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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/239/3384/ACouperAJ151208.2.mp3
ac37331c622356f58e50bdab1d0f435e
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Title
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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.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:43:17 audio recording
Creator
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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
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
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
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
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
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/289/3444/PLarmerLO1507.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/289/3444/ALarmerLO151112.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Larmer, Lawrence
Lawrence Larmer
Laurie Larmer
L O Larmer
L Larmer
Description
An account of the resource
17 items concerning Flying Officer Laurence O'Hara Larmer (1920 - 2023, 430037 Royal Australian Air Force). Lawrence Larmer volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force and trained in Australia and Canada. He flew operations as a pilot flying Halifax with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith. The collection consists of one oral history interview with him, wartime photographs of aircraft, aircrews and targets, his logbook, route maps, and an official certificate.
The collection was donated by Laurence Larmer and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-12
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Larmer, LO
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AP: This interview is for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive is with Laurie Larmer 51 Squadron, Halifax bomber during World War II. Interview taking place at Laurie’s house in Strathmore in Melbourne. My name is Adam Purcell it is the 12th of November 2005, 2015 in fact. Laurie we might start with an easy one, can you tell us something about your story before the war growing up what you did, before you enlisted?
LL: I was born in Moody Ponds eh in 1920, September 1923 and eh in 1931 or ’32 an old uncle of my father’s, my father was a painter and paper hanger by trade, during the depression there was obviously not that much work about but eh he managed and in 1931 or ’32 an old uncle by marriage of his died and he owned a hotel in South Yarrow and he left in his will that dad was to be given the lease of this hotel at a certain rental for as long as he wanted. So eh dad without any experience in the hotel business eh we moved into South Yarrow on the corner of Tourag Road and Punt Road and eh he ran this hotel until the old aunty the widow eh realised that the rental had been set in her husband’s will and she couldn’t do anything about it. So she did the next best thing as far as she was concerned, she sold the hotel. My father then moved to another hotel in Prahran and eventually in 1935 he went to a hotel in Ballarat and I went to school, St Patrick’s College Ballarat and I stayed there until I finished my schooling in 1940 eh in 1940 eh I got a job in the Department of Aircraft Production at Fishermans Bend where they were building the Beaufort bomber. Not on technical side, eh in the pay office actually I saw a lot about aeroplanes and what have you and eh in September 1941 I got called up for, I turned eighteen and got called up for a medical examination and eh it was for the army but to avoid going into the army you could volunteer for the navy or the air force. I volunteered for aircrew in the air force and was accepted. Did another medical exam, much stricter medical exam for the air force, aircrew actually, naturally and eh I then went back to work at Fishermans Bend until I got my call up sometime in 1942 and I went into the air force. So that is my pre-service history.
AP: Actually I might close that door if we can ‘cause it is noisy outside [pause] still there but it is not as loud. Okay where were you and how old were you when you heard war was declared and what were your thoughts at the time?
LL: I was, we were at Ballarat on the 3rd of September 1939 I was not quite eh not quite sixteen. I turned sixteen I turned sixteen a couple of weeks after the war was declared like most people I thought or hoped that the war wouldn’t last long and that I wouldn’t be affected. We were so far away that eh it all seemed a bit remote as far as we were concerned. And I certainly didn’t anticipate at that stage. I knew the talk was that kids of eighteen would be called up and I knew then or I thought then, the war would be finished before eh I got eh called up, but it was not to be.
AP: I guess you covered why you joined the air force based on some sort of experience with aeroplanes em why did you move in that direction in some sort of with aircraft. Was there some sort of inspiration that this was going to happen ?
LL: No I think that, I didn’t want to go into the army, the army just seemed to walk everywhere eh the eh hand to hand fighting didn’t sort of attract me. The navy didn’t attract me, I think there is a sort of glamorous feeling about the air force at that time. The Battle of Britain had just been fought and won and the eh airmen were eh I don’t know just a little bit different, and they seemed to just attract me a bit more than the other services.
AP: Can you tell me something about the enlistment process, were there interviews or tests or how did that all happen?
LL: The tests for the army of course was fairly simple, as long as you could stand up and breathe they accepted you for the A
army and that was only for home service. The fellows who wanted to go overseas volunteered for the AIF the call-up was actually for the militia because we didn’t have compulsory service for overseas, eh compulsory callout for overseas service. Eh the air force medical was much stricter, I always remember it was done in eh a place in Russell Street on the corner of Little Column Street were where Preston Motors were for many years after the war [cough] and eh we had eye tests which were particularly hard, they tested your heart and your blood pressure and all that sort of business which seemed a bit unusual for young fellows of eighteen, sixteen, eighteen we were at the time. I passed that and there was a delay of course of some months till they caught up. We were then to be trained under the Empire Air Training Scheme. That was sometime before I was called up, and I actually didn’t go into the air force until December 1942 so it was about twelve months after I volunteered for the air force I got my call-up to report to the service.
AP: Was there anything the air force gave you to do to sort of maintain the interest.
LL: We had to do school, night school, I went to the Essenham High School for two nights a week for about eight or ten weeks eh and we did maths and a few things like that. I can’t recall all the subjects we did, it wasn’t a matter of doing exams or anything. It was just to refresh us from our school days. Did a bit of geometry and angles and things like that, probably preparing us for navigation.
AP: Did you find that sort of training useful, did it help you when you got to your initial training school?
LL: It must have helped at initial training school. I was pretty good at maths even although I say so myself. This always confused me, I was never able to explain it. Two months, after two months at Summers which was the initial training school eh they came out one day, we were all there, they said ‘The following will train as pilots’ and they read a list of names. ‘The following will train as navigators’ they read a list of names and eh ‘the following will train as wireless operators’. And the balance for gunners. How they picked us I don’t know. I can only assume I must have done very, excellently, excellent at maths and those sort of things. Those picked to train as pilots and navigators stayed at Summers for another month. We did a bit of navigation and meteorology and a few things like that. But I, so I think that going back to school, the night school probably helped to refresh an interest in these subjects and it obviously paid dividends as far as I was concerned.
LL: What memories do you have of Summers, of ITS what was a typical day, what things did you do?
AP: Eh a lot of it seemed a waste of time we both knew an aircraft, they didn’t talk about an aircraft, they talked about Morse code and that was terribly important, I couldn’t take a word of Morse code couldn’t take a letter, I couldn’t understand it. Then a couple of nights later, the Aldis lamp I couldn’t even see that, it didn’t register at all. There was no way I was ever going to be a wireless operator and it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying, I just could not, couldn’t get the dots from the dashes in the Morse code. We seemed to do a lot of marching and eh, it was probably very necessary teaching us air force rules and regulations and all that sort of business. After a while you would say, ‘when am I going to see some action, when am I going to do something, when am I going to learn something about flying?’ Particularly once you had been charged to be a pilot you wanted to get on with it. Instead of that we did an extra month eh and then after that extra month I was posted to Benellah.
AR: Benellah was the– ?
LL: Elementary Flying Training School.
AR: What happened there apart from elementary flying training?
LL: Elementary flying training field, the first month we were there. Obviously the weather or something had held up the courses before and we were dragging the chain a bit. For a month we were known as tarmac terriers. We used to hold the wing of the aircraft because of the strong winds and of course Benellah which was a very open aerodrome no runways or anything it was just big one big huge enormous paddock eh and we’d hold, one fellow on either wing, the wing of the aircraft and we’d hold it till it got round there cause the wind would get under it, the aircraft was such a light aircraft, the Tiger Moth and then we would wait till they took off. You turned your back and you would get splattered with little stones and pebbles and that eh. And there would be fellows waiting down the other end when they landed to wait and hold them there and take them round. It was quite an interesting process, we had for half a day and the other half day we did, school, eh lectures on gunnery and eh basic flying without getting in an aircraft eh and navigation and a few things like that, meteorology particularly which was good. That was interesting even although we weren’t flying we saw these aircraft and we knew only in another couple of weeks and we would be there, then we started. We were allotted to an instructor, Jim Pope was my instructor, he was a sergeant a lovely bloke eh we then continued our lectures for half a day and fly for the other half. The next day it would be alternative, you know, flying and then lectures. It was good, I suppose after about eh it’s still sharp in my log book there, must have been twelve or fourteen hours or something went over to Winton one day which was a satellite ‘drome a bit further up the highway with another instructor. After we did one or two circuits and landings he said, ‘take me over there, pull up over there.’ Pointed to a spot where he wanted to go, he said, ‘now’, he said, ‘you are on your own, do three circuits and bumps and then come and pick me up’. I thought ‘goodness gracious me, here I am on my own’, you know, I was ready to go solo. And eh I wasn’t nervous it was just the excitement of it and you know you were concentrating on remembering all the things he told you to do and all that sort of business. I did three circuits and landings and went and picked him up and he said ‘that was good, alright son.’ Then we did eh, I don’t know whether we went back to Benellah, we stayed there, that’s right and he put me out of the aircraft and took another student and eh that was, that was. Then I went back to the normal side of the pad. The next day we done a bit further advanced flying eh cross country, and a few things like that. We were there altogether three months. Normally it would just have been two months, two months flying, but we did three months actually.
AP: What did you think of the Tiger Moth?
LL: Lovely, they were a breeze now you look back on it, in those days it was a pretty big aircraft, here you were sitting in the back seat. There were two seats, one in front, the pilot sat in front there, two little cockpits. Very basic, they had a control column it was just a stick that stuck up, a throttle which you pushed here, it was very, very basic. But we were told nobody had ever been killed in a Tiger Moth, whether that was true or not I don’t know that was, that was and it was good. I remember one day we had to do a cross country, this was sort of a bit scary I thought anyway. A mate of mine we had to go from Benellah to Ochuga [?], Ochuga [?] to Aubrey then from Aubrey back to Benellah. A mate of mine came up to me Tommy Richards he used to live at Clairbourne [?] and he said, ‘you doing this cross country this afternoon?’ I said ‘yes’. He said ‘so am I’ he said, ‘stick with me I know the road.’ He knew the way and then we flew back along the river and then down the highway you weren’t supposed to do that, you were supposed to go that way and the river might have gone down here but we had no problem. Before we left we had the whole thing planned out, had a little map on our knee and had it all. We got full marks for our navigation but it was only that Tommy had lived at eh, where did he, Clairbourne.
AP: You were talking while they were about no one had crashed a Tiger Moth. Did you encounter any accidents or high jinks or near misses or things, did you know- ?
LL: No, not while I was there, no, no. The biggest problem I reckon and they warned us about it was low flying, we used to [unclear] go down low and then we will frighten this farmer down there. There might have been electric wires going across you know. And we had hanging down the wheels, they weren’t retractable wheels on a, on a eh Tiger Moth. We did a bit of low flying everybody did but eh no I didn’t go as low as some of the blokes did you know. They used to try and be real smart and fly at ground level almost but nobody while I was there.
AP: You go from FTS, next step is a service Flying Training School?
LL: Service Flying Training School we got some leave and got a telegram to report to the RTR expenses troop and eh the smarties knew where we were going. There is always a smarty in every crowd all lined up they call and he’s here and he’s there and we are going to Sydney that means we are going overseas. ‘How do you know we are going to Sydney? That’s where the bloody train’s going.’ ‘Oh right oh we are going to Sydney’, and we went to Sydney. We went to Barfield Park and eh there they kitted us out and eh ‘Don’t think because you are here that you are going overseas, you could be going to Queensland.’ Somebody said, ‘well that’s strange what did they give us Australia badges to put on there’ and then they said, ‘you have got these Australia badges but don’t put them on until you get overseas.’ That’s in case we are going overseas, I don’t know. Well we were there about three or four weeks I think eh and we did nothing and that was pretty awful. And what they do, they were waiting for a ship eh [cough] and eventually they got us all lined up one day with the kit bags we put on a train and we went to Brisbane and put on this ship there the Metsonia and eh [cough] we sailed out down the Brisbane River and out we just got outside the harbour and looking over the side we could see a submarine. ‘Goodness me I hope it is one of ours’ or was one of the Americans ‘cause we didn’t have any submarines at the time and eh we headed, they didn’t tell us where we were going. We had a fair idea it was Canada. We went to New Zealand first and picked up some New Zealanders and then went up the west coast of South America and eh North America and landed at San Francisco. At San Francisco they put us on a train, we went to Vancouver eh got off the train there and put us on one of the Canadian Pacific Railway trains. We went to a place called Edmonton in Alberta. Eh that was quite strange because we didn’t know exactly what was going to happen from there on in. There was a big heap of us there and after three or four or five days I suppose eh we got another posting. I was posted to a place called Dauphin which was in Manitoba which didn’t mean much to me at that stage. Manitoba is actually the central province of the whole of Canada. Dauphin was about ah, suppose it would be about a hundred and fifty mile north west of Winnipeg which was the capital. Then the train went through, there was nothing in Dauphin apart from the air force base and the little village really [cough]. And so when we got there eh we found that we were going to fly Cessna Cranes which was a twin-engine, little twin-engine aircraft, lovely aircraft to fly, lovely and eh that was where eh he made the point there before in crashes in Tiger Moths. I had an Australian instructor, there were a couple of Australian Instructors on the station the rest of them were Canadians. The Canadians were lovely people. The officers were friendly, they didn’t muck around with formalities and that, it was real good. Eh this Australian instructor I had was a Sergeant Lawley, Lawla, Lawley I have got it down, there we are. He didn’t want to be an instructor he wanted to get at the overseas and he was a most unfriendly fellow, but you know I was coping with him and eh one morning we got up and he and another trainee pilot had been killed night flying. It could have been me and eh and that was about the first experience I’d had with anybody sort of eh death, you know. I was nineteen years of age and you were not used to it. Anyway they gave them a full military funeral eh which was good. Then I got a Canadian instructor and then it was real great after that it was wonderful and eh I sailed through the rest of the course. And I graduated in September ’43 as a sergeant pilot, I reckon we were pretty good.
AP: So then comes a boat across to the UK presumably.
LL: Yeah, we got a bit of liberty and went down to New York and Washington which we could ill afford and eh we went to Halifax in Nova Scotia and caught a, and got a boat to, I can’t remember the name of the ship we got to England we went to England in [loud background noise].
AP: We might just wait for a moment I think [laughs].
AP: So we were talking about a boat across to UK, you were just about to embark at Halifax.
LL: The interesting part about that trip was the ship that we went on, I think it might have been the Aquitania. It was a big ship, a lot of Americans on board [doorbell interruption; laugh].
AP: Anyway let’s get back to the boat [laugh] the Aquitania.
LL: And eh there were a lot of Americans from the mid-west not only had they not been on a ship, they never even seen the ocean. A lot of those kids, they were sick all over, oh! it was awful and what we did because we were too fast for a convoy we went on our own. But they zig-zagged all day, that way and then that way all during the daylight hours eh because it takes a certain time for a submarine to line them up to fire a torpedo at them and that’s what. That didn’t worry us but it was most unusual and when it got dark we went whoosh straight ahead. And eh we lived in pretty awful conditions, it was wartime we had hammocks and had a long table that came out from the deck, from the side of the ship and if there were six blokes at the table, three either side you had to find your accommodation so one bloke would sleep on this bench there another back there. Two blokes one would sleep on the table and the other three would be in hammocks above. That’s how, and we couldn’t have showers, we couldn’t shave properly it was pretty awful. We landed at Liverpool and eh went eh got on a train, went to Brighton. We got off the train at Brighton and there was a fellow there, he was a Wing Commander Andy Swan, he was a Scotchman in the RAAF. He had apparently been in the Black Watch for many years before the war done his time, retired, came out to Australia to live and the war started. He applied for a commission and got a commission, they sent him back to England, he was ground staff what we call a shiny bummer ISD interested in special duties. He was a wing commander and he was a dreadful man, dreadful fellow. He saw us, we had been five days on the ship, unshaven, unwashed and feeling very, very lousy and he berated us on the Brighton railway station, platform. Eh he had us smartened up within no time at all, we were going to do this and what a disgrace we were. Anyway the following morning eh, no two mornings later we had a general parade in the hall and there was the padre there, the Church of England padre a fellow called Dave Bear, you might have heard the blokes talk about Dave Bear he was a marvellous fellow he put everybody at ease you know. He said ‘there are three religions in the services, RC’s odds and sods and the other buggers’, he says ‘I am one of the other buggers, if you want anything just come and see me.’ He had a sign above his shop, his store ‘abandon rank all ye who enter here’. And that is what he was like. He used to give advice on a charge or anything like that or help you to write letters home or whatever you wanted. He was a great bloke, didn’t make any difference what you were he was just a wonderful fellow. He virtually did sort of a lot, undid a lot of the evil things this Andy Swan had done. They tell a story of the fellow who finished his tour and is on his way back home and Brighton is what they called 11 PDRC, Personnel Dispatch and Reception Centre. So any Australian airmen who went into England went through Brighton and when they were going home they went through Brighton and they knew and this fellow had taken the stiffening out of his cap which we all used to do, made us look a bit racy. Swan pulled him up in the street one day and said, ‘where is the stiffening in your cap?’ ‘I lost it over fucking Berlin’ whoops and kept walking. And then after we had been there for a while I got posted. I think the first posting was to a place called Fairoaks which was just near Windsor Castle, pre-war it would have been the King’s private aerodrome. This was just a way of sort of getting us back into flying again and there we flew Tiger Moths for a while. Eh back to Brighton then went off and done a PT course and then we went off and did some more flying eventually I had been up to Scotland, I was flying up there at a place called Banff eh BANFF [spelt out] was out from Aberdeen, from Inverness, out from Inverness the Scotch people were lovely eh and eh got a posting then to eh Lichfield which was 27 Operational Training Unit. The OTU was where you formed a crew. Lichfield was an Australian OTU in that all the aircrew were Australian so we got I got an Australian crew. It was an interesting thing we had the pilots in the centre, the navigators in one corner and the wireless operators and the bomb aimers and the, and the gunners in another corner [cough]. They said, ‘alright, pilots you have got to go and pick a crew.’ It was as simple as that, I didn’t know anybody who was a navigator but a bloke came up to me, ‘you don’t look a bad sort of a bloke’, and he was a wireless op, he was a bomb aimer, a fellow named Bill Hudson and eh Bill had been a used car salesman in Sydney before the war. Eh he had all the fun in the world and he said ‘stay here’, he said, ‘I will get you a navigator, I know a bloke who is a good navigator.’ He didn’t of course, he went off and he brought back a bloke and he introduced him ‘This is Ron Harmes, so wait there,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you a couple of gunners’ so he went off and got a couple of gunners. I said to him, ‘I am supposed to be picking this crew.’ And he said ‘I got it for you skipper don’t worry about it’. Then he got a eh, he got a wireless operator so eh, here we were we had a crew and I had nothing to do with it, we turned out to be good mates, we all got on very well together. A couple of them were different they eh, but we all sort of mixed in and did our job and eh. And eh there we flew Wellingtons, they were a big, heavy lumbering aircraft they really were. They had been used as a bomber during the early stages of the war but they couldn’t carry enough bombs and eh they couldn’t carry great distances, like a lot of the British aircraft the Whitleys and those sort of aircraft, eh Hampdens, twin-engined aircraft and that eh, just hopeless and the Germans had stole the marks on them because the Germans before the war, once the Nazis got in control they said, ‘who cares about the Geneva Convention, we will build the type of aircraft we need to win a war.’ The British they didn’t, they kept, the wing span couldn’t be more than a hundred feet. That is why when they eventually got the Lancasters and the Halifaxes and wing spans more than a hundred feet they couldn’t fit in the hangers because they had built the hangers to take aircraft with wing span of less than a hundred feet. The Germans it didn’t worry them they had aircraft with wing spans greater than a hundred feet. It was a silly situation but that was the way they operated eh and eh we flew these Wellingtons for a while and we were lucky and Bill was a good bomb aimer and we got highly commended for our bombing activities at training. Then eh I don’t know how many hours we did there, it’s in the log book there, we were posted to a place called Riccall eh, which was a Heavy Conversion Unit. I had been flying Tiger Moths and Cessna Cranes, and Ansons and Oxfords and what have you, you know. Then on the Wellington then boom, four-engined aircraft, it was like eh, like riding a bike and then getting driving train or something it was just sort of an enormous thing really. There we picked up our flight engineer. There weren’t any Australian engineers so we got an Englishman he was the only Englishman in the crew, good bloke too. I don’t know how many hours we did there but that is all in the log book. Then one day they said ‘right Larmer, your crew is posted to a squadron.’ ‘Oops, yeah okay, when do we go?’ ‘This afternoon’ [laugh]. So there we were on a train and eh they met us with a truck. We thought, by this time I got commission and eh they picked us up in a truck. Another crew arrived at the same time as us, this was an English crew. It was an English squadron but this other crew was an English crew, I only had the one Englishman and I, we were the only Australian crew on 51 Squadron at the time. There had been some there before and eh, we went to the orderly room, they told us where we were billeted told me what time dinner was in the officers’ mess and all that sort of business and report to the, you are in B Flight report to B Flight Office at nine o’ clock tomorrow morning. That I did and eh the squadron leader what was his name, Lodge he had nothing doing today. He introduced me to the other blokes, other pilots that were there. The bomb aimers had reported to the bombing leader and the navs to the nav leader and what have you eh, and then he called me back and said I will get you an air test, eleven o’clock. I got the crew and we done and air test at eleven o’clock. I don’t know what the point of it was, they had just done some repairs to an aircraft. Anyway we just hung around then for a couple of days. They said if you are wanted for flying, for an operation your name will be on a list in the officers’ mess. That was up at five o’clock at night you know, a couple of, we had been there about three days, and I got the list five o’clock you know. The following crews will report to the briefing room at 0600 hours tomorrow and my name was there. I went down to the officers’ mess and they said, ‘yes we’ve seen it’, so they knew, all the crew knew. And that was it were there, ready for our first operation which was a bit strange. Nobody took any notice of you, we were just another crew there and nobody sort of put their arm on your shoulder and said ‘you will be right son.’ Just eh, you were briefed, you had a meal and boom, off you go. They said, ‘you go and get dressed, you go and do this, you go and pick up your parachute, you do this, there will be a truck will take you out to your aircraft which was at your dispersal point.’ And that was it. Then eh we did another daylight and then a couple of nights later, a couple of nights later there was a list up eh one morning that there was a briefing at two o’clock and I was flying second pilot with an experienced crew. My crew weren’t going on it, just me and this other pilot went with another crew and he was in C Flight, I was in B Flight. That was a bit strange I had nothing to do except sit next to the pilot and you saw everything that was going on, the rest of the time when you were flying you were doing something, you were busy, you didn’t have time to be worried or frightened or anything like that. I don’t think I was frightened actually on this particular night. But you could see all the anti-aircraft shells exploding all around you and what have you. We got back and we were just taxiing around to a dispersal and we heard this other aircraft calling to eh traffic control V-Victor or J-Johnnie or whatever it was. ‘V-Victor overshoot.’ They had come in a bit high and they were overshooting, the second pilot, the other bloke that had arrived the same time as me, he was still a sergeant. The bomb aimer used to sit next to the pilot on take-off and landing and eh the pilot would open the throttles but then he would have to control, take the control column. So the second dickie used to hold the, hold the throttles open, apparently this bloke didn’t . He’d opened, the pilot had opened it, got onto the thing, the throttles came back, they only got, anyway it crashed, they were all killed, eight of them it was. Nothing was mentioned at debriefing, and the next day at lunch time I said ‘did somebody, what are the funeral arrangements.’ He said ‘what?’ I said, ‘the funeral arrangements for those blokes that were killed.’ He said, ‘there is no funeral, there is a war on son.’ Stone me you know these blokes that were killed in our back yard just across the road from the end of the runway. They buried them, slight, you know quickly eh but they didn’t get any military funeral or what have you it was just ‘there is a war on son.’ And that was it.
AP: Living conditions at Snaith, how, how and where did you live?
LL: Well we were billeted away from the station, of course everybody had a bike eh we were somewhere down near the local village and [cough] just had living accommodation there and as an officer and aircrew we got eh sheets which normally you didn’t get in the air force. Eh in the mess we got, we could get fresh milk and eh before and after a raid we got a meal of bacon and eggs which were luxuries in wartime England. The rest of the time eh the billets were pretty ordinary but you know you got used to them. I could never front breakfast, on one station we were on, this was just after the war we were at Leconfield and one morning for breakfast they’d have kippered herrings and the next morning would be baked beans on toast, they were, I could cop the baked beans on toast but not the kippered herrings, they were. We used to have to wait for the NAAFI which was the restaurant or café opened about eh half past ten or something to get some breakfast [cough] but basically the living conditions were pretty crude eh but that was wartime England you know, they, they couldn’t produce their own food, it all had to be imported and there were much more important things to eh to bring in to the country. But you know we survived, we complained about it mainly because we were eh used to Australian food and Australian conditions. But basically it was pretty good.
AP: Just sort of routing of that for a bit, what were your first impressions of war time England, what did you think, presumably this was the first time you were overseas?
LL: Well eh it was quite a shock, it took a bit of getting used to. When we got there in the November eh it was eh they had two hours daylight saving. Naturally you know that was to eh, you couldn’t have a shower, in Brighton the Australian Air Force had taken over two hotels, the Grand and the Metropole eh and they were eh big, real big hotels. They had stopped the lifts working, if you were on the third floor you walked up and down to the [cough] you could have a bath but the water could only ever come to a certain level. There were all those sort of restrictions you ah you put up with really. You got used to them I suppose after a while mainly because you saw the English and eh they were, they were probably worse off than we were, you know they were on rations and we didn’t have, when we used to go on leave, they used to give us the ration to give to the people we were staying with or wherever we were staying would want ration tickets. But eh you know you couldn’t drive a car, there was no petrol available for private, well there was for doctors and things like that but basically there were all those sort of restrictions. There were blackouts and we had a pretty miserable sort of an existence we found but you got used to it after, well a couple of years I was there, just over two years, just on two years, it was you got used to these sort of things. We were pretty well received the Australians they liked us, they thought we were colonials still but I think some of them still do probably. But eh we went, we were well received on the squadron eh mainly because they didn’t know how to take us. They were eh, we didn’t salute officers, we’d salute wing commanders and above but eh you were supposed to salute squadron leaders and you were supposed to salute flight lieutenants. If you were acting as a flight commander something like that, those sort of thing you know used to rile us. We used to go out of our way [emphasis] not to and that really used to get them going. They didn’t like us at all, and they didn’t know how to discipline us really, they were frightened, and we used to tell them we were subject to RAAF control from and they had headquarters in London and they would have to go through them, but they didn’t know really [cough]. But we survived I suppose.
AP: What sort of things did you do to relax if you weren’t on operations. Where did you go on leave, even not on leave, just when not on duty?
LL: Eh, not much at all, you used to hang around. When we were on the squadron and eh you see that there was nothing going today or nothing going tomorrow day, tomorrow eh you’d go to the pub in the village or you would stay in the mess. They might have a few drinks in the mess eh but eh basically we didn’t do anything with, we didn’t play tennis or cricket or any of those sort of things. I don’t know how we kept fit but we did [laugh].
AP: What sort of things happened in the officers’ mess, what did it look like first of all? What went on there?
LL: Eh very sort of strict, you didn’t sit at this table because this was where the senior officers sat and eh you as a new bloke could sit at that table up there you know. A couple of nights after I had been there a couple of days after I had been there I sat at the wrong table and they told me you know. I couldn’t say that it made any difference where you were sitting but that was what the sort of thing. This is where the senior officers sit. Not you know, when I got on the Squadron I was a pilot officer you know I hadn’t even graduated up to flying officer eh and that sort of thing sort of got to you a bit. I, I went into the flight office one morning, used to go in there, the flight commander you know, used to give him a sort of half salute. He was pretty good Colin Lodge, Plug Lodge they used to call him and eh he was on leave. I had been having a drink in the mess with this fellow I can’t think of his name now, eh he was a flight lieutenant and I had been drinking with him in the mess having a couple of beers with him. Eh I went to the flight office the next morning, I walked in and he is sitting behind the desk and eh I said ‘hello.’ And he said ‘you haven’t saluted.’ I said ‘I don’t have to salute flight lieutenants.’ And he said ‘I am acting squadron leader.’ I said ‘well you haven’t got the bloody rank, not showing it.’ Stupid stubborn you know, he said ‘I am acting flight commander and you are supposed to salute me.’ Oh I probably was supposed to salute the acting flight commander but I, as I say I had been having a drink with him the night before. And he said ‘go outside and come in again and salute me.’ I said ‘right ho.’ I went outside and went down the mess and had a shower. He never spoke to me again, never spoke to me again. Just unbelievable you know, that was the sort of thing. Eh we had one, this Bill Hudson I was telling you about the bomb aimer, we came back from a raid one day eh and after when you came back you dumped all your gear and what have you and you go up for a debriefing and you sit around the table, the intelligence officer sits opposite eh while you are waiting to go in, other crews that are there before you there had been a bit of a hold up and eh on our squadron the padres would give you either eh you could have a cocoa, or a tea, a coffee or something like that and eh an over proof rum. Well I had only one over proof rum, it nearly blew my bloody head off that was all. On this particular day, the eh two gunners didn’t drink and the wireless operator didn’t drink so Bill had two or three over proof rums. And we get in there and he was always a bit of a yapper our Bill eh there was a very attractive WAAF intelligence officer she was a flight lieutenant or a flight officer as they call them eh and eh she spoke to me first and how did we find it over the target area and did we this and that, one thing and another you know [cough] eh and then she said to the navigator and what about, did you have any trouble with your Gee box various [unclear] so and so. And then Bill he was looking at her sort of making a play for her, he had no hope and she didn’t wake up you know. He started to tell her about over the target area. Now there was flak coming up and eh and then the fighters and then the anti, the searchlights and he was wondering how he was able to do it. He was telling her this terrible bloody story and we were just about killing ourselves laughing you know and all of a sudden she woke up. It was a daylight raid and Bill had searchlights coming into his eyes you know. She didn’t think it was funny at all, I said, ‘don’t take any notice of him you know, just write down that we dropped our bombs and we got good photos of the target we reckon and so and so’. No. She wanted to put him on a charge eh for misleading and all that sort of business. Anyway I, I talked to her for some considerable time to try and break her down and I thought I had got, anyway I got to the flight office the next morning and the eh Squadron Leader Lodge said ‘what was this with your bomb aimer last night?’ [emphasis] I said, ‘oh no.’ she had reported it, he she demanded he put him on a charge. I had great difficulty restraining him from putting Bill on a charge and eh that gave us a much worse reputation than we deserved, you know. We were a good crew and we were doing a good job but eh just Bill had, had two over proof rums gone to his ruddy head. I will tell you one story it didn’t happen on our squadron eh but we heard about it in York or one of the local pubs or something. Eh after briefing and the mail all that sort of business, and you got out of the aircraft and had about quarter of an hour, twenty minutes and waited around, you put your stuff in the aircraft and the blokes would have a smoke, had a smoke. Just stand around and sort of relax waiting for time as I say, better get ready and so I can get out there, you know what time you had to take off. This wireless operator went up and eh and he said eh to the pilot, ‘I am not going skip.’ He said, ‘what do you mean you are not going?’ He said ‘I am not going’ he said. ‘You’ve got to go.’ He said, ‘I am not going.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I am not going.’ That’s all he said, so they sent for the flight commander and the flight commander sent one of the ground staff blokes off on a bike to get the -. He arrived out in his car and ‘you’ve got to go.’ ‘I’m not going.’ And that’s all he said, he wouldn’t give him any explanation or reason or anything you know, ‘I am just not going.’ Eh so they said, ‘you will be charged with desertion.’ ‘I am not going’, he said. They charged him with desertion, they locked him up eh they got a relief wireless operator and they were shot down and all killed. Eh he was court martialled and he got ten years in a military prison. I understand that he got out eh shortly after the war finished and they gave them an amnesty those blokes [cough]. But apparently from what I heard, what I subsequently found out later on eh that was all he ever said, ‘I am not going.’ He didn’t tell them why or, or that he wasn’t. He’d been, it wasn’t his first flight, he’d been before, eh two or three times before eh he just said he wasn’t going. Now I don’t know if he had a premonition or what but eh he survived and the other blokes didn’t and that was it. There is not much more I can tell you Adam, I think.
AP: There is one other thing, well there is two questions in particular that I have for you but one I have find out is, on your wings here is a little Guinness pin.
LL: [laugh]
AP: I am guessing there is a story behind that.
LL: On one leave we went to, went to Ireland eh and eh and one day there was a tour of the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. We had to go over in civvies but they knew we were airmen because we had our air force trousers and open neck shirt, blue shirt and sports coat which the army, air force store had provided for us. That was the only way we could get into, get into eh Southern Ireland because it was a neutral country. Eh this fellow said ‘you want to, give you this you know, Guinness badge, it will bring you luck, wear it for luck.’ I used to wear it on my battle dress, I just pinned it onto the eh onto the wing after I got rid of the battle dress at the end of the war, that was all.
AP: Been there ever since.
LL: [laugh]
AP: Okay there is another question that I want to ask as well. Was there any superstitions or [? voodoos] on 51 Squadron, rituals that people would do that you were aware of, for luck I suppose?
LL: No one thing they did eh they did, we had to do thirty flights, thirty trips for a, for a, for a tour eh and anybody that was doing their thirtieth trip, you knew but you would never say to the bloke ‘is this your last trip?’ I said it to one bloke ‘is this your last trip?’ [emphasis] He very near hit me. That was a very bad sign, no I don’t think there was, don’t think there was anything like that eh, not that I can recall, no.
AP: Okay. Final question and probably the most important em, how in your view is Bomber Command remembered, what sort of legacy?
LL: We fellows in Bomber Command eh [pause] during the war you didn’t sort of think much about how good you were and all that sort of business but when you saw the figures at the end of the war of the casualties and eh this is a classic example. The casualties there, just the Australian casualties that is eh when you saw you realised they had a loss rate of something round about forty per cent. It was a bit higher for the English, forty two or three per cent you know it was pretty awful and eh Harris was treated very shabbily by the British Government at the end of the war. Harris apparently, not apparently actually he was a brilliant organiser absolutely brilliant but apparently he was a dreadful bastard he used to argue eh and he would refuse. They would tell him a target say on Monday, they would have to get a couple of days in advance obviously to plan up and how many aircraft they would need, which way they would go and all that sort of business. Eh and he would tell them he wouldn’t go, that ‘we are not going to that place.’ You know. Just refused to, he would argue with Churchill, he would argue with the Air Board, he would argue with the Air Ministry eh he was one of those sort of fellows but he was always right. They wouldn’t admit it of course but eh ‘we are not going there, you want us to go there because this suits you after the war you know, so we are not going there, but we will go there.’ They said ‘no we don’t want to go there till next week.’ ‘Well we are going this week.’ You know, and he would plan it and that would be a very successful raid and it would have done the job you know eh. And at the end of the war all the chiefs of all the commands like Fighter Command, Coastal Command and Training Command were all made Marshals of the Royal Air Force, Harris wasn’t they left his as an air chief marshal. He resigned his commission immediately got on an aeroplane and went, took his wife and daughter to South America, to eh South Africa eh I don’t know whether he ever went back. Somebody told me once that he thought years afterwards that they eh had relented and made him a marshal of the Royal Air Force. I am not sure about that I never heard anything about that. Eh and eh that without any publicity the fact that these three blokes got, or four blokes got air, or marshals of the Royal Air Force which was equivalent of a field marshal eh and Harris didn’t. We all felt a bit, ‘is that what they think of us, is that really?’ We had the idea that we won the war, Harris gave us this impression. We are doing this as opposed to the American Eighth Air Force eh, and they were sort of a bit at loggerheads, they didn’t do any daylight, eh night time flights they only did daylights the eh Americans and we did daylights and nights you know, whatever it didn’t make any difference. We went out over the North Sea and fly for hours over the North Sea without any landmarks eh to check your position eh. We reckoned that Bomber Command had done an enormous job and they had, there was no two ways about it eh and a lot of us sort of felt well, the bulk of Bomber Command felt let down, eh really. Fighter Command got a lot of publicity early in the war Churchill went on with this ‘never was so much owed by so much, many to so few’. Eh but their work finished in September ’41. And they didn’t really do anything further until eh the invasion. They went over with, a bit of protective force for the invasion forces but basically they didn’t do anything. Eh we never had any fighter escort, never, the Americans had fighter escorts they used to take them over there and then meet them on the way back but we never had any. So as far as Fighter Command was concerned they did nothing [emphasis] for three years during the war. Bomber Command flew in operational flights from the day the war started or the day after the war started until the day after the war finished, really. So that was a bit of a let-down, really. And then eh persevered it took seventy odd, sixty, seventy years before we got a little clasp that said Bomber Command, the Bomber Command Association like the old boys of Bomber Command like their association in England, they tried for years to eh get some recognition and they eh tried to get us awarded the eh congress, eh the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, CGM, eh they eventually knocked it back completely to ‘no’, said logistically couldn’t be done and all this sort of business and they went on and had a million reasons for it. And then they said well eh ‘we’ve got these ribbons.’ But no what does that show eh I’ve got a ribbon France, Germany Star which shows that I was in operations, but doesn’t show that I was in Bomber Command. So they said ‘we will give you a Bomber Command [doorbell interruption]. That’s typical.
LL: I rang our honours and awards section in Canberra week after week after week and I’ve given up. ‘Well’ they said, ‘your application is on hold.’ And I said, ‘why would it be on hold?’ ‘I don’t know why Mr Larmer but it is on hold.’ I said, ‘well get it bloody off hold.’ Eventually she then came back a couple of days later, ‘no, no it’s ok.’ I said ‘there couldn’t have been any bloody doubt about it, you know. You have got the exact figures and you have a copy of my log book’ and all that sort of business. ‘We are sorry about that Mr Larmer.’ ‘Now’, I said, ‘now how long is it going to take?’ ‘Oh it shouldn’t be very long now.’ Anyway eh I’d been waiting, oh, from the time I applied it was seventeen months and a mate of mine said, ‘why don’t you get onto John Find?’ I said, ‘no, no John Find couldn’t do anything.’ Anyway the next thing I know I get a ring from John Find’s producer. And eh I said ‘who told you?’ ‘Mr Bill Burke a friend of mine’. I said ‘Oh no, I said I told him I wasn’t, didn’t want to.’ And she said, ‘John would like to speak to you about it.’ Anyway he spoke to me and he sort of eh said, ‘are you serious, you know you have been waiting seventeen months?’ and I said, ‘yeah’ I said, ‘it doesn’t have to be fairly long, because I am ninety years of age, if it don’t get it soon it doesn’t matter.’ And he said, ‘no we’ll get it.’ And eh anyway he rang me back the next day, she rang me back the next day she said ‘John wants to speak to you again.’ He said ‘I have been speaking to the assistant minister eh, and eh he said within six weeks.’ And I said ‘ I don’t know what you drink in that place, but if you believe him, you know.’ I said ‘they won’t have it in six weeks.’ Two weeks later I got it, we got it you know. He rang me and said ‘Oh Mr Larmer your clasp for your Bomber Command clasp is coming through, you know it will be sent it down to you in the next week.’ Two weeks it took and I spoke to John Find afterwards to thank him and I said ‘I, I can’t understand it you know’. He said ‘Laurie they are frightened of us, we can give them bad publicity’, he said, ‘they don’t want any.’ He said, ‘we could have made them look very foolish.’ He said ‘and that is what we were prepared to do’, he said, ‘and they know it’, he said, ‘it is an awful way to exist.’ He said, ‘you couldn’t embarrass them but we could.’ Isn’t that terrible really and that was the thing. I wasn’t so much the fault of the people here in Australia, the people in England hadn’t done anything about it. It took an assistant minister here to get onto somebody in England to get them. They only had to put a fifty or sixty or a hundred of them in a box you know, it wouldn’t be as big as that, to get them out here and that’s what happened. So you know that’s what happened. Overall eh we reckon that Bomber Command and probably we are a bit unreasonable but I reckon we got a bit of a, you know rough end of the pineapple. Because eh towards the end of the war all the operations in the last two years of the war all the operations with Bomber Command all the news on the, on the BBC was six hundred of their aircraft went to Nuremburg last night, ten of our aircraft are missing. That was another thing, ten of our aircraft, but it was seventy men. Even meant you know you go on a raid and say three out of their aircraft went to Dortmund and they did bomb the railway yards and whatever they might have done you know. Five of their aircraft are missing that was thirty five men and that, that sort of eh took a bit of getting used to. Eh I could see their point from a psychological point of view everything was done to protect the morale, or build up the morale of the British people eh but eh it gave you the impression that aeroplanes were more important than blokes [ironic laugh] probably in war time they had plenty of blokes but were short of aircraft you know. There you are, alright you have heard all of that?
AP: I think we have heard all of that. Thank you very much it has been a pleasure for the last couple of hours.
LL: [laugh]
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ALarmerLO151112
Title
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Interview with Lawrence Larmer
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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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01:09:51 audio recording
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-11-12
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence Larmer was born in Australia in 1920. After completing school he went to work on the Beaufort aircraft in the Department of Aircraft Production. He was called up in 1942 and volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force to avoid the army. His initial training on Tiger Moth aircraft was followed by further training in Manitoba, Canada. He graduated as a sergeant pilot in 1943 and was posted to Great Britain. He describes conditions at 11 Personnel Dispatch and Reception Centre, Brighton. At 27 Operational Training Unit, RAF Lichfield, he crewed up before posting to 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Riccall. His first operational posting was to 51 Squadron at RAF Snaith. Lawrence Larmer discusses in detail the process of crewing up, of relations between personnel on the station, officers’ living conditions, and a case of desertion. He also discusses his views on Sir Arthur Harris and recounts his experience of applying for the Bomber Command clasp.
Contributor
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Hugh Donnelly
Mal Prissick
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Great Britain
England--Brighton
England--Staffordshire
England--Yorkshire
Manitoba
United States
England--Sussex
Conforms To
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Pending review
1658 HCU
27 OTU
51 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
coping mechanism
crewing up
debriefing
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
mess
military discipline
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Lichfield
RAF Riccall
RAF Snaith
superstition
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/290/3445/PLeicesterD1601.1.jpg
c2820bc7a7d2d3b32e67a8ee5335b9ba
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/290/3445/ALeicesterD160501.1.mp3
d86dafc77cb44e9b7caaf069d8f6a1a2
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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Leicester, David
David Leicester
D Leicester
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with David Leicester DFC (1923 - 2021), and his log book. He flew operations as a pilot with 35, 158 and 640 Squadrons.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Leicester and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-01
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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Leicester, D
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: And I think we’re working. Yes. We are. So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with David Leicester. He was a Halifax pilot with 158 and 640 Squadrons and a Lancaster pilot with 35 Squadron Pathfinders. The interview is taking place in North Plympton in Adelaide. My name’s Adam Purcell. It is the 1st of May 2016. So, David let’s start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life? What you were doing before the war and how you came to join the air force.
