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25
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/150/1567/LBellinghamPF1397635v1.2.pdf
1fbc8b7942f76eed3db897aeedc910f4
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
Bellingham, Peter
Peter F Bellingham
Peter Bellingham
P F Bellingham
P Bellingham
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Peter Frederick Bellingham (b. 1923, 1391638 Royal Air Force), a photograph and his log book. Peter Bellingham trained in South Africa as a bomb aimer and flew 30 Special Operations Executive operations in Halifaxes and Stirlings with 138 Squadron from RAF Tempsford.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Bellingham and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-21
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
Bellingham, PF
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
Peter Bellingham’s observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
The log book covers the training and operational career of bomb aimer Peter Bellingham from 10 March 1943 to 21 February 1946. After training in South Africa he flew Halifaxes and Stirlings with 138 Squadron, taking part in 30 night operations over Denmark, France, Germany, and Norway. These were special operations involving the dropping of containers, packages and pigeons to agents, outcome logged either as ‘Joy’ or ‘No joy’. His pilots on operations were Strathearn and Flight Lieutenant Moffat. Landed with FIDO once, did a Cook’s tour over the Netherlands and Germany before becoming an instructor. Aircraft flown included: Oxford, Anson, Wellington, Stirling, Halifax and Warwick.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBellinghamPF1397635v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1944-07-03
1944-07-04
1944-07-05
1944-07-07
1944-07-08
1944-07-09
1944-07-10
1944-07-11
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-07-28
1944-07-30
1944-07-31
1944-08-04
1944-08-05
1944-08-06
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-29
1944-08-30
1944-09-28
1944-09-29
1944-09-30
1944-10-01
1944-10-04
1944-10-05
1944-10-15
1944-10-16
1944-11-01
1944-11-02
1944-11-07
1944-11-08
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-11-29
1944-11-30
1944-12-24
1944-12-25
1945-02-21
1945-02-22
1945-02-23
1945-02-25
1945-02-26
1945-02-27
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-06-19
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Denmark
France
Germany
Great Britain
Norway
South Africa
England--Bedfordshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
South Africa--Port Elizabeth
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.
11 OTU
138 Squadron
1657 HCU
17 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
animal
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
Cook’s tour
FIDO
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Manby
RAF Oakley
RAF Silverstone
RAF Tempsford
RAF Turweston
RAF Westcott
RAF Woodbridge
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1224/3356/PBrownJ1721.2.jpg
841499b815a584b52bc4b555540f5b4f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1224/3356/ABrownJ170118.2.mp3
a8113fdf85b50ce4324c3cbdb34aa73f
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
Brown, Jeff
Jeffrey Brown
J Brown
Description
An account of the resource
35 items. One oral history interview with Flying Officer Jeff Brown (b. 1925, 2205595, Royal Air Force), his log book, service material and photographs including 16 pictures of B-29s. He flew operations as a Flight Sergeant air gunner with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton towards the end of the war and took part in Operation Manna.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jeff Brown and catalogued by Peter Adams.
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
2017-01-18
2017-01-31
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
Brown, J-3
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SP: So this is Susanne Pescott I am interviewing Jeffrey Brown today for the International Bomber Command Centres Digital Archive, we are at Jeff’s home and it’s 18th January 2017, so first of all Jeff thank you for allowing us to talk to you today and also present is Yvonne O’Rourke Jeff’s daughter. So Jeff do you want to tell me about your early life before you joined the RAF.
JB: Well after school when I was fifteen I became an apprentice electrician in the local bus depot working on buses and trolley buses and then when the, I was always interested in aircraft model aircraft my neighbour friend and I used to make and fly model aircraft er we had a good place to fly them because across the way from where we lived was the Ashton Golf Course so when nobody was playing golf it was our flying area [laughs], so when the Air Training Corps started I think it was 1941 I joined that and er got interested and of course the war was on then and er there was the possibility of later after a year or two I might be called up to go in the services so er at that time if you waited until you were called up at eighteen every tenth conscriptee was sent to work down the coal mines, it was a scheme developed by a Government Minister called Ernest Bevan because they were short of miners, and if you were unlucky enough to be caught in that you had to go and work in the coal industry now I didn’t want that I wanted to join the air force so to be sure of going in the air force at seventeen and a half you could volunteer for the air force and you went and had a medical and aptitude test and if you were accepted for training as air crew you were given an air force number, you were paid for the days you were at this centre which was at Warrington, and you were in the air force but you were then sent home on what was called deferred service until you were eighteen and at eighteen you could be called at any time to start serving properly and this ensured that when you registered at eighteen they couldn’t send you down the coal mines because you were already in the air force that was one way of avoiding coal mining [laughs]. So I was accepted initially to train as a wireless operator air gunner and at about eighteen two three months I was finally called up to serve and er in those days air crew trainees the first place you reported to was Lords Cricket Ground in London which was rather [laughs] an unusual place to start service and er there you were kitted all your equipment had medicals and so on and then after a few weeks you were sent out to start your training properly, after about three months of this er which was largely basic air force training and learning to receive and send Morse Code er we were called to a meeting by a group captain and he said ‘I’m sorry to inform you that we have so many wireless operators under training we cannot cope with the numbers so we are going to have to suspend your training may be for six months possibly indefinitely’ but he said ‘we are at the moment of short of trainee air gunners anyone wishing to change can do so by leaving a name now’ so most of us being young and daft said ‘oh yes we want to be air gunners’ so we started training again as air gunners, er the basic training was done at Bridgnorth in Shropshire er after that we were sent to an Air Gunners School at RAF Dalcross near Inverness, we trained there for about three or four months and then we qualified as air gunners er the training was done in Ansom aircraft er we flew with another aircraft pulling a target which was a long canvas sleeve and you fired ammunition which had been dipped in paint, the nose of the bullets were dipped in paint, so if you hit this white canvas sleeve besides making a hole in it it left a little colour smear this way the scores could be counted afterwards and er we did this all types of different exercises out over the sea the Moray Firth er following that I was sent on leave and then posted to Operational Training Unit which was at um a place called Westcott and there you were crewed up in a crew, um it was a rather haphazard method all the different air crew categories were put into one large hall and told ‘find yourself a crew’ and I wandered round a bit lost and I was approached a a little chap an air gunner he said ‘have you got a crew yet?’ I said ‘no’ ‘well would you like to join ours?’ and I said ‘yes I would’ and that was how I was crewed up, er my pilot was a New Zealand lad flight sergeant and the rest of the crew were all English boys, so [coughs] we were flying in Wellington aircraft we did various exercises all kinds of things for the different trades, navigation training, bombing training, gunnery training and so on and um after this we were sent to er what was it called Heavy Conversion Unit this was at RAF Bottesford in Nottinghamshire where we were introduced to the Lancaster bomber and also another member joined the crew this was the flight engineer, er in our case our flight engineer was also a pilot this had happened because they had a large surplus of pilots and to give them something to do they trained some of them er as engineers so we had two pilots in the crew which was handy, er we did this training again doing all kinds of exercises including the dreaded corkscrew evasive manoeuvre which was quite horrendous, and from there we were posted to RAF Fiskerton to join 576 Squadron this was in April 1945 towards the end of the war, we did further er what you might call squadron training for a week or two before we were considered qualified to go on operations and the big thing at that moment was called Operation Manna this was dropping food supplies in Holland because it was an area which had been cut off by the advance of the armies and in the last six months or so of the war there had been dreadful food shortages and people were dying of starvation thousands and thousands of Dutchmen died through lack of food so we and the American Air Force were tasked to drop food supplies for them and the area was still under German occupation er a rather dodgy truce was organised with the Germans a kind of er ‘don’t shoot at us we won’t shoot at you’ but it was a little bit of a flimsy thing and several aircraft were shot at ours luckily wasn’t but one American aircraft was shot down and the crew killed by the German Occupation Forces, so I did five of these trips er mainly to Rotterdam and we dropped these food supplies er they were simply bundled into the bomb bay of the aircraft and they weren’t dropped on parachutes they just opened the bomb bay doors and everything fell out in a huge cloud tins and boxes and sacks and all kinds of food which were collected by the Dutch authorities and then distributed to the people who needed it, er we did the last flight on 8th May 1945 which was VE Day, the war ended on that day. After the war we continued flying doing various exercises er one thing we did was to fly to Brussels and bring home Army personnel who had been prisoners of war, another thing we did was to fly to Naples in Italy and bring home again Army personnel who were due for early release from the forces er we continued to do this for about I think four or five months and then the big run down of Bomber Command started the squadrons were disbanded and we were all thrown on the scrap heap not really knowing what would happen to us, but um eventually much against my wishes I was sent on a course to be an equipper demanding and issuing supplies and in this role I was finally posted to a small radar unit in Germany er initially in the British zone of Germany and then er eventually in the American zone and finally in the French occupation zone and er I was there for two and a half years something like that, during that time we had on this little unit when I say little there were a total of about thirty five personnel you could tell how small it was we required an interpreter somebody who spoke German and French because we had the contact with the French Occupation Forces and a young lady called Dorothy Bush who lived nearby she was the daughter of the local school teacher became our interpreter and er many well not many years several years later Dorothy and I were married [very emotional].
SP: Do you want to stop?
JB: Right after some time on this small radar station in Germany I found that you could er re-engage you could sign up for regular service and that would be as air crew to be flying again so I applied for this er I was sent to London to have a medical examinations and so on and I was accepted to fly again as an air gunner but before you could start the flying training er as gunners we had to be trained with er er sort of auxiliary trade and we did this at RAF Kirkham near Preston it was a school of armament trades we learned about all the armament equipment in use at that time in the RAF guns and mines and all the er ancillary equipment, and then we had to do a course at a place called Wellesbourne Mountford on aerial photography that took another couple of months or so so we were quite highly qualified in the trades by that time and then we were posted to RAF Marham in 1950 to join 149 Squadron which was reforming it was the first squadron in the RAF to be equipped with American B29 Super Fortress Bombers the type of bombers that the Americans had used in the Pacific to bomb Japan and drop the atom bomb with so we did this course at RAF Marham and then we had to move out and make room for the next squadron to come in and do the course and we were sent to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire which at that time was shut down and we arrived there but we didn’t have any aircraft because in the meantime the war in Korea had started and the Americans stopped the supply of B29’s to the RAF because they wanted them for themselves [laughs] so we sat at Coningsby fully trained squadron, air crew and ground crew, for six weeks and the only aircraft we had was an Oxford and a Tiger Moth [laughs] had the Russians known they could have walked in [laughs]. So finally one B29 arrived and our crew had the honour of making the first B29 flight from RAF Coningsby er in I think it was November 1950 er so eventually more aircraft came and the squadron got rolling and operating as it should do and er we were there for a couple of years doing all kinds of exercises, some very very long range flights lasting fifteen sometimes as long as eighteen, nineteen hours without landing or refuelling and then of course jet aircraft began to enter service and on these aircraft no requirement for air gunners so once again facing redundancy, several of the chaps applied to retrain and were accepted as navigators, pilots, so I thought I’m going to have a go at this so I applied and after the interviews and medicals I was accepted for pilot training but by this time the RAF had decided that if you were pilot or navigator you had to be commissioned not like in the old war time days where you could have sergeant pilots etcetera so we had do to a commissioning course which lasted about five months at Jurby in the Isle of Man, having qualified for that and gained a commission I was fortunate to be chosen with a small group of chaps to go and do our flying training in Canada under a NATO training scheme so we flew to Canada in er civilian aircraft and after some time in kind of transit units we eventually landed up in Alberta a place called Claresholm which was about sixty miles south of Calgary, this was a flying training school and unlike the British trainees who started their pilot training on a light aircraft like a Tiger Moth we went on day one on Harvard aircraft which for a trainee were quite a handful they were a sturdy little aircraft with a big five hundred and fifty horsepower engine and they took a bit of handling when you were a novice but er we coped with it and we did the all the necessary exercises day and night flying and er finally after I think it would be nine or ten months er we qualified but we were caught in a rather unusual situation previously at the end of flying school training they had a big parade and celebration and you were presented with your wings the Canadian authorities had decided they were not doing this any longer they were giving our chaps their wings when they’d done a further advanced flying training so what was going to happen to us we were due to come home then and nobody could really tell us what was going to happen when are we going to get our wings, so we flew home in a civilian aircraft we arrived in London airport and were taken in buses to the Air Ministry this was about half past six seven o’clock in the evening by then going dark and we were ushered into a dismal basement room where we met by a civilian clerk, who from the smell of his breath had been out and had a few pints whilst he was waiting for us so, he then issued er instructions of where we were to be posted to and in those days we were still on rations so he issued ration cards and as we were due to leave he said ‘before you go any questions?’ and one chap piped up he said ‘when do we get our wings?’ and this half drunken clerk said ‘oh it’s okay you can put them up now if you want to’ that’s was how we were awarded our wings I thought it was the most miserable bit of service time the whole of my air force career. So we were then posted to RAF Turnhill to do a course on instrument flying to get a qualification called the white card er instrument flying this and they wanted you to fly under various weather conditions, er the grades were white, green, and master green, if you were so experienced and qualified if you got a master green you could fly in any weather conditions whatsoever so we got the white card which had limitations and when we had arrived there some of the chaps not believing what this clerk at the Air Ministry had said arrived not wearing wings odd chaps who had previously been other air crew like a engineer or air gunners were still wearing their old air force air gunner engineer wings and the first day we were introduced er by a squadron leader to tell us what the course was all about and he started his speech and then after a moment he stopped and he pointed at the lad in the front row who was wearing the single wing of a flight engineer and he said ‘who are you what are you doing here?’ so the lad said ‘well I understand sir I’ve come to do an instrument rating course’ so he said ‘well are you a pilot?’ and the lad said ‘well I’ve done a pilot’s course’ and he said ‘why aren’t you wearing pilot’s wings?’ so the lad said truthfully ’because I’ve not been awarded them’ and the squadron leader took no notice of this at all he looked around the room and he said ‘well if you want to do this course you better get some wings up damn quick and that goes for all the rest of you not wearing them’ that was our introduction to being pilots. [Pause] So this business of the wings I thought was disgraceful and thinking about it years later I feel that about that time due to the way we had been treated I really began to lose interest it destroyed my enthusiasm for the RAF, and for flying, and for the whole bloomin thing, however, we did this um instrument training course and then we were posted on to er Meteor Jet Fighters a twin engine jet fighter of that day er and we did conversion on to those and er I did I did conversion I went on solo on them they were comparatively easy to fly engine wise because you didn’t have too many points to consider with a jet engine as you did with a piston engine aircraft and er we carried on with this course till we got to the stage where we started aerobatics and then I found that due to the violent manoeuvres with aerobatics er I started blacking out so I was removed from the course and after a while I was sent to the er er the School of Aviation Medicine School at Farnborough where they have flying doctors who took me up in a Meteor equipped with G measuring device and they flew the plane around and blacked me out all over the place and declared that I had a low G tolerance and I would be grounded so that was a big disappointment after all that I’d been through before, I I was then offered the choice of one or two ground trades which I didn’t fancy doing if I wasn’t flying I didn’t want to be in the air force so the other alternative was to leave so I was then discharged having been in the air force something like eleven years altogether, and um I came home and I started applying for jobs and I went for various interviews and er people asked me what I’d done and so on as usual the case ‘oh that’s very interesting but your no use to us’ so I got a bit despondent I was out of work for may be about six weeks and I was walking along one evening I bumped into an old school chum of mine and the conversation got around to jobs ‘what are you doing?’ I said ‘I’m looking for a job’ ‘what are you doing?’ he said ‘I’m on a management training course in Manchester for the CWS the Co-opertive Society’ er he said ‘come round to my house I’ll show you what we are doing’ so I went to his house and he showed me all these books and information and I thought oh how boring after flying [laughs] doing that didn’t appeal one one little bit, all this time his father had been sitting there quietly reading a newspaper and he chipped in he said ‘have you tried our place?’ so I said ‘well where is our place?’ he said ‘A V Roe’ and he gave me the address of the employment officer so I wrote in and er they called me in for an interview and I think they had it in mind that I would fit in to some kind of position in the works so they sent me home and said we’ll notify you and then a letter came sorry we can’t do anything for you so disappointment again and then almost immediately another letter came from them would I go for an interview with the chief draughtsman ‘cos at that time the Avro factory at Chadderton was the main design office for the company, so er I went for this interview it was a Friday afternoon and er I saw this gentleman the chief draughtsman and he asked me all about my service career and so on and then he said ‘I think we could find a place for you in here’ so he said er ‘when would you like to start Monday?’ [laughs] following just a weekend away [laughs] oh rather puzzled I said ‘oh yes that’d be fine’ so on Monday morning I turned up and I was placed in the middle of the design office and due to my armament work that I had done in the forces I was put onto what was called the armament section the design office was broken up into sections groups of about a dozen men each section did a different type of work some did air frames, some would do engines, some would be radio, and I was on the armament section and quite a lot of the work they were doing was stuff I already knew that I’d seen and worked on in the air force but of course there was a lot of new stuff because at that time they were just introducing the Vulcan Bomber so I fitted in very nicely and er got going steadily working on the Vulcan and the Shackleton and later on the Nimrod and er several aircraft we did er certain parts of those and er so I worked quite steadily and happily for several years I think about twelve years in the design office on armament equipment mainly of the different aircraft and then the company decided to have a huge reorganisation, er they moved the design office to the company airfield at Woodford and of course it was practically impossible for me to get there I didn’t have a car at the time it would have meant several bus trips a train journey and er it was just impossible so I joined a bunch of rebels who said ‘we’re not going’ [laughs] so we were kept for a while at Chadderton in the design office on a sort of queries section and I thought well this will just potter along until the company get fed up with it and then you’d be given the ultimatum either get to Woodford or get out [laughs] so I left and I got a job at a local firm building er commercial vehicles again in their design office which was quite different to what I had been doing before but it was in a way quite interesting. I did this for a year or two and eventually I bumped into a chap er who I’d worked with in the design office and er we got chatting and I said ‘I’m a little bit bored with this job I’m doing’ and he said ‘well we’re looking for people at Chadderton in the publications er department’ ‘cos each aircraft has a huge set of books for servicing and maintaining them er he gave me the address to write in to and er eventually after had an interview I was accepted there and I started back again on my beloved aircraft in the publications department and I worked in there for about twenty years [laughs] until I finally retired in 1989 [laughs] so that was the end of my life with aircraft more or less right through my whole working life [laughs] it had been aircraft one way or another.
SP: So Jeff you talked about when you first joined up you went to Lords Cricket Ground do you want to tell me a little bit more about that?
JB: Yes, oh for aircrew trainees during the war the place you reported to when you were called up was Lords Cricket Ground in London, rather unusual setting to think you are going in the air force er we were billeted in blocks of flats all around Regents Park and we were kitted out you got all your uniform and equipment and er you had your introduction to things like how to march and drill and so on, and one day we were taken back to a building on the side of er Regents Park which was a medical centre we were led into the backyard amongst piles of coke and coal [laughs] taken upstairs to about er the third floor on the way up you had to take your tunic off and roll both sleeves up when you stepped inside the door there was a duty airman on each side with a basin with some sort of disinfectant fluid in and a scrubbing brush and he scrubbed both your upper arms, you moved on into the next room and there were doctors in line and you were given various injections inoculations er oh what what was it something fever they had in those days, and then you were led out down some stairs onto a road at the side by the railings of Regents Park [laughs] it looked like a scene from a battlefield there were chaps hanging over the railings vomiting, there were others lying flat out on the pavement having fainted not being used to all this injections and inoculations [laughs], luckily it didn’t affect me although I did have a rather sore arm for a little while [laughs].
SP: So Jeff you were talking about during when you were on the plane the dreaded corkscrew.
JB: Yes
SP: Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?
JB: Yes er when we did the course er on er to train on the Lancaster er one of the exercises we had to do was to er learn er called an evasive tactic in case you were attacked by a fighter they had this manoeuvre called the corkscrew where the aircraft went into steep dives and turns and climbs in order to put the aim of the attacker off and you had certain drills to carry out er in order to aim your guns correctly and try and hit him whilst you were doing this, now the main people involved with this were the gunners and the pilot um you gave the instruction to the pilot when to start this manoeuvre and whilst he was doing it he told you what you were doing because you were thrown about so much you could hardly realise whether you were turning left, right, going up or down whatever it was very very violent and er you repeated back to the pilot so he understood that you knew and according to what he said you had to apply certain rules of sighting in order to hopefully hit the attacker, so the the manoeuvre would start like this, oh before I say anything more I should say that our first corkscrew was done by an instructor pilot an experienced fella, the manoeuvre went like this you as a gunner had a thing called a reflector sight you looked through a glass screen and it had a red ring with a dot in the middle you compared the size of this to the size of the attacking aircraft you had to learn the wing span of the groups of the attacking aircraft when he filled a certain amount of your ring and bead sight he was at six hundred yards that was the distance when you were to open fire ’cos it was the best range for the guns you were using, so you watched this attacker and make him he came in a curving dive which is called a curved pursuit and you raced him with your gun sight you warned the pilot he was coming in when he got to six hundred yards you said ‘corkscrew’ either port or starboard depending which side he was coming in from the pilot then we did the first one to port which is the left side he just simply stood the aircraft up on it’s port wing tip and we went down in a screaming dive after a few hundred feet he rolled and he went down on the other side the starboard side for a few more hundred feet and then he pulled up violently, on the way down you were virtually weightless you just floated up off your seat the only thing I was holding onto was the two control handles for the gun turret [laughs], all this time you were trying to apply these what we call sighting rules where you aimed your sight at the attacker you didn’t aim directly at him and then the pilot pulled up and he did the same manoeuvre going up and then the G Force came on you were slammed literally just slammed down into your seat became several times heavier than you normally are [laughs] and it was so severe you couldn’t raise your arms try as you may you couldn’t lift them and you had an oxygen mask on your face this pulled away on the straps and then you climbed up to your starting height and then you went down and started another corkscrew [laughs], all this time other members of the crew that weren’t involved with this as I said it was just the pilot and the gunner the other people such as the navigator and wireless operator were sitting there with their stomachs churning and quite a lot of them being airsick but due to the fact that you were so concentrating on what you were doing it didn’t make me airsick strangely enough so that was our introduction to the corkscrew [laughs].
SP: Jeff you also talked that you were at Fiskerton on VE Day do you want to talk me through what happened on VE Day what you did?
JB: Yes er VE Day 8th May 1945 we were scheduled to do the last Manna food drop in Holland [coughs] we got out of the aircraft and a photographer suddenly appeared and asked us the crew and the ground crew to pose in front of the aircraft and took our photographs which I still have, and then something happened that had never happened on any previous operation a car drew up and it was the station commander the group captain wishing us well [laughs] and hoping that we had a good trip of course we knew that it was the last day of the war [coughs], my pilot and two other pilots from our crew had made a secret arrangement that on the way back at one of the turning points on the route back was Cambridge that we were going to meet up formate and fly back from Cambridge to Fiskerton and beat up in the airfield in formation, so [laughs] we arrived at er at er Cambridge and [coughs] they’d arrange [coughs] not to use the radio so that it wouldn’t be identified [coughs] they arranged to fire off a coloured vary cartridges so these two planes were milling around at Cambridge when we arrived and they were shooting off these coloured vary cartridges I think they were green and we fired some off so we knew who we were and we all joined up together and headed off to Fiskerton, now we were flying a rather old Lancaster and we were slowly dropping behind these other two aircraft we couldn’t keep up with them ‘cos they were going flat out and our engineer told us he said they had er a sort of toggle which was called an emergency boost button to give the engines a little bit of extra power he said ‘I’ve pulled the emergency boost and we still can’t keep up with them’ and we were dropping more and more lagging behind them dropping away so eventually our pilot said ‘okay well we’ll forget it’ but because of all this extra power on this old aircraft was shuddering and shaking suddenly there was a loud bang and a whole sheet of metal fell off from underneath the starboard wing [laughs] we didn’t know what it was at the time [laughs] but I reported it to the pilot he said ‘well I don’t know what it is but we’re still flying okay so we carry on’ and we flew back to Fiskerton and of course this beat up had occurred by the time we got back and when we landed we found that this vibration had loosened some of the skin coverings on the outboard engine nacelle and it had ripped off with the airflow that’s what we saw some farmer would find a nice sheet of aluminium in one of his fields [laughs], so we then went to the debriefing and the station commander came up on the dais afterwards and he said ‘all pilots are to remain behind everyone else is dismissed’ he didn’t know he hadn’t identified who had done this beat up at the airfield so we scurried off to get our bacon and egg which was the meal you got after flying [laughs] whilst all the pilots got a tremendous bollocking from the station commander [laughs] that was VE Day [laughs].
SP: Jeff do you want to tell me about the time in the Wellington bomber that you were talking about?
JB: Yes um we were introduced to the Wellington at a unit called Operational Training Unit OTU this is where you joined a crew [coughs] and amongst various exercises you did of course there was quite a lot of practice bombing er you dropped small smoke bombs on er des designated targets where er how well or badly you had done there were staff there could record it and send the results back to your unit [coughs] now to do this exercise er we were based at this er place er Westcott near Aylesbury we had to fly er about thirty miles in a northerly direction to the area I think it was Northampton and back for the navigator to calculate the wind ‘cos this was a vital thing for the bomb aimer to know he set this into his equipment er the target we were to attack was on some moorland in the Oxford area, so we took off and we had to climb up to twelve thousand feet to fly this course to calculate the wind er on the way we flew through quite a few heaps of cloud it got a little bit bumpy and unknown to us behind all this cloud was a cumulus nimbus thunderstorm cloud and we flew straight into it and it was a fantastic all of sudden it went grey and then it went almost completely dark this is sort of ten o’clock in the morning and the turbulence we were thrown about up and down and in a flash then the the inside of the gun turret was painted matt black in a flash it just became white all over with hoarfrost and I made the aimless gesture of trying to scrape some of it off with my fingers [laughs] I don’t know why I did that [laughs] but we were thrown about we went up and down and the pilot said ‘we’re getting iced up I’m losing control’ he said ‘we’ll have to get out of this’ and he did the worst thing he could have done he tried to turn round to go back out of it, the rule was if you were in that position you flew straight through it, so he started this turn and he collected so much ice on the wings he lost control of it he called out ‘I can’t control it’ and he gave the order ‘fix parachutes and standby’ now you wore your parachute harness all the time in the aircraft but your parachute was in a pack in a stowage near to where you were sitting so we grabbed the er the parachute out of its stowage and it fell to the floor just at the moment we started to be lifted up at some tremendous speed and the G was so strong I couldn’t lift the parachute pack and I thought if this carries on I going to die pretty soon [laughs] ‘cos I’ve heard of stories of planes flying into thunderstorm clouds and coming out in bits in the bottom so we were flung up and down, up and down, and then eventually we came out of the clouds and we began to lose some of the ice that had got into all our and the pilot regained control so he said ‘stand down’ we didn’t need to put the parachute on to jump but we fell out of control iced up from twelve to four thousand feet totally out of control and the air speed indicator broke the the air speed indicator pointer the needle was just hanging down and swinging like a little pendulum so we’d no air speed however our pilot er was experienced enough to know that if he put certain power settings on the engine it would keep us flying [coughs], so we abandoned the exercise and flew back to Westcott where we were based told them what had happened they then divert, oh they asked how much fuel we still had so we had sufficient fuel, they then diverted to us to RAF Wittering which is in the Peterborough area and Peter and Wittering was a big pre-war airfield and across the fields from it was a smaller wartime airfield called Collyweston and there was a flat land flat fields between the two and they had laid what was called pierced steel planking between the two airfields to create an emergency landing strip was a bit longer than the normal landing strip so we were given instructions over the radio and we told them what had happened to us what power settings to set on the engine to make a faster than normal approach so there was no danger that we would stall and we all got down in what we call crash positions we were trained to do this and we landed on this pierced steel planking runway which made a hell of a noise [laughs] when you ran over it but we got down safely and then motored back to the Wittering side where we were interviewed as to what happened then we were taken for a meal whilst the aircraft was prepared and then later on that day we flew it back to Westcott, but that from that day on until we got on the Lancaster which was an all metal aircraft I was always a bit scared [laughs] when we flew into big heaped up clouds [laughs].
SP: So Jeff you talked about Operation Manna how did you feel about doing that?
JB: Well at times it was quite emotional because so many people had died twenty odd thousand in total I think in the last months of the war er and many people had suffered so greatly through this starvation and eating all sorts of weird food like the flower bulbs they used to fry flower bulbs and all kinds of stuff, they used to make from what we were told foraging trips the people in the big cities suffered the most because they could out may be on bicycle or walking ‘cos they’d no vehicles er into the country areas and barter for food with the farmers to get a few eggs or potatoes and give away their valuables and all kinds of thing and when you spoke with some of the people that had suffered with this er it’s quite er emotional, little old ladies would want to come and hug you [laughs] and that kind of thing, and er one boy I think about probably twelve years old came to me spoke very good English as most of them do and he said ‘I want to shake your hand and thank you’ so I said ‘well what do you want to thank me for you weren’t born at the time we did this’ he said no ‘you saved my grandparents lives’ and that was the kind of thing that er happened to you people come ‘thank you thank you’ and giving you gifts it was utterly amazing the gratitude that er they showed was just overwhelming at times.
SP: Okay thanks for that is there anything else at all that you feel you haven’t had a chance to say?
JB: Well one little amusing story er when we came back from Canada and we did this instrument flying course at Turnhill er the course included normal exercises besides instruments and navigation exercises and so on and er we were being briefed to do the first solo night cross country flight we we had a rather er broad spoken Yorkshire flight lieutenant flight commander who was giving this er briefing before the flight and er he told everything we were supposed to know the weather and everything and er at the end he said ‘just a word of advice before you go’ he said er ‘if’ in his broad Yorkshire accent he said ‘now if you get lost or owt bloody silly like that for god’s sake give us a call even if it’s only to say goodbye’ [laughs].
SP: [Laughs] That’s great Jeff so thanks for all the stories there [Laughs].
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ABrownJ170118
PBrownJ1721
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Interview with Jeff Brown
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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01:03:08 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary. Allocated T Holmes
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Susanne Pescott
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2017-01-18
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Jeff Brown worked as an electrician until he joined the Royal Air Force. He flew with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
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1945-04
1945-05
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Jackie Simpson
149 Squadron
576 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
B-29
bombing
crewing up
Harvard
Lancaster
Meteor
military service conditions
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Bottesford
RAF Dalcross
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Marham
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/225/3370/AChaplinSR170407.2.mp3
a95468a013bf06283db41402714c4f41
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Chaplin, Susan Rose
Susan Chaplin
Susan R Chaplin
S R Chaplin
Sue Chaplin
S Chaplin
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Susan Chaplin (b. 1954) about her research into the crash of Wellington HE740 on 4 January 1945.
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2017-04-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Chaplin, SR
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Thursday, 7th April, 2017, and I am here in Thornton with Sue Chaplin who arranged for details to be made much more public and memorable about an air crash at North Marston nearby. So Sue what are your earliest recollections of life?
SC: I was born in North Marston where my mother and her brothers and sisters, and grandparents, great grandparents were all born, and my mother was always very very interested herself in local history and the stories of everyone so I was brought up surrounded by stories of village people and family and one of her stories was always about how she had witnessed this Wellington plane crashing in the war when she was twenty seven years old and she used to show me on our country walks the field where it came down and she always used said to me ‘there’s an engine deep down in that field you know may be one day it will be dug up’, so that’s how I grew up really with an interest in local history and the family and I’ve always had a very strong connection with North Marston where all of my family seem to take up most of the churchyard and so although I don’t live in the village anymore I have very strong connections there and my mother herself died nine years ago and my cousin still lives there so I’m going back there all the time and it’s really what led me to write back in 2014 to write the history of North Marston “The North Marston Story” which really I was prompted to do because I wanted to put down in writing all of those things that my mother had told me when I was a child, and then of course the book expanded in to far more than that in the end. I went to school in I went to Aylesbury High School er and after that I went to Teachers Training College at Wall Hall Aldenham for three years where I trained to be a teacher and then I went to the University of East Anglia after that and did a degree in history and education, so history has always been a great interest anyway and when I qualified I got a job at a school called Akeley Wood School which was a private school near Buckingham, er I got the job in 1976 and I thought it would be a stop gap for a few years until I got a different job. I had never been to a private school so it was nothing that I knew about so I thought well it would be a nice job just for a year or two but I actually stayed for my whole career and I was there for over thirty years ,and er I became head of the junior school there, and I retired in 2006 I took an early retirement in 2006.
CB: Okay we’ll stop there for a minute.
SC: In er about 2008 a gentleman came to live in North Marston who was a local historian, John Spargo, and in conversation with him one day he mentioned to me that he was surprised there was no written history of the village of North Marston as it was so rich in history, and I said to him ‘well I would absolutely love to help you put that down’ because as I mentioned just now it was something I’d always thought would be a good idea. So we decided to see if there would be um an interest in the village for a written history and we sent round a questionnaire and yes people would love it, so we started off by recording I offered to do all recordings of all the elderly people in the village and actually the not so elderly as well some of them were my old friends from school, and I did twenty three recordings including my mother, one of the recordings was also a chap called Chris Holden and Chris had been a little boy when the Wellington came and crashed and during his recording he was recollecting that night and he said ‘you know’ he said ‘I think it’s tragic there’s never been a memorial to those boys’ so I thought about this and coupled with my mother’s story of that night and finally by the fact the nearby village to me Thornborough erected a memorial in 2014 to the Wellington Bomber that crashed there all of those three things combined, so I went to the North Marston History Club which we had founded by then and said ‘how about it why not do a project the anniversary of the North Marston Wellington crash is coming up on 4th January 2015, that will be the seventieth anniversary, Thornborough had just put up one, Chris Holden had said in his interview what a shame so why don’t we go for it?’, it was agreed that we would then start to investigate the possibility of doing it this would have been the summer of 2014 when we started to think about it so we had about six months before the seventieth anniversary in January 2015 came up, obviously we had we wanted to put a memorial in the church so the first thing we had to do was approach the Vicar and the Faculty at Oxford to see if they would give permission, so the er church Parochial Church Council applied to Oxford for the Faculty that took quite a long time to come through, but we decided that we would go ahead with the memorial even if it couldn’t be put in the church because we would find somewhere for it in the village and obviously the next thing to do was to get going on finding out more and more and more about these boys. In our North Marston Story that we had written the big book about the village we had actually mentioned this crash, we knew the names of the six boys who’d died, we knew where they had come from, three were from New Zealand, one from Sussex, and two from Kent, so our next project was to try and trace any relatives that we could and my colleague in the history club Jane Springer started off by emailing the Otago Daily Times in New Zealand because we knew that two of the boys came from there, she had an instant response that day from the journalist from the Otago Daily Times and within a few days he had published our story, I sent him all the details we knew he published our story and that same day we had a response from Michael Reece who was the nephew of our pilot Michael Reece he had seen this in the paper, and we had a response from Chas Forsyth who had been a friend of the Reece’s he had seen this article in the paper, we had a response from dear Neville Selwood who was a Lancaster navigator who had been stationed at Westcott who knew Alex Bulger our bomb aimer, and we had a response from Alex Bulger’s family and that all took place within a few days. The biggest surprise at the time to us was that the Reece family and the Bulger family who had both lived all their lives in Otago knew each other but until we got in touch they hadn’t realised that their uncles had died in the same plane so that was just the most amazing thing and that was the first of many coincidences that were to happen, er so then they started to inundate us with photographs, letters that they’d had from their boys, photographs, photographs of the funerals in Oxford because five of the boys who died in the Wellington were buried at Botley in Oxford, the other one went home to Maidstone, but the Reece family in New Zealand had photographs of the burial and so they sent us photographs of the family of the boys, I mean to suddenly seeing photographs of these boys who my mother knew died that night, she by then had passed away, and it was of great sadness to me that my mother couldn’t see these photographs that suddenly came to us because she would have just loved to have seen the pictures of the boys who died. So we were suddenly starting to get information and we, Jane my colleague, went on to Ancestory.com and she was contacted by somebody who said I am a relative of Don McClellan the wireless operator, Don McClellan came from New Zealand but much further north, so she put us in touch with Don McClellan’s family so then we suddenly had photographs and information from the McClellan’s so we thought wow we’ve got enough stuff here to put out a little publication throughout the village let us put all these pictures into a little pamphlet and let’s send this round the village and tell everybody that this is our project and ask if we could have any contributions towards it. Well whilst we were doing this we then er decided that we would write to the Kent Messenger newspaper and the Brighton Argos and we had an immediate response from the Brighton Argos, somebody knew of our Reginald Price his name was in the memorial book in the St. Peters Church Brighton, we had a response from two people who read the Brighton Argos called Jackie and Nick Carter who were interested in tracing people they offered to help trace the other three British boys, they came up first of all with a relative that they had found from a free electoral um site of Mormon a family search Mormon site and free birth, marriage and death site, they came up with an address of a Christopher Colbeck who they believed was a nephew of John Wenham, I wrote to him actually wrote to him and yes he was John Wenham’s nephew and his mother John Wenham’s sister was still alive down the road in Luton, so suddenly we got John Wenham’s photographs, letters, documentation, that left us with Reginald Price and it left us with Ian Smith, then Reginald Price um suddenly started to appear because again from the Brighton Argos somebody who had read the Brighton Argos who again loved investigating went on to Ancestry.com and located a Catherine Cook who was a marine biologist in Scotland who was distantly related step step family distantly related to Reginald Price she put us in touch with her mother who had um you know was a step daughter of of a relative and we then had pictures from them that was Reginald Price ticked off. The only by now our doc out leaflet had gone round North Marston village and we had put in it that we didn’t actually have any pictures of er Ian Smith we couldn’t trace Ian Smith’s family, so the doc the leaflet went round North Marston we immediately started getting money in but the leaflet went in North Marston to a gentleman called Mike Fillamore, who again is a local historian, he saw the name Ian Smith he telephoned me and said ‘Sue a few years ago I was in North Marston Church and a gentleman was in the church looking to see if there was a memorial to a relative of his called Ian Smith and I happened to take down his name and address’ and so I telephoned I found on the internet his telephone number and I phoned him that night and he said ‘yes this is amazing’ um and so we then were put in touch with Ian Smith’s more immediate family and again the photographs started rolling in. So we had by well by November we had got pictures of all of the boys, documents, letters and we were in touch with their families and the money had started to roll in and in the end we er I had approached Brett and Sons the stonemasons in Norfolk who did a lot of the village churchyard gravestones, they um gave us a quote for um the actual plaque would have been um was going to be about fifteen hundred pounds in the church but in total our donations from the village people and from the families of the crew came to three thousand pounds so that enabled us to put up the plaque, Oxford Diocese said absolutely fine no problem, and so then we had money left over for a lovely reception and things like that. But um if I can just go back for a moment the er anniversary of the crash was 4th January, and the seventieth anniversary would have been 4th January 2015, but we didn’t have time to get together the Faculty permission to get the plaque done and to get a big service organised for 4th January, we also asked all the New Zealand relatives what they felt about it and all of them said they would absolutely love to come to the service but really January is too soon for us and we would rather come to England when the weather was a bit warmer, so we decided to have a remembrance service on 4th January 2015, which happened to be a Sunday, we put together a lovely service, we as history club wrote some of our own poems, the niece of Michael Reece the pilot, great niece of Michael Reece the pilot happened to live in Wales she said ‘I will come to this January service to represent the families’ and she read a poem at the service, we had the Last Post and it was a wonderful anniversary service followed by a lunch in the church so village people and a few RAF people who we knew and Tina Reece as the relative, and of course she wasn’t the only relative to come to our January service because all the Luton people, John Wenham the young air gunner his sister Joy in her nineties and her family all attended the January service so we had a lovely representation from families there, but we decided then that we needed to find a date to have the big plaque unveiling and the bigger service the New Zealand families suggested if it were possible what about having it on Anzac Day 25th April, it was a very special Anzac Day in 2015 and so we all you know went to the powers that be the church and everybody and it was decided to hold the big memorial on 25th April 2015, by which time the plaque in church would have been completed and we would have time to organise a big big celebration so that is where we’ve got to at the moment. We then decided that er obviously we would like some more representation at this service than we had at the other so I contacted the New Zealand Embassy in London and asked if we could possibly have any New Zealand er RAF people they said being Anzac Day they were a bit short on the ground, but as it happened a week before our service they phoned me and said we are sending six RA New Zealand Air Force, we also had very very honoured to have Air Marshall Sir Colin Terry who agreed to I wrote to him and he agreed to unveil the plaque, we had um members of the er cadets, we had from Maidstone in Kent where young John Wenham had been a boy and had attended the Scouts the Tovil Scouts came up and represented the Scouts they came, we had some local RAF reserve people, and we had our Church Warden um an ex RAF wing commander so he took a big part in the service, um the Royal British Legion of course were desperately keen to be involved and so we ended up with a procession involving um a lot of people all in uniform we had the Last Post we had um eight relatives from New Zealand that day at the service, and a huge coincidence again was that one of the New Zealand relatives was talking to one of the RAF New Zealand RAF and er she said ‘well my er son is a photographer in the RAF’ he said ‘what’s his name, ooh I know him’ so that’s amazing this lady had come from New Zealand and one of our New Zealand RAF boys knew knew her son so that was another little coincidence. So er we had well I say the most wonderful service the church was packed we had wonderful hymns we started off with “God is our Strength and Refuge” sung to the Dambusters tune and it was um a really really lovely service members of the history club all read poems and did readings, I introduced the whole service I set the scene and gave the whole background to it and er then afterwards we went down to the village hall where some local groups had set up memorabilia war time memorabilia, and er a local lady had set up a huge huge refreshments we had a cake with “Lest We Forget” and Joy Colbeck the ninety ninety two year old sister of the young air gunner er she cut the cake and all her family were there so I mean it was really absolutely marvellous, but we had decided before the er big celebration that really with all the photographs that we’d got and the documents er we really need to needed to write a proper book so John Spargo the chairman of the history club and I and two other people from the village, John Newby who was very interested in aircraft he had been er flying with the RAF in the RAF Volunteer Reserves and had had twenty five years in management per to the aviation industry he helped write all of the technical stuff about the plane, and Martin Bromelly who was a current airline pilot and again very very interested in airline history he investigated an awful lot for us, he found out the weather conditions that night, he wrote his own version of what he thought happened that night, so all of these us four basically put together this book with photographs all the photographs that we’d got plus um our interpretation of what actually happened that night and we sold over a hundred copies of the book and we put all the photographs from the day onto a DVD and sold I think about seventy or eighty of those.
CB: Having a break having a breather. So continuing from there.
SC: Um so following the service it it certainly wasn’t the end to everything because although it was coming up now for two years ago we are still in very close contact with the New Zealand families and the families of the British people we are getting emails from them every now and then with best wishes we have Christmas cards we have letters, Jane Springer my colleague who did a lot of the initial investigation with Ancestry.com, she and I have visited dear Joy Colbeck er the sister of the young air gunner John Wenham we visited her several times we visit her on her birthday she has been back to North Marston on several occasions so she has become very much a family friend, er we have been given gifts er um we’ve been given lovely pictures of Wellington aircraft and things like that, and not only have we learned about the six boys themselves but of course we’ve learned very much about their families and these New Zealand boys who had also had brothers in the air force, and Don McClellan whose brother was killed very tragically just before he died his he had also lost a brother on a POW ship that had been sunk by er um mistakenly by a British torpedo, so we learnt about all the tragedies in the families and how sad they’d been and we learnt how much it had meant to them all to lose these boys some of their descendants are named after their uncles and great uncles who died in the crash and the wireless operator Don McClellan his sister is still alive in New Zealand and she has had a picture of him on her wall ever since he died, Michael Reece the pilot his brother Jim is still alive in New Zealand, and of course Joy Colbeck is still alive and Ian Smith’s sister only died a couple of months before we started to do our investigation, so in fact it’s amazing that there are still siblings of these boys still around, it has brought the Colbeck family um John Wenham’s family who are called the Colbeck’s they had had a bit of a rift in the family and because of our investigation about John and they all came together for the service they have all been reunited. Also um dear Ed Andrews from Westcott showed me a photograph one day of a Wellington crew and he said ‘we don’t know who these people are in this picture’ but he gave me the photograph, well Neville Selwood the Lancaster pilot from the Lancaster navigator from New Zealand who was a friend of Alex Bulger who had been to Westcott also sent me a photograph of himself at Westcott and it was exactly the same photograph that Ed had given me so I could then contact Ed and say ‘I now know who this crew is’ and dear Neville Selwood he’s still going strong he writes to me frequently he sends me copies of all his log books, he is the honorary chaplain of the Royal New the New Zealand Bomber Command Association he’s the honorary chaplain and I get their magazines every quarter or every six months they send me their magazine and I believe Ed Andrews from Westcott writes in this magazine because um I’ve seen his articles, so having having um this contact with these people has been wonderful and I myself have found it really heart-warming, I spoke to Captain Jack Charley again who was a Lancaster navigator I believe had a long conversation with him so to to talk to these people is absolutely wonderful, and er as I say you know we’ve brought closure to the families and we have explained a lot to them that they didn’t actually know before they now know that it was North Marston not Long Marston, they’ve seen the site, they’ve seen the field and the actual spot where the plane came down, um one thing that Joy Colbeck er John Wenham’s sister was very very concerned about which is interesting is that she had the official report sent to her of the crash and many many years ago and in it it mentioned that the pilot it was the pilot’s fault because he was inexperienced she was desperately worried when she met the Reece family that this shouldn’t come out, she didn’t want it put in our book she didn’t want them to know because she felt that if they thought that that they wouldn’t be able to live with that, er and so of course we never mentioned it anywhere but I think you know we have discussed this and um basically if he didn’t have enough experience to go up that night then he shouldn’t have been allowed to go up so one can hardly blame the pilot we feel, but we did keep it quiet from the Reece family ah but it has been the most amazingly heart-warming experience since the service in April 2015, we have had three more sets of relatives from New Zealand who have visited they couldn’t make the service themselves but they have been over to England and I have taken them to the memorial, to the crash site, shown them round Westcott airfield which I am now getting very familiar with, and have taken them to Botley to the cemetery, and I expect there’ll soon be some more coming [laughs].
CB: Is there a crucial question here or matter I think which helped closure for families and that is um what was the um what was the operation that they were on because some people don’t recognise how many crashes were in training and there they attributed the loss to a wartime operation, so how did that come out with the different families?
SC: Um the fact that they were just on a on a training mission um I believe John Wenham’s sister knew that anyway um the New Zealand families were happy to know the facts.
CB: Which were?
SC: Which were that they had taken off from Westcott at about seven o’clock on a snowy evening to go on a training mission we’re not quite sure we haven’t been able to find out exactly where they were heading but they took off from Westcott at about seven seven ten and fifteen minutes fifteen minutes later the plane came down in North Marston, so it said on the official report that it came down in from five thousand feet, my mother who was in the back garden at the time heard the plane coming very low over and she knew that it sounded wrong there were Wellington planes all around the airfields around North Marston and she knew it sounded wrong, and Chris Holden with his friend up the road heard the explosion heard the bang, er Clifford Cheshire who was a young boy was out delivering bread with his father he came upon this crash scene within minutes, and er so that is why these people have such vivid memories but they we do not know we haven’t been able to find out what they were doing but it was a training flight the pilot was alone there wasn’t any other train there wasn’t um anybody training them they were on their own, um the New Zealand families were surprised to hear that it wasn’t a mission but they accepted it and er I don’t think they were anything other than pleased to know the facts.
CB: So just to clarify that so some of the families that were there were under some misapprehension that this was actually a bomber sortie.
SC: Yes they hadn’t ever been told that it was a training flight so they assumed that it was a bomber sortie in the in the New Zealand the New Zealand yes yes we have the letters in our book we have the letters that were written to them after the death to announce you know the deaths um from Captain Stevens who was the Group Captain at Westcott um and it basically says ‘your son lost his life as a result of a flying accident the aircraft in which he was flying took off from the station on a normal exercise at nineteen thirty five hours the aircraft crashed’ it doesn’t say what time it took off it just says it crashed at nineteen thirty five hours and it says it was a normal exercise and I think that they just assumed in New Zealand that it was actually a bombing mission, their boys had trained in Canada before they’d come over here and so they had these boys had arrived at Westcott in October around about October and this was January they were due to go off to another base very shortly where they would be going on to Lancasters and things um but I don’t think that er the families probably comprehended that they were just still training I think they probably thought having trained in Canada and come over to England that they had finished their training and no more training was involved er and the letter from Captain Stevens goes on to say ‘no details as to how the accident occurred are available’.
CB: So just to clarify that they’d done their initial training in Canada?
SC: They have.
CB: They’ve come to an operational conversion unit on a twin engine Wellington?
SC: Yes.
CB: There next move probably would have been to heavy bombers because of where the Westcott stream went.
SC: Yes.
CB: So they would have gone to a heavy conversion unit.
SC: Yes.
CB: After that they would have gone to an operational squadron.
SC: Yes yes and I believe that the New Zealand er contingent often went to the same place it was um you might know which one they went to.
CB: Seventy Five Squadron.
SC: Seventy Five Squadron yes yes, one of the letters that we have from one of the boys when he wrote home said that er you know he was sort of suggesting that very soon they would be on their way to somewhere else yes er you know um and they never got there and of course it was only a few months before the war finished
CB: Yes.
SC: Which is very very tragic.
CB: Yes because this was January 45 and the war finished on 8th May in Europe
SC: That’s right yes.
CB: 1945.
SC: Yes.
CB: What would you say was the reaction of the families to the event you put on in memory of the crew?
SC: Huge gratitude and overwhelming surprise that we had decided to honour their family members seventy years after the event that’s that those six lads were still being remembered and were in somebodies memory and I think they were honoured they felt honoured to um think that we had done this, that their boys names are now in the church on a plaque forever and er yes great surprise, but as I have said already several of them said what wonderful closure the actual siblings of the crew who died it brought real closure to these elderly people all in their nineties of course that now they felt it was it had come a full circle and this had been remembered, and of course they were so grateful that they now knew more details about everything and that they had managed to find out about the other crew members that were in the plane with their relatives that night and they have become firm friends the New Zealanders now are all in contact with each other and they write to the old lady in Luton so they’re emailing her she is in her nineties but she still emails she’s very lucid so its brought great friendship and a sense of togetherness and very heart-warming to us at the history club that we managed to do this for these people.
CB: Yes, and in the village what was the reaction to the publication of the book but actually the event itself also?
SC: Well we had the most amazing response to the book because the money just starting pouring in I think the fact that we showed the photograph the photographs we got by then that the photographs the story of this plane crash in this little booklet made it very personal and very poignant um and the village people showed great interest in fact I think we could have filled the church twice over er that day of the big service but obviously with all the RAF personnel and relatives you know and people close to it we er we couldn’t fit we wouldn’t have fitted everybody in um [laughs] but er yes um great interest great interest.
CB: I remember it was a very good event.
SC: You see a lot of people in the village er had no idea that a plane had crashed you know in the village and they didn’t know that and so I think yes it was an event very well worth doing all round for everybody concerned.
CB: Two supplementary questions associated with this what was the reaction of the Church of England to this?
SC: Er there was no opposition whatsoever to putting a memorial in the church the Faculty although they took a long time to give us permission but I think faculties always take a long time to come through and the er Vicar the village Vicar was very very happy to do that.
CB: And afterwards did you get anything from them?
SC: From the church?
CB: Yes.
SC: Yes um in fact er we we because we had some money er left over from our collection we actually gave the church a substan quite a nice amount of money as er the collection at the church that day was about five hundred pounds that day and so er I think we actually handed that over to the church so they were very grateful for that as well.
CB: Right brilliant, the second question is to do with your speciality education so how did the Local Education Authority but particularly the school in the village react?
SC: The school in the village? Er they had very little to do with it the village school yes yes.
CB: It’s not surprising in a way that so many people don’t even know when the war was.
SC: Mmm mmm.
CB: Let alone anything that came out of it.
SC: Absolutely, I think to be honest with you we were so busy, and I was particularly busy because I I organised it all, so I wrote all the letters, I wrote all the invitations, I did all of the organising absolutely everything, I wrote the service and everything, I think I was so probably taken up with the organisation of it all that I didn’t actually involve to be fair the village school children at that time because um we we just had so much else to do, we have the North Marston History Club we do go into the school I have gone into the school and given talks on various things like the history of the school but we haven’t actually talked to them about this particular event but we we might because I think it it’s something that we can we can do but at the time the village school children weren’t really involved, the children who were at the service were not the village school children they were air cadets local air cadets and the young scouts from Maidstone, er quite another nice coincidence was that John Wenham the young air gunner was a scout in Maidstone in the Tovil Scouts and there is a memorial to him on their Scout memorial but also his name is just alongside Guy Gibson’s because Guy Gibson was an honorary Tovil Scout, so John Wenham and Guy Gibson are on the same memorial down in Maidstone which is rather rather lovely, and those scouts our Tovil Scouts from Maidstone have forged a relationship with old dear Joy Colbeck now and they um have looked after they have now gone round to look after her brother’s grave in Maidstone and in fact the war grave the War Grave Commission have renovated er his stone and so that’s another nice outcome, I think the she wrote to it and I think it all brought it to the fore that the stone was getting in very poor condition and so that’s another result of this is that his stone has now been renovated at and the Tovil Scouts tend it and have shown an interest in him so it’s been educational for those young boys as well, and I think also what has been again so amazing is the response from the newspapers the Kent Messenger they have run big they wrote ran a big article for and to find to try and help us trace relatives they reported our service afterwards, The Best of British Magazine had it in , in er you know the Bucks Herald, er and the Brigton Argos if they hadn’t have published our story that time, and then since then the Kent Messenger the journalist there who was so interested in our story that he has contacted Joy Colbeck and has got a lot of stories about her family and her her family grew up in Maidstone, her family ran I’ll say a well known shop in Maidstone and I think he’s just suddenly she’s become a local celebrity in Maidstone although she lives in Luton she’s become a local celebrity in Maidstone and he’s been writing stories about her so that’s another offshoot really from it yes yes.
CB: You mentioned the Military Cemetery at Botley on the west side of Oxford.
SC: Yes yes.
CB: How well is that maintained and by who?
SC: It’s maintained beautifully um I’m not sure whether it’s the Oxford Council who do it or whether it’s the War Graves Commission but I’ve visited it on many occasions occasions and there’s always somebody mowing it’s beautifully kept and the three New Zealand boys are buried side by side and then the two British are just a few yards away in a different place, and all of the relatives who have visited this country have all obviously been over to Botley, and on the morning of our service on 25th April, we organised a little minibus and er a little minibus load of people went over there before they came back for our afternoon service and they took poppies and flowers over there to lay on the graves that day, yes very very beautifully maintained.
CB: Finally you’ve done a huge amount of work on this which worked extremely well and gave great closure for the families what would you say was the most memorable aspect of your task in arranging and er closing this operation?
SC: I think the most memorable aspect was our initial contact with the families we had no idea we would actually contact anybody and I think to receive photographs but receiving the photographs um I think every time I had a photograph I burst into tears when I saw it, there was only one of the crew who we couldn’t get a photograph of as an adult we only had one of the child, but to see photographs of those boys who died that night that’s my most I think one of the most poignant things, and I think to looking back to think how we have brought the families together and have given them so much information and honoured them, I think they felt honoured that we had remembered their boys and I think it’s the overwhelming sense of thanks and gratitude that we have had from the families I think that has been the the the personal aspect of it has been the most the thing that will live with me forever, I think it really well and er its been er yes a very very very worthy thing and I shall never regret doing it, my only regret is that my dear mother who saw the plane come down that night and who gave me the first early stories of this plane er had died before we managed to do this she would have just loved to have met everybody so that was my regret but yes that’s it I think really to say the everlasting legacy of it I think.
CB: In view of what you said I think it’s worth recording that er to do with the New Zealanders that of all the Commonwealth Countries New Zealand contributed the highest proportion of it’s population towards the war effort in Britain.
SC: Really, that’s amazing.
CB: So Sue we’ve spoken about people who are effectively are not in this locality in terms of the crew and their families and their descendants but in the locality first of all what was the reactions of schools and secondly the press because that links together really in an awareness but first the school so what was their reaction?
SC: Er the local village school er didn’t actually show any interest in it really, that said we didn’t approach the school at the time because we were so very very busy involved in the organisation and all of you can imagine how busy we were, er but some of the people who had given us money er and were helping us in the project had children had links with the village school but somehow it didn’t filter through to the village school or the headmistress there er that this might be a worthy project for her children to do, I don’t think that the headmistress of North Marston Village School had a great interest in history herself, in fact the only thing that the village school has done in North Marston in any way to do with history is that they have called their four houses after some important names linked with the village history, like Shaw and Camden and things like that because of its their names that go back in North Marston history back to twelve hundreds they have called their children’s houses by those names, misspelt I might say they haven’t spelt them properly, but that’s the only real thing that they’ve done towards village history, and they did er I asked them if I could go in and give them a history talk and I talked about the history of the village school er so that is really the only link that they have they have had with history, oh and I believe our Chairman of the History Club did take them on a guided walk around the village but certainly with where we go back to the bomber they didn’t show any interest at the time but that said we were so busy and exhausted with it all actually that we probably didn’t approach the school ourselves so we might have engendered so interest if we had gone in, um but the local newspapers were very disinterested the Buckingham Advertiser didn’t even publish a story about it and the Bucks Herald did publish something many weeks after after we had cajoled and that was a complete contrast to the reactions that we had from the Kent Messenger newspaper and the Brigton Argos newspaper who were thrilled to publish pictures of our big service and the stories behind them so it’s interesting that the editorial in the Bucks papers is disinterested in that sort of thing, er I will probably give a talk to the school at some stage actually I’m sure that they will um yes they they will let me go in and talk to them but I think um it didn’t engender their interest at the time.
CB: And your secondary school is in Waddesdon so what was the reaction there?
SC: No well we haven’t heard anything from them but again they might not have known anything about it because the local papers didn’t publicise it.
CB: Okay right I’ll stop there.
SC: Keep thinking of things but
CB: There are occasionally other things that come to mind afterwards and one is that there are stories about things that happened like what your mother’s perception was so shall we just cover that and also the other one so what did your mother say about it?
SC: Well my mother who happened to be in the outside privy in the garden at the time age twenty seven heard the Wellington bomber coming over and knew that it was in trouble because it didn’t sound like the other Wellington bombers that were always going over, she always said to me that it was on fire and she heard those poor boys screaming, but thinking about it with the noise of a Wellington bomber just a hundred feet above your head she probably didn’t hear screams and although it exploded in a field about quarter of a mile away er and obviously there was fire all around them, er we’ve all discussed since that possibly it wasn’t on fire when my mother saw it but it’s something that she thought it probably would have been but she didn’t actually see it but she’s dead now so we won’t ever know but that was her perception of it at the time.
CB: Well it could have been an engine fire of course as the crash was undetermined, what was the other story?
SC: Well this isn’t in our book at all and we haven’t mentioned it to some of the relatives but a local person in North Marston, Mike Fillamore, who is still alive, said that he was told by another local villager that the morning after the crash when they were down there a body was found hanging in a tree an ash tree just on the edge of the road, this was news to me I’ve never heard this story certainly my mother had never mentioned it, but the person who told this story was somebody called Jeff Ayres who has now passed away, but Mike Fillamore who heard this story from him said that was what he told him but Mike Fillamore could still tell you that, but we didn’t mention this to er the Joy Colbeck, the sister of John Wenham who was an air gunner, because we thought that it would upset her if she thought that it was her young brother who might have been in that tree and possibly in the dark might not have been noticed that night and could possibly have been saved, so we thought it was best not to tell her this because it’s not substantiated but I think I don’t know where the story comes from but this was what was said.
CB: So it is quite possible of course that somebody tried to get out like the rear gunner rotating his turret.
SC: Yes, so it could have been John Wenham or the young Reg Price the two nineteen year olds.
CB: Yes. Thank you.
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AChaplinSR170407
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Interview with Sue Chaplin
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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00:52:23 audio recording
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Pending review
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2017-04-07
Description
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Susan Chaplin was born in North Marston and was a local teacher. She recounts the story her mother told her as a young girl, about Wellington HE740 which crashed near the village. With her local history group she researched and wrote a book “The North Marston Story”, about the crash and erected a memorial in the village church. Flight Sergeant Michael Reece, Flight Sergeant Donald McLennan, Flight Sergeant Alexander Bolger, Sergeant Ian Smith, Sergeant John Wenham and Sergeant Reginald Price were killed in the crash.
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Civilian
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
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1945-01-04
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Jackie Simpson
crash
final resting place
memorial
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/239/3384/ACouperAJ151208.2.mp3
ac37331c622356f58e50bdab1d0f435e
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Couper, Allan Joseph
Allan Joseph Couper
Allan J Couper
Allan Couper
A J Couper
A Couper
Description
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One oral history interview with Allan Joseph Couper [d. 2022]. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 75 Squadron.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-12-08
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Couper, AJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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Alright. Here we go. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre with Allan Couper who was a 75 Squadron, New Zealand Squadron bomb aimer which is an RAF squadron during World War Two. The interview is taking place at Cabrini Hospital in Brighton where Allan is unfortunately a patient. My name is Adam Purcell. It is the 8th of December 2015. Allan, we may as well start. Start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life, how you grew up, what your education was like and what you did before the Air Force?
AC: Well my family, the Coupers. C O U P E R S. The Coupers had dairy farms at a place called [unclear] South. Somewhere between Leongatha and Mirboo North. Actually, my great grandfather selected land at Mirboo way back in the eighteen, probably the 1880s. And my grandfather, the son selected land at [unclear] South. A hundred and sixty acres I think it would have been. It was completely forested. Now, in that family there were four boys and three girls. It’s of interest to me that the first boy, son was out crawling around the veranda of what might have been the house, it was probably only a two roomed affair on the, on the farm. He got bitten by a snake and by the time I got him to the doctor he’d passed away. Always been very careful about snakes in my time. Well they [pause] yeah they milked cows for a living shall we say. I’ve been told that at the very beginning when there were no separators, cream separators, what they used to do was put the milk [pause] they used to put the cream in these big basins and then skim the, or put the milk in the basins and skim the, skim the cream off. What they did with this cream I’ve never actually found out. But obviously they must have sold some of it. Well, as time went by and the boys grew up, they acquired adjoining farms. Or their father did, I think. And so it became, and my uncles and aunts et cetera were all dairy farmers including my father and my mother and we endeavoured to make a living. It wasn’t really very successful for all sorts of reasons. By the time I, oh I went to school at the local primary. [unclear] south number 3356. I can still remember that. Initially I got there, I walked and then we moved to another farm and I then had to ride a horse. I had the experience a couple of years ago of going to a grandparent’s function at the school where my grandchildren are now attending. They were doing an interview of the grandmas and grandpas and on this particular occasion a question was asked of me, ‘How did you get to school, grandpa?’ And I said, ‘I rode a horse.’ ‘Oh. Why would you ride a horse, grandpa? Why?’ Why? I explained why. Of course, they all were driven there these days in a motor car. Anyway, in those days we were examined at eighth grade, which is what the primary school went to and we got the, whatever it was called — the merit certificate. It was decided by my parents that I would continue on doing year nine but I would do it by correspondence which was a bit of a challenge to me. Particularly if you are doing French and I didn’t have anybody to talk to in French. Anyway, after about one term of that we moved to Melbourne and I went, from there I went to the Box Hill High. I was there for two years, more or less. Left when I got my intermediate because by that time my father had enlisted in the army in the Second World War. Money was very scarce. Almost non-existent. So I got a job working as a junior clerk at a place called James McEwan Hardware Stores in the CBD. I have to say that was a new experience for me. Anyway, after a few months I saw a vacancy for a job in the State Electricity Commission as a junior clerk. I applied and got it and I was taken on. Worked there in what was called the overhead main section. The overhead main section was responsible for building the transmission lines from, for example [unclear] to Melbourne from what do they call their key, not key but [unclear] that was up in the hills where they had a hydro station and I sort of did all sorts of odd things. Then one day I saw, oh I started doing English and maths 1 at night school. That was also my mother persuaded me to take on doing mechanic studies. I was spending more time at night time going to school than anything else in the city. Then I saw an advertisement in the paper. It was just a point of time when the Japanese were, had come in to the war. I saw an advertisement. They were advertising for cadets for the Air Training Corps. I made an application. I was accepted. And then for the next two years I went a couple of nights a week to the Camberwell Boys Grammar School I think it was, for lessons. Now, how am I going?
AP: Very well.
AC: Enough detail?
AP: Very well. This is —
AC: Ok.
AP: This is excellent.
AC: Ok. One of the interesting things about that was that each morning it was my job to change the blotter on the desk of one of the senior engineers that worked on the same floor as I was working. That was in a building in the, in the city. He happened to be a chief education officer for the Air Training Corps. And it so happened that I was able to, whilst changing the blotter have a look in to his inwards tray and see what was going on in the Air Training Corps [laughs] So I was well briefed there. Nobody else would have been. Eventually, I was coming around to being eighteen and I was accepted by the RAAF. It also just happened, not that it really advantaged me, it just happened that the chief of the RAF, RAAF recruiting was a gentleman called Sir Harold Buxton. He had been the mayor and he was the senior director of James McEwan. And because of his role in the Air Force his secretary used to get me to take correspondence et cetera up to Sir Harold’s office which was at the corner of [pause] Little Collins and Queen Street. That didn’t really have anything to do with me except just that that did happen. Sir Harold had been in the, well the equivalent of the RAAF in the First World War. Obviously, he would have been a pilot. As I said before he had been the mayor. Lord Mayor of Melbourne. Well, whilst we were in the Air Training Corps we did quite a few things. Like on Saturdays on one occasion I remember we went down to Laverton. It was a great thrill for us boys of sixteen, seventeen to go down there and see the planes. Many of them being, of course almost obsolete. I remember on one occasion we were asked to go to the Hawthorn Town Hall. They were having a loan function. It was for advertising how they needed money to pay for the Second World War. Me and the boys, we all went. Made up the audience of course. That was the idea of it but on the platform we had some very good speakers. One of them was a well-known correspondent, war correspondent who’d just been to New Guinea and had experienced the traumas of the Kokoda Trail. He talked about that. Of course nobody in the audience really knew anything about the Kokoda Trail but he sort of filled in. Another one that spoke was a lady. I can’t think of her name now. But anyway her mother, she was the mother of a gentleman who was in the RAAF who later on made his name when he came and brought an aircraft home and flew underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He later on went on to be involved with publishing. How are we going?
AP: Yeah. That’s alright.
AC: Alright.
AP: We were talking, I think Peter Isaacson you’re talking about.
AC: Yeah.
AP: Yeah.
AC: Isaacson.
AP: Yeah.
AC: And also, at the end of the evening we had the pleasure of hearing Sir Robert Menzies speak. And then subsequently answer questions. And whilst I was only seventeen, I was fascinated by his ability to answer questions. Talking of questions, on one occasion, one Saturday afternoon we were all brought together and the gentleman that I spoke of who was the chief educator for the Air Training Corps and who worked at the SEC and whose inwards I used to inspect every now and again came to sort of make a visit. I suppose to check us over. The interesting thing about it I said, prior to him coming we had a series of questions asked of us and funnily enough those same questions were asked when the gentleman [laughs] the chief training instructor was there. Of course we, we all knew the answers. Anyway, eventually when I was just before I was eighteen I asked to attend the RAAF recruiting I suppose. It was in a building on the corner of Little Collins and Russell Street I recall. Had the name of Piston Motors or something like that and went through a series of interviews. Had medical examinations. And one of the examinations, oh yeah, the medical examination I had one of the doctors conducting it recognised me. A couple of years before, after I’d been attending a church service shall we say, I fell off my bike. He happened, his surgery happened to be opposite the church in Surrey Hills and he looked after me and when I got into this medical in the RAAF he recognised me. Anyway, he passed me. Well eventually a few days after I was eighteen I reported to this place in Little Collins and what was it again? Russell Street.
AP: Yeah.
AC: We all came together. All swore on the bible. My father must have accompanied me and I recall he’d come back from the Middle East by this time. I recall him saying to me, ‘Now don’t go, go to Victor Harbour. Don’t go to Victor Harbour, Allan.’ Victor Harbour was another training area like Somers I mentioned about. Victor Harbour was in South Australia and of course it was I suppose a business of an eighteen year old one day going into the State and not being able to come home. Anyway, we were marched off down to the station and went off down to Somers. Will you want to know anything about Somers?
AP: Oh yeah. Yeah, that’s, we’re getting up to pretty well my next question was talking about your Initial Training School. So tell me. Tell me what you did at Somers.
AC: Well, when we got down to Flinders, no — Frankston Station, got on a bus, went down to Somers. We must have got there by about lunchtime and probably had a bit of lunch and then we were taken to the equipment room. And one of the first things I remember happening there was that they pointed to a pile of hessian bags and then a pile of oats, not oats — hay and said, ‘That’ll be your bedding for the night.’ Anyway, we got our blankets and I suppose a pillow and then would have had equipment to sleep in or sleep on and shown where which hut we were going to be in. And then, probably the next day we would have been lined up and allotted to our class. I think I was in B Flight. A B A B C D E F. I was in B flight. That’s right. And we started a lecture series. Going, going over some of the things we’d already been taught at the Air Training Corps but you have to remember that most of the people involved with that course, course 35, Somers, Initial Training School — most of them were, hadn’t been in the Air Training Corps schools. Hadn’t been with the Air Training Corps. So, I think, I think I’ve still got a letter. I was number two from my, second one in from my squadron. And so, you know it was very, in one sense very early days. Well, we did all these various things. Did a lot of drill. Did physical exercises. Went to the pictures occasionally. Every morning we had to line up and go onto the parade ground. Do our parade. [pause] One of the things I remember about it was we all had to do eye tests and my, apparently my, I had some problem with my vision that hadn’t shown up before. And I was put through a series of exercises to try and improve the situation. It may or may not have. I’ll mention it later. One of the other interesting things that happened there was at the time somehow or another I broke my upper false teeth. Cracked. So I went to the dentist and must have been home on leave at the time of the break. Of course it was very sharp and I couldn’t really wear the two pieces of teeth. It was very sharp. So I got a nail file and I relieved the situation. When I went back to the dentist he couldn’t understand why the teeth didn’t sort of come together like they used to. But nobody was, nothing was revealed. As a consequence I got a new set of, new set of teeth. Well, eventually we finished the three months. We finished the course. In the process we had been and had a series of interviews. Now, the adjutant at that, for our squadron was the cyclist. What was his name? Famous cyclist. Went into parliament later.
AP: Opperman.
AC: Yeah. It was Hubert Opperman. He was a very nice fellow. Treated us all very well. At the end of the three months our flight went out to dinner at some café along the coast down at Somers. One of the things I remember about that was they asked Oppy to give us a bit of a talk about his, when he was the cycling in various tournaments. And he made mention of a twenty four hour ride in Paris. And when he’d finished one of the smart boys got up and said, ‘Sir. How did you cope with your wee wee problem riding a bike for twenty four hours?’ I can’t remember [laughs] what he said.
AP: But that’s the best bit [laughs]
AC: Anyway —
AP: Oh dear.
AC: In the process we were selected out to be either pilots, observers or wireless air gunners. And then we were sent off to the appropriate station and I went to Western Junction as a trainee pilot.
AP: As a trainee pilot. Right. I sense there’s a story here if you were a trainee pilot.
AC: Well, at the time. I wasn’t in the end.
AP: Did [pause] so ok so how, how far did you get through the pilot course?
AC: I got to twelve hours.
AP: Did you solo?
AC: No.
AP: Bugger. That’s always my, my next question really for anyone who went through pilot training. I always ask them about their first solo. But you can probably tell me something about the Tiger Moth. What did you think of it?
AC: What?
AP: You can probably tell me something about the Tiger Moth. What, what did you think of flying the Tiger Moth during your brief time pilot training?
AC: Well I’d never flown in anything else. Didn’t know anything about it. It was the standard training plane. We had to start the damned things by twisting the propeller. But it wasn’t, the trainee had already got into his cockpit. He didn’t do that. It was somebody else that did it. But the fundamental reason for me getting, we used the term scrubbed, was the eyesight problem. The judgement. The judgement on landing. It was very important to be able to precisely know whether you were three feet above the ground or thirty feet. So that was my understanding of it. Well then I, we were shall we say stood down. I wasn’t the only one. About twenty five percent of them were. And I’ll mention that in a minute. And then we were stood down and just sort of re-allotted quarters and put on to digging trenches because still at this time the Japanese, the Japanese event was very much to the fore. And the fellow that was in charge of us, I suppose he was a corporal or something had been in Darwin in charge of much the same thing but had obviously been re-allotted. Given the boot I suppose. And that’s what we did for a while. But eventually I was interviewed by the wing commander in charge of the squadron, or the base and I was made, re-allotted to being an observer and then transferred up to Cootamundra to the Air Navigation School for further training. It turned out that most of the people that went there were scrubbed pilots. So obviously it was part of a plan. Every hundred pilots and twenty five would be given the boot and then sent on to the air navigation. That’s how it worked as I understand it. Shall I keep going?
AP: Absolutely.
AC: Well —
AP: What we might do. I’ll just let you talk. Keep talking until you run out of things to talk about and then I’ll go back and fill in the gaps later. Like you when you get to the end I’ll go back and see if there’s are any other questions that I need to ask you. So just, just keep going. There’s good, there’s good stuff actually. This is really good.
AC: Well, we went to, I went to Cootamundra and met up with, of a course a different set of people. Fellas. Mostly they came from Queensland and New South Wales. We weren’t there very long before we were put on to air training in the Avro Ansons. Two, two trainees would go up with a pilot and stooge around doing different things. I remember one of the things we had to do was, say go to [pause] the name just comes to mind, Lismore and do a sketch of the Lismore township as we flew over. That was all part of the training. I think we got down to Mildura on one occasion on training. And one of the things I do now remember is we went over to the coast. There’s a place with an inlet, a big inlet. River coming in. And we had to do a sketch of that. It was near Merimbula, but you had to be pretty quick. And on that particular exercise one of the planes, I don’t, didn’t ever find out what happened but failed and would have crashed and one of the trainee navigators or, trainee observers they were, parachuted but hadn’t done the straps up under between his legs and he, of course he couldn’t control his fall and he was killed. There was a story, I don’t know that it had any truth in it but the other one, there were two of course, the other one was in the UK over Wales. Much the same happened. He’d forgotten to do his straps up. Just don’t believe it but I did hear that story. Anyway, we worked our way through the course. It was as cold as buggery being in the winter. There was no real heating. And eventually we had our exams. I did well. I came third in the class. Got above average. Very happy with my role in life. I would have been the youngest there because of the Air Training Corps bit. And from there we were shifted on to number 3 BAGS — Bombing and Gunnery School. That was at West Sale. Yeah. All the new, all the new, no, all the boys from New South Wales, Queensland et cetera went off up north to another training station there and I was sort of well, I didn’t know anybody initially at BAGS. We did a month on gunnery training. We did a month on bombing training there. For the bombing we flew in, well Oxfords I think. I can’t remember whether Ansons or Oxfords. And for the gunnery we flew in Fairey Battles. Well that was an experience. A Fairey Battle. Terrible. And one of the things that used to happen was the pilots, of course it was pretty dull for them just flying alongside an aircraft towing a drogue which we were supposed to fire at. And after the exercise was over they’d do a few aerobatics. Well, I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy the aeroplane. One of the exercises we did was low level bombing. Had to drop ten bombs on a, on the target. This was all out near the coast at Sale. I had to drop ten bombs. The little fellas. And the pilot and I managed to get all ten on target which was quite an achievement. It had a lot to do with the pilot mind you. Thinking about it there were no real highlights when we were there. Oh. From there, that’s, we got our wings there. I don’t know why but we did. Then we went on, I went on, I went on to the Air Navigation School at Nhill.
AP: Right.
AC: Where we learned to fly by using [pause] what did we use? [pause] It’ll come to me.
AP: Astro?
AC: Eh?
AP: Astro?
AC: Yeah.
AP: So, so a sextant.
AC: Yeah.
AP: Presumably. Yeah.
AC: We were there for about a month using the astro navigation. Learning where the stars were et cetera et cetera. Yeah. On one of the missions I got lost. Course we were all sort of over Mallee country. There were very few features that we could sort of identify. And then we had the exam. As a result of the exam I got a below average. It didn’t mean, I don’t know whether it meant much. So then we were put on to leave for re-direction as qualified aircrew. Had to report in to the Spencer Street Station every day for instructions. Of course I was at home. I lived in ‘Bourne at the time. Eventually we were put on a train to Sydney. It turned out there was a couple of others I must have known. We eventually got to Sydney. Caught the train out to some station. Well known station north of Sydney. Got off the train. The station must have been next door to the RAAF station I think. When we got to the RAAF station we were about to go in [pause] there was a fellow I knew there. A trainee who’d been at some of the places I’d been to. ‘Hurry on,’ he said, ‘Hurry on,’ he said, ‘Hurry on, I’m making a selection. Hurry on.’ So we sort of picked up our bags and went down to where there was a line up. It turned out that we were lining up to be exported the next day to San Francisco. We dashed around to get a bit of clothing and that sort of thing. The next day put on a bus and put on a ship. It was an American transport. Something Vernon. Mount Vernon comes to mind. Put on there and away we went. Now then. What are your questions?
AP: Your wings.
AC: Eh?
AP: Your wings you said you got at West Sale. Did you have an O or a B or something else?
AC: Oh a B. No. No. No. No. I had an O to start with. I had an O.
AP: When did that —
AC: Observer.
AP: Yeah. When did that change to the B? And do you know how it sort of happened? Or did someone just kind of give you another one and say you’ve got these ones now.
AC: Well, how it happened was when we eventually got to the UK we went to Brighton which was a personnel depot. Once again we were all lined up. And they called for volunteers for bomb aimers. Saying that they needed this sort of background, that sort of background et cetera et cetera, and there would be an immediate posting. So the group of us, half a dozen of us who had been mainly Cootamundra put our hands up and about two days later we were on a train to a place up in — Wigtown, I think it was. Wigtown. Up in Scotland. That’s how we became bomb aimers. Or how we started off being bomb aimers. And then after we’d been there we went to what they called the Operational Training Unit at Westcott. The navigation leader said, ‘You shouldn’t be wearing those O’s you should be wearing a B.’ That’s how it came about.
AP: Alright. Presumably this is the first time that you’ve, you’ve been overseas.
AC: Oh yes.
AP: Yeah. What did you think of the US? You probably weren’t there for very long but —
AC: Well we were there for about a fortnight. The US. Well we got to San Francisco. We were put into a US army station which of course it would have been a permanent place. Well-equipped and everything. We had a couple of days. Might have, might have been more than that in this camp. We were allowed to go into San Francisco. I remember going in to, somehow getting in to an ice skating rink [laughs] and doing some ice skating. Then we were put on the train and set off. Well, we didn’t know where we were going of course. We thought we might be going to Canada which a lot of people, a lot of them did. Anyway, we set off late in the afternoon and had to go over the Rockies. And one of them, and of course it was a troop train. It just had us. It would be about three hundred I think. There were probably others in addition to the, you know the navigators, the air observers et cetera. I can’t remember though. Probably we never even mixed with them. I always remember when we got sort of up to the Rockies it had been snowing and all the boys were crowding at the window, windows looking out at the snow. Course some of them had, the Queenslanders and that had probably never seen snow. Don’t know whether I had either. Well, we continued to look out at the snow for the rest of the journey to New York. Eventually we got to New York. We had stopped off in Chicago I remember but we hadn’t got off the train. We went to, got from Chicago to New York. The last bit of it we were filing down the Hudson River which was ice-bound. Ice topped. We got to New York and we were taken to some sort of a gathering place. Christmas Eve 1943. And there we were allotted out to homes in New York. Probably two by two. And I don’t recall but we must have been put in a taxi. We went to this place, American family where we had a meal. And then went to the pictures about 1 am in the morning. And the next day had Christmas lunch. And one of the things I remember about that is I think the, the father there was a stockbroker or something. Something like that. Anyway, he had a couple of bottles of wine on the table. My mate who would be only my age you know, I don’t suppose he’d ever drunk wine said, ‘Oh I don’t drink wine.’ So the poor fella took the wine bottles off. So it must have been a disappointment for them. Anyway, we had a couple of nights there. We went back into New York and sort of got accommodation in the basement of the hotel. And we had a, we had a — we managed to get to an opera that we didn’t pay for. And then eventually we gathered together. We were taken to another army, US army place. An island it was in the Hudson River somewhere. We were put on a ship. The Ile de France. Oh, from there we were put on a ship the Ile de France which had been under repair. We were there for two or three days down at the, right down the bottom of the ship. One of the things I do remember about it is that they were able to broadcast BBC news. I remember a story being told over the wireless of course how the RAF had bombed some place in Germany and they’d lost, I think it was sixty nine aircraft. Something like that. I thought my God. What are we letting ourselves in for? Well, the Ile de France had some problem. Engines perhaps didn’t work or something. We were taken off. Taken back to where we’d been. A couple of days later we were taken off again and put on to the Queen Elizabeth. We had much, much, much much, much better accommodation [laughs] It was pretty crowded. Supposedly there was sixteen thousand on board. I well believe it. Queues for the meals ran all day and night. Anyway, we set off, not knowing where we were going but we could guess. About two days out, at about 1.30 am in the morning the captain comes on the, shall we say the loudspeakers, ‘I want everybody to put their life jackets on immediately.’ Which of course we did. Well, it turned out, later I found out, I met a fellow that was on the, up on deck on the sort of, what do they call it the viewee. Sort of had got to know what had happened was there had been a submarine scare and obviously the Queen Elizabeth had been diverted. Just as well wasn’t it? Well eventually we got to Glasgow in the UK, in Scotland and were taken down to Brighton by train where we were, get back to the, we were accommodated for a few days and then sent up to this place in Scotland where we started our real training as bomb aimers. Much the same as what we’d done as observers. Out over the Irish Sea. Of course, one of the issues there was it was a matter of getting to know the signals and all that sort of thing. All the specialities of the RAF.
AP: What do you mean by signals?
AC: Oh. When you got to point B there’d be an orange light flashing three times. You get to the point. This wouldn’t be for the UK but this was for training. When you got to the next point there would be one end that be flashing orange, blue or something. And all, and of course we were all the radio, we didn’t do the radio but you get to know the radio bits and pieces. The landing arrangements and all that. But in between we did a lot of bombing practice. Bombing practice.
AP: What did you think of the UK in wartime?
AC: What?
AP: What were your impressions of the UK in wartime? Particularly England.
AC: [pause] Impressions. Well of course the place was absolutely over run with troops because when we got there they were getting ready for the invasion. And where we were down in Brighton there were mostly the Canadians were stationed there. Lots and lots and lots of Americans. Lots and lots of Brits. And what people don’t realise is, you know there was a fair sprinkling of Poles and that sort of thing. Well, there was food rationing. Very severe food rationing. The roads were [indecipherable] on occasion, not all the time, on occasion tanks and that sort of thing. A lot of women in uniform. We were restricted to where we could go. When we were, when we were at Brighton we were sort of fenced in. You could go to there or there. So one day some three or four of us got on a bus, went there and met up with the RAF boys, men. They took our names and we were put on a charge. It wasn’t very far but we were sort of, hadn’t listened to the instructions. It was really sort of unbelievable actually. And of course another issue of there was the number of aircraft.
