar coins to our own, altho’ we had little trouble with “bucks”, dimes” etc.
Met Vic Berry & had quite a chat to him. – had to leave writing Airgraphs as we had missed a fair amount of sleep & had to catch up on it.
[page break]
June 16th.
Spent yesterday tearing about as a squad having identity cards etc. attended to - & then away to begin some drill. Was able to write quite a few Airgraphs home, - along with a cable.
Tonight, Bob & I visited Warrington, about 3 miles from here – guess it is a typical English town, & we sure did find it an ancient spot!
The township was rather busy & we noticed quite an abundance of food, clothing & all else in the shops. As the streets are [inserted] of [/inserted] cobble stones & very narrow, the double decker buses which buzz around them, leave very little room when they pass.
Left a couple films at a chemist’s to be developed.
On our return walk to camp, we had a good stroll - & before long found ourselves in the midst of
[page break]
rather heavy drizzle. Bowls was being played by old men – coats off & in the rain!
The time was eight o’clock but still quite twilight.
This night was the first I had spent sleeping between sheets whilst in camp anywhere I had been since joining the army.
It was really good!
June 17th.
Saturday – we were given leave soon after lunch & set out for Manchester. The train trip was O.K through well cultivated country, & in surprisingly good trains compared with what I expected.
We found the city very interesting but rather dirty & with very narrow streets. Quite a number of buildings had been flattened in raids about 18 mths
[page break]
before – there was hardly a car to be seen anywhere, & this allowed people to wander all over the place & along the main roads. We found ample stocks in the shops, - many articles there, had not been seen in Aust. for years.
Saw quite an amount of the city before we paid a visit to a theatre & saw “Pimpernel Smith” & returned to camp on the last train.
June 18.
After our church Parade at camp, Bob & I decided to go to Liverpool & then to visit Auntie Lil in Birkenhead – we had little trouble finding our way there & spent a few hours telling her all about home. She was certainly pleased to see us, & actually became very
[page break]
excited & could not speak fast enough. She showed me letters from “Colwyn” – the remains of a cake from Joy, etc.
She seemed well - & Beatrice too, was very nice & looked out for our afternoon tea.
We returned to Padgate after seeing “Pygmalion” – the railway tunnel from Liverpool to Birkenhead is very good & far ahead of those in New York.
June 19th.
A year ago I began at Somers – arrived at I.T.S. from Pt. Cook on this day.
However, things are much different now – but all is well. Bob & I took our washing into the laundry to prepare for our leave next week. I am certainly lucky to have him for my cobber now – he is such a mighty
[page break]
fine lad & I’m sure he could never be led off the “straight & narrow.” As in the army, I have found the young chaps being very easily led astray – Glenn does not even pay any attention to me nowadays, & after our long friendship, I cannot make it out. He seems to prefer other company, & appears to be dropping back quickly, - drink has upset him too! Guess I will see if I can wake him up before he goes too far, but am afraid it will be tough. I thought I had helped him quite an amount, but guess he doesn’t think so!
However, Bob is far more reliable than he & altho’ of the same age, he could be taken as much older. We certainly get along well together, & is one of the finest chaps I’ve met in the
[page break]
past few years. I met Vic Hill, of Gambier today.
June 22nd.
The past few days we have had little of interest to do – just arranging billets for leave, etc. Bob & I paid a visit to Warrington last night to arrange an order for a bicycle. As the shops had been shut since midday, we had to go in again tonight - & now all is O.K. Our flight had a swim parade in the local baths this morning & it was O.K. Was a test to swim 100 yds. – Alan Beavis, Bob & I called again at 7 PM for another dip.
June 24th.
Saturday – After spending the morning on night vision tests, etc Bob & I set out for Warrington
[page break]
to pick up my films & then met Gordon Curtis & Alan Beavis to go by train to Liverpool.
After seeing over the city once again we booked into a hostel & crossed by tunnel to New Brighton. This seemed quite a good spot & we spent some time about the sideshows - & even had a ride on a donkey.
Returned to Liverpool & decided to have a look at the well known tunnel roadway. We managed to bludge a ride both ways thru’ & we certainly were pleased we had the experience – it is a wonderful piece of work.
June 25.
We had some trouble finding a way to Chester, where we had intended spending the day. As we had to wait until 2 P.M. for a train,
[page break]
we called on the Liverpool Cathedral (C. of E.) – It was an amazing place, & a terrific size, but owing to the echoes we were unable to follow much of the service, as we were well to the rear of the church.
Chester proved very interesting, as it is a city enclosed by a huge wall with bridges, & forts or such like on the corners. It was from one of these that Charles Ist saw his army defeated – we were supposed to have stood at the same window.
The gardens & river were very beautiful – typically English & the township was cleaner & better than others we had seen.
We spent a couple hours at a modern & really good theatre - & returned to Warrington by road. It was a mighty good trip - & I sure do hope we can pedal the bikes
[page break]
through that country, some time.
June 26th.
I managed to pass my second attempt at night vision this day – sent another cable home to tell of my leave etc.
Weather turned wet & rather cold – hope we will be moving to Brighton again, soon!
June 28th. Yesterday & today we continued doing little other than preparing further for the future days, - this afternoon we were issued with our flying gear & personal issues which were later handed into the store, for us to collect when posted!
I blew into Warrington again after tea – Bob was not with me as he hadn’t a shirt to wear until I returned from the laundry – was able to buy a rather good booklet
[page break]
of road maps of England, & then, after looking without success to find an electric iron, I returned to camp. Was rather surprised to find the electrical pressure in the lines over here at 230 V. – same as ours at home - & I could then have brought Glad’s Iron with me.
However, on my return to camp, I received the best surprise I had had since leaving home – my first cables & letters. There were cables from Mum & Dad, Joy & Murray, & Ralph! Also 2 air mail letters from Ralph, which only took 4 weeks to come over.
It was a great show, - & I arranged with Norm Deady to send some cables in answer for me – as we were to set out on our leave early next morning. This news from home set me sleeping like
[page break]
a top as soon as I “hit the pillow”.
June 29th. We were out soon after breakfast to set out north on leave - & Bob & I certainly made sure we weren’t late!
43 course arrived into Padgate as we prepared to leave – Ted Belcher was among them, so that makes another Gambier rep. over here!
We caught a train to Manchester, altho’ later we found we could have gone direct from Warrington far better. – Alan Beavis & “Brucey” were with us. At Manchester, Bob & I left the others to find our way north to Kendal – this was quite easy, and after I had ‘phoned Mrs Huggins we left Manchester. We were met at Kendal by Mrs Huggins’ daughter & taken home. P/O Ferguson was staying with them – we met Mrs Huggins, who is a wonderful
[page break]
person & has helped so much with the Lady Ryder scheme to billit [sic] we chaps! Her address is – Mrs Huggins, Helme Bank, Nr. Kendal (Sedgwick 63).
Mrs Huggins gave us our address where we were to be billited [sic] - & we caught our train to Carlisle
Mr Brown, our host & his small son, Keith (about 11) met us at the station, & soon we were home and had met Mrs. Brown & her daughter, Joyce (19). At once, we were taken into Mr & Mrs Brown’s home, as two of the family. Gee! it was grand. – I thought we may wander over the whole of England without finding such a home.
We were early to bed this night – the Brown’s address
Mr & Mrs [inserted] G. [/inserted] Duncan Brown,
“Glenleigh”
Kingmoor Road.
Carlisle. Eng.
[page break]
June 30th.
Gee! what a sleep – guess I didn’t know much about it ‘till Mrs Brown awoke Bob & I at about 9 AM. with a grand breakfast! We managed a shave & bath & were ready for an early lunch to leave with Mr Brown at about 11 to go with him by car on a business trip up north. We crossed into Scotland & then turned off along to Gretna Green – saw the old blacksmith shop where the runaway marriages became famous. The country through which we passed was most interesting & amidst the sunshine we had for the day, - I saw the typical Scotch countryside at its best. So old, & quiet yet full of abundant crops & progress – it sure did make my heart beat & my eyes dart from side to side.
We moved on to Annan
[page break]
& then to Dumphries [sic] Bob & I saw quite an amount of this town whilst Mr Brown was busy & took numerous snaps. The return trip was just as enjoyable & then we spent the evening at home.
July 1st.
Saturday - & as this was holiday week in Carlisle, there were numerous people about town when Bob & I were shown about by Keith – we called on several places which advertised bicycles for sale. In the afternoon Bob & I called on the Carnival grounds – to see the sideshows & horse displays for holiday week.
Even in war time Carlisle has its holiday week & most business houses close during this period.
In the evening Bob & I joined Joyce & her girlfriend in a bicycle ride of about 10 miles – the twilight hours enabled us to enjoy this till about
[page break]
10 o’clock.
July 2nd.
Once again we were awakened to be given our breakfast in bed by Mrs Brown – what a life!
It was another damp day, so we had an early lunch & did little else before setting off for a cycling tour to Port Carlisle with Joyce & her girlfriend.
We were fortunate in as much that we missed any showers which were about, - & all four managed rather well pushing the “beaut” cycles.
I had Mr Brown’s bike with a 3 speed gear – was O.K, too!
We called on relatives of the Brown’s & after spending the afternoon around the bay & amidst fields in which I tried my hand at shooting rabbits etc. Our return trip was O.K. too, - was rather late when we arrived home. It was rather strange to sit down to quite a meal of salad etc. for supper
[page break]
but at about 10 P.M. – this seemed the usual thing, but of course it was still quite light & Mrs Brown had some trouble getting Kieth [sic] to bed before 9 PM.
July 3rd. Our usual breakfast in bed was really fine – Bob & I did not rise ‘till late & then only had little time to write our airgraphs home before lunch.
In the afternoon Mr Brown accompanied us to an auction sale where we had arranged to buy a bike & an iron if the prices were O.K. However, we missed them both, so, as Mr Brown had a business trip to Annan, to attend to, we set out in the car for that town & purchased two “beaut” cycles with all fittings & spare parts.
Mr Brown, being a commercial traveller in the clothing line, - was able to take us about the
[page break]
country quite an amount – we sure were lucky. The bikes were sent to Carlisle per train, so, in the evening after we had collected them from the station, Bob & I called for Joyce & we buzzed off to a Noel Coward show in town. Joyce was on fire watch after this, so we left her to it & returned home to our usual supper & good bed!
July 4th. Teusday [sic] – we were up early, for a change, as Mr Brown, Bob & I were to leave on a full day trip around the lakes district at about 9.
We were on our way in the good little Austin ‘ere long, & altho’ the clouds seemed to have burst, we hoped the rain would soon stop – as we were looking forward to seeing the scenery in good weather. However, the
[page break]
rain continued to pelt down – similar to our winter, but of course this was a bad week & unfortunate that we should meet it! Had to have the bus tuned at a garage before we had gone far!
Saw Neil Livingstone whilst waiting here – then on to Penrith. The country between Penrith and Appleby was just as interesting as ever – so green & with rows of hedges and unusual stone walls. The roads were all very good – winding up hill & down dale, through farms & villiages, [sic] so much so that my head darted to and fro the whole time. All the roads were of bitumen & seemed in good repair actually – in the towns we found numerous quaint old cobble stoned roads.
So this continued, into the county of Westmorland to Kirby
[page break]
Stephen where Mr Brown attended some business – we saw 3 WAG’s who were also being billited! [sic]
At Sedberg we wandered off while Mr Brown was busy – we saw the large boys’ school there, with a huge field for cricket – quaint old houses all about, & absolute peace. One would certainly not think there was a war on to see this quiet spot! We were able to buy numerous postcards of the surrounding country, - thru’ Kirby-Londsdale [sic] & then to Kendal.
We passed Mrs Huggin’s home & spent a short time in the town.
Quite a few hundred people had been coming to this district from London – the “flying Bombs” were raining down at this time.
The drive from Kendal to Bowness on Windermere was most interesting – the stone fences
[page break]
here changed – they were made of irregularly shaped stones & curved all over the hillsides in most fascinating patterns. This was good dairying country - & we were pleased to be able to buy a few eggs!
Bowness was a really beautiful spot on the lake – this is where Seagrave used to race & was killed when his craft hit a log in the water! Took some snaps there & purchased postcards. – the drive through here & along the lake was really marvellous & altho’ the sun was not shining we were amazed at the marvellous scenery – it was really a wizard show. Photographed an old church on the road to Wythburn – was the smallest & oldest in the country!
The scenery right through to Keswick & back to Carlisle was wizard - & some day soon I hope to
[page break]
have the good fortune to see it all in better weather! After returing [sic] home we spent an hour or so until about 10 P.M. at Mr Browns Victory garden & collected quite a few good vegetables. Spent the evening at home with the Brown family – our days tour covering about 140 miles. We were sure pleased that Mr Brown’s job took him over so much country.
July 5th.
Once again Bob & I were spoiled with breakfast in bed, by Mrs Brown – I rose a little earlier than usual, after this, & began adjusting & fitting up my bike a little. Managed to saw some wood for Mr. Brown – don’t think he expected me to do it, as I’d joked about it before! He is a mighty fine chap, too – Gosh! we sure had enjoyed the whole week with the Brown family & now, the
[page break]
close of our leave was coming far too quickly! They sure had looked after us & even had the winder on my watch fixed for me. After lunch we took photos of the family & Bob & myself.
Bob & I cycled about town during the afternoon & were later joined by Kieth, [sic] who showed us all the sights. We were pleased to spend the last hours of our leave with the Brown family at home – we had a good walk in the evening amidst some of the first real sunshine of our leave! Had a rare supper of chips & beans at 11 P.M – what a show.
July 6th.
What a grand day too! Sun shining & all and we had to be up to an early breakfast to catch a train at 8.20.
Gosh! we sure were sorry to
[page break]
leave Mrs Brown & Joyce – Mr Brown & Kieth [sic] came to the station to see us off! So came to the close, our first stay in an English home – we found hospitality, & the people grand!
We arrived back at camp on the “beaut” bikes soon after Midday. Wrote an Air Mail Letter home & an Airgraph to Ralph – also sent a cable home.
On my first leave in this country I found to my surprise that the town shopping centres had every thing in abundance, & altho’ food, sweets & clothing were rationed people lived well & had all they could wish for in war time.
In the country, - the narrow winding roads, numerous hedges & trees – stone walls, power lines, the lack of road & rail crossings & thus the use of numerous bridges, and the
[page break]
large number of double decker buses & cycles throughout the country appealed to me to be the most fascinating pints of interest
July 7th.
Had little to do so I filled in the day after lunch with letter writing. Had an interview with the Categorisation Board at 9.30 AM – think I’ll probably be a Nav. as my results are too high & my night vision a bit low for Bombaimer! Collected our kits & sorted it out – then a beaut Air Mail letter home & airgraph to Ralph & Bet Bailey!
Bob & I cycled into Warrington to see “Phantom of the Opera” – Nelson Eddy etc. – quite a good show. We were caught in a shower on our way home but the bikes proved a big help & we were in camp in no time but the NAAFI was
[page break]
closed & we missed our supper!
July 8th.
Saturday: - had a quiet morning & managed to buzz about camp to see Norm Deady & then write letters. Met Bill Braithwaite in the mess at lunch time. Alan Beavis, Gordon Curtis, Wal Brue & Hilton Bruce left by train with Bob & I for Manchester in the afternoon.
Bob & I left them & booked in at the YMCA for the night.
We saw the “Desert Song” – an excellent show, & then at 7 PM set out for “Belle Vue”.
The sun began to shine about then so, it was quite a break – we called in at the speedway straight away, & were amazed to find motor bike racing on just like it was in Melb. in peace time. Took a few snaps – one at the bend using F 3/5 at 1/300 sec.
[page break]
We certainly enjoyed the racing – it was a wizard show, & the dipper etc was also extra!
July 9th.
Set out early from Manchester for Blackpool – train was crowded & we sure were surprised to find such a mob at the station when we arrived.
The weather was typically English when we came out into the street, but we soon found our way to the sea front & on to one of the mighty large piers!
There were amusements all along the coast & all the many thousands of people were spending money galore. They were holiday crowds – many were evacuees from London!
We drifted into the “Tower” there – a huge building with a zoo, & roof gardens, aquarium, ballroom & all!
[page break]
We spent two hours in the huge ballroom theatre listening to an organ recital – a chap from London played everything under the sun.
Wandered around more later & finished up with ice cream (“artificial” but O.K). & fish & chips for tea.
The train back to Manchester at 7 PM was crowded & we had to bludge into the line to get on!
July 10th.
Spent this as my first of three days in a dark room on Night Vision training
Wrote home by air mail & to Mrs Brown & Auntie Lil.
Bob & I rode into the laundry with our shirts in the evening – then to the “Southern Cross” & supper at the NAAFI. Plenty of rain!
[page break]
July 12th – Yesterday & today I found myself rather flat out on night vision – Alec Brown was with me!
Bob & I saw “the Man from down Under” last night at the station cinema – was about Australia, & altho’ amusing, it was no good impression of life at home.
Tonight I rode into Warrington after tea & as my films weren’t finished, I returned immediately – Bob & the other chaps in my hut went to Liverpool on a tour of the docks & my night vision left me out of it. They were away all day, & after making their beds & getting some cake from the NAAFI for them I buzzed to bed & was asleep when they returned!
July 13th. – Had a hell of a shock today to learn that after the night vision I had been put into “pool” – Bob & the boys were already on lectures & this
[page break]
meant that I would be the only one split up from them – looks like this is where I leave them anyway, & expect I’ll go to EFTS next week. Received an airgraph from Bet & a cable from home telling of receipt of letters – gosh! waiting & not receiving mail is not the best & it sure makes one feel flat!
Bob had quite a few airgraphs from home - & is of course quite pleased. Wal, Alan Beavis, Bob & I rode the bikes quite a distance out toward Leigh after supper at about 9 P.M. – good show!
July 14th.
On 24 hour duty of orderly Sergeant – Received airgraphs from Dad, Ralph & Win - & also Ted Pedley!
A great day to receive first letters – sent cables & letters in return!
[page break]
July 15th.
As I was still in “pool”, I had little to do in the morning, so managed a few odd jobs & some more letter writing. Called for our mail – Bob & I received our first surface mail. I had six in my bundle, all written about May 1st, soon after we set sail.
Bob & I set out to spend the weekend at Ripon with Mr & Mrs Hebden – friends of Bob’s Grandparents. We arrived at Ripon, after quite a long trip, just in time for a late tea. – we found the old people very interesting, and as they had been out to Australia, we had much to talk about.
In the evening we walked down to the township to see a huge horn blown at 9 PM by a fairly old chap in a fascinating uniform & old three cornered hat – it is an old tradition [inserted] or custom [/inserted] & has been kept up for hundreds of
[page break]
years without a break. That was in the former market place, which was once made of cobble stones but is now concrete! We then spent quite some time in their very interesting cathedral – one of the many beautiful ones in this country. The stained glass windows & carved wood were really wonderful. I noticed that it was becoming dark at about 10.30, as we returned home. – the days were already becoming shorter!
July 16th. Sunday.
This was a beautiful day & proved to be the best we had seen since our arrival. – we saw blue sky all day! It was grand, & we had the good fortune to spend the morning with Mrs Hebden’s two nieces at the ruins of the cathedral of Ripon. They are the largest ruins in England, & with the
[page break]
spacious grounds & numerous huge green trees, it was all very fascinating on this fine day.
These were the first ruins we had seen, & I took a few snaps whilst there – the place sure was old & it made one wonder how the monks in those days had ever managed to lift the huge, hand cut stones up such terrific heights.
The stones were cut out of solid rock – many were now missing, as the nearby farmers in days gone by, had built homes of the stones from the ruin. Some of the walls were four feet thick & the huge archways were perfctly [sic] made & fitted by hand.
We walked quite some distance about the district – everything was so fresh & after seeing the dirty industrial cities, this was truly a good tonic. Bob & I had some
[page break]
strife returning to camp, & altho’ we left Ripon at 9 P.M, we did not arrive at Padgate ‘till 7 AM. – had to wait from 11 to 3 AM. at Leeds!
July 19th
The past couple of days had meant a few odd jobs in stores etc. about camp, whilst in pool – Bob & the remainder were still on lectures, & I missed beginning this week too, so guess I will be moving to go to EFTS with them now!
Bob sent a cable to Glad for her birthday today – I left camp at about 10 AM with about 20 other chaps whom I did not know, for a tour of Liverpool.
On our arrival there, we were taken by a member of the British Council Club to the Cathedral, which I had previously visited with Bob. It was 40 years today that the foundation stone was laid - & it is still under
[page break]
construction. The architect had done a wonderful job – began at 21 & is still working on it at 63. The building is of really wonderful modern design!
After lunch at the club, we took the overhead railway along the docks – the battleship King George V was in harbour. We then went by ferry to Brighton, which I had also visited with Bob – so I set out immediately to call on Auntie Lil in Berkinhead. [sic]
Returned to Padgate at about 10 PM. – Bob & Wal had been into town on the bikes to collect my films, so they had them, my supper & bed made when I arrived!
July 20th. Just another day spent at stores etc. working on all odd jobs. – No letters from home yet!
Wrote to Dad by air mail & enclosed my first negatives.
[page break]
July 22nd. Spent the morning at the ration store carting bread from Warrington – sent negatives to [inserted] No. [/inserted] 27 to Dad before lunch.
Bob, Alan Beavis, Gordon Curtis & myself cycled to Chester soon after lunch – it was a good trip of about 20 miles & we sure did enjoy it!
However, on our arrival, we found there was not any accommodation at all in the town – we had hoped to stay at a roadside inn but they were all full, as there were people all over the place, including hundreds of evacuees from London! After spending some time along the river & the shops we returned to camp by train. Chester has one row of shops above the other - & there are two footpaths at these levels.
It was most unusual to see this, & it is [inserted] the [/inserted] only one of its type in the country.
[page break]
July 23rd. Sunday.
Was really good to be able to remain in bed until about 10.30 this morning – was the first Sunday that Bob & I had spent in camp since our arrival. There was very little for us to do, so I wrote letters & after tea we four set out again on a cycle tour. At 7 PM we came back into Warrington to see “40,000 Horsemen”. – was just as good a show as ever, but rather cut about, & worn out.
We had to make good time back to camp to arrive in time for supper – the bikes sure were proving very useful.
July 25th. Received more surface mail – 2 from Dad & Mum & some from Wal Metters. Still in pool – Bob & I saw a show at the camp gymnasium in the evening.
Rather wet in the afternoon – had set in at night.
[page break]
July 28th. Left Camp at about 9 AM. with a party of chaps for a tour of Manchester by the Council Club.
The day was passed by visits to quite a few historic buildings.
Bob & Wal Brue called in town for my films, so when I returned to camp my “beaut” bed was already made, with supper, mail & the snaps awaiting me. Good old Bob!
Received an airgraph from Mum.
July 29th.
Besides my usual odd jobs for the morning, I arranged with the Southern Cross for our billet for the weekend. – then ‘phoned Mrs Morris, at Southport! Had to register our bikes with the camp S.P.’s by noon – so now we have to carry registrations with us too. We arrived at Southport at about 4 P.M & took a bus to the home of Mrs. Morris, our hostess for the weekend. We were soon
[page break]
making ourselves at home, & amidst the usual afternoon tea – however, we were surprised to find ourselves at a Vicarage – our host was the Canon of the All Saints Church.
ie – Canon & Mrs H. Morris
The Vicarage
1 Rawlinson Rd.
Southport. Lancs.
In the evening Bob & I saw the show – “Half Way House” with Mary, Mrs Morris’ married daughter who had 3 young daughters. (3 yrs to 9).
July 30th.
Bob & I accompanied the family to the morning service – was quite a fine day then, but it was soon overcast again, so besides a walk to Southport, we did little but rest!
Returned to camp in the first darkness we had seen for some time. – about 11 o’clock.
Days are becoming shorter now –
[page break]
August 2nd.
Bob & the remainder of the course joined us in pool today - & we continued on the usual odd jobs.
We cycled to Warrington tonight to pick up more prints & see if we could find some stain for Dad. – saw “Destination Tokio,” [sic] a very good show at a new theatre, which is the best we have seen here. It even had an organ!
Aug. 3rd.
Alan Beavis & I were interviewed today before being posted to an A.F.U. somewhere. – on mediums!
We found that we were due to go to Half-penny Green – in the Midlands! I tried to have Bob posted with us, & at the interview thought it would be O.K, but it did not come off. He was no more pleased than I was today; & thus it seems that we will only have a few more days together.
[page break]
Aug. 5th Bob & I had checked up on our leave for today, & managed to leave camp at about 9 AM. to catch the 10 o’clock train to Carlisle. ‘Twas a really extra day – the trip was O.K & the scenery very good & we were met by Mr Brown & Joyce at about 2.
As soon as we arrived at “Glenleigh”, Mrs Brown settled us to a good meal – then out into the garden.
Joyce & a girlfriend accompanied Bob & I to rather a good dance in the evening, & altho’ hot, it was O.K.
Aug. 6th. We were well looked after, as usual, with Breakfast in bed, & All! Spent a very enjoyable quiet day at home – was a grand day & we saw plenty of sun in the garden.
It was really good to be able to feel so much at home – it was O.K.
We left Carlisle on a midnight train, arriving at camp in time
[page break]
for breakfast.
Aug. 7th. Alan Beavis & I had a busy day arranging gear etc. in preparation for our posting.
We had to take our bikes into the station in the evening – Bob & I spent some time, later, writing at the “Southern Cross.” & then to supper.
We were not at all pleased that this should be our last night together!
Glenn Cliff came in later in the evening & I had quite a good chat to him. – only wish we three could have stuck together all along. It was not the best of jobs, saying au revoir to all the chaps we had known for so long!
Aug. 8th
Alan & I had to rise fairly early to be at breakfast before 7. – It was tough having to say goodbye to Bob. We left in rather unsettled spirits!
Left Warrington station at
[page break]
about 10 AM. – took train back to Wolverhampton. We had a couple hours in the town, & even managed to buy a new iron for £2. On arrival at Halfpenny Green, we found that we were the first “Aussie” Navs. to be on the station. Had soon been told that we may be on Mosquitos – here’s hoping.
The ‘drome, - set amidst some really excellent countryside & hills, is about 11 miles from Wolverhampton!
Alan & I had a good long stroll about the station before bed – all was O.K. but the canteen was not the best!
Aug. 9th. After spending most of the day on “arrival duties” & lectures by the C.O etc., Alan & I had a grand surprise to see Bob walk in at about 5 P.M.
Thought he may come, - &
[page break]
now we were set again – a great show that we three should be together again! & all goes well!!
Aug. 10th. Our first day at work again. – settled to our first lectures on Nav., Briefing etc. The 20 chaps (16 Sgts & 4 P/O’s) on our course went into Stourbridge at 3 o’clock for dinghy drill & swimming at the local baths. – passed tests O.K.
Aug 12th. Spent the whole of yesterday in the D.R. instructor. – “the horror box”. Had a sore head after the day was thru’ & then had to go on guard in the night.
Had a tough day of lectures today – received quite a few airgraphs from home.
Aug 13th. Sunday: - Spent most of the day catching up on bombing g.g. – had my first flight in the afternoon on a 3/4 hour bombing trip.
[page break]
Aug. 14th. Had this as a day off – rose at about 9 AM in time for morning tea at the NAAFI – then Bob, Alan & I set off to cycle to Wolverhampton. It was [deleted] always [/deleted] [inserted] O.K. [/inserted] along the country lanes - & a good day for cycling. Had a good look about the town – bought some stain for Dad, etc! We saw “Fanny by Candlelight” – a good show. Also visited the West Park, etc. before returning – we were more or less last on our return ride & took some time to find the camp.
Aug. 15th.
Lectures all day – went on a bombing trip in the afternoon & managed to get the best score of the mob. – 72 X from 10,000.
Aug 17th.
1st day flying exercise – as bomb aimer. Two trips, the first at 8 AM. – had to rise at 6 to get to briefing. Second at 2.30.
[page break]
Aug 20th. Continuing lectures as usual – some details of flying have been scrubbed during the past few days thru’ bad weather.
Received a.g’s from home O.K yesterday – course proceeding O.K.
Saw a show at the camp cinema in the evening.
Aug. 22nd.
Flying was once again cancelled last night – very poor vis. & plenty of rain. Today was our day off. – but far too wintry to use our bikes so most of the chaps in our hut & Bob, Alan & Self took the bus to Wolverhampton.
The day was so miserable that we had little to do after some shopping & I had posted the parcel of stain to Dad. – so we saw “Gone With the Wind” & after tea, “This is the army.”
We took fish paste & raisin bread back to camp for supper & future use.
[page break]
Aug 23. Usual nav. lectures & plotting. Received SAFFCF parcel from London – no mail from home for some time. Sent cable to Ted for his graduation.
Weather still poor & visibility very little.
Aug. 24th.
Rose at 6 AM. to fly at 7. – Two 3 1/2 hour exercises over the Irish Sea. – late returning from 1st exercise, so I missed out on dinner. Took off at 2 PM on 2nd exercise – all went well.
Quite an amount of mail was awaiting me on my arrival at tea at 7 P.M. – wrote to Ralph in evening, but was pleased to turn into bed after my shower.
[page break]
Aug. 25th. After a day of lectures, I wrote my letters before beginning night flying. – we took off at about 10 P.M. & our trip took us south to Southport, then to Northhampton [sic] & Coventry. Was clouded over at base when we returned – too thick to land, so we had to fly to Leichfield. [sic] – landed O.K. & settled to bed there at about 4 AM. after a good supper.
Aug. 26th. Rose at about 11 AM – had a good lunch at the Sgts. mess. This station was a RAAF. O.T.U. so we saw a good many “Aussies”. – Took off again for H.G. at 2 P.M. On returning we found that one of our “kites” had pranged. – killing one of our course, P/O Trusty. Bob had come back to base early, with engine trouble & landed O.K. Alan landed at another ‘drome & returned O.K today!
[page break]
Aug. 27th. We flew on one detail last night – I was NAV. & had a good trip. Turned into bed at about 3 AM. - & rose in time to write letters home at the mess before lunch!
Aug. 29th
Spent yesterday flat out in the DR. trainer – quite a good day tho’ & with Bob acting as pilot, we did quite a good exercise. Our former exercise was not very good tho’ – ie the whole course’s exercises - & the C.I. decided to cancel our day off, so we have [inserted] had [/inserted] to work today. We were to be posted straight to Bomber command as st. Navs. but our course has been extended another week to keep us as Nav B.
Will probably be on Mosquitos or Transport now!
Received ag. from home today.
[page break]
Aug 31st.
On lectures all yesterday - & then rather a busy day today in the D.R.I.
Received quite a few letters today from home - & locals from Alex Brown & Wal Brue at Brighton! PD.R.C. Shifted down there a short time ago from Padgate, & are now having a marvellous time.
We were given the news of our posting this afternoon – Alan, Bob & I are to go direct to the Mosquito Training unit at “Warboys” – a ‘drome about 80 miles north of London, near Huntingdon. We missed out on a week’s leave & the other 3 “Aussies” on our course will get it, & so [inserted] will [/inserted] be a course behind us from now on.
We are on night flying tonight!
Sept 1st. Friday.
After two exercises last night, I crawled into bed at about 6 AM this morning - & was I tired!!
We were to fly tonight but
[page break]
the weather was lousy, - & it wasn’t “scrubbed” till the last minute.
Spent some time in the mess this afternoon writing letters – rose at about 3 P.M., so was kept busy!
We are all pleased that the whole of our course are going to the M.T.U. on “mossies” – they are all a fine lot of chaps & we get along well together!
Sept 2nd. The last of our days of lectures at Halfpenny Green – we had leave at midday so Bob, Alan & self, set out for Wolverhampton by bus at about 4 P.M, & after having a “beaut” meal, came back to camp as it was far too cold & miserable to stay in there. The bus stopped at the local pub. – so we had to finish walking a mile to camp.
Sept 3rd. 5 years since war was declared – a wet & miserable day here, so we did little but
[page break]
prepare for our departure from 3 (0) AFU.
Sept. 4th. After spending quite some time obtaining the last of our clearances, Bob & I caught a bus to Wolverhampton at 4 p.m. – I collected my first cake from home, at lunchtime so I sent a cable to that effect & also one to Ralph for his birthday.
Was grand to receive the cake – can see we’ll be enjoying some for supper before long. Tried to buy a wireless in town – no luck. so Bob & I saw “Her Jungle Love” – an old show, actually, which I saw at home!
Sept. 5th. We left Halfpenny Green at about 10 AM. - & left by train from Wolv. For London.
The country changed, & became more level as we went south – we passed many ‘dromes & also a good many modern factories.
It was quite impressive, & the
[page break]
whole was much better & more modern than any city I had seen here. We arrived at Paddington & had to wait quite some time before we managed to get a Yank transport to take us to King’s Cross station!
Had hoped to be able to spend the night in London, as we were too late to make the train scheduled for us, but the RTO refused permission to stay, so we had to head for Huntington. [sic]
Had rather an interesting drive thru’ London, to the station. – the buzz bombs had almost stopped now, as most of the sites across the channel had been captured!
Some fell earlier in the morning, but we missed them O.K. – the city was very busy & the whole atmosphere was O.K.
It was a really good day - & the sun brightened the city so, that I was amazed just
[page break]
how good the city looked. – the gardens & all made it equally as neat as N. York.