DL: Well, really before the war I was at school when the war broke out in 1939. And I left. In 1940 I was at High School and was very interested in the, mainly in the Battle of Britain and what their pilots were doing. And I sort of made up my mind that if I happened to be in the war I would like to be a fighter pilot. My father was in the AIF during World War One so I was very keen to get into something. I left school at the end of 1940 and started work as an office boy in the rag trade, in a manufacturer’s agents office here in Adelaide until I was called up in August 1941 as — in number 19 Course EATS at the age of eighteen. Yeah.
AP: Did you, sorry did you say you had any prior military service up till that point?
DL: No.
AP: No.
DL: No.
AP: So you weren’t in the, in the army or the —
DL: No.
AP: CMF or anything.
DL: No.
AP: Ok.
DL: We did, prior to be called up, after we’d applied to join the air force we would, I was, I and others were too young at seventeen. We had to wait until we were eighteen before we were called up. So we did, we were put on the Air Force Reserve and while we were waiting to be called up we did a lot of the pre-entry work. Learning Morse Code, learning air force regulations and that sort of thing. So, by the time we actually got called up and went to the Initial Training School we had done a bit of pre, pre-interest work in the air force.
AP: Why did you choose the air force?
DL: Well, as I said I was interested in what the Battle of Britain boys were doing and I thought, oh boy that’s for me. Exciting and it, it was the one that attracted me the most. Even though my father had been in the AIF and told a lot of stories about the AIF. I wish I’d known more about my father‘s activities actually. As most of us say these days but the air force was the one.
AP: Can you tell me something of the enlistment process?
DL: The which?
AP: The enlistment process. The process of actually going to and signing the papers and all that sort of thing.
DL: Well I don’t, can’t recall a lot of that but I guess in the early 1941 I made application to the Air Force Recruiting Office. We were under age as far as the air force was concerned so we needed the parent’s permission which was freely given by my father and mother. And so I was really ready for, to be called up.
AP: Were there any medical type examinations or something that you can remember?
DL: Yes. We had to get, from our local GP we’d need to get a clearance to say that we were medically fit to join the services. But of course as soon as we went in we went through vigorous tests at Initial Training School. Initial medical tests to make sure we were alright. If we had a broken toenail it was more or less couldn’t get in. We were rejected.
AP: Can you remember any of the specific tests that you had to do?
DL: No. I can’t really. Tests on what we had learned prior to entry. Tests on Morse Code. Tests on what we’d learned as far as air force law was concerned, and the theory of flight. We needed to know quite a bit about that prior to going in. And they assessed us on the results of what we had learned prior to entry.
AP: The, you said before you were doing some, some study while you were on the Reserve. Where and how was that delivered?
DL: Well, we, we were mainly did our pre-courses. We had lecture courses on theory of flight and air force law. They were, they were given to us at a local school. But Morse Code and other things like that we learned at the local General Post Office. GPO. And we needed to reach a certain qualification particularly in Morse Code, again before being accepted. I can’t remember now how many words a minute we had to do but obviously those of us that were called up had passed the requirement.
AP: Do — alright, so this is in Adelaide. Sorry I didn’t clarify that.
DL: In Adelaide. Yes.
AP: You’ve lived in Adelaide all your life.
DL: Everything was in Adelaide. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Alright.
DL: I had never been outside Adelaide until I joined the air force.
AP: Excellent. So your Initial Training School. Where was that?
DL: That was down at Victor Harbour.
AP: What happened there?
DL: Well, that was mainly furthering education on air force law and theory of flight and a lot of drill, marching and all that sort of thing. Discipline. We learned discipline and had to do what an officer said. So it was very strict. And it was at the ITS, as a result, I guess of how we came through each subject and an assessment by a higher ranking officer. They chose whether we would be pilots, navigators, wireless operators or whatever was needed in the crew and fortunately I was selected as a pilot. And that course at Victor Harbour was about three months. No flying at ITS. Just strictly all ground work.
AP: What was, what was the actual camp like at Victor Harbour? What were the buildings like? Where did you sleep? All that sort of stuff.
DL: Well, the actual headquarters of 4 ITS at Victor Harbour was an old mansion. But as far as we were concerned as air force recruits we just slept in tents. Six to a tent. And that was it. And —
AP: They had classrooms and things like that as well.
DL: Oh yes. Yes. They built classrooms and as I said the actual headquarters of 4 ITS was called Mount Breckan which was an old English mansion built out here. And that contained many rooms. The air force had acquired that building and it had many rooms which we used for lectures and all the other requirements.
AP: Was that, that — I drove out of Victor Harbour a couple of years ago on the way back from Kangaroo Island. Is that the big house on the hill as you go, sort of out?
DL: Yes.
AP: Oh cool. Now I know.
DL: The big house on the hill. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Now I know where it is.
DL: It was actually a house built for some Englishman. I can’t remember now but all it was built as a replica of his home, or her home in England and was built almost entirely of imported material.
AP: Wow. Fantastic.
DL: A grand old building it was.
AP: Yeah. And I imagine the air force probably didn’t leave it in quite the condition they found it in.
DL: No. No. That’s right. No. It’s still there today.
AP: It certainly is. Yeah. I remember seeing it. Yeah. Ok so from ITS your next step would have been an Elementary Flying Training School.
DL: Yes, selected as a pilot. Well, first we were asked at ITS whether we wanted, what we wanted to be — pilots, navigators or whatever. We were given three choices and most of us put down number 1 — pilot. Number 2 — pilot. Number 3 — pilot because everyone that went in or most of all, almost all were, ninety nine percent probably of called up wanted to be pilots. But at the end of the course at Victor we were, looked at notice board to see what the next posting would be and fortunately for me it was to be a pilot and posted to Parafield in South Australia flying Tiger Moths at EFTS. Yeah.
AP: So you’re, you’re still in Adelaide.
DL: Yeah. I’m still in Adelaide. Yes. Still in Adelaide.
AP: Excellent. All right. Tiger Moths. They’re the ubiquitous training aircraft.
DL: Magnificent little aircraft. Yes. Because we didn’t know about any the other. That was, that was it as far as we were concerned. I’d never flown before. Never thought of flying. I’d never been up in an aircraft. But we had to. Our flying started within a certain number of hours and again like ITS we were assessed by superior officers as our flying capability and given an assessment at the end of the, at the end of the course.
AP: What was your instructor like? Who was your instructor? What was he like?
DL: Well, the instructors were just chaps that had finished their flying training and I think the chap I had, I can’t remember his name but he had recently finished his flying training at, at Parafield. And he was posted from Parafield to Parafield as an instructor. Some of them happened like that. But I wasn’t interested in instructing. So, and at Parafield there we were given three alternatives of what type of pilot we wanted to be. Fighter pilot, bomber pilot or whatever, or instructing. And again I put down, as many others did, fighter, fighter, fighter. And it looked that way that we would be fighters because from Parafield we were posted, some of us were posted to SFTS at Point Cook and flying Wirraways. The course at Point Cook was a four month course divided into two. Two lots of two monthly courses. Two months of what they called Initial Training Centre School and another two months of Advanced Training School. ITS and ATS, flying Wirraways at Point Cook. After the end of the first two months we were given leave and many of us, the South Australians we came back to Adelaide for leave. And when we got back to Point Cook we found that all the Wirraways had gone and they had been replaced by Airspeed Oxfords. That didn’t concern us terribly because ok it looked like single engine pilots were out but we could now be twin engine pilots. And we had to complete that first two monthly period again, over again. And still complete the four months within the prescribed time. So it was a bit of a rush. And it was at ITS — at SFTS the second two months when we received our wings and became sergeant pilots or some of them were officers but most of us came out as sergeant pilots waiting for another posting.
AP: So backing up a little bit more can you tell me something about the Tiger Moth in particular? What did it look like? Where did you sit? How did it fly?
DL: Oh the Tiger Moth is a twin-engined little biplane with a Gypsy engine. Not much bigger than a lawn mower engine but they had two seats back to back. The instructor sat in the front and the, we were sat in the back. And we spoke to each other through a funnel. Telling us, he was telling us what to do and giving, giving us instructions. We had to fly solo within twelve hours I think it was, or ten hours. And then most of us, there were some scrubbings but most of us were able to get through in the required time. I’m not sure what I, how many hours I took. Around about eight or nine I think. There were quite a few scrubbings strangely enough. Scrubbings, I mean chaps that failed the test and they had to be re-mustered as navigators or other crew members.
AP: Alright. First solo. Can you tell me about your first solo?
DL: Well the first solo was quite exciting. We’d go up, up with an instructor and land at a certain time and when he thought that we were, had done enough to go solo he just got out of the cockpit and said, ‘Here we are. Off you go.’ And that was it and we had to just go around on our own. A very exciting time getting the, getting, flying solo was the ant’s pants or mostly. When we would fly solo, amazing.
AP: Did, did you encounter throughout your training any accidents, or —?
DL: No. Not really.
AP: Did you see any?
DL: You’re talking about total training?
AP: All the way through.
DL: Hmmn?
AP: Yeah. All the way through.
DL: Yeah. Well, after we’d finished training at Point Cook many of, many of us were posted to England. To the UK. We were seconded by the RAF actually to replace aircrew. Aircrew were very short in England at the time. This is now in late or early 1942 perhaps. And we were posted from Point Cook to England. We went by ship to England via New Zealand. And when we got to England we were awaiting postings again. And a lot of us had all trained together and became close friends. And when we started off at a place called Advanced Flying Unit and that was still flying Oxfords. Still thinking we were going to be, or I thought we were going to be fighter pilots. After we’d done a course at AFU at Grantham in England I was posted as a lone figure to a bomber Operational Training Unit where all of the others went to further their single engine or twin engine fighting. Many of them finished up on Beaufighters or Mosquitoes. Now, why in the heck I was sort of singled out I’ve got no idea but I finished up at an OTU at a place called Honeybourne in England flying Whitleys. Now, the Whitley was Armstrong Arthur Whitley was one of the main bomber forces of England at, in the early part of the war, and Whitleys and Wellingtons were used for training purposes. And at the OTU at [pause] where did I say it was? Honeybourne. A place called Honeybourne. On my first solo flight at night in a Whitley an engine caught fire on take-off and I had to get up and go around and bring the thing back again. And I had to land wheels up. A belly landing. So that was during training. Yeah. And that was bad enough but quite an experience.
AP: I can imagine. Alright, so can you tell me how you got to the UK in a little bit more detail?
DL: Well when we arrived — on the way from New Zealand, Auckland to the UK we were in a South African luxury liner which had been turned into a troop ship. A vessel called the Cape Town Castle. The Castle Line ship was a South African ship. Now, this was, this was re-modified to take about two thousand troops but there were only about a hundred and fifty on it at the time. And we took off from New Zealand to England through the Panama Canal. And, but on the way across the Indian Ocean we came across some life boats with a crew from a vessel that had, a vessel that had been sunk by a U-boat, presumably. But then we, we carried on. Went to England via the Panama Canal and eventually arrived in Liverpool Harbour. Now the, Liverpool Harbour had been bombed by the Germans the night before and we had to stay about, oh three miles out. We couldn’t get near the harbour at the time so this large vessel anchored about three miles out and we were taken in to the city of Liverpool in row boats. Taken from, from the Cape Town Castle. So Liverpool was on fire. But then, there we boarded a train and went down to Bournemouth in the south of England.
AP: So this is the first time, as you were saying before, the first time you were outside of Adelaide.
DL: Yeah.
AP: The first time going overseas.
DL: Yeah.
AP: What did you think of wartime England?
DL: Well, at, initial, the initial because we didn’t know much about England of course. My father was very pro-English although he had never been there. But I remember, remember through my growing up days he always had, on the dining table, a huge map of the City of London and he would have been able to drive a taxi in London without any trouble at all. And this really got me interested in England. But the train journey down from Liverpool to Bournemouth was at night so we didn’t really see much at all. And the first we saw of it was when the next posting came which was only after a couple of days, for me only a couple of days at Bournemouth. From there I was posted to heavy, Heavy Conversion Unit. HCU in Yorkshire. So, I can’t remember now how I actually got from Bournemouth to Yorkshire but I remember being very thrilled at looking at the vast expanse of England. Even though it’s a very small area it seemed to have plenty of space. And I had heard that there was something like seven hundred aerodromes there so where the heck they put them all I really don’t know. But that was, by then I knew of course I was definitely on bombers. Getting to the Heavy Conversion Unit which were flying Halifaxes. So I I transferred from Whitleys to Halifaxes at the Heavy Conversion Unit. And it was at the Heavy Conversion Unit where we picked up our crews. For example, when, when pilots had, some pilots had finished their training they were sent to Heavy Conversion Unit. Same with the navigators and wireless operators and gunners etcetera. So we picked up the crew at, at Heavy Conversion Unit. Strangely enough on my first solo flight in a Halifax at night an engine also caught fire. But by then the training had been good enough to know exactly what to do without any, any problems. So we landed wheels down and only on three engines. So it was a good experience at the time. It was usual too for a pilot to be sent to an operational training squadron, yes an operational squadron, an operational flying squadron to become experienced in perhaps flying on operational flying. And the pilot would do two trips at least with an experienced crew at that squadron. And it so happened that, and I was sent to 158 Squadron to do my first second dickies we called them, with, with an experienced crew in 158 Squadron. And having done that back to the Heavy Conversion Unit to pick up the other six crew who I had obtained at Heavy Conversion Unit, and strangely enough when the posting came through we were posted to 158 Squadron, in Yorkshire.
AP: How —
DL: In East Yorkshire.
AP: How did, how did you actually meet your crew? How did you choose your crew?
DL: Well, it’s a funny thing. Strangely enough, as I said we crewed up at HCU and all navigators and other crew members came. Now, I was looking for a navigator so as soon as I saw one I said, ‘Are you looking for a pilot?’ Or he would say, ‘Are you looking for a navigator?’ And I’d say, ‘Yes,’ and the same with, we’d just see someone come into the mess or come into the — some, some pilots used to go out to the entrance gates of the aerodrome and as new crew came in pilots and the navigator or someone would just say, ‘How about flying with me?’ That’s how, it was as uncomplicated as that. We had no idea how good they were or how bad they were but that’s how we picked them up. Just by being in the mess with a load of, a load of other crew members.
AP: If you perhaps picked the wrong person. You discovered later that you weren’t suited was there any way out?
DL: Oh yes. Yes, that happened quite often. As a matter of fact a friend of mine from Adelaide he was on, finished up on the same squadron. He had got a very bad navigator. And so he just wanted him replaced so he would just, if there were any spare navigators on, around on the aerodrome he would, on the airfield he would just say, you know, or tell the CO that he wasn’t happy with his navigator and he wanted him replaced and that’s, he’d get him replaced. Sometimes, in his case the squadron navigation officer went on one trip with them and found out that the navigator was just not plotting his courses properly. Yes there was an out. Yes.
AP: What, ok, so, if you crewed up at the Heavy Conversion who were you flying with at the OTU?
DL: Well, nobody. Just, didn’t have any crew. Just an instructor. And I think on the night that I had the fire in the engine and crash landed I think there was a rear gunner. That’s all.
AP: Ok. It’s a little bit different to some other stories I’ve heard. So you did what a lot of what people did in the Operational Training Unit at the HCU instead. So it’s a little, a little bit different.
DL: What have others said about the crewing up?
AP: It tended to happen at the OTU. And so that’s where they started flying as a crew and then the Heavy Conversion Unit was just to add the extra two engines essentially.
DL: Oh well. It depends I suppose. I hadn’t heard that. I thought, I thought they all crewed up at HCU.
AP: Yeah. Well there you go.
DL: I’d never known, you saying that. Well OTUs, that’s strange because a, a Whitley or a Wellington didn’t have seven in the crew.
AP: Yeah. What, what tended to happen was they got the flight engineer when they got to Heavy Conversion Unit.
DL: Oh. I see. Yeah.
AP: So they were added on. But the, the six of them started out in those aircraft. But anyway that’s, that’s a —
DL: I hadn’t heard that.
AP: That’s different to your story but this is your story we’re telling.
DL: But is that how they got them at OTU?
AP: Yeah.
DL: The same way.
AP: Yeah the same sort of —
DL: Saying as hey you are you looking for a pilot?
AP: Or they’d put them all in a hangar.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Equal numbers of everyone.
DL: Yeah.
AP: And they say, ‘Sort yourselves out boys.’
DL: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. I think it’s one of the fascinating parts of Bomber Command stories that so often worked.
DL: Yeah. And the seven became a very very close knit crew. Each relying on the other. I mean it was, if you had a dud, you know, no good having someone who couldn’t do their job properly.
AP: Did you, jumping forward a bit, did you tend to socialise with that crew?
DL: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
AP: You all lived together and —
DL: Yeah.
AP: Went to the pub and all that sort of stuff.
DL: You became almost all day and every day together doing everything together and became very close. You had to rely entirely on other members of the crew, particularly if something went wrong or something happened. There was only one pilot and if anything went wrong with the pilot they had to know what to do. No one could fly it if the pilot got hurt. It was almost baling out the rest of the crew, which did happen a lot.
AP: So I guess going on from the doing everything with your crew what sort of things did you get up to when you were on leave, throughout the time in England?
DL: Well, mostly on leave other members of the crew, if they were English and mine all were on Halifaxes, I had two different crews, I’ll come to that soon, they, they would go home for a leave. So mostly then I, I would go down to London and go to Australia House and meet other, meet some of my friends and who I’d trained with or, but the Englishmen would — would go to their home. I was asked to their home on, some of them, on occasions, where I went. When I went and met members of the family.
AP: Alright. So you flew both Lancaster and Halifax. What was your first impression of a Halifax when you first saw it?
DL: Well, I liked the Halifax. We might come to that later about the difference between a Halifax and a Lancaster.
AP: Definitely one of my questions.
DL: I didn’t know how a four engine bomber should, should operate or how it should travel. The Halifax was a very nice plane to fly and it did everything it wanted to do. In fact it did it too quickly at times. But my first impression was, was very good. They had Merlin inline engines, very capable and reliable engines. They didn’t have any real fault except that they were very vicious in any control needed by the pilot. It was like, I always say it’s like the difference between a car without power steering. The Halifax was very direct in its operational command of the pilot. It was very swift in its control, which, as far as the wartime flying was concerned meant a lot. The Lancaster was, was a beautiful plane. Very, very, very easy to fly. Very nice to fly. Very comfortable to fly but it was much slower to react to the pilots control in wartime. The Halifax would get me out of trouble more quickly then would a Lancaster. I’ve had arguments about this with Lancaster blokes forever, since the war. Most of them they, they, at OTU these fellas that you’ve already spoken to did they do their OTU on Lancasters?
AP: No. Typically they were, they were Wellingtons.
DL: Oh yeah.
AP: Or perhaps Whitleys.
DL: Yeah.
AP: And in the Heavy Conversion Unit was where they flew.
DL: Yeah.
AP: In some cases they went to Stirlings first.
DL: Yeah. Right.
AP: And then there was another thing called a Lancaster Finishing School.
DL: Yeah. That’s right, Lancaster Finishing School.
AP: That’s where they converted into the Lancaster themselves. That was later in the war though.
DL: Yeah. That’s right. That was later in the war.
AP: Yeah.
DL: But in most of the Heavy Conversion Units they were, were Halifaxes that had been passed their use by date. And they, they were cranky old things and they, they didn’t impress some of the pilots. But they would go from a beat up old Halifax and go on to a Lancaster Finishing School, a brand new Halifax, a brand new Lancaster and they would, you know, compare the difference. Well that’s not fair. In my opinion it’s not fair and, but the Halifaxes, oh boy, that really got you out of trouble in a hurry and also the pilot’s escape hatch on a Halifax was in a better position than that on a Lancaster. You could get out. The pilot could get out of a Halifax more quickly, not by much mind you, seconds quicker than a Lancaster. So those seconds meant a hell of a lot.
AP: So you talk about the escape hatch in a Halifax. Where actually was it?
DL: Hmmn?
AP: Where was this, this escape hatch in a Halifax? I know the pilot’s one they could get out straight up or they had to go down the nose. Where was the Halifax escape hatch?
DL: That was straight up.
AP: Straight up as well.
DL: But I can’t quite remember why it was better placed but I don’t think the Lancaster one was straight up was it? It was slightly to the front or back.
AP: I can’t remember. I don’t know.
DL: The Halifax one was straight up.
AP: Alright. I guess we’re getting towards the squadron now. Your first squadron was 158.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Where were they?
DL: They were at a place called Lissett in East Yorkshire. The East Riding of Yorkshire, right over near the coast. You’ve heard of Whitby I suppose. Not far from Whitby and it was, it was near the east coast of Yorkshire. What they called the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was war built airfield. So everything was strung out all over the place. All of the buildings and the sleeping quarters were miles apart, or seemed miles apart. Whereas in a permanent, permanent air force airfield was quite luxury compared with the wartime airfield. But they had everything there. I quite enjoyed it at Lissett and had no problems with, with anything. There were, there were three Aussies, three Aussies there, one other chap from Adelaide and a chap from West Australia and myself. We were the only three Aussies on the squadron and we got away with murder. We used to go and have a bath in the officer’s mess. Between, between where the sergeant’s, sergeant’s sleeping quarters and the ablution block, we had to pass by the officer’s ablutions. So on one occasion, it was about half a mile between each of the, of these areas. On one occasion the bloke from Western Australia was walking past the officer’s ablutions. He was a sergeant walking past the officer’s ablutions. He couldn’t hear anybody in there or see anybody and no lights on. So he hopped in there and had his shower, no shower, they didn’t have any showers, hopped in, had a bath in the officer’s quarters. He told the other two of us about it and we started doing it as well. The sergeant’s bath only had, they had a rim painted around the bath, six inches of water. Well, the officer’s had twelve inches. So, but we got caught out but being Aussies we got away with murder almost. And the CO found out but he didn’t take any notice. He just said, ‘Keep it going.’ So, that was a funny one.
AP: What, what sort of thing happened in the sergeant’s mess?
DL: The sergeant’s mess, well it was like a community hall I suppose. It had eating quarters. Tables and chairs. It had a billiard table perhaps. And lounge chairs. English papers, and just a general place to go and relax if you weren’t flying. It was used quite a bit when we weren’t flying.
AP: What, what other things did you get up to when you weren’t flying?
DL: Well, mainly, if we didn’t go to the mess we would go down to a local pub. English village local pub and spend the afternoon or evening there. I got a story later if you like about that. What we did when we were on Pathfinders. The crew instead of going down to the pub. We did other things first but it was generally just a recreation, time off, relaxing in the sergeant’s mess.
AP: So, ok you were on operations at this stage.
DL: Yeah.
AP: You’ve already flown two as second dickie.
DL: Yeah.
AP: And then went back to HCU and then came with your crew.
DL: That’s right.
AP: Do any of your operations from Lissett stand out in particular in your memory?
DL: Well, yes they do. But I can’t really tell which was which strangely enough. We weren’t allowed to put in our logbook strange things that might have, may have happened. We had a intelligence officer, a squadron leader intelligence officer who was besotted with the fact that the Germans were going to land in England. He had dates and everything else. And he would not let us put in the logbook anything that happened that might give the Germans an idea that their defences were good. So, unfortunately in the first few, while he was there, the first few ops even if we got hit up to glory all we were allowed to put was, “No flak. No fighters. Good trip.” But the logbook, the logbook, I’ve got my logbook here. The logbook doesn’t really tell us what happened. Tells us, tells me what crew I had and how many hours it took. That’s about all. So you know, I got hit in the tailplane for example one night. Now, I can’t tell you what night it was. The night of Nuremberg. You’ve probably heard about that. I was on that. That was my thirty first trip actually. We had a bad run but I can’t really tell you what happened unfortunately which is disappointing. I was very disappointed with the log book.
AP: That’s wartime for you I suppose.
DL: So I’m asked questions like that I’m inclined to say what happened on nights with Bomber Command. Example, things that happened, not only to me but could have happened to anybody else. Most of them did happen to me but as I said I can’t tell of one particular raid.
AP: Well look if we don’t know particular dates that’s fine. We’re more interested in, in those, those, those particular things that happened.
DL: I know the date when I went to Nuremberg. I know the date that, I know things that happened but —
AP: That’s alright. Let’s hear some of the things that happened. It doesn’t matter if we can’t tell when it happened.
DL: At Lissett we had nights of absolute horror, nights of near death situations. Near nights where had parachutes on ready to jump. Twice on occasion I had parachutes on ready to jump. Being chased by a night fighter, a night fighter plane. Being shot at from the front, from the back, from underneath. Dodging searchlights, avoiding collision, landing short of fuel. All things like that. Could have happened to anybody any night. I did sixty eight trips and had my share of trouble but, you know some fellas got shot down on their very first raid. It’s very hard to tell. And I’ve been, you know, shot up one night when the rudders got jammed and things like that. But that could happen to anybody. So I prefer not to sort of talk about individual things that happened to me.
AP: That’s ok.
DL: All those things I mentioned did happen but I can’t tell you when and what night and where.
AP: That’s alright. The when, what night and where is less important I think then the feeling of it. What —
DL: Well, you know, you land short of fuel or you land on three engines many times and it’s, you come back and you think you’ve had a hard time and you look at another aircraft on the same, you know, on the airfield that’s come back all really shot up.
AP: So you mentioned there were two occasions where you had parachutes on ready to jump.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Why? Why was that? What sort of things happened there?
DL: On one trip we got hit in the tailplane, and the, just prior to that the rear gunner had spotted an enemy fighter and he, he told me as pilot to corkscrew. You know what a corkscrew is? And while we were doing a turn, a steep turn we got hit in the rudder or got hit in the tailplane. Didn’t know where but the rudder became jammed, and we were in this turn and the rudder jammed. We couldn’t get out of it. And so the engineer and the bomb aimer came in to help me by putting pressure on my feet to try and stabilise the aircraft. But we, we were circling. We had, we had to go. You know, we could have caused collision or whatever and we couldn’t. And so I told the crew to prepare for, to abandon aircraft. We had practiced the drill many times as a crew and, but the engineer and the bomb aimer were helping me with the feet on the rudder, trying to stabilise it. And we could, my feet kept slipping off the rudder pedals so the bomb aimer took off — he had two pairs of socks on [laughs] he took off one of his socks and tied my foot to the pedal. Anyhow, after a lot of trying, we eventually, something must have been stuck in the rudder cables must have come loose because it did free itself and we were able to get out of it.
AP: So, now as the pilot were you wearing your parachute the whole time?
DL: No.
AP: No.
DL: No.
AP: So you had to go and grab it from somewhere else.
DL: I’m sorry. Yes.
AP: Yeah. You were.
DL: I had used the parachute as a, as a seat of course. You know the parachute was a seat, yes. I always preferred the parachute with a seat. Everybody else had the clip on type.
AP: Yes.
DL: And I’ll show you something. A friend of mine did a pencil drawing of me years ago, many years ago which I’ve got down in a room at the back.
AP: Cool.
DL: And I’ve got the harness on for a clip on ‘chute. I’d a funny thing to tell you about parachutes. I don’t present myself, or I don’t think I’m a superstitious type of a bloke but I — usually with a parachute we, if we were on ops, say tonight. Or during the day we would go to the parachute section and collect a parachute. Parachutes were packed every time, even though they weren’t used. We took back a parachute to the parachute section. It would be repacked before it went out again. But I never handed mine in. I went to the parachute section one day and they were all girls that did this — packed the parachutes, and asked if she would pack my parachute. And she was a young girl. Probably eighteen. And I had my parachute. I kept it with me all the time and got this one girl to repack my parachute three times a week. So, but I never handed it in. I would have got into trouble but we just kept it. Just she and I kept it. And what was the question?
AP: We were talking about just parachutes in general.
DL: Yeah.
AP: We were talking about the time that, so —
DL: Yeah.
AP: You told the rest of the crew, ‘Clip them on. We might need them.’ Yeah
DL: Yeah. I can’t really remember the other time. It might have been the Nuremberg raid. We got badly hit on Nuremberg raid.
AP: By flak or a fighter?
DL: Oh, we shot down a fighter. We actually got the fighter, yes. We got hit by a fighter. In my logbook I’ve got just, I’ve written the word, “Wheels.” Why? — I really don’t know. I can’t remember what the word “wheel.” It was something meant to happen. I think the wheels didn’t come down. They didn’t, no, that’s right. The wheels didn’t lock down. Well they didn’t show that they were locked down. The green light didn’t come on. And we were flying around so long trying to get the wheels down that we were nearly out of fuel. And so we, the air con, air controller, air controller told us to go and crash land. They had special crash landing ‘dromes, airfields, but I didn’t have enough petrol left to go so we just had to chance that the wheels had locked down. They felt as though they were locked down but didn’t show. I think that’s the story. We had a bad night. Everyone had a bad night on the Nuremberg raid. But it was, we did, it’s very hard for an RAF bomber to have a [pause] shot down fighter confirmed. Have you heard the story? For example if we saw a fighter, if we saw a bomber go down, through a fighter, shot down, a fighter. We would have to take the time, the height, the latitude and longitude and all details like that. And we would have to do it and so would other, about another dozen other planes come in with the same, with the same news. And if they all confirmed well they would, if they were all together we would get it confirmed. The Yanks used to, you know the top one used to shoot the fighter down and then the next layer down would put the hole in him as well, but very, very hard. We did get a confirmation of getting a fighter that night.
AP: That was on Nuremberg.
DL: That was on Nuremberg. Yeah.
AP: Oh wow. Can you remember that engagement at all?
DL: Yes and no. It was, there’s been a lot of stories written about it. A lot of books about it and everyone’s got a different opinion. I think we took five hours to get there and three hours to get home. We were using tactics to try and put them off. We would head, head towards another German city and before we got there we would turn off and go somewhere else. The idea was that by the time we got to Nuremberg the fighters would be on the ground refuelling. But instead of that they were there waiting for us and there’s all sorts of stories told about why. Careless talk and all that sort of thing. But that was absolute horror. There were ninety six aircraft shot down that night. You know that story? Yeah.
AP: Can you, can you remember particularly the fighter that your gunners got? Can you remember that attack?
DL: The what?
AP: Particularly, the fighter your gunners shot down.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Can you remember that actual engagement?
DL: Yes. Yes.
AP: What happened there?
DL: Well the rear gunner just advised that he had a Messerschmitt on his tail, on our tail and to corkscrew. The same thing. Corkscrew. But while we were doing all of that the rear gunner was perfect. He was terrific. And I guess while we were, while we were doing all this throwing around he put a few bullets into it. Because it was very hard for us because they were using .5 cannons and we were using 303s. So, of course they, they could get us before we could get them. But, no I can’t, maybe except for throwing around and trying to get out of the way so that the — but the gunner just reported that he had got it.
AP: So how many —
DL: Other than that it was just routine flying. What you do if you’ve got a fighter on our tail.
AP: So, ok that is one of my questions. The gunner says, over the intercom, you know, ‘Fighter. Fighter. Corkscrew port. Go.’
DL: Yeah.
AP: What happens next?
DL: That’s right. He says, he might say, ‘Fighter, fighter.’ Or they were called, what word they used. What words did the Battle of Britain use?
AP: Bandits.
DL: Bandits, yeah, bandits. So and so, and so and so. Corkscrew. I was always known as, I was never called skipper, I was always called, I was always the youngest in the two crews I had and I was known as Junior. Which someone had painted on my helmet. And he would just say, ‘Corkscrew. Corkscrew Junior,’ and he’d just keep giving an account of where the fighter was if he could see it still. But we were, yeah, so, he got close enough to us. He missed us fortunately, the tracer bullets going in, going past.
AP: And as the pilot, how, how do you do a corkscrew? What are the movements and how do you actually make a difference?
DL: Oh you’re just flying it all around. Up and down. Up to stalling point or down, you know. Just trying to, so that you couldn’t get which there was still enough room to get, to get his eyesight, his bomb site on us. His guns on us.
AP: So —
DL: That was just, just corkscrew was the best way of getting away from a fighter.
AP: How many trips did you do from Lissett?
DL: How many?
AP: Yeah.
DL: From Lissett I did twenty seven. And the 158 Squadron had three Flights. You know all about the Flights.
AP: Yeah.
DL: A B and C. And C Flight 158 moved to Leconfield and formed 640 Squadron. So, and I was in C flight, I was actually, I was flight commander of C Flight. And we moved over to Leconfield as 640 Squadron. And I only did four trips from there, from Leconfield. The — when we go to a bomber squadron it is a known fact that we would be expected to do a tour which would comprise thirty ops. Many were taken off. What we called screened at twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine. There were a shortage of crews at the time. This was in March ’43. There were a shortage of crews and although the squadron commander CO had said that we were, we were ready to be taken off the crew were getting a little bit, a little bit [pause] what would I say? They were getting a little bit cheesed off. I became flight commander and was only allowed to do one trip a month. And there’s a reason for that which we can get on to. And they were getting a bit cheesed off with waiting around, waiting to be — waiting to finish ops. Not nastily but they just felt that they were, had had enough. And so we’d done our thirty and I said, ‘Ok fellas. That’s it.’ But on the night of this Nuremberg raid Bomber Command called for maximum effort. Now, when, when they called for maximum effort it was every plane they could get on the airfield and any crew they could get. So there we were supposed to have leave and finish because we were still on the squadron as a crew they wanted maximum effort. We were, every crew was put on and so we were rostered to go that night. And so actually it was our thirty first trip, op. And after that, yeah, we did finish up. They all went. They were all posted to different areas of instructing and I was posted to the RAF College to do what was called a junior commander’s course. During the time at Lissett on 158 Squadron our CO had finished. He was in permanent air force but he had finished a tour of ops and he had been posted to 158 Squadron as CO, but, and he was, they weren’t allowed to fly. COs weren’t allowed to fly on ops although they, they had a plane at their disposal. A staff plane which was shared with a couple of other squadrons. But he had itchy feet. Now bear in mind that he was not allowed to but he had itchy feet and he decided that he would go on an op one, one night. And he didn’t have a crew of course so he took with him the navigator, a crew from 158 Squadron. The navigation officer, the gunnery officer, all the senior officers on the station and the flight commander of C Flight which was the Flight I was in was, he was a squadron leader navigator. Unusual but he was a squadron leader navigator but he went as the CO’s navigator. Well, they were shot down and didn’t return. Here we are at 158 Squadron. No CO. No leaders. No flight commander for C Flight. No one to roster the crews for ops the next day, or the next couple of days. What a mess. I’m, our crew, as far as C flight was concerned was the, had the most experience on the squadron and I was asked as a sergeant to fill in for the squadron leader flight commander because they couldn’t get one. Couldn’t find one, particularly in a hurry. So, on the next night sure enough there were ops on so I with the other two flights — A and B squadron leaders, went and rostered all the planes and the crews for the night’s op, and off they went. And we had done twenty three trips I think at the time. Or about that many and we were the most experienced crew in C Flight and on the squadron actually. There were other officers on the squadron but they had, they were just none of them had done many ops at all and didn’t have any experience with, and so it so happened for the next six weeks they couldn’t find a flight commander and so [laughs] I was asked to have the job and I was given the rank of squadron leader. Six weeks from flight sergeant to squadron leader [laughs] and took over C Flight. Well then, C Flight as I told you, C Flight then moved over to Leconfield to form 640 Squadron and I was acting CO there until they found a CO for 640 Squadron. Still, still with a rank of squadron leader. And so that was it. But our crew, after the Nuremberg raid we all split up and they were posted elsewhere and so was I —
AP: So —
DL: So there we are.
AP: As a flight commander what actual duties did you have and where did you do them?
DL: Well, the duties were split between the flight commander’s office and the ground crew out at the dispersal area where the aircraft are kept. The flight commander was really, did all the paperwork necessary for C Flight. Not, not the administration for the squadron but just for C Flight. But it meant getting the orders for the day. If there was going to be an op on for that night roster the crews and make sure they were all ready to go and had no problems with crews. I was helped a lot by the chap who was flight commander of A flight. In fact, he helped me, he helped me even to his own working. He gave me advice that, from a flight commander’s point of view. I still, a New Zealander he was, and he’s still a friend of mine. He lives up in Queensland and he’s still alive and he helped me magnificently. In the meantime also we had transferred from Halifax with radial, no with Merlin engines to Halifaxes with radial engines. Mark 3 Halifaxes. And so when we moved over to Leconfield we had Mark 3 Halifaxes which were even better than the Mark 2s. And of course the radial engines were better because they were air cooled whereas the Merlin was glycol cooled. Liquid cooled.
AP: So —
DL: And when, there’s an anecdote there. With the, with the appointment as flight commander we had, I had the use of a motorbike and shared the use of a Hillman Minx motorcar. Have you heard of a Hillman Minx?
AP: Vaguely.
DL: They were not too.
AP: No. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen one.
DL: A Hillman Minx. The air force, the RAF had a lot of these. Hillman Minx’s, little cars and they were shared with the other two and I had this use of this motorbike and the car and I couldn’t drive any of them. I was nineteen. I was. And I could fly a four engine aeroplane before I could drive a motorbike or motor car.
AP: So did you, did someone teach you how to do it?
DL: Yeah.
AP: Or how did you get around it?
DL: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Very good, alright. So after you’d been to Leconfield your tour finishes. You said you went to a junior commander’s course?
DL: I went to a junior commander’s course at the RAF college at [pause] where was the RAF college, Grantham I think.
AP: Cranwell.
DL: Cranwell, that’s it.
AP: Yeah.
DL: Yeah, Cranwell, now a junior commander’s course. There were about fifty of us. Mainly group captains, wing commanders, and a few squadron leaders. The idea was that the college was teaching these wing commanders and group captains how to be COs at squadrons. They had, most of them had finished their tour. Most of them were permanent air force blokes. Most of them had finished their tour and were being trained to be squadron COs. And I was put there, I don’t know why but I went to this course and it was just doing that. Learning how to run a squadron. But being more familiar with air force law and being more disciplined as far as a squadron was concerned. Now after, I don’t know how that lasted, I can’t remember that but after that that during that course we had a lot of exams and all sorts of things. And at the end of the course it was, I was found that I had done well in air force law. Now, I’ve never, I wasn’t interested in it at Cranwell but for some reason or other I — what happened then?
AP: No. That’s alright, the sun went down. The sun went behind a cloud. It just got a bit darker.
DL: What was I saying? As I did air force law and I was posted to a field somewhere as part of a, and I did well in organising Courts of Enquiry. So I was posted to an airfield somewhere, non flying to take part in organising Courts of Enquiry. Collecting evidence. Me and a couple of others there were, not just myself. Collecting evidence. This was mainly for crashes that had occurred during training practice and collecting evidence and all that sort of thing. And then the lawyers would come in who were mainly [pause] well they were seconded to the RAF. They wore a uniform although they weren’t in the RAF. They were like doctors and then they’d come in. Look at all this evidence and then find the pilot or whoever — why the aircraft crashed. And most of it was quite clear to me that they were fit on trying to make that the pilot error which I didn’t agree with. And I hated it there. Absolutely hated it. I wanted to get back to flying. And so I was friendly with a girl who was the personal assistant to the air officer commanding 4 Group. You know all about the Groups of course. And after I’d done a couple of these Courts of Enquiry I applied for leave. It was granted and so I went up and, to 4 Group headquarters and looked out, up this girl. Not romantically. I was just a friend and I was, she had an office outside of the Group commander’s office and I was sitting in her office with her just having a cup of tea and the Group commander came. She had a intercom thing on her desk and he came through the intercom and asked this girl if she knew of a spare pilot in 4 Group who could go down to 35 Squadron and take over a crew. They wanted a squadron leader. A squadron leader on 35 Squadron because 4 Group supplied 35 Squadron. The pilot had been injured and the crew were, were ok. And they wanted a pilot to take over this crew until such time as the other bloke could come back. So I’m sitting there, spare pilot and I said, ‘Hey, hey how about me?’ And she said to the air officer, commanding, you know, ‘Squadron Leader Leicester’s here. He’s looking for a job.’ So the CO said, ‘Send him down to 35 Squadron.’ So down I went. And when I got down there and made myself known to the CO he said that the pilot wasn’t as badly damaged as they thought he was and after a fortnight leave he could come back and fly with his crew. So I’m down there. And I said, ‘Well what do I do?’ He said, ‘You either go back to 4 Group or you volunteer.’ You had to volunteer for Pathfinders as a single unit. So I said, ‘Oh ok.’ I said, ‘I’ll keep on flying. Thank you very much.’ So then I was posted to the Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit flying Lancasters. Now, it’s funny but at this Pathfinder navigation, quite often when crews finish their thirty trips there’s one or two of the crew that don’t want to go instructing or anything like that. You’ve heard that story have you? Understand it?
AP: Go on.
DL: Yeah. And they want to keep on flying. So, if they don’t, if they can’t find a place for them the only thing they can do is volunteer for Pathfinders. And so within a week of being at the Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit in came a navigator, DFC and Bar. He had done flying, all his operational flying on Mosquitoes and he came in, navigator. And in came a bomb aimer DFC. In came an engineer and so on. Within a week or ten days I had a crew. And so we did a bit of flight training in the Lancaster and got to know each other and finished what we had to do. Strangely enough we were posted to 35 Squadron. We could have been posted to any other Pathfinder unit but we, it was usual for 4 Group to, 35 Squadron was originally Halifaxes. So that’s how that all came about.
AP: Alright. How did, in terms of the operational flying that you did how did Pathfinder flying vary from Main Force?
DL: Well —
AP: How was it different?
DL: Generally speaking for example the Pathfinders had a number of steps in a squadron. You’d start off at the bottom and step and then as you got experience you’d be given a different job to do. Now, when we, when we first got down to the 35 I think our aggregate in, every, every one of them had done a tour of ops. I think the aggregate was over two hundred. And so here we are at 35 Squadron as what we called a sprog crew, a new crew. And the first op that we were asked to do we were called a supporter. That was the bottom rank. Now, we would go in exactly the same way. Drop bombs with main force but carefully examine the work of what the Pathfinders did and so that’s as we got more experienced we got a different job to do. We didn’t carry bombs. We carried incendiaries. But we carried flares and as flares were required by the Master Bomber well we would drop them according to what was required.
AP: So you said that there were different levels of Pathfinders.