[telephone ringing]
AC: You’ll have to excuse me.
[recording paused]
AC: Where were we?
AP: We were talking about wartime England.
AC: Oh yes.
AP: And you said it was pretty amazing.
AC: Well it was [pause] Yes it was, well of course it was all geared and I made the point that everywhere, everywhere there were aircraft training. At our time, for example when we were in Brighton it wasn’t, we weren’t there very long. About seven or eight days I expect. But it, perhaps every afternoon a formation of Fortresses or Liberators would be coming back and coming over where we were. And other aircraft would be coming and going all the time. So yeah, it was all go go go go. So were the pubs. All go go go. There were six hundred pubs reputedly. There were reputedly six hundred pubs in Brighton. Alright. Well, eventually where did we get to? We, did we get up to Scotland?
AP: Yeah. Yeah.
AC: Yeah.
AP: You were at Scotland.
AC: Oh we’ve done that.
AP: That’s where you started training as a bomb aimer. Yeah.
AC: Well, ok.
AP: I think you got to OTU next.
AC: Yeah. The time came for, to be re-allotted and the next station was the Operational Training Unit and I was allotted to one at Westcott. Down near London. Westcott. And on the, I and another fella from where we had been were sent to Westcott. He was a New Zealander. And when we got to Westcott we were there apparently ahead of schedule before they formed up the next course. We had [pause] I had two or three days on my own shall we say. I met up with an another New Zealander. And whilst we were filling in time we went off to London which was something new to us. And then we, we went back and they had enough to make, make up a course. I can’t remember the course number. And shortly afterwards we were all brought together and the pilots in the group were asked to form a crew by going around, seeing if he had any friends or knew anybody or something or something. That was all very deliberate of course. And I was asked by a gentleman — Mr Boyer, Len Boyer, if I’d be his bomb aimer. And with others we made up, we made the crew. Except for the flight engineer who was to come later. And as a crew we were allotted a hut. A hut. Very tenth, tenth rate beds. Out in the mud because where we were, oh, sorry I’ve got the wrong. I got ahead of myself. We were in huts. In huts. I don’t think we were in Westcott. Yes, we were in huts as crews. That’s right. That’s right. And we did a lot of training as a crew. A lot of bombing, a lot of navigating and also learning how to fire the guns and so it went on. We were sent off to another station for a while. Probably because there was better landing or something like that. Eventually we, oh in particular we were supposedly being trained to go to the Far East. This particular, this particular OTU was supposedly training crews for the Far East. And we did quite a bit of familiarisation there. And when it came time very few went to the Far East but some must have. Or one crew must have because when I was coming home on the Athlone Castle, when we got to Bombay one of the fellows that was at Westcott walked up the gangway [laughs]. I never actually met him because he went somewhere else. But, well Westcott of course was very challenging because of all the different exercises we had to participate in. Very, very challenging. We were learning to be a crew. Each one was learning to do their bit and we allowed for flying in the dark. One thing or another. Well the time came to move on. We probably had a bit of leave then and the New Zealander who came in to the crew who was the wireless operator I recall he and I went off down to London. The others went home because they were Poms. Well, then we were re-allotted again. This time we went to a service training school I think it was called where we went on to four engine aircraft. Stirlings. I can’t remember off-hand the name of the station. It was very, very, very rough put together. Obviously one of the stations built during the Second World War. We did about six weeks there flying the, the Stirling which was an aircraft we were very pleased to move on from. It didn’t have much height. From there we were re-allotted to the final training school. Lancaster. The LFS. Lancaster Flying School. It was a pre-war job. Good accommodation and everything. We were only there about seven or eight days just to learn how to fly the Lancaster and learn how to, what all the knobs meant. I suppose we did a couple of bombing exercises. And then one day we were put in a truck. Two crews. We went off and found ourselves at the Mepal Station which was the station for 75 NZ. And my crew, we had been allotted a hut and from there we were met up and I probably, oh yeah we went out on a few training exercises to start with. Two or three, I think. We were doing just, once again learning the various calls and signals and so forth. The etiquette on the airfield. Then we went on our first trip. We were allotted for the first trip. That was to an airfield in Holland. At Eindhoven. Now this was late August, early September 1944. The Brits and the Canadians had just broken out from where they’d been held up in the invasion point. They were moving up to Holland, through Belgium to Holland et cetera and the Americans were moving up towards Germany. I suppose Eindhoven at the time had seen everything of the German Air Force and we were to bomb the airfield. Well, now it became quite a saga because as we were setting off of course Mr Boyer had a very nervous crew. As we were setting off, about a minute and a half after we started on track the navigator announced that we were doing the reciprocal of what we should have been doing. So we immediately of course turned back onto the right course. That, in a sense, meant that we were three or four or five minutes late which subsequently became a real issue. Anyway, we set off what we were supposed to be doing. Somewhere over Holland, don’t know really where, we got attacked by anti-aircraft in very great volume because we were the only one [laughs] flying relatively low. But we managed. Well the pilot managed to get out of that by [pause] had a term for it. Diving left and right. We went on, eventually got to the airport, aerodrome. We were the only ones there. Dropped our bombs. I don’t know whether we hit anything. Then turned. Turned to port. Left. And managed to join up with another attack. Probably our squadron was taking Eindhoven and some other squadron was taking the next German airfield sort of down the road. We joined up with them and we were with, you know sort of with company and we got home ok. That was the first trip. Now, it was said, it used to be said that if you managed to survive the first three trips you had a fair chance of surviving. That was a fair illustration [laughs] of what the first three trips was all about. Terrible. Ok. Well, what do I do? Keep on going?
AP: You can keep on going if you feel like it.
AC: Number one to Eindhoven. I have to say the bomb aimer didn’t have a very high opinion of the navigator to start with [laughs] His confidence slipped a bit after that. Anyway, that’s another story.
AP: You were a fully trained navigator yourself.
AC: Well there’s that.
AP: The same course as the observer. Yes.
AC: I was.
AP: Understood.
AC: Of course, that was his bad luck. Anyway, we went on and did more. Most of the ones we did, the next three or four we did were down in to France. For example, I think we went to Boulogne. That’s the way you pronounce it. German troops holed up there. We went. We attacked the German front line somewhere. It would be in France. But somewhere around there. Down. Then eventually after trips, probably four or five we went on to night trips into Germany. Here, there and everywhere. Well, they were at night and you didn’t see much [laughs] Eventually of course you got to the target. The navigator would, largely got you there. We would, we had Pathfinders in those days. The Pathfinders would be dropping or have dropped target signals. Colours which we would have, we were, had, the idea was we bombed the target indicators. Sometimes we would get instructions to say allow for another hundred, hundred yards or something. As the targets, the target indicators were, had been dropped short or something like that. I wouldn’t have liked to have been the master bomber in all that. Well, that went on until about the seventh or the eighth flight. We went to a place on the Rhine. No. Yes. That’s right. I just can’t think of the name. It started with S I think. On the Rhine. And I haven’t told this story. Whilst we were training, at Westcott I think it was, we used to do night vision exercises. That was to, we used to sit in a sort of a hut or something. The lights turned on and some mythical light would, the idea was that gradually you recognised features. Follow me? Ok. Well it became obvious that the rear gunner had much better night vision than the rest of us. Well it became obvious to me anyway. Well, no notice was taken of it because it was just another exercise. But this particular night, after we’d left the target, he sighted a fighter attacking us and he called out to the pilot, me and to do a dive. Which he did. The gunner did get his machine guns going. Anyway, we managed to dive out of it. But I’ve always seen it, maybe not be correctly, seen it as his better eyesight. Because not many of us survived the fighter attacks. Anyway, we got out of that and got home. Well, we continued on doing these here, there. For example, we participated in the two trips that went to [pause] Driffield. Driffield. No. That’s [pause] they put on two bombing raids on this Northern Ruhr city for the one day. I was told later the idea was to show the Germans that we had the capacity to do that sort of thing. They were thousand bomber. Or one, the first one was a thousand bomber raid. We were part of it.
AP: Dusseldorf perhaps.
AC: Eh?
AP: Dusseldorf.
AC: No. It wasn’t Dusseldorf.
AP: Dortmund. Dortmund.
AC: Eh?
AP: Dortmund.
AC: No.
AP: No.
AC: Driffield.
AP: What else is there? No. Driffield is in the UK.
AC: It might come to me.
AP: Anyway.
AC: Anyway, we did, also did the night flight. We were, you know [laughs] we were sort of up for so many, so many hours. When we got home the thing that I always remember we were offered a small drink of rum and I don’t know what else [laughs] That was that one. [unclear] North end of the Ruhr anyway. Well, we had to get to thirty. That was the target. The next problem we ran into we had to stay for, oh one of the flights we did was to fly to the Dutch coast and drop bombs on the walls that were holding the water back from the Dutch land. We dropped bombs on the walls and the water flowed in and eventually we managed to kick the Germans out because the Germans couldn’t sort of operate their units. Well we had that. Feltwell. Not Feltwell. No, it wasn’t Feltwell. We did that. That was in a sense relatively simple. I believe we killed six hundred Dutchmen in the process though. Later on, just perhaps a week later on we had another of these flights to the south of the island which was on the coast of the estuary that led into Antwerp. And what they were really trying to do was to get shipping into Antwerp to supply all the troops and they had to get rid of the Germans. Well anyway, this city, town, on the south, we had to do this bombing exercise which we did relatively low and as we were leaving, turning around to go home the rear gunner said, ‘The aircraft behind us is going into the sea.’ Which it did. At the same time within seconds I suppose but might have been a half a minute one of our engines failed. And of course that wasn’t the best but we got rid of the bombs and that, that got rid of a lot of the weight. Anyway, the pilot tells us to don our parachutes which of course were here and there. But luckily, he managed to keep it all going and we got, we got home alright. The thing that always struck me, has always stayed in my mind is I was at the front of course, lying down, looking out. I’m looking out down there at that bloody great sheet of water. But we missed that. I mentioned, I should have mentioned earlier on one of the early flights that was going to France. We lost an engine on take-off with a full bomb load. Eighty thousand pounds I think it was. A full load. A lot of bombs. We were a fully laden aircraft. And we lost the engine on take-off. Well, normally the pilot would have gone back. First of all he would have had to get rid of a lot of the petrol and then he would have gone and landed it. But our friend Mr Boyer decided that the trip wasn’t all that bad. That we’d go on. And we went on and did the mission on three engines. You have to give him credit. You have to give him credit. So anyway, eventually we, we get to thirty two because at that stage they were increasing the number of missions as the casualties were sort of falling. And we were stood down at thirty two. And then from there we were all sent off to places for re-allotment and I was sent to, with some of the others, sent to a station in Scotland. And from there I was allotted to another station down near Coventry where I became a navigator. When I was, we were being used, well not used, our role there was to check the accuracy of signals on runways and each day, or each day and a half or something we would be allotted an aerodrome somewhere in England or Northern Ireland or Scotland to go and check the accuracy.
AP: So, this is like a standard beam approach.
AC: Yeah.
AP: That’s the signal you’re talking about.
AC: Yeah. They did have names for them but I can’t remember.
AP: You’d probably be interested to know they still do something very similar to that.
AC: Oh, they’d have to.
AP: Yeah.
AC: And they do it here. Here. They do it in Australia.
AP: Yeah. They certainly do.
AC: They’d have to.
AP: I’m an air traffic controller. They’re a pain in the backside but that’s another story. Anyway, cool. So how long did you do that for?
AC: Well, I got there about January. And I left about October.
AP: Ok.
AC: It was really, for me, of course I’m only nineteen at that point. To me it was one of the best things that ever happened to me because the people that were at this station they were all very, they were all trained crews. All very experienced crews. They’d been all over the world three times [laughs] They’d done everything. They were very experienced and, you know their backgrounds. But mostly, hang on. I was the only Australian. I was the only Australian on the station. There was a Canadian for a while. There might have been one or two or three New Zealanders. The rest were all Poms and of course they were all, they’d all been long term hadn’t they? Some of them were permanent people. Very interesting it was. And as a consequence, of course we went all around. All over England and all over Scotland and Ireland. And Northern Ireland. I was talking to a lady here this morning she was a New Zealander but spent quite a bit of time over in the UK. Some years actually. And she’d been up to, spent time in the Hebrides and all that. Well very, well I wouldn’t say it was the making of me but very interesting.
AP: From, I’m just interested on the bomb aimer side of things.
AC: The what?
AP: Just interested on the bomb aimer side of things.
AC: Yeah.
AP: What did a target indicator actually look like? Can you describe seeing one burst and what it looked like in front of you?
AC: Oh, it was just a big flame really. And I mean we’ll talk about night at the start. At night it was just down there somewhere. There. There. There. There. It was just a sort of a big flame. A big light. A big light. And of course, there’d be hopefully two or three of them in close proximity. Not always. Far from it. In daytime [pause] well they must have shown up in the daylight.
AP: Big and brighter I suppose, yeah.
AC: Eh?
AP: Even brighter than the first.
AC: Well, must have.
AP: When, when you’re, you were saying that the master bomber says you know aim at the reds.
AC: Yeah.
AP: Or aim at the greens or something. Could you as the bomb aimer actually hear that over the intercom?
AC: Oh yes. Yes.
AP: So it was patched over the intercom.
AC: Yes. Yes. I and the pilot probably. At that point in time it only lasted minutes. At that point in time the pilot and the bomb aimer were, shall we say running the show. But after the bombs had been dropped et cetera the navigator would give you a course to steer. With us though, just to make the point, for it was never explained to me, but I think some of it reverted back to our pilot. We were given the task of having special photography which meant that we had to fly what they termed the straight and narrow. Straight and level. Straight and level for, it might have been say fifty seconds. It doesn’t sound long [laughs] but up in the air under those conditions it was a bloody long time. Well we got, some of us got anointed with that somewhere after we’d started and we stayed in that role the whole time. It was something that the rest of the crew weren’t very keen about I can tell you [laughs]
AP: I can imagine.
AC: I don’t know. They weren’t very keen on that. I don’t blame them either.
AP: I’ve, I’ve seen a letter that was written by a wireless operator.
AC: Yeah.
AP: A friend sent home during the war. He described his bomb aimer as, ‘our best passenger.’ You know, ‘We carry him thousands of miles so he can drop his eggs and then he has a sleep on the way back and asks us how the flak was like.’ That’s probably a slightly jaundiced view. But what, what did you do as a bomb aimer when you weren’t actually in the nose with your finger on the tit?
AC: Well, in the first place, as a bomb aimer I was in the nose all the time. Except on one occasion where our pilot had to go to the toilet which of course was quite an experience for everybody. I was on my belly lying in the front of the aircraft. I was also theoretically the alternative front gunner but we didn’t use those. I used them accidentally once. I didn’t tell anyone.
AP: Yeah.
AC: But you lay there. You were the sort of assistant navigator. For example, if you were crossing the coast or you’d tell the navigator, ‘We’re now crossing the coast.’ Or crossing here or something over there. If you saw anything like it’s, well I used the word cathedral because we used Ely Cathedral all the time when we were coming back, as a landmark. You’d sight, sight the cathedral and you were watching out for aircraft, enemy aircraft or our own aircraft because they were a menace too. And also we in our squadron anyway I was the one that operated what was called the H2S. H2S. Have you heard of that?
AP: Yes. I have.
AC: And while on operations we didn’t use H2S too often. Well, it wasn’t encouraged actually because the enemy apparently put a locate on it. I did use, I did two or three times have to get up in the main cockpit and use the H2S. So that’s about it really. Yeah. Well, in a way the fellow was right but not really. You know. Because I see, well the whole thing sort of revolved around emergencies didn’t it? Of one sort or another. The example of an emergency was the pilot and the toilet. Yeah. In some cases and there were two on our squadron I don’t really know what happened to them but the pilots were wounded and the bomb aimers took over. I knew both of those. They took over and they managed to land. Don’t know how [laughs]
AP: So —
AC: Well, you see with me I’d done, I’d done the pilot training for twelve hours. That got me to the point where I could sort of fly an aircraft. We did a lot of the make believe training on the, we had these make believe aeroplanes. Did that all the time when we were on the squadron. So in a way I I wasn’t exactly dim witted, in the sense I’d done it all. But let me just say that this time when Lenny boy had to go to the toilet it starts off with, ‘Allan could you come up?’ I suppose, so, ‘I need to go to the toilet.’ That means I’ve got to sort of get out of where I am. Get up. We’ve got to get him out of his seat. Equip him with a parachute which must have been hanging somewhere. Get him fitted out with an oxygen mask because he couldn’t, couldn’t go to the toilet without oxygen. He’d never come back. We were in formation. Three other, I think three aircraft. We were on what was then termed, I think GH. That was another form of navigation. We were in formation and we were in cloud. And when we got home three aircraft didn’t come home on that trip. You can see how dicey it was.
AP: Very much so.
AC: Terrible.
AP: Speaking of dicey you mentioned earlier you accidentally used the front guns. I sense a story.
AC: Yeah. What? How did I do it?
AP: Yeah. What happened there?
AC: Well I must have been setting them into position or something and I must have pressed the trigger.
AP: In flight, or on the ground?
AC: On the ground.
AP: Oh dear.
AC: Going around. We was going around the tarmac. We had been at a night and it had all happened in a second.
AP: Very good.
AC: Not really.
AP: No. Not really at all [laughs] So anyway you’ve told me about your operational flying. When you weren’t on ops on the squadron or elsewhere in England what did you do when you weren’t on duty?
AC: Well so some of us stayed in bed. Some of us went to the pub. My navigator used to go sleep with his girlfriend. We all had bicycles. And on the squadron we would be, you know, we were very close to the place. Ely. Ely. Ely Cathedral. We used to go in there on occasion. Once or twice we went to the pictures there. When I was at the, where I went to the last operation. Come in.
[recording paused]
AC: Well, you know the last station we [pause] well I have to say we spent a lot of our time in the pubs.
AP: I would like to ask you about that soon too.
AC: But also we, I anyway, I and some of the others we used to go into Birmingham, big city, and go to the piccies. And also Stratford on Avon wasn’t very far away. And well say there was a Padre. The Padre used to organise small groups to go to the theatre et cetera [unclear] or a night. Went there quite a few times. And of course we used to go on leave every six weeks. Now, I had relatives in the UK. My mother came from England. She was English. And not every time I went on leave but about half I used to go and stay with them. That would be about it I think.
AP: You said you spent a fair a bit of time in pubs. Describe your favourite English pub. What happened there and what was it like?
AC: Favourite English pub. Oh I suppose that, the answer to that is that one that was nearby the Mepal [pause] Station. It was very close. It was very sort of friendly because I mean all the other crews or some of the other crews would be going there. We wouldn’t stay there very long. But that’s where we sort of spent a bit of time. I can’t remember. They had a snooker, billiard table in the mess. We used to play a lot of that. That would be in the off times. I don’t know whether that fills in.
AP: Yes. That’s alright. Alright, we might, we might, we’re getting fairly close to the end of my, my short list here. What, how did you find readjusting to civilian life when you came back? What did you do and how did you readjust?
AC: Well I worked for the State Electricity Commission. When I left I was a junior clerk. And at that time, in the era, all the people that went into the service were guaranteed their jobs back. SEC of course very big and I just went back to the job I was in when I went in to the Air Force. Nothing. There was nothing different. Nobody ever asked me any questions. But there were a lot of us doing the same thing. And then after a year or two I thought, you know I need to move on somehow or another. And I applied for a couple of jobs and got one of them and left the section that I was in. I went into what was called the audit branch which was totally different. And that had different demands et cetera. Used to spend quite a bit of time away from Melbourne doing audits in the country. Then I got another job as a trainee which gave me a broader horoscope. I spent a month with this group of people or that group of people. Or three months or six months. It was over a period of three years all around the place being trained up. Once I, one of, one of the jobs I was given was to be a meter reader. I did that for about three months. Later on in my work life I found myself in the role interviewing people for jobs. Different scene altogether. Anyway, this particular job that was being interviewed for was a meter reader’s job. Somewhere up in Mallee or Wimma or something. Outback place. The fella being interviewed probably didn’t understand what was going on. The question was asked by me about, something about the meter reading. Some technical point. He said to me, ‘You ever read any meters?’[laughs] I was able to say, ‘Yes. I’ve read quite a few.’ And that sort of [laughs] killed his further, further questions. I know. Oh well. Then I got a series of other jobs stepping up all the time. And that Frank Sims that was there with us that day he and I sort of started together. He was in a different role to me but we sort of finished together. He was in the Air Force. In the [regulars?] He’d been to not Pakistan. He went to [pause] We now called it whatever they call it. What they invaded. I’m terrible. Anyway, Frank and I sort of we stayed in the SEC all our working lives and for one reason or another we managed to get a few promotions. And I’ve got a problem with the teeth and well as far as I was concerned it was very success. It was very successful. It was hard work. Very demanding. Managed to eventually [laughs] eventually retire thankfully. But I did a lot of things subsequently. Did a lot of things.
AP: So perhaps the this is my final question, perhaps the most important one. For you personally what’s Bomber Command’s legacy and how do you want to see it remembered?
AC: Well we forget one aspect of it. As a marvellous well-organised organisation that achieved great things against great odds. It was a marvellous organisation. I haven’t said this to anybody else but the RAF, compared to the RAAF, of course there were all sorts of reasons for that were so far ahead. Technically and everywhere else it was hard to believe that we were both doing, in one way, the same thing. And whilst they haven’t picked up too many accolades in, not recent times but over time, over time it was a very very efficient organisation. Does that help you?
AP: That’s yeah. Yeah, that’s very good. How, how do you want to see it remembered?
AC: Remembered? [pause] I think along with the other groups, Fighter Command, not the Fleet Air Arm, what’s the one that went out to sea? And Transport Command. They all made the, a significant contribution to the, well the finalisation of the Second World War as they did. What people don’t understand is, for example one of the reasons that the Germans gave up was they ran out of petrol. They ran out of petrol because we constantly bombed their refineries and as a consequence of, this has got nothing to do with that, as a consequence of bombing their refineries we lost three aircraft on that mission I talked about. And we lost eight on a previous mission where I think we filled the gap. That was the oil refineries. Of course, the oil refineries naturally enough were extremely well defended. So they all made their contribution along with the RAAF and the RCAF. The Royal New Zealand Air Force. But it was a very big contribution that sort of got lost in the upsets after the war. I don’t know. Will that do?
AP: Very good. I think that’s a very emphatic way to finish actually. I think that’s, that’s quite good. Well, we’ve done pretty well. That’s an hour and fifty minutes. That’s not a bad effort. So, thank you very much. Let’s turn the tape off.
AC: Well, in a way, when you look back it’s a minor event but it wasn’t to us I have to say. It wasn’t to us.
AP: I don’t think it was a minor event at all. I’ve just spent the last two months interviewing ten of you guys and you were all —
AC: Of course none of them knew what they were letting themselves in for.
AP: I’ve heard something along those lines as well.
AC: Well we didn’t. When I applied to go into the Air Training Corps [laughs] it was a fun thing. Sort of.
AP: That’s awesome. Very good. Alright, I’ll stop the tape.
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ACouperAJ151208
Title
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Interview with Allan Joseph Couper
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:43:17 audio recording
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-12-08
Description
An account of the resource
Allan Joseph Couper grew up in Australia and joined the Air Training Corps as a teenager. He was employed by the State Electricity Company until he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He was accepted for aircrew training as a pilot and later as an observer. On the ship over to the Great Britain he heard a radio announcement that the RAF had bombed a city in Germany and had lost 69 aircraft. At that point he wondered what he had let himself in for. He later remustered as a bomb aimer and flew operations with 75 Squadron at RAF Mepal. On one occasion, their aircraft lost an engine on take off but the pilot decided to proceed and they completed their operation on three engines. On another occasion the rear gunner said that he had witnessed one of their aircraft go into the sea. Couper looked out over the sea and considered their vulnerability. He recalls looking out for sight of Ely Cathedral to know they were nearly home.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Cambridgeshire
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Victoria--Melbourne
Victoria
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
75 Squadron
aircrew
Battle
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
H2S
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operational Training Unit
RAF Mepal
RAF Westcott
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/304/3461/AMeehanJ150604.2.mp3
9dce0f625519d32dc660e2faf4b1b661
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Meehan, Jack
J Meehan
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Jack Meehan.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Meehan
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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NB: Right. This is an oral history interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. I’m here with Jack Meehan at his home, Tauranga, New Zealand and the time is 14:00. My name is Nicky Barr, I’m IBCC Director. Thank you for agreeing to do this, Jack. It’s really important for us to make sure we record all your histories. Could you start off by telling me a bit about your life before Bomber Command?
JM: Before I went in the air force. Just an ordinary life. When I left college —when I was living in Wellington I went to Wellington Technical College and had three years there and my intention was to take up art. I was in the art classes. And at that time of course the word came out about the war and the beginning of the war and what you could do. Previously to that I was in the Territorial Army. I decided to do it as a hobby sort of thing or a novelty to get away at the weekend at various camps etcetera. And when the war broke out I was working for the Wellington, at the Wellington Railway Station and the government Railway. And in the early part of the war I used to do fire duty on the roof of the Wellington Railway Station. And eventually when they sent away the first lot of troops from Wellington there was five big boats, tourist boats, all arrived in Wellington Harbour and the first lot of troops were going off. Presumably, we thought, to Egypt. And I was on the roof of the Wellington Railway Station watching all these boats going out of the harbour and one of the boats was called the Aquitania. You probably would have heard about it but that was one of the boats and it just sort of stuck in my mind. And eventually, a couple of years later I was leaving Quebec to go from Quebec to England to join up with the Royal New Zealand — Royal Air Force over in England and there was only the one boat in the harbour, and lo and behold it was the Aquitania. And I went so strange. It turned out that, you know seeing it two or three years beforehand and leaving Wellington Harbour and here I was on it going over to Scotland. England and Scotland. So that’s getting back to just side-tracking a wee bit but it was just a coincidence. So with my days of working in the railway I couldn’t get away with the railway contingent going in the army so I eventually joined up in the air force. And I was at the age of twenty one years when I joined, joined the air force. We did the training in New Zealand, training at, first of all at Whenuapai Airport. And then we had six weeks training at Rotorua. We went on final leave from Rotorua and left in January 1942 and left from Waltham. Went from Waltham to San Francisco. That was our, we didn’t know at the time where we were going, we had no idea. We left and then went from [pause] arrived in San Francisco. Had four days holiday sort of thing and there was four, we were just walking around the town and we met up with four American who had been in hospital in [unclear] and were being invalided back from Guadalcanal. And they stopped us and we had a little yarn. And they said, ‘We were treated so well in New Zealand while we were there. Would you like to be our —’ what’s the word?
NB: Guests.
JM: Friends or whatever, ‘We’ll take you around San Francisco.’ And we went around various places. I remember one that always stuck in mind was the hotel. The Mark Hopkins Hotel at San Francisco which is on the top of a hill at San Francisco.
NB: Right.
JM: And that had a, the top of the hotel had a big bar. A big circular bar and in the centre of the bar itself which in turn revolved around while you were sitting there drinking. That was always in my memory. Eventually we had to be down by the railway station at a certain time. We were met there by a wing commander and said farewell to these boys that had taken us round and we never have seen or heard from that day onwards. Unfortunately, we never thought about addresses. And we left then from San Francisco to go to, to Vancouver. Made our way to Vancouver, then we stayed there at Vancouver for a couple of nights and then from Vancouver through the Rockies to Edmonton.
NB: Right.
JM: Had a week in Edmonton being fitted out with all our winter. Winter had arrived. It was January of course and we’d just arrived in a bit of snow etcetera which was the first time I’d ever seen snow because I’d never been in New Zealand, anywhere in New Zealand to see it. However, we had the — from then we finished in Vancouver — to Edmonton, rather. We journeyed then down to Calgary and we were stationed then at Calgary. At Number 2 Wireless School, Calgary. It was a university which had been taken over by the air force. Dormitory sleeping. Dormitories and everything were all in the one building. And we were there for about six months training at Number 2 Wireless School and we were, did all the wireless side of it there at Calgary. And then we went to a place called Dafoe, which was just a small place just out of Calgary where we did our training for shooting.
NB: Right.
JM: And after we finished at the [pause] come back to the Wireless School again and we went on, following on leave from Calgary across to Winnipeg and on down towards making our way to New York. On the way of course we called in at Niagara Falls etcetera. Had a couple of nights there touring around and we just had to be in, at Quebec, by a certain date and which was sort of freelancing. Taking in the country and the scenery etcetera and eventually arrived at Quebec. And we were billeted in a college there at Quebec getting fitted out for certain things that we had to have. And then leaving, as I say, from Quebec to Scotland on the Aquitania. Eventually we arrived in Scotland. Boarded the train in Scotland right down to Brighton. Our headquarters at this stage were going to be Brighton, Brighton. We stayed at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Brighton. Which I’d — we were there for a few weeks. Then training for doing wireless work etcetera. And then we were, sent me to various air force stations. We went, we went to Air Force Station Westcott where we had an OTU. Westcott. And into the hall and met in the hall with dozens of other crew who were eventually going to be crew members.
NB: What stage did you crew up, Jack?
JM: Well, I was just going to say —
NB: I’m sorry.
JM: From that stage we were just left to wander, talk, meet up with all the different other. We had one or two other nationalities with us as well. There were some English boys. Some were — I remember one from British Honduras. We had Australian ones, Canadians. But we were just left on our own for an hour or so just to wander around and talk to different ones. And we were told that during that time we were to meet up with your crew together. So the pilots of course, they were, they started off by picking who they thought they wanted to have for a, for a navigator, and then a bomb aimer.
NB: Right.
JM: And a wireless operator. They had to, they could pick out who they wanted. It didn’t matter who it was. Whether it was a New Zealander or Australian.
NB: Right.
JM: And once they’d all got had their respective crews up, respective members they all met together. They were all, particulars and everything were all taken and they were given a short talk and you were allocated to a hut and your crew sort, if he wasn’t an officer he would be with us. But if he was already appointed an officer like a pilot officer he would go off to the officer’s headquarters. Eventually when it would come to meeting up together. We’d all get together again. So that’s we went along and after about a few days or a week or so we were then told. We were allocated to station such and such. You were given your tickets and that too for travel and told to report there by a certain date. And that’s how it all started.
NB: Did it take you long to bond as a crew?
JM: To go around?
NB: To get together and —
JM: No. They did it. It was up to them. Some of them took a bit longer than others. But some — it was just the pilot, you know. He was the captain and if he liked the look of you he just picked you out.
NB: I mean, did you feel as a kinship as a solid crew relatively quickly or did that take quite some time?
JM: Oh no. Relatively quickly. I mean once he’d sorted out his navigator he didn’t have to worry about him anymore. I think he had to go on to the engineer. And we finished up with the captain and the navigator, bomb aimer and the wireless operator. We were four New Zealanders and the other three —two gunners and the engineer were three English boys. That’s how he picked it out. He didn’t want all New Zealand.
NB: Right.
JM: He broke it up and we got on marvellously well. No problem at all. Some of them might have [pause] once you got into your own crew you didn’t worry about anybody else, you know. It was a good way of doing it. Leaving it to yourself.
NB: Yeah. Formed some very strong ties didn’t they?
JM: We, as I was saying once we’d done that and you were sent off. Sent off then to a squadron or a training school for a bit of training before you got to the squadron itself and once you’d done a certain number of hours pre-flying. Pre-flying and then getting the feel of an aeroplane and to a certain — started off on the Wellingtons.
NB: Where were you stationed?
JM: We were at Westcott there for a while training. And we eventually went straight to number 75 Squadron which was a New Zealand, nearly a New Zealand squadron. We said that’s where we wanted to go. We had the option to go where we wanted. We said we wanted 75 Squadron seeing as it’s a New Zealand squadron. Even our three English boys. They didn’t mind. So we had four New Zealanders and three English. And it was very good because when we went on leave and that we went to visit their places, and that. And we used to be very popular being New Zealanders. Getting all the food parcels and cigarettes and tobacco and everything, you know. You had no trouble leaving out the [unclear] bills, they’d bring you home for tea and you always took cigarettes or things that they couldn’t get, you know. Or were hard to get. And they didn’t take long. It was amazing to see how, how we sort of just fitted in. of course every time you went on leave you didn’t go back home. Where we were going we used to always make for London. But as I say Brighton was a very popular place. And I went back there a few years later at different times when I went there. And the Grand Hotel had been all redecorated and, years after the war of course. And I went to there and made myself known and asked them, ‘Could I have a look around?’ I told them I used to be in England during the war. They all treated you well every time.
NB: Perfect. So how, how long was it before you left New Zealand and before you ended up with 75 Squadron at Mepal. How, how long a time span was that?
JM: Between?
NB: Between you leaving New Zealand and and getting to your squadron.
JM: Well we left in January. I left off in January. It would be about [pause] if I had my log book here I could tell you but I keep it up at Waltham at my son’s place in case I ever lose it. I’d say [pause] I have to try and think now. [unclear]. We went to a place called [unclear] which was on the outer Scotch coast and we had a Christmas. That would be, that was our first Christmas I think that we had so that’s nearly twelve months.
NB: A long period.
JM: That was, we were only still training there. We weren’t — we were flying Oxfords in those days. They were trainers. We used to train out on the Irish Sea and that sort of thing. But yeah. That would have been the best part of twelve months. As I say when we eventually got to a squadron. 75 Squadron that was in, I think that was July, if I remember rightly. So it was nearly eighteen months from the time we left New Zealand.
NB: Right.
JM: I mean we did a lot of training in New Zealand before we went on in to —
NB: So did you feel confident when you finally went out on ops? Did 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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMeehanJ150604
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jack Meehan
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
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00:45:33 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nicky Barr
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-04
Description
An account of the resource
Jack Meehan grew up in New Zealand and worked on the railway before he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 75 Squadron at RAF Mepal.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
New Zealand
United States
England--Cambridgeshire
New Zealand--Wellington
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
Operational Training Unit
RAF Mepal
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/360/5767/LFreethR1319543v10001.1.pdf
432d56a5d548ab9c682b4566db2f44e1
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
Freeth, Reg
Reg Freeth
R Freeth
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Reginald Freeth (b. 1921, 1319543 Royal Air Force) his logbook and a squadron photograph. Reg Freeth trained in South Africa and served as a bomb aimer with 61 Squadron first at RAF Syerston then at RAF Skellingthorpe.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Reginald Freeth and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-31
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
Freeth, R
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
Reg Freeth's South African Air Force observers or air gunners log book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LFreethR1319543v10001
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Description
An account of the resource
South African Air Force observers or air gunners log book for Warrant Officer Reg Freeth, bomb aimer, covering the period from 7 February 1942 to 8 October 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations and Instructor duties. He was stationed at SAAF Queenstown, SAAF Port Alfred, RAF Millom, RAF North Luffenham, RAF Winthorpe, RAF Syerston, RAF Skellingthorpe, RAF Harrington, RAF Bruntingthorpe, RAF Westcott, RAF Finningley, RAF Little Horwood and RAF Wing. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Oxford MkI, Wellington MkIII, Manchester, Lancaster I & III, Martinet, Wellington MkX. He flew a total of 16 night operations with 61 Squadron to Dusseldorf, Bochum, Cologne, Dortmund, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Nuremburg, Munchen-Gladbach, Berlin, Hannover, Hagen, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Madgett, Flight Lieutenant Talbot, Pilot Officer Graham, Sergeant Strange and Flying Officer Turner.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
South African Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Cumbria
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Stuttgart
South Africa--Port Alfred
South Africa--Queenstown
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1943-02-28
1943-03-01
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-27
1943-05-28
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-13
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-03
1943-07-04
1943-07-08
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-01
1943-10-02
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-10-07
1943-10-08
11 OTU
1661 HCU
26 OTU
29 OTU
61 Squadron
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Manchester
Martinet
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Desborough
RAF Finningley
RAF Little Horwood
RAF Millom
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Syerston
RAF Westcott
RAF Wing
RAF Winthorpe
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/81/7914/LGodfreyCR1281391v10001.2.pdf
2bb4feee369606f050f7e0e0563b6922
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
Godfrey, Charles Randall
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Description
An account of the resource
64 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Charles Randall Godfrey DFC (b. 1921, 146099, Royal Air Force) and consists of his logbook and operational notes, items of memorabilia, association memberships, personnel documentation, medals and photographs. He completed 37 operations with 37 Squadron in North Africa and the Mediterranean and 59 operations with 635 Squadron. He flew as a wireless operator in the crew of Squadron Leader Ian Willoughby Bazalgette VC.
The collection has has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Charles Godfrey and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
Godfrey, CR
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-18
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
Charles Godfey's observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGodfreyCR1281391v10001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Egypt
France
Libya
Greece
Germany
Gibraltar
Great Britain
Netherlands
Scotland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Belgium--Haine-Saint-Pierre
Egypt--Alexandria
Egypt--Cairo
Egypt--Ismailia (Province)
Egypt--Marsá Maṭrūḥ
Egypt--Tall al-Ḍabʻah
England--Berkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cumbria
England--Devon
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Kent
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northumberland
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Shropshire
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
England--Worcestershire
England--Yorkshire
France--Angers
France--Caen
France--Creil
France--Mantes-la-Jolie
France--Nucourt
France--Rennes
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dorsten
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Troisdorf
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wesseling
Greece--Ērakleion
Greece--Piraeus
Libya--Darnah
Libya--Tobruk
Netherlands--Hasselt
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
England--Cornwall (County)
North Africa
Libya--Banghāzī
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Libya--Gazala
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1942-03-23
1942-06-10
1942-06-11
1942-06-12
1942-06-13
1942-06-14
1942-06-15
1942-06-16
1942-06-17
1942-06-18
1942-06-19
1942-06-20
1942-06-22
1942-06-23
1942-06-24
1942-06-25
1942-06-26
1942-06-28
1942-06-29
1942-07-02
1942-07-03
1942-07-05
1942-07-08
1942-07-09
1942-07-10
1942-07-12
1942-07-13
1942-07-15
1942-07-16
1942-07-17
1942-07-19
1942-07-20
1942-07-25
1942-07-26
1942-07-28
1942-07-29
1942-07-31
1942-08-01
1942-08-06
1942-08-07
1942-08-08
1942-08-09
1942-08-14
1942-08-15
1942-08-16
1942-08-17
1942-08-18
1942-08-19
1942-08-21
1942-08-22
1942-08-23
1942-08-24
1942-08-25
1942-08-26
1942-08-27
1942-08-28
1942-08-29
1942-08-30
1942-08-31
1942-09-01
1942-09-03
1942-09-05
1942-09-06
1942-09-08
1942-09-09
1944-05-06
1944-05-08
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-05-29
1944-06-05
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-07-07
1944-07-09
1944-07-10
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-08-01
1944-08-04
1944-11-17
1944-11-18
1944-12-04
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-12
1944-12-15
1944-12-18
1944-12-24
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1945-01-01
1945-01-02
1945-01-05
1945-01-07
1945-01-08
1945-01-23
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-18
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-22
1945-03-24
1945-03-25
1945-03-31
1945-04-11
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-25
1945-04-30
1945-05-05
1945-05-07
1945-05-15
1945-05-22
1945-06-08
1945-06-18
1945-08-03
1945-08-05
1944-06-06
1944-08-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Observer's and air gunner's flying log book for Pilot Officer Godfrey from 3 of February 1941 to 25 of September 1945 detailing training schedule, instructional duties and operations flown. Aircraft flown were Dominie, Proctor, Wellington, Hampden, Anson, Defiant, Martinet, Stirling, Lancaster, C-47 and Oxford. He was stationed at RAF Manby, RAF Bassingbourn, RAF Harwell, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Downham Market, RAF Hemswell, RAF Wittering, RAF Abingdon, RAF Upper- Heyford, RAF Upwood, RAF Gillingham, RAF Cranwell, RAF Melton Mowbray, RAF Church Fenton, RAF Market Drayton, RAF Waddington, RAF Upavon, RAF Sywell, RAF Carlisle, RAF Linton-On-Ouse, RAF Newbury, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Brize Norton, RAF Exeter, RAF Andover, RAF Hampstead Norris, RAF Hythe, RAF Gibraltar, RAF St Eval, RAF El Dabba, RAF Shaluffa, RAF Abu Sueir, RAF Almaza, RAF Blyton, RAF Ingham, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Leeming, RAF Acklington, RAF Middleton St. George, RAF Newmarket, RAF Moreton-in-Marsh, RAF Leconfield, RAF Skipton-on-Swale, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, RAF Westcott, RAF Gravely and RAF Worcester. He completed 37 operations with 37 Squadron in North Africa and the Mediterranean and 59 operations with 635 Squadron to targets in Belgium, France and Germany. Targets included: Heraklion, Piraeus, Derna, Tamimi, Benghazi Harbour, Gazala, Mersa Matruh, Ras El Shaqiq, El Daba, Tobruk, Fuqa, Quatafiya, Düren, Munster, Mantes- Gassicourt rail yards, Haine St. Pierre rail yards, Hasselt rail yards, Rennes, Angers rail yards, Caen, Ravigny rail yards, Nucourt, Wesseling oil refineries, L’Hey, Kiel, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Notre Dame, Trossy St. Maximin, Karlsruhe, Merseburg, Essen, Ludwigshafen, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Mönchengladbach, Troisdorf, Dortmund, Nuremberg, Hannover, Munich, Gelsenkirchen, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Osterfeld, Kleve, Wanne- Eickel, Chemnitz, Wesel, Worms, Hemmingstedt, Dorsten, Bottrop, Osnabruck, Berchtesgaden, Ypenburg and Rotterdam. Notable events are that Charles Godfrey undertook a search and rescue operation in a Defiant and during the operation to Trossy St Maximin 4 August 1944 his aircraft, Lancaster ND811, was brought down by anti-aircraft fire. Whilst he survived and evaded, his pilot, Ian Willoughby Bazalgette was awarded the Posthumous Victoria Cross. The hand written notes added to the end of the log book give a description to the crash, and his attempts to evade capture. Pilot Officer Godfrey also took part in Operation Manna, Operation Exodus and Operation Dodge.
11 OTU
15 OTU
20 OTU
37 Squadron
635 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
Bombing of Trossy St Maximin (3 August 1944)
C-47
Cook’s tour
Defiant
Dominie
evading
Hampden
killed in action
Lancaster
Martinet
missing in action
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
Proctor
RAF Abingdon
RAF Andover
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Blyton
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Carlisle
RAF Church Fenton
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Cranwell
RAF Downham Market
RAF Graveley
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Hemswell
RAF Ingham
RAF Leconfield
RAF Leeming
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Manby
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Melton Mowbray
RAF Middleton St George
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Newmarket
RAF Skipton on Swale
RAF St Eval
RAF Sywell
RAF Upavon
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Warboys
RAF Westcott
RAF Wittering
RAF Wyton
shot down
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
Victoria Cross
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/615/8884/PNeechPRR1601.2.jpg
b18dcb33ac05d88b974e6778658b17de
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/615/8884/ANeechPRR161013.2.mp3
b4f50aafc08ff7c8b4aba0c7ac356bbc
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
Neech, Peter Rowland Ruthven
P R R Neech
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Neech, PRR
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Peter Neech (b.1925, 1851518 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a with 75 and 98 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
2016-10-13
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
JH: My name is Judy Hodgson and I’m interviewing Peter Neech today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s digital archive. We’re at Mr Neech’s home and it is the 13th of October 2016. Thank you, Peter for agreeing to talk to me today. Peter can you tell me when and where you were born?
PN: Yes, I was born in London, West Hampstead actually on the 7th of January 1925. And that’s quite a long time ago. [laughs]
JH: That’s right. And what about your family and your early years sort of thing?
PN: Yes, well I had a mother and father there you see. My father was in the first world war and he was trained as a marine engineer and then like all young fellows he decided that he would far rather be a dispatch rider and got on a motor bike. He was flying about the trenches, all over that kind of thing. That was his - although he was trained as a marine engineer he did – he’d rather would do the motor bike bit. So that’s what he did and he came through the war alright. Yes, he did alright. Now –
JH: Where?
PN: Going forward to my years, I suppose if I were to – I think about 1940. I was working in a jeweller’s shop in Hammersmith. And the manager’s son came in one day and he said ‘Oh,’ he said ‘I’ve done it now’ he said ‘I’ve really gone and done it. I’ve joined the Air Training Corps’ or the Air Defence Cadet Corps as it was then. He said ‘I’m really in it’. I heard that and thought I’m going to join that too. So, I promptly looked around near home and I joined the Air Training Corps as it was then as well. And I served in that for two or three years until 1943. And on my birthday in 1943, 7th of January, I went along and I joined the air force. I was eighteen and I joined the air force then. And I was called up some six or seven months later. And did my training in various places, ITW, Initial Training Wings and then finally –
JH: Where was that, Initial Training Wing, where was that?
PN: Initial Training, believe it or not it was at St John’s Wood. It wasn’t the Initial Training Wing there it was, oh what was the name of the place? It was in St John’s Wood in the various flats that were there, luxurious flats that were there. And they took great precautions to see they didn’t get mucked up. At a reception centre, aircrew reception centre, that’s what it was called. And we were there for two or three weeks something like that, got uniform and things of that sort. And then we were moved then to a reception centre, where was it called? Oh, I think it was at – well we went onto various places like beginning to train, oh yes at Bridgnorth down in Shropshire. And there we started, started, although we didn’t fly down there we did do some training, aircrew training down there. And that was three or four weeks down there. It was rather, it was rather strange. We didn’t have sheets to sleep in we just had blankets and I got well and truly bitten by little buggy wugs. And had to go, I went to sick quarters to get treated for this. And he made sure that I was lathered in a thick coating of sulphur ointment and uniform on top of that. Most uncomfortable. [emphatic] I was straight out of there went home, I was not too far from home, went home, took, changed my uniform for my best uniform and the rest went in the laundry. And there they stayed until they got cleared of all the sulphur, sulphur ointment. I never went back near them again. [laughs] And from Bridgnorth I then went on a very long train journey, Bridgnorth down in Shropshire, right up to just outside of Inverness. Which was a long time. And that was at, the place was called Dalcross. And it was an Initial Gunnery School. And it took us quite – it was a troop train and as such we didn’t get changed – we didn’t change trains at all. We stayed on that one train and I thought ‘Right monkey, I’ll get some sleep on here’. And I made sure I got up into the luggage rack and had a good old sleep for most of the time. [laughs] Anyway, we arrived at Dalcross railway station and there the, there was a corporal there to shepherd us up into the local station, RAF station at Dalcross. No er, all just any kind of marching, no smartness at all there, just a shambles going into that station. But that was alright. Some six weeks later we were marched down there very much in line and very much drilled, having been taught how to drill properly. And indeed, how to deal with guns. And it was very nice we passed out there as sergeants. And the local WAAF’s on the station were very kind they sewed, carefully sewed, our stripes and our brevets on our uniforms. That was very kind, we would have made a right old mess of it. But they did it and they did it kindly for us. And that corporal who had marched us carefully up to the station, we marched him round the parade ground. He was a corporal, we were sergeants and we chased him round the parade ground at a very good march. And then we marched him down to the railway station too when we went away. And so we went back to our next station which was in, er not Andover, not very far from London in fact I went to London. I was able to go home for a day or so because we were going there. And going back I went from Bakers Street to this station where this – it was, what was it? An ITW, no not ITW. Was a training station anyway onto Wellington aircraft. And it wasn’t a very long railway journey and I met a very good friend on that journey, Pat Butler. And he – I’ve got a picture of him there somewhere. He was a very good – we got on great friends, we became great friends. He went onto the same squadron as me. We went onto the Initial Training Wings and various training wings and we went onto the same squadron together. And the third trip that we did was laying sea mines in Kiel Canal. And we got a bit damaged and had to retire. We got one engine shot out and this engine was the one that supplied power to the gun turrets. We turned – we dropped our mines, laid our mines, but we then moved away and went back home.
JH: What aeroplanes were you flying?
PN: There we were flying Stirlings.
JH: Right.
PN: Yes, we were flying Stirlings there and we went back, back to our station at Westcott. Westcott, that’s what it was called. Anyway, Pat Butler I’m afraid he, a fighter ‘plane caught them and shot them down and they were all killed. Great pity only a third operation. Um, so I was very sad to see that. Quite funny we were in the same barrack block. In the same Nissen hut it was actually together. He was in one corner. And they had a firm called, air force people, called the Committee of Adjustments, yeah. And these, this Committee of Adjustments whenever anyone was shot down or killed or anything like that they used to come round and collect up all their kit and put it into stores. They collected up his kit and mine too! And it took me several days to get my uniforms back again because I was sleeping in the corner near enough to his bed, so they collected up his stuff and mine too. [laughs] Well, I was very cross with them for that but anyway I got the stuff back eventually. And from there we went onto Stradishall. Yes, now come to think of it the aircraft that we had been flying in until then were Wellington aircraft, and not Stirlings. Was about to say we weren’t on Stirlings until we went to Stradishall. When we went to Stradishall that was when we went onto the Stirlings, the heavy bombers, four engined. And that was the time when I’d got somewhere to go, I got a mid-upper gun turret and that was alright. On the Wellingtons of course there was no mid-upper gun turret.
JH: So what position were you on a Wellington?
PN: Pardon?
JH: Where did you fit into a Wellington?
PN: In the middle of the fuselage. Nowhere much to go except to look out of the bits, the astra dome, things like that, just to keep myself amused. But there we are, as I say we went onto eventually onto the squadrons and they were flying Stirlings then and it was on Stirlings that Pat Butler got killed. It was a shame, only on his third operation. I went onto do – I did a complete tour there and somehow or another they managed to – a tour of operations was thirty operations. Somehow or another they managed to craftily get me on and I did thirty-one. I don’t know I managed, they managed to do that but they did. And they asked me, we’d just come back from a bombing raid and while I was coming away from the aircraft they asked me if I’d like to continue on that same squadron. And after I’d done an eight hour bombing mission I told them where to – what I thought of them. And I did, I got posted away. [chuckles] So I went to another place then and then I went onto North American Mitchells which was a twin engined bomber. There I think that’ll keep you busy for a while, I’ll give you some more a little later on. Yes, that’s how we did it and it was on those five that we were doing on the Stirlings, the third one was when Pat Butler was shot down and he, and all his crew, were killed. And that was a shame.
JH: And after those five you went on?
PN: And after those five I went onto Lancasters and we did converting onto Lancasters at Feltwell and did it all in one day. Day and night the conversion onto the Lancasters. Then we came back and we carried on our tour. But I’d done about five or six on the Lancasters when we were flying along one evening when an aircraft flying fairly close to us just blew up. He just blew up without any warning at all and rocketed us all over the sky. We went up topsy-turvy all over the sky. And eventually my skipper, he was a very good skipper, managed to put it into a bit of a dive. And from that dive he could pull us out. And he pulled us out at ten thousand feet. So, we had lost ten thousand feet and he pulled us out and climbed back up to the twenty thousand which was our normal operating height. And then we went on and did our, that particular bombing mission. Yes, I don’t know –
JH: Did you ever know who, which ‘plane it was that blew up? Did you ever know who they were?
PN: No I didn’t, no.
JH: No. Or why?
PN: No, well I suppose they got hit by anti-aircraft fire. And probably if it hit the bomb, bomb loads, it would blow up.
JH: Yes.
PN: Yeah, yes, it was er – it really sent us all over the sky. But as I say my skipper was a very good skipper and he eventually put it into a low dive and from that dive he could pull us out. He could work it out, and we then climbed back up to our normal height again, operating height again. But after that I went to – when we’d landed, a day or two later I thought ‘I must have some wax in my ears I think, I’ll go and get them syringed out at the medical centre.’ I hadn’t got wax in my ears, no. I’d got cracked eardrums. And the doctor – I went just to get the wax out of them. But he said ‘Oh you’ve got cracked eardrums.’ And I spent two weeks or more in hospital, Ely Hospital, and then some time in a local health centre not very far from Ely Hospital. I can’t remember their name now but it was an old English country house sort of thing. Used – it had been taken over by the RAF and people we used to recover from various injuries there. And I was there for two or three weeks and then went back. But of course my crew carried on their time and at the end of that tour they carried on and they’d finished their tour some five odd trips before me. And I had to finish my tour with one or two other people, other skippers. And that was a bit of a nuisance. Because my crew, my original crew, then went on to rest period and I had to carry on flying. That’s, I suppose that’s how I got my, how I did the thirty-one operations instead of the thirty because of a bit of a mix up on the number.
JH: And then you had leave after?
PN: Then I had some leave yes.
JH: What did you do?
PN: I didn’t have much leave. About two or three weeks or something like that. End of tour leave. And then I went back again and eventually, oh I did instructing for a while. I went up funnily enough back up to Dalcross as a flying instructor. And you usually did six months as a flying instructor. I made sure that I counted the – I went there at the end of a particular month and I counted that whole month. And I, and there’s the beginning of another month just after Christmas. I counted that as a whole month so in fact I did four months rest period but it counted as six. And then I went back on flying again and I went back onto 98 Squadron which was a North American Mitchell squadron.
JH: Where was that based?
PN: They were based initially in Norfolk and then we went across to France, just outside of Brussels and then up into Germany. Up to a station in Germany near Osnabruck, there, Osnabruck, near Osnabruck. And it was then soon after that that the war terminated.
JH: So, did you fly with any of your, you know, former mates from the other crews, did you fly with them again?
PN: No, I didn’t see – but on the North American Mitchells I did a further seventeen bombing missions. So that made a total around about forty, forty-eight bombing missions I did altogether. Which was quite a lot. And on one of them going to a place called Bremen we were quite near a flak explosion, quite near to us. And when we got back I hadn’t, fortunately hadn’t used my guns on that particular operation. When we got back the armourer came up to me and he said ‘Would you like to keep this souvenir?’ and it was one of the cases, one of the round cases which was fed up by a belt quite near to me and it had got a nice little hole in it. And he said ‘We’ve taken the explosives out,’ he said ‘You’re lucky it didn’t explode’ because the metal, the flak that hit it was white hot and melted. He showed me the piece of flak and it had brass on one side melted onto it and the iron of the flak shell on the other side. And so it had melted that case, that brass case of the ammunition onto the flak and there – so it must have been very, very hot indeed. I was lucky it came to me as near to me, and I was lucky I didn’t get a little bit closer to that I’m glad to say. And the, as I say the armourer came to me later and said ‘Would you like this case?’ with the flak inside it. It was a big hole, I’ve got it still and he gave it to me. Unfortunately, a number of years later my, one of my sons looked at that shell case and the little bit of flak which was inside it rattled and he thought ‘That’s all very interesting’ and the little bit of metal, the flak, he looked at that and then put it in the ashtray and it got thrown out. I didn’t know for a month or so later that it had been thrown out. And it is a real piece of the interest story of that but it’s a pity, but it was gone. I searched for it but I couldn’t find it. Well, lost that. I’ve got the case, the shell case still but I’ve lost the piece of flak that would fill it which was a shame.
JH: Of all the aircraft that you actually flew in did you have a preference for any of the aircraft that you were in?
PN: Did I?
JH: Did you prefer one aircraft to another, did you like?
PN: Oh well I would have preferred the Lancaster.
JH: Ah.
PN: Yes, the Lancaster. The Stirling was quite good. It was bigger in fact I think, bit bigger than the Lancaster and we had some quite interesting do’s in them I must agree. Mainly going to Kiel and places like that. And we went down one time to where was it? Went to the South of France on a bombing mission laying sea mines. Yes, I’d have to look in my logbook and see where we went to on those places.
JH: You had some –
PN: Coming back from that place, La Rochelle, La Rochelle. It was a tributary of a river there and we laid our sea mines in there and we came back, and we by a little bit of a mistake I must agree, we came a little bit close to the point of Brest. The part of France Brest. And it was in German hands and they opened up all kinds of fire against us so we promptly put our guns over the side and fired back at them. They shut up quick. They shut – the firing immediately stopped and we went a little bit further out to sea. And came back home that way. But they, it’s funny to see that they fired several shots at us, going out as we came past Brest, and the moment we started firing back at them they packed up at once, and went quiet, very quiet.
JH: You must have had quite, quite a few near misses?
PN: Um [emphatic] yes.
JH: Yes.
PN: Oh yes.
JH: Do you remember any others in particular, do you remember?
PN: Now did I? Yes. One of the last ones. Well of course, I told you about that one. He was going, a friend of mine who wrote the poetry he was going to a place called Darmstadt. And that was fairly near to where I was going at – it’s in my logbook too – down by the South, the South of France. I’ll look it up in my logbook soon and tell you what it was. And we got quite a bit of a hammering there too. Um, I forget the – of course it’s seventy odd years ago you see, it is a long time to remember these things. I will look it up, I’ll tell you later on.
JH: So really it must have been quite difficult?
PN: Yes.
JH: Having to go back up all the time?
PN: Yes, it was but I didn’t particularly bother about it, it was part of the job that I was doing. But we did have fighters come after us a number of times and we used to employ an evasion method called a corkscrew. And a corkscrew, we used to fly into the direction of the fighter and lose about a thousand foot. And then we’d roll over to the other side and drop another thousand foot. And then we’d climb a thousand foot, and roll and climb another thousand foot. And by that time that fighter was long gone. So, our corkscrew did us the world of good. So, we didn’t have to bother too much with corkscrews a lot. That was our normal tactic for getting out of fighter, fighter attacks.
JH: Could all ‘planes do that are was it only?
PN: Oh yes.
JH: All of them, it was standard?
PN: It was a known tactic. It was a known tactic that aircraft could go into a corkscrew, yeah.
JH: What is your experience really of being in the mid-upper turret, you know what was that like to be in that particular position?
PN: Yes, it was quite cold. It was – we used to go there and the outside – there was only a thin – the turret had perspex, a perspex cupola and that was only very thin that perspex. And outside was a temperature of minus forty, something like that, it was quite cold. But we went – while I was doing normal, not an evasion tactic, but we did what we called dinghy drill. Learning how to get into a dinghy quickly if we were shot down over the sea. And to do that we went to a local swimming pool at Newmarket. And while there you dressed up in flying clothing, very – most likely it was flying clothing that the, a crew had used a few minutes ago, and it was soaking wet and cold. But I’d noted that the helmet was one of the old type helmets with the zip earpieces, and it was my head that used to get cold with the thin helmets, flying helmets that we normally had. So, a little case of swapping went on there. And I came away with a heavier, heavier helmet, which I promptly cleaned up and laundered and the – ‘cause it was quite dirty inside really. But I laundered it and polished the brass and I had to resew some of the straps on, the hooks on because they were in the wrong position for my oxygen mask and things like that. But I did all that and very snug and very comfortable helmet I got out of it. And you could, if you could see me on a dark night you’d see a smile on my face that all the cold outside I was nice and warm in that helmet. I’ve still got that helmet, yes. So, I had done some thirty-one operations on the Stirlings and Lancasters. And then another sixteen or seventeen on North American Mitchells. And that made quite a total. About forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-eight operations. Quite a lot. Quite good fun, quite good fun.
JH: And how did you feel about being in the war, was it?
PN: Well it was – I lived in London of course you see. I lived in London until 1943 when I joined the air force. And we were often very well bombed. In fact, I remember when I came home, when I first passed out as a sergeant air gunner, that I came, got a taxi because I’d got quite hefty kit bags. I thought ‘I can’t get on buses and things with those’ so I got a taxi home. And he stopped at one place and I waited for a minute, ‘What have you stopped here for?’ he said ‘Well this is where you wanted to be isn’t it?’ And I looked out and it was. My house a bit dented, a bit well and truly dented. Had bombs near it and had got quite well damaged. But my people, my father and mother, they were all right. Of course, they’d been a bit shaken up by all that but they survived it all right. And I saw that things were all right. And that’s when I went back onto flying operations again.
JH: Did you hear a lot about Bomber Harris you know?
PN: Oh yes, he was a –
JH: Yes.
PN: Yes, Butch, we called him Butch. Butch Harris, yeah. Yes, we thought he was a great man, a very good man. He was well appreciated and his trips that he put us on.
JH: Would he visit your base, your squadrons at all or?
PN: I never saw him no.
JH: You didn’t see him?
PN: I didn’t see him. We did get some people you know quite high up, high up ranks come and visit the station at times but they never came to see us as well. They, would often talk to people up in the front like the pilot and navigators but they never came down towards the tail end. Never talked to the mere gunners oh no. [laughs] Probably wasn’t designed, they probably didn’t think about it. But I couldn’t care, I wouldn’t bother really about that. So, there it is. And as I say I came out in 1946 something like that and a friend that I’d had at home for a long, long time we had decided that when the war was over we would start up a small restaurant, that kind of business. And so, I came out and I worked in hotels for quite a while, for several years. A particular one was Grosvenor House in Park Lane. Yes, I worked in the kitchens there. And then I got a little bit tired. Well you worked from early morning, you had a break in the afternoon, and then you worked at night again until about two or three in the morning. And eventually after doing that for about three or four years I got tired of that, I went back into the air force. And though I went back as a sergeant air gunner and a gunnery instructor so I was quite happy about that. And I spent several more years in the air force then.
JH: Where were you based then in the air force?
PN: Then, where was I? I can’t remember the places. Well, we went into – I forget the name but we did some flying for – I was a gunnery instructor there, we did gunnery instructing. I think up in Scotland somewhere. I think we did some training, you know training gunners up there, who were being trained as gunners. And eventually I came down, eventually I came out of the air force and settled down.
JH: What ‘planes were you flying then, when you were training then up there?
PN: Ah yes, I was flying Shackletons, Shackletons. When I started with them you know they had two forward wheels and the tail was down on the floor. But afterwards a little later on they became tri-planes and they had all three wheels at the front and they were flying on the three wheels you know, they landed on the three wheels, much better aircraft. Shackelton III and we did quite a bit of gunnery training on the Shackletons and they were quite nice. Yes, well that’s taken you over a whole few years.
JH: It has.
PN: 1950’s.
JH: Yes, and did you actually keep in touch with any of the crew after the war?
PN: No.
JH: No?
PN: No, never saw them again.
JH: Didn’t see them?
PN: Of course, they went back to New Zealand see.
JH: Of course.
PN: Mind, later on I did meet up with my skipper’s daughter. In fact I’ve got some pictures of her there. She was a nice girl and she came and stayed with us one time. And I’ve got a picture, several pictures of her there in my casings there. You can have a look at them some time when you’re ready.
JH: What did your skipper do then after the war, she obviously told you?
PN: Oh, I don’t know.
JH: She didn’t say?
PN: Don’t know what he did.
JH: No?
PN: But not very long afterwards unfortunately his wife died.
JH: Right.
PN: And later, little later on he died as well. In fact, I’m the only one of the crew now alive.
JH: Right.
PN: All – they were as I say, when I joined them they were all in their thirties. So, they were about fifteen years older than me so they therefore of course they didn’t last so long. Now I’ve got a picture here. A book here – my logbook, my flying logbook. And there’s even – when we were flying in Germany we did a flypast for the Russian leader [rustling] a General Zhukov, and there’s a picture of General Zhukov. [rustling]
JH: September 1945.
PN: Yes.
JH: So that was at the surrender?
PN: Yes, yes we did a flypast for him. That was in the North American Mitchells I think. [rustling]
JH: I’d like to thank you Peter for allowing me to record this interview today, so thank you very much.
PN: That’s OK, my pleasure.
JH: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Peter Rowland Ruthven Neech
Creator
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Judy Hodgson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ANeechPRR161013
PNeechPRR1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:44:34 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Shropshire
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
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1943
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born in London and his home suffered bomb damage during the war. He served in the Air Training Corps until joining the Royal Air Force in 1943. After reporting to the Aircrew Reception Centre at St John’s Wood, he spent a few weeks at RAF Bridgnorth. Peter then went to the Air Gunnery School at RAF Dalcross. This was followed by RAF Westcott, a training station on Wellington aircraft. Peter flew in Stirling aircraft at RAF Stradishall where he had a mid-upper gun turret unlike in the Wellingtons. He worked as an instructor for four months at RAF Dalcross before joining 98 Squadron on North American Mitchells. He was initially based in Norfolk but then went near Brussels and Osnabrück.
Peter carried out a tour of 31 operations on Stirlings and Lancasters, followed by 17 operations on North American Mitchells.
Peter recounts a few incidents from his tours, describes the corkscrew evasion method and how he coped with the cold in the mid-upper turret. They held a positive view of Arthur Harris.
Although he left the RAF in 1946, Peter returned as a sergeant air gunner and gunnery instructor. He flew in Shackletons.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
75 Squadron
98 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-25
bombing
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
military service conditions
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Dalcross
RAF Stradishall
RAF Westcott
Shackleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/8890/PParryHP1609.2.jpg
b7df933b79f45737f7c38a9f7b59ea8c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/8890/AParryHP161011.1.mp3
2d504a390d6a64c19871b79350c9f428
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Parry, Hugh
Hugh Pryce Parry
H P Parry
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Parry, HP
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. Two oral history interviews with Hugh Parry (b. 1925, 2220054 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and newspaper cuttings. Hugh Parry flew operations as an air gunner with 75 Squadron and then as a photographer and air gunner with 90 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Hugh Parry and catalogued by Stuart Bennett.
Date
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2016-10-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HP: And then, you want me then to carry on through my life story?
CB: Yeah.
HP: But I can’t, wouldn’t be able to give you the end.
CB: That’s all right.
Other: Haven’t got there yet.
JB: I think we’re quite pleased about that Hugh.
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today we’re with Hugh Parry in Abingdon and the date is the 11th of October 2016 and Hugh’s going to talk about his life and times with the RAF. But what are your earliest recollections of life, Hugh?
HP: Well, I was born in Oswestry on the 22nd May 1925 to Sam and Nora. Sam was the manager of the local furniture shop. A branch of Astins. He had the, a travel gene and he had spent some time in Canada and America. His father before him had spent some time in Australia. And that gene persists in the family to date. I had a sister who was older than me. At the age of five — no — four, I went to Bellan House Preparatory School. Left there at nine, ten and went to Oswestry School which was then Oswestry Grammar School which is the second oldest school in the country founded in 1407. Got my, I was a bit precociously young. Did my school certificate at the age of fifteen and by the contact with my mother’s brother who was the manager of the local Midland Bank got a job with a firm of accountants there. And at the age of sixteen was articled to a chartered accountant. Joined the Air Training Corps and the National Fire Service was part time. In the Air Training Corps I was the youngest of a group of friends who were all going to volunteer and be on a squadron as soon as they possibly could. When they all went and volunteered they all went for PNB. Consequently they all got long deferred service. They were still taking air gunners. Well, being the youngest I went and, initially to Shrewsbury which was a joint recruiting centre for the three services. Moved from there to Birmingham which was for the aircrew medical and volunteered for air gunner. There was a height limit of six feet for air gunners. I made sure, knowing this I made sure I wore baggy trousers because I was slightly over six feet. And I joined the RAF on the twenty fifth anniversary of its formation on the 1st of April 1943 and for call-up at the age of eighteen and a half which duly came in December 1943. And I had to report to the ACRC at St John’s Wood. Well, the usual thing of queuing up for injections and blood tests and the usual introduction to that which baffles brains, and in January got posted to ITW at Bridlington where my principal memory is of PT on the sands without getting the sands wet because the rain came across the North Sea horizontally. But it was not the most comfortable of places. From there moved on to ITW at Bridgnorth in Shropshire and all just totally routine. From there to, [pause] No. We’d been to Bridlington. From there to Bridgnorth. Yes. Bridgnorth we’re at. Elementary Air Gunnery School. And from there to Pembrey on the South Wales coast. Not too far from Llanelli. Then passed out from there on the 1st of July 1944 which was unfortunate because automatic promotions came annually and if I had been told of passing out on the 30th of June I would have got an extra promotion. Sods law. Can’t say. Moved then to Woolfox Lodge. No. I tell a lie. To Westcott. In Buckinghamshire. Not too, not too far from Aylesbury where we were crewed up. There for approximately three months and it was Paddy Goode and his crew. We were an all NCO crew. And on the 7th of October we were posted to aircrew school at Stradishall which was just to keep us out of, out of people’s way until the 28th of October. From there go to 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit at Woolfox Lodge. On the 11th of February 1945 got posted to 75 Squadron at Mepal in Cambridgeshire. 3 Group. Not 5 Group. Repeat. Not 5 Group. On the first operation it was normal for the pilot, skipper, to go as a second dickie with an experienced crew on the first trip. Our CO’s crew were on holiday so he took us on our first trip. His name was Wing Commander Baigent. He was an old man of twenty three at the time. I think he got his DSO when he was with us and he died in 1953. I think that’s what my memory said. It was —
[Loud bells from chiming clock!]
HP: 75 New Zealand Squadron which doesn’t appear on a lot of Bomber Command memorials because it was New Zealand Air Force. We were posted there because there was a shortage of replacement crews coming forward and there was several, not too many, UK crews there. They were a wonderful, friendly people. They had comforts sent to them from New Zealand which were, was not in such an austere state as this country and they shared. Shared them always with us. Leave, of course, was compulsory on a squadron every six weeks. Things got easier. We had five leaves in four months which didn’t do us any harm. When you went on leave you get, got an extra five shillings from the Nuffield Fund which, added to the eight shillings which you got there, was a welcome addition. Looking back forty pence a day to be an air gunner does not seem an overpayment. Anyway, we stayed there until the 16th of June ‘45 and did half a tour there. The last one being the first air drop under the Operation Manna which was very different to the others because we had to go over there on a specified route at three hundred feet which was, we were told, it had been agreed with the Red Cross. We were not told it had been agreed with the Germans because on that date it hadn’t and we were followed by flak guns who were lining this route. That part of Holland was, at that stage, still occupied by the, by the Germans. The reason for Operation Manna was that twenty thousand Dutch people had died from starvation. So the affect, you can well imagine, was very great on all the rest. Despite their German occupation they were out in the streets. Out on the rooftops waving their flags and generally cheering and waving us and that was quite remarkable. Because we were on the first one we didn’t have packs to put the sacks of food on. They were just loaded on the bomb bay doors and they were dried egg, dried milk, flour. Really basic things. And you did it at three hundred feet. You just opened the bomb doors and there they went. And of course coming back it was so wonderful to have been giving life instead of taking life. An earlier but totally different memory results from the publication in the newspapers of the Belsen camp being liberated. With piles of corpses and piles, and people walking. Well walking or sitting. Skeletons. Slowly starving. We seldom but very occasionally would wonder where our bombs had dropped because there was an inevitable meeting between the bombs and hospitals and children and so forth and so on. And this was at the back of your mind wondering where they had been because I mean you couldn’t possibly see where they’d been. But once we saw the pictures of Belsen it had two effects on us. One was horror. And the other one was it removed any feeling of guilt. So on the 17th of June we were posted to 90 Squadron because 75 Squadron was going to be repatriated or go out to the Pacific or somewhere. And that was at Tuddenham and we were there on operational review which was photographic survey of the whole of Europe. We were, we believed that we were going out with Tiger Force to Okinawa in September ‘45. We were never officially told that but when the bombs dropped in August ’85 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a tremendous cheer went up because we knew that we were not going to be done again. There were one or two crews who hadn’t been on any ops who were a bit disappointed perhaps.
[Recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re restarting now.
HP: We left 90 Squadron and the crew was dispersed on the 30th October 1945 and we were sent to Catterick. Some of us. So I think the pilot and the navigator were posted to Transport Command and the rest of us were spare. And there was a holding unit at Catterick where, it was there until it was decided what we’d do with us and we were there for a month until the 28th of November ’45 when we were posted to Silloth for work at a, at a Maintenance Unit. And I found myself in the guard room in charge of a guard dog and walking around. And since I was of an equal or higher rank than all the rest of the policemen that was quite a pleasant occupation. Just walking around the camp. And I made sure I had the dog with me. On the 3rd of January, possibly because of my background in accountancy, I was sent to the School Of Accountancy Training at Kirkham which is not too far from Blackpool and finished there on the 31st of January. Moving from there to an Equipment Disposal Depot, 276 Maintenance Unit at Burton Wood. From there on the 27th of February at my last posting to 268 MU which was an Equipment Disposal Depot at Marston Moor in Yorkshire. People have heard of Marston Moor. And if I had obeyed orders I would still be there now because I was told to report to the demob centre on the 31st of April 1947. So I didn’t. I went there on the 1st of May and therefore left the RAF. Now, from a family point of view in March, no, May, 1945 I met the girl who was going to become my wife and we got married in October 1946 and managed to get a flat together on our demob. And in May 1948 the first child was born who was described by the local Scottish GP as, ‘A wee demob present.’ I returned to the firm where I was articled because it was a five year article. I had just done two. About two years before going in the RAF. Concessions due to people who’d been in the forces. The five years was reduced to three so I had a year to do then and I had the exams to do. You got exemption from the intermediate or consideration on two subjects in the final. I decided to opt for the consideration of the two. This was done by correspondence course. There was no tuition other than the occasional Saturday morning lecture in Liverpool. Took the final exams in November ‘48 and got the results in January ‘49. It was easy to find out what your result was. We were on the second floor of this block of flats and you knew what time the post came and it came down and just went through on to the floor down there. You had a careful look and if it was a thin envelope you had failed. If it was a thick envelope it had the application for membership and you knew you’d got through. So from there having moved from a very small practice in Oswestry. You know, which was local firms, farms and nothing. Small. Needed to go for some experience on bigger stuff so we moved to London. Lived in Raynes Park and I got a job with Price Waterhouse. No. I beg your pardon. [Pitt Mark and Mitchell?] which was audits on a big scale including, I can say, Fairey Aviation at Hayes, which was interesting. Having done that for a year I decided I would rather make my own mistakes than find other people’s so got a job with United Dominions Trust which, at that time was the main hire purchase business and their premises were in Thames Street. They were just by London Bridge in London. I stayed there for two years and it was, it was a boring job and then the travel gene came out so I got a job with the India General Navigation and Railway Company Limited founded in 1847 which provided river steamers up and down the Ganges and the Brahmaputra with a head office in Calcutta. So went there. Obviously in the accounts department. The scale of it was rather surprising. There isn’t a bridge on the Brahmaputra for the first seven hundred miles because there isn’t enough stable bank. One of the principal activities was bringing tea down from Assam. There were a lot of general cargo but that was a bulk one. And in the month of October which was the busy month we would bring down from Assam to Calcutta for loading up from the port six hundred thousand eighty pound chests of tea which is a lot of cups full. The passenger vessels were licensed to carry more passengers than the Queen Mary. Two and a half thousand. Perhaps not quite in the same standard of comfort but it was an important link in the travel of East and West Bengal which were now separated. East Bengal at that stage was East Pakistan. Later changed its name to Bangladesh when it separated from what was then West Pakistan. In the December of that that year we moved from Calcutta to Dakar where an office was being set up because of the split of all the various companies following the devolution in 1947 and had to set up, from scratch, an accounts department there. Fortunately, twelve Hindu clerks were content to come with me even though they were moving to a Mohammedan country which had been a lot of unpleasantness in the recent past and I was very appreciative of that. They stayed for about four or five months whilst I got the furniture for the office and recruited seventy local people with a minimum qualification of a B-Comm and generally speaking an M-Comm. That meant that they were able to express a third as a percentage or the other way around. There, until the [pause] sorry. In Calcutta we were in partnership with the River Steam Navigation Company which was the same company that ran the British India Steamship Company and they were, ran joint services but they had separate marine engineering accounts and all the other departments and it was decided it would be better to set up the joint ones. At that time I was posted to Chittagong and there to sit in an office for six months drawing up the procedure and the layout of the books and all the things for the joint accounts department in Calcutta. Having done which, posted back to Calcutta to make the bloody thing work and stayed doing that until 1957 when, by that stage having had another child out there and where the expat community was tending to diminish. It was, when I went there in 1952 there were ten thousand British expats in Calcutta. All with, all in management jobs. Decided it was better to come back to the UK. Decided then not to work north of a line from the Mersey to the Wash. Not London. And the Black Country. Got a job just outside Abingdon which was in Berkshire with Ameys which was a building material company using sand and gravel quarried stone, concrete, concrete products. I stayed there from 1958 until retirement in 1985 at the age of sixty.
[Recording paused]
CB: Just doing a recap on a number of things now, Hugh. In your earliest stages you talked about your friends volunteering for PNB — Pilot, Navigator, Bomb aimer. What happened to them?
HP: They were called up, sort of, eighteen and a half, nineteen. Sometimes just a bit over nineteen because they initially were put on deferred service but when they were called up they were given ground jobs as aircraft and general duties. And none of them completed any flying training or ever got to a squadron. So my decision to go for air gunner although it was thought a much lower and lower class occupation than the rest of the aircrew I was fortunate enough to get all the way through and became their envy. I got paid slightly more which was a bit expensive when they were on leave and I was at the same time.
CB: To what extent did you keep up with them during the war?
HP: Very little.
CB: You didn’t know where they were I presume.
HP: If you were on leave at the same time you did but I mean your life was very full.
CB: Yes. Ok.
HP: And you, you were meeting new people all the time.
CB: Yeah.
HP: And you didn’t make too many intimate friends as such because you were aware that their, of their life expectancy and that there was this distance. Certainly between crews and to an extent within a crew.
CB: Ok so —
HP: You were very close together. If one chap had any money you all had money. But as far as mixing with families goes — no. The bare minimum.
CB: Now you mentioned crews. So this is moving ahead a little but you crewed up at number 11 OTU at Westcott and what happened there? You arrived at Westcott. Then what happened?
HP: The day after arrival all the various un-crewed up members were assembled in a hangar. The pilots then sort of cruised around accumulating a crew. And there didn’t — there was no logic about it. There was no question of people being placed with one or another. It just happened. In the American Air Force I think they were posted together by order of their superiors but with us we just accumulated and that started off as a period of trust.
CB: And what was your pilot like?
HP: Paddy Goody was basically of Irish descent. He was, I think he was a flight sergeant there. He got a commission in the end of March I think it was. ‘45. We were all from very much the same background. You know. Sort of Grammar School or equivalent.
CB: Ok. And was he a good leader? [pause] Or you just followed what he —
HP: Well we worked together as a crew. There wasn’t conscious leadership as such. We moved as a unit. Not as six people commanded by the pilot
CB: Right. And then what about the other members of the crew? Should we? What about the bomb aimer?
HP: The bomb aimer. Taffy Williams. We knew him as grandad because he had his twenty third birthday when he was with us and he came from not too far from Rhosllanerchrugog. Try and spell that.
CB: That’s an easy one. Yes. [laughs]
HP: The navigator, Roy Wootton came from Nottingham. The Gilly, the other air gunner, he was a Londoner. The flight engineer, he joined us when we were at Heavy Conversion Unit and he was a Geordie. The wireless operator, Gilly — no. Harper. Gilly was the other gunner. Harper. Harper he was. He came from Grantham. Now he was a bit of an oddity. After an operation he would sit on his own in the mess not talking to anyone and he ended up by more or less excluding himself from a crew. So he left us and we were joined by another wireless operator who was a spare on the squadron. I can’t remember his name. We weren’t together all that time. Otherwise, as a crew if one had a pound you all had. You all had a drink, you know. And it was very much a crew spirit.
CB: So the crew spirit at the OTU.
HP: That’s where it generated.
CB: Was pretty good was it? It’s just that when you got to the HCU that you had this difficulty with Harper.
HP: No. That was on the squadron.
CB: On the squadron. Right.
HP: Yes.
CB: Ok.
HP: Because after an operation he would sit separately.
CB: Ok.
HP: Not after a flight.
CB: So why did he move? Was he — did somebody say, ‘Right. That’s it.’ and say, ‘We’ll have somebody else,’ or, how did that happen?
HP: Well as because he was part of the crew the rest of us said, agreed with the pilot, that he would go and see the chap in charge of the wireless operators, you know. Which was a sort of separate wireless operators section. There was a gunnery section, a bomb aimers section and say, ‘Look we think it is better from his point of view as much as from ours if he doesn’t stay with us.’ Now, he was eventually posted but we made sure that he didn’t carry with him the horrible initials of LMF with which I’m sure you’re familiar.
CB: I was going to ask you about that. Keep going. Yes.
HP: Yeah. Yeah. We made sure that he was just posted and not, not labelled.
CB: Ok. So what we’ve talked about is going back a little now. You joined at Shrewsbury. Was that a recruiting office?
HP: Yeah. Shrewsbury was the combined recruiting office for all three services.
CB: Right. And what did they do there? You knew you wanted to be RAF but —
HP: Oh yes. Yeah. So you went, you went to the RAF section. You said what you wanted to do. You had the normal medical which everyone went through and you had an interview and if you were considered reasonable at that level you then went to Birmingham for the aircrew medical and aptitude tests and recruitment and where you got your shilling.
CB: Now. The shilling’s important. We’ll come back to that. But you said aircrew tests. You’d already indicated you wanted to be an air gunner.
HP: Yeah.
CB: Were you on that stream?
HP: Yes.
CB: And what were the —
HP: No. No. You were on an aircrew stream.
CB: Aircrew stream.
HP: At that stage.
CB: Right. Ok. So what tests did they give you there?
HP: Oh. Extra medicals. Extra sight tests. Hand and eye coordination with which you’re familiar. The test.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Ok.
HP: And aircraft recognition. All sorts.
CB: Then when you went to ACRC, the Aircrew Reception Centre in —
HP: St John’s.
CB: St Johns Wood was there any repetition of what you’d done or was it a different? What did you do there?
HP: You went there to be kitted out and punctured.
CB: Yeah. Inoculations.
HP: Yes. And if you were in one particular requisitioned block of flats you actually went to eat in Regents Park Zoo.
CB: But not eating the animals. The —
HP: Not. You didn’t know.
CB: [laughs] So then you went to ITW at Bridlington. That was an ITW was it? Bridlington.
HP: It was.
CB: Pardon?
HP: Yes.
CB: It was. Right. So that was when you were on the beach and you’ve got the driving rain.
HP: Yes.
CB: What was the main activity there?
HP: Aircraft recognition. The guns with which you had to be familiar. Both from the point of view of their components and their stripping and very limited amount of firing. Law, discipline and just general background to assimilate you in to the air force with a view to moving on to air gunner training.
CB: So what were the guns you were using? Were they ones that were used on the ground like Bren guns and rifles? Or —
HP: Yes. They tended to be. But that was a minor point. I mean using live ammunition was not that very serious.
CB: Ok. Then you went to Bridgnorth. Now this is the, [pause] a gunnery school is it?
HP: Number 1, Elementary Air Gunnery School. Number 1 EAGS.
CB: Ok.
HP: No flying there at all but just taking this, taking the ITW disciplines a stage further.
CB: So how were they teaching you air gunnery there? For instance to what extent did they use clay pigeon shooting?