We arrived rather late at Hunt. & ‘twas well after midnight before we saw bed.
Sept 6th.
Buzzed off to begin finding our way about the camp. – it sure had us tricked. & the whole was so scattered that we had 2 miles almost to go from our hut, in a roundabout route, to reach the ‘drome & H.Q.
We were sure pleased we still had our cycles!
There were the 4 Canucks & we three – so the canadians [sic] had a fair amount of walking to do. The other chaps of our course were given a week’s leave – we missed on it!
We had a busy day & after interviews & all, setted [sic] to tea & some writing in the
[page break]
mess! We found a wizard Club. – Warboys’ Club. – ideal for our evening writing, & the whole was O.K. The meals were good & so we made a very good beginning.
Mosquitos, Lancs & Oxfords flew about all day – it would not be long now before we were twiddling “G” on the “mossies.”
Sept 8th.
Yesterday we began lectures & so far have heard so much gen. on ops & the general goings on in Europe that we have been fully concentrating to take it all in.
Bob, Al & I were put straight on the course, but the Canucks are now in pool, - we have a W.C, Sq. Leaders & other officers with us. They sure are gen men & we feel strange to be in the midst of all them.
At this rate we should
[page break]
be on ops. in “Mossies” in a month.
We crew up later at Wyton!
Received a.g. from home today – they had received my records from U.S. Finished up after writing letters in the Club, with cake for supper. – sure is a good reminder of home!
Sept 10th. Gosh! we sure have been getting some gen. today – all secret stuff which we must remember & not take in notes. – is best forgotten ‘till it is needed.
Have still a couple days of lectures before beginning flying.
Sept 11th. Our first day on “G” – found out all about it & after the lectures etc. all was O.K & we had the subject more or less sown up!
Had an early tea, & at 4.30. our course (32) left by bus for Cambridge to do dinghy drill. – had to hurtle off the
[page break]
platform in flying gear this time.
Bob, Alan & I strolled about the town afterwards – a really fascinating place! The colleges were very interesting – typically English, & with excellent grounds.
Saw some extra good souvenir spoons – but shops were closed
We saw a show in the evening – “the Lost Angel.” On coming out of the theatre, we found ourselves in the blackout & were lucky to have remembered our way back to the bus!
Was sure pleased to crawl into bed after all that!
Sept 12th.
Had rather a lively day on “G” today – along with practice in a “dry swim”! Bob, Al & I had to go bombing at 6 P.M. – my first trip in an oxford.
Was quite a good show – but we did not get back to the
[page break]
mess for supper ‘till late!
Was sure pleased to get an air mail letter from Dad, today – photo of our march in Melb. was enclosed! Mail is coming thru’ well from home now – is mighty good, too, as it makes home seem only a short distance away - & as we are not far off operations now, they go a long way to keeping one’s mind off the task ahead.
Sept 13th Wednesday
“We three” spent this morning in the decompression chamber – at 37,000’ for 2 hours! Bob felt pains in his shoulder, but Al & I didn’t have any trouble at all – we were all O.K, after that!
Sept 14th.
I now have crewed up with my pilot – W/O. John Herriman (RAAF) He is a really decent chap & rather a gen. man
[page break]
I am fortunate to have him, as we get along so well together – it will sure make a difference in our job, too. Hope to fly with him soon in a “Mossie” – he soloed a few days ago and is progressing well. He thinks they are wizard “kites.”
As he is rather a practical sort of chap & is really keen on photography, we have much in common, I think, & I am looking forward to some interesting days ahead especially at the squadron
We went thru’ dinghy drill together on Monday – quite a good show!
Went to Wyton to see over a bombing “Mossie” today – it sure is a wizard station & I’m looking forward to going there!
Sept 15th. First cross country flight using “Gee” this afternoon
[page break]
- a really good show! Received letter from Jean Rogers.
Had another chat to John tonight – getting all the “gen” on mossies.
Sept 16th. – Saturday, & Ralph’s birthday – was wondering all day just what he was doing.
Received “Over to you” from Mum today – will keep me busy on some interesting reading during spare time (just where that comes from, I do now know!)
However, all is O.K & I also heard from Whem, Glenn & Aunt Lily. Flew this afternoon – had a good trip on “G”, but was not able to drop my bombs.
Sept 17th. Clocks were put back an hour at 3 AM. – had to rise at 6, to be at 7 o’clock briefing. However, we had to wait ‘till 9 AM for the fog to clear off the ‘drome, so all
[page break]
our early rising was to no advantage! Flew 2 trips of 3 hours, bombing on each!
So, it was late when I finally returned to the mess for tea. - & so another Sunday passes (one would never know it actually).
On such days as this, one sure does realise how grand & peaceful it is at home on Sundays – where one does as he likes, when he likes!
Had a letter from Wal Brue today – he is on 9 days leave in Glasgow & had hoped to see us on his return to PDRC.
Couldn’t wire him, so guess we won’t meet him now! The lucky blighter is still bludging at Brighton - & the P/O’s such as Alec Brown & Jim Allsop are with him. They will soon be F/O’s & we’ll be on ops as Sgts! – what a difference!
However, we’re going along
[page break]
O.K & expect to go to Wyton on Tuesday.
Had an orange for lunch yesterday & another today – the first I had seen since leaving the USA.
Sept 18th.
Returned to lectures today for the final few days before moving to Wyton. Bob, Al & I had hoped to catch a bus to Huntingdon tonight just to get a break from camp, but we missed it, so we returned to the mess to a picture show. We managed supper at the Warboys Club. – chocolate biscuits & tea! Quite a good show.
Sept 19th. Had a quizz [sic] this morning summing up the whole of the course – we came out well! John sure is a “gen” man, & I’m looking forward to getting on to the real thing with him. Bob had a RAF
[page break]
F/O chat him about crewing up, so he has a pilot now. – Al is missing out still & I don’t know what he’ll be doing. We hoped to have a day’s leave tomorrow – but we are required to do another “Gee” flight before leaving here so that is all scrubbed. & our next leave is still a fair way off!
Had our usual letter writing programme tonight at the club. - & later found a really excellent supper at an evening in the mess. We were speaking to the AOC. – A. Vice M. Bennett of Brisbane for about 15 mins. He was quite interested in our progress - & we now feel that things are moving along O.K.
Sept 20th. Found today that we were to make another trip before proceeding to Wyton. – so, as soon as the fog had lifted from the ‘drome, (10 AM.) a RAAF pilot & I set out, & had a good trip on “G”
[page break]
Was really warm above the clouds & we sure did enjoy it.
Spent the afternoon getting clearance – but Al then found that, as he didn’t have a pilot, he had to stay ‘till he was able to get one. So Bob & I were due for Wyton, & as we didn’t have to be there till Friday at 2 P.M. we buzzed off to catch a train to London for a day’s leave.
To ride 5 miles to Huntingdon in a hurry was a bit much for us at this stage so we decided to hail a car – quite some traffic passed along these roads. There were three ‘dromes together here, so things were always busy.
Our train took over 3 hours to reach London – yes! eight o’clock when we landed at King’s Cross, & altho’ the total blackout had now been lifted, - it sure was dark. And, to our disgust, we had forgotten
[page break]
a torch – so there we were, in London, along with its almost total blackout! Which way does one go in a city of 8,000,000?
After ‘phoning a hostel, we found it had nothing in the way of accommodation – but were informed of another near Marlebone [sic] Station, so we buzzed by the underground to this spot.
We were amazed to learn that there were no hostels there & were directed along further – then somewhere else, then on again by two policemen until we found after walking for about an hour along black streets we managed to come to the hostel we ‘phoned in the first place!
We managed to get a room here O.K. - & sure were pleased to stay until daylight before exploring further.
[page break]
Sept 21st.
At breakfast Bob & I had quite a chat to some AIF chaps who were on their way home after being POW’s in Germany since Greece & Crete. It was grand to see the old uniform again.
We then set out for Sth. Aust. House. The city appeared quite neat & tidy, and I was amazed to see numerous modern shops & very good statues & gardens. My idea of London had been quite different. – expected to see something dirty & ancient like Liverpool.
A very nice lass from Adelaide was at Sth A. House – she directed us to the Boomerang Club.
There were many of our chaps at Aust. House – we signed books etc. &
[page break]
arranged for something in the “Advertiser.” Met Mrs. Bruce & had a chat to her.
I bought a tiny Koala to send to Browns as a souvenir.
Bob & I then set out to see the beaut city – all the well known spots, such as Waterloo Bridge, Tower Bridge Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament. Big Ben struck three, while we were there.
The Thames made a typical London scene – fog & boats all over the place. We spent some time wandering about & used the camera quite an amount – Buckingham Palace & the gardens & broad road leading to it, which had witnessed the coronations – were just as I had expected. Guess the King
[page break]
& Queen must have been away – the flag was down!
We saw Piccadilly Circus & the main shopping centre before returning to the club.
Managed to buy some oil colours for Dad. – the shops are well stocked but one can’t usually get what he wants, or at least, I can’t!
We returned by train this evening & settled for our last night at Warboys.
Sept 22nd.
We were sorry to leave Warboys. – the fortnight we spent there were really most enjoyable! Alan had left on a week’s leave, so we didn’t see him – he sure was lucky to get that.
We settled into Wyton
[page break]
before lunch & had quite a good chat & interview to the O.C. – we were pleased to see how well organised the show was, & we were looking forward to our next fortnight!
Sept 23rd.
Began the day well today with P.T at 7.30, - was O.K & then a shower after it made me really fresh & ready for breakfast.
John took rather a dim view of the P.T – but all was well as we had puffed rice & eggs for breakfast, & took to it very well!
Today we had lectures on Mosquito flying & an interview with the Adj. – getting along fine now & as all the officers here are really decent, all should be well. Had my first trip in a “Mossie” today – John
[page break]
& I took off at about 1400. – he did 3 circuits & bumps in 1/2 hour.
Was really good – they are wizard “kites” & he makes a good job of handling them. Dropped eight bombs – John had not been on bombing for ages & we stooged all over the place, & finished putting our first on the wrong target – that nearly cost me 6. Finished up really well, tho’ – my score was the best they had had on the Holbeach target for a while!
Sept 24th.
Sunday
We were to go on our first cross country at 25000’ today, but weather was really foul – flying was scrubbed in the finish so we had an interesting day figuring out all our gen.
We are having excellent meals here – eggs & cereal for breakfast (haven’t seen them since
[page break]
leaving U.S. Three course meals for lunch go very well – was as cold as could be today, & gosh! I could have well sat before a fire to warm myself tonight!
Sept 25th.
Rose at 7. this morning to begin P.T. at 7.30 – what a show! Gosh! it sure is cold these mornings & I’ll be taking to long trousers for PT from now on! John & I flew this afternoon on our first cross country in a “mossie” – all went well.
Flew at 25,000’ – cloud came right up to us, & we were unable to carry out bombing!
Sept 26th. Had an early start on a cross country this morning – we were up for nearly 4 hours & thus covered 8 – 900 miles. Was a very good trip, mainly D.R. & as I was only 15 miles from the target after all that time, it was
[page break]
considered a good exercise!
So, on our return we prepared for a night trip. – ‘twas a really grand night tonight & we were the last to take off.
Once again had a good trip – but what a day! Gosh! was I pleased to hit the old bed!!!
Sept 27th.
We sure were tired this morning & it took me all my time to rise at midday to be at briefing for tonight’s trip. John & I tested two mossies this afternoon – was good experience & practice for us, but I sure had to move fast to be ready to take off for a cross country tonight. All went well & we were back at midnight!
[page break]
Sept 28th. Thursday.
Had to ferry a “mossie” to De Hav.’s drome near London this morning. John & I spent the day there at the works – picked up some extra good photos of the Mosquito from the boss. We returned here tonight – picked up by a W/Cmd in an oxford.
Received first mail from home today for three weeks. – don’t know why the family didn’t write in between this time, but I sure missed the letters & hope they continue to come O.K now!
Sept 29th.
Spent the morning in the Intel. library getting all the “gen” here – John was feeling the effect of his cold today so we did not fly tonight. Tested a kite this afternoon, but soon
[page break]
settled to washing & pressing clothes & ironing etc in the earlier part of this evening.
Have had little time to spare of late – gosh! I’ll be needing a wife to look after me if this keeps up!?
Oct. 1st. Yesterday afternoon we stooged up to Holbeach to do some practice bombing – cloud very low & vis. was poor. We returned without dropping any “eggs.”
Night flying was cancelled at the last minute, so Bob & I soon wizzed into our blues & caught a bus to Huntingdon. Have a new “O” wing up now, as the “N” doesn’t go with us any more.
We were very disappointed with the township – people were in great long queues waiting for the shows we intended seeing. ‘Tis only a fairly small villiage [sic] - & we saw
[page break]
people (typically English villiagers [sic]) gathered around the Salvation Army Band near the bus stop. Light rain was falling & ‘twas rapidly becoming dark, so Bob & I set off to see what else we could find. That, we found ended up to be nothing, so, after buying a small cake & eating same between us at the bus stop, we returned to camp.
Today, John & I did an hour & half of bombing before lunch – stooged all over the place practicing target runs!
Spent a couple hours before tea this afternoon writing in the mess. – a peaceful Sunday afternoon!
We took off fairly early tonight for the last of our cross country exercises – had a U/S kite so was late when we finally set off. Had a good trip, returning soon after midnight.
[page break]
Oct 2nd.
Posted the oil colours & photo of the “mossie” home to Dad today
Was hoping to be able to buzz off on a few days’ leave today, but we have an interview with the group Nav. officer tomorrow.
Bob & Alan still have night flying to complete, but as it was scrubbed tonight we called on the camp cinema for the evening – the first show I had seen for some time. It was “Hit the Ice” with Abbott & Costello – a really good show & we sure had a grand laugh.
Oct 3rd.
Today, after spending the morning obtaining clearances etc, I left camp to buzz to Carlisle for a couple days. Bob still has flying to complete, so couldn’t be with me.
Had a rare time hitch-hiking to Peterborough so that
[page break]
I could catch an express to London – made it OK after being in about 3 trucks & 2 cars!
Was a long trip from London to Carlisle & we were to arrive at 4 AM. – however there were numerous stops & starts and long waits on the line, & I was amazed to find we were still going at daybreak. Nearly had forty fits to see mountains etc, which I had never seen before, & thought I must have been asleep when we passed Carlisle. What a show – guessed I’d have to make a trip back from Glasgow!
However, I found that we had made a deviation owing to a smash on the main line & we rolled into Carlisle quite O.K at about 8 AM.
[page break]
[underlined] Wednesday [/underlined]:
Mr & Mrs Brown were home when I buzzed in – we were soon busy talking & I was quite at home at a good breakfast in no time!
After a bath & clean up I joined “Dunc” at morning tea – we returned home early for lunch & then I spent the afternoon peacefully before the fire, writing letters.
‘Twas grand to get back to see Mr & Mrs Brown, Joyce & Kieth [sic] again – they are just the same after two months or more having passed since we saw them.
Oct 5th.
Was grand to have the usual breakfast in bed this morning – Mrs Brown still looking after me as usual!
I was out for a rest
[page break]
these two days, so I made the most of it, & did very little before lunch.
Mr Brown had the afternoon off – so I made them a “hotbox” & we set some boiling water in it to test it. Proved O.K, & I hope it will cook O.K, too!
Was quite a nice afternoon so we walked to the Cathedral & the Tower, - then home to another few hours spell before my return trip.
I wished Bob could have been with me – it was grand to be able to spend a couple days with them, & gosh I had all I wanted.
Mrs Brown gave me a “Le Havre” spoon to send to Mum.
Made the return trip thru’ Newcastle & Peterborough & arrived at camp by 9 AM.
[page break]
Oct 6th [underlined] Friday [/underlined]
John returned a little after me this morning – I rode the good old bike from Huntingdon, so managed to get in a bit before him. We soon found from the Adj. that we were posted to 627 Sqn. at Woodhall Spa, near Boston – gosh! what a show! This didn’t appeal to us.
And so the time had come when I found that it really seemed like leaving Bob & Al - & that last couple hours I had with them passed all too quickly.
We made our train connections O.K & after making four changes at all sorts of out back stations, we managed to reach Woodhall & find an “Aussie” WAAF to drive us to the drome – good show!
But gosh! were our spirits flattened when we saw the
[page break]
the place. – a dispersed ‘drome (one of the many in this country)
‘Twas so different from Wyton, & it sure was a blow to find we had been dumped here!
There was only another crew besides us sent to this spot – we sure were unlucky this time!
And so we began – John had ideas to be moved elsewhere as soon as we knew the running of things here! It was a grim show, & I was pleased to hit the old bed & sleep it off!
Oct 8th.
We sure were feeling rather flat yesterday – spent the day finding out all we could about the squadron & everything else! Dive bombing & the prospects of a very long tour of ops did not appeal to us, as we told the C.O. – W/Cmd Curry, when we were inter-
[page break]
viewed. Today we did little more of interest – was a typical English winter Sunday. Gosh! it is might cold & damp here even now, so I don’t know what it will be like in a couple months if we are unlucky enough to still be here!
We have started things moving now. – John has written to H.Q to try for a move elsewhere!
Oct 10th.
Since my arrival at this spot these English “bods” have annoyed & sickened me more than ever. – I never have been dead keen on them, & now that John & I are the only “Aussies” about here, there is definitely something amiss. & thus I’d sure like to find ourselves on a RAAF station with people who think & talk as we do. We
[page break]
have certainly had bad luck to be sent here - & the dull, damp atmosphere of the place, and prospects of a very slow & uninteresting tour of ops. ahead, have sure made us feel flat!
Guess Bob is now on a fairly good station & maybe already on ops – he has sure had a good spin! John & I spent last evening at the camp cinema – rather a boring show, but it managed to break the monotony & ease our depression!
This morning I was peacefully making up a “Gee” homing card when John burst in. - “We’re Airborne” he says! “O.K Let’s go”, I answer, rather stunned by this sudden outburst of life on behalf of the beaut squadron!
So, off we buzzed in a “beaut” old MK IV & completed our dive boming [sic] before lunch.
No mail today – poor
[page break]
show! Can’t make out where my airgraphs have gone.
Oct 12th. Today I received quite a budget of mail – on top of some from Mum, Dad, Glad, Auntie Bess which came yesterday.
So all is well again, & an answer to my letter to “Auspo” re. airgraphs tells me that air letters are definitely best now, - so they should continue O.K.
This place was making me feel mighty flat, but some mail sure makes a difference & I don’t mind now if I’m left here a while before beginning ops, as I can pick up quite an amount to help me.
John & I blew across to Conningsby [sic] this morning, to get the hang of using T.I’s etc on targets – in a special training arrangement. ‘Twas a huge place like a B.T. - & we
[page break]
peered down on the target, from a balcony as if we were in a “kite” at about 10000’ seeing a dinkum raid. It would make a really good sideshow for post war days. – something like “How the RAAF did it!”
Was well worked out tho’ & mighty interesting with red, green & yellow markers going down, flak bursting & searchlights on!
We thought it quite a good station – gosh! why should we be sent to a wicked place like Woodhall! Hope to have a chance to begin something for our move before long!
Oct. 13th. All we navs. had a lecture by the C.O this morning – on much secret “gen.”
John & I set out on a bombing trip soon after, but we developed a mighty big swing on take off. - &
[page break]
skidded off the runway & flat out towards the control tower – was funny to watch everyone run for trucks etc. expecting things to happen, but we came round O.K & began taxying back to the flight – brakes were soon U.S so we left the “kite” on the perim. track!
Visited Coningsby again this afternoon to get some more secret “gen” – good stuff!
Oct. 15th.
Continued with the usual “genning” today & at 11 this morning John & I took a F/LT to Oakington – good show! I’ve now at least put foot on the place even if we don’t get our move there! Set out to do some wind finding on our way back. – instruments went U/S on us, so we had to forget it!
Tonight there was a grand show on in the mess – a party for one & all apparently! We
[page break]
had to take off on a practice marking trip at 10, so it was all over when we returned at midnight. We dropped 250 lb. T.I’s which went down O.K. – but I forgot to fuse them! What a show – thats [sic] twice I’ve done it (first & last) I hope.
Had a late supper & piled into bed at about 1 A.M.
Oct 16th.
‘Tis impossible to express the rotten feeling I’ve had all day. – Bill Read’s letter, telling me that Bob was missing after a raid on Berlin last Wednesday night, came this morning. Gosh! it hardly seems possible – I go back over all the good times we have spent together, & gee! I’m just hoping & praying that he’ll be O.K. I wrote to Mrs. Bolton a couple nights ago – will write again now.
Contacted H.Q in London today
[page break]
& hope for some news of him before long! Wrote also to Bill Read, & hope to hear from him again soon – Alan Beavis is now with him at Downham Market!
Oct 17th.
John & I had to make an early start this morning on a special wind finding trip. We Made [sic] two trips – took some shots today of the “kites.”
I wrote to Brown’s last night – it will be a hell of a shock to them to hear of Bob’s misfortune.
Oct 19th.
Yesterday we were flying early again – then on bombing in the afternoon. Were due to take off at 1900 for wind finding – dropping incend. & spot fires.
It was a rotten night – we had to wait ‘till midnight before we could get off but it was raining so heavily when we
[page break]
began taxiing out, we had to switch off & the whole was cancelled. – Was sure pleased to hit the old bed at 2 AM.
Oct. 22nd. Sunday
Have had rotten weather the past few days & most of our flying has been scrubbed because of fog & rain. The only way to keep the dampness out of our huts is to keep a fire on the whole time – but fumes etc. soon cause us to open all windows, so I don’t know [deleted] hh [/deleted] what we’ll do as it becomes colder.
Have not yet had any news of Bob. – received a cable from home yesterday, so the family all know of Bob’s misfortune!
Oct. 23rd.
The weather sure is “clamping down” here now. – fog & rain usually greets us in the morning,
[page break]
& gosh! everything seems so miserable! It usually clears up in the evenings, tho’ - & so we are then able to fly, & it is OK as long as we get back before the fog begins to gather again.
Went out to Wainfleet on bombing again last night – T.I’s didn’t burn very well tho’. Today I was a pal-bearer at the funeral of an RAF chap who was unable to bale out of a “mossie” in time a few days ago. – was not at all enjoyable!
Had a letter from Mr Brown today with snaps from my last film enclosed – they came out rather good & there were quite a few we took in London when Bob & I were last there on leave.
Still no news of Bob – guess it may yet be some time before any comes along! Am saving
[page break]
some chocolate to send to him as soon as I have his P.O.W. address, as he likes it best of all!
Gosh! I’ve really “had” this place now. – we have had everything go wrong lately & I sure would like to get away for a while. Mr Brown’s letters are always grand to receive – they are wizard people & I sure do owe a lot of my happiness here to them! John’s wizard sense of humour keeps me going O.K too. – we get along well together & without him there would not be much of interest for me! We have hopes of some good ops soon - & maybe make the grade to ferry a “mossie” home!
Oct 25th.
Firstly today – a change of ink & so we proceed.
Today was the great day – as it seems we are to be on this Squadron for some time,
[page break]
I found the opportunity to apply to the Adj. for the required form 1020 for my application for a Commission – so it is now on its way, & maybe in a few months’ time I’ll hear something of it! Has yet to be passed by our W/C Curry – who no doubt will require a very interesting interview before he passes it on!
Still no news of Bob. – a fortnight tonight since he was missing, so I sure hope he is O.K as a P.O.W. & if Jerry has finished his interrogation, I may hear something soon!
Oct 27th.
We are still on training – gosh! we have “had” this place & only wish we could get on to the real thing. I’m afraid I’m looking forward to leaving England – as far as I’m concerned, the
[page break]
whole place makes one feel so miserable, & I’d sure dislike being here very long.
John & I flew a few hours on a X. country this afternoon.
Oct. 28th.
Had a couple hours’ trip in a Lanc today – using H2S. There sure is plenty of room in them compared with the “mossie”!
Was grand to receive Mum’s parcel today too – it only took a little over 2 months. Dad had enclosed some films, so I’ll be taking the camera with me to get some shots of the “kites” when I next fly.
Oct 30th.
Yesterday was quite fine - & the sun helped brighten things a little.
Had intended cycling to a nearby castle, but we had to fly, so that settled that. Wrote to Mr & Mrs Bolton again before lunch. – John & I set out to
[page break]
begin a bombing exercise early in the afternoon, & to our delight a large formation of Fortresses were streaking along up above with Con-trails galore. – so up we wizzed to 20,000 after our bombing to do likewise.
It was really a grand Sunday afternoon’s flying. – the old “mossie” did a good job!
Today another crew from 627 Sqn. is missing – had to bale out over their target, so should be O.K.
Oct 31st. Teusday. [sic]
My “Flight” actually came through today – only a month overdue, so I must now find some crowns to put up!
Have received quite an amount of mail from home – letters & papers & “Waltzing Matilda” from Mum & letters from Dad.
No further news of Bob has yet come to hand. – I sure do
[page break]
hope I’ll know of him soon – have now quite a supply of chocolate for him, & will send it on as soon as I have his address. This makes me remember how well we both used to like chocolate. – the chocolate cakes & ice cream of New York are a vivid memory.
Nov. 5th Sunday.
The past few days have been rather hectic & as we’ve had quite an amount to do on Loran etc., time has passed rather quickly.
I blew into the flight office & had our well over-due leave fixed up – for Monday 6th.
John & I have been on a fair amount of bombing practice the past few days - & with some link practice & some “gen” on flying the “mossie”, John managed to show me how to handle the “kite” – found it O.K & I sure would like to get in a dual control job.
[page break]
We saw “Goodbye Mr Chips”, last night at the station cinema – really enjoyed it again, & it sure made one feel like fighting to keep such lads as those out of this business. The moral of the film was very impressive.
The National Anthem runner at the camp show is an old one – with an Anson in part of it. It always reminds me of our days in the old Anson’s at home – gosh! how many times have Bob & I been in them, - & its amazing to think how things are for us now.
This afternoon we were not able to fly owing to bad weather – so, after a great effort by the whole squadron to run the 3 1/2 miles round the ‘drome, I was pleased to get into a bath & so begin preparing to go on leave.
Left camp at 4 P.M by bus for Boston & after a
[page break]
considerable wait, managed to get to Peterborough. The train to Newcastle was packed – so I had to stand in the corridor & freeze! I never want to see another train after this business is all over – especially an English one.
Was a terrifically cold night - & I was pleased to arrive at “Glenleigh” in time for breakfast.
Mr Brown, & a friend of his were going to Coldstream by car, so I bundled in with them - & off we went before lunch! It was quite a good drive & the country we passed thru’ very interesting – however I was pleased to return home, as I had missed out on all my sleep the night before.
Wednesday 8th.
After a lazy day yesterday, I actually rose early (about 8.30) this morning, to go off with
[page break]
Mr Brown on his trip to Edinburgh.
We had a really good day – the sun was shining & all was O.K. Passed thru’ Hawick & Galashiels & many of the hills about were already covered with snow.
Arrived in the “big smoke” at about 2 P.M, so were able to have a good look about before tea. – we stayed at a small hotel! Visited the Castle & took snaps about the place.
In the evening Mr Brown & I went off to a show, in which Will Fyfe, the Scottish comedian was the main attraction – it was very good, & we sure did enjoy ourselves.
Nov. 9th.
We managed breakfast O.K this morning & set out to see all we could of the city.
‘Twas very smoky & hazy but we found our way to the old Castle & Cathedral!
[page break]
I was able to buy “This, my Son” at a bookstall, to give to Mrs. Brown. We then caught a bus for the Forth Bridge, & spent an hour or so there – ‘tis truly a wonderful piece of work & I wished Ralph were there too.
Our trip back took us along a slightly different route – had been cold the night before, so there was quite an amount of snow & ice along the roads.
Met trouble on the road, with a blowout, so had to change the tyre in a slight snow storm.
Sunday.
Came along all too quickly & soon ‘twas time to board a train again.
My week at Carlisle was one big bludge – but it was grand to be in such a homely atmosphere again!
[page break]
Mrs Brown fitted me up with biscuits & powdered milk, so all should be well for supper now!
Monday 13th.
Arrived at camp at midday – things were well fogged up, so there was little doing in the Squadron.
Saturday 18th.
John & I had hoped to get an interview with the C.O this week, but he was on leave when we returned, so we must wait a couple days yet - & in the mean time continue our daily “stooges” & training about here. Made a trip in a Lanc. on Loran today – out to the North Sea. Was O.K but I’d rather have a “mossie” any day!
Have not had any further news of Bob yet – a letter from his mother came a few days ago.
[page break]
Wednesday 22nd.
Last night John & I were on our trip to Munster – O.K.
Had a grand day for mail today – quite an amount from home, & one also from Glenn & Clarrie. Glenn & I may be able to coincide our leave – I sure do hope we can make it O.K!
Sent off the last of my Xmas Air Letters today. – was scrubbed from the op tonight – “kite” U/S.
[deleted] On Munich – via Manston [/deleted]
We had a snow storm today, but was very light.
Saturday 25th.
On our return from T.I. dropping at Wainfleet tonight, we collided with a Lanc. at the perimeter track. The “mossie” wasn’t touched much, but the Lanc. broke in two – I shall never forget the sight of the fin suddenly appearing in front of us.
[page break]
No one was touched in the collision so all is well so far!
Sunday – We were on Munich tonight. – had a very wet afternoon with some sleet & snow Trip via Manston!
Monday 27th Nov.
Spent today at the inquest to our accident – we are in the clear, as it was the Lanc. chap’s fault & he is in some strife! Received parcel from home & Tyson’s today.
Wednesday 29th.
Our trip to the River Weser was spoilt by cloud over the target – otherwise O.K.
‘Twas 5 AM. before we at last made bed!
Wrote to Glenn today to hope to arrange Xmas leave together. Have no further news of Bob, yet!
[page break]
Monday 4th. We were out tonight on Halcunn rail centre – good trip. 13 Lancs missing
Teusday: [sic] Today more papers came from home, with four parcels & one parcel from SAFFCF.
On ops. again tonight – but they were later scrubbed, after us getting up at 1 A.M, having a meal & preparing for the trip.
Dec 6th. Raid a rail junction near Frankfurt tonight – quite O.K.
Dec 8th. We had our first real heavy fall of snow today – gee, it was cold. Had to practice ditching drill too!
Received a letter from Mrs. Francis – Allen Boase’s friends who want me to spend my next leave there. So I may go there before visiting Brown’s
[page break]
but hope to see Glenn also!
Dec 9th
John & I had a flight this afternoon on blind windfinding – we were to be on ops tonight but it was “scrubbed.”
[underlined] Sunday: [/underlined] Rather a miserable day – kept the fire in the crew room warm & with sheepskin etc & flying boots to keep me warm, completed some letter writing & met. swotting – also Loran manipulation.
On the link this afternoon – a heavy fall of snow began at about 2 & continued ‘till after tea. Gosh! what a mess! ‘Twas rather unusual to see the snow over buildings & all, as that which I have seen at home is all in the hills! Lit the fire in 126 tonight – John & I spent the evening reading & munching
[page break]
almonds & sultanas etc. from my parcels. – supper of cocoa & a piece of cake made a good combination while the wind & rain outside made all outdoors rather miserable!
Wednesday:
Have been on bombing & wind finding the past few days. – days always foggy with hardly any vis. in the morning, & to make the situation worse, some very heavy frosts, which now last all day. We were not put on the battle order for tonight.
Received quite an amount of mail from home yesterday – Dad said the photo of the mossie had arrived O.K. Allan Beavis wrote today – his leave has been put back & we should now spend Xmas together at Brown’s – he has now done 15 ops.
Mine laying at Bremen – 45 ships “bottled up”
[page break]
Dec 14th. Received three more parcels this morning – a cake from Mum & also one from Mrs Bartlett, & a beaut tin of yo yos from Gwen. – Gosh! all this is grand, & such incidents brighten things quite an amount. – the cake contained a card for Xmas & a large print of Mum & Dad. Gee! it is good to have their photo – often look through all I have, with many pleasant memories.
Flt/Lt Jackson & I went for a ride around the country this afternoon – ‘twas might cold!
Friday: -
Received another parcel from home today. – four films enclosed.
Saturday 16th.
We were put on an op. this morning – left at 7 P.M for Marston for a late take off. Weather was very poor – we put down there O.K, with a
[page break]
ground staff “chappie” in the nose. –
Op scrubbed at 1 A.M – so we settled to sleep in a really miserable hut.
Sunday: -
A vile day – we tested the mossies & hung round for final gen. on the op. Set course in quite fair weather, - hit Munich & came back without any troubles. The lights in Switzerland were showing very plainly – we were on marking tonight.
Once again spent a few hours sleeping in a miserable hut. – rose at 9 AM. & returned to Woodhall!
Had some strife this afternoon preparing for our leave – but finally managed to get everything set! Spent this evening writing & dusting the cobwebs off my “blues”. – all set for a “bang on week”. Sent a wire
[page break]
to Allan today & hope to meet him in London.
Monday passed O.K, so John & I, after fixing up my log for the last op, caught the midday bus to Boston. All done up & somewhere to go. – they say we “Aussies” have the pick of all uniforms here, & today we managed to keep up the good name.
With the help of Fl/Lt Tice, I had my leave extended to Dec 28 – 10 days – as John has an R/T course to attend in London.