DL: Yes.
AP: So support was one of the bottom one.
DL: Yeah. I was trying to think of some of the levels. What was second? Supporter. An illuminator. Now, an illuminator would [pause] a raid is controlled wholly by the Master Bomber. Now, the Master Bomber would go in twenty minutes ahead of, ahead of main force with other Pathfinder aircraft and as an illuminator we’d go in early and we would drop an illuminator flare which would light up the whole of the area we were going to bomb. So, if we were bombing Nuremberg the illuminator would go in. If we were bombing the railway yards at Nuremberg the illuminator would light it up so bright that the Master Bomber could see quite clearly what he was looking for. And when he found the marshalling yards he would ask for a red flare to be dropped. And there would be a Pathfinder aircraft carrying red flares. And then when the red flare was dropped the Master Bomber would assess to where it was to where it should be. For example if it dropped on the Adelaide Oval instead of the Adelaide Railway Station he would be able to tell the main force of bombers it’s not in the right position and so on. And then the Jerries would start dropping red so we as Pathfinders would have to change them to green or something like that. And then others were visual marker. You could, dropping flares visually. You could see. And blind marking. You’d drop them at night. Or drop them above clouds. There was markers on little parachutes.
AP: How would you know where you were when you were above the clouds in that sense?
DL: Where that’s where navigators came in. They were, the navigator in Pathfinders had to be spot on. My navigator got the DSO when we finished.
AP: Wow.
DL: He came with the DFC and Bar. He got the, he got the DSO. He had to be, we worked to a tenth of a second and yeah, he was pretty sure he was right. He would have visual. He would have blind markers and they would drop them in the air but of course they had they would hang on parachutes so of course they’d drift all over the place. Then they had visual centrerers. That’s another name I can think of. The top job was Master Bomber. The second was the Deputy Master Bomber. You could get to Master Bomber class for example and never do a Master Bomber raid. Because there were eight squadrons in Pathfinders and each of them had their Master Bombers I guess. And we became Master Bomber status. You were given an extra crew member. There was so much radar equipment in a Pathfinder plane that the navigator just couldn’t handle it all. So, we had an extra man that was called a set operator. And he would just work entirely with, with a navigator.
AP: And would he be next to the navigator?
DL: Next to the navigator, yeah.
AP: On the same bench.
DL: Yeah. Just working all the —
AP: A bit squeezy.
DL: With all the equipment. Yeah.
AP: Wow. And so what, what level did you — what were you?
DL: I got to Master Bomber level.
AP: You got Master Bomber.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Did you ever do any Master Bomber raids?
DL: Yeah. I did. I did quite a few.
AP: Tell me about that.
DL: Hmmn?
AP: Tell me about that. I’ve never spoken to a Master Bomber before so —
DL: [laughs] I just told you about it. Just get there first. The Master Bomber is the first to get there and the last to leave and he’s flying around all the time assessing what’s going on.
AP: How would you communicate with the rest of the crews?
DL: By just voice over.
AP: On VHF. Or on the, what would they call it?
DL: I don’t, no. It wasn’t VHF.
AP: It wasn’t.
DL: No. It was, I don’t know what they called it but they were all on the same channel.
AP: Yeah.
DL: And the Master Bomber did voice over.
AP: RT.
DL: We would just tell them what to do.
AP: Excellent. So ok, how many, how many trips did you do with Pathfinders?
DL: Thirty eight, thirty seven.
AP: Thirty seven. Golly. Do any of those stick out in your memory?
DL: Do what?
AP: Do any of those stick out in your memory? Same sort of question we had before?
DL: The same sort. The same sort of things happened. We used to say in [laughs] on the squadron, Pathfinders squadron if anybody came back on four engines we used to rib them. We used to joke with them and say, ‘Haven’t you been there? Where did you drop your bombs?’ [laughs] One, one fella I remember he took the ribbing so [pause] so much to heart that on one occasion when he came back he called up for his turn to land and he was given his turn to land. And when he got down to number one turn to land on his downwind stretch he cut one motor [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
DL: That was the sort of things that happened though.
AP: Actually just ripping off that for a moment. The landing procedure when you all came back from a raid. All your aircraft are arriving at more or less the same time.
DL: Oh yes.
AP: How did that work?
DL: Well, more or less the same time.
AP: Yes. How was that organised because obviously only one can land at once.
DL: Yeah. Oh well, we had to stay while we were over enemy territory we had to stay as we, you know, as the raid instruction said. We couldn’t, we couldn’t drop our bombs and just put the nose down and whizz for home. We had to stay where we were supposed to be. But as soon as we crossed the enemy coast, to cross the English Channel it was everyone for himself. But we would get back. We’d come in on a beam. The pilot’s mostly would come in on a beam and we, we’d get back to our aerodrome and call up with the call sign, whatever it is and say, and say, request, ‘Request permission to land.’ And back would come the control, ‘Your position to land is number six. Circle aerodrome at six thousand feet.’ Something like that. And then he’d gradually bring you down to five, and four and three and two. Yeah.
AP: Yeah, that’s how it sort of how it works today.
DL: That’s how it worked.
AP: The beginnings of air traffic control.
DL: The first in, best dressed, [laughs] the one with the fastest plane.
AP: Alright. Were, you told me about, in your previous or earlier on actually, that’s right. You told me something you used to do instead of going to the pub with your Pathfinder crew.
DL: Well, yes, when I got this Pathfinder crew they were all top blokes. And, but when we had a day off flying and there’s nothing on tonight most of the crews would go down to the local pub. Most of them, if not all of them. And when, the first time we were off flying someone said to us, ‘Look, we’re all going down to the pub. How about coming down?’ Were inviting us to come down. And we said yes. I said, ‘Yes, ok. We’ll be there.’ But just before we left to go down to the local pub the rear gunner came up to me and said, ‘Junior [laughs] how about we don’t go down to the pub till later?’ He said, ‘I’d like to have our crew stay behind for an hour and I’d like to talk to you about, all of you, about aircraft recognition.’ Now, the rear gunner on Pathfinders I had, he was an expert on aircraft recognition. He was a Londoner. But boy he knew every, every aircraft backwards. And I said, ‘Oh yes. Ok.’ So we told all the others that we wouldn’t be down ‘til an hour later. And he put us in a room and showed us shots. How to recognise enemy aircraft and our aircraft. Amazing. He was absolutely amazing. So we had an hour with him, seven of us. And then we hopped down to the pub. Now, on the next time it came up one of the others, perhaps the navigator said, ‘Listen, Jimmy had you back for an hour last time. How about me having an hour?’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ And so the same thing happened except the navigator, he told us all about his equipment and how it worked and everything else. And then the third time the engineer had a go. And we were already, in fact we got quite a name and people used to rib us and call us all sorts of names and laughed and joked. Until one day one of the other, we were going and we were off and one of the other crew’s pilots came over and said, ‘Listen, we know that you stay behind every time,’ to, you know we used to do parachute drill and we did all sorts of things. And the pilot said, ‘Look, do you mind if we join you?’ And I said, ‘No I don’t mind at all.’ But I said, ‘Why join us? Why don’t you do it yourself?’ And so he did it himself. And it wasn’t long before every crew in that squadron was doing exactly the same thing. They would stop behind and an hour later at the pub, incredible, incredible. But oh boy we had, the crew, the crew I had were out of this world. I’ll tell you something funny about that too. Do you know that I flew with them for I don’t know how long and I did not know their names, their surnames, and I don’t think they knew mine. I was, I was Junior and that was it. No, surnames. What names. For, yeah for example, the bomb aimer’s name was Rusty when we were at PNSU, Pathfinder Training Unit. He introduced himself as Rusty. He was a London policeman. He had the DFC. He was Rusty. Now, what the Rusty meant I’ve got no idea. And the navigator was a New Zealander. He was Pat. His name, no I’m sorry we knew their surnames. We didn’t know their Christian names. His name was, he was called Pat. He was Patrick. What his Christian name was we had no idea. The engineer was Titch. A little Canadian. Flying Officer Lloyd. Didn’t know his, didn’t know his Christian name. And there was seven of them. Never knew. Jimmy, the rear gunner, we called him Jimmy but he didn’t have a J in his [laughs] he wasn’t J something Hughes. I knew their surnames. Didn’t know their Christian name. Incredible. And they didn’t know mine.
AP: One of the other, he was a Halifax pilot that I interviewed in Melbourne recently said, I think it was his mid-upper gunner, his surname was Bill so he was always Dingle.
DL: Yeah.
AP: That was it. He never found out his Christian name.
DL: That’s right. I’m the same.
AP: Seventy years later.
DL: Incredible. That’s good you’ve heard that story before.
AP: Yeah, a similar sort of thing to you.
DL: He was on a Halifax. What squadron was he on?
AP: He was 578 and then 462.
DL: 462 was an Australian squadron.
AP: It certainly was. Yeah.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Only on 462 very very briefly.
DL: Where were they?
AP: Oh bugger I can’t remember now. Burn, at 578. I don’t know where 462 was.
DL: No. I don’t. I don’t know where 578, I’ve never heard of 578.
AP: A place called Burn they were.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Anyway. They came out of 51 squadron same way as you.
DL: 462 was 4 Group. Halifaxes.
AP: 466 was the other one.
DL: 466. 461 was too.
AP: Yeah.
DL: But they were 3 Group I think. 461 were 3 Group, I think.
AP: I can’t remember. Alright, so you mentioned something earlier as well. Just going back to some notes that I took down.
DL: That’s alright. No.
AP: Something about as flight commander you could only do one trip a month and there was a reason for that, that you were going to say.
DL: Well the reason for that was when the CO of the squadron went and took all the officers with him an instruction was ordered that flight commanders were only allowed to do one a month. That was interesting too because the other, the other two got a bit of a reputation of picking what they thought might be an easy trip. No trip was easy. But they, some were easier than others of course. I used to put up on the board, on the 1st of the month that Leicester flies on the, well on this case, Leicester flies on the 28th of August. And my crew knew that as well so they could do all of their planning. And when it came to the 28th of August there was no trips that night. No flying. 29th the same. The 30th — Nuremberg [laughs] so that’s how I got to do that. They used to wait until they saw what the others used to wait, well the story thought of. They used to wait until they found out what the target before they decided.
AP: What that might be.
DL: Yeah. Yeah. Take the nearest one, or the shortest one. Or the less defended one or whatever.
AP: What else? Yes, alright. So you have a DFC and Bar I believe.
DL: Yeah.
AP: That’s also unusual. I haven’t met someone with a DFC and Bar before.
DL: Haven’t you?
AP: No.
DL: You know what that is.
AP: It’s a second DFC.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, so —
DL: Yeah, they don’t give you two medals.
AP: No, just the one little bar.
DL: I’m sorry to ask you that. Of course you’d know. But, you know, I had an interview last Monday, Anzac day and the reporter was a girl. She just didn’t know anything. She hadn’t done her homework. She didn’t know what the questions to ask. She had no idea what a DFC was let alone a DFC and bar, you see.
AP: So why do you have two DFCs?
DL: Why? Well, I think one was given for the Nuremberg raid, and the other was towards the end of, and I can’t think what raid it is now.
AP: So they were both —
DL: They were both immediate awards.
AP: Immediate, they were, both. Wow. That’s also unusual.
DL: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: So we might have to dig the citation out. I’m’ sure it’s there somewhere. Ok, cool. So how did your second tour, well your Pathfinder tour, end?
DL: It ended, well, we had been discussing it for a while. And we thought we had, had done enough. But I applied for a job. The then CO for Qantas was in England and this is early ’45. The war is coming down a bit. And he was recruiting pilots to restart the Australia — England route for Qantas using aircraft called Lancastrians. And I applied for that and was one of eight. They wanted eight pilots. And I applied for that and was actually picked to be one of the eight pilots. But when I got back to Australia I was still in the air force of course. I had to be discharged and I was discharged being deaf in one ear or not, not requiring the, not reaching the required deafness. And the Civil Aviation at that time, Department of Civil Aviation — Federal. Would not accept anybody or Qantas would not accept anybody who had any defect and so I was put out. I had stayed in the air force and I went to all sorts of troubles. But that’s what happened. I just missed out on flying for Qantas. The, it’s always been a bit of a sore point with me. When I joined up in 1941 with the air force medicals we had to go through an ear, nose and throat specialist. Now, when I came out for the discharge five years later, four years later, we had to go through the same medical procedure. Who’s there? The same, the same doctor. And the first words he said to me was, because I came back with quite a bit of publicity actually because of decoration and being a squadron leader at nineteen and all that sort of thing, and the first thing he said to me, ‘Oh you whippersnappers come back and you think you own the world.’ And he just, he gave me a bad report on my ears. And although I, it didn’t show in any other way and my own GP I went to who I saw during the war, before the war, he gave me a test — no. Nothing was wrong. But I went through all sorts of tests and the Department of Aviation said no. Qantas said no, so that was it. But I’m not, I don’t regret that because the fellows that did stay in, none of them liked it. You know, you had to fly straight and level. You couldn’t, you couldn’t spill a cup of tea [laughs] they just sat there and the aircraft did it all for them. So that’s the story.
AP: That’s not so, not so exciting for a bomber pilot, with sixty eight flights under his belt I’m sure.
DL: No. No.
AP: Alright, so your tour in Pathfinders. When did you actually finish flying with Pathfinders? When was your last trip?
DL: February. January ’45.
AP: So, you pretty well, at that point having done well more than the minimum you could pretty well pull the plug yourself.
DL: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok. And then go in. Ok, so coming home. How did, how did you get home?
DL: Flew home.
AP: Flew home.
DL: I flew home and as [pause] well we were temporarily, the eight of us were temporarily discharged from the air force and we flew two planes home. A Liberator and a York to Australia. We landed in Perth and then we were back in the air force. And we couldn’t go to be Qantas staff until we had been officially discharged from the air force. So that’s what happened. We actually flew home.
AP: And so you, you flew the aeroplane yourself.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Wow.
DL: Well eight of us did.
AP: Yeah. Nice. So you said something about publicity on your return. I’m just sort of curious as to what that was like for a twenty something year old.
DL: Well just that you know south SA boy makes good. And, you know, that sort of thing. And I still get a bit of that actually. You know on the march on Anzac Day the chap doing the commentating had obviously done his homework and he said, you know, he mentioned my name and said all about, you know, sixty eight trips and all that. My actual log book shows as sixty seven. But there was one trip where we had crossed the coast, enemy coast. And the raid — we were all recalled. It was aborted, officially aborted. And at the time we weren’t allowed to count it as an op. But later on —
AP: It did count.
DL: We could count it. Yeah.
AP: Right. How did you find readjusting to civilian life?
DL: Very, very hard. It was very difficult because, you know, we left home as we were eighteen and we came back we were twenty two, twenty three. All of the jobs had gone that we would have been perhaps been promoted to. Someone else had got those. And it was very hard to get anything. In the six months from the time that I left school at the end of 1940 until I was called up for the air force, or eight months I worked as an office boy for a company. A manufacturer’s agent in the rag trade. And when I came back of course that office boy job was no good. I wasn’t a boy anymore anyway. But he knew someone in one of the retail stores and I got a job as an Adelaide representative of a Sydney company in the rag trade. But unfortunately the chap in Sydney, the owner of the company in Sydney died at the age of forty two and it all fell through. So I then got in to the food trade. I worked for Cadbury’s for four years [laughs] and then worked for other food companies right until I retired in 1988.
AP: I guess the final question, possibly the most important one. How do you think, or what do you think is the legacy of Bomber Command and how do you want to see it remembered?
DL: Well, it’s a hard question but whenever I hear the words Bomber Command mentioned I think of the hundred and twenty five thousand boys that joined. A hundred and twenty five thousand. Plus of a hundred and twenty five thousand. Of which fifty five thousand would die. Forty four percent, you know. It’s a big — and in Pathfinders it was fifty percent. I think of them often. Particularly on Anzac Day and Day of Remembrance and any time I see a Bomber Command bloke has died whose name’s in the paper. It’s hard. I’m a very emotional type and I cry very easily and it really — Anzac Day gets to me. But I consider I was proud to be part of Bomber Command. I don’t know how else to put it. They played their part. They’ve been criticised badly in some areas for what they did and how they did it. I have no apology for that. I did what I was told. I did what I was trained to do. What else could I say? I call them a hundred twenty five thousand heroes. A hero to me, Adam is not the bloke that kicks the goal after the siren that wins the game. The hero is the bloke that stands on the front line and gets shot at. Does that sound alright?
AP: That’s a very emphatic way to —
DL: I’d like to talk about defences.
AP: Go for it.
DL: People often ask me what I considered to be the worst. I always say searchlights. You can dodge fighters, you can dodge flak with a bit of luck. You can be hit by a fighter. You can be hit by flak and get away with it at times, you know. A lot of people didn’t. It depends where it was hit. But searchlights were impossible. They were so bright that a pilot could not see a thing. Could not see a thing. And I can say, and once a plane gets caught in searchlights, one searchlight, well the other hundred and fifty all, yeah and you form a cone like that. The fighters can see you. The gunners can see you on the ground. None of the crew can see you. It’s absolute curtains. So, for that reason I say searchlights were the dangerous things as far as I concerned. And unless you were trained and told really how to avoid them it was curtains. Once you got caught you couldn’t get out of it. But you could fly through them and that’s what I used to do. I mean, I’m doing a hundred and sixty mile an hour. The fella on the ground training the searchlights can’t move that quickly here. So you’ve gone before he can get you. The thing I feared most was an engine failure on takeoff fully loaded. I had that on one occasion. I lost power on one engine. It’s frightening. You know, you think you’re going to not take off and you land with your bombs on, you know. How does that cover it do you think?
AP: That’s pretty good. Any final words before I —
DL: No. I thank you, and I thank you for what you are doing and the work that your committee and everyone else is doing. I think it’s marvellous. I’m glad that Michael did get in it because he you know he went to England for the, me with the Queen there.
AP: Yeah. He’s quite proud to show that photo.
DL: Yeah. I’m quite, very pleased with what you’re doing.
AP: Good. That’s absolutely the least we can do.
DL: You’re on the last Sunday in May are you?
AP: First one in June.
DL: First Sunday in June. Originally it started off to be the first Sunday in June. Why has it changed?
AP: It’s a contentious thing at the moment.
DL: Yeah.
AP: The first Sunday in June is the official day.
DL: Yeah.
AP: That’s in Canberra.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Canberra’s sort of the sort of main one.
[telephone rings)
DL: Can you excuse me a minute?
AP: Yeah. Go for it.
[ recording paused for chat]
AP: That’s alright. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. That’s right, the day that changed. So it was in, in Canberra and it still is the first Sunday in June except if it’s the long weekend when it’s the one before I think. So the concept was the Bomber Command Commemorative Day. You know, supposed to be the same day around the country and around the world.
DL: Yeah.
AP: I don’t know why it changed in Adelaide. Different Groups organised all the different ceremonies.
DL: Yeah.
AP: So it’s RAFA here and in Western Australia. It’s the Queensland University Squadron in Brisbane. I don’t know who does the Sydney one because most of them are in Canberra. And with our Group which is different. Separate to RAFA that does the Melbourne one. I’m of the opinion and our group in Melbourne is of the opinion that we should have them on different days. I think the Canberra one is the big one. That’s what everyone sort of wants to go to and I think all the individual States should be on a different day because that gives you a chance to, I can go to the Melbourne one and then go to Canberra. So it’s a bit like Anzac Day. I don’t know what it’s like in Adelaide but certainly in Melbourne and Sydney Anzac Day, the day itself that’s the day of the big march in the city.
DL: Yes.
AP: The Sunday before is typically when all the little suburban RSL’s hold their services. So that allows the veterans to go to their local one and then also go to the big one in the city. I see it as a similar sort of concept for the Bomber Command Day. However, in Melbourne there’s a long standing booking at the Shrine on the day that we want. So we’re going to have to, we’re still working on that. We’re going to have to negotiate to get the day that we want. But that’s what it is so I don’t know why it changed here. I’m in contact with Dave Hillman who organises it for RAFA South Australia.
DL: It won’t change here you say.
AP: I don’t think. I don’t know. I don’t know why it changed and I don’t know.
DL: I would have thought David would because originally it was the first day in June.
AP: Yeah. Yeah. I know last year the one in Canberra had to change.
DL: Yeah.
AP: Because of the clash of bookings.
DL: Yeah.
AP: So it actually changed after it had been advertised if you like but yeah I don’t really know. It was useful for me because I could go to both of them.
DL: Yeah.
AP: But this year I’m going to Canberra for the Saturday night. Flying back to Melbourne Sunday morning and then going to the ceremony in Melbourne. Anyway, yet more travelling. Now I’ll stop the recording because we are still going here but I’ll cut this bit out.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ALeicesterD160501
PLeicesterD1601
Title
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Interview with David Leicester
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:04:02 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-05-01
Description
An account of the resource
David Leicester grew up in Australia and worked as an office boy before he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He completed 68 operations as a pilot with 35, 158 and 640 Squadrons and as a Master Bomber with Pathfinders. He describes how he always kept his own parachute rather than hand it back and always asked the same person to pack it for him.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
158 Squadron
35 Squadron
640 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
Flying Training School
forced landing
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Master Bomber
mess
military ethos
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Cranwell
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Leconfield
RAF Lissett
searchlight
superstition
target indicator
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/297/3452/PMcBeanLW1602.1.jpg
8c7fbfb2845990a68d2b4ba40cd383c3
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/297/3452/AMcBeanLW161022.2.mp3
c1d0e5a458132c81e8eb1429d0346aaa
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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McBean, Lachie
Lachlan William McBean
Lachlan W McBean
Lachlan McBean
L W McBean
L McBean
Description
An account of the resource
117 Items. Collection concerns Lachlan William "Lachie" McBean (1924 - 2019, 430629 Royal Australian Air Force). He was a pilot whose crew had just finished their course at a Heavy Conversion Unit when the European war ended. Collection consist of an oral history interview and photographs of people, places and aircraft.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Lachlan McBean and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-22
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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McBean, LW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive is with Lachie McBean who was a pilot at the tail end of World War Two. The interview is taking place at Lachie’s home in Ballarat in Victoria. It’s the 22nd of October 2016 and my name is Adam Purcell. Lachie, start from the beginning. Can you tell me something about your early life? Where and how you grew up and what you were doing before you enlisted?
LM: Yes, Adam. I was a country boy. I, we came from a place, a town called Seymour in Victoria. My people originally came from Moulamein in New South Wales but I was still, I was going to school in Geelong when I turned eighteen and on turning eighteen a friend of mine and myself both joined the air force. And we were told that we had to finish our school year out before we would be called up. So we did finish our school year out and then in January the following year we were called up then. So, I didn’t have any work experience or anything like that before I went into the air force.
AP: What, what were your thoughts and how old were you when you heard that war had been declared?
LM: Oh I think I would have been about fourteen or so and I remember, I remember the occasion very well when Mr Menzies announced that Australia had declared war. It’s quite vivid in my mind. I guess in those days being a school boy it didn’t, it didn’t have a great Effect on us but we were aware of people joining the services and going away. It was a little bit ahead for us being only about fourteen or so at the time.
AP: Did you have any thoughts about whether or how you might have been involved yourself eventually?
LM: Not initially. Not initially, Adam but as the time goes on when we were getting towards the age of eighteen it wasn’t discussed amongst school, school mates at all but we all, I think we all just automatically understood that we would be joining the services. There was no thought of, not in my mind, of doing anything else. I think everybody, almost everybody, just assumed they would be in the services.
AP: What — did you sort of see any effects of the war as like in those few years before you enlisted yourself. So home front type things.
LM: Sorry I didn’t —
AP: Sorry. Did you see any effects of the war? Like in, on the home front in the first sort of few years before you enlisted yourself? So as a, as a civilian essentially did the war have any effect on your life in Australia?
LM: Oh yes, certainly. Certainly by the, being aware of the people who were joining and going away and yes we were certainly as school kids aware of the effects of the war, but we certainly were pretty sheltered by it. Looking back on it I think we should have been more aware. But we still remember all of the, all of the more important things that were happening through newspaper reports of course and radio.
AP: Why did you pick the air force?
LM: It seemed to be an automatic choice. I just, I wouldn’t know when we picked the air force. I think I must have been always a little interested in the air force because I did know a little bit about some of the aeroplanes that were used prior to that. I remember, for instance, the Hawker Demon, the Bristol Bulldog. There was another one that I [pause] won’t come to mind at the moment. I remember when the Avro Anson first, first came out to Australia, well, pre-war. So I must have had a leaning. Leaning that way. I certainly didn’t give it a lot of thought.
AP: It was always, always going to be the air force. Alright. What about the enlistment process? So, once you were, once you were called up what happened next. How did you enlist? Where did you have to go and what did you have to do?
LM: Well, we, I went, I went to Melbourne. I can’t think exactly of where it was. We, in civilian clothing of course. We were put on to a troop train to go to Sydney that night. There was a troop train ran every night from Melbourne to Sydney. I well recall going for the troop train because there were all army, mostly army personnel on there and we were dressed in civilian clothing, young people. They knew we were in the air force. We got, we got a lot of cheek from the army blokes. And I do remember we were very pleased to get shut into the carriages that were there. Away from the [pause] what were they calling us? Blue orchids or something to that effect. But I know that we were quite pleased to get away from the army thing and I can even remember an incident on that troop train going. We were stopped outside, outside Wagga. I think it was just the southern side of Wagga. There was a big army camp there and a lot of the army people used to come from the camp, hop through and the train would stop and they would get a ride into Wagga on the troop train. And one of the, one of the army fellas was trying to get through the fence and he got his pants caught on one of the wires. And a train stopped there with hundreds of people hanging out the windows barracking at him [laughs]
AP: Can you remember much of the interview or medical process that you had to go through before you were accepted?
LM: No. I remember very little. Very little about it. We did a medical. We did a medical I’m not sure if it was on that day. Certainly we had to do a medical, a medical. But, no, I don’t remember any details about that.
AP: Were you on the reserve for any length of time or did you just go straight in?
LM: No. I went straight in.
AP: Straight in. Scratch that question off the list. Alright, so you were on a troop train up to Sydney. Presumably your Initial Training School was at Bradfield Park.
LM: It was at Bradfield Park, yes.
AP: Tell me something of that. What happened there? What was the place like?
LM: Well, it, it was a surprising place because it was the nearest railway station I believe was Lindfield and quite a built up area and the Bradfield Park camp was not very far from the station. Probably about a mile. But when at, at the camp you wouldn’t know you were in a built up area. There was a very steep bank at the back of the camp going down to the Lane Cove River. It seemed although, although in a, virtually in a built up area it wasn’t noticeable at all there.
AP: What sort of things happened there? What can you remember of what you did? What you learned.
LM: Well, certainly the thing that I most remember there was the drill instructor that we had. He was, he was a corporal, Corporal Sheriff. And Corporal Sheriff had more power than any officer that I’ve ever came across I think. He used to be a professional boxer and showed all the signs of it. He had a flattened nose. I had heard of cauliflower ears before I went into the air force but once I saw Corporal Sheriff I knew exactly what cauliflower ears means. His grammar was out of this world really. He, he would say to you things like, ‘What was the first thing I learned yous was when I seen yous?’ And you had to answer to him, ‘Corporal that yousil tell us nothing wrong.’ He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t stand you saying, saying, ‘You wouldn’t tell us anything wrong corporal.’ You had to say that, ‘Yous’il tell us nothing wrong.’ And I have great memories of Corporal Sheriff. And although he was rough and tough I now regard him as one of the people who had a lot of influence on my life. He was a strict disciplinarian. Disciplinarian. And he wouldn’t stand for anything but your best effort. And I think I learned a lot from Corporal Sheriff.
AP: What was the accommodation like at Bradfield Park?
LM: Oh well, I thought it was excellent. We were in a Nissen hut, about thirty people I think. And very good, and very good meals. Yes. It was, it was, naturally from a kid coming straight from school it was an experience. I hadn’t had any experience of the outside world and that was all new to me but I coped pretty well.
AP: Some of the, can you tell me some of the, well about some of the other people who were in your course? In your intake. Like — did you make any mates in particular?
LM: Well yes. I actually did go, one of my friends, the friend who we joined up together did go in with me so that was a help. And also another. I had another friend who unexpectedly was called up in the same draft. He was in a different flight from me but I knew him very well. But there were a few characters in amongst them. I had been used to, because I’d been at boarding school, I’d been used to living with other people. But there was certainly a few characters. One — Kevin Brennan, I remember was a great character. Another one — Lou Murray who was older than most of us. He was twenty five or six and had been in the army and Lou was a great character. That, we all got on pretty well together.
AP: There was a lot of helping each other out with the lessons and the study and all that sort of thing as well.
LM: I don’t know so much about helping each other out. Yes. I suppose we did. We all, we all [pause] well, we all coped. We all seemed to cope and we had, I can’t remember a lot about it but it was almost in a way like going back to school again because we, we had, most of the day was occupied with lectures of some sort or other.
AP: That was going to lead me to the next question. Was there any sort of time off or time spare at ITS and what did you do with it if there was? Was it go, go, go the whole time?
LM: We, we did have leave in the [pause] I’m not sure if it wasn’t every second weekend. No. It might have been every weekend we had leave and could go in to Sydney and do. Do little things. There wasn’t much in the way of sports from what I, what I remember. Quite a bit of work in the gym. But no, I don’t remember. I think we were kept pretty well, pretty occupied. I don’t know what we did in the evenings but we, we coped. I just don’t remember what we did in the evenings.
AP: That’s alright.
LM: We were not allowed out. We were not off away from camp in the evenings.
AP: So, I think it was at ITS that you did a selection board or something where they chose where you were going next.
LM: Yes. We had a Category Selection Board that we had to front up and I well remember that because I was the last one interviewed on, on the particular day. It was considered to be a pretty big ordeal for, for trainees to front the Category Selection Board. And when I was called, called into it there were three officers on the board and I certainly remember it well because Corporal Sheriff marched me in. He, he gave me, you know, ‘Right turn. Halt,’ in front of the, of the officers, ‘Left turn.’ And then said, ‘Sir,’ which meant that he handed me over to the officers. And at the time I thought I didn’t think. I thought there was something wrong with the interview. It didn’t seem to be going smoothly. And then I realised that I was, had put so much attention in trying to do everything correctly that I had forgotten to salute. We were supposed to give them a smart salute. And I waited until there seemed to be an appropriate answer and I threw a salute to the three officers. And something strange happened then because the one who was in the centre had a lot of papers in his hand and he picked these papers up and put them up in front of his face and he seemed to be shaking a bit. But the officer on each side of him both dropped their pencils on the floor and they took a fair while to get their pencils back again. I wondered. And when they did one of the officers made some sort of a comment which I thought was a bit like a school-girlish comment and they all burst into laughter. And of course, you know having this this recruit forgetting to salute them was a great joke to them. And after that the interview went, went pretty well. I know that they kept talking about my navigation. They asked what category I’d like to be and I said, ‘A pilot,’ and they kept talking about and saying my navigation was pretty good, ‘What would you I think if we made you a navigator?’ And I said, ‘Oh well if I’m made a navigator I guess that’s right.’ Anyhow, it turned out at the finish that they did select me for my first choice so that was lucky. But actually when I forgot to salute I was more worried about Corporal Sherriff standing behind me than I was about the officers. And in fact now that I remember it that Corporal Sherriff took me to task. He said, ‘You’s has disgraced me.’ [laughs] and he sent me down to his hut. He said, ‘At the double.’ He said, ‘There’ll be, there’s a couple of pairs of boxing gloves behind the door. Go and get those and meet me in the gym.’ Which I did. I was terrified about that and when I got there Corporal Sherriff was working on a punching bag and he was a lather of sweat and anyhow I thought this looks pretty bad but he said to me, ‘Put them down there and get out of me way. Clear off.’ [laughs] Which I did pretty smartly.
AP: Excellent.
LM: He was a great character, Corporal Sherriff.
AP: Obviously had you well, he had you well figured out. Or he had trainees well figured out.
LM: My word he did.
AP: Yeah [laughs] very good. Alright, so you’ve just found out you're a pilot. You then get shuffled off to EFTS.
LM: Yes. I went.
AP: Where was that?
LM: I went off to EFTS on Tiger Moths at Narrandera in New South Wales. Southern New South Wales. Yes. Can’t remember. I think there were two or three of us there but I don’t remember the other people who went there. So —
AP: What, what happened at Narrandera? Tell me about the learning there.
LM: Narrandera. Well it was, it was pretty interesting. The, it was in the wintertime and I’ve always thought since that you didn’t know what a frost was like until you’ve experienced one at Narrandera. You’d sometimes be flying at 7:30 in the morning and you could see the whole countryside absolutely white below as if it were covered with snow. It was very, and of course an open cockpit. When we got down you would probably not be able to feel your legs ‘til probably 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning. But Narrandera was good. Yes, we enjoyed that. And that’s about it, I think, for Narrandera.
AP: A question I have to answer every pilot — tell me about your first solo.
LM: Yeah, my first solo was interesting in that I was having a bit of trouble landing and I thought that I was probably going to get scrubbed because I could do, handle everything else but I was having a bit of trouble landing. And when it came to the critical time they gave me another instructor and he straight away, he straight away identified the problem that I was having with it. I was able to correct that to land it perfectly well. I had about two flights with him and then he, he hopped out and said, ‘You’re on your own,’ and so that was, I had no trouble afterwards landing. I think I was, I didn’t realise that, I think I was trying to sort of to wheel them on and didn’t realise, and hadn’t been really instructed by my original instructor about three pointing them. But it was just a matter of just one, you know, one comment, or one from the new instructor that fixed it.
AP: I can, yeah, I have a story that’s almost exactly the same. I was flying at Bankstown in a Cherokee and I’d completely forgotten how to land.
LM: Yeah.
AP: This was shortly after I’d got my licence. I just couldn’t land it. New aeroplane, new instructor ‘cause I was getting checked out there.
LM: Yeah.
AP: And I did about two hours with him and then, or two or three hours with him and I just couldn’t figure it out. And then I went with another instructor who had something like thirty thousand instructional hours.
LM: Yes.
AP: And he went, ‘You’re looking at the wrong place on the runway.’ It was as simple as that.
LM: Yeah.
AP: Fixed it. Never had a problem since.
LM: Well, I was trying to bring them in on a, I think, touch the wheels down instead of just holding it off. Stalling it on to the ground.
AP: Very good.
LM: Yeah. Very, very simple and very effective from the new instructor.
AP: How — did you spend any time there as one pilot’s called it, tarmac terrier? Starting engines up and things like that before you started.
LM: No. No I didn’t do any of that. No. No.
AP: Just straight into it. After EFTS you went to a Service Flying Training School.
LM: I went to, on twin engines on Avro Ansons at a place called Mallala in South Australia. Just north of, north of Adelaide. And I really, I really enjoyed being at Mallala. And —
AP: What happened there? Why did you really enjoy it?
LM: For some reason we, we used to have, I think, three days off every second weekend at Mallala and we could go into Adelaide. I’m not a city person at all but I really liked Adelaide. I felt at home over in South Australia and have ever since actually. But it was, it was a cropping area around Mallala and we used to do a lot of cross country flights to interesting places. Up to the Flinders Ranges and Port Lincoln over to the, to the west. They were, used to fly those with, with two trainee pilots. One would be navigator on the way out and swap over. Swap over with the other pilot and the course was very interesting. But for some reason I seemed to feel at home over in Mallala and I didn’t, I didn’t realise until later in life that my forebears first came to Adelaide in South Australia. And an old forebear arrived in Adelaide in 1838 and became an overlander. And I just seemed to feel at home there. So yes I enjoyed Mallala. Yeah.
AP: There was Ansons you said. What did you think of the Anson?
LM: The Anson. Oh I really liked the old Anson. They seemed reliable and not complicated. And I think a lot of people were not very impressed with them but yes I’ve still got a soft spot for the old Anson. Yeah. But they, they seemed to me to be simple and safe, yeah I enjoyed them.
AP: Where did you go from Mallala? What was next?
LM: I think, Mallala — after Mallala was to [pause] must have been to the Melbourne Cricket Ground as embarkation depot I think.
AP: Tell me about the MCG.
LM: Well, the Melbourne Cricket Club, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, yes. It was an interesting place to be. I lived there for three weeks. Under no circumstance were we allowed to set foot on the ground itself but we had parade grounds on the tarmac in front of the, I think it was in front of the old, the original old members stand. Yes, three weeks there for — I actually was, I was meant to go overseas a little earlier than I did because I’d been given pre-embarkation leave. My mother had gone to live in Canberra at that time and I had only a few days. I think about four or five days embarkation leave and the train, I was late back because of a train not connecting and when I got back the rest of the boys were all ready to go overseas and I remained there another couple of weeks. And, and by doing so the ones that I had been with had gone on a ship via the Cape of Good Hope. And the ship that I travelled on went via New Zealand and the United States. So I probably would have selected that way of going.
AP: Right. Tell me about that boat then. Tell me about that trip to the UK.
LM: To the — well we were taken to Brisbane. We were in camp at a place just north of Brisbane for two or three nights and embarked on a, on an American troop carrier called the Matsonia. The Matsonia was almost empty because they had taken troops to New Guinea and we, we travelled from Brisbane quite close to Lord Howe Island. I would think probably only a mile off Lord Howe Island. They’d got these remarkable high cliffs that I’ve always remembered there. From there to Auckland. Not allowed off the ship at Auckland and then from there to San Francisco, and we had about a week or so in San Francisco which was pretty interesting to young blokes like we all were. Not long left school. About a four day trip across the United States by train through — I remember going through a tunnel called the Moffat Tunnel which was, I think was something like seven and three quarter miles long. The longest tunnel in the world. I remember seeing the first snow I had ever seen. The place might have been called [unclear]. Salt Lake City. Places like that. Passing through. Detroit. Passing through them and then we had a week or so in New York. The American people were absolutely great to us. I know that on at least two occasions some others and myself had had meals in a restaurant and had gone up to pay for it and been told it’s already been paid for. And people had already paid for them and not even come up and told you they were doing so. That happened at least on two occasions. So, yes the American people were great.
AP: Can you tell me some more about New York?
LM: More about New York.
AP: Yeah. And your — well you spent a week there. What sort of things did you do?
LM: I think —
AP: What did you think?
LM: Well, first of all at San Francisco when we had a week or so there we were, we were camped on an island in the San Francisco harbour which was quite close to the famous prison island which is [pause] won’t come to mind now but there is a famous prison island in San Francisco and we were quite close to that. But in New York we, I know that we were billeted for a few days with a doctor who took us to an opera. It was, the opera was called, I believe, “Carmen Jones,” and it was all black, all black cast. He took us to his country, his residence in the country further to the north. I can’t remember just where but I do remember it was very cold at the time and I was with a friend of mine called Doc Davies from , who came from Perth. And there was a pond. He had a country property. There was a pond on this property that he had which was covered in ice. It was a beaver pond. The pond had been made by beavers and I remember Doc being, I suppose silly enough but walking out on the ice there and went through the ice and into the freezing water. But he was able to get out easily enough but, it — we looked of course at all the buildings. The famous buildings in New York. I think most of us went to visit Jack Dempsey’s bar. He was, I think, had been World Heavyweight Boxing Champion prior to that. That was a famous place. And anyhow it was a great experience for young people. From young people from the country in Victoria.
AP: You’re not the first person to tell me about Jack Dempsey’s bar, so —
LM: Is that so?
AP: Yes. A lot of people have mentioned it.
LM: Yeah.
AP: Yeah very good. Alright. Then you go across to England.
LM: Yes. We, we went to, if I remember correctly there were only seventeen in our party and yes, we, I was put in charge of the baggage of this lot and I was taken down to the wharf with all the baggage. The day prior to our sailing I think it was. But however we travelled on the Queen Mary and in New York harbour tied up along, beside the Queen Mary was the Queen Elizabeth. So the two biggest ocean liners in the world were tied up together. We were fortunate to travel up together in the Queen Mary which was a great experience. There were lots of rumours. The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth carried lots and lots of troops to, to England. And there were lots of stories about u-boats looking for them. Hunting them. However, we had a, we had a — our trip was ok. I believe that the trip that I did was to that time had the record number of troops on it than it had so far. And I understand that there were twenty two thousand troops on because there were a lot of American troops being taken to England prior to D-day. And I understand they had one soldier sleeping in a bunk in the daytime and a different one sleeping in the same bunk at night. And I can remember them having the canteens on the decks and the American troops had to line up. To line up at these and they’d have to, they’d get their rations slapped on to plates and then they had to run for about a hundred yards away. They had American service police who were belting them on the backside with a baton and saying, ‘Get moving buddy.’ And they’d belt them on the backside with batons to make them run so they would clear the area out and not be hanging around there. And I might add they’re talking about the meals on troop ships the meals we had on the American troop ship, the Matsonia were absolutely magnificent because the ship was almost empty and probably four or five course meals, unbelievable for troops. Yeah.
AP: Lovely. This is the first time obviously that you’ve been overseas isn’t it?
LM: Oh yeah.
AP: Yeah.
LM: Yes. Yes.
AP: It would have made a fairly big impact I imagine.
LM: A fair?
AP: A fairly big impact.
LM: Oh yes. Oh well, but I guess, I guess we took it all in our stride. It surprises me now that they didn’t seem to be big deals. All the young people just seemed to take it in their stride.
AP: So you, you then land in the UK.
LM: Yes, at Greenock.
AP: In Greenock. And presumably you then, you probably caught a train down to Brighton or something similar.
LM: Yes we would have caught a train to Brighton. That was, that was our first posting in England, to Brighton.
AP: What did you think of England? Seeing it for the first time as a young Australian.
LM: I guess again, I guess again we just took it in our stride. We just accepted what we, what we saw. I don’t remember having any particular thoughts about it. No. I can’t think of any immediate. Any impressions that I had.
AP: Did you, when was the first time that you realised you were now in a war zone?
LM: Oh well it didn’t take long to realise that because of course there were — beaches were, were fenced off with barbed wire along there. There were anti–aircraft guns on the beach front. More or less in front of our billets. We were billeted in a couple of the big hotels. There was the Royal and the Metro. I can’t remember which one I was in but I know there were plenty of signs of wartime then. You often used to see in the evenings the, off the coast you would see what certainly appeared to be gunfire. I understand the little motor torpedo boats used to get involved in little actions off the shore. You saw plenty of signs of that at night. Occasionally at Brighton, even at Brighton occasionally sirens going, air raid sirens going off. Oh no, it was soon very very obvious that [pause] I think we could get down to the beach. The beaches were not sand. They were, they were pebble beaches and absolutely marvellous for throwing stones. Skipping stones across the water. And I had one friend Henty Wilson and I — there was one place you could get down to the water and throw stones and we regularly went down throwing stones in the water there.