HP: I don’t think we had clay pigeon shooting there. We might have done but it was just more intense of stripping and reassembling and, say, aircraft recognition and you did a limited amount of astronomy so that, you know, you could do that and a limited amount of what might happen on an escape and evasion. I don’t remember much more.
CB: Ok. And the guns there. Were they the type that would be in the aircraft? In other words Brownings. 303.
HP: I think it was there we were first introduced to the Browning 303.
CB: In a turret? Or in an open deck?
HP: I think we had possibly a very limited amount of turret manipulation but very limited. And yeah and following a dot which was put around a darkened chamber through the gun sight.
CB: Right.
HP: To get the turret manipulation.
CB: So your next move was Pembrey on the, on the [Caernarvon?] Coast.
HP: South Wales Coast.
CB: Cardigan Coast is it? Anyway. The edge of Cardigan Bay.
HP: Yeah.
CB: So that’s —
HP: No. No. No. South Wales.
CB: South Wales. Right. So where —
HP: Yeah. Overlooking the Bristol Channel.
CB: Oh. Over the Bristol Channel. Right.
HP: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So what was the activity there? What did they teach you there?
HP: Well again just a development but at that stage you would have four trainee air gunners going off in an Anson firing live ammunition at a drogue towed by a Miles Magister or a Master. I can’t remember. I can’t remember which. And when the tow was over the drogue would be dropped on the runway and it would be picked up by the four trainee air gunners from the Anson. Having landed before they got, they got to it and that would be taken into a hut with a long bench and you would then identify the bullet holes which you had made. Not that anybody else had made. Now the, I think the firing was two hundred and fifty rounds for each. It was made up in a belt of four lots of two fifty. Three had their gun, their round tips dipped in a colour and the fourth one didn’t have any colour at all. So you had traces of the colour in the drogue and you counted the number of holes and divided them by two. One for the bullet to go in. The other one for the bullet to go out. And that gave you a score. You also had fighter liaison with the camera gun where you were practising deflection and bullet trail and all the other various parts. And with the target aircraft diving, moving, doing mock attacks. And those, the film from those camera guns was then assessed as to your ability to be able to fire directly.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’ve talked about your training there in the Anson and you mentioned deflection shooting. Could you just describe what that means?
HP: The only point blank shooting which was shooting direct at an aircraft would be one which was immediately behind you and travelling at the same speed and not changing direction. From there you could aim straight at it. If it were in any position other than that you had to put the bullet where the aircraft would be when the bullet got there and this would involve both speed and direction. It might be climbing — losing speed. It might be diving and gaining speed. So you had to rapidly assess which you thought it would be and in your gun sight there was a point and a circle. Within the circle you would draw a line in your mind from the point to the edge of the circle that the plane would be coming in to and you then had to assess how many of those radiuses you needed to move according to the speed of the aircraft relative to the speed of the one you were in. Apart from that there was one other complication that your own aircraft could well be manoeuvring violently as well.
CB: Yes. So in practical terms then the amount of deflection, the amount you aim ahead would depend, to some extent, on the relative position of the other plane.
HP: Yes. And what it was doing and what your own plane was doing.
CB: Right. So what might your own plane be doing?
HP: Might be diving, climbing, turning.
CB: What about corkscrew?
HP: Well if if you went into a corkscrew it was most unlikely that the attacking aircraft would follow you because it wouldn’t be able to. That was the point of the corkscrew. If he could follow you through into a corkscrew well there was no point in corkscrewing.
CB: Right. So could you just describe how you’d get into the corkscrew and what was the corkscrew?
HP: The cork.
CB: Who would call the corkscrew?
HP: The gunners would usually call the corkscrew because they would be the ones seeing the attacking aircraft who were aft. And you could corkscrew to the port or to starboard. A corkscrew to port would be when the pilot would dive port and having done that for a matter of some seconds. Ten, fifteen perhaps. He would then turn the aircraft and dive starboard. He would then climb starboard and then climb port and then he would dive port. And that would repeat a circular movement which can adequately be described by going along and describing a pass, a corkscrew in the air.
CB: And the fighter would normally be closing at a higher speed or the same speed?
HP: He would, if you were corkscrewing the fighter would probably stand off because his chance of being able to hit you when you were corkscrewing were the same as your chance of hitting him when you were corkscrewing.
CB: Right.
HP: That was the point of doing a corkscrew.
CB: Right. So we are at Pembrey and you’ve been getting all this training. What happened then? How long was that? Relatively short period?
[Recording paused]
HP: The Air Gunnery School was from the 25th of March 1944 to the 30th of June so that was three months which was the longest period there.
CB: Ok. And from there you went to the OTU.
HP: Yes.
CB: We talked about crewing up. What did — because there were all the disciplines except flight engineer at the OTU what were the tasks you did as a crew?
HP: Well we were flying in Wellingtons so we had to become familiar with the Wellington. When walking down the gang plank from forward to aft or aft to forward you had to make sure you didn’t, you didn’t let your foot slip on either side because it would go through the fabric of the fuselage and that would cost you five shillings to the ground crew to mend when you got back. And since your pay was four shillings a day you were very careful walking. It was familiarity with cross country flying with the wireless operator then. It was everybody becoming more familiar with their trade and doing, for the first time, practice bombing runs with practice bombs on bombing ranges which might be on the ground or they might be just just on the coach.
CB: And were you — as far as the gunners were concerned that wasn’t a task you were directly involved in but were you doing fighter affiliation?
HP: Oh yes.
CB: As well?
HP: Yes.
CB: And how would that normally take place?
HP: Generally more. Generally with, not with drogues but with cameras. And not — and with fighter aircraft because it was part of their training. So you were helping a fighter, our own air force fighter aircraft to do the same thing so they would have their camera guns on you.
CB: Now the number of airfields was very high so what area would you be doing fighter affiliation work? It was?
HP: Well you could fly out over the sea or you could, or you could go west because if you went west say from [pause] oh a line drawn up north south through Birmingham there was plenty of air space there and there was, or went beyond Yorkshire there was plenty.
CB: Right.
HP: Or over the sea.
CB: So you were at Westcott for three months and at the Number 11 OTU. And then you go to the HCU. At Westcott did you know where you were going to be posted or did that only emerge —
HP: No.
CB: At the last minute?
HP: Well it only, in fact it only, when you got your orders through the post because you were probably on leave. You just reported.
CB: Right. So you’d finish your OTU training and go on leave and then find out. In this case that you were going to Woolfox.
HP: Yeah.
CB: So what happened there? What was the aircraft?
HP: From there to the Lancaster which was of course a lot bigger aircraft. You had your flight engineer.
CB: He joined you then.
HP: He joined you there and it was just more cross country. More. Just more of the same but I think we went on one diversion raid to Calais. We would. You did that to sort of draw off the German Air Force from the intended target. They would have a force going there and we got, I think we got shot at over Calais which was a bit unfair we thought because we were only training.
CB: Yeah. Not fair at all. [laughs] So those sorties. Would they, what sort of flight time would you have there? Would they be fairly short because you went to Calais and back? Or would you then go on somewhere different to make up the time?
HP: Excuse me while I look up.
CB: That’s fine.
HP: Woolfox Lodge. We did a lot of circuits and landings, rated climbs, fighter affiliation, a run on H2S, cross country’s or practice bombing and general fighter affiliation. Yeah.
CB: Ok. We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok. So you finished at Woolfox Lodge and you were then posted to Mepal in Cambridgeshire. What, what were you impressions when you arrived there? The squadron and the station.
HP: Well we were made very very welcome.
CB: This is a New Zealand squadron.
HP: Yes. And we were still at that stage an all NCO crew. We didn’t have any problem. You had the traditional two crews to a Nissen hut and everybody had a bike so that they could get to the mess and they could eat. Everything was relatively informal but the discipline all through the training became more and more your own discipline and the crew discipline. You weren’t ordered to do many, to do things in detail. You knew you had to report at a certain time every day to the gunnery section or what, if you weren’t doing anything else and you just did it. As you would any job in Civvy Street. There was a high degree of discipline but it was self-imposed of necessity.
CB: And tell us about the crew. So they had a motto and the squadron was supposedly New Zealand but what was the composition?
HP: I don’t follow the —
CB: Right. So what was the motto of the New Zealand Squadron? 75.
HP: That was, that was the motto of the New Zealand squadron Ake Ake Kia Kaha.
CB: Right. Which meant?
HP: “For ever and ever be strong.”
CB: Right. So why were there, why were there British crews as well?
HP: Because there weren’t enough New Zealand crews coming forward to replace the casualties.
CB: Right. And what about the ground crew?
HP: All British.
CB: And what association did your crew have with the ground crew?
HP: Well, we had the same aircraft all the time and it was friendly without being really familiar. They wouldn’t want to become over familiar with the crew because they didn’t want to lose their crews. But they tended to, if you were on an op, they would wait to see if you came back before they went off on leave.
CB: And what was the chief, the chief of the ground crew, the chief — the crew chief. Who did he liaise with in terms of the aircraft?
HP: Well he would liaise according to the trade which was involved. I mean you had air frame, you had wireless, you had gunnery. You know. Engines. They had, the ground crew were a team of specialists who tended to reflect the trades of the aircrew. On return from a flight of any sort whether it be training or operational a report would be made to the ground crew of any problems or anticipated problem.
CB: And who would do that in your crew?
HP: Depends on the speciality. There’s no point in anyone trying to inform the problems of another one’s trade because he wouldn’t know.
CB: Right. So in the crew there are people at the front, people at the back and people in the middle. As the mid-upper gunner who had the best perspective?
HP: When you say perspective you mean the greatest all-around view?
CB: When you’re flying.
HP: Oh yes. No doubt about it. The mid upper gunner because you could turn through three hundred and sixty degrees and you could look upwards and downwards.
CB: And in your position how many guns did you have?
HP: Two.
CB: And how often did you fire them on operations?
HP: Seldom.
CB: Was there a reason for that?
HP: Yes. Nothing to fire at as we were mainly on daylights to synthetic oil plants.
CB: Ah.
HP: Bombing on GH which you are aware of.
CB: Yeah. On —
HP: And we had close escort of Mustangs and high escorts of Spitfires. So we didn’t have a lot of trouble with fighters. We had the odd rocket one would come through. Go up and, you know, firing as it went up and firing again as it came down.
CB: ME262 er 163.
HP: 163.
CB: 163. Yes.
HP: Yes. The 262 was the first —
CB: Jet.
HP: Jet. And the target areas were heavily supported by flak. The reason we were going there was to — obviously so that there was no oil available. No fuel available. And it became apparent from the shortage of fuel for tanks and aircraft that we were achieving what we set out to do.
[Recording paused]
HP: That is shortly going to go twelve.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ask the question.
JB: I was just wondering how it was that you met your wife and what she was doing.
HP: I was, I was on leave and I was friendly with a family called the Morgans. Morgan family. And we used to tend to go to the same places. This was the Queen’s Hotel. She was friendly with a female member of that family. I was familiar with one of the boys. I went in there. Met for the first time in April ‘45 and it just moved on very naturally from there.
JB: Oh right. And so was she working?
HP: Yes. She was working in a chemist’s.
JB: In the hotel?
HP: In a chemist’s shop.
JB: Oh right.
HP: She wasn’t a qualified pharmacist.
JB: No.
HP: But she did a lot of dispensing from the prescriptions.
JB: Right. Right. Did she develop that after the war? Did she carry on? Did she?
HP: No. We were. No. We were married. She was the mother of the children.
JB: Yes. That was a time when you did. You did. Your job was to be mother of the children wasn’t it?
HP: Yes.
JB: So that’s something that I don’t think people these days quite cotton on to. Apparently.
CB: We’re going to stop because we’re coming to the 12th hour.
HP: Yes.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’ve restarted now just to pick up on an item which was to do with the wireless operator and we didn’t really go in to it but LMF, lack of moral fibre was a particular stigma. So how did you see it and how did it affect your crew?
HP: You were aware that this was a sanction. You couldn’t be put on a charge for refusing to fly because you were all volunteers. There had to be a sanction for those who deliberately avoided it or demonstrated any signs of cowardice. It would, a lot depended on the squadron commander and the medical officer as to the sanction which would be applied and to the history of the individual and what he actually did to possibly justify an assessment. If somebody was — appeared to refuse to fly out of sheer cowardice he could be classified as LMF. That was put on a rubber stamp on all his documents. He would be posted to an aircrew disciplinary school at Sheffield and the same thing could apply to a total crew if a total crew went, as a unit, LMF and those initials would follow them as a matter of disgrace all the way through. So because you couldn’t be disciplined for refusing to fly you had this as the alternative which was shame. And it was shame that would accompany you for the rest of your time. So to what extent this stopped people taking actions which would possibly declare them LMF of course can never be known.
CB: And in the case of your crew — what happened there?
HP: Nothing.
CB: But you had a man, a wireless operator —
HP: We had a man who we could no longer get on with and he was isolating himself. He carried out, he carried out his job reasonably well but became incompatible with us and for that reason we made sure that although we made arrangements with him to be replaced that there was no stigma attached to him.
CB: Yeah. He was posted elsewhere was he?
HP: Yes. I think so. But no —
CB: But nobody. Nobody knew.
HP: Yes. He left but we don’t know where he went or what or how.
CB: And the new man? How did he react to joining the crew in these circumstances?
HP: He was glad to be back in with a crew. He was no longer a spare man.
CB: And why would people be spares?
HP: Well he was on either his second or his third tour.
CB: Oh.
HP: And I think the rest of the crew had finished, finished a tour and he had a few more ops to do to become tour expired. So spares.
CB: Yeah. Now in your case 75 gave way to 90. What were the circumstances of that?
HP: Well 75 Squadron, as far as we understood it, was going to be returning to New Zealand.
CB: So the war has ended in Europe.
HP: Yes.
CB: 8th of May.
HP: Yes.
CB: 1945. How soon after that did they —
HP: Well beginning of June we were posted to 90. I don’t know when 75 actually moved back to New Zealand.
CB: And there was the Maori motto but were there Maori members of the crew?
HP: There were.
CB: And what did they do in the aircraft as a task? Do you know?
HP: Well, any. Any job.
CB: So they were pilots.
HP: Yes.
CB: Yeah. The whole span.
HP: Probably fewer pilots because of the length of training but there was.
CB: Yeah.
HP: Yeah. And they were a wonderful friendly people.
CB: And they had a boost to their rations. How did that work?
HP: Who said they had a boost to their rations?
CB: Well because they, they received parcels from New Zealand.
HP: Oh all. The whole of the New Zealand squadron.
CB: That’s what I meant.
HP: Got home comforts.
CB: Yes.
HP: Yeah.
CB: What did they get mainly?
HP: Oh you got cigarettes fully packed in tissue paper, silver paper and cellophane covered cardboard boxes and I think there were chocolate and so forth. Nothing very major but sufficient to make the non-New Zealand crews feel that they were welcome. That they, it wasn’t that a whole group of people got something that you didn’t get and that there was a gap between you.
CB: Yeah.
HP: There was every attempt to keep it as a unit.
CB: Yes. So they were supplied by New Zealand but everybody, regardless of origin on the squadron —
HP: Yeah.
CB: Took. Was able to benefit.
HP: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Your final operation before the war ended was Operation Manna which was supplying food to people in Holland.
HP: Yes.
CB: You talked about your, the first op. What other operations did you do there? Was that the only one or did you do several other Manna drops?
HP: No. We did the first one on, it was a Sunday. The 29th of April and then it got other squadrons. It was a privilege to actually be able to do it and other squadrons and other crews were involved. There was a limited number to start with.
CB: What was the significance of flying at three hundred feet rather than a different level?
HP: If you’re dropping stuff in sacks you want to drop it from not too high otherwise the sacks would burst.
CB: No. I meant, I meant rather than two hundred or one hundred because the impact is so high.
HP: I wouldn’t know.
CB: No.
HP: You might have had pylons going up to two hundred and fifty. Who knows? But I mean that — somebody had to fix that.
CB: Yeah.
HP: You couldn’t do it, fly at ground level even though Holland is pretty flat.
CB: Because you never knew which windmill was coming up next.
HP: Yes.
CB: Right. So how many sorties did you do? Operations did you do on Manna?
HP: As far as I know, oh only one on Manna. And I think we did fourteen bombing operations I think it was.
CB: Yeah.
HP: And then one on Manna.
CB: Ok. And —
HP: And we only did one night operation. That was to Kiel.
CB: Ok.
HP: That was the night the Scharnhorst sunk. We of course sank it.
CB: Yeah. Of course you did. Yeah. Everybody did.
HP: The other nine hundred aircraft on the operation missed.
CB: Everybody did. Yeah. That’s it. So 90 Squadron now. So you’re in 90 Squadron what’s the brief there?
HP: Well. Carry on with operation review which was the —
CB: This is the mapping. The film mapping.
HP: This is the mapping of Europe. Yeah. Generally long distance flying. Anything up to eight hours.
CB: And at what height would you be flying there?
HP: I think the, it was because of the cameras I think we were at twenty thousand feet above ground level.
CB: Oh.
HP: So the height varied.
CB: And it’s a big place. Continent of Europe. So what was the focus that you had geographically?
HP: Well, not a particular focus. You just went. Went where you were told the following day.
CB: Yeah. But did it tend to be any consistency like —
HP: No.
CB: Going over —
HP: No.
CB: France or whatever.
HP: No. I mean over France. We went once to Norway and there you were supposed to get there at first light before the clouds formed. Norway at first light. The fjords, the fjords, the bottom of the fjords were in darkness so we had to wait until that was light. As soon as that was light the cloud started up and down so we went and had a look up the fjords and we were flying up one and turned around to the left and stopped. S we just managed stopped so we just manage to scrape over the top.
CB: Crikey. Yeah.
JB: Nasty moment.
[Recording paused]
HP: That was on the 5th of September.
CB: So your mapping work took some time. How long did that continue until?
HP: Well I’ve no idea how long other people carried on.
CB: No.
HP: We did our last mapping trip on the 5th. On the 5th of September.
CB: Right. And then after that did you stand down?
HP: We were made redundant.
CB: Pardon?
HP: We were made redundant.
CB: Oh you were. Right. Ok. So that’s when you went to the —
HP: Yeah.
CB: Other places. Catterick.
HP: You had, you had a lot of newly trained crews you see. Moving forward.
CB: Right. And they wanted to use them.
HP: Well they were just replaced those who became redundant.
CB: Yeah. Right. Ok. Good.
HP: And of course squadrons were disbanded.
CB: Yes. [pause] But 90 carried on.
[Recording paused]
HP: On Bomber —
CB: Just going on to equipment. We touched briefly — you mentioned H2S the scanning radar. So what was it, how did it work and how did you use it?
HP: We didn’t use H2S. We were bombing on GH.
CB: Oh. On GH. Right.
HP: And
CB: Why didn’t you use H2S?
HP: Because it wasn’t as accurate as GH. We were daylight bombing on synthetic oil plants which were not vast areas and the, you had special training to familiarise yourself with, with this and specially equipped aircraft and on, on a squadron going one in three aircraft would be equipped with —
CB: GH.
HP: With GH only. And two aircraft would formate on that. So you went out like that because I think the question of the strength of signals. I don’t know much about GH but we went on a course where the navigator/bomb aimer were familiarised with this method of accurate bombing through cloud or through anything else like that and you had to maintain a steady course to go over this which was helpful for the flak.
CB: Absolutely, because this is running on a lattice system and, right — so talking about flak to what extent did you get damage from flak?
HP: You usually came back with holes of some sort. We came back once with two engines gone on one side which was not particularly healthy. Another occasion I knew I was dead. I was doing a search there. I’m fairly tall. If I was looking up the back of my head would be pressed against the Perspex of the turret at the back and there was a loud bang where my head was touching this. I turned around and there was a hole about the, about the size of a penny. So I felt the back of my head. Nothing. Looked around at the hole. It was definitely there and if I wasn’t bleeding and didn’t feel any pain therefore I was dead. Now, this lasted for perhaps a half a minute, a minute before you realised that it was a large piece of, large piece of flak had ricocheted off. But bearing in mind you’ve been on oxygen and heated, you’re cold, you’ve got temperatures of minus thirty, minus forty and there was stress. So for that short period of time I knew I was dead. But you came back with holes almost practically anywhere.
CB: And in your turret which way would you normally be facing? Was it —were you rotating it?
HP: Aft.
CB: All the time? Or mainly aft.
HP: Yeah. Yeah. The normal position of a turret was facing aft because you didn’t have to rotate the turret to see.
CB: Yeah. So when those engines went out you would be looking backwards so you wouldn’t see them being hit.
HP: Well you wouldn’t necessarily see them being hit because they would be from underneath and since the engines were underneath the wing.
CB: No. I’m just wondering whether you happened to see as both went out. Whether you happened to experience that.
HP: I can’t remember. I can’t remember.
CB: Right.
HP: You soon knew it had happened.
CB: Yes.
HP: There was a change in sound immediately.
CB: We talked about GH is was the navigation system also used for bombing but from earlier in the war the H2S with the bulge underneath was introduced. My question there was why wouldn’t you use it?
HP: Because the fighters could, 1 — because the fighters could home in on it. 2 — it wasn’t as accurate for the targets which we were detailed to bomb and there weren’t too many squadrons on daylight bombing.
CB: Right.
HP: In Bomber Command.
CB: Right.
HP: We were.
CB: Good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Hugh Parry. One
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-11
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AParryHP161011
Conforms To
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Pending review
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Hugh Parry was born in Oswestry and joined the Air Force in April 1943 and volunteered to be an air gunner. Knowing that there was a height restriction on air gunners of six feet he hid his height by wearing baggy trousers. After training, he was posted to 75 NZ Squadron and then to 90 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham where his crew carried out photographic reconnaissance over Europe. Among his operations Hugh’s crew were also one of the first to take part in Operation Manna. After the war Hugh returned to accountancy. For a while he lived and worked in Bangladesh before returning to the UK.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
India
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
India--Kolkata
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Format
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01:09:30 audio recording
11 OTU
1651 HCU
3 Group
75 Squadron
90 Squadron
aerial photograph
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
guard room
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Me 163
military ethos
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
P-51
perception of bombing war
physical training
RAF Bridlington
RAF Mepal
RAF Pembrey
RAF Silloth
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Westcott
RAF Woolfox Lodge
reconnaissance photograph
Spitfire
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/693/9240/PBarnettWE1701.1.jpg
7c713abda4f42e7135e9e634f0cfee24
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/693/9240/ABarnettWE170328.1.mp3
d760a82e33d828a0e77867096443f1cb
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
Barnett, William Edwin
W E Barnett
Description
An account of the resource
an oral history interview with William Barnett (b. 1924). He grew up close to RAF Westcott and was nearly killed when a Lancaster crashed. He served in the Royal Navy 1946 - 1952.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Barnett, WE
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 28th of March 2017 and we are in Woodham, near Aylesbury and I’m talking with William Edwin Barnett about his days in the war as a resident on the edge of the airfield at Westcott. So, Eddie, what are your earliest recollections of life?
WEB: Well, earliest recollections really is going to school at Westcott School and I went to, you know, walked to, down to the village and get educated there. And from there we were then transferred to Waddesdon and that’s where I finished my education, in Waddesdon. So that’s as far as that goes.
CB: And what did your father do?
WEB: My father was a signalman on the railway and he, all during the war, he was at Ashendon Junction signal box
CB: Right. So, which railway was that?
WEB: That was like, that’s, I don’t know the railway, that’s the Oxford, is that the Oxford one? It goes, anyway, it goes below Ashendon Hills
CB: Yes
WEB: And on its way to Oxford and [unclear] perhaps I used to come from there through to here, Woodham and
CB: Yeah
WEB: And on to, on to
CB: Went on to the mainline
WEB: Mainline and onto Quainton
CB: Yes
WEB: Joined up with that one
CB: Yes
WEB: That’s as far as I know
CB: Which was the London to Wragby line
WEB: Yeah
CB: Yeah. Ok. And at what age did you leave school, Eddie?
WEB: I left school at the age of fourteen
CB: Ok.
WEB: And I, my first job was William Fenimore’s farm, which is this one down here, down, where Mr. Adams lives now, that’s where I first had my working experience and we used to get up and do, had to get down to the farm around about six o’clock in the morning to do the milking and finish it around [unclear] and come home for breakfast then and then continue the rest of the day onto the farm.
CB: And what did you do on the farm the rest of the day?
WEB: Just general farm work, cleaning out the stables and cow [unclear] and things like that and do the milking and all that sort of thing
CB: So, was this an animal farm effectively or was it arable as well?
WEB: It was until the war years, when the war started it became any arable, the ploughing and things like that, that was the first time that I ploughed and done things like that
CB: So, what animals were there, apart from the cows?
WEB: The cow. Oh, all animals like, they didn’t have horse, they had one horse, I think, one horse, and that used to take the milk from the farm up to the [unclear] on it and the rest of the day it was in the stable and [unclear] things just, you done the normal things with haymaking and all that sort of thing and the hay was all stacked in ricks and these were cut and delivered to the [unclear] as they needed it. I think that covers that sort
CB: So, in the wintertime, there was enough hay, was there, to feed the cattle?
WEB: Yes, yes, that was enough, all stacked in what they called ricks, ricks we used to call them
CB: Could you describe a rick? What’s that like?
WEB: Well, it’s built from the ground upwards and it’s round about, what, [unclear] about the size, half the size of this building long and about the same width and you take it up, build it up and then you come, when you get to round about ten, fifteen feet from the ground, something like that, you [unclear] it in which to make the roof and then you thatch it to keep the rain out
CB: So, the thatching is done with
WEB: Straw
CB: Straw. Ok. Where did the straw come from?
WEB: Straw was with the, in the fields like, where you thrashed out the corn
CB: Yes
WEB: What you call it, you thrash the corn out and then the straw was what was left
CB: Yes. So, they grew corn effectively to create straw, did they, for thatching
Web: Well, it would, it got that and then of course corn was used cause poultry and that, they had in [unclear] farm in what they called them I forget now, it was a thing that you could move and the chickens were in there
CB: Yes
WEB: The chicken, with a run and it was moved gradually about the field the chickens to get fresh grain to be on. This was, and that was all done usually nothing to do with the men farmer, just usually done by the daughter, something like that which in down here was Carrie Fenimore, that was the daughter’s name and she looked after the chickens
CB: Did they have sheep as well?
WEB: They had sheep, a few sheep
CB: Any goats?
WEB: Not goats, never had goats
CB: Right. And what numbers of cattle were involved in this? Roughly
WEB: The actual, I think it was around about up to twenty-five in, for milking purposes and that sort of thing
CB: Right
WEB: And then they did, did they have beef cattle as well?
WEB: Pardon?
CB: Did they have beef cattle?
WEB: Yes
CB: Raised for meat?
WEB: Yes, well, yes, they, that in a was a sort of a separate place because they used to have some fields that were down here but over the railway, over the top of the railway were a few more fields and those cows used to run wild there and were just, you went up with a horse and a cow straw and hay and that and you used to feed them during the winter
CB: Right
WEB: With that and they used to fatten up there and then, when they were ready they send them off to market
CB: Did the farm have a tractor?
WEB: Well, he, well
CB: At that time when you joined?
WEB: Had a tractor of a, yes, they did have a tractor, yeah, but it was a big, powerful one and it was a steam driven one they had, like, it was more like a steam engine then with which they towed anything they wanted to tow
CB: So, could that go on the road?
WEB: That did go on the road, that steam engine
CB: So, would you call that a traction engine?
WEB: Traction engine? Yes
CB: Right
WEB: And that was, that was used to take [unclear] job to describe the farms because they had another load of field round on the [unclear] road
CB: Right
WEB: And things like that and all these [unclear] just wend round and some of the sons and daughters used to look after that
CB: Right. So, how many people were running the farm?
WEB: Well, the actual who, the head of the farm was Will, William Fenimore and then there was Algernon Fenimore, he used to run and what was the other one? Algernon and I forget the other man’s name but he was married to a schoolteacher, now I can’t think of his name now but
CB: So you were supporting the family effectively. Were there other farm workers in addition to you?
WEB: Oh, there was, yes, there was
CB: How many?
WEB: Other people, was Leslie Jones and he was a real farm worker, well, he used to do that plus he used to look after me
CB: He looked after the animals
WEB: He looked after the hedging, and hedge cut
CB: Oh yes
WEB: Anything like that, he’d step in and do that sort of thing
CB: Was there a lot of hedging, hedge cutting in those days?
WEB: Only when it was necessary and he’d done, it wasn’t done on a regular basis in this day that was done very occasionally
CB: So, you were born in 1924 and you joined at fourteen, so that’s 1938, what do you remember of the next year, when the war started, in September 1939?
WEB: What do I remember? Not very much mainly actually [unclear] it was, the thing was there and that had to be dealt with I presume but it did make differences to us because we, for instance we had to join the home guard that was, if you couldn’t join, if, what I mean to say is if you was in a reserved occupation, let’s put it that way, you were not called up to do military service
CB: Right
WEB: As it goes but you were conscripted into the home guard and you’d done military training [unclear] and one odd day in the week and at no time, no time when you was later on you were let, we had to patrol the A41 of [unclear] and [unclear] you have done that for, would say, from midnight till four, and then from four till you went, four, that was, four would be the last watch, and you then, from then on you went to work so what you done, what you’re trying to do is to get you the end and the beginning of the day, merge into one so you could do the job, then go home and have your breakfast and then carry on working for the rest of the day. Does that make any sense to you?
CB: It does, yes. So, you were on four till eight, were you, and then had your breakfast
WEB: Yeah
CB: Ok. And what was the watch before that, before the one at twelve, was it eight till twelve? Were they four-hour watches?
WEB: These four-hour watches, they, you were drawn from, they started by midnight, more or less,
CB: Yeah, right
WEB: We used to think but that probably, started a little bit earlier than that but you’d done so long and then you got relieved and you left
CB: Yeah. So, at what stage did the farm operation change because of the war and why was it changed? How was it changed?
WEB: Well
CB: Because they started doing arable crops, didn’t they?
WEB: Well, this is all before the war, before the war [unclear], it was more or less just have a few cows, let them run around in the fields and do things like that, there weren’t much given to ploughing or anything that I can remember before the war
CB: No
WEB: Not, on a
CB: On a
WEB: On this basis
CB: Yeah
WEB: It weren’t really come necessary to do, what is it, to substitute the corn and that we were getting from the [unclear] and that sort of thing were coming in before the war for breadmaking and all that, it wasn’t until after when the war started and we had to make deal with bread and make bread out of the wheat and we started making bread of our own
CB: Did you?
WEB: We’d have our own wheat is what I mean [unclear] it was all done by imported corn wheat stuff
CB: Yeah
WEB: Does that make sense?
CB: Yeah, absolutely. So, then, Westcott became an RAF airfield, so when did that happen, when did they start building that and what was the reaction?
WEB: Dates, I can’t remember those dates and what was it, who was when? [unclear] to say
CB: Well, we can look up the actual date but what do you remember about it happening because your house
WEB: Yes, yes, as a matter of fact while, before that happened, I was happily working on the farm down here and then I got talking to some lads who was on the, doing the ministry job as I call it and I know he said, well, if they are getting that much money, I think it’s time I went in and had some [unclear], so I left the farm and went into the [unclear] and started doing this job and at that time I was, I was taken a surveyor [unclear] on a dumper to [unclear] we went up and came up to the bridge and what was the boss from the farm spotted me and that’s where my problems started then because he immediately went back and phoned the employment agency [unclear] I was immediately told to go and see them to get myself back on the farm, I was more important to them on the farm than the [unclear] so I was virtually took back to the farm and made to work on that farm until the wartime was over. I couldn’t please myself where I went [unclear] I had to be there. Do you understand this?
CB: Absolutely. So, there you were, in a house, a row of three, is it, next to the airfield, so did that map out as they were building it?
WEB: Well, it was, no, it didn’t affect us to in a lot of ways, you know, I mean, the only thing that we sort of did fall into was it all these, making these rain rings and putting them on where the aircraft standings were which what they called the one [unclear] behind the hazes, where I lived, was given a number of sea flight, that was its number and that’s where a lot of the fellows worked and that’s where a lot of the fellows used to nip out and go absent to drink without anybody else knowing [laughs] [unclear]. Mother used to be [unclear] nipping and give them plates of food and things like that they didn’t want give mother on a plate said, yes, you can use that more than we can, which take me now to, down on this road as we go down to Mote farm
CB: Right
WEB: Just as you go down [unclear], there they got as machine gun post, a machine gun nest then for Canadians, the Canadians were stationed in the old drive, driveway down at Lodge Garage they went that, they were stationed there, the Canadians were and they had a machine gun nest, machine gun [unclear] the bloke and what was it, and he came and he made friends with us, with myself and my brother, used to go down to [unclear] and for a pint or two of milk the farmer didn’t know about, he, they used to give us a bit of corned beef [laughs], which I, which people don’t know about, they shouldn’t have known about it then so we used to get a bit of corned beef for giving a pint of Mr. Fenimore’s milk and all went on during the war that sort of thing
CB: Nobody ever knew
WEB: No, well, I supposed they guessed I mean, Mr. Fenimore, what was it, he got these as I said, as I said the daughter of the farm, Carrie Fenimore, she used to be in charge of the chicken in these, I forget what they used to call them things, you could [unclear] them with the [unclear] and [unclear] with the [unclear], I forget the
CB: And they were called arcs, were they?
WEB: Well, [unclear] that anyway, and they shipped them about the farms and she looked after that and all the, what was it, and after, when you’d done all the those, all the milk was in churns which stood about that height from the ground were filled up and we, they had to be taken from the farm and up to the road here and stood on the road where Nestle’s milk lorries would pick them up and Carrie used to [unclear] the door, she drove the van up and I’d have to go up with her to lump the cans of milk away to where they go and that was where we got the milk to Aylesbury.
CB: These churns were about four feet high but how much milk did they carry each?
WEB: [unclear] I can’t [unclear] at the moment
CB: Probably about forty pints
WEB: I mean they [laughs] I stood about that, about that high so what was in there I wouldn’t know
CB: No
WEB: But there was but we used to send about five churns of milk per day to Aylesbury, to the Aylesbury Nestle’s, Nestle’s milk Aylesbury, [unclear] that
CB: What was the lorry? Was it a steam lorry or was it a
WEB: It was a petrol
CB: Petrol
WEB: Petrol driven lorry, lorry with a flat back where the bloke used to keep the pints of milk and get it go in to set on top of the
CB: The technique was to kick it and bounce it
WEB: Well, it was, yes, it got two little handles at the top
CB: Yeah
WEB: But he [unclear], his foot [unclear] side of the lorry, just slide it on
CB: So you
WEB: The lorry was not very high
CB: No. You brought it but he loaded it, did he?
WEB: He’d done all the, if he, if there was no, we used to leave it, if, you take it up to the road and you pick up the old churn and they used to drop the spare churns as I went down but if they were there when you were, you took the spare churn and left the milk, the milk there for him to pick up, you didn’t have to be there to see him take it
CB: But it was on a deck by the gate, was it?
WEB: That was on a
CB: Platform
WEB: Well, some [unclear] had platforms but we just set them straight onto the road
CB: Was it concrete?
WEB: To the farm you had road on, you know
CB: Ok. And how did you sterilise the empty ones when they returned them?
WEB: Well, when they returned them, they were already done
CB: Ready to fill
WEB: Straight in, straight into the caveyard and filled them up again
CB: Yeah. Right
WEB: But to, it was [unclear] in the farm there was a place where you put your milk, I forget what they called it now so, you put your milk into the top and it went through to cool it off, they cooled the milk off before it went into the can, into the churns
CB: Right
WEB: The churns that’s what
CB: Yeah
WEB: Thinking about
CB: Good
WEB: But that, that was heavy work that you had to do
CB: You were the only person who did that, were you?
WEB: You had to do it cause Carrie, the daughter couldn’t let them and so she just drove the little lost van it was at that time but they got, just [unclear] Carrie used to drive it
CB: I think we’ll take a break for a mo, thank you.
WEB: Lived on, lived where I am.
CB: Right, so, let’s just look at the farm. The Fenimores didn’t own this farm, did they?
WEB: No
CB: Who do you think owned it?
WEB: No, they rent it
CB: Right, from whom?
WEB: From the [unclear] estates
CB: Right
WEB: As far as I could think,
CB: Right. And the house you were in, who owned that?
WEB: That was, oh, some,
CB: It wasn’t owned by the farmer?
WEB: No
CB: It was owned by the Crown
WEB: Crown properties
CB: Yeah
WEB: Crown properties owned that
CB: Because it was the edge of the road
WEB: Like there sort of thing
CB: Right
WEB: That was [unclear]
CB: That, yeah. And you were one of a big family, so how big was the family?
WEB: There was eleven in our family
CB: Right. Mixture of boys and girls?
WEB: Yeah, I think it was six and five, I
CB: Yeah, ok
WEB: That was [unclear], that was five boys and six girls, yeah
CB: Yeah
WEB: And at the moment, there’s just three boys
CB: Yeah
WEB: Left
CB: Left
WEB: That’s the sad outcome
CB: So, going back to when the airfield was starting to be built, in about 1940, ’41, that was right next to your house, what could you see going on from the house? Because
WEB: Well
CB: It was land which it was a mixture of fields, wasn’t it? What did they do about that?
WEB: The field and different thing
CB: Woods?
WEB: [unclear] say that the first thing that you saw, thing was the great big caterpillar tractors around pulling down, pulling up hedges and things like that to make way for all this airfield now and as I say, I left and went over to, thought I get a few paid more than I was getting on the farm and that was Derby, this is the name of the firm if you want
CB: Yeah
WEB: It was the one I worked for was Derby Everdale and Greenwood who were subcontracting to, I can’t think now, the overall government was, what was it
CB: A big construction company
WEB: Big
CB: Like McAlpine
WEB: Well, was something like that, there, can’t think of it now but that was more or less done there and as I say, I thought I’d have some of the while I went, while they sent me back they said, Mr. Barnett, not Mr. Barnett, they called me, what was it? Get back to work, you, work, they said, you are more important where you are than where, [unclear] told me, he said, you’ll stay there until the end of the war, that’s your job, and that was all they told me, that, and during that time, the whole home guard and all that you were expected to join that but at night-time you’d have to do a stand on, from, on the road
CB: Yeah
WEB: On the A41
CB: Yeah
WEB: To ensure that there was no funny business by, you know, some people wanted to damage the, damage the things at Agnem Street station, that was all that keep you on that, because in the Agnum Street station they got that based to run petrol into that, to Wadston to store and you had to make sure that it was doing and then, as I say, you done that and the time it was, you finished that shift it was time to go and milk the cows
CB: What sort of people were they thinking were going to do these things?
WEB: Well, it was German parachuters more than anything, you know, that was what they, that was what they used to tell us, they dropped these people with parachutes and things and we believed them and you had to believe, innit? They say they would drop, I presume they could’ve done, but that we believed it and we used to do this patrolling. Two of us used to do the patrol and then get relieved, the ideal one was to start at four o’clock in the morning and do that and do that and [unclear] until six and then you went and done your farming
CB: Right
WEB: Done your milking, went and done your milking and then you went home and had your breakfast and all that sort of thing
CB: What weapons did you carry?
WEB: We had, I don’t know where, the ones we had were the imported 300
CB: Springfields
WEB: Must have been the Springfields, it was American made
CB: American, yeah
WEB: [unclear] that was the ones we had, we had Springfield and five rounds of ammunition
CB: Right
WEB: And we kept that, there was two of those and [unclear] cause me brother Sam [unclear] he had one as well
CB: Did you take it home or?
WEB: That was, that was kept at home.
CB: Yea
WEB: But you had to take it to your [unclear] on the Sunday and that one we were doing the drills and [unclear] and several on a Sunday and all that sort of thing
CB: Where did you practice your shooting skills?
WEB: Unfortunately, we didn’t get to any shooting practices, that was too, our ammunition was too, what they called? Too
CB: Too [unclear]
WEB: Too spare, too expensive, and too valuable then to expend on things like that, what we used to do was to have a target sort of thing with an air rifle
CB: Ah
WEB: [unclear] and you never practiced with the actual big machine, as I call it,
CB: Yeah
WEB: You had a little air rifle
CB: Yeah. And how good was your shooting?
WEB: Pardon?
CB: How good was your shooting?
WEB: My shooting weren’t too bad, actually. It was about fair, fair
CB: So when you briefly worked on the airfield construction, how much did they pay you?
WEB: Oh, I think it was round about that time, it was round about seven or eight pounds, something like that which normally
CB: A week?
WEB: For that time
CB: A week
WEB: A week
CB: Yeah
WEB: But the farming, that was only up to about seven or eight pounds
CB: Right
WEB: So that was what [unclear], Mr. Fenimore he spotted me on this, what was it and I was back down the next day
CB: Yeah. So, how many people were building the airfield, were there lots of people?
WEB: Oh, I don’t know, quite a lot, what was it? It was Irish, a lot of Irish people
CB: Right
WEB: At the time
CB: Where did they house those?
WEB: In a factory down sort of gypsie bombers as we called it, you know a gypsies barn is buried where the club is
CB: Yes, in the wood there
WEB: In that strip of land there to the bottom of the hill, that’s where they used to house those people, in Nissen huts sort of things
CB: Which they put specially, had they?
WEB: They put them up specially for them
CB: How long did it take to build the airfield?
WEB: Oh, I don’t know, [unclear] I don’t know, it didn’t take them long, to, I mean, it’s, I think it’s, I wouldn’t say
CB: So, you talked about these caterpillars that were ripping up the hedges, how many trees did they have to take out?
WEB: Oh, that is beyond me, I mean, as a matter of fact, I don’t know, before the war actually they were [unclear] from way [unclear] on the side of the road
CB: The A41
WEB: From there the back portal as we called it to the Westcott turn was a load of those, what we called? Birch, is it?
CB: Silver birch
WEB: Silver birch, they were lines of eight of those trees on the road, then they got four of them and then there was odd one or two down Westcott lane, these silver birch trees and that sort of thing
CB: So what happened to those?
WEB: All fell and burnt, but the most of it was burnt and the logs and that, cause people had them stacked and had them for firewood and that sort of thing
CB: They pulled the roots out?
WEB: The roots and all that were pulled all out and
CB: Where did the put those?
WEB: They put them in heaps and got rid of those with the fire
CB: And what about the runways, because they had a different type of equipment for that, did they?
WEB: What the
CB: Making the runways
WEB: That I couldn’t say, I mean, I just
CB: You could watch them
WEB: It was concrete and what was it? All the way, done, they’d done it in bays, bays
CB: In sections
WEB: In sections, that was all, don’t know what the, the machine was actually making the concrete and they’d lay there and then, when that was drawn, they moved it on and made the next one and doing, that was done in bays I think
CB: Right, yeah
WEB: Call it but it was big concrete
CB: And what about the material. How did that get there?
WEB: Came in from road, from the road, from [unclear], the Oxford area, somewhere down, I just big, some big [unclear]
CB: Were they petrol
WEB: Pits and where they loaded them up on the lorries and
CB: Yeah
WEB: They brought the stuff and loaded it and put it on, what was it, where that was to be used and that was levelled out by tractor, the things and pushed all over and levelled and rolled out and then they made concrete on the top of it
CB: Right. Now, there’s a railway that goes down beside the airfield so, how much came by railway?
WEB: Funnily enough I don’t think not a lot of it came by the rail but the only thing that sort of come by rail was petrol and storage that they sent to Wadston and stored up in the plantations of Wadston [unclear]
CB: Oh, was it? Right
WEB: Mostly [unclear] that I can tell
CB: That was fuel for the aircraft
WEB: That was fuel for, not for the aircraft, that was fuel for the general army actually but a load of these things were in tin, what they called it? Tin cans, they weren’t very thick but those weigh round about four gallons
CB: Yeah
WEB: And they were all stacked in the Wadston, Wadston plantations
CB: Right
WEB: Right where the doctor’s surgery is [unclear], all around that area
CB: On the far side of the village, yeah
WEB: Was where [unclear]
CB: So, how different was the supply, when the airfield was finished, how did they supply the fuel for that?
WEB: That used to come in by big tankers from somewhere, I don’t know where
CB: But not by train
WEB: Ehm
CB: Not by train
WEB: Not say this local station anyway
CB: Right
WEB: It came, it might, even then I might be wrong, but I think it was from somewhere else they used to come, the big tankers
CB: Yeah. Now your house and the others next to it are on the north side of the airfield, they actually with the hard standings for servicing, they also had a big petrol store underground
WEB: In where?
CB: Just across the fence from here
WEB: Ah, yes, yes
CB: So how did they build that?
WEB: That was all a big, they dug it all out, a big pit and they put a steel tank, yeah, that was, a big tank was lowered into the ground with pumps and all that and they [unclear] for petrol, well, fuel for aircraft anyway and then they [unclear] the back [unclear] where [unclear] is, are three, are standings for aircraft
CB: Yes
WEB: Cause I was saying, [unclear] or something like that, three Wellington bombers used to stay
CB: [unclear]
WEB: Were parked out there and that sort of got to know the load of the people
CB: Yeah
WEB: [unclear] Tipps Wooller, he used to run to dinner now and again he [unclear], we don’t want it, you can eat it [laughs], yeah Tipps Wooller, [unclear] to know I recall, you know, some of the names but no [unclear] to me, so I say, Tipps, he was an aircraft ambuler, he brought out to the aircraft and that at the back and then he, there was several couples I used to know in when we used to go and have a pint with them when we got in the pub to get a pint but I forget the names of those people that used to come, I know they come up into London somewhere
CB: Why was it difficult to get into the pub?
WEB: Pardon?
CB: Why was it difficult to get into the pub?
WEB: Into the what?
CB: Into the pub. You said it was difficult to get into it
WEB: The pub?
CB: Yeah
WEB: Oh well, I mean, [unclear], it was like everything else, it was shortage of beer [laughs], that was too odd difficult thing to get in there, I mean, they’d be all waiting outside there for Frank Washington to open the door, [unclear] that was, the biggest problem was to rush in and a beer, they weren’t officially rationed but they weren’t [unclear] for them to give it then, yeah
CB: Now, this big tank with petrol in, when they moved the contents to be able to fill the aircraft, to what extent was there a strong smell of fuel in the air?
WEB: I don’t know this much of it. I couldn’t notice much of the smell from it really. I mean [unclear] I presumed, which way the wind blowed
CB: Right
Web: But we, some of that we didn’t take much notice of but [unclear] the big, the tank, that when you get more of a smell than anything was when the tanker came round to fuel the aircraft
CB: Right
WEB: Which was right close to the [unclear] the aircraft and that was when you used to get more of a smell from the tankers but other than that, nothing [unclear]
CB: So, how did they get from the main road to this fuel tank? Was there a special gate near your house?
WEB: What was?
CB: The tankers
WEB: The tankers [unclear]
CB: They came in from a gate near your house, did they?
WEB: Not the actual tankers that fuelled, they used to come in and I had, they had an underground tank
CB: Yeah
WEB: Inside the aerodrome which was quite a long way from the [unclear] and they used to, at the end of where our garden and that, there was a road
CB: Right
WEB: Off there where all the tankers went in and to supply the tanks and that sort of thing
CB: Yes
WEB: Other than that, that was the only sort of thing that used to go over in there but it was a pretty busy thing I would think
CB: We’ll take a break there. So, just talking about
WEB: End of the gardens
CB: Yeah, there was a [unclear]
WEB: There was a [unclear] called Wadston terrace
CB: Yeah
WEB: There used to be a little building with a sentry, and he used to let in the lorries that’s one thing I think [unclear] lorries
CB: The fuel delivery lorries
WEB: They let the fuel delivery lorries in
CB: Yeah. So how was the airfield secured? They didn’t have a fence, did it?
WEB: Had, most of it round was concertina barbwire
CB: Right
WEB: One roll, two rolls on the floor, one on the top
CB: Right
WEB: That’s what they call it
CB: How high was that? When they were piled on top?
WEB: Well, they were, each roll was about that high
CB: Right, five, six feet
WEB: There was one, that was up from the floor
CB: Yeah, five feet
WEB: And then one, another one
CB: Yeah
WEB: Balanced on the two
CB: Yeah
WEB: That was the only thing that I can remember of [unclear] place
CB: Yeah
WEB: Being [unclear] as it stood and [unclear] we used to be a very good [unclear] for the people who come and see and have a pint without the bosses knowing [laughs]
CB: So where would they
WEB: They would walk through the garden at the end of the pub and then back
CB: Which pub are we talking about? Which pub are we talking about, in the village or elsewhere?
WEB: [unclear] go anywhere more or less where the pub, they got the beer
CB: Ah
WEB: This was the problem for me, see, with all these extra people, is, where do you go and get your pint of beer, when it don’t last long? You know, it was, they ain’t got beer all the time, these pubs, they just start to [unclear] if you [unclear] go and get a pint every day mostly, well I suppose, it was a type of rationing [unclear] but, yeah
CB: Could you buy beer to drink at home or was it not available?
WEB: Never, I never saw any of that sort of, bought anywhere, not a way, that was too, they wouldn’t sell it, I don’t think, in the pubs, avoidable for them to sell it, I don’t think, you probably would do but I can’t say that I know that you can buy beer to take home
CB: Right
WEB: But, I mean, it’s a long time ago, isn’t it?
CB: Yes
WEB: But there
CB: Now what about, when the aircraft, when the airfield became operational, that was quite a change to the quiet of the countryside so how did people take to that?
WEB: Oh, just a war time job that you had to take, it wasn’t that, the noisiest places for us, I presume, was when the aircraft was on the landing, on the site, next [unclear] and they were testing the engines
CB: Yes
WEB: They were revving up, that was the noisy part of it and to do that, we used to laugh, we got Lottie Cannon used to live one end of [unclear] and guess it’s going back and Stanley [unclear] was in the middle, I think it was the [unclear] in the middle way round there for end at the time and mum said, that lot, Lottie will be able to [unclear] she said today, she said, they grabbed the aircraft blowing straight across our garden [laughs], they used to make, that was the type of thing they’d done, you see, to test the aircraft, that was right on there, in the aircraft there and then the [unclear] is here, and they, I guess, they just revved up the engine to test them, and all that sort of thing and you had to put with it and that was it
CB: They didn’t swing the aircraft into a better position to save you
WEB: Pardon?
CB: They didn’t swing the aircraft
WEB: No
CB: Save the
WEB: No, they, that, where the aircraft come in to land, that’s where it [unclear] straight to the aerodrome and tail, facing your [unclear]
CB: Yeah
WEB: You got all the background then
CB: So you deserved the extra food as compensation
WEB: We deserved a lot but we didn’t get [laughs], oh dear
CB: So we are talking about a big family here, how many of the family had left to get elsewhere by this time, beginning of the war?
WEB: By the war all the girls had gone
CB: Right
WEB: I think most
CB: Cause they were older
WEB: No, it was because the way these people worked them days, when the girls left school they were billeted out to the place where they were gonna work
CB: Right
WEB: [unclear] they seemed to manage to all these families
CB: Yeah
WEB: I mean, I think certainly my oldest sister Winnie, she went over the back of the farmer back Quainton Hills [unclear] Quainton Hills and she was lodged in that place, that’s where she met her husband and
CB: What was her job then?
WEB: Well, she was [unclear], she kept and cleaned the farm and kept it all going
CB: Right
WEB: [unclear]
CB: What did the other girls do?
WEB: Oh,
CB: A variety
WEB: I don’t know, Alice, she was sent out to [unclear], Aston Clinton, that area, round there to do people’s ailsing and the other girls, they all, well, don’t think of the younger ones, were at home, you know
CB: So, in those days, the big houses had girls in service
WEB: Yes, they did that, that was what they had to do mostly what they’d done [unclear], business was the service for
CB: You were on the farm, were there any of the girls in the land army?
WEB: Not our girls, no
CB: And your brothers, what did they do?
WEB: The brothers were all more or less, Ernie, now, he was the star of the family actually, cause he was a cross country runner and he was transferred from Grendon, that was present man, Lord somebody who’s done Grendon Hall
CB: Grendon Hall, yeah
WEB: And he worked for them in the gardens
CB: Right
WEB: And he happened to go, happened to go to Grendon and the police were holding a sport’s day at Grendon, at Bicester and he [unclear] and went to and do his races and he eventually come home with a, what do you call it? Hang on the wall [unclear], tells the weather, a weather glass, a grandmother clock, and something else he, three things he brought home on that high school from
CB: That he’d won
WEB: He won
CB: Yeah
WEB: But the police bought it what was it, when from then on, that made him and they got in contact with Wickham Phoenix Harriers, which was at Wickham, what was it? And they got him a job in the chair factories and that’s where he spent the rest of his days in factories apart from when he was called up into the Air Force and that was it, he won the only international medal he got was when he, England and Belgium were against other sports and he was one of the runners and he got a gold medal in that, what was it, and that was his only medal he ever sort of won in international, what was it, and then on he went in the Air Force and the next thing I know he was in the Far East, Middle East, my mistake, doing his Air Force
CB: Right. When did he join the RAF? When did he join the RAF?
WEB: When did he? Oh, I don’t know, he was more or less conscripted I think into it, that was where
CB: At the beginning of the war
WEB: At the beginning of the war and that was where he done that training and all that sort
CB: How much older than you was he?
WEB: Oh Ernie, he was quite, he was the oldest and I was round about the middle, middle of the family
CB: Right
WEB: I don’t, those, I don’t know much really cause the difference in years and that, most of the girls then were sent out to work [unclear]
CB: Was that because of the war or because that’s how the things happened?
WEB: Well, that’s how things happened normally
CB: Right
WEB: Cause the war didn’t have a lot of effect on the difference what, the only difference they did sort of do then were to get jobs into factories and things so that were important to do, war efforts where before that they’d do everything else
CB: Right. And did one of your brothers do work in the mines? What was he?
WEB: Oh, well, Victor
CB: Yeah
WEB: Victor, he’s still living in Aylesbury at the moment, he was conscripted down the mines, yes
CB: A Bevin boy
WEB: A Bevin boy, yeah
CB: Yes
WEB: Yes, he was, that was it, he was a Bevin boy. I don’t know many people that done it from around here that went in there
CB: Yeah. And where was that? Up in the north?
WEB: He went up to
CB: Newcastle?
WEB: That was Newcastle and somewhere around that area
CB: Ok, we’ll take a break there. We’re stopping there. So, what we are going to do now is talk about the crashes and other recollections of the airfield. Actually, Westcott 11 Operational Training Unit lost 53 Wellingtons in crashes
WEB: [unclear]
CB: Yeah. And how many, what’s the first one you remember? You talked about one to do with a signal box.
WEB: Yes, well, that one has taken three runways out there and I think it was, I don’t know which one, which one to name, they named them, but it came from that way and he didn’t make the end of the runway properly and he was never got enough height and he hit the signal box and went into the, this side of the railway and that was where one of the fellows, I think it was one of the fellows down on the Restborough [unclear] but that was that one but I don’t think there was any
CB: Right, so then another one was one that
WEB: Another one was, I mean, [laughs] I don’t know whether anybody ever looked at, if they kept the [unclear] on the left hand side but you come down from [unclear], from [unclear] down to Woodham, I think I’m not sure but there’s three, three fences on that left hand side, where the aircraft had actually gone over the road, come over the, come to land on that airfield, failed, went over the field, down and over the road and landed with its, either its tail or its nose, over the Bicester road
CB: This explains
WEB: And I think if I’m not sure, there’s three fences have been put up in the [unclear], I don’t know [unclear]
CB: So, this is a strip between your house and where we are talking today of about half a mile and we are talking about the end of the runway that is runway 2 8, in other words goes to the North-West so there was shot out
WEB: They are the ones that come over the road then
CB: Yeah
WEB:
CB: To the A41
WEB: Yeah. Well, that’s as far as I can tell, I don’t know where they got fences in there or not, but they used to have gaps in the hedge then and they been filled in [unclear] sense or not, I don’t know,
CB: Now, there was one crash that took place on the 15th of March 1944 which was when there was a Wellington in the circuit and it was hit, this is in the night, by a Stirling that came from another direction, what do you remember about that?
WEB: That’s the first time I ever called a Stirling, we, everybody [laughs], I’ve always known it as a Lancaster,
CB: Right, that’s the other, that’s the different crash, this the one that where they were hit
WEB: This is
CB:
WEB: This is one at Westcott turn
CB: Yes
WEB: This, this
CB: Ok, that’s the other one, yes
WEB: This plane had been doing circuits and bumps as we called it
CB: Right
WEB: Been flying [unclear]
CB: Yeah
WEB: On its final, he didn’t make it, he went straight over the road
CB: Yes
WEB: But that crashed his undercarriage
CB: Yes
WEB: And he [unclear] that side of the road
CB: The other side, this is a Wellington
WEB: At night time, they’d done this big raid on Germany and these aircraft were flying back and these actually got diverted from some other airfield, this Lancaster bomber, we’ll call it a Lancaster
CB: It is a Lancaster, yes
WEB: A Lancaster bomber come flying in from the other way and he didn’t make it, he went over the road and landed on top of this Wellington that was already there
CB: Right
WEB: And that was where all the hullabaloo got started then, blokes running down the road, in their flying boots, mom looked out of the window and she said, [unclear] Charlie said, blokes running [unclear] we better get out, and we [unclear] then Kitt Rebell come along and he shouted and told us, get out and clear airfield, he said, in the roots cause all in [unclear] beyond our place were tree roots, [unclear] up when aircraft were being made, when the airfield was being made but there was a load of roots out there, so get out in [unclear] and we went out there. My father, he was out there and he was when it went off, he was pulling his trousers on outside in the field and he was pulling his trousers on and suddenly he said, I heard this thump, I know there was a lump of aircraft metal, not two yards from him but my father was near my father ever got to an aircraft, he said, that’s the nearest I ever wanna be and that was, he missed, that was when that aircraft blew up at Westcott turn
CB: So you were in the tree tumps
WEB: We were in the tree stumps
CB: And where was he, close to that?
WEB: Who, my father?
CB: Yeah
WEB: He was in the tree stumps with us
CB: Yeah
WEB: In those but he was [unclear] a little bit in the open when that aircraft blew
CB: Yeah
WEB: That of course took the roof off [unclear] the slades and things and we were covered with sheets [unclear] for ages
CB: Who came and fixed it?
WEB: I don’t know, it took, I think it was, I’m not sure where it was, [unclear] and fixed the
CB: [unclear]
WEB: Well, but the finish
CB: So this was the first of June 1944. How long did it take to get the house fixed?
WEB: I can’t say, took a long time I mean they more or less had cut [unclear] to make it waterproof then
CB: Yeah
WEB: To stop the water but to actual do the repairs, that took ages
CB: So, it blew the roofs off, what happened to the windows?
WEB: Windows were [unclear], never was blown out the windows so that they fixed those up as well. A lot of time I think some of them would bits of plaster or something instead of glass
CB: So this was actually only two hundred yards from your house that the explosion took place. What other houses were damaged?
WEB: A little bit more than
CB: Four hundred yards?
WEB: [unclear] from Westcott turn to [unclear]
CB: Yeah, four hundred yards
WEB: Something like that
CB: Yeah. What other houses were damaged?
WEB: Oh, I presume the [unclear] were damaged and all that sort of thing but
CB: There was a bungalow in the opposite direction that received an engine through the roof. And who was hurt in this?
WEB: I, I don’t know, obviously somebody I don’t know, I
CB: Ok. So, the person that hurt was the duty officer who’d been telling people to get out and he’s buried in the church yard but he was the only casualty from the blast.
WEB: Yeah
CB: The bomber landed with the full bomb load
WEB: That’s [unclear] full bomb load [unclear]
CB: Which he’d brought back
WEB: He landed on the Wellington that was lying there incumbent
CB: That’s what made it catch fire, wasn’t it? Cause it wasn’t on fire when it landed
WEB: Naturally in coming in, his engines were hot anyway
CB: Yes
WEB: And he had the bomb in
CB: That’s it
WEB: Petrol was very inflammable stuff and that, especially that aircraft fuel
CB: But unusually the aircraft came with a full bomb load, cause you would not normally land with a full bomb load
WEB: Yes, but he was diverted from another airfield
CB: Yes
WEB: I mean, you wouldn’t have got a Westcott plane coming in with a full bomb load because they didn’t have, they didn’t have a lot of bombing sites
CB: Yes
WEB: Only when they, they would make an exception
CB: Yeah
WEB: [unclear] but not many of the crashes that happened round Westcott were with people, with aircraft with fully explosive bombs on. That’s the only thing good about any crash that came round Westcott [unclear] that one
CB: Cause it was an operational training unit. Now, one of the crashes was registered as Waddesdon so where was that?
WEB: Well, as far as I know, that was the only one that went, that was in the side of the hill, was it?
CB: Right
WEB: I don’t remember
CB: But that wasn’t by the fuel dump
WEB: What?
CB: It wasn’t by the fuel dump
WEB: I don’t know much about, we didn’t know much about anything like that
CB: Right. Just stop it, just a mo.
WEB: I still, was still [unclear] went but doing tees and what I did when it went over
US: But you used to have a cafe
CB: Yeah, it is on, yeah. So, Gos ran a café, did he?
WEB: That was a café there
CB: Yeah, and he got the engine
WEB: What they called a path walk cafe
CB: Right
WEB: That was, they were a going concern
CB: Yeah
WEB: So, I think a load of RAF people used to go up there for a cup of tea or things like that
CB: Right. Yeah
WEB: But
CB: This is the bungalow that got the engine through the roof. Then there was another house I gather called Victoria House which was badly damaged
WEB: Victoria House, this
CB: That’s on the edge of the village, what happened there?
WEB: Well, I don’t know, must have been, I mean, that was as close as any other [unclear] could get really
CB: Yeah, the blast hit it
WEB: But I mean, obviously damaged
CB: Yeah
WEB: But we missed looking at our own what was it, we didn’t really know much about what happened down there and there or I suppose it was, yeah
CB: Now the
WEB: [unclear] you see
CB: The duty officer was flight lieutenant Bulmer of the cider family
WEB: Bulmer, sorry
CB: And he’s buried in the churchyard and they put in new windows in the church, did they? And they paid for it, restoring the church
WEB: Almost
CB: Restoring the church
WEB: Yeah, they come, yeah, Bulmer’s [unclear] people
CB: There is a plaque in the church to his memory
WEB: Yeah
CB: Yeah, right. Now, there is another crash which is recorded on the airfield with a monument and that was, took place on the 15th of March ‘44, when a Wellington was hit by a Short Stirling and that was near Quainton and you know somebody who was in the signal box at the time.
WEB: Well, that’s, that might be Sue’s uncle
CB: Right
WEB: Someone like that [unclear] but I don’t this Stirling, I didn’t know any Stirlings here but if they say it was a Stirling that was what it was, but I imagine that could have been a Lancaster
CB: But it was a Stirling and it landed at Wappenham, crashed at Wappenham
WEB: Yeah
CB: In the end but the Wellington landed nearby so the significance was this person in the signal box seeing it
WEB: Yeah
CB: The pilot’s wife was in a house up the road with her new child, he was an Australian
WEB: Yeah, I, well, I don’t know [unclear]
CB: That’s right. What other crashes do you remember there being
WEB: Well, I mean, as I just say, if you look what date where they overshot the runway away and landed in the fields, the only things that mark by fencing and all that sort of thing
CB: Yeah
WEB: That I can say about any others I mean, I should say, if you walked around the perimeter, you’d find a crash site anywhere around that aerodrome
CB: Yeah
WEB: Where the aircraft were taking off and landing, but you can’t, to pinpoint it’s a hell of a job
CB: On a more positive front then, how about the social life? How did you link in with that with the airmen and the air women for that matter?
WEB: Well, we used to drink together in The Swan at Westcott, that to we went out to drink, they weren’t allowed much beer about then, I mean, the pub, you’d be standing outside the pub waiting for it to open and it wouldn’t open something like that was, I mean the, when Frank [unclear] the bloke who used to keep the pub at Westcott, he used to say, said, when it’s gone, it’s gone, he said, so if you drink it now, he said, you won’t get it tomorrow, and that was his philosophy and you get rid on. I know we were young [unclear] but we had bicycles and things like that and when we hang up going up to Quainton and see any or not that was we used to take, you could always get a pint at Quainton
CB: There were three pubs in Waddesdon
WEB: Waddesdon
CB: So, how did you get on there?
WEB: Well that was, we used to get off a pint in the [unclear] now and again when we started doing the home guard, home guard training sessions at Waddesdon on Sunday morning, that was the only place you could get a pint if you wanted a pint then
CB: Would help your shooting, wouldn’t it? What about socials that they ran on the airfield, cause there were a good few WAAFs, there was a separate WAAF area
WEB: Well, didn’t take much part in the social side of the airfield, you know
CB: Right
WEB: But any time I used to [unclear] was when I got in the Swan and I did know a couple of WAAFs and their boyfriends and things like that, they used to come in the Swan and other than that I didn’t know, yeah, I get the names [laughs]
CB: Now, being in a reserved occupation meant that you were a young person amongst military people, most people were in the forces one way or the other, what sort of reaction did you get as you walked around and cycled around, not being in uniform?
WEB: No, [unclear] I think people more or less understood the situation you were in, you were in that, I never got any diverse comments about [unclear] or anything
CB: When you were in the Home Guard you’d be wearing the uniform, at other times you wouldn’t, wouldn’t you?
WEB: Well, in the Home Guard, you wore that when you went to and done the midnight walk, as we used to call it, go out at midnight and be home back by four o’clock, be in bed at four and then back up again at six and go milking [laughs], that’s how we used to, things, no, I, wasn’t anything spectacular
CB: Did they give you a badge to wear, to show that you were in a reserved occupation?
WEB: No. I never had one anyway
CB: Right
WEB: I didn’t know never [unclear] I mean there was my brother Lewis and myself, we were all working in the same, on the same farm, just one day here,
CB: Mate Farm
WEB: Mote Farm and we never did [unclear] seen any words or anything from anybody about it, you know
CB: So, what would you prefer to have done in the war?
WEB: Well, what I wanted to do and which I tried to do, several times, as a matter of fact I [unclear] from here to blooming Oxford to go to a recruiting centre and all I got in trouble was get on your bikes and go back to where you come from, you’re in a reserved occupation and you are better off where you are. And that was that, that was the only thing I [unclear]. And I went to Old Wickham, it was [unclear] come back on the, went to Wickham, come back on a train said it was a waste of time then, trying to go, you’re in a reserved occupation, you’ve got to do that reserved occupation to change jobs that blokes say if I want to move from where [unclear] the
CB: Mate Farm
WEB: Yeah, but I wanted to go to work at Waddesdon for somebody else, it was a hell of a job, you got to [unclear] to Aylesbury and see somebody in the labour exchange when I’ve been all through the, what was it? The [unclear] was, go back and behave yourself and don’t worry us again. You go back where you come from.
CB: Yeah
WEB: That was that, that was the attitude to take. You were in the, you were there and that’s where you’re gonna stay
CB: Right
WEB: [unclear] it was, you couldn’t, I mean, as I said, I tried to get away from [unclear] and only needed the farmer to spot me once and just ring [unclear] exchange and somebody was there to tell me to get back on the farm again
CB: So, which of the forces were you hoping to join?
WEB: Mh?
CB: Which of the forces were you hoping to join?
WEB: Well, I was always wanted to join the navy, that was my one and only thing, I wanted to join the navy and I went, and I tried my [unclear] to get into the navy but every time I went anywhere, was the same thing, you’re doing a better job than [unclear], but directly the war was over, this is what nickels me in a way, so as soon as the war was over, and things had settled down a bit, the first thing I got, was a notice to go and see somebody at High Wycombe and when I went to High Wycombe they said, you will be sent now to a training camp down in, what was it? To join the navy. And I said, why at this time? He said, because we want, he said the, well, what we call it? Operation, people that was, were forcibly sent into the forces, we want those people back home and we will get you training and put you in the navy and send those people back home and that’s exactly what happened. I went down too long for a round of instructions to get down to Plymouth, in that area, to a place down there, and I was conscripted into the navy then and I served seven years and five on a reserve and I was told, that was where I got to be after that and that’s what I had to do.
CB: But the conscripted
WEB: And I was seven years a complete, what shall I say? I thoroughly enjoyed my seven years I served in the navy and I got no complaints whatsoever by joining up.
CB: And what did you do while you were in the navy?
WEB: I ended up being a radar operator, you know, sort of, on any ship I could go and operate, what was it, and I’d been, the best thing really was to get into the plot room on board ship with the officer, the navigating officer and you were on the radar and told him where to put the dots and [unclear] on his [unclear], on his plot. You had two [unclear], you either served in the actual place where the PPI was, the Plot Position Indicator, which was like a little light line going round and round like that and if it hit a ship or anything like that, it would leave a spot and you reported up to the bloke in the, what was it, and from there he’d take it up and you’d keep telling him where that spot [unclear] he said you can plot the course and tell his where the ship was going. So, in a way, it was interesting in a way, but I thoroughly enjoyed it
CB: What was the balance between being on shore and being afloat?
WEB: What, in what way?
CB: How many years of the seven were you on shore and how many on afloat?
WEB: I was, oh, I don’t know, I don’t [unclear] about on any land station really. I went over to, we’d done the training down at Plymouth and that took about to eight weeks, something like that [unclear] course and that and from there, I’d done that and I was in the Mediterranean in next to no time and the first, I joined there and I started, and the coincidence here is that I joined this ship HMS Cheviot and I relieved a bloke on board of that ship by the name of Stanley Pankhurst, now, I lived at Westcott and Stanley Pankhurst lived at Bicester [laughs] and was, his, and when I went there, he said, good gracious, he said, where do you come from? And I said, Westcott. Wow! I could blow the, I could blow the bloody place up, he said, if, he said, you’re the finest bloke I’ve ever seen in this world, he said, come and relieve me. Stanley Pankhurst greeted me to [unclear], he said, here’s the keys, I said, what’s that for? He said, that’s for your locker, he said, he said, you can, I’ll take my kit out, you can put yours in there, he said, I’ll make sure it’s locked, he said, that was when I went since Stanley Pankhurst but his father apparently owned a paper shop or something in Bicester but no
CB: That’s eight miles away
WEB: Yeah, that’s right
CB: Right
WEB: I mean, wonderful, that is to think that you meet somebody who’s glad to see you [laughs]
CB: But the conscription was for less than two years so how did you come to do seven?
WEB: Ah, I, you see, that’s, that was, I volunteered for the seven, I volunteered to, wanted to join the navy and the only thing that stopped me joining the navy was my father and when you, if your father said you can’t do this, in them days, you’d done what your father said
CB: Yeah
WEB: Now, when I decided that I wanted to go, he said, well, he said, you can go now, he said, you’d done all what you need to do here and that was as far as it went and I joined up and I said, I’ll do seven, the seven years and then seven years, if, that seven years was done on a reason was that if we’d given seven years to do and then five years on a reserve that means to say that we still got a little hand on them for another twelve, for twelve years and that’s where they go and half way through that five year job they cancelled it
CB: Right
WEB: They wrote a letter who said you are no longer required and that was, from that [unclear] now I can go upstairs into my bedroom [unclear] and I can go into my, into a, what was it there? and I can pick up a little blue folder, and that’s all my papers
CB: Really?
WEB: Navy
CB: Fantastic. What did you do when you came out of the navy?
WEB: Well, I went into the brickyards
CB: Which is where?
WEB: [laughs] at [unclear], that’s where I started
CB: Just half a mile away
WEB: Yeah. I went and started into the, what was it? And it wasn’t long before Woodham disappeared and I went from there I went to [unclear]
CB: Right. London Brick
WEB: London Brick company. And that’s where I finished my work in days on the brick, I say, they made me redundant when I was, what was, I think I was fifty something,
US: Fifty-eight
WEB: Fifty-eight or something [unclear] and I had round about four, three years to do and they, I didn’t do a day, I’d done one day’s work since I was retired
CB: Right
WEB: And my [unclear] got me to go and do one day’s work for the people that he worked, worked for and [unclear] and sadly he’s gone anyway
CB: What, how far did you move up the organisation? You started doing what, little brickworks?
WEB: In the brickworks? Well, I had work all the time, [unclear] you didn’t get any advancement in any way, at all much, you’d go down into the pit or any, or down or drawing site, going with a barrel going into the [unclear] and run the brick site and load lorries off with your barrels and all that sort of thing, [unclear] anything you could do down there, paid work, I mean, that was the only thing, if you’d done, if you worked hard, you got paid more. But, I did not [unclear], there was no advantage in being in brickyard, brickworks
CB: Did you, to what extent did you find opportunities to take a more responsible job? There’s a chargehand or supervisor or something?
WEB: Chargehand and all that sort of thing, I mean, that came earlier there when somebody else had gone and
CB: Yeah
WEB: And they wanted somebody to fill the place and that was only done or any and when you got to filling out the forms and that sort of thing, but that weren’t, that was all to just fill the forms out, get it cause he took the lorry driver and he took the bricks and away
CB: Right
WEB: [unclear] keep you landing and doing the thing but all our work
CB: What would you say finally was the most memorable thing about your working life from when you left school?
WEB: Memorable? Can’t say there is anything memorable [unclear]. I know being out to more or less do what you like, do what you please and as long as it didn’t do any damage to anybody else. Yeah
CB: Well, Eddie, thank you very much for a very interesting and enlightening conversation
WEB: Well, just, piece of work then, as I say
CB: Now
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with William Edwin Barnett
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-28
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABarnettWE170328, PBarnettWE1701
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Pending review
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01:49:02 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Description
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William Edwin Barnett talks about his experience of living on the edge of RAF Westcott, near Aylesbury. Remembers starting to work on a farm at the age of fourteen and describes his everyday life and duties. Tells of being conscripted into the Home Guard, where he did night patrolling and practiced target shooting with an air rifle. Tells of how he wanted to join the Navy but was rejected because he was in a reserved occupation. Talks about various plane crashes, including a Lancaster, of which he gives a detailed and vivid account. After the war, remembers being conscripted into the Navy, where he served for seven years.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
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1944-03-15
11 OTU
civil defence
crash
final resting place
Home Guard
Lancaster
memorial
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
sport
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/9641/AParryHP180723.2.mp3
13b5afae366c9f607dbb315a66c06f2a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Parry, Hugh
Hugh Pryce Parry
H P Parry
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Parry, HP
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. Two oral history interviews with Hugh Parry (b. 1925, 2220054 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and newspaper cuttings. Hugh Parry flew operations as an air gunner with 75 Squadron and then as a photographer and air gunner with 90 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Hugh Parry and catalogued by Stuart Bennett.
Date
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2016-10-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GT: This is Monday the 23rd of July 2018 and I’m at the home of Mr Hugh Price Parry known as Hugh, born 25 err 22nd of May 1925 in North Shropshire, England. Hugh joined the RAF in December 1943 at the age of nineteen during training to become a chartered accountant. Hugh was also in the Air Training Corps and volunteered for the RAF as an air gunner as there was a shortage of gunners at that time. Hugh became the mid-upper gunner of the Paddy Goode crew from February to June 1945 completing thirteen war ops and one Manna drop on 75 New Zealand Squadron, RAF from Mepal. After VE Day Hugh was posted to 90 Squadron, then to RAF accounts, demobbing in May 1947. Hugh, thank you for allowing me to interview you in your home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire for the IBCC Archives. Please tell me why and how you joined the RAF in 1943.
HP: I was a member of the Air Training Corps because there was a general feeling that there was a bit more excitement about becoming, about becoming air crew. There was no real publicity about the potential casualty rate. There was a glamour which attached to air crew which were, from the point of view of meeting girls was alright. And of course, it was acceptable there was good, always good publicity. At the time my friends were just all slightly older than I. They all wanted to be PNB, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer as a general recruit. But when they went to volunteer and they got to the Aircrew Reception Centre they were all put on deferred service for at least eighteen months and in practice none of them actually got to serve on the squadron. When I went to the Aircrew Reception Centre knowing this I found that they were still accepting air gunners so I volunteered for air crew as an air gunner. All air crew of course being, being volunteers and as a result I got on to a squadron and became operational and looked down on the, my friends who were called up and all served as aircraftsman second class, general duties.
GT: When abouts did you begin your training then, Hugh?
HP: Well, the Reception Centre was in London and from there moved to Bridlington on the east coast of Yorkshire for Initial Training Wing in January which was a little chilly. And I’m not referring to the very mild curries which they had there. From there to Bridgnorth for Elementary Air Training School. Thereafter Pembrey, Number 1 Air Gunnery School which was, which was on the south coast of Wales, flanking the Bristol Channel. From there passed out as air gunner at the end of June 1944.
GT: And did you have an option of where to go? Fighter. Bomber Command.
HP: No. No. You were posted.
GT: And you then were sent down to Westcott with 11 OTU. So, how long did you spend there and where did you crew up?
HP: Well, you crewed up either on the first or second day. All the, all the trades, aircrew trades were put in the hangar. The hangar. And they evolved in to crews. There was no compulsion. No discipline. It just happened. And I think we were at Westcott which was an OTU Operational Training Unit until about the end of September. We then went to a holding unit on the, and we were training then on Wellingtons. We then went up to a holding unit because of the, we had to be posted somewhere until we went to Woolfox Lodge which was a Heavy Conversion Unit where we moved over from Wellingtons on to Lancasters.
GT: So, so you didn’t, you didn’t go in to Stirlings at all? You just went straight over to Lancasters.
HP: No. No. We went in to, in to real aircraft.
GT: So, your holding base in your logbook states Stradishall. So, you were at number 3 ACS in Stradishall for most of October ’44.
HP: Yes. That was just, that was just a holding unit where nothing happened.
GT: Nothing happened. Ok. So, so moving on to the Lancaster at 1651 OCU you spent pretty much that of November December there at Woolfox Lodge. So, the differences between the Wellington must have been huge between the types.
HP: Yes. The only thing which, which was the same was the rear turret. Otherwise, all other facilities were different. Including the position of the elsan.
GT: What position in the crew did you take up as a gunner?
HP: I was, when we got to the Lancaster I was mid-upper because there was just marginally more room there because I was six feet tall officially and the reason that was, that was official was when I was actually measured for my medical I made sure I made sure I wore baggy trousers.
GT: So, during your training the Gunnery Schools did they have moving targets? Were you flying in different aircraft for that?
HP: We were flying in Ansons at, at the air gunner, at the Air Gunner’s School and taking as the airborne targets drogues, drogues towed by Miles Masters. Or they might have been Miles Magisters as well but certainly Miles Masters and we were doing our air to air firing based on on those. We were also obviously doing ground firing and that was relatively simple and the, the drogues were towed behind the aircraft. There were four trainee air gunners in each Anson. Each supposed to be firing two hundred and fifty rounds out of the thousand which was in, in the ammunition tank. Of the, the two hundred and fifty of the rounds at a time had dyed, dye on the tips of the bullets so that you could count the holes going through and see what the dye mark was on them. The fourth one obviously didn’t need any dye because it just made a hole. So when the drogue was dropped on, on the runway they, it was taken back to the armoury section, laid out on a long table and the number of holes caused by each dye was counted and then divided by two [pause] because there was a hole where it went in and a hole where it came out. You may find that a little subtle.
GT: Interesting. Ok, so, and you were a good shot?
HP: Enough. Enough to get through and qualify.
GT: And what was the qualification grade for gunner?
HP: I don’t know.
GT: Well, were any chopped along the way that weren’t any good.
HP: Oh yes. You, you could you could get chopped for all sorts of reasons, you know. Inadequate theory, inadequate practice, indiscipline, incompatibility. Any particular reason. You weren’t necessarily explained to you.
GT: That’s something perhaps many don’t understand is that everyone sees you in a turret shooting guns but you actually went through quite a bit of paperwork and classroom training to become a gunner. So what kind of things did they teach you in Gunnery School?
HP: Well, you, you had to recognise very early on that you never fired at the target. You fired at where you had worked out the target would be by the time your bullet reached it and this was a question of relative speed, deflection, angle and so forth. That was the fundamental skill which you needed as an air gunner. Where to point the gun so that the bullet would get to the target when the target reached the bullet.
GT: The gun you used, the 303.
HP: 303.
GT: Explain about that gun for us and its capabilities.
HP: Yes. Well, the Browning 303 fired at the rate of twenty rounds a second which was quite fast and quite loud. And the ammunition tanks on for the mid-upper turret on the Lancaster were for a thousand rounds for each gun. Four, in the rear turret there were four of the same guns and the ammunition tanks were up just about the centre of gravity of the plane. And the bullet tracks came down through tracks along the side of the fuselage, four tracks and entered the turret from underneath the turret and fed up to the guns so there were two thousand five hundred rounds for each of those. Now, you couldn’t use anything like that for the mid-upper because the mid-upper would circulate through three hundred and sixty degrees or keep turning in any one direction. With the rear turret it would turn a total of a hundred and eighty degrees.
GT: And we’re talking about the Lancaster aircraft in that situation.
HP: I’m talking about the turrets. Not the aircraft.
GT: The [pause] in that situation for you did you have a choice because you did your tour as a mid-upper. Did you have a choice in being either or? Or a front gunner perhaps?
HP: No. No. The bomb aimer was, occupied the front turret. So as far as the other two turrets goes the two gunners sorted it out between themselves.
GT: Did you ever swap? Do the —
HP: Only once.
GT: And, and that was enough?
HP: Oh yes. Quite sufficient thank you.
GT: We were talking about how hearing loss was a huge thing throughout many of the crews during the war.
HP: Sorry?
GT: The hearing loss that was —
HP: Yeah.
GT: That happened.
HP: Yeah.
GT: That the aircrew had. So you were a that point —
HP: Well, I think, the mid-upper air gunner was in the worst position because he was sitting between the two guns and very close behind four thirteen hundred horsepower unsilenced engines. So, there was, there was a lot of noise and I think we all suffered that to some extent and fortunately with hearing aids I’ve been able to cope with the rest of my life. My hearing is not much worse now than it was fifty years, fifty years ago. Sixty years ago. There was an initial loss.
GT: Many also suffered, suffered tinnitus as well.
HP: Tinnitus you mean. Yes. I didn’t. Which was a repeating of the noise within the ears.
GT: That’s good. That’s good. So, with your gunnery then did anybody especially during your training did they miss the, miss the odd drogue and get the other aircraft? Was, was there any accidental shooting of friendly aircraft?
HP: No, because your fellow Air Force people were in that. Not all the training was with guns and live ammunition. A very considerable amount was with cameras. Camera guns. And in the camera guns the film would be processed and from that you were were able to be assessed on the probability that you would have hit the target with live ammunition. And with that of course the target aircraft could be manoeuvring a lot more violently than when it was towing a drogue. So the camera gun was quite a tool to be training air gunners.
GT: The, the role of, of the mid-upper gunner and tail gunner during a lot of sorties was to warn the skipper of, about, of aircraft and the like. Did you ever have to tell the skipper to do a corkscrew or take evasive action at all?