We arrived at the AFC at Kensington Gardens in good time – settled for a room, which altho’ in an annex, was very good. Wizzed out then to Liecester [sic] Square to have a look around – ‘twas now about 8 PM.
We blew into a cafe – had some wizard sandwiches & tea, and then began sorting out the theatres.
The crowds were thick & the
[page break]
city quite bright with the blackout partly lifted. – ‘twas amazing to watch the city more or less humming with activity whilst above our “kites” were heading across the way. We saw a newsreel show - & returned to the Club. Teusday [sic] over, we come to –
Wednesday 22nd Dec.
After a wonderful sleep, we managed to make breakfast with a few minutes to spare – we soon noticed the excellent atmosphere of the club. The chaps all looked so clean – it was typically Aust.
Today we spent pondering thru’ bookshops etc. – time soon passed, as we were made to wonder at the interest London has for its Visitors.
The underground, especially struck me more than ever as being a truly wonderful piece of engineering. The city itself
[page break]
was not so bright – we had run into a London fog, & one could just see across the road.
Saw Michael Redgrave in “Uncle Harry,” tonight – an excellent show.
[underlined] Thursday: [/underlined]
John had to attend the R/T course today so he had left the club before I awoke. At Breakfast I met Geoff Mitton, so, as I had to go along to have the “Power of Attorney” from Dad, witnessed, we went along together to see Sir Chas McCann & then to Kodak House. Had hoped to visit Parliament House, but were too late, so we tripped along to the Boomerang Club to lunch. Met quite a few chaps I knew including Paul Smith.
At 2 PM. four “Aussies” including “yours truly”, set out for
[page break]
Ealing – thence in a taxi to Paramount’s Ealing Studios.
We were met with much enthusiasm – once more it seemed our chaps had a good name - & I was in my element seeing all I could of the place.
Tom Walls was making a film at the time – we saw a few shots being made & pottered all over the sets which were under construction.
I met John back at the Club – we had tea, & later set out for Euston, to get my train to Carlisle.
We arranged that he should follow me in a day or so. – I left him hoping to see him at Brown’s for Xmas! My trip was O.K. – I arrived at Glenleigh just in time for breakfast.
‘Twas good to see the Brown’s again & they were pleased
[page break]
that I had at last arrived.
I sorted out the local bookshops - & came home with some “gen” on photography. A wire from Allen told us of his time of arrival – met him after tea, & spent a very pleasant evening having a good chat.
Was just like old times – three months since I last saw him - & it sure did remind me of the days he, Bob & I spent together.
The Browns began looking after us right away – they were grand!
A wire from John let us know he would arrive about midnight. However, I missed him at the station, as he was on a second part of a train which was late.
Saturday: John came along this morning before Al
[page break]
& I were up. – we were having our usual “breakfast in bed.
Our next few days were carefree & lazy, but happy & it was wonderful to relax so in such homely surroundings!
It was grand we could all get together. – Xmas Day was a grand surprise & we had a really hearty meal.
For the rest – so much happened that the time passed all too quickly.
Firstly, Allan set out again for London & then John & I returned. I was not at all pleased having to leave. – the Brown’s had been marvellous to us & we spent a Xmas of reunion I shall not forget.
I often thought of Bob. – if only he could have been with us too!
[page break]
Friday Dec 28th.
When we arrived back at Tattershall last night, we were amazed to find the place covered in ice & frost & gosh! was it cold. Apparently it had been this way for some days. – the road was slippery & John and I had quite some fun attempting to keep up!
Today John’s commission came thru’ & he is now an F/O.
Received two parcels from home & one from Henderson’s today – along with “bags” of letters.
Saturday: -
We were on a battle order this morning – early lunch, but was in time to collect my mail. – another parcel arrived, but there was not time to collect it before we left. Flew in formation of 6
[page break]
to Peterhead – spent the night
[underlined] Dec 31st [/underlined]
Arose at 6 AM – bleak, cold & miserable morning with snow on the ground. Weather cleared & we set course when the sun was rising – was as clear as could be as we climbed up & the effect above the clouds was extra. The formation looked grand passing over the Norwegian mountains, which were well covered with snow. – we arrived at Oslo amidst a beautiful clear day.
Divebombed the Oest. H.Q there & wizzed off home on the “dick”.
Noticed some skaters on a large lake as we left the town. – Flak was heavy, but we came out with only a glycol burst. Dicky Doyle & F/L Gaunt were wounded.
John & I returned to Woodhall in a Lanc – our kite was U/S so we left it behind.
[page break]
[underlined] 1945 [/underlined]
January 1st.
John & I had early supper last night – too tired to bother seeing the New Year in!
[underlined] Wednesday: [/underlined]
John had moved to another hut today, so I moved also across the way with most of the chaps I know!
Tuesday 9th. All has been going along O.K. – have only been flying on practice bombing etc. as the weather has been foul.
Has been snowing for a couple days – we are now well in the midst of the cold season.
Went to Lincoln today for dinghy drill – had a really good swim in the baths. John came back in the bus, but “Johnnie” Caragatta & I stayed on – saw a show & bought a kettle & some eats before our return.
[page break]
Jan 10th Received 4 parcels today – two beaut cakes included! They were nos. 10, 11 & 12. One cake was from Joy! They were dated Oct 30th.
Heavy falls of snow again today – ‘tis now about 4” deep.
John is still busy writing his “Sallies of Youth” – we spend most of the time in the crew room! I have to prepare for my comm. interview – so “swotting” is in full swing, plus “link” etc.
Get along well with everyone here at the squadron, & we are actually very lucky. Have a fairly easy time in between flying & with all this snow of the past few days, we’ve had no flying, so I can catch up on quite an amount of photography etc.
With my parcels, & others “Johnnie” Caragatta etc. get, we have some good suppers, so
[page break]
have only the cold to complain about.
Jan 13th.
John & I made an early start this morning – was just beginning to get light at 9 AM. when we piled into a Lanc. to go to Peterhead to collect our “kite” which we left there after the Oslo trip. She was not completed so it meant spending the night there – I sure did notice it strange to have John in the officers’ mess, but I met Ken Brand & Laurie Armstrong, two WAG’s who came on the boat with us, & we four went off to a show later on in the evening.
Wherever we go here, we can always meet some RAAF chaps – it sure is great to see them. By all accounts a good many of our chaps at Brighton are on their way home.
[page break]
Jan 14th
It was after lunch before we were able to get the “mossie” completed. - & ‘twas 6 P.M before we landed back at Woodhall. – 285 N. miles in 64 minutes is quite fair cruising! We found the squadron on an op. - & had been on one last night too!
Mum’s grand Air Mail, with the photo of herself, Glad & Peter was awaiting me in the mess!
Jan 17th. Received more mail from home today – also from Dad, on his last day in Melb. & from Cath Page, during her stay at “Colwyn”. I’m sure pleased she is staying at home – she must be a fine lass, & it will be great to meet her. All this recalls all Bob used to tell me of her – they are a good pair & I only hope news of Bob will soon be thru’
[page break]
for her. – Past few days have been finer, & we’ve been practice bombing at Wainfleet, & T.I. dropping at night.
Jan 22nd. Have had heavy snow the past few days – about a foot fell between 6 & 7 AM this morning.
We have only flown on a few bombing trips
Today my commission was put thru’ by W/Cmd. Curry – this is his last day as C.O of the squadron. Our new C.O. seems to be O.K.
Spent a couple hours this evening shovelling snow from the runway lights etc. – caught up to us at last. “Pop” Levigne, F/O Willis, F/L Bob Boyden have all finished up! – Bob is going back to Canada.
Stalin’s big drive on the eastern front is well under way, - & if he keeps up, the RAF will have a few more targets less to look after, - & maybe we can
[page break]
soon get tracking home!
Wednesday 24th
Heavy fog today – stand down for the squadron. It sure is thick, too!
Received Cath Page’s letter with snaps of them taken at home. – first photos I have of her, & she is still just the same as in the ones Bob had of her!
Monday 29th.
Received parcel of fruits from Glad today – plus mail from home. Mine laying at Kiel
Wednesday: 31st – River Elbe “gardening”
Thursday 1st.
Weather has cleared well – on an op. tonight to Dortmund Ems. F/LT Baker & Doug Betts missing
Feb. 2nd.
On ops again tonight to Karlsruhe – landed at Woodbridge.
Passed over Alan Beavis’ drome as we returned.
[page break]
Wednesday 7th.
Weather clearer with some rain – quite mild.
On ops tonight to upset Jerrys railways
Thursday 8th.
Long trip to Politz near Stettin tonight – received Mum’s cake (14) & Gwen’s parcel today. Mail still delayed.
Saturday 10th.
After raid assessment this morning I caught the midday bus to Boston, & with “Freddie” Nash, went to London. John left before me, by car, but I booked into the A.C.F Club & was having tea when he arrived.
We had a fairly early night, rose for breakfast – the usual fruit & cereals.
I left for Brighton before
[page break]
lunch, but did not see Alec Brown or the other chaps I hoped to find down there. – the sea was mighty rough & the day miserable so I returned to London.
John & I saw “Henry V” tonight.
Monday 12th.
Bought my book – “the theory of the photographic process” by Kenneth Mees & a few odds and ends, then had lunch at Boomerang Club. We saw the film “Lady in the Window” in the evening!
Feb. 13th. Sent off some photos home & Mum’s birthday card to Ralph this morning - & caught a train to Leamington soon after lunch!
Found my way to “Sixteen” by the help of a taxi.
Was soon made at home by Mr & Mrs Francis & Joan
Wednesday: Had a late breakfast
[page break]
& then cycled around town with Mrs Francis! We all had a grand time at the dance tonight – was not up till 10 A.M. & then I set out to explore the town.
[underlined] Friday: [/underlined] As usual, I had a quiet time today – visited Coventry & met Joan after work!
Alan Boase & a cobber came Saturday afternoon – we had a good chat, but they left early on
Sunday 18th.
Allan & Ted left at 7 AM. – I got their breakfast & took tea up to Mr & Mrs Francis! “Pop” & I spent today on the first stages of the boat shed.
Monday 19th. I left Leamington at 12.30 PM. – after buying some more stain for Dad.
Met John & F/L Tice in London –
[page break]
had tea & saw a show in Boston & landed in hut 120 Echelon at about 2300. “Blue” Dalton had got my parcels & mail for me – Nos 16, 18 & 19 – so ‘twas late when I hit the pillow.
[deleted] [indecipherable letter] [/deleted] Tuesday 20th. On ops. tonight to Dortmund Ems.
[underlined] Wednesday: [/underlined] Landed at Coltishall after last night’s trip. On ops. to the canals again tonight – our 14th trip.
Friday 23rd.
On op to HORTON tonight – marked first; “kite” caught some flak in port radiator.
Did not rise ‘till 11 the next morning – had interview with the Base Commander at 1 PM.
Sunday: - John & I flew during the afternoon on a fuel
[page break]
consumption test, & on Monday we took off again on a similar job in a MK XVI “Mossie” – we had fuel sprayed all over us, & could hardly breath from the effect of the fumes – had petrol galore on the floor on landing & we sure were “walking on air.” Took the same kite up in the afternoon – all was O.K. & we had a great time dodging among the clouds.
Teusday: [sic] we spent mainly on bombing op. to Wesel rail Junctions.
Wednesday 28th.
Further fuel tests on climbs etc.
March 2nd.
Today, John & I took a “mossie” down to Cambridge for a check up – he used to instruct there on “tigers”! We were able
[page break]
to spend a couple hours in the villiage [sic] - & met John’s former landlady. We returned in the afternoon – the ‘drome there is only grass & very small, but the old “mossie” made it easily with + 9 boost!
Saturday 3rd.
We were on the Dortmund Ems Canal again tonight – had rather a hot reception over there but all was O.K. & we pushed the kite along to get back well before the heavies. Had not been on the ground long before we found that some of Jerrie’s kites had come across in the bomber stream.
We had two shooting up the drome & dropping A.P. bombs. – it continued till after I “hit the pillow” but all settled down O.K. Only one civilian driving a car was killed. This is the first we’ve seen of “bandits” – will be back well before the heavies from now!
[page break]
We did not know till we landed that we had a .303 bullet in the tail of the kite.
Monday 5th. Bowled along to Coningsby to get some pay today – found I had £140. credit, so will have to invest in a car for the summer.
Received mail from home, & from Cath Page.
Sent a cable for Peter’s Birthday.
Teusday [sic] Mch 6th. We were on an op. to Sassnitz, near Stettin, tonight – 1400 miles, a 5 hr. trip – will be pleased to have cushions from now! Terrific light flak in the harbour, but all went well!
Friday 9th. Weather poor these past few days. – calling for practice bombing & ground training on our new “gen” box.
Raced a Mustang today
[page break]
coming back from the range – left him at 250 K.
The chaps nearly collapsed tonight when I went along into Boston – saw a show & then went to the dance with Blue Dalton, G. Swales & Co.
Tuesday 13th.
Last night I collected my Xmas parcel from the comforts fund – then “Geordie” Swales, “Johnnie” Caragatta & I went to Woodhall for supper. Met Bill Carey in there.
Today Jim Allsop was posted to 627 – talking to him for a short time.
Thursday 15th.
Went on op. to Halle last night – landed at Woodbridge & returned this morning.
Received parcel from Joy today.
We went along to Boston
[page break]
on the 5.30 bus. – saw a show & then went to the St. Patrick’s Ball – quite a good show!
Saturday Mch 17th.
On our 32nd op. last night – to Zurburg. Engine failed on the way out – came back with only the starboard & landed very well with only the one.
Received parcels 20 & 21 from Mum today – sent 3/1/45 whilst Cath Page was at home.
Wednesday 21st.
On a target near Leipzig last night – landed at 6 A.M. today. John awoke me at 1.30 P.M. – to go for a “mossie” from Coningsby. We wizzed across in the Oxford.
Thursday 22nd.
Packed up & set out on leave soon after lunch – booked
[page break]
into the A.C.F Club. London & saw a “News” show before John arrived.
Saturday: After spending yesterday about the “Big Smoke”, I caught the train to Carlisle at 10 AM.
As I passed thru’ Warrington I was reminded of the first time Bob & I visited the Browns!
On my arrival, Mr & Mrs Brown had my telegram of congrats etc. for my commission, from the C.O – thus I would have to return via London
Saturday 31st
John arrived on Sunday at Glenleigh, & we had a grand lazy spell with the Browns. Returned to London yesterday, collected all my gear from Kodak house, & arrived at Tattershall about 8 P.M – just before dark.
Had to take off my stripes
[page break]
& put on the narrow band before turning into bed, as my battle dress was at the cleaners.
Learnt on our return here that “Johnnie” Day & F/O Barnett had been missing for a few days – ditched near the Frisians.
Sunday April 1st.
Easter Sunday - & my first day in the officers’ mess – all went well, but nobody seemed to treat me as a “sprog” & ‘twas all taken for granted!
Thursday 5th.
Began high level bombing
Monday – on Battle Orders Monday & Wednesday. Jim Allsop & I went into Boston tonight – saw “Bathing Beauty” & then called in at the “Gliderdrome”.
Friday: - Op. to Prague.
[page break]
Saturday 7th. On ops to oil plant near Leipzig tonight. – received letter from H.Q. to the effect that Bob was posted as killed.
Monday 9th. Yesterday was a grand spring day – Jim Allsop & I went for a ride after tea.
My day off today – ‘twas very foggy when I left on the bus to Boston to wizz down to London.
Collected my gear & cap from Stores & after being fitted for a uniform, settled to waffles & ice cream at Boomerang Club. Met Jerry Donoghue & Kevin Barry.
Returned late this evening, & had the chat I had expected with John before bed – all is well now!
April 10th. Ops took us near Leipzig again – DR Compass U/S.
April 11th. Ops tonight scrubbed when we were almost ready to go, as
[page break]
the yanks were almost to Leipzig but it was put on again at 3 AM.
John wrote this poem whilst we were at Brown’s – he thinks it’s O.K, wonder to whom he’s referring!
Oh! I’ve taken off my stripes,
I’ve taken off my crown
Hey nonny nonny, derry derry down.
No longer am I “Chiefy”
A non-commissioned clown,
Hey nonny nonny, derry derry down.
I wear a stripe upon my arm
And write with greenish ink
I fill the “erks” with wild alarm
I’m quite important – don’t you think?
I wear a lovely peaky cap.
My clothes are simply smashin’,
I’m such a clever sort of chap,
So debonair – so splashin’.
I hob-nob with Society
When I go to town,
Hey nonny nonny, derry derry down
On cheap but dull sobriety
Contemptuously frown.
[page break]
Yet when this war is over,
I’ll be feeling somewhat brown,
Tha’ll [sic] be no “nonny nonny”,
Only “derry derry down.”
J.W. Herriman?
April 14th. Received fair amount of mail from home today, parcel from Mum No 22. & one from Cath Page & Auntie Lil.
Monday 16th. Wing/Cmd. R. Kingsford-Smith took over the squadron today – W/Cmd. Hallows is to have an operation & will not come back here. Berchesgarden today.
April 19th. Last two trips have been to Czechoslovakia – near Prague. Had innoculations today.
Sunday 22nd. Op. laid on for tonight. back at 8 AM.
Monday, briefing again for
[page break]
another at 8 P.M. – 41st.
Tuesday 24th.
John & I flew a “mossie” to Cambridge – then in an oxford to Hatfield. Saw air tests of a new “kite” before leaving to return to Woodhall.
London to Woodhall, 17 mins – 3 1/2 hrs by L.N.E.R. We enjoyed the trip. Another op. laid on tonight was scrubbed – put on again on Wed. Night.
Thursday 26th. On an op. to Norway tonight – near oslo. [sic]
Saturday 28th. Flew a “mossie” to Cambridge again yesterday & also brought one from there today. S/Ldr Oakley posted from here today, also.
Ops tonight to Denmark.
May 1st. Our day off today – left on the noon bus for Lincoln, & after lunch went
[page break]
along to West’s garage – decided on a 500 cc Ariel (£80) after much consideration. Will collect it at the end of the week, so we returned by bus.
Teusday [sic] 2nd. (sorry Wednesday)!
Today Hitler is reported to have died – all is mixed up here & it looks as if we have completed our last op. from this country. Allan Beavis finished his tour last week & is now on leave with Vic Berry at the Brown’s.
Wrote to Glenn Cliff today. P.O.W. ferrying put on twice this week.
Friday May 4th.
Weather quite fine today – John & I had a bombing exercise & flip about the countryside before lunch. Had the afternoon off to write mail & read at leisure in the sun!
[page break]
[underlined] Saturday: [/underlined] Went to Lincoln on the noon bus – collected the Ariel & owing to shortage of fuel, returned as far as Woodhall Junction by train.
May 6th.
Flying today – weather O.K. After obtaining petrol, we tried the bike out up thru’ Woodhall.
Tuesday May 8th.
Today was V.E Day – we were not allowed to fly, so spent the morning on the bike out at the flights. Parade in the afternoon. Received a cake from Merle Kilsby today.
We took the bike half way to Boston after tea – was cute to see the flags out in the villiages. [sic] Were celebrations in the Sgts. Mess.
[underlined] Thursday: [/underlined] All “kites” still grounded – only Lancs to fly. Trip to
[page break]
Dortmund Ems, Germany with “Winco” to collect POW’s yesterday.
John & I tuned up the bike & went to Lanrick, near Boston to get some tools.
Saturday: “Barney” found – “Johnnie” Day reported drowned in ditching. Allan Beavis posted to Pershore.
Tuesday 15th
Airborne this morning for bombing practice at Wainfleet. – after lunch I began my “VE 48” leave. Arrived at Birmingham about 7 P.M. – booked into the Provost Hostel. On Wed. I went to Birkenhead via Manchester – stayed with Aunt Lily ‘till about 7 P.M.
Thursday 17th.
Met one of our WAG’s last night, so after I had been out to Ariel works, we spent the day together – bought books on Walt Disney etc.
[page break]
Returned via Lincoln – John had been to London & was waiting for me at Coningsby with “Euphemia.”
Sunday 20th.
Yesterday we learned of the reforming of 627 Sqn. – so expect to get word of our return home very shortly.
“Johnnie” Caragatta & the other 3 Canadians are leaving tomorrow on the first stage of their trip home – quite a few new crews are already coming in.
May 21st.
Left after lunch on “Euphemia” for Leamington arrived in time for tea with the Francis family – all as good as ever!
Next day we pottered about the town & then stripped the bike in the afternoon.
[page break]
Wednesday 23rd.
Arrived in London soon after lunch & after booking in at the A.C.F club, wizzed along to Kodak House & stores.
Met a chap on Thursday whom I saw in Birmingham – we saw a play at the Wintergarden – “Three’s a family”.
John & I saw “The Three Caballeros” & another excellent play. Met Lloyd Howard Gordon Curtis & Bob Dennis.
Saw “Fantasia” with Joan.
Saturday 26th. Set out from Leamington for Stratford on Avon – were not able to book for a play ‘till Tuesday.
Made a trip out to Pershore on Sunday, hoping to see Al Beavis, but he was on leave.
Monday: - took us to Bath. – a most ancient place, found the
[page break]
Roman baths mighty fascinating.
We returned to Leamington via an indirect route – quite an excellent day & trip.
After tea John & I went to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre to see “She Stoops to Conquer”.
Wednesday 30th.
Returned to camp this afternoon – a good trip We covered about 500 miles in all. Had quite an amount of mail, & my new uniform awaiting me!
Received a cable from Norm Page asking if I could see him in London re Bob’s fate. – wrote to him tonight. Letter also from Glenn, at Bottesford.
Learnt from the Newsletter that All Beavis had the DFM. – the first for 42 course!
[page break]
Friday 1st June
Cross country over the Continent again today – Frank Armstrong landed at Brussels.
Strong reports that at last we should fairly definitely go home.
Received parcel No 22A from Mum – yoyos from Gwen & cake from Cath Page.
Saturday: -
Parcel from Glad & John came today.
Wednesday 6th.
Anniversary of D Day.
Been on lectures etc. this week but W/Cmd K.-Smith gave us the news that we were posted to 54 base for repatriation. Will remain here until required at Brighton.
Friday June 8th.
Went to Huntingdon for P.F.F Board – have been given permanent P.F.F. wings.
[page break]
Saturday: - Our day off – ‘phoned Mr Francis after breakfast, as Alan Boase wondered if I could obtain leave. John & I then set off on “Euphemia” for Bottesford to see Glenn Cliff. I had quite a good chat to him & found that he is soon to go on indefinite [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] leave.
Sunday 10th.
Orderly Officer today – received the painting of the “mossies”. Asked “Smithy” about our leave – guess we should get some soon!
Tuesday 12th June
Posting to Gamston came thru’ yesterday, given week’s leave – after clearing, wizzed about the flights & set out on the Ariel at 2.30 for Carlisle.
Several heavy showers on the way. – arrived about 11 P.M.
[page break]
[underlined] Wednesday: [/underlined]
Allan Beavis’ leave extended a week – we decided to strip the bike, to have it rebored. We had an easy week – all went well, altho’ the weather was a bit poor.
Mr Brown, Joyce, Al & I played tennis on Friday evening – was very good!
[underlined] Sunday: [/underlined] after making & trying to fly a kite for Kieth, [sic] we all went off to Pt Carlisle for a picnic – ‘twas very good & we had quite a time with the kite etc. John & I rode back. Allan left in the evening for London.
Wednesday 20th. Put the bike together last night – set out from “Glenleigh” at 10 AM. Took it easy going thru’ the Lakes – had quite a good trip.
[page break]
Arrived at camp for supper – many new crews in, & had quite some strife finding a bed!
June 22nd.
Our P.F.F Certificates came along yesterday – squadron party in the evening! Left Woodhall after lunch today – very good trip across to Gamston.
June 26th. After four days at Gamston, preparing to go home, we were given a week’s leave – Met “Andy” before setting off on “Euphemia” for Lincoln where we sold her.
Stayed at the ACF club in London.
June 29th. Spent two days about London – Visited Kodak
Saw “Tomorrow the world”, an excellent show! Also “Princess & the Pirate” at the
[page break]
Liecester [sic] Sq,. Theatre.
Today we tripped off to Newquay – quite a good trip thru’ Plymouth, Devon & Cornwall. & found the ACF club O.K in time for dinner! We were taken down by a taxi chap – rather amazing that he could get away with charging 2/6 for a 300 yd. run!
Monday 2nd July.
Weather has not been so very good the past couple days – had a swim yesterday, but the old Atlantic was a bit fresh. The beach & surf were very good.
We then took a bus to Truro & Penzance – very ancient places, altho’ we did not see much of them. The bus could just squeeze down the narrow streets.
Returned to the A.C.F.
[page break]
club today – hoped to see “The Pirates of Penzance” at the Kings, Hammersmith, tonight but could not get in!
The D’Oyle Carte players are there, so we hope to have better luck next time.
Wednesday: -
On our return last night I found I had 7 parcels awaiting me. 24 25 26 27 from Mum – one from Gwen, Joy & Cath Page!
We will now be having leave ‘till 20th so I’ll be calling on the Brown’s again!
Expect to go on a draft at the end of the month.
Met Wal Brue & Lloyd Howard today – Glenn should be in here soon!
Friday 6th.
We were given another lot of leave till July 20th – so John
[page break]
& I left for London – stayed at the YMCA Officer’s club, Cromwell Rd.
Saw “Blythe Spirit” on following evening –
Monday 9th. Visited Denham & came back to see “Olenthe”. at the Kings.
July 11th. I left London for Leamington, spent a night & then on to Brown’s via Birmingham.
John joined us at “Glenleigh” in a couple days. – we had a few good days including a trip to Edinburgh, before he left again for Birmingham
I remained with Brown’s – Vic Berry stayed a few days then Neil Bilney, Bill & Fred came along.
I made up the side fence & a dish drier in my spare time – met Evelyn Currie
[page break]
& we all had some grand times. I soon became to know Ev. quite as one of the Brown family – she has such a grand character!
Left Glenleigh on July 29th for Gamston, as we were to have extended leave ‘till the end of September.
Monday July 30th.
Arranged all as was necessary for my two months’ proposed work – John turned up after dinner, to my surprise. He brought along the camera & as he insisted I should accept it, I decided it was the only course for me to take & maybe some day in the near future I could reciprocate with something worthwhile!
Tuesday: - After having my
[page break]
teeth attended, I left Gamston for London.
We were due to spend another two months on leave before setting sail, so I soon contacted Kodak & thru’ Mr Samson, became part of Navana Studios, where I spent most of my time after Mr Shepherd’s return from holidays.
Visited Buntingford for a weekend & stayed with Mr & Mrs Maughan – then VJ Day!
London was in a grand state – Mrs Maughan & Ann spent the last week of the celebrations in London.
‘Twas then I saw the tennis at Wimbledon & the last test on Lords!
Our leave was cancelled after Aug 31st & we were to return to Gamston. I obtained another nine days’ leave & wizzed up to Carlisle.
[page break]
Believed this to be my last leave with Brown’s – had a grand week, easy to remember!
Sept. 10th. Left Carlisle late last night – found myself on a draft, on arriving at Gamston, & we are due to go to Brighton on Sunday.
Should sail about 22nd. Neil Malkin, Bill Braithwaite & Ken Barry should be on our draft too!
Sept 16th. Left for Brighton at 8.30 A.M. – met John in evening at the Metropole Hotel.
Tuesday 18th. Spent today in London – called on Mr. Shepherd, bought some material for Mum’s costume & visited Neil Bilney.
Thursday: ‘Phoned Mr Brown –
[page break]
final clearances for our departure!
Saturday 22nd.
Our gear was soon all put on its way & after a show in the evening we waited in “the” “Tuckerbox” ‘till our train left at 4.30 A.M.
‘Twas 9 AM. before we reached Southampton, but we were soon on board the “Andes” & I was lucky to be able to “clamp onto” quite a good bunk.
Our first meals were a complete “shambles” – but it seemed the food situation was good & with a canteen, all should be O.K. Met F/O Olliver, Buckley & (N.Z.) – so we have most of old 627 on board.
Monday 24th.
Last Night 10 P.M. we passed the first lights of
[page break]
Northern Spain – ‘twas grand to have all lights on at night now.
Today we passed Lisbon, at about 5 miles from the coast – slowed up by fog, but passed “Gib.” about 1 A.M.
Thursday 27th.
Today brought us to Malta which we passed at about 11 P.M.
Watches on 2 hours so far.
Wrote mail today to post at Port Said.
Saturday 29th.
Entered Pt Said 2200 today. – found the natives at the boat early next morning selling cheap goods. Began trip up the Suez in afternoon.
Oct 1st. Left Suez early this morning, & headed out into the Red Sea!
[page break]
Thursday 4th.
Past three days have been hardly bearable below decks – we are now sleeping on deck. Temperature is well up. – we passed Aden last night & now have altered course in the Arabian Sea & have begun on the “home straight”
Sea is unusually calm, giving a strange glassy appearance right to the horizon!
Saturday:
Crossed the equator at 1430 today – sky overcast making the atmosphere rather heavy with the high humidity. Sleeping on deck.
Thursday 11th. Life has been just as usual this past week – time passing quite quickly but little of interest happening. Changed back to “blues”, today, as the weather is decidedly cooler.
[page break]
Was grand to hear a rebroadcast from the A.B.C today – seems ages since we heard the once so familiar voices & programmes!
Sunday Oct. 14th.
Early this morning we came opposite the W.A. coast & saw the last of it at about 10 A.M. – 3 days left for our trip.
Oct 17th. It was 1 A.M when at last the first lights of the Melbourne heads came into sight. – yesterday we were again fascinated by the albatross etc flying after the boat, & now it was but a few hours when we’d be tied up at the wharf which I left 19 months ago.
Was out for breakfast early & on deck at 7.30 for a parade – we we [sic] then passing St Kilda. After
[page break]
being tied up at the wharf for about half an hour, I was amazed to see Ralph standing below me. – we had quite a chat & all seemed in a whirl as I didn’t expect to see him there. Was soon to find, as I left the boat, that Dad, Glad, John, & Peter, Lilian & Aunts were awaiting me at the gates – was grand to see them all again & even then hard to realise we were at last back home, but the whole was a scene I shall never forget – with the banner “Eric Arthur you beaut, here we are” well to the fore.
Was soon clear of the RAAF & we had a grand reunion in the flat, “Stratton Heights.”
Spent the afternoon with Margaret & Ralph – [deleted] caller [/deleted] called on Mr Sims & had a great day amongst the fruit!
[page break]
Had quite a crowd at the flat in the evening – a grand reunion!
Thursday : -
Glad, Dad, Peter & I left in the Standard at about 9 A.M for home, & were soon making good progress along the Princes Highway.
Called on Mrs Woods at Colac & then after mending a puncture & wasting time cooling the engine we arrived at “Colwyn” at 6.30, after quite a good trip.
Found Mum looking fine – gee! ‘twas great to be back amidst all I’ve known so well, & to find everyone much as I had left them.
Friday Nov. 2nd.
Left by Bonds at 7 A.M to go to Tailem Bend – arrived at about 3 P.M. in the midst of a dust
[page break]
storm. – Spent a very pleasant weekend with Mr & Mrs Bolton, & Mary.
Met Cath Page. – Mary & I went to Murray Bridge for her 21st on Sunday. Travelled on to Adelaide on Monday – stayed at the Officers’ Club. Unable to go far there owing to tram strike.
Returned home on Friday with Whem & Col McDonald.
Thursday Nov. 15th.
Flew to Melbourne with “Whem” – Dad followed next day for Lilian’s wedding on the Saturday.
Monday Evening: -
Flew to Hobart arriving at about 11 P.M. – week with Glad, John & Peter. John & I spent Saturday & Sunday touring to Launceston & Deloraine.
Met Ted Pedley for a short time.
Monday Nov. 26th. Flew back
[page break]
to Melbourne – was at the Exhibition Buildings, 1 P.D at 10 A.M to begin on my discharge.
Discharge completed Dec 3rd.
December 20th. Ralph returned home for Xmas after receiving his discharge!
Xmas Day was very hot. – Joy, Murray & David joined us at “Colwyn”.
New years’ Day, ’46.
Spent the day at the Bay – first trip the old “Stude” had made for many a day” Ralph left to visit Margaret on Jan 5th.
Monday Jan 7th.
Mr & Mrs Bolton arrived at 3 P.M. – stayed ‘till Friday 18th.
Trips to Pt. Mac, Portland & Caves at the River.