AP: Where did you go next, after Brighton?
LM: I can’t quite remember. I was at Brighton for, for a while. I don’t remember quite where I went but probably there was a, we went to a camp which was an interesting posting. We went to one called Credenhill near Hereford and it was not to do with flying. I can’t remember the purpose of the camp. We did a lot of exercises. Climbing over walls with nets on them and through big pipes and all that sort of thing. We did a lot of, did a lot of, a lot of exercises but it was interesting in that camp because after we’d been there for a few days all of the pilots on the course were called in to be given a talk by an RAF officer. And I don’t think we, I don’t think we understood what the talk was about really. But when he’d finished his talk he, he said, he asked us if any of us would volunteer to retrain as glider pilots. And we could hardly believe this. Nobody was remotely interested in it. He not only asked, he not only asked if anyone would volunteer. He more or less pleaded. He seemed to be quite insistent and, but still nobody even remotely thought of doing. We thought it was a backward step. And I don’t think, I don’t think we thought any more about it after that but about a month later after breakfast one morning I can recall.
[phone ringing, recording paused]
AP: Now you were saying about a month later, a month after —
LM: About a month later, near at the end of the course we were out after breakfast doing some exercises and we could hear the drone of aircraft, and suddenly aircraft appeared towing gliders. Going straight over our heads. Not at great height. Probably fifteen hundred feet or thereabouts and the sky became full of aircraft towing gliders and if you looked to the north as far as you could see and looked to the south as far as you could see they were gliders everywhere there. Strangely, at the time we didn’t immediately realise what was happening. It was later in the day that it was announced that the D-day landing had occurred and then of course we came to understand why we were asked if we would consider remustering as glider pilots.
AP: Wow. That’s great.
LM: So that was a, that was a pretty interesting posting to that place.
AP: Wow. That’s a good story. I like that one.
LM: Strangely I, I can’t I can still see them going over today but I can’t remember. I think they were mostly DC3s towing the very big gliders. Mostly DC3s and I can’t, I can’t even remember anyone commenting on what the aircraft were that were towing them. But the sky was full of aircraft as far as you could see. North and South and even from where they were coming they took quite some time to go over us.
AP: Suddenly we understood. I like it. Alright, were there any other training, well there were some more training units. After that did you do AFU or something like that? An Advanced Flying Unit.
LM: Oh yes. We did, we did a refresher course on Tiger Moths and I think we did a beam approach course on [pause] I can’t remember what they were but we did, did an AFU or whatever on Oxfords. Airspeed Oxfords, which were a bit of a step up from the Ansons I suppose they were but I would still prefer the Ansons myself. And yeah, that was I can’t think where we were doing that but it was quite a comprehensive course on Oxfords. There was, there was another interesting posting. I think it was actually where we were doing the Oxfords. Yes. I think it was. It was at a place, at a small village called Badminton which I understand is pretty well known because of horse trials they have there. But it was, it was interesting in that in doing this course and yes I’m pretty sure it was with, with the Oxford — on one of the runways the one that was mostly used on taking off it went directly over the top of a very, very large mansion. It was, I think about three storeys high this mansion, and stone. Had a magnificent looking garden and driveways around it and had a big area of park like grounds surrounding it with scattered trees and a herd of deer in the, this surrounding land. And the deer didn’t seem to be worried in any way by the aircraft going over but, but the home belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort if I remember correctly. But we, and when it took off and going up straight over the top of the building we’d only be probably two or three hundred feet over it, night flying as well. And we couldn’t understand why that would be allowed because, especially because it was the wartime residence of Queen Mary. Queen Mary being the wife of the late George the Vth. I think he died in [pause] probably seven or eight years prior to the war. Anyhow, that was Queen Mary’s wartime residence and here are these aircraft flying directly over the top of the thing. Could not, and once we were very fortunate that we were invited. The dominion blokes who were on the course. Probably about a dozen Aussies and three or four Kiwis. Might have been a Canadian, I think. A couple of South Africans probably. We were invited to go to this. It was called Badminton House I think. We were invited to go and watch a film being shown. The film was, “Pygmalion.” And we were taken over in a bus, shown into this very large room barely furnished that had a screen for showing the film on. It had a row of about oh probably seven or eight more or less comfortable chairs and then probably about three or four rows of wooden benches. And also had a table with cups and saucers and things on it. Very big room. Very high ceiling. I reckon probably about twenty foot ceiling or something. So we were shown into that room and after a while a door opened and two very good looking girls walked in there and that caused a fair bit of excitement amongst all of our blokes. And soon after that they were followed by a couple of fairly foppish looking young blokes about the same age. That caused a bit of comment too I can say. And then two or three other people came into the room and then Queen Mary herself came in and she stood at the doorway and she looked at all the troops and beamed at everyone, looking around. Then she took up her seat and we all sat down. The lights went out. They showed this film, “Pygmalion.” I think later called, “My Fair Lady.” A couple of, I know a few of us were a bit worried about that because we knew the word, ‘bloody,’ was used a couple of times [laughs] in this film. Anyhow, we watched the film and enjoyed that and when it was finished the lights went on and Queen Mary stood up. And we would only be sitting, you know, probably three rows, three to four rows behind her. Probably ten or fifteen feet or something behind her. And she stood up and she beamed at everybody again and walked out followed by the others. Not a word was spoken in the entire time from when the time the girls came in ‘til everyone went out. Not one word was spoken. We were then given our cups of tea and some sandwiches and off home. So we were pretty fortunate to have that opportunity. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Presumably Church Broughton happened fairly soon thereafter.
LM: Went to Church Broughton.
AP: Yeah. You mentioned Church Broughton.
LM: Well we would have gone soon after Church Broughton was OTU. Where we crewed up. Crewed up at OTU. Yeah.
AP: Tell me about that process. How you crewed up.
LM: I don’t remember much about it. I mean, I think the process was that we were, a whole lot of us were let loose in a room and we had to make up our own crews I think. And I don’t really remember much about that process but we came out of it with a crew. We had, two of us were Aussies, a couple of Scotsmen and a couple of Englishmen. Six in the crew at that time. But, yeah. I just can’t remember much about the process. I think, I think most people are you know, sort of understood pretty well what happened but, you know I just don’t remember much about it.
AP: What sort of flying did you do at Operational Training Unit?
LM: Well it was on Wellingtons there and first of all it was mostly daytime. It was getting familiar because it was the biggest step of all, I think of, of going from an Oxford on to a Wellington. It was , yeah it was a bigger step than [pause] certainly bigger than previously and then of course there was a crew there to be thought of us as well. And yeah, quite, quite a big step and did, did mostly daylight until I guess we became familiar and competent with it. And mostly night flying after that. And it was, it was good joining with a crew. We seemed to get on pretty well I think and I think most crews got on. Most people on crews got on well. I really can’t think of any times when there was problems amongst the crews. I guess there were at times but I’m not aware of them and, you know, our crews certainly got on well.
AP: What was I going to ask you next? [pause] So you’ve now been in England for a little while. What sort of things did you get up to on leave and when you were off duty?
LM: Well when I happened to have a few relatives that I was able to visit. I certainly didn’t do enough visiting them but I had an aunt, a sister of my father who actually lived at Hove which was within walking distance of where I was at Brighton. And I’m really sorry to say that I can only remember going up a couple of times while I was there to visit them. I had two half-sisters who lived in, were living in England then. One that was more convenient to go. I used to go there on leave to stay with them. She lived in Stockbridge in Wiltshire, I think. Might have been Hampshire. Later on I had a motorbike and I did a little. We had a lot of leave later. In the latter part and I was able to get petrol for my motorbike. I’m not going to go into too much detail how some of that petrol was got [laughs] but we seemed to manage that and sometimes on a few occasions the whole of the crew went. I remember going, all going to London once because one of the English boys lived in London and I used to like trying to do sightseeing and visiting, looking at famous buildings like Winchester Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral and those sort of places. I can’t think too much more of leave but certainly at the, mostly at the latter time, of course, when the war had finished when we did have quite a bit of leave and that’s when I did the motorbike work.
AP: Can you tell me something more about that motorbike? What sort was it and where did you get it from?
LM: Well it was a Norton 500 and it was said to be the fastest bike on the station and the way I got it was that the flight engineer that joined our crew after we’d finished OTU, when we went on to Heavy Conversion Unit the flight engineer that we picked up had been a, been a racing rider, motorbike racing rider. And he organised this Norton 500 for me and he taught me how to ride it and that’s probably the most terrifying time that I had when I was, entire time when I was in England because he used to go — belt down these narrow country lane. We’d do a left turn for instance and he’d yell out, ‘Go over.’ I didn’t know much about going over as you turned a corner and then he’d yell out, ‘Come back.’ And we’d have to do but had traffic been coming the other way there was no way we could not have collided. He absolutely terrified the living daylights out of me. I don’t know if he was putting on a special show or for me or not, just to show me how good he was but anyhow I was pleased when my lessons were finished on that. It was years and years afterwards that I, it occurred to me that I don’t know whether the bike was registered or not. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been insured and I certainly didn’t have a licence, and I didn’t think a thing about this. And I can’t remember what happened. When I finished either. I think I just left it on the station.
AP: What a shame [laughs] Very nice. Did you see or hear about any accidents while you were training?
LM: Any accidents?
AP: Accidents. Like flying accidents.
LM: Oh yes. Oh well, yes, there were. There were some. There was. On EFTS originally at Narrandera one of the chaps who was quite a good friend of mine he baled out. Had to bale out of his Tiger Moth. But unfortunately he hit the release button instead of pulling the rip cord and that’s the first. That was the first accident, but oh yes, there were. There were accidents throughout the training and it I remember, I remember when we went to Bottesford on the Lancasters when we were taken on to the station. The first thing I saw was that, well we all noted it, was a graveyard of two or three wrecked aircraft, which struck a bit of a cord. Yeah. But yeah, there were often accidents with undercarriage, through landing and that sort of thing. Taxiing accidents too. Fortunately, I wasn’t involved in any accidents at all.
AP: So after your OTU, you’re on a Heavy Conversion Unit. That was, you said was at Bottesford.
LM: That was at Bottesford. Yes. Yes.
AP: Ok. Can you tell me something about Bottesford.
LM: We picked up, picked up the seventh member of the crew.
AP: What, what did you do there? Actually tell me of your first impression of a Lancaster.
LM: Well, I guess they were, they were big and, was the first impression. Big and powerful. But seemed to be, seemed to be, you know perhaps easier certainly than the Wellington. The Wellington was pretty heavy on the, on the controls. And the Lancaster just seemed to be easier to come to convert on to. And they were, they were a marvellous aircraft yes. But that’s about it I think. I can’t —
AP: What did your position, your pilot’s position in the Lancaster? What’s around you? What does it look like? What do you feel?
LM: What was the —
AP: Well the pilot’s position. What does it look like and what does it feel like when you’re sitting in a Lancaster?
LM: Well, the viewing was very good. Seeing out of the, seeing out of the aircraft which was important. There was no obstructed viewing. They looked pretty high when you were sitting. Sitting in them when you first got in to them. Pretty high off the ground. They just, they appeared, they seemed to me to be fairly easy after the Wellington. And I suppose it seems strange with young people who are not even twenty one and that having, and not perhaps being mechanically minded or anything like that, but everybody coped perfectly well. I don’t think I can add much to that.
AP: That’s alright. Some, a place where many things happened was the mess at various airfields. What was the atmosphere like in a wartime mess?
LM: In the wartime, in the mess?
AP: Yeah.
LM: Well it was usually fairly lively most nights [laughs] and I think there was some who used to hang on there longer than others. But I think they were yeah, I just remember enjoyable experiences of the mess as far as I’m concerned. There were occasionally, there was a lot of line shooting went on there I think. You’d see people standing at the bar waving their arms and manoeuvring with their arms and I think that’s where there were a few tall stories there. But I used to, I used to enjoy going into the mess and everybody got there. We used to play darts and all that sort of thing in there and that was a great little hobby, like going down to the local village pubs at night. That was a great little thing and we used to do that a lot. Most of our crew would go down there. And we’d get home alright at night usually [laughs] without too much trouble. But I used to even have my own set of darts that I used to take down to play. And I can imagine the, all the locals how much it would have upset them with all these kids practically coming in and pinching their dartboard and making nuisances of themselves in the local quiet little pubs. They were a great atmosphere in those little country pubs, yeah.
AP: What, you’ve just gone on to the front door of whatever your favourite pub was, you open the door, you step in. What do you see?
LM: What do you see? Well you usually see a fairly good crowd of people in there. And you’d see the blokes, you’d see the local blokes sitting down and playing draughts. A few of the others playing, playing darts. You’d probably notice the great big pots they had instead of a, instead of what we would normally have. They’d have a pint pot and a pint was a pretty big, pretty big volume of liquid. But that’s what they mostly did have there. Oh yeah, well I just think often the pubs that we used to go into were little, little country pubs because you know having an airfield near them you’re not near built up areas. And they were a great atmosphere.
AP: What was the English beer like?
LM: Well, I think you were almost duty bound to criticise it [laughs] but, you know, for all that everybody drank plenty of it. I think it was thought to be warm and this and that and the other but everybody — it didn’t put people off drinking, drinking it. But I think for most Aussies I think it was part of your duty to be critical of it.
AP: Still is. Do any of your flights, all throughout your, your flying career with the air force do any of your flights stick out in your memory in particular?
LM: Do any particular ones?
AP: Flights, yeah, any of your flying. For whatever reason.
LM: I don’t, I don’t see, I don’t think of any being any being particularly remarkable for any reason because we finished our training. It coincided with the end of the war. Pretty neatly I think. We, ours were all routine, routine training flights. There were always times that everybody would have experienced, you know, some drama or other. That happened, you know all the time I guess. There were little things of drama. But I don’t remember any being of any particular significance.
AP: So the end of your, you came to the end of your training and it happened to be the end of the war. How did you find out? Did you know that the end of the war was coming? Did it, you know was there we’re just waiting for it to happen now or, how did it actually happen?
LM: No. It’s such a long time ago now. I think, I suppose my thought is that probably it was only in the last week or so that from from my point of view that I, it seemed it was going to. There was talk of it earlier but to my way of thinking it was only in the last when it was actually coming up to the last week or so that I realised that it was going to. You seemed to be involved in what you were doing and you know I really haven’t got, you know good memories of that time.
AP: What were your feelings when the war did end? You found out. It’s over. Now what?
LM: I I suppose, I think I just thought, well that’s it. That’s it, you know, what happens now? I can’t remember having thought about any great sighs of relief or anything. I think it was, in those days you seemed to, you seemed to live day to day. You did what you had to do and didn’t sort of speculate much on other things and, yeah. I just feel that you went on with life. What was happening, you just went on with it you know. One thing finishes, something else starts.
AP: What did happened next?
LM: What did happen? Well we were sent, from my memory then, when we finished the course, from my memory I think we were sent up by train up to 467 Squadron and we were not taken on strength by them. There’s nothing in my records about it but I think we were sent up to 467 and then, and then without being taken on to the station I think we were issued with new rail passes and sent back again to Bottesford. But that’s getting a long, long time ago and from what I understood was that the crews on our Heavy Conversion Course, the ones that were all English crews, as I understand it, they were, they were sent on to a tour of duty flying prisoners of war back from Italy. I think minus the gunners of course, but the pilot, flight engineer, radio operator and navigator. I think that they were sort of retained. That was my understanding that the English crews did that. And we were sent on leave virtually I think at that stage. We used to get leave extended by a couple of weeks all the time.
AP: And that’s when you were hurtling around on your motorbike most of the time.
LM: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Great. I’ve seen some photos of Scotland in your photo album there. Tell me something of that little trip.
LM: Oh well I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to Scotland. And my forebears came from the Scottish Highlands so that was all very interesting, and that’s the, that’s sort of the destination that I eventually headed to. I did a lot around the Scottish Highlands, Isle of Skye, that sort of thing. And, you know, I was extremely lucky to have the opportunity of doing that. The motorbike seemed to go pretty well and I don’t think I ever had troubles with it. I can’t say what else but yeah, I got, I saw a lot of the Highlands and you know the, the lands that your forebears came from. So I was very lucky there. I wouldn’t have been able to do so otherwise. And I was able of course, with the motorbike, to get down to where my half-sister was living in the south of England. So I don’t know that I can enlarge on that.
AP: That’s alright. So travelled all over England after the war ended essentially is a summary of it.
LM: Well yeah. Well I travelled more, you know, more Scotland and — yeah. More Scotland rather than over the rest of England. Yeah.
AP: So how did you get home?
LM: I came home on a ship called the Athlone Castle. It came from Southampton and I don’t remember it but I noticed in one of the photographs I’ve got there is a photograph of the Queen Elizabeth at Southampton. So therefore I’ve seen the Queen Elizabeth on two different occasions. We came home through the Suez Canal. I think we arrived in Fremantle just before Christmas and if I remember we had Christmas Day between Fremantle and Melbourne.
AP: Christmas Day 1945.
LM: Yeah, ‘45 that would have been. Christmas Day 1945. And one thing I do remember about it. It would be about Christmas Day coming across The Bight between Fremantle and Melbourne. I remember seeing quite a number of whales that were spouting or blowing I think they call it. Yes. Which was quite interesting.
AP: So how long before you were demobbed?
LM: Not long at all. I was demobbed, I think, within a couple of weeks of getting home. As I mentioned my mother had moved, moved to Canberra and I think I had a, just had a short bit of leave, about five or six days or something and was demobbed soon afterwards.
AP: What happened then? How did you find re-adjusting to civilian life? Getting a job. A real job for once.
LM: It was quite unsettling really and I had, we were given, we were on the ship coming home we were given a few lectures on the future thing. We were, we were given the opportunity to go to, to apply for the university if we wanted to. And quite a few of my friends did take that opportunity of doing a university course. I think quite a few of them went. They had a campus at Mildura at the time. Straight after the war. And I actually think I filled in papers to do engineering at the university but I scrapped that. Soon after we got back I wanted to go on, decided I wanted to go on the land and do something because my people had always been on the land in the past. That didn’t, I don’t think that that fact that families had been on the land would influence me but I seemed to come to that decision that I wanted to do that. So I scrapped my, any thought of going to the university, to do engineering. But yeah it took a while to settle down.
AP: So you were a farmer for your working life. Is that what happened?
LM: Yes. Yes. I actually qualified to get a soldier’s settlement block under the Victorian scheme and I think I was very fortunate for that to happen. And it happened in a great area as far as I was concerned. So yes, I was very, very lucky. And until eighteen months ago I’ve lived on that. We lived on that property until eighteen months ago. We were over sixty years there. So that you know that was a really good opportunity.
AP: That was, that’s Lismore I think you said, wasn’t it?
LM: Sorry?
AP: That was Lismore area.
LM: At Lismore area. Yes. Yes
AP: Tell me about the book you wrote.
LM: Well I knew that I didn’t know much about family history but I knew that I had an old forebear who’d come out in the very early days to Adelaide in 1838. I didn’t know much about him really, really at all, and I think the first real interest that was sparked when I was training at Mallala. I had to do a cross country from Mallala across the, across the Mallee country to a place called Pinnaroo, somewhere. And where we crossed the Murray River, I noticed on the chart, just near the place we crossed the river on that flight there’s a place called McBeans’ Pound, and that made me wonder why that would be. I didn’t know anything about it but I knew there was a branch of the family living near the Barossa valley in South Australia and had been there for a long time. I did actually ring them up and speak to one of them while I was at Mallala and I was invited to call out. We used to do a lot of flights around. I remember [unclear] Kapunda, and things flying over, over there. They lived, their property was near Truro which I don’t think I ever flew over, but I did ring one of them. I was invited to go. To go out and visit them. I didn’t get the opportunity to, but that’s, that’s all that I knew and later on I got to, got to hear a few. There were always stories told about this old fella. He settled up in the Moulamein area mainly in New South, New South Wales, but there were lots of stories that were told about him. In fact, when I was boy of ten or twelve or something like that people used to visit my grandmother. And that’s all they seemed to do was tell stories about old Lachie and, but though they were mostly stories about his closeness with money or his eccentric ways or less eccentric ways. When I was a little boy, about ten or twelve or something like that I used to get really annoyed at these people telling these stories and I used to think, you know that story’s not true, and this sort of thing. And eventually, that must have been the first time really thought of the old fella and added to that scene this place called McBean pound on the Murray River caused me to look into it quite a lot. And so eventually I did research and as much as I could and put together this little book that I wrote about him. And I think it’s probably, probably one of the most important things that I have done because all of this history about the old bloke would have disappeared if I hadn’t written it down. Heaps of people in the past have had the opportunity and no one’s done it. And it would have all disappeared so I am pleased that I did write that.
AP: Lovely. Alright. Final question. What, to you is the legacy of Bomber Command and of your time in Bomber Command and how do you want to see it remembered?
LM: To see Bomber Command remembered. Well I suppose [pause] I suppose one thing it certainly taught discipline and that’s anyone who served learned plenty of that. There were certainly huge sacrifices made by, by young people with everything before them and you know as long as that’s remembered and known by people then it can only be a good thing. It would be, you know very sad if a lot of this stuff was lost, and there are not very many of them left these days. But [pause] well, all I can say is that I hope every, you know, every move that made us successful in remembering the efforts of Bomber Command and I don’t think I can add any more.
AP: Before we turn off the tape any final thoughts, stories.
LM: It would be a great weight off my mind if you turned off the tape [laughs]
AP: Alright [laughs] thank you Lachie.
LM: Alright. You know to think of you coming all this way just to do that.
AP: Not a problem at all. It’s been great.
Dublin Core
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AMcBeanLW161022
PMcBeanLW1602
Title
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Interview with Lachie McBean
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:22:58 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-10-22
Description
An account of the resource
Lachie McBean grew up in Australia and joined the Royal Australian Air Force when he was 18. He was a pilot at a Heavy Conversion Unit when the war in Europe ended. After the war he returned to Australia and became a farmer. He also took the opportunity to research his family history and wrote a book about one of his ancestors.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1945
aircrew
entertainment
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Oxford
pilot
RAF Bottesford
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Credenhill
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/300/3457/PMcDonaldDA1501.1.jpg
24affe9a8e5b3c45763f7f0310a07306
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/300/3457/AMcDonaldD151013.1.mp3
1b0cb799bccd5b31e6022fb655bc6475
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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McDonald, Donald
Donald Alexander McDonald
Donald A McDonald
Donald McDonald
D A McDonald
D McDonald
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. One oral history interview with Donald Alexander McDonald (1920 - 2021, 410364 Royal Australian Air Force) as well as two letters, a concert programme and notes on his interview. He flew operations as a pilot with 466 and 578 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Donald McDonald and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-13
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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McDonald, D
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive is with Don McDonald who was a Halifax pilot during World War Two [DM coughs]. Interview’s taking place at Don’s home in Doncaster in Melbourne [DM coughs]. It’s the 13th of October. My name’s Adam Purcell [DM coughs]. Don, I thought we’d start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life growing up [DM coughs], what you did before the war?
DM: I was born in Melbourne and at an age too young to remember, the family moved onto a dairy farm at Koo Wee Rup [?] which is about seventy k south-east of Melbourne. I was born in 1920 and my first recollection of the dairy farm was in early school years, six and a half, seven. It was a pretty tough life, tail end of depression, appallingly low prices for our produce and there was a family of seven children, three girls and four boys so it was a, a tough life [emphasis]. As the result of poor income, low income, low prices, I had to leave school at age fourteen and I was lucky enough to have a, get work in the local post office and general store which was very much a part of Victorian Australian life. My wage was ten bob, a dollar a week for a forty-seven hour week. After a couple of years of that, I entered for an examination for the Commonwealth Public service and, and passed the exam. The examination was held in the Wilson Hall, the old Wilson Hall at Melbourne University. When I say the old Wilson Hall, it was a beautiful building but it was subsequent, post World War Two it was burnt down in a fire which was quite tragic. There was about four-hundred entrants for this examination and there were about twenty positions available, typical of the depression era or immediate post depression, world war depression era. And I was lucky enough out of the four-hundred, I came in ninth, and I misread one question, otherwise I would have gotten third, and I was pretty up, up staged about that because having only got to grade eight in school I was pretty happy with that outcome. And then of course 1939 came World War Two. In about 1937, just after I’d passed the examination for the Public service, I had to move to Melbourne to take up the position and was staying with an aunt and her, and her family. By the time I paid fares plus board and lodging there was no money left for anything else, and another guy who’d paid the same exam as I had, also from the country and equally short of funds, suggested that we should join the 4th Division Signals, because if you attended a parade one night a week you got the princely sum of five shillings fifty cents and, but that was one heck of a lot of money to both of us in the situation which we were in, and so we joined the Signals and so I was in the part time Army. Bear in mind there was no war, there was no ‘your country needs you,’ no loyalty, call on loyalty, no drums banging or cymbals playing to get you to enlist, it was pure economic necessity [emphasis] that we joined the Signals. I was a terrible [emphasis] soldier, absolutely shocking [emphasis] soldier. I didn’t think much of the Army and I didn’t give the Army any reason to think much of me. We attended our once weekly parade round and learnt Morse code and then came the outbreak of war, and with the outbreak of war within a month [emphasis] of the outbreak of war, I found myself in camp at Mount Martha, a newly formed military camp in Victoria on Port Philip Bay. Everything was absolute rudimentary. They were just still building the camp and our tents, we were living in tents and some of those leaked because they’d been stored at a military depot out in Broad Meadows, a northern suburb of Melbourne since World War One, and so they were pretty daggy [?] believe you me. As mentioned I was a shocking [emphasis] solider, I couldn’t – if something could be messed up, I would mess it up, and I’d do right turn instead of left turn on the, out in the bullring, the parade ground. My Morse was okay, I didn’t have any trouble with that, but apart from that I could drop a rifle in the middle of present arms and God, if you wanted to send a sergeant major ballistic that’s a guaranteed way I can assure you. I, I didn’t, I detested [emphasis] the Army and applied for aircrew and was accepted, and of course having left school at grade eight I was really playing catch-up. Our first Air Force camp was at Somers, purely ground subjects, no flying whatsoever, and it was rather amazing. As I say, I was on catch-up but in the evening quite often a lot of us would go down to the lecture huts and instead of going down to a picture show or camp concert or something like that where all the gym [?] there was – and we would help each other out on different subjects, whatever our forte might be, we would help someone, and I got a lot of help and made the grade as a pilot. I’d been brought up in a very [emphasis] strong, very astute Protestant family, and any thought of dropping bombs on people would have been absolutely abhorrent in our home, yet wartime dictated that was how and where I would finish up. I, I – after Somers initial flying training school, elementary flying training school was at Western Junction, the civil airport for Launceston, Tasmania, where we flew the Tiger Moth. Said to be unprangable, however I failed [?] up that story on solo flight. I apparently came in just a shade low, clipped the post on the boundary fence and finished up in an ambulance and in hospital. When I was well enough that prang meant that I had to have a scrubber [?] test with the chief flying instructor. He gave me an incredible [emphasis] drilling, he found out exactly what I’d learnt hitherto in my Air Force training, but I think he also found out what I hadn’t [emphasis] learnt and that was the important. And got to the stage [?] – he was very fair, very fair, he got to the stage of flying test and I think I – ‘cause this was a scrubber [?] test. Any, any messing up on this and my days as a pilot were finished. We, he put me through a few exercises in the air and then said [?] ‘trip’ [?], said ‘take it in and land it.’ And I think I did probably the best [emphasis]landing of my career. I absolutely breezed [emphasis] it on, you hardly knew when we, whether we were airborne or whether we’d touched down. Years later when I would try and relate this story about the perfect touchdown to my crew on a squadron they would laugh like all hell [emphasis], because they couldn’t believe that I could ever have done a decent landing. I from there went onto Point Cook, flew the twin engine Air Speed Oxford and – which was renowned as having bad stalling habits but I never did have any trouble whatsoever with them. Life – speaking from the viewpoint of mere male, to me life in the Air Force is very like life in marriage. Best to do what you’re told most times, the quicker the better, and as I say, happened to do what I was told I ended up in Bomber Command in, in England. Flew the, flew the Oxford again for a few hours and then OTU and crewed up and flew the twin engine Whitely, which was outdated pre World War Two and yet some of our very early people in Bomber Command had to fly the jolly Whitley on operations. No wonder their life span was so short. Alright, carrying on?
AP: That’s a, that’s a very good start. Sorry I wasn’t sure if you were carrying on or not there. Alright we might, might go back a little bit. The enlistment process – so you’re in the Army at this stage and you’ve decided to join the Air Force, so you go and sign the papers, presumably that was Melbourne. Can you remember much of the process? Was there an interview involved, some sort of medical tests? What happened on that day?
DM: Yes the medical test for aircrew was very, very strict, very exhausting and I passed that, not that I was in any great physical specimen then or now, but I managed to pass it. There were several interviews, one heck of a lot of questions, some of which seemed totally irrelevant but they were, they were there and they had to be answered. And it was a result of passing those questions and what have you that I was accepted and went to Somers on initial training school.
AP: What sort of things happened at Somers?
DM: Somers was great. Quite an emphasis on physical fitness, a lot of PT, a lot of square bashing or we used to call them the bullring parade ground drill. I formed an opinion there and it might be a totally incorrect opinion but I still reckon that to be a good drill inspector, the two main or the main attributes are a loud voice and not necessarily much between the ears. That might be quite unfair on DIs because they’re very decent blokes really when you got them away from the program, from the parade ground but they could give you one hell [emphasis] of a time when you were on the parade ground.
AP: From your assistive [?], your service flying training, so your Oxfords in Point Cook, you then somehow got to the UK. How did you get to A to B?
DM: We passed out of Point Cook, got my wings at Point Cook which was quite a thrill. Somers where we posted as instructors around various schools, flying schools around Australia. Some were posted as staff pilots flying trainees around other trainees such as navigators and bomb aimers around, flying them around to give them experience in the air and experience of navigation. I was from Point Cook and this, as I say, we had no say in, in what, in what happened to you. I was posted to pre-embarkation depot which was at the Showgrounds which are in a suburb of Melbourne. We were there for some weeks, awaiting, awaiting a ship. Shipping was very limited, very, very secret due to avoiding enemy action, not giving any secrets away in case – there used to be the saying: ‘tittle tattle buggers battle’ and tittle tattle, you know, words, things said unintentionally, if they got into the wrong ears, you have to be in a pub or something like that, and there was a fifth columnist there, well he would relay the shipping movements and make you ready made for a submarine attack. We, we were at Showgrounds for about six to eight weeks and then one Saturday morning, I can remember it quite well, they said ‘pack up all your gear you’re on your way.’ And we had no idea what ‘on your way’ meant. We finished up at Station Pier Port, Melbourne, weighed anchor late afternoon. Down port full of boat [?] and of course there was a lot of conjecture, a lot of guess work, ‘where are we going?’ ‘Well we’re going to Canada’ because a lot of our fellows went to Canada to finish their training, or ‘we’re going to South Africa’ because quite a few went there to finish their training. We got outside the hedge and turned port, so it was pretty obvious that we wouldn’t be going to South Africa. We hit it off, it was into the dark by now and about three days later we came in sight of land, and it was the coast of New Zealand. We entered a harbour, somebody recognised it as Wellington. We docked there, took on a few Kiwis and headed off again, much conjesture, conjecture [emphasis] and guessing. We all reckoned we’d be going to Canada – would we go around the, the Cape of South America or would we perhaps go through the Panama Canal, and we were heading off in generally speaking a north-easterly direction and after a certain time we were calculating our direction by the watch, you know, point the twelve o’clock at the sun et cetera, et cetera. And after a certain time we reckoned ‘oh no we’re not going around the Cape, we’re too far north for that,’ and then after several more days now, well we reckoned we must be passed the Panama Canal by now, and so it was guesswork, ‘where the heck are we going?’ And one beautiful, bright, sunny Saturday morning we woke up, walked out on deck, and were under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Harbour. Oh we reckoned this would be pretty good, we’d be able to paint the town red that night and, and, and you know, thinking up things we were going to do and not going to do, and about four o’clock on the afternoon, they pulled us into a floating jetty, probably a couple of hundred metres long, and on each side of which, shoulder to shoulder, were big black American policemen with rifles, all with rifles so there was no hope of jumping, escaping, doing anything that we, we would like to do. We were marched up on this floating jetty, straight into a train and that night instead of painting San Francisco red we were heading off east across America. And we spent five days and four nights on the train and ultimately – I better finish this [AP laughs] – we had five days and four nights on the train trans-America, experienced some very kind and generous hospitality from ladies clubs and that sort of things at stations where we’d pull up to refuel with coal or top up the water on the steam engine train. Some extremely [emphasis] generous hospitality, and we ultimately arrived early in the morning at a place called Camp Myles Standish. It was a transitory camp just outside Boston, from memory about thirty miles outside Boston. The nearest town was a place called Providence. We were given – ah when we arrived at Myles Standish we were taken off the train onto trucks and then dumped inside the gates of the camp, and the Americans had a band there to welcome us and they played us into out billets to the tune, among others, of “Waltzing Matilda,” and that was pretty great, pretty special of them to do that. We were granted leave that night and we went into the local what they call Legions Club which is the equivalent of the Australian RSL, and we were made very welcome, given the VIP treatment. We had heard during our time at Showgrounds in Melbourne that it was worth collecting a few kangaroo pennies. Now penny was currency at the time, the second lowest denomination of Australia currency, and some of the nine, pennies in the 1930s were struck with a kangaroos on the back of them, on the reverse side, and we were told that these were in great demand, the kangaroo. And we were having a drink at the bar of the Legions Club and one of us produced a kangaroo penny. Well the Americans who were in the club at the same time went berserk [emphasis] for them, and most of us had kangaroo pennies, as I say we’d been given the mail [?] about them, and if you produced a kangaroo penny you couldn’t buy a beer for the rest of the night. There wasn’t a bloke who – the recipient wanted to shout it for the rest of the night, so that was pretty good fun. After about, I think about two and a half weeks in Myles Standish, there was nothing to do. A few of us shall we say got itchy feet, and five of us decided that we would go AWL down to New York. Fancy being within a few hours of, you know, the Big Apple and not getting there, the temptation was too great. So we sneaked out of camp undetected, got into Boston to the railway station, and thankfully, very, very thankfully bought return tickets. It was a bit over a four hour trip down to New York and we had a great [emphasis] time. The Americans, the Australian uniform, Air Force uniform stood out fairly well because it was known as Air Force blue and it had Australia on the shoulder pads and we, we had a great time. The one thing though which we did [emphasis] discover was that an Australian pound didn’t go very far in New York and a sergeants pay as we then were, a sergeants pay was not very great and after about I think it was fourth day the five of us were all stone motherless broke [emphasis]. We didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and so this, as I say, was the good thing about buying a return ticket. If we’d, if we’d bought a one way ticket we’d have been stranded in New York, so we, we thankfully as I say, had the return ticket. Went to the station about ten o’clock, caught a train about ten o’clock at night, got back into Myles Standish somewhere between two or three o’clock in the morning. Again undetected, and hadn’t been in bed long and we were shaken awake, ‘wakey, wakey, wakey, wakey, you’re on your way.’ Well as I say, the good – there is a wonderful [emphasis] virtues of being stone motherless broke, not having two pennies to rub together. The great virtue on this occasion was okay we were awoken as I say after a couple of hours in bed, on another train and we finished up in Canada, a place called Halifax, a port, and we were put on a ship on our way to England. Now, the beauty about having the return ticket was this: had we not been able to catch the train to New York back to Boston [emphasis], we would have missed the ship from Halifax to England, and would have been classed as deserters. Now, desertion is a very, very serious offence in the forces and instead of getting the ship to England, we’d have been put on a ship back to Australia and arrived in Australia in handcuffs and gone straight to jail, so don’t ever worry I suggest about being stone motherless broke, it can have its virtues [AP laughs]. The ship was the, the ship from Melbourne had been the New Amsterdam which in peacetime was a luxurious Dutch liner. It had been revittled [?] in South Africa and there was only about three hundred of us airmen and about another forty or fifty New Zealanders so it was a pretty comfortable [emphasis] life. We got onto the ship in Halifax, it was the Louis Pasteur which had been a luxury French trans-Atlantic liner pre-war converted to a, a troop ship. America was in the war by now, and there were fourteen thousand [emphasis] troops onboard the Louis Pasteur. It was just incredibly packed, we didn’t get anything, the bell would ring for mess and there was nothing that even resembled edible food. You couldn’t blame the cooks, trying to cook for fourteen thousand people, they didn’t have a hope [emphasis]. The ship, for the first couple of days out we had a Destroyer escort and they were incredible, the way they would charge around. You’d swear they were going to be cut in half, they’d just you know, clear the bow of the Louis Pasteur and the Louis Pasteur, bear in mind you’ve got some pretty big Atlantic seas once you get out of a little bit from the coast, big, big waves, and the Louis Pasteur changed course every seventh minute. Quite violent change of course, and the reason for it being every seven minutes was it took a German submarine eight minutes to line you up and shoot a torpedo at you, so by changing course every seven minutes you had the German subs pretty much at your, your mercy, but it was very violent change of course. That plus the mountainous Atlantic seas, you really were getting your money’s worth I can tell you, and at times fourteen thousand troops – there was no treatment for the sewage it was just pumped out, raw sewage pumped out, and with these violent waves plus the also violent change of course of our ship, it was quite possible at times to have waves break over the stern of the ship and you’re up, you’re standing there knee deep in raw, untreated sewage. Strangely enough we didn’t hear – there may have been but if there was any sickness, any outbreak of sickness it was kept a very, very clever secret because there was never any word of it or any indication of a, a sickness outbreak from this as I say, almost living in untreated sewage sometimes. But after, after about three days I think it was, three or four days, the Destroyer escort just disappeared and one day we saw a speck on the horizon and there was much conjecture, ‘is it one of ours or is it one of theirs?’ It was an aircraft in the distant horizon and it turned out it was a four engine RAF Sunderland flying about and it took over the escort until we got almost, almost into Liverpool and another Destroyer came out and met us, took us under its wings for the last few hours, and so we landed at Liverpool late in the afternoon. Most wharf areas that you go to are not terribly exciting. This far from being exciting was rather depressing because it had had its share of Jerry bombs dropped on it and there was devastation everywhere. It was a quite a depressing sight actually, yeah.
AP: So that’s probably one of your first impressions of, of wartime England, is the –
DM: That’s right –
AP: You know, bombing damage.
DM: Yeah.
AP: This is the first time you’ve gone overseas presumably.
DM: Yes, yes, yes.
AP: As a young Australian, what did you think of wartime England?