HP: Once. When we were [pause] no I’d better start. We were practically all on daylight operations to synthetic oil plants because at that far end of the war the Germans were running out of fuel for their aircraft and for their tanks and this was because we were doing daylight in flying in formation with, in a V formation with the leader of each V of three being equipped with special radar which was GH. Not Gee. GH. And you bombed, the leading aircraft in the V had that when he opened his bomb doors the other two did and when he dropped his bombs the other two did. And we would be going after small targets with precision. Not, not area bombing as such.
GT: Or other people call it carpet bombing I suppose.
HP: The [pause] the town and city devastation bombing that was, that was largely done on night time raids over large target areas where high explosive bombs would be dropped first followed by incendiary bombs which would set light to the debris caused by the high explosives. We were mainly with that. But the one time which I remember was that I remember looking up because as a mid-upper gunner you didn’t sort of gaze around in a random manner you did a regular pattern of search of all the way around in a circular direction and up to a hundred and eighty degrees vertically down as a routine. And I remember once seeing a group of aircraft above us open their bomb doors so my immediate reaction was, ‘Mid-upper to skipper, dive port, dive port.’ Which we did, and I was told by the navigator who looked out that some bombs missed our wing tip by about ten feet. I was not allowed to buy a drink that night.
GT: You saved your crew and your aircraft. Awesome.
HP: That was what you were asking for —
GT: Yeah. It certainly was. So, from your Heavy Conversion Unit we’ve established that you moved to 75 New Zealand Squadron at Mepal in February of 1945 and throughout the next few months you completed thirteen daylight war operations. Did any one of those trips stand out to you? That, was anything special or anything that was of memory to you?
HP: No. There was, they were fairly routine because they were to, as I say daylight trips to synthetic oil plants and on those we didn’t have a great deal of trouble with American, sorry with German fighters because we had close escort of Mustangs and high escorts of Spitfires. Other than of course they moved away when we were over the target area so we got the full benefit of flak.
GT: Was flak extremely heavy during the day?
HP: Yes. The Germans knew that they had to well, very well defend these synthetic oil plants because they were totally dependent on it for fuel for their, for their Army and their Air Forces.
GT: Your bomb loads. Did, did you have anything to do with the loads that are carried and did you know what the aircraft were carrying each day?
HP: No. No. Normally speaking we, we would carry twenty, twenty two thousand pounds. Say five tonnes for each aircraft and the bombs would be dropped from roughly twenty, twenty two thousand feet.
GT: As a gunner were you responsible for the cleaning of your guns and the mounting of them or was that the armourer’s responsibility?
HP: You seldom fired of them but if you did you, you could leave five shillings which was the best part of a day’s pay for the armourer to clean up but you did make sure yourself that the guns were coupled up directly with the reflector gunsight so that it did reconcile where the bullets would be going for the sight and the barrels.
GT: And they were removed after every sortie and taken back to the armoury?
HP: No.
GT: Was there normal?
HP: No. There was, there was, if they hadn’t been fired there was no need to remove them and they were seldom fired for the reasons I’ve said. The fighter escort. We got, we got largely the benefit of the flak over the target areas because the fighters knowing that there would be no German fighters over the flak ridden areas could, could keep on the outskirts as well quite properly and be ready for us, to escort us back.
GT: Did you see any of the German jet fighters at all?
HP: Just remember seeing the vapour trail of the odd one going very quickly up through the formation and then back down through. I think it was the ME 163. I don’t really remember. It was a few years ago. But not, not regularly.
GT: You then did an Operation Manna food drop.
HP: Yes.
GT: And were you given any heads up on that? Training or, and how did it eventuate for you?
HP: No. This was on a Sunday. We were, we were told at a briefing that the Germans had stopped trains delivering food to the, to the Dutch and that twenty thousand Dutch had died of starvation and a vast number more were suffering from malnutrition. The food we delivered was mounted in jute sacks. There weren’t any panniers, panniers or special equipment available on, on the first few trips. The bomb doors were nearly closed but enough room in between to let these sacks in and resting on the bomb doors which were closed of course when the total load was there. The food was dried. Dried eggs, dried milk, flour and essential ingredients like that and we went in at a designated route. The route, the place we dropped was on a racecourse just outside Den Haag or the Hague as, as it’s called. I think the dropping height was between three and five hundred feet. The Dutch knew we were coming, this, because the Red Cross had been involved in this. It was towards the end of the war and the Germans were getting a little worried about war crimes. And on the route which we took there were Dutch people out in the streets waving flags and table cloths. I mean, it was, it was a wonderful occasion because we were dropping something which was food which would keep people alive and not bombs which would kill people.
GT: The Dutch were always very thankful for for the food and they’ve always commemorated.
HP: Yes.
GT: The Operation Manna. For the likes of what you chaps did for that.
HP: Yeah.
GT: Were you told to empty your guns of ammunition?
HP: No.
GT: Did you, you went over there fully loaded.
HP: Yeah. But, but you weren’t expecting to have to fire but just in case because we weren’t told that the Germans had agreed to this. It had been agreed through and with the Red Cross so we were ready in case there were any attacks and there weren’t. I think the subsequent trips that they didn’t bother really much with guns because the trips had become fairly routine.
GT: Did you go in single file or did you go in as a squadron or a gaggle?
HP: As a gaggle. On, on, on a designated route at a designated height.
GT: And with, with the war closing to a finish was there much talked about on the squadron as to what would happen once the war had finished? What you were going to be doing.
HP: No. We had no idea what we would be doing because it was the war in Europe which was finishing. There were wars elsewhere.
GT: Who, who was your commanding officer of 75 Squadron at that time you were there?
HP: Wing Commander Baigent. Or it might have been Group Captain Baigent. B A I G E N T. He was a very ancient warrior. I think he was, he might have been twenty four, twenty five.
GT: And what did the crew think? What did all the crews think of Wing Commander Baigent? Cyril Baigent.
HP: Oh, he was, he was a leader who was respected and when, he spoke obviously at every aircrew briefing and he had everybody’s respect.
GT: Did, did he get to see all the crews at a time or was the CO kind of out in the background?
HP: No. No. When we first went there I think this may show in the logbook and I think it could have been on our first, first trip his crew was on leave and I think he acted as our pilot. Have a look at our first trip. He acted as our pilot. Now anybody who would do that with a raw sprog crew gets all the respect he deserves.
GT: 22nd of February 1945 war operation to Osterfeld. Five hours. Daylight raid. He, he went on to be one of the potential leading officers of the Royal New Zealand Air Force but he died of cancer in the early 50s so it was —
HP: Yes. I think he died in the early 50s or [pause] Yeah. But you know various things happened over the target area with flak. One experience will always be with me. If you were in the mid-upper you didn’t get, I think I’ve said this, you didn’t look around in a random manner you did a regular search of the sky. And on one particular trip I was looking up and being rather tall my head was pressed hard against the Perspex. At the back of my head there was a loud bang. I looked around and where my head had been there was a hole about the size of, about an inch across. So I immediately felt the back of my head, put my hand in front of me. There was no blood. Looked back. There was the hole. The only possible explanation for that and no blood was that I was dead. And it was some, some moments before I realised that what had happened was a piece of shrapnel had ricocheted off. You don’t, you don’t forget an experience like that.
GT: That was from an ack ack shell exploding nearby was it?
HP: Yeah. But you know normally speaking you would come, you would come back with a number of holes in the fuselage. We came back one time with two engines gone on one side and on that particular day the North Sea seemed about as wide as the Pacific which was [pause] it was not a healthy occupation.
[pause]
GT: With your time at Mepal, Mepal was a big station. It obviously had three flights of —
HP: It only had one squadron.
GT: One squadron but three flights.
HP: Yeah.
GT: So you would have had something like thirty plus aircraft. So, so what things around Mepal did you guys get up to during your off time? Pubs? Dances?
HP: Well, Ely was the best place to get to. It was about ten, twelve possibly miles to to the east there and they had restaurants, pubs. And generally speaking there were so many aerodromes within East Anglia, and this was 3 Group that you were made pretty welcome where every you were because the local inhabitants knew what you were up to, had an idea of of casualty rates so there was, there was friendly stuff everywhere. And that’s what it was. Leave was compulsory every six weeks which was a terrible thing to happen. To have to happen.
GT: One of the major things that some of the aircrew faced was lack of moral fibre or LMF. Was that something you were aware of or that was talked of amongst the aircrew?
HP: All aircrew were volunteers and you could not be charged with a refusal to fly as such. What, what happened was that the refusal stimulated the impression of a rubber stamp with the letters LMF on all your documents and this was a mark of shame. Lack of moral fibre. But you could not, you could not be charged. You could be sent to a disciplinary school which I think was based somewhere up in Yorkshire and have a fairly tough time but you could not be charged with a refusal to fly. So LMF was that. But you had the other symptom which was known as being flak happy where perhaps the odd member of a crew in the mess would sit on his own in an armchair just not communicating and he would be referred probably to the medical officer and he would be taken off flying on medical grounds. That was different from LMF.
GT: Did you get a chance to see them before they left or they just disappeared and another person replaced them?
HP: They disappeared very quickly. As I say it was not what, nobody wanted it to be contagious.
GT: Your, your skipper, you joined the crew with was Flight Sergeant Goode. Paddy Goode, you say. And the first part of February he was a flight sergeant and early in March he was, he was commissioned to flying officer.
HP: No. At that, at that time an instruction went out, presumably from the Air Ministry that all pilots in squadrons in Bomber Command should be, should be commissioned. So, at that stage instead of being the seven of us in the same hut and in the same mess he got sent off to be in a different hut and a different mess. And neither he nor we were over enthusiastic about it but but we recognised that it was a, well a recognition of his duties as the pilot and skipper of the, of the crew. And this was something we had to tolerate.
GT: You got on already with all of your crew really well?
HP: Yes. We were all, all a bit different but we all trusted each other which was, that was the part that was essential. We had —
GT: Was it something that was taught, told to you, or it just gelled when you all got together?
HP: Well, it happened and it had to happen because if you became an untrusted member of the crew. No. It was not acceptable.
GT: And all of your crew were British.
HP: Yes.
GT: And did you follow any of them up during, after the war?
HP: No. No. After I, we got posted to 90 Squadron as a crew after the war in Europe finished and we understood although we were never told officially that in September we would be sent out with Tiger Force to Okinawa to take part in the Japanese war. Fortunately, two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and we never had to go. And when those bombs were dropped and the news came across on the wireless in the mess a cheer went up.
GT: With 75 New Zealand Squadron at Mepal once VE day occurred there was pretty much the mass posting of all others than New Zealanders, and 75 New Zealand Squadron moved from Mepal to Spilsby. So your whole crew, being British you were shifted to 90 Squadron. What was your role then and what did you achieve from, from VE Day onwards with 90? Because your whole crew moved, didn’t it?
HP: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
HP: Oh, it was just another, another squadron. We were, we were new in there. It had been an operational squadron. The other aircrews knew that we had been on operations so there was no antagonism or anything else like that. You just went and you fitted in. No problem.
GT: What was the role of 90 Squadron for that time then? What did you do specifically for them?
HP: After [pause] after the war one of its principal duties was taking part in Operation Review which was a photographic survey of the whole of Europe taken with two large cameras and lasting many many hours.
GT: 90 Squadron at that time was at RAF Tuddenham.
HP: Yes.
GT: And where was —
HP: Which was Suffolk.
GT: In Suffolk. Ok. So, with the cameras what did you have to do to achieve the shots they asked of you?
HP: Well, you, you had to make sure that they were correctly positioned in regard to the drift of the aircraft as, because the line of the photographs had to be in a direct line. Not the curving line of that. And the other thing you had to do was to reflect the speed of the aircraft either in one direction or the other according to the timing of the exposure.
GT: Did you review your photographs after or were they just taken away and —
HP: They were taken. They were taken away and developed and very often they would be posted as a whole series of them in a very large room which showed whether there were any gaps or not.
GT: Did you have to go back and do some that you’d missed?
HP: That had to be done. If there were, if there were gaps.
GT: Was that 90 squadron’s sole role at that time or were there other squadrons doing the same thing?
HP: I don’t know.
GT: The use of the camera when you got to 90 Squadron, was that something that you’d done before or you had to be taught it?
HP: No. No. If you have a look in the logbook you will see that just after the posting to 90 Squadron I think there is a reference to training for use of the camera. [pause] Yes.
GT: Yeah.
HP: You found it.
GT: Yeah. Yeah. Ok. So once, now was the camera hard mounted in to the floor of the Lancaster? Did they cut a hole and then hard mount the camera or just hold it?
HP: In in the floor of a Lancaster there was space for a downward firing gun which would be mounted on a bar over this and it was that particular area where the bar was and the cameras were fitted down there.
GT: Were there any ventral gunners on 75 Squadron during ops that you know of?
HP: Any?
GT: Ventral gun position and a under, under gunner they called them.
HP: No. I don’t remember. I think that the, you either had a ventral one which had a .5 Browning mounted on the bar like that or alternatively it was where the HTS radar device was mounted and H2S radar devices were not popular with the aircrew because the Germans could home on the signals.
GT: Making you rather vulnerable. 75 Squadron did have a under belly gunner on, one on each flight. I’ve interviewed a chap who was one of those gunners and he was just dropped off and said, ‘You’re in it.’ So I was wondering if you’d seen that and that was only a modification made to one or two aircraft. So on 90 Squadron the whole fleet or the whole squadron —
HP: Yeah.
GT: Had that modification.
HP: Yeah. Well, all the Lancasters had the hole. Sometimes it was with a ventral turret. Sometimes it was with a .5 machine gun just mounted on there. Sometimes it was H2S. Most of the time it was just blanked off.
GT: Ok. Going back to your firing 303 rounds compared to fifty cal rounds. So half inch versus three point three.
HP: I never fired much. I never really fired any .5s.
GT: That must have been a bigger lead with a bigger bullet heading off to the enemy. Yeah. The target.
HP: Yeah, but yeah, and of course, with more noise and more kick but a slower rate of fire.
GT: So, once you’d completed your flying and review camera work on 90 Squadron in October 1945 that was the last of your flying time was that right?
HP: It was. Yes.
GT: Where did they post you from there?
HP: Because of my occupation before going in to the Air Force I I was posted to a school for RAF accounts equipment and pay because that was my civilian trade. And that’s what I did for the rest of my time until I was demobbed.
GT: Had you completed your accountant programme there before the war?
HP: No. No. You had five years articles. I started at sixteen. I would have finished by the time I was twenty one but war service of course interrupted that. As a concession for war service you could serve as an article clerk three years instead of five and you could get consideration in the final examination on two subjects or exemption from the intermediate. I went for exemption on the intermediate knowing that I would need to do the finals.
GT: And you completed your accountancy. Your chartered accountancy.
HP: Oh yes.
GT: And that gave you your future.
HP: That was my trade for life.
GT: And what companies did you work for for that? Is it a whole myriad or one or two you stood out for?
HP: Well, yes. Having, having been articled in a small country town I then worked in, in London, in the City of London for three years. And in 1952, by this time we were married and had a child my wife and I we went and lived in Calcutta, Dacca, Chittagong for five, for five years and came back and got a job with a construction material company which was taken over with various successes but that lasted until I retired at the age of sixty.
GT: And where did you meet your wife? During the wartime or was it post-war?
HP: We met, we met in April 1945. Yeah, and got married in October 1946 and, can you stop a moment?
[recording paused]
HP: We met in April. April 1945 and we got on well together but by about the end of May 1945 she gave me a photograph of herself which in those days was, didn’t necessarily represent a commitment but meant she wouldn’t really mind seeing you again and that photograph I have now and it is in my bedroom and it overlooks my bed. And that is it and you can see it for yourself.
GT: That is wonderful. It is special. Thank you for showing me. And her name?
HP: Elaine.
GT: Elaine.
HP: E L A I N E. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. And how many children did you have between you?
HP: We had three. Three children of whom you’ve met. We had three children. We have seven grandchildren and so far only seven great grandchildren. But no doubt there will be more.
GT: Fascinating. And you retired from your accountancy work and did you do anything special after that?
HP: No. Well, I was involved in all sorts of odd things you know in relation to sport, fisheries and in relation, and in relation to work. I was on the London and South East Regional Planning Committee you know for about sort of five years after I retired and various other oddments, you know. Yeah. But I was on the National Fisheries Committee and that was a very interesting one. You may have heard of a rugby player called Gareth Edwards who was in the Welsh team in the early ‘70s. I was the representative of Thames Water Fisheries and he of the South Wales Fisheries and at the meetings we used to sit next, next to each other. Gareth was a lovely man.
GT: Fascinating. And you retired here to Abingdon. How long have you been living here?
HP: We [pause] we lived in Abingdon from 1959 when we came back from India and stayed in the same house until my wife died in 1999. And I now live in this block of retirement flats alone and solitary. Yeah. But with the, with the family fortunately daughter and two sons all within ten miles.
GT: Fabulous support.
HP: Yes.
GT: In 2012 there was a special Memorial unveiled in London.
HP: It was. The Bomber Command Memorial and I was fortunate enough to get an invitation to that through the Bomber Command Association.
GT: And that’s where you and I met for the first time.
HP: Yes.
GT: You were in a crowd and you met Denise Boneham from 75 UK Association.
HP: Yeah.
GT: And she came down and she said, ‘We’ve found another 75 Squadron chap.’
HP: Yeah.
GT: That was wonderful and there was a photograph of you and I and for years I wondered who you were. So it was, it was fabulous to meet up with you again Hugh a couple of years ago. So, so you were also a member of the UK 75 Squadron Association for a while. Was that right?
HP: I was but that finished years ago.
GT: They, they moved from being totally for the veteran side to to become Friends of the 75 Squadron UK Association so, so you’re still a member.
HP: Yes.
GT: But that’s fair dos to you.
HP: I have no connection with it. I don’t receive anything from them, from them —
GT: Well —
HP: And you know time goes past.
GT: Well, I know you’re on the mailing list so obviously it’s the mailman is not delivering the right parcel here. But so, so if you have a look at your wartime service, the volunteer side of things it’s something that you decided you had to do. You wanted to serve your king and country. Do you feel that you did your bit?
HP: Yes. I think taking a risk did because you didn’t know totally what would be involved when you did it. It was, it was not pleasant being operational but as operational aircrew there was a certain caché about it and you know being around with a brevet and so forth you had strange privileges. As I say, leave every six months, sorry every six weeks and possibly once a year when you went on leave in addition to your normal pay you got five shillings a day from the Nuffield fund. And since your pay was eight shillings a day the extra five shillings was a substantial addition. Particularly when beer was less than a shilling a pint. So yes, there was a certain glamour attached as well, as well as the dangers. There were privileges but you had to, you had physical and mental stress. The mental stress obviously from that but the physical stress from, from the cold and the discomfort and general cramp of not being able to move for five or six hours perhaps. Yeah.
GT: When you did your review flying and you were flying across Germany and France to across all the bombing sites did you concentrate on your job or did you notice what had been happening?
HP: No. This was a review. A geographical review. A photographic review of the whole of Europe to get a photographic map of the whole of Europe. Anything to do with bombing areas that would be done by sort of Bomber Command doing that for the purpose of getting damages but there wasn’t a great deal of difference between damages at Hamburg and damages at Dresden, you know. You got buildings destroyed and you could, it didn’t take much to imagine the very unpleasant consequences for that. One occasion which did stick in my mind is in April ’45 there was a publication of photographs of the concentration camp at Belsen where there were literally piles of corpses and Jewish survivors, very thin and skeletal and seeing those photographs certainly as far as I was concerned and I think as far as many others were concerned removed any thought of guilt about having dropped bombs on German civilians. It was not a pleasant experience.
GT: Bomber Harris was your initial or ultimate boss.
HP: He was.
GT: Could he have done it any other way?
HP: No.
[pause]
GT: Given the equipment you were given and the tasks you undertook.
HP: Don’t forget that quite apart from the area, area bombings and B) the ones we were after which were specialised on the synthetic oil plants he also had the precision bombings of, if you like the viaducts with the ten thousand pound bombs and the bouncing bomb against the dams. They were part of his job as well to look after those. But the bulk of the people and the aircraft involved were more or less mass destruction of one sort or another but he did have the specialised ones as well.
GT: What was the talk of Bomber Harris after the war?
HP: Oh, he —
GT: Did he deserve accolades or peerage?
HP: Yes. He took the blame for every German civilian killed. He was the one who said yes and it, there were a whole lot of British people who looked after that. They saw the bomb damage in say Dresden and Hamburg which was a lot greater than the bomb damage of Liverpool and London. But it was proportionate to the time when the bombing was done because the Germans were unable to continue their bombing raids. They would have been very happy to do so. Instead of having live aircraft with live people on they had the V weapons. The V-1 and the, and the V-2 which were totally indiscriminate.
GT: There’s obviously in the last ten years been much talk of a campaign medal for those of Bomber Command. The men that survived and did not survive.
HP: Yes.
GT: What is your opinion and thoughts on that?
HP: Well, yes. That there should be recognition because of the high proportion of casualties. Let me just say the numbers involved for the record. I’m sure you got it everywhere else. Bomber Command were all volunteers. A hundred and twenty thousand went in to Bomber Command. Of those fifty five thousand were killed, ten thousand taken prisoner and seven thousand wounded. So it was not a healthy occupation and there was good cause and good reason for some sort of recognition. Yes, a medal was campaigned for but you have to remember now that we now have a clasp to fit on to our medals which says Bomber Command which was the recognition of the Bomber Command contribution. It specifically says so on it. Bomber Command. Now a medal you know would be another way of doing it but it is, it is recognition.
GT: Is there anything else that you can think of that would be of value for those people who are going to listen to this recording in the future that you might have thought of that could be of value?
HP: Well, the trouble is as you become less young it’s not too easy to recall things. In fact, I do have a problem with this. Sometimes I forget I’ve got amnesia [pause] And that might be a good note to finish on.
GT: Hugh, it’s, it’s been marvellous to have a chat with you. Thank you very much for talking with me on the interview. I certainly appreciate your company and it’s great to drive all this way today to see you and I’ll go back to New Zealand very soon but it’s been a pleasure to know you and thank you very much. I’ll give you the last word, Hugh.
[pause]
HP: Ok. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Hugh Parry. Two
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
AParryHP180723
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
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Glen Turner
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-23
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Description
An account of the resource
Hugh Parry was a member of his local ATC and was awaiting the time when he would be able to volunteer for the RAF. His slightly older friends had qualified to train as pilots, navigators or bomb aimers, but because of a backlog of trades they were given deferred entry. Hugh saw this and decided to train as a gunner. Hugh took the position of mid-upper because of his height and being more comfortable. He was posted to 75 Squadron, RAF Mepal. On one operation as Hugh was scanning the sky he looked upward and saw a Lancaster was about to drop its bombs and they were right in its path. He was able to warn the skipper to take evasive action and the bombs narrowly missed their aircraft. On another occasion when Hugh was scanning the sky he heard a bang behind his head. There was a hole in the Perspex where his head had been.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:53:40 audio recording
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
11 OTU
1651 HCU
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Mepal
RAF Westcott
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/171/9859/LAtkinsAH418514v1.2.pdf
2442259ebfd050afd9ef5293f8203e96
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
Atkins, Arthur
A H Atkins
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. An oral history interview with Arthur Atkins DFC (d. 2022, Royal Australian Air Force), his logbook and 23 photographs. Arthur Atkins grew up in Melbourne, Australia and joined the RAAF. After training he flew 32 operations as a pilot with 625 Squadron from RAF Kelstern.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Arthur Atkins and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Atkins, A
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending additional content
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 Atkins’ flying log book for pilots
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for Arthur Atkins, covering the period from 12 November 1942 to 12 July 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAAF Benalla, RAAF Somers, RAAF Malalla, RAAF Ascot Vale, RAAF Point Cook, RAAF Bradfield Park, RAF Brighton, RAF Andover, RAF Greenham Common, RAF Long Newnton, RAF Lichfield, RAF Church Broughton, RAF Boston Park, RAF Wescott, RAF Blyton, RAF Hemswell, RAF Kelstern, RAF Sandtoft and RAF Gamston. Aircraft flown were, DH 82 Tiger Moth, Wackett, Anson, Oxford, Wellington, Halifax and Lancaster. He completed a total of 31 operations with 625 squadron, 15 night and 16 daylight. Targets were, Orleans, Foret de Croc, Caen, Saumerville, Wizerne, Kiel, Russelsheim, Tours, Le Havre, Rheine-Salzbergen, Saarbrucken, Fort Frederik Hendrik, Essen, Ardouval, Stuttgart, Le Landes, Pauillac, Fotenay le Marmion, Stettin, Ghent-Terneuzen Canal, Raimbert, Frankfurt, Calais, Emmerick, Duisberg and Koln. His pilot for his first 'second dickie' operation was Flying Officer Slade.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LAtkinsAH418514v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Berkshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Derbyshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Staffordshire
Belgium--Ghent
France--Calais
France--Calvados
France--le Havre
France--Les Landes (Region)
France--Orléans
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Saumur
France--Forêt du Croc
France--Tours
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Emmerich
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Rüsselsheim
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Salzbergen
Germany--Stuttgart
Netherlands--Breskens
Netherlands--Terneuzen
New South Wales
South Australia
Victoria--Benalla
Victoria--Point Cook
Poland--Szczecin
Victoria
England--Sussex
Poland
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Pauillac (Gironde)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1943-11-13
1944-07-04
1944-07-05
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-12
1944-07-13
1944-07-18
1944-07-20
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-08-02
1944-08-04
1944-08-05
1944-08-06
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-17
1944-08-18
1944-08-19
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-29
1944-08-30
1944-08-31
1944-09-05
1944-09-06
1944-09-10
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-27
1944-10-05
1944-10-06
1944-10-07
1944-10-11
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-31
1944-11-01
1662 HCU
1667 HCU
27 OTU
625 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Andover
RAF Blyton
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Gamston
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kelstern
RAF Lichfield
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Westcott
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/10310/LParryHP2220054v1.1.pdf
ddaf9a0a608ca33ebd5bf7220796dcc8
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
Parry, Hugh
Hugh Pryce Parry
H P Parry
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Parry, HP
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. Two oral history interviews with Hugh Parry (b. 1925, 2220054 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and newspaper cuttings. Hugh Parry flew operations as an air gunner with 75 Squadron and then as a photographer and air gunner with 90 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Hugh Parry and catalogued by Stuart Bennett.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-11
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
Hugh Parry's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers for Hugh Parry, air gunner, covering the period from 27 May 1944 to 16 October 1945. Details his flying training, operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Pembrey, RAF Oakley, RAF Westcott, RAF Woolfox Lodge and RAF Mepal. Aircraft flown were Anson, Wellington, Lancaster. He flew a total of 13 operations with 75 squadron, 12 daylight and one night time, on targets in Germany and the Netherlands. Targets were, Osterfeld, Kelsenkirchen, Kamen, Dortmund, Wanne Eickel, Huls, Munster, Hamm, Kiel and Heligoland. He also flew Operation Manna to The Hague and was recalled from an Operation Exodus flight. He did one Cook's Tour flight. His pilots on operations were Wing Commander Baigent and Flying Officer Good. On 30 October 1945 he was posted to Coastal Command.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LParryHP2220054v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Kamen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Netherlands--Hague
Wales--Carmarthenshire
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1947
1945-02-22
1945-02-23
1945-02-25
1945-02-26
1945-02-28
1945-03-01
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-17
1945-03-21
1945-03-27
1945-04-11
1945-04-12
1945-04-18
1945-04-29
1945-05-13
1945-06-09
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Stuart Bennett
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
11 OTU
1651 HCU
75 Squadron
90 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Mepal
RAF Oakley
RAF Pembrey
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Westcott
RAF Woolfox Lodge
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1005/10746/AColbeckJC170524.1.mp3
523a16a235ce2e945b8a2efc683102c5
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
Wenham, John
J Wenham
Description
An account of the resource
46 items. An oral history interview with Joy Colbeck (b. 1923) about her brother John Wenham (1925 - 1945, 1894709 Royal Air Force) documents and a family photograph album. He flew as an air gunner but was killed in a training accident 4 January 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Joy Colbeck and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle. <br /><br />Additional information on John Wenham is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/124831/ ">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wenham, J
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 24th of May 2017 and I am in Luton with Joy Colbeck and we’re going to talk about initially Joy’s experience in the war in the Royal Navy as a Wren but principally we’re talking about the experience of her younger brother who was killed on a training flight in the RAF and, in a crash near North Marston near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. So, Joy, what are your earliest recollections of early life?
JC: Well, I think it was recollections were moving house. I remember the house I was born in and my brother was born in. When we were about six or seven we moved to the next road to a slightly bigger house.
CB: In Maidstone.
JC: In Maidstone. All the time my father was a second in command in the grocery shop to Mr Henry Topley, his partner. And my father was, ran the business by his hard work. Mr Topley used to wear a top hat, stand outside and take the customers to the pay desk etcetera but, but my father was the one who drove the van, and he went to all the biggest houses in our part of Kent. Castles. Boarding schools. Had to pick, to pick up the orders from the cookhouse keepers, take them back to the shop, and a fortnight later my father would drive the van and deliver them back to the big houses before all, all mass buying. And so my brother, my brother never seemed to be part of this performance because he was always two years younger than me if you know what I mean. He, he took second, played second fiddle really. He [pause] I don’t remember him. He was a Boy Scout and all the way up and on, on the, we have a photograph here of his War Memorial, my brother’s death, in the Scout camp next to Guy Gibson who was a friend of Scout Master and practicing for the —
CB: The dam’s raid.
JC: The dams.
CB: Yes.
JC: On the Scout master’s lake. In his garden. But that’s beside the point but my brother was, he did it. He, my brother for some reason and we never know, we never got to the end he, he could not read. Now, we find this, I find this extremely difficult. He was [pause] I had left school and had been to secretarial college and was working at County Hall when my brother left school, because the school became a hospital and we were in a war zone. Whatever’s the word. Not war zone, is it? It was [pause] that we were in, it was, yeah, I suppose you’d say it was a war zone in England really, and was treated as such. My father was the chief air raid warden so he knew what was going on. And my brother just got on his bicycle and followed every Spitfire that was shot down and every German plane that was shot down. That was his whole interest in life that I remember. When I used to come home from work we used to say, ‘What have you got hold of today?’ And it was a bit of plastic or something which they all sat down, this little group of boys and made a little cottage out of the, out of the plastic windows. And he didn’t have a lot of friends and when, when his school closed my mother was so worried. He was in elementary school. He couldn’t pass any grammar school at all. And his reading and writing was extremely bad, but of course nobody took much notice of it and we wondered if he was dyslexic would he have been discovered by the RAF? How on earth did he become a bomber when he couldn’t read when he was thirteen?
CB: Extraordinary.
JC: I don’t know. Nobody ever mentions it. But he was, he was a nice boy. He was a lovely boy. People liked him but he, he didn’t shine. He didn’t shine at anything. So when he left school it would have been [pause] 1941 I suppose. I was seventeen in 1941. ’42, the school would have closed and my mother just had a tutor for him and my father got him a job in the brewery next to the shop, the grocery shop. Style and Winch’s brewery. And he worked in the lab washing bottles I suppose. But I don’t know. I’ve got a big gap because I wasn’t there.
CB: So, at seventeen what did you do?
JC: At seventeen I volunteered for the Wrens.
CB: Right.
JC: I left my job at County Hall and was supposed to go in the Wrens with my best friend who as soon as we got to London said she didn’t want to go and she became a Land Girl and I became a Wren. And they put me, I had no preliminary war training whatsoever. They sent me a letter saying, and a railway ticket to report to [pause] I was just going to say Paddington. It wasn’t Paddington. To the, to go to Lowestoft to report to HMS Minos as a writer to the captain. A writer meaning a shorthand typist but the rank is writer [pause] and I wasn’t welcomed. I was the first Wren and they didn’t want me because they were regular sailors. They weren’t service, there was no conscription in to the Navy at that time so they didn’t really want the Wrens but they got them. And so by the time I would get home on a weekend’s leave all the way by train across London and back by train down to Kent there wasn’t much left of a forty eight Wren’s pass getting there, and I didn’t see a lot of my brother. All I got was that he was working at Style and Winches. He was doing quite well in, in the brewery section and the next thing was that he had volunteered. He volunteered. He wasn’t conscripted. Volunteered for the RAF. And I think I only saw him two or three times after that. I, I’m trying to think how many times I saw him back. Not a lot.
[telephone ringing]
CB: I’ll just stop there.
[recording paused]
JC: And of course then we got, we got, I got shifted from up in Norfolk back down in to London to HMS Pembroke which is all the Wrens working in London. Whitehall. And I stayed there until I went to Westcliff on Sea which was a holding base for sailors waiting for Dunkirk, not Dunkirk, for D-Day. But I spent nearly two years in London.
CB: What were you doing in London?
[pause]
CB: What were you doing in London?
JC: Well, I just worked in in offices. Office job. And —
CB: Secretarial.
JC: I also, I did one interesting thing. I, because I had worked very hard on the setting up this, I’d been promoted to leading Wren and I was working very hard on the setting up of this holding camp and we had a lot of rather important people on the staff there. And we, the whole of Westcliff on Sea Promenade and the roads adjacent to the Promenade were requisitioned as a block and the civilians were moved off. It was mostly holidays. Small hotels. Private hotels. So it wasn’t difficult but the whole lot moved off and we moved, the Navy moved in and there were four thousand sailors and about four hundred Wrens.
Other: You had your choice ma.
JC: And then I worked very hard. Very, very hard because I worked for a wonderful woman called First Officer Bowen-Jones who was quite a high up ranking officer in the Wrens and she used to push, give me lots of difficult jobs to do. And one day she called me in and she said, ‘You’ve worked very hard. I want to send you on special duties.’ And she said, she’d got a lovely smile and she said, ‘You’re going to, maybe you’ll go with Churchill on one of his ventures abroad, to one of the conferences.’ She said, ‘Go and enjoy it. Report tomorrow to the Admiralty.’ When I got to the Admiralty it was a busy, busy, busy office full of American officers and British Naval officers from all over the world. And they were all [pause] well they would sort of shuffle up. We went on the back of a Land Rover from our billets in in [pause] oh, it was a long time ago. I’ll tell you in a minute. But we assembled at 6 o’clock in our billets. We were taken by Army car to the Admiralty. They had been working all day long deciding which way they’d go. Who’d go, who went and who didn’t. And as soon as we got there at 6 o’clock in the evening, it would be about seven we got there we started and we typed all that the, you know the ships and Naval officers had learned during the day. We typed it during the night on stencils on [reniers], and then we ran them off and we did that for six weeks and we had no time off. And then we were sent back to our posts and told to keep quiet. Not to say where we’d been. Not even to our officers. And we had done the invasion of Sicily and Italy, but in fact we didn’t know it was Sicily and Italy because we didn’t know and they didn’t tell us they were going to go to Italy. They just gave us a map reference along the, along the garden and up the stairs on the, on the grids. It was all done on the grid. And it’s all boring. There you are.
CB: Right. We’ll just take a break.
[recording paused]
JC: You mean one of the AGs ones.
CB: Now, we’re just going to recap quickly on yourself because you had two interesting experiences. One, Joy early on, one experience you had early on was in Lowestoft.
JC: That’s it.
CB: What happened there?
JC: What happened there? It was a Tuesday.
CB: Yeah.
JC: I had every Tuesday off. Worked the rest of the six days. In the mornings we did our washing and sewed on our buttons, etcetera. Well, about half past one the girls, we were, we were billeted in a private hotel in the attic. There were two rooms in the attic either side of the stairs and three of them were occupied over the stairs. They didn’t work, they worked in HMS Minos 2 which was a holding base. I worked in HMS 1, which was a minesweeper base, active service. So, they knocked on the door and said, ‘Are you coming down in to Yeovil, err into Lowestoft for a cup of tea at Waller’s Restaurant because they have cream buns. So I said, ‘Yes. I think so.’ So, they said, ‘Pick you up in half an hour.’ Half an hour later it was snowing. I said, ‘I think I’ve got a cold coming and it means walking both ways to Lowestoft in the snow. I’m not coming.’ And they said, ‘Ok. We’ll go without you.’ I’d been, I decided to have a bath. I was in the bath when the claxon went. We had no air raid warning. The claxon went. Out in the garden. Get in the shelters. Hit and run raids. So we, we just went. Ran down the stairs, out the back door, got in. We’d only just got in the air raid shelter when there was the most enormous explosion and about, we just didn’t know anything about it. About half an hour later the Wren officer on duty said, ‘Wren Wenham,’ that was me, ‘Back to duty.’ So I got dressed in to my uniform and walked in to Lowestoft and the whole of Lowestoft High Street was flattened. And I’ve got a picture. I, I don’t know.
[pause]
CB: Ok. Well, we’ll look at the pictures in a minute.
JC: No, we don’t. Here it is. Here’s my whatnot.
CB: Oh, report.
Other: Yes.
JC: There they are. Digging up twenty years later.
CB: Right.
JC: But, and I went into my office and the captain said that we had to stay on duty because the bomb had fallen on the main supply department and all, all my three, and it had fallen on Waller’s Restaurant next to the Naval supply because we were all in the High Street. So bang on Waller’s and every one, I think there were, seventy were killed. So, I lost my three friends. That was, that was number one.
CB: Right. Very hard.
JC: About three weeks later I was.
CB: This was 1941.
JC: About three weeks later I was machine gunned with two other Wrens walking to our quarters along the cliffs at Lowestoft. We just got down in the, in the whatnot. You had no warnings. So, that was two. I can’t think what the third one was.
CB: Right. So, if we go now towards the end of the war there were the V-1s and V-2s. So what experience did you have?
JC: Oh yes. That was dreadful.
CB: That’s in London.
JC: I, I was, I was at Westcliff. HMS Westcliff. After D-Day they began to get rid of, the numbers went down and the places were closed. We were just a closure. In August, in August 1944 I was promoted to chief, to Wren petty officer and it meant that I had to be moved because there was no, no requirement for a petty officer in there. So I was sent to the Royal Marines at Burnham on Crouch on a single posting as petty, just as what would be called secretary to the Marine’s officers because they had a big Court of Enquiry of, of, to do with the firing of an officer. And I had to go every day and take down in shorthand the doings of the court. I don’t know whether I made a very good job of it because nobody then was interested in, in talking slowly or [laughs] even knowing how to put questions. It was very difficult. And so there I was down in Burnham on Crouch, and every Sunday morning all the Royal Marines assembled outside of the Burnham Yacht Club for Sunday morning divisions. In the middle of the second, second hymn we got this colossal blowing, and we were all flattened on to the roads. Yeah. Onto the ground. Nobody was hit. The thing, the thing exploded up in the air, away up in the air and if it hadn’t exploded we wouldn’t probably have been here I suppose. But that was the third time that and after that I couldn’t sleep. And my posting came to an end and I went to the Royal Naval College at, hospital at Chatham and I was turned out. My husband came to tell me and [pause] I was still packing up my belongings when he came back again and told me that John had died. And —
CB: This is January 1944. Your brother John.
JC: Yes. And my father had phoned my husband who was on duty and he’d been to see the captain who gave him permission to come to Burnham because there was, it was the back of beyond to tell me and take me home. And I went home and, and it was awful really when I got home because my mother and [pause] when, when I was two and a half years old I had double pneumonia, and there was no hospital. I was just, my mother cared for me. My brother was eight months old and John went to stay with my father’s sister for [pause] I’ve no idea but he was certainly away from home for three months. So my mother couldn’t see him. There was, it was a real break and —
[doorbell]
JC: It was a real break. Not very nice I suppose. I don’t know how my mother would have coped to have her baby boy taken away from her. She had to look after me at home. I had pneumonia. Pneumonia for six weeks and my father took me out on my first walk and I cried so much that he kept on walking rather than take me home, and the next day I had pneumonia again. So that, so my brother still stayed with, with Auntie May and she features in this book. So he had a real break in his parenting. I don’t suppose it would have been a very quick cut off when I had pneumonia. I mean the doctor would have come. Our doctor, he came on a horse, on a horse, horseback. Privately. And, and my father took my brother in the van and off he went. So I don’t know what effect that would have had on my brother. It must have broken my mother’s heart I think. She was a wonderful mother wasn’t she?
Other: She was a lovely lady.
JC: Lovely woman.
CB: You said, you said your brother John had difficulty with reading.
JC: Yes.
CB: Did that get linked with that experience?
JC: I don’t know. Of course, he was only eight months old. I don’t [pause] that’s the only time. I know that it was snowing and there was no ambulances available. The doctor and the, and the vicar spent three nights at our house. Did their calls in between. He was very well looked after but —
CB: We’ll just stop there again.
[recording paused]
CB: These are all very important experiences to know in the background but returning to your brother John. Returning to your brother John. He joined the RAF on the 24th err the 28th of April 1943. Well, he attested then but he was only seventeen.
JC: Yes.
CB: He started, according to the records we’ve looked at, at Number 19 ITW on the 5th of February 1944 and shortly after that he was admitted to hospital and then he was temporarily discharged and put into hospital again. He then went to a different Initial Training Wing on the 24th of April 1944 and according to the records he then had been identified as an air gunner and you mentioned his difficulty with reading and so on and it may be that that had some bearing on the selection.
JC: Yes.
CB: Of his position in the aircraft.
JC: Yes.
CB: He then went to Number 1 Air Gunnery School on the 1st of July ’44 and from there in October, the 19th of October 1944 he went to 11 OTU, Operational Training Unit which was at Westcott. Which is the point of our story.
JC: Yes.
CB: And then he was killed in the crash on the 4th.
JC: Yes.
CB: Of January 1945.
JC: Yes.
CB: So my question there is that as you were in the Navy and busy and had little opportunity of finding out what was going on, what do you understand about what he was doing and what your parents knew? What did your —
JC: You mean while he was still training?
CB: While he was in the RAF.
JC: I don’t know. You see it was such a different life. Everybody’s son was in, in the Army, The Navy or the Air Force all of the way around him. If, if you weren’t, if you weren’t in the Forces there was something funny with you and I suppose you had to, I suppose you had to accept that your son or your daughter would go off into the Army. And, take my father, he’d spent four years of his, six years of his youth, of his young life not his youth because he married during his service but they’d all experienced Army life. So it was nothing different in a way. And I think they would have accepted what was going on. That he would join. He would join up but whether they would have ever accepted that he was going to be in the Air Force I don’t know.
CB: Why did he join the RAF?
JC: Why did he join the RAF?
CB: And not the Army or the Navy.
JC: I have no idea. I have no idea.
CB: And did you have any, you saw him rarely but did you have any conversations with him?
JC: No.
CB: About his service.
JC: No. No. I had no, you see I saw so little of him. I wouldn’t like to say how many times I saw him. Definitely not during the previous year to his death did I. I was going to. I told you, it’s in my husband’s diary we were going, I was going to take my husband home to meet my parents on a weekend leave because my husband had, we were already engaged but we were going to go home. Became engaged on my twenty first birthday and so [pause] I, when it came to, it’s just written in some, about the middle of October, November we were going to, my husband was coming to spend the weekend with, and would have slept in my brother’s bed and I was going to join them and I was hit by this bomb, V-2 bomber thing. So I was in [laughs] I couldn’t go to Maidstone. So my husband went by myself to meet my parents.
CB: For the first time.
JC: I think he’d met my mother because he came, he came to my mother at Southend on my twenty first birthday when I was in sick bay for a different reason, and they had given me [pause] He had produced my engagement ring while I was in bed covered in, I had a series of boils, awful things all the way around my neck and I’d had them for about a year, and they were trying to do what they could to get rid of it in the sickbay. But they couldn’t and I was swathed up in all these bandages and my mother came on the train to celebrate my birthday and she met Gerry there and he gave me my engagement ring. There it is. There we are.
CB: Very nice. Yes.
JC: And [pause] so it was, it was so natural in a way. It was happening all the way around him.
CB: And people didn’t talk about what they did in the Forces.
JC: They didn’t talk about it.
CB: They weren’t allowed to, and they didn’t want to.
JC: And they weren’t allowed to. They didn’t have the time. They were so worn out. My father was head of the ARP and they met, we were about the only people who got an air raid, a decent air raid shelter, and we had it because our next door neighbour’s brother built the new County Hall. He was a big builder, and while he was building the big County Hall he dug the hole with his digger of our, of our air raid shelter and he built us a double deck, double brick air raid shelter in our, half in their garden, half in ours. Two doors. We were very posh. We had radio and we had electricity and, but my father came home from work he, we were, we were down there. We, we put our pyjamas on as soon as we came home from work and we went straight down and we had our tea down in the air raid shelter. My mother, of course women didn’t work so my mother, my mother looked after my father and all the people who worked for him. And as soon as my father had had his tea he became the air raid warden. So I mean he didn’t talk about, we didn’t talk about family.
Other: I think the horrors were so bad as well.
JC: Yes.
Other: People didn’t want to dwell on them.
JC: They didn’t want to. They used to say —
Other: They wanted a change in their lives.
JC: My, my brother’s friends, four boys came to Maidstone in 1939 when his father built the A20. Not the M20. The A20 over, over the hill, down into the Weald of Kent and he bought these, his four sons all at school. And my father saw the for sale notice on the house and investigated who was moving in. Met them and said, ‘I’ll be your grocer. I’ll take your cards from you.’
CB: Ration cards.
JC: The [Riccomini] family. I’d love to know what happened to the [Riccomini] boys because as far as I know only the eldest one, who had a cleft palate survived and I think my brother was, was very friendly with the second boy called Geoffrey. And I don’t know what the other two were and I wouldn’t have met them anyway but Geoffrey used to come and play in our garden, and was the same age as my brother. And to think that they could, my father knew the mother and parents. To think that he knew that there was a family losing three and his was one. It was—
Other: I see what you’re saying.
JC: I’m sorry.
CB: Very difficult.
JC: We’re getting off, aren’t we?
CB: Well, it doesn’t matter because the point in the background there is Maidstone is in the front line.
JC: Yes.
CB: Effectively closest almost —
JC: It was.
CB: To the continent.
Other: Well, it’s about —
CB: So to what extent did you suffer air raids there?
Other: [laughs] She was hit by one.
JC: Well, we didn’t really suffer any real damage but we did have an unexploded bomb come through the roof of our detached house and my mother ran. Obviously, it was in the middle of the afternoon. There were no men. My mother, when the men came home from work ran to the ARP post, and said that there was a hole in the roof and they sent, they sent a man, an ARP man to investigate and he went up inside the house on a ladder and he got stuck in the hole. In the, in the, he was a big fat man and he got stuck.
CB: In the loft hatch.
JC: And [laughs] he became [laughs] didn’t he? All our children remembered the second world war was the man who got stuck in the hole. We had, we had behind our house was a place called Vinters Park which was a big private place and was used as a war, as a hospital in the war and their guns came over in to our garden at the back. So we were very close to the, we had every night we slept when we were there. Even when I came home on leave we slept down in the, we had six bunks in our —
CB: In your air raid shelter.
JC: Mr and Mrs Shaw didn’t have any children so there was my mother and brother. We mostly played cards and sent the money to the Red Cross. But we don’t, I don’t remember that we talked about people who’d died that day.
CB: What about these, these were anti-aircraft guns.
JC: The?
CB: Anti-aircraft guns you are talking about are you?
JC: We didn’t meet them.
CB: No. You had anti-aircraft guns next to you.
JC: They were over the field.
CB: Right.
JC: In Vinters Park, and they came over. The men didn’t come into our garden but in 19 — before I joined the Wrens, that was July ’41 Detling Aerodrome which was a mile from our house was bombed by the RAF and obliterated.
CB: By the Germans.
JC: And my father was on duty that night at the top of the road called the Chiltern Hundreds, the public house and he, he had the road closed and they wouldn’t allow anybody to come over the road. Well, about 11 o’clock that night he, my father brought two men to our house. They were soldiers. They were men from the Royal Air Force Defence Regiment. It wasn’t a very, it wasn’t an active, it was [pause] then anyway, they’d come back from a day, they’d come back from holiday leave to find they’d no air, no, no air base left. Not allowed up on the road. My father brought them home and they slept upstairs in my father’s bed that night, and the next morning they went back on duty. And the following night they came and knocked, morning they came and knocked on the door and said, ‘Can we, can we please come and sleep again because we’re frightened.’ And my father said they looked it. And they came for about three weeks and my father said, ‘Yes. You can come and you can sleep in a bedroom in the house in the daytime and you’re to help the men dig the hole and finish off the air raid shelter.’ So these men built our air raid shelter. And that was the only contact we had with, with soldiers.
CB: Yeah.
JC: But they were all the way around us. So my brother must, my brother was down in that air raid shelter every night. Had to be. And they weren’t allowed, boys they weren’t allowed to go off to the cinema in the evening. I mean, you didn’t go out. You went in to the air raid shelter. And what he did I don’t know, apart from the fact that after I left probably somebody else came and borrowed a bed for the night. Any vacant bed was taken up and it was, it was busy. It was really, really busy.
CB: We’ll take a break there.
[recording paused]
JC: My husband.
Other: Just one second.
CB: Right. So where did you meet your husband?
JC: At the Royal Palace Ballroom, Southend on Sea. And it was, I’d been in the Navy then for, I met him on the 28th of April 1944, Saturday night. And it was only the second dance I had been to in the whole of the war and the whole of my service. We seemed to spend all our time working. And so I met my husband at the dance and he asked me for a dance, and I met him then. And he was, he had just arrived at HMS Westcliff. I had been there already since, I think the 4th of September 1942. So I had been there nearly two years. My husband was a year younger than me.
CB: And what did he do? What was he?
JC: He was, he was, he was a sub lieutenant in the Naval Coastal Forces. He tried to be in the RAF VR but he failed one of his. I don’t know which one it was, but he failed one of his tests.
CB: And when were you married?
JC: 31st of March 1945.
CB: Right.
JC: And that was arranged before my brother died and we hadn’t told my brother. That would all have been, I don’t know if, well I suppose of course my husband would have told his future brother in law that wouldn’t he? So my brother must have known, but we didn’t send many letters. I can honestly, I can’t remember sending many letters.
CB: So —
JC: We didn’t send many. Didn’t send many [laughs] we sent food parcels to each other [laughs] but we didn’t send much else.
CB: We’ve talked about the fact that what your brother John was doing that your parents didn’t seem to know about it.
JC: Yes.
CB: And you certainly didn’t know.
JC: No. I didn’t know.
CB: So, how was it that you learned about your brother John’s death?
[pause]
JC: But what I learned, I arrived home with my husband on the 6th. Let’s see. Yes. It took, it took twenty four hours for the news to get through to my husband so that would have been the 5th of January. And we travelled back. There was no over, no trains out of Burnham on Crouch in the evening so it was morning of January the 6th that we got the train to Maidstone. And my mother was sitting there with her sister in law, Auntie May who’d brought John up as a baby, and they were just sitting there on the settee next to each other. They didn’t, they didn’t even seem to talk. It was absolutely unbelief on their, on their face that this could really have happened.
CB: Then what?
JC: Hmm?
CB: So you got there and saw mother and aunt.
JC: Saw mother and aunt and then all the, all the family and friends came up. I had to, my husband had to go back the next day. They wouldn’t give him any more leave. I had. I was given seven days, because by this time I was already on, I’d already been shifted to the Royal Naval Hospital at Chatham for despatch. And it was the old Naval physical standard.
CB: So, when your parents knew about your brother’s death, Joy —
JC: Pardon?
CB: When your parents knew about your brother’s death.
JC: Yes.
CB: What happened next?
JC: Well, we heard that, my father got on the phone to the, to the vicar in Buckinghamshire and asked him to find out some news. This young curate, eighteen, nineteen, no he would be about twenty. Twenty years old. He went to Westcott and requested an interview and was told, they said they wanted a letter. Well, actually my parents were very happy when they got this letter which is dated the 9th of January. But what they didn’t know was that every one of that, every one of the aircrew got the same letter. I mean actually lettered the same letter. I mean this must have been the standard letter one or two because we’ve seen it mentioned in the New Zealand papers. So, my father, all the other members of the crew, the five members were buried at Westcott.
CB: At Botley.
JC: Nearby. My father arranged, my father was church warden of our church and he arranged that my brother would have [pause] my brother would be buried at, from the funeral in his own church. My parents were Christian. Church of England. I’d say fairly strict Christian people but were very good people. Very, very good people. They, all the way through the war they entertained next to the church. Our family church was the Kent Royal Regiment’s Headquarters at Sandy Lane, Maidstone and every Sunday we entertained soldiers. And these soldiers were collected at church. I think the word got around, ‘Go to church on Sunday morning and Mr and Mrs Wenham will invite you to lunch,’ because we had a procession of soldiers and my father would write letters for them, because lots of soldiers were illiterate. My father would write letters. My mother mended them their socks, knitted their things for them. So they, they were very good people. They weren’t [pause] how do you put it? I don’t think they showed their grief apart, my mother became very quiet. She, she must have talked to my father about it. She must have told to him she didn’t want to stay. And as soon as we’d married within a year they’d sold the business which was due to be, my father had always hoped that John would follow in his business but that was no longer possible. And they, they sold everything up and moved to Hastings. Although my father at that stage was only borderline retirement and he went on to work for a further twenty years, but he really didn’t know what else to do with himself.
CB: So after the, after the funeral.
JC: Yes.
CB: The funeral was in the church at Maidstone.
JC: No. No. The funeral in the church was absolutely full of people. There was standing at the back. We all went and there were six airmen who carried the hearse, and we all went by transport of some sort to the Maidstone Cemetery. The military cemetery attached to Maidstone Cemetery and we had another service at the graveside and we had the Last Post and it’s the one bit of music I cannot abide. But it was snowing. Snowing again. Afterwards we went back to my parent’s home and his close relations were there and our neighbours and people from the church and we all had afternoon tea provided by my mother. Two of the airmen came up to, to my father and said that it made life easier to know that people could be so sensible over the loss of family they, they just thought that the fact that my mother had baked all these cakes for them eased the problem. It didn’t, did it? But so they all came back and then the men, we’d no idea they, I seem to remember I didn’t speak to them an awful lot but I seem to remember that, that they weren’t close members of [pause] they weren’t colleagues. They didn’t actually know my brother. Perhaps they had a special job, ‘Your turn’s come up,’ you know.
CB: They were representing the RAF.
JC: RAF. Yeah. Representatives of the RAF.
CB: Were, were they ground crew or aircrew? Do you remember whether they were —
JC: The men? I’ve no idea. No. No idea at all. But they spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening with us. And we didn’t know. We had no idea. I think that my father must have known that the New Zealanders were involved, but apart from that I don’t think my mother and father knew anything about these airmen.
CB: The other five were buried at the —
JC: Hmm?
CB: The other five were buried at the Military Cemetery at Botley.
JC: Yes. Yes, and there are pictures.
CB: Oxford.
JC: In it. In Sue Chaplain’s book.
CB: So when did you find out details of the crash?
JC: Oh, well that was when I belonged, I joined the U3A in Luton about ten years ago, I suppose. And I joined the family history group because I’d got an awful lot of pictures and things of Maidstone and that’s my that’s —
CB: Did you —
JC: That’s Maidstone. London Road, Maidstone. Sharp’s Toffee Factory Headquarters. That was the Sports Club.
Other: That was a Sports Club.
JC: And that house was built by my great grandfather.
Other: That’s right.
CB: Now —
JC: There he is.
CB: Just —
JC: And there she is.
Other: Listen. Listen, Chris is saying something.
JC: Hmmn?
CB: Just quickly, just —
JC: Yes. So, that —
CB: You didn’t know from the end of the war, well January ’45, until ten years ago are you saying you did not know how the crash had occurred?
JC: No. No. No, it wasn’t —
CB: And —
JC: It wasn’t mentioned. And I, I believe I’m positive that my father and mother, or my father never knew that. How the plane had crashed. I think he would have talked to us, don’t you?
CB: Did, where, when your own children were born did that cause your parents to wonder how their son, your brother had died?
JC: I don’t somehow think it did. We weren’t [pause] we weren’t actually living close to them. But Christopher the oldest was born when my husband was in Germany and my husband didn’t see Chris until he was nearly eight weeks old.
CB: Right.
JC: Graham was born, and his father had just had a heart attack so myself and Christopher and baby Graham we couldn’t go back. We were, we were living with my father in law. We couldn’t go back there. We had to catch a train and go to Maidstone where my mother took over.
CB: But your parents weren’t prompted to recall.
JC: No.
CB: The death.
JC: No.
CB: Do you think they had —
JC: No.
CB: Accepted that they would never find out or they were pushing it to the back of their minds?
JC: I don’t know. I can’t think. I really can’t think what —
CB: I think we’ll have a pause there.
[recording paused]
CB: We’ve talked about your perception of your parent’s attitude and the fact that they didn’t really talk about it but when your parents moved up here to the Luton area and settled here they had pictures, family pictures in the house did they? And how did they explain that?
JC: My parents.
CB: Yes.
Other: Yeah. They didn’t.
JC: My parents never lived in Luton.
Other: Luton.
CB: Oh, they didn’t.
Other: No. We lived together.
CB: No.
Other: We lived together after my parents, my grandparents moved to Hastings. My father my mother and us moved to Somerset to his parents and we were born and brought up in Somerset. So they never lived, we lived together.
CB: Ok.
Other: In Somerset. My grandparents then moved to Somerset so the whole family were in Somerset.
CB: Ok. So, I’m trying to focus on the pictures that your, your parents, Joy had in their house.
JC: Well, they had —
CB: They had pictures of your brother.
JC: My mother’s, my mother’s brother in law, her eldest sister’s husband was a photographer. A private. Made his own, hung his own things across the —
CB: For drying them.
Other: Plates.
JC: The negatives. And developed his own, and this was my mother’s and she had another one and she was very proud of the fact that they were always taking photographs and putting them in this book.
CB: But what I meant was in the house.
JC: In the house.
CB: Did they have pictures and how did they explain?
JC: Yes. Inside the house you mean.
CB: Yes. And what, how did they explain the picture of your brother?
JC: I don’t, I don’t think they needed to explain because —
CB: If they were asked.
JC: Because my brother was so much a part of, of the tight little family that there was then in Maidstone.
CB: Yes.
JC: That we all attended all the family dos. My father wasn’t very happy about it because they would drink, and they would have a singsong around the, around the, around the piano but my father wasn’t very keen on that and neither was my mother. But we all met together and I think my father was, you would describe him as the steady one of the family wouldn’t you? He was the one who, who worked hard and bought his own house.
CB: Yes.
JC: And he bought his sister a house because she was a complete invalid and any family trouble they went to my father, and my brother grew up in that. They didn’t have to talk about him because he was part of it.
CB: Yes. I’ve got that. What I was trying to get at was after the war.
JC: Yeah.
CB: After the war.
JC: After the war.
CB: There would be pictures in the house and your children —
JC: There was always a picture of my brother.
CB: Yes.
JC: Yes. There isn’t one in my house because I decided that that we’ve always got our poppy and we always talk about him but I, we’ve got three great grandsons. Nine, twelve and twelve. And although they came to, they were there at, at the parish meeting. You know. The church.
CB: In North Marston. Yes.
JC: They came to them all but I was, I was delighted. The two didn’t come up from Bath because it was a long way. No, but my, Sue’s daughter brought Woody who is now twelve. He came and he was a good boy. He enjoyed it and he, he, you know, took part. But apart from that I think on the whole that we, we don’t talk about it but they all have four of these books.
CB: Yes.
JC: This is the first book one. And then each one. We did it because in 1986 my husband had to leave the Civil Service because he was a driving examiner and he was injured in three work accidents.
CB: Right.
JC: And couldn’t, couldn’t undertake doing eight or nine emergency stops every, every day.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And he worked for Brian’s family and, but we, we, I was having to make the decision to carry on working.
CB: Yeah.
JC: Because otherwise we, you know we couldn’t manage to pay the mortgage etcetera and it was, it was [pause] oh, I don’t quite know how you would explain it but we felt a bit as if we were the bottom of the pile. All our children were successful. They were all running their own businesses except for Richard in Canada who worked in a furniture store. But all the rest were very successful and we felt that our grandchildren were growing up thinking of us as these were poor relations down the bottom. We didn’t have this and we didn’t have that, you know. We didn’t have lots of things. And so I sat down not thinking in, in 1986, three weeks before Christmas I wrote that book in my lunch hour at work.
CB: Right.
JC: Straight on to the typewriter. Straight on to the photocopier.
CB: Yeah.
JC: At the Post Office.
CB: Right.
JC: We had no other equipment. And it was to try and show them that we didn’t all have all these wonderful trips to America. One of them had been off in Concorde. That we didn’t live that way.
CB: No.
JC: Ours had been a wartime struggle.
CB: Indeed.
JC: And of course there’s that, part of my book was about telling them about my brother.
CB: Right.
JC: So we, we put it in to print for them.
CB: Yes.
JC: And they’ve still got that book.
CB: Right.
Other: Treasure it.
CB: A real treasure.
JC: Reduce them by half.
Other: It’s lovely. A lovely book to read.
CB: Yes. So the reason I asked the question was because so many people after the war, veterans didn’t talk.
JC: No.
CB: About their experiences.
JC: No. True.
CB: And what happens is that grandchildren, children of the children, children don’t, direct children often don’t get the information but the grandchildren sometimes —
JC: Yes.
CB: Elicit the story from their grandparents. So that’s why I was asking about the picture.
JC: Every one of our grandchildren has taken that book to school, haven’t they?
Other: Yeah.
JC: And it’s as I say it’s only half this size.
CB: Yes.
JC: It’s —
CB: It’s A5 size.
JC: A5.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And they still produce it and on occasions and they take, all of them all of them have taken them into school and we heard from the teachers how helpful it’s been.
Other: Helpful.
JC: And Woody’s family, when he was leaving junior, infants [pause] Junior School to go to a Senior Academy they did turning Luton into wartime as an event.
CB: Did they really?
JC: With an evacuee section.
CB: Amazing.
JC: And he used to, he took our book, and they wrote a book for me. His class. Telling me about —
CB: About Luton.
JC: About what they knew about. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. It was a catalyst for wider.
JC: It’s been a real. I wish everyone would do it.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And it did help me. It did help me through going through the U3A. We had a wonderful tutor and she told us, I told her that I had got in the back of my book here the obituaries of my great grandfather, Mr Joe. And my husband’s great grandfather who was a wool merchant. A scrimmage man. And we got them printed from the paper and I showed them to her and in my husband’s book it said that Mr Colbeck’s background were mostly public ministers in the Methodist Church, but one of his great grandfathers fought at Waterloo. So she said to me, ‘Send your money to the Waterloo Society. Three pounds.’ I waited nearly six months for an answer.
CB: Did you?
JC: And the Waterloo Society Man said, ‘We’ve had a reply. Somebody would like to meet you.’ So I said, ‘Well, can I have their number?’ ‘No.’ she said ‘But you, can we give her your number?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And so I met my husband’s cousin. No. Yes. My husband’s second cousin. A lady in Lancashire where the family came from. Or Yorkshire. And they invited me to meet the family and I was the only relative left and it was incredible.
CB: Extraordinary.
JC: I don’t know. I can’t see that we can be any interest. Any, we haven’t got anything to tell anyone have we?
CB: People are very curious about their history.
JC: Pardon?
CB: People are very curious.
JC: Do you think so?
CB: About their history. Well, that’s why some —
JC: They are?
CB: Well, on the television there are two programmes based on finding out your history.
JC: Yes.
CB: Anyway, I think we’ll stop there. Thank you very much indeed, Joy.
JC: Yes.
CB: For a most interesting interview.
JC: Yes.
CB: To do with —
JC: Yes
CB: The air crash of John Wenham.
JC: Yes.
CB: And the loss of his life.
JC: Yes.
CB: In North Marston.
JC: Yes.
CB: In January 1945.
JC: You’ve got all the rest. It’s wonderful.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Joy Colbeck
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-24
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AColbeckJC170524
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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01:17:58 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
Description
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Joy Colbeck was born in Maidstone, Kent and served within the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the war. Her brother, John, joined the RAF on the 28 of April 1943, qualified at as an air gunner in April 1944, before being transferred to an Operational Training Unit in October 1944 at RAF Westcot. It was here that he, along with the rest of his crew, crashed during a training exercise in January 1945. Joy goes on to explain that she doesn’t believe this affected her family very much, although she does state that people do not recall the war often, likely as they want to forget the experiences they had during it. Joy recounts several experiences of her own during the war, being a typewriter operator after volunteering at age 17. She served on board the destroyers HMS Whitehall and HMS Whitecliff, and the minesweeper HMS 01. She tells a number of anecdotes of her time during the war, including three stories of near-misses with bombs and machine guns. Joy was promoted to a petty officer before joining the Royal Marines at Bermondsey. She recalls meeting her husband during a formal dance at her naval base, but also recalls being incredibly busy during the war, an example being her husband having to meet her parents for the first time by himself as she couldn’t get the time off. Following the war, she believes that people did not talk about their experiences because they didn’t want to dwell on them and would rather move on. Joy continues to take part in memorial services, both Navy and RAF. As part of this, her mother, father, herself and her husband have all written books outlining their experiences during the war and she takes pride in her grandchildren knowing her story.
Contributor
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Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Suffolk
England--London
Temporal Coverage
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1941-08
1943-04-28
1944-02-05
1944-03
1944-10
1945-01-04
11 OTU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
crash
home front
Initial Training Wing
love and romance
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/763/10760/ACunninghamAB171104.1.mp3
9f16a8efcb1e7748a3ad23a726fc2d16
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Cunningham, Bruce
Argyle Bruce Cunningham
A B Cunningham
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Bruce Cunningham (1920 - 2020, 424433 Royal New Zealand Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 514 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Cunningham, AB
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GT: It is the 4th of November 2017 and today I’m interviewing Mr Argyle Bruce Cunningham at his residence in [long beep] in Kilbirnie, Wellington, New Zealand. With me is the New Zealand Returned Servicemen’s Welfare Advisor Kaye Pointon. And Kaye has introduced me to Bruce, Bruce Chapman err Bruce Cunningham and Bruce has agreed that I can interview him today for the IBCC Digital Archives. Mr Argyle Bruce Cunningham was a pilot for the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and he flew on 514 Squadron as a pilot in Bomber Command, England. So, Bruce can you please tell me a little bit about where you were born and when and therefore your age? And how you got to join the New Zealand Air Force. Please.
BC: I was, I was born in Marsden. 1920. And then I, I left school when I was thirteen and a half. I worked for a firm for four or five years and then I decided to go back to school. To short trousers and a school cap and so forth. Taken two years instead of three. When I was, the last year I was at school the school children came back from the town saying the head prefect’s name’s in the ballot. And the principal called me in and said, ‘I believe your name’s in the ballot. I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well you’re not going on any ballot. You’re sitting matriculation.’ He used to be a lieutenant colonel in the army. But just after I sat I did go into the Territorials and I spent my time digging holes in the sand and so forth. And I decided that there are other better things to do than that so I decided that I would join the, something else. I then applied. Made enquiries about the Navy. And then on second thoughts I thought no. I’d spend years being seasick so I’d better go in to the air force. So, off I went into the air force. Up at Rosewood they said, ‘We’re short in the course before. Is there anybody, would anybody like to go out of this place in half time?’ And I thought — no. I’ll leave that to the boys who’ve got all the brains. But they didn’t do it that way. They set some navigation exercises and it was decided on your results on those whether you went out of Rosewood in half time or not. And I scored, believe me it was 98.5 or something. So I was assisted to get out of the place. But I wanted to get out because I’d developed impetigo and then I used to go to the doctors. [unclear] they’d paint me with green paint. They ran out of green paint and started painting me purple. So I walked around Rosewood looking like a Red Indian looking for my lecture places which had been changed. And I was very pleased to get out of Rosewood.
GT: So, so Bruce you, joining the air force they assigned you your service number of NZ424433.
BC: Yes.
GT: Is that correct?
BC: That’s right.
GT: So what, what did you go on to do then to end up being a pilot?
BC: Yes. I went down. First of all went to Bell Brock and New Plymouth and did eighty hours there on Tiger Moths. And then I went to Wigram and got my wings in Wigram. Not in Canada. I got my wings in Wigram.
GT: Yeah. What year was that please Bruce?
BC: That would be in [pause] was it ’43? Was it? It was ’43. I didn’t wait a long time to get into the air force. I was, I knew I had to go to a war but I wasn’t particularly keen on getting into the air straight away. It got to the stage where I waited far too long. In the finish I had to ring up Wellington and say, ‘Goodness gracious me. How much longer?’ But finally I got in and I went to Wigram and got my wings. And then we had, we did the final leave and went up to Auckland and I thought I will probably get on a big boat. Walk up the stairs onto this boat that would be so big. But when I got there I got the impression that the boat was so small I walked down the thing instead of up. When we, before this, before the boat took off we were speaking to one boy on the staff there and then we were asking him about going to England by boat. And he said this is the third sister ship. The name was the Empire Grace, I think. And he said, ‘This is the third sister ship.’ And we said, ‘What about the other ships?’ ‘Well, they all went on their third trip. They were sunk.’ And I was, so of course someone asked the question, ‘What trip is this?’ Of course the answer was, ‘This is the third trip.’ [laughs] Well, as the lights of Auckland disappeared I thought well that’s the last you’ll see of her [laughs] But first of all we didn’t go straight to Panama. We went south. Went down the Southern Ocean and that. It had the largest consignment of cheese that had ever left New Zealand. And they’d built some bunks in it and took about fifteen air force crew over then. But then, and then we went to Panama and we had leave on Panama and we went into town. Pitch black. 10 o’clock the lights turned on all over the town and then to it. That was a big night in Panama for everybody. A strange place.
GT: So, how long did it take you to sail to England then Bruce? How long did it take you to get there?
BC: From memory I think it must have taken about five weeks. I can’t recall back then. I remember going across the Atlantic. We, we were on our own. We weren’t escorted. We got nearer to England and we had to do drills and all sorts of things. Quite a long way. German aeroplanes coming out to bomb us. We went out over the top of Ireland and down. Right down to Avonmouth where we finally disembarked.
GT: Was that Southampton?
BC: Avonmouth. Yeah.
GT: Ok.
BC: Yeah. Avonmouth.
GT: So once you got to England then where did they send you? What, what OTU and bases did you go to?
BC: Well, we went to, New Zealand troops in those days were sent to Bournemouth. It was very good at Bournemouth. But later on they decided to send us to Brighton which wasn’t so good. But Bournemouth was a lovely place. Also, my first introduction to Bournemouth was on Sunday afternoon a Focke Wulf came over from Germany and blasted the place. Sunday afternoon. And we were crouching down on the floor and I thought afterwards what’s the good of that? I remember they bombed a, a Bobbies café and a woman who used to watch us drilling every morning she stopped a bullet from that trip. They came over very low level and frightened everybody. Then I went to several stations flying Oxfords at that. And then after we finished Oxfords we then went on to Wellingtons. Flying Wellington. Wellington 1Cs.
GT: What station was that at Bruce? Can you remember?
BC: That was at OTU at Westcott. And to me I always look back and think that station was more, it was more dangerous being there than being on operations. The aeroplanes used to remind me of old, old rental car. If you got there you were lucky. The chance of getting there without a breakdown were pretty remote. And, and I had the diciest do ever in my life was at Westcott. And how I survived I’ll never know. But it is, it was a very dicey business Westcott. If you got out of Westcott there was a fair show you’d live. But most of New Zealanders must have gone through Westcott. Bomber Command. 11 OTU. And then I left that station with good marks, but boy was I ever lucky. I learned to listen. Never be first off in training. Never, never do that again. Never be first off. That’s because leave it for someone else to do the finding out. I took off and I wasn’t far up in the air before an aeroplane in the [pause] flew over the top of us and ruined all our radio equipment including the artificial horizon at night time. And then, and I couldn’t see the ‘drome. That was, we should never have taken off. So I had to do what I thought was a circuit. No artificial horizon. All that missing. Did a circuit and land only to find the runway was over there. So I do an overshoot. In those aeroplanes the 1C’s you didn’t do an overshoot in the middle of the day let alone at midnight. Green as the grass surviving then. So do another circuit. Just one. The runway’s over there. So I kept on doing these circuits. That’s right. I found out later on that they could hear me but I couldn’t hear them or the other way around. Something right. So they turned on lights to tell me where the front of the runway was. After all the lights all they did was lit up the air but I’ve forgotten the colour that I could see. And I, somehow or other made a landing. When I landed the official procedure was to ring up and say you’d landed. The whole damn ‘drome knew I’d landed but the RAF says you ring up and say you’ve landed. That’s what you did. So I picked up to ring up but my tongue wouldn’t work. My tongue wouldn’t work [laughs] and boy was I lucky to get down. But everybody else was sitting down there waiting for me to land. And that’s when I learned never be first off in future. Someone else had got to find out what the weather was like. But it wasn’t made any better by someone flying over the top of me ruining all my radio and [pause] and radio, and. I was lucky to get out of Westcott alive. After that I, they put me sent me off to fly Stirlings and Stirlings were very big and you were about twenty feet up in the air. And when you started to fly that you were never knew whether you were two feet above the ground or two feet under.
GT: So, so Bruce, was it at Westcott you formed up with your crew? Did you get crewed?
BC: At Westcott we signed up with five of them and subsequently we got the other two. But it was amazing you should mention that because how you got crewed up was a great way. It worked for some reason or other. It’s a thing that you wouldn’t want to do a second time. Like getting married. You’re just shoved into a room and something happened made you. And here you see I picked on a fellow who finished up boss or second boss of [unclear] of Great Britain. You could drop a bomb behind him and he wouldn’t shake. He was a wonderful fellow.
GT: Can you tell us their names please?
BC: Eh?
GT: Can you tell us their names?
BC: Yes. I could.
[pause]
GT: Bruce is opening his very well-worn diary. It’s an awesome piece of history.
BC: Incidentally, I drew that myself. I couldn’t do that now. The navigator was Bob Ramsay. The bomb aimer was Brailsford. Reg Brailsford. Radio operator Sergeant Stone. The rear gunner Sergeant Roberts and the mid-upper gunner Fred Brown. And then the engineer would have been [pause] But Roberts was a, he swore that we were shot down by another Lancaster. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was just reading before you came in here how I went over to Wales after I came back from the war and Taff was in the same pew in the church that we’d had sat in before I went missing. And then he and his family told me that he wouldn’t budge. Budge from that.
[Telephone ringing. Recording paused]
KP: The war —
GT: Ok.
KP: Again.
GT: Right. I’ve just had to turn that off. That was Bruce’s daughter just ringing on the phone.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, so, Bruce if, if we could —
BC: Go back to —
GT: If we could just go back to the point where —
BC: Fair enough.
GT: Now, you’ve just named your crew and I need to point out that Bruce has read all the names in his diary on pencil without glasses. So for a ninety six, ninety seven year old man that’s pretty awesome that you’re doing that without your, without any reading glasses. So, so Bruce, now you moved on to your Stirlings. Who else did you pick up for your Stirling crew? And where did you fly and learn to fly the Stirlings?
BC: I picked up the crew and joined up with the mid-upper gunner and the engineer, at [pause] I’ll tell, I’ll tell you later. It wasn’t the engineer that we were shot down with. That, our own engineer was injured.
GT: So you learned to fly the Stirling. What station were you at for that?
BC: I can’t remember. Stradishall was it?
GT: Stradishall. Could have done. Yeah. Ok.
BC: It’ll come to me.
GT: And that was, that was a Heavy Conversion Unit.
BC: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Do you remember the number of the HCU? 1685 maybe?
BC: I can get it if you want it.
GT: Alright. Yeah. Well, we can, we can add that in later on. That’s fair. So how long did you spend on Stirlings? And was it then you were sent to a Lancaster squadron was it?
BC: Yeah. When I was, they were going to, they were going to send us to 75 but then they changed their minds and sent us to 514 and we went on to Stirlings. Mark 2s. On to Mark 2 Lancasters. And they were a wonderful thing to change there. It reminded me of an old Vauxhall motor car. Mass produced but wonderful. And I was flying again, and I seemed to recall I went, the bloke said to me, ‘Well, you can go solo now.’ And I said, ‘I think I’d like one more circuit.’ And he said, ‘Ok,’ but even after that I think I was first off with all the [unclear] I took to those. They were good. They were very good indeed.
GT: So, you, you flew Lancaster Mark 2s. Did you ever fly a Merlin powered Lancaster?
BC: No. No. No. But when I got back to England after the war they were on Merlins. They built three hundred Hercules motored Mark 2 and it was the number three hundredth that we got out of.
GT: So, now how many sorties did you manage at 514? How long were you on 514?
BC: Oh, I was only there for a couple of months at that and I did about ten or a dozen at that. But I got about three weeks before the invasion we were sent over to France and Belgium and Holland to smash up all the railway yards and so forth.
GT: So, this was about May. June.
BC: Just before the invasion.
GT: 1944. Yeah.
BC: And that’s when I got caught.
GT: So what base were you at? What station were you at?
BC: Waterbeach.
GT: Waterbeach on 514.
BC: Yeah. Just out of Cambridge.
GT: Ok.
BC: Peacetime ‘drome and we [unclear].
GT: And, and you got to your twelfth or thirteenth operation.
BC: About ten or a dozen. I can’t remember. A couple of boomerangs. I can remember one boomerang. We got a half way across the North Sea. Sparks were coming out of the motor. And that’s not nice being up there in the middle of the night. You don’t know what to do or what’s going to happen. That was most annoying to have that. Another time we hadn’t been going long before we were sent in immediately after the Pathfinders which I thought was very good for a green crew. I was sat in the aeroplane, revving it up and a great big magneto drop. And I tried all I could do to clear that magneto run but I couldn’t do it. So I had to turn the motors off and I called up. You weren’t allowed to speak just before you took off because they knew you were, people were listening to you in Germany. Call up, ‘M-Mother, engineer,’ and out came a squadron leader, ‘Start the motors up. You pilots are all the same.’ So [laughs] so started the motors up and he started to run the motors up. And he ran and he ran and he ran and my engineer was telling him the cylinder head temperatures were way above what it should be. And he kept on trying to clear this magneto drop and at first couldn’t do it at all. He had to turn the motors off. But he never apologised. Nowadays, of course you’d, you’d get stuck in to him but in those days you couldn’t start to, telling a squadron leader what to do or you’d be on the outer for some time.
GT: So what rank were you at Waterbeach?
BC: I was a, I was a, when that happened I was probably a flight sergeant. And you didn’t, you didn’t tell the squadron leader because — especially an English one.
GT: So on the sorties you did they were all night operations.
BC: Every one. Yeah.
GT: Every one. And did you manage to engage any night fighters? Do any corkscrewing? That kind of stuff.
BC: No. No. No. We didn’t. On the night we were shot down we were just left the target and then something came through the mid-upper. The, the starboard inner. If I had trouble with the aeroplane it was always the starboard inner. Always. And the starboard inner ran a lot of the things all over the aeroplane. That’s where the source of power came from. And I can remember the tracer bullets coming through like that. Power over the ground. And when I became a prisoner of war the interrogator was trying to find out all sort of things from me. He said, ‘You were shot down by flak.’ Now, I wasn’t shot down by flak. I was shot down by something in the air. And Taffy reckoned it was another, another Lancaster but over the years I’ve seen all sorts of reasons why I was shot down. I was shot down by — somebody claimed me, flying a Focke Wulf. Another one claimed me, flying I think it was a 109. And somebody else claimed me. It was the old story. Someone was trying to jack up their shooting downs and they were all claiming me.
GT: Enemy kills. So, so you saw tracer coming through your aircraft.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Straight and level. Or —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Horizontal and level.
BC: Yeah. It come from the back. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. So could it have been machine guns or cannons?
BC: Yeah. It couldn’t have been anything from the ground.
GT: Ok. But the cannons were a lot larger mass —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Of incendiary coming through. Whereas the bullets, 303s in calibre are smaller.
BC: The poor, the poor rear gunner. He he he was one of three who got home. Managed to get home. And he went on operations again. First operation with a pilot called Gilchrist. Flight Sergeant Gilchrist. Blown to smithereens. And that —
KP: It’s ok [pause] It’s alright. Keep talking. Glen just went to answer the door.
BC: Who was that? Who was that? Yeah. He was blown to smithereens. Do you know what it was? Bombs from a Lancaster up above him. Poor old chap. He was coming out to live in New Zealand after the war. But he, he used to be a, well he was an orphan. And the week before, the Sunday before he was shot down I was over Wales. I went to this small church in Blaenau Ffestiniog. And I said to Taffy after the service, ‘Taffy, that preacher was talking about you and me in your lingo. What was he saying?’ He said. ‘Yeah, he was.’ Yeah.
GT: Bruce, can you describe the night you were shot down then? That was about your twelfth. On your twelfth operation thereabouts you were saying. So, how? And you described that you were shot down possibly by enemy aircraft. More than likely. So, so what happened then? Did the crew bale out? Run us through what happened.
BC: They, I — the thing was on fire and the fire was spreading. I asked the engineer to push the graviner switch in. I’m not sure what happened after that. I think he, he was a bit worried that after the war too he was in England. He was an Englishman. He went up to Lincoln and sat in the aircraft to try and recall had happened on the night. He was very worried about it. And I can remember a friend of mine connected with gliding in England and he wrote and said, “I see your name in the “Aeroplane” or “Flypast” or something in England. And this is what it said — ”. And I said, ‘Well, that’s wrong. That’s not true.’ My mid-upper gunner in Adelaide, he read it too. He said, ‘I’m not putting up with that.’ So he started looking for him in Adelaide. That took him a day. He found this bloke. He said, ‘You’d better retract that mate. It’s not good what you said in that.’ But then —
GT: So the graviner you mentioned there. The graviner switches.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: The graviners were the fire extinguishers. Is that right?
BC: I don’t know what happened about that. What he did about the graviner switches but on one trip we went to Karlsruhe. We went to the briefing and, you know sort of from memory the Met man waved his hand from Spain to Sweden and said, ‘There’s a cold front there. It’ll be gone when you get there.’ Of course the damn cold thing wasn’t gone at all. There was a cold front as soon as we got into France and we spent most of the time flying to Karlsruhe in, in, in ice and so forth. I see on that something happened a few minutes ago when there was no stuff on the wings to stop the icing. And we were flying in pitch black and then bang. What had happened is ice came off the propeller through the Perspex and laid the engineer out. He got up to have a look around and so help me another lot came through and hit him and he finished up in hospital. They thought he was going to lose his sight, but he didn’t lose his sight. He certainly wasn’t a POW either. He got out. We got another engineer who was a, who was a, whose pilot was in hospital. I think they shifted him from ‘drome to ‘drome and they came cropper on a motorbike and the pilot finished up in hospital. But then —
GT: So, when, when you gave the order to bale out once the aircraft was on fire.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Was that how it worked?