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
Eric Arthur's diary
Description
An account of the resource
Diary starts in early 1944 and describes in some detail his journey to England and his travels around Britain when on leave. Eric was called up into the Australian Army in November 1941 and transferred to the RAAF in June 1943. Went to No 2 AOS at Mt Gambier for Air Observers course and then to No 3 AOS at Pt Pirie. It begins in detail when he leaves Melbourne aboard the Mariposa as an aircrew sergeant. The ship passed through the Panama Canal and docked in Boston. Eric had some time on leave in New York before crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary He eventually arrived at the No 3 (O) AFU at RAF Halfpenny Green in August 1944. Eric was crewed with a second tour RAAF pilot at the Mosquito OTU at R.A.F. Warboys and RAF Wyton. They were posted to 627 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa in October and did their first operation on 26 November to Munich. They remained there until the war in Europe ended in May 1945.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Eric Arthur
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Printed book with handwritten annotations
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Diary
Text
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
YArthurEG431155v1
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 Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1944-08
1944-10
1944-11-26
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Germany
Great Britain
United States
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
627 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
bombing
entertainment
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
observer
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Warboys
RAF Woodhall Spa
RAF Wyton
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1566/27713/AArthurEG09XXXX.2.mp3
6182e9ac9561d44f5026b25bf8dda79a
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
Arthur, Eric Garnet
E G Arthur
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-01
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
Arthur, EG
Description
An account of the resource
33 items. The collection concerns Eric Arthur (1923 - 2019, 431155 Royal Australian Air Force) and contains his diary, an audio recording, a newspaper cutting, and 30 photographs. He flew operations as a navigator on 627 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Eric Arthur and Alan Arthur. It was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
EA: And we were in the middle of Britain. In the middle and we were in a holding pattern really.
I: How did you end up in the RAF then rather than the RAAF? Was it —
EA: Yeah. Well, you were in the RAAF. The Australian Air Force were posted to Britain but they joined, we joined British squadrons. We joined the Royal Air Force as extra personnel really. That’s what it was. We were just attached to the Royal Air Force.
I: They did have plenty of RAAF squadrons there.
EA: They were plenty of those depending on —
I: Just fully RAAF.
EA: Yeah. There were. There were some that were just RAAF but depending on where you got posted to. Some of the Mosquito squadrons were RAAF too but not many. But then some were night fighters. Some were photo reconnaissance aircraft but most of those were RAF squadrons. So we were in this holding pattern. We went in and had an assessment and then we were posted to an Operational Training Unit.
I: This is where you met John Herriman.
EA: Yes. Well, that’s where I met John Herriman at a place called Warboys. That’s a good name isn’t it? And Wyton. Wyton was another aerodrome there and that was a peacetime permanent RAF aerodrome which had brick buildings and all. A very formal sort of place, you know. Parade grounds and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, we were posted there and that’s where I met John Herriman and we were in a room there with about eighty or so pilots and navigators and we had some New Zealanders, some RAF blokes and some Canadians there and us and only three Australians in the room and so on. John Herriman, who was a pilot he came over to over to Bob [Bolster] and I. Bob was there, a friend that I had. Bob and I were there and he came over to us and he said, ‘Well, if we’re going to be in this Mosquito two of us have got to crew up to make a crew.’ So we decided we’d toss a coin to see who stayed with John and I won the toss and I said, ‘Well, yeah, I’ll go with you John.’ And Bob went away to the other side of the room and met an RAF pilot and they were discussing, they crewed up and they were sent to a squadron on the east coast of England which was trecking across to Europe mainly at night and they were on Berlin raids. But Bob only lasted a month and he unfortunately got shot down over Berlin and he was buried at Potsdam just nearby. Actually about three months later the information came through from Germany that they, they found him and they indicated where he was buried and so on and they were able to put that information back to his parents. So then we, John and I teamed up and we were posted to Woodhall from there and we, when we arrived at Woodhall Spa it was, it was a very cold wintery sort of day and we arrived at this place after getting in a train and heading up north and it was so miserable, unreal you know and we felt so [pause] it was run down we thought my God what have we come to here? And this was an operational squadron and there was no messing around. No fancy buildings or anything. You were in Nissen huts covered with snow and so on. And we —
I: Sealed, sealed runways.
EA: Oh yes. Sealed runway that’s right. Yes. It was originally a farm and the government just took over these farms and ploughed it all up and made an, made an aerodrome there with a, it was a very good aerodrome. It had a perimeter track right around the outside and two long runways and one of them was a mile and a half long. And, you know they were quite, how they built all these was amazing because in the area we were in, Lincolnshire and in this area they were all so close together the aerodromes that you know if you took off and you lost a motor, one cut out or something just land on the one in front of you in most cases. Although we were fairly near the coast so we had to turn back in again. But they were. They were as close as that together and it was quite interesting to see that you could create an aerodrome in the middle of farmhouses and they had actually farmhouses right on the edge of the aerodrome and we were living in Nissen huts. We were in the back yards of farms and you know it was a great old place and real real rough and ready sort of thing. So actually of course John was commissioned and I wasn’t so I was in a, I was in the Sergeant’s Mess and he was in the Officer’s Mess [laughs] My commission came through about a month later so then we went into the Officer's Mess after that. But it was very rustic and we had an old wood or coal fire in the middle of the hut and so on trying to keep warm and all this sort of thing it was. And the food probably was quite alright. I don’t remember much about the food but we seemed to think it was alright and so on. So then we got going and training. The squadron history is very interesting in as much that the, there’s a piece here that I just had to read about Pathfinder Force and this probably is, sums up what Pathfinder Force were the elite squadrons of the RAF Bomber Command during World War Two. They located and marked targets with flares which the main force bomber force could aim at increasing the accuracy of their bombing. While the majority of Pathfinder squadrons and personnel were from the Royal Air Force the group also included many from the Air Forces of Commonwealth countries. So our squadron, 627 was formed in late 1943 and it was formed because they were not getting accurate marking. They tried marking first of all the Lancasters from a fairly high margin but they found they couldn’t get low enough to the ground so they decided they’d have to use Mosquitoes so that we could get down right close to the ground and put markers on the ground exactly where we wanted them. So the squadron was only new and that’s why we only had about fifteen crews. Only about thirty blokes on a squadron and fifteen crews and so you’d have five on each raid. So about every third night you were likely to be put on a raid and so on depending on the weather and everything else. But it was such a small squadron that you know you sort of got to know everybody and it was quite unique because they took lots of photographs and that sort of thing.
I: Were you aware of Pathfinders then while you were —
EA: No.
I: Training.
EA: No.
I: Before you actually got posted there.
EA: Never heard of them at all.
I: Never heard of them.
EA: We hadn’t any idea what Pathfinder Force was and not many people did actually and it was there were some squadrons which were Pathfinder squadrons that went over and dropped all the flares for us so we could see the ground. But they just, they just remained at about fifteen thousand feet and cruised. Their job was to arrive at a given point and given time and drop these flares so we could mark the target. But before we could do that we had to have a whole lot of practice bombing and so on so we were schooled through this thing and we had a bombing range out on the coast of the Wash just in from near Lincoln and that was about only about two or three kilometres in from the coast. The idea was to have a point on the, in the mud there where they have a target marked out and they had two siting towers and so these guys up in these towers when you dropped a marker from the aircraft it was a small bomb and we’d fly over and start descending at about fifteen hundred feet. We dived down to five hundred feet and pulled out just as we were dropping this marker and it would hit the water or the mud and explode and a puff of smoke would come up and so these two guys in the towers could then line up two, two directions and get a pinpoint on exactly where it landed. And you’d get a score from that according to how accurate you were with the hangar. All these results went back to the squadron. They were posted up on a board and found out who was missing the target and all that sort of thing.
I: Yeah. So, John was the one actually sort of doing the —
EA: Yeah. John was —
I: Pressing the button.
EA: John was the —
I: So he was —
EA: He was siting the target through —
I: Siting and pressing the button. So what were you doing while all this was going, going on? You were —
EA: Well, delving into information about and lining up the right bombs to select. We had different colours and so on.
I: Ok.
EA: These had to be selected so —
I: You’d individually select which ones you’d drop.
EA: Yeah.
I: And then go around again and select another lot.
EA: Picking each one. We dived in. Then you had to watch out for other aircraft coming around and you had to dissect all the information that was coming in on on radio and so on and also of course try to keep a record of what was happening and write down where the target was going to be. So —
I: So —
EA: Anyway —
I: John, he deliberately tried to get on to Mosquitoes because he’d been flying, don’t know how long he’d been flying fighters beforehand?
EA: Yeah. Well, he’d been —
I: For a while.
EA: In the Middle East for about a year or so and they posted them back to have a little rest or something. I think he had about six months off and then he went into another pool and they’d had you know you’re going to after you’d been on leave they take you in another pool and they say righto we’re going to have some for this, that and the other thing and they’d go from the record. And he was chosen to go on to these Mosquitoes because of his calibre. But he was thirty, nearly thirty one years old and that meant that he was near the end of his Air Force time because once you get about thirty two they say you’re too old for the Air Force and you’d be discharged. So he was on the end of the line as far as the Air Force was concerned but because with experience and that’s one reason why I happened to get on the squadron because I went along with him. But I had records too because Bob and I both got to this Operational Training Unit because of our score in maths and whatnot that we’d been doing.
[recording paused]
EA: We got on to, on to that and then we had a whole lot of night flying practice. And one of those air exercises I was talking about was we used to fly from there, do cross countries, we’d be out for about three hours and this aircraft by the way was one of the best aircraft there. We, we crews had about six hundred and eighty kilometres an hour at normal cruise speed and you’re moving over the country fairly fast you see. And when you initially come in as a navigator unless you really get cracking you can get lost in no time. And so we used to go around Scotland. We’d fly from the east coast up to Scotland down to Land’s End and back again and this is you know you’d cover that distance in no time. And one night we were out there fairly early on and we were coming down from Scotland down to the south of England and I was checking the going position with what we called Gee which was a very accurate means of navigating in Britain. It was made by two transmitters in Britain were sending out signals and they had a means to electronically of measuring the time interval, the distance the signal took to travel from both stations and where they intersected was the position where you were. So we had this as a natural way of navigating and was pretty accurate.
I: So that was on a little screen or something was it? The set in front of you.
EA: So we could transfer this on to our chart and tell exactly where we were and I was coming down then. I said to John, ‘I can’t make out where we are because our ground speed’s too high.’ And we were getting up. We were flying in knots in those days. About three hundred knots which was our normal speed for flying and not in kilometres an hour and our speed was getting up. We were getting up to about six hundred knots which was a phenomenal speed because we were normally flying about four hundred. And I found from this I found I had a tail wind of about two hundred knots and I couldn’t believe it. I mean, we’d never had winds like this before and, and so John he was, ‘Come on there. Where are we?’ And so I guess we went down and I found another, another fix and we were over the end of Land’s End and by the time we turned we were over the middle of Spain [laughs] So we turned around and headed home from that. But we had plenty of altitude so it didn’t matter what was going on down below. We were out. We were above all that so we got away from it.
I: You must have dropped a bit of altitude then to get out of that Jetstream.
EA: With the speed, you know with the high winds and speed of the thing initially when you were a rookie it really set you back a bit but we soon picked up on it. We just got used to the whole thing you know and that was our night time but we did a lot of night flying practice and then we, we went on. Our first raid we went on was a practice one. They said, ‘Well, you go out and see if you can follow the markers and do something. Otherwise just observe what it’s all about.’ So we went out to Munich. One of the Munich raids and we found our way across all right and of course Switzerland is on the, because it was all neutral and the lights were all on and actually Switzerland at night flying from fifteen thousand feet you could see it just like a chart drawn on the ground with these lights. So we knew where we were when we were heading for a corner of Switzerland. You know where it came in and you knew where you were then but we, we found that interesting because there was an easier way of picking up Munich which wasn’t all that far away from the Swiss border. But that was one of the first trips we did and we didn’t do any marking that night. We just observed what was going on but we were in the circuit and did a lot of flying around. Saw what they were doing so that was a good way to learn the tricks with that.
I: So could you see other aircraft?
EA: Yeah, oh yeah.
I: Yeah.
EA: We could see other aircraft.
I: Yeah.
EA: Against the light on the ground. Yeah.
I: Right.
EA: But they were shadows just tearing around but the Lancasters were all above us. We couldn’t see those unless they had searchlights on them you know so — [pause] But in one of the aerodromes near Woodhall it was interesting that they had a large hangar, it was a pretty big building and they had a stage set up whereby they, they had a demonstration raid. And they, you stood up on a railing high up on the wall and looking down a map was drawn on the ground and they depicted an actual raid with the lights and all the explosions and everything else were going on and you assumed you were in an aircraft going around and watching this on the ground. And it was rather interesting that you could learn, you know the tricks of this marking and so on and actually the atmosphere of a raid from this. And I thought geez that would be a good idea if we get back to Australia after the war. You’d have something of all the various shows and you could put this on. Have a bit of a circus. People would find it very interesting you know. But that was one way we learned to do the marking on the targets there. The main targets often were railways because at this stage the invasion had started. It was moving across towards the German border and they were bringing up from Germany supplies to the front on these railways. The problem of course is that you know a railway stuck in the middle of never never like that trying to bomb it as the Yanks were doing during daylight had very little chance of hitting a railway junction as such. And so we were able to get out there, the flares would come down when we arrived at a, at a certain time at this location. The flares would come down over the top of the other PFF squadrons from higher altitudes. We could see the ground, we could pinpoint this railway junction and there were five of us on marking and we’d spill around there and before this came we would call in there. We would calculate the bombing wind and at the height of fifteen thousand where the bombers were coming in the five of us would be there calculating drift and we’d do three quarters and catch a drift each time and we could calculate the exact wind at that altitude. And once we’d had that the [unclear] leader as we called him would then broadcast that wind to all the main force coming in and they’d be back a hundred miles or so and they’d hear this, set this wind on their bombsites so that when they flew over the marker that we put down the aircraft was flying straight and level and wouldn’t be drifting off target. And so they had that the proper wind on the target and this had been the problem with trying to bomb anything like that from a height. If you, same as when you were taking in aerial photographs of the ground if you’re flying over a target the wind will push you over and you miss the target and so you have to have the drift offset on the aircraft before you start moving in to it and we did that and then we’d start the marking and once we saw the marker on the ground we’d be down to fifteen hundred feet or so, see this and the first aircraft of ours would call out, ‘Tally ho.’ That was the answer. And as soon as someone called, ‘Tally ho,’ they knew that they were going to dive for the target and the first one to see the target would, would dive in a drop a red marker on them. If that was accurate we’d say, ‘Just back up. Back up the markers,’ and back up the raid and you see and from the other aircraft and we’d all come in and drop some more and make it bigger. This was, the markers were exploded from about a hundred feet and they sent down red phosphorous stuff that burned on the ground and you’d get a circle of perhaps a hundred yards or so that would be burning phosphorous on the ground which would be a very bright red from a great distance. And then if they were not in the correct position they’d call out for a green to cancel out. You drop a green on top of the red and then start another marking position. And the Lancasters coming in from a long way back would just see that red spot on the ground. After about ten minutes all the flares that had been dropped would be coming down just near the ground and they were big cannisters, had phosphorous in them with parachutes on them. And they would be dropping down and so by the time the main force were getting anywhere near the target these were all on the ground and the whole place had gone dark . And so they could see this red spot on the ground. That was all they saw. They didn’t see, they couldn’t see any buildings or anything from there.
I: Right.
EA: Couldn’t see the railways or anything. Just this green spot.
I: A green spot.
EA: And that was where we were still flying around the outside of this having a look to see where the bombing was going and if, if an area had been wiped out we, we were one of the, usually the bombing leader would ask for an overshoot of a hundred yards or something like that and the next lot coming in would overshoot the target by a hundred yards and wipe out the next area up. But that was one way of doing a railway area. We did a lot with these fuel dumps up in Latvia and so on up on the north coast there.
I: That’s a fair, that’s a fair flight, isn’t it?
EA: Yeah. That would be —
I: So —
EA: That was over those areas we had to go over the North Sea across to those. But they, they, that was for the submarines and a lot of those came up and the fuel dumps up there were targets waiting to be taken out you know. But they reckoned they’d never find them. What we did with these flares you know I had aerial photographs of this and I haven’t got them now but you could see the, see all the huge oil containers on the ground clearly and we just put a marker in the middle of them and wiped them out the same way and the same thing went with all of the submarine bases. They had very heavy concrete bases and so on but they were, they were quite easy to find at night over there. They didn’t believe, I don’t think the Germans ever believed that we’d be able to find all this sort of stuff, you know. And so the only way would be, was just to get down low and do what they were doing.
[recording paused]
EA: The guy who thought of the Pathfinder force was DCT Bennett. He was an Australian bloke. He came from Brisbane but he was part of the RAF and he came up with this idea of the Pathfinder force. And so that’s how we did the fuel dumps.
I: So you’ve, you flew out there at height. On the way to the target you flew at sort of fairly, fairly high.
EA: Yeah.
I: And then dropped down. And on the way back again would you climb back up again or would you fly low going home?
EA: It depends on where we were but we would usually try to climb up if we could. Yeah. It depends on the weather too a lot and it depends where the wind is. We would always try and get a tail wind and if we found there was a wind lower down on the way there well we would keep a note of this and use it on the way back to save fuel. But usually we would climb back higher again. But sometimes we were right down on the deck over the water and so on. But it just depends if someone shadows you whether you would stay down low and try to kick them off your tail you know. And the Germans were very persistent. The fighters they sent would go after everything that was flying and of course a lot of our Lancasters were lost that way too.
I: And do you have many, get chased many times yourselves?
EA: Oh yes. We did. But we had a booster in the Mosquito there and we could get away from, from them quite a lot like that without any trouble. So that was one advantage with it.
I: You were too low for sort of searchlights to sort of find you when you were sort of doing it. They were, I mean they were trying to cone the —
EA: Yes. They were then.
I: They hadn’t twigged.
EA: In the target area.
I: They hadn’t twigged that it was a good idea to try to sort of get the Pathfinders.
EA: Yeah.
I: Or something you know.
EA: The, yeah well this —
I: So if they knocked you guys out they would have knocked out the raid wouldn’t they?
EA: They would have but well we were going too fast for the ground. The ground defences were very difficult to hit us.
I: Right.
EA: A low flying fast aircraft. They were mainly able to hit the Lancasters because they were much higher up and they could aim at them you know. But it’s just a matter of where you were was the main thing you know. But near the, the dive bombing particularly too they brought this in to particularly when the invasion started they wanted to avoid bombing the cities if they could. And so railways and that near cities they aimed to mark them so that we would bomb that area and not the city itself. Especially around Paris and those places. They wanted to save that. But as it went on further it was much the same although the industrial areas where they were bombing those anyway because just the same as London was bombed. Areas were used in that way but they were trying to avoid the [pause] you know the residents in these cities and so on if they could but of course it was quite difficult to do that. The Norwegians were a different group of people but we went to Norway a couple of times but the Gestapo took over Norway and they went through all of Scandinavia and took over all those countries and really the Norwegians were given a terrible time up there by the Germans and especially the Gestapo. They had a big Gestapo Headquarters in Oslo and anyway someone came up with the idea that they ought to be wiped out or something like that. So they reckoned we could go up and do this and this is New Year’s Day in 1945 and we went up to Peterhead right up the north of Scotland and we stayed there overnight and refuelled the aircraft the next day and then we flew across the North Sea and there were ten of us. We were number seven on the group and the CO he was in the front of this and he took five in the front and we took and we were all following one another and we had a beautiful clear day. It was rather fascinating. We were flying at about I suppose ten thousand feet or something and we were just coasting along and heading straight towards Norway and when we got up there Norway came up with all the mountains and so on covered in snow. It was just a fantastic sight you know. The aircraft coming along and all coasting along up and down gradually as we went into there. We came in, around and the idea was to come to land in to there about 11 o’clock so that the angle we were tackling into the city we’d be coming out of the sun and so any anti-aircraft guns would have found it hard to see because you’re coming right out of the sun. And so we did that. We lined up and then we went and the first five went and we followed them in and it was rather interesting that straightaway there seemed to be flak galore and the sky was black with things bursting all around the place and around the first that went in. But they were lucky because they say I knew that if he could get in first he was surprised when they wouldn’t be shooting at him they’d be shooting at the last ones. And so by the time we got there they already had some target practice on us because we were only about a thousand feet but were diving down to the ground but we were all going pretty fast of course. And they had, there were all these [pause] we found out afterwards the idea of the raid was that the Underground suggested, and there was a hotel there where they were all housed in. The Underground did all the planning of it, the Norwegian Underground and there was a sign we could go in there and so on. So they told everybody in there they all had to go to church on New Year’s Day in 1945. Pray for peace and this sort of thing and the idea was to get all the people off the street and so they did. They went in there and they always did as they were told the Norwegians because there was a reason for it. And so we headed for this hotel. Well, that was alright. The CO could see the hotel up in front and he was getting lined up for this and then we had, they said we found out afterwards that the German Navy was all in the harbour at Oslo celebrating New Year and we didn’t know they were there and neither did the Underground [laughs] And of course, by the time we got there all these battleships and so on all had their ack ack guns on us and the sky was black with these blooming explosions and so on. We wondered what the hell was going on. We said, ‘This isn’t right. They shouldn’t be doing this.’ [laughs] Anyway, the first few aircraft that went in they put a few bombs into this hotel and there was so much smoke and stuff by the time we got there we couldn’t see the place. So at the side of, someone screamed down for us to stop bombing and clear out. So we decided we’d do this full on, full bore right down over the rooftops getting out through the top of Oslo. And in front of Oslo, in front of us there was a big lake, frozen lake and all a lot of people on there were skiing or skating rather, were skating on this and there were people all over the place. And of course, we could see there were a lot of German blokes there and so on as well and we were right down over the rooftops like this. Right over, right down there and John said to me, ‘You watch them go.’ And as we got over the ice he put the nose down. We were just getting over the top of the ice and these blokes all looked and they all dived for the ice and laid down and they all had machine guns and they had these guns that were pointing up at us firing these blooming machine guns at us, you know and we were down right on top of them. And we were just starting to climb out from the other side of it and I felt down. I said, ‘Hey, we’re all getting wet John.’ And we had water all over the place inside the aircraft and I said, ‘It’s the glycol out of one of the radiators. They’ve hit one radiator.’ And then the temperature gauge started going so you had to feather the left, the port motor. We were, we hadn’t got any radiator on there so we cut one motor out. We had to climb out on one engine. And the interesting thing there was that a young guy in Oslo wrote to me years afterwards. He found out through the RAF that I, we were in the raid and they got my address and so on and he wrote and he said he was writing a history on aviation in Norway. He believed we were on this raid and he wondered if I could give him some information. Anyway, I finished writing to him a few times and he told me that he met a guy who was there skating that day and he saw us go down and he saw our port motor stop as we were climbing out. And this happened afterwards and this young fella wrote this in this book on Norway in Norwegian and he sent me a book on this. It’s all in Norwegian and I couldn’t, well I didn’t have anyone here reading Norwegian so I gave it to the State Library.
I: So on that raid you were carrying regular —
EA: Oh yeah.
I: TNT or whatever regular explosives.
EA: On our bombers yeah.
I: The bombs weren’t sort of —
We had five thousand pound bombs. Yeah, it was —
I: It was just the Mosquito on that raid, wasn’t it?
EA: I think we had probably on that raid they all probably all carried a few five hundred pounders and one on each wing and a few underneath to carry the blockbusters on it for that one, you know. But then we —
I: So what did you do? Did you take them all home again or did you drop them all in the sea on the way.
EA: Yeah. We did on the way. We dropped the lot as we went.
I: Dropped them in the sea. Yeah.
EA: Yeah. In fact, we dropped them off in the mountains as we were going out.
I: So landslides.
EA: Caused an avalanche on the sides of the mountains when she went off. Anyway, of course we, we got left behind you see and the others all nine of them all cleared off.
I: Right.
EA: They didn’t know anything about it. They didn’t, they didn’t know we’d been hit. We didn’t scream out anything. They just —
I: Well, you still had to maintain radio silence.
EA: I found and of course they were home first. We took a while to get back. We had to pump fuel from one tank to the other and all that sort of thing but we headed across there. We were very pleased we had a British aircraft. None of the American aircraft would have done it anyway. They would have been in the water before they got home.
I: So you had to get back to Peterhead.
EA: Yeah.
I: Back to Peterhead.
EA: Yeah. And we sent out a distress call on the way back and we had a Sunderland homed in on us and by the time we got down to the coast they were flying beside us and so I took it back in there but we had to leave the aircraft at Peterhead and we went home with another, another Lancaster and we had to go back the following week to pick it up after it had got a radiator fixed up on it. So that was the end of Norway. But the other ones to Norway were mainly up there up the west coast and that was all pretty rugged stuff up there.
[recording paused]
EA: We had leave between our operations. We’d be there for about ten days I suppose or two weeks and we’d have, we had a few raids to go on in that time and then we’d go on leave for a few days. We used to go to London and that was rather scary because they were still using the buzz bombs on London in those times. That was 1945, about February ’45 and the invasion was well on but the Germans were still had those buzz bombs coming over London. They were fairly, and you know we were in the streets. It was complete blackout.
I: You could hear them coming, could you?
EA: Yeah. You could hear them coming.
I: Yeah.
EA: Yeah.
I: The motor would stop and you would go uh oh.
EA: The motor would stop and you would wonder where it was coming down you see and you’d come out and you know you’d go into, go over the railway station. It was pitch black. Actually pitch black. It was so black it’s unreal. I mean no lights anywhere and you had to feel your way along the gutter and on like a drunkard you know and you couldn’t use torches or anything. You weren’t allowed to use torches or anything. Anyway, it was, it was very scary and we said, ‘Well this is no good to us. We’d rather be back at the ‘drome.’ It was dangerous down in London.
I: So you didn’t always have the same aeroplane though did you?
EA: No. you —
I: You see I was looking at the pictures at M-Mike had done an awful lot of missions.
EA: Yeah.
I: Like seventy odd missions by the look of it.
EA: Yes.
I: By the number of —
EA: Yeah. That one, some aircraft were interesting. Some aircraft seemed to be too heavy to fly and so on and they didn’t function quite as well as others. I’m not quite whether they were some a lot of the Mosquitoes were made in Canada because they had the timber there. The plywood and so on. And so they were, some were much more efficient aircraft. A bit like cars you know. They vary too even in mass production. But so therefore we would use some of those aircraft that didn’t seem to be functioning quite so well for bombing practice and that sort of thing.
I: Ah.
EA: But the ones that were purring like a kitten everyone wanted to fly that on a raid and that’s why some of them were on the squadron for a while and they got used a lot if they were efficient. Because the engines were all fairly new you know. They had hardly any maintenance on them. They used to put a new engine in and send it off again. So I think that the amount of maintenance that was put on to aircraft in those days was nil. They just said wear them out and then put a new engine in it.
I: So would you have to swap aeroplanes? If you went out one night and then someone else went another night did they take your aeroplane?
EA: Oh yeah. Yeah.
I: Or did aeroplanes get reused?
EA: It just actually —
I: You got allocated an aeroplane.
EA: It depended on how much maintenance was on it and all and if they had it ready to go and it would be put on the flight plan and just get allocated an aircraft and you take whichever one was allocated to you.
I: Right.
EA: And I think they avoided anyone using or claiming.
I: Claiming one.
EA: The Air Force and so on I mean, it’s not like that. You’re just part of a crowd then. You do as your told, you know. The people, the personnel there the people we had on the squadron were interesting. The CO was a guy called Currie as a matter of fact C U R R I E his name was and he was a permanent RAF bloke and he had been flying a long time and he tried to get, he was trying to the get the VC. That’s why he took us to Norway and so on [laughs] But he —
I: He got a DFC didn’t he?
EA: Oh, they got DFCs and all that. Most of these guys were decorated, you know. I mean they’d been around for a while and in the finish though he was, he was flying a Mosquito at an airshow and he, he rolled it along the ground. He got too low and was killed and we got a message from his wife and so on and she said, ‘Oh, well he was doing what he wanted to do and that was all there was to it.’ But he was fairly, he was a pretty reasonable sort of a character. A bit standoffish. A bit, you know. A bit of the old school sort of thing blooming Australian.
I: British.
EA: Well, yeah British, and Australians are a bit of ragged lot.
I: Colonial types.
EA: Oh, John Herriman used to wander around with a flying jacket on and was real, the flying the wings were just about torn off with his parachute harness and so on. He couldn’t care less how he looked [laughs] you know. But oh yes it was quite funny the difference between things like that but it was performance he wanted best and of course it’s a bit like playing sport. You know, they kept a record of everything you did and then after a raid you’d be debriefed. He’s come back and we’d come back and maybe we’d go there and get back at three or 4 o’clock in the morning and have to turn up in the flight tower and do a debriefing on what happened and what you did and what was wrong and what you could do better and all this sort of thing. And we had various characters come up. We had Winston Churchill came up once and got in the squadron. He wanted to find out what all this marking thing was all about. And actually, the squadron drew a lot of attention there because they were small and they could get in and see what was happening you know. And then we heard afterwards it was the invasion was getting on and Germans were getting a bit [unclear] and we had Lancasters coming into the circuit. We would always get back about a an hour before the Lancasters. We’d do our debriefing, get home and get our eggs and bacon and start getting into bed. But by the time they were coming in and we heard all this firing going on, guns firing all around the place and they started to turn the lights out in the place and some of the German Air Force had followed in our Lancasters and they started to shoot at them just as they were lining up to land on the runway. And that was hell to pay. And so we were all in our Nissen huts by this time. We raced outside to see what was going on and saw all this going on and then we had a slit trench next to the thing for safety you see. And we jumped into this and of course it was half full of water. It had never been used. We never used to have any defence and we were in an awful mess and all this coming. It was a very dangerous time.
I: Right. Yeah.
EA: And that was just about the end of the war.
I: So when they were landing they would switch the runway lights on would they? As they were coming in.
EA: Yeah. They had little, little blue lights. You could see from the aircraft as you were coming to land but you wouldn’t see them for a distance. You know, from a height or anything like that.
I: Right.
EA: A very little amount a light.
I: Right.
EA: And we had, we had some accidents with the thing. One, one night we were coming back and it would have been early in the morning and you get pretty tired after you’ve been. Actually flying like that at that altitude and everything else is not funny. There’s no pleasure in it whatsoever. It was just a damned nuisance and you were breathing oxygen all the time until you feel like nothing on earth. And you think God let’s get out of this thing, you know. And you would really feel you couldn’t get out and get home quick enough and forget about it. And so we were just landing. Just taxiing along the runway just to come off and all of a sudden at the end of the runway there’s this dirty big figure in front of me. And I think I said, ‘Look out for that.’ And there was another Lancaster crossing the duty runway. He was going the wrong way around the aerodrome.
I: Right.
EA: And very unfortunate because you know just for us to be at the end of the runway just when he did and we hit this thing just behind the wing and broke it in half and of course there was no strength in them. That sideways motion on aircraft is the other way.
I: Yeah. Yeah.
EA: That’s got the strength and so we our propellers chewed into this Lancaster and we stopped. Stopped dead there and then we, the pilot on that had a court martial. We had to go to his court martial a week or so later and he was scrubbed off.
I: Or grounded.
EA: Grounded. Yeah. He didn’t do any more flying. Though I mean you know they just don’t ask any questions.
I: Right.
EA: Or give any consideration and so on. But that was —
I: It didn’t damage the nose of your aeroplane. It just sort of —
EA: Oh, yeah, oh they, I don’t know. They had to replace all the engines or something.
I: Right.
EA: No, she was a bit of a wreck. So it went on but didn’t have that sort of thing all that much and so on. But when when John was getting used to the aircraft we used to skid all over the, all over the runway when we were taking off because there was so much power in those engines that we had too many revs on one they’d drag you straight across the other side, and we’d tear across the aerodrome at right angles to the runway and jam on the brakes and start turning around to go back again and it took a long time for him to get used to it because he was only used to the one engine in a Spitfire before and this was quite a different proposition. But we kept alive. But we did a lot of experimental flying and I worked out how I could home in on a runway in a blizzard and land on the runway without seeing the ground.
I: How did you do that?
EA: We did that. We navigated with usually Gee. I could navigate him in and put him on. John was the sort of character that would practice something experimentally all day long if you wanted to. And so he’d just sit there flying and I’d tell him where to go. In the long run he used to say, ‘Right, we’ve got it.’ And when he said that he knew he was confident that I could put him in there at night without seeing the runway. We’d put him down on the ground and we tried to get this message through to some of the others but they thought it was too hard to do so they didn’t bother with that.
I: So you used to Gee to sort of line you up on the approach and then what? Had to use an altimeter sort of thing to —
EA: Yeah. Yeah.
I: To —
EA: Calling out the altitude to him and he would judge, yeah. So it was a matter of a team run, you know. You did. But you were doing, there were so many things to do. You see the fuel selection was another thing the navigator would do. Had to watch the fuel. And we had to keep some fuel ready in one tank and start using the other ones and to balance up the aircraft you’d drain some out and balance the other one. So this had to be done on the way across as well as finding your way and so on. So —
I: So you were kept busy the whole time.
EA: Oh yeah. Yeah. Busy. Especially now in the target area saying when he did the aiming and the bombing but you know you had to do this. Not only select the right colour for the markers and so on you had to watch fuel as well then and so on and you had, you know, when you’re in the target area you’d use the tank with the most fuel in because coming out of a dive and so on sometimes you know you could lose revs when you were coming out of a dive.
I: Right because you ran out of fuel.
EA: So you had the fuel in the main tank. Now, if you didn’t, if you happened to be in that situation and you were on a tank just about dry you were in real trouble so you know. It was a two man thing. And you both had your responsibilities and I mean the pilots they were such he didn’t have time to worry about the fuel on one of these jobs. John, he used to go with me on leave. We used to take the bike up. We had a motorbike.
I: Tell us about the motorbike.
EA: We had. Yeah, we had —
I: What sort of motorbike was it?