DM: It was interesting. We’d left here at the end of early, rather early March, early March at the end of a rather dry and harsh Australian summer, and we got on a train at, at Liverpool and the first hour or two was in daylight and the – having left the harshness, the brown harshness of an Australian summer – there of course it, in March, you’re into spring and the various shades of green on the trees, the far [?] leaves. There was such a contrast to what we’d left back here about six or eight weeks earlier, and if it was very, very impressive without a, without a doubt. Beautiful shades of, of green, it was very, very impressive. We went from Liverpool by train down to Bournemouth. There were a number of delays in the journey, and we got into Bournemouth getting on towards midnight and that was our, we were to have our, that was to be our first English meal, a meal of English rationed foods. Our mess there had been an indoor bowling green in peacetime. Bournemouth is on the south coast as you almost certainly know, one of the most popular holiday spots in England pre-war but it had been evacuated. All the women and children had been evacuated out to the country. It was almost like a service town. All the hotels which had been packed with tourists in peacetime were taken over and used as billets for the three services. We – that was actually on a Saturday night and we got up on the Sunday morning and there was a church parade. Those of you who have been in the services know what it was, the Catholics went one way, the Jews went another way, the Protestants went another way, off to your various denominational services. We came out of our church service – the Catholics had an earlier service than us and some of their guys had gone back to their hotel, got their ground sheets which were a waterproof sheet, multipurpose thing, and laid them out on the lawns and there were a lot of lawns in Bournemouth, and they were enjoying a bit of Sunday morning sun [emphasis], and we came back out of church a bit later than them, and all of a sudden there’s a clatter, clatter, clatter. Now we’d been in England just over twelve hours – clatter, clatter, clatter. It was machine gun fires and so we suddenly realised ‘boy oh boy, this is a warzone.’ And the clatter, clatter from machine guns was German, what they used to call ‘tip and run raids.’ They didn’t do a lot of damage [emphasis] as such but they did cause one hell of a lot of disruption, and they were German fighter planes which would come in low, low, low over the English channel. Low so that the radar couldn’t pick them up, and when they got into, when they got over land they’d up to about a hundred and fifty, couple of hundred feet and they were just shoot. I don’t, I think at times they weren’t shooting at anything, they were just opening up their guns and as I say, nuisance value rather than damage. But interestingly enough I was saying these fellows had come home and come back to the hotel and got their groundsheets. Two of them were lying on a groundsheet, probably not much more than a metre apart enjoying the morning sun and a cannon shell ripped the groundsheet in two but neither of the blokes were harmed, it was quite, quite an initiation to, to fire and to the fact that they were in a warzone. We were there for a while, and there’s nothing worse for morale than having a congregation of guys with nothing to do so the powers that be decided that they would send us to a battle course up just outside Newcastle, Whitley Bay, just outside Newcastle. Here we were to have our introduction to Pommy drill instructors. Now when they use the word Pommy, often it’s used as a sort of derisive type of word. Later on I was to have five Poms in my crew, and whenever I use the word Pom it’s not one of disrespect, it’s more likely to be one of admiration. And anyway, I might have mentioned earlier about the main qualifications to be a good drill instructor being a loud voice and not much between the ears – these Pommy drill instructors did nothing to change that opinion. Whitley Bay had concrete strips, concrete streets, and this was a battle course to harden us up. We were, you know, scaling fences, going into trenches, God knows what, and marching clip-clop along the concrete streets with Army boots which had steel toes and steel heels, and we just about drove the Pommy drill instructors nuts when it came too hot [emphasis]. They would sound like a machine gun, and they used to let us know this, instead of – hot, you know, everybody exactly the heel on the ground at the same time sounded like a machine gun, and they, the more – they would take it out on us, they would make us double, they would make us run with our rifle above our head, but then at night we’d get in the mess or one of the local pubs and have a beer together and laugh our heads off with the Pommy DIs knowing quite well it was going to be more of the same tomorrow. But it didn’t do us, do us any harm, and from there we weren’t back to Bournemouth and on to AFU, an advanced flying unit which was where we flew the Oxfords again. Got a few hours up, the flying conditions were just so [emphasis] different there from what they are back in Australia, though Pommy instructors, and they bet us that they could take us up in the air, fly us around for quarter of an hour and we would be lost [emphasis]. They won the bet. The conditions, particularly around, we were just outside Oxford, and there are railways lines going everywhere [emphasis]. In Melbourne, Point Cook, if you’ve struck a railway line, spotted a railway line going west it’s almost certainly going to go to Bellarat. If it’s going north it’s almost certainly going to Seymour. Here you had railway lines going everywhere, little paddocks about ten, fifteen acre paddocks, whereas here we used to paddocks of hundreds of acres, and the instructors, as I say, won the bet. We were hopelessly lost after a quarter of an hour in the air. Good fun, all good plain sport, we used to have some good laughs about it, and from there we went to OTU, operational training unit. This was where you crewed up, which was quite an interesting exercise. There were probably about twenty-five or thirty of us on the course, and so you were going to have a crew of five, so it meant you had about shall we say thirty pilots, thirty navigators, thirty bomb aimers, thirty wireless ops, thirty tail gunners, and we were put in a hangar together and told to, you know, see if you could pick out someone you liked, you thought you’d like to fly with, and I saw a bloke standing there and went over and spoke to him, and his name was Pat. He was a navigator and started off, mostly, most people started off as a navigator. Skippers, most skippers started off as a navigator, and I had a bit of a yarn with Pat and Pat was, as the name might suggest, an Irishman and he was a wild Irishman. He’d been in a mercenary in the Spanish civil war when they were overthrowing I think it was King Alfonso that was overthrown. Pat was pretty wild sort of a guy and we decided, had a bit of a yarn. ‘Okay well do you want to try, do you want to, do we want to have a go together?’ ‘Yep.’ So then we looked around and saw a few bomb aimers and walked over and had a bit of a chat, and ‘ah yes,’ same sort of thing. So by now we were a crew of three, and the three of us then looked, went over to where the wireless ops were assembled, talking around and what have you. Incidentally, as I mentioned, Pat was a wild Irishman, the bomb aimer was a Kiwi, a New Zealander, the wireless op was from, a Pom from Cheshire, it was culturally [?] often called Cheese, nicknamed Cheese, and, and the – so we were a crew of four by now, picked, like picking number out of a hat really, and then we went over and had a look at the gunners and picked up a fellow, Taz Mears, who was a Pom from Brighton, and so there was the five of us and we decided we would give it a go together. The only unfortunate thing that broke that crew up was Pat got pneumonia and the Bomber Command appetite for replacement crews was insatiable [emphasis] so we couldn’t wait, we weren’t allowed to wait for Pat to get back out of hospital and rejoin us. That might have put a week or two weeks delay on our availability at the squadron, and so the CGI, the chief ground instructor, got us together and asked us would we try another guy who had been separated from his crew. Well this other guy was very, very different from, almost the opposite to, to Pat. He was an ex-public, an Englishman, ex-public school, a bank clark, and our initial meeting was to say the best was quite cool, quite – and when I say cool, not cool the way kids use it today, it was cold, it was frigid. But anyway, we didn’t have much option but to give it a try and it turned out to be good, he turned out to be a top navigator. He, he was ten years my senior, I was twenty-two, he was thirty-two. There were times where he was a steadying influence on the whole crew due to that bit of extra maturity, and we finished up despite the frigidity of our initial meeting, we finished up great mates. We, I went to his mother and sister, the father was deceased. The mother and sister lived at Exmouth, just outside Exeter in Devon, and I went down to their place numbers of times on leave, and the way they treated me was embarrassing. The food rationing in England was extremely severe, like two ounces per person per week of meat, two ounces of either butter or margarine per person per week, one egg per person per week, and we used to say perhaps, but they would save some of these rations so that when Wally and I – his actual name was Philip, Philip Hammond, but the English opening bat test, cricket batsman at the time was Wally Hammond, so Wally, Philip became Wally Hammond as far as the crew was concerned. But we finished up as I say mother and sister would save a couple of pieces of meat so we could have a bit extra and it was embarrassing [emphasis]. They killed us, killed me with hospitality. From OTU we were flying the old Whitley aircraft, a twin engine thing that was out of date before the war started and yet in the very early stages of the war, airmen had to fly the things on operations over occupied Europe, and it is no [emphasis] wonder that the losses were so great. As I say, there were hopeless [emphasis] bleeding aircraft, heavy on the control, sluggish to respond, low air speed, nothing going for them really. But we finished OTU, had a couple of nasty incidents there, and then onto the four engine Halifax. We were stationed just outside York and here further crew selection went on. We had to get a mid upper gunner and a flight engineer, and the same thing as I mentioned at the OTU, you went and had a yarn with a couple of blokes and we finished up with a fellow Pom from Newcastle, his name was Bell, surname Bell. To this day I have not got a clue what his real Christian name was because from day one with the crew he was Dingle, Dingle Bell, and what his true name was, as I say, I hadn’t a clue. And the other was a just turned eighteen year old, in fact I think he might have put his age on a bit, Johnny Cowl, and Englishmen from Kent as our mid upper gunner, so we had our compliment of five for the, for the Halifax.
AP: You mentioned a couple of nasty incidents at OTU, can you expand a little bit?
DM: Yes, the, the worst incident was there were only five crews on this particular course at OTU all of whom had been selected at OTU the same way as I mentioned ours, and we were briefed one night to do a cross country. Now cross countries were meant to get you ready, really ready for ops, and they could last five, six hours and the weather forecast was absolutely shocking [emphasis], and take off was postponed several times due to the weather forecast, and then ultimately it was decided that we would go [emphasis]. And as I say, why it was decided I do not know, but anyway, five crews, one had a crooked motor and didn’t get off the ground, another one of the crew took sick and I don’t blame him in view of the forecast [laughs]. I wish I [laughing], almost wish I had decided that I was sick, so there was two that didn’t get off the ground. Three of us got off the ground, one of them hadn’t gone far when he had a faulty engine and had to return, so that left two of us to – and of course we didn’t know anything about the other three, what had happened to them, we just pressed on. And after a while the control started to get heavy and as I say, the aircraft ultimately [?] was slow to respond and, and this was making it a bit worse, and then we started hearing things hitting against the fuselage and we couldn’t make out what it was, and it turned out, it was decided after we’d gotten back after everything was analysed that it was bits of ice flying off the propellers and hitting side of the fuselage. Things got worse and I lost our air speed indictor. Now what had happened, the pitot head – in case you don’t know what that is, it’s a little narrow tube that protrudes, protrudes out under the wing and the pressure at which the air hits that is converted to the air speed indictor in the cabin, via which we flew. Now, we lost the air speed indictor, and it’s a pitch black night, pitch, pitch black and so how the hell do you judge the airspeed if you haven’t got an ASI? Well with one hell of a lot of good luck, is all I can say. But anyway, we finished the, the course and got back over the airfield. Navigator did a marvellous [emphasis] job, incredible job, and bear in mind we’re only trainee crew, and I call out and said to the flying control, and told them, you know, ‘we’ve got no airspeed indicator and the aircraft’s hard to handle due to the ice, the wings and everything being so iced up,’ and the, the fellow in chargr of flying for the night was a flight lieutenant who’d done a tour of ops and a good bloke, good bloke, and he took over from the airfield controller and said, ‘okay, come in high, come in fast.’ And, which was good [emphasis] advice, no doubting the wisdom at all of his advice but how the bloody hell do you know fast when you haven’t got an ASI? So we, I, by the greatness of God and one hell of a lot, managed to do that and touched down. And it was screaming along the runway because I had come in really [emphasis] fast, screaming along the runway, brakes starting to overheat, no reverse thrust of course in those days, and the human mind is a funny thing really, I believe. I had my hands really full trying to look after and control the situation and I must [emphasis] say, just diverting for a moment, I must say the crew were absolutely marvellous [emphasis]. There was never a beep out of any of them, they each did what they were asked whenever they were asked, they fed whatever information they could to me, and they were absolutely brilliant [emphasis]. But anyway, as I say, we’re charging along the runway, brakes starting to overheat and lose their effectiveness and the human mind, suddenly it dawned on me about the excavation at the end of this runway. I would imagine there had been excavation and they’d taken the stuff out to build the runway and the perimeter tracks and what have you, and so ‘oh my God’ [emphasis]. You couldn’t possibly think of going into that, so I jammed on hard, hard left rudder, going as I say quite fast, and we went into a magnificent bloody ground loop and ultimately shuddered to a, to a halt and you know, we were off the runway, up the middle of the patty [?], out the middle of the airfield somewhere. And we hardly stopped, hardly come to a standstill and this flying duty officer who I’d mentioned to you, who’d gave us the instruction, ‘come in hard, come in fast,’ he, he was out there and up in the aircraft beside me, and anyway he was saying, you know, ‘good show, good show’ et cetera, et cetera, and we went off and, and were debriefed and went to bed. And we got up the next morning and they took us, drove us out to the aircraft, drove the crew out to the aircraft, and there were some bloody great slabs of rubber which had been ripped off the tyre when we went into the vicious ground loop at speed, and we, you know, looked and thought what might have been, what could have been. But we were by no means the main topic of conversation because the other crew I mentioned, you know, three didn’t go, we were the fourth. The fifth aircraft, he lost control [emphasis]. He couldn’t control his aircraft any longer, undoubtedly due to the icing and plus he may have let his airspeed get a bit low and perhaps close to stall. But anyway, he couldn’t control the aircraft and he gave the order to abandon aircraft, jump [emphasis]. And his bomb aimer – it was the bomb aimer’s job, he was the nearest to the front hatch, that was the only exit in the Whitley was the hatch at the front. He, his job was to lift the hatch, jump, and the others in theory follow, that was the theory. He lifted the hatch and froze, he couldn’t jump, and worst still he was blocking the exit, and the skipper, you know, he gave the order again a couple of times, and nothing was happening so he jumped out, out of the pilot’s seat to the front hatch, virtually threw this bomb aimer bloke out of the way and said ‘follow me,’ and he jumped because he knew quite well how low they were getting, so he jumped. Another two jumped and got out, but the bomb aimer and probably the tail gunner went in [?] and were killed. And I, I fell foul of authority because this skipper of course, he was being castigated. You’re supposed, you know, skipper’s supposed to be the last man to leave the sinking ship type of thing. Well I had the greatest admiration for him, because I’ve said, and our crew was agreed, better two blokes killed than five blokes killed, and I was told that I had to give evidence at, at a subject court of, subsequent court of enquiry, and I was marched in with a corporal with a bloody rifle, almost as though I was a criminal [emphasis], and I got in front of the desk where the chairman of the enquiry and a couple of other blokes were seated, and saluted and was told I may sit. And the way, the way the chairman told me, I think put us at loggerheads straightaway, you know. We used to talk cattle dog on a farm [emphasis] nicer than the way he spoke to me, and when I sat down he said ‘you’re, you’re required to answer some questions,’ and I [laughs], ‘I’ll answer any questions you ask me provided I can first make a statement.’ Well, t’was not spaghetti what hit the fan I can tell you. He lectured me about insubordination and this and that and the king’s regulations and God knows what, stathan’s [?] standing orders, and when he’d finished I repeated what I said, ‘I’ll answer any question provided I can first make a statement’ [emphasis]. And he was about to light up again when one of the other fellows on the board of enquiry asked what, why was my attitude such as it was, and I said to him just what I’ve said to you, I, the, ‘the skipper of that aircraft should be congratulated not castigated in my book.’ And anyway, after that a bit of reason prevailed and I was able to make my statement and the questions came thick and fast, and so that was, that was a rather nasty experience at, at, on Whitelys at the OTU so that was what I referred to before. From, from there it was – oh yes I, from there it was onto four engineer aircraft, Halifaxes, at a place called Rufforth which is now a suburb of York, it was just outside York at that time, and I finished HCU, that was called the heavy conversion unit, conversion on the heavy engine aircraft, heavy four engine aircraft, and I was posted to the Middle East. 462, an Australian Halifax squadron in the Middle East, and I thought ‘crikey.’ Just digressing a bit, my father came from the north of Scotland and he still had a couple of sisters, and I still had a number of cousins up near Inverness, right up the north of Scotland, and I’d been up to visit them a couple of times on leave since I’d been in England, and so going to the Middle East I sort of reckoned ‘well, I’m not half way home, I’m a third of the way home from Middle East, so I’ll probably be posted back to Australia.’ So I thought I’d better do the right thing and went up and saw my two aunties and cousins up in Inverness. We had a fortnight’s leave and I, after about a week or so, life up there was a bit dull and the bright lights of Lomond beckoned, and so I said to my auntie, said that I was going to go back down to have a few days in London before I left and that was all a-okay. If you change your address while you’re on leave you had to notify the adjutant’s office back on the unit where you were, so I sent a signal, no email of course in those days, sent a signal notifying my address as chair [?] of the boomerang club in London. I got down to London okay and sort of figured there won’t be much to spend my money on out in the Middle East, might as well have a good time here so there was no show I couldn’t afford to go to, there was no pub I couldn’t afford to drink at. I had an absolute ball and ala New York, just like New York I was stone motherless broke and went back to Rufforth, the camp where I was, the station where I was, and there was a party on in the sergeants mess so I borrowed ten bob, a dollar off one of my mates so that I could afford a beer and I was just about to have the first sip out of this pint of beer, and the CGI, the chief ground instructor came up to me and said, ‘what are you doing here McDonald?’ I said ‘just back from leave sir,’ and he said ‘well, your crew’s been, Middle East’s been cancelled, your crew’s been posted, you’ve been, you and your crew’s been posted to a squadron. The crew have all been over at Burn for two or three hours, two or three days. Be at the front door here with all your gear at seven o’clock in the morning and you’ll be on your way over there too.’ So, what had happened, I’d sent my notice as I mentioned back to the adjutant’s office, but they, they hadn’t profiled it, progressed it, hadn’t put it through the system and so I didn’t, the rest of the crew were recalled. They’d gone, you know the five Poms had gone home and Murray [?] had given the key, we, I don’t know where he’d gone, but they all got recall notices whereas mine hadn’t been put through the mill, and my change of address hadn’t been put through the mill, and so – but that was a great streak of luck, I would say, because I got over to Burn. The, it was almost straight into the CO’s office and he told me to sit down. He proved to be the greatest leader of men I have ever met or am ever likely to meet. He, I was Mac from the moment he met me. ‘Sit down Mac, I know you’re late arriving. Your crew’s been here for two or three days, but I also know that you sent a notice back to the adjutant’s office, you did all the right things’ he said, ‘you’re not, you weren’t in anyways wrong. This is a new squadron,’ and I think we were, I think we were the fourteenth crew there out of squadron strength was normally about thirty, maybe about thirty-two if you were lucky. We were about the fourteenth crew, and among other things he said to me, he said ‘Mac’ – and he’d already done a full tour, and had been selected to form up this new squadron, and one of things he said to me, he said, ‘Mac, you won’t – the only thing we’ll ask of you here is that you give off your best, and you’ll know whether or not you’ve given off your best,’ and so, you know, ‘go and get the rest of your crew round so we can have a bit of a yarn.’ And as I say, he was the greatest leader of men that I’ve, I’ve ever met but very, very [emphasis] sadly, he finished his second tour, was selected due to his ability and compatibility and all his virtues, he was selected to head up a very special training school and went over there. He always wanted to know what was happening to the men under him, and he wanted to find out more about what was happening, what was the routine with these fellows at the special school when they got in the air, and so he said to the commanding officer at this station, ‘I want to go up with, with a crew and find out a bit more detail.’ And the command officer looked his – ‘well everybody’s booked out, they’re all full crews today,’ and he says ‘doesn’t matter I’ll go with somebody, I’ll sit on the floor.’ And that was the type of guy he was. Sat on the floor and the bloody aircraft pranged on takeoff and he was killed after he’d done two full tours of ops, and as I say, his leadership, ah, outstanding [emphasis].
AP: What was his name?
DM: David Wilkerson.
AP: Wilkerson.
DM: Yes, David Wilkerson.
AP: [Unclear] record –
DM: Won a DFC on his first tour and a DSO on the second tour when he was in charge of us. David Wilkerson DSO, DFC.
AP: So you’re, you’re at your squadron now. This is 578 Squadron, am I right?
DM: That’s right, yes.
AP: Where and how did you live on the squadron?
DM: Beg your pardon?
AP: Where and how did you live [emphasis] on the squadron?
DM: On the squadron – David Wilkerson I just mentioned, the greatest leader of men, one of the things he said very early in the piece, ‘don’t muck around with saluting and things insofar as I’m concerned, unless there’s a senior officer there with me. If there’s a senior officer there with me, well then salute because they’ll wonder why you don’t salute me as a wing commander.’ And life on a squadron, there was no bull dust [emphasis], there was no drill, you did what was required of you. There wasn’t, strangely enough, a lot of flying because the aircraft was wanted for ops. The only time you did non operational flying was to do an air test if the aircraft had been damaged and you as a skipper and a crew who were going to fly it were entitled to fly it after it had been repaired, so you’d do an air test. Might be half an hour, you might go on a cross country or something like that, but there wasn’t, very, very little non essential flying. As I mentioned, David Wilkerson didn’t want any saluting. He didn’t have to demand respect, he commanded it by his own example, by his own demeanour, as, as squadron commander. He had to seek permission before he could go on an operation, the reason for that being the losses were such, highly qualified blokes were pretty scarce [emphasis] and promotion on a squadron could come incredibly quick. I knew of one case where a fellow got his commission, was a pilot officer and six weeks later he was a squadron leader. In other words, he’d pilot officer, flying officer, flight lieutenant, squadron leader, everybody above him had been knocked off, hadn’t returned from ops, and so within six weeks from pilot officer to squadron leader. Impossible if it wasn’t for the chop rate, and now and we – life was, I wouldn’t say on the squadron, I wouldn’t say it was ill disciplined, but there was no bull dust, there was no parade ground, no square bashing. As I say, David Wilkerson didn’t want to be saluted unless a superior was there, so it, other than when you were flying, I suppose a bit lay back is the, would be a suitable word. A bit lay back. The aircrew, the close knittedness if that’s the correct word of aircrew I couldn’t describe and I don’t know that anybody could describe. You just relied on each other, you were part of a close knit team. As I mentioned in that icing incident, not a mumble or a grumble from any of the crew and they must have wondered what the bloody hell was going on at times, but very – and mutual respect and likewise [phone rings] the ground crew [phone rings], they would do anything [phone rings]. That’s it, you got it. Absolutely anything [emphasis] for their aircrew, and the close knittedness if that’s the word between aircrew and ground crew was so close to that between the aircrew that it didn’t matter. We were, we were issued pre takeoff with compasses and escape maps and that sort of thing, and also with a thermos of coffee, some glucose tablets for quick conversion to energy, molten milk tablets, and a, and some very, very [emphasis] dark chocolate, was almost back, terrible [emphasis] looking stuff, and we would always try, the aircrew, try and save a few bits of that for the ground crew because as I say they would do absolutely [emphasis] anything [emphasis] for us, absolutely anything. And one night, I mentioned Wally Hammond, the navigator, an Englishman. Wally had quite a large nose – now I’m the last one who should speak about a large nose but Wally put mine to shame [emphasis], and one night we were on our way home and, bear in mind that the aircraft thermometer went down to minus thirty-five degrees, the needle went down to minus thirty-five, and it would disappear right off the clock, minus fifty God knows what, and this night Wally wanted to blow his nose. He had a bit of a dew drop, and he pulled off his oxygen mask but before he could get his handkerchief to his nose, a big dew drop fell down onto his navigation chart and was immediately snap frozen. Now, as I say it was a big dew drop and as you would know, a dew drop is almost semi transparent, and as I say, when these, with these chocolate molten milk tablets and et cetera, we’d always try to save something for the ground crew, and some crews they’d, they’d hide them, they’d have the ground crew in and have them hide and seek. We never ever did that, we’d always try and have something for them, and this night, as I say, this giant [emphasis] dew drop, almost transparent, and one of the ground crew came up into the nose, the aircraft, the navigator’s area [?] and looking for his goodies, and Wally said ‘would you like a dewb [?] Jonny,’ because it looked a little bit like a clear, transparent clear dewb and [laughs] well, Jonny – and he’d almost got it into his mouth and Wally smacked his hand and knocked, knocked it out [laughs] and told him the origin of the dewb [?] [laughs].
AP: What, what happened in an officers mess in a squadron? What, what sort of things happened?
DM: Well I wasn’t commissioned until fairly late in my tour –
AP: The sergeants mess then [laughs].
DM: Sergeants mess, you can have some real [emphasis] good piss ups at times without a doubt, and the officers mess wasn’t any, the limited time that I was in there wasn’t any, any different. No, no formality as such as there is in the permanent Air Force mess. They could be very, very formal you know. The draw with the wine at the end of dinner was a port night, you would, the waiter would put a port glass down in front of everybody, and then the very strict rule was that the bottle didn’t touch the table until it was empty, you had to hand it on hand to hand to the bloke next to you, right to left, right to left and things like that. Very formal in the permanent mess, quite informal in the, in the wartime mess. Just on the subject of mess, I would reckon the best Christmas dinner I had – well okay, take the ones you can first remember, first Christmas you can remember, they’ve probably got to be your greatest. For those of us who have little kids, the next best Christmas you could have was when your little kids open their presents and sat up at the table. My third, my best Christmas other than those two and nothing can supplant them, my next best Christmas was when I was instructing after I’d finished my tour. We were at a place called Moreton-in-Marsh, in the Cotswold country of England. For those who don’t know the Cotswold country, on the corner of the Moreton airfield was the four shire stone, a stone denoting the joining of Gloucester, Oxford, Warwick and Worcestershire, the four shires all joined together there, and I was instructing there, and magically out of nowhere about two or three weeks before Christmas about six or eight geese appeared and it was much activity making an enclosure for them. We pinched bits of wire form everywhere and made an enclosure for them, and so the geese was the, there was no turkey but there were geese for Christmas dinner. This was Christmas 1944 and there were a lot of Australians on the station at Moreton-in-Marsh, and a couple of them gathered the rest of us together and suggested, ‘look, we can’t get home for Christmas. What about if we go to the CO, the commanding officer, and tell him that all the Aussies are prepared to stay on the station over Christmas and let the maximum number of Poms go home for Christmas dinner with their family.’ This was accepted and all we Aussies, I was commissioned by then, and we went to the airmens’ and the WAFs’ mess and waited on them for their Christmas dinner. Went and got the, the meal out of from the kitchen and took it and put it on the table for them, which was great and they appreciated that, and then the same thing happened with eh sergeants’ mess. We went over to the sergeants’ mess and waited on them which was absolutely great [emphasis]. It was absolutely marvellous and we got our own Christmas dinner I suppose at about four o’clock or something in the afternoon, but that was very, very, as I say, next to being a little kid and then having your own kids. That’s the, my most memorable Christmas, mm.
AP: Do any of your, your operations stand out in particular?
DM: I suppose whilst it was – we had a pretty easy trip, although we did lose our flight commander. D-Day was incredible. As skipper, you’re pretty preoccupied watching your instruments, flying your aircraft, looking up from time to time for other aircraft because there were bloody kites everywhere [emphasis], but the rest of the crew were – and we were a very strongly disciplined crew, very strongly disciplined in that we didn’t tolerate any unnecessary chatter, but the sight on D-Day was such that I take my eyes away from the instruments and other things from time to time and have a look out. But the rest of the crew, you know, the, the, the gunners and the navigator and bomb aimer down the nose of the aircraft, the engineer had a window beside him, as did the, the wireless op. They, you know, the sight, all [emphasis] those watercraft, God [emphasis] it was an unbelievable sight. As I say, we had a, a reasonably easy trip but we did lose our flight commander who was very experienced, he was on his second tour, and [phone rings] he unfortunately, as we used to call it, copped the chop [phone rings], mm. Now that would be one of the most memorable. Couple of the others weren’t as kind as that [laughs] was, but that was an incredible sight.
AP: Are they, are those other trips something that you’re – are you able to tell us something of some of the other trips?
DM: Er, yes. Our – Karlsruhe was very unpleasant, nasty weather, a lot of electrical storms. Very, very nasty and it was pretty hot over the target. They certainly gave us a, a warm welcome. We were lucky, only, only minor damage. Now look, yeah Karlsruhe was the most, probably one of the most – Essen, they certainly didn’t welcome you Essen, you know, the home of crops. Germany’s biggest armament manufacture, they, they let you know that you weren’t wanted. My – you, as a skipper you were sent with an experienced crew. You’d done everything in the way of training except being put under fire, and to try to give you some experience there, they would send the skipper to an operational squadron to do either one or two ops with an experienced crew. We, I took off with one of the flight commanders and we had an engine fault and had to return early. The target was Berlin and that was, that was, this was the first briefing of course that you’ve been to and you’ve got no idea what you’re in for. And when the squadron commander ripped the curtains back from the map on the wall and said, ‘there’s our target for the night, Berlin,’ there were groans, there were moans, there were some said ‘not again,’ others screamed out ‘the big city,’ and that was interesting for a first time. And as I say, we had to do an early return. Couple of nights later, experienced by then, I’d been to one briefing, so I’m into the second briefing, and it was Berlin again and indicative of how temporary life on an operational squadron could be is this example. There were two of us sent over to, to Driffield, the Australian Halifax squadron to do our second dicky trip with an experienced crew. The other fellow, Doug, Berlin the target again, was shot down just before they were to release their bombs, so his total experience on an operational squadron was about four hours, slightly less than four hours. Berlin was about a seven hour, roughly trip seven, depending on wind direction and whatever, and his total experience on an operational squadron, four hours as I say, it’s indicative of how brief it could be. The second time I took off with another, with a different crew and we – interesting, you know, you’re sitting there in the co-pilot’s seat in a Halifax, take it from me, no aircraft, no wartime aircraft in which I entered had any consideration of comfort for the crew, and indeed they seemed to have protrusions everywhere which, you know, as though they set traps for you to hit your head on or bump your shoulder against or some such, but as second dicky in a Halifax you pulled down a wooden seat from the side of the hall. It had no padding on the back of it, just timber, and precious little padding on the seat, and nowhere to rest your feet. You dangled your feet in midair a little bit like a very small kid in a church pew, just dangled his feet and that’s all you could do. And so, as I say, no thought of comfort and the guy with whom I was flying on this second attempt at Berlin was a fellow named Gus Stevens. Very experienced and very good pilot, and I can remember approaching or probably about half way there, ‘oh this doesn’t seem to be too bad,’ and bit further, ‘oh I’m getting close to the target. I’m not too sure this is all that good.’ Getting into the target area, ‘oh my God, there’s, there’s, I reckon there’s a few places where I’d rather be,’ and then over the target itself, ‘I know bloody well there’s a whole [emphasis] lot of places where I’d [laughing] rather be.’ And anyway, we got in and out of the target area okay and we’re stinting [?] along on our way home when all of a sudden a heap, a trace of bullets started flying everywhere and we had one of the inner engines were, were knocked out. The rear gunner didn’t spot him. Obviously if it was one of those German night-fighter aircraft where they had the upward pointing firing guns, which was a very [emphasis] bloody miserable trick in, in my book. God, talk about all’s fair in love and war, there’s nothing fair about, about that. Anyway, the – this was interesting, we’d done plenty of fighter affiliation at heavy conversion unit. They’d set up Spitfires and Hurricanes to, with us and the gunners both had camera guns so that we could, the aim could be assessed when they got back on the ground. But anyway, and with, you know, we’d thrown the aircraft round corkscrew port, corkscrew starboard et cetera, et cetera, and generally speaking the rougher and more violent your corkscrew, the more effective it was likely to be. Would you like a beer by the way, or anything like that?
AP: I’m alright thank you, but you’re happy to keep going? Carry on?
DM: No, no I hope I’m not boring you.
AP: Oh not at all.
DM: Anyway, the, one of the, I think it was the port inner engine got knocked out, but Gus Stevens, the pilot, the skipper told me to feather the engines so he could keep his both hands on the control column and put it into a steep dive. Well, there was almost like a deadly silence other than air swishing around, and Gus had, we worked it out later what he’d done, he’d put it into such an incredible [emphasis] dive, used such force that all the petrol, all the fuel was forced up centrifugal force off the bottom of the fuel tanks, and you had what was known as constant speed control on your, on your propellers, but the moment they were relived of any load [emphasis] they just went into runaway mode, and so, as I say, you had this short period when the fuel was off the bottom of the tanks and you just had air rushing by and then when he pulled it back in and the fuel went back onto the bottom of the tanks and entered the fuel allowance [?], entered the motors – the motors of course as I say, they had constant speed, like governors on them and, which governed the air, the air screw, the propeller speed to about three and a half thousand revs, but with this load moved, taken off them, I reckon they were probably at about four and a half thousand. And then when the petrol went back and into the – the bloody row [emphasis], the vibration of the – I didn’t realise what punishment a hellick [?] would take until that moment. You know, I thought I’d done some pretty rough and tough stuff on [phone rings] when we were doing [phone rings] our fighter affiliation in training, but nothing [emphasis] like [phone rings] this. Bloody vibration it shake [emphasis], I thought the thing would shake to pieces.
AP: I suppose that shows the value of the second dicky trip, going with an operational pilot [unclear] –
DM: That’s right, that’s right, yes, ah yes, yes, yes.
AP: It’s yeah, unreal.
DM: Yes, and interesting side line to that was back at the heavy conversion unit, the training unit again the next day, the CGI, chief ground instructor – there was a class in progress, I’ve forgotten what it was, and I was marched in and he said ‘I want you to tell your experience, your experience from last night.’ So I started, and he said ‘hold up Pilot McDonald, hold up. You don’t have to say any further. We’ve been in touch with the flight commander and the skipper concerned and we know almost as much about it as you do, so you can save your voice.’
AP: Very good [DM laughs]. Well I guess flying operations wouldn’t have been the most stress free existence. What sort of things did you do to relax?
DM: Give the grog a good nudge [laughs]. Yes, there was sports. You could have, there was tennis courts near the squadron and you could have a – we used to play a game that was a cross between AFL and rugby. There was you know, plenty of blokes from New South Wales and Queensland. They, they’d never heard of AFL at that time, and so we would, we’d have a game crossed between AFL and rugby. And of course the blokes, the rugby boys would tuck the ball under their arm and never think of bouncing it or anything like that, and that, that, that was a bit of good fun, and most, most messes would have table tennis facilities so you could have a game, and some would also have billiards or snooker to fill in time at night. And of course you’d have the odd game of cards here and there and those who liked to play poker could put their pay on the line.
AP: Can you – I gather you probably spent a fair bit of time at the local pub?
DM: Oh yes [emphasis], yes, yes.
AP: [Unclear].
DM: Yeah, not really funny thing, but the mid upper gunner of my second crew – when the war finished in Europe, I had just started a second tour. Indeed I only did one trip and the war in Europe ended. I – back at Moreton-in-Marsh, I, flying the twin engine Wellington which were a lovely, lovely kite to fly. As I say, twin engine. I’d had about three single engine, I’d had three single engine landings in about five weeks, and it wasn’t the fault of the ground staff. The motors were copped, cuffed out, they’d, they’d had it and no matter how good the ground staff had been, they would have had troubles keeping them airworthy. So I’d had about five single engine landings in about five weeks. The first two were highly successful. The last one, the third one, I was very lucky to walk away from. And the – sorry where were we up to when I digressed [?] –
AP: So we were – pubs.
DM: Ah yeah pubs. Yeah, and, and so we – I was very lucky to walk away from it. And on the sort of subject of pubs, as I say I was an instructor at this time, and I finished up in an ambulance and at lunchtime I was about to have a pint of beer because the flight commander had said, you know, ‘your flying’s finished for today.’ And so I thought I’d have a pint of beer at lunch and I was just about to have my first sip out of it when the MO, the doctor came up to me and said, ‘I think you can put that down, and, and you better come with me.’ And I didn’t realise but I had concussion, and he put me into hospital. Now, there’s two things outstanding about this. Some miserable sod got that pint of beer and drank it and never owned up to me, never paid me for it, never owned up to me for it, and so if I ever catch up with him I’ll, I’ll get my [AP laughs] money’s worth. The other thing was at night a couple of the other instructors, they were, we were all instructors at the OTU were ex-op fellows, and a couple of them decided they’d come down to the hospital, the sick quarters and see how I was, and they bought a couple of beers with them. So that was great, very good medicine, and the next night about four of them came down and finished up after three or four nights was about six or eight of them, and, and we were having a great old time grogging on in the station’s sick quarters, and lo and behold, who should come in but the doctor, and caught us all with our grog there. He ordered the other blokes out and said to me, ‘you’ll be in the flight office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning McDonald, and I’ll be there to make sure you’re there.’ And so that was the end of that medication, so that’s, you know. Looking back, looking back at him, I sometimes wonder and indeed think that possibly we were pretty much at the stage of eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow you may die, and I think that did tend to take over, yeah.
AP: We’re getting, we’re getting close to the end of [both laugh] –
DM: No worries.
AP: We’ve been going for an hour and fifty-seven minutes.
DM: Truly? Oh my God.
AP: Believe it or not, flown by –
DM: Yeah.
AP: It’s been great [emphasis]. I guess, well yeah, coming back to Australia. How did you find readjusting to civilian life and what did you do after the war?
DM: I reckon for the – I had been in the Public service, as I mentioned, when I enlisted and when I got back I took twelve months leave from the Public service, leave without pay, with a view to hopefully [?] adjusting or readjusting myself. I went back to the bush, back on the farm, and I reckon for about the first three weeks I got up and helped with the milking in the morning and then spent most of the day sitting under a big pine tree. I’ve got no idea what I would have been thinking, and the, the owner of the local general store and post office said, ‘what about coming and working for me? I need someone.’ So it was a bit more than ten bob a week at that time of course, and I accepted his offer which suited me really because I was, meant I had to be meeting people, getting out amongst them, them coming into the store, me getting out amongst them, and I think that was a good move. At the end of twelve months I resigned altogether from the public service and got married and went into business on my own. First one was a little grocery store, a newsagents and post office out at Fawkner, northern suburbs of Melbourne, just near the Fawkner cemetery. I sold out of that and worked for another guy for a few months and then opened a grocery store in Hampton, a beach side southern suburb of Melbourne. That was when self service first started to come in. Prior to that when you went in to the grocer’s shop you asked the grocer what you wanted and he put it on the counter and gave you the bill and then self service came in. We had one of about the first twenty self service shops in Melbourne and then frozen foods came in, and we had one of I think it was about the first six [emphasis] deep freezers in Melbourne. After about six, seven or eight years in that business I sold out, worked around for a while and went into radio communications. The neighbours said, ‘look, we want someone – our company’s just going into radio communications. You know a bit about it from your Air Force experience.’ And the job was virtually painted [?] there on a platter for me so I worked in that, and I could see a need for some towers. It was roughly line of sight communication – radios such as in taxis and in trucks and plumbers and electricians et cetera, communications, mobile communications, and I could see that to increase the range we needed some towers, and the company with whom I was working wouldn’t listen to me, so I said to them ‘okay, you won’t provide them, let me provide them.’ And I did and we finished up with about six of these around Melbourne, and then I, I started renting a few radios. I could see a requirement for rental and people didn’t want to buy, and once again the company with whom I was working were disinterested so I started renting radios which I owned. And then later on I saw a need for little hand-held portable radios for security people and crowd control and parking et cetera, and actually I just sold out of the last one of them in the last twelve months. But we finished up with roughly a thousand of them little hand-held ones, and we, we do some, well I’m out of it now but we did some quite big jobs. Probably the biggest was the spring carnival at Flemington in Melbourne. The Melbourne Cup is a world famous race and a big requirement for these little hand-held radios, not worth them buying them because they only need them for about two weeks of the year. The rest of the year they would be on the shelf and be knocked off or the batteries would go flat and so there’s the, you know, just a little inside there, there’s the parking, there’s security, there is crowd control, catering. Imagine what it would be like if the bird cage or some of those quite exclusive enclosures at Flemington ran out of champagne, so you’ve got to be able to engineer, develop a system so that they can get down into the bowels of the earth as it were, under the big grandstands and everything so that we could control the flow of champagne up there to marquees and the likes spread around the ground. Quite, quite an interesting, quite a challenging exercise, and, and it was, as I say, I’m sold out of it now but it was financially fairly favourable, and no Lord Nuffield or Rockefeller or anything like that but enabled a quite good standard of living.
AP: Excellent. I guess the final, the final question, perhaps the most important one. From your personal perspective, how was Bomber Command remembered and what sort of legacy do you think it’s left?
DM: A good question. A lot of condemnation on Bomber Command. If Bomber Command hadn’t done the duties they were called upon to do, and likewise many other branches of the service, if they hadn’t done the things they were called upon to do, goodness knows how much longer the war might have gone on. The French government just this year, seventy years later after peace was declared, seventy years later gave, made some awards. Now, one of the qualifications was that you had to be involved on D-Day. D-Day for a lot of the French people and a lot of the people of occupied territories was the first time for five years that there was any light to be seen at the end of the tunnel. That D-Day signalled in my book, the beginning of the end and Bomber Command were well and truly involved in D-Day and they were involved subsequent to D-Day, stopping Germany getting their troops and their supplies up to the front line. The V1s and V2s, the Doodlebug, flying one, call it what you like, if Bomber Command hadn’t put down the launching pads for those V1s, almost all [emphasis] of London and southern England would have been laid waste in my book, there’s not any doubt about that. And of course the V2, terrible [emphasis] weapon. There was no combating the V2 once it was in the air, there was no ways [unclear], and so what did they do? They sent Bomber Command over to the launching pads and manufacturing plants in Scandinavia. Some of those aircraft were in the air fourteen hours. Now, as I mentioned, there was no thought of comfort for the crew in a bomber aircraft. Temperatures, as I mentioned, the thermometer went down to minus thirty-five and the needle used to go right off the clock, right [emphasis] off the clock. The gunners had electrically heated gloves, other crew members had three pairs of gloves on: silk next to the skin, woollen to try and keep the warmth in and then the big elbow length, fleecy lined leather gauntlet. Bomber Command [phone rings] didn’t get, did not [emphasis] get the credit [phone rings] for which it was due [phone rings]. Almost sixty thousand people killed [emphasis]. Young men in their prime, fit, you had to be fit to be an aircrew. Fit, young men in their prime, almost – now for Victorians or Australians, almost sixty thousand, that is the equivalent to every man, woman and child, the city the size of Bellarat. There were eight thousand killed on training – I mentioned the icing experience before, eight thousand killed on training. Now, for any Victorians, that’s the equivalent of a provincial city the size of Bellarat or the size of Colac. Every man, woman, child in that city, killed. So as I say, the legacy of Bomber Command, the ruddy war might still be going on. It did not get its true dues in, in, in my book, and as I say, it would have gone on a lot longer. Yes, we’re finished I think.
AP: I think we’re done.
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AMcDonaldD151013
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Interview with Donald McDonald
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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02:10:05 audio recording
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Pending review
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-10-13
Description
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Donald McDonald grew up in Australia and worked for a general store before he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He flew operations as a pilot with 466 and 578 Squadrons. He returned to Australia after the war where he became involved in radio communications.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Yorkshire
Victoria
Victoria--Mount Martha
Victoria
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Katie Gilbert
466 Squadron
578 Squadron
aircrew
coping mechanism
crash
crewing up
entertainment
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
mess
military discipline
military living conditions
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Burn
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Rufforth
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/341/3508/PTinningH1601.1.jpg
4d7e45a79160aa79382026fe9410ad61
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/341/3508/ATinningHW160314.1.mp3
00643b1db6bb18f53a1b33afa4d3184e
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Title
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Tinning, Herbert
Herbert William Tinning
Herbert W Tinning
H W Tinning
H Tinning
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Herbert William Tinning DFC, his log book and three photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Herbert Tinning and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-14
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Tinning, HW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: So, this interview of the International Bomber Command Centre with a Mr. Herbert Tinning, who was a 51 Squadron Halifax navigator during World War Two. The interview is taking place, at Herbert’s place in Preston, in Northern Melbourne. My name is Adam Purcell, it is the 14th of March 2016. So, Herbert, we might start at the beginning, uhm.
HWT: [unclear]
AP: It is a very good place to start, isn’t it? Can you tell me something about your early life, growing up, the education and first job, perhaps?
HWT: Oh yeah, I grew up on the other side of the river, mainly around Prahran and Toorak and Carnegie, I, I went to the, the Fawkner Park State School up until the sixth grade. Then I went to Toorak Central, seventh and eighth grade and then I went to Melbourne High for, to leaving. And then I went, I managed to get, no, I went to work first in a, no, no, I got an apprenticeship with the Victorian Railways as a fitter and turner, which a highly competitive job thing in those days and in waiting to go there I went and worked for a gasket maker called Ferrer, a company, that would be for about six months, and then I spent nearly three years in doing my apprenticeship at Newport during which time the World War Two broke out and I wanted to get into it but I was in a protected industry so I had to [unclear] quite big struggle but I managed to get a release providing I went into a technical trade which I, which I did do, I trained as a, what’s that called, a fitted away, which rear [unclear], I did that, then I was posted to a communication flight as a fitter and I again kept trying to get to [unclear] into aircrew, which I eventually managed and, uhm, and then I trained in Australia at, uhm, at Sale and Nhill and Cootamundra and then I was posted overseas and went to UK and ended up in Bomber Command as, I was trained as a navigator, bomb aimer but I was chosen to be a navigator and I went through the usual initial training et cetera and whilst I was at, what they called pre airview, which is because of the difference in map reading between Europe and Australia we had to get used to the greater quantity of identifiable objects and so we did a pre airview in Tiger Moths, would I tell you the story about that?
AP: Go for it.