BC: How I got out I don’t know because I said to the engineer, put my parachute, ‘Get my parachute off the ground.’ It annoyed me. The RAF did something I didn’t like. They took pilot type parachutes off us. ‘Chutes that you sat on. And gave you an observer type which you put down on the floor behind the seat. Now, that’s not good enough. But I had to say to this engineer, ‘Get me my parachute.’ So, he gets the parachute and plops it down on my knee. I said, ‘That’s no good. Put it on hooks will you.’ I’ve got, all the trims for the aeroplane are gone. And you’re holding a Lancaster there with no trim. You’ve got a problem. Your feet hard down and you’re not holding the stick like, you’re holding the stick like, like — the minute you took your hand off the aeroplane started to turn over.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Now, I knew, I knew that blokes that were near me had got out but I wasn’t sure about the two at the back. And I spent some time sitting there ringing them up saying, ‘Are you there? Can you hear me?’ They never did answer. One of them afterwards, I said to him after the war. ‘You didn’t tell me you were going. I sat here for some time in a burning aeroplane while you didn’t tell me.’ ‘Oh yes I did.’ I didn’t, no you didn’t [laughs] But he, he got hit by the tail plane when he was getting out so he had that then. And of course then after after they’d all gone there was one hook on this parachute I had to put on myself and I couldn’t spare any hand. I had to put the thing on otherwise the parachute wouldn’t work. And of course the minute I get out of the seat the aeroplane started to roll over. Now, to get out I had to virtually dive underneath the dashboard. There’s a small hole which is not as, everybody acknowledged it wasn’t big enough. Now, to get through that hole and turn the aeroplane at 1 o’clock in the morning you’re pretty lucky to get out. I think it was a jolly good dive, never mind that.
GT: So you got out the hatch in the nose. In the floor of the aircraft.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when I got down a very stupid thought passed my mind and people can’t understand how it did but I didn’t understand it either and I was on the roof of this place, two storied roof looking up. At that stage we weren’t flying high. Five, six, seven or eight thousand feet only. And I could see the first flying home and I said to myself, ‘What the heck am I doing here when all those blokes are going home for eggs and bacon?’ And down the west coast of New Zealand they seem to enjoy that crack.
GT: Yeah. Did you lose many when you were on the squadron? Any. Many aircraft?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Had you lost quite a few as a squadron?
BC: No. All go on time.
GT: So, when, when you managed to get out of the aircraft how did you pull your parachute? You had a rip cord. A handle.
BC: A ripcord. Yeah.
GT: You managed to find —
BC: I can remember a friend of mine. I went all through the air force with him and then he got crewed up and then he went on his second dickie. You know what a second dickie is?
GT: I know but please tell people.
BC: He, he went with an experienced crew and the whole lot of them killed on the first trip. That, that was rather shaking. Ken Drummond from Lower Hutt. But then his crew crewed up with another Englishman who wanted his crew to salute him every day. And Ken, Ken’s navigator was a the fellow with some Maori blood in him and he took this pilot aside and sort of put him right. But they finished a tour. They were very lucky. They finished a tour. Yeah.
GT: Fascinating. Ok. So you managed to get your parachute open. And did you manage to steer yourself anywhere? Could you see where you were going to land?
BC: No.
GT: Or was it just pot luck that you ended up on top of a house?
BC: It was completely black. So I suppose you couldn’t see where you were landing that was probably a good thing. But I sat on the top of this roof. It was a small building with a very, very steep roof and the parachute was caught over a chimney otherwise I might have slid off the roof. And I heard a story after, after the war that I wouldn’t be, I refused to come down off the roof. Where they got that story I’m daft if I know that. But what would I want to refuse for? But finally they got me down me down through a trap door in the roof. Two stories up. And so help me there was a, oh must have been at least a dozen or eighteen young Germans and one rope. I used my French for the first time in my life. The only time I ever used my French. I wanted to find out had the aeroplane landed on houses or in the fields. I can remember that much French. I found out the aeroplane had landed in fields. That’s how I knew that I hadn’t killed anybody.
GT: So, where, where did you crash and land please?
BC: Where did I crash? I landed at a place called Rixensart at about sou’ southeast of Brussels. I always thought it was a pub I’d landed on. And I thought it was quite strange that I should land on a pub and be a teetotaller [laughs] Yeah. But it wasn’t a pub. It was a café. And I went back in 1996 to collect my beer. But only to find out the place is now a bank and the Brussels newspaper thought that was highly funny. That I came back to collect and I couldn’t [laughs]
GT: So, the Germans immediately took you as a prisoner of war.
BC: Yeah.
GT: What happened then?
BC: I became a prisoner of war and I was — the next thing I went to Frankfurt for interrogation. And I was there for several days. I don’t know. It might have been a week. And they questioned you on — they were able to tell me more about my squadron than I ever knew myself. I learned a lot from that bloke. And he surprised. He threw, he threw across the table a photograph of a Mosquito aeroplane and he said, ‘See that aeroplane?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I flew that yesterday.’ And I said, ‘Yeah?’ ‘Yeah. What a wonderful aeroplane,’ he said, ‘Pity you can’t make more of them.’ I must have said, ‘Can’t we make more of them?’ He said, ‘No. They’re made of wood.’ And then I suppose he was a, he might have been a pilot who was resting or something and that’s they were giving him a job while he was resting. But I can remember seeing marks on the wall that people had made in there with thumbnail and fingernail. And that was the number of days they’d spent there before they got out. I can remember being on the Frankfurt Railway Station. There was a German corporal looking after about a half a dozen of us. And while we were on the station there was an air raid. And of course everybody in Frankfurt decided they’d get in to the railway station to be safe. And of course the crowd got bigger and bigger and it got more closer and closer to us. And this poor little German corporal he was dead scared that the public might tear us apart and he’d be responsible. I can remember him flapping good and hard at that. He might have been in trouble but then after we left there we were put in these sort of cattle trucks and then began the long, long trip across. Across Germany to, to Sagan. Which now is back in Polish hands. But, but it was a long, long trip and it was terrible. Terrible. I suppose we were lucky.
GT: You, you were interviewed by the Luftwaffe or by the Nazis? Or Gestapo.
BC: The Luftwaffe. Yeah.
GT: You think that was a lucky —
BC: When, when I — on my first trip the squadron said to me, the squadron commander said, ‘We’re going to Berlin tonight. If you don’t want to go just say so. No questions will be asked if you say no, that you don’t want to go.’ But that. Who? Who would want to, not want to go he said. Off we go to Berlin. And I can remember the next morning on the newspapers in England. Big headline, “RAF fools German defences.” The RAF didn’t know where it was that night. They sent out winds which were wrong. Someone going towards Berlin had to change and they, they didn’t fully accept the changes. They made some sort of amendment. And everybody of course got lost. And they went over Berlin. And then if you read in the book, “The Great Escape,” you’ll find they, they held up escaping because there was a raid on Berlin. That was my first trip. The worst Berlin trip during the whole of the war. Seventy three aeroplanes missing. So we all come back and we came back, slap bang in to the Ruhr and one of my crew said, ‘There’s more searchlights here than Berlin.’ Navigator said, ‘Oh, there’s darkness in between a couple of them.’ I said, ‘Mr Navigator, we’re flying, changing course. We’re flying due north.’ I flew due north whatever it was. And then turned west. We find out the next day some came out south of the Ruhr. And they didn’t know where they were that night. The winds got them all mucked up that was the last big trip they did on Berlin. They didn’t do any more. They couldn’t afford to lose, lose men like that. Seven in each aeroplane and seventy three aeroplanes missing. Although subsequently and I’ll always remember standing on the railway station at Waterbeach and, and I didn’t know at the time but that night they, they went to Nuremberg. And they lost ninety three in the air. That was the biggest loss of the war. I went on leave that morning otherwise I might have been there.
GT: So that would have been July 1944.
BC: That was at — no. That was before May. I went missing on the 11th of May. That was before then.
GT: Right. And the targets that you flew for what were they? Was it cities? Oil refineries?
BC: No. They were mostly cities. At Cologne and then Berlin. Karlsruhe. Just before the invasion there were, there were two or three or four stockyards. Messing up a stockyard. After we were shot down they were doing daylight raids. They were, they were mighty costly too. Very costly. But I don’t know, at night time you just flew an aeroplane. You didn’t know what was around you. You couldn’t see. You might find, shake a bit and that was someone flying across your nose. You could have hit him. You wouldn’t know. In the daytime you must have been very frightened seeing people get trapped. Night time you couldn’t care because you didn’t know. But there must have been quite a few accidents in the air. People hitting each other. So.
GT: What was your standard bomb loads? Did you have incendiaries or the high explosive. Five hundred pounders? Cookies? What was your standard bomb load you took?
BC: My first trip was an eight thousand pounder. Fancy sending a green man like me with an eight thousand pounder. I took an eight thousand pounder at another aerodrome too. Used to take off with about six tons. And people say that Bomber Command didn’t do much of a job during the war but you try following six hundred people over a city. Each aeroplane’s got six tons. That’s three thousand tons of bombs on a flight. That must make some difference eh? Night after night. On my second dickie trip and that, that’s what’s on there. Always reminded me. That photo there that’s what Stuttgart looked like. It was more of a second dickie trip. They decided to go to Stuttgart and the previous losses was three aeroplanes so everybody decided it was about time they did an operation. The last time was only three. That night it was thirty two. And that was like daylight that night and that always reminds me of it.
GT: Now, your dickie trips. Did you get to know the captain and the crew very well or were you just told to stand there, shut up and don’t touch anything?
BC: Oh, the second dickie. Funny you should mention that. I’m looking around. Before we took off I’m looking around the aeroplane. Doing a sort of inspection. Casual inspection. And I see the rear gunner with an empty bottle of beer. I said, ‘What the hell is going on here mate?’ He said, ‘Oh for Lords sake don’t tell the captain.’ He said, ‘We drop one over the target.’ He said, ‘They make a terrible noise when they’re going through the air.’ But that, there’s a photo over there there’s one, there’s a book called Strike and, Strike and Sure, something like that.
GT: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll have a look at that later on.
BC: At the end. Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Now that fella’s grandfather was a rear gunner on that aeroplane which I flew.
GT: Ok.
BC: That —
GT: Yeah.
BC: That fellow who wrote that book on 514 Squadron. His grandfather was killed on an aeroplane. That one over there. Yeah.
GT: What was the side code numbers of your aircraft? Do you remember the numbers of your aircraft?
BC: Yeah. I’ve got them wrote out. JI something. 819 was one of them. And that. But I always had trouble with that, with the starboard inner. I mean one aeroplane we came home with had [pause] I was very fortunate when I got home. I was green, you know, a young pilot. Always was, the big shots won’t like my coming home early. I used to say, ‘If you’re only over the North Sea and you’ve got trouble go back home and you’ll come back tomorrow night. But if you go ahead you know you could kill yourself.’ But we got quite worried about sometimes about boomerang. But in that particular case, the flight commander’s aeroplane and they had to take the motor out. Yeah. Yeah. That pleased me [laughs]
GT: Just showed that —
BC: Yeah.
GT: Going back was the best option in this case. Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Definitely. So once you were a POW how, what happened then? You ended up in Sagan. Did you have a POW number assigned?
BC: Yeah. 5150 — my POW. I remember that number. When you got to the POW camp of course you had to be checked over. You might have been a ring-in. And that happened occasionally. Yeah. That’s true. I didn’t, I don’t think that happened in our camp but that did happen. And —
GT: So you’re meaning that there was a Nazi infiltrator. That they planted people in.
BC: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. Wow. And they called them ring-ins.
BC: Eh?
GT: Did they call them ring-ins?
BC: No. I called them that. I was able to tell them about a bloke there who was on the squadron before. Before I got shot down. He was able to confirm that I was quite legitimate. But, but in that POW camp of course you, you had guards inside the camp and out and, and bringing their beautiful Alsatian dogs. But the goons were interesting people. The guards would come into the camp. I remember a fella coming into camp once and he’d lost his ticket to get out. Word went around, ‘If you’ve got his ticket will you bring it to the gate so he can get out’ [laughs]. Everybody had to take, wait a damned long time before they handed that in [laughs] That’s that. That’s oh, that, yeah up to all sorts of mischief when you were a POW. They were underneath you. Underneath the floor checking up on you and crawling out on the [unclear] and they call you out to check where the radios were. We had, they had one fella who was going to, he was in our room actually. I don’t know where he was going to escape from but he was going to. He had an escape all jacked up. But I think it was called off in the finish because of some reason or other. But he was going to go down the road and steal an aeroplane. Yeah. There was, next, next door to the prisoner of war camp there was a big paddock. I’m not sure whether they used that for sport or not but I do recall a very small Welsh pilot who was a, he was a lawyer. And he went into this paddock and picked up a shovel and and a handful of wood and an old hat and decided walk out. Unfortunately [laughs] unfortunately they got him before he got very far. And I’ll never forget watching Wing Commander Tuck. As they were walking this bloke out he was dropping all the escape gear on the ground and Wing Commander Tuck was picking it up [laughs] Yeah.
GT: So Bruce, you were mentioning a Wing Commander Tuck. So, as we were talking earlier you had some very famous aircrew with you in Sagan. So, can you tell us a little about the people that were with you? And in this case Wing Commander Stanford Tuck.
BC: Wing Commander Tuck. He was a prisoner of war there and he, he — we were in a section called Tuck’s Mansions which were infected with those what do you call them? Bedbugs. And you go to bed at night, wake up in the mornings and your back was all bloody. And they tried many times to get rid of these roaches but they were, they had long lives these roaches. Yeah. There was one fellow in there they reckon at one stage he he flew an aeroplane up the streets of Berlin. I don’t know whether it was up the streets or not but I’ve a feeling he was pretty low. He was a, he was a [pause] At the prisoner of war camp I had a good record for bowling and cricket and then I quite often tell people that I had a very good record for bowling and cricket. They said, ‘Oh yeah. You must have been amongst the Sunday afternoon players.’ And I said I don’t think the Captain of Western Australia would like to be called that [laughs] The blokes from the West Indies. They wouldn’t like to be called that. We had, in my room we had a book. A line book. If you shot a line it got, it got put into the line book. Tuck was in the room one day and he made the comment, ‘All my flight commanders have become group captains and so forth since I was shot down,’ into the line book. And another squadron leader was shooting the line that he said, ‘So I pulled up, I pulled up over the hill and the flak was so and so thick you could have walked on it.’ That’s that.
GT: So Stanford Tuck was stuck down in Europe.
BC: I think he was. Yeah.
GT: Ok. And he ended up in your, in the same POW camp was it? Did he become the POW senior commander or was that someone else?
BC: No. There was a group captain there with a, a little fella with a big moustache. A groupie. And he was, he was, he was the commander. There were, there were lots of wingcos in there. It was a camp, a compound that was started off they got the ringleaders of the escape and shot them to [unclear] . That was the focus of the [unclear] compound. After that it was prisoners from recent trips and of course they were Nuremberg and Leipzig and Berlin. They were pretty heavy losses so the, you know blokes who were prisoners of war quite often didn’t have very many operations. It wasn’t their fault. I can remember one night around about 12 o’clock at night the word came out we were going to be shifted out of the camp. So, we had to, we had to move out. And that was the worst winter in Germany for eighty years. Snow outside. Marching. We marched in the snow. And then it wasn’t very pleasant at all. At the — I can remember one, one stop at, my friend I was with, a boy from Eton he could speak any old language at all. He talked to some people who lived in Germany and we got a damned good meal. I’ll always remember. Kept going back to the great big room where we were housed. It was dark and we had to crawl across all these bodies to get to where we should have been and put our knees in people’s noses, and all sorts. Frightening thought. But then we, we got out. Finally got up to a place called [pause] sou’ southwest of Berlin. A very big camp and they shifted us out of [unclear] or Sagan because they didn’t, they didn’t want the Russians to get us. Otherwise there might be, might be thousands of aircrew available to, you know, send back to England to fly again. So they didn’t want the Russians to get us. So that’s why they marched us away. But they couldn’t stop. Once we got to up south of Berlin. Couldn’t stop it. The Russians came. And they became our captors. And the Yankie, the Yanks used to send up trucks every day to cart us away. The Russians wouldn’t let them go. Wouldn’t let them go away. So they wanted, they said, ‘We’ll take the wounded and sick away.’ The Russians wouldn’t allow that either. So, I don’t know what the Russians had in mind at all but they wouldn’t let, they wouldn’t let the Yanks take us away. It was at that stage that I said to Guy one day, ‘I’ve had this place. I’m getting out of it.’ That’s when it all started again. But we got caught. Yeah. I always remember finally we got to the, we got a correspondent in a jeep picked us up. Guy and I. After we escaped.
GT: I’m sorry. Guy who?
BC: Guy Pease. And he picked, the correspondent picked us up in a jeep and he took us west to a, to a, to some trucks manned by negro drivers who then decided to take us west. And we got to the old brew hut only to find the bridge was manned by Russians who said, ‘Take them back, boy. You’re not crossing here.’ So these negro drivers said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.’ So they turned around to go further north to find another bridge — manned by Russians. Finally get a bridge that was manned by Yanks and we got across. And I’ll always remember those front line American troops putting chewing gum and toothbrushes in to my, our pocket. And you know for years later I wouldn’t have a word said against the Americans at all. Front line troops doing that. That’s that. Yes.
GT: Many of those Americans had liberated many of those camps and must have seen some awful sights so obviously they had great compassion for you and their own boys too. They had a lot of people in POW camps themselves didn’t they? The Americans.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, they, they managed to get you across into allied lines. How did you get back to England? And when was that?
BC: That was in [pause] that must have been in May. And we were flown back from Brussels. I got flown back in a Dakota. But my rear, my mid-upper gunner he was a flight sergeant from another camp. He got to Brussels before me apparently and he, so help me got flown back by a 514 pilot. 514 aeroplane. Yeah. That’s that.
GT: So, we must, must go back then and ask you about your crew. So all your crew managed to bale out. That’s seven members.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Did they all survive the war and were they made POW or did they evade?
BC: Three of them. Three of them got back to England. The bomb aimer, the rear gunner and a radio operator. Apparently the radio operator got caught. He was two or three feet away from being caught, and he doesn’t know how he got away with it but he got home. Another two they were on the loose for six weeks before they got turned in by infiltrators. There was a group who helped prisoners of war get back but that group got infiltrated by somebody and he turned the whole damned lot in. And I think he left, he left that, what — he left somewhere but he came back. He came back and he worked in a pub in Paris. And some Yank spotted him and I think finally they got him and killed him in a chuck run. I’ve got a note of it somewhere. His name. He had several aliases. But that, but that was a bit frightening anyway to be turned in. And my navigator the Gestapo got him at night time. Very difficult if you’re — you know kids can give the giveaway you know. Get to school at that, ‘Oh we’ve got a man at home,’ and so forth. It could have been worse I suppose. When I was in Frankfurt the Germans made a comment that there are so many people on the roofs in the air force that so many people on the roofs they weren’t able to stop the population taking a, you know a pitchfork to people who landed. I suppose that happened occasionally. But in the, in the front of this book here I’ve got a note of the, the service when that, all those people were killed. Do you remember that Great Escape? Hitler said they were all to be shot. Somehow or other somebody else said half of them will be shot. At the service, I’ve got a note of the service there. Incidentally, a few years later, a few years ago I read some of that to the Girls Guides at the RSA laying of poppies at Karori. I read some of that. I don’t know. I don’t know what year it was but I’ve got a note of it here.
GT: Did you, did you know any of those prisoners of war that escaped and then were shot?
BC: No. No.
GT: You didn’t. Right.
BC: No. I didn’t know.
GT: So, when you managed to get back to England then when you flew back to England where did you land and what did they do? Did they —
BC: I can’t remember where we landed.
GT: Did they medically check you and then —
BC: I think they did. Yeah. We weren’t very, we weren’t in very good health but on the boat coming back it was a big boat. We, I think we won the tug of war on the boat and it always amazed me how underfed people like us could beat the rest of them. We didn’t cheat [laughs]
GT: And that was only a few months after the war finished. You managed to get a boat back to New Zealand.
BC: That’s right. Yeah. 1980 went to the Girl Guides. 1980.
GT: Wow. Yeah.
BC: Forty years ago.
GT: Goodness me.
BC: But you’d be very interested to read some of the comments from that.
GT: Thank you. I will do. Yeah. So, from, from that time when did you arrive back to New Zealand? Was it mid 1945? Something like that?
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. And the —
BC: On the way back I think the Japanese tossed it in. I was on the boat when they tossed it in, I think.
GT: Ok. You were very lucky then.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Did you stay in the New Zealand Air Force or did you keep flying?
BC: No. I I got out. They asked me in Brussels why I didn’t stay in the air force and I made a comment and after I made it I was very frightened it would get back to my friends in the New Zealand. They said, ‘Why didn’t you stay in the air force?’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to be a taxi driver all my life.’ If that gets back to my friend in New Zealand. Of course I had a lot to do in aviation after the war.
GT: So then please tell us about that because once you arrived back did you take up a new trade? Did you carry on flying? What? Please tell us what you did there Bruce.
BC: When I came home from the war I [laughs] When I came home from the war I went to the powers that be and I said, ‘I want a bursary to go to university.’ They said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Commerce.’ They said, ‘There’s no bursaries for Commerce.’ It was in the rehab, opposite, upstairs opposite [unclear] and they said there’s no. I said, ‘I’m not interested in what you say. I want a bursary to go back. The war has ruined my life. I went back to school and I didn’t go back for nothing. I want a bursary.’ They said, ‘You’re not having it.’ I said, ‘I think you might be wrong mate,’ and I said, ‘Who’s above you in this joint?’ And I can remember saying, the fella said to me, ‘The lecture’s at night. What would you do in the daytime? Go around Oriental Bay?’ And I said to him, ‘You say that again and see what happens then.’ I pestered. In the finish the pushed me out. They said, ‘You’ve got a bursary for one year only.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much.’ I forgot who it was who helped me get that. A bloke. Turner I think. I’ve forgotten who. In the end I went back and I said, ‘Now, I want a bursary to go to university next year.’ They said, ‘You’ve had one for a year. You were told for one year only. You’re not having another one.’ I said, ‘Who’s above you in this joint?’ So [laughs] so, finally I enrolled at the university and I went down. By this stage I’d have got to top man in New Zealand. A fellow called Colonel Barrington. A little fellow. And thank goodness for him. He was the top man. We started [laughs] we were swearing at each other. And then, and then I said, ‘I want a bursary. I’m not clever but I’m pig headed enough to want to get somewhere.’ And then finally he said to me, ‘Ring me back at 4 o’clock. What are you doing now?’ I said, ‘I’m up, my books are on the table in the library right now. Up at the university.’ ‘Ring me at 4 o’clock.’ So he gave me a bursary for a second year. And, and I found out that’s not the way to study. It’s not the way to study. Doing a three year course in two years is no way to. It’s wrong. Fundamentally wrong. It’s very wrong. You shouldn’t do that. But I finally got my accounting work from somebody. Then went on my own. And I spent a lot of my time on aviation. I was at the aero club and I was at the aero club for, I don’t know, sixteen years. And then and then the Royal New Zealand I was up for the whole of New Zealand. And then gliding for forty five years. New Zealand Secretary of Gliding for forty five years and I’d the only aerial topdressing company in Wellington. I was the secretary of that. I used to go up to Martinborough, every month for a director’s meeting with that John Rutherford whose family owned the dominion. John with his great big moustache, his Benz car. When you closed the door you thought you were closing a strongroom door.
GT: Wow. So, so for gliding became your passion in the end. Forty. Forty five years.
BC: Captain of the secretaries. Yeah. I had another secretaryship. Sixty years. My daughter said to me one night, ‘Come into town. We’re going to have a meal.’ That happened quite often. But they put one across me. When I got into this, this restaurant I knew everybody there. It was a party for me. To give me a New Zealand life membership of the painters. The only one ever given to a bloke who’s not been on the New Zealand Executive. I got life membership with the painters after sixty years secretaryship. That’s a long time.
GT: So you were a painter and paper hanger. Or —
BC: No. I was the secretary of it.
GT: Just became the secretary of it.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Wow. Without even being in the industries per se.
BC: That’s right. I was a, I was secretary of Wellington for six years. I was a life member of Wellington and I’m a life member of the New Zealand too. In fact when I got that life membership that was my eighth. I’ve got eight of them.
GT: Fabulous.
BC: I had about forty years in the motion picture industry too. I was the auditor of the motion pictures, the cinemas for New Zealand. And then I became a secretary. And I was the secretary of the — and I used to run all the conferences up at Rotorua and Hamilton.
GT: So, this is a direct result of you pushing to get your bursaries and you did a degree in Commerce.
BC: Yeah.
GT: This is a direct result of all of that.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: I got a, I got a BComm and then I got my accountancy and then they decided that the Institute of Secretaries, there was a, I thought I might as well become, get my secretarial exam too. And they said if you sit this exam and pass it by the New Zealand you are automatically become a chartered secretary of England. So, we sat this, we sat this exam for, for the secretarial and I remember sitting in a church hall in town. I sat this exam and got it all done in about nine hours flat. Three three hours papers. Everybody, everyone was there to get in the back door. And I got home and I found out that one question I got all the, I made the list correct but I put the wrong heading on it and I thought oh, I had to finish that. But they gave me that and now I’m with the Chartered Institute of Secretaries too.
GT: What a fabulous thing. So, now tell me please about your family. You married and had children and when?
BC: Yeah. Well, when I went back to school in, in the class of a family called Derwent and I finished up by marrying her. She was a wonderful chorist. When I went back as a pupil when I was nineteen. And she was, her mother and father were, they were headmaster and headmistress of a Maori school in Turangi and it was pretty amazing rather. He was born in Scotland. A white man buried as a Maori chief. And when they buried him out came the cloak with the kiwi feather. Reserved for Maori chiefs.
GT: The rangatiras.
BC: They were around the Ataahua. All her family were, too [unclear] out. she was, she was white but a great honour for a white man to be buried as a Maori chief.
GT: So you met her before the war and when you came back you married.
BC: I married. Yeah. When I got back I married. I was twenty nine when I got married and I’ve got a wife and three children. That’s my wife there.
GT: She’s got a nurses uniform there.
BC: When I married her she was a theatre sister at Wellington Hospital. Blood and guts.
GT: Fair enough too. And then you lived here in Wellington.
BC: Yeah. I’ve always been in Wellington. Yeah. Ever since the war I’ve been in Wellington. I’ve got a daughter in Wellington. A son in Wainuiomata and a son in England.
GT: So how many grandchildren have you now?
BC: I’ve got two.
GT: Two grandchildren.
BC: Two boys. My daughter’s got two boys and my son in England has got two girls. And that’s my grandson on the right there. He put in for a job in Wellington in New Zealand. Eight hundred put in for it but he got it last year. Three days after he got it he told me he didn’t want it. That, that crowd in Melbourne sent for him and he’s over there. He’s not been long there before he got, he’s got promotion already and the woman in England with that firm wants him in England, and I hear two days ago the boss in Jakarta wants him. He’s, I don’t know, he’s something. I don’t think he’ll finish up in that firm. I think he’ll finish up like John Key making his money out of money which is not good. He just, that’s his father in the centre. He’s a lawyer in Wellington. And his, his father was an All Black. That there.
GT: Really?
BC: Incidentally, do you know what that thing on the left is?
GT: I’m looking at a shield type plaque and it is [pause] it’s the Caterpillar Club.
BC: You wouldn’t credit my name’s on the back of that would you?
GT: Now, Bruce is showing me his Caterpillar Club pin and it is, his name is engraved on the back of it and he’s kept it in a ring, in a ring holder so, and it’s on a small very delicate chain. So it’s a very prestigious thing to be wearing and still have your Caterpillar Club pin. Has it got one eye or two?
BC: One.
GT: It’s got one eye. Yeah.
BC: That’s enough.
GT: Yeah.
BC: What was that?
GT: Yeah. It’s got, yeah it’s got two eyes. Two little red ruby eyes.
BC: I used to think the coloured, two different coloured eyes but that, I believe that’s not true.
GT: Yours has both red. I can see that.
BC: They used to say the, the green eyed one was if you were shot down over the sea but I believe that’s not true. Yeah.
GT: I’ll find out for you, Bruce. I don’t know about that. So, so now, I’m sorry in chatting with you earlier you mentioned your wife had had a stroke and died. And how long ago was that, Bruce? When was that? Your wife died of a stroke. Was that correct?
BC: No. She had a stroke. But she had that. When I brought her home from England they sent her up to Taihape Hospital and she was there for thirteen years. I used to see her every day. Get her out on a Friday. Take her back. But that got too much for me. I used to, she insisted I do her washing. I used to do her washing every day and then do my shopping. And then I’d, it was always late at night. Then a few years ago, three years ago I was working full time. Still working ‘til midnight every night and enjoying it.
GT: At ninety. In your early nineties you were still working.
BC: Most. Yeah. Ninety four. Most of my life I didn’t have a doctor. I went for an insurance policy once and they said to me, ‘What’s your doctor’s name? We want to check up with your doctor?’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a doctor.’ ‘What’s his telephone number?’ I said, ‘Didn’t you hear me? I can’t give you a telephone number because I haven’t got a doctor.’ So, finally I gave them the name of Bill Treadwell. That was a doctor at Wadestown. Used to be a rugby doctor. So when I went down there to be tested a woman tested me. A woman doctor. I spent most of my life without a doctor but I’m very fortunate.
GT: And you’re looking very healthy. Bruce, you also mentioned that you’ve been a very long-time member of the RSA.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And, and that includes Rose and Poppy days. Please tell me about that.
BC: Yes. All together I did a hundred collections for that. They used to have a Poppy, a Rose day which was in, on Armistice Day in November. That stopped in the early 80s but I did, between sixty four and thirty six, that made a hundred. A hundred poppies.
GT: You did thirty four Rose Days and sixty six Poppy Days.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. I did.
GT: Because in England right now, England right now many service people are collecting for poppies and donations.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: I have many friends that post saying they’re doing that.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And you were also the treasurer for the RSA.
BC: I was treasurer for the RSA. Yeah. Before that. That was twenty two years. And my wife was twenty eight. That made a century. That’s a good way to have it.
GT: That’s a good way to have it.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Now, you also mentioned to me a story about someone come up to you while you were collecting.
BC: Oh yes. He said the money doesn’t go to the RSA.
GT: But the gentleman said to you the money doesn’t go to the RSA. So, he was trying to have a go at you.
BC: Right.
GT: And what was your reply?
BC: My reply was that you picked on the wrong one. Of all the collections in Wellington you picked on the wrong one. I’m the treasurer [laughs]
GT: ‘And I know where that money goes,’ you said. Right.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. and in New Zealand the value of the returned serviceman’s association in New Zealand is all about what? What does the RSA do here in New Zealand?
BC: Looking after ex-servicemen and their families. That couldn’t be much more important because after all those blokes that not only did they lose their lives but their families lives were all mucked up too. And, you know I think in Europe there must have been over fifty million people killed. And there would be another fifty million were affected. Growing up without their father or mother or brother. And the same number in the east. And, and now we have a fellow sitting up there going to drop a bomb on it. Up in North Korea. I don’t know.
GT: Yeah. Pretty, pretty strife. Now, you also mentioned you knew Phil Lamason. Can you tell me about knowing Phil Lamason because he was another famous Lancaster pilot.
BC: Yeah. Well, he was, he rolled up in the prisoner of war camp after being in, he’d got out of Buchenwald and he [pause] I think he should if ever a man should have had an award it was him. He found out that they intended doing them all in the next day. He unfortunately got caught just before the invasion and, and he was shifted in to Fresnes Jail. And the Germans decided that all those in Fresnes Jail should be sent to Buchenwald. And that’s how he got there by mistake. But when they said that when he told us that he was air force they I think they struck him. And he used to be a prize fighter himself once. In fact in the book, the book about one of those spies he’s referred to as Lamason with a, with a pugnacious nose. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Because Phil Lamason he, he was featured in some news articles several years ago but sadly he’s since died so it was of interest to hear you mention his name.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Just recently so. And although you say you’ve been in very good health have you suffered a stroke recently yourself?
BC: No. In 1994 I was very fortunate. I’d just had breakfast and my daughter came around to my home and I said, ‘My breathing’s not working too well.’ She said, ‘I’d better take you to the doctor.’ So we went to the doctor and I finished up by being sent in to Kenepuru for about I don’t know must have been about ten or eleven weeks. But I wasn’t there very long before I was ready to run up and down the corridor. I was shown how to fix the strap. I was ready to run. And then I had a late [unclear] stroke in there. It cost me about eleven weeks at Kenepuru. I’m lucky to be here. Very very fortunate. Most amazing how that happened. Got in here so quickly. And I know somebody in St Giles, in St John’s Church they enquired about coming here and they were told eighteen months. So I was very fortunate.
GT: Certainly very fortunate because in 1996 you went back to Belgium. So, please tell us a little about your trip back to Belgium to meet the people that were in the village where you landed that night.
BC: I did. I can’t recall. All I can recall when I landed was that all these young Germans. It was 1 o’clock in the morning. That’s all I can remember at, in that place. They, they pitched. I had, for some reason or other I had my pilot’s badge was stuck on with a safety pin. Why I don’t know. But that was stolen. And then —
GT: Your pilot’s brevet you’re talking —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Your wings.
BC: Yeah. That was stolen.
GT: And what about your parachute? Where did you parachute end up?
BC: I don’t know where my parachute ended but that one I got I think was my radio, I think it was my radio operator’s. The silk in it you see was what they wanted for her wedding dress. And —
GT: So there was a woman in the village that used the parachute for her wedding dress.
BC: She gave it. I lifted her a foot off the ground when she gave it to me.
GT: So you went back in 1996.
BC: ’96.
GT: And there’s a lovely photogaph in the Belgian paper articles you’ve shown us.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And she is showing you her gown made from the parachute —
BC: That’s right. Yeah.
GT: Of your wireless operator’s.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: And you have a piece of that leftover, of that parachute here in your possession now.
BC: That’s correct. Yeah.
GT: So you still have that. That’s fabulous. So, you were treated, treated very well when you went there. Was that right? You were treated very well, Bruce.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. When I went, when I went in I went over to London for the — incidentally at the you know in London there were about twelve members of the royal family there. Most amazing. And when the English government wouldn’t give a cent towards it. Twelve of the royal family there.
GT: Yeah. Bruce this is the next and the last thing we’re going to talk to you about. And I’d like you to check and tell us that how you managed to get to England in 2012 for the Bomber Command Memorial of London’s opening. Which I was there too and I remember you there now. Please tell us how you got there and, and what happened.
BC: Well, it started off by a client of mine, I’ve still got him as a client, a few days prior said, ‘Are you going to London?’ And I said, ‘What for?’ He said, ‘The Memorial.’ I said, ‘What’s that all about?’ He told me about it so I decided to apply but unfortunately I made my application the day before they closed and they, the bloke said, ‘I’ll give you a — I’ll give you a week to get it in.’ So, finally I got it in and and and they were pretty strict with the medicals. They didn’t want anything to happen to you while you were — and one poor fella he passed all that and when he got up to Auckland just before his take-off there was another little medical. He got chucked. He got chucked altogether. And at that stage I was sitting on a stool. A three pronged stool. And I had to take, I had to take that with me. Now, at Kuala Lumpur I’m sitting on that stool talking to a doctor and then, and I — what was I talking about? I think I said, ‘We’re all in this life for some reason or other.’ The next thing I’m on the floor and they thought I’d thrown a heart attack. And I got up. I said, ‘Don’t worry about me. Have a look to see if the floor’s damaged,’ [laughs] And you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t credit it. That thing had three prongs on it and it cracked right across there. You wouldn’t believe it. How it came to crack. And my Kiwi rep said to me later on in the night, ‘I found you one of those seats.’ I said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ She said, They’re for sale in the front of this beautiful big hotel.’ I said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ So, that night we went and had a look. And they had this little shop. Only about half the size of this room. They had two of them so I bought the two of them and, but how it came to break I never. It’s unbelievable how it broke.
GT: So you nearly didn’t make it. So, so a slight bit of background for the folks listening, listening to us is that the New Zealand Bomber Command Association in 2011 got a team together to look to getting as many veterans and their families to England as possible.
BC: Yeah.
GT: For the 2012.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: And in the turn of events the New Zealand government took it off of the Bomber Command people and they organised a 757 of the Royal New Zealand Air Force and their crew. The Chief of the Air Force, Mr Peter Stockwell went as well. And there was thirty three of you chaps selected and each of you were assigned a New Zealand Veteran’s Affairs and a New Zealand Army medical staff person.
BC: Yeah. That’s right.
GT: So they looked after you to get over there. So you flew from New Zealand to England via the Middle East and on the 757 and you stayed in England for about a week or ten days. You were very well looked after. They gave you the best of hotels and you also joined in with us of the 75 Squadron Association’s New Zealand and UK.
BC: That’s right.
GT: And we had a grand day at Mepal and dinner. And also Newmarket and, and at Feltwell. So, can, can you please tell everybody because you were sitting up front next to her majesty and Prince Charles. And did you get to meet them?
BC: No I didn’t. I didn’t feel too well at that and I was sitting a bit away from the front otherwise I would have met them. I did enjoy my night at the Guildhall. And that was my, my son’s mother in law said to me, ‘The Guildhall. Not many people get into the Guildhall,’ and I said, ‘No.’ And I spent a long time speaking to the treasurer of the whole place. Yeah. I found out he was the treasurer.
GT: And you would have gone to the RAF Club as well. Did you go up in to the RAF Club?
BC: No. No.
GT: Across the road.
BC: I can, I remember the Guildhall very well. That was a great night there. When I came home they had a service at the National War Memorial for those who couldn’t go. But the odd one or two blokes who went to London did go and at the last minute I got turned up for an interview. And that, occasionally I read it on the internet and it’s —
GT: So, what did you think of the Memorial, Bruce?
BC: Oh wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah. I’ve always, the night before we went to, the day before we went to the Memorial we were driven around and we had a look also at the Memorial that was for Sir, was it Keith Park?
KP: Yeah.
BC: And I was very disappointed at that. Yeah. They didn’t give him a fair go did they? They just didn’t give him a fair go. And I thought that, I thought there’d be a big Memorial for him. You know, you go around London there’s blokes sitting on horses with spears up in the air and yet this very small thing was for Keith Park who did a wonderful job at the start of the war.
GT: He was the saviour of the Battle of Britain, wasn’t he?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, so the statue of the seven airmen. Did they represent you guys do you think? Was their images awesome or —
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did. I did that. I’m very impressed with that.
GT: Did you see you up there? Because they’d got the pilot standing up front.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Represent you alright?
BC: It cost about six or seven million. I don’t, I don’t know what it costs them every year to run. Do you know?
GT: There is an upkeep. The Benevolent Fund has the upkeep for that memorial and the 75 Squadron Association —
BC: Not far from Buckingham Palace.
GT: That’s correct.
BC: Yeah.
GT: It’s through the park. Yeah. Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So Bruce what, our interview with you today has been for the digital archives at the International Bomber Command Centre.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And they’re based in Lincoln. And early in 2018 their brand new building will be opened and that will house a lot of the Memorial and the records of you gentlemen. You, our famous Bomber Command people. And this interview that I’m recording for you and with you now will go towards that digital archive.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, I think we’ve been speaking for well over an hour and a half so I’ve run right through a lot of the things. Is there anything else you’d like to point out or say?
BC: No. I’ll think of it later on.
GT: Yeah.
BC: I’ll think of something.
GT: You’ll think of something later on but I probably will have gone but —
BC: People say I should write a book but I don’t know. They say I should write a book but I don’t —
GT: You endured so much Bruce. What about the fact that the Bomber Command role could — could Harris have done it any other way?
BC: No. I don’t think so. Aircrew liked him. I don’t think he got a fair go. I don’t know whether he hit it off too well with Churchill. I can’t be sure about that. And I have an article somewhere in my records where that trip to Nuremberg was that it should never have happened. I’ve got that. I think they, they knew we were coming. Lamason made the comment before they went to Nuremberg on that trip he said, ‘This is suicide. We shouldn’t be going this long straight trek with no changes of course. Something fishy here.’ And I’ve seen an article where that might have been. Mind you if it is true it probably saved lives but the air force had to pay. You see, for a long time the Germans thought — they took the word of that spy who said the invasion’s coming from Calais. And they kept all the bigger German equipment around Calais waiting for the invasion. Rommel pleaded for that stuff to be sent down south so he could use it. And they said no. It’s all coming finally at Calais. Of course that was just a big hoax wasn’t it? They had no intention. That might have been the reason why we lost a lot at Nuremberg. The spy told them the route and everything. They were waiting for the RAF that night. But I don’t know whether that’s true or not.
GT: The fabulous thing is you survived.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And I’m very honoured to be talking with you here today. And we’ve got Poppy Days coming up but I know that you’ve retired from that. Yeah.
BC: That bloke who took over from me on Poppy Day he died a couple months ago.
KP: Yeah. That one.
GT: Yeah. Oh gosh. So, so the Bomber Command gentlemen, and your numbers are dwindling very quick and I’m so privileged to be able to come and talk with you today in your place and I —
BC: I don’t, I don’t think I’ll be interviewed again in my lifetime now.
GT: Well, you can be rest assured that the people listening to these recordings, this recording with you will sit back and be very honoured to listen to what you’ve had to say to us today.
BC: I bought one of these things before I came here. Never used it and it’s gone. I don’t know where it is. I asked my daughters a couple of times where it’s gone but they don’t remember.
GT: One last thing then, Bruce. What do you think of the Lancaster Mark 2?
BC: Oh marvellous. I’ve seen the fellow [unclear], an engineer on the Mark 2 said they suited him fine. They were much more powerful and they were better. Stood much more damage but they wouldn’t go up quite so high and on a long trip they couldn’t quite take so much ammunition because they needed more petrol. That’s right. They needed more petrol. But I can remember seeing a Mark 3 take off on our short runways once and when they got to the end of the, then end of the runway [unclear]. We used to take off in the middle of the night six ton of bombs aboard on those short runways. And they were much more powerful. My garage clients put a heated, about the make-up of the different engines. He said the Bristol motor was much much better. A better motor.
GT: Wow.
BC: And he’d know all about engines and that.
GT: Yeah. And your aircraft was the three hundredth off the production line.
BC: That’s right. Yeah.
GT: That you were shot down on.
BC: Yes.
GT: That was last one produced.
BC: Yeah.
GT: You were saying to me.
BC: It must have been a costly business running a war with all those aeroplanes. The cost must have been absolutely fantastic. Was that what crippled England after the war? I don’t know.
GT: It did. Well, Bruce I think it’s time that we, we sign off our recording now. And I I must thank you very much. And for Kaye who’s been sitting here listening and in awe of Bruce’s story as well. For introducing me to Bruce here. So, I’m going to say thank you very much. It’s now quarter past five on the evening of the 4th of November 2017 here at Bruce Cunningham’s place at the Rita Angus Retirement Village in Kilbirnie, New Zealand. And I’m sure that dinner awaits down below so I’m going to say thank you very much for, for chatting with us and I will make this recording —
BC: I wish as well. I don’t know that it will be. I hope it is.
GT: You can have the last word Bruce.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Thank you very much, Bruce. Yeah.
BC: Thank you.
GT: Thank you
BC: Thank you.
GT: Alright.
[paused]
BC: I have a great deal of trouble with electronics. Hunter aeroplanes.
GT: Did you? Hunters.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: And he started off to be a lawyer in New Zealand and [paused] in charge of 707s.
[recording paused]
BC: And when people ask me, when they ask me I don’t think I should say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’ If they ask you a question. Tell them. Get on with it.
GT: Yeah.
BC: You know in POW you didn’t even speak about what you did during the war. You didn’t know and couldn’t care. My brother he was in the army. I didn’t know what he did. He didn’t know what I did either. My family don’t know what I did. They haven’t got a clue. If they asked me I’d tell them. They don’t ask me. I don’t tell them. It doesn’t arise.
GT: Many choose not to speak so I’m honoured that you’ve spoken to me today. Thank you.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. Now, actually I’ll take a picture of you two.
KP: Oh no. Don’t take a picture of me. I don’t like being photographed. Bruce, would you like me to go out and ask them to bring your tea in here?
BC: No. No. No. I normally go out a little bit later but I’ll catch up. They’re old people. They take a while to eat and talk too much. I’m not. I’m only ninety seven.
GT: Bruce, I’m going to take a picture of you by yourself because I’ve got a picture here. Actually, if I just put that there so that’s Bruce Cunningham and you’ve got your Lancaster pictures up above you.
KP: He’s Lancaster pictures all over the place.
GT: Which is fabulous and I love that. Now similar with the other gentleman. Jack Meehan.
BC: Eh?
GT: Remember Jack Meehan who was on the trip in 2012.
BC: Oh, I remember the name. Yeah.
GT: Jack died at Christmas time. Dick Lampier. He died a couple of years ago. Dick was in the wheelchair.
BC: Oh yeah.
GT: Was he ok? Some said he wasn’t.
KP: Oh I remember. He was a Wellington man wasn’t he?
GT: No. Lancaster.
BC: Where I —
GT: Jake Wakefield.
KP: No. No. I mean Wellington. Wellington city.
GT: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
KP: Yes. I remember. He was a very difficult man.
BC: I went to see my son and he gave me a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful photo of — what was the double VC bloke’s name?
GT: Oh Upham.
BC: Upham. Yeah.
GT: Charles Upham.
BC: Oh beautiful photo. Gold lettering, and he said, ‘Take that back to New Zealand with you.’ Big one. Great big photo. And I said, ‘I don’t know whether I can get it on the aeroplane.’ He said, ‘Take it back.’ I gave it to a doctor who was, got a very high rank in New Zealand. In the army. Oh terrific rank. Right at the top. I said this is, this is a very high rank. He said well I had to give it up to come over here. I gave it to her and she bought half, and the last I saw of it in Auckland. She waved me and went out and said here’s the picture. And I think, I think it might be in the boss’s office of the Vet’s Affairs in Wellington.
KP: Oh right.
BC: I’m not sure.
KP: Oh, I don’t think —
GT: And you haven’t seen it.
KP: I’m just going to tell them that you are late for tea. I’ll be back in a moment.
GT: And you haven’t seen it since.
BC: Yeah.
[pause]
GT: Ok. Ron’s in that one. [pause] Ron was there.
BC: My crew are there somewhere.
GT: Have you still got your logbook?
BC: Eh?
GT: Have you still got your logbook?
BC: Yeah.
GT: And your medals.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Are your medals on here.
BC: Yeah. I don’t know. I never wear my — I don’t like wearing medals. I don’t like wearing them.
GT: No.
BC: I don’t. I don’t. I don’t like wearing my medals for some reason or other.
GT: Did you, did you get all your medals though?
[pause]
KP: You still haven’t seen the magic book that was the start of all of this. You’ll just have to come again.
GT: Yeah. I will.
BC: At one station I was at I was quite, quite a green sort of a pilot and the flight commander called us in and said, ‘I want to do something. I want to help you people. If you mention a word about it I’ll kill you.’ I said, ‘Well, what’s the story.’ He said, ‘The wing commander wants to come for a flight tonight and I’ve been asked to give him a crew so he can test fly. But I don’t want to do it that way. I want you to draw lots as to who takes the wing commander.’ Because Joe Soap loses the, loses it, what’s the name. I had to take the wing commander. It was the best thing I ever did during my air force. I took him. We got over the place and we couldn’t bomb it because of cloud and the navigator said, ‘Oh hang on.’ — do this, do that, do that. ‘Bombs away.’ We took a photo and it was very difficult thing to get in Wales and it came out and we won the bombing competition.
GT: Oh wow.
BC: [unclear] But to have our photo taken in front of an aeroplane. And the wing commander was so full of himself he was going around the officer’s mess saying how he’d bombed this place in Wales. In Wales. ‘Well, you all you did, you were a passenger.’ They took the photo and it didn’t come out did it? The next station I said, ‘I want my photo back.’ And that’s it.
GT: That’s it there.
KP: Oh.
GT: Your crews too.
BC: That’s it.
GT: Right. Ok. So I’m going to take a shot of that but what —
BC: When we were at Kuala Lumpur we were held up for the plane to be fixed or something and I went away from the rest of the crowd and I sat on my own. And some girls came over and they were security girls at Kuala Lumpur. And I took a liking to them and they did the same for me. Finally they called us all to the aeroplane and she grabbed my arm and walked me towards the aeroplane. Now, now people on either side of the aeroplane watching. And the squadron leader called out, seen me walking with this girl arm in arm. ‘What’s going on here?’ I said, ‘Jealousy will get you nowhere, mate. I’m not going back to New Zealand.’ He said, ‘Oh you’ve got a new girlfriend have you?’ That’s them.
GT: That’s them there is it? Lovely.
KP: Oh right.
GT: I think she was blinking though.
KP: Oh, who cares.
GT: That’s right. The one behind’s even lovely.
KP: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: We did a couple of trips to Malaysia. I’ve been with the Sky Hawks.
BC: Athletic champ while I was at college.
KP: So that’s —
GT: Very nice.
BC: That’s where I [pause] that’s where I’m nineteen. Head prefect.
GT: You were destined. Now — oh is that you?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Oh gosh. I’m going to have to keep taking photographs. I wish I’d brought my scanner actually.
[pause]
KP: This is a really good photo. Who are you talking to there?
BC: Oh, that’s the bloke that put me in the Wall Street Journal.
KP: Oh right.
GT: I think you like interviews.
BC: Has she finished?
KP: Isn’t that a neat photo because it’s a doing things photo. Right.
BC: She finished up in the Wall Street Journal.
GT: Leaning up against the, that’s a really good story isn’t it?
KP: Yeah. It’s just —
GT: I’m surprised you bought another couple of three legged stools after that one breaking on you.
BC: Yeah.
KP: And there’s the, yeah here’s the lady with the parachute silk.
BC: Yeah. The woman who made her wedding dress.
GT: One thing we didn’t discuss Bruce was when you took your commission.
[pause]
KP: Here’s one taken here. Here by the look of it. Oh there’s another.
BC: Oh she was a —
KP: That’s a different one.
BC: She was a Countess that one. That’s in Belgium. At the reception.
KP: Oh.
GT: That was ’45. That was June ’45 as well.
BC: Yeah. One of those blokes, I’m not sure which one, air commodore. Prisoner of war.
GT: So when did you get your commission?
BC: Eh?
GT: When did you get your commission because you’ve got an officer’s —
BC: Yeah.
GT: Suit on there. You said you were a flight sergeant.
BC: I wanted to go to the New Zealand forces club and a fellow at Bennington, from Marsden said, ‘You haven’t got a commission. Why haven’t got one?’ The next time I see him he said to me, ‘Put in for it. You’ll get it straightaway.’ I said, ‘Oh you’re talking rubbish.’ He said I’d take it anyway. Next time I was in London he said, ‘Haven’t you put in for that yet? Put in. You’ll get it straight away. I’m telling you.’ I didn’t realise at the time that he must have been in the know for something. I decided yes, I’ll put in and so help me it came through straight away. They had, they had a church service on Waterbeach and I didn’t go and all those who didn’t go were given drill to do. And while I was doing it a bloke came over to me and said, ‘We can’t drill you any longer. You’re an officer.’ I thought that’s funny. After all my connection with the church I get in to trouble. I get some drill for not going to church. That’s unusual. All my connections over donkeys — a lifetime in the church. And now I’m in trouble for not going to church. But of course when I got pulled out for the drill everyone said boo hoo hoo, ‘Why are you getting off for and we’ve got to stay here and do the drill?’
GT: People are really strange, aren’t they?
KP: They are strange. Yeah.
GT: [unclear] what they do.
KP: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Bruce Cunningham
Creator
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Glen Turner
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACunninghamAB171104
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Format
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02:02:42 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Bruce Cunningham was born in New Zealand. After initial training as a pilot he was posted to RAF Wescott Operational Training Unit and flew operations with 514 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach. His first operation was over Berlin. On one operation they were shot down and as he landed on the roof of the house he looked up at the sky as the other aircraft were heading for home. One lady from the village used the parachute silk for her wedding dress. He became a prisoner of war and was sent to Stalag Luft 3.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Nuremberg
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
11 OTU
514 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Caterpillar Club
crewing up
Dulag Luft
evading
fear
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
memorial
Operational Training Unit
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Stradishall
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Westcott
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/839/10831/PGossRG1701.2.jpg
be88e24ccd82e4e6c7e6905f6f5600c3
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/839/10831/AGossRG170614.1.mp3
f4efcb8a5d0a140edd4572c44475e407
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
Goss, Raymond George
R G Goss
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Raymond Goss (b. 1933), a map and three photographs. He was a boy during the war and lived on a farm close to RAF Westcott, Buckinghamshire.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Raymond Goss 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
2017-06-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Goss, RG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 14th of June 2017 and I’m with Raymond Goss in Grendon Underwood who used to live near Westcott. And the topic that we’re looking at particularly is the airfield of RAF Westcott. But first of all, Ray what are your first recollections of life and what did your father do?
RG: My father at that time was making chicken houses. He made chicken coops, chicken coops and dog kennels. Anything out of wood then. In fact, he built his own bungalow. Built his own bungalow and then he made a business of making chicken coops and things and that was my first life then sort of thing. Then he bought a lorry to transport them around. He was about the first one locally. And he started cattle transporting with the lorry. He made a box to fix on the back of the lorry to carry cattle.
[pause]
CB: And you were living with your —
RG: We lived, my father built a bungalow.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Where we had this accident then.
CB: Right.
RG: [unclear]
CB: So, how many brothers and sisters did you have?
RG: I’m, I’m the third of eight. I’ve got, had a brother and sister older than me but they, I’m afraid they died.
CB: Right.
RG: Last year.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Very sad.
RG: I’ve got to go to one funeral this week.
CB: Right.
RG: Yeah.
CB: It’s hard going. So, where did you go to school?
RG: Westcott. Yeah. I joined Westcott School. I must have been I don’t know whether it was four or five. I can’t remember. But yes, we went to, we used to walk then across the fields to Westcott School. Frightened us to death it did because there was always army things. Vehicles running up and down the road. You never knew what was about down there. So we used to start and run all the way to school [laughs] Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And after Westcott Primary School.
RG: After school.
CB: Then where did you go?
RG: We left Westcott Primary School at eleven years old and went up to Waddesdon where we carried until we was about, I don’t know, fourteen fifteen.
CB: So, you walked to Westcott school.
RG: Yeah.
CB: How did you get to Waddesdon School?
RG: Push bike. We had a bike. We had a bike. Leave our bikes. We used to leave the bike at the police station at Waddesdon. Mr Lines. Sergeant Lines it was then.
CB: Right.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: That was so they were safe.
RG: Well, I don’t know that [laughs]
CB: Where was the school?
RG: The country was safe then.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Of course it was. I suppose it was more safe. Folks never used to pinch things the same as they do now.
CB: No. No.
RG: No. All the roads was full of service people. Either RAF or soldiers because Waddesdon of course was took over by the army wasn’t it? During the war. It was a fuel depot there. They used to keep all the fuel there. There was lorries going day and night from Quainton Station to Waddesdon with loads of oil on. Petrol. And they had petrol dumps all over Waddesdon Estate. And well that’s where they had all the barrels there. I suppose that supplied Westcott aerodrome. I don’t know. That was a big petrol dump there.
CB: Right.
RG: Rothschild’s.
CB: So, what did you do at school? Were there certain things that you liked doing more than anything else?
RG: Very little if I could help it. No. I weren’t very good at school at all. In fact, we used to have, we used to have quite a lot of time off to work on the farms. We used to have a little book. We used to have days off from school and we used to have to put a stamp in the book to say where we’d been. And we used to, well have days off school then to work on, in the fields. Haymaking or whatever.
CB: So that was seasonal. So in the winter you didn’t have so much to do.
RG: There weren’t much in the winter. No. There was always a certain amount to do you see because after my father finished making his poultry houses then the war came along. There was no trade for anything like that so he, he turned it into a farm. He started milking cows. So as soon as I was big enough to carry a bucket I was milking cows.
CB: How old would you be then?
RG: Oh. No more than about nine perhaps. As soon as we was big enough to carry a bucket we was out there feeding calves and pigs and milking cows. Yeah.
CB: So —
RG: Always at work.
CB: How many brothers and how many sisters?
RG: Had five boys. Five boys and three girls. Eight of us.
CB: Yeah.
RG: I was, I was number three.
CB: Right.
RG: Yeah.
CB: So, everybody helped out.
RG: Everybody had a job.
CB: Right.
RG: Yeah. It was either milking or feeding the pigs or calves. One or the other.
CB: Yeah. So when the war started —
RG: We was never allowed to go down the village playing very often anyway. My mates and that was at school and they’d be playing cricket or something at night but we were never allowed. We had to be at work.
CB: Right.
RG: We were still doing it.
CB: Yeah. So when the war started you were aged six.
RG: Yes. Yes.
CB: And you got brought in to help out on lots of things.
RG: Oh yes. As soon as he started keeping cattle and sheep and pigs and everything else then we was out there in the fields helping. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. So more on the background then. At what age did you leave school?
RG: I’m not sure. I think, whether I left at fourteen or fifteen. Fifteen I think. I had quite a lot of time off though working somewhere.
CB: Yeah.
RG: My first job was down here in Grendon actually. Working for the Cannons.
CB: Doing what?
RG: Building work.
CB: What sort of building was going on in the war?
RG: Well, it was mostly repair work. Repairing farm buildings and such like and sort of thing. It was mostly work on the farms anyway.
CB: And this was your full time job.
RG: Yes. Every morning I used to get up and get on my old bike and be down in Grendon here at 7 o’clock. Yeah.
CB: What, what made you go into building?
RG: Well, we’d got to work. We’d got to do something. We’d got to get a living. In them days you see there weren’t all this social or nothing like that and my father was running the farm but if he’d got about two of us working on the farm that was about all he needed. So the rest of us had to find a job where ever we could. So I got a job on the building which I did until I was eighteen. Then I joined the army. Everybody joined the army at eighteen then didn’t they?
CB: They did. Doing National Service.
RG: National Service. Yeah. I didn’t like that much but there it was. They put me in the Royal Horse Artillery.
CB: Did they?
RG: Yeah.
CB: And what did you do there?
RG: Training. Just about everything. We did, we had to do a lot of ceremonial drilling and that sort of thing. But of course then we had to — being as I was always brought up to work they give me jobs learning other people how to dig holes and trenches. Anything at all. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And you, you were good at riding horses anyway.
RG: I finished up a gunner. I finished up a gunner actually.
CB: Did you?
RG: We had twenty five pounder guns and that’s what were used. Twenty five pounder guns to fire the salutes then. Anyone who came out. I was stationed and they sent me out to Germany. General Eisenhower, he was the first one to come out there. We had to fire a twenty one gun salute for him. And then the Duke of Edinburgh. I remember him coming. He come out at night when it was dark and we had to fire a salute for him. But that’s what he did when ceremonial things then.
CB: Right. And what was the biggest ceremonial activity that you participated in?
RG: I think probably the last one when — for the Queen’s coronation. We fired a twenty one gun salute for that. I’ve got a photograph of that somewhere.
CB: And how did you feel about that?
RG: Well, it was just a job. They’d trained us to do it so we just done it then sort of thing. Yeah.
CB: For, for the coronation did people have a feeling of pride in being involved in it or was it —
RG: I think so. I think so. Yes. I was in, I was still out in Germany. We did this out in Germany actually but a lot of them there were regular soldiers then. They actually came back to London to line the route and do things in London. But we National Service ones we were just kept out there to do different parades and that out there.
CB: So —
RG: We were supposed to be peace keeping force but we caused more havoc then [laughs]
CB: Now, that was in the social life.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Rather than in the army life, was it?
RG: Yes. That’s right.
CB: And whereabouts were you stationed?
RG: Hildesheim.
CB: Where’s that? Near Hanover?
RG: Yes. Yeah. Not far from Hanover because we used to go there. Get on a tram. Go to Hanover now and again. Yeah.
CB: Right. So, in your army activities how did you — you’ve got guns to move around and fire so how did that fit in the countryside?
RG: Well, we used to try — they used to take over the railways and they used to load these guns and everything up on the trains. At night very often. They used to have these big long trains and we used to drive the tanks. The old Sherman tanks. That’s what we had. With the gun mounted on them. And we used to drive them. Drive them on at night. Frighten you to death but we’d done it. Yeah.
CB: And then you got on the train as well.
RG: That’s it. We got on the train and rode on, in the carriage behind. Yeah.
CB: So where would you go?
RG: What?
CB: You loaded the train. And where did the train go?
RG: Well, where ever the parade was. I can’t remember that now. It’s in Germany. Yeah.
CB: I was thinking of the training that you did because you’d go to the range at Paderborn or somewhere like that would you?
RG: Well, I don’t know quite where we did go.
CB: To fire the guns in earnest.
RG: We went all over the place actually. They used to be out in the forest and that lot because we used to find, we used to use live ammunition. Oh yeah. You had to be a bit careful but yes we did.
CB: Did you enjoy firing the guns?
RG: Not a lot. No.
CB: Too noisy.
RG: Yes. Very much so. Deafen you. Yeah.
CB: And the social life. How did that work?
RG: I quite enjoyed that. That was alright. There used to be a group of us perhaps. A dozen of us perhaps. We were all perhaps the same age and we used to be able to go down to the NAAFI or down the town or somewhere and have a few drinks at night and that sort of thing. That was alright. Went skiing actually when I was out there. Then I strained my ankle.
CB: Oh. But you enjoyed that. Yeah.
RG: I don’t know about that but that’s what we done.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah. And then when I come out the army then I got, I got, went and got a job for a small builder then at Waddesdon.
CB: Right.
RG: Cripps and sons. EJ Cripps. They were the local builder and that sort of thing.
CB: And what was your job there?
RG: They learned me to lay bricks. I took over. I started laying bricks. I learned the trade there actually and I stayed there until they built this establishment over here. The prison. And I got, I joined a group down there. We went piecework brick laying. Building this prison.
CB: Grendon Prison.
RG: Grendon Prison. That would have been 1960 wouldn’t it? Crawford’s. Now — Crawford’s farm, they demolished Crawford’s farm didn’t they?
CB: Oh did they?
RG: There was a farm up on the top there. They demolished the farm to build the prison. Hector’s. Hector’s parents. I knew Hector Crawford.
CB: Yeah.
RG: That’s it. Well, his parents, they had a farm up on the hill there and they demolished that to build the prison.
CB: So piecework was lucrative was it?
RG: Yeah. Well, that’s what I done then until, until we formed this company, Grange Builders, in 1963.
CB: Right.
RG: October.
CB: So, how did you come to form Grange Builders?
RG: Well, we’d been piecework brick laying. We then went into gangs. About six of us worked together laying bricks and we did very well actually. We made money but of course we went out and spent it quick. So we decided we ought to have a go at building small buildings. And at that time the council decided to modernise the council houses. That’s when they started building bathrooms on to council houses. So we got a contract to go around putting, building bathrooms on council houses and that’s how we formed the company to do it. We done it properly. We registered it up in whatwasit House up in London. Company. We all put a little bit of money in to it and started it and we’ve carried on. And I’m the last one still here now running it.
CB: So, there were six of you who formed the business were there?
RG: Yes.
CB: Right.
RG: And one by one they dropped out for some reason.
CB: They weren’t related to you. They were all separate.
RG: They was all separate.
CB: Yeah.
RG: One by one they dropped out. That left two of us. Two. Myself and Colin Bradbury. And we worked together until we got to almost retiring age and then he was ill then. He had a couple of strokes and he had a bit of heart trouble and, well he had to pack up then. So, I retired and handed the company over to my daughter and she’s still running it now. And Paul’s, Colin Bradbury’s son he stayed with us and he took over and carried on. He had his father’s company shares and he’s still here with us now. You know Paul then perhaps. Do you?
CB: So, your your daughter owns half and Colin’s son —
RG: Yes.
CB: Owns half is it? What’s his name?
RG: Paul.
CB: Paul. Right. Ok. So that’s been running all that time.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Now, in your life you’ve got involved in lots of things but —
RG: Oh yeah.
CB: You’ve had an interest in Westcott all the time even though you live —
RG: Oh yes. Oh yes.
CB: You live in Grendon Underwood.
RG: That’s right. Oh yeah. I still kept in contact there. Well, all with the Cricket Club I’m a life member now. And I’ve always been involved with that and of course the church. My parents was always church wardens and that sort of thing. So when they died I carried on. I got on the Church Committee then.
CB: Right. So, going back to the early days what do you remember most about the war as a youngster?
RG: I don’t really know.
CB: You talked about all these vehicles.
RG: We was always at work. Oh yes. There was. I mean on the road there you couldn’t have no lights so there was vehicles running about all over the place with no lights. You weren’t allowed to have lights were you? The only lights there was was out in the fields there at which you said about lighting up the runways.
CB: Yes.
RG: And this sort of thing. The only lights you’d see and of course there were searchlights in different positions on the camp.
CB: Oh, were there?
RG: There were searchlights there and they was, you could see them at night trying to look for planes or whatever. Yeah.
CB: So, there were a lot of military people around.
RG: Oh, without a doubt. Yes.
CB: It was.
RG: All sorts. Canadians. New Zealands. All sorts. And of course Westcott that was there for training really. That’s what it was there for.
CB: Yeah. Number 11 OTU.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Operational Training Unit.
RG: And there were all sorts and they was only all young chaps you see. Twenty one and two. That sort of age.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
CB: So, at your age you weren’t too conscious of the pub.
RG: Not really. No.
CB: But —
RG: No. We weren’t allowed to go in.
CB: But they managed to drain the beer fairly quickly.
RG: Oh well. Well, the pub was always full of airmen or whatever.
CB: Yeah.
RG: But we weren’t allowed in the pubs. Not until we was, well eighteen then I suppose.
CB: Yeah. But your father had the small, the small farm effectively.
RG: He run the farm there. He run the farm.
CB: At the end of the runway.
RG: Yes.
CB: And he went, the family went from peace and quiet of the countryside.
RG: That’s right.
CB: To two things. The construction of the airfield.
RG: Exactly.
CB: And then the running of it.
RG: They used to hire our horses and carts off the farm to move materials about on to build the aerodrome that sort of thing. They used to come and hire a couple of our horses and carts to carry cement and ballast and whatever to build the aerodrome. That was a regular thing like.
CB: How long did it take to build the aerodrome? Do you remember?
RG: I wouldn’t remember that.
CB: So we’re talking about 1940/41.
RG: Yeah. That’s right yeah.
CB: And obviously you were very young then.
RG: I was very young then you see.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
CB: So it’s just perceptions of a child are really interesting in these things.
RG: Yeah. Well, yeah. All I can remember is that we, as young boys we used to go to school and we used to run as fast as ever we could to get to school. So, to get off the road like sort of thing. And of course we used to get — I mean there was no proper fence around the Air Ministry place then. There was just a string of barbed wire around. That’s all. So we boys used to go in there and have a look at the old aeroplanes now and again. There was one stationed just outside the school. We could sit in school and look at it just outside. Yeah.
CB: Right.
RG: I bet Tim would know that.
CB: Yes.
RG: Yeah.
CB: So —
RG: The old Wellington bombers.
CB: What, what did that do to your clothing? Going through the barbed wire.
RG: Probably got ripped to pieces. Yeah. We used to crawl through it anyway.
CB: Yeah.
RG: It was like coils of barbed wire. There was like three rows. Two and then one on top. That’s all there was and see, and when these aeroplanes when they overran the runway they just took the wire fence with them. They just went. Played straight through it. I remember that happening several times.
CB: So, it wasn’t unusual for a plane to overrun the runway.
RG: Oh no. No. No. That was, that was a regular thing. Because I mean a lot of the pilots and that what was driving these planes they was only young chaps come there for training.
CB: Yeah.
RG: They weren’t experienced that much at all and of course they just used to run over the runway.
CB: Yes.
RG: Run straight off it.
CB: Right.
RG: And that’s what happened this particular night. There was a Wellington ran straight over it and it landed over in a field just the other side of the A41 and there it stood. They used to leave a couple of chaps there to guard it. I don’t know what happened. I should think this chap Bulmer must have been one of them.
CB: So, what we’re talking about now is the overshoot of a Lancaster.
RG: Yes.
CB: A bomber. On runway 07.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Which was fully loaded.
RG: Yes.
CB: So, what do you remember about that?
RG: Well, all I remember is being blown out of bed. I mean we didn’t know anything about it because this all happened at 3 o’clock in the morning.
CB: Right.
RG: And of course we was all in bed asleep then you see. And all I know, remember then was being woke up with an almighty bang like sort of thing. And there was five of us boys sleeping all in one bedroom and of course the walls was made of asbestos. Sheet of Asbestos. The cavities filled with a sawdust. And well we just woke up with all sawdust and asbestos all around us.
CB: So ten of you in this house.
RG: Yes.
CB: That your father had built.
RG: That’s right.
CB: And it didn’t look too well after the explosion of the aircraft.
RG: Oh no. What it, what it did I realised afterwards. I couldn’t work it out because after we all got out of bed you see and dad got us dressed and he sent me and my brother, my elder brother, he said, ‘You’d best get down the farm. See your gramp. See as he’s all right.’ So, we did of course. We started to go out the farmyard and we went by our back door. Instead of blowing the back door away it drew it back towards the aeroplane in the field. We couldn’t understand that but that’s what happened. And the windows. The windows at that end of the bungalow. Took the windows and the doors out and drawed it up the yard towards. —
CB: Because the explosion created a vacuum.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RG: That’s what happened. Me and my brother then we set off and we had to run down two fields down to my gramps place to see as he was alright. And I remember going down the field and of course the field was alight then with all little bits of metal sort of burning. Frightened my brother to death. We got him down there and he was ever so sick and bad. So my gramp sent him back. He said, ‘You’re not much good to me,’ he said. ‘You may as well go back home.’ And that’s what we done.
CB: And what had happened to your gramps house?
RG: It took the front door off. There’s a photograph in here of that. And they took the front door and one or two of the windows out. Not so bad as ours I don’t think up the top but certainly took the door off and the front, a couple of front windows. That’s about all like. That was brick built of course that was.
CB: What about the farm buildings?
RG: Well, they were back behind the house so I can’t remember too much about them but they, well they was still there intact anyway.
CB: And your father was doing milking so he had cows.
RG: Yes.
CB: Where were they?
RG: My grandfather was still living down there then and my grandfather was actually looking after that bit down there.
CB: Right.
RG: Well, I’ve an uncle. Uncle Ralph. He used to help out and he used be down there with him when he was there. He lived in the village at the time and he used to bike up there but my gramp sort of run the place then sort of thing.
CB: What did you gather afterwards about how the aircraft had come to explode?
RG: Well, it was just common knowledge I think. The old Wellington bomber stood there and then this Lancaster this night apparently there were several come back to Westcott that night and this one over run the runway and run straight into it. And that at 3 o’clock in the morning. And then it was half past three when the explosion apparently. It blowed up. And everything went all over. There was bits of aeroplane well within a half a mile radius then of the explosion. One of the engines off the aeroplane, I don’t know which one it was, went over the top of our bungalow and landed in a field behind our bungalow. That was laid at the side of a pond down there. Yeah. I remember that.
CB: Did you hear it land?
RG: No.
CB: But were you aware of what was going on before the explosion?
RG: No. We were all in bed asleep.
CB: Right.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Because on the other side on the, actually on the edge of the airfield was Eddie Barnett who we also interviewed a little while ago.
RG: Yeah.
CB: His family had been cleared from the house and an engine landed behind them when they were sheltering outside the house. What about the man who was warning? Who’d warned them.
RG: Bulmer.
CB: Bulmer.
RG: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
RG: He was on duty. I presumed, I don’t know for sure about this but when the Wellington went over the runway they always left a couple of chaps to guard it. To look after it overnight like sort of thing. Because then the next day they would go in there with a tractor and pull it back. So I presumed he was there when this Lancaster run into it. So he knew what was going to happen. So he started to run towards the Barnett’s. He run to the Barnett’s to Eddie Barnett’s then to warn his family that it was going to blow up which he did and they got, they got out of the house I think. And then he, from there I think he was going then towards Mr Adams.
CB: Right.
RG: And I think he was on his way there when it went up and that killed him.
CB: That was the next farm.
RG: Yes.
CB: What was that one called?
RG: New House Farm.
CB: New House Farm.
RG: Yeah.
CB: On the A41.
RG: Yeah. Just, just below the Barnett’s then. Yeah.
CB: Right.
RG: And of course that shook that house up. That sort of ripped some of the tiles and that off the roof and all that sort of thing. The same as with the Barnett’s, sort of thing.
CB: So, Mr Bulmer.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Was a ground officer at the airfield.
RG: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
CB: And he was killed.
RG: Yes.
CB: Right.
RG: He was killed and then as I say there was a woman in the village. A Mrs Evans. Nancy Evans. She actually wrote to his family and explained to them what he did. All about it. And they wrote back and thanked her for writing and every year from then on the family sent a crate of cider to her family for writing the letter and explaining it all to them.
CB: This is because he was son of the Bulmer family.
RG: Yes.
CB: From Herefordshire.
RG: Yes. That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. David Evans. He was the last one to receive the crate of cider but he died about, I don’t know, three or four, perhaps five years ago now. And I think the cider stopped then.
CB: Now, what else did the Bulmer’s do in commemoration?
RG: I think, I think they commemorated — they actually renewed because it blowed the church windows out. That’s one thing that happened you see. That must have been a half a mile you see to that but that that blew the windows out of the church. There’s a big stained window in the south window. South east isn’t it? The window there. So the fact that the Bulmer family replaced it. Paid to have it put in and they had his name put in the bottom left hand corner. It’s still there now.
CB: So, this is the main window above the altar.
RG: Yes.
CB: Which is coloured stained glass.
RG: That’s it.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah. They renewed it because the old window was all — well blown out then. That’s what it did. That blowed a lot of the windows out of the properties, you know. Well, within a half a mile of the explosion anyway.
CB: So the next day what was the reaction of everybody?
RG: Well, I don’t really know. I know there was a hell of a commotion. There was sort of servicemen all over the place looking to see what was going on. They was walking about in the field then seeing what bits and pieces were laying about there. And within a couple of days then they, instead of going out in the fields with the lorries or trucks to pick up the bits and pieces they borrowed our horse and carts. The horse and carts walked about in the field. That was corn field. Wheat growing. And they used our horse and cart to pick up these little bits of aeroplane which were littered all over the field.
CB: Why did they do that instead of using trucks?
RG: Well, because that damaged the corn. Crops you see. If you drove a lorry across it that would flatten the corn you see but they went across with a horse and cart that did little damage then. Oh yeah. I remember doing that.
CB: So, when local farmers, including in this case your father did work for the RAF at Westcott.
RG: Yeah.
CB: How did they get paid?
RG: I wouldn’t know that. I wouldn’t know. They were contractors. There were contractors in there doing the work you see. The Ministry weren’t actually doing it. There were different contractors in there doing the work and they’d be hiring the horse and carts to do the work. To move the materials about then.
CB: In those days —
RG: I think all the farms around Adam’s, Adam’s farm, they had a couple of horses there. And the Cripp’s family they had a couple of horses working there and my father had a horse or perhaps two down there.
CB: Did your father have any arable land?
RG: Oh yes. In fact this field where the, where the plane crashed. That was arable. That was a wheat field.
CB: Right.
RG: Yeah.
CB: And that was his field.
RG: Yes. Well it was my gramps field.
CB: Right.
RG: My father was running it.
CB: But the family field.
RG: Yes. Family. Yeah.
CB: And to what extent were horses used rather than tractors?
RG: Just about everything. We hadn’t got a tractor. Not at that stage at all. It was all done by horses. In fact I don’t know where it is now but I’ve got a photograph. Combining. That particular field. There were three horses with the combine. Yeah.
CB: So this was —
RG: It was done by horses but we boys was out there and that’s when we used to have one or perhaps three horses on a machine pulling the cart or whatever machine you were using and the boy had to be in front leading the horses then.
CB: And when you say combine you actually mean a reaper.
RG: Yes.
CB: Rather. Because there weren’t combine harvesters in those days were there?
RG: Oh yeah. No. There weren’t combine harvesters as such. No.
CB: Yeah. So this just cut the corn and laid it.
RG: Cut it and tied it in bundles.
CB: Yes.
RG: Yeah. Sheaves. Yeah. And then we used to have to go around and pick the sheaves up and stand them up together. Shock them up together.
CB: And then what?
RG: Well, leave them out there a few weeks to dry out and then pick them up and put them in a rick like.
CB: Right
RG: In a big heap. Then when the winter come along they’d pay a contractor to come along and thrash it.
CB: So, the contractor would have his own thrashing machine.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Thrashing machine.
RG: Yes.
CB: Yeah. And they’d do that in one of your barns would they?
RG: Yes. Well, it would be out in the fields actually.
CB: Oh, would they?
RG: Because the ricks would be outside in the fields and they’d stand it.
CB: Put it next to the rick.
RG: They’d stack. Yeah.
CB: Right.
RG: It would stand. Stand the combine, what was the machinery right side the rick then sort of thing.
CB: Yeah.
RG: So they’d just throw it straight in it.
CB: Yeah. So going back to this incident. The reason there was such a big explosion was because the Lancaster landed with a full load.
RG: That’s right.
CB: Of bombs.
RG: Exactly. Yeah.
CB: And the effect of that was large because of the huge load the aircraft had.
RG: That’s right.
CB: The Lancaster had four engines and it was on top of a Wellington with two.
RG: That’s right.
CB: We’ve talked about two of the engines. Where did the rest go?
RG: I wouldn’t know. I don’t know [laughs] All I remember was seeing this one engine down, down the bottom of our field then. That went over the top of the bungalow and landed in the field.
CB: And did the RAF come and recover it or —
RG: Oh yes. Oh yes. That was a grass field so they drove down there with a lorry to pick that up. Yeah.
CB: Right.
RG: They did. It was just the cornfields they used the horse and carts to pick up bits and pieces. I remember running down that field with all of these little bits of aeroplane. All like a lot of candles on, like in the field then.
CB: Extraordinary.
RG: Yeah. Frightened us to death.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
CB: So the air, there were ten of you as a family in this house.
RG: Yeah.
CB: What happened next? Did you go and stay with your grandfather? Or —
RG: No. No. We stayed there. We stayed there. I think I stayed down there with my grandfather. I probably stayed down there now for a night. A couple of nights. But they got the builder which was Cripps at Waddesdon at that stage. He come, he come the next day and they boarded all the doors and windows up for us. Then eventually they come and renewed them. Oh yeah. We stayed in there. Well, I think I stayed down with my gramp for a couple of nights. My brother. He sent him back. It made him ill. He was sickened bad. Frightened him to death.
CB: Yeah. Because we didn’t think of asbestos in those days but to what extent were people —
RG: Never give it a thought.
CB: No.
RG: I mean we used asbestos for just about everything. Even the roofs on the buildings. I mean even the Westcott, well the club, the Cricket Club then had asbestos until we took it off the other year. And what’s his name? Barry Raynor’s bungalow where he lives now still has asbestos hasn’t it?
CB: It’s a radio station.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah. There was asbestos. They used it for anything. Never had any trouble with it. The sheet asbestos for lining ceilings and walls and everything and the corrugated stuff was put on the roofs. And then they had another one then which they used then for insulating pipes. That’s the one. The asbestos which caused trouble isn’t it? But in the hospitals and where ever. Yeah. All asbestos.
CB: I know you were young but what impression did you get about the construction of the airfield? Because they, were they all local people working?
RG: Most of them. Yes.
CB: Or who else was there?
RG: Well, just anybody who was able to work then was brought in there to work.
CB: To build the airfield.
RG: To build it. Yes. They used to fetch men from miles around. They’d run buses. They’d run perhaps a dozen little buses running about there. Funny little things but they got all these little buses and they were picking up labour. Women as well. They’d got women working in there as well. Diane Hickman, just down the road here she worked down there for years didn’t she. Still there. She isn’t there now is she? No. Yeah.
CB: And heavy equipment would be quite novel for you so what did you see?
RG: There weren’t no real heavy. Nothing much. Mostly done by hand.
CB: Bull dozers?
RG: Well, there was one or two bulldozer type tractors they used for levelling the ground and that sort of thing but all the concreting and that was all done by shovels you might well say. They had the concrete mixers but had to be all shovelled in like. All the runways and and that was all concreted you see and that was all done by hand then.
CB: Do you remember how they built the runways?
RG: Not really. No. Well, I remember seeing them out there at work with their heaps of ballast and concrete mixers out there and they were shovelling it in the mixers to mix concrete in to it. Yeah. Different to what it is now.
CB: How did the concrete mixing work? Did they move the mixer itself down the runway as they progressed?
RG: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: Or —
RG: Yes. It was on wheels.
CB: Right.
RG: And they could just drag it along a bit. They’d do a bit and then drag it a bit further on and carry on along through the fields. Yeah.
CB: Because the runway was built in square sections.
RG: That’s right. Yeah. Well, it was all shuttered up and done. Yeah,
CB: Shuttered. Yeah,
RG: Oh yeah.
CB: Now, around the airfield when it was running —
RG: Yeah.
CB: They had a system called the Drem system for helping aircraft find the airfield and line up for the runway.
RG: Oh yeah.
CB: That had posts.
RG: Little posts. Yeah.
CB: Do you remember that?
RG: Yeah. I remember seeing the lights around the outside. Yeah. They were like little, little posts then. Only about two foot high. They weren’t very high. With little lights on. Yeah.
CB: They would be switched on at night wouldn’t they?
RG: Well most of, thinking about that, the electric, most of the electric come from our place because I remember them laying the electric on. They brought electric down the A41 from Aylesbury. A big cable. And then they put the transformer in our yard actually at lower south, Upper South Farm. We had a big transformer put in the —, in our yard. And that supplied the camp. They got, my father gave them permission to build this transformer in his yard providing the wired his bungalow up and supplied us with electric. That’s, that’s how we got electric into the bungalow.
CB: And the —
RG: It was all oil lamps until then.
CB: Right. And did they do your grandfather’s as well?
RG: No. I don’t think so.
CB: Just your father’s.
RG: He certainly — no he had oil lamps all through the war. Yeah.
CB: Going back to the explosion when was this incident? Do you remember? Do you know?
RG: I remember. I do remember. Yeah. 31st of May.
CB: 19 —
RG: 1944.
CB: Right.
RG: Yeah. And according to the letter it was 3 o’clock in the morning.
CB: Yeah.
RG: And the explosion was 3.30.
CB: Right.
RG: That’s about all I can tell you about that. And then the next thing I knew I was running down the field then to tell me gramp.
CB: Yeah.
RG: To see that he was alright.
CB: Of course.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Apart from your brother did anybody else feel emotional effects from this?
RG: I don’t think so. No. My sister, I’ve got an elder sister she was, my mother would get her out of bed anyway and she’d have to start getting the place cleaned up I expect. At the time she’d be about thirteen perhaps. Yeah.
CB: And when your sister got older did she leave home or did she stay at home and —
RG: She was at home until she got married. Yeah. Yeah. She was at home. Yeah. Well, folks that’s what folks did do at that time of day didn’t they?
CB: What age did she get married?
RG: I can’t remember.
CB: You yourself did National Service after the war.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Royal Horse Artillery.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Then you came back. Did you know your future wife then or did you meet her afterwards?
RG: I met her after. Yeah.
CB: Was she local?
RG: Yeah. Well, she lived in Aylesbury at the time but she lived at, used to come down to Kingswood and that quite a lot. Yeah.