EA: It was an Enfield 350. Enfield.
I: Single cylinder.
EA: Yeah. Yeah. And we called her Euphemia and we went all over the place.
I: Who the hell was Euphemia? That sounds like an ancient Greek name.
EA: Oh that’s just a name that John came up with. This is typical him. He, I think he read Shakespeare and all that.
I: Right.
EA: He must have picked it up from somewhere but he come up with some fancy name and I said, ‘Oh yeah, that sounds alright. We’ll go up.’ We’d never argue about anything. Just go along with whatever both of us decided to do. And you know we only saw him here once. He came, he came to Charleville and he went back there afterwards and came back on the boat with me. We went to get out of Melbourne and I said to goodbye to him and you know you’re here today and gone tomorrow and you don’t no big crying session or anything like that. Say goodbye to him and never see him again.
I: Yeah.
EA: But we’d been so, you know together so much and yet he came when Ev and I were just building the house. We’d had and I was [bitumenising] the back out near the clothesline the day he came. He came unexpectedly. It’s the sort of thing he did. He’d never bother forewarning you or anything like that. Just turn up on the doorstep.
I: It’s a long way from Charleville.
EA: Yeah. But Ev said we saw him twice after the war. I couldn’t quite remember that. But anyway, then a bit down the road he was killed in a motor accident up there.
I: So this motorbike, you used to fuel it with [ab gas], did you?
EA: Oh no. We, no. We’d take it out. Take it out when we were going flying if daylight flying we would just practice practice bombing and so on. Cross countries. And we’d leave it parked alongside the aircraft and so on and then the ground staff used to drain the petrol out of the tractors and put it into our bike for us [laughs] you see.
I: Right. Ok.
EA: Oh, we used to look after them very well. We used to give them some chocolate and so forth. And of course that chocolate was another thing. Nana used to, my mother used to send over parcels with some fruit cake and chocolate and stuff in it and of course John never did get any of those things. He was unfortunate. However, I used to take some to these guys, the ground staff fellas and give some to them. We also took some in the aircraft with us and one night coming back late I was going to get some chocolate on the way home to pass the time away and I put my hand down in the seat just in between my feet and the chocolate had all melted and I pulled my hand down in the the melted chocolate. By the time we got up near my head the cold air up here and it all went hard on my hands so John and I had to bite it all of my hands to get the chocolate. But that were, the ground staff were very good fellas. I have some photographs of them too.
I: Did they ever do an investigation into why the fuel was disappearing from the tractors?
EA: Oh no. I don’t think anybody was worried about that sort of thing [laughs]
I: What were the tractors doing? Carting?
EA: Yeah, carting.
I: Dragging the aeroplanes around.
EA: Dragging aircraft and so on around. Yeah. They were doing that. Yeah. I don’t think anybody sort of worried much about that. I don’t whether anybody else got fuel for their cars and so on. Perhaps they did.
I: There was a few people with bikes or was that a popular way of getting around?
EA: Yeah. No, some of them had cars. Some of the unit’s blokes had cars. They used to go home on leave and that sort of thing but the bike was, we decided we’d buy a bike and we went and got it and we sold it afterwards and so on. But some of the characters there on the squadron besides the CO, some of them had done a lot of flying but the RAF English blokes all seemed to me, seemed to us to be fairly soft sort of characters you know. And there was one fellow that used to, Bill Topper and he used to drive around in an MG Sports and he had a WAAF that he was friendly with and she used to go around with him in this around the squadron and the perimeter track on this bloody thing and he had a big Alsatian dog. And of course, he’d fly, have a big scarf around his neck and so on. Cruising around on this thing and you know you’d see him there and you’d think oh he’s a bit weak you know but I tell you what he was so game. It was unreal the things he used to do from the aircraft. It was a wonder he, I think he came out of it because he’d been to some of the reunions and so on. It’s a wonder he ever got through the whole thing and he’s still going [laughs] So you meet interesting people all over the world don’t you, you know.
I: So how many, do you know how many missions you and John —
EA: We did forty one.
I: Forty one.
EA: On our squadron we were aimed to do fifty. This was, this was on a time basis. The Air Force would calculate you were due for a certain amount of flying, operational flying because we used to, only had two thirds of the flying time that the Lancs had on the same raid you see.
I: Right. Yeah.
EA: So they they’d had thirty missions. We had forty five. But we didn’t, we weren’t really interested in trying to finish a tour anyway. We were just about to finish one when the whole thing packed in.
So all of yours were with John. You didn’t fly with anyone else at any.
EA: No.
I: At any time.
EA: No, we didn’t. No. We stayed together.
I: Yeah.
EA: No. If they did that they usually bit the dust.
I: Right.
EA: A funny thing.
I: Tell me about the time you got shot in the foot.
EA: Oh yes. Yeah. Well, I always got some flak through the aircraft.
I: Was that a bullet or a bit of flak do you think?
EA: Yeah. A bit of flak. Yeah. But John, John got —
I: So you realised that at the time. You did, you know the moment it happened you suddenly realised.
EA: Not really. No. No.
I: Or it wasn’t until later on when you got back.
EA: A bit later on. Yeah. A bit later on that we found that. John got, he got his shoulder injured at one time. I just forget what that was about now but I know that once you get, that’s, oh that’s the other thing. Talking about, you know how high we’d come back. It depends on whether the aircraft was still pressurized because some of these were pressurised you see. That’s why flying, we were flying at high altitude.
I: Right.
EA: But once you get up to ten thousand feet you see you’re breathing oxygen. At about fifteen thousand you’d pressurise the aircraft. So, but we were breathing oxygen all the time. I mean even down low we had, we had oxygen mask on all the time. This makes it very uncomfortable when you’re flying too. You’re breathing through that all the time. Then you had a built in microphone on them as well so you were just talking to this and it goes. Goes through the speakers then you know.
I: It does. Yes.
EA: Yeah.
I: So after when you did get injured so you decided not to sort of tell the MO because you would have ended up grounded or something eh?
EA: Yes. Well —
I: Yeah.
EA: The other reason is that we didn’t want to be separated so the other thing we did we just applied for leave and we went away and had it fixed up somewhere else.
I: Right.
EA: You see, and any small injury you would do that. But as soon as you signed in on a sick parade you know they start checking up on you. There was a lot of people checking up on you in those days [laughs] And you know, because you know to be separated when you’re in a crew like that and we were very much aware of this and John said, ‘You know, we don’t want to be separated. We know what we’re doing now.’ Don’t, because it makes, unfortunately it seemed to be a jinx you know. If they started flying with someone else they were bound to be missing for some reason. It was just silly but I think they perhaps lacked coordination or something.
I: You’d just get used to each other.
If you were with someone else flying.
I: And working with a team.
EA: Guy Gibson with his background they crashed down there. Just didn’t get the right fuel [unclear] you were finished.
I: Yeah. So did you ever socialise with the 617 over on the other side or was it like two separate?
EA: Oh yeah. They, they no they were two separate places but they lived, they lived in a hotel in Woodhall Spa which now is a hotel isn’t it? And there’s a golf course there and it’s an interesting place to go to and it’s dedicated as a museum to 617.
I: Right.
EA: But in the, in Woodhall there’s a little pub there that Ev and I went to and had a look at and we used to go into this place and Bill Carey from Mount Gambier he was there the night I went to see him. He was with 617 Squadron and Bill did some hairy flying over there too and he was well known but he’d be surprised to see me turn up. He thought he was away from Mount Gambier but [laughs] ‘Have you come to spy on me?’ Initially. We always had a bit of a laugh about it even after the war. He was here and we used to laugh about that but Bill got, he died in a car accident too up in [unclear] So that’s, after all that is what he did. He came, made forced landings over in Sweden and all sorts of things. But he got out of it there and he finished up in a car accident.
I: So were you, were you sort of marking for 617? Did the two squadrons work as a —
EA: No.
I: Or you just got allocated.
EA: 617 and they did more —
I: They were more specialised sort of stuff.
EA: Dive bombing like they chased the Tirpitz and that sort of thing you know. And they, they raided targets in Europe. They did a lot of daylight trips, 617. It was dangerous sort of stuff but they went out on daylights. I don’t know. Not many of the squadrons did. The Yanks certainly didn’t fly in daylight. At night time rather because they couldn’t find their way around at night. They always, always had to go out on day raids.
I: Yeah.
EA: The Yanks. We had a bit to do with the Americans when we were there. They used to land at Woodhall if they were running out of fuel or something and we had some of them there and we had a Fortress come in and the Mosquito could stick under the wing of a Fortress, you know. And of course they thought it was a bit of a joke this blooming aircraft made of wood but when they found out that we were carrying the same bomb load as they were and two of us in a crew instead of ten they changed their tune a bit. They reckoned we had something going for us, you know. But that was all part of the fun and over that —
[recording paused]
I: So missions took quite a few hours. You were actually in the air for quite a few hours on most —
EA: Yes. Well —
I: Four or five hours.
EA: Yeah, well yeah four or five hours. That’s right and down at Munich and those places that was fair, fairly nearly at the range of a Mosquito. We had some as the Russian force came forward coming west from Russia there were some raids that we did on there before then. But we had intelligence to report that you know if we got in to any trouble over there and we had to make a forced landing or bale out head for Germany don’t head for Russia because they wouldn’t know who we were and they wouldn’t have any sympathy or ask who we were there helping them [laughs]
I: Assume you were Germans.
EA: We were there helping them but they wouldn’t risk the Russians so go back to Germany and bale out over there you know rather. But that was the Russian Front when they were coming through that was a fair way. We had to watch out for the fuel there by the time we were in that area.
I: It’s a fairly sort of hazardous sort of way to spend your time flying these sorts of things.
EA: Yeah.
I: Were you frightened quite a lot of the time?
EA: Actually no.
I: Or did you sort of get used to it in some way?
EA: I don’t remember it much. We were just there to do a job and, and it was a bit of a competition. You had a challenge. You had a challenge to do what the others were all doing. We were all in together and, and you had to see if you could do better than the other fellas and I think this is the big advantage of a team. You were with, the two of us together we sort of I don’t know whether John used to get scared or not. We never discussed it. It’s all this all on you had to have a positive attitude you know and get going.
I: Did you get butterflies before it? Hopping in the plane and —
EA: Oh, I don’t know. Well, things started to happen so fast you sort of — but you get caught up in the swim of it and it’s all part of the game you know. I don’t know that we worried very much about that. It was never going to happen to us.
I: Right. Ok.
EA: We were invincible [laughs] We were absolutely invincible. It was never going to happen to us, you know. When, when Bob went that sort of set us back a bit and I started, you know and John, John said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that you know. That’s how it happens to someone.’ I can remember quite well we had a bit of discussion about it and so on because I’d been with Bob for quite a long time and we got to know one another pretty well from that point of view and so it was a bit of a scary thing but it did seem you know yeah it’s a sort of unreal. In fact, you know when you were diving around the ground you see people down on the ground and it almost seems it’s like a story that someone’s telling you. It’s not real. Are those people real down there or not, you know. You seemed to separate yourself from the whole thing.
I: Did it —
EA: And it becomes a bit of a circus [laughs] so that’s how it goes you know.
I: These days you know you’re not allowed to go, there seems to be a long time between having a drink and you go flying but I always got the impression that sort of you sort of chaps would sort of would head off down to the pub and —
EA: Well, we —
I: In the daytime and then head off on a raid a bit later on.
EA: No, the crews —
I: Were there rules and regulations on that sort of —
EA: Well, the crews that were going out knew the day before they were listed.
I: Right.
EA: And you just don’t go and do anything. You know. No, there was no scope for that but really you’d be told to go out at an hour’s notice and things like that. I mean the thing had to be planned ahead.
I: Yeah.
EA: The strategy on where the raid was because you know they’ve got a few hundred other aircraft.
I: Yes.
EA: Tee’d up to do the same thing.
I: Yeah.
EA: But then of course if the weather clagged in and it would be scrubbed which was you know there was a lot of cancellations of the whole thing. Sometimes you know the Lancs would be starting to wind up the raid before they’d been cancelled and they had to shut engines down and all that sort of thing.
I: Right
EA: Not very often. Once they really started to, if once the Lancaster started to wind up they were usually on their way but so we, we used to go after them and we’d get to the target before them and so on. So they were the first ones that once they were all going and we would have them flying over our drome there hordes of them and you know they were going out and we knew where they were going when we were lined up. No. No celebrating, you see John Herriman he was he never had any alcohol at all. I didn’t really either. We didn’t drink. John used to smoke. He used to roll his own cigarettes and so on and so on. That didn’t worry me of course in those days. Nobody knew any differently.
I: But he didn’t drink at all.
EA: No.
I: No.
EA: No. We didn’t have any alcohol.
I: Ok.
EA: No we used to have parties in the mess and so on but he wasn’t, he wasn’t a really good mixer for that sort of thing actually. A bit of a loner John was in a way and that was all to the good actually but and I never used to either. We used to go down to the mess and all these fellas were there and had a bit of a joke. We had all sorts of funny things happening at parties and so on and we used to but no we didn’t bother much on that angle with it and he didn’t, certainly didn’t anyway so that was alright. But it could be a problem I suppose if someone had too much to drink.
I: So if you wanted to go out and see a movie or something where did you go to do that? Was there that sort of entertainment I mean?
EA: Yeah. No, not at the, not at the ‘drome. What we had was certain, not at our aerodrome. What we had was certain. Not at our ‘drome. It wasn’t big enough to warrant that. You know you’d go to one or the other aerodromes. I mean some of the ‘dromes had a few hundred folks there you see.
I: Right.
EA: So we could go across to another aerodrome in the same Group that had films on and so on. Yeah. Go to the town. Most of the towns still had cinemas.
I: Yeah. Yeah.
EA: And that was in Britain they had to keep the people’s spirit up and they tried to keep all the dance halls and the cinemas and you know the music was still going and all that. It was tried. They did well really they tried to keep the country going normally while all this stuff was going on and an influx of all the Americans and so on I mean there was a hell of a lot of people there.
I: There must have been a lot of people everywhere then. On the roads.
EA: Oh yeah.
I: The motorbike was probably the easy way to get around wouldn’t it because you’d be sort of like —
EA: Oh yeah, a big, oh yeah.
I: Trucks all over the roads and —
EA: Big army trucks and so on like this. Yeah. And if you wanted to go anywhere you just hailed one of the trucks and get on board and go with them you know. It was so easy going. It was all quite amazing. Of course, we used to put the, put the bike in the back of the train in the guards van and go all over the place on this. And sometimes we would find out that one of the, one of the Squadron, 617 were there. We used to go with them. They were doing practice navigation trips and so on. We said, ‘Well, you know we what are you doing tomorrow on this? Oh yeah, we might, we might as well end up there. Where do you want to go? Well, we wanted to go up in Scotland somewhere. Well, we’ll drop you off up there. So put your in the back.
I: In a Lancaster.
EA: And then we’d take a Lanc up there for exercise [laughs]
Oh [laughs] really?
You know, burn up a few hundred gallons of fuel. That sort of thing. The fuel situation was interesting you know over there.
I: They must have gone through a hell of a lot of fuel.
EA: They put this from the area, from the west coast and downloaded it over there at one of the ports along the coast there.
I: Where did all this come from? America?
EA: They come — yeah.
I: From America was it?
EA: Yeah. Coming in from the States and they had great pipelines and the fuel lines coming through and these pipelines are going right through and in the finish they connected up and across the Channel for the invasion and they pumped fuel all the way from there.
I: Across the Channel.
EA: Right across the Channel in the big pipes underneath the sea and so on and they’d shove fuel through. Aviation fuel. And that would go through in bulk into tanks and so then they put oil through the same. The same —
I: The same pipe.
EA: The same pipe and then pumped them through and then ordinary fuel goes through the next and they’d take it off the other end. There was, the fuel situation how they worked it all out it was quite amazing really.
I: Well, the logistics are a feat really.
EA: And this used to get all the aerodromes connected up to the fuel system going through.
I: Right.
EA: To these aerodromes and so on.
I: So you didn’t have trucks sort of driving it around.
EA: Oh no. No.
I: It was all piped.
EA: Piped in there and and had their big fuel dumps in the aerodromes and then they fuelled the aircraft from those things.
I: So in the end you hopped on a boat. Where did you get on a boat to go, come back from? Southampton?
EA: Oh, Southampton. Yeah. Yeah.
I: Not the Queen Mary this time.
EA: Not the Queen Mary this time [laughs] no. No, we were we were there they put down there was a holding place down in Brighton so we all went out of Brighton, south of England there you know and we were in a hotel down there.
I: This was after the end of the war.
EA: Yeah.
I: In the Pacific.
EA: Yeah. Well —
I: You were training to come out.
EA: When —
I: Come out to the Pacific were you? After —
EA: No, we were going to. Yeah. We actually were.
I: This Tiger Force. Whatever it was called.
EA: The squadron. We were there and they once yeah once the war went over they changed the system of training and we went on to a system of navigation called Loran. And actually they used it in civil aviation after the war for a long time before we got satellite navigation. And this Loran was sending out signals, long signals over long distances and we were going out to Manchuria and the squadron was going out there to mark targets in Japan. Then they dropped the atom bomb and they finished it off.
I: So they had these big things underneath the plane. Was this what they called the H2S.
EA: H2S, yeah. We used H2S too. That was, that was handy but and we used to practice in Lancasters on H2S. that was for low level flying along but the trouble with that is if you were following a railway line in H2S on a screen you could follow a railway line and follow along like that. But some of these had put up balloon barrages and so on.
I: Right.
EA: And you could just run into one of those and cut a wing off.
I: Right.
EA: And that wasn’t very easy.
I: You had to fly fairly low to make it, make that useful.
EA: Well yeah.
I: Was it?
EA: That’s right. Yes. When you were doing that so you had to, you had to try to find out where all the balloon riders were so you could miss them but you know. There was always someone comes and upsets everything you know. They either do that or they shoot at you and all this. It’s not fair [laughs] But anyway it’s all a bit of a mystery, isn’t it?
I: So what sort of a boat was it you came back on then?
EA: Well, we came back on the Andes which was —
I: The Andes.
EA: A boat that was in service after the war for a while. But we came a very fast trip through the Suez, the Suez was operating in those days and we I think we only took three weeks to get back here and it was a pretty fast trip actually.
I: Right.
EA: Of course, these troop ship were easy because they only had hammocks you know. No, there was no beds or anything in them. No chairs. Not a chair in the place anyway. Same with the Queen Mary. You didn’t, you had to sit, you sit on the floor and so on. No chairs anywhere around the place. Just hammocks. A good way to carry because you stay and the boat goes around you.
I: It is. Yeah. Yes. I suppose so.
EA: Yeah [laughs]
I: And where did that arrive back? In Sydney or —
EA: Yeah, we came. No, we came in Melbourne.
I: Melbourne.
EA: Yeah. And that’s where that photograph was. This is —
I: Oh yeah. Yeah.
EA: [unclear
I: Yeah.
EA: And I’m so glad someone put that altogether and that was all in the paper in the Sun.
I: Yeah.
EA: At the time. Yeah, so we arrived in Melbourne and Ralph was there too. I don’t know why. He must have been on leave. I don’t know how. I never really found out how he got to Melbourne on a day when —
I: When you were coming in.
EA: Yeah. I guess, I don’t know. I must have sent him a telegram. We used to send telegrams in those days.
I: Oh.
EA: Sent them a telegram telling them when we were coming or something I don’t know because there wasn’t much communication you know. And the letters we sent, the letters were done on a letterhead and it would go through and they’d microfilm all these and send the film out to Melbourne on a little spool by plane and they’d print them off and sent them to people from —
I: Really?
EA: When they got there.
I: So they sort of photocopied.
EA: Yeah.
I: Didn’t get the, didn’t get the original letter.
EA: No. They didn’t get the original letter at all.
I: Oh really?
EA: No.
I: Mail otherwise takes up too much space.
EA: Well yeah. Too much weight.
I: Too much weight and space.
EA: And I suppose the letter was printed. By the time it was printed off it would be a half of an A4 sheet.
I: Right.
EA: The letter would come out that size and it was pretty small lettering because you write on a thing and they’d reduce it in size you see. But that was how all the mail went around the world in those days. Yeah. No, no big mail was carried.
I: Right.
EA: It was all on microfilm.
I: Right. And that was shoved on boats or planes or —
EA: They had a regular flight of —
I: I suppose Quantas —
EA: Flying Boats.
I: Quantas was flying all the time.
EA: Yeah.
I: During the war back and forth, wasn’t it?
EA: Flying boats. Yeah. They were using flying Boats all the way. That was an interesting exercise. The blokes who were flying those I suppose they got tired of that too didn’t they?
[recording paused]
I: So it wasn’t the most comfortable of huts you lived in then.
EA: Oh, it was a comfortable hut.
I: I get the impression the 617 boys were rather comfortable at —
EA: Yeah, they had a hotel to live in. Yes. No, we didn’t have any of that. No. We were —
I: So there was a whole bunch of you in one —
EA: Oh no.
I: Room was it or —
EA: We had, we lived in Nissen huts. We had, there was about, I think about eight or ten beds and each —
I: Ok. Yeah.
EA: They were all very basic you know but quite handy if it was all covered with snow. The snow would tend to keep you a bit warm and so on.
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
Eric Arthur's audio account of his time in the R.A.A.F.
Description
An account of the resource
Covers Eric's time training in Australia and his time in Britain with 627 Squadron flying Mosquito from RAF Woodhall Spa. He discusses the attack on Oslo on New Years Eve 1944. He flew a total of 45 operations, all with the same pilot, John Herriman.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:02:58 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AArthurEG09XXXX
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 Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Eric Garnet Arthur
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944-12-31
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Norway
England--Cambridgeshire
Norway--Oslo
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Claire Campbell
627 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Lancaster
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/12025/EDonaldsonT-FIDonaldsonDW430515-0001.2.jpg
7999f561851dc7b3cde3610f63cef5eb
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/12025/EDonaldsonT-FIDonaldsonDW430515-0002.2.jpg
27bf596295dc3ee8e4a14a2de068e34a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/12025/EDonaldsonT-FIDonaldsonDW430515-0003.2.jpg
fe1d49ea9386b660dcf738e83bd25107
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/12025/EDonaldsonT-FIDonaldsonDW430515-0004.2.jpg
88ae861b149ac7d0258dad57e1fa61ba
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/12025/EDonaldsonT-FIDonaldsonDW430515-0005.2.jpg
adcb5909322bfec820cf7f11b662a013
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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Postmark]
[Postage stamps]
Wing Commdr David W Donaldson DSO DFG RAFVR
RAF Officers Mess
Warboys
Huntingdonshire
[page break]
Brambridge House
Bishopstoke Hants
[inserted] Ian & Co were all packed up for Blackpool but it was “as you were” [\inserted]
May 15th / 43
Dear David,
Hearty Congratulations on your well earned DSO We are all feeling like Peacocks. Your wife was simply beaming when I got back and even Frances seemed more cheerful – if possible – & all my friends run saying here's that d-d old bore again
Eyston [?] said there was someone of your name where his brother was i e Harwell but he must have made a mistake. I told him it was Warboys
[page break]
Rhodes was so taken with the Photo of you 3 in the avenue that he enlarged & coloured – said he could not resist. I sent copies – uncoloured – to your M-in-L, The Aunts & [underlined] The [/underlined] Aunt.
Many thanks for your letter as Mr Einstein would say I note that time for you is greatly accelerated by your velocity approaching that of light – its 3 years since you left SH&T not 2 as you suggest.
[changes to mother's handwriting]
Your daughter will not allow me to leave her side she has just swallowed a large crust whole & seems none the worse for it & looks
[insertion] [changes to father's handwriting]
Norman is here for a weeks leave seems a bit tired [/insertion]
[page break]
[changes to mother's hand writing]
a terrible sight oozing crumbs in all directions – I long for some D.S.O. ribbon to tie her up with all round, – [insertion] I feel it would suit her so well [/insertion] I am so glad you've got a pink ribbon, I think they look nicer than any others, & said so to Joyce the other day, but she said that was beyond anyone's wildest dreams as it was only D.S.O's or V.Cs, anyhow I feel terribly proud, as Norman says like the [indecipherable word] basking in reflected glory
Joyce has been walking on air all day, she burst into my room in such excitement with
[page break]
the news I could not think what had happened
Smith sent you his congratulations & all Brambridge purrs with [word deleted] pride -
I must stop Frances says she must have some attention
Joyce says she is writing tomorrow she is too excited to write today
Very much love
from your very proud
Mamma
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to David Donaldson from his mother and father
Description
An account of the resource
Letter congratulates him on award of Distinguished Service Order and catches up with family news.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
F Donaldson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-05-15
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four page handwritten letter and envelope
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
EDonaldsonT-FIDonaldsonDW430515
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Hampshire
England--Bishopstoke
England--Huntingdonshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-05-15
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
Frances Grundy
Distinguished Service Order
RAF Warboys
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2047/33328/ABiltonGHA960623-0001.1.pdf
68edbe099b5e26f2922404b2fb056c11
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2047/33328/ABiltonGHA960623.1.mp3
3f3f5cac621761fcd3088cee74a5d0fd
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
Bilton, George Henry Albert
G H A Bilton
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteen items. The collection concerns George Henry Albert Bilton (b. 1923, 175723 Royal Air Force) and contains an oral history interview, his log book, correspondence and photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 428 and 434 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anthony Bilton and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-14
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. 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
Bilton, GHA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Music]
I: Were you born in Hull?
GB: Well, outside of Hull at Anlaby.
I: Which year were you born?
GB: 1923. October.
I: And what did your father do for a living?
GB: He was a coach builder for, well it’s now British Railway but first of all Hull and Barnsley. Then it was taken over by the London Northeastern and he built the coaches and the waggons. He was with them all his life.
I: Did you go to school in Anlaby?
GB: Anlaby Church of England School. And then the last two years I was at Hessle School when they closed the Church of England one down. I left school 1938.
I: So you were fourteen.
GB: Fourteen. Yeah.
I: Did you get a job?
GB: Yes. I went and got a job as an apprentice furniture salesman.
I: In Hull.
GB: In Hull. At Harry Jacobs Furniture.
I: Were you doing that when war broke out?
GB: Oh, I was still with them when war broke out. I was with them until I went into the Forces in 1942.
I: What was your reaction when you heard Chamberlain make the declaration that we were at war with Germany?
GB: Well, I think it was a bit too young and didn’t know anything about it but I volunteered for an ARP messenger boy and I was accepted and that kept us busy on a night time. Even with practices.
I: Where did you volunteer for it?
GB: Anlaby House which became the Central Headquarters for the ARP in Haltemprice. It is now the headquarters of Beverley Borough Council. The same house.
I: What kind of work did you have to do as an ARP messenger boy?
GB: Well, if any of the telephone lines were broken in a raid we had to go out and take messages from one post to another.
I: By foot?
GB: No. On our bikes.
I: Did you have a uniform?
GB: No. Just a steel helmet and an extra special gas mask. That’s all.
I: What was extra special about it?
GB: Well, it was more like the Services one. Not like the ordinary civilian gas mask.
I: What was the difference between the two?
GB: Well, it was heavier and, well and you just, you didn’t have the mask at the face. You had a small canister at the side.
I: So you didn’t have the protuberance.
GB: No. That’s right.
I: Did you have an arm band to show who you were?
GB: Yes. ARP messenger, that was all and the steel helmet with M on.
I: What did M mean? For messenger.
GB: For messenger.
I: Did you get paid for it?
GB: No. It was all voluntary. No. Nothing at all. You, you, when the sirens went you reported to Anlaby House and you stayed there until the siren all clear and then you went back home.
I: Whereabouts did you do this work?
GB: In Anlaby. The farthest we ever had to bring a message was from Anlaby to Cottingham when the lines were down.
I: Did you enjoy doing it?
GB: Oh yes. I did.
I: Could you have thrown it up any time you liked?
GB: Any time you wanted you could decide to finish and that was it.
I: Was there competition to get these jobs?
GB: Well, there was about four of us and that’s all they needed. They all went in the Forces and of the four there was one killed.
I: How did that happen?
[pause]
GB: It was a lad called John Harding. He was killed in Italy about a month after the war. He went all through the desert, all through Italy and he was killed about a month after the war moving shells from the artillery.
I: Were there any incidents that happened to you after you had done the messenger work?
GB: Not really.
I: That you can recount.
GB: No, there was, it was very very quiet in the area of Haltemprice. All the damage that was done was done in Hull. I think we had what five bombs dropped in the village of Anlaby and they were unexploded.
I: Whereabouts did they drop?
GB: At the, two or three hundred yards from Anlaby House down Woodlands Drive in a snicket.
I: A snicket being a cut through.
GB: A cut through. Yes. They did no damage. The Army came, found them and exploded them.
I: Was anybody injured?
GB: No. There was no injuries whatsoever.
I: When did the bombs drop on Anlaby? Which year would that have been?
GB: That was in the big raid of 1940. May the 8th 1941.
I: ’41. Any others that you remember that dropped in Anlaby?
GB: None at all. There was only the five.
I: Did you ever see the damage in Hull?
GB: Yes. I used to work in Hull. The place where I was employed in Jameson Street was completely gutted during the 1941 raid.
I: What was the name again?
GB: Harry Jacobs Furniture, Jameson Street.
I: What else did you see of the damage in Hull?
GB: All of Jameson Street were moved. Our offices were down Osbourne Street and that was severely damaged. You could see all of Paragon Square which was Hammonds at the time was gutted. There was a terrific amount of damage done and especially in the Stoneferry District where the oil mills were and the flour mills around it.
I: Did people come out of Hull to Anlaby to get away from the bombing?
GB: Yes, they did. They built a camp down Lowfield Road in Anlaby for displaced personnel from the raids and there was one built on Priory Road just outside Cottingham which was taken up by people who had been bombed out. Those two camps after the war housed the young couples who got married and they had no housing. When I got married in ’51 I finished up in one of those converted accommodations for a year before I got a house.
I: What were they like?
GB: Alright.
I: Just describe them.
GB: Well, they were two little bedroom. You had a small bedroom, small living room and there was a small like kitchen for cooking and doing your washing. In Priory Road where the camp is we spent a year in there didn’t we before we came to Cottingham. There were no housing at all and they were in use for about ten years before they were finally closed down.
I: What was the standard of accommodation like?
GB: Poor. Single bricks. Very damp. Corrugated roof.
I: Wasn’t it later used to house Poles?
GB: That’s correct. Yes.
I: Now, can you tell me how you came to be in the Air Force?
GB: I volunteered for air crew in, when I was eighteen in what we called a Selection Board. And I was accepted as a wireless operator air gunner.
I: When you, which year would this have been?
GB: That was 1941. I was eighteen in October ‘41 and I volunteered then and went down for an interview at Padgate. I went through the examinations. Then my medical and then the Aircrew Selection Board and I was accepted for training as a w/op a g.
I: Why did you volunteer for it?
GB: I was, I should have made a very very poor sailor and my father always said, ‘Don’t go in the Army.’ He’d had enough.
I: So you wanted to exercise a choice before you were directed.
GB: Before I was directed.
I: But you were. Did you become a w/op air gunner?
GB: No. There was, they had a tremendous influx of people wanting to be w/op a g’s and I think I’d been waiting about four months to go in and they were short of flight engineers for training so they asked me if I would like to take a test board and become a flight engineer for training. And I accepted that instead of waiting. So I was called up in August ’42. Went to Blackpool. Did my initial training footslogging and I stayed in Blackpool then for about ten months doing a flight mechanic and a fitter’s course. Passed out AC1 flight mechanic and AC1 fitter and I went down to St Athans for six weeks to do the Halifax course and I waited then in August ’43 and I was posted from St Athans up to Number 6 Group, a Heavy Conversion Unit 1664 which was then at Croft and I crewed up with a Canadian and English mixed crew on August 1943.
I: In that training did you run into any problems?
GB: None at all. The only time I got jankers was for failing to carry a bayonet whilst on duty [laughs] and I got seven days CB for it and I swore never again to do any punishment.
I: What happened to you on the CB?
GB: CB? Well, you reported at 6 o’clock after you’d done all your schoolwork for three hours of square bashing. Fifty five minutes square bashing, five minutes off with full kit. Saturday you scrubbed the NAAFI out at Squire’s Gate and it was a huge one. Sunday you reported after Church Parade on the hour every hour until 10 o’clock at night. That was enough. No more. So I kept my shoes clean after that.
I: Did you resent the punishment?
GB: Not really. It taught you to behave yourself.
I: What did you think of the quality of training that you got?
GB: Very good. The instructors were very good. I had no complaints whatsoever against any of the instructors. They were always fair and they helped you whenever. All the way through the course.
I: Were you taught what you had to know or did they miss any?
GB: Well, I think the original entries for flight engineers were given far too much training on engines. You didn’t have to become a fitter to become a flight engineer as they found out later. They shortened the course to about a twelve week course where it took me nearly a year. You didn’t have to be a qualified flight fitter engine to become a flight engineer.
I: What did a flight engineer have to do in a bomber?
GB: Look after chiefly the control of the engines, the petrol consumption, know the hydraulic systems and all the emergencies. Assist in take-off and landing.
I: If the pilot had been hit would you have been able to pilot it?