HWT: Uhm, whilst we’re training, we used to do three, three day cross countries in flying in groups of three, big formation and I led this formation into Northampton and, as we’re turning over Northampton to, for another aircraft in which my mate was the navigator and the pilot [unclear] slipped under us too closely and wiped it up the main plane off on our undercarriage and we were in about 800 feet and he, they had to get out because the plane just went straight in and fortunately to this shoot [unclear] this happened in time [unclear] could land or crash land this thing so seemed so low, I straightened it and crash-landed it and that was that. Now, I tell you that as a preamble to we went on through training, we did our OTU on Wellingtons and we went to squadron, I went to 51 and he went to a different squadron and anyway I’m about, sometime later I heard that he is missing believed killed and I learned that on their fourteenth trip, I’ll tell you the, he went to 467 Squadron instead and anyway on the 8th of July ’44 he was on a French target, Saint-Leu-d’Esserent and he was shot down, it was night of course and they were on fire the Halifax navigator set out the forward straight patch so he tended to jettison the straight patch and he grabbed his parachute in his hand and he shot the [unclear] up because of his previous experience to just fall out and try to keep it on the way down but he clipped it, apparently he clipped it on a one clip and it held but he was ok and the only, the only one that could help was the bomb aimer, that was that I didn’t know anything about that at the time but he was missing believed killed. So the years went by and I finished my tour and I was appointed radar officer for the squadron and I’d been on leave and I was on my way back to squadron when we stopped at a place called Peterborough and just as the train was pulling out, the back wing doors on the bar, which is on the station, swung open as a fellow went out and I had a quick glance inside and I saw this, sort of head in silhouette, with this peculiar nose cause, in the bailout he’d, of the Tiger Moth he’d hit his nose on the tireplane [?] and it broke and he had mended it in a peculiar way. So anyway I grabbed my bag and I jumped out of the train and went back into the bar and, sure enough, it was Jim Walsh. He’d been picked up by the Free French and he’d spent the remaining years of the war until they were, until that part of France was, ehm, was occupied by the Allies, uhm, and he’d only been repatriated two days and there he was, you see. So, it was quite a good reunion, uhm, you have to believe in these units, I did you know, anyway I went on my way then and he went on his way and I’ve never seen him again. He was a Queenslander and in those days, it was much more expensive and difficult to travel into [unclear] as it is now of course and you get tied up with marriage, family, all the rest of it. So, that was that but I just tell you because of the incident that we had in the Tiger Moth and that [unclear] mine, uhm, we, that sort of saved his life in a way because if we hadn’t had the previous [unclear] he would have hesitated and try and put his shoot on, straight out of the escape hatch, it would have been too late. So anyway, that was that and then, as I say, I went to Waddington on 51 Squadron and there I did a tour with a mixture of French and German targets.
AP: Pretty good. Uhm, so you were working for the railways when you heard that war was declared. How old were you at that time? What were your thoughts? And how did you [unclear]?
HWT: Well, I must have been, I must have been, uhm, eighteen, because it was the age you could enlist and I was only, I always wanted to fly and a fellow who I knew was a pilot in the Air Force, he told me that you gotta get a speciality to, you know up until that, normally in the Air Force is a five year commission and you’re out. But if you had some speciality they would give you a more permanent job, you see, well, this fellow specialised in Photography and he was kept on as a aerial photographer. And because I was interested in engineering mechanical things, I thought, oh well, I’ll get an engineering diploma and then I’ll try for the Air Force. Instead I was on my third, in my third year, or just started my third year. But, it must have been during, it must have been, nearly in towards the end of my first year as an apprentice as the war broke out and I spent, you know, a year or so trying to get out of it, which I ultimately did and that was it.
AP: You, uhm.
HWT: Is that enough?
AP: Yeah, no, no, that’s alright, we’ll, [laughs] we’ll got plenty to cover, uhm, so I guess you’ve already answered the question of why you picked the Air Force.
HWT: I suppose I better finish it off and then, before I got an apprenticeship, I missed out that bit, after I’d finished with leaving, I went to Melbourne High and I was there for three years now, I’ll say it again, after I finished State School which is the eighth grade, then I went to Melbourne High and I finished there in my leaving year and went to the railways.
AP: Ok. Uhm, can you tell me something of the enlistment process for the Air Force? Did you have to do any testing, any interviews, any medicals, things like that?
HWT: Oh yeah, there were [unclear] interviews, there were, uhm, medicals of course, which sight was the main, was one of the principal things and [unclear] fine [laughs]. When I was, I got the notification to go and had my medical for remustering to aircrew, a couple of mates and I went out and had a bit of a party you know and anyway the next morning I had to do this medical test you see and, which I did but my sight must have been caught up to it because one eye was a bit weaker than the other. So, they, uhm, so I didn’t get the choice of a pilot, I was navigator bomb aimer and I always put it down to the fact that I’d perhaps had a bit too much booze that night but the, uhm, cause the thing is, post war when I was sort of older, I passed certainly a less stringent test but the eyesight test was just as stringent I think. Uhm, and I got the ok for a pilot’s license. So I think I’ve had a bit too much to drink at the wrong time.
AP: [laughs] pretty good. Uhm, were you on the reserve at any stage?
HWT: No.
AP: Because you went straight in as the trade of course.
HWT: Went straight in as a, as a trainee 2 A and well actually you didn’t do that as [unclear] but now they, you went in as an AC 2 and that’s we had a little white flash in our forage caps [unclear] to sending into [unclear] trainees and you did a three, four weeks of square-bashing down at Laverton and then you, during which time you, the selections were made and then you went to, in my time, Ascot Vale for engineering training and so, uhm, so I think I must have been about, almost nineteen when the war broke out.
AP: So, the white flash you are telling me about, I always thought that denoted air crew training specifically but it was
HWT:
AP: It was aircrew training specifically. Ok, yeah, that’s what I thought. Uhm, alright, so, you did, once you transferred to air crew, presumably you had to go to initial training school and do all the square-bashing again.
HWT: Yes, that’s right.
AP: Where was that? What happened?
HWT: The square-bashing was down at, uhm, at, oh god I must [unclear],
AP: Somers, perhaps.
HWT: Mh?
AP: Somers?
HWT: Yeah, Somers, yeah, that’s right, [unclear] bad, we did square-bashing then and pre airview at Somers. Incidentally it was, there was a well-known champion bike rider called Hubert Opperman, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of him but anyway he was, I came across him at Laverton first, where he was, a sergeant, no, he wasn’t a sergeant, I think he was DO, and then, when I went to Somers there he was again as an officer and he was doing, taking the PI training, organising and so on, nice bloke, anyway you had to gotta do that to. Anyway that’s where I did my initial training for aircrew. Then I went to Cootamundra and had training as a navigator. And then to Sale, training as a bomb aimer and gunner and then to Nhill, to do astronavigation. And then back to Ascot Vale, yeah, Ascot Vale for posting.
AP: So, I’m particularly interested in Nhill, I’ll tell you why later on, but, uhm, the first time you went into an aeroplane, presumably that was Cootamundra?
HWT: No, I had a passenger flight, you know, in a Tiger Moth, or was that a Gypsy Moth in those days, pre-war and while I was, fitted away, I had two Hawker Demons and a Lockheed Hudson in my charge, you see, and, anyway I used to, uhm, hit the odd flight [?] in a Hawker Demon, which we flew down over [unclear], anyway we flew down over to [unclear] anti-aircraft shooting, training, you know, and we, in a dive bomber [unclear] and so I got a, but then I fit [unclear] to it and I got a little bit of dual time on it, you know unofficially. So, yeah, that was, so I found a bit [unclear].
AP: [laughs] excellent, very good. Did you, when you were doing your training but particularly in Australia, did you see any accidents or anything like that?
HWT: Accidents?
AP: Along the way? Yeah.
AP: Or did you know of any accidents?
HWT: Oh, I knew, when I was at, when I was, just after I had been to Sale, I’m not sure which now, there was a string of accidents of aircraft going in and have a best strike and there were, I think there three of them, before they discovered what it was and what they were doing was torpedo bomb training with a damaged torpedo, see, and they had made the torpedo run which could have been made almost underwater and released the torpedo and [unclear] away you see, but I have been doing dry rounds without torpedoes and then I fitted them with these damaged torpedoes, which is the same weight as number one. And of course the pilots were used to unlighten [?] pulled out but, and because with the heavy weight they squashed a bit to say and that’s what they were doing, they were squashing into the sea and but they lost I think three before they discovered what the problem was. So, there were those and, uhm, [pauses], you know, you’d hear of accidents but they weren’t close to me, you know.
AP: Uhm, so, Nhill, oh my God, was talking about before Nhill also went through Nhill, and I actually went through there just about a year ago, we were coming back from Kangaroo Island and we stopped at Nhill on the way back, and turns out that the airfield, they’re opening up this Nhill aviation heritage centre, and they’ve got an Ansett there restoring very very slowly, which is really good to see. Uhm, can you remember much about Nhill in particular and what you were doing there, I know it was, I believe it was astronavigation at Nhill, uhm, what did that actually involve?
HWT: Oh well, we, we did the theory of it you know and then we did star identification, we just stand out and pointed out [unclear] to learn where they were and then you had to learn the theory side of using them, using sights to develop a fixed position and then of course sometimes that was over your head, you see, because flying over Europe was all dead black, not a speck of light anywhere and until you’ve done that, you don’t know how black the night is, you know. Uhm, and occasionally you’d have some, uhm, some guidance with, you know with the water get the reflection of the river, or a lake, whether you like it or not, although I didn’t experience this with the Gee, five lights around Berlin and they were a wonderful sort of fix for the aircraft, so the Germans were a very cunning enemy, they actually boarded out [unclear] a couple of them so there were only three lights, then they altered the shape of the other lights by boarding round it [?] you know, so none of the people would be certain [unclear] Berlin. Very cunning. But, what was I saying?
AP: We were talking about Nhill.
HWT: Ah, Nhill, yeah, uhm, now what I remember then it was very hot and the meals were good, we had no trouble flying out of there, at night we were flying in Ansons and, uhm, we were only a month there, four weeks, so I haven’t got much of a memory, I know, I’d been married by then and I know I missed my wife because she’d come up to Cootamundra, but Nhill was such a short stay. No, she didn’t come up to Cootamundra, she came up to Sale, where I did two months for bombing and gunnery. But, uhm, I know I got, you know, quite positive memories of Nhill, as a matter of fact I called in there once when I was driving, no, I flew in there once, that’s right, [unclear] to analyse, yeah, I landed there, just [unclear], was the last experience I had.
AP: [laughs] So, yeah, it is really nice to see what they are doing there actually at the moment, but anyway. Alright, so, moving on a little bit, we go up to Ascot Vale and then you embarked and you went to the UK. How did you get there?
HWT: I embarked, we went by a ship called the New Amsterdam, which went via New Zealand, cause it was taking, uhm, some of the New Zealand members of [unclear] back from Africa and were called from Wellington and then from there we went on to San Francisco. And from San Francisco we went by [unclear] car across to Boston. [unclear] car, they are still in pretty [unclear] condition and we had a black porter, made up our beds for the night, put a [unclear] chocolate on our pillow every five nights and anyway then we got to Boston, and we were waiting embarkation for England and we were embarked on a French liner, [unclear] something, wasn’t [unclear] to France but they had, they had several of these [unclear] and they flew, normally in peace time fly between Marseille, France, yeah, to Rio de Janeiro and that was a regular [unclear], you know. Anyway, we went to from Halifax in Canada to Liverpool unescorted so, they took us way up into the Arctic Circle to avoid the subs, which was interesting, and cold, and, anyway, [unclear] arrived at Liverpool and then we went by train to [unclear] out of Bournemouth.
AP: What did you think of wartime England when you first got there, particularly an Australian?
HWT: I liked England, I’ve been there since, I liked it better since but then during wartime it was, everything was severely rationed, there were no lights anywhere, blackout was very, very strict, uhm, and, I went to, I went to several stations, Bournemouth and from there we went to a place called Desford and then to, went to Lichfield and to Marston Moor for conversion and then to Snaith for, uhm, for 51 squadron. [unclear] We were actually posted to an Australian squadron but the day before we left, Bomber Command had raided Nuremberg and they had the heaviest losses of war, they’ve had 96 lost on the one trip and I think another twenty flying into high wind [?] when they got back. Uhm, so they were very short of aircrew so we were, uhm, then diverted to reinforcements to various squadrons and our diversion was to 51 Squadron.
AP: So, what did you have getting to that point where, ok, we’re going to a squadron now and you hear about Nuremberg, what did you think of when you heard about that?
HWT: Oh, well, you really got pretty philosophical about it, you know. As a matter of fact, you didn’t expect to live, you know, that’s probably more [unclear] a bit more than I should. And whatever, but we didn’t think about after the war, really, we just did what we were doing and, and uhm, did as best we could, I guess.
AP: Alright, We’ll back up a bit. Lichfield. I was talking just on Saturday to a WAAF, who served at Lichfield.
HWT: Oh yeah?
AP: Amazing lady, I interviewed this, [unclear] Mary Mccray, we had a wonderful chat. Uhm, the important thing that happened at Lichfield I presume is where you met your crew.
HWT: Yes, uhm, we met part crew,
AP: [unclear] of course, except for your flight engineer.
HWT: Pardon?
AP: Except for the flight engineer, of course.
HWT: We didn’t pick up our gunners, we, it was the, we didn’t pick up an engineer either. It was just the navigator, bomb aimer, pilot and wireless op. And we did our, well, we converted from, what the pilot did, we did to a point [unclear] from the Tiger Moths [unclear] previously flying in Ansett [unclear], no, we hadn’t, no, we hadn’t, we, uhm, [pauses] we must have flown, no, [unclear] I do recall flying in Anson but I don’t think that was in training, anyway we went to Wellingtons and we did the, the, what do we call it? [pauses] The, there was a pre airview I think they call it, anyway we flew the Wellingtons and actually I liked [unclear], I had no complain about any of the stations except, no, none of them, at Lichfield we had [unclear] they sent me to cross countries day and night, [unclear] a bit of a, a bit of a [unclear] there, see where we were, here you go, I went to 27 OTU which was at Church Broughton.
AP: Ah, that was a satellite of Lichfield, I think.
HWT: I think you’re right.
AP: Yeah.
HWT: We were flying Wellingtons there and I was West Freugh in Scotland and that’s where we were flying Ansons. I got it a bit wrong then before.
AP: That’s alright.
HWT: Pre airview at West Freugh
AP: A bit cold up there I imagine?
HWT: It was a bit.
AP: [unclear] at what time of year?
HWT: [unclear] was a bit [unclear], Stranraer was 7 Squadron you know. Yeah.
AP: Very nice. Uhm, when you were in England, what did you do when you weren’t on duty? What did you to relax?
HWT: On the station?
AP: Yeah, any of the stations that you were there.
HWT:
AP: Anything.
HWT: I played a fair bit of squash, most of the men, I know the, stations [unclear], we did a bit, we started [unclear] when we got leave, you know we went and quite often we stayed with people you were good enough to, you know, to sort of entertain, [unclear] your troops and I saw a bit of England that way, quite a bit really, underground and by you know they just we were on leave, we went some place which [unclear] short leave like overnight or a couple of days, you know, you didn’t go far but life on the squadron wasn’t bad, it was, but I initially went as a flight sergeant and there we lived in Quonset huts and that’s a thing I remember about it, the Quonset huts, oh, I suppose it might have been twenty or so, slept in them, and down the set of the bedroom on the side [unclear] down the centre and there were two or three potbellied cast iron heating stoves [unclear] and anyway it was cold alright because we stacked these things up and when we went to bed, the [unclear] of the [unclear] was cast on was red hot and was beautiful, you see, but then by morning there were icicles off the roof, from our hot breath, you know, the heating had gone out and other things, and it was cold, very cold, I remember that, but then I got a commission and we moved into a two bedroom unit in a big, where I was, in a big building at [unclear] which was much better than, I got no sort of unpleasant thought really of any of the stations I was on [unclear] I know the time has [unclear], but.
AP: [laughs]
HWT: But I think I remember something.
AP: Very nice. Alright so, when you are on squadron and you’re not on duty, I presume that you spend a fair bit of time in the mess, at the sergeant’s mess or the officer’s mess.
HWT: Play snooker, billiards, squash, sometimes I put on a cross country run and if you [unclear] you might decide to do it. And I had picture shows, pretty regularly at night and of course there was always drinking, always high drinks [unclear] appreciate. Some of the men [unclear] there and they used to get into the, particularly into the police time quarters where there were long corridors with, they’d get in there, ride round their motorcycle up and down along the corridor, you know, which in confined space was pretty deafening and then another friend I used to get up to was, and I only saw this once though, was they, they’d been drinking, and they got this fellow and they walked him over some soot and then they uphended him and hurled him against ceiling, across the ceiling, made him walk across the ceiling, you see, which looked pretty funny, you see, these black footprints across the ceiling [laughs], I remember that, [unclear] prank I remember, but no there was not, no boredom really, you know, you had, and we had [unclear] and all that sort of stuff, you know, and that was quite good. I’ll tell you a funny thing though, when I, during ops I was doing mechanical engineering and I liked engineering and I still like it and I intended to finish up as, with a diploma and working in like a designer that, you know, but during the war for some reason I changed my mind quite unconsciously and became interested in building, so when I was demobbed, I did a rehab course in building and construction and spent my working days in building administration and some on a building design on a side but yes, so I don’t know whether, whether unconsciously knocking building down through the war, unconsciously directed me towards, rebuilding, [laughs] interesting question.
AP: [unclear] more questions, isn’t it? yeah. Pretty good. Uhm, that sort of leads into the next thing, presumably an operational tour was not the most relaxing thing that you would have ever experienced, how did you cope with the stress of the operations, the stress of flying and [unclear] what you were doing. How did you cope with that on a daily basis?
HWT: Oh I think we had probably a bit more drinks than we should have drunk you know we had regular, you know, organised parties in the mess and they were fairly cunning you know, not that you weren’t aware of it, but, you know, you might go out on a ride one night and you come back and go through debriefing and you go off, have breakfast and go to bed. And when you were up in the morning, you know, you might have lost one aircraft say, [unclear] and you come out and you want to go out and do a, you know [unclear], usually only if you are doing ops really you had to do an air test and any way could be sitting there but you knew it was missing and what they did overnight went to remind you night, they flew an aircraft in from a, you knew, factory area, [unclear] the number, it was on dispersal and the only thing that was missing was the crew, and they sort of tried to make losses less obvious then they really were but I know some people had a lot of trouble, I, I don’t know why but I wasn’t, you know, I was concerned but I didn’t have any sort of shakes or anything like that, the only thing I got really was at the end of the tour I developed an eye tick, you know, you’d feel your eyebrow move but you weren’t sort of, you weren’t doing it, yeah, so yeah, they called it a nervous tic.
AP: And how long did that hang around for?
HWT: I don’t know, a few months.
AP: Alright, we were talking about drinking before. The local pub at Snaith, what was it called? What did it look like?
HWT: The local pub at Snaith was George and the dragon. And we drank, and it was a typical English pub you know, a nice atmosphere and all the rest of it. And of course we had our mess which we patronized, you know, fairly well because they had, you know you had your billiards or your snooker, your darts and the bar, card tables you know to play cards and that, so you had enough to do around the place.
AP: Were there any [unclear]?
HWT: There were concert parties and there were film [unclear] all that sort of stuff you know and they looked after us pretty well.
AP: Were there any, [clears throat] excuse me, superstitions or hoodoos, things like that, within your crew?
HWT: Very much, very much. And I remember some of the crew’s superstition, they are not my words, we always had to sit at the same seat in the way of going out to dispersal [unclear] aircraft. I think that was my only one. Yeah, I had to have that seat [unclear] but I know some that got some, well, the other thing too I suppose was, my wife, when I went [unclear] she gave me a white silk scarf and she’d sown a little, a little, uhm, what do you call, dice, a little dice in one corner of it, see, and I wouldn’t fly without that, I still got it, it’s no longer white, it’s now yellow.
AP: [laughs] it’s done you well then, it’s done you well. I guess we’re getting to the nitty gritty now. Do any of your operations stand out for any particular reason?
HWT: I remember D-Day, it just, you know, just for the amount of traffic on the Channel and we had, you know, on D-Day they locked all the [unclear] down, you know, so nobody went anywhere and there were armed guards with instructions to shoot to kill if anyone wanted to get out. And then when we went into briefing, I noticed, they told us, this was D-Day and our target was on the coast, [unclear], not [unclear], [unclear], something like that and that’s the first we heard of it, oh, no, we knew it was pending because the place was crawling with troops and [unclear] whatever but we didn’t know when and so we, so off we went and I just remember the level of activity and there was no fighter activity on that D-Day target, not where I was, there was quite a bit of flak and that was it but the, there is, thing I remember mainly is a mid-air collision of three pre airview, that’s opened your eyes pretty quick and we got shot up a few times, you know, may have taken out a bit of flak damage one night, we had one fighter attack [unclear] air gunner, I remember that, [unclear], you know, normally they were looking for someone who was asleep, you know, and because they were easy in sight but by the way [unclear] was in the time when they developed a thing they called Music, Schrage Music I think they called it and they equipped the Me101os with an upward firing cannon and they’d come in underneath [unclear] you see and stand in blind spot and [mimics the sound of rapid gun fire] and it’s gone, they aimed for the wing tanks and that was very successful and they did in the end on some of the aircraft, on the Halis or the Lancasters, they did put up a turret, or not a turret, but a gun in the, no, I’m sorry, they didn’t, no, they never did that, the Yanks did that, the Yanks did that with their [unclear], they put a belly gun in and the poor gunner had to sort of crawl in and, you know, he’s in a very uncomfortable position and but that was the Yanks, not us. No, we were, we did, part day and part night trips and by the time we were doing them, they were, by the time D-Day arrived, the Yanks had cut into the [unclear] pretty heavily with attacking their aerodromes and in air fighting, you know, by then they had the Thunderbolts and the Mustangs. And they got [unclear] in the bomber stream a fair way the Yanks [unclear] not us and of course they got into the German fighters a bit. Which is very good.
AP: [laughs] yeah. Cool.
HWT: But, oh, now we had, a couple of times we lost motors [?] and you get one time bomb hanger, but now we, when you’re, [laughs] when you’re being, when there’s a lot of flak, when you’re hit by the flak, it’s, you don’t have to [unclear] quick you’re in it, you know, but the no reason that the shrapnel, sometimes the noise that’s close to you when you caught a bit of shrapnel, it sort of puts you on edge but the thing that I know was my job, I was busy all the time, see, cause the safest way to get over a, uhm, an operation was to stay in the stream, you see, the head streams had five, six, seven hundred aircraft, you know, in a short space of time and if this stayed within the stream band was about ten hundred miles, you mind an individual on the German radar, you’re part of the mess which they couldn’t distinguish you from, but if you were outside that, you appeared on their screens as a [unclear] and they could [unclear] a fighter onto you, you see. So, the thing to do was, stay behind and you had to stay in that channel, then be one of the pack, so you were supposed to take a fix every six minutes, but of course you couldn’t do that with, you know, where the, your radar range weren’t, what do you call it? Interfered with, you know, which I have forgotten the word.
AP: Jamming.
HWT: And [unclear] otherwise you took them as you could [unclear] something on the ground or, a river or something or [unclear] started with the star sight, but they, the best took you about fifteen minutes to work out, [unclear] to work out.
AP: And you, you
HWT: And so you had to stay on it, you know, and if you concentrated on that but you’re not thinking about the threat, instead I was fortunate in that position.
AP: What was the navigator’s compartment like in the Halifax?
HWT: Good,
AP: If you’re sitting at your desk, what are you looking at?
HWT: It was, I haven’t got a photo of it, but it was quite generous, it was, uhm, the pilot was up on a slightly raised area and there was a lower deck but not at full height, you know, and then I was [unclear] accommodate the navigator and the bomb aimer and when the bomb aimer wasn’t up acting as a second pilot, he would be down in his prone position, you know, and when he was there, I had to let him in because I had a collapsible seat that folded back [unclear] and but I had a pretty generous desk probably about that wide I suppose and it was, we had, you know, the usual red light or amber light to light, which wasn’t all that good. But then you had an API in front of you, which was a box about so big on the wall and, you had the, forgotten the name of the thing now. You had this device over the table which carried star maps and that projected star positions down onto this chart, you see. And, in fact, I’ve collected navigation instruments since the war, you see, and might even down in the workshop.
AP: Yeah.
HWT: And not since the war, only since I’ve retired yes and anyway I got an API, I got a GPI and I’ve never been able to get one of these, whatever they were, because I don’t think they were common out here, I think they were common to Bomber Command in England [unclear]. Anyway, this is one thing I forgot but I’ve known now, I’ll look it up.
AP: [laughs] Pretty good.
HWT: But now, my space was pretty generous and the only, I had a fold down seat [unclear] and that’s about it, and we had to wear silk gloves under our gauntlets to give us feel [?], that’s one of the computers we used to use, that was, that’s just, you know, one I bought since you know, but they were between that and doing your chart work and then doing your sextant work, quite busy.
AP: Where in a Halifax, I know in a Lancaster you got that astroline [?] thing behind the cockpit, where in a Halifax did you take star shots from?
HWT: Same thing.
AP: Same spot the Halifax.
HWT: [unclear] position to it.
AP: Oh yeah.
HWT: To [unclear] I’ll show you.
AP: Oh yeah, we have a model here so I prepared earlier.
HWT: It was just alongside, just behind the pilot and I’m beside [?] the radio operator.
AP: Ok. Pretty good. Uhm, you were talking about being attacked by a fighter once or twice, or being chased by a fighter once or twice. Did you encounter the corkscrew or did you have to use the corkscrew at some point?
HWT: Yeah.
AP: And how did that effect your navigation?
HWT: Badly [laughs] it, everything I had on my desk flew up the roof, you know, scattered all over the [unclear], then I had to recover them when I got out of it and but it didn’t affect, like, navigation as far as [unclear] is concerned, they usually corkscrewed around the [unclear] they’re on, it only pictured as a one off anyway, you didn’t [unclear] you know it was [unclear] corkscrew and so it didn’t affect my navigation to any extent because whatever in the [unclear] you were picking up with the continued fixes you were trying to get, you know, so it didn’t grow and I’m frustrated you know, I kept a log and part of the chart of the trip I did to Stuttgart, which I was going to show you but I can’t find the damn thing!
AP: Oh damn!
HWT: I looked everywhere and it gives you a fair idea then of how the, you know, why you kept the record the fixes [unclear] you know.
AP: You have to let me know if you do find it. I’d like to see that. Anyway.
HWT: I’ve gotta find it.
AP: Yeah.
HWT: I don’t know whether it’s down in my workshop, I got stuff down there but I wouldn’t have taken it down, there is no reason for me to take it down there. However.
AP: That’s alright, no worries. Uhm,
HWT: And I’ve got, this is a map, a map case this,
AP: Ah, cool!
HWT: Which I made, when I was collecting maps, well, I still have and I’ve got, you know what a [unclear] is?
AP: What?
HWT: [unclear]?
AP: No.
HWT: [unclear] you hang the file.
AP: Oh, ok, yeah.
HWT: And that’s how I got the maps in here.
AP: Oh, fantastic! Uhm, alright, so, how many trips did you do?
HWT: I did forty.
AP: That’s alright.
HWT: I started off on forty two, but two of them we were recalled on. Went through all the briefing took off, were on our way when we were recalled. Because they got [unclear] information that the targets were, you know, clouded out [or up?] and even then the decisions varied you know because we were recalled on those two occasions but on other occasions, you’d, not very often though, you’d bomb out of a cloud [unclear] and now I bombed once on my H2S,
AP: Ah!
HWT: And the bomb aimer couldn’t see the target and when we were committed to it, so handed over to me and I took it over on H2S which where they landed but [unclear] aircrew there’s a bomb site.
AP: So, Ok, tell me something about H2S. Presumably that’s in your navigator’s compartment as well, it’s around your desk somewhere. What were you looking at and how did it work?
HWT: Well, you had curtains along the side of your compartment. You could find the light [unclear], so most of your time that’s where you were, except when you want to take, you know, star shots and then you turn your light out and go for [unclear] you come back and if you got [unclear] on the chart, that’s why I’m frustrated I couldn’t show to you, you know, you had to get a fix straight at target shot if you could on three stars and that gave you, you reduced your position to a small triangle, and you just took the centre of that then you had to, had a symbol for that which was a circle with a dot in the middle on the chart and then your air position which made you maintain a, what do you call it? An air position chart all the time so because your air position was always the thing you had to apply the wind to, which gives you a [unclear] position and the air position was always the triangle with the dot in the middle, so by the time you’re keeping your chart up to date and you’re writing up your log and you’re having taken the fixes, you’ve taken the shots to make the fix and then on some occasions you’re bitterly cold, you know, your hands are cold, so you don’t work as flexibly as you would normally, I remember one time before we got the Mark III [unclear] my oxygen mask was dripping onto my chart and make a little ice cream, you know, but you had to navigate through but [unclear] you know, so, you couldn’t, you wouldn’t work as quickly as you would if you’re sitting down here [unclear], you know, you had certain discomforts here so you are
AP: Pretty good.
HWT: That’s how anyway, but the navigator was pretty busy all the time and he looked like [unclear] interesting, I was [unclear] target when we went up to it and if there was, if there was a ten [unclear] black in the sky, if it was a day like one, I just keep the curtain pulled [laughs] not that you use your curtain as you could but that’s what you felt like
AP: Yeah.
HWT: But now, I was, particularly on the night targets as always busy, day targets were better because you had, you could take visual fixes, [unclear] you could have a radar range, you know.
AP: You used Gee a fair bit?
HWT: Pardon?
AP: You would have used Gee a fair bit?
HWT: Yeah, Gee.
AP: How did that work?
HWT: [unclear] I think I got a, no, [unclear] but the [unclear] chart was an [unclear] chart with a number of lines drawn on it, you see, and these lines, they weren’t straight, they were sort of, you know, what they call it, I forget now, anyway they were lines demarking the radiations from three different radar stations and each station had a different colour on the chart and say you’d, when you took your readings of the, of the Gee, you could prop them on against in relation to the station you were working, you know, and that was very good and very simple and then you got the H2S which and of course the [unclear] was able to, oh God there is a word for I can’t think of it, a [unclear] scrambled anyway the Gee transmission over the [unclear] so the H2S then gave you a radar unit that you carry in the aircraft and the Germans couldn’t, uhm, scramble it, ain’t that terrible? Anyway but you had the danger the Gee transmitting and the Germans took out [unclear] they could pick up your transmission and home on you, you see, so you didn’t want to, until that happened, it was great, you know, you could, all the cities had distinctive shapes on H2S screens which were the same on your chart, so it was easy and to maintain where you were but when the Germans tend to home on your transmission, you didn’t transmit all the time, you see, so then it was much harder because you hadn’t been on the thing all the time yet, you had to be, identify where you were, you know, or guess where you were in relation to what you station you were working. Bu they all had their, you know, plus and minuses.
AP: It’s one of the fascinating things I think, if you follow through the whole bomber war, the measures and the countermeasures and then the counter countermeasures and then the way that, you had this brilliant new technology that gave you the advantage for about two weeks and then the other side came up with a counter tour and you had to put the counter to counter and it just kept swinging [unclear]
HWT: [unclear] scientific war
AP: That’s unbelievable, yeah, I [unclear] read a couple of books about that. Uhm, alright, so forty two trips happen, uhm, how did your tour end?
HWT: Oh, it just ended.
AP: Just ended? [laughs]
HWT: It was forty, I did forty two, was the number I was set out on but how did it end? [unclear]there was another operation on Essen, two days before I’d had a day operation on Essen and the one before that which was two days before that again we were recalled by radio. Oh, it ended quite officially peacefully, [unclear] five hour trip, five hours, five minutes.
AP: Were there any, any particular celebrations when you got back or?
HWT: Oh yeah, we [unclear] on celebration, yeah, course, of course it has but in [unclear] long, you see, we were posted [unclear] pretty straight away but [unclear] was our pilot, he went to [unclear], no to [unclear] to conversion, I was, stayed on the squadron, they made me the radar officer which, you know, I had to assess all the bombing performance of the aircraft, you know, as recorded by H2S and I did that some months and then I was posted to a transport squadron 96, which was just forming and I did three cross countries to them [unclear] we were preparing to go on a route I’d established by then was down to Middle East, Cairo across to Bombay, then across to Chongqing I think, some Chinese place to take [unclear] squadron to them. And we were just doing our run up to that, I didn’t know which [unclear] I was gonna be on because, you know, you do the England-Cairo, we did the Cairo-Bombay, Bombay-Chongqing, a trip, be stationed on those but I can get to that, they posted me back here and I went back here and then I had my normal leave and I was posted, I was going to be posted to a squadron in New Guinea when the war was over, so that was it.
AP: That was the end of it. So, how did you find then are you in the Air Force for about five years or something now?
HWT: Yeah.
AP: How did you find readjusting to civilian life?
HWT: No problem.
AP: No problem at all?
HWT: No. I went back to Newport for six or eight months and then my course started at Swinburne and I did that. I did that for three years and then, then I got a job at the council as a building inspector and I was that for a couple of years, then I got, caught as a building [unclear], so I got the building [unclear] job and then that gradually grew to encompass the town planning and won a council work so started as the city architect [unclear] town planner [unclear] regional department for about fifteen [unclear] and couple of secretaries, you know. So it developed and so I had no problem, I got back into a quiet work and then I wanted to fly but my wife didn’t want me to fly until the kids had grown up a bit so I didn’t care for my license until 1968, then I got that and then, well, I still got it but and then during those years I did a lot of flying around Australia. I belonged to a group called the [unclear] aviation group [unclear] and I was the secretary, director for secretary for quite a while and so we had three aircraft and we had a Cessna 182, a Cherokee Piper 180 and a Victor and before we got the 182 we had a Piper Comanche, beautiful aircraft, I was standing in front of the aircraft but one of the [unclear] aviation group crashed the [unclear] and killed the four of them and [unclear] for me, I had to go up there and dispose of the airframe, and [unclear] took the engine and the retractable undercarriage and I had to very carefully dispose of the [unclear] which was the airframe and [unclear] back and forth which, you know, [unclear] terrible end of a lovely aircraft. Anyway and then the last trip I did, I flew clockwise right round Australia, coastal, right round Australia,
AP: Beautiful.
HWT: You know, took us three weeks, a good trip.
AP: Oh boy! [unclear] A country that lends itself to things like that. Very much the easiest way to cover the distance I think. Very nice, so, oh, I guess we’ll come to what is my last question, I ask everyone this. Uhm, what do you think is the legacy of Bomber Command and how to you want to see it remembered?
HWT: Well, I was annoyed and hurt so that affected [unclear] job didn’t but the way that the Command was treated after the war upset me, [unclear] a good two years the Command has carried the war and at the time we started was the time Bomber Harris really started his campaign we didn’t have any [unclear] gear, you know, we had normal just recorded all this stuff but and sextants but then, as a Command I’m talking about and then we got Gee, which helped us through a while and then we got H2S which helped us and then in between the, [unclear] this, they developed pathfinders to find the target and illuminate it, which made the job more accurate so and it was the Bomber Command and the government’s, the English government’s decision that we use carpet bombing because at the time we started, we had no better means to getting to and so, but they always picked an appropriate target which was bombed too but then there was always, you know, the weering skilled and the bomb aimer, all that sort of stuff come to it, so you had a spring but, but anyway Bomber Command was much blamed and the politicians particularly didn’t want to know [unclear] because you see in the bombing civilians were killed but civilians were [unclear] during the war because most people were working in something to do with the war, ammunitions, looking out, people in leave, all this sort of stuff, you see, so there was no real completely neutral person but that’s perhaps a modest justification but the, but anyway the thing I heard most was the fact that the politicians would give Harris a list of targets, see, the scientists worked them out, you know, factories [unclear] whatever, so they had collected the intelligence, then they gave the list of appropriate targets to the Parliament and the politicians nominated [unclear] you see, they normally give him [unclear], you know, the five was his choice, which one of the five his choice, depending on [unclear] and so it was [unclear] because the politicians didn’t want to know it, didn’t want to know about it, you see, because thinking that it was not very good because of people had, you know, the [unclear] of civilians being killed they didn’t know [unclear] and I think members of Bomber Command as a whole felt that way. There is one little last thought, but I don’t know whether you know about it but it was something like so long after the war I [unclear] have forgotten about it, but last year the French government decided to give the survivors of D-Day and Battle of Normandy a Legion of Honour and they presented them to them and which I got one was a nice medal but I think there were twenty five from Victoria and I think six from South Australia and I think there about twenty five from [unclear] I’m not sure but they [unclear] until the numbers were way down, you know, and I just mentioned it because it’s a very frugal [unclear] to
AP: What are your thoughts on the clasp? I see there’s not one hanging on your medal up there. There’s a little Bomber Command clasp.
HWT: OH yeah, good idea, I’ll show you.
AP: One of those as well [laughs].
HWT: [unclear]
AP: Yep.
HWT: This.
AP: A DFC as well I see.
HWT: Yeah, and that’s the
AP: Yeah, lovely.
HWT: [unclear] a nice medal, isn’t it?
AP: That’s a very nice medal, yeah.
HWT: And when you look at it, it’s clipped by the sides.
AP: Ah, wow!
HWT: [unclear] any good one side.
AP: [laughs] Lovely, yeah, there’s the clasp there. Very good.
HWT: That’s our crew, that’s me, that’s the rear gunner, that’s the wireless op, that’s the bomb aimer, that’s the mid upper gunner and that’s our pilot.
AP: [unclear] ground crew and a couple of WAAFs as well.
HWT: And, yeah, that’s the ground crew, that the ones who drive [unclear]
AP: Yeah. Fantastic, fantastic.
HWT: And that’s, that’s the rear gunner [unclear], the pilot and the mid upper gunner [unclear], he was killed on his fifteenth trip.
AP: Wow [unclear] that’s brilliant. Brilliant [laughs]
HWT: [unclear]
AP: Ah, very nice! Well, that’s the interview thing, so I’m gonna turn that off in a minute. So, thank you very much.
HWT: That’s alright.
Dublin Core
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ATinningHW160314, PTinningH1601
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Interview with Herbert Tinning
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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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01:19:54 audio recording
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Pending review
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-03-14
Description
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Herbert Tinning trained as an aircraft fitter but later remustered and flew operations with 51 Squadron as a navigator. After the war, he build a career as a town planner and later as an architect.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
51 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
coping mechanism
crewing up
fitter airframe
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
perception of bombing war
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Lichfield
RAF Snaith
RAF West Freugh
superstition
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/349/3518/PWhiteRR1601.1.jpg
fe069536c41a571ddb9dd906a128148a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/349/3518/AWhiteRR160607.2.mp3
8a1d50dfd1e1ebd27540c7db00715556
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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White, Ralph
Ralph Robert White
Ralph R White
R R White
R White
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Ralph Robert White (1923 - 2021, 427630 Royal Australian Air Force), a training report and four photographs. He flew operations with 192 Squadron from RAF Foulsham.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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White, RR
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Ralph White. A 192 Squadron Halifax skipper. A Special Duties squadron he tells me. The interview is taking place at Ralph’s place in Burwood in Melbourne. It is the 7th of June 2016. My name’s Adam Purcell. Ralph, we might start from the beginning.
RW: Yes.
AP: If you don’t mind.
RW: Not at all.
AP: Can you tell me something of what you were doing before the war and where you were when you heard that war had been declared?
RW: Initially I was employed as a junior clerk or office boy at the Melbourne City Council. From there, when the [pause] when I turned eighteen I wanted to join the air force. But my parents were not signing forms. So I then made a very silly mistake and joined the army and I spent eighteen months in an infantry battalion. Which — when the, when the Americans came into the war 7th of December ‘41 the unit I was with got, were sent to Western Australia. So while spending my time in Western Australia I got up as far as Geraldton and they were looking for aircrew trainees to join the air force. So I volunteered as an air crew cadet in from Geraldton starting off with recruit training in Busselton and then sent as an aircrew guard while we were waiting to start ITS training. Poor aircrew. You were made aircrew guards which didn’t, didn’t worry us, being out of the army. The guard duty was ok except that when we got to Pearce which was the air force main ‘drome in those days — located nearby was petrol dumps. Forty four gallon drums of petrol in the bush and it was our job at night to guard the petrol dumps because light fingered Perthites were coming out and stealing forty four gallon drums of petrol. But once, not — I didn’t do it, but someone caught someone or someone had pulled up in a car so they felt suspicious and they fired a shot and we were never troubled with them again. So that was the start of my aircrew career as a cadet. From there, once initial training started after we’d done our duties as air crew guards we were sent to Victor Harbour. ITS at Victor Harbour. EFTS at Benalla. Went solo at Benalla on Tiger Moths. Over to Mallala on Ansons. Got my wings at Mallala. Came back to Point Cook to do beam studies and from there was sent to the UK to start with the RAF.
AP: How — alright tell me about your first solo.
RW: First solo. Oh God I wish you hadn’t as a matter of fact [laughs] At Benalla. Yes. Went about, it was about seven and a half hours I think that was there and I had a very good instructor. The instructor had four pupils. One of them was scrubbed. That meant three of us. But when it was my turn to do the solo trip Mr, Squadron Leader Kinnear was a very big man. And squadron leader. And I did the solo test with him which was the usual things. Loops, slow rolls, stalls and just little areas before we did the circuits and bumps just to pass the pilot’s test. And then coming in to land I really didn’t take into account that he was a very big man in the front cockpit. Which, when I came into land it sank too quickly on me and I bounced across [laughs] across the aerodrome which wasn’t the right way to go. However, I said to him there, I said, Oh, you know, ‘I’m sorry sir but I reckon I can do better than that.’ He reply was, ‘I wouldn’t fly with you again. Too dangerous.’ So I got, I got my wings. So that was that. So I wish you hadn’t asked me because it was not done in glory.
AP: It very rarely is. What was a typical day like at EFTS? What sort of things were you actually doing?
RW: What? At Mallala?
AP: EFTS. So Benalla.
RW: EFTS. EFTS would be — each time you’d practice something different. First was familiarisation. Just on there. With an instructor. Practicing stalls and spins and recovery. And from then on you were sent out to practice by yourself. Every couple of days they might give you a taxiing test or something of that nature. But it was just a matter of going up, practicing yourself and coming back. Stall turns. You know some aerobatics you did better than, or I enjoyed better than others. But as a slow roller I was impossible. The, I’d lose so many feet, about five hundred feet every time I tried to slow roll. It was never done graciously. But that was about it. It was a matter of getting, I think, eighty hours. I think I had to get eighty hours up before they’d pass you on to the next unit at Mallala.
AP: And what did you think of the — what did you think of the Tiger Moth?
RW: I loved it. I think it was great fun. It was more or less a joy ride really. Really. It was responsive. It never let you down. If you did the right thing the old Tiger would do what you told it. But apart from that it never gave me any trouble.
AP: An instructor of mine once said, ‘A Tiger Moth is easy to fly but hard to fly well.’