CB: How did you meet in the first place?
RG: I think I first met her in Kingswood. They built a little village hall in Kingswood. Well, I helped build it. And they used to have little dances and things in there. The same as they did all the villages. And I think that’s where we met up. Yeah.
CB: And how many children have you got?
RG: Two. I’ve got a daughter and a son. My son, he’s got cancer. He had cancer. He’s had it now and he’s been having treatment now for five years and he at the moment he’s a lot better. It’s all working. He’s had chemo and all sorts of different treatment and they’ve kept him going. He’s not well enough to go do a full days work or nothing but he’s still with us like. My daughter’s here now. Well, she out in America at the moment. She’s running the Grange Builders. And then she’s on holiday at the moment out in New York.
CB: Did your son not come into the business?
RG: No. Because he weren’t well enough. He couldn’t cope with it. He weren’t feeling well. So I thought well there’s no good having him here. My daughter’s different altogether. She could cope with anything. So I gave her the company shares and she’s been running it ever since.
CB: Going back to wartime what was the most memorable event would you say of your knowledge of the wartime?
RG: Well, I don’t know really. I don’t really know. They, they used to have things. There was always things going on at Westcott of course. They was always raising money for airmen and soldiers coming back from the war and that sort of thing. We used to have, run sort of dances and whist drives and whatever in the school. Used to use the school for that sort of thing so we was always involved with that. And then of course we was always at work.
CB: Now, you’ve always kept your link with Westcott even though you don’t live there.
RG: Yes. Yeah.
CB: What? What have you done in [coughs] excuse me, what have you been involved with there in later years?
RG: Later years. I used to be involved in everything just about. Well, there isn’t much in Westcott. Only school, church and a cricket club. That’s all there is. So, we have fundraising things. We have a fun day there every two years and I chaired the first one we done. I don’t know how many years ago that is now. And after that Tim carried on. And we’ve always included the three of school, church and the cricket club and they split the money. Whatever money we make we split between the three of them. That all works quite well. I still get involved with that a little bit. Not so much this time. I’ve sort of stood back a little bit and let the younger ones do their bit. But I still go down there. I went down there yesterday and planted the flowers in the pavilion. Yeah.
CB: But in the Cricket Club you helped out with that. What did you do?
RG: I built it. They’d got a picket hut. There was a picket hut there from back from the war time then sort of thing. There was a little picket hut there which they used and there was just about room for them to get in there and change their clothes in. That’s about all. There weren’t no room for nothing else. And over the years Eddie Barnett and one or two more did actually put a little extension on it. What they called the kitchen. It was a bit Heath Robinsony sort of a job but it was there. Anyway, when I retired which was twenty years ago now I said to Tim, I said, ‘Well, now I’ll build you another pavilion.’ So we did. I got an architect chap to draw some plans up. I’d done it. He drew the plans up and got planning permission to do it and then we went, set about then raising money. We got grants from different people. Calvert here. We got a nice good grant from them.
CB: The brickworks.
RG: Yeah. Well, no it was the waste.
CB: Oh, the waste disposal.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RG: We got a grant from them. And the council, we’ve always been very friendly with John Cartwright. The council man.
CB: Yeah. The County Councillor.
RG: County Councillor. He, he got us a little grant from the council. And, well different ones then sort of thing. We raised money we raised money to buy the materials and then I set about and built it. And that’s there now. They’re using it now regular.
CB: And the picket hut is actually on the edge of the site that the WAAF accommodation.
RG: Exactly. Yes. That’s it. Where those houses are now, the Ministry houses we call them, that was all WAAFs huts there. Yeah.
CB: So, they took down did they, after the war the WAAF.
RG: Oh yeah. They were all demolished and they built houses in place of them then. Yeah.
CB: Now, you said the Ministry. So what was that?
RG: Well, now that’s still now — the council’s never actually took over. They’ve sold the houses now. They’re privately owned most of them. I think all of them probably are. But the footpaths and the sewers and the lights that’s, that’s still theirs. They have to maintain it themselves. The council’s never ever adapted them then.
CB: Oh right. So after —
RG: And the same as at the top by the school. There’s a few Ministry houses up there aren’t there?
CB: They used to be.
RG: The back of the church. That’s it. But they’re the same then. They’ve never been adopted by the council. They have to maintain the lights and everything themselves.
CB: The significance of what you’re saying is that this is, this became, RAF Westcott became the Rocket Propulsion Establishment.
RG: Exactly.
CB: Where they did research into rocket propulsion.
RG: Yeah.
CB: With British and German scientists.
RG: Scientists. Yeah.
CB: So what do you recall about the German involvement in this area?
RG: Well, all I can remember about it that the scientists then running this, doing these rockets they were Germans. Yeah. They must have been involved in that sort of thing in Germany and they they, just took them over and brought them over here to run the — well set up this establishment at Westcott. And there was explosions. That was a regular thing. I mean you could hear. They were testing the different fuels and that weren’t they? And there was explosions regular. All the while.
CB: When they went wrong.
RG: Yeah. And there was one particular day that the whole thing blew up. It burned out and I think one of the scientists got killed. And another one got very injured. Two or three of them I think in fact. And in, what they did the Ministry gave them, the family there were bits of ground to build themselves a shop. There was a shop in there behind the school then. Where the school is now that was a shop. That was they actually gave the chap there a bit of ground there to build a shop to start his own business.
CB: A German.
RG: He was an English chap actually.
CB: Oh.
RG: But he lost his arm and he was invalid then. He had to give up his work so they give him a bit of ground to build a bungalow and he opened up a little shop there. That’s gone now but the house is still there. And then another one up Church Farm you see there was. They gave another one a bit of ground up there to build himself a bungalow. “Caroline” they call it now. I think. And they tidied it up and built a bungalow up there. That’s still there.
CB: What was the local reaction to these Germans? Bearing in mind it’s immediately after the war we’re talking about? What was the local reaction to that?
RG: I think, I think most folks accepted it. I mean there was all sorts of people. I mean a lot of local girls married airmen and that that was on the camp. And that’s what happened. Even Tim’s sister did. Yeah. Yeah. I think folks just accepted it because when the war came along that changed everything didn’t it? I mean at one time local folks done everything locally and that was it. Once the war came along they was doing all mixed up with everybody and everything. Yeah.
CB: One of the effects of war is —
RG: War.
CB: Different intermarriage.
RG: Yes. Without a doubt.
CB: Dilution of the local heritage.
RG: Yeah. That’s right.
CB: And what happened to these Germans eventually? They lived in the community didn’t they?
RG: He lived down there until he died. Yes. He must have died there. I don’t know. Well, I do know a chap because I met him. Another chap just moved in down there now. There was a chap named Clapp who used to be in there. He was there for a long time. He was a good chap. He done a lot for the school and the church. Yeah. That’s Westcott.
CB: Thank you very much, Ray. We’ll take a break there.
[recording paused]
CB: Now, when the war came to an end then there was a repatriation of prisoners of war. What do you remember about that?
RG: Well, they, there were some sent home. And quite a lot of them stayed here. They got jobs on farms. But in Aylesbury now there’s the Sasso family’s now involved with the ice creams and that in Aylesbury. There was a John Sasso. He was a prisoner of war. He was down at Wotton actually. Down there. And then after the war he got a job on the farm down in Grendon Wood. There’s a farm just there inside the wood. Just alongside the wood. And he brought his family over here. His wife and mother.
CB: From Italy.
RG: From Italy. And they stayed on the farm for a little while and then eventually they moved in to huts around at Wotton and they got integrated and married girls locally. And different chaps. Yeah.
CB: Where was the local prisoner of war camp?
RG: There was little ones dotted about everywhere. There was one around at Quainton. There was one around at Wotton. I think there was a little camps everywhere and they had to send them out on the farms and out to work in the daytime. But they were just ordinary chaps the same as what everyone else were really.
CB: But the purpose of dotting them around was because there was a need for farm work.
RG: Farm work.
CB: Workers.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RG: That’s right. Yeah. As I say, the Sassos. They all started. Marcello’s over here now, you see. Their mother is a Sasso. And Derns down here. Their mother’s a Sasso. Yeah. She still lives around there actually. She’s the same age as me. She lives around at Wotton. Yeah.
CB: But old man Marcello was one of the prisoners was he?
RG: Yes. He was a prisoner. He was out here. Yeah. He came over after the war.
CB: D Marcello.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Now, literally at the end of the war then Westcott and Oakley.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Were used for receiving POWs from —
RG: Yeah. I remember that.
CB: Prison of camps in Europe. What do you remember about that?
RG: Well, I remember the Americans bringing them back in with little Dakota aeroplanes. A little, a bit like a Wellington bomber only a bit smaller. And now landing on that, they seemed to come in the other way around because they came over the top of our bungalow and landed there. Now, they was coming in there and landing three at a time all across the fields.
CB: Oh side by side.
RG: Yeah. They didn’t stick to the runways. They just come down. Landed everywhere.
CB: Is that right?
RG: I remember watching them come in there. Three abreast sort of thing. Straight over our bungalow and landed on the camp like. I don’t know how many they put in them. They weren’t very big aeroplanes was they?
CB: Not a Dakota. No.
RG: Two engines.
CB: Yeah. But they carried quite a lot compared with what they could get in a bomber.
RG: They was running, they was running day and night. A couple of days. I remember that. And they landed their aeroplanes and they went straight in. There were lorries there. They jumped out the aeroplanes. I watched them doing it. And they took them down the hangars, down the bottom where they gave them a change of clothes and a good feed. Then loaded them in lorries. Took them home.
CB: To the railway station.
RG: Well. I don’t know where they took them to but they went. Left Westcott in lorries. I remember them being, they used to be coming up through the village waving their arms. Enjoying themselves. And in fact there was one chap — he was a Westcott chap. One of the Beattie families. Tom’s brother. What was his name? I forget now. Anyway, he was, they brought him back and he jumped out the lorry at Westcott. Yeah.
CB: Made a run for it.
RG: That’s it. Yeah. He was home. Yeah. I remember that alright. We boys went down there and watched them all coming in these huts and now they were running about in there enjoying themselves they were. They was having a good feed and change of clothes and then they loaded them up and took them home.
CB: Most of these POWs were flown in by the RAF in bombers.
RG: Oh yeah.
CB: And the total number was about fifty six thousand.
RG: Quite likely to be.
CB: Which was a fantastic number.
RG: Yeah.
CB: And they had to close the airfield for a while because the runway and taxi way were breaking up. Do you remember that?
RG: No. In here? At Westcott?
CB: At Westcott. Yes.
RG: Did they? No. I can’t remember that. I can remember these Dakotas coming in three abreast.
CB: Amazing.
RG: Yeah. And they was landing on grass. In the fields like, sort of thing.
CB: Because we’re talking about May 1945.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Final thing I didn’t ask you is your family was farming.
RG: Yes. At that time.
CB: They were. But the nation as a whole was really on limited rations.
RG: Oh yes. Very much so.
CB: In other words there was rationing.
RG: Yes.
CB: To what extent did your family of ten —
RG: That went on for a long time.
CB: Deal with that?
RG: That went on for a long time. Because I know going back to the time when I went in the army, eighteen we still had ration books.
CB: Yeah. 1954 it finished. Yeah.
RG: Quite likely.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah. We had a ration book. We went, well, we had a chap from Aylesbury used to come and deliver our groceries and that and he used to go through the book and he’d take so many stamps out of the book each a year. Or a stamp. I think he had to put the stamp in and sign it. Yeah.
CB: Did your father grow vegetables on his farm?
RG: Yes.
CB: During the war?
RG: Oh yes. Very much so. He, we, we lived quite well actually because we used, he had his livestock there so we used to keep, we was always killing a pig then sort of thing. He used to kill a pig each year. And a sheep if we wanted one. And of course we’d grow all sorts of things.
CB: Plenty of chickens.
RG: Local. All everything. Yeah. So we lived quite well actually. We never went without anyway.
CB: And the road was busy with military vehicles.
RG: Yes.
CB: Was there a café or anything around nearby?
RG: Yes.
CB: Where was that?
RG: My father’s place. There was. He started a little café there. Back just before the war then my mother started a little café. The main reason for it was to accommodate cyclists on bicycles. There was a lot of cycling clubs set up just before the war. And she set up a little café so they could stop there and have a cup of coffee, a cup of tea. She opened a little tearoom. And then when the war come along that was all shut down and well the café was turned in to a, stack the corn and everything else in there. And then after the war they reopened it. I think one of the chaps, one of the chaps come back from the war actually, rented it and opened it up as a café again. And they run it from, my father carried on running the farm and he let the café to a chap to run it for some time. And then eventually my father gave up the farm. It got too much for him and he took the café over. And it was called John’s Café for years. He got two or three women from the village to run it. Worked with him like. Yeah. it was always a café.
CB: So when did that close?
RG: I don’t know. I can’t remember when it closed now.
CB: What happened to the farm? None of your brothers or sisters ran the farm did they?
RG: No. No.
CB: Although your brother Frank runs one it’s not that farm.
RG: No. He’s round at [unclear] now. He’s just, just about to retire now. He’s just had a sale. No. Roger, my older brother he took a farm around at Stewkley. Run his own place there. Frank, he — but most of us we had to find jobs wherever could. Subcontract. Anything. Cutting hedges. Doing anything. Frank and my younger brother Stan they started a dairy. A milk supply. They used to buy the milk and they were delivering milk around Quainton and different places and he finished up Wendover Dairies.
CB: Right. But what happened to the farm in the end?
RG: Which one?
CB: Was it sold? Your father’s farm.
RG: No. It’s still there. Still there now. My sister’s still living there.
CB: Oh, she lives there. Right.
RG: The bungalow where we was all was all brought up then that was sold off. I was trying to think of the name. It was sold off to a restaurant group. I forget the name what it was called. They ran it for a little. They couldn’t make it pay so they shut it down. And then this chap come along then and bought it and turned it into motorbike sales place.
CB: Yeah. “On Yer Bike.”
RG: Yeah.
CB: It’s called. Yeah.
RG: That’s it. And he demolished the bungalow and built workshops in place of it. And my father, before that he actually built — after he sold that off he built himself bungalow. A brick one. And my sister’s still living there now and she has the fields to go with it.
CB: So she farms the fields.
RG: Well, she don’t. She’s got the fields but Frank my brother actually farms them.
CB: Right.
RG: Yeah.
CB: So, how did the family feel about the family bungalow being demolished after such an historical —
RG: That’s right. I don’t think anybody really thought too much about it. We’d all got our own homes. We’d all set up and running our own business of whatever it is. Like Frank and Stan. They were dairyman. They was doing — Frank got a farm, Stan got the dairies. My sister June that’s there now she had, her husband run a couple of lorries. My eldest sister she had a farm at Stewkley. So, we were all doing our own thing then sort of thing. So, we didn’t worry too much about it until my parents died. When my parents died then something had got to be done with it. So my sister, younger sister they wanted me to stay there but my wife preferred to come to Grendon. So, I come to Grendon and my sister then, she bought the bungalow off the family as you might well say. She’s still there.
CB: Going back to RAF Westcott. What effect would you say on the countryside did the construction of something, an operation of something like this have?
RG: I don’t really know. Effect on the countryside.
CB: Well, people.
RG: Well, certainly in terms there was a lot of folks employed there for a long long time. But as I say when they were building it you see they were fetching people in from miles around in little buses and that. And they carried on even for years then sort of thing. Little buses running about all over the place. Aylesbury. Bicester. Miles around. Picking up people that was employed there. They weren’t doing nothing but they was there [laughs]
CB: This is the post-war you’re talking about.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Yes. Under the government.
RG: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah. Oh yeah. Anybody. Didn’t matter. They’d say. Well, you’d better go to Westcott. Get a job down there if you aint fit for work.’
CB: There was a huge shortage of labour at the time they were building the airfields so they brought—
RG: Oh yes.
CB: Brought in a number of Irish people.
RG: That’s right.
CB: So, to what extent were they obvious in the area?
RG: Well, they used to cause quite a bit of trouble I think but —
CB: In what way.
RG: Well fighting. They used to get in the pub and get drunk and get fighting and all sorts of things. Oh yes. Without a doubt. Oh yeah.
CB: And did they settle?
RG: It was a recognised thing actually.
CB: Was it?
RG: There would be fights going on in the pub. Yeah. How they managed to find the beer I don’t know but they did. There was always, the old landlord used to have to keep a good stick behind the counter to square them up. Frank [unclear]
CB: Pick handle.
RG: Yeah.
CB: And did many of them settle in the area to your knowledge?
RG: One. There was one particular. He married a local girl. They moved to Waddesdon I think but I don’t know where he — I think he’s probably dead now. Yeah. There’s none there now as I know of.
CB: Right.
RG: Not Irish ones. No.
CB: Ok.
RG: Tim’s sister married an Irish bloke. She did. Yeah. That caused a bit of a stir that did. But anyway. Yeah.
CB: In what way?
RG: He fell out. I don’t know. I think Tim’s parents fell out with him or summat. I think what it was, I think what it was Tim’s sister married and they started a family just before the war. Then her husband went off in the war and she met up with one of these Irish chaps. That was it. And that upset the whole family. In fact Tim’s father chucked him out. Chucked her out as well. He said that was the wrong thing to be doing.
CB: Because her husband was still alive then was he?
RG: Yeah. He was in the army then. Yeah.
CB: He hadn’t been killed in action.
RG: No. No. No. He come back. He come back and he’d got one son. He had his son here. He was about the same age as Tim I suppose. He lives at Wendover now I think.
CB: Oh.
RG: Yeah. Pretty sure he does.
CB: Such are things of the countryside.
RG: Yeah. That’s what happened during all these things happened after the war didn’t they?
CB: Yeah.
RG: I don’t know what happened before the war but —
CB: Just one other thing. The railway system around here was fairly well developed.
RG: Yes.
CB: And Quainton is still, is a Railway Historical Centre.
RG: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: And it was an important station. But also at Woodham there was a station there.
RG: Yeah. But that was mainly —
CB: Where there was a bridge over the A41.
RG: That’s right.
CB: What happened there?
RG: Well, that was mainly a coal dump.
CB: Oh.
RG: There wasn’t much going on there. Only coal. At Quainton they had just about everything going on there. We used to go there with a pony and cart picking up all sorts of different things, sort of things. And Quainton was a regular thing. We used to go and pick things up and bring them back for our own cattle food and that sort of thing. And also pick up parcels to bring into the village because very few folks had got any transport you see. So we used to go to Quainton pretty regular. Most weeks then. We used to be around there with a pony and trap picking up parcels or whatever there was then to bring back to Wescott. That was another job we had to do then sort of thing. And Woodham was another thing. That was more like a coal dump there. We used to go there. That was another thing my father done. He decided to be a coalman. So he started. He bought — he supplied all the village and one or two villages with coal. So we used to have to go down there to collect the coal from that station then. Woodham. But they used to bring trucks in there and we used to have to shovel it out the trucks, then into bags and deliver it around to wherever. That was another job we boys had then.
CB: Enjoyed that did you?
RG: [laughs] That was a dusty dirty old job.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Yeah. I can’t remember. There were no passengers. Nothing like that in there. Not as I can remember anyway. All I can remember is the coal being delivered there. And then when they stopped, when they closed the station down they still kept the line going because ICI used the brickyard then as his where is now, that’s still up there now. The depot. Isn’t it? They used to bring fertilizer in there.
CB: Oh right.
RG: Tim worked, Tim worked there.
CB: Yeah. Yes.
RG: That’s right. Well, they’re coming now by rail to the place. They never come along to the station. That was the old brick works.
CB: And the brickworks was closed.
RG: The brickworks closed I should think [pause] well around about 1963 time I should think. They were making bricks right up ‘til then.
CB: Right.
RG: But I remember when we started building we actually bought some bricks from there. So, that must be going after ’63 anyway.
CB: With, in the war time people did need to move about. Was there a local bus service? Or what was there?
RG: No.
CB: For getting about.
RG: They started an old bus. That was an ancestor of ours actually. He’s in Westcott Churchyard now. He, he started a bus from the Hay Binders. You know where the Hay Binders are?
CB: Yeah. The farm.
RG: Westcott.
CB: Yeah.
RG: Well, an ancestor, one of our ancestors anyway. A Goss. He decided to start a bus up from there and he bought an old bus then. I don’t know. A funny old thing.
CB: Coal fired.
RG: He used to run it in from there into Aylesbury then every day. Taking folks in and fetching them out then sort of thing.
CB: Was that a coal fired bus?
RG: No. That was a petrol engine. Yeah. They did. There was an old bus there but going back to that time we used to run around into Quainton Station picking up all the parcels and things there. We also used to drive a horse in to Aylesbury once a week. My uncle that was mainly the one that done that. Picking up anything from Aylesbury. Picking up folks whatever they wanted then. He used to pick them up in Aylesbury and bring it back and deliver it around the village. And if they wanted taking in he would take them in on the horse. We used to have to drive a pony to Aylesbury every day for the cafes. To collect up the food stuff from the cafes. An aunt of ours, a couple of our aunts they started running a little café tearooms. Grundy’s Tearooms in Aylesbury. We boys used to have to drive the pony in to Aylesbury every Saturday morning to collect the rubbish. Yeah.
CB: How did the milk get distributed from the farm?
RG: Well, back to the time my father was milking there was a lorry came from Nestles in Aylesbury. There again that was a funny old lorry. Only a little old thing. They used to bring, they used to come out, they used to bring churns of water out from the depot so as we got drink. That was our supply of drinking water then. Churns. And then we dumped the water out the churns and put the milk in them. And then they’d come and collect them up each day and take them to Aylesbury to Nestles. The milk place.
CB: Was there no well at the farm?
RG: There was but that weren’t very reliable.
CB: Right.
RG: There was one there. There was a well around behind the back of the bungalow which we used which had a pump on it and we pumped the water up but that weren’t very reliable. But we used it. Yeah.
CB: What was the surface of the roads like in those days?
RG: Well, I suppose it’s similar to what there is now but it was a bit rough. They talk about the potholes now. I mean that was all potholes then. That was just stones really. Going back to my, when my grandfather and my grandfather used to run the council. Westcott. And he used to have to pay somebody to go and fetch loads of stone from Blackthorn to fill up the potholes in the roads around the village. As I remember now we used to drive the ponies and that in to Aylesbury. That were tarmacked roads then. But yeah, the road and of course they did because they used to put these chippings on the road a lot then didn’t they?
CB: They did. Yeah.
RG: Now they’re all steamrollers roll it down and that. Yeah.
CB: I was thinking because of the amount of military traffic.
RG: That’s right.
CB: That that would churn up the roads unless they were properly surfaced.
RG: They were. They was rough up until the wartime and then I think that’s when they started laying this tarmac on the roads then. Yeah.
CB: So one of the effects of having these airfields was to improve the —
RG: Improve the —
CB: The road structure.
RG: That did. Yeah. Well it improved everything. Actually the roads and the water and the electric of course. I mean they brought water into Westcott for the camp didn’t they?
CB: Right. Where did that come from?
RG: Ashendon.
CB: Right.
RG: Still comes down from there. Yeah.
CB: I think we’d better stop.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Thank you very much indeed.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Raymond George Goss
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-14
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGossRG170614, PGossRG1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:12:11 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Description
An account of the resource
Raymond Goss lived on the family farm at Westcott before, during and after the construction and occupation of RAF Westcott as 11 Operational Training Unit. One evening a Lancaster collided with a Wellington on the field and both exploded. The Goss family home was damaged and metal from both aircraft littered the field and was still burning as Raymond ran to check his grandfather was alright. A member of the ground personnel was killed by the explosion and his family paid for the new glass windows in the church to commemorate him. Raymond also recalls the prisoner of war nearby. He also watched as prisoners were returned to the UK. After the war Westcott became the sight of the Rocket Propulsion Establishment where both German and British scientists were employed.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1944-05-31
1945-05
11 OTU
animal
childhood in wartime
crash
fear
home front
Lancaster
memorial
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/853/10853/PHamptonJ1601.2.jpg
b7dd793907aed248ade2f162c16f7102
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/853/10853/AHamptonJ160831.2.mp3
fdd3e4a8a9f34c9f12ef81cab9f74095
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
Hampton, James
J Hampton
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with James Hampton (b.1923, 2211484, 202028 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 76 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-31
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hampton, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PJ: My name is Pete Jones, I’m interviewing Flight Engineer James Hampton, other people attending are Sandra Jones, and James’ daughter, Julie Appleton. It is 31st August, 2016, and we are in James’ home in Thame, Oxfordshire. Thank you, James for agreeing to be interviewed for the IBCC. James, tell me about your early years before you joined Bomber Command?
JH: Before I joined the Air Force, I was an engineer, an apprentice engineer and because I was an apprentice engineer that I was able to join as what was called a direct entry flight engineer. That didn’t mean that I could join the Air Force and immediately become a flight engineer because I was a direct entry flight engineer. Until then, all the flight engineers had to come from the Air Force itself, and they had to have been members of a technical trade group, they had to be technical men, but obviously word got out how long you would survive as a flight engineer among the regulars, and that dried that up completely. So after that, they relied on people with an engineering background coming into the Air Force and so there were sort of two age groups. If you look at the age groups, you find that about half of the flight engineers were teenagers, late teenagers, I was nineteen at the time, and also men in their thirties who were engineers outside, and they suddenly decided, I think I’ll join the Air Force and go and kill somebody. So, but anyway, that’s how I came, and of course the Air Force, I chose the Air Force for two reasons, one it was part of my family tradition, nobody seemed to join the Army, they just joined the Air Force, that was point number one. The second reason was that the firm I worked for, I was in a reserved occupation, and you were not allowed to leave a reserved occupation even to join the forces, unless you were joining the RAF as aircrew, then you were allowed to leave a reserved occupation otherwise. Well when I joined Laystall Engineering Company, two of the men there had been territorials before the war, they had joined the Territorial Army pre-war and, you know, had gone on camps and so on, but when the war started, Laystall said, they were called up to the colours, Laystall said, ‘We’d like our two men back now because we are doing war work’. So, and incidentally, we had long hours to work, we worked till seven o’clock, and of course, I was a teenager at the time so I was perpetually tired, and it was a job getting out of bed in the morning, so I ended up in front of some kind of tribunal because I was on war work, and I’d been sort of dodging the column by coming in late and so on, and the manager decided he would make an example of me and so I was taken in front of this tribunal, and they said, ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ And I said, ‘Well, I dispute the fact that I was on war work’. And I turned to the boss, I said, ‘I’ve spent the whole of the last week repairing a scooter for the manager’s daughter, now is that war work and if so, which war was that?’ Collapse of stag party. So I said, ‘In fact, I did some war work but, you know, I wouldn’t be able to identify it’. So that was that. Anyway, when I was eighteen, I decided I would now volunteer for the Air Force, and I joined the Air Force, but in those days there was such a, they were never short of aircrew, ever, and all aircrew were volunteers, there was no such thing as conscripts in an aeroplane because obviously they could not have done their job. Um, and as a, these young lads who’d joined the Air Force, there was so many of them that they would go away for three days, that’s what happened to us, we went away for three days to an aircrew selection centre, and you persuaded them there that you were a suitable man to be aircrew, and they would either agree or disagree, and if they agreed, you would now be sworn in and sent home on what was called deferred service, and the deferred service in my case it lasted from April 1943, when I went to the aircrew selection centre to the 5th September 1943, when I actually went. Now in the meantime, I’d been keeping a close eye on all the other young lads who I knew of, and I saw that some of them were being treated better than me, and that they were being called up before me, so I wrote to the Air Ministry and complained, and I had a letter back from the Air Ministry, which I’ve quoted in there, er, it’s signed by the then Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, known to the other politicians as the Laird of the Air, he was a Scotsman, the Laird of the Air. And his letter was so patronising, that when, at the time I thought, that’s great, you know, to become aircrew, you’re very fortunate and you must be above average and so on, otherwise you wouldn’t have been accepted. And I read it later, and one of the phrases in it, to have been selected for aircrew and I thought, well I would use that as my, the title of my book, so that’s why it’s called “Selected For Air Crew”, it’s a, out of a patronising letter which is in there from the Secretary of State for Air. The first thing that happened, we all went to the Air Crew Reception Centre, that was in London, and we were accommodated in various hotels, where they had stripped out every last piece of luxury, we didn’t even have beds, we were sleeping on the floor on highly polished lino, and each of us had three little mattresses, two feet square and about that thick, and the idea was that you put these on the floor and sleep on them. Well, you can imagine, shiny floor, they’d all do this and that, so the next morning you’d end up with aches and pains everywhere, although you were only an eighteen year old, but that’s where we did it. And we were there for a month, and during that month, we learnt to march, learnt to salute and so on, and reached a good standard actually. We were good enough to go to Luton to lead the parade in the Battle of Britain Parade, we’d only been in about a fortnight in the Air Force, and there we were you know. The thing that we were very proud of, as air crew cadets, we dressed like all other airmen but in our hats we had a white flash to indicate, this fellas aircrew, and we were rather proud of the white flashes, and we were always referred to as aircrew cadets in the Air Force, not as airmen. And the privileges of being an air crew cadet were, instead of being issued with two pairs of boots, it was one pair of boots and one pair of shoes, the ground staff got two pairs of boots, and the aircrew were given a pair of white sheets once a week, the airmen, the ground airmen, just slept between blankets and kept the fleas company I suppose, but [laughs] so there were little, um. The next step from the Air Crew Reception Centre was Initial Training Wing, ITW, and that lasted for six weeks and we had that up in the north east on a proper RAF Station, I remind you we were sleeping in hotels in London, but up there it was an RAF Station with huts, beds, little iron beds, they were the first beds we’d had so far, and we spent six weeks doing that. At the end of it, we got our first leave and we were so happy to go home and show ourselves off to the local girls and what have you, but my leave was spoiled because I’d been home on leave for about three days when I heard my mother coming, flying up the stairs in the morning, which was most unusual for her, and just simply burst into my bedroom and fell on her knees and handed me a telegram to say that my eldest brother, Flying Officer John Hampton, had failed to return from operation. So that spoilt my leave then I obviously couldn’t go out with the boys or anything like that, so that was. And then at the end of my leave, I went back to the Air Force and started the flight engineer course. That was the beginning of November 1943, and the course ended sometime in May 1944, it was just over six months, the flight engineer course. It was a very intensive course, and among other things we used to have lectures on Saturday mornings, of course, was a five and a half day week, but there were also voluntary lectures on the Sunday, which you felt obliged to go to because if you didn’t you might fall behind, and you were only allowed to fall behind three times, and when I say fall behind, every Friday afternoon, there was a progress check an examination, a kind of examination, and if anybody failed it, they were held back, so they now left all their friends in this party and joined another group of strangers, they were all trainee flight engineers but they were a week behind them, so they did that week over again but with a bunch of strangers. And people were allowed to fall back three times and do the thing for an extra three weeks of the course, and if they fell back, then they were finished as flight engineers and had to do something else, so it was a very intensive course. But I’ve never, ever been with people who were so enthusiastic, till quite late at night we had lights out, we didn’t turn the lights out, they were turned out centrally somewhere, you know, there’d be a thing over the tannoy, lights out in ten minutes time so get yourselves in bed, and long after lights out had gone, somebody would shout out, ‘What causes hydraulicing in an Hercules engine?’ And somebody would shout, ‘Feathering it and feathering it after more than fifteen minutes’. ‘Yeah that’s it’. And it would go on like this, they were so enthusiastic and trying so hard to qualify. At the end of it, we had a final examination, we never flew by the way, flight engineers never, ever flew, we had aeroplanes there, we would go out and start up the engines and run them up and so on, but we never flew, so there was always a terrible thought that when you did fly, you’d be airsick to the extent that you could not, you know, in case anything happened. Now flight engineers, they were different from all other aircrew, in that they were all trained at the same place, other people, pilots for example, air bombers, navigators, they were trained, well my eldest brother Jack, he did a pilot’s course in America, The Swarm School of Aeronautics Miami, Oklahoma, not Miami, Sheridan, er Florida, he did a bomb aimers course in Canada. Other pilots, navigators, bombers, they went to Southern Rhodesia, you know, to, to learn to fly and do whatever they did, and air gunners, there were lots of air gunnery schools, wireless schools, but all flight engineers were trained at No. 4 School of Technical Training, RAF St. Athan, and about five hundred would pass out every week and go and join Bomber Command, because they were basically the only people. There was a Transport Command with some four-engine aircraft which needed a flight engineer, but they didn’t suffer any losses to speak of. And there was Coastal Command, which the bomber boys always referred to, looking down on them, as the kipper fleet, they didn’t take them too seriously, the kipper fleet, but again, they didn’t suffer many losses so, most of the output of No. 4 School of Technical Training was for Bomber Command. At the end of that, we went to, we passed out as a sergeant, but there was one proviso. Those who got over seventy percent in the final examinations would automatically be seen by a commissioning board if they so desired, and I got seventy point nine, which was like creeping in under the barbed wire, but they were as good as their word, and I appeared before a commissioning board, and I’d never flown, and I thought how terrible it would be to arrive somewhere as a pilot officer, never having flown, and then being airsick, you know, somebody had said it’s time you got some in mate or whatever. So I said, could it be, they wanted to know are you interested in being commissioned, I said, ‘Yes I am, but I don’t want to be commissioned for at least six months, I want to get six months experience’. But it was all forgotten about, I didn’t realise that in the Air Force, if you don’t do something at the time then it’s usually forgotten about, and it didn’t crop up until after the six months. But that’s, the next step was to go to Heavy Conversion Unit, now the process for aircrew, all aircrew, would train at their specialist place and never meet other people, other aircrew during that training, so pilots would only meet other pilots, navigators would be with other navigators, bomb aimers etcetera, engineers with the engineers, but the next step for all but flight engineer, was Operational Training Unit, and that’s where the crews were brought together. Oh I should have said, they did advance flying training after their basic training, then they went to Operational Training Unit where they would meet up as a crew, and the way it was done, they would all be put into a big room, usually a hangar, and they were told to sort themselves out into crews, so it followed from that that you chose people who you thought you’d be at ease with, and on friendly terms with, and so on and that was a good, one of the better aspects of service life, you know, all self-selected, and they would do the Operational Training Unit. A little aside, my last job in the Civil Service was as the Senior Administration Officer of the, the Rocket Engine Division of the Propellants and Explosives and Rocket Motor Executive of the Ministry of Defence, and it was at Westcott, which is not very far from here, that’s why we were living here, I was posted here, you see. And Westcott, during the war, had been No. 11 Operational Training Unit of the Royal Air Force, Bomber Command, and my eldest brother John, he did his OTU there, so by now I was sort of senior enough to pull a few strings, and I got on to the chap at the Air Ministry and said would you send for me, write and say could your Mr. Hampton please come to the Air Ministry for discussions, and in the meantime, will you get the operational record book from the Public Record Office, where it now is, on No. 11 OTU. And I would go up to have these discussions and I’d go through the operations record book, which is a wonderful book, every RAF unit has one. It’s usually referred to as the 540 because it goes on a form, 540, so everything that happens of any import, new officers arriving, the names go in the book, so if you want to know who was there in 1921, go and have a look at the ops record book for that, it was maintained once a month. So I did that, and went and had a few discussions at the Air Ministry, I wasn’t allowed to take it away of course, it’s a sacred document, but I got enough from it to be able to write a brief history of No. 11 OTU, which is now much sort after by the people who were there, I’ve got a copy of it to show you, you can have a look at it, but anyway, that was a little aside. I was at Heavy Conversion Unit, but to go back to the flight engineer days, and it was at Heavy Conversion Unit that we actually flew, first of all as a second engineer, and then you’d be allowed to be the flight engineer, and then it was there that you would meet up with the other six men, who’d been together now for about four or five months, so you were like a stranger. There were two strangers, the mid upper gunner would join their crew there, and so would the flight engineer. The other five, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and rear gunner, they would have been together from OTU days, where they would have spent three or four months on Wellingtons or something, so we were the strangers. And the first thing we did there, was to go to what was called an aircrew co-operation school, where we were taught what to do if you were shot down and survived, and what your duty was to try to get back to your own country, easier said than done, and in fact, very, very few managed to get back and they were almost invariably people who had landed in Holland or France. It was most unusual for anybody who had landed in Germany to get back, and in fact anybody who did come back was sent around the squadrons and so on, to give a talk on their experience of what happened after they were shot down and got back. They were never again allowed to fly over Europe, by the way, because if they had been caught by the Germans, they would know all about them, because they made it their business to know about them and they were saying, ‘When you were here last time, who befriended you?’ And they’d got ways of helping you to remember it, so they were never allowed to fly again. But the men who went around talking to the squadrons and so on, I remember two men coming to us and they had been shot down over Germany, but one of them at least was fluent in German, and before you took off, you were given money that would see you through Germany or the from other countries some foreign currency and it was called your escape kit. You’d have some photographs which could be used to, um, in a passport, if somebody could make a passport, you had a photographs, nine photographs you had. So you had all that, and these two, they’d come down over Germany, one was a fluent speaker, but they decided to give up, they could see no way of getting out of Germany and getting back and they were on pins the whole time. So they decided, you know, they would give themselves up, but they had got to do one last thing, they went to a cinema, they were going to go to a cinema, to get rid of the last of the Germany money, and when they were paying, they were stood in an RAF uniform but they’d taken their rank badges and flying badge off, the man at the cash box said, it’s half price for servicemen, so they thought, well there’s still hope, and they managed to get back. That gave them that little bit of hope, you know, the fact that it’s half price for servicemen and they got back through Sweden, so quite amazing really, wasn’t it. But on the, we finished Heavy Conversion Unit, we did all this escape, you know what to do if you were shot down and so on, at an aircrew co-operation school where we spent three weeks. Then it was on to Heavy Conversion Unit proper, where we learnt to fly the Halifax, and as we saw the flight engineer, they did away with second pilots when the decided they needed a flight engineer, they want to keep the crew numbers down. So part of the flight engineers terms of reference were to be able to fly the aeroplane on a course as given by the navigator, and that was just a bit of a joke, that was for flying a link trainer, a very early type of simulator, and over there, those three would have a thing that was called a spider, that would be tracing out a course that the man in the cockpit was flying, and that would now be compared with the course that he’d been given by one of the other two, turn onto 340 and so on, and see if you managed it all, so that, that was a bit of a giggle you know, for a bit of space in the tour, a bit of light relief. Anyway on the squadron, the first thing that happened, the whole crew would arrive together, now trained on the Halifax but we trained on the Mark 2, although the flight engineer, he’d done all his training at the School of Technical Training on the Mark 3, because it was known that they would be on the squadron by the time he got there, and they were a much different aeroplane really, the engines were much more powerful and so on. So the first thing, was to convert from the Mark 2 with Merlin Engines, onto the Mark 3 with radial, the Hercules Radial Engines. The Merlin Engines, they were about twelve hundred horsepower, the Hercules Engines were about sixteen hundred horsepower, so there was quite a good leap forward in technology. And a little aside, if you’d been flying in a Mark 2 and then into a Mark 3, you could feel, on take-off, you could feel it pushing you in the back, you know, the acceleration from these extra engines is quite remarkable. So we learnt to fly the Mark 3, and we were there for maybe a week, at one time the pilot would have to go second dickie with another crew, but by the time we got to the squadron, they’d stopped that, and we just went on our own. I won’t talk about operations, because really, I just, I got me feet in the water, I did a few but not many, and in fact, if I hadn’t been, I was called for by the squadron commander, Wing Commander Cassells, and he said, ‘Have you got two brothers in Bomber Command’. And I said, ‘Yes’. And he said, ‘Have they both been reported missing, presumed killed in action’. And I said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Well you’re not to fly anymore, anymore operations, you’re going to Headquarters 41 Group and you’ll be doing flight testing, but you’re not to fly on anymore operations’. So I said, ‘Well what about me crew?’ He said, ‘I’ll look after your crew, don’t worry’. So I said goodbye to the crew, after a very short time and in fact, a very short time after I left, they crashed on the way back from Essen, so if I’d stayed with them, I wouldn’t have met you. I now tell people I was never a veteran, I don’t class myself as a veteran, in fact, if you look in there, the introduction, I make a special point of that, that this is by no means a, you know, a personal account, because I wasn’t there long enough, I never class myself as a bomber boy, a bomber veteran, because I wasn’t there long enough, so I wasn’t on the squadron for very long. When I left the squadron, a very short time afterwards, the next month, my crew were killed coming back from Essen. I had a letter from the squadron, somebody there, to tell me, so and there were no survivors from the crash. They crashed, they were on fire actually, because I used, you know, a little bit of my influence as a civil servant with the, in the Air Ministry, to get the crash card, recording the crash of my crew. And all it is, about six inches by four inches, filled in in long hand and that’s all there was about the crash, and all seven on board were killed, it was on fire in the air, one of the engines was on fire, and then it says the pilot then obviously lost control, and went spinning into the ground, and there was a secondary fire which destroyed the aeroplane and killed the crew, so that happened just after I left them, which is a great shame, they were all nice chaps, you know. Anyway, on my behalf, now I was posted to Headquarters 41 Group, which was at Andover, so I travelled from North Yorkshire, where 76 Squadron was based, being a Halifax squadron, all the Halifax squadrons were in Yorkshire I don’t know if you know that, and the Lancasters were all in Lincolnshire, Stirlings were in Suffolk, so they took up most of the East Coast. And I went all the way from the north of Yorkshire and I still felt that I was a recruit, I hadn’t been in the Air Force, I’d been in a year by now but I didn’t, I’d been so busy at schools, Air Force training establishments, that I hadn’t picked up any of the, um, lore [spells it out], the lore you know, I was very much a recruit, and I took everything I had with me. Only later did I discover that what you could do, is hand in all your flying kit at Station A, it would be taken off your flying clothing card, which was a permanent in your possession, a little booklet, and that when you got to your new place, you draw another set of flying kit and that would go on your flying clothing card, but you wouldn’t have to carry it all the way. I carried it all the way down to, going through London was a nightmare, I’d never been in London before, apart from my ACRC, and now I was trying to go up and down the tube, with all my own kit, plus another kit bag of flying kit, and it was exhausting. I’d go hundred yards, put one of them down and go back and get the other one, that’s the way I progressed through London. When I got to Headquarters 41 Group, the man I had to see, a squadron leader, he said, ‘Where’s your home?’ I said, ‘Liverpool’. He said, ‘Right’. And he then looked at huge map, he said, ‘Mmm where are we’. He said, ‘Right, well, we’ll get you to somewhere near Liverpool’. I said, ‘Well, I don’t especially want to go home, sir, you know, I’ve joined the Air Force to see a bit of the world’. And he said, ‘Well anyway’. Then he looked at another chart where all the names were, and he said, ‘Well there’s no vacancies there’. So I said, ‘Well where there’s a vacancy?’ And he said, ‘Edzell, and Kinloss’. I said, ‘Well I’ve heard of Kinloss, I’ve never heard of Edzell’. And he got a long stick and pointed to the top of Scotland, and he said, ‘That’s Edzell, and that’s Kinloss’. So I’d now have to set off all the way back, with all this flying kit, through London again, to get to Edzell, I’d only been with him for about half an hour, that was the interview over. Although I did stay overnight, and I went to see my brother John’s widow, I did you know, she lived in Andover so I was able to see her and her family. But it was back to the north again and I spent the next three years testing Halifaxes. About three weeks after I went there, we were air testing a Halifax, it was always just a two man crew, there was no bomb aimer or what have you, just the test pilot and the flight engineer, and it was the chief test pilot who was flying the aeroplane this day, Squadron Leader Johnson, and it was a Sunday morning, and we were bombing down the runway in this Halifax when suddenly, starboard outer exploded and the whole front of the engine came off, the reduction gear, the propeller, the whole thing came off and hit the starboard inner propeller and bent one blade forward. You can imagine they’re about fourteen feet diameter so they, the vibration it nearly, you know, everything was going up and down, including me [laughs], ‘cos I never used to sit down for take-off, I always stood up, it was against the all the laws, you’re supposed to be strapped in, but I always stood up. And anyway that was two engines gone on one side, I stopped the starboard inner one, and it didn’t want to stop because the way it, the way it all worked, when you wanted to feather an engine, you simply pressed in the feathering button and left it, and it was held in by a solenoid, when the propeller had turned round to head on into the wind, it would stop anyway, the pressure would continue to build up and it would put the solenoid out to break the circuit, for the solenoid, but inside the propeller itself, there’s a little needle, a valve that moved backwards and forwards, and in one position it was allowing oil under pressure to go to one side of the piston. It’s a very complex thing, the propeller, because the blades all turn, so it’s a very complex thing, there’s a piston in there and high pressure either goes to one side or the other, depending on the position of this valve inside, and when the thing stops and the pressure builds up, the solenoid comes out and the needle moves to the unfeathering position to allow oil to go to the other side of the piston, the piston doesn’t actually, it turns and that’s what moves the propeller, there’s all sorts of gears inside. But because of the damage it had suffered, I pushed it in to feather it and it got down to about 800 rpm, and then it started to unfeather, and back to this terrible vibration again, so I pressed the button in again, and again it started to unfeather. So I had a picture in my mind of this valve inside, and I thought, well, what’s happening, the pressure’s building up because of the amount of force it’s having to use to overcome this bent blade, and another blade was split down the middle, so I could see it all in my mind, so what I did was, press the button, pull it out, press it, pull it out, thinking that now will have just moved it, you know, and eventually it stopped. And as a little aside, there was an investigation, our formal enquiry, as to why it all happened, you see, and I was asked, ‘Why did you keep pressing the button?’ And I told them why, and I’d made a big exploded diagram of the propeller, and I said, ‘That little needle valve there, that directs oil, you know, this way and the other’. I was a sergeant at the time, and when we were coming out, the chief technical officer, ground staff officer, a squadron leader, he said to me, ‘I never did know how those bloody propellers work but I do now, thanks’. So that, he said, ‘That’s the first time I realised how they worked, I never bloody knew’. So I said, ‘Well, we learn something new every day, sir’. So anyway, then we turned and the port, the two port engines had to be kept at take-off power for, you’re only allowed to do that for up to three minutes, because over that, over three minutes, the engines start overheating, that includes, you know, take, when you’re taking off, you’ve got to throttle back after the three minutes, unless, of course, you’ve lost an engine, in which case you’d keep them open and damn the consequences. On this occasion, we had the two ports still at take-off power, well beyond the three minutes, and explosions started coming from the port outer, and I thought, I know what’s happened there, it’s got overheated and the, those explosions are coming from the supercharge of the lube casing, and it turned out to be the case, so I said to the test pilot, ‘Shall I stop it?’ ‘Yyyyes’. So I stopped it and well, you know, we still had a lot of vibration going on and he didn’t have his mask on, and he couldn’t really let go of the, you know, it was very, very dicey for him, trying to fly it on two engines, then one engine with all this carry on going on, so it was a remarkable piece of work on his part, but er, he said, ‘Yeah stop it’. Shouted out, so I stopped it, we carried on, on one, came into the funnel and landed, and we both got a green endorsement, have you ever seen a green endorsement in a flying log book? I’ll show you my flying log book, ‘cos nobody ever sees it, it’s not like a DFC or something [laughs], it’s in your log book, you’d have to walk around with your log book open, you know, green endorsement. [laughs] But that happened within about three weeks of my arriving there, and it fortunately set a seal on my competence, the chief test pilot had been flying the aeroplane, and after that, even if he was going to fly an Anson, he would insist that I went with him, and on the Anson, the oil pressure gauges are on the engine itself, and of course, all the vibration, the needle would be doing this, and I remember Squadron Leader Johnson, ‘Are you happy with that, are you happy with that engine, are you happy with it?’ ‘Yeah, it’s okay’. I was the gent, kidding [laughs], know about everything you know, what a laugh that was. Anyway, while I was there, Squadron Leader Johnson was posted, a new man came, a new chief test pilot, Squadron Leader Phillips, and one day he said to me, ‘I’d like to have a little walk with you around the pedy track, a private walk’. Because there was six of us on the test flight, four test pilots and two engineers, and there was no privacy at all, so this was a private talk, and I thought I wonder what he’s going to talk to me about. So we got out and he said, ‘Have you ever thought of applying for a commission?’ So I told him that, you know, I’d been interviewed, and I’d said leave it for six months, he said, ‘Well, I wish you to apply, so I will get the papers’. And so, I was now commissioned. And I think the voting age in those days was twenty-one, so I was an officer in the Air Force before I was old enough to vote. [laughs] Everyone in the Air Force had a secondary, every officer had some kind of secondary duty to do and my secondary duties, my main job was testing aeroplanes, but I was also sports officer. I’ve got absolutely no time for it, I can’t be bothered, don’t watch anything on television to do with sport, just can’t be bothered with it, and the other secondary duty was officer in charge of prisoners of war, we had a hundred Germans, the war was over by now, and we had a hundred German prisoners. They’d been taken prisoner, these hundred men, in North Africa, with the Africa Corps, they’d been taken to Canada, kept in a POW camp, when the war ended the Canadians just wanted them off, but the British wanted a bit of work out of them, so we got a hundred of them at RAF Edzell, and I was nominated as the officer in charge. There was a staff there to look after them and so on, but as the CO said, ‘If anything goes wrong, the Air Ministry will want a head on a plate, and it ‘ll be your head, so just bear that in mind’. [laughs] There was no way they’d want to escape or anything like that, and they were all hard workers. We had one of them on the test flight itself, Oberfeldwebel Gustav Bergman, a very mature man, I would have thought he was in his forties, that was sort of sergeant major in the Germany Army. And on the test flight, he introduced a bit of law and order that we didn’t have before, we didn’t have a parachute section because we weren’t big enough, there was only six of us on the flight, you see, so our parachutes, when they were due to be unpacked and dried out and then repacked, they would go to RAF Montrose, which had a lot of flying going on and was a training school, and a big parachute section, so you know every month, we’d think which parachutes, oh, just take six parachutes, take them, you know, and then the next thing, Montrose would be ringing up saying, these parachutes were only done a month ago. Anyway, old Gustav Bergman arrived and one of the jobs he was given was officer of six parachutes [laughs], and he used to make the morning tea and so on, and odd job man, and he was brilliant at it, and the chief test pilot was telling somebody one day, the visitor sort of said, ‘What’s that German doing?’ you know. ‘Oh, he works, he’s in charge of the parachutes’. In charge of the parachutes!’ ‘Would you fly with it?’ He said, ‘Yeah’. He said, ‘Well how do you know he’s not going to, you know, interfere with them?’ He daren’t, he said, ‘Guards, Gustav’. So Bergman came in, ‘Yes, sir’. He always, you know, ‘Yes, sir’. He said, ‘Get yourself a harness on and get yourself a parachute and get ours, you know, we’re taking the Halifax up and you can come with us’. Just to prove that [laughs], so Gus Bergman, he was walking on air then, you could imagine, he would be dining out for years on that, how he flew in a Halifax bomber, so er [laughs], that’s what happened to him. So it wasn’t all, you know, shouting at them or anything, well they were never shouted at, the Germans, there was no point, they wouldn’t want to escape, they worked so hard, it just wasn’t true. And I had a motorbike with a broken kick-start, so what I had to do was put it in gear, hold the clutch in, run it, let the clutch out, which would start the engine, and then jump on board, you see. The Germans were having none of that, the German sergeant major was almost weeping at the sight of an officer pushing a motorbike, because their officers, they were little tin gods, and he said, ‘The men will push it’. I said, ‘No it’s all right’. ‘The men will push it, sir’. So the next time I went on my motorbike, when I was ready to leave, he got six men, three on each side of a motorbike, and being from Liverpool, I thought, well I’ll teach them a lesson, so when the engine start, I just kept it at low revs and they were still running along, all trying to keep up with me on the motorbike and thinking they were pushing it [laughs], and in the end, I just sort of opened the throttle and roared off and left them to it, but, so it wasn’t all fear and, you know. And it was on that test flight, that we had an officer there called Flight Lieutenant Hesp, who had a bicycle inner tube and every time the weather was bad, Flight Lieutenant Hesp was looking for something to do, he was a very restless sort of man, always looking for something. He used to say to the girl clerk, ‘Go get the inner tube, chuck’. We always called her chuck, I don’t know what her name was, and she’d say, ‘Oh no, Mr. Hesp’. ‘Go and get the inner tube’. So she’d fetch the inner tube and he’d put it round her shoulders or somewhere and stick ‘em on top of the door and then bounce her up and down like a baby bouncer [laughs], and it was all very funny for the rest of us, but not for old chuck. So one day she got fed up with it and went to see the queen bee, you know, the senior WAAF officer there and had a moan about it, so they transferred her out, and another girl arrived to take over as the flight clerk, LACW Grace Morrison Crawford, and I eventually married Grace, but anyway, the chief test pilot lined everybody up and he said, ‘If anybody so much as looks as this girl and an inner tube or any other, it won’t be the girl that’ll be going, it will be the officer, do I make myself clear’. ‘Yes’, and right. So my wife arrived, I didn’t know she was going to be my wife but she was, that’s how she ended up, we married for over sixty-seven years till she died a couple of years ago. We were married at the age of twenty-one in Dunblane Cathedral where that tennis player was married, and I noticed, who was that other fellow that was married there, Julie? It was in the paper last week. Every Saturday in the Daily Mail, there’s a magazine and there’s an article there and photographs, it was David Steel, and they have six items which they tell you why they want them in this sanctum sanctorium, you see, a tiny little room, and one of them is a photograph of him and his wife on their wedding day at Dunblane Cathedral, so they didn’t mention we were married there, I don’t know why. Well then, I stayed in the Air Force for five years after the war, principally to get some money. If you signed on for five years, if you were an officer, you got five hundred pounds at the end of it, and five hundred pounds was a fortune in those days, so I did five years on a short service commission. And then I saw an advertisement one day for an open competition for the Executive Class of the Civil Service and also I saw some exam papers, and I made enquiries and these belonged to a Flight Lieutenant Hoveran, so I found him and I said, ‘What are these exam papers for, Sammy’. And he said, ‘Well, I saw an advert about the Executive Class and I rather fancied sitting that exam, but I sent for the papers and I don’t think I will’. I said, ‘Can I have your exam papers then?’ He said, ‘Yes’. So I took them home and went through them and thought I could pass that exam, so I sent off for the another set of, they sell old exam papers, you see, I got them and I went through them and I thought, I think I’ll try this, so I sat it and got through. There were seventy-five vacancies in the Executive Class and there was just over seven hundred people sat the exam, so I was fortunate there was about a one in ten chance, and I became an Executive Officer in the Civil Service, and I’d only been an Executive Officer for less than three years, normally you did about eight years before you were promoted. A job came up and it said, ‘Suitably qualified executive officers will be considered and will be given temporary promotion’. So I thought, I’m suitably qualified, so I applied and I got it. Well it was like going from acting squadron leader, from acting flight lieutenant to squadron leader in the Air Force, going from Executive Officer to High Executive Officer, ‘cos in the Air Ministry, they do roughly equate flight lieutenant and executive officer. In fact, my first job as an executive officer was to take over from a flight lieutenant whose job was being civilianised to save money, because we were a bit cheaper than flight lieutenant, and his boss was a high executive officer, so I was sort of, I think, promoted from flight lieutenant to squadron leader. It was executive officer to high executive officer and it more or less doubled my pay all in one go, because for executive officer, it was a twenty year scale from start to finish and I was, you know, simply at the bottom somewhere I think because of my age, I was twenty-eight when I sat the exam, and because of that, I was given a couple of years notional seniority, so they pretended I’d been on a bad point something or other pay scale rather than the bottom, but it was low down and I went from there to the bottom of the high executive officer scale and never looked back. We moved all over the place, um, the first posting was to Stockport, and I went from Stockport to the Air Ministry in London, from there to Carlisle, from Carlisle to Andover. It was always from one end of the country to the other never, you know, sort of Aylesbury, it was always miles away, but it was a very satisfying career, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And got promoted twice to high executive officer and then to senior executive officer, and my last job was the senior administration officer at the Rocket Motor Establishment at Westcott. Do you want to ask me anything?
SJ: Yes, can you state your date of birth please?
JH: Beg your pardon?
SJ: Date of birth?
JH: Yes, 26th February, 1925.
SJ: And how did your parents react when you went into the Air Force?
JH: Er, not very, they weren’t all that pleased to be honest, but it seemed to be the family tradition, and at that stage, nobody had yet been killed. So whereas the soldiers in the first war, my father had been in the first war, they would be lucky to get two leaves if they were in France for about three or four years, they’d probably get home leave about two maybe three times, and they would arrive covered in mud from the trenches or whatever. The aircrew got leave every six weeks, operational aircrew every six weeks, a week’s leave and they were well fed, well looked after and so on, and it was absolutely difficult to believe that they were engaged in activities which could cause their death at any time, you know. And in both my brothers cases, they’d just gone back off leave when they were on ops and they were shot down. So by now I was in the Air Force, but I told you about my squadron commander calling me in and telling me, I wondered about that for a long time, especially in the later years, because when you first leave the Air Force or any service, you just get on with your civilian job and that’s all behind you, you know, you’d only talk about that with other people who’d been there. So, and it was about the 1980’s before I started thinking of that you know how did I manage to, I made enquiries everywhere and I actually, I spent two afternoons with the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command during the war, Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris, I was at his home on two occasions, and the second time I thought, well we’re friendly enough by now, you know, for me to ask him. Was there any procedure whereby if two brothers had been shot down and there was a third one still in the firing line, you know, and he thought about it and he said, ‘Well Hampton, if there ever had been, I’d never heard of it, you know’. And of course, I considered, it was all done manually, nowadays if you want to know how many flight lieutenants have got red hair, somebody would say, ‘Forty-six, sir, and there’s one whose turning a bit grey, but he’s still got a bit of red’, you know, it’s all on the computer, but in those days it was all handwritten, so how they could possibly have kept any. Well I wrote my first attempt at “Selected for Air Crew” as what I called a monograph, and in the monograph I said, ‘Unfortunately the telegrams advising my parents that my elder brothers had been reported missing are not to be, are not available, I’ve no idea where they are’. And I eventually gave, I had a dozen copies made and gave them to members of the family, including my sister Ivy, she got on to me she said, ‘I’ve got those telegrams Jim, do you want them?’ So I said, ‘Well you know’. Said, ‘Well when mum died, you know, the telegrams were there with a lot of other things, would you like it all?’ And I said, ‘Yes please’. There was quite a wodge, I went through it quickly, found the telegrams and didn’t look at the rest of it until about 1990, you know, when this was getting, that was on it’s final, I got all this bumf out and low and behold, in there, there’s a letter, there’s a letter in there to my mother from the Air Ministry, and it says something along the lines of, ‘Thank you for your letter of such a date and we note that you have had no word about your son, Flying Officer John Hampton, nor have you had any word about your son, Sergeant George Hampton’. Now the reason I think they would have written to her to ask her if she had heard anything, people used to listen to a man called Lord Haw Haw, he was an Englishman in Germany and he used to broadcast, and people would listen to his things, it was sort of an offence, it was like traitorous to listen to Lord Haw Haw, but he would always have the names of a few men who’d been shot down. And in fact a colleague of mine at Westcott, the Rocket Motor Establishment, one of the engineers there, he’d been a flight engineer in the Air Force and he said when he was shot down and his mother learned of it, when one of the, oh, learned that he was still alive, when one of the neighbours came in, you know, all excited, said, ‘Lord Haw Haw has just said that your son’s a prisoner of war’. They’d been listening to Lord Haw Haw and he gave a few names out of prisoners. So anyway, there’s this letter from the Air Ministry saying, ‘Dear Mrs. Hamilton, we note that you’ve had no news of your son John or George, with regard to your request that your third son, Sergeant James Hamilton be grounded, this is receiving urgent attention.’ Well I was never grounded but I was posted from the squadron, and although I can’t say well that’s why because I don’t know for certain if that was why, but it gives me a ninety-nine percent, I would never have asked my mother about it because, you know, we never talked about my brothers ever, never done, so I wouldn’t have asked. So I’m pretty certain that she was the one set in train and I’ve got the letter now from the Air Ministry to her and it says, ‘I’m instructed to express the department’s grief, the department’s something or other, at your great grief’. To my mother. So obviously the people there think, cor two brothers getting shot down. Because in the First World War, we lost eight hundred and fifty thousand men killed, in the Second World War, and by now we were a much bigger country, a bigger population, we lost two hundred and sixty odd thousand, so it was less than a third, so whereas in the first war everybody knew somebody from their street, in the second war, it was quite unusual and for a lot of the time it was only Bomber Command who were losing anybody to speak of, because nobody else was involved in it.
SJ: When you went on your [unclear] to do your training, did you have any lucky mascots or any superstitions or anything like that?
JH: No, no.
SJ: No.
JH: No, [laughs] we had enough to do to get ourselves in there, climbing over the rear spar with all your kit on you know, harness —
PJ: Did you all go out together was there —
JH: Beg your pardon?
PJ: Was there that comradeship?
JH: Oh yes, we were all NCO crew, there were no officers in the crew, although the pilot became a pilot officer after he was, after he died, because it’s always backdated to the date of the initial application and he must have applied for a commission, probably told to apply ‘cos I think, by then, there had been a policy decision that all pilots of four engine aircraft would, in future, be officers, so, because up till then, there’d been sergeants, flight sergeants, warrant officers. Sixty per cent of air crew or thereabouts were NCO’s and about thirty per cent were officers.
PJ: Well on behalf of the IBCC, Jim, I’d like to thank you for allowing us to interview you. Thank you.
SJ: Thank you.
JH: I’ll show you some of these bits I’ve got here.
SJ: Yeah, you can stretch now —
JH: I don’t know about that laughs] —
PJ: It’s so frustrating, ‘cos you want to lark or psyche us up or say something, you know, and you can’t and I find that very restricting.
JA: But of course, Dad, what you didn’t mention about the German prisoner of war who went up in the Halifax.
JH: Oh yes.
JA: He went up in the nose cone, didn’t he?
JH: Oh yes, he, in the bomb aimers position, he wouldn’t have taken off there because it was absolutely forbidden for anybody to be forward of the cockpit for take-off.
PJ: That’s quite ironic, isn’t it —
JA: Exactly.
PJ: You know though, Jim was flying in that –
JA: Well apparently the Germans had babysat me, hadn’t they, Dad? Because I was born in early 1947 and they were still there the prisoners of war.
PJ: Yes.
JH: Oh yes.
JA: Yes.
PJ: You don’t realise do you.
JH: No
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 Hampton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pete Jones
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-31
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AHamptonJ160831, PHamptonJ1601
Format
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01:05:48 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
Description
An account of the resource
James Hampton was born in February 1925. He was an apprentice engineer before the war with Laystall Engineering Company and was in a reserved occupation before joining the Royal Air Force in 1943, where he trained as a flight engineer in Bomber Command. He tells of how his experiences and his training, and how he was moved from operations to 41 Group headquarters after his two older brothers were reported missing, presumed killed. His former crew was killed a month later, on an operation to Essen. James tells of his role in flight testing the Halifax, and how he became officer in charge of prisoners of war looking after a hundred German prisoners, his trips in a Halifax, and how he met his future wife. After the war, James became a civil servant at the Air Ministry travelling extensively. His final job before retirement was as the senior administration officer at the Rocket Motor Establishment at Wescott. James is also an author who published his memoirs ‘Selected for Air Crew’.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
11 OTU
76 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
love and romance
missing in action
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
promotion
RAF Westcott
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/11115/PHollisAN1801.2.jpg
7fea6f1398cdeabc26833d102de46378
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/11115/AHollisRE180111.1.mp3
e3e523e3265c6984d2c2ca159745a801
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
Hollis, Arthur
Arthur Norman Hollis
A N Hollis
Description
An account of the resource
56 items. The collection concerns Arthur Hollis (b. 1922) who joined the RAF in 1940 and after training completed a tour on 50 Squadron before becoming an instructor. At the end of the war he was deployed as part of Tiger Force. Collection contains a biography and memoir, his logbook, correspondence, training records, photographs of people, aircraft and places, his medals and flying jacket. It includes an oral history interview with his son, Richard Hollis.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Hollis and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Hollis, AN
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 Thursday the 11th of January 2018 and I’m in Cowes with Richard Hollis to talk about his father Arthur Hollis. What were the earliest information you’ve got about your father, Richard?
RH: Well, right from his, from his childhood through schooling. We know quite a lot. Quite a lot about the family. I’ve got lots of photographs and, up until when he was in the Home Guard and then joined up and joined the RAF.
CB: So if we start with early on. Where his parents were. What his father did. And then take it from there.
RH: His father got completely decimated in the First World War and was an office manager in an insurance company. He went into insurance really because it was about the only thing that he could do and my father’s mother was at home bringing up children. My father was the eldest. The eldest child.
CB: His schooling?
RH: And his schooling. He went to, he said not very satisfactory prep schools. And then my grandparents were left some money by an uncle who deceased and enabled them to send both my father and his brother to Dulwych College as day boys where my father said he rapidly learned how to work and the advantages of working and he, he did very well academically. He was also a keen sportsman. He played rugby. He was a very keen swimmer and he was an extremely fine amateur boxer. He then, well after he came out of school at sixteen after he matriculated and I think that was school certificate or, anyway and he then, my grandfather was very anxious, his father was very anxious that he’d, with the war coming that he’d have some sort of grounding for a profession which my poor late grandfather had not had and so he was articled to a firm of chartered accountants or accountants in the City called [Legge] and Company. I think Phillip, I think it was Phillip [Legge], I’m not sure. The, he, [Legge] had been a contemporary of my late grandfather in the First World War. He was there for a good couple of years and, and, but he wanted to join up. He was not, he couldn’t join the Army or the Navy for some reason but he went then, he opted for the RAF and but apparently at that time there was a bit of a blockage of new people wanting to be pilots. They obviously couldn’t process them fast enough so he was sent off to Manchester University to do higher maths and flying related subjects I think for about six months before he went off to learn to fly in Florida. In his memoirs he comments that the ship that they went out on which was to Nova Scotia had been used for, as a meat ship. I doubt if it was cleaned out very well. They just strung a row of hammocks across and people were very sick apart from him. And so he landed in winter time in Nova Scotia. They saw good food for the first time. In his memoirs he tells us that. And then they worked, went by train down through the United States into, into Florida which of course was beautifully warm. He went to an airfield called Clewiston and quite early on he was selected to be a corporal, acting corporal and to, one of the jobs was to maintain discipline. He was quite a disciplinarian anyway and so he seemed to be rather suited. His commanding officer was Wing Commander Kenneth Rampling and he got on extremely well with Kenneth Rampling and had a huge amount of respect for him. He finished his training there. He said when he was training the flying instruction in the air was excellent. On the ground it was very poor so they had to work extremely hard to, to make sure that they didn’t lag behind or or fail. When they had finished there he went back up to Canada and I think he received his commission on [pause] up in Canada. They then joined other people on a, on a ship, troop ship crossing the Atlantic and in, he said in his memoirs later on he didn’t realise at the time, he wouldn’t have known but it was actually at the height of the U-boat, U-boat war but they were all very jolly and he said, but it wasn’t always pleasant going. He said, ‘If the sea was rough,’ he said, ‘You imagine shaving with a cutthroat,’ which he did, ‘A cutthroat razer in a rough sea.’ He said, ‘I didn’t worry about it.’ He just got on. But anyway, he landed in, he landed in [pause] I think Liverpool but I’m not sure. That would have to be checked out. And then went down to, in his memoirs I think he said he goes down to the south coast to be kitted out. After that, we’ll check up in his logbook, he went to Little Rissington to start learning to fly twin engine aircraft. It would have been Oxfords. He then went, he then went on to, where did he go after that Chris?
CB: Right. We’ll pause there for a mo.
RH: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: The question [pause] Of course, when he was an articled clerk it’s the early days of the war and everybody was pressed into something. He’d had training, officer type training when he was at school.
RH: Yes. He was —
CB: So what did he do when he left?
RH: He joined the Home Guard. He had a lot of respect for the other, his colleagues in the Home Guard. He pointed out to us as a family, he said, ‘Dad’s Army is not really a true picture of what it was like.’ He said, ‘These were people who had been a part of a, at the end of the First World War, if they’d survived the First World War, a fine Army and they could certainly shoot fast and straight. And in his memoirs he says that there would have been a lot of dead Germans. Anyway, he enjoyed himself in the Home Guard and thought it was very worthwhile.
CB: Good. Thank you very much. And so that set him in good stead anyway when he joined the RAF because he already had —
RH: Yes.
CB: Military training.
RH: Yes.
CB: Now, in his logbook we have talked about him returning to Little Rissington.
RH: Yes.
CB: Returning to England and doing his twin engine flying.
RH: Yes.
CB: So that was to get him accomplished with A - twin engine and B - the British weather.
RH: Yes. He does say in his memoirs that navigation was considerably harder in in the UK than it was in the, in the States.
CB: Did he ever explain why? Why that was so much more difficult.
RH: I don’t think so. Just that the terrain, in the States you could follow a railway line or something and there was very little. And the weather of course. So after Little Rissington —
CB: He then went on to the Operational Training Unit.
RH: Yes.
CB: That was at —
RH: He then went to Number 29 OTU at North Luffenham on Wellington Mark 3s. By this stage he had done two hundred and ninety five hours of flying and and it was during this period that he had an unfortunate incident. It was in December just before Christmas. December 1942. He had to bale out at two and a half thousand feet on the orders of the captain from the Wellington and he did not have his parachute done up correctly and it started to go over his, over his body. It caught on his flying jacket. It tore his flying jacket and he came down holding on to the, holding on to his parachute with his arms. He flatly refused all through his flying life to get the flying jacket repaired where it tore because he said, ‘That tear saved my life.’ He says in his memoirs that when he landed on the ground that he was met by some farmers, or farm labourers approached him and questioned where he was from. Was he one of theirs or one of ours and he said very strongly he was one of ours. He said they then plied him with tea in a farmhouse. He said he would like to have had something slightly stronger. Anyway, he continued his training there, then went to a short course, advanced flying, again on Wellington Mark 1s. And then in February, the beginning of February 1943 he joined 1660 Conversion Course at Swinderby. Swinderby, and was flying Manchesters, Mark 1s and he then and that’s where he picked up the rest of his crew. He had picked, when he was flying Wellingtons he had pilot officer then, Palmer as navigator, Sergeant Kemp as an air bomber, Cheshire, Sergeant Cheshire as a wireless operator/air gunner and Sergeant Jock Walker his rear gunner. And he was very very fond of Jock Walker.
CB: What did he tell you about the crewing up process at the OTU on the Wellingtons?
RH: He said that you just stand. There wasn’t any, he said you chose. I don’t know how it worked but you just chose your, I think he said that he chose. You chose your own crew and how you would know if they were good. I suppose if you got on reasonably well or you talked to them and you found out a little bit about them but those were the people that he had, I believe he had chosen. Later on in the Conversion Unit at Swinderby he was joined by Sergeant Bob Yates and sergeant [pause] who would that have been? Sergeant [Adsed], Don Adsed who was a flight engineer. Bob Yates was the mid-upper, upper gunner. So that made up the crew of seven. He did say, he told me that when he was doing his Conversion Unit converting to heavy bombers of all the people on the course he was the only one to have survived the Second World War. And that was born out by when the Memorial at Skellingthorpe was unveiled in the 80s. nineteen eighty —
CB: Six.
RH: 1986. A very old man came up to him and said, ‘Are you Arthur Hollis?’ And he said yes and he said and he was with my mother at the time who also witnessed this and this dear old man said to him, ‘Oh, I know one, I knew one survived. I’m so pleased to meet you.’ Which was very touching. Anyway, then in 1943 in March, March the 11th 1943 he started flying operationally at Skellingthorpe on 50 Squadron and straightaway we’ve got the first operation to Stuttgart. According to his logbook he flew a variety of Lancasters. They were Lancaster Mark 3s but his favourite, their favourite one appeared in March, at the end of March 1943 and that was D for Dog, ED475 which took them to Berlin and then on to St Nazaire the next night. Working through his logbook they did, they were flying some part sometimes to France. I know he planted, he did some mining in the Gironde on one occasion but then it was off to Kiel, [unclear] Stettin, Duisburg and Essen. On May the 12th 1943 they were setting off to go to Duisburg. He told me that quite often to gain height they would take off, fly over and go and fly over to Manchester to gain height and then, and then cross the North Sea with some decent height. But off the Dutch coast he was with, in collision with a Halifax. What had happened was that the Halifax apparently had been early and contrary to the strict instruction not to do a dog leg and join in with the main bomber stream the pilot of the Halifax had decided to turn back in to the main stream. Go head on into the main bomber stream. They collided. The Halifax with one of its propellers cut through and cut off six feet and damaged six feet of the starboard wing and put an engine out of action. The engine must have been on the starboard wing as well. Probably the outer. They both returned to, to England and he my father told me, I had asked him at one stage why he had not been recognised for, for bringing a damaged aircraft back with seven valuable men in it and he said because he wasn’t riddled with German bullets. But he was always extremely angry that the collision seemed to have been hushed up. There is correspondence about the collision from other members of his crew that looked at it, looked at it in 1979 and some photographs of the damage to the wing. But [pause] could we just stop there?
CB: We’ll pause just for a mo.
RH: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: So after the mid-air collision.
RH: Well, he —
CB: He got no recognition.
RH: He got no recognition. In fact, it was, it was all hushed up which made him very angry because it was, he said it was two valuable aircraft and fourteen valuable men. Coming back they jettisoned the bombs. He managed to fly the aircraft he said. He told me he could just about keep it in a straight line and they jettisoned the bombs and I don’t know where he landed but he obviously did. So that was that. Then he continued on with operations. That was with ED475. Their favourite aircraft. In an article written by, or written in 1979 one of his crew which was [pause] who was that? Cheshire, his wireless operator praised my father for flying the aircraft back. But it was established that it was a Halifax because there were bits of the Halifaxes propeller wrapped around the wing of the aircraft and it contained wood and only the Halifax propeller I believe had, did contain wood. So, we then move on to [pause –pages turning], I think we’ve missed something here. We need to stop I think.
CB: Ok. We’ll stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Ok. Restarting now.
RH: There is another photograph of, a colour photograph of a Lancaster. It’s actually a flight of Lancasters and my father told me that he was asked to take up a flight, a flight of Lancasters with a photographer on another aeroplane. They were to do formation flying. In his logbook he says on the 23rd of July a formation flying nine aircraft. He did say that they weren’t trained to do formation flying and basically most of the aircraft the pilots couldn’t get near this photographer so most of the photographs were taken of my dear late father in his Lancaster and his crew and the photographs are there. That has been established that it was JA899, again D for Dog and photographs have been taken up by Lincoln, copied by Lincoln University. Shortly after that, that was on July the 23rd, on July the 24th he went to Hamburg and on July the 25th in the same aircraft JA899 they went to Essen. It was on this trip to Essen that he, they were caught in searchlights and I think my father said at that stage they now had radar controlled searchlights and they were damaged by flak. It said hydraulics were u/s in his logbook. Tyres burst. They didn’t know that until they landed. Following the attack they were attacked by a fighter whilst held in searchlights in the target area and Jock Walker the tail gunner was wounded by a cannon shell and one of his other crew, the mid-upper gunner was also slightly wounded. He managed to lose the, or get out of the searchlights and, and fly the plane home and there was also, it says in his memoirs there was no, they lost their intercom as well. So it must have been a pretty unhappy time. For that he was awarded later on the DFC. Then after another trip to Hamburg they were coming towards the end of their tour. By this stage he told me that his crew, he said he didn’t believe in luck. He wanted, he purposely throughout his tour never had a girlfriend and he was a very strict disciplinarian in the aircraft. He said that there were, there were good skippers of aircraft and there were popular ones but he did not believe that the popular ones were necessarily good and he maintained this discipline. By this stage the crew had definitely established that they wanted to be flying with him and were most grateful for that which they wrote to him in a letter in 1968. And in the letter, this was written by Tom Cheshire who had visited, who had made contact with Don Adsed and it said, “We had a nostalgic hour.” This was in 1968 when they met up, “We had a nostalgic hour during which time we came to the conclusion from our total flying times that you were about the best pilot and aircraft captain we’d, either of us had flown with. I will spare your blushes but I really mean that. I afterwards flew with a motley load of crews and missed the crew discipline which you always maintained. I’m sure this was a considerable factor in allowing us to take advantage of an average share of luck.” Can we pause there?
CB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
RH: There is a photograph of, I would imagine it’s the entire squadron in front of a Lancaster. I know that my father is not in this one. I believe it was taken when he was on leave and that was at about the time of the, I think the Peenemunde operations. And he said that when he was on leave he came back and there had been such losses he arrived late in the evening and it was dark and he didn’t recognise anyone in the officer’s mess. He didn’t see anyone he knew and he said he seriously thought that he’d been dropped at the wrong airfield. And then he met someone and he said, ‘No, Arthur. I’m afraid we’ve had some, we’ve had some very bad losses.’ Moving on as they get towards the end of their, oh when Jock Walker was wounded so he didn’t do the last three operations but they were ending their, ending their tour and the last two operations were to Milan. My father told me that they were chosen, Milan was chosen because it was really getting to the stage where Italy had was on the point of, of getting close to giving up and Milan was perhaps a softer target, an easier target. They flew across France, over the Alps to bomb the marshalling yards in Milan. Unfortunately, my father told me that there had been a lot of instances where bombing raids tended to creep back from the target area as people pressed the button just a little bit early to, to get out and he wanted to demonstrate how not to bomb short. So he said to his bomb aimer, ‘You tell me when you’re ready and I’ll tell you when to press the button.’ He unfortunately got it slightly wrong and counted all the way to ten by which stage he’d completely missed the target they were shooting at, destroying the chapel where Leonardo da Vinci’s, “The Last Supper,” was on the wall in this chapel and Leonardo da Vinci’s, “The Last Supper,” was damaged but the wall stayed there. The rest of the chapel was completely destroyed and online you can, if you go online and look at the Leonardi da Vinci’s the “The Last Supper - war damage,” you can see some of my father’s handiwork. Later on, some years, some twenty seven odd years, thirty years later in his memoirs he tells us that he had, as a chartered accountant some Italian clients. He had quite a number of Italian clients. He never let on that it was he that had damaged that chapel or blown it to bits. But he was taken to see it and he quietly told my mother, ‘And guess whose handiwork this was?’ And he did also say later that he felt gratified, the fact that he had a whole lot of artisans work for the last thirty years. So that was his last operation to Milan and that was the end of his time at Skellingthorpe.
CB: Right so we’ve ended operations.
RH: Yeah.
CB: How many operations did he do?
RH: He, he did thirty. He did his full thirty.
CB: And how many hours was his total by then?
RH: And that, and that total by then was just under, was about six hundred and ninety.
CB: Ok. We’ll pause there. Have you got some more?
RH: Yes.
CB: He, he just about when he was finishing at Skellingthorpe in his logbook he says a voluntary attachment to 1485 Gunnery Flight, Skellingthorpe and it was then that his dear rear gunner Jock Walker came back on to the squadron and he, he took Jock Walker up in a Tiger Moth because he thought it would just be fun and good for Jock to get back into flying again. Very sadly Jock Walker lost his life doing his last three trips with another aircraft and in his logbook he says he was a very experienced pilot but sadly they lost their lives.
RH: Stopping there.
CB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: What was your —
RH: With the situation with Jock Walker my father was asked by the station commander or senior officer whether he thought it would be a good idea if Jock Walker went back on to operations just to finish his tour because he only had three, three to do to complete his thirty trips and my father said that he thought that Jock would like that because he would be happy with that. My father later on a night explained that, he said it was one of the worst things he ever said in his life because as I’ve said poor Jock Walker went off to, to lose his life on one of those last three trips and Jock was the only child of, my father said, a very nice Scottish couple and to lose their only child was absolutely tragic.
CB: The history of these sorts of things is that, seems that captains and others sometimes feel a sense of guilt when something’s happened to their crew that was actually beyond their control but nevertheless within their realm of concern and command.
RH: Yes. So that was the end of his flying operationally. That. His tour of operations.
CB: We’ll just stop there a mo.
RH: Right.
[recording paused]
CB: So in training and during operations people formed all sorts of alliances, experiences and admirations and some of the senior people were very encouraging to the more junior ones. What experience did he have in that?
RH: When he was, when he was, going back to Florida he had a great admiration for, for his Wing Commander Kenneth Rampling. And as I say he appointed him, he says in his memoirs course commander. “I was made an acting corporal unpaid and held general responsibility for the behaviour of the Flight. About fifty cadets.” He, he then went on to say that, at the end of his course, “We took the wings exam and qualified. On the evening before the Wings Parade together I, together with my two section leaders invited by three officers to a celebration at the Clewiston Inn where they stayed. What a night. I arrived back at camp wearing the CO’s trousers, mine having got wet in a rainstorm. The next morning the Flight was drawn up on parade and I marched up to Kenneth Rampling to report, ‘All present and correct, sir.’ He said, ‘Christ you look horrible.’ To which I replied, ‘Not half as horrible as I feel.’” Just as well the doting onlookers could not hear these remarks. Dear Kenneth Rampling, he was killed two years later as Group Captain DSO DFC CO of a Pathfinder Squadron.
CB: Clearly made a really big impact.
RH: Yes.
CB: On him and an inspiration in his life.
RH: Yes.
CB: I’m stopping.
[recording paused]
RH: If I just refer back to his last trip, tour. His last trip of the tour was to Milan. His he said his usual aircraft was pronounced unserviceable rather late in the day. Group Captain Elworthy, later Marshal of the RAF, Lord Elworthy the then base commander was very anxious that I should finish on this trip. He therefore arranged for an aircraft from another station be made available and took me personally in his staff car to that station. My crew were taken there by bus. And he then goes on to talk about the bombing short.
CB: So, when, when he went to Milan then he didn’t come straight back did he? He went on to North Africa.
RH: No. They came straight back.
CB: That was a different one.
RH: That was a different one.
CB: Right.
RH: The North African was when he was bombing, a trip to Friedrichshafen. He says in his, in his memoirs if I can find it. [pause] I think we’d better just stop now.
CB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
RH: Was when they, when they carried out raids on the U-boat pens at St Nazaire it was rather useless as the concrete was too strong for the bombs then carried. He also went to Berlin, Pilsen and Hamburg. An interesting trip was as a special force chosen to bomb Friedrichshafen where special radar spare parts were stored. “As it was then midsummer there was not enough darkness to return to the UK. We therefore went over the Med to North Africa. The personal map which I marked up and tucked in to my boots is in my logbook."
CB: Stop there.
[recording paused]
RH: After his trip to Milan he used to dine out on the story but he maintained that he had taken Italy out of the war because they were so disgusted that a religious artifact was too much for them to cope with that and he recently, he said he recently told the story to an artist friend who remarked drily that the bomb damage was not half as serious as the damage inflicted by the subsequent garish and overdone restoration.