GB: It would have been a struggle. As a Halifax flight engineer you didn’t have any pilot training. You were never on the controls whereas in a Lancaster you were. You acted as a second pilot for take-off and landing but on a Halifax bomber the bomb aimer assisted in take-off and landing.
I: Now, you said that you were posted to 6 Group. Can you tell me about what 6 Group was?
GB: 6 Group was the Halifax group financed by the Royal Canadian Government. They provided all the aircraft and the crews were mixed. I had three English and four Canadians in the crew. The pilot was, pilot, navigator and the two gunners Canadians. The wireless operator, the bomb aimer and myself were the English members of the crew.
I: How was the crew formed?
GB: Well, I met the crew. They’d done their Operational Training Unit course and they were posted up to Croft and ten crews and ten flight engineers were told, ‘Sort yourselves out.’ And they picked me and I accepted them and I went with them. You weren’t allocated. You weren’t told, ‘You fly with that man.’ Or, ‘You fly with them.’ You were left to individually sort yourself out which crew you wanted to go with. So if you met a sergeant in the mess, you know you knew him and you had a drink or two before you crewed up you went to him.
I: How did you like serving with Canadians?
GB: Oh, they were very good. Very friendly. They didn’t have the bull. The discipline wasn’t as severe on the Canadian group as it was on the English groups.
I: Can you give an example?
GB: Well, I mean you mixed freely with the, when I was an NCO you mixed freely with the two officers. The Canadian officers. No trouble at all calling you by your Christian names.
I: Now, what was your first operational squadron?
GB: My first operational squadron? Well. I lost my first pilot. We went to 427 squadron and Sergeant Dresser went on his second second dickie trip and never came back.
I: 427 was your first.
GB: First squadron at Leeming. So we were a crew without a captain.
I: When did you join that squadron do you think?
GB: We joined 427 Squadron 4th of September and we left on the 23rd of September. We were posted back to 1659 Conversion Unit Topcliffe where there was another pilot waiting for us.
I: So did you do any operations —
GB: None at all.
I: At that base?
GB: No. None whatsoever there. As I say the pilot never came back from his second, second dickie to Frankfurt.
I: So you were posted to a new squadron.
GB: No. A new Conversion Unit for a new pilot. A new pilot by the name of Watkins, a flying officer who had been instructing in Canada for nearly two years. He’d been, come over and we crewed up with him on the 24th of September with Flying Officer Watkins at 1659 Conversion Unit Topcliffe and we went through our month training with him again until the 7th of October ’43 where we were posted to 428 Squadron, Middleton St George.
I: And it was then you started operations.
GB: Operations. Yes. The first operation we did was the 3rd of November.
I: Can you describe what you remember of it?
GB: Very very little. It was Dusseldorf and everything seemed to be on top of you at the first you know. You didn’t take it all in. All I seem to remember is a little bit of flak and the flares going down for target indicators for bombing. Everything happened so fast on your first two or three trips that you hadn’t adjusted to operational flying. I learned more on my second op. We went to Ludwigshafen on the 18th of November.
I: What happened then?
GB: Well, first of all we got coned over the target. We got the master searchlight on us which was a bluey colour and he followed us and we got out of him after a lot of evasive action and as soon as we got out a fighter opened up on us and we got a good hiding. The rear gunner was severely wounded. The IFF that we had was damaged. Monica, which we had was damaged. All the trimming wires for elevator and rudders were cut. We had petrol tank wires cut from one, two and four tanks. All hydraulic pipes were cut. We couldn’t close the bomb doors. They were fully opened. We were in a mess and we got hit about twenty one thousand feet and by the time the pilot got control we were down to fifteen thousand. We had no navigational aids and the navigator brought us back by straight navigation of the Pole Star. We were off track coming back when we crossed over Ostend at fifteen thousand feet and they hit us with everything.
I: They what?
GB: Hit us with everything. They opened up with everything they had and we couldn’t take any evasive action. We just had to go through it.
I: This was the flak.
GB: Yeah. There was flaming onions coming up in between the tail plane and the main plane. It was rough. And then we crossed the coast and we still didn’t know exactly where we were so the skipper called up. The emergency call sign then was Darkie and Woodbridge accepted the call and we did a full emergency landing there.
I: What was the emergency landing like?
GB: It was very rough. We couldn’t get the undercarriage, it came down but I couldn’t lock it down. We tried everything. Put in to a shallow dive, pulling out to see if we could just pulling into a shallow dive, pulling out to see if we could just jerk it that two or three inches to make it lock and we couldn’t do that. We were all in the emergency positions coming in to land and just as they pulled up to do a belly landing it just threw it that little bit forward, the wheels, and they locked. So we were alright. We came out. The rear gunner we, we’d patched him up. We’d pumped morphine into him and he went to Norwich Hospital. We never saw him again. He was very badly wounded in the head. And we spent the night there and then an aircraft flew us back the next morning to our base at Middleton St George.
I: What was the date of that?
GB: 18th of November.
I: And which Halifax was it? What was it called?
GB: NA O-Oboe. We were just off on a night operation at 16.45 on a trip which lasted seven hours and five minutes.
I: Did that put you off wanting to go on operations after that experience?
GB: Not really. We were in operations again on the 26th of November. We took two spare gunners and we went to Stuttgart and we had a reasonable trip. We had no fighter trouble but when we went to a diversionary raid being done on Frankfurt and the Germans had laid what they called you know the fighter flares, the path the Mosquitoes were taking oh and it looked rough. We bypassed it and Stuttgart was quite you know quite a normal trip. A bit of flak. No fighters. But I think that got the confidence of the crew back.
I: When you went on these trips to Stuttgart and Ludwigshafen could you see other planes being hit?
GB: Not on those two. No. I never saw anything anyone shot down over Ludwigshafen, Stuttgart or the first trip Dusseldorf.
I: How did your next operations go?
GB: Well, the next operation was January the 20th 1944, Berlin and that was a rough one.
I: Can you describe it?
GB: Well, at one part the Germans had laid a flare path for fighter flares and they were among the bomber stream and we were going down. You could see the fire from the German aircraft and a small amount coming from our aircraft. The Allied aircraft and then you’d just see a ball of fire and it would hold steady for a minute or two then it would just go in to a dive. That was quite an experience to see it. When we got to Berlin we were in the first wave and the target indicators were a few seconds late and we got caught in predictive flak because we were the first wave. We had no cover from the metal strips. The tin foil that we threw out. It didn’t affect, it didn’t help you it helped the people behind you and we were a little bit off. [pause]
I: Which was the worse? This Berlin one or the Ludwigshafen?
GB: Ludwigshaven. Ludwigshaven was the worst. I mean we got a lot of shell, a lot of holes, a lot of damage. This Berlin it was just that you were in the predicted flak. We didn’t get hit. We didn’t have any fighter trouble. Berlin, Ludwigshafen I’ll never forget it. Never.
I: Was Berlin a particularly dreaded place to go to?
GB: It was, yes. It was such a long, it was such a long stooge. It took us eight hours fifteen minutes. It was very tiring and it was overpowering on the target area because it was so heavily defended. There were so many searchlights. I think on the first one we lost about forty odd aircraft that night.
I: You said which particular Halifax you had. Did you always have the same one?
GB: No. That was Halifax NA U-Uncle on that Berlin trip.
I: Was there any competition to get the best aircraft?
GB: No. It was just what you were allocated. Our pilot later became a flight commander and he took any aircraft. I mean I think we were nearly always in a B flight when we flew aircraft.
I: What does that mean?
GB: Well, you had A flights and B flights.
I: As part of the squadron. To make up the squadron.
GB: The mark up the squadron. Yes. And the A flights were the first half of the alphabet and so the second B was the second half. We were either V-Victor, Q-Queenie, or O-Oboe later on that we flew in.
I: But was there any, ever any feeling that the more senior people were getting the best aircraft?
GB: No. No.
I: Or the best ground crews?
GB: No. The best ground crews were on operational squadrons. I thought so anyhow.
I: But was there any difference between the different ground crews that you had in your squadron?
GB: No. They were all first class. They all did a first-class job. The aircraft were always in good condition. We never turned back from thirty four trips from any trouble whatsoever.
I: What was the next operations that you had to do?
GB: Well, the next two I did were two mine laying stooges. One was to Kiel which was a quiet trip and the other one was down to la Rochelle which was a very long stooge. Eight hours ten minutes. That was the fourth of February ’44. Then we went to Berlin again on the 15th of February.
I: Was mine laying usually a quiet job?
GB: Yes. Well, it was a very hard job because you were by yourself. There would probably be about twenty aircraft you know to lay mines and you were on your own. You had no cover whatsoever. I mean the tin foil that you threw out didn’t help you. It more or less showed the Germans where you were because you were always ahead of the tin foil you were throwing out. There would be about twenty. Probably twenty two twenty three aircraft would go down to La Rochelle and lay two mines a piece. In between the island of la Rochelle and the mainland.
I: Did you ever call those gardening operations?
GB: They are gardening operations. I did the La Rochelle. I did two La Rochelles in February. One on the 4th and one on the 21st and then on the 25th I did a mine laying stooge to Copenhagen Sound.
I: Well, what was your next Berlin operation like? Was it any different from the first?
GB: It was the same as the first. A lot of flak. A lot of fighter activity but we never had an attack. That day, night we were diverted to Shipdham which was an American base and we were there for three days for bad weather. Our base was closed down and we stayed with the Americans. Had their hospitality.
I: What was the date of your second Berlin raid?
GB: 15th of February. We took off in NA Q-Queenie. We took off at 17.20. We were airborne for six hours fifty minutes.
I: What did you fear most over Berlin? Was it the night fighters or the flak?
GB: The night fighters. The flak no. It was the fighters. We were always looking out for fighters. You didn’t want, you didn’t want to battle with them you wanted to get out of their way because the armaments that we had was four 303s were just like peashooters to their cannons if you could see them and get out of their way. That was the main thing.
I: And then after Berlin? That second Berlin operation.
GB: After Berlin we did as I say two mine laying stooges to la Rochelle and Copenhagen Sound in February. Then March we started with another gardening operation mine laying to the mouth of the Gironde River which was seven hours fifty minutes. Then we started the pre-D-Day marshalling yards in the March of ’44 and it was the marshalling yard at Trappes. Now that one we had an absolute full bomb load, I’ll never forget it of eleven thousand five hundred pounders. We had eleven thousand five hundred and fourteen hundred gallons of petrol and it was made up of seven five hundred pounders and six one thousand pounders. That was the heaviest bomb load we’d ever taken and after the operation the marshalling yard at Trappes was never used again. It was, it was quite an easy trip. There was very very little flak. It was very light. No fighter trouble. We came, we did five hours forty minutes and there was bad weather at the aerodrome and we were diverted to Harwell. And we spent the night at Harwell and we left the next day back to base.
I: Now here you’ve given me a sheet headed “Target Token” relating to this Trappes raid on the 6th of March 1944. Can you tell me what this sheet signifies?
GB: Well, that is the marshalling yards there. Those are early flares, the photograph flares that we dropped to illuminate the target so we could take the photograph. Well, from that they could photograph from the headings that we were on. They could tell you exactly where those bombs straddled the target and the whole load went right across the marshalling yards.
I: So you’ve got the copy of the photograph.
GB: Of the photograph. Every crew member was presented with a copy of the photograph.
I: As a means of congratulating.
GB: Congratulating. More or less that you’d got the whole fifteen bombs right across the marshalling yard.
I: Any other marshalling yard operations that you did?
GB: Well, I know the next one we went to was, the next operation I did was another gardening trip to Kiel. We did the mining to the entrance to Kiel harbour. The next one was on the 25th of March. We went to Aulnoye. That was quite an easy trip. A marshalling yard. No trouble. Then on April our skipper had been promoted to squadron leader and we were posted 434 Squadron where he became B Flight commander.
I: Where was 434 Squadron?
GB: At Croft. It was a satellite aerodrome of Middleton St George. It was one that was built during the wartime use whereas Middleton St George was a peacetime aerodrome. The next marshalling yard we went to was Lisle. That was a quiet trip. That was on the 9th of April. We went on the 26th of April to Villeneuve St Georges. A French target. On the 29th we had a short gardening trip to the Frisian Islands. The mines we were laying were supposed to be for a convoy that was coming through. We laid the mines and the convoy was coming through. There was quite a bit of flak from the flak ships. That was then —
I: Were you hit?
GB: No. It was, we had no trouble. We seemed to be lucky again. There was a lot of flak from the flak ships but we had nothing. No holes whatsoever. Come to May, the 1st of May we went St Ghislian. And then on the 27th we went to Le Crepiet. They were quiet trips. Five hours and four and a half hours we did. On June the 15th we flew in J-Jig on a daylight to Boulogne and you could see the flak there. When we were going in there was one aircraft coming out with the whole of his starboard wing in flames. We never knew what happened to him.
I: Was that the first daylight raid?
GB: That was the first daylight I’d done. Yes.
I: How did you feel about that compared with the night raids?
GB: Well, you’re more confident because you could see what was happening and you knew you had fighter cover. It was just the flak but then flak you got used to. It never really bothered people unless you got hit with it badly.
I: What was the date of that bombing operation?
GB: 15th of June.
I: So this was after D-Day.
GB: After D-Day. I was on leave on D-Day. We were. And the next operation was to Disemont on the 21st of June.
I: What was the target in the Boulogne raid?
GB: On the Boulogne raid we were dropping bombs that exploded as soon as it hit the water to cause waves to go into the fence to destroy their MTB boats and that.
I: Do you think it worked?
GB: By all accounts yes. The reports we received afterwards it had been a successful raid and the docks got a good pasting as well. In July, we started off the 1st of July we went to a place called [Benayes or Beugnies] and when we got there there were no PFF markings so we bombed on Gee. There was quite a bit of flak and we lost all hydraulics and had to, we had to land using emergency undercarriage but I could never close the bomb doors. They were open all the way back and all the way for landing. And we had to use full emergency for getting the undercarriage down and the use of the flaps.
I: When was that?
GB: That was the 1st of June. We went in Q-Queenie that night.
I: 1st of July.
GB: 1st of July, sorry. They sent us back to the same target on the 6th of July. To [Benayes or Beugnies]. We went on G-George that time and it was a quiet trip.
I: Where is [Benayes or Beugnies]?
GB: It’s in France. All I can —
[recording paused]
GB: And after that I went to Caen on a daylight and on a night operation on the 18th of the 7th took off at 3.30 in the morning. That was when they started the big push and their breakthrough at Caen.
I: Was that a particularly big raid? A mass raid.
GB: Yes, it was a mass raid. They practically destroyed Caen that night and the Army moved forwards and they never stopped moving after that.
I: Do you have any memories of that raid?
GB: Yes, all I can remember was it was a dead easy raid. Flak not bothered. No fighters. No nothing. Just like a cross country.
I: Were you aware of all the other planes?
GB: Yes. They were all, they were all so close together. All bombing on one area. You could see them even though it was that time. Just two hours. It would be about 5.30. just dusk coming on.
I: So you didn’t have any opposition.
GB: Nothing at all. Nothing whatsoever. It was just like flying from here to Jersey on your holidays. No opposition whatsoever.
I: Do you think you hit your target?
GB: Well, we must have done because the Army never stopped moving. They took Caen. The next job after that it was a rough one. It was Hamburg. That was the 28th.
I: What happened then?
GB: Well, we were in the second wave and we were a bit late and we were at the scheduled height of bombing at seventeen thousand feet. There was somebody else above us and they dropped their bombs and we had, on our bombing run we just had to dive starboard to get out of the way of his bombs or we should have got the lot because they always had separate heights for bombing and we were late. Two minutes late. We were at seventeen and the next wave was at seventeen five. That was it. There was quite a bit of flak at Hamburg. That was the most terrifying thing. A full bomb load up there. And the skipper just dived starboard and we were on the bombing run. Where our bombs went we don’t know.
I: Was it common for planes to be hit by bombers above them?
GB: I don’t think so. I think it occasionally happened but this was too close.
I: What about collisions between bombers?
GB: I never saw any. Never saw any at all. I think they did happen but they were very few and far between.
I: And then —
GB: And then after that August was a very busy month. Our skipper had been promoted because our original wing commander, Wing Commander Bartlett had been lost. He’d been shot down and killed in action and our skipper was promoted and became wing commander of 434 Squadron. On the 1st of August we took J-Jig to Acquet in France. There was no PFF markings so the full bomb load was brought back. We brought the whole load back. On the 3rd of —
I: How dangerous was it to bring bombs back?
GB: Well, they weren’t fused. I mean they weren’t fused until you were bombing. Didn’t press the selector switches so they would be alright. It was just that we would have a heavy load for landing. After that on the 3rd we took J-Jig again to le Foret de Nieppe which was for fuel dumps. On the 4th of August again in J-Jig again we went to caves that were just outside Paris where the V-2 rockets were assembled and that was heavily defended with a daylight op and we were hit by flak. We got a few holes. We were caught in predictive flak. We were diverted on the 4th to Dalton.
I: Was this a V-2 place or a V-1 place?
GB: No. A V-2 place where they were assembling the, where they assembled where they assembled the rockets.
I: And where was it?
GB: Just outside Paris. Some from what we could understand from the briefing they were more or less mushroom caves and that. And then on the 5th we went to St Leu d’Esserent. On the 8th we went to a fuel dump just outside at Foret de Chantilly and that was hit and there was black smoke when we left up to fifteen thousand feet.
I: What do you think you hit there at Chantilly?
GB: It was a fuel dump. And on the 9th we went to Le Breteque. On the 12th of August we went to Brunswick. To Germany. On that raid according to recent record was a complete failure as everyone bombed on H2S as there were no markers went down so we bombed individually and there was no concentration.
I: Did you feel at the time that it was a failure?
GB: Well, it seemed to be a failure because there was no concentration of fires or anything. Then on the 14th we did the Army coop where the German divisions were trapped at Falaise. Now that was a very easy trip. There was no opposition whatsoever. The only thing wrong was that the Canadian group bombed their own troops. The Canadian Army had advanced past the markers and of course there was a few killed.
I: Was yours one of the bombers that dropped on the Canadians do you think?
GB: Hmmn.
I: Right.
GB: It wasn’t the Air Forces fault. It was the Army had advanced past the markers. And the last trip I did—
I: And that was what? That was the 14th was it?
GB: That was the 14th of August. We took off at 12.40. It was a five hour ten minute job. And the last trip I did was the 25th of August. We went to Brest to soften it up so the Yanks could take it. And that was quite easy. There was no trouble at all. I think they were more or less giving in. And that was on the 25th of August. There was bad weather back at base and we got diverted to Thorney Island. We spent the night at Thorney Island and then came back the next day and we were told that was it. We had finished our tour.
I: Had you done thirty?
GB: We’d done thirty four and one sea sweep. The skipper, the navigator and the bomb aimer were each awarded a DFC and myself, the wireless operator Jackie Bennett from Newcastle and Jimmy Silverman the rear gunner were granted a commission. That was our reward.
I: What happened to you then?
GB: Well, after that I was posted down to Bruntingthorpe which was 29 OTU and I was instructing on engine handling. I did very little flying. And a week at Blackpool on an Air Sea Rescue course which I thoroughly enjoyed. I only flew twice in the six months I was at OTU. I was never keen on Wellingtons.
I: Why not?
GB: Well, the Wellingtons were clapped out [laughs]
[pause]
GB: Then I went, I volunteered to go back on a second tour and I went in April ’45 with a Flight Lieutenant Kennedy. He made a crew up from 29 OTU and we went to 1651 Conversion Unit at Woolfox Lodge.
I: Why did you volunteer for a second tour?
GB: I didn’t like 29 OTU and I didn’t like what bit of flying I did do.
I: Why didn’t you like that OTU?
GB: Well, there was a little bit of too much bull. The group captain in charge was an ex-Cranwell boy and I think he thought it was still 1938 and not 1944.
I: So you preferred to risk your life.
GB: Yes.
I: Than have the bull?
GB: Have the bull. Yes.
I: Did you go back on ops in the end?
GB: Well, we did our conversion unit on to Lancasters and we were picked out unfortunately to go to Warboys for PFF training so by the time we’d finished the PFF training the war had finished. They had special training at Warboys and then we had to go through another course of automatic gun laying turret which was new to the gunners. By the time we’d finished those courses the war had finished. We finished up at 156 Squadron at Upwood and that was quite enjoyable because we did [pause] took ground crew on what was called a Cook’s Tour. We used to fly them over Germany up the Ruhr and show them all the damage that they’d helped to do in maintaining the aircraft. I did two of those Cook’s Tours in in June and we did a little bit of flying. I did an air test for the Royal Aeronautical Establishment. Another Cook’s Tour. We did a postmortem to Denmark where they did an actual like on operation to Denmark to see how the German radar system worked and that was on the 29th of June ’45. That was a five and a half hour.
I: Testing the radar defences.
GB: Yes. Of the, that the Germans had. Then we just did local flying and then for three days we were dumping. The 21st, the 24th and the 27th of July was dumping incendiaries in to the North Sea that were no good. And in the August of ’44 we, the 1st of August we did a passenger trip to Frankfurt and Nuremberg taking crew, ground crew in and bringing ground crew out. And we had a trip which made me want to go back to Italy when I got married but on the 15th of August ’45 we went to Bari in Italy and we had three days. Well, we crammed twenty of the 8th Army boys into a Lancaster fuselage, gave the a sick bag and put their kit in the bomb bays and flew them home. That was thoroughly enjoyable to see Italy.
I: Can I ask you about the difference between Lancasters and the Halifaxes. What did you feel about flying in the two?
GB: Well, on a Lancaster the flight engineer did the work of a second pilot. He did the throttles, looked after the undercarriage controls, flaps and everything. But as regards flying I still like the Halifax. Especially the Halifax Mark 3 with the Hercules Centaurus engines. It was a marvellous aircraft. There was more room in it. It could carry a bombload of twelve thousand pounds but it couldn’t carry the big bombs because they hadn’t the depth of the bomb bays. But I still liked the Halifax. I think it was because I did all my operations in them and I got through a tour with them.
I: Did the Halifax have any disadvantages?
GB: I don’t think so. Not the later ones. The one of the first lots, the first ones had a tendency to stall but they altered that by doing, altering the rudder system.
I: What did you learn in the Pathfinder course?
GB: I took a bomb aimer’s course and learned how to drop bombs [laughs] That’s the only difference.
I: How did you do that?
GB: Well, they give you a concentrated course on dropping practice bombs and that was the only difference.
I: Now, can I ask you some general questions about operations in the war. what was morale like amongst the bomber crews as far as you personally experienced it?
GB: Very good. Very high indeed. I only ever knew one person who went LMF and he was a member of our crew but everyone else that I knew enjoyed the life. It was a good life. I mean admittedly it was very very dangerous but it was a clean life. You came back to a clean bed and you came back to good food and you were treated well. You were given leave every six weeks. You were. You had extra rations when you came home. It was a dangerous job but they looked after you and discipline wasn’t severe on bomber squadrons. That was on the Canadian group anyhow. But aircrew was quite relaxed.
I: Could you see signs of LMF in this chap?
GB: No. No, we couldn’t. It was only the second trip after we got a good hiding and he never said anything on the night when we did the emergency landing at Woodbridge. When we came back the next day I met him in the Sergeant’s Mess in the afternoon and he said what had happened and I never saw him again. He was off the squadron as quick as that.
I: So you couldn’t think of any reason why he should have gone LMF.
GB: No. None at all. He was the mid-upper gunner and that was just it. He just threw the sponge in.
I: What did the rest of the crew think about him going LMF? Did you have sympathy or did you look down on him?
GB: I don’t think they looked down on him. They were just pleased that he’d gone so quick and nobody could dwell on the subject. And when we got two new gunners and as I say we were away within seven days of that operation on Stuttgart 18th to the 26th and we got two spare gunners. And after that we got two permanent gunners.
I: Were the aircrew superstitious? Did they have any lucky charms or anything like that?
GB: Yes, I’ve still got my little St Christopher cross and three us was always emptied our bladder on the starboard wheel before we took off. Myself, the rear gunner and the wireless operator.
I: This was a superstition was it?
GB: Always did it. Always, whether it was a daylight or a night op. Whether the groupie was there or anybody it was always emptied against the starboard wheel.
I: And did other crews do that?
GB: I think other crews always went in in certain order. Pilot first and like that.
I: What were the briefings like? Can you describe the scene when you got the briefings?
GB: Well, when it was the Berlin and you looked up and everyone said, ‘Berlin,’ everyone, ‘Oh.’ That was it. Then you just stepped back in silence and let them all give you the information. The German targets when you saw them when you saw the red lines leading you knew you were in for a warm night. The French targets everyone [clap] was happy.
I: They clapped.
GB: Well, there was that and a cheer when they said Caen or St Leu d’Esserent like that. I mean compared to the German targets they were easy. The only targets that we didn’t really like, the whole crew, was the mine laying duty because they, the majority of them were so long and there were so few of you you felt so exposed. I mean the Germans would probably leave you alone but then the next time they’d probably lose four five aircraft out of twenty odd. They would really come down on you like a tonne of bricks than leave you alone. When they hit you they hit you.
I: What do you feel about the criticism that has been lodged against Bomber Command since the war?
GB: I think its people who have got no idea about a war. They have no idea what the targets were like. Bombing had to be done. It was the only way of offensive against the Germans and I don’t think they take in to fact the amount of damage that we did do. The amount of people that were tied down. There was over a million people tied down in German defence. There was thirty thousand anti-aircraft guns and over, nearly ten thousand of those were eighty eight millimetre. Now if those eighty eight ten thousand millimetres had been used on the beaches of Normandy the Channel would have been blood red. They had, the German defences had all the ammunition they wanted up to within six weeks of the war. They were never short. They rationed the Army but they never rationed the local defence. And after all we did reduce production and if you reduced production by twelve and a half percent of the Tiger tanks it’s a heck of a lot because there was nothing could touch a Tiger. So I think the criticism has been very unfair because the boys went through hell.
I: When you were at these stations how and where did you spend your spare time?
GB: Well, at Middleton St George and Croft we used to go into Darlington and we all had one particular pub. The Fleece. And that’s where we spent our time. At the Fleece. But I was up there about eight or nine years ago and it’s been knocked down. The Old Fleece pub.
I: Did you put any kind of trophies or anything like that up in the bar?
GB: No. No, we just went there to drink and sing and other things.
I: Were there any breaches of security with people telling girlfriends about —
GB: Not to my knowledge.
I: Ops.
GB: No. No. If you were going up there for a night out you didn’t know anything because the station would be closed if there was a full ops on. There would only be probably only a few ground crew but the aircrew wouldn’t go, be allowed out. So most of the telephone lines were shut down. Were closed. You couldn’t make outside calls if there was ops on.
I: Did the German Air Force ever attack these airfields.
GB: No. Not to my knowledge. Not whilst ours.
Now, I think after the war had ended you went out to Burma.
Burma, yes. On 267 Squadron at Mingaladon. The squadron was keeping the airways open taking mail and passengers flying from Mingaladon in Burma up to Dum Dum at Calcutta. And then from, back again and then from Mingaladon to Bangkok. Bangkok, Saigon. Saigon to Kai Tak which is the aerodrome for Hong Kong on the mainland of Kowloon and they used to fly down to Singapore.
I: This is Dakotas.
GB: On Dakotas. Yes. And the flight engineers were all remustered as air quarter masters on those trips looking after the baggage and the passengers and I had about fifteen of the lads under me. We used to take them out on these trips which they thoroughly enjoyed going up to Calcutta. Spending a day in Calcutta and then coming back going down to Hong Kong. We had a thoroughly enjoyable time.
I: What kind of passengers were you moving?
GB: Well, RAF and Burmese and if you were coming from India you used to bring down the Indians who were coming down on business trips or anything like that. Used to bring our own people down to [unclear] and look after the stores. Generally taking mail across to Bangkok, Saigon.
I: So you were a bit like an airline.
GB: A bit like an airline. Yes. A bit rough and ready. I did one or two. I went to Saigon and worked with Saigon. Wanted to look around during the night time but we were informed that all personnel were on curfew and had to be in by 9 o’clock. And the biggest shock I ever had was walking into the hotel where we were billeted to be given a salute by a Jap prisoner of war with a rifle and fixed bayonets.
I: When was this that you were in Saigon?
GB: 12th of February ’46. Then from Saigon we’d go to Kai Tak which was the aerodrome for Hong Kong on the mainland and the people of the mainland which was a British colony I’ve never known people so friendly to see us. We were taken into cafes and restaurants and you could have everything you wanted.
I: In Hong Kong.
GB: In Hong Kong. But what I was surprised about Hong Kong is that they had everything on show and sale and the war had only been over for five months. You could go in and buy a Rolex Oyster watch. You couldn’t see them in Europe but they found them. They could. You could buy anything you wanted.
I: Were these Chinese who were —
GB: Yes. The —
I: You in Hong Kong.
GB: In Hong Kong where they were first class.
I: Coming back to Saigon did the Japanese soldiers do their job well?
GB: Yes, as far as I know they had no complaints. They guarded us well. But the trouble was just beginning to start then. There was just a bit of discontent amongst the Saigon people I think. It was just beginning to start with the Viet Cong. Just beginning to get unruly.
I: What did you see of disorder there?
GB: Nothing at the night time. That’s when it happened. During the day everything was normal. It was on a night time when they used to come and try and interfere on the aerodrome but we were in the town itself so we saw nothing.
I: So they were trying to attack the aerodrome.
GB: Trying to you know disrupt it more or less.
I: Did you see any French military presence there?
GB: Well, last I was there the only French presence was two Corvettes in the harbour. There was no French troops whatsoever. If the French had spent a little more time in French Indo China as it was then instead of parading around Europe they might have been in a bit better position out there.
I: Did you feel in much danger in Saigon?
GB: No. Not really. I wasn’t there long enough and the short time where the trouble was we were in the hotel out of the way.
I: You were telling me about 29 OTU at Bruntingthorpe was it called?
GB: Bruntingthorpe.
I: Where is that?
GB: Just outside Leicester.
I: And you were telling me about the excessive bull there that drove you to apply for a second tour. Can you give any examples of not —
GB: Well —
I: Without mentioning the group captain’s name any examples of the kind of bull that went on there?
GB: Well, we had once a month we had an officer’s dining in night where all the tables were put in the shape of a horseshoe with the group captain in the centre and then going left to right from squadron leader. From wing commander, squadron leader, flight lieutenant, flying officer down to pilot officer which was pre-war bull. Not wartime discipline. And then he would hold a full parade of the whole OTU and every officer and every airman would parade on the main runway and would march past the rostrum as though they were the guards which again goes back to pre-war. It should never have been done in wartime RAF. But the Australians didn’t like it because we had a lot of Australians go through there and they objected strongly. And in the Officer’s Mess we had a very big organ by a very well known organist. The organ, keyboard and the sound box system was flooded with beer. The Mess notice board all the Mess board notices were burned down by the Australians. The group captain had his own hook for his hat and coat with a bolt right through the wall. The peg was pulled out. Also, part of the wall [laughs] In fact they did so much damage the group captain closed the Officer’s Mess bar for a week. All because of bull.
I: Did you approve?
GB: No.
I: Of what the Aussies did?
GB: Yes. I did. But no one was allowed in the Officer’s Mess after 5.30 unless they were in full dress. No battle dress. I came back and I’ll tell you the exact day. We’d, I’d been out a cross country to check the pilot for engine handling on the 19th of February ‘45 and we took off at 12 o’clock and we’d been diverted to Husband Bosworth. And by the time we got back it was 16.35. I was pulled up for entering the Mess in battle dress and not allowed to have a meal, my evening meal until I had changed. And the evening meal finished at 19.00 hours which is 7 o’clock and I didn’t get in as I say until 16 —
I: Twenty five you said.
GB: That’s how bad, that’s how bad the bull was.
I: You also were telling me about another job you had I think in ’46 of having to deal with airmen’s possessions who had been killed.
GB: Yes.
I: In accidents.
GB: That was the, I did that at 29 OTU. The last job I had was on for in the July 1946 was Dakota KN585 was hit by lightning and crashed in to the Irrawaddy Delta at Bassein. The death roll was twenty two. By the time we got the bodies they were four days old and I had to [pause] another flight lieutenant and the local police identified the bodies and arranged burial which was a very distressing thing to do especially as five days later I was on my home.
I: How were the possessions dealt with?
GB: Well, most of the possessions that they had I had to burn because they’d been on the bodies and they had been five days in the swamp and they smelled terribly and there was very very little went home. And of the twenty two they had no identification. They were all just interred with no headstone. No one knew who they were. They were interred at the European Cemetery at that time in Bassein. They would later be moved to the War Graves.
I: But you were telling me about your special problem you had with the possessions of Australians.
GB: When I was at 29 OTU. Yes. With the letters I mean the Aussie boys would have two or three girlfriends and the trouble was sorting out the letters to make sure that the right ones went home and the other ones were destroyed. Of the, we had two crews killed whilst I was there. Eleven men died.
I: Would any of them leave wills?
GB: No. There was no wills. I never found a will in the, any of the airmen who I buried. I went through their personal effects.