RW: Well yeah. Well, I can remember an instructor once saying to me, ‘No matter what way you fly as long as you do it smoothly,’ which was fair enough but they won’t let you down. The funny side in all of it really when you’re saying about Benalla, thinking back we had similar weather to what we’re experiencing at the moment. That, the first flights in the morning that took off this particular day when we, when we were coming in from whatever shift we were going to do the flying the afternoon there were five Tiger Moths all with their nose in the ground. All sitting up. They had landed but the ground was boggy and they all tipped over. All you could see across the field was Tiger Moths.
AP: I was, I was actually going to ask you about accidents in training. Were they common? Did you see a lot of them?
RW: Not really. No. The only trouble was that sometimes before you were told to do something I’d go out and say, practice stall turns, practice fancy slide slipping. I can’t think what other ones we were, but at one stage we weren’t allowed to, we weren’t allowed to do a loop until we’d had a few more hours up. And one of the boys tried to do the loop. Stalled at the top. Spun in. And actually he got out of it which was lucky. He didn’t get killed but just badly shaken up but showed him that, you know, when you get to the top of the loop you just have to have sufficient speed to get out at the top.
AP: Nothing has changed. The laws of physics are exactly the same. Yeah. Very good.
RW: But you can’t help enjoying flying a Tiger Moth. It was just pure fun.
AP: I would agree exactly with that. Absolutely. What sort of things happened at Mallala?
RW: Mallala was modest flying. The old Anson. It wasn’t a good, I don’t think it was a good aircraft to train on because with the coming in to land with an Anson you were given a speed. I think it was, from memory, sixty. I think we still operated sixty with dual aircraft. Flying two together. Two pilots. We were usually flying together so one would do one hour as pilot and you’d sit back and do navigating. And then the other chap would have a turn of his hour flying. And they were very bad because as you might remember from the Tiger Moth you don’t pick up a stall with your ailerons. And with an Anson you could pick up a stall with your ailerons. You’d have to pop out and kick the wing and it’d come good. It was that placid. It used to stall at forty seven. It was nearly stopped. So I, from that area, a lot of the chaps we were with that went solo at Mallala, from Mallala, and stayed in Australia they went on to Beauforts. And I often, I often put down to the fact that so many of our lads went on to Beauforts and spun in. And I think it was picking up their wings with their ailerons. But that was some of the things. Very awkward to fly solo. You had to do solo flying in an Anson but it meant getting out of your seat and changing petrol tanks and they were sliding ones. Ones that you slide up and slide down cutting off and they weren’t ever maintained very well. But you had to get out of your seat, get over to the side of the aircraft and try and change tanks and get back to the seat again before you hit the ground. Very rough. It was all good training. ‘Cause when we got to Point Cook after we got our wings we didn’t know we were alive when we got on to the Oxfords at Point Cook because they were comfortable. Automatic undercarriage and flaps and all those sorts of things. It was good.
AP: Moving up in the world.
RW: But learning to fly in Australia was very easy compared to going over to the UK. Picking up the practice of flying there that they were more precise. When you got to the UK in the RAF initially we had to wait a while before we could start flying. And I did something that you’d be familiar with. We had to learn aerodrome control. Which was, was good fun at the time but the practice then of course was the way you approached it you approached the landing and did your circuit before you landed each time which made it a bit of hold up when you were trying to land. The queuing up to get on the ground particularly if it was two squadrons on one station was a bit, a bit tricky. But the Ansons never gave us any trouble as I can recall really. The, the second pilot in an Anson used to set up as a single pilot but the co-pilot had to plunge his control in with, you know, a ratchet to get the controls picked up. And quite often it would jam and wouldn’t do it so you were left to hang on ‘til the co-pilot could do change over and change pilots. But they were very old fashioned. Lovely old things. They had no vices. That’s why a Lancaster has got no vices. I think they learned a lot from that.
AP: Avro. Avro. Yeah. Background coming through I suppose. Can you remember much of the process of a beam approach? You were saying you did beam approaches at Point Cook. Can you just tell how they worked and what they were.
RW: Well beam approach. Beam approaching the point, that of course, you understand that the beam approach is a beam. A signal that you’re getting and once you get on to a beam it’s a single note until you drift off the beam. If you go to the left well you get dit dit dit dit dit so you know you’ve come off the beam. Steady note and your, and the other one would be a dash, dah dah just to try and get you back on the thing. But the beam set up in Point Cook was what they called a four degree beam that went out in that. The further you got out the wider the beam was. And when we got to the UK of course, we said yes we’d done beam work. ‘Righto. Off you go and do beam work on Oxfords.’ But their degree of signal was point four — not four degrees. It was point four of a degree. So you really once you got near the control that was sending out the beam you had to be spot on. Which was good. Once again good training. But to be truthful when you think back on it we didn’t use the beam that much. Occasionally with the fog you might try and put it on but you were never left to go around training too long while the fog was coming in and you couldn’t find the approach.
AP: So beam approach though — you trained on them though.
RW: You trained on them but you never, never used it.
AP: Not usually used in anger.
RW: Well, I don’t remember. Maybe some other people did. I can’t remember. At Foulsham, when I, when I finally got to 192 the, the aerodrome there at Norfolk was on low lands but it was fitted with FIDO so we had the approach shown with the burning the old FIDO so we didn’t really need the beam.
AP: That’s, that’s one way of getting around it I suppose. Fair enough.
RW: I never used it anyway because each time, coming back we were usually in the mornings and it was ok.
AP: How did you get to the UK?
RW: Oh the UK. From Sydney. There on an American vessel. I think it was nineteen days to San Francisco. Across the States by train to New York. And then from New York to Gourock in Scotland on the Isle de France. A big French liner that eventually was sunk in the harbour. At New York — sabotaged. Sabotaged but we got there. It was big but very rough getting there and what I liked about it — when we landed in Gourock which was just up north of Glasgow I read the notice in the train. It didn’t say if there’s an air raid. It said when there’s an air raid you do — [laughs] so it was just a difference.
AP: That was, that was going to be my next question actually. First impressions of wartime. Of the UK in wartime.
RW: That surprised me because we got down to Brighton there. Once we got off the boat we went to Brighton to wait. To wait to start our training again. Flying training after doing the aerodrome control. But it [pause] very close. Brighton’s not that far. It’s only twenty two miles, I think, across the channel to, to the occupied France at that stage. And every now and then a 109 would come over and particularly on parade mornings. He’d come up, rip up to Brighton and try and catch us, you know if we were on the parade ground and things like that. That’s what you got used to it. And then of course going to London occasional raids coming across until — you know the raids really stopped and then started again with the buzz bombs and that sort of thing but we got used to it there. The people sort of take it naturally. I can remember even going down Brighton this 109 used to come across at regular intervals. But people would be queuing up for something. Old ladies. You know. Civilians. And blokes going to pubs. And as the warning came out that he was coming again people would just drop on the ground. Once he flew over they’d all stand up again. So that took a bit of getting used to.
AP: Just a part of life I suppose.
RW: It was really.
AP: Yeah.
RW: And particularly going in to London. To see them sleeping on the underground tube stations.
AP: Yeah. I’ll be there in a minute. So you mentioned aerodrome control. Tell me a bit about that.
RW: Well it would be so different from yours. The girls did it all. It was just that we were standing by in case we were needed. But originally the idea was you would ask for permission to land which was always cheating because within ten miles [laughs] ‘I’m number one.’ Everyone dodging their position, but the idea was you came over, identified yourself over the ‘drome. You went on the, about at a thousand feet straight down the runway, to the crosswind. You’d go cross wind and tell them when you were turning cross wind. Go across wind. Come down wind. Down wind, middle of the down wind you’d let the tower know that you were downwind. Then you were turning in to crosswind again and then once you were in the funnels you said, if you were in funnels you just notified you’re in the funnels and you were given the ok to land. But that’s all it was. It was just an acknowledgment and then you had each one doing it and then turn. And you spaced yourself out. Now, does that make sense to you?
AP: Yeah I can, I can understand. I’ve got a vague idea.
RW: It’s none of this coming straight in [laughs]
AP: No. No. Of course not. No. Of course not. Just sort of moving, moving forward a little bit.
RW: Yes.
AP: To, to operational life.
RW: Yes.
AP: You said, you know, when two squadrons arrive at the same time. How did they sort that out?
RW: Well, they just, as you, as you called in. Whichever your call sign was. They’d give you a spot. In other words you know, when you were overhead. If you were overhead you told them you were overhead. If you said you were approaching then they’d give you a situation. If you got too many there that, around, that they were, you were starting to stack them around the aerodrome which was a bit dangerous then they’d send you off on a cross country. Give you a, you know —
AP: Come back.
RW: Anyone short of fuel would be happy but being on special duties we didn’t carry a bomb so we only carried overloads. So at any time we came in we were always sent on cross-countrys. They knew we weren’t and of course cunning ones that had lost a motor you know they would say, ‘I’m approaching on three.’
AP: On three.
RW: Or something like this. To get priority. Feather his motor.
AP: One veteran I have interviewed for this programme said — he was a wireless operator and he said he patched in the more powerful power supply in to their RT.
RW: Yeah.
AP: So that they had a range of thirty miles.
RW: Oh yes. That’s it.
AP: Instead of fifteen.
RW: He’d be saying he was overhead and he could be thirty miles away.
AP: That’s right. Sneaky.
RW: And I think after a while the, I think the signal would come in and then they realised they were weak and you’d say, ‘Stand by,’ and if you could understand he was cheating a bit because we [pause] normally, on special duties, they were very secretive. And of course we only would, sometimes only use two out of the squadron and things of that nature and wherever you were sent was a little bit off key because instead of being through Bomber Command you went through Air Ministry. Which was rather unusual. Now, now you might have to correct me here but I think our instructions came through Air Ministry. From department A14. That doesn’t mean a thing but it was out of Air Ministry. It wasn’t out of Bomber Command because old Butch, he can’t stand — unless you were dropping a bomb you’re no use [laughs] but we were given that and would have been given the — I’d better not get too far ahead of myself.
AP: That’s alright. We’ll, we’ll —
RW: But that was the idea. There was always a little bit of a give and take with the approaching.
AP: Very good. Alright. After Brighton what happened next?
RW: After Brighton, went back on to Tiger Moths. Of all things at a place called Fairoaks but it was really Windsor Castle’s —
AP: Take a couple.
RW: With Fairoaks and we were given, and we were now sent to Smith’s Lawns. Smith Lawn, which was Windsor Castle’s own private airfield. So we did our flying from Windsor Castle. Smith’s Lawn it was known as. And that was just, just routine. Getting familiar with English conditions and flying the Tiger Moth. We weren’t particularly given any aerobatics to do. It was mainly cross-countrys and things of that nature to get us used to the countryside really. Because as we, as we went there you got a bit sick of just doing cross-countrys because I remember once that they’d taken all the street names down. I shouldn’t say town names so it was always a cunning move if you were ever lost was to try and nip down to a railway station to see what the [laughs] where you were. And they didn’t have that there so I was going in and out doing this cross-country. So many hours up and back on different courses they give you. And I’d put, “Crossed road. Crossed railway. Crossed road.” I couldn’t mention, I didn’t know a town. Any there. When I handed my navigation papers in the instructor very sneeringly said, ‘What did you do? Go by road and come by rail?’ [laughs] But no that was the sort of training we did there and from there on I don’t know how many hours we would have done there. It was very interesting being at Smiths Lawn being Windsor Castle. We had one of the lads on flight with us. An English lad. Or English Czechoslovakian. He was royalty from — Prince, oh I know, he was Prince Peter. And he was from Yugoslavia or somewhere. One of those states over there . And as a result with the prince there the RAF were looking after him a bit. So when it came Sunday we were all invited to go to the chapel at Windsor Castle with the royal family. And it was interesting too. He of course went off and sat with the royalty. The ones he knew. But we, the lads we all stood at the back there of the chapel just having a good look around. But of course it was Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth were there with the King. King and queen. And afterwards we went for a bit of a tour around the, around the castle and we got to their own home garden and of course the royal family were interested in growing food for, for the sake of wartime restrictions. And we noticed that Princess Elizabeth’s garden, she had a plot of her own, it was perfect. You know beautifully done. And I thought, oh I know what’s happened here. You know they’ve got the gardeners to do it for her. Then we were taken [laughs] then we were taken to see Princess Margaret’s garden and it was a shambles [laughs]. Weeds and everything. So no she obviously did her own gardening and so did the king and queen. We presumed. We didn’t look at theirs. But that was just one little thing.
AP: Yeah.
RW: That was Smith’s Lawn. While we were waiting then to go back to, to go on to Oxfords. Our next.
AP: What particularly made England different to fly in than Australia?
RW: The, the amount of flying from Tiger Moths and the Ansons we had there was that here we have set towns. You know you’d go to Benalla. You know you’d hardly, I’ve forgotten half the towns up there now. Wangaratta, and the different, Winton Lakes and things but in England there were villages and towns and little bits and pieces here, there, everywhere. Like a patchwork quilt compared to an expanse. And that’s what we got used to. One of the things that the aerodromes, usually — not like ours you know. Benella was miles away and there wasn’t another aerodrome anywhere near it. But if we were in England there was an aerodrome somewhere near you somewhere so you had to watch your pick. In fact, it got to the stage of, really in the UK that on the approach to the different ‘dromes — like Foulsham would be FU. You’d see FU up there so you’d know you were heading for Foulsham. But there would be five or six ‘dromes all around that you could jump into if, if you knew who they were. But you had no identification really from small towns. In other words I’m thinking of when we got to South Cerney when we did proper navigation we flew at Bibury which was a little village say a couple of miles away. Then further north was Cheltenham and Gloucester and places. Not Gloucester. Oh, Cheltenham. See I’ve lost track of the towns but they were bigger towns heading towards Manchester and the Cotswolds and places like that. But it was different flying. You had to get used to the difference of finding out where you were. But eventually that was while we were just flying on AFU. Just on, we were virtually doing solo in the Oxfords.
AP: Alright. What happened after that?
RW: After that. That was beam. Once we got on to Oxfords you went and did the beam course again and then you did advanced flying. Even to the extent of, a lot of the instructors you had at AFU were ex-operational pilots having a rest from operations. And the, it was just a matter of flying around and getting used to things. One of them even said you know who we were flying around with the instructor would get in and say oh we’ll go in flying here, there and everywhere and go down towards Bath or some place like that. And he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘It’s too nice just to be sitting here doing nothing.’ He said, ‘How would you like to try a roll?’ And I thought, my God. A roll. I was rotten in a Tiger [laughs]
AP: Rolling in an Oxford.
RW: He said, ‘Let’s do a roll.’ I’d do the roll, but of course he did the roll but it meant that we had to stay in the air for ten minutes because all the gyros had tumbled [laughs] So that was, that was your training for not using your instruments all the time. You couldn’t use your instruments for ten minutes. But that was it. He was a Canadian pilot but he didn’t, he did the roll alright but it was a barrel roll. But I thought I’ll do it when I’m not seen.
AP: A bit flak happy perhaps.
RW: He could have been. Yes.
AP: Yeah.
RW: I think he was actually relaxing after operational stuff. I don’t know what he, I can’t remember what he came off to start with but a lot of them weren’t staff pilots there. You had a lot of staff pilots on these places to beam courses.
AP: Alright. And the next step was Operational Training Unit.
RW: OTU. Yes. OTU was good. That was on Wellingtons. Wellington 10s. I did pretty well on, on Wellingtons except the aircraft we were flying. They were clapped out. We had to do, you know, cross countrys at night and this sort of thing to imitation targets and that type of training. Getting used to it. Getting used to night affiliation where you’d get attacked by a fighter aircraft with cameras to see how you go. But on one occasion there the aircraft I picked up was u/s. It was u/s. You couldn’t fly it that night. So we had to get out of that, go and get another aircraft and then pick up with a dummy raid. But it meant I got attacked left, right and centre but halfway through it I lost a motor. And then I had a fire in the, a fire in the wireless ops room. He put the fire out. I said, ‘Righto Lin.’ They were always grizzling they never came out front to have a look out. So I said to Lin, the wireless op, I said, ‘Come up and have a look out now. Now that you’ve put the fire out.’ No sooner got him sitting up front there than the motor went. And of course — had to go home. So we came home and of all things had to do a, I had to a left hand circuit instead of a right hand circuit because I’d lost the port motor. And it came in on one and put it down beautifully, I say it myself because It was a perfect landing and the crew reckoned it was only perfect one I ever did [laughs] But that was, that gave me a, I think that started off why I finished up on special duties because I got reassessed as above average and then, well volunteered for required, didn’t require, ‘Would you volunteer for Pathfinders?’ ‘Yes,’ and was accepted for Pathfinders. And the crew. And that was at OTU so that was on Wellingtons to then, and got, and got a commission. I was commissioned from OTU and then finished up joining, doing heavy duty conversion to the big, to the Halifax 3s and eventually a squadron.
AP: Tell me how you met your crew.
RW: The old — everyone in the hangar [laughs] Yes. Now, the, the hangar there. There was twenty pilots, nineteen navs because I had, I had a navigator with me that I wasn’t satisfied so I had to leave him behind to do more training. Bomb aimer, wireless op and forty gunners. And when I went in to the place there a little bloke came up to me and said, ‘Have you got a crew yet?’ and I said, ‘No. Would you like to be mine?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ And he was the wireless operator. In the meantime he’d gathered a bomb aimer and one gunner. But that was, it just sorted out. Eventually the navigator was replaced because he would have been a sick, a navigator gone sick the previous course so he was a spare and I picked him up as a spare and I used him all the way through.
AP: What — what sort of things did you do when you were on leave in England to relax?
RW: We’d go to Lady Ryder’s billets and things. I didn’t have a girlfriend or anything like that. I was sort of a bit keen on the flying and all that sort of thing and a bit more, I was interested in, you know, I wanted to be a pilot and that was it. But a lot of the boys had girlfriends. The crew. OTU there was an Australian pilot. We jumped up together. We’d flown since the time we left Australia till we came to OTU and he and I would probably go to a different billet as they were called in those days. Staying with different people and enjoying the peaceful side. Go to Edinburgh for a trip up to see what Edinburgh was like. Glasgow. But that’s about all on leave. There was, I didn’t have any relatives over there to visit but that would be about all I can recall really what we did on leave. Go and get, go to — you’d mix with different courses you were on. Perhaps you’d get someone a bit familiar when you were at AFU. There would just be pilots only so you were more or less stuck with pilots. Perhaps if you met a mate there you would go and have a few drinks and go into town for a night. That business. Have a drink up.
AP: What was, what was the local pub like? What sort of things happened?
RW: The local pubs. The AFU was Cheltenham and you got to know how to get over the back fence. And that rationing had come in and every now and then they ran out of beer so you had to know which fence you have to go in. A lot of the beer in the pubs in, particularly in Cheltenham, very posh towns there. Very lovely towns really. And to go into the pubs in our dark blue uniforms quite often they had, instead of beer they’d have ciders and you got used to watching your step there. I was leaning on the bar, with my elbow on the bar, sort of, say drinking and with that the barmaid come up and said, ‘Love take your elbow off the bar, it’s in all the drinks.’ And I said, ‘Oh sorry.’ She said, ‘No. It takes the dye out of your uniform.’ [laughs] So I had better watch this. You did meet the locals in the pubs. They’d quite often take you on. Or they’d be playing darts and they’d be all over the place like madwomen on scooters. You know they’d be throwing their — and whatever game they’d challenge you to a game. And of course immediately they challenged out came their special darts. You’d play them. You’d play. They’d beat you and you’d have to buy them a beer. But they were cunning. They conned us [laughs]
AP: What, what was your first impression of a Halifax?
RW: The Hali I thought was lovely. I was very impressed. Actually when I did the aerodrome control it was Halies then but of course they were the old Hali 2s and 5s when I was doing that. And once again when you’d done Conversion Unit. They’d all been all clapped out. The aircraft we were flying had been ex-French squadrons we were using but when I got used to her she was beautiful. I loved the Hali. She was good to fly. She was responsive. Never gave me any trouble. The only thing I’d say that was wrong with the Halifax I think everybody had the same trouble — brakes. The brakes weren’t effective. You know, you’d have full brake on and you’d still keep going. But I liked the Bristol Hercules. They were very powerful engines so she could climb like a homesick angel as we’d say. They were good. They were comfortable. They were responsive to fly. I had no complaint with them.
AP: Alright. Now you’re getting towards your squadron at this point. Where was that?
RW: Squadron. Yeah. 192.
AP: Where was 192 based?
RW: Hmmn?
AP: Where was the squadron based?
RW: This was in Foulsham in Norfolk.
AP: Foulsham. That’s right. Cool. Right. So where and how did you live at Foulsham?
RW: Lived there as, once again an officer at that stage so that was in billets mainly. Mainly pilots together because the crew was still — the flight engineer was, he had done a special tour. He had already done one tour, the flight engineer. Which we picked up at Marston Moor when we did the conversion. So he was, he would be in the officer’s mess with us and and the rest of the crew would be in NCO quarters. But we were usually two to a room perhaps. That would be — mostly if you got a room on your own you were lucky. But they’d bunk you in with someone else. And 192 of course had, as I’ve showed you that photo with, they were all the Halifax pilots but we had a Mosquito flight on 192 because when you, when you accepted special duties we weren’t bound by the thirty, thirty trips for a tour. We had to do forty five straight. And once you were forty five straight you were tour expired. They never wanted you again on that. For that reason. So you were a little bit different from Bomber Command itself because we had our own set up there. And it was comfortable. Good living. It’s just someone that spoke to me the other day. In fact it was Laurie Macpherson? Laurie. Laurie Larmer?
AP: Oh Laurie Larmer. Yeah. of course.
RW: Laurie. We were talking to him and he said, ‘Whitey, can you remember when we got the bacon and eggs before we went on a trip?’ And I said, ‘Oh yes.’ He said, ‘What time did you get it?’ And I said, ‘We used to get it about, I don’t know, depending on what time we were going out. 11 o’clock. I don’t know. 12 o’clock. Depending on when we were going to fly out. Yeah.’ He said, ‘Ah. We used to have ours in the morning.’ And I said, ‘What?’ Then I didn’t realise. He was doing daylights.
AP: Oh of course.
RW: Because we were all, we were still doing night work so it was just one of those things. You forget little things like that. The same old thing. People could never get used to it. Telling you about, you know how the Benzedrine tablets were there to take, you know. These days we would have had so many druggies we wouldn’t have known what happened [laughs] But that was, I didn’t realised that the Benzedrine tablets were to keep you alert whilst — I never used them which I was lucky to say. But some people did. They’d sort of get their Benzedrine, they’d take the wakey wakey as it was called and of course then all of a sudden the op would be cancelled and they were bright eyed. They’d sit there playing billiards half the night because they were awake [laughs] I learned that but I believe the idea was you took your Benzedrine tablet when you were coming in to the target and of course — so as far as we were concerned we found that very often we didn’t have targets. We, most of the time if it was a special we were escorting a bomber group out you’d got the track drawn in. I think with operational units the track was in the, the navigator didn’t have to alter course for as long as it was in the ten mile bracket that they gave for the ten. Now we were, one of us would be on one side and one, the other from 192 would be on the other side checking on the counter measures. It was all radar. Radar. Radio and radar counter measures. Basically with the special operator. And of course depending on which operator you had, he wasn’t a regular one. When you had to there were two waves going in. We had to hang around the target area whilst the next wave was coming in which was usually two minutes and two minutes and two minutes. So it was always hang around waiting and not very often we would change over. We wouldn’t be in communication with the other 192 bloke and just hang around. The big thing was that when we did go out because normally we would just wander. They’d give us so many set courses to go and fly and we were just flying with the, with the RCMs listening in to what they could do. If they, if they went on a target then the German speaking one would — with 192 they can tune into the, we could tune into the Germans talking. And of course no good for us but the German translator he could chip in to give them the fighters the wrong info which was a bit sneaky [laughs] But no the funniest thing was that on one of the ones that we were in just out of Oslo. Norway. Tonsberg. When we came and the bombers had done their two minutes and we were hanging around waiting for the next wave to come in and while we were doing and whilst we were there we were having a marvellous time. We could see the lights of Sweden in the distance so we were busy. So busy were we looking around not being alert. We were looking at the lights of Stockholm or wherever it was and over us — we were here and over like that, it would have been as high as this ceiling an 88 went right, just over us like that. Here I am down sitting here. We’re having seven or eight blokes all supposed to be looking out for it and he just went. In fact I can see, I can still see the dirt on its belly to this day and I ducked [laughs] But it one of those things that only goes to show you, you know a moment’s lack of concentrations. Everyone’s gazing. And I think the German bloke was doing the same thing. I think he was looking at the lights and wasn’t looking because after a while our operators could pick out when, when we were being tabbed. And the Germans were very good at your height. The flak bursts were pretty well spot on with the height but they couldn’t find you just where you were. And the rear gunner was always very much aware that if he saw two flashes coming very close to his tail he’d let us know when to divert and get away from it. But that’s about it really. About the only excitement we ever had. Except that while we were cruising around, and before all this aircraft where the 88 went over us the crew said, ‘How about,’ because we had money. We carried the gold sovereigns to give to the patriots, ‘Why don’t we have a forced landing in Sweden, spend the money, wait for them to rescue us and we’ll go home and perhaps the war will be finished.’ Which it wasn’t at that stage. And I was the most miserable man you’ve ever met. ‘I said Martin. Mark. You won’t do it. You won’t do it,’[laughs] It was just a bit of a joke but that I think was why we were, I can say messing around arguing about whether we should make a forced landing in Sweden just to get rescued.
AP: A very, very forced landing.
RW: Where was the honour amongst thieves I don’t know.
AP: So what, what sort of things— you were talking about the German speaking operators.
RW: He was special, he would come in once we’d — we didn’t know what they were doing really. We had no idea. They, they’d come and get on board. They were always known, as far as we were concerned they was a co-pilot. Just a squadron bloke learning to, if you got, if you were forced down he was Milner. I only knew him. He just joined us to do an experienced trip. You know. You knew nothing about him because you couldn’t let on that he knew how to speak German if you were forced down. But that’s about it really. I don’t know really what else I can tell you.
AP: What I was just trying, I have been reading a little bit about the radio counter measures.
RW: Indeed.
AP: And the sorts of things that were done.
RW: Initially we were told about the idea. Because, you know we thought oh bloody hell, you know. We want to drop bombs when you go there and special duties were ok but it was just special duties on what we were doing. Just fiddling around with the special operator. And it was initially told to us that the Window was cut to a certain length and it had to be cut to the length of whatever the radar, or the radios were working on. So that the window would be effective against jamming the radar. But I don’t know if that’s right or not. That’s my recollection of what we were told we were doing. And the idea was that if you, no matter where were just floating around in a — going up to Norway you know. It was still active so far as the Germans were concerned because at that stage we’re now getting there that France had been occupied up to Paris at that stage. So there’s nothing, we didn’t have to be required to go to Italy which we were initially sent to get to know, you know, what was wrong with the Italian radar. But it was all German so it didn’t make much difference I gather. But it’s, we had to, we had to take a photo of where we’d been though. You must remember that no matter what, what jobs you did you still had to take a photo of something to prove that you’d done your trip. Which evidently at times certain blokes would get the twitch. All they’d do is go out and wander around the North Sea, drop their bomb and come back. And so then you had to take a photo of your ,where you’d been to prove that you’d done a trip.
AP: How, how would you time that as a special operator? Without a real target. You just go somewhere and say that’ll do?
RW: With the real target you’d just go and bomb him. If, in the case of the one I just mentioned. Tonsberg there. That at some stage of the game you’d go over the near target, let go of the photoflash and go home. But until, until you’d got your trip because obviously there would be a timer on your camera because we were supposed to stay there for always for the second wave to come in so they’d have to. You’d have to prove your point.
AP: So, so your tour essentially was just go flying?
RW: Go flying.
AP: In random directions.
RW: The only.
AP: And then come back.
RW: The only thing we had that, I’d say that JU88, I would think that he’d been sent. Because he was almost the same height as us, you know, just over the top of us, that I think he’d been sent to find us and he didn’t find us thank God because otherwise, it might have been a different story.
AP: So —
RW: That’s about the only excitement I can give you, Adam.
AP: It sounds like an ideal tour for someone who just wants to fly an aeroplane.
RW: The only thing is if you had to fly you’ve always got the twitch. No matter where you are you’re supposed to be, you know ready and willing and able to do evasive action. Because every time we did there because when the war finished they even sent us out to do [pause] oh God. Simulated attacks. I can’t think of the word. Affiliation. Fighter affiliation. You had to do fighter affiliation and then do corkscrews and that sort of thing. So you were always on the tip of your toes. It wasn’t relaxing flying.
AP: Of course not. What —
RW: The only part that was relaxing was the fact that the Bristol Hercs were a very reliable motor. Hardly coughed.
AP: The — you were saying before about doing aerobatics in an Anson and they toppled the gyros.
RW: Yeah.
AP: How did a corkscrew —
RW: Oh no, the Oxfords
AP: The Oxfords, sorry. Oxford. Anson.
RW: The Oxford. Yeah.
AP: They’re very similar [laughs] but how did a corkscrew affect the gyros in the Halifax?
RW: Oh the, well we didn’t go out. We didn’t. You had a certain a certain limitation on what we could do. With the gyros were of course actually in the cockpit. They were in the Sperry panel there and the gyros were set up in the thing. Whereas in the Halifax the master control was down the back end where you had the gyroscope down there which was in a cradle. And a bit like a centrifuge I suppose it would be called. But it didn’t affect them at all.
AP: Ok. So it was sort of more designed for —
RW: Because really we didn’t, you know, with all due respect to the Hali a thirty degree you very seldom would put her wing down to forty five to do it. But as long as you were giving your gunners maximum deflection that’s all you had to do. And of course when you do your corkscrew and of course up top you were a sitting beauty for any [laughs]. Anyway, but you didn’t really throw her on her back. No.
AP: Right.
RW: But the old Sperry panel, I think it was the gyros were fitted in the panel. I gather that they were. I could be wrong on that.
AP: Not a, not a technician so I don’t know. How did you, how did you cope with the, I guess the stress of these operations? Was there stress?
RW: I think there was. I think you slept well. I think you were actually six, eight hours. See the minimum you would do would be six and a half and otherwise eight. Eight hours. By the time you’d done you were tired really and you went to sleep. I think we, we only had to operate once every three days. It gave you time to recover from the stress because I think once you were where you’re going and you’re going over enemy territory no one’s very friendly to you if — whatever’s happening. There will always be flak around you. Not intensive as the target. To be truthful I’m not too sure. I think we were young and stupid. [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
RW: I don’t think. I think it must affect people differently because up until that stage, you know, until we got to squadron it was just joyful flying. Whether you were doing a conversion on to a four engine aircraft you were still just practicing over England. But once you went over the enemy coast you really felt you, instead of relaxing you really would hang on and I presume that’s what it was. And I think as a captain of the aircraft you’re inclined to get a bit snappy with people and I think that at that stage you got on well with your crew but you very seldom complained to them about it. They crew would complain. The navigator would always complain that you weren’t flying, you know, true course that he wanted. And this and that and all the rest of it and, and of course the bomb aimer had nothing to do and he was our second nav. And they used to always be, we had the friction between the navigator and the bomb aimer in jobs to do. In other words it was a bit useless having a bomb aimer on but he had to be on there to say it was an ordinary bombing aircraft.
AP: Ok.
RW: And that bit. My navigator had, the navigator I got was a very good one. Thank God I did because as I say I had to lose the first one and, but he was always late. Once, you know you’d go to the briefings for whatever we were doing that particular night and he would always be the last one to get in, you know. He’d always be dawdling to get in to the briefing. And it used to irritate me a bit and I’d tick him off for not getting there on time. And eventually I thought I had to teach him a lesson because we were, the boss, or the flight commander said to me would I go down to Woodbridge. You know, it’s an emergency ‘drome down there. Evidently someone had left something down there and so they decided to send an aircraft down to pick it up. A table or whatever it was [laughs] but I went down to Manston to, I said, ‘I’ll go down and pick it up for you.’ So I told Derek and the gang to, you know, ‘We’ll go off about half past ten. We’ll go down to Manston. Pick up this table they want us to get.’ And of course I’m waiting there. You have to pick up your ‘chutes and all that because you were going out and Derek’s not there. So I said to Terry who was the bomb aimer/navigator, I said to Terry, I said, ‘Could you navigate me down to Manston?’ He said, ‘Oh yes.’ I said, ‘Right. We’ll go.’ So we all marched out, went out to the aircraft, picked up the aircraft less a navigator. And went down there and when I came back of course there was a furious navigator [laughs] ‘How dare you take off without me.’ I said, ‘Just to show you you’re not essential.’ But you know it’s one of those silly things. One thing that you can find that you get a bit snappy with them but the — when you’re taking off with, well you’ll probably see on those pilot’s notes where the controls are very far apart and I haven’t got a very big hand. So taking off, and with four, four Bristol Hercules all pulling in one direction your aircraft wants to weathercock and quite often you’d let two go. Let two of the throttles go and just keep going with two. And your engineer would be standing behind you and he would be watching his gauges which he was supposed to do because when you’re taking off your fuel pressure goes down. And anyway, he was supposed to carry on just when I got full bore, then he’d bring the other throttles up to me and once we were taking off and it was on this Manston trip I think that he must, the fuel pressure lights were blinking like hell because I could get a reflection from them and I thought it was trouble. And he had shot the two throttles up and locked it. Locked the throttles on, which is grip. And of course all of a sudden I started doing a mighty spin so I had to unlock it and take them back and I ticked him off for not watching what he was doing. But he was really watching the pressure gauges. But you can get a bit crusty with them I’d say. If I was under tension. I don’t know. I think so. I think probably the tension caught up with me in later life.
AP: How did your tour end?
RW: The war ended.
AP: The war ended. Oh fair enough.
RW: I only got twenty two in so had I, had I got a full trip tour to — it finished on the — the last op I did was the 25th of the April which, the war was still going, but you know, it was knocked off. And initial thing was when I said that we were only going to do forty five trips. We were going to do thirty on Halifaxes and fifteen on Mosquitoes. So the final fifteen I would have been transferred from the Halifax flight to do fifteen on the Mossies. So that, I missed out on that. So that just finished. After the war we then did [pause] it was called Operation Post Mortem where we took English radar operators over to the German side of things for them to operate the German equipment and we then put on a mock raid in daylight so that they could see the effectiveness we did. We did a mock raid with Lancasters. The whole lot. In daylight. Over to [pause] I can’t think. Gjol. A place called Gjol in Denmark. We did that as a bombing trip and it showed us, you know where the faults were in the British equipment and where the faults were in the German equipment. It was quite an interesting exercise. But after the Post Mortem then the squadron disbanded and that was it. And I came back at Christmas time.
AP: How did you then find re- adjusting to civilian life?
RW: A little bit ratty I think, then. I think I was getting stuck into the grog too at that stage in the game and I think that might have been a little bit of an indication of what it was but that was when we came back home. And as you can imagine I said I started off as an office boy in the Melbourne City Council. And it, you know it was a pretty dead sort of existence after [pause] after the flying days. And then I didn’t settle so I went off and went into insurance broking. And that was what I finished the rest of my days as. I only flew once. In 1953 they called us up on the reserve to train as instructors and we’re back at Moorabbin on Tigers. So I got some flying in again. But I tell you what. I wasn’t the brave boy I was at Benalla. When, you know — I think we had to finish, at Benalla we had to finish our aerobatics by three thousand feet and I’d get to three thousand feet — too bloody cold. This’ll be fine. Another thousand [laughs]
AP: That’s —
RW: So there it is. It caught up with me eventually. That’s about it I think unfortunately.
AP: So how [pause] my last question then.
RW: Yes.
AP: How is Bomber Command remembered? What’s its legacy? I mean, how do you want to see it remembered more importantly?
RW: I think what you’re doing now is ideal because being an odd bod which was the only thing left for us originally when we came back in so far as the Air Force Association which we, you know, we kept up straightaway through ourselves and odd bods there, But I think what you’re doing at the moment is something peculiar, special –not peculiar. Special to Bomber Command and the Bomber Command boys and seeing you’re part of their group then that’s the place I find it’s more comforting. And I think that now we’ve started to take it there I think quite a few bomber boys including myself were very disappointed with the RAF not giving us the bar for the odd bods. For the area we did. And eventually John [Frayne?] and Laurie — I think we both complained to John [Frayne] that nothing was done to remember Bomber Command and I don’t think we actually had a day declared which now is taken as been either the 30th of June or the 1st of July. I take it. Would that be right?
AP: As in the one we’ve just done?
RW: Yeah.
AP: So it’s yeah. The first Sunday in June is the day.
RW: 1st Sunday in June.
AP: Yeah.
RW: I had an idea it was either going to be the 30th no, the first Sunday in June.
AP: The first Sunday in June.
RW: Now, that’s, that is ideal. I think it’s just what we need there. Because Anzac Day really doesn’t mean as much to us and now that we are just going to travel in a motor car I don’t find is it’s like a parade really. But I think what we did yesterday was worthwhile and just feel that though yesterday was unlucky that the weather didn’t give us much chance to talk. Plus that bloke pinched my umbrella [laughs] so if it’s raining there you’ll have to blame whoever it was. I don’t say pinched but he obviously took it by mistake. No. That was I think full marks to Jan Dimmock and the rest of you good folk on the committee now as I know. I thought you were doing it by yourself at one stage of the game.
AP: Not quite. We’ve got some good help.
RW: No. But you did a sterling job but you were battling by yourself for quite a while weren’t you?
AP: I wasn’t. There was, it was Jan and Ed Robbin set up the first one.
RW: Yes.
AP: I came on board about three years ago.
RW: Did you. That was round about the same time as —
AP: So I’ve been involved with about three now.
RW: I took an interest in Bomber Command then.
AP: It’s been, personally I moved to Melbourne about five and a half years ago so.
RW: And you came down from Sydney?
AP: I did.
RW: Three years ago did you Adam?
AP: A bit more than that but I so my background is Sydney. So I was in Canberra on Saturday night.
RW: Yes.
AP: At that gathering.
RW: At the gathering.
AP: And then came down early for our one on Sunday.
RW: Are they in each state?
AP: Not quite on the same day.
RW: No.
AP: There’s a few different days around the place.
RW: Ok.
AP: But yes. Except for the Northern Territory each capital city has a ceremony.
RW: I was just going to say yesterday we didn’t realised that there was that RSL thing was on at the shrine as well.
AP: Yeah. Yeah.
RW: Has that affected our attendance?
AP: I think it affected some of the dignitaries.
RW: Did it? Oh yes. Because there was quite a few apologies.
AP: Yeah. I think it kept their numbers down a little bit.
RW: A little bit.
AP: Yeah. And it meant that we had to sort of rush through a bit and get out quite quickly afterwards but —
RW: Was that, were they before you?
AP: They were after. They were at 4 o’clock.
RW: I wasn’t aware of that.
AP: Yeah. Neither were we when we booked it.
RW: Serve them right.
AP: Yeah. Oh well. But yeah it all, It worked out quite nicely. We’re looking forward to the next one.
RW: Yeah. Looking forward to the next year. That’s good. And thanks Adam.
AP: Any final words before I turn the tape off.
RW: No. Just to wish you well and whether you find as I say I have no memorabilia that I can really give you that is of value because a little thing that actually happened there. When I was getting commissioned I had a month off or something. They did all the commissioning in the UK. And I was down — staying down in London whilst I was getting measured for my uniform I think. Something like that. And I had a bike, a kit bag and a suitcase, and I was going to Earl’s Court which was where we stayed overnight on leave. And whilst I was booking in I had three things to get inside. So I left my suitcase, took my bike and kitbag in and someone pinched my suitcase from outside. And in it was all the, all the papers. Quite a lot of bombing atlases and maps I had there but someone pinched it and eventually when I got back I found out that he got six months for pinching it. But did I have this Halifax book there.
AP: Yeah. I think it’s in this pile.
RW: Halifax. There was just something to read. That’s something that you don’t really see. We used to call them H sheets. That was [laughs] there was my perfect landing. I had to keep it [laughs]. The little bit down below.
AP: That’s commission of — yeah. Very nice. Perfect single engine landing. You’re, you’re not the only veteran who has told me flying a Wellington and something —
RW: Goes wrong.
AP: Engines stops or something like that. You’re about the eighth.
RW: Eighth. Really?
AP: It happens a lot.
RW: Mind you the poor old things were clapped out.
AP: Yeah. Of course they were.
RW: The very thing that happened with that there — the Halifax that I ended, the Wellington that I changed over to and took the one that the engine broke down — the reason why it made such a fuss is that ten days later that Wimpy was out on a cross-country in daylight because that was at night time, but daylight, and it went in. Killed the lot of them. And it sort of brought it to light the fact that that particular one because it played up with me because I had a fire and the engine and the throttle, actually it was the throttle connection that vibrated out so it must have been vibrating terribly to ruin it within ten days from being —
AP: It happened again.
RW: Previously being done.
AP: Yeah.
RW: So it was a bit of a shame.
AP: Yeah. Who was the last bloke? Someone told me a very similar story as well. How they flew. And it was a Wellington and it had a problem and then a couple of days later someone else flew it and in they went.
RW: Well, that was it. You just couldn’t.
AP: Yeah.
RW: You know, you can’t, you couldn’t tell and that happened and that’s happened when you finally got there. You said what did I think of the Halifax because all of a sudden I’m not flying a 2 or 5 at Con Unit but I’m flying a brand new 3.
AP: Yeah. Like me driving a brand new car.
RW: Yes there you are. That’s right. Everything’s right. But thanks very much.
AP: No worries. I shall turn this off.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AWhiteRR160607
Title
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Interview with Ralph White
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:09:52 audio recording
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-06-07
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Ralph White grew up in Melbourne, Australia and originally joined the army. He later volunteered to become aircrew and undertook initial pilot training at Benella and Mallala in Australia before sailing to the UK via San Francisco and New York. He flew operations with 192 Squadron from RAF Foulsham and recounts and attack by a Ju 88. After the war he took part in Operation Post Mortem. English operators went to Germany to test their equipment while his squadron mounted a mock operation. This was to see how effective the British and German technology had been.