[recording paused]
CB: What other stories have you got that ties in with —
RH: Well, my father, my father had a very [pause] he was quite careful what he would say to, to some people. Particularly, he had German and Italian clients but I remember on one occasion in the 1980s at a lunch party my father was sitting next to a very charming German lady and she asked the question, ‘Have you ever been to Hamburg?’ And, because she was from Hamburg and he said, ‘No.’ And she, this lady had to leave the lunch party early so she went and one of his other, one of the other people sitting beside him said to, said to him, ‘I thought you said you had gone to Hamburg.’ He said, ‘Well, I did go but I didn’t stop.’ He was very, he used to give talks on, about his experiences and he was very adamant that people should understand that, you know people said, ‘Oh well, you know the poor Germans,’ etcetera. He said, ‘Do understand this? That whilst Germany was completely obliterating Europe the —' perhaps we ought to be recording this actually.
CB: We are.
RH: Yes. We are. Good. That it, it turned people, some people said, ‘Oh the bomber, the bombing campaign didn’t do much.’ He said, ‘Just look at it this way. It tied up, it tied up about a million people. Manufacturing had to be geared for defending the German Reich not manufacturing shells for, for the Russian Front or tanks for the Russian Front. It tied up a huge number people as Speer said in his book.’ My father also used to refer to Speer and said that had there been nine other raids like Hamburg the Germans would have probably thought about giving up. But everything was, everything, the vast amount of armaments and work and planning was geared to the defence of Germany not the offensive. And he said, ‘If you look back in history no one has ever won a war on the defensive and we put the Germans on the defensive. That they were not going to win.’ So, and he was, people used to bring up, he’d give talks about, about the Second World War and he would, he would definitely make this point that, and he also talked about the, after the war he said, ‘I can understand the crooked thinking that the appalling and harsh lessons during the war our former enemies quickly became model citizens. I’d been delighted to share friendships with some admirable Germans and even one or two Japanese. But naturally there has always been during the war there were good Germans but the nation as a whole followed, took a disastrous turning during the 1930s and set about ruthlessly establishing itself as the master race and one must not forget that.’
[recording paused]
CB: How many aircraft did he fly on ops?
RH: In total he flew twenty different Lancasters and after the, after the war my mother did the research when it became available and found that only one of them survived the Second World War. All the others were either crashed or went missing which means they were crashed. Incidentally the Lancaster JA899 which was the Lancaster where he got shot up over Essen that was repaired. That was repaired three times. Damaged three times and eventually it was lost on the 22nd of June 1944. So it was quite clearly not a throwaway society. Right.
CB: So after ops then.
RH: After ops he went on to number 11 OTU at Westcott in Buckinghamshire and was flying, became an instructor and was flying Wellington Mark 1Cs. He used to tell us that they were grossly underpowered and quite honestly he thought at times that it was far more dangerous training people than it was flying over Germany which he absolutely hated by the way. Flying over the Ruhr. He then said, he says in his memoirs he was posted instructor’s duties to OTU Westcott. “I felt it was rather like leaving the Brigade of Guards for the Ordnance Corps but there was no choice.” Most of the instructions, instructors were New Zealanders. A very jolly bunch of chaps. His immediate senior and flight commander was one Squadron Leader Fraser Barron. DSO DFC DCM. A New Zealander who ranked at the age of twenty one as a Pathfinder ace and was killed the next year as a group captain. The immediate successor to Kenneth Rampling mentioned earlier in the narrative in my father’s memoirs. He told one amusing story about one New Zealander who said he was, father became what he termed as a shepherd. People who really couldn’t get something right and eventually were going to be, you know sent back to be an air gunner or something instead of a pilot they were given to him and, and he, he did his absolute utmost to make sure that they were, they, you know, passed. He said, but it was sometimes it was very sad because he said generally people who were poor pilots tended to get the chop first. He had one. One New Zealander. He said he just couldn’t believe how this man actually got his wings but he did. He disappeared and some months later he turned up back on the station and said, ‘Oh, hello sir.’ He said, he said, ‘Good God, what are you doing here?’ And he said, ‘I’ve come here as an instructor.’ He couldn’t believe it [laughs] He’d survived his tour. Anyway, he was also at Westcott. He was, spent a lot of time at the satellite station of Oakley which also had 1Cs. He said one night he was sitting next door in the instructor’s seat next to an Australian pupil pilot who was doing a cross country practice. On returning he made a rather mess of the landing approach and I said, my father said, ‘Go around again.’ Immediately ahead of the main runway was at Oakley was Brill Hill. He said, ‘Good pilots could clear it easily but my pupil was not in that category. After looking up at the trees as we went over Brill Hill I let him have another attempt at landing. He did the same thing again after which I said, ‘Up to three thousand feet and we’ll change seats.’ The aircraft cross country flying at Oakley had no dual controls. He said at one stage he did, I think on that occasion he did come back with some, a bit of branch or twigs or something in the tail wheel. When he was at Oakley he said in the late spring of that year he had the good fortune to meet one Betty Edmunds, one of the staff in the watch tower at Oakley. He was officer commanding night flying at the time. “We soon discovered that we both came from Carshalton and had many mutual friends. Our friendship developed. We used to play tennis together. She always won partly because she was a much better player than I but also because whenever she bent over to pick up the ball I was completely unnerved and my mind was not on the tennis.” They did eventually get married and my father said he thought they would wait until the end of the war and my mother said, ‘Oh, do you? I was thinking about the coming 2nd of December.’ They got married on the 2nd of December and, and they went away for a honeymoon in Torquay and there is a photograph of my father on honeymoon wearing, wearing a greatcoat and out of uniform. That hasn’t gone to the Lincolnshire. That’s a new one I found. But anyway, continuing on with my parents because it was a very important part of his life. He said they both wanted children. My mother wanted four but my father thought that would be rather too many to educate properly. He was particularly keen in his life that people should be educated properly thinking back of his own, of his own education. He said, “Thinking about things over the years and knowing my darling Betty’s quiet way of getting what she wanted I think she made up her mind to start our family on our honeymoon. I had no hesitation in helping.” And I think, I know life was very difficult for them there. My mother was, was still in the WAAF but, and found certain petty rules very very irksome and there was one time she was married, then married to my father said at a New Year, at New Year there was an officer’s dance at Oakley and Betty was only a sergeant. She had to get her COs permission to attend and this was refused. “My fellow officers were most indignant that the Oxford tarts were likely to be there but an officer’s wife was refused.” I didn’t particularly mind the signs that Betty was pregnant but there you are. I don’t know how he told that within a month but still [laughs] they then, they then got some accommodation, very difficult but later on they managed to get a council house or part of a council house. Two rooms in a council house at Brackley but more of that in a while. So he continued his, back to the flying he continued with his training as an instructor and there was one stage where someone started to write him down and when he went for tests in flying saying that he wasn’t very good. Fortunately, his commanding officer picked this up and realised that the man, the same man actually wanted to go out with my mother. He thought that he would be taking my mother out. So, but that was, that was picked up and he did finish up and he says in his memoirs that he finished up with a category, “After New Year I was telephoned, this was a year and a half on, “I was telephoned by Group and I was promoted to squadron leader and was to Command Instructors Flight, Turweston. A satellite of Silverstone. I had two months earlier been categorised A2 by a visiting examiner from Central Flying School. An A2 instructor’s category was rare and the highest one could obtain in wartime.” I didn’t know that. But there we are. So, after, after Westcott he then went to [pause – pages turning] Ludgate, Lulsgate Bottom. Number 3 FI [pause] FI5 or FIS?
CB: FIS.
RH: FIS. And I don’t know whether that, I think that must have been further, that must have been further training.
CB: Let’s just stop there a mo.
RH: Shall we stop?
[recording paused]
CB: Right.
RH: Right. So after further training, advanced training as an instructor his European war ended on the 1st of May leaving Westcott.
CB: No. Turweston.
RH: Sorry. Leaving Turweston and he says in his memoirs when everyone else was celebrating VE Day he was with my mother and he had a miserable time because he’d just been told that he was going off to be an advanced party of Tiger Force then being formed to set up Bomber Command on Okinawa. But he was not allowed to tell my mother where he was going and he may or may not be coming back. So, he refers to that as, ‘The saddest day of my life.’ Do you want to know about Sue the dog?
CB: Yes.
RH: When he was, when he reached his twenty first birthday, as a little anecdote he, he was given an English bull terrier called, which he called Sue which he obviously loved. And when he got married to my mother they went to [pause] they found the two rooms in a council house in Brackley which was owned for the sake of it by a Mr and Mrs Blackwell. They didn’t, when father was posted away my mother who was heavily pregnant at the time went to live with, back to live with her parents in Carshalton Beeches and they didn’t know what to do with Sue. So they gave Sue the dog to Mrs Blackwell and my father used to say that every, every Christmas there and after they always had received a photograph of Sue the dog with Mrs Blackwell. He said they looked rather similar which looking at the photograph they did but Mrs Blackwell was always the one wearing the hat. He boarded a, he boarded a troop ship which had been formerly the Kaiser’s yacht and they were, they went through the Panama Canal. He found that fascinating. And they ended up they were in Hawaii when the bomb was dropped. The Americans, he said, didn’t really want us to, didn’t really want the British contingent which I think was about seven squadrons. They didn’t want them to be part of Tiger Force. The bomb was dropped and he said he and his fellow officers were horrified. Had mixed feelings. He discussed the situation with his fellow officers in his memoirs, “We were horrified that science had reached this far but grateful that our lives and probably about two million others had been saved.” They didn’t know what to do with them. They had a ship full of craftsmen, builders, and medical units, air sea rescue units etcetera. So after a certain amount of cruising around the Pacific they went to Hong Kong. He, they landed, they got to Hong Kong and it was about two days or so after, a day or so after the British Pacific Fleet. Before the Army had arrived and my father told me a story that it was after he arrived he said the crew on the Empress of Australia, the former Kaiser’s yacht, he said they were about, he said about the fourth rate scum that they’d dug out of the, out of somewhere in, somewhere in England. I think he said Liverpool. They had been cheating the, the servicemen on board by turning up heating and then serving them some sort of orange drink to which they would add a touch of salt so they wanted to you know, sell more. And he said they really were, they were very badly done by this group. When they arrived in Hong Kong he went ashore for twenty minutes and he came back and was speaking to a very worried sergeant, RAF sergeant who told him that the crew were mustering over there and, and they wanted, they were planning to loop the medical supplies that had just been unloaded from the ship on to the dock and what should he do? And he said it was the only time he took out his service revolver in anger. He said to the sergeant, ‘Sergeant, there’s a line there. Any man that crosses that line shoot him dead and I’ll show you how to do it.’ And he would have done too. But anyway, he, they had to keep the Japanese officers as fully armed because otherwise, he said the Chinese, the Hong Kong Chinese would have ripped the place apart and looted it but he said they gave, they gave away their food, their rations because there were other people who definitely needed it more. He said, ‘I scarcely slept for several days and was somewhat hungry as we had given up our rations to the ex-occupants of the internment camps. The Japanese were later used for hard work in repairing the colony. They lived in POW camps and were not overfed. And then after about a fortnight the Marine Commandos arrived and he did have, apart from the fact he was away from my mother and he did have a grand time, or a good time in Hong Kong. Although he’d never learned to drive he was given a jeep and he said that you had to guard it all times. If you left it for five minutes when you came back the engine would have been taken out. He said the Chinese, the Hong Kong Chinese were so resourceful he said they would, they used the engines for their, to power their junks. He was initially put in as supplies officer for the officer’s mess and he had an office in the Peninsula Hotel. He said that when you went into the Peninsula Hotel you turned right into a large room. In the middle of the room the room was completely bare apart from a desk, a chair and a filing cabinet and that was his office. He was supplies officer for the officer’s mess and he said he used to go out to the Navy ships to collect the gin. He said, ‘I always remembered going out.’ He always remembered going out but he never remembered coming back. He then, also in Hong Kong went on to do the rather unpleasant job of commandeering people’s houses for accommodation and he made some good friends from the Hong Kong Chinese for that. He said it was the most distasteful job. He also would do tribunals. Criminal tribunals. He said it was very difficult because the Hong Kong Chinese at that time would make things up and tell you what they thought you wanted to hear not what had actually happened. But I don’t know whether we can put that in. Anyway, he, my mother sent him some books to study, to carry on studying accountancy but he said that the social life was, it was difficult to study because the social life was rather too good. Anyway, back, then later on in it must have been I think it was May. In May 1946 he [pause] I’ll just get, we need to stop really.
CB: Yes.
[recording paused]
CB: In July.
RH: In July 1946 it was his turn to be demobilised and he set course for home by taking a passage in one of her, his majesty’s ships to Singapore and then got a place on, believe it or not the Empress of Australia again. He arrived at Liverpool one wet afternoon and the ship’s tannoy went, ‘Requiring the presence of Squadron Leader Hollis in Cabin —’ X. He proceeded there and was greeted by an air marshal who was there for the purpose of offering him a permanent commission. He said, ‘I’ve always been pleased that I didn’t accept. There were severe Service cuts a few years later and he has had a very interesting life.’ He went on to qualify as a chartered accountant. When he came back to England — do you want this? When he came back to England of course he then had to study. He had a young child. They had nowhere to live. They managed to find two rooms in the attic of a house in Dover belonging to a relative and he only spent the weekends there because he was studying during the week time in London living with his father which was, he said since his father liked to sit in silence it was the appropriate atmosphere but very poor for my mother. They literally had no money at all. Any money that they did, he got a small grant and any money they did have was spent on, on suits so that he was well dressed when he went to work. They then moved to a house of another, some cousins in Westcliffe on Sea in Essex but they were not, that did not go down. It did not work very well. But then in 1948 they found a flat to rent at the Paragon in Blackheath where they spent fifteen happy years and he passed the final exam and became a charted accountant. And my late sister Sylvia was born in 1949. Things got a bit better for him and eventually he was offered a partnership in a firm called Hugh [unclear]. A joint [unclear] with an assistant partnership prospects and he, in 1950 — do you want to continue in this? In 1950 he went out to Jeddah and he had some work in Jeddah to do and he said Jeddah at that stage was absolutely medieval. He said he felt that he was going back to the Old Testament. He did tell me one story that he was very keen on walking and one evening he walked out of the town and on to the outskirts of the town and got surrounded by a pack of dogs, wild dogs and he really did think that he was, that he was going to be attacked and killed. But he managed to find some sticks and stones and threw them at the dogs and he walked back into the town. But he said that was a very close shave. Unfortunately, my sister Sylvia when she was born was born very prematurely and was blinded by an oxygen, use of an oxygen tent. This was when he returned from Jeddah. He said it was very difficult. My other sister was doing well at school but he said, ‘How can you tell a child who says, ‘Will I be able to see next year? Or when I’m ten?’ ‘No. You won’t.’ In 1953 I was born. Unfortunately, my mother contracted polio whilst she was carrying me and it was another great burden on the family. My father and his career he worked hard and progressed well becoming a partner in [unclear] and company. He also took on the work from a small practice where the sole practitioner had died and the sole practitioner specialised in theatrical, in the theatrical and musical world and, and he met, and Yehudi Menuhin became a client amongst others. And Diana Sheridan, the late actress. He struck a great, had a great rapport with Yehudi Menuhin. Saved him from being clobbered by vast taxation and, and he was instrumental with others in setting up the Yehudi Menuhin School. He provided for us admirably. The family. We then in the early ‘60s moved down to a beautiful house down in Kent where he lived with my mother for fifty years and was very very happy there. He was highly respected and it was the house, he was highly respected in the village and became the sort of the elder statesman in the village. And he, my mother died in 2010 and in 2013 my father didn’t become ill he just one day went to bed and never woke up. And he was terrified of ever having to go into a home but he had his wish, he died as I say in his own bed in his own house and having lived an extremely full life.
CB: What a fascinating story.
RH: There we are.
CB: Thank you very much.
RH: Sorry, I’ve gone —
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 Richard Hollis
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-11
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHollisRE180111, PHollisAN1801
Format
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01:06:22 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Richard’s father, Arthur Hollis, went to Dulwich College as a day boy. He left at sixteen to join the Home Guard , then worked for a firm of accountants for a couple of years before joining the Royal Air Force. He was sent to Manchester University for about six months and then to Florida to learn to fly. He went to Nova Scotia and then travelled by train to Florida. Arthur was posted to Clewiston airfield and was soon selected for acting corporal. After finishing his training, he was posted to Canada where he received a commission. His next posting was to RAF Little Rissington to learn to fly twin-engine aircraft and then to the Operational Training Unit at RAF North Luffenham working on Wellingtons. He also went on a course for advanced flying and then joined the conversion course at RAF Swinderby with Manchesters, where he picked up the rest of his crew. Arthur recalled December 1942 when he had to bale out at thousand five hundred feet on the orders of the captain. His parachute, not being fastened properly, tore his flying jacket and he came down holding the parachute with his arms. In March 1943 he started flying operationally at RAF Skellingthorpe with 50 Squadron. Off the Dutch coast he was in collision with a Halifax which had been early. It cut off and damaged the starboard wing and put an engine out of action. Arthur had brought his crew back safely. The crew continued operations flying to Hamburg and Essen. On one occasion they were caught in searchlights, attacked by a fighter, and damaged by anti-aircraft fire. They managed to get home and Arthur was later awarded the DFC. The last two operations were to Milan to bomb the marshalling yards. Arthur completed thirty operations and had flown 20 different Lancasters, of which only one survived the war. Upon completion of his tour, to No. 11 OTU at RAF Westcott and RAF Oakley, where he met Betty who became his wife.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Manchester
Canada
Nova Scotia
United States
Florida
Germany
Germany--Hamburg
Italy
Italy--Milan
Netherlands
England--Rutland
Germany--Hesse
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Lancashire
China--Hong Kong
Germany--Duisburg
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-12
1943-02
1943-03-11
1943-05-12
1944-06-22
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
11 OTU
1660 HCU
29 OTU
5 BFTS
50 Squadron
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
civil defence
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Lancaster
Manchester
mid-air collision
Operational Training Unit
RAF Little Rissington
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Westcott
searchlight
training
Wellington
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Adams, Matthew William
M W Adams
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Mathew Adams.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-19
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Adams, MW
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 Matthew William Adams
Description
An account of the resource
Matthew Adams’ family farmed the land around the site and once covering the site taken over by RAF Westcott. He describes the reaction of landowners, the details of the takeover and the building of the site for use by the RAF.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AAdamsMW170519
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:04:56 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
RAF Westcott
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/615/11423/PNeechPRR1601.2.jpg
b18dcb33ac05d88b974e6778658b17de
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/615/11423/ANeechPRR180705.1.mp3
71c61783aa88de07a69697151f381f10
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
Neech, Peter Rowland Ruthven
P R R Neech
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Neech, PRR
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Peter Neech (b.1925, 1851518 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a with 75 and 98 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
2016-10-13
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
GT: This is Thursday the 5th of July 2018 and I’m at the home of Mr Peter Neech born 7 January 1925 in West Hampstead, London, England. Peter joined the RAF on the 7 January 1943 at the age of eighteen, beginning his training to be an air gunner in the July of 1943. Once training completed and fully crewed, Peter completed a tour of Ops on 75 New Zealand Squadron with Stirlings and Lancasters in 1944. Then, after a break, joined 98 Squadron B25 Mitchells until VE Day. Peter continued his RAF career post war as an air gunner on Lincolns, Lancasters and with Coastal Command in Shackletons until retiring in 1956. Peter, thank you for allowing me to interview you for the IBCC Archives. Please tell me why and how you joined the Royal Air Force.
PN: Go ahead now. Yes, I joined because I was working in Hammersmith, London in a jewellers’ shop where my brother had originally worked until he joined the Air Force and so I worked there and the son of the manager came along one time and said ‘Oh I’ve really done it now. I’ve joined the, the I joined up, virtually, but it was in the Air Training Corps Cadets and I’ve joined the Cadets.’ And I said ‘Well that’s a good thing. I’ll join up’, and I joined the Hendon Squadron of the Air Training Corps and em I served with them from 1941 something like that until about 1943 when I joined the Royal Air Force on my eighteenth birthday and I started in as an air gunner on training and went through the training and eh at Westcott I selected, I saw eh ‘Hoot’ Gibson and his crew and I thought ‘They look a very steady crew to me.’ And eh he was third in line for picking out air gunners because they, they hadn’t that’s what they’d come to this country for, so I, he looked my way in between the third position and got in his crew. And from there on I was in ‘Hoot’ Gibson’s crew as a mid-upper gunner.
GT: Outstanding. So, so em, Peter, when you initially then joined as an air gunner at what bases and places did you train before you joined crew?
PN: Before I joined crew? I don’t think em
GT: You were in Scotland?
PN: Yes. Oh yes, I joined up in Scotland at Dalcross. RAF Dalcross and eh that was about three months and then it was there I passed out as a, as an air gunner. And I was very pleased with the little WAAFs there who very kindly sewed our tapes and brevvies on our uniforms. I wouldn’t have been able to do that but they could and they did. And so they sewed our uniforms up with ah the brevvies and the sergeant’s stripes and we were then sergeants. I came down to London then and eh on leave and eh got a, as I’d got a lot of kit, flying kit, I took a taxi home and eh the taxi stopped suddenly and I thought ‘What are you stopped here for?’ and he said ‘Well that’s where you wanted to be.’ And I looked around and true enough it’s my house had been eh quite badly damaged in a local bombing episode when night bombers had come over from Germany and bombed, laid a lot of bombs, and they had blown up a house only two doors, only two houses away from me, damaging my home quite severely. And eh but it got repaired and I went back then to eh a Wellington OTU at Westcott.
GT: So that was late 43 when you eh when you went home to find your house bombed. Was that German bombers or?
PN: German bombers.
GT: Not the German missiles? Not the V1s or the V2s?
PN: No, no, no. They came much later.
GT: Much later, okay. So, so then you arrived at 11 OT, OTU at Westcott in December 43.
PN: Yes.
GT: And, and what aircraft did you join up with there? Or did you go straight to the crew?
PN: No. Went in to Wellington bombers there. And eh I had picked out a crew at that time, ‘Hoot’ Gibson, and eh his crew, I became their mid-upper gunner. And we went from there to Stradishall because that was where they had fighting bombers and Stirling bombers, short Stirlings. And eh I had a mid-upper gunner there, and then we went on from there. And we had, there to [unclear] on to Lancasters and once again there was a mid-upper gunner turret, and then from there we went on to 75 NZ Squadron.
GT: So in Stradishall, and I’m looking at your notebook here and, and pretty much you only spent one month there on 1657 Conversion Unit.
PN: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. And that was, that was, now ‘Hoot’s’ crew,
PN: Yeah.
GT: Can you name, name the crew members and where they were from, please?
PN: I, I can, but eh I’ll, no, I’ll have to look it up.
GT: No problem.
PN: Because I have got them all, but em
GT: We, we’ll come back to that.
PN: Their all, apart from one Englishman, who came from Brentford in Essex, the engineer, flight engineer, and myself, we were the only two Englishmen. The rest were all New Zealanders, rear gunner, navigator, em pilot and em bomb aimer. They were all New Zealanders and em from various parts of New Zealand. But eh I can’t remember exactly without looking up, where they came from. I have got the information but eh I can’t remember it now.
GT: Understood.
PN: Who could, who could remember New Zealand words anyway, Maori words [emphasis] at that. [chuckles]. So there you go.
GT: [laughs] All right. So you, em you, you arrived in early April on 75 New Zealand Squadron at Mapel?
PN: Yes. That’s right.
GT: And eh, you eh you did the first month there all on Stirlings?
PN: Yes.
GT: And then you went to LFS at Feltwell in the April.
PN: And changed into Lancasters.
GT: Late April into Lancasters. What, what was the difference between the Stirling and the Lancasters to you?
PN: Size.[chuckles] I used to stand beside the wheel of a Stirling and I came just to the top of the wheel. The Lancaster was much smaller. It’s a fighting bomber but it’s much smaller somehow. Em in size. [coughs]. Quite a, quite a good size and eh quite a good, neat little bomber.
GT: And you were able to fly higher?
PN: Yeah. And it’s a fighting bomber just the same as the Stirling, but much smaller than the Stirling. Wasn’t the same size.
GT: What was your view like. Em was it, was it better on the Lancaster?
PN: Oh yes. It was a, it was a mid-upper gunner turret. Just the same. And em we, we flew on that, on that for twenty six operations. Somehow the tour on one of the things was thirty operations. Somehow or other I managed to do thirty one. [laughs] How I, how I managed to do that I do not know, cos I did. And then I went on to [unclear]
GT: Right. Well, let’s stay with Mapel for the moment. So with, with your gunnery actions and your thirty one operations, did you get any squirts away at the enemy?
PN: Em, occasionally we had eh little eh squirts at them. But on the last, especially the last day, one German aircraft came fairly [emphasis] close to us on the starboard side and eh I kept my eye very closely on him. Eh but he was just flying alongside me, it was towards the end of the war, and all of a sudden he dropped a wing towards us and I didn’t like that at all. Then we, all of us, the rear gunner and myself we fired at him and we shot him down. And that German plane went down and a few seconds later there was a little explosion on the ground and that was him gone.
GT: So you can claim one kill?
PN: One kill at least. Certainly.
GT: The aircraft type was a ?
PN: JU88. A JU88. He probably wasn’t doing any harm but he did, he did drop a wing towards us and I didn’t like that and eh so that’s when we attacked him. I shot him down.
GT: So, did you say to the skipper, ‘I’m Shooting.’ Or did he, did you have to get permission? Or did you just do it?
PN: We didn’t need any permission, only as we’ve opened and fired our guns away. He was close enough I suppose two or three hundred yards. Something like that. Not all that close but eh close enough for us. But he dropped a wing in our direction, I was, I was going and I was firing.
GT: The um, you, you have a little note in your logbook saying that you thought you might have been fired upon from, from below. Was that, was that a rocket?
PN: Oh yes, we did see rockets coming up but em we didn’t take much notice of them. We didn’t even know what they were [emphasis] at that time. So eh, we didn’t take much, we thought they were just anti-aircraft fire as far as I know. But they did come up and they went whistling past us and that was eh they didn’t hit us and that was eh quite happy that they were gone.
GT: So later on you thought they were rockets? Wow.
PN: Later on I did think they were rockets and we learnt about rockets and we suddenly thought probably they were rockets and they had come passed us.
GT: Now, there, there, later on 75 Squadron there were some under-gunners. Did you hear anything about under-gunners?
PN: Never heard. Never heard or saw any under-turrets. No, didn’t see any of those at all.
GT: Did you have any problems with em German aircraft coming up underneath you at night?
PN: Well, we watched, we didn’t eh, we got the skipper to bank over well to one side and we searched underneath very diligently either side, and a little later on we, the other side, we turned the other side there, and searched under that side. We searched underneath very diligently, very carefully and em made quite sure there was no one coming up underneath us to attack us from underneath.
GT: You had been warned about that type of German attack, had you?
PN: Yes, we knew about that kind of German attack. Yes. And eh we were well aware that they could attack from underneath and we took steps to make sure they didn’t attack us [emphasis] from underneath.
GT: So em, how many night operations did you complete?
PN: Em, thirty one, I think on 75.
GT: No, the night time ones though. You did night and day, and day operations.
PN: Oh well, I’d have to consult my log book on that.
GT: And so, for the, for the raids at night though you did not see the other Lancasters next to you?
PN: Em.
GT: Could you see them very well?
PN: Occasionally you’d see them come up close and they would, yes, I did see one come up and I thought he looked a little bit like a fighter and em so we kept a very close watch on him but eh he turned out to be a Lanc. In fact the wireless operator, he has a little radar screen of his own there. He was shouting and saying that there was a fighter coming up on the port side, and I told him to calm down because I had been watching that aircraft for a good ten minutes and I knew [emphasis] that it was another Lancaster and he couldn’t see that he could see just a dot on his screen. But I had been watching it well and knew that it was another Lancaster.
GT: You, you wouldn’t want to be shooting down one of your
PN: And I wouldn’t want to shoot at that. [emphasis]
GT: Did you hear of that ever happening? That other Lancasters shot other Lancasters?
PN: No, no, I didn’t hear any of those. But em there was a time when eh we got eh bombed on the airfield and a lot of air, oh well one aircraft came back with a [unclear] bombs on and he made a very bumpy landing, a very damaging bumpy landing and eh he had [unclear] bombs on board and they kept those bombs on because the aircraft was going to do the same old place again the next day. But about four o’clock in the morning that aircraft [unclear] bombs blew up and blew the aircraft to pieces and quite a number of other aircraft of A Flight as well. And eh they did a lot of damage, but the following morning the replaced an aircraft in the afternoon and we had an aircraft come in to complete the Squadron again.
GT: It was that quick they replaced them?
PN: They replaced. And funnily enough they came in and em landed at the eh the site for A Flight and out of the aircraft a young women got, a young women came out and she climbed out and she had flown this Lancaster on her own, [emphasis] without any other crew and brought it in from transport. She was an air transport, air transport auxiliary and she’d flown that Lancaster on her own and landed it and delivered it to eh to us. Which was an amazing [chuckles] thing when you think of it.
GT: Huge surprise huh?
PN: Well we looked around for the rest of the crew and she said that ‘I am the crew’ she said, ‘I am the crew.’ And that was it. She was the crew.
GT: And eh
PN: And there was no one else, no one else in the aircraft at all. They, they went in and they looked around to find the rest of the crew and eh they came back and they said, ‘Well there’s no one there.’ She said ‘Well, there won’t be. I am [emphasis] the crew.’ And she went back to Air Traffic Control and eh brought the aircraft in and that was it. She just landed it on her own.
GT: So those aircraft that blew up?
PN: Yes, there was quite a lot of them eh on A Flight and B Flight. They, they all suffered damage from this aircraft that blew up at four o’clock in the, well they had [unclear] bombs on. Four thousand pounders and they all blew up and they damaged a lot of the aircraft.
GT: And you, you were in bed at the time? Did you hear it, feel it?
PN: I did and I shot out of bed. We thought that we were being bombed and eh that we were being under attack. But eh
GT: Pretty much an own goal?
PN: Yes. But it wasn’t eh [mumbles] it wasn’t that at all.
GT: But no one was hurt. That was the [unclear]
PN: No. No.
GT: But you managed to find some bits and pieces.
PN: Yeah. I did and I’ve collected an axe, an escape axe that there was lying there. It was lying on the ground. So I captured that and eh I’ve got it to this day.
GT: You still have it and you’ve just showed it to me. So that’s, that’s very good. That was, that was normally where on the Lancaster? Where did that axe normally sit? What position?
PN: Well, there were two, there were two. There was one bolted on to the side, of the starboard side of the aircraft and there’s one on the rear end eh on the stick before they get into the rear turret, there’s another axe. So there are two axes on each aircraft. I’ve got one of them.
GT: And, and they’re identical. You don’t know which position this one came from?
PN: No. No, no. You don’t know. They’re both identical. But I got one of them. And I’ve got it to this day.
GT: So, in the mid-upper turret position em when you were seated in it you could spin yourself completely and just keep going round and round?
PN: You could, you could [mumbles] cos I did like that.
GT: And, and were the guns positioned so that you couldn’t shoot your own tail?
PN: Ah, yes. I did have a, an interrupter gear. The, the raise that the guns, when they came towards the fins as well, they would raise up automatically and down the other side so that they couldn’t fire at their own tail or rear of, rear of the fuselage or any part of the fuselage. When you turned them round to the front they would raise up above the fuselage and down the other side. They couldn’t eh, it’s an automatic interrupter gear.
GT: How many rounds did you have per gun available to you?
PN: Em, around about three thousand, I think.
GT: Each gun?
PN: Yes. Each gun. And the rear gunner, he had ten thousand, because he had a track going down the fuselage with rounds in them. So he had lots more ammunition than we had, but we had about three thousand per gun.
GT: So the tail gunner had four, three lot threes and you had two.
PN: Yes.
GT: Okay, and so where was your ammunition stored? In boxes underneath your guns?
PN: In a box at the side. Eh, ammunition boxes at either side that fed up to each gun. Yes. Em and the rear gunner he had a track leading down the fuselage and into his turret.
GT: So the guns were right next to your shoulders or your head?
PN: Em, well, I forget now but they were reasonably close to, yes they came up round one side and into the guns themselves.
GT: So you could feel them when they went off, yeah?
PN: Yes. Yes. Yes, they were quite close. But not too close.
GT: And you, you were sitting in the seat or were you suspended?
PN: It was a seat that swung up like em like a [mumbles] swing, that eh you swung it down whilst you were sitting in it. But to get out you would have to swing it up and then get down again to the floor of the aircraft.
GT: Was it comfortable? You might have had to have sit in that way for eight hours or so.
PN: Yes. Sometimes we did indeed sit there for quite a long period. It didn’t, it didn’t worry us. That’s eh that’s [unclear] rear ends. [chuckles]
GT: And, and there was no size restriction, any, any height of a person?
PN: No. No height, em sometimes it got a bit cold in the turret. I did at one time get em the perspex shot away and eh I was out in the cold so I slipped down into the turret with just my eyeballs just above the eh turret then where the perspex should have been and I just kept an eye on any, any other aircraft that might be following us.
GT: And that was in the Lancaster?
PN: Yes.
GT: And, and was this anti-aircraft shrapnel or bullets from another aircraft?
PN: Who knows? I don’t know. Just the perpex just vanished. It might have been shrapnel. It could’ve been shrapnel and it just vanished.
GT: And, and did you em suffer from frostbite on your face?
PN: No, fortunately not. I had a oxygen mask on of course and eh goggles, so eh we, we did get a bit of frostbite where it showed but nothing much.
GT: On the forehead?
PN: Yes. Nothing much. No, the goggles were there and the oxygen mask was there and that protected us a lot.
GT: Now eh if you saw a fighter coming in was it your job to tell the pilot to corkscrew?
PN: Yes. If I was, if I saw one, I did occasionally see one eh I was wait, wait till they got to six hundred yards and then having warned the skipper that we wanted to corkscrew to port or starboard as the case may be, eh I would give a running commentary and eventually ‘Corkscrew. Go.’ And he would then drop a thousand foot and roll and drop another thousand foot and roll and climb a thousand foot and roll and up into his normal position again and that was a corkscrew. And by then the fighter had gone. Don’t know where he’d gone, but he’d gone and eh glad that he’d gone. That’s it.
GT: And Hoot was really good at a corkscrew, was he?
PN: He was excellent. He was really excellent at corkscrewing. He used to await my orders and as I said ‘Go,’ he would go [unclear].
GT: You had em, a couple of different pilots. You had Timmons and Williamson as pilots near the end of your tour.
PN: Yes, because on D, the D Day I had been off sick ah with those ears. Infected eardrums.
GT: Ah, now you thought you had ear wax. [emphasis]
PN: I thought I had earwax. But in fact, the doctor, when he looked he [unclear] he said, ‘No, you’ve got collapsed eardrums.’ And I was in hospital for a while having that repaired and that’s why Hoot gives a carry on to this tour and finished early to me. And I had to then go with another crew to finish my tour ah with other, with other pilots, Williamson, Squadron Leader Williamson was one of them and Timmons eh he was the other one.
GT: And they were short of a gunner so you stepped in?
PN: They, they that’s it, I stepped in then. Yeah. I finished my tour that way.
GT: And of your thirty one trips was there any operation that was, that stood out for you besides shooting down an enemy aircraft? Was anything dang –
PN: Not that I can think of.
GT: Dangerous? Ack ack? Em.
PN: It was always dangerous. It was always dangerous. There was flak coming eh and large amounts of flak bursting all around eh but it didn’t hit us and while it didn’t hit us we were happy. And that was it. But there was lots of flak going on, on the ground and flak coming up through the surrounding air, airspace, lots of fires below, where our bombs were going and when the bomb aimer released the bombs it sounded as if someone was slapping the side of a car. If, if you put your arms out of the car and slapped the side door, that’s what it sounded like when the bombs were released. And they left the aircraft, they banged as they left the aircraft. And the bomb aimer said, ‘Bombs gone,’ and the, about twelve thousand pounds worth of bombs a lot of bombs. So the aircraft eh raised a bit, raised up a bit, being the, having lost that much weight, and so eh that’s how it went on. But I suppose we came to expect that.
GT: Now if we go back to your, your first month on 75 and, and at that time the Stirlings were, well certainly well overdue to be replaced on a, for a front line squadron, I believe 75 NZ was one of the last front line squadrons to be replaced with the Lancaster since they’d already been flying for nearly two years. That was a bit criminal of Bomber Command to let you guys carry on flying the Stirling on that op. But you, you did quite a few gardening trips.
PN: Yes.
GT: What was the gardening trips like compared to later on when you were doing high level bombing?
PN: Ah well, they were much lower and much [mutters] mainly in the places like [unclear] and down in the south of France we laid mines in the eh estuaries, where U-boats were likely to come and be harboured. That was mainly our job on those. Dropping these mines for our action against U-boats.
GT: And what eh, what did the German defences have against you?
PN: Oh, they were quite lively. They were quite lively. There were plenty of flak positions, but then I looked at them and I shot down their beams, straight down the em searchlight beams particularly and it’s quite interesting to see, all of a sudden, the searchlights would suddenly switch off very fast and all way down the flight path, that was because they were getting a good sprinkling of eh my guns. [chuckles].
GT: And you, you could give them a good squirt from your mid-upper position?
PN: Yes. Oh yes, we, yes, we banked, banked a bit over and gave a good squirt of the guns, the guns at the searchlight positions and the searchlights switched off very quickly and the anti-aircraft fire started up quickly. Yes.
GT: So did they have land and sea flak positions, ships, flak ships as well, did they?
PN: I didn’t see any flak ships but eh I imagine there were flak ships about. Yes. I didn’t see any though.
GT: And you said you lost a very valuable friend on one of those gardening trips?
PN: Yes. He was on the third operation to, his third operation to Kiel, laying sea mines like we were. We were on the same operation but em it was our fourth operation and his third operation and he was, they were laying sea mines and a fighter came up from a nearby fighter station and unfortunately shot them down and they were all killed. That was em Megson and his crew, yes, Megson, I think is.
GT: Was your bomb loads all the same on the trips you did? They stuck with cookies and GP bombs?
PN: Yes, about twelve thousand pounds, about twelve thousand pounds altogether. The cookies and em bombs.
GT: What was the furtherest [sic] trip that you remember doing? Was it, was it over to Stettin or Berlin?
PN: Stettin was a long way off. Yes, Stettin, Stettin was about fifty miles north, north east of Berlin. Quite a long way away and took about eight hours altogether.
GT: And that was your third to last op, so you were, you were stretching it right at the end of your tour. Weren’t you?
PN: Yes, that’s quite so.
GT: And, what was, what was the morale like on 75 Squadron for you guys?
PN: It was good and in fact I came back from that particular operation and eh expected to see eh my particular pal, Pat Butler, he was eh living in a, a bed next to, virtually next to me in our hut and people called the Committee of Adjustments came round and collected up all his uniform and they collected up quite a few of my bits too. [emphasis] I, and they were the Committee of Adjustments and they collected up uniform and things like that to, to put them away. And it took me quite some time to get back to them and get my own bits of uniform back [emphasis]. Because they collected them up as well.
GT: So that was a, that was a good idea to make sure before you went on an op all your stuff was packed away nice and neatly, yeah?
PN: Yes, yeah. And eh the Committee of Adjustments came along when someone was shot down and they eh collected all of their possessions. Any eh, if they were talking about a man, they didn’t want any letters from his girlfriend eh, falling into the wrong hands as it were. So the Committee of Adjustments had the job of collecting up any letters like that. Making sure they didn’t fall into the hands of wives and eh others arrangements.
GT: Very wise that.
PN: Yes.
GT: Very wise. During July of 44, 75 Squadron suffered seven aircraft loss in one night.
PN: Yes.
GT: Do you remember that?
PN: Yes. Yes, that was a trip to Hamburg, a trip to Hamburg, and it eh took us quite some time and it was em
GT: Were you on that raid?
PN: Yes, I was on that raid.
GT: Particularly, specifically?
PN: Yes, on the
GT: 20th of July.
PN: Yes, yes, on the Hamburg raid and it was quite a, quite a lively bombing mission but we fortunately got back, we got damaged, we got damaged as we did very often on, on them. And em but we, we got back okay. And we came to land alright. But that was quite a hairy operation, to Hamburg.
GT: And to lose seven in one night must have been pretty devastating to the rest of the Squadron, yeah?
PN: Well, it was em it wasn’t out of the ordinary, we didn’t think too much about it. We, we kept a, we kept a, we expected losses, just as we expected everything else and eh what came, came along. That’s it. That’s part of squadron life. So that’s what you had to do. You might get eh, you might get more [emphasis] than seven going sometimes. Who knows? It was the luck of the draw.
GT: Who was your skipper, eh sorry, your commanding officer, on 75 at that time you were there?
PN: Maxie. Wing Commander Max.
GT: And what was he like?
PN: He was a good bloke, yes a good bloke and em we all liked him. And he used to come round to all the aircraft and have a little chat with them, mainly with the pilots and those others. Before they, before they taxied and went off. He used to drive round and have a little chat with them. Wish them good luck I suppose. But he didn’t [unclear] [chuckles] gunners as well. But he didn’t have time for the gunners. We were there that was all right.
GT: Wing Commander Max’s medal group was donated by his wife to the 75 New Zealand Squadron Association.
PN: Was it really?
GT: And they’re currently on display at the Wigram Airforce Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, but they are, the property of 75 Squadron Association of New Zealand, so, so just to let you know that em, your, your ex-Commanding Officer’s medals are on display.
PN: On display. Good old Maxie. He was a good bloke, a good bloke was Max. Now I got em I got another set of medals, a second set for one of my sons who is now unfortunately deceased. So there’s a set of my medals, identical to my medals which are going spare, which eh, I would be quite happy to donate to eh.
GT: You eh, you and I can have a chat off microphone.
PN: Yeah. Yes.
GT: Thank you, Peter. Okay, so your, your time on 75 though, you must have gone to some pubs?
PN: What did you say?
GT: Some pubs.
PN: Well,
GT: Go and have a beer or two somewhere?
PN: Very occasionally, I wasn’t a, I wasn’t really a drinking man at all. I didn’t, I didn’t like the stuff really, if the truth were known. I would go to a restaurant to have a nice meal occasionally. But I wasn’t really a beer man, I didn’t like beer. Nasty stuff. [laughter]
GT: Cos there was, there was three main pubs, the Chequers and the Three Pickerels in your area.
PN: Yes, we went to them occasionally but very occasionally, but I wasn’t, I would eh go on the, be there for a, perhaps a few minutes and then nip off back home to bed.
GT: So eh, so did you go to any of the churches or cathedrals around Mepal?
PN: No, I don’t think I did.
GT: There was quite a few of them around there.
PN: Yes, there was Ely, of course, Ely Cathedral.
GT: And there’s Sutton, one at Sutton as well.
PN: Sutton there, yes.
GT: Now, the one at Sutton has eh, the complete casualty em, list of all airmen killed on 75 Squadron.
PN: Have they really?
GT: And they turn the page every day and I do think a copy was made and that is in the Chapel of St. Marks, on my old base, base at [unclear] and the chaplain on that base turns the page every day as well.
PN: Oh, yes, good.
GT: And so, so all your colleagues that were lost in the five years of 75 New Zealand Squadron RAF are remembered every day.
PN: So, Pat Butler’s name would be among them. He was a mid-upper gunner, the same as myself, and he was lost on his third operation to Kiel. Laying sea mines in Kiel canal.
GT: His name will certainly be remembered in this, this book, for sure.
PN: Yes, he was a great bloke.
GT: So next to you was at Mepal, after 75, there was 115 Squadron.
PN: Yes. that’s right. Witchford, on the road to Ely. Yes, they were there. I didn’t know much about them. Passed them on the road there. Often they were going, they were taking off at the same, much the same time as we were. On operations. But I didn’t know much about them.
GT: They, they were very unfortunate, at least on one night, had one aircraft shot down by a Messerschmitt 14, eh as it was coming in to land. Did 75 Squadron have any trouble with night fighters stooging around whilst you were coming in?
PN: We did hear, we did hear, have them occasionally and we had to keep a very close watch out and I can’t recall any being shot down. But eh I believe it did happen on more than one occasion.
GT: As the gunner, was it your responsibility to clean and fit the guns, or was that the armourers?
PN: No, I did mine, I did my guns. I did. The armourers could, would do them, but I, I used to do mine, look after my own guns and cleaned my own perspex, to make sure that my perspex was cleaned, in the top turrets.
GT: How did you clean your outside perspex? Did you have a door through the canopy or did you have to get out on the fuselage?
PN: I used to get out. There wasn’t, I think, [mumbles] there wasn’t a place where you could get out on to the front of the fuselage and there was em perspex polish that I could use, and I did, to make sure that my perspex was cleared and clean on the inside as well. If there was a scratch, the searchlight would hit us, a scratch and would split [unclear] effect. It was no good, so I made sure my perpex was clear.
GT: Like a prism mm.
PN: Mmm.
GT: With your training that you did as an air gunner eh, did that, eh when you look back at sitting in a Lancaster turret and doing operations, did that training, was that good enough, did that do the job to prepare you?
PN: Oh yes. Oh yes. Em and I used to keep very close watch on all those around me. I used to spin the turret around and make sure I saw, and I used to ask the skipper occasionally as we heard, to dip his wings down one way, or dip down the other way, so that I could search underneath the aircraft in case there was anything creeping up underneath. But eh that’s how you got on.
GT: And you had good coordination with the tail gunner? Did you talk a lot between you?
PN: We didn’t talk a lot but eh if occasionally em it was necessary to confer we used to. But we didn’t talk a lot really.
GT: And if you
PN: We were very good friends on the ground.
GT: Good yeah.
PN: Yes, we were very good friends on the ground [unclear] and myself were great pals on the ground.
GT: What was the radio talk like? Was it ‘skipper’, ‘rear gunner’, ‘mid upper’? You didn’t say your names did you?
PN: No, didn’t say your names but say, say your position. ‘Mid upper to skipper’, or something of that sort. And he would say, ‘Go ahead, go ahead mid upper’, and you would pass a message to him.
GT: And was, Hoot, Hoot was the flight sergeant em when you joined up together as a crew and then he was commissioned, so
PN: Yeah.
GT: So, so did the commissioning matter to you guys?
PN: No, not at all.
GT: You were a senior NCO and a, and a pilot officer or an officer.
PN: Yes, didn’t make, didn’t make any difference. He was still Hoot Gibson.
GT: But you couldn’t go and drink together in the same mess?
PN: Oh no, no, no. No. We had that, there was that difference. He was a commissioned officer after all. But it didn’t make that difference.
GT: And you were a flight sergeant at that time?
PN: Yes.
GT: Did you want your, did you want a commission as well?
PN: Ah yes I did, but eh but for some reason I didn’t go for it.
GT: You weren’t offered it?
PN: Yes. I can’t remember what exactly it was. [unclear] he was getting commissioned.
GT: As a tail gunner? Wow.
PN: Yes, he became commissioned. But I can’t remember just exactly the circumstances. He was like that later on he became commissioned.
GT: So, your time with 75, em and, and you thoroughly enjoyed?
PN: Oh yes. Oh yes. I was there until I done my, how I, how I had to do thirty one operations I don’t know but I did and I got posted away to, funnily enough, back to Dalcross where I’d done my training.
GT: Your training. So, so when you were posted, what did they say? ‘Right you’re off!’ No fanfare. Just
PN: Oh no.
GT: Called you into the office and said, ‘So right, you’re next, you’re leaving.’ Is that it?
PN: Oh yes. Yes. Just you posted. Yes.
GT: And that would be at the end of eh August?
PN: It would, yes, I think it would.
GT: Your last operation was August the 25th and that completed thirty one ops. You had a hundred and thirty six hours during the day and a hundred and twenty hours of night and em that’s a pretty, that’s a pretty great record there Peter. So your, your log book states that you moved on to Dalcross at 2 AGS and there you were flying in Martinets. [emphasis]
PN: Yes, that’s right.
GT: What were they [emphasis] like?
PN: [chuckles] They were a fighter aircraft, they were like a fighter aircraft as far as I was concerned. But we used to em, had to virtually em they had a real [unclear] of you might call cords really. Then we had to almost stretch out of the aircraft to thread through pulleys and fix them on to the drogue for other aircraft to shoot at.
GT: And so the Martinet was a drogue towing aircraft?
PN: That’s right. Yes.
GT: So you didn’t deploy the drogue until you were in the air?
PN: That’s right. And then you had to bend and you were half way out of the, of the aircraft hooking the drogue on.
GT: This was a hole in the floor of the aircraft?
PN: Yes. Yes.
GT: So how long was the hoars of the rope? Eh, the
PN: About eight hundred, eight hundred yards or something like that.
GT: Was that a safe, safe distance?
PN: Yeah. Safe enough. Yes. Safe enough. Yes.
GT: And what were the gunners and eh, of the aircraft taking the drogue?
PN: They, they did occasionally fire and hit the drogue towing aircraft thinking it was, thinking that was what they had to aim at.
GT: That’s friendly fire.
PN: Yeah. They, they used to do a quick dive away then, but eh mainly that was alright and you could tell in the drogue you could count up the bullet holes because the bullets had got paint under them of some sort. They were coloured.
GT: Did they have a fight over who, who was, what hole was [unclear] [chuckles]
PN: No, I don’t think so.
GT: All good. And therefore you went, that was in eh November?
PN: Yes.
GT: And so you had a little break in between leaving end of August, so you had September, October off?
PN: Yes.
GT: Where did, what did you do there? Did you, did you go back home for a bit?
PN: Eh, I went, I did, I was, I can’t remember exactly what I did.
GT: But you did have a bit of a rest though didn’t you?
PN: But em anyway, I made sure that eh I counted the months and eh while there was only four months and then I went back on the Squadron again.
GT: Aah. Okay, so, so that was 2 AGS at Dalcross and we’re still on the Martinet and Martinet right through to January and eh and in February you moved on to Number 2 GSU on Mitchells.
PN: That’s right. Yes.
GT: As an air gunner, so you were, you were ramping up on the B25.
PN: That’s right.
GT: Were you the mid upper gunner for there too?
PN: Rear gunner.
GT: Rear gunner on the B25.
PN: Rear gunner on the, yeah. And eh you didn’t have a seat to sit on, you sort of eh, virtually on your knees, half on your knees, half sat, sat on the sloping seat. Not a very comfortable position at all. And you had two point fives I think in the rear turret.
GT: Now, the point five was a little bit more heavier than the three nought threes.
PN: It was indeed.
GT: More punch and distance?
PN: Yes, and the you see what happened.
GT: Well now, obviously for the recording eh Peter had a bit of a close escape here, and I’m holding a fifty cal shell eh minus the head and eh there’s a big hole in the side of it. Peter, what happened to you there and this was in the rear turret of a B25, yeah?
PN: Yes, that’s right and it was quite, that, it was quite close to, the bomb was quite close to my shoulder and em the armourer, when we came back, I didn’t know about it, while we were airborne, but the armourer came to me and said, ‘Would you like this as a souvenir?’ and at that time it had a shrapnel inside of it and the, the bullet too. Em but unfortunately, while examining it, my son, the little bit of shrapnel that had caused the hole, put it in the dust, in the ashtray and it got lost. And eh so I don’t, I, I searched for the, I think it was about ten days afterwards that I found it was missing and I searched for the, that little bit of shrapnel, but I couldn’t find it, unfortunately.
GT: Well, it’s very fortunate, [emphasis] for you Peter, that you’ve been able to keep the shell and eh it also has an official RAF photograph tucked with it.
PN: And the [unclear] at the bottom end you notice that it hadn’t been fired.
GT: That’s true, yeah, yeah. The firing element at the base there’s eh, there’s no pin impression so that’s, that’s a special piece of history right there for you.
PN: Yes.
GT: Fabulous. Alright Peter, now, you, you’re suffering badly from eh, from your knees.
PN: Arthritis.
GT: And arthritis, but [emphasis] you were talking to me earlier about your kneeling position of a B25 rear gunner.
PN: Yes.
GT: And can you attribute your current problems with knees back to that?
PN: I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I wouldn’t be at all surprised because you were sort of half on your knees, half sitting on a sloping, a sloping seat.
GT: Gosh.
PN: And it could well have been that em that was the cause of the arthritis.
GT: Well you started flying B25s in March 45 and eh you completed more operations in, in the end of April. Now your trips here in your log book for your Mitchell flights are anywhere between one and, and one and two and three quarter hours. So you were flying from em 98 Squadron. Where were they based and, and where did you go from there for more ops?
PN: Now. 98. Yes, I, oh I can’t remember the dates. Is it not in the book? On top of the table? The places that we went to? I do know the name of the aerodrome but I can’t remember it.
GT: Farfield. So you, so your log book is very well presented, of course, and you’ve got a lot of trips there across to Bremen, em certainly into Germany em and beyond. So, so that’s very impressive. So during your, your flights in the Mitchells, did you have any opposition from the German em Luftwaffe?
PN: Em, we did, and eh I can’t remember the exact details, but we, we eh got flak, flak as much as anything. We had to dodge the flack because we’d got anti-aircraft fire bursting near us, a lot of anti-aircraft fire bursting near us.
GT: How many bombs did you carry?
PN: Eh, oh, I couldn’t say.
GT: It wasn’t a very big bomb load for a B25?
PN: Eh, no, about, about eight or eight or so five hundred pounders probably. I’m not quite sure.
GT: And this was an RAF squadron flying American aircraft?
PN: Second Tactical Aircraft, yes, Second tact.
GT: So what was it like flying an American designed aircraft compared to the English Stirling and Lancaster?
PN: Uncomfortable.
GT: Uncomfortable.
PN: Yeah. Uncomfortable.
GT: It didn’t go very –
PN: On you knees, you see. You were on your knees and the seat sloped and you had your bottom on the, on the seat, and you were half on your knees and eh it wasn’t a comfortable position, wasn’t a very comfortable position at all. But there you are, that was, that was hard luck. And em we did quite a, did quite a few to Bremen if I remember rightly, quite a few to eh yes, the city of Bremen and em they were quite lively, a lot of flak coming up.
GT: It must have been low level, was it?
PN: Em, not really low level.
GT: Oh, no? You were still up high?
PN: Still, still, yes, fairly high I think. I can’t quite remember these details now.
GT: And what was your crew like? For the B25s
PN: There was about five members of a crew in the B25s.
GT: All English?
PN: As far as I know, yes. Ah, yes I think so, yes. They were. Yes. I do mention their names.
GT: Now your, your last operation with eh 98 Squadron was the end of April and then you moved through as passengers in May and you, you began a second trip, tour in, in June as the rear gunner and eh also did some trips, through, as passengers to look over Germany and in July. So you certainly got around for a little bit after that.
PN: Yes.
GT: So tell us a bit more about the eh, okay, the –
PN: I was stationed in Germany.
GT: Ah, there you go. So VE Day, what happened with you on 98 Squadron on VE Day and what did you do after?
PN: So, yes, I remember VE day.
GT: You went to Germany after that was it, directly, or did you stay in England?
PN: [mumbles] Difficult to remember. I think I was, I think I was stationed in Germany at that time. I think, yes, I think, I can remember we were living in tents and all of a sudden the CO of that Squadron popped down and said, ‘It’s all over, chaps. It’s all over!’ and [unclear] drinking his own champagne. And didn’t invite us in at all. And that was the end of the war. And we were in Germany at that time, living in tents. Aachen [?] Yes.
GT: Did you stay on?
PN: We went to Brussels. We took, we took, we went by an aircraft. We took an aircraft into Brussels, but I didn’t think much to that. And eh visited a short time and we came back, back to Aachen [?] again, and stayed there. Didn’t think much to it. It was all over as far as we were concerned and that was it.
GT: So did you want to stay in the RAF? Or did you look at demobbing or?
PN: No, I was demobbed soon after and em I did various civilian jobs and eh basically I got sick of them and went back into the Airforce again after a fairly short time.
GT: As an air gunner?
PN: Yes, eh I was an air gunner instructor this time. I was instructing.
GT: And your log book says in 1951 you were at 230 OCU in Scampton?
PN: Yeah.
GT: In Scampton?
PN: Yes.
GT: As an air gunner exercise so em that was from February
PN: I was instructing then.
GT: And what aircraft were you with?
PN: I think Lincolns.
GT: Lincolns?
PN: I think Lincolns and then Shackletons and finally Neptunes. Yes.
GT: Yes, you have a lot of entries here from being in Lincolns. What was the Lincoln like compared to the Lancaster?
PN: Bigger. And that’s all, apart from that. [mumbles] Yes, they were bigger. A bigger version of the Lancaster.
GT: And the Lincolns had fifty cal? Half inch? Did the Lincolns have the bigger gun systems?
PN: As far as I know, yes, I think so.
GT: And you moved on from three nought threes. Yeah?
PN: Yes.
GT: And then you moved on to 9 Squadron at Binbrook?
PN: Yes, at Binbrook.
GT: And you become crew, you become part of a crew then, were you then? Is that what you were doing?
PN: I think so, I can’t remember. It’s difficult to remember. It’s a long time ago, as you know.
GT: No, that, that’s fine there, Peter. So we’re just moving through and eh you, you were em just working through on the Lincolns right through to 1952 and em with, with your changes you moved into Coastal Command?
PN: Yes, Shackletons. Oh, yes, low flying over the sea doing searches and things like that.
GT: What was the Shackleton like, as an aircraft to fly in?
PN: It was much, it was something like, something like a Lancaster but fatter. You know, it was a bigger, bigger fuselage than the other one. It was much like a, much like a Lincoln.
GT: Now what em, what caused you to finish up in the RAF then? You’d had enough again do you think or?
PN: Yes, yes I did instructing for a while. I was instructing on various subjects and then I came out, I think, I think, I came out and took, took my pension. To get a pension and em I came out and got a pension.
GT: Well, some of your last entries in your log book eh Peter, are at Kinloss em with, with Shacks and eh and then eh you’ve got a P2 Neptune entry here as well.
PN: Eh [mumbles]
GT: In mid 56.
PN: Yes, it was actually the islands, Benbecula for a while. That’s not even mentioned in there, I think, but I was [pauses] just at Benbecula for a while, which is one of the Outer Hebridean islands. But not for any reason.
GT: Yeah. So then you moved down to Singapore for a while. Tell me a, tell me a little bit about that, please, because that was in the mid, early sixties there when you went to Singapore.
PN: Ah yes. Yes.
GT: Was that with the RAF?
PN: Yes, oh yes. And em, Singapore. I think I had a crew there.
GT: And you were doing the administrative stuff? You were?
PN: Oh yes, I was doing admin as well, yes. Instructing em, instructing.
GT: And there was a [unclear]
PN: [unclear] yes. Um I think I was doing instructing as well as doing –
GT: And so that was after the confrontation eh had finished?
PN: More or less I think, yes. Instructing em discip. I was a flight sergeant discip there too. Yes. Various jobs yeah.
GT: Various jobs. Now, you, you were married and had children by then?
PN: Yes, I had been married, I got married in 1962, think it was 62 and unfortunately em my first wife died in 1969. She got breast cancer and she died in 1969. But see we had a tour in Singapore and she quite enjoyed that. So she did have some good life there.
GT: Nice. And you moved back to the UK then?
PN: And we came back in 1966 and then eh we were, she was ill for two or three years and she died in 1969.
GT: No children?
PN: No children. Well, previously we had had four, four sons but long before you know and the eldest which is the one who’s birthday it is today, they were born 50, he was born in 54, 1954 and the last one was born in 1958. Yeah.
GT: Pretty tough to lose their mum a little bit later. And so then you, you remarried later?
PN: Yes. Two or three years afterwards. Yes.
GT: And so, you, you’ve lost two em
PN: And I’ve lost her too.
GT: Several years ago.
PN: Yes.
GT: And, and what did you do after the RAF, Peter? How did, how did that go?
PN: Em I did do, em, what did I do? I engraved [?] a house, do something, engraved [?] a house. I forget now. I forget
GT: Peter, you’ve, you’ve got a lot of memories here and a lot of archives from your time
PN: Yeah.
GT: Especially with Bomber Command.
PN: Yes.
GT: And that’s pretty special. And eh now I’ve known you for some years now and popped in to see you from my trips from New Zealand here to the UK so I’m eh, I’m quite honoured today really to sit and chat with you about your [emphasis] Bomber Command time and your life, a bit of history. This recording will go to the Bomber Command archives and eh and I know that they will gratefully receive your information and your recollections and memories.
PN: Sketchy as they are.
GT: Sketchy as they are. No problem at all, no problem for us, Peter. Is there something that you would like to make one last comment about Bomber Command? Your time, the war, that had to be done, that could have been done any different?
PN: I don’t think so. I was very lucky to have eh, to have a skipper, Hoot Gibson. He was a great, a great pal and a great flyer [coughs]. And we got on very well with him, and the crew for that matter. It was very unfortunate that the navigator, Bill [unclear] unfortunately, he was in a hurry to get home to New Zealand, chose to hitchhike with an American crew, which crashed.
GT: Wrong, wrong choice.
PN: Killing them all. Yes, killing them all. Unfortunately.
GT: Peter, look em I think it’s fabulous of you to be able to sit with me today. Thank you for this interview and it’s been a pleasure being in your company and presence in your house today and I’m gonna say thank you from the IBCC for your recollections. And eh I think we, we can close the interview now if that’s okay with you.
PN: I think so, yes. Sketchy as it might be in places. You’ll have to pick out the bits and pieces. Of course, I mean I’m ninety, getting on for ninety four and memory does tend to get a little bit sketchy at times at that age. But I’ve done my best. Tried to remember the best I can.
GT: Thank you for your service to your King, your country and now your Queen. It is much appreciated. Thank you.
PN: Okay. Good.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Rowland Ruthven Neech. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Glen Turner
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ANeechPRR180705, PNeechPRR1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:08:10 audio recording
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born on the 7th of January 1925, in West Hampstead, London. He worked in a jewellers in Hammersmith and left his job to join the air cadets at RAF Hendon from 1941 to 1943. On his eighteenth birthday, he joined the RAF to begin training as an air gunner, this took him to RAF Dalcross, Scotland, where he completed his training in July 1943. On arriving home on leave, he found his family home damaged after a German bombing attack. In December 1943, Peter trained on Wellingtons and Stirlings at No.11 Operational Training Unit, RAF Westcott, where he was picked to join 75 Squadron, as a mid-upper gunner by Sergeant Donald George ‘Hoot’ Gibson. After flying Stirlings for his first month, the crew trained for Lancasters at 1651 Conversion Unit, 75 Squadron then moved to RAF Mepal, and in April 1944 they converted to Lancasters. Peter completed thirty-one operations with 75 Squadron. In August, he returned to RAF Dalcross, to fly in Martinets which towed targets for aircraft practice. After taking a short break, he joined 98 Squadron in March 1945, and flew B-25’s as a rear gunner until VE Day. He took part in gardening operations, which involved low flying to drop sea mines on estuaries in France to prevent U-Boat attacks. Towards the end of the war, Peter shot down a Ju 88, after it came too close, his only claimed kill of the war. Peter continued his flying career with the RAF post-war, as an air gunner with Lincolns, Lancasters, and Shakletons, and then joined Coastal Command at RAF Benbecula until he retired in 1956. In the 1960s, Peter moved to Singapore to be an instructor, married in 1962, but his wife passed away in 1969 and he remarried a few years later.
Contributor
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Jennie Mitchell
Tricia Marshall
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
11 OTU
1651 HCU
1657 HCU
75 Squadron
98 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-25
bombing
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lincoln
Martinet
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
RAF Dalcross
RAF Mepal
RAF Westcott
searchlight
Shackleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1115/11605/PSchneiderT1702.2.jpg
253b1bb03df06456d9be85a27476c3c2
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1115/11605/ASchneiderT170428.1.mp3
c9ea20470217553e23e0abf4cca50d9e
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
Schneider, Tim
Tony Schneider
T Schneider
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Tony Schneider (1931) his identity card and three photographs. He lived on the flightpath to RAF Westcott and witnessed a Lancaster crash.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tim Schneider and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Schneider, T
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 Wednesday the 28th of April 2017 and I’m in the village of Westcott with Tim Schneider, whose real name is Tony and he’s going to talk about his recollection of early days. So, Tim, what do you remember as your earliest days of life?
TS: My earliest days of life.
CB: What age were you?
TS: I can remember as a three, four year old, living in the house I was born in, in the Lodge Lane in Westcott, which was owned by Rothschild Estate, because that farm was with Waddesdon Estate, my father worked for Waddesdon Estates and he lived there as a rent-free employee. I remember my father being poorly paid with regards working, but he had a house rent-free so he had to dig an allotment outside the house to help [unclear] and he, to make ends meet, we had to live off the land so to speak and as soon as we was old enough we, as four, five years old, we was feeding the rabbits, to feed us sometimes the rabbit, we had rabbits as pets, my father also kept pigs which was a supplement to the household, I think once a year we killed one, and I can remember him going up there with his buckets to feed the pigs every day in the morning and as we got older, we had help come out but as my first four year old I can remember him taking his buckets up there. At five years old I went to school and walked almost a mile to the school up in the village and you started at five, you didn’t start at four years old, you started at five in those days, and you stayed at school until you were elven years old. You took your eleven plus, which [unclear] failed, and after you either failed your eleven plus or passed it, you moved on to Waddesdon School, as eleven-year-old. By that time you managed to scrame a bike or get a bike somewhere so you was out to peddle around the villages, as far as mum and dad would let you go in them days and I failed this eleven plus so I obviously went to Waddesdon School then, which was a secondary school, and you bored your mind a bit because you had some garden to do up there, they’d give you a garden plot and that brought you into your fathers regain that you’d gotta help with your family budget and help in the allotment, which you did, at fourteen years old, getting to go at the allotment to help feed the family, which not only that my family did but all the families in the village, was kept by allotments really. There was a greengrocer coming round, but he did very little trade whatsoever, it was a crime if any, the people in the village bought potatoes off them because they self-supporting the potatoes off their allotment. I was the youngest of a family of five so it had to be that we all had to muck in and do this gardening, which was probably forced up you when you might been kicking a football round but that had to come first, the garden come first and then you could go and have a game of football. At the age of fourteen I left school and the only, the only real reason for it was because mum and dad wanted you to contribute, you left school so you had to get a job, where you earned a few shillings, and the only employment round here apart from going to Aylesbury which mum and dad couldn’t afford to send me or I couldn’t afford to go, you took to the farming. And I worked on the farm, the field farm, I did that, I sat there working out. When I was fourteen, I left school, working for an uncle, who was a farmer and I did farm work right until I was about this, I was twenty-seven. I worked on a farm until I was twenty seven, and that time I had managed to go on a holiday and meet my wife and [unclear] this holiday when I was about twenty, eighteen, nineteen, we married when I was twenty-two. And [unclear] we went to a pub in holiday camp at Clacton I met my wife and only way of [unclear] married life to be able to support her, was down on the farm so if she came to Westcott with me and we set up home with my parents, we then moved to a little cottage down the road here and we just, I just worked on the farm, [unclear] just say I got security, which wasn’t a very profitable security at all, but it was a job that you could get, you could get your wife and then we had two children come along and I was happy to maintain our children and in 1969 the farmer who my uncle retired from the farm, so I had to change my occupation then, and I went down to the road then to just past the Westcott turn on the way to Kingswood there was a fertilizer depot down there, supplies for a loads of, to farms and I was [unclear] to go down there for eighteen years then, there again maintaining my children and brought them up and obviously as the years went on, they fled the nest so to speak. We moved from our little cottage, when we had the first children [unclear] which was a, went up one day with the [unclear] in the garden, after the first child was born, we was able to get the council estate across the road here, which was the only one [unclear] built in my lifetime in Westcott, because I worked on the farm, I was able to claim it, because I was a farm worker and I had it, and we lived there till our children fled the nest and we came across, the wife and I came across this old people’s bungalow some years ago, after the childrens fled, and but after, oh, after I’ve been down the fertilizer store for eighteen years, and I was just an ordinary stacker driver, I had got no trade so just a stacker driver truck and it brought a lot of heavy lifting and work and to make ends meet, I’ve always been a person that would do anything other than the job I was doing, I had many job during my life time, spare time. One was serving beer in the local pub and from that experience I was picked up the pub life which I enjoyed cause I was earning money and I was in a place where there was a bit enjoyment and I could increase my income of wage cause I was never a big earner at wages at all and I loved the pub trade and the one chance I took in my life was when the Westcott social club come up for a new club steward and I stood the one chance in my life and I took the Westcott social club on as a full time steward, going against my father’s advice a little bit which he’d always told me, never do anything that’s a risk, and I really didn’t do it till that time and I did take the Westcott club on and I worked there for, uhm, till five years ago. But I did resign when I was sixty-five from it after I had eight and a half years there and I must say that was the best job I ever had, thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it and I did do myself a little bit of by going heavy cause I worked long hours, very long hours, seventy hours a week, and thoroughly enjoyed it. When I was sixty-five, I had saved enough money to say, well, I think I can’t do seventy hours more, I’m gonna retire. And I did retire and then I went back normally cause things went a little bit downhill, and I went backwards and forwards a little bit, helping out but I finally retired five years ago. I lost my wife elven years ago with cancer and I lived here now so there was, the past eleven years on my own, here in this bungalow, in this flat on my own and survived and here I am as a retired man and still living in Westcott. I’ve got no, I’m not an enterprising man at all, you’re talking to a man who is eighty-six in about three weeks’ time who’s never owned a motor car, never had one. I think that sums me up [laughs]. Is that enough [laughs]?
CB: That’s really interesting, thank you. Now, the reason for talking to you is because we’re in Westcott at the side of what was RAF Westcott number 11 Operational Training Unit.
TS: Yes
CB: When the war started, you were eight, because you were born in 1931
TS: Yes,
CB: The airfield was built shortly afterwards, what do you remember about the beginning of the war? What was the first thing you remember about the war?
TS: I remember them forming a home guard, I think in Westcott. I remember the big diggers and navvies and who were I think [unclear] devises, were the main contractors, [unclear]
US:
TS: Sorry?
US: I got it down as Humfries
TS: Humfries, yes
US: [unclear]
TS: Yes, I think I’m wrong and you are right, yes, humfries. I remember all that coming in, the concrete being laid in the fields, much one or two of the farmers [unclear] being roughed up and concreted and I can remember the first aeroplanes coming in and going. I can remember the RAF, the fields, the billets where the aircraft, the airmen lived had to be away from the aeroplanes so they was dotted around in various locations away from the airfield in field, in billets, I got my rationing I was [unclear] in hindsight, I think there was tenth they called them, in numbers and the village was right past [unclear], we would [unclear], there was billets away from where the aircraft was on the site, remember that. I can also remember them building a WAAF site which was near the cricket field, I can remember that going on and I can remember it all taking place and lots of people, air, personnel of the air people around here, they just [unclear] by the village, hell of a lot and the aircraft started to fly and we assumed then that’s what it was, they was training aircrew, we was told that and obviously the blackout was here, everything was black tilled, and the house, the airfield I think had three runways if not four, three and one of them was coming in from, oh, east Sefton, Sefton North, East or something, it come by the house by the cricket pitch, which is where I lived, it come across that way, and went in and so [unclear]. And they’d come so close, that line was so close to our house that we could come our bedroom, plane come in, draw the curtains back and we could see the pilot by our bedroom window going in to land. It was that close when they come that line, that way because it depended on the way they landed, I believe, where the wind was. Sometimes they’d come in over the A41 and they’d come by [unclear], I can remember plainly seeing that pilot sitting in his cockpit [unclear] by my bedroom window [unclear]. And also the taking off, the same thing, when the wind ran the other way, take off you could see his pilot then, you could see the aeroplane landing cause it was only hedge high [unclear] or tree high, put it that way, coming in. The other things I can remember, which I don’t know whether you’re interested in that one or not, the air people around here obviously increased everything around here, and rationing was on, and even the pub in the village was rationed with beer but these airmen drunk the pub out in about three days and after they’d drunk the Westcott pub out, they rode their bicycles to God knows what, to Quainton, they’ve got five pubs and they drunk them out as well. So, a lot of the airmen in them days, went across to Quainton and obviously Quainton was a bigger village than Westcott, there was quite a lot of ladies around and then the airmen at Westcott called Quainton Hollywood, that was nicknamed Hollywood because of that. Is that making, is this interesting to you?
CB: Very good, very good. Keep going
TS: And that, that I can remember. I can also remember another thing, probably you’ve been told about the Lancaster going across the A41.
CB: What do you remember about that?
TS: Well, I remember they used to have various [unclear] going across there, and there was a Wellington bomber had gone across there and I’d been in the field and they hadn’t removed it but they were guarding it, this Wellington bomber, and then, soon after that, seven months after that, I don’t know how long it was, I can’t tell that, after that, I remained in the field on the A41 and across the A41 and they were guarding this plane over night before they removed it and seven nights went by, I think it was, and then, for some reason other there was a Lancaster bomber, due to arrive in Westcott with bombs on, why I don’t know, you probably do, I don’t and this, this was warned about, there was gonna be danger with this and this Lancaster bomber surely did land, went across the field near where this Wellington bomber was and the guard posting on duty at the time went along to the houses, along the A41 just away from the Westcott turn to tell the people they knew what was gonna happen to take their air raid shelters which we all had our Anderson air raid shelters because this was gonna be dangerous and he went to warn those people in those houses and coming back, that poor man caught the blast and he was killed. I’m sure you’ve heard of this. And you have to be [unclear] to [unclear] man and he was killed and there was a lot of damage done to the surrounding properties that night with these bombs going off. The aircrew was all killed, were New Zealanders and I think they will find someone up in the church yard now, there’s a New Zealand crew, they’re up in the church yard now I believe, you’ll find but this [unclear] gentleman was killed. There was an old lady in Westcott who every village had them and they still got them or of course gossip for the village know if you like to call it whoever it was, this old lady called Mrs Evans, wrote a letter to [unclear] to say she sorry, she wasn’t very of being killed one thing and another, at night the stained glass window in the church got blown out on that explosion and because of her writing out letter [unclear] it probably transpired from that perhaps, that stained glass window got replace by [unclear]. Her husband, Mrs [unclear] Evans husband, also they got one son called David, who is my age, every week before Christmas, almost sent a crate of cider to that man’s house every week, every, just before Christmas they received a crate of cider every week and died the son had it until he died as well from [unclear]. The house where the farmer lived, named Peter Cripps, there was a [unclear] called Victoria Cottage, that was a Victoria house I think called because it was his, Peter Cripps’s grandfather he lives there now, is his grandfather, Ernest Cripps, a lovely old gentleman, who we all respected, was smartly dressed like yourself is now, we always taught to respect people like that, and he was a respected man, Mr Crips, and he lived in a house with his wife and as I said, he got home guard round here, we also got ARP and I think it was their job to, if anything like this happened, to go and see if people were ok. This gentleman, Burt Saunders, tells a lovely story and that was a true story that he goes along to Victoria House halfway up where the farmers house is now to see if they were alright. The door would been blown off, open and he could hear murmur upstairs and he shouted up to, are you alright Ernest? To this gentleman, he couldn’t make nothing of it and he was worried, so he went up the stairs and this is a true story I’m telling you, he said, there was Ernest, crawling around the bottom of the bed, his poor old wife was laid in bed, with [unclear] past the ceiling, all round around the [unclear] bed, and he said, oh, he said, you’re alright but I can’t find my colour stand [laughs], he was looking for his colour stand [laughs]. He wasn’t got the ceiling round and he was worried about his colour stand [laughs] and that is true. Also, the house that took a fair bashing that night also was where on your bike is now, that was a wooden home built bungalow by Mr John Goss, he built his own bungalow up there and that was a wooden one and that was all damaged that [unclear]. The other, my other, going forward then is when the war finished, we had all the Germans prisoners, all the prisoners of war going back here and they came in Dakota aircraft and they’d done whatever all the various people, in fact my sister went across there in the hangars to manoeuvre repatriated back to, if you want a better word, delouse them and give them tea and coffee and everything else before they repatriate, and we used stand at the end of the road, waving to those boys in open back army lorries as they went to wherever they was going back home. The thing I suppose, [unclear] tell you some.
CB: You talked about the reception and local people helping out
TS: Yes
CB: So, what exactly did they do?
TS: First of all, they were there to, the WVS, so they were all voluntaries people, they, I think all their contact was, was to give them refreshments before they went but I think these boys was medically examined. The various things, I mean, people say the common word was their delousing, whether that was, I mean, that’s not a good description not I don’t know, yes, and I think and then, they made sure they was fit to go back to where home or wherever they took them, they distributed them from here to different places and then they went home, I think. Yes. That’s about
CB: So, after the war, the airfield was closed and then it changed to something else, what was that?
TS: Market research, yes, do you want me to carry on? Yes
CB: So, that brought in a different type of person.
TS: Certainly did, it certainly did, I mean, to add to that, if you like my sister married an aircraft man, he was stationed at the Westcott and she married one of the aircraft boys from Westcott, he came from High Wycombe, he was just, he fuelled the aircraft, that’s all he’d done, but after the war, yes, all this opened up and along came this massive industrial thing, rocket, making rockets as is so, am I right in saying that? I think I’m right in
CB: Rocket research
TS: Rocket research
CM: Yeah
TS: So, it brought lots and lots of people and it, it just went, well, went from the airfield [unclear] crazy almost, you know, you had troll fourteen busses coming in from Aylesbury, all various, all year round, to employ people, it employed a lot of people, and it opened up this rocket research [unclear] all these, concrete and things, they had big noises, we still get noises now but it was Chester rocket fuels and not lots of noises, there was a big important thing that was that made the village because it brought houses here, it doubled the size of the village, it’s not troubled, with houses and I’m right in saying that one in every, one in every three [unclear] was building houses in the time immediately after the war was commandeered by Westcott workers, you know? [unclear], I think he does. And so there was a lot of people coming from Aylesbury to work at Westcott. And they were Westcott workers and it developed the village immensely and we had the social club and everything not we were allowed into it but that would all come along at the time and it developed the village into something massive, yes, it did, it all caused, caused a bit of a storm, a stir because they brought American German scientists back here to work and that wasn’t very acceptable in them days to people in the village and there was one particular man who was called Doctor Basky, who was a German scientist, rocket scientist what they called him, and he helps at the neighbourhood by applying for a bungalows we built, the top end of the village [unclear] in Westcott, am I right on this? Have you heard this? You haven’t. There’s a bungalow built up there, he applied for a bungalow, but he hadn’t got access, and he got a go across Westcott Village Green, reckless he applied, to the Westcott village council if you like to call it in them days, to go across the Village Green where we’d played all our lives, and my dad had played his life a suppose, access, to this bungalow, there was uproar, a German in a bungalow in village green, yeah, have we not, not enough for this, [unclear] with the people, my father was one of them and there was a gentleman in the village called Mr Bricks, he was supposed to be a bit of a solicitor, come what, a lawyer or whatever you like, and he formed a [unclear] to stop this, they all paid thirty pounds and they went to London court and Mr Doctor Basky, because he was working for the government, he won the day on that, and he got his room, the bungalow was built. It went across Westcott Village Green and that bungalow is still there today and where Mr Clap lives, you know, that just sold me neighbours six hundred thousand pounds that bungalow and they still got the access through Westcott Village Green. The reason they won the day there was because they had, they came back with was, that it was common land, the Village Green [unclear] common land and the boss of the common land was the lord of the manor. Nobody could find the lord of the manor, whoever he was, but it turned out to be the priest. And he still is. Hence the bungalow went up. Against a lot of wishes. This caused a stir but [unclear] the rocket research, everything else, yes, it made this village, yeah, yeah, it’s still there, it’s still there, isn’t it?
CB: Just on that topic, are we talking about the church priest or the local chapel priest?
TS: The church priest.
CB: Right.
TS: Yeah.
CB: The Church of England man.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So, what was the public reaction to his support for the German?
TS: Well, he didn’t have to say yes or no, they’d already decided, there is all the aftermath I’m talking about
CB: Right
TS: That was sold, there was no question that man wasn’t going to get our permission
CB: Right.
TS: No question
CB: He wasn’t involved
TS: No, no, no
CB: Going back to the war,
TS: Yes
CB: What was the, the two parts, one is the construction of the airfield
TS: Yes
CB: The next is its occupation by the RAF. In construction, where did the workers come from? Were some locals and others imported?
TS: [unclear] but they was, they was transported in from Aylesbury, they lived in hostels in Aylesbury, they wasn’t all local by any means and there’s too many to be local. They was in hostels in Aylesbury and they brought them in minibuses [unclear] I could see the coaches bringing them in, they just transported wherever they could lodge them and obviously there was [unclear] Aylesbury, a lot of them there
US: Did they build a camp to [unclear] them?
TS: Sorry?
US: Did they build any sheds for them at all?
TS: No, I didn’t think they did, did they? Can’t remember that.
CB: Were they, were they all British or were they other nationalities?
TS: There wasn’t [unclear] nationalities, a lot of them was Irish, yes, yes. Yes, lot of them was Irish. Yes.
CB: So, the airfield opened in 1941
TS: Yes
CB: And then the RAF people came, what effect did they have on the locality?
TS: They was welcomed, I mean, was happy to see them, I think everybody was pleased, yes, they was accepted without doubt, yeah, there was not, they was accepted as something, well, just Westcott, they’d never seen Westcott like it before, I mean, me father was, yes, they was all happy about that, all happy about that, yes, and they thought it was helping, it was helping, was it?
CB: And on the airfield, they would have had various social events, how much did they incorporate?
TS: [unclear] social events on that, no, no, they wouldn’t, they didn’t incorporate the village on that, no
CB: Right
TS: In fact this social club where I worked and had known so much about was the officer’s mess [unclear],
CB: Right
TS: That was the officer’s mess, yeah. [unclear]
CB: So, when they drank all the beer in the pubs, what was the local reaction to that?
TS: Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing nasty, no, nothing nasty at all, no, we, I would say, when they drank the beer it didn’t take long to drink it because it was only a small community and [unclear] joke but they did [unclear] what I got for a pint of [unclear], they’d drink it dry and we [unclear] next week and that was it, and when they finished, the pub didn’t open the next couple of three nights, so they, they got off to Quainton, yeah
CB: And in, locally in the pubs did, in the evenings, did you, you were still at school age, so you didn’t get out.
TS: No, my father, my father did, yeah.
CB: What about your brothers and sisters, what were they doing?
TS: My brother went to war, my sisters worked in, I don’t, the brother only a year older than me but I had two sisters older, they worked in, they lived in, with my mother, they worked in the factories in Aylesbury, they got a bus on the A41 to Aylesbury, yes, yes, they worked in various factories in Aylesbury.
CB: And your brother, older brother, what did he do, when he joined the forces?
TS: He was in the RAF. Yeah, yeah.
CB: What did he do?