[Music]
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
War Memoir - George Bilton
Description
An account of the resource
Talks of early life at school and work in Hull. Volunteered as ARP messenger and described duties and air raid damage in Hull. Volunteered as aircrew and initially selected for wireless operator/air gunner but later asked to change to air engineer. Trained in Blackpool and RAF St Athan. Crewed up with mixed Canadian British crew on Halifax HCU before being posted to 6 Group 427 Squadron. His pilot did not return from a second dickie orientation sorties so crew went back to conversion unit to crew up and train with new pilot. Then posted to 428 Squadron. Subsequently transferred to 434 Squadron when pilot promoted. Completed tout of 34 operations on Halifax. Gives detailed description of individual operations, experiences and activities. Describes flying in Halifax and discusses moral, discipline issues, operating with Canadians and other general comments. Did instructional tour after completing operational tour, offered commission, did not enjoy it and volunteered for second tour but curtailed by end of war. Comments on tours after war including one in Burma including dealing with casualties in from a Dakota crash in Egypt.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
G H A Bilton
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Oral history
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABiltonGHA960623
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Hull
England--Lancashire
England--Blackpool
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--Durham (County)
England--Leicestershire
Burma
Germany
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Stuttgart
England--Berkshire
France
France--La Rochelle
France--Lille
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Caen
Germany--Hamburg
France--Paris
France--Creil
France--Falaise
Germany--Braunschweig
France--Brest
England--Sussex
England--Huntingdonshire
Italy
Italy--Bari
Denmark
Denmark--Copenhagen
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Chantilly Forest
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
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
Julie Williams
427 Squadron
428 Squadron
434 Squadron
6 Group
aerial photograph
Air Raid Precautions
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
bombing
C-47
civil defence
Cook’s tour
crewing up
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
military discipline
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Croft
RAF Harwell
RAF Middleton St George
RAF St Athan
RAF Thorney Island
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Warboys
RAF Woodbridge
target indicator
target photograph
training
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
Window
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/11929/[1]DAVID AND THE RAF2 [2].pdf
35b5401702ea96880cafe22e9866fad0
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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DAVID AND THE RAF
My brother David’s very distinguished wartime career with the RAF - two DSOs and a DFC, and promotion to Wing Commander at 28 - warrants a separate appendix to these family notes. He has kindly helped me to compile it by giving me the run of his log books, and I have supplemented them from a number of other sources.
He became interested in flying in the early 1930s. I recall him taking his small brother of 9 or 10 to an air show at Eastleigh and abandoning him while he went up as passenger in a Tiger Moth doing aerobatics. That may well have given him the incentive to join the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1934 as a weekend pilot. He did much of his training at Hamble, on the Solent. When war broke out in September 1939 he was called up immediately and had to abandon his legal training. He spent the “phoney war” towing target drogues at a bombing and gunnery school at Evanton in Scotland. His log books show him rated as an “average” pilot.
At the end of April 1940, just before the Germans attacked in the West, he went to Brize Norton for intermediate training (earning an “above-average” rating) and then to Harwell for operational training on Wellingtons, the main twin-engined heavy bomber of the early war years. On 20th September, just as the Battle of Britain was ending, he was posted to his first operational squadron, No 149, part of No 3 Group, at the big pre-war air station at Mildenhall. His first operational sortie was over Calais towards the end of September, no doubt to attack the invasion barges.
Over the following five months he took part in some 31 night raids. The German defence at this time was relatively feeble by comparison with what was to follow, and so the tour was correspondingly tolerable; however bitter experience had shown that day bombing was much too costly, and the night bombing techniques were very inaccurate. His first raid on Berlin, at the end of October, was particularly eventful; they got hopelessly lost on their return, came in over Bristol, and ended up over Clacton as dawn was breaking with very little fuel left. There both the Army and the Navy opened up on them, and even the Home Guard succeeded in putting a bullet through the wing. They eventually made a forced crash landing at St Osyth. The Home Guard commander, a retired general, entertained him generously and he finally got back to Mildenhall where his Group Captain forgave him for the damaged aircraft and advised him to go out and get drunk. He took the advice, and in the pub he met a WAAF whom he married eight months later (maybe that is why he remembers that particular day so well.)
The gauntlet of Friendly Fire seems to have been a not uncommon hazard to be faced. On another occasion, when he had to make three circuits returning to Mildenhall, the airfield machine gunners opened fire on him from ground level; he thought they were higher up and judged his height accordingly, and narrowly missed the radio masts which were not, as he thought, below him.
The longest raids on this tour were trips of over ten hours to Italy: to Venice, which they overflew at low level, and to the Fiat works at Turin. He described the latter raid, and the spectacular views of the Alps it afforded, in a BBC broadcast in December 1940. The commonest targets were the Ruhr and other German cities, and some raids were made at lower level on shipping in French ports. The raid which won him the DFC was on 22nd November, on Merignac aerodrome near Bordeaux, which “difficult target he attacked from a height of 1,500 feet and successfully bombed hangars, causing large fires and explosions. As a result of his efforts the task of following aircraft was made easier ......... He has at all times displayed conspicuous determination and devotion to duty.”
It was at Mildenhall that he featured in a series of propaganda photos by Cecil Beaton,
“A Day in the Life of a Bomber Pilot”; they were given a good deal of publicity and in fact David appears in one of them on the cover of the recently published video of the 1941 propaganda film “Target for Tonight”, also made with the help of 149 Squadron - though he did not take part in the film. Beaton describes the occasion at some length in his published diaries, though he has thoroughly scrambled the names and personalities, and he “demoted“ David from captain to co-pilot in his scenario.
On completion of this tour, early in March 1941, David was detached on secondment to the Air Ministry to assist with buying aircraft in North America, and later to ferry aircraft within North America and across the Atlantic - he flew the Atlantic at least twice in Hudsons, taking 12 hours or more.
The “chop rate” in Bomber Command increased substantially during the first half of 1941. [Footnote: The average sortie life of aircrew in the Command was never higher than 9.2 and at one time was as low as eight, and during the dark days of 1941-1943 the average survival chances of anyone starting a 30-sortie tour was consistently under 40% and sometimes under 30%. In one disastrous raid, on Nuremburg in March 1944, 795 planes set out, 94 were shot down and another 12 crashed in Britain. During the war as a whole, out of some 125,000 aircrew who served with Bomber Command, 55,500 died.] This coupled with increasing doubts about the value of the results obtained led to a serious decline in aircrew morale. During the summer of 1941 the Germans had considerable success with intruders - fighter aircraft attacking the bombers as they took off or landed at their own bases. At the end of September David returned to No 3 Group and joined No 57 Squadron at Feltwell, still with Wellingtons. His third raid, over Dusseldorf on October 13th, was particularly difficult; they were badly shot up and with their hydraulics out of action they crash landed at Marham on their return. After two more raids the strain finally proved too much and he was admitted to hospital just before Christmas 1941; for the next two months he was there or on sick leave. From then until mid-July he was Group Tactical Officer at HQ No 3 Group, and not directly involved in operations. In July 1942 he was posted to No 15 Operational Training Unit, at Harwell and Hampstead Norris, where he spent six months as a flight commander flying Ansons and Wellingtons, though he did participate in one raid on Dusseldorf while he was there.
In spite of the appointment of Harris early in 1942 and the introduction of the Gee radio navigational aid, results were still considered disappointing, particularly over the Ruhr, and serious questions were raised about the future of Bomber Command. To improve matters, in August 1942 the elite Pathfinder Force was set up under Don Bennett, albeit in the face of considerable opposition from most of the group commanders who were reluctant to lose their best crews to it. At least initially, all the crews joining it had to be volunteers, and to be ready to undertake extended tours. Their task was to fly ahead of the Main Force in four waves: the Supporters, mainly less experienced crew carrying HE bombs, who were to saturate the defences and draw the flak; the Illuminators, who lit up the aiming point with flares; and the Primary Markers and Backers Up who marked the aiming point with indicators. Their methods became more and more refined as the war went on. The increased accuracy required of them, and their position at the head of the bomber stream, inevitably exposed them to greater danger and a higher casualty rate than those of the Main Force.
No 156 Squadron was one of the original units in the Force; it operated from the wartime airfield of Warboys with Wellingtons until the end of 1942 and thereafter with 4-engined Lancasters, the very successful heavy bomber which was the mainstay of Bomber Command in the later years. The squadron flew a total of 4,584 sorties with the loss of 143 aircraft - a ratio of 3.12%. David joined it in January 1943, again as a flight commander. In the following four months he carried out a further 23 raids (all but one as a pathfinder) in Lancasters. The log books note occasional problems - “coned”, “shot up on way in”, “slight flak damage”, and so on. [Footnote: "Coned" = caught in a cone of converging searchlights, an experience which he says put him off hunting for life.] Much of the period became known as the Battle of the Ruhr, though other targets were also being attacked. He told me once that the raid he was really proud to have been on was the one where instead of marking the targeted town (I think Dortmund) they marked in error a nearby wood, which the main force behind them duly obliterated; only after the war did the Germans express their admiration for the British Intelligence which had identified the highly secret installation hidden in the wood.........
One of the pages in his log book has a cutting from the Times inserted, evidently dated some years later, recalling how in April 1943 the spring came very early and the hedges were billowing with white hawthorn blossom. This puzzled me until I read in a book on 156 Squadron how that blossom had come to have the same significance for them as the Flanders poppies of the 1914-1918 war.
David was promoted to Wing Commander half way through the tour (pathfinders rated one rank above the comparable level elsewhere), and awarded the DSO towards the end of it. The recommendation for this said that he had “at all times pressed home his attacks with the utmost determination and courage in the face of heavy ground defences and fighters. As a pilot he shows powers of leadership and airmanship which have set an outstanding example to the rest of the squadron” - and Bennett himself added, noting that David had just flown four operational sorties in the last five days, “he has provided an example of determination and devotion to duty which it would be difficult to equal.”
On the end of this tour in June 1943, he was sent to command No 1667 Conversion Unit at Lindholme and later Faldingworth. In December 1943 he transferred to a staff appointment at the headquarters of the newly formed 100 (SD) Group at West Raynham and later Bylaugh Hall. At this stage in the war the methods of attack and defence were growing increasingly complex, and this group was formed as a Bomber Support Group, including nightfighters, deceptive measures, and radio countermeasures (RCM). In June 1944, just after D-Day, he was given command of No 192 (SD) Squadron based at Foulsham, another wartime airfield. This squadron had been formed in January 1943 as a specialist RCM unit, and it pioneered this type of operation in Bomber Command; it flew more sorties and suffered more losses (19 aircraft) than any other RCM squadron. While RCM and electronic intelligence were its primary purpose, its aircraft often carried bombs and dropped them on the Main Force targets. RCM took a number of forms - swamping enemy radar and jamming it with “window” tinfoil, looking for new radar types and gaps in its coverage, deceptive R/T transmissions to nightfighters, and so on - and one of the attractions of the work was the considerable measure of autonomy, and the freedom to plan their own operations. These extended to tasks such as searching for V2 launch sites (recorded as “whizzers” in David’s log book) and trying to identify the radio signals associated with them, and supporting the invasion of Walcheren in September. The squadron was equipped with Wellingtons (phased out at the end of 1944), Halifaxes and Mosquitoes, plus a detachment of USAAF Lightnings.
This role was the climax of his career, and lasted until the end of the war and after. It involved him in 25 operational sorties, all in Halifax IIIs, the much improved version of this initially disappointing 4-engined heavy bomber. They carried special electronic equipment and an extra crew member known as the Special Operator. The record of these sorties in the log books, for the most part so formal and statistical up to this point, becomes a little more anecdotal: “rubber-necking on beach” (when he took two senior officers to see the breaching of the dykes at Walcheren), “Munster shambles”, “Lanc blew up and made small hole in aircraft [but only] 4 lost out of 1200!” The furthest east he went was to Gdynia in Poland; on returning from there he had the privilege of becoming the first heavy aircraft to land at Foulsham using the FIDO fog dispersal system. “Finger Finger Fido” was the cryptic comment in the log book.
A number of these sorties were daytime; on one of them, on September 13th, he was chased home by two ME109s which made six attacks on him. One of them opened fire but thanks to violent evasive action his aircraft was undamaged: his own gunners never got a chance to fire. No doubt it was skill of this sort, as well as his survival record, which gave his crew great faith in David’s ability to get them home safely. An encounter on December 29th 1944, on a Window patrol over the Ruhr, was not quite so satisfying; they claimed to have damaged a Ju88 which subsequently proved to be an unhurt Mosquito X from Swannington - and the Mosquito had identified them as a Lancaster. The log entry concludes “Oh dear. FIDO landing, flew into ground. What a day.”
He was awarded a bar to his DSO in July 1945. The recommendation, made in March, recorded that “since being posted to his present squadron he has carried out every one of his sorties in the same exemplary fashion and has set his crews an extremely high standard of devotion to duty and bravery. This standard has had a direct influence on the whole specialist work of the squadron.
“He has been personally responsible for the planning of all the sorties carried out by his special duty unit and by his brilliant understanding and quick appreciation of the everchanging nature of the investigational role of his squadron, much of the success of the investigations performed by his aircraft can be attributed to him. He has shown himself to be fearless and cool in the face of danger, and towards the end of his tour made a point of putting himself on the most arduous and difficult operations.
“Both on the ground and in the air he has been untiring and has not spared himself in his efforts to get his squadron up to the high standard which it has now reached.”
The squadron was disbanded in September, by which time David had completed 501 hours of operations against the enemy in 86 sorties, the great majority of them as captain of his aircraft. He had no ambition to make a permanent career in the RAF; he has commented to Richard that this fact gave him a degree of independence in his dealing with his superiors that he thinks they appreciated and valued. He was demobilised in November and returned to his interrupted law studies.
* * * * * * * * * *
I showed these notes to David, who thought them well written but suggested that they gave a twisted view of the reality - a reaction that I can understand. Since then, however, I have managed to contact one man who flew with David: H B (Hank) Cooper DSO DFC, who first met David in 149 Squadron which he joined in January 1941 as a wireless operator / air gunner for his first tour, and later did two tours as a Special Operator in 192 Squadron, the second of them under David's command. On two occasions he flew as a member of David's crew.
He has written of David that "he was always completely fearless and outstandingly brave and pressed home his attacks to the uttermost. As the Squadron's CO he generated loyalty and warmth, he was an outstanding model to follow. He spent much trouble and time encouraging his junior air crews as well as helping and seeing to the needs of the ground technicians who serviced the aircraft, generally in cold and difficult conditions. He was completely non-boastful, in fact he belittled his own actions (which were always of the highest order) when discussing air operations. [That rings very true!] He was an outstanding squadron commander in all respects, much liked and completely respected by all his air crews and ground crews."
G N D
March 2002
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
David and the RAF
Description
An account of the resource
Account of Wing Commander David Donaldson's RAF career from his early interest in flying and joining the Royal Air Force volunteer reserve in 1934, call up in 1939 and operational tours on 149 Squadron, 57 Squadron, flight commander 156 Squadron pathfinders and commanding 192 (special duties) squadron. Includes training, descriptions of notable operations and incidents, postings between tours to headquarters and training units, pathfinder techniques, radio countermeasures and award of two Distinguished Service Orders and a Distinguished Flying Cross.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
G N Donaldson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2002-03
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four page printed document
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
BDonaldsonGNDonaldsonDWv1
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--Hampshire
England--Hamble-le-Rice
England--Eastleigh
England--Oxfordshire
England--Norfolk
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Scotland--Evanton
England--Suffolk
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Bristol
England--Essex
England--Clacton-on-Sea
Italy
Italy--Venice
Italy--Turin
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dortmund
Netherlands
Netherlands--Walcheren
England--Berkshire
France
France--Bordeaux Region (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Poland
Poland--Gdynia
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Gloucestershire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1934
1939
1940-04
1940-09-20
1940-10
1940-12
1941-10-22
1941
1941-04
1942
1942-07
1942-08
1943
1943-01
1943-04
1943-06
1944
1944-06
1944-09-13
1944-12-29
1945
1945-07
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Frances Grundy
100 Group
149 Squadron
15 OTU
156 Squadron
1667 HCU
192 Squadron
3 Group
57 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
FIDO
forced landing
Gee
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hudson
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
P-38
Pathfinders
pilot
propaganda
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Evanton
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Warboys
RAF West Raynham
target indicator
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/11946/E[Author]RDonaldsonDWXX1119-0001.jpg
f03066a5dba72adafdc23fa2c9a5d2ab
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/11946/E[Author]RDonaldsonDWXX1119-0002.jpg
0c1433e6248b583de825b828477d8df6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/11946/E[Author]RDonaldsonDWXX1119-0003.jpg
9320f044cd46240070cdfc46a2c05ad8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/11946/E[Author]RDonaldsonDWXX1119-0004.jpg
be4445abdc1038d2d2167faa8289b1bf
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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] Nov 19th [/underlined]
Officers Mess
Warboys
Dear Skipper,
I was highly delighted to receive your letter today, have intended writing you to thank you for the telegram you sent, we've been trying to get up to see you, its rather awkward as the G/C has tightened up on that sort of thing, but we'll make a big effort in the near future.
Ken was here last week, had quite a chat with him, he doesn't alter much, he made us laugh with his descriptions of E.F.T.S. & of course the old question of his sickness arose.
[page break]
Mackie arrived back from C.G.S. Today he's a real gen man now & is Squadron Gunnery [?] Leader as Monty has gone to Washington (U.S.A.) Vic, I'm sorry to say has been in hospital & is seven ops behind Launy & I, he got back today and is ready to press on again. We did our 40th last night to the “big city”, the skipper is doing 57 so we shall have 47 by then. I think that will be quite sufficient for a time, I'm feeling a bit fed up now and would like a rest.
I got engaged last leave & as the gong came through the next day you can imagine what a celebration we had, we are getting married as soon as I finish here.
We're all feeing a little downhearted today as W/C White failed to return last night from his 42nd trip, a big shock to everyone as he was very popular on the Squadron. Incidentally the G/C took our crew to Mannheim the other night, what a trip, he's a straight & level merchant, not so good after you & our present skipper, anyhow we did O.K.
I've enclosed three snaps I thought you might like, especially the one of our insignia on “B” beer.
[page break]
Well “skipper” thats all for now so I'll close hoping you're not too browned off.
What are the chances of getting with you when I finish?
All the best
Yours etc,
[underlined] Roy. [/underlined]
(P.S. Vic, Mac & Launy send their very best regards)
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to David Donaldson from Roy Swinney
Description
An account of the resource
Letter to David Donaldson from G R Swinney (Roy) the wireless operator in the pathfinder crew. He gives news of the crew and various other people at Warboys including the loss of wing commander. Waiting to finish his tour of ops. Additional information about this item was kindly provided by the donor.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
G R Swinney
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-11-19
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Frances Grundy
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
E[Author]RDonaldsonDWXX1119
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--Huntingdonshire
Germany
Germany--Mannheim
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
RAF Warboys
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1049/11427/ANewhamDF170727.2.mp3
4317e63f3920f92373f45d230b14638c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Newham, Douglas Frank
D F Newham
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Douglas Newham DFC (1921 - 2022, 1337797, 156440 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an observer with 156, 150, 10 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Newham, DF
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GT: Now, I’m with Mr Douglas F Newham LVO DFC and Doug welcome and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for your history and for the history of what you did with Bomber Command to be put forward for the Digital Archives. So, please tell us your story.
DN: Right. My name is Douglas Newham. I was born 13th of November 1921. Consequently, ninety five years of age at the moment. I started my life in, in the RAF by volunteering in 1940/41 and did my first operational tour as a sergeant with a serial number of 1337797. I did my training in the UK. I consider I was very fortunate to do, to do that because right from the word go I got used to flying in weather such as we have over here rather than in the blue skies of South Africa or Canada. So right from the word go I got used to crap weather. Any rate, I did my training in the UK as a navigator observer which was what I always wanted to do. I had no wish to be a pilot. I saw the duties of a navigator as more challenging. Any rate, I did my flying first of all on the dreaded Botha. The Blackburn Botha. And then very quickly they were grounded and we were on Blenheims. The short nosed Blenheim and the long nosed Blenheim for navigation. And my navigation training was from Jurby on the Isle of Man. And most of our navigational exercises were all up and down the Irish Sea and off the west coast of Scotland in glorious, glorious scenery and quite challenging from a navigational point of view. Having finished my navigation, bombing and gunnery training at Jurby, we were then moved up to Kinloss in Scotland, near Inverness. This time flying Whitleys. The old Armstrong Whitworth Flying coffin which looked like a coffin at least. And we finished there our navigation training up there prior to being posted to a Wellington Squadron and that would have been in the tail end of 1941 the beginning of ’42. Strangely enough we were first posted to 156 Squadron which was then still on Wellingtons. And it was the forerunner of one of the Pathfinder Squadrons. As a result of that at a very early stage I was given excellent training on the navigational aid Gee which I loved for the rest of my career. However, that was just as Pathfinder course. 8 Group was being formed and as a consequence of that our crew were posted from 156 to 150 Squadron down in North Lincolnshire. Again on Wellington 3.
GT: Ok.
DN: We stop.
GT: Yeah. Doug, where did you crew up? And who was your skipper and crew please? Could you, can you remember?
DN: Right. We crewed up at our Operational Training Unit at Kinloss in Scotland and I crewed up with a Canadian pilot, Bill Harris. Several years older than, than I was. As a mild diversion at the moment several years after the war I met his sister and married her. So I married my pilot’s kid sister from Vancouver. But that is another long story. Any rate Bill and I and our crew we started our first tour of operations on Wellingtons operating from Kirmington. I remember the first couple of trips were down the north west coast of France. Mining. Dropping sea mines in the channels used by the U-boats. And we dropped mines at probably something like oh five or six hundred feet and encountered a few flak ships. They were very very steep learning curves. I do recall that my [pause] somebody, somebody had suggested to my pilot that unbeknownst to me that it would be safer to do an asymmetric weave. Never to do a regular weave because that could be predicted but to do little bit one way a little bit more that way and then perhaps back. But nothing regular. Well, unbeknownst to me Bill tried this on our first operation. Suffice to say that I think we toured the whole of northwest France but we did find exactly where we wanted to drop mines. Did so and found our way back by which time they thought we were, we were gone because we were about two and a half hours later than we should have been and we were getting a bit short on fuel. Any rate, we carried on. Proceeded with our first tour with further mining operations and then bomber operations over western Germany. Still on the dear old Wellington. Our maximum load was four thousand pounds and we, we had one aircraft that did carry a four thousand pounder. It didn’t even have any bomb doors. It just had an open space and the four thousand pounder was pulled just, just up inside. Any rate, all was going reasonably well there and then there was the allied invasion of north west Africa. Of Algeria. And to our great surprise half the Squadron was sent on this invasion. So we, we flew down to Cornwall. And then from Cornwall down to Gibraltar. And then Gibraltar to an ex-French Air Force airstrip about thirty miles from Algiers. And we had, I think it was twelve aircraft. And our targets were mostly the German ports of Tunis and Ferryville. Then bounced back down the Tunisian coast or over to Sicily. Maybe up to Sardinia. But in the central Mediterranean we were fortunate on one of those operations that we were carrying our four thousand pounder and I did manage to get a direct hit on one of the lock gates at a German port called Ferryville which put the port out of action. Which was rather fortunate. Anyway —
GT: So from that point Doug you’d moved from Bomber Command through to the Mediterranean Command.
DN: Yes. To the North West African Strategic Air Force which consisted of, I think twelve aircraft. Yeah. And our command, commander in chief down there was Jimmy Doolittle who did the Tokyo raids off the carriers. Anyway, so we had started our tour in Bomber Command and then towards the end we went over to, well went down to, posted at away from the UK down to Algiers and moved in to the North West African Strategic. Anyway, came home. Finished there by which time we had lost, well our aircraft was the last remaining aircraft of the twelve that went out there. Most of them I must admit were either accidents or bad weather. Some being shot down. The casualty rate was considerably, considerably less than it would have been had we stayed in Europe. Very much. I mean, we were operating mostly between five and ten thousand feet. We were subject to a lot of light flak but compared to what it was like over Europe in those early days we were extremely fortunate. And recognised it. Germany had a few night fighters out there. Nothing like subsequently developed in Europe. Anyway.
GT: Yeah.
DN: Back to the UK where the crew were dispersed. I was dispersed to Abingdon which was an Operational Training Unit with Whitleys and I was in a Navigation School doing, trying to convert the navigators from their, their early theoretical navigation practices into more realistic operations. Training. Training flights and then more realistic of what it was like over the other side. Now, for some reason, and I have no idea why I was selected to go to the Central Navigation School for a staff navigator’s course. I have no idea why I was picked out. I get to this school and I find that I am the only NCO on the, on the course. They were mostly flight lieutenants and there was one wing commander and I was the lonely sergeant. As a result of that my social life was nil because they were all in the officer’s mess. I was in the sergeant’s mess. So I had, really had nothing else to do but study and I was absolute. I mean I I loved the course. I had, had always hoped as a youth that maybe I might get to university but that was not on in those days. But here I was on what was virtually a university course on navigation and everything to do with it. Astronomy, compasses, radio, tides, astronomy, huge amount of mathematics. And I loved it. I had got nothing else to do. Then I became an absolute bookworm and a swat and it got a bit embarrassing when the only sergeant on the course came out top and I was not very popular with my other course mates. But anyway my commission came through just as I finished that course and I went back to my Operational Training Unit only to find out that one of the conditions of such a course, the staff navigator’s course was that you were obliged to stay in a training position or a staff position for at least a year before you could go back on operations. Any rate I tried to wriggle my way around that and I very nearly got to the Mosquito Met Reconnaissance Flight but it was cancelled at the last moment and I was obliged to stay for that year. However, on the three hundredth and sixty fifth day after finishing the course I was called down to Group Headquarters and offered a job of navigation leader on a Squadron of Halifax aircraft up in 4 Group. So I grabbed that and from, from Abingdon, from my Operational Training Unit went up to Melbourne, just outside York on Halifax 3s. Initially I was not a member of 8 Group and I could only put myself on operations if somebody, somebody went sick. But then one of the flight commanders lost his navigator and he and I then lined up together. That was Squadron Leader Bill Allen who was on his second tour. And Bill and I hit it off precisely. We both had the same view on flying duties. We both trusted one another implicitly and equally the rest. Trusted the rest of our crew. He was a flight commander. I was the nav leader. We both had similar views on our administrative and leadership duties. Bill, for example would always ensure that if there was a new pilot he would never send a new crew up on a long distance difficult flight as their first operation. Whereas some of the other, other flight commanders would take a brand new crew and stick them on anything. I mean I’ve had a little bit of a tussle with one flight commander and indeed with my Squadron commander because we had a brand new crew and they put them on Leipzig which was a ten hour flight. And I objected to this for a new crew. I got overruled and they operated and the crew concerned did a bloody good job but that was, that was lucky. But any rate my own skipper he and I had very similar views and we would not infrequently take lame ducks with us. And any rate we Bill would too, too frequently choose the rough targets rather than the easy targets. But he, he believed in leadership in its, in its true sense. We did, on one occasion towards the end of the war lead a three hundred. I think it was three hundred and fifty or four hundred raid of Halifax aircraft. We were the lead aircraft on a German oil target north of the Ruhr. But in the end we got separated because we were operating more frequently then Group thought we should. They wanted us to stay so that we would remain in our admin capacity for a longer period. Frankly we didn’t give a damn about that. We operated when we wanted to. As a result of which Bill was promoted to a wing commander and moved elsewhere and I was disciplined. However, Bill, I’d say he was a bloody good pilot. He ended up with a and DFC. And any rate I then finished my spell with 10 Squadron during the ’39/45 European war. I would fly with anybody who needed a navigator and chalked up my operations. Anyway, the end of the European war came and the Squadron was immediately, I think it was the second day after the, after the European war was declared over if I remember correctly we converted to Dakotas for glider towing and paratroop dropping for the Malaysian invasion. Well, they wanted to put me in a staff post somewhere but the Squadron was going out on operational duties so I managed to pitch it that I stay with the Squadron. And we went out with, well we converted to paratrooping and glider towing down in Oxfordshire. That was quite entertaining too. We were towing gliders. Let’s see what it’s like to fly in one. These troop carrying gliders that have, I mean they had a descent angle like a brick. They had flaps as big as barn doors. You came down at a hell of an angle. And on the flight I was doing in a glider and we, we disconnected from the tug and the glider pilot stuck the nose down. I was standing behind. I lost all sight of the sky. All you could see was the patch of ground where eventually you hoped you were going to land and he’d get each flap as I say like two bloody great barn doors and very low altitude pull the stick back into his stomach and you’re down. I tried to have a go at seeing what it was like to join with the paratroopers who were, we were dropping. But I got down to the dropping zone and unfortunately the surface wind was too strong so we had to call that operation off. Otherwise I would have had a go at that. Anyway —
GT: Doug, before we leave the European theatre for you just quickly going back to the Halifax. It seemed to be always the third cousin of the four engine heavies. To you guys and where you flew it was she as good as the Lancaster? How did you guys feel?
DN: We on, on the Halifax, we frankly loved the aircraft and thought it was better than the Lanc. We believed it was tougher. It could take more damage than the Lancaster. It couldn’t, it’s true it couldn’t carry the same load and it couldn’t fly at the same altitude but we certainly in the last, the last few months of the war until the Halifax 3 came in with the uprated Hercules engine we were certainly below the Lancasters and we couldn’t as I say we couldn’t carry the same bomb load. Later however in the later marks of Halifax we were damn nearly as good as the Lanc in those respects. It wasn’t as convenient an aircraft for a crew. I mean the wireless operator was sitting almost underneath the pilot’s seat. Feet. In the nose of the aircraft. And the navigator was sitting in front of him. So, to get, if you wanted to get back or even get up towards the pilot’s compartment I had to get out of my seat, walk past the wireless operator and up a couple of steps. So as I say you were way down below the pilot’s feet. It wasn’t as sociable shall we say but I think those of us who were operating on Halifaxes had every much as faith in our aircraft as a Lancaster. There was always rivalry between Lancs and Halifaxes. I still say I’d just as soon fly in a Halibag as I would in a Lanc. Sadly, I never flew in a Lancaster. In fact I never even, no I’ve never even been on board a Lancaster. You know. On the deck. But a Halifax yes. I enjoyed that and had great faith in it. Yeah.
GT: Many of the crews I’ve talked with have talked of how corkscrewing with the Lancaster or the Stirling was was a special art and and most pilots managed it. Some did not. How did the Halifax deal and did your pilot master the art of corkscrewing?
DN: Yes. The early Halifaxes had significant problems in that they, they could get in deep trouble by stalling the rudders. That was when the Halifax had a kind of defect. A fin. And then later, it was in the later Halifaxes it was made into a rectangular fin which overcame the problem of stalling of the rudders. But Bill could certainly corkscrew the Halifax and throw it around the sky like nobody’s business. And he did [laughs] No. I say the Halifax did not have as good a reputation. Bomber Harris for example disliked the Halifax and would have, all his memoirs and books about him indicate that he would, he would have sacrificed a year of production of Halifax aircraft if the factories could have been turned over to Lancasters. But that was not agreed and the Halifax did not, never did have the same reputation. I think a bit unjustified but it was based primarily I think on the fact of it had less bomb load and less range than the Lancaster did. But as far as the attitude of the crews and the confidence in the crews in their aircraft it was certainly equal. Equal to the Lancaster.
GT: Now, Doug it has been made mention that if they lended total production to the Mosquito that having thousands more Mosquitoes and not the four engine seven man bombers they could have saved a lot more air crew but still achieved the bombing of Germany. What’s your opinion on that?
DN: It, I mean statistically it’s true. You’d have had to have had a lot more. A lot more Mossies. It was questionable whether we’d got, whether we got enough airfields because obviously you’d have to have three or four Mosquitoes for every Lancaster or every Halifax. You might not have had some of the precision of the mass bombing that the Lancs and the Halifaxes achieved although with [pause] with Oboe and some of the other navigational aids the Lanc — the Mossies were capable of accurate bombing but I can’t see the big mass raids being conducted by what would achieve the same bomb load per raid as the, as the Lancasters and the Halifaxes. I mean a raid comprising just of Mosquitoes would have been at most six seven of four thousand or five thousand pounds so you’d have had to have had two or two and a half times as many aircraft. And then there would have been the problems of concentration and mid-air collisions and the density of traffic. Have you got enough runways and aircrews in the UK to do that? So no. I think we probably had it about right. Although the Mosquito, Mosquito was a very fine aircraft. Again, I would have loved, I would have loved to have gone in those. But no. My own job as a navigator in a heavy bomber I I really loved it. I think I was good at it. My navigation aids of Gee and H2S and Air Position Indicator. I was paranoid about accuracy. Way over the top and quite unrealistic. I admit that. But I used to fix my position either by Gee or by H2S every six minutes. I had my Air Position Indicator and I was working to the nearest decimal of a minute. So I was working to the nearest six seconds and I was fixing every, every [pause] every six minutes. The reason being if I did it every six minutes I didn’t have to work out how many miles or knots I was doing in an hour. Just moved the decimal point. So I had a, a very very strict navigation procedure and discipline for myself which a number of others on the Squadron followed. I mean if you did a ten hour, a ten hour trip and you were fixing every six minutes, you know. That, you’d be doing ten fixes, ten calculations of ETA and track and distance of track I’d say every six minutes. They’d do that ten times in an hour. If you’re on a ten hour flight you got a hundred. It was a bloody high workload. However, I loved it. That was my job and I loved it. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. Yet the Americans obviously were pretty thick to the last couple of years of the war in the air during the day and I was also made aware that most of the flights of the American bombers only had a navigator aircraft. And so most of the aircraft didn’t actually have a navigator.