TS: [unclear] say, say that, wasn’t [unclear] but he wasn’t
CB: Wasn’t round here
TS: No, no, he wasn’t round here, no. Where was he now? I think he went to Surrey, someway that somewhere, yeah. I honestly can’t tell, [unclear] that one
CB: So, your father was working on the farm, during the war
TS: Waddesdon estates
CB: Waddesdon estates
TS: The other bit about my father, now you’ve brought him up, the name being Schneider,
CB: Yeah
TS: I’m sure you wondered,
CB: I was just going to ask you, so thank you, go on
TS: My father was an American. He came to Waddesdon when he was three years old with his family from [unclear], German Jews they were, they came, Rothschild imported labour to build Waddesdon manor and he came with his father then as three years old worked at Waddesdon manor his father did and he was only three years old then when he came. It cost a lot of money to be naturalised and he never did it and when war broke out, my father was passed as an alien, he couldn’t vote, he was American, he was American till he died. He couldn’t vote and every month the policeman come for him to sign a paper to make sure he was still there, and he wasn’t spying or anything like that, he had to sign a paper every month. The policeman came to [unclear] him every month. My father signed that paper cause he was not naturalised, he [unclear].
CB: How did he feel about that?
TS: Beg your pardon?
CB: How did he feel about this approach?
TS: he didn’t worry, he didn’t worry, yeah, he didn’t mind, yeah. He couldn’t join the home guard, he couldn’t do anything.
CB: No. So, what was the reaction of the local population to him, with his name like that? Oh, Schneider?
TS: He, no, no, no reaction, whatsoever. No, no, he lived the village all his life. They knew him, was hard working people all those people in them days. No, he was accepted, he was not an outcast for any reason, [unclear], no, no, he just, he did things for the village [unclear] like I did.
CB: So, his father had come over
TS: He was [unclear], yes,
CB: Yeah. And with the Rothschilds, they of course looked after him anyway.
TS: Well, they’d give a house, that was [unclear] Rothschilds that was the little thing, you work for me and you can have a house for nothing. It’s all [unclear] in them days, what they call them nowadays
CB: Yeah, ok, and your mother was obviously busy looking after her children
TS: Yes
CB: But did she do an extra job as well?
TS: She, no [unclear]
CB: Right
TS: She didn’t do anything
CB: There was plenty to do anyway
TS: There wasn’t [unclear] and going back to, these, war, I mean, that school up there, they were inside overnight with evacuees from London, you know, when he was there and we just had to bring all chairs and tables in sitting where they wanted, we couldn’t have any of them because we were five in family, we haven’t got room. There was quite a lot of evacuees brought from London down to Westcott and that doubled the size of that school, you know, I’m talking about from twenty to forty overnight and those [unclear] very few children around here.
CB: So you, in your school you had these evacuees, how did you liaise with them?
TS: Very well, very well, very well. Yes.
CB: And they were used to being in a city and they were now in the country? What was their reaction to that?
TS: Well, for my recollection of that, the children was happy, their parents came to see them as often as they could, and the people who was looking after them was happy to accommodate them in somewhere other and I think it all worked out pretty well, it did, yeah.
CB: Did they stay throughout the war or did they return to London, some of them, after the Blitz?
TS: After the Blitz, they returned, yes
CB: All of them or just some of them?
TS: Some of them. Some of them still remained here and they made a life here, yes. Oh yeah, not many of them but they did, yeah. There was no mossy about that whatsoever, no, no whatsoever. No, as wartime it was accepted, wasn’t it? You know. Oh yes.
CB: Where would they be accommodated mainly? Would they be in the villages?
TS: In the village.
CB: In the village here.
TS: Yeah, if you got a spare bedroom
CB: Yeah
TS: You could have two.
CB: Right
TS: We hadn’t got any spare bedrooms there cause were’ five in the family so we couldn’t have any but
CB: And did the people who were putting them up get an allowance for looking after them?
TS: I can’t tell you that, sorry
CB: They would have had extra food ration of course but
TS: They got food ration, yes, I’m sure they would but I can’t tell you that. I don’t know what situation that was.
CB: Ok.
TS: Right.
CB: Now, at the school, which is on the edge of the airfield,
TS: Yes
CB: Everybody is conscious of the flying and the people there
TS: Yes
CB: How did the school handle explaining what was going on in the war?
TS: They just, I think they accepted it as something that’s got to happen and they just accepted that way. They welcomed it basically, say they welcomed it, they appreciated what was going on, but there was no objection whatsoever, none whatsoever.
CB: Did the RAF occasionally send somebody to talk to the schoolchildren, both the primary and secondary?
TS: No
CB: About what was going on?
TS: I can’t remember that, no, can’t remember that.
CB: And of course, secrecy was very important,
TS: Yeah
CB: But to what extent did people talk about what was going on at the airfield?
TS: Well, they said well, there’s night flying tonight and then daytime flying, training these aircrew, it was about all there was to talk about really. That was what it was for and that’s what people talked about. They said, oh, you know, I don’t know what number they had here a dozen of Wellington bombers, more?
CB: Oh, they had about twenty-six.
TS: Did they?
CB: Yeah, or more. Yeah, and the number of RAF personnel was two thousand two hundred.
TS: No, nobody, nobody ever complained about the thing at all in my [unclear], no
CB: You said, you said that your house was right beside one of the runways
TS [unclear], yeah
CB: So, uhm, the flight path, the planes going past were close. Did you get any sleep on those nights?
TS: Yes, because they, you know, I’m talking about when it getting dark at eight o’clock, probably finished at twelve o’clock. They didn’t go one night, no, they didn’t go one night, no.
CB: Except in the summer where they had to
TS: Well, yes, right, yes, yeah
CB: Fly later
TS: Yeah, you, we [unclear] of it, in fact we were happy [unclear] locally, quite honest
CB: Exciting for kids
TS: Well, it was, yeah, but my dad never complained, no. Everybody accepted it. No, everybody accepted it because this thing was got to be done and helping to win the war so to speak, I suppose in a way if you’re thinking about it.
US: There’s a question from me.
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo.
TS: One thing, sorry
CB: Go on, go on.
TS: Well, another thing that I can remember too, looking at that window, was the night Coventry was built, bombed, they, some [unclear] rather thought that field there was Coventry
CB: This is November 1940
TS: Was it?
CB: Yeah, [unclear]
TS: They must have thought they got to Coventry one of those bombers, you could hear them going over, you could hear them [unclear] they called them, going across, within the flight path of Coventry put it that way. And all at once, that field was alight with incendiary bombs
CB: The airfield?
TS: No, the field
CB: Just the field, where you were
TS: Yes, yeah and we felt [unclear] cause that field [unclear] and we were looking out to the fireworks, lighting the [unclear] field up it did, it really did, no bombs to drop, we thought, we ran down and got [unclear] and everything but nothing, no bombs had dropped but there was a bit of a false alarm but they thought that won’t protect the bomber or whoever it was, thought it was at Coventry but it wasn’t. So, nothing was dropped
US: This is before the airfield was built.
TS: No, during the war. 1940.
CB: 1940
TS: Yeah
CB: They were building it then, weren’t they?
TS: Yeah, building it, yes, right.
CB: Yeah
TS: That, that was that, that was a lovely sight, I can assure you, me and my brother were looking at it incendiary bombs. When we went next morning there was like a big wood, metal stick, like a firework had gone off, you find a firework, bit of wood but that was metal, these things were metal, those bombs they seemed to us, and we picked them up, two or three of them.
CB: And these were, were these landmines that they’d sent?
TS: They were incendiary bombs
CB: Oh, they were incendiaries, right.
TS: [unclear] told they were incendiary bombs
CB: Yeah, the spike
TS: The, [laughs] the blame that for that went on a guy who made a living during the war, who worked on the farm [unclear] catching rabbits and he had a rabbit round on a Friday night, he came with carrying a bicycle [unclear] rabbits on a Friday night cause for rationing and we’d eat rabbits and he was making the money rabbits and he got the blame for that for flashing a [unclear] catching these [unclear] rabbits, he got the blame for that, whether it was true or not, I don’t know [laughs]. He used to do it, he used to flash his light [unclear]
US: Speaking of lights, referring back to your senior aircraft landing out your bedroom window?
TS: Yes
US: Were there any runway nights
TS: There was
US: Yeah? By your place?
TS: Yes, [unclear] across the field
US: Interesting [unclear]
TS: Sorry?
US: The [unclear] lighting system
TS: Yeah, there was poles
CB: Poles
TS: A lot of poles
US: Yeah?
TS: Every so many yards, back across those fields, towards Quainton, yes, there was, yeah
US: Was it in all the runways or just [unclear]
TS: That one, yes, yeah, cause that was on our field, one thing or two, there might be some, [unclear] I’m not sure about that
US: [unclear]
TS: Yeah. There were lights, yes, there was lights and lights, yeah.
US: And the other question I have on related, there was a dummy airfield down the road at
CB: Grendon Underwood,
US: Grendon Underwood
CB: By the A41
TS: Yes, I know what you mean [unclear]
US: Do you anything about that?
TS: No, I don’t. No. Wasn’t Oakley, brother and sisters at Westcott.
CB: Oakley was
TS: Oakley, Yes, yes
US: [unclear] Westcott
CB: This other airfield is a dummy airfield just beyond Kingswood, down on the A41.
TS: No, I’ve got no recollection of that. I’ve got visions of here and about it but no, I can’t [unclear]
CB: Did you, as youngsters you would walk a bit but you could a bike you could cycle around. Did you cycle around much as a youngster during the war?
TS: Yes, yes
CB: And where would you go?
TS: Kingswood, Kingswood. Yeah. Kingswood or Waddesdon. Yes, yeah.
CB: Just for something to do.
TS: Just something to do, yes. And then you got this thing on your portable lamp if you were out at night that shone down on the ground so [unclear] wouldn’t go up in the air. But not much, I mean, yeah, there was a bit security form my parents on that they wouldn’t, well, we did have air raids so [unclear] just said, we all had Anderson air raid shelter and if you, if the air raid siren went, you didn’t always go in it, I was there [unclear] if you wanted it, it was in our back house.
CB: Describe the Anderson shelter that you had in your garden.
US: [unclear]
CB: Four feet high.
TS: Four feet, it was [unclear] like that, very solid [unclear] and the net [unclear] it and a solid piece of metal on the top
CB: Right
TS: Yeah
CB: Then, what was on top of the metal?
TS: Nothing.
CB: Oh.
TS: So, the [unclear] was that, square, get six in it, laid on it, and the object, the story of that was we got a direct hit of a bomb [unclear] top of that table, you’d be safe under it
CB: So, where was this cited?
TS: In here
CB: In the house
TS: Oh yeah.
CB: Right. So, this was the inside Anderson shelter.
TS: That’s right.
CB: What about outside the house, what sort of arrangements were there?
TS: There was people dug, dug things in their garden, we didn’t but it was
CB: And what sort of shelters did they make?
TS: They made them with wood or concrete.
CB: On a dome shape.
TS: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
CB: And covered with what?
TS: Earth.
CB: And what, what did they have inside them?
TS: Oh, nothing, [unclear]
CB: Just a bench
TS: Yeah, yeah.
CB: Ok. How many people could get into those?
TS: They dug as many as [unclear] family, if it was five or if it was four, six, [unclear] family, a big family [unclear]
CB: And who paid for those?
TS: The people dug themselves, oh yeah.
CB: Was it with material that was supplied, or did they have to buy?
TS: They had to buy it, oh yeah
CB: Right.
TS: That’s what everybody [unclear], they gave you these air raid, these Anderson things
CB: In the house?
TS: Yes
CB: Yes
TS: Yeah. I think situation if there was children which we was
CB: Right. You talked about rationing but you, your diet was supplemented by what you grew
TS: Yeah
CB: And what you could catch
TS: Yeah
CB: Did you also get deer?
TS: No. No. No rabbit sort of thing, no
CB: Hares?
TS: No. Not very often anyway.
CB: What about pigeons and things like that?
TS: No, what, no, we didn’t.
CB: But you kept chicken I presume.
TS: Oh yeah, chicken, [unclear] pig, [unclear].
CB: So, how would you describe the family’s diet?
TS: Old-fashioned but good, eggs and bacon and meat, when Dad killed the pig hung up on the wall [unclear] load of bacon and you had two of them off the pig, you got two hams as well and every now and again Dad would get the cow and get it off the wall [unclear] cut a piece off and that would [unclear] bacon, we had that.
CB: And when a slaughter, when an animal was slaughtered, there was a lot of meat and you’d wanted to spin out, so how did you preserve or how did he preserve the carcass?
TS: You salted it, so pork became bacon.
CB: So, how was it salted? Was there a big trough or how did?
TS: Yes, you had a lead, lead thing like that, [unclear] they were done in leads, pure leads, you could done it yourself, you [unclear] the salt on it, yeah and that was for about six weeks. Then it came out of the salt and you hung it up and [unclear] three quarters of a year sometimes, yeah
CB: Because of the salt in it
TS: Yeah, I kept
CB: So, where did you keep?
TS: Bacon
CB: Yeah, where did you keep it in the house?
TS: Hung up on the wall. Yeah. There would be one hung up there on a hook and that was it.
CB: So it,
TS: It was salted
CB: It lasted a long time
TS: It did, yes, it did.
CB: Was there a larder in the house?
TS: Yeah, sometimes it was outside, yeah, there was a larder in our house. We was lucky with the house down there [unclear] the damage to the when my Dad, if you go down and look at the house now, that was made [unclear] brickwork, [unclear] loads of work if you look [unclear] anywhere
CB: Yeah
TS: Solidly built, my father said no [unclear], I won’t this bloody [unclear], me swearing but that was his words, and this bloody Einstein [unclear], you [unclear] going out [unclear] I’m not [unclear] and he was right against others that just as [unclear] brickwork, yeah, yeah.
CB: Just pause again. So, if we move now Tim, to post-war,
TS: Yes
CB: The rocket research establishment was set up here in 1946
TS: Yes
CB: And these people you talked about who came in were scientists. Who were they and what was the local reaction to them?
TS: Well, as I said, the local reaction to them was not very good. We fought the war, they come here and they give them [unclear] jobs, it wasn’t a very good reaction at all, so no, it wasn’t. Hence the man getting in trouble building his bungalow.
CB: Yeah
TS: It wasn’t a very good reaction and at the same time they said it was needed and, I mean, he was an exception, that man having his bungalow cause the rest of them made do with the old ex-Picket huts, buildings what the RAF had lived in, they lived in, they were squatters in not very good conditions, four or five of them, they was, probably eight, if I say eight I might be overdoing I think.
CB: These were men on their own, they didn’t have families with them?
TS: Oh, they’d got wives.
CB: Oh, they did?
TS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they squatted where, they [unclear], they [unclear], they wanted to be here but they wanted a job, I suppose, but, I mean, they lived in not very good conditions at all, this man made his money and he built this bungalow. Oh yeah, one of the family called Jessons, I mean, they had family here and they went to school with my children.
CB: Oh, did they?
TS: Oh yeah. Oh yes, oh yeah, yes. They were accepted in the long run.
CB: So, gradually they were accepted, were they?
TS: Oh yes, yes, yes,
CB: But immediately after the war, what was the public reaction? How did they express themselves?
TS: Well, they didn’t mind, the first reaction to getting these German scientists was, oh, they bloody German scientists here, they we fought against the war [unclear] and all that but they did get used to them but the bigger majority of the people in Westcott welcomed that place because [unclear] all at once everybody got a damn good job, everybody worked at Westcott. In fact they called it Holiday Camp, that was known as Holiday Camp that was, when Westcott, I mean, everybody went there to work, they wanted workers and everybody went there to work and it was easy work, and you know, I mean, if I think of these scientists wanted a piece of metal carried or some carried, there was an old [unclear] in the village, he got a damn good job carrying it to them and he’d never had a job in his life like that, before he worked round the farm or round about to Aylesbury, people used to [unclear] to Aylesbury, they used to work and now at once we got Westcott here, oh my God that was, you know, there was, you know, money was no object it seems and they got a better job with a pay and they, a lot of people accepted that and that wasn’t only at Westcott [unclear] I mean. My brother in law, who I said was an RAF man, he immediately got a job there, he was an MT driver on the site and he was going to Buckingham, when he was at Buckingham with a bus in the morning and picking up all the villagers on the way back from Buckingham, coming back with a busload of workers. Westcott was, well, wonderful to people that was, Westcott. It was well thought of. I didn’t work there because I wouldn’t take chances, I was [unclear] workwise but there’s a lot of people and not only that, they had the benefits of, I had an uncle, my mother’s uncle worked out there, he [unclear] course [unclear] say he was living in benefits, he was sort of man he was in them days put it that way and when Westcott came along, he got a job as a laborer [unclear] just in his element, not only that, when they had a sick pay scheme, they had a sick pay scheme and for thirteen weeks he’d go to the doctor and get a [unclear] in them days which he’s still doing now [unclear] if you go to the doctor and get a certificate, you sign out cause he’s not allowed to be [unclear] that was and he go and get a certificate and for thirteen weeks he should have a full pay, he was working for the government, he’d never had that [unclear] life and a lot of people round here, by God they made [unclear] out of that, and after thirteen weeks he went down on half pay so he turned his [unclear] you know, he did have some, [unclear] I tell you he did and there’s a lot more who did as well, not only him, and it was so easy for him, it was [unclear] paradise to Westcott when that opened up that place in Westcott. Oh God yes, there’s people round here now, went there half time, living on lovely, healthy pensions, believe me [laughs]
CB: Meanwhile,
TS: [unclear], you’re not saying anything [laughs]. No, no, it’s true what I was saying, I mean, it was paradise for Westcott when that rocket place started, yes. And the surrounding villages, I mean, people. So, as I say, it was queued, I’m not joking, from the A41 to where the pub was in Westcott, there was a queue of traffic, with busses to get out of Westcott to go home. I’m sure you’ve got photographs of that perhaps, yeah. You know, there’s a lot of people working in Westcott, I don’t know many, probably [unclear], but a lot of people,
US: [unclear] very few people worked at Westcott
TS: Sorry?
US: According to you, very few people worked at Westcott, there’s a Holiday Camp?
TS: That’s what they called it [laughs], that was known as [unclear] camp, down at Westcott, Holiday Camp.
US: [unclear]
TS: [unclear] Holiday Camp, yeah.
CB: Meanwhile you are working for the fertilizer depot. How did you enjoy that job?
TS: I enjoyed it cause I was, I enjoyed all my work because I provided for my family. I had a boy and a girl, I had a family to lead, I was a family man, and I wouldn’t take big chances [unclear], I never had a car, [unclear] luxury if I wanted one, and I couldn’t afford it and I wouldn’t have it and that’s been my life [unclear] and so against other people having the Holiday Camp or whatever you like to call it, I’d never interfered me, it was just, I was always a very cautious man as regards my family. And that’s how I live my life. And I was able to save a bit of money although I worked [unclear] hard and whatever say that, anybody [unclear] talk to you will tell you that. But I was able to save a bit of money and I, I don’t got no secrets, I [unclear] this house and I have four hundred and twenty five pound a week and [unclear] for my investments and my pension which I paid in for and I think I care [unclear] and that’s how I ended up and I’m happy, I’m not boasting when I say that, I’m pleased I’ve done it. But I was never ambitious, no. Westcott working, it didn’t appeal to me, no, because I was trying to [unclear] but I mean, yeah, I’m saying, these people, got good jobs there, they didn’t, they weren’t all scientists, they were only laborers but they’d got a damn good job if you needed one, you know. I mean, I can tell you the story of a man who used to live in Ashingham, you remember what we were talking about, it was there again, you get back to the benefits people today, he was one of them in them days, you see, pack out [unclear], doing the job [unclear], packing up, packing up, he got a job at Westcott, best thing he’d ever done, and he was just an ordinary laborer digging the waterworks, pipes and if there was any digging, trenchwise digging, [unclear] his name was, he would be the man to dig the hole, ok, he was the digger, well, he was nothing but [unclear] and they knew it and they would try to get rid of this man and this is a true story again and the foreman knew he [unclear] and the only way you’d get a sack at Westcott if you refused to do anything, they could dismiss you for that, but they set a trap for this guy, and he said, ok, [unclear] was the foreman, he said, ok, we’ve got no digging today, [unclear] he said, we want, can you paint? We’ve got to do some painting, they wanted him to say, no, I’m bloody ain’t gonna do it, but he didn’t, he went the opposite way, he said, [unclear], he said, he said, of course I can paint, anybody can, [unclear] can paint, [laughs] he [unclear] was [laughs], he’s [unclear] gonna sack me, he don’t know [unclear] him, [laughs] he wasn’t gonna say no, to get [unclear] that was [unclear] trying to explain really and nobody, they put a lot of people, they put a lot of people. Yeah, my sister worked there at the laboratories, although she was inspecting this, inspecting that, scientist, he wanted this, he wanted that, she ran that, [unclear]. Not done wrong with that rocket research, there was never wrong, [unclear], can’t see nothing wrong with it, but it did put in a lot of people, I suppose, I suppose it done its job as well [unclear] he ain’t [unclear]
CB: There is still research going on there.
TS: Yeah
CB: I’ll stop the tape now. Thank you very much indeed Tim. Fascinating.
TS: My pleasure. [unclear] three laborers. So, they were doing his work, so to speak and if he wanted another one, they employed somebody. So, he did get a job at Westcott as a laborer, if you hadn’t got anything up here, you could get a job.
US: But it was, it’s true because alter the war, you couldn’t get anything so the only way they could do any work was to make it themselves.
TS: Yeah.
US: So, they had to have a full range of people there,
TS: Yeah
US: To do everything,
TS: Yeah
US: [unclear]
TS: Yeah
US: So, that’s why you got any [unclear] skills there.
TS: Yeah
US: And
TS: Yeah
CB: The companies were the same
US: Yeah
CB: In, they, what they’re now called vertically integrated.
TS: We, after you know, I mean, I first took [unclear], that was still very much subsidized by Westcott and there was open [unclear] just store [unclear] and night, I used to cringe cause he come in, what have you done this morning? I ain’t done nothing, you know, [unclear], you remember him? [unclear] he was, typical one he was, I’ve done nothing this morning, you know, used to cringe,
US: [unclear] comes down to our meetings
TS: I know
US: [unclear]
TS: I liked him, I liked him, [unclear] yeah [unclear], I liked him, but it was easy job [unclear], you know, I’m not saying there’s no, was it wrong? I don’t know, they seemed to, get [unclear], you know, yes. Yeah, well, I mean, [unclear], say where you’ve been, you lied, you know, you got to, you had to find some, and I said dinnertime, this isn’t or I got tied up with the Morgan, he was the union man, Mr Morgan, he was the union man and everybody, he got tied up with him, you could get away from him, this [unclear], where you’ve been? I got, Morgan stopped me, Morgan, [unclear] for? He said, I did and he said, in a minute [laughs]. Yeah, that was the sort of thing that we’re on.
CB: It was the system.
TS: It was, yeah [laughs].
US: [unclear]
CB: This interview, this interview with Tim Schneider was part of the “We were there too” series of people who were in the war but not in the forces and in this case next to the airfield.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Tim Schneider
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-04-28
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASchneiderT170428, PSchneiderT1702
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Pending review
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01:08:15 audio recording
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eng
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Description
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Tim Schneider lived at Westcott before, during and after the construction and occupation of RAF Westcott as 11 Operational Training Unit. He tells of feeding the rabbits when he was four years old; leaving school at fourteen to help working on the farm because, in a family of five, everyone had to help out; at the age of twenty seven, left the farm and went to work in a pub. Remembers when the airfield was built in 1941. The airplanes were landing so close to his house that when he drew back the curtains, he could see the pilot in the cockpit. Tells of food rationing and how they supplemented by raising and eating their own farm animals; incendiary bombs being dropped in a field the same day Coventry was bombed; beer rationing in the pubs and the aircrews drinking all of it; children being evacuated from London to Westcott and accommodated in a local school; Anderson air raid shelters in people’s gardens; a Lancaster crash. After the war Westcott became the sight of the Rocket Propulsion Establishment where both German and British scientists were employed. Remembers how the local people initially didn’t at all like the German scientists working there and tells of one of these scientists wanting to build a bungalow at Westcott and the legal dispute around it. Emphasises how the Rocket Propulsion Establishment boosted Westcott’s economy, creating lots of jobs for people from the local area.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
11 OTU
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
evacuation
home front
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1203/11776/AWilliamsRS180115.1.mp3
013f78dd9e7081e681585d2c9c682061
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Williams, Ronald Spencer
R S Williams
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ronald Spencer 'Roly' Williams, (1921 - 2019, 4215269 Royal New Zealand Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 75 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-01-15
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Williams, RS
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GT: This is Monday the 15th of January 2018 and I’m at the home of Mr Roland Spencer Williams, known as Blue or Roly. Born 18th February 1921. RNZAF air gunner NZ4215269. Flight sergeant. In Christchurch New Zealand. Roly joined the RNZAF in 1942. Trained in Canada and flew with 75 New Zealand Squadron, Lancasters Marks 1 and 3 from March to July 1945. Hello Roly, and thank you for allowing me to interview you. Please give us some insight and a little bit of history of where you were born, where you grew up and why you joined the RNZAF.
RW: Well, I was born right here where I’m living. The district I’m living now. And so I have never known anything different really. Why did I join the Air Force? One night laying in bed I thought well this war is going to last a long time. Do I want sand in my feet or do I want mud or do I want to bring up my breakfast every morning? No. I think I’ll join the Air Force. So within a day or two of that I went up to the recruiting depot in Mackenzie’s Arcade in Christchurch and made out an application form. And the first thing they said to me, ‘Have you ever flown?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I haven’t had the opportunity.’ ‘Why not? Do you know anyone that flies?’ ‘Yes.’ I knew two people who had pilot’s licences but they were both years older than I was. But they couldn’t make out why I hadn’t been up for a trip. However, they accepted my application and I got to don the Air Force blue. I first posted to Omaka, just out of Blenheim. Full summertime. Full heat. We were parading on the tarmac. You got the backs of your legs sunburned. And then I went to just out of Palmerston North. Milson. And then I was shifted to Gisborne. And then at Gisborne we had that well known Air Force man running us. Tiny White. It was a bit of a holiday really up there. We were aerodrome defence and our defence was a Canadian two land barrelled rifle with a six inch bayonet. Pig sticker. The whole things was worse than, worse than useless. Absolutely useless. But I met some good friends in Gisborne and from there I moved to Rotorua. It was there that the medics took over and they found that my eye sight was out of kilter. We had to line up the two sticks horizontally. I was miles out so they said I couldn’t land a plane. So that destined me to air gunner or AG W/Op. From Gisborne we down to Trentham for a while. I presume while awaiting for a vessel to come in. And we were unloading ammunition there until the wharfies complained bitterly that we were working too hard, unloading too much and it was too dangerous and they were going to declare the port black if we carried on. Then came the call to report to RTO in Wellington and we were moved alongside a ship called the Nieuw Amsterdam. The Dutch vessel, the Dutch captain wanted to sail on the tide. There was quite a lot of gear still to go on including I don’t know how many bottles of Red Band beer. Crates and crates of it. We offered to put the Red Band beer on [laughs] once again the wharfies came up to the mark and said if we handled that beer at all they’d declare the port black. Hence my disapproval of wharf labour [laughs] The Nieuw Amsterdam was crewed mainly by Javanese and that. And of course, we had our duties to perform which was usually something to do in the cookhouse. The Javanese all had long aprons on and the concrete floor in the cookhouse was swimming in water. We used to wait until one of these little Javanese had gone past us and the apron was no use, stamp our foot in the water and up it would shoot up the backs of their little legs. That caused no end of problems. Then we had, I was told eight hundred and fifty German prisoners of war on board and they would come up about 2 o’clock in the afternoon from down way below water line for a bit of sunlight. And they told us then we were going to ‘Frisco. We had no idea where we were going. We went to ‘Frisco. We had a wee bit of trouble with them on one night. And the next night I was on guard duty and one prisoner called up that he was ill. So I had to get the doctor and go down there. And the bunks were about two foot apart, at least four to five high and we went down to see what was wrong with him. Apparently, it was suspected appendicitis and at any time the cordon could have fallen out on top of us and we had no hope. And the sten guns we had, well that blocked up with rust. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway [laughs] From ‘Frisco we landed on the station there and they were getting on doing a film there. They had all the Hollywood celebrities there. Then it was, I forget whether it was five and a half or six days on the train to Winnipeg. You know, through Kicking Horse Pass and that was wonderful scenery. Blue Lake. We got a station off Winnipeg and when we got into Winnipeg the station was all locked up. Apparently, the stationery owner on the previous station had rung through and said that some of the troops had tried to grab money and books and that from her stationery shop and so they’d rung through to Winnipeg and sealed it all up. The, I suppose the brightest spark on that trip was the last few mile. The big negro porter came in who we had not seen the whole trip and he had his hat in his hand by the peak and he says, ‘The boys have taken up a little collection for me. How’s about it boys?’ [laughs] He got the bum’s rush really. He forgot he was dealing with Kiwis. On to Winnipeg. That was, we were based at an old school for the deaf there. That was like going back to school again and I’d been away from school for five years. So it was pretty hard going. Most of the intakes then were UI entrants, or first year university boys. It was fairly hard going there. And then as a gunner I was posted to Macdonald which was a gunnery school. And at the finals there we had the drogue. Air to air firing with the drogue. Of course, being W I’m last on the list, very used to it by now because I was always, always the last on the pay line. It was very unfortunate for someone who was below me. And I was last in the turret. And I knocked the drogue down into the lake. Lake Winnipeg. So we had to come back, more ammunition and start all over again. And damn me if I didn’t do the same thing again. So they gave us all average marks. I maintained if you could hit that turnbuckle your lead was right. But it didn’t make any difference. So —
GT: What aircraft were the target towers? Ansons?
RW: No.
GT: [unclear]
RW: What was the Canadian Blenheim?
GT: The Bolingbroke.
RW: Bolingbroke. Yeah. Where did we go to?
GT: And no one shot the aircraft though.
RW: Oh, no. No. The aircraft was safe and sound. It was just the turnbuckle at the end of the drogue.
GT: And you got it twice.
RW: Took it twice. So then when I got to Padgate, which was the clearing station just out of Manchester a chap named Woody Woodhall, a wounded gunner was there and he took one look at my logbook, he said, ‘You trained at Macdonald didn’t you?’ I said, ‘How’d you know?’ He said, ‘From your score.’
GT: So, from, from your logbook, Roly you’ve got, you’ve got your pass out results for the ab initio gunnery course and the period of the course was 27th March 1944 to 16 June ’44. And so then you, you arrived into England what? By about September 1944?
RW: Oh yeah. About that I think. At that stage I didn’t take very much notice of time. I was more interested in where I was going and what I was going to do. So we went down to Devon. Just out of East Budleigh in Devon. Oh, what’s the name of that station? What was my first station there?
GT: I don’t know Devon.
RW: It’ll be in the logbook.
GT: You’ve got 11 OTU, which is up north.
RW: Yeah. That I know.
GT: You crewed up at 11 OTU.
RW: That would be in the front of the logbook won’t it? Westcott. I was stationed at Westcott. Well, we were flying Wellingtons here.
GT: Yeah. From September. September 1944 you joined 11 OTU.
RW: Yeah.
GT: That’s fine. Yeah.
RW: Yeah. The big thing about Westcott right at the end of the runway as you took off was the imprint of a Wellington that had burned and the imprint had burned into the ground. It would still be there today, I think, honestly. It wasn’t a very good sight. And then we moved to a satellite station there.
GT: Oakley. Oakley.
RW: Oakley. Yes. Coming back from a leave to Oakley we watched a flying bomb fly parallel to the train. It was at no great height whatsoever and we wondered where it was going to land. When we got back we found it had landed up into the Rothschild estate at Oakley and it was filled with [pause] printed matter.
GT: Propaganda that is.
RW: Propaganda matter. Yes. Then, oh where did I move to then?
GT: Did the Rothschilds take any notice of that at the time?
RW: No. We never heard anything about it. No. Just that it was a non-explosive one. It was a propaganda thing.
GT: Roly, looking at your 11 OTU Westcott time you did sixteen hours during the day. Eighteen hours at night. A total of seventy three flying hours at Westcott and Oakley. And then you moved on in January ’45 to 1655 Conversion Unit, North Luffenham.
RW: North Luffenham. Yes.
GT: So, yeah, Roly can you tell me a little bit about your crewing up?
RW: Oh.
GT: Because it happened at Westcott, right. So a lot of people have a lot of stories to tell about how they found their crew members. Have you got a story about that? have you got a story how you found your crew and skipper?
RW: Yes. I’ve got to think this through. I teamed up with the mid-upper gunner because we trained together. Pete Dixon from Auckland. And we were walking down to the flights one morning and talking about crewing up and I met a chap I knew. Neville Staples. ‘G’day, Nev,’ I’d gone to school with him. I said, ‘Are you crewed up yet?’ He says ‘No.’ I said, ‘Well, you are now.’ So, that was the beginning of the crew. Well, in the next couple of hours we had got a skipper, Bill Evenden who, we believed anyway I don’t know whether it’s right yet, had been a commercial pilot in South Africa. And then we picked up our bomb aimer, Tom Lane. And then I was looking for a pushbike because of the propensity of getting a pushbike and selling it at a small profit and I met a chap that said he had a pushbike for sale. He turned out to be our wireless op, so he got snared. The last one to join the gang of course didn’t arrive until OTU at North Luffenham was the engineer. A Welshman. We had to have a Welshman with a half English crew and half Kiwis. We had to have a referee somewhere [laughs] North Luffenham. I thoroughly enjoyed that time. I remember once we were sent out on a cross country at about 11 o’clock at night. The country absolutely under a white blanket of snow. We had to go to Galashiels and off we went. No. Sorry, we didn’t get off. We had engine trouble so they gave us another aircraft and the second aircraft also had engine problems. And so about 2 o’clock in the morning we set off to do a cross country. Other than that it was a fairly quiet period. I thoroughly enjoyed that time although it was a cold, cold area in wintertime until the call up came to the chop squadron. Now, I had heard about this since ’43. It was well known amongst the gunners. In effect I know two people who refused to go. Both got put onto different squadrons. One was a radio op. The other was a pilot. Because of the reputation we had. I don’t, it never worried me what squadron I was going to. If your luck was in it was in and if it was out it was out.
GT: So 75 New Zealand Squadron was referred to as the chop squadron.
RW: The chop squadron.
GT: Back in early ’43 when they were flying Stirlings.
RW: Yeah.
GT: From Newmarket.
RW: Yeah. Definitely.
GT: And that reputation kept on going for the next couple of years.
RW: Kept right through. Yeah. Yes. Oh yes.
GT: So you had no choice. It was, that was your posting. To 75 NZ at Mepal.
RW: If you’d like to object you could have. Yes. There will be hundreds of chaps say you couldn’t object. I know two that did. And both got put on other squadrons there. One completed his tour and went on to flying DC3s and that. The other one must have just about completed his tour as a radio op. Yeah. So they didn’t hold it against you.
GT: There were many that’s told me that they deliberately chose a New Zealand skipper so that they would get posted to 75 New Zealand Squadron.
RW: Didn’t make a bit of difference.
GT: Yeah.
RW: Well, the CO when I first went on the station was an Englishman. Fortunately, he went quickly. But the best CO I had of course was Cyril.
GT: Wing Commander Cyril Bateman.
RW: Absolutely.
GT: He joined the squadron in January ’45 after the newer CO, Newton was killed on New Year’s Eve.
RW: Ray Newton I knew personally. He was a traveller for Smith and Smith’s. And he was a great loss. He was a good skipper. A good skipper. He was a great loss. But Cyril put a new breath of life into the squadron in as much as he was young, the youngest wingco in the force, I think. And nothing was half measures. It was all or nothing. That’s what he got there.
GT: So, I see from your logbook and, and to those listening I’m reading out from Roly’s logbook because Roly is severely sight impaired so I’m helping him with, with some of the facts and figures here that obviously he wrote many years ago. So 1653 Conversion Unit, North Luffenham you joined the 29th of January ’45 and you departed after the 27th of February ‘45 and you flew Lancasters only. So that —
RW: Yeah.
GT: Included being a Lancaster finishing school. Flying, I guess at that Conversion Unit because you didn’t go to an LFS. They did everything at 1653.
RW: Yeah.
GT: And it says here that you flew a total combined flying time of twenty six day and eighteen night hours and then you joined 75 New Zealand Squadron at Mepal on, in early March 1945.
RW: Yes. Well, Mepal was a bit of a surprise. Being a wartime station the conditions were not very good. In fact, they were pretty poor. And here again we had to have a bike to get around. He, I don’t know that [pause] we filled in our time greatly with skeet firing. We didn’t do a great deal on the aircraft. We left a lot of it to the staff. The ground staff. They’d been doing it for five years. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew what we wanted. And so I never had any complaints there. They were great.
GT: As a gunner did you clean and move your own guns and fit them?
RW: No.
GT: What was the story there?
RW: I left it entirely to the —
GT: The armourers on the squadron.
RW: The armourers on the station. The only time I had trouble with my guns I was on a night flight. A bit of heavy flak around. And all of a sudden the guns went dead. And all of a sudden my right foot was warm and I wriggled my toes and it was wet. Oh Jesus. I’ve got one. And I waited for the pain and the pain didn’t arrive. And I was still wriggling my toes around and they’re getting wetter and wetter. And it suddenly dawned me and I fished around and I pulled the top of the hydraulic hose out of the top of my flying boot [laughs]
GT: Could you put it back on?
RW: No. In the darkness and that, all those gloves on and that, no. I didn’t know even how to put it on. I suppose it clipped. I don’t know. However, I had to put a cord in my pocket. It had a couple of loops in it that fitted over the pulls on the guns and looped around. I could put my foot on it. And I could rotate the turret by hand.
GT: Right. And I must ask were you a rear gunner or a upper, mid-upper.
RW: Rear. All of us couldn’t leave the rear turret. You want to see where you’ve been.
GT: Yeah.
RW: Yeah. So I got some semblance of order back in. But the laugh of the matter was that the next day I took the heated flying suit down to stores to get replaced and they threw it back at me. How they expected heat to transmit through an oil soaked flying suit I wouldn’t know but that was the situation.
GT: And you wore it and it was —
RW: I wore it from then on.
GT: Oh.
RW: I had trouble with it once again. In fact, I lost the entire heat once there. I was that cold I wouldn’t have given a damn what happened. If you ever wanted something to happen quickly it was then.
GT: So you really, all your crew relied totally on those heated —
RW: Yeah. Oh yeah.
GT: Flying clothing.
RW: Yeah. Yes. Well, the point was that from the minute you gave the order for to the skipper to take evasive action you were in the hands of the gunner. Only he knew where the fighter was. Now, when we went on to daylights this became quite apparent because at night time you didn’t see the fighter until you saw the flare from the muzzles. If they were pointing too directly at you it was too bad. But in daylight you could follow the whole pattern there and when that fighter broke off usually it was a beam attack from above. Sometimes it was slightly below. The gunner was in complete control because only he knew where the fighter was. Fortunately, in the event we got no problem with them. We were one of the lucky ones there. But it was only the that when we went on to daylights that I realised how dangerous the night flights were. Over flights were common place. And in one of my last trips I saw three planes go down. The first one I was watching when it disintegrated in the air. The air just boiled. You could see it rising. Boiling. Just liquified. That was a direct hit in the bomb bay. That chap, I believe was Jack Plummer. He would, it should have been Jack because he would have been leading C Flight formation. He was the flight leader there. The second plane was only a very short time later, perhaps half a minute when I saw a bomb leave a plane above and come down and hit the plane below fair in the mid-upper turret. It just broke it clean in half. There. There was a body came out. I never saw a ‘chute. Within a half a minute because we wouldn’t have been in the target area any longer than we had to be I saw another Lanc collapse a port wing. It just collapsed right back at the inboard motor. And he just went into a spin and never came out. Those three chaps I think were Plummer, Barr and Brown. I had quite an interest in Brown. He was an Auckland boy and he, his first trip after his second, second dickie trip which was a night trip was a daylight and he had engine trouble going out but he followed on quite a way behind us but around about oh fifteen thousand if that. And he pushed on through the target. The Huns threw everything they had at him and he pushed on through the target. Target. Returned home. And I never heard a word of praise. Not a dickie bird there.
GT: That’s a true DFC.
RW: Oh, there were dozens of them around the bloody office. That was the trouble. The, he certainly deserved mention for it there. Then there was the 14th of July. Was that Kiel?
[pause – pages turning]
GT: The 9th of April.
RW: 9th of April.
GT: Yeah. Your fifth operation, to Kiel harbour and it was night time. Five hours forty. And that was the Admiral Von Scheer.
RW: That’s the one. Right. On that one we had engine trouble the minute we hit the English Channel. We had to close it down and the skipper called up and said, ‘Well, do we abort? Or do you want to carry on?’ ‘Carry on.’ Unanimous. So we did. We were a wee bit behind. We couldn’t maintain the height exactly, nor the speed. So we cut off a dog leg and we went, must have picked up a tail wind because all of a sudden Neville called up and said, ‘We’re over the target, skip.’ And I looked out and it was complete blackness and Bill, the skipper called up and said, ‘I’ll do a circuit,’ which he started. And we just got well into the circuit when the master bomber came in and he dropped his TIs and I saw where they fell. And I’d noted where the Hun set up their dummy TI markers and I directed the bomber stream on to the right ones there. And then the skipper called in and he said, ‘I’m going in.’ The reason being he knew damned well he couldn’t get back on to the bomber stream and get into that so because we were early, ahead of anything he goes straight through. Which he did. We dropped our bombs and everything was alright. The next day we get back and the CO calls us in the office. ‘What the hell were you doing bombing on that heading?’ So we told him and he listened. He said, ‘Bloody good show. You got an aiming point. You hit the bugger.’
GT: And the target was the ship.
RW: The target was the ship. Yeah.
GT: And you got bombs on the ship.
RW: Yeah. And well the aiming point was the target and —
GT: Yeah.
RW: We got it on. We then got the report that she was upside down in Kiel Harbour. Now, the Admiral Von Scheer was the sister ship to the Graf Spee. The Von Sheer had suffered some damage in the North Sea and when the time came for it and the Graf Spee to break out to get in to the Atlantic she wasn’t in a fit state. So she stayed up and was repaired up in north —
GT: Norway.
RW: Norway. There. The Von Sheer of course met a sticky end in the Battle of the River Plate.
GT: The Graf Spee. Yeah.
RW: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. True. So, so that was the Admiral Von Sheer that you helped sink with your aircraft, on the 9th of April.
RW: April.
GT: ’45.
RW: Yeah.
GT: And then on the 13th of April, a Friday you noted, you were detailed for the Kiel ship building yards.
RW: The Kiel ship —
GT: And that was your sixth op. Was there anything special about that one for you?
RW: No. Kiel had taken a pretty fair sort of a hammering and things were not that bad around there. It was all those towns leading in towards Kiel. The industrial towns, Hamm, Bad Oldesloe, Gelsenkirchen. All those. They were the sticky ones. So Kiel wasn’t that bad really at that stage. I would say perhaps in ’43 and that it was a sticky one.
GT: You have a note here your undercarriage collapsed on landing. From that op —
RW: Oh yes. We never heard the full story about that. I don’t know really whether we had damaged the undercart or whether it was a tight landing. But they don’t land gently at forty feet up.
GT: And were you injured that, that night?
RW: Yes. Looking out the back was just a sheet of flame as we tore down the runway and I thought, ‘This is not the place for Blue. Get out of here.’ So I rolled myself into a ball and went out the side. When I came to I was back at the aircraft trying to open the side door to let the boys out but the ground staff held me back and opened the door and let them out. And then the blood waggon grabbed hold of me and tried to put me in the waggon. But I decided that wasn’t a very good place either because I didn’t want to leave the crew. Nor anything, leave anything else. So I drifted in to the darkness. I never ever reported any injury but I’ve carried it for the rest of my life. I got two compounded discs which are now really set in place.
GT: Well, you flew another couple of months after that accident so —
RW: Yeah. Oh well.
GT: Were you in pain ever since?
RW: Yeah.
GT: So that was your operations five and six. Number seven was Heligoland.
RW: Ah. A brilliant day. I remember we took off about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. A brilliant day. As far as I could see was aircraft. We were quite early. We only had to fly to the Wash and gain a bit of height. We were almost leading the stream. And when we got to the target the clay from the cliffs had come down into the surf and was just starting to wash out into the water and you could see the German e-boats coming out and making a run for it. And the Mustangs and the Spits that were flying overhead cover you just see them drop a wing and down they’d go and all of a sudden the wash from the e-boats would be covered in the surge from the water. And the whole thing had just subsided into nothing again. I saw a documentary a couple of years ago on that. It was on television where they showed photographs of the damage there and I was amazed at how flattened the place was. There was nothing left standing there and as I say when we got there the cliffs were falling into the water. I’m not surprised. It was just fair pounded. It was a seaplane base and as such controlled movement into the North Sea.
GT: You noted nine hundred and eighty Lancs that night.
RW: Nine hundred it were, was it?
GT: I beg your pardon. That day.
RW: That’s what would be, we would be given.
GT: Your eighth trip there to Oldesloe rail junction. Six hours dead.
RW: Oh yes. Bad Oldesloe. That was a day trip too. That was the first time I’d seen railway lines flying. And we had just come out of the dropping the bombs, still in the target area, looked down and here was a whole section of railway line, sleepers all intact, flying up through the air. And I thought the buggers are coming up this way. It must have been hundreds of feet in the air. Yeah. Do you know they most like had that railway line back in twenty four hours with their forced labour.
GT: Wow.
RW: We spent thousands dollars getting planes there to blow it up. There would only be a few hours before they had it back but we would have disrupted them for quite a while. Yes.
GT: Well, that was your last op.
RW: Yeah.
GT: You completed eight. And that was on the 24th of April ’45. And your next trip to Europe was on the 4th of May. Supply dropping for the Hague.
RW: Oh yes. Oh dear. We were just crossing out of Ireland towards the Hague when all of a sudden black dots appeared in the air. Some bugger had fired on us. We were told we had safe passage through the air. We, we got to the target which was a racecourse so we dropped our supplies from very low. How someone wasn’t killed there I don’t know. Most likely someone was because the minute the food was dropped they just rushed out and I think it was a case of who got it. The Dutch or the Germans. Because one would have been as bad as the other. The Germans were collecting it to send home because they were starving too and the Dutch of course were starving. They were dropping in the streets there. There’s not much sustenance in a tulip bulb. I have met a woman who was nursing at the time and working for the Underground. And she had some quite exciting experiences running maps and all those sort of things amongst her medical gear to the Underground, and dates and that for meeting places. But those girls certainly deserved worldwide mention. Yes. The things weren’t easy. They were all on pushbikes and if they had a rubber tyre on their push bike the Huns would confiscate it and send it home. So they had rope wrapped around. Things were not easy at all. But when we got back from the Hague trip we of course were all cocky. We would up, start and go and bomb the hell out of them but that got frowned upon. And in recent years what I’ve read and what I’ve heard there’s a dispute whether they fired on us or not but I saw three go up. So they can fight that one out amongst themselves.
GT: And what was the kind of food you were dropping and what did you do? You stuck it in the bomb bays —
RW: All American. Here again the much of America proved its worth. Flour, sugar, beans, bacon, tinned meats. It was mostly spam and ham and that. All stuff that could be stored for a wee while too because no good sending perishable stuff that would disappear a couple of nights later. We didn’t know anything about this operation. It had taken place days before. They had worked out the flight plans. They had also loaded up the planes. And I think they were just waiting for the right weather. The right day. The right time. It was suddenly all on. That was operation manna.
GT: And it was the only briefing you got was the morning of the —
RW: Morning of the trip. Yeah. Yeah. Amongst the chief staff they’d have known all about it, about it but as far as the aircrew were concerned it was kept right away from us. Some just [pause] mention about that too. No. We didn’t know a great deal there. As I say I heard later on that there was no firing. Well, I’d seen enough to know it wasn’t scotch mist up there. No.
GT: Did you, did you see any other aircraft doing the same thing other than aircraft from 75 Squadron?
RW: Oh yes. It was about 75. Now, Operation Manna was a full 75 operation. There was only six of us went to the Hague. Most of the rest went to a target in North Holland. It’s well documented there. So it often made me wonder why, when we went through the target we were about second or third through there were very few behind us for, you know a main major food dropping operation. That was the reason. Because there were only six went to the Hague. Most of them went to another target north, in the north of Holland and I can’t think of the name of that target.
GT: It was at least three days that 75 dropped food and I’m assuming there was other, other squadrons doing the same and as the Americans did as the Chowhound side. And I’ve seen movies of the American side and they were the only ones dropping food. There was no mention of the British doing it so, but nonetheless there was many other RAF squadrons that —
RW: Oh yes.
GT: Participated on Manna too.
RW: Oh yes. There were other squadrons that participated to other areas. Yes. Well, it had to be a full op because I think at the time we had thirty three planes in the squadron. On my reckoning we put up thirty two. And on a report that I saw there was six planes went to the Hague and there were sixteen went to this other target. So that was thirty two. So it would have been an all out effort.
GT: The Dutch have built a Memorial to Operation Manna in Rotterdam. Have you seen that?
RW: No.
GT: I’ve been several times to it and to civil services. It’s fabulous and it’s built there specific. Especially to thank you guys for. The Dutch are forever thankful for your doing something.
RW: Yeah.
GT: To give them food and life.
RW: Oh well, it’s it had to be done somehow.
GT: Yeah.
RW: And had the Germans not been in such dire straits because they were starving too. They were not the only ones. The bombing had taken toll and also the sinking of the submarine fleet had taken its toll. They were not getting supplies through so they were in trouble. So anything they could get, lay their hands on that went back to Germany smartly. Yeah. And I can’t blame them for that.
GT: No. So, there was several other flights. I’m looking at your logbook again and the next one through to Europe was 25th of May, was a Baedeker. And the particular cities you mention here Frankfurt, Hanover, Düren, Aachen, Cologne, Koblenz, Hamburg, Bremen, Munster, Brussels etcetera. Seven hour flight. So, so tell me about the Baedekers and what they were about, please.
RW: That was [pause] the name came from a German who had had a tourist agency and a Baedeker was one of his tourist trips. We went from place to place to place looking at the war and so, ‘we did a Baedeker,’ was going over places that had been bombed to get an idea of the damage and assess the damage in those towns. Now, a place like Aachen which was on a bend in the Rhine river which was a perfect spot for a take-off for almost any target around there was absolutely flattened. You looked down on Aachen there wasn’t a roof left. If there was a wall standing you just looked in to the space where the roof had been covering. That’s all. Cologne. Wrecked all around the cathedral. Cathedral not touched. There you are. Good luck again. Absolutely.
GT: Was the Baedekers done by other squadrons? Was that a name given it from up high? Command?
RW: Yes. It was listed on the ops board as a Baedeker. I suppose other squadrons would have done it too. They’d want an assessment of the damage.
GT: Who did you take with you on those flights?
RW: Just us. Just the crew.
GT: And you photographed or filmed anything?
RW: Not officially. The, no [pause] that was the silly part about it. Had it been worked officially they could have got some marvellous shots there and been able to assess the damage really well from the photographs because they’d had so much practice assessing bomb damage. Even in London. But unofficially I had a little 620 Kodak in my pocket. I got some shots out of that. When I came home my father never once asked me what I’d done. But when he saw the photographs they got spirited away and I’ve only seen half of them since. He died in ’72 so I don’t know where they are.
GT: So, from, from your experience and it being right near the end of the war which obviously raged for some time then did, did Bomber Harris have a choice? Or did he do it right do you think? Was there anything talked about on the squadrons as to —
RW: No.
GT: No.
RW: You had a job to do. The hierarchy said that’s how you did it. You did it. Of course, he was right. Yes. All over one town. All the controversy. Absolutely. Like these woman getting raped in the film studios now.
GT: So, for Dresden was it something that was talked about?
RW: No. No. I wasn’t on Dresden. Had I have been on Dresden that was just another target. All the stuff going to Russia was going through Dresden by rail there. It was a railhead.
GT: A legitimate target. Yeah.
RW: Legitimate. Yeah. But also they were producing war material. No.
GT: Still doing it. So, did you see any fighters? Any aircraft come up to, to get you or escorts get them or —
RW: No. I never. That way we had a pretty charmed life. But afterwards I met a German at the aircraft museum where I was guiding and he was a radio operator gunner on an ME 110 which was firing vertically.
GT: Schrage music.
RW: Eh?
GT: Schrage music.
RW: Yeah. Schrage musik. And he was fighting for the ace. Flying with the ace. Prince someone who had been shot down during April and the German boy had parachuted out. And he gave me a booklet about the prince. Prince [Englestein] or something like that. He was a genuine Prussian prince and he had terrific career. There’s no doubt about that. He accounted for lots of planes. I think he, off hand he had about thirty odd he’d shot down. And I think we lost eight Mosquitoes in one night over Berlin with night music there. No one knew they were there. They came in on radar. We never picked them up. They just flew underneath ‘til they were slightly ahead of us, fired backwards. Curtains. Yeah. it was a wee while before they learned that they had to get ahead of the plane and fire backwards. Initially the flew underneath and let it go and of course they flew in to all the debris. Yeah.
GT: Now there was, what was mentioned of a ventral gun position in Lancasters?
RW: Yeah.
GT: Do you know of any ventral gun users at 75 Squadron etcetera that used ventral guns.
RW: We carried one on one trip. He was an Englishman that had done quite a lot of flights and I think he had been in hospital. And they must have taken out a panel in the fuselage towards the rear of the aircraft and they put a gun position in there. Now it must have been on a swivel mounting. I didn’t take any notice of it because to get in to the rear turret I climbed over the tail beam which was ahead of what his mounting would have been. So I didn’t know anything about it and when we got over the target I could hear this gun rattling. What the hell’s he firing at? And he went absolutely berserk over the target. We got back. We reported in. And we never saw him again. I think he just broke down over the target.
GT: During my trip to England last year I met with a 75 Squadron under, under- gunner and he said that he was going to arrive on squadron and then he and two others were picked and they disappeared for training for a week or two and then were just dropped off outside dispersal. And there was one aircraft each flight on 75 Squadron with an under-gun that flew for the last few months of the war. So as a gunner I’m interested to hear from your point that you managed to fly on one of those aircraft and he and his gun was assigned to that one aircraft as opposed to crews going over in anything so —
RW: Yeah. We were —
GT: Very intriguing.
RW: You see that was the only time I ever heard of it. An underbelly gun. Nor did we see him again so he must have been hospitalised surely. He just broke down completely. Yeah. At, I think by that time too they had got to a stage where they thought they could cope with night music in as much as their radar was better than us. We have to admit it. They could come in on radar. We didn’t even pick them up. We had nothing to pick them up with. I went on a course on — in Yorkshire of the radar gunsight. Fishpond it was called. Where the rear gunner had a oscilloscope in the turret and all he did was look into the oscilloscope and when the German plane came into view monitor its course in. Gauge its distance away. Once it got into the centre there all he had to do was press the tit and wait for the result. It never happened. Not only could they pick our radar up they also had better radar than us to pick it up with. And so fishpond was a disaster.
GT: What was the turret that you flew with in flight every time?
RW: FN.
GT: Yeah. Mark 8?
RW: I wouldn’t —
GT: Yeah. It was just four three. Not three guns.
RW: Four 303s, yeah.
GT: And how many rounds of ammunition did you normally carry for each gun?
RW: Two thousand two hundred.
GT: And did you get any shots on anything coming in to you? Or targets.
RW: I was a miser. I never fired the gun unless I had to. And if I did have to I might have a quick burst. It was no [laughs] no good exposing yourself if you didn’t have to. If he was going to press on the attack all well and good. That’s up to him. But don’t look for trouble. No.
GT: There’s many movies that show, ‘Rear gunner, test your guns.’
RW: No.
GT: You were never told to do that.
RW: No.
GT: Didn’t need to.
RW: Didn’t need to. No. The armourer had them all loaded for me and everything. All set to go. Yeah.
GT: So, as a tail end Charlie did you choose that position?
RW: Yes.
GT: And you’d know that tail end Charlies had a very low percent rate of survival? Didn’t matter?
RW: I don’t know whether I ever knew or not. I didn’t care.
GT: But you liked it.
RW: That’s the point I wanted was there. Yeah. When you come to think of it, it was a much better position than the upper turret where you were sitting in a sling all the time. God, no. I wanted to see where I’d been.
GT: Did you have to use the can at all?
RW: I should have but I didn’t. We had a rule. You didn’t use the can unless it was absolutely necessary. I think there must have been the odd time when the can was used. I never used it. But there was one time when I was puffing at the cheeks. I was bursting. And we got back on to the ground on the station and we taxied to a halt and I was sitting on the step with the pilot type ‘chute there. And I grabbed hold of the sides of the doorway and I heaved myself out. But unfortunately, my ‘chute caught on the lip of the step and tossed me face forward. Down I went. When I came to the ground staff were standing over me and there was blood everywhere and the bloody rigger says to me, ‘Wouldn’t your bloody ‘chute open mate?’ [laughs] Out again. I’ve never had that pee because I forgot all about that pee [laughs] I think in my time I had more humorous bloody episodes than I had dangerous ones.
GT: Did you have a good crew?
RW: Yeah. A bang on crew. Bang on crew. Nev, our navigator, spot on. We never missed a target. We were always within QE of time with that one exception. Bill never failed us. Radio operator was bang on. The bomb aimer and the engineer for Lancs, Herbert Morgan. A good Welshman. He was an engineer in normal life and he was a good engineer. We were a good workable crew. I don’t say we were top class or anything like that. If anything went wrong we overcame it. We always got to the target and we always got home. What more do you want?
GT: And what flight were you in, Roly of 75 Squadron.
RW: B Flight.
GT: B Flight.
RW: Yeah.
GT: It states on your logbook here your summaries. Operational sorties forty four hours fifty five. Baedekers seventeen hours. Post mortems seventeen hours. Food dropping two hours twenty. Army co-op four hours. Training thirty hours.
RW: Oh yes. We did a bit of army co-op work.
GT: Yeah.
RW: Co-operating with the army as they moved up through Holland and that.
GT: And summary. Aircraft was Lancaster Marks one or three. Operational. Seventy four hours by day, eleven hours by night. Training twenty eight hours by day. One hour by night. So you have a grand total of day hours one hundred and three and night twelve hours twenty five in the end. Total a hundred and fifteen hours. That’s still a huge amount of of time served. And so therefore your last flight on 75 New Zealand Squadron was the army co-op.
RW: Oh yeah.
GT: On the 13th of July 1945.
RW: ’45.
GT: And so the end for your crew you must have had many other crew members standing there wanting to get flights I suppose. Were there?
RW: At dispersal was again was another humorous situation. We were told that we were going to Lincolnshire. And amongst us was a [pause] Oh God, I’ve got his name too. A, what this for a wing commander.
GT: Squadron leader.
RW: Squadron leader. Squadron leader. Well, when we were leaving of course we all had bikes and that. We couldn’t take our bikes and we left them all against the side the toilet. And we weren’t the only crew in the truck either. There was a whole swathe of bikes there. And I looked out and I saw the toilet man coming up and I knew he sort of collected bikes. So out of that truck. And I said, ‘How much for that lot?’ and I’ve forgotten what he said now but it was a few pound there. And I said, ‘Right, they’re yours,’ and I climbed back in the truck and of course they all wanted the money for their bike. I said, ‘You tell me how much I got for your bike.’ So I was the one holding the cash. [laughs]
GT: Entrepreneur Roly.
RW: Oh, you’ve got to be quick.
GT: Yeah.
RW: The, the place we went to, the CO there was a squaddie too but he didn’t have the experience of the one that was with us. So he came to us and he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘They haven’t got rations for you. What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Look, draw ration cards and put us on leave with a leaving address.’ ‘Good thinking.’ So that’s what we did. So we drew ration cards and Pete Dixon the mid-upper gunner and I high tailed it to London and I never saw any of the crew after that. They just dispersed. I didn’t see Pete again after I left him in London. [pause] He would have come home on the Andes as I did. But when we got aboard ship I went down to our quarters and, oh boy. They were a long way down. And they weren’t very good. So Blue says, ‘Now, look here Blue. You’ve got to do something about this.’ So I went up on deck again and I saw a staff sergeant there. I said, ‘G’day. What are your quarters like?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘They’re not too bad.’ I said, ‘Have you got room for another one?’ He said ‘Yeah. I think so. We’ll go along and have a look.’ So I went, we went along and sure they were miles better than we had. I said ‘Right. You’ve got another staff sergeant on your list.’ So I came home in their quarters.
GT: So you finished as a flight sergeant by rank.
RW: Yeah.
GT: And you came back on the Andes.
RW: Yeah.
GT: You were saying. So what port was that leaving from?
RW: Southampton.
GT: And did you have white Lincolns fly over with Baigent at the control. That would —
RW: I doubt whether I could see them.
GT: Oh, you were down.
RW: Because the air was white as it was.
GT: So, that was your tripping back to New Zealand so how long did that take? That sailing. A couple of weeks.
RW: Twenty one days. Record trip.
GT: And what, did you come through the Suez or the Panama?
RW: Suez. Yes. Suez. Now, there’s something else on that bloody trip.
GT: Because the Japanese war was still going, wasn’t it?
RW: The Japanese war was still going then. Yes. Yes.
GT: So you had to be careful for Japanese submarines, I guess.
RW: Well, I think the Yanks had them reasonably well bottled up by then. The drive down south would be well and truly held up. But there was, there was something else.
GT: So, when you arrived how long did you stay in RNZAF? Did you stay around as a territorial or —
RW: No.
GT: Demobbed straight away.
RW: There was no future in that for a gunner. I demobbed straight away and went back to work after. I had a month off. My mother and I went around the North Island visiting some of her relations, and mine I suppose. And I came back home and I couldn’t stick it. Life was too slow. I had to get back to work. So I went back and where I was working the boss there had a son the same age as me. An only son. An only child. And Ray had everything he wanted in life. Unbeknown to me he had joined the army and been transferred into the ack ack squadron which I was in before I went into the Air Force. I was in the Bofors. He would have been in the 3.7s I would have imagined because the 3.7s had taken over in the port. But ack ack base by this time.
GT: That’s here in Christchurch.
RW: In Christchurch. Around Lytteleton Harbour. Yeah. And all those crews were mustered together and taken up to the islands. And unbeknown to me the crew Ray was in was dive bombed by a Jap dive bomber and cleaned out completely. And so there was quite a few that I knew that had been on the Bofors with me cleaned up on that too. And so had I known that I wouldn’t have gone back. But I didn’t and so I went back so it must have been a pretty hard pill to swallow that I came back and Ray didn’t. And he called me in the office and said, you know I’d been off the tools, I was a joiner, for five err for three and a half years. I’d take a bit of catching up again and I said, ‘Well, look. How about we call it quits and I’ll move out,’ and that suited him. And I got on the tram and went home. I got off the tram at the street where I lived and a local builder lived first house on the street and he was there unloading an old Model A car. ‘Any chance of a job, Mr Allen?’ He said ‘When can you start?’ I said, ‘Now.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Make it Monday morning.’ So Monday I went along there, we loaded up the Model A and off we went to the first job. And I worked with him from ‘46 through to ’53. And in ’53 he came to me and he said, ‘Can you raise five hundred pound?’ ‘Oh, a tall order.’ He said, ‘Well, do you think you can do it?’ I said, ‘I’ll give it a go.’ So I managed to raise five hundred pound and I went into partnership with him for twelve months. He put in five hundred. I put in five hundred. We came out, split the difference and went on our ways. But of course in the meantime I had to do the plans, do the pricing, keep the books. He provided all the work, and we had plenty of work on hand and utilised his good name on all the business accounts and he, and in ’53 I went into the bank and changed over the bank account from the dual names to my name and took over. And then the hard work set in. Boy, if I was ever in bed before 11 o’clock and up again at six it was a great night. Drawing plans and that. I heard a knock on the door one night and a joker standing there with a plan under his arm. It was that door and he said, ‘Could he get a price on this plan?’ ‘Bring it in.’ So we went to the table there laid it out on the table and I took a look at it and there were pencil marks all over it. It was filthy. I said, ‘How many prices have you had?’ He said, ‘You’re the fourteenth.’ I just rolled it up, handed it back to him and said, ‘If there are thirteen other chaps can’t satisfy you I can’t.’ That was the end of that one. It was from then on I learned that that’s what you strike in business. Boy, I struck some hard ones here.
GT: So as a joiner this was all internal fitting.
RW: Well, I’d, as a joiner I’d done building construction and that you see. And then what I learned in ’46 through to, oh Charlie Wood had his eye on me. I suppose about ’49 he had been wanting to ease up. Yeah. What I’d learned from him then it was like learning another trade with him then, you see.
GT: Do you have a family here?
RW: No family. No. My wife and I. My wife died in ’72, I think. Yeah. But she was incapacitated too. And there was no family unfortunately.
GT: And you’re in the Brevet Club here in Christchurch.
RW: Yeah. I joined the Brevet in 1953. It started in ’52 and I joined early in the ’53. At that stage we had a membership of five hundred and fifty. She was a go ahead club but it was a boy’s club. They were still boys and they played as boys. We played it hard. And we got a name for it too where lots of places would not allow us in their premises. We got thrown out of one or two. But all in all we boxed on and gradually as age took over we settled down. We had presidents that went horse riding on the west coast and fell off and broke their arms. I don’t know. Some of the things that went on. We used to go on a picnic outing. And we had a big chilli bin and that was a big one. That was filled up with the grog. We had another chilli bin that had a little bit of food because you took mostly your own food. Also in the food chilli bin was a bottle of rum and a bottle of milk. And on the bus out to the venue we’d have a stop and there would be rum and milk. Now, I wasn’t very partial to rum and I was only a lone voice but I reckoned we should have whisky. So I persisted with this whisky and in the way, in the end I got my own way. And [unclear] down they got to whisky and milk. But then, you see a lot of the football clubs, these trips were spot on. They were never anyone obstructious or anything like that. We all knew our place and we stayed in it. We enjoyed our drink. We enjoyed our day out. We came back a little the worse for wear I admit that. But there was no trouble on the bus or anything like that until the football clubs got in to it. And then they lost control of it.
GT: Yes. It’s rugby football or football football.
RW: Rugby football.
GT: Yeah. Not football football for our English listeners now. Yeah. Some people have got sight that it’s football.
RW: Rugby football.
GT: Rugby football is big here in New Zealand.
RW: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
RW: And that’s when it fell by the wayside. We were not allowed to carry on carrying liquor.
GT: Yeah.
RW: On the bus. They stopped that. Which of course put a dead halt on it. So then we started going to venues. But it wasn’t the same. You go to a venue and have your lunch. They put on a lunch and they provided the liquor but it wasn’t the same. There was not the camaraderie there and so that’s fallen by the wayside. And so, now bus trips are out but we have dinners once a month at a venue. The Chateau in the Park usually where they supply the meal and they put on the liquor and you drink as much as you like but it’s pretty quiet now. We’re also, all of us are now dragging a leg anyway [laughs] But that’s what happened to the picnic trips and had the Rugby Clubs not got into it because they lacked control of the younger players. That was the trouble. Ours were wild enough in certain venues when you got, got over the west coast boy there was nothing wilder than the Brevet Club. But then that’s what the west coasters expected. They, usually they led it. You know [dear] Scott and Co would be right in there, boots and all.
GT: When you came back from Europe, from the war in particular in the years that rolled through did you find that New Zealanders didn’t want to know what you guys went through? What happened over there. Was that a feeling you felt? Because many I’ve talked with said they just got on with life and many didn’t want to know and as a subsequence they suffered for it later on.
RW: I don’t know that they didn’t want to know. They didn’t even know what had gone on. Our papers never carried a great deal because it was all hush hush there. And so there are only illustrated magazines that came out that showed bomb damage or something like that. But then how could anyone sitting on a settee here relate to bomb damage in the East End of London? There’s not a hope in hell. And so they didn’t know. And when they talked here about rationing, yes we had rationing here. They had so much sugar and soap. So much of sweets and all the rest of it. It was only a fraction of what they had over there of the rationing. Jeez, I first saw a banana in London the kids stood with it in their hands. They didn’t know what it was. Hell. They had no conception of what people had to go through in wartime in war areas. We were alright here. Well, mum could still send me over a cake every now and again. Admittedly it had to come off her ration cards some. She most likely had to save up a bit for it. But at least she could still save up and still manage in the household. Over there you couldn’t have saved up if you lived to be as old as Methuselah. No.
GT: And you enjoyed your time in the RAF. RNZAF. I know it was wartime but some people —
RW: Yeah.
GT: Made good of it. Others —
RW: Yeah. Best time of my life. I learned more, I did more, I grew up more. But I must say that I didn’t grow up until I got back in to civilian life here because those years, my late teenage years I should have been learning. I wasn’t. I was learning something. That was how to keep alive. And it wasn’t until I got back here into civilian life and saw how people acted and reacted and that that I realised what I had missed in my growing up years. I had women on a pedestal. Absolutely on a pedestal. And it wasn’t until I got back here and when I was nearly thirty and I found out what they were like. They can be on a pedestal when they want to be.
GT: Did you have any affiliation with the Wigram Museum at all?
RW: Yeah.
GT: You did a whole lot of work with them, did you?
RW: Eighteen years as a guide there.
GT: Yeah.
RW: Yeah. Now, a great museum. A great museum. Did great jobs there. Some of those reconstructions were great when you worked out what they had to work with there. Planes like the old Hudson and that was a complete and utter wreck. They got it back into a viewable shape and that. The Oxfords. The Ansons. The working on the Wildebeest. Well, they were the first planes I saw when I was stationed at Gisborne was a Wildebeest. We had to go out and protect them at night with our Canadian long branch rifles. All we did was try to shoot pukeko at night with, with a 303.
GT: A moorhen. Yeah.
RW: Yeah.
GT: So, as a guide at the museum there were obviously children and others came through the museum. Were they interested in World War Two and Bomber Command and things? Could you, could you share your experiences?
RW: Not greatly. Not greatly.
GT: They weren’t interested.
RW: Today, I was with, there was only, I suppose two or three World War Two jokers there. The rest were all post-war.
GT: Today, this morning, you were at a funeral.
RW: Funeral. Yeah.
GT: For another World War Two veteran that’s just died.
RW: And even those post-war chaps have got no conception of what it was like. The post-war boys played at playing Air Force. They did a good job in Vietnam and that. I’m not saying that. There must have been times that were a bit sticky there but in comparison they were playing. Yeah. God, stuff the lizards you know, if there was a plane surplus to requirements on the station — take it away for a weekend. Didn’t happen in my time. No. The one time I do know where a crew took a plane away and it must have been in ’43, a joker named Ewan Knox, he would have been a flight lieutenant I would imagine took a Heinkel 111 out with a load of boys on leave and they crashed into the hillside somewhere. They were all killed. Now, you can look up Ewan Knox’s name and all about him in that booklet that’s in the museum. There’s a, there’s a master booklet there of all their names. His name is also on the Memorial plaque in the museum there. And no doubt you can google that name up. New Zealander Ewan Knox.
GT: So did, you got to meet and got to be very good friends with some very famous World War Two flyers.
RW: Oh.
GT: Johnny Checketts, and you mentioned Chuck Yeager to me earlier.
RW: Yeah. In as much as I spent quite a bit of time with Johnny at the museum and it was a common thing between us to talk about events that had happened. And then I went down to Wanaka, to the War Birds with Johnny and met obviously [pause]
GT: Chuck Yeager.
RW: Chuck Yeager, down there and had a great yarn with him. We had entire an entire dinner hour with him yarning and they both said the same thing there. That on these daylights they used to sit up there and watch the bomber stream going into the target there through this cloud of anti-aircraft fire. And it was so black I could smell the cordite through my oxygen mask. I I breathed pure oxygen from ground up. I switched on immediately we were taking off. I switched my oxygen on because I believe the more I could get in my blood the more I could stay awake. And you could smell the cordite. The fumes leaking through it. You could hear the shrapnel rattling down the sides of the fuselage there. Thrown off by the props. God only knows what condition some of the props were in. But it would all be light stuff I admit. The stuff that was thrown off there. But that’s how black the cloud was. And as Chuck said, they used to sit up there and watch them going and hope that they’d come out again. I suppose when one came out, right. Thumbs up.
GT: Fascinating. Fascinating indeed. Well, Roly. Blue. It’s, it’s time perhaps we wrap up our interview. But —
RW: Yeah.
GT: You’ve, you’ve said plenty for me.
RW: Good [laughs]
GT: Anything else you’d like to add before we, we finish?
RW: Well, I enjoyed my time in the army.
GT: The Air Force.
RW: And I had a chance of staying in the army. Captain Chapman asked me if I wanted to stay and I said to him well, we were very happy. I was doing well there. I could see myself doing quite well there. And he rang in and said, ‘’I’ve been in touch with the Air Force and they say you’ve got to go.’ So, that was the end of it. I thought, well now I’ve got to go I’d better make the most of it. Make the best of it. But to me brought up in a Victorian family it was such a different life. Also, I was brought up in a country life. We lived out here with the hills all around us. I went to town twice in the school holidays. Once to buy Christmas presents if I had any money and second to get my school uniform. Other than that I was running in the hills and that was all I knew. And when I was eighty I could scamper through the hills better than my grandson who was eighteen [laughs] Yeah. So that was my upbringing. I knew where every rabbit lived, where every morepork lived. I knew where all the wild pigeons were roosting and where they were feeding and what time they’d come home to roost. Yeah. There wasn’t a thing I didn’t know that went on in that, up that valley there. Yes. And when the ducks, when the south westerly weather came in and the pond came at the bottom of the rifle range there amongst the rushes I knew exactly when the ducks would come in. We had duck for dinner then. You didn’t need a licence when you were close to home [laughs] I know. That was my early days. And so I never had a great deal to do with people. I didn’t know how to talk to people that were older than me. I knew how to talk to my age group because I knew what they would be interested in but I didn’t know people who are older than me. And I sometimes feel I still don’t because lots of times I want to bring up the ante sometimes. And sometimes it doesn’t go down [laughs] I can see now many many things that take place that I’m highly critical of. And if I get too critical it meets with a very sad reception. But believe me it’s my belief and I think I’m right [laughs] And if I don’t think I’m right who else is going to? No.
GT: Fabulous. Thanks, Roly.
RW: It’s been an uneventful life in some ways. And events all came up all of a sudden. The years I was building was damned hard slog. All, nearly all hill work. One foot below the other all the time and that. Lifting everything up. Very seldom did you strike a job where you could slide it down. And I met some hard people. Especially the women folk. God. I struck one woman, one woman that I had a scaffolding up to do the barge boards and that on the roof. And she said to me could I leave the scaffolding there for her painter so he could paint that part of the house? I said, ‘Yes. I’ll leave it there for a week.’ God. I got lumbered with a two month bill for the scaffolding. Ran into bloody hundreds of dollars then. I went to her. She just laughed. So eventually I got around to taking her to court. I couldn’t get the, get the summons on to her. She was never at home. So I noted too that she went shopping on Fridays. Excuse me I’ll have to —
GT: Right [laughs] I’ll tell you what, Roly. Roly, it’s been lovely. Thank you very much for your interview.
RW: Ok.
GT: And I’m sure the international Bomber Command is going to welcome it.
RW: My pleasure.
GT: Thanks very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Roland Spencer Williams
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
2018-01-15
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWilliamsRS180115
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:50:33 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
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Roland Spencer Williams was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. Wanting to get involved in the war he joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1942. After initial training in New Zealand, as an air gunner, he sailed on the SS Nieuw Amsterdam to San Francisco in 1944 and then by train to Winnipeg, Canada to MacDonald Gunnery School. September 1944 saw his arrival in England as a flight sergeant. Training and crewing up in Wellingtons with 11 Operational Training Unit (OTU) was followed, in January 1945, by Lancasters in 1655 Heavy Conversion Unit. In March 1945 he was posted to 75 Squadron based at RAF Mepal as a rear gunner. He describes operations to Keil harbour (where the cruiser Admiral Scheer was sunk), Keil shipyard, and Heligoland. On one operation he saw three planes all shot down, and on another he was injured when the aircraft’s undercarriage collapsed on landing. He was also involved in Operation Manna. After the war in Europe finished, he sailed back to New Zealand and was demobilised immediately on arrival. He then describes how he became a builder and ended up managing the business. He also became a guide at the Air Force Museum of New Zealand. Roland states that his service in the Royal New Zealand Air Force was “the best time of his life!”
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Germany
Canada
New Zealand
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Rutland
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Kiel
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-04
1945-05
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
11 OTU
1653 HCU
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
Bolingbroke
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
crash
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Mepal
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Oakley
RAF Padgate
RAF Westcott
shot down
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1217/15049/LStoreyDP1334123v1.2.pdf
9575e8b05a67237abd33f0bdb44eaf50
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
Storey, David Philip
D P Storey
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns David Philip Storey DFC (1919 - 2018, 1334123, Royal Air Force) and consists of his log book, a photograph and a memoir. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith and then became an instructor at RAF Kinloss. He was promoted to flight lieutenant in September 1945.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Storey 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
2019-01-30
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Storey, DP
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 Storey's observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LStoreyDP1334123v1
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for David Storey, navigator, covering the period from 3 October 1942 to 6 June 1946, and from 25 June 1949 to 29 November 1952. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, instructor duties and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Wigtown, RAF Abingdon, RAF Rufforth, RAF Snaith, RAF Kinloss, RAF Westcott and RAF Panshanger. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Whitley, Halifax and Wellington. He flew a total of 30 Night operations with 51 squadron. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Morris, Sergeant Jackson and Flying Officer Love. Targets were, Krefeld, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne, Hamburg, Remscheid, Mannheim, Nuremburg, Milan, Peenemunde, Leverkusen, Berlin, Monchen Gladbach, Montlucon, Modane, Hannover, Kassel, Dusseldorf, Ludwigshaven, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Stuttgart and Lille.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Cara Walmsley
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Hertfordshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Lille
France--Modane
France--Montluçon
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Remscheid
Germany--Stuttgart
Italy--Milan
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Scotland--Kinloss
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1943-06-22
1943-06-25
1943-06-26
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-03
1943-07-04
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-22
1943-08-23
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-15
1943-09-16
1943-09-17
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-11-03
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-22
1943-11-23
1943-11-25
1943-11-26
1944-01-29
1944-02-15
1944-02-20
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-04-29
1944-04-30
10 OTU
11 OTU
1663 HCU
19 OTU
26 OTU
51 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Me 109
navigator
Operational Training Unit
promotion
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Rufforth
RAF Snaith
RAF Westcott
RAF Wigtown
RAF Wing
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1224/16230/LBrownJ2205595v1.1.pdf
68f04a9ac0e97a321619e6e864c46ad3
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
Brown, Jeff
Jeffrey Brown
J Brown
Description
An account of the resource
35 items. One oral history interview with Flying Officer Jeff Brown (b. 1925, 2205595, Royal Air Force), his log book, service material and photographs including 16 pictures of B-29s. He flew operations as a Flight Sergeant air gunner with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton towards the end of the war and took part in Operation Manna.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jeff Brown and catalogued by Peter Adams.
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
2017-01-18
2017-01-31
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
Brown, J-3
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jeff Brown's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers for Jeff Brown, air gunner, covering the period from 18 August 1944 to 31 December 1951. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Dalcross, RAF Oakley, RAF Westcott, RAF Bottesford, RAF Fiskerton, RAF Wellesbourne Mountford, RAF Marham and RAF Coningsby. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Martinet, Wellington, Lancaster, B-29, Oxford and Tiger Moth. He flew 5 Operation Manna sorties to Rotterdam and Hague, and one Operation Exodus to Brussels with 576 Squadron. His pilot on operations was Flight Sergeant Fleming. Post war flying was with 149 Squadron.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBrownJ2205595v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Great Britain
Netherlands
Belgium--Brussels
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Warwickshire
Netherlands--Hague
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Scotland--Inverness
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1945-05-01
1945-05-02
1945-05-03
1945-05-05
1945-05-08
1945-05-26
1945-06-19
11 OTU
149 Squadron
1668 HCU
576 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
B-29
Cook’s tour
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Martinet
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Bottesford
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Burn
RAF Coningsby
RAF Dalcross
RAF Driffield
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Hartford Bridge
RAF Marham
RAF Oakley
RAF Sturgate
RAF Wellesbourne Mountford
RAF Westcott
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17046/MHollisAN124522-171107-010001.2.jpg
a447aca358153796cd71fb48ab358939
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17046/MHollisAN124522-171107-010002.2.jpg
ae44d4792840dd645a7ce384069cd12d
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
Hollis, Arthur
Arthur Norman Hollis
A N Hollis
Description
An account of the resource
56 items. The collection concerns Arthur Hollis (b. 1922) who joined the RAF in 1940 and after training completed a tour on 50 Squadron before becoming an instructor. At the end of the war he was deployed as part of Tiger Force. Collection contains a biography and memoir, his logbook, correspondence, training records, photographs of people, aircraft and places, his medals and flying jacket. It includes an oral history interview with his son, Richard Hollis.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Hollis 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
2017-11-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Hollis, AN
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[symbol]
[underlined] 92 GROUP INSTRUCTORS FLIGHT [/underlined]
[underlined] R.A.F. STATION, [/underlined]
[underlined] PUPIL INSTRUCTOR'S FINAL TRAINING REPORT [/underlined]
To: Officer Commanding, No. 11. O.T.U.
R.A.F. Station, WESTCOTT.
(Copy to H.Q. No. 92 Group)
Date: 12.1.44.
The undermentioned pilot was attached to this Flight for No. 30 Course, from 2.1.44 to 12.1.44 and the following is a report on his ability as an O.T.U. Instructor:-
No. 124522 Rank F/LT. Name HOLLIS.
Flying Times
Day Dual 2.20 Solo – Passenger 1.20
Night Dual 1.25 Solo – Passenger 1.25
Total Dual 3.45 Solo – Passenger [deleted number] 2.45
Examination result [missing number] %. Position [missing number] out of 10.
A very capable officer and pilot Instructor. He should be employed on Basic instruction if circumstances permit.
He is/ [deleted] is not [/deleted] considered fit for BASIC instruction.
He is/ [deleted] is not [/deleted] considered fit for APPLIED instruction.
[signature] F/LT.
for. Squadron Leader,
[underlined] Officer Commanding. [/underlined]
[page break]
[underlined] PRO FORMA. [/underlined]
From: Officer Commanding,
No. 92 Group Instructors' School.
To: Officer Commanding, No. 16 O.T.U.
(Copy to Headquarters No. 92 Group).
Ref: TW/13/4/Air.
Date:
[underlined] INSTRUCTOR'S REPORT. [/underlined]
[underlined] Pilot. Flying Times. E.C.D.U. Result. [/underlined]
Day Dual
Night Dual
Total.
Squadron Leader,
Officer Commanding,
[underlined] No 92 Group Instructors' School. [/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
Arthur Hollis: pupil instructor's final training report
Description
An account of the resource
From 92 Group instructors flight to officer commanding 11 Operational Training Unit. Gives hours flown and assessment as an instructor. On the reverse a proforma not filled out.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Officer Commanding 92 Group Instructor Flight
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-01-12
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page typewritten form manually completed
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MHollisAN124522-171107-01
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roger Dunsford
aircrew
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Westcott
training