DN: Yeah.
GT: Did you have contact with the Americans in any way? And what’s your thought on the fact that they went in with one aircraft with one navigator for a bunch? With your experience on the Halifax there.
DN: I think that was probably misguided. But their whole technique was very different from ours. I mean, we were operating at night because, well we had to. We could not defend ourselves by day against the Germans fighters. We had difficulty doing so at night. I mean we were very near, I believe Bomber Command was very nearly overwhelmed by the German night fighters. Witness Nuremberg. The number we lost there. But the only way we could operate during most of the war was certainly at night where obviously you had to have one navigator per aircraft. When we were operating by day once we got air superiority and I mentioned the occasion that we led a three hundred and fifty or four hundred aircraft on on this oil target it’s true that the others could have followed us. I think it would be, it would be foolish to do so because you had no, no insurance policy. If that one aircraft got clobbered the others would be in trouble. I, I was of the opinion that most of the American aircraft had at least a second pilot was able to to have a fair bit of expertise at navigation but to be honest I’m, I’m not adequately familiar with what the Americans could do. We certainly had, well, to me navigation was an art and I loved it. Yeah. Very different for tactical if you were on tactical target by shall we say smaller aircraft like the Boston or the North American. That would have been a lot, a lot different from my type of navigation. It would have been a lot more map reading than. I mean I was doing mostly, would be by Gee and H2S and traditional DR navigation. Occasionally, very occasionally you’d resort to a bit of astro but Gee and H2S were my, my two main nav aids.
GT: And were they cutting technology for the time? Was, was that, was that really awesome designs and futuristic equipment that they gave you to work with?
DN: I think so. I mean there was other stuff coming along later. The Americans used Loran and I believe some of, some of 8 Group and 5 Group used Loran. They also used GH which I didn’t use. But certainly H2S was, I believe pretty cutting, cutting edge stuff. And they, I mean even in my time they, they got working to shorter and shorter wavelength. They, we had introduced gyro stabilised standards so the aerial scanner was, was stabilised. So you could move the aircraft and the, the Gee pitch, the H2S picture on your screen didn’t change because the scanner itself, the rotating scanner was gyro stabilised. We had variable rates of scan so you could change the speed of scan to take better definition or better accuracy. So we were getting better accuracy because the frequency reduction has got shorter wavelength. We had various variable speed scan and gyro stabiliser and those, those modifications were being introduced while we were operating. So I think that, I mean much of that stuff went on at Malvern which was a kind of centre of, one of the centres of research. And I think they did a bloody good job of keeping up to date. I mean there’s been a lot of criticism about navigational ability and bombing inaccuracy in the early part of the war and there was a government, government inspired survey of this. And results were pretty horrible. I can’t remember the details now but it was less than a fraction of our bombs were getting within kind of five or twenty miles. And I think that was justified but they were in the early days of the war and then at the same time there was a lot of development work going on with new compasses, gyro stabilisers, distance reading compasses, with H2S, with Gee, with the Air Position Indicator. There were lots of developments that were coming along in those early days of the war and kept coming along. And I think the development guys were doing, you know a brilliant job all the time in trying to improve things. Perhaps we in 4 Group didn’t see as many of those clever things that perhaps 5 Group or 8 Group but I think there was a lot. A huge amount of credit due to those guys who were in the development. Equally, on the, some of the radar counter measure stuff which is another one of my interests on how we, how we tried to fox the German radar and the German night fighters. Ok. They, they out foxed us with their upward pointing cannon and Schrage Musik and it was on, but it was on a programme with the BBC some years ago about the see-saw activity that was going on. The Germans would introduce something. We would either counter that or better it. And it didn’t matter whether it was radar or weaponry or tactics it was, it was a swings and roundabouts, see-saw developing, changing all the time. And if you look at some of the, I’d say the German radar and the systems of Fighter Control while they were changing that we were introducing new measures to detect their fighters to make life difficult for them. I mean, we, you probably know we had, we had microphones in the engine nacelles of our aircraft. So if we were over the other side our wireless operators would tune in to the frequencies used by the German fighter controllers. Then blast the noise of the engines on that frequency to drown out. The most brilliant thoughts of all were the Germans realised that we were doing our damndest to mess up their radar and their fighter control system and they suddenly introduced women controllers. So the German night fighters only took notice of a woman controller because they didn’t whether it was a German controller or a British controller. And at one stage we were carrying German speaking radio operators in 100 Group aircraft who would come up on the same frequency and German speaking Brits who would direct them to return to base. The weather was closing in. Or don’t take this vector take another vector. And they were, putting it bluntly they were trying to bugger up the fighter control system by using German speaking Brits. So the Germans overcame that by suddenly introducing women controllers. So the German night fighters only took notice of a woman controller. And within forty eight hours we had British German speaking women who were taking over and issuing conflicting instructions to the night fighters. I think the brilliant thinking that our own people had thought this was what they might do so we’ll be ready for it. And that kind of see-saw of activity and counter activity went on. Well, it wouldn’t have been just in aviation it would have been in anything else. But I found it fascinating.
GT: The crashed aircraft must have fallen into German hands. Do you think that, that Oboe and H2S and similar equipment the Germans managed to analyse that and better their own from it?
DN: Unquestionably. I mean all of those equipment had explosive devices in them with crash switches so that if the aircraft did crash there was an inertia switch inside which would set off the explosives and destroy the critical part of those bits of equipment. But inevitably that didn’t always work and the Germans did get at our stuff and were trying to, well they got certainly got into H2S and discovered, you know the frequencies in use and produced Naxos. I don’t know whether you know they was a, they had a session with the BBC some years ago. There was a German night fighter operating, operating out of Denmark, got itself lost. It hadn’t, it flew south west rather than north east and landed at Woodbridge, one of our emergency airfields down in Suffolk which was virtually running out of fuel. The German pilot and observer radio guy had got themselves completely lost. Our scientists got at it and found that it had got an equipment which was code named Naxos which could home onto our H2S. So the German night fighter could be directed by his ground controller in the general vicinity of the bomber stream and with this Naxos equipment he could home right in on our H2S. And anyway we then developed equipment to home on to Naxos. So some of our night fighters could home onto their night fighters. And it was this, and it’s a fascinating topic this see-saw in technical developments. Fascinating. Yeah.
GT: Now, the, the Schrage Musik.
DN: Yeah.
GT: The upward firing cannons —
DN: Yes.
GT: Of the German night fighters to, to, because the Halifax, Lancaster and Stirling didn’t have a, well —
DN: Yeah.
GT: Ball turrets.
DN: Yeah.
GT: As the B17s, and I’ve been made aware that some Lancasters had belly guns. Did any of the Halifaxes ever been modified with such?
DN: Yes. Yes, but you couldn’t have an H2S at the same time. And they were called Y aircraft. And they had, they, the blister with the rotating scanner that of course was removed and there was a half inch, a single half inch calibre gun on a hand mount with a gunner sitting there freezing his whatsits off. Just looking down.
GT: So, so there was an eighth member of the crew then. Deliberately.
DN: Yeah.
GT: An eighth member.
DN: Yeah. Yeah. And in fact one of my books over there on 10 Squadron operations and I’ve got one or two sample crew lists of before an operation and you’ll find here and there will be a Y aircraft with an extra crew member known as an under-gunner. But it’s not a power operated turret. I never operated on one of those. We always had upper turret, rear turret and H2S. Not that we had a choice. That was allocated by somebody I don’t know. But what my skipper used to do was he would every so often he would drop a wing one way and then drop a wing the other way so particularly the mid-upper could peer over the side and get a better view. And with the rear gunner and the upper gunner cooperating with one another and knowing that the Schrage Musik was around and they could come up from underneath you and with the wireless operator looking at Fishpond and some of the other devices which could detect other aircraft coming towards you. What with that and a bit of extra vigilance as I say. Rolling the aircraft. Somehow we managed it. But it was a very deadly weapon was Schrage Musik. Two bloody great cannons and right underneath you.
GT: With the aircraft and the streams did you ever encounter any aircraft above you that you managed to avoid?
DN: Yeah.
GT: Bombs dropping on you?
DN: Yes. I’ve been underneath an aircraft and looking up into his bomb bay where he probably wasn’t more than twenty feet above us. And you look up there and you could see everything but the kitchen sink up and he’s got his bomb doors open. Edging in to get on to target. And your bomb aimer was down in the nose telling the skipper left left or right and you’d be looking up and seeing a Lanc or another Halifax above you with his bomb door open and everything but the kitchen sink in there. The navigator. The bomb aimer would be saying, ‘Left. Left.’ And you’d tap the skipper on the shoulder and say [laughs] No. And there were, there were a number of occasions of course and the operational research people had worked out what the expected rate of bombs dropping on our own aircraft. In fact, do you know, have you ever heard of Bill Reid? Bill Reid was the last Victoria Cross and a good friend of mine. And Bill got his Victoria Cross on on an early operation and then went back later on a second tour. And he was hit by bombs being dropped from a Lancaster above him and managed to bail out and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. So I mean it did happen. We knew it. We knew it would happen inevitably. The flight engineer and, and the mid-upper gunner and occasionally the pilot but certainly as a navigator once I had handed over to the bomb aimer I would be up there looking. Adding another pair of eyes. Trying to keep out of the way.
GT: So, in the bomber streams did you, you were in formations of Halifaxes and Lancasters?
DN: No. No.
GT: No. You were just all a mix.
DN: No. You [pause] you had each, each Squadron, each flight, almost each aircraft, not quite, you had a time span when you were, it was your turn to be on target. The raid might be forty minutes in length shall we say? Thirty to forty five minutes depending on the number of aircraft. And each Squadron had its own height band and its own duration on target. So it would have perhaps eight minutes on target out of a total of forty five. And each Squadron would have that. And each Squadron would have its own height band. So you knew darned well and of course the Halifax not having the performance of the Lanc it was generally the Halifax who would be at a lower level. Which would prompt you to keep a good look out. But I mean there were occasions when the aircraft, there might be an aircraft two thousand feet above you and you wouldn’t have a hope in hell of seeing anything coming down. But yes not only mid-air collisions but being bombed by your own aircraft was a known and anticipated factor but again the operational research people, the whizz kids with their mathematics and probabilities way beyond the Squadron activity did work out what was an acceptable risk and consequently worked out what was an acceptable density of a bomber stream. If you got it too dense then yes you’d be increasing the chance of mid-air collision. You’d be increasing the chance of being bombed by somebody above you. And they would adjust the density of the bomber stream to meet those parameters.
GT: What, what was the likelihood of you getting out of the Halifax if it was going down?
DN: Well, I had an escape hatch immediately under my seat. So if I had to get out in a hurry I had to stand up, lift up my, fold up my seat, get my parachute pack and clip it on my chest and kick open the door and just go straight out. Unless, which I’m sure would have happened you were checking. I mean there were four of us in the front end. There was the bomb aimer, the navigator, the radio man. Well, the flight engineer into there. And the pilot. And we were all in a pretty, pretty congested area. And then we, there was an escape hatch above the pilot and this one which was underneath my seat. I don’t know.
GT: Now, Doug, you mentioned earlier about the actual accuracy of the bombing raids. And you likened it with the navigational equipment you had. But the bomb aimer’s role was to direct the aircraft to drop their bombs on target. So was there a correlation of equipment between the navigational and the bomb aiming equipment? Did they combine together or were they totally separate items?
DN: On the actual bombing it was either one or the other. In the early days it was entirely visual and that was from a relatively, relatively rudimentary bombsight where you would, where the bomb aimer would make adjustments for the height of the aircraft and, and the anticipated wind. And then he would look down and get two pointers in line with whatever the target was. Now, later on later developments of the bombsight had gyro stabilised bombsights where much of that mattered. Many of the parameters that were essential for bomb aiming were undertaken automatically. The height would be fed in from a, from an altimeter computer. The speed would be fed in by the same system as would register on the airspeed indicator. And as I say some of those parameters would be fed in automatically. Nevertheless, you would be the bomb aimer and this is what one hoped for pretty well every time was that the bomb aimer could see the target markers, target indicators on the ground and would be instructing the pilot which way to turn in order to get that cross right on that player and then push the tit. Now, if the weather was crap and there was no direct vision then it would be the navigator who would do so either through Gee or more likely and preferably through H2S. And I had my H2S set here and I could, I could, for example if there were a lake or an open space, a known open space in the centre of the city and you, your aiming point you would have calculated back to what was given you at briefing. If you can’t see, get a direct visual sight on the markers then aim for, for one five four degrees, three and a half miles from this park. And if you could identify that park on your H2S which frequently you could do if you were a good H2S operator then you could. You could get yourself to that position in the right direction and then you, the navigator would push the tit. And then it would probably come up, that method probably twenty thirty percent of occasions because so frequently you get over land the bomb aimer couldn’t see the markers. So we had, we had the means of dropping on either H2S or on Gee. Gee was a bit different. But the navigator would, I’d say swap over with him. The bomb aimer ideally, and this would happen in a good crew the navigator would train the bomb aimer to be able to operate the Gee or the H2S as accurately as he could himself. So the navigator could, well could supervise the thing and, and refine it whilst the, whilst the bomb aimer would be following it on on the radar.
GT: Now, you’re initial navigation training. What was that like compared to when you went back as an instructor yourself? Had, had they progressed in those years? Did they move forward with the new equipment? And, and how did you feel then becoming the instructor?
DN: Well, when I trained in the early days it was, it was pretty basic. We were flying Blenheims and you were doing ninety percent of it by visual pinpoints or by bearings or a bit by radio. Perhaps, not very much, by astro. When I went back as an instructor by then Gee had come in. H2S was just coming in. The Air Position Indicator was just coming in. So your techniques were changing. And one of the things I, I did when I was an instructor down at Abingdon was to devise exercises that were, as I saw it, much much more realistic. That reflected the kind of situations and procedures that one would encounter in the nav, in the real. You take, you take a crew or a crowd of navigators through and then you’d say and now you have H2S has gone u/s. What do you do? You know. And [they didn’t really know] [laughs]
GT: And what was the, what was the result? Did they come up with the right —
DN: Well I, I’m pretty damned sure that, that I ended up as an instructor exposing my pupils to a much more realistic situation. In fact, two or three of my my old pupils had said and I’m not trying to spread my own bullshit, did say that, you know, ‘You introduced us to practical navigation.’ I mean, I did, I did love navigation in every aspect and if I wasn’t operating I I think I became a good instructor because I enjoyed it.
GT: So your instructing role actually made, made you a far better navigator then you would have if you’d have just done one tour and then gone away.
DN: I think so. Yes. I say I, my, my period as an instructor was not in the final stages of training of a crew but in a fairly advanced. Advanced stage of their training. And I tried to make that as realistic to the real thing as I could.
GT: So how long did you actually serve with Bomber Command?
DN: How?
GT: How long did you actually serve with Bomber Command in the end?
DN: Well, that would have been nineteen [pause] 1941 until ’45 with, with a break of a few months when I was down in North Africa. But in that period I was still, as an instructor I was still in Bomber Command. Yeah. And I didn’t really come out of Bomber Command until I went out to to India to do glider towing and supply dropping and other silly things. Yeah.
GT: And by the end of your Bomber Command time you had accrued operations. Forty odd. Thereabouts.
DN: I did thirty on my first tour. Then I did my second tour. We had, with my skipper a number that didn’t necessarily go in the logbook. Yeah. My eyesight without going through my logbook over there I can’t tell you exactly how many. But I guess it was somewhere around about sixty five.
GT: And the Squadrons you flew on in Bomber Command?
DN: 156, 150 and shiny 10.
GT: And where were they based at that time please?
DN: 156 was at Warboys. W A R B O Y S that’s in what became 8 Group. 150 Squadron was in Kirmington which is in North Lincolnshire. And then out in a place called Blida in Algiers. Then 10 Squadron was at Melbourne. Just outside York. And then, and then out to India. India and Burma. Yeah.
GT: So —
DN: Oh, and Abingdon was where I did most of my instruction. Yeah.
GT: So your Bomber Command time was up and you received new posting orders. Did you seek something new or was that just the next thing on the rack for you? Where did you move to from there?
DN: Mostly accepted that that’s what was on, you know. In later years I got to get bloody awkward and would challenge it. When I, when I finished on the Halifax they wanted to, because I got my staff navigators qualification when I went to the staff nav school I mentioned earlier they wanted me to go to some unspecified staff post. And for some crazy reason I said, ‘No. I want to stay with the Squadron on operational duties.’ A bit bloody stupid in retrospect but [laughs] one was like that occasionally. Yeah.
GT: So you headed off to Burma then. Was that the next step after Bomber Command?
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we were in India on general transport duties because although you went out there to participate in the invasion of Malaysia and we, we knew all about or knew some about glider towing and supply dropping and paratrooping that was off the cards then. But we, we did have a period up in northern Burma where we were supply dropping to some Burmese tribes. When the Japanese, I mentioned where I went with Bomber Command when the Japs were in northern Burma to a large extent they lived off the land and they stole their food, or requisitioned it from the locals. And a number of the British political, political agents who had been in the Burma Civil Service were parachuted into northern Burma and persuaded the locals to burn their stocks of rice which made, made life difficult for the Japanese who then had of course to provide their own food for their troops. So when the war was over the Burmese tribes concerned having burned much of their stocks of rice including their seed rice were on the point of starvation. So obviously the Brits were morally obliged to re-supply them. Well, the army did a lot of this with trucks but in some of the high mountain regions in the extreme north of Burma where the Kachin tribes lived, K A C H I N, it was way beyond the ability to get trucks and there were no railways. So the decision was made to supply them, supply, re-supply them with rice by air which is where we came in. And the terrain up there is very very difficult terrain. The mountains. Some of the mountains go up way over eighteen, twenty thousand feet. But the lower ranges you still had to if you want to get into some of these areas you’ve got to get up to about eleven thousand, twelve thousand feet. And the villages are generally built on the ridges. On the spine of the ridges. They had to go over, go down, spiral down, do your supply drops, climb up and out. And we were flying in Dakotas and we had the rice in sacks. No parachutes. Rice in sacks. In three sacks. One inside another so that we chucked them out of the door, or toppled them out of the door. And when they hit of course the inner sack might burst and the outer sack might tear. The chances of all three going were pretty remote. So we would, we would fly to the area, circle down and then we would stack the sacks of rice up in the — no door. Take the door off the Dakota. Put the sacks up. My favourite position was to stick a sack of rice on the floor on the starboard side and get my shoulders against it and feet against these sacks of rice. And while the co-pilot and the pilot and co-pilot would bring the aircraft down, normally you would come along the ridge. Never go across it because you could never judge the, judge the approach altitude accurately enough, so you would come along the ridge, getting lower and lower and honestly you’d only be twenty or thirty feet above the trees until you came over to the, the centre of the nominated village and a light would change above the door and you’d heave and pop the sacks of rice out and then go around again and do this. And we were engaged in that for about a month. Living in tents on an old Japanese airstrip at Meiktila. And then one particular sortie to a new, new grid, never been there before. There were four of us. Four aircraft and we were number one. So we flew, let down, did our drop and climbed up again and then went back to an advanced base to pick up some more rice and we saw number two aircraft starting to circle down. Any rate, to cut a long story short number four aircraft, we don’t know what happened to him. He never came back. And numbers two and three didn’t come back from their second drop. So out of the four aircraft who was the lucky one? Yes.
GT: And that was 10 Squadron you were with.
DN: Yeah.
GT: And they converted to C47s to go out.
DN: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: To the Burma time.
DN: Yeah.
GT: Ok.
DN: And that, details of that is in the latest 10 Squadron booklet.
GT: Marvellous. So, how long were you in that area for? In Burma.
DN: Came back in ’46. Yeah.
GT: And you carried on in the RAF?
DN: No. No. I would have carried on in the RAF but they would only offer me a short period and I wanted to go. If I was going to go in I wanted to go in for a career and they were hanging up on me. I think it was something like four years. And I said no thank you. So I then applied as a navigator with BOAC. The forerunner of British Airways. And they said, ‘Ok. But wait ‘til you get — ’ I applied while I was in India. So when I came back I applied and they said , ‘We don’t need any more navigators.’ However, I did stay with BA. With BOAC, BA for the next thirty five years in operational posts on the ground out in, oh Cairo, Khartoum, Basra, Kuwait. And then back to this new airport called Heathrow. And then from a series of luck and luck believe you me from what I’ve already told you luck played an extremely important part in my life in the RAF and my survival. Anyway, luck played a bloody big part in post-war and I stayed in British Airways, BOAC, British Airways for the rest of my career and ended up as general manager operations control in charge of minute to minute operations worldwide. If everything went alright I didn’t have a job. If anything went wrong I did have a job. So it didn’t matter if it was crew sickness, aircraft unserviceability, somebody digging up a runway running short of fuel, a war, a bomb warning, a hijacking then that was mine. Which was very exciting. It called on all of my experience and all I knew and I loved the job and I stayed there for the rest of my career. Wonderful job. Best job in the airline. Very exciting. All, if anything went wrong it was mine and I enjoyed it.
GT: What were the airliners that were about at that time when you were? The airliners that they were flying for BOAC at the time.
DN: Well, we had Concorde and we had the Jumbo. I mean when I started it was the flying, the old Flying Boats and the Lancastrians and converted York which was a development of the Lancaster. I mean, by, by agreement during the war the Americans took on the development of civil aviation and a definite agreement that Britain would not do that. So when the war ended we did not have a civil aviation industry. So we adapted the Lancaster to the Lancastrian. We modified it to make a York. We had the Halton which was a development of the Halifax. But the Lancastrian would take, I think it was nine passengers. And we did a cannonball service from Sydney to London and it landed, I think nine times. With nine passengers. And that was the crème de la crème of British civil aviation. I mean we had Flying Boats. Well, you had TEAL. TEAL had Flying Boats down, down under. And we had those when I was in Basra. But it took a, took a long time. And, and Britain didn’t have the money. Didn’t have the dollars to buy American aircraft. Quite a long time before we managed to get ourselves on our feet with, with decent aircraft. But when I left we, certainly we had the, we’d gone through the Britannia. We’d had that. We’d gone through the VC10 and we had by then the Jumbo which was after 707 and then the Jumbo and then Concorde. But that was before we had any of the [pause] what do you call it? The French manufacturer. Anglo French manufacturer.
GT: Aerospatiale.
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Before that had really got, got in to many of the civilian aircraft like the Airbus.
GT: Did you have anything to do with the Berlin Airlift? Being involved.
DN: No. No. No.
GT: Not with the airlines you had there.
DN: No.
GT: What about family then Doug? How did you get on with family? You got married. Did you have children?
DN: Yes. Two sons. One who you spoke to and an elder one who lives in London. The younger one he’s lived a very unconventional life [laughs] Has spent more time in the Antarctic than anywhere else with the British Antarctic Survey. More in the Arctic. And the elder one much more conventional. He’s an accountant. Or was an accountant and he now is a senior executive with a manufacturing company. And I mentioned that I had married the kid sister of my, the first pilot I had. So, so we had a [pause] I’ve had a bloody marvellous life. Luck has played a huge, huge amount. Opportunities that have arisen. Sheer luck.
GT: I understand you had some time with the royal family.
DN: Yeah. One of my jobs in BA was any time royalty was travelling for example if the Queen was coming out to New Zealand then I would get a phone call saying now we’ve got a flight coming up for the Queen to wherever. Give me the date. ‘How many?’ ‘Oh, about the usual crowd.’ [laughs] Allow for seventy five and seven and a half tons of baggage. Which way do you want — well for example going to New Zealand, ‘Which way do you want to go? Do you want to go east about or west about? ‘ ‘Well, you know a bloody sight more about that than I do so come up with some suggestions.’ And I, I had, I’ve got a list of over two hundred and fifty flights that I did for members of the royal family. I mean if it was the Queen then [pause] then I would decide which way. What kind of range do we want? Do we want a long range aircraft to do it in a minimum number or perhaps a smaller aircraft? And then gut the inside of the aircraft and divide it up with bulkheads to provide a lounge area, a dining area, a sleeping area and what have you. And all of the arrangements. I mean, it was good fun. And I had a fairly small team who who would get involved in that and we all took it as a challenge. So we had a lot of those.
GT: These were BOAC aircraft that you would do that to —
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: The queen did not have a Queen’s Flight at that time.
DN: No.
GT: Of her own aircraft?
DN: No. She had a number of small aircraft. They were mostly, well in the latter years they were Vickers or, anyway twin engines. Small. I can’t remember it. The old mind. But they weren’t, their own aircraft on the Queen’s Flight were essentially for use within the UK or within Europe. Or if they were going to do a big tour we would position them out there. I mean, I remember we did one where we took the Queen out to New Zealand and then she went from New Zealand to Oz and then up through the Solomon’s and what have you. And the Queen’s Flight I think positioned some of their smaller aircraft for flights between the islands. And then we went then and brought her back. That was, that was quite amusing. Before they went I said to the captain of the Queen’s Flight, ‘Well, what happens if while you’re away there’s an election?’ Because we were in a ghastly political uncertainty at the time. He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ Queen Elizabeth, err Princess, ‘Princess Margaret is authorised to dissolve parliament.’ I said, ‘I’m not worried about that but if while you’re away there’s an election we’ve got to get the Queen back in time to appoint the new prime minister.’ And I remember Archie, Sir Archie Winskill who was captain of the Queen’s Flight, ‘Good thinking, my boy.’ [laughs] So I said, ‘If the election is on the Thursday as it always is you let me know where you’re going to be every Wednesday,’ which included the Cook Islands and Solomons and what have you. I said, ‘You let me know where you’re going to be every Wednesday and I will develop a plan to get home.’ So, anyway I developed these plans. Labelled each one of them with an identification letter. I said, ‘You have a copy in your briefcase and I’ll have a copy in my briefcase so at least we’re ready for it.’ And it was, oh it was a long tour. I remember it was a couple of weeks later I get a phone call. I was at home at the time but I was working on my wife’s rust bucket of a Morris Mini and my wife came and said, ‘There’s Buckingham Palace on the phone.’ And the message merely said, ‘Plan Sierra.’ And Sierra being the identity of when we were going to get her back. And we didn’t exchange another word but on the day there was our aircraft waiting for her and brought her home. And that was the kind of [pause] if you like it was good fun and everything was different. Yes. It was important and you get in trouble if you got it wrong. But no. I’m, it was a very nice simple airline job wasn’t it? Rewarding and it was exciting in a different way as my RAF time. I mean, I was extremely, extremely lucky.
GT: How long, how long were you working with the Queen’s Flight for? Or for the royal family.
DN: For really twenty four years.
GT: And I understand you received an award for your time.
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: And that award is?
DN: That was the Royal Victorian Order. I’m a lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.
GT: And the letters are?
DN: Does it do me any good? No.
GT: And I understand also you were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
DN: Yeah.
GT: Can you please describe what that was for? And when?
DN: Well, that was for really for my second tour. Not for, not for any specific operation. For whether the citation refers to the standard of the whole Squadron. Navigation standard. The whole Squadron. And gives me credit for that. And and for leading. Leading the whole of the group on one or two operations like the one when we went for the oil target and I do, I can assure you that we were going over the Channel and my skipper said, ‘Doug, come back here.’ So I come from my little compartment in the nose. He said, ‘Put your head up in the astrodome and have a, have a look behind.’ And of course there’s three hundred and fifty bloody aircraft following me. I said, ‘I don’t want to know. Don’t remind me [laughs] Just shut up.’ [laughs] Oh well. No. I was extremely fortunate. I had lots of, lots of good friends. Lots of excitement. But the, I’d say one of which experiences was the way, the way these challenges seem to come out of nowhere and I enjoyed them.
GT: Bomber Harris, your boss at the time came in for a lot of criticism.
DN: Yeah.
GT: Specifically for carpet bombing and for that of bombing major cities.
DN: Yeah.
GT: That’s potentially weren’t strategic targets.
DN: Yeah.
GT: What’s your take on that? From, from being with it.
DN: We were in a situation of total war. It wasn’t a question of tit for tat. We were [pause] it was either them or us. And by then it was obvious that as far as Hitler was concerned he didn’t give a damn about what was right and what was wrong. Whether you should bomb civilians or not. And we were in total war and I for one accepted that. I know that there were times when I pushed the bomb tit and there would be grandma and grandad and the kids down below. Ok. Sorry. We were at war. I have, I regret having to do that kind of thing. I’m not ashamed of it. And if it happened again I’d do it again. I think towards the end Harris, what Harris did think he could do he could do it on his own. And it went, proved that he couldn’t. Nuremberg for example. The Nuremberg raid demonstrated very clearly that we were [pause] that German night fighters got their act together and we were, we were up against it so. But in the, in the perhaps slightly earlier days when we were really clobbering Germany city after city after city yeah. ok. War had descended in to that and I, I have no regrets. No conscience. And I think under the circumstances Harris was right. It cost many many many many of my mates. And others as well. But sorry. That’s war.
GT: Could they have done it any other way?
DN: I don’t think so. No. I don’t think so. We couldn’t, we, the army couldn’t have done it. And we didn’t have the capability of being that precise that we could pick out targets.
GT: Some have said that without the war happening and the methods and the designs of many things in aviation aircraft and your navigation equipment that that the world actually paced forward five years.
DN: Oh.
GT: Very quickly.
DN: Unquestionably. Certainly electronics, communications, navigation aids. A lot of, oh mechanical things must have developed at a hell of a pace. Plastics. Zips. You know, you can think of a billion things that came about through war. Stimulate. It did stimulate development. God, you’re up, you’re up against it. I mean, before I, before I joined the RAF I was in a UK government research, communications research laboratory, and funnily enough developing part of the radar. The ground. Ground defences radar that we had. So as a, as a youth I was exposed to that kind of development stuff pretty well soon after I left school. Yeah.
GT: In your later years you’ve been involved with Air Force Associations. Can you tell me something about the ones that you were associated with and the titles you’ve, you’ve ended up with?
DN: Well, I was very busy with the Bomber Command Association when I was living down near London and near Oxford and I was on the Executive Committee and we were very involved in the, in the Bomber Command Memorial in London. But then when we moved up here that was impractical and I joined, well I was in the RAF Association. So I joined the local branch where we have about [pause] we had I think twenty nine members when I joined the branch. And we now have sixteen. And [pause] we don’t do very much. That’s probably Brian. Is that you Brian?
Other: Yeah.
[recording paused]
DN: When I came up here I joined the RAF Association up here where we had a very small number of members and saw even fewer. And we’re, we’re now up to about seventy members. We, we rarely see more than about a dozen of them. So we’re not able to provide much in the way of social activity and as a result most of, most of our activity is connecting, collecting for the RAF charity. The RAF charity or the RAF Benevolent Fund. So I’ve done my stint of tin rattling. And as I say we have a very small band of loyal, very loyal volunteers. And we’re trying to, desperately trying to make it more active. To get ex-RAF people up here to participate more. We’re, we’ve got a website that will be up and going in the next few weeks. We’re on Facebook. And as I say one of, one of my problems is we collect money for RAF charity. We have problems in finding local people who need it or who will accept help. And it’s a pleasure if we’re, if we can, we can find somebody who, whom we can help. So much of the money goes into an overall pot and yet up here I’m sure there must be ex-RAF people who need help. And one of my ambitions has been to try and get those people to come out of the wood work and let us know they need a bit of help. I’ve found one or two but the number of, out of our seventy members we don’t have more than about ten or twelve people who between you and me get off their backsides to do much. So there we are. Anyway, that’s it.
GT: So currently you’re the president of the Royal Air Forces Association Cockermouth Branch.
DN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Yeah.
GT: And I believe thank you for your services.
DN: You’re welcome. Yeah.
GT: Is in order. Doug, it has been a pleasure talking with you today. Thank you very much for allowing me to add to the IBCC’s Digital Archive. Specifically of your Bomber Command history and experience, and, and no less at all your experiences before and your time after. And so thank you very much for that.
DN: You’re welcome.
GT: And this —
DN: It has been a crazy life you must admit. Yeah.
GT: And you’ve obviously had a time and your, your willingness to sit and chat with me is —
DN: Yeah,
GT: Is very special. Thank you. On the 27th of July 2017 I’ve been talking with Doug Newham and he, from his house here in Upton Caldbeck in Cumbria this is Glen Turner from the IBCC Archives in Lincoln and the New Zealand 75 Squadron Association secretary. And we’re signing off now. Thank you very much, Doug.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Douglas Frank Newham
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Glen Turner
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ANewhamDF170727
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:33:33 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Burma
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas Newham enjoyed his career as a navigator. Over his career he saw the development of technology in his chosen field. He and his crew spent some of their time as part of North West African Strategic Air Force. Following time as an instructor at an Operational Training Unit he started a second tour in Europe. He then went on to operations over Burma dropping supplies. Post war he enjoyed a very interesting career in aviation working for BOAC and BA.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
10 Squadron
150 Squadron
156 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
Botha
C-47
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (1926 - 2022)
Gee
H2S
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Lancaster
Lancastrian
military service conditions
mine laying
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Kirmington
RAF Melbourne
RAF Warboys
rivalry
training
Wellington
Whitley
York