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Germany
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
New York (State)--New York
Victoria--Melbourne
Victoria
New York (State)
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
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Julie Williams
192 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
crewing up
Halifax
Ju 88
pilot
radar
RAF Foulsham
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1170/11739/PGoodwinWJ1701.1.jpg
8b4ec729b85f1c3409510581a2237ccf
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1170/11739/AGoodwinWJ170607.2.mp3
e3c8203b31a0ff85ab7d6725b4be77a1
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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Goodwin, Wal
Walter James Goodwin
W J Goodwin
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. An oral history interview with Walter Goodwin (b. 1921, 419914 Royal Australian Air Force) as well as his log book, a story about visit to Cape Town, certificates, flying operation guide for Haverfordwest and photographs. He flew as a pilot with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Walter Goodwin 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
2017-06-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Goodwin, WJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Wal Goodwin who was a pilot with 463 Squadron on Lancasters. The interview is taking place at Wal’s place at the Basin in Melbourne, in Victoria. My name’s Adam Purcell and it is the 7th June 2017. Wal, we might start at the beginning if you don’t mind. Tell me something about you early life. How you grew up and what you were doing before the war.
WG: Oh. Well, my father was a farmer and we had conscription and I put in, in the Army for quite a while and then they decided because I was a Reserved Occupation they kicked me out, which I didn’t complain about. Not that I had any complaints out there either because they knew I had a driver’s licence so I had the, quite often had the job of seeing, driving the CO around in a beautiful new [unclear] [laughs] which was much better than doing route marches. But after I got back, about three months later I enlisted in the Air Force. But I had to wait to be called up and there were a lot of things that we had to learn because there was so many subjects we had to know which were way above whatever I had done. There was maths. And I was very lucky in one respect. There was a Post Office fellow, a guy that worked in the Post Office down in Boronia and he taught me Morse Code which was a great thing because a lot of the fellas were scrubbed because they couldn’t handle Morse Code. You had to be able to take and send twenty six words a minute and there was no way of faking it. You had to get it accurate and if you weren’t accurate you were out. And I was a bit lucky with the maths side of it. I did a correspondence course for, for the three months I was waiting and so that got me back on track but it was way above what I had done, learned at state schools. So that was a help. And then when you went to Bradfield Park, the initial training course at Bradfield Park was really nothing to do with flying. Although there was a lot of ground work and all the subjects we had to learn as well and there were, which were only be about a hundred guys on the intake I was on and they all wanted to be pilots but there would only be fifteen I think that qualified to go on to elementary flying. So I was posted to Narrandera to do elementary flying and I was a bit lucky there because if you couldn’t go solo in in six hours you were scrubbed. Anyone could learn to fly but there’s a time limit on it and if you couldn’t do it in six months, six hours you were out. Well, I was a bit lucky really because one of my mates [Salle Colewall] for some reason he couldn’t fly and he was filling in his time at that stage in the office. And when I was younger I used to get quinsies which were an abscess on the tonsil which are pretty painful things and I was home on leave from Narrandera one night and going back and I felt this quinsy coming on. So I went straight to this doctor and they put me into the hospital in Wagga Wagga and took my tonsils out which took me off course for about six or eight weeks I suppose. Quite a while. And part of the recuperation we were sent to a farm at a place out of Wagga at a place called Mangoplah where Charlie Harper had a farm. And it was quite an experience because there again because I had a driving licence. Mangoplah was quite a few miles out of Wagga but they used to go in to Wagga Wagga for their shopping and they got me to drive their Ford truck and the roads were all corrugated and I’d never met corrugated roads before and I, going, driving slowly. And a lady said, ‘The only way to handle these roads is go like hell.’ [laughs] So I tried and it worked. But I was there for probably five or six weeks recuperating and when I got back to Narrandera because I hadn’t had any flying experience in that time and according to my records I wasn’t there. But that’s when [Salle?] came in handy because he was in the office and said, ‘He couldn’t be because he was in, in hospital.’ So I was back on course again with a different instructor and I can remember he told me to do a slow roll and I told him I’d never been taught how to do it and he told me I was a bit of an [embarrassment ] But I proved to him I hadn’t because I went in that way and came out [unclear] [laughs] So I finally finished my course in Narrandera and then we were posted to Point Cook to Airspeed Oxfords and that was quite an experience flying a twin-engined Oxford after a Tiger Moth. Tiger Moths, you could, you could do anything in a Tiger Moth so a very very safe plane. But there was a couple of guys who were scrubbed from there as well. One guy was about to take off and the CO was taking me out for a test and suddenly he said, ‘Taking over.’ And he taught me so much in that five minutes that I never forgot. He turned the thing around, right around. So actually down and put the plane down right alongside the chap who was about to take off. He was taking off with, they had a little luggage compartment in there, just behind the cockpit and that was open. He was flying, taking off without opening and he never flew again. And another one he was a bit unlucky in a way, he landed downwind which another thing you recommend because Tiger Moths didn’t have any brakes and he got, before he went in to the drain at the end of the runway he managed to stop. He got out and turned this thing around and took off the other way. But the CO happened to see that so he never flew again either. There were all sorts of reasons why they were scrubbed. Anyhow, flying Airspeed Oxfords was quite an experience. The, my instructor was, he used to fly air ambulances in Sydney in peacetime and everything he’d tell you was just like taking candy from a baby which it was eventually. We, we learned an awful lot on the Airspeed Oxfords. They were, I was lucky really when you had, you didn’t have a choice but we got either posted to Ansons or the Oxfords and I’m glad I had the Oxford because they had hydraulics whereas the Ansons you had to wind everything up and down. And they were very safe plane but the Oxford had a few quirks about them. If you had a dent in the cowling that would put up the stalling rate by quite a few kilometres an hour but I managed to get through it all alright. And then we had to do a cross country flight up to, oh it was around almost to Ballarat and then back down again but you had to find your own way. It was common knowledge. Everyone that had done the course before would tell you when you did that all you do was follow the line. There’s a [unclear] plantation with a ring fence. You follow that down and you go straight [laughs] on to Point Cook. That was a big help but one fella did low flying down Geelong Road and he got a bit low down and took the tips off the propellers. He didn’t fly again either [laughs] But from there I was posted to embarkation depot in Melbourne. We started out at the Melbourne Showground and while I was there I got the mumps so, I missed the [unclear] By the time I was cleared of the mumps all the guys that I’d trained with they’d already been posted. I don’t know where they went. A lot of them went to England but not all of them. I never kept track of it after that. And then we moved from the Showground to the Exhibition Buildings for a few months and from there we went to the Cricket Ground which was quite an experience staying at the Cricket Ground. And eventually we went. We were posted. We went on a Dutch ship, the Niew Amsterdam which was a pretty big ship and we went from there and then we stopped off at South Africa and Durban for about four weeks because they took on about five hundred Italian prisoners of war and about the same number of Polish women. Girl refugees which were going to England so they had to change the ship over so everyone was segregated and of course it was quite an experience. Pretty well uneventful until we got up to Freetown and they took on supplies and one silly guy decided to buy a monkey. I don’t know what he was going to do with it but fortunately they found out before we sailed that he had a monkey so they, that was the end of his monkey. We went unescorted all the way because it was a pretty fast ship and it did a zigzag course which took a bit of getting used to but they reckoned that way you to go so submarines wouldn’t be able to get it. So we finished up in Scotland and went by train from there down to Brighton on the, right on the English Channel. And the first night we were there they had, there was an Englishman who had just defected to the Germans. His name was Lord Haw Haw and he used to do a radio broadcast every night in English to the English people and that the intelligence was pretty accurate because he heard that there was a group of Australians had arrived in Brighton that night and they were going to give them a warm welcome. So we had a quite a lot, a lot of planes going over and they dropped bombs where we were in Brighton and one of them was shot down and it crashed just a couple of streets away from the hotel we were staying at. And for me we, there were so many pilots around. There was. They didn’t know what to do with them so they sent us back to a private airfield flying Tiger Moths again. And from Tiger Moths we had one guy [Danny Maddox] was his, he was a civilian who ran this, this Tiger Moth station and they were all civilians and one of the guys [Danny Maddox] decided, he had a girlfriend and he decided he was going to go and see her in the daytime when he was flying. The only trouble was he tried to land at an airfield, in a wheatfield and he tipped it up. So, he rang the CO, told him he'd crashed a plane and the CO said, ‘Is it flyable?’ He said, ‘Oh, if you send a couple of guys out to stand it on its wheels it’ll be alright.’ [laughs] From there we did a, what they called a BAT course. That’s where you, a beam approach. You did everything by radio. You couldn’t see the instruments. You had to do everything on your instruments of course. It was quite, quite an experience. I really enjoyed it but it taught me a lot about instruments though. At Narrandera we used to do what they called a link trainer which was just, they all called them the horror box because if you could do it they were like a simulator you could do anything in the things but you never crashed. And quite often at night time I’d go back and do another course on on the link trainer because it was, I think that helped me a lot but this instrument flying one was really something. But we found flying in England was a lot easier, especially at night time than it was in Australia because in Australia at night time all you had were flares down the side of the runway and you had to come in until you virtually lined the flares up all in one line. I mean, you, that was it. You landed. But over there they had the control lights. If you were too low it’d be red. If you were on course it’d be green. If you got too high it’d be yellow. So, you come in on this its green and they had a, you had to come in at a separated speed and you had to lose height at certain times otherwise they had what they called the outer marker beacon and then an inner marker beacon and then a cone of silence and you had to be about fifty feet when you came over the cone of silence and you had to pull everything back and you’re on the runway. Which was really good. But from there I got sent on a [pause] down to a place called Haverfordwest in South Wales on flying control duty in the, in the control tower where it was getting, and it was quite funny really too. They had a radio channel that was monitored twenty four hours a day. It was called Darkie and if anyone got in to trouble they’d press Darkie and they, they would be directed to the nearest airfield. Well, this night there was a fella calling up for Darkie and we couldn’t get him. He’d got the, had the transmitter down all the time because we couldn’t get him. But it’s a funny thing I’ve often wondered about that. I reckoned he just must have just gone off into the night and crashed. But in reading a report from a, in a book that I got a bit after the war this guy he was doing his OTU at, in Scotland and the navigator should have been able to tell him where they went, where they were but the navigator had no idea. It was night time and it was cloud and the navigator didn’t know where they were, the pilot didn’t know where they were and they just kept on flying and eventually he was very lucky because the clouds broke up and underneath him was the Isle of Man and he was able to land on the Isle of Man. But in report he was, he was afraid he was going to be scrubbed because of that but in the report it said the navigator was the one who really got the blast. But he said to him as a navigator he wasn’t very good but as a pilot he was proficient. Well, I was there for another couple of weeks and this was after the D-Day landings and there were planes flying backwards and forwards across the Channel and the Navy was shooting at everything that came in sight. So they put me on a destroyer at Milford Haven as aircraft identification and they were taking a convoy of ships up the Channel to Cherbourg or what was known as a Mulberry Harbour. That was a harbour that was built up in Scotland [coughs] Built up in Scotland and it was, it was a huge thing. It was about a mile long. How they did it. We got there without any problems and we were on the way back to Milford Haven when the admiral was on board the destroyer I was on and he got a call to go to Portsmouth and I was, I’ll never forget it, I was on the catwalk on this destroyer when it turned around and I was up to my knees in water. Anyhow, we got to Portsmouth. Portsmouth, and from there got posted back to Haverfordwest and then the next day I was sent to Moreton in Marsh for OTU. That’s where I first met my crew. They put a whole load of us pilots and all the guys in a big room and we had to pick a crew. We’d nothing. We knew nothing about them at all except that they’d done their course and must have been proficient in whatever it was they were. I was very lucky. I managed to get a crew which we all got on very well with. Yeah. And the only one that I didn’t get was the flight engineer. He, they sent me a flight engineer and he came from Newcastle but he was quite a nice guy too. But we never had any problems. We just, we all got along very well with and we finished our OTU. The only thing was there’s something that I’d forgotten about until a couple of years ago when my rear gunner and mid-upper gunner reminded me that I’d, we were flying at seventeen thousand feet and suddenly started coming down, losing height and I can never, couldn’t get it back and we were coming down down down, getting lower all the time and everything was working as it should have been. I’d forgotten about it because, but when we got down to about six thousand feet I told them to prepare to jump out and when we got to about six thousand feet I was able to hold it at six thousand feet. So we finished the flight at six thousand feet but I reported it as an unserviceable plane, told them what the problem was but the next day we were posted to Winthorpe to the Lancaster. So I never really found out what the problem was. The only thing I can think of is that you had a constant speed propellers but [pause] you took off in fine pitch and then you put in a course pitch and from then on they took over and the only thing I can think of is that for some reason they changed over to fine pitch which would give you, you wouldn’t be able to climb very far on fine pitch. But that’s the only thing I can think of. I’d forgotten about it until just a few years ago when my rear gunner told me he always wanted to do a parachute jump. And he did two parachute jumps down at Wollongong but he said he was never so glad as the night I cancelled the order to jump ship. Now, I never, to this day I really don’t know what caused that. But then we went to Winthorpe. That’s where I met a guy that took me on a conversion course or an initiation course on Lancasters told me that he was very glad I was flying Lancasters and I never had any trouble. But the funny thing was there was an Englishman on the same course and he’d had no problem landing the Wellingtons and yet he reckoned he couldn’t land a Lancaster which doesn’t make any sense. I think he just didn’t want to go any further but I don’t know what happened to him. They took him out one day to an airfield that wasn’t used very much and they had him doing landings all day but I don’t know what happened after that. So from Winthorpe we were posted to 463 Squadron and [pause] I was, we were still on training at that stage and I can only remember they used to have a spoof raid which they called them, where the main course, main flight, the bombers would take off but this other lot would, one or two planes would take off a few minutes earlier and go on a different course and they’d throw out these strips of aluminium which they reflected on the German radar as planes that they didn’t know. And the idea was to get their planes up in the air somewhere away from where they, the main force was going. But the night war ended over in Europe we were flying on and all of a sudden all the lights came up all over the ground so I asked the wireless operator what was going on and he’d been listening to music so he didn’t know. Then he rang back and told me that the war was over and we had been recalled an hour earlier [laughs]. So we went back to base and I called up for permission to land which you have to do and of course and no one answered me. So I flew down over the control tower and never got any result from anyone. So I took a chance on what the wind was doing, what direction it was coming because we couldn’t see very much and when we landed we called up for transport to get us to go from dispersal back to the control tower and nothing happened. No one answered so we had to load all our gear for quite a long walk back to the control tower. And when we got back there all the guys were very much inebriated or had [laughs] had a little bit too much to drink. But it was quite a relief really to know that the war was over down there. And then we did several they called them Cook’s Tours. We took mostly WAAFs who had been in the offices around the place on these Cook’s Tours over Europe and showed them the bomb damage and all that sort of stuff and then that’s where instrument flying came in very handy because we were flying in cloud for oh, probably an hour. And it sounds silly but you, you swear blind your bum was six foot, six inches off your seat. You could really reckon you were upside down but you, that’s where I, you had to be convinced that the instruments are working. One of them might get out but not all them. And I finally got out of the cloud and when we came back I landed and the CO happened to be in the control tower and he, he said, ‘The pilot of that plane report to control tower immediately.’ I thought what the heck have I done? And he said, ‘That’s the best, best landing that I’ve ever seen.’ From there we did, we were supposed to go down to Italy to bring the prisoners of war home but it turned out that they had, in Italy they were all grass runways. So they didn’t have any concrete runways and they’d had a lot of rain there and the Lancasters that had gone down were all bogged. So we never went down there but the war was still going in, in the Pacific and the whole squadron were posted to, to go to Coningsby to do a conversion on to Lincolns. But the war ended over in Europe before, in the Pacific before we started on that so the next things happened pretty quickly from there on. That’s a photograph taken there of our squadron after the war. But we, we never actually got to Coningsby. I was posted back to Brighton and within three weeks we were on our way home. So that’s about it.
AP: There’s your quick story. Can we go back and fill in some gaps?
WG: Yeah.
AP: How old were you when you actually enlisted?
WG: Pardon?
AP: How old were you when you, when you actually joined the Air Force?
WG: 1942, I joined.
AP: So, how, how old were you at that point?
WG: Twenty one.
AP: Twenty one. Oh, of course because you had been a farmer.
WG: Yeah.
AP: The farm wasn’t a Reserved Occupation. That’s what —
WG: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok. That makes sense. Where were you when, when war was declared? What can you remember of that time? What were you doing? What were your thoughts?
WG: Well, that was [pause] well the Japs came in to the war when I was out at Seymour in the Army. So that would be, well ’41/42. ’41 I think it was. So, I would have been in the Army up there at that stage and as I said I enlisted in the Air Force in about six, would have been when I was called up would have been about three months later.
AP: What can you remember of 1939?
WG: Well, that would be, in those days I was just a farmer.
AP: Did you suspect when, when you became aware that war was on did you suspect that you would be involved at some point? What were your thoughts about that?
WG: No. To this day I don’t know why I enlisted in the Air Force [laughs] It was just something. I’ve no idea why I did that. Anyway, I decided I had to do something and I wasn’t really crash hot on being in the Army so I decided the Air Force would be better. You know. I had no idea. It’s funny because my younger brother enlisted in the Air Force just before I did. It’s funny how people, what their ideas are because she told him he could enlist in the Air Force as long as he was a rear gunner which was the most unrealistic thing [laughs] I mean, that’s the last job you’d want. But —
AP: So your brother did serve with Bomber Command as well? But did he —
WG: No. He was a fighter pilot.
AP: Fighter pilot. Ok.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Can you tell me much about the process of enlistment? What did you have to do? Did you have to do interviews and any extra training or anything? Any medical exams before you enlisted?
WG: We all had a medical exam and that was about it. And then we were called up and were put on a train and we turned up to Sydney and, where we did as I’ve said I didn’t do anything, learn anything really about flying except the theory of flight. That was about the only thing. But we had to pass in meteorology and so many [pause] There was about fifteen or twenty subjects we had to study. Law and administration and, as I said before Morse Code. That included aldis lamps and semaphore which was all part of it. I can’t remember the rest of the things. We had to be able to take a Bren gun apart and put it back together with your eyes closed which is quite a thing to do. But I don’t think there was anything. We did a lot marches in, in Sydney while we were there. Never did any marches in Melbourne.
AP: So, you mean like a march down the city street.
WG: Yeah.
AP: As a recruiting thing or just to get from A to B or —
WG: Oh no. It was just something they just decided to do. I don’t know why they did it but we did two or three. Three I think in Sydney. Marching down the street in Sydney.
AP: What did the local population think of that? Do you know?
WG: Oh, there was always a crowd of people out to watch it. But I don’t really know what they thought about it because we weren’t privy to that.
AP: Was it, was it a serious thing or was it like a joyful thing or, what was the mood on a march like that?
WG: Well, no one complained about it. It was just something we did. At one stage after we, when we were in England we were posted up at [pause] north of England and they had a lot of what they called six weeks wonders. There was a guy trained in administration but they didn’t know how to handle anyone. And I can remember at one stage that we were all marching, we still had to do marches and we were marching past a, I can’t remember [pause] it was, if it was for some reason the guys just kept dropping off. This fellow was in front leading the marching and by the time he got back to base there was only half a dozen guys behind him. And the day we were passing out up there unbeknownst to the, the officer in charge they all decided they would silent hop. Normally when you stopped you banged your foot down like that. It was something that always happened and this day when he called out, ‘Halt,’ there wasn’t a sound behind him. He spun around. Everyone was there, which rather surprised him. He thought he’d lost them all [laughs] While we was there this chap came in in a Lancaster and it was probably one of the worst landings I think you’d ever see. He touched down and up and down and up and, and when he finally got it down there a big roar went up. And I remember the last flight I did in England was at a [pause] I don’t know why I had to, I don’t know why I was there but there was a chap, Johnnie Blair. He was senior to me. I was only a flying officer and he was a flight lieutenant and I had to go along as his second pilot for some reason. This is what they called a gaggle where everyone just flew in a heap at night time and it was the worst flying I’d ever seen. I was tempted to take over many times but I thought well, he’s, he’s my senior, it wouldn’t go down too well. But we got back alright and I never saw him again. That was just a few days before we were posted to Brighton and the funny thing is he joined, he was a pilot with TAA in those days and this was quite a few years after the war and I was up at Mildura and I was there having a meal and this guy come in and he looked. He came over straight away to apologise. He recognised me even though he was a civilian pilot and this was quite a few years after. He reckoned he didn’t know he was going to fly that night and he had too much to drink [laughs] But he remembered that years afterwards.
AP: Oh dear. That’s great. Ok. Well, we’re talking about flying. Tell me about your first solo.
WG: Oh, it was uneventful. I did everything. No drama at all. That was on Tiger Moths. We had a lot of funny experiences because the airfield at Narrandera, they had a satellite field a few miles away where we flew. And I can remember one day these, the pilots used to get really cheesed off with it because they didn’t want to be instructors on Tiger Moths and this guy undid his straps on his parachute and walked out on the wing and sat there on the wing. The Tiger Moths, you could fly them with your hands out at the side really. They were, I don’t think any Tiger Moths crashed while I was up there. I think if you crashed you’d have to have done something silly. They were, they were a reliable plane. Yeah. I don’t think I had any dramas. When we were at Point Cook we had what they called a crash mate. There were, there were two of you and one guy would do his hour or whatever flying or whatever he had to do and then they’d change over. Well, my crash mate, his first solo flight was from Werribee and they’d, and he was coming in to land at the same time as another plane and they were both killed. So that wasn’t a very good experience. We didn’t know what happened to him. We only found out afterwards. So that taught me to make sure you knew everything that was going on around about you. Which reminds me, when you were coming in to land you always had to call up for permission to join a circuit and you always had to go downwind, crosswind and then put it, come back downwind and this guy he was supposed to meet his girlfriend that night and he decided to come straight in. I could see him coming and I thought well I’m not getting off the runway for him and he had to land on the grass alongside, just behind me. And unfortunately for him the CO happened to be in flying control and saw that. He didn’t go out that night. He was a bit of a rat bag but he was still flying a couple of years ago. He was flying, delivering newspapers down to, well down as far as Eden. Dropping them off. So, he was still flying so he must have been able to fly all right.
AP: Didn’t set him back too much. What can you tell me about Narrandera? The airfield. How did you live there? What sort of things did you do on a typical day?
WG: Well, I was lucky in one way. My cousin had trained at Narrandera and my brother had as well and they got to know a Mrs Andrews who was the wife of the doctor and we could go and spend a weekend when you couldn’t go and come home and get back in time for anything. So we, quite often we’d spend a weekend with the Andrews family which was quite good. Otherwise, we just stayed on the station.
AP: What was a day like? When you were learning to fly on a Tiger Moth what sort of things did you do on a typical day? How, how did it run?
WG: Well, as I said earlier quite often I’d spend time on the link trainer. Apart from that there wasn’t much else to do. I didn’t have any social habits. Really, really nothing in Narrandera itself. The town was very very small.
AP: Ok. Can you describe a link trainer?
WG: Pardon?
AP: Can you describe a link trainer? What did it —
WG: Well, it was like a big box and had all the instruments the same as a plane would have. You were completely enclosed in this thing and you could do anything. You could put it in a spin and whatever and, but you couldn’t hurt yourself. So the one thing we had if you did anything wrong you’re not going to hurt yourself.
AP: Very good. What about Point Cook? What was that like as an airfield to fly from?
WG: Oh, it was quite good actually. It was wintertime when I was down there and at that stage I was importing Vultee Vengeance planes which they came boxed and they were assembled down there and the pilots had taken [unclear] do a circuit to make sure they were flying alright. And I can remember one day I was walking behind one when he decided to rev it up and I was blown over and down the runway on my backside. But it was, it was only the bare necessities at an airfield. Nothing special about it. But they didn’t, they didn’t have concrete runways. They were all grass which meant you could fly in any direction but there was nothing special about it.
AP: You said you stayed at the MCG for a little while. That would have been something of an experience I imagine.
WG: Well, it was. A lot of things in the Air Force disappear and they did a stock take of things while we were there and it’s amazing how people would get off with things from the store room which, you’re not supposed to go to the storeroom only if you need another uniform or shoes or something. And it was amazing the amount of stuff that was missing. Which reminds me of another time we were between sometimes it must have been after [pause] no, it would have been before we started OTU. We were at a place called Burton and it had a coal dump at the back and they had a whole lot of fire buckets and things like that and one of the guys used to take the fire bucket into the town and sell them. And he sold buckets full of coal as well. They never caught him [laughs] And I remember he had a verey pistols and a cartridge you would fire if you were in distress or something land or something and there was a big flare at the end of it and one day I had one and I was trying to light it with a cigarette lighter and I was keeping well away from it because I knew that it was going to if it, if it lit it was going to go off. Well, two of my mates [unclear] and Bob Hines decided to take over and they were crouching over the top of it when it went off and they lost all their eyebrows and half their hair and everything else. They weren’t going to go to the doctor. They went to the chemist down the street.
AP: Yeah. Ok. So, when you get to England you said there was something like the first night there was a a Germans attacked.
WG: Yeah.
AP: What were your general thoughts about wartime England? What were your general impressions?
WG: Well, we had been through London in daylight and they had big barrage balloons up in the air and all the damage that had been done so you didn’t feel any sorrow for anything that happened over in Germany because London was pretty badly bombed. But we didn’t know that at the time it just it wasn’t until the next day we knew that the plane had been shot down. We, we knew the Bofors guns. They had Bofors guns all along the, the promenade so we, when we heard them going off but that’s about all there was to it. They didn’t last very long.
AP: What did you think of the civilian population and how they were handling things? Did you —
WG: Oh, it was amazing how they handled it really. A lot of them used to sleep at night under the railway stations in the Underground. London got a, it had done a lot of damage to the buildings and the houses but there were so many people who were spending their nights in, in the underground railway stations. Hundreds of them. They did that week after week. And it was funny when the what they called the buzz bombs they were just a little two stroke engine and a bomb and wings and they’d fly over until they ran out of fuel and then they’d crash. Well, the Hurricanes used to fly alongside them and tip their wing up and turn them out to sea so they crashed out to sea. So they didn’t do that much damage after they realised what they were. But then when the V-2s came along that was a different story because you couldn’t do anything about them. You didn’t know they were there until [pause] and I reckoned we were pretty lucky because we were at the Victoria Station and were about to get into a taxi when this woman for some reason wanted a taxi in a hurry so we said, ‘Take ours. Take it.’ And a V bomb came over just a few seconds later and I reckon we would have been just about where it was. So, as I said lucky we didn’t get that. But there was nothing they could do about them. They were just going too fast.
AP: You said something about a beam approach course.
WG: Eh?
AP: You mentioned something about a beam approach course [coughs] Excuse me, that you did earlier.
WG: Yes.
AP: Flying the beam. How did you do that? Can you remember the process of it?
WG: Well, it was set up for landing when there was a fog on for some reason. Before that they had what they called, well they still had what they called FIDO where they had pipes of oil down the side of the runway and they’d light them. Well, this took over from that and you’d have to find where the runway was for a start but they had different signals for, one side would be dit dit dit and the other side would be da da da but when you, you got on the where it was quiet you knew that’s where the runway was. So you did your circuit around, and you had to have everything accurate. Your rate of descent had to be right any you had to be at a certain distance there. The marker beacon, you had to be seven hundred and fifty feet and your rate of descent had to be accurate or you had a gauge telling you what that was and then had an inner marker which was a different sound again and then, and then a cone of silence which everything went off and you just pulled back on this control tower and you were there which made it very simple.
AP: How often were they used in anger so to speak? I know you trained on them. Did you ever —
WG: No.
AP: Do you know of anyone who —
WG: No. I never knew of anyone that used them.
AP: You have to wonder the point don’t you?
WG: Well, London used to get fogs and —
AP: Yeah.
WG: Their Meteorology was very very good except for one night I remember we were supposed to do a cross country flight and we had to take off north and then we had to come back over the airfield and then and we had to be at about twenty thousand feet. And it, the Met told us that it would be a windspeed of about fifteen or twenty knots but they got it completely wrong because it was over two hundred knots and I can remember it took us over half an hour to fly across the airfield and, and it went on and on and on. I could still see that there was one plane up there and one down just below me and one was just going veering away so I had to make sure I stayed in the middle and hoped to hell they didn’t change. Well, after about an hour I decided that we were never going to be able to finish. We didn’t have fuel enough to get back again so I aborted and went back and the CO told me off ‘til the next morning when the planes were all over the country and they’d all ran out of fuel so he decided I did the right thing which I think I did anyhow.
AP: Was what aircraft were you flying at that point?
WG: Lancaster.
AP: That was a Lancaster [unclear] Cool. Alright, turning to thoughts of leave. You would have got leave in England fairly often. What did you do?
WG: Well, there was [pause] quite often I wouldn’t go on leave. But when I was, before I got a commission there was a what was known as a Victoria Leagues Club where other ranks could go in Vauxhall Bridge Road. It was the Duchess, the Duchess of Devonshire was a patron and you’d pay about two shillings for a bed and your breakfast. But it was only for other ranks and there was, the person who really ran it was an Australian Red Cross girl, Virginia [Herman] and I got to know her very well and quite often I just spent half a day helping her in the office because there was a lot of office work that I could do to help her. But then I got, we got an invitation to, for an evening at the Duchess of Devonshire’s residence in Knightsbridge and so I think that was the Red Cross girl organised it for me and I went out there and that’s, and the present Queen Elizabeth happened to be there. She was in the Land Army. Just an ordinary girl in those days and we had a dance with her and Princess Margaret. Quite a nice night. Something I can remember which not everyone’s had.
AP: That’s quite a good claim to fame actually. I like that one.
WG: But once I became commissioned I wasn’t supposed to go to the Victoria League Club but I kept my old uniform and if I was going on leave I’d go down there because you get sick of London. There’s not a lot you could do there. I wasn’t a great one for going and getting drunk or anything like that. But it’s funny because my wireless operator was a funny little guy. He was only very very little but he was walking down the street in London and there was a couple of New Zealand guys trying to break in to a car. They reckoned they’d lost their keys so Shorty said, ‘Oh, I can get in there for you.’ Just then the police came along and grabbed him [laughs] So he was arrested, spent the night in jail. There was an American guy in there as well and as he was going before the judge he put something in Shorty’s pocket. He didn’t know what it was but when he, he finally, the judge believed what he said and when he put his hand in his pocket there was a brand new watch. So he sold that and got his uniform cleaned.
AP: Ok. Characters. What was your first impression of the Lancaster when you first saw one? What did you think?
WG: I think. Well, I thought it was a marvellous plane. I didn’t realise how good they were but one night we were supposed to go, take off early in the day and went in flying and like the day before, it was summertime and for some reason when we were coming in to try to land everything was just a blur of lights. I’ll never forget it. It was just a blur of lights and the instructor said, he he aborted it, the whole lot and said, ‘The student is showing signs of fatigue.’ But the next night no problem. I don’t know what it was. There was something about it because we had never any trouble flying at night with landing. But with the Wellingtons they were a different story. They were a sleeve valve engine on them and if you throttled back quickly the, it would backfire and the carburettor catch alight. Well, in the daytime you didn’t see it but in the night time you did see it and the only thing to do when that happened you opened the throttles and it sucked it all out. And this guy, I was supposed to take off after him on his first solo flight at night and he’d throttled back and see this sheet of flame they reckoned [he was surrounded going in]. The poor old instructor said, ‘I think we’ll have to shoot him down.’ [laughs] But after four attempts he did come down and landed all right. He took a chance on it but you don’t really see the flame in the day time but at the night time it’s very very visible. It’s something you just have to watch out for.
AP: So the Wellington was a challenging aeroplane then in some ways.
WG: Not really. A lot of people didn’t like them. One of my mates he had to have a certain length leg to be able to put on the full rudder when one engine gave out and he was too short. He started off flying Wirraways in Australia but he, his legs were too short and he couldn’t. He couldn’t handle them. He tried to join Oxfords at Point Cook and did all the things that I did, the beam approach and all that until he got to OTU where he couldn’t, couldn’t handle the Wellington. But they were a very good plane really and they were the first plane that bombed Berlin so, but the only thing I, trouble I had was when I lost height with them. But I never had any trouble landing them ever.
AP: There’s one thing I’m really interested in as well. You said you were at Haverfordwest, I think.
WG: Yeah.
AP: At Haverfordwest. Flying control.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Declaration. I’m an air traffic controller. I’m very interested in your experiences there.
WG: Oh. Well, they were really flying looking for U-boats and that sort of thing and I can remember one day when a Halifax came in. Yeah. A Halifax. And it had been shot up and they’d landed. The undercarriage was blown away. I never, I didn’t think anyone could get out a plane that fast. The whole crew were out. They landed on the grass and the whole crew were out but the plane was still going off down the runway. You can do it if you wanted to. But otherwise it was pretty uneventful. One of the things that I will never forget though was I had to do a couple of nights on pundit duty. Every airfield had a call sign and this pundit duty was an alternator. It had a big diesel engine and it was roaring all night and this thing was going. It was clacking out the three figures for the, to identify the airfield. So, I never got much sleep that time.
AP: So —
WG: There wasn’t much to do though. It was just to make sure that it was alright. Everything didn’t stop. Another time I was on the [pause] controlling on the runway and the guys were supposed to end up being flying, shooting bullets and they had to clear them again before they came in but he didn’t. He was clearing his guns on the runway. Everyone was diving for cover.
AP: So what did the runway control duty involve? What did you actually have to do there?
WG: Well, the control duty was only really if anyone was taking off you had to give them a green light or not. Whichever way. It depended if something was, an obstruction on the runway which could well be they had to stop anyone landing. So you either gave them a green light or a red light.
AP: That was like an aldis.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok.
WG: And the only thing wrong with the Lancasters if you had to stop before taking off they’d overheat because they depended on the air flowing through to keep them cool. If that happened you had to turn around the other way and rev them up until they cooled down again otherwise they’d blow all their oil out, coolant out which wouldn’t be a good thing.
AP: No. No. Not at all. And did you do much in the watch tower there as well? The control tower.
WG: I was in the control tower for about three weeks. That was before I went on the Navy excursion and after that I was posted to OTU.
AP: So, what can you remember about that control tower? What did it look like?
WG: Oh, it was just up in the air. It was a view windows all the way around and you could see everything that was going on all the way around you.
AP: Who else was in there?
WG: Pardon?
AP: Who else was in the tower?
WG: Oh, who was qualified. Yeah. We were, we were only doing what we were told to do because we didn’t know anything really about it.
AP: What, so what sort of things were you actually doing?
WG: I don’t remember doing anything very special. That night when the chap was calling up Darkie I was on the radio trying to get him but couldn’t do it. That’s the sort of thing we did.
AP: So just an extra pair of hands to fill in.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Get the coffee or whatever [laughs]
WG: Yeah.
AP: Alright. Cool. What did you think as the only Air Force officer on a Navy vessel? That would have been a bit odd.
WG: Pardon?
AP: When, when you were with the Navy what was the —
WG: Oh, I was the most popular guy in the Navy because they gave them a tot, a tot of rum every night and I didn’t drink the stuff. So I was the most popular fella. They all wanted my tot of rum.
AP: And were you, you were just sort of on the bridge there or —
WG: No. No. We, we was just there and if we were needed they’d call up. We didn’t have anything.
AP: Any duties as such.
WG: We didn’t have to do anything.
AP: Yeah. Ok. Alright. We might move on to Waddington. You weren’t there for very long I gather.
WG: Waddington?
AP: At Waddington. Yeah.
WG: No. I wasn’t at Waddington at all.
AP: Ah. Ok.
WG: 463 had been at Waddington but then they turned, they moved to oh what’s the name of the place there? Skellingthorpe.
AP: Skellingthorpe. Alright.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Tell me about Skellingthorpe.
WG: Very basic. Everything was very basic. Waddington was more of a permanent airfield whereas Skellingthorpe was just one that he been built during, just as for the war.
AP: How did you live there?
WG: Oh, we had all the amenities we needed. Had a mess hut. For a long time they used to have what they called high tea. I thought that was a main meal but I found out after that wasn’t a main meal. Once you became a commissioned officer you lived in a different world. You had a, I had a room to myself with a batwoman that came in to do all, all your necessary. Take your laundry or whatever. And they paid her a little bit extra for their meals but their meals were one hundred percent better than the ordinary troops got and one night a week we had a, what was called a dining in night. We had to be there in dress uniform and the CO shouted everyone a glass of port. I missed that for quite a while because I didn’t realise that the high tea wasn’t a main meal although it could well have been.
AP: So —
WG: The meals were much much better than the troops had.
AP: What was a high tea? What was the high tea?
WG: Pardon?
AP: What was the high tea? What did it involve?
WG: Oh, well it was a meal really. You could, could exist on that without any problems. But it was just called high tea. You had a normal meal. Your normal meal.
AP: What was, what other things happened in the mess? Did you get up to any high jinks there or —
WG: Not really. They had a bar but I wasn’t one that did a lot of drinking anyhow. Otherwise, it was just, one experience I’ll never forget was when I was orderly officer you had to go around the camp with the military police. They’d go around with you and they set me up because I was new on the station and there was, you had to check all the lights were all out by 10 o’clock and everyone was supposed to be in bed by 10 o’clock. But we came to this hut where there was a fair bit of noise going on so I opened the door and looked in. There was, this was the WAAFs quarters and this WAAF standing there with nothing on. Just the standard equipment [laughs] I couldn’t get out of there fast enough but the MPs knew what it was. They just set me up.
AP: Very good. Very good. Alright, so the war ended you said when you were on your first essential operation wasn’t it? Was that, did I understand that correctly?
WG: It wasn’t. That was a training flight.
AP: Yeah. Ok.
WG: [unclear] the training flight when Johnnie was listening to music. That was when it ended in Europe. That ended, was the night after when I was with Johnnie Blair and I was his second pilot.
AP: Yeah. And so then at that stage you, so you didn’t actually fly in any operations. Is that, that correct?
WG: No. We were still listed as learning.
AP: Ok.
WG: Yeah.
AP: At that point. Yeah. Alright. Alright. So, someone I, well you’re the first person I’ve spoken to who’s told me about a Cook’s Tour. Can you tell me more about it?
WG: Oh, Cook’s Tour. Yeah. There were a lot of ground staff on every station you were on, and they, they could be radio operators and all sorts of things but they were all WAAFs and we took them. There were two different routes. You flew over a fair bit of Germany, Munich and you crossed to Holland. And I could still remember something that I’ll, I thought I wish I hadn’t done it but we flew down low over the train on the [unclear] line and we flew down low. There was a train and it stopped and everyone [laughs] everyone piled out. Then we waved our wings at them and they all waved back [laughs] That’s something. I shouldn’t have done that.
AP: Wow. So, when you got back to Australia did you have a bit of time or a bit of trouble adjusting back to civilian life again when you got there?
WG: Oh, a lot of trouble. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: What sorts of things happened?
WG: I can still remember the day I was demobbed. I went in there as a flying officer and they made a point of telling me, ‘You’re mister from now on.’ I’d have liked to have stayed in the Air Force really but the way things were at home it just wasn’t practicable. But it took a lot of adjusting to civvy life again.
AP: What did you do after the war?
WG: Oh, my father still had a market garden. We planted an orchard with my brother, an older brother and we had an orchard and grew flowers and I used to do the marketing. Go to Victoria Market in the middle of the night about three, three times a week selling the produce. Couldn’t do it now. It’s a different world. But the old Victoria Market was quite an experience. I remember there was one chap down there he used to have flowers and his name was Eden and he sort of lost his marbles. He went around one day how long you’d be coming in to the market and telling him oh you’ve been here too long, writing me out a cheque. I don’t think anyone ever cashed his cheque. But that, I did a lot of the marketing before during the war before I joined up and it was pretty difficult driving with your headlights blacked out. Headlights were just a slit across and it was pretty hard on a dark night or wet night to see where you were going. I managed to make it all right. Didn’t have any crashes. But I’m glad I’m not doing it now.
AP: We might just jump back a few years again then as well. Most people that I’ve interviewed before the war if they joined up a little bit later they were still at school or something like that but you were actually working.
WG: Yeah.
AP: So as a civilian in Australia how did the war have an effect on your life in the first few years?
WG: Oh, it was just hard settling down to having to make your own decisions about everything because you had to earn a living which in the Air Force it was all [unclear] out. Yesh. Apart from that it was just something you had to get used to.
AP: So, my final question when you look back on your Air Force service what does it mean to you and what does Bomber Command mean and how should it be remembered?
WG: Oh, you’re talking about something I’m glad I did. I’m really, I was pretty proud of what I managed to achieve in the Air Force. I think someone had a guardian angel on my shoulder because if we’d been three months earlier I probably wouldn’t be here now because three months earlier Bomber Command were, their attrition rate was almost one hundred percent. And so we were very lucky. Ron, my mid-upper gunner I didn’t know until after the war that he started off trying to fly Tiger Moths and he couldn’t make it. I don’t know what it was but if he was doing anything he’d always turn to the left. If he was driving a car and he didn’t know where he was he would always turn to the left. And it must have been something to do with that because I never knew anything about that but he finished up a mid-upper gunner. He’s still going too. Shorty was a bit of a troublemaker. We, quite often, we had the living quarters and the mess hut were a long way away from the flight things and we used to all have push bikes and Shorty didn’t have a push bike so he would just take the first one he could find around the place. I can remember when first we got to Winthorpe we didn’t know where, we went into the town, Newark. It was only a few miles down the road. Then there was an, the Air Force had their buses take people into town and bring them back at night and we got back pretty late at night and we thought we knew where we were going and we were, it turned out we were walking through the CO’s tulip patch and the adjutant came out and the CO it was and I could see the moonlight shining on the brass around his hat and I saluted him and did everything right. And he said, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’ I said, ‘The commanding officer.’ And Alan Short said ‘Oh, what of it. Have a cigarette.’ And he said to report to the adjutant next morning at 10 o’clock. We thought we know [unclear] he doesn’t know who the hell we are. He knew who we were alright and we went in front of the adjutant the next morning and they called us. We were having lectures and they told us to go and report to the adjutant. They told us off a treat and they reckoned Alan Short was going to be sent home straight away and I said, ‘Well, if he’s going I’m going too.’ After giving us a good dressing down he said ‘Jolly good show.’ [unclear] So that was the end of that and the next day I got my commission.
AP: Oh really. Everything changed.
WG: There was lots of little things happened. Shorty used to, I had an electric iron when I, before I got a commission we all lived in the same hut and he, he’d break in to the butcher’s shop on the way at night time and bring out a steak out or something and cook it on my electric iron [laughs] Do that time and time again. One night the MPs were after him and he was a bit of a ratbag in lots of ways because they’d be looking for him and he’d sing out, ‘Hey, over here.’ And by the time they got there was somewhere else [laughs]. They never caught him. And he, I remember one night he went to the kitchen and he brought back, a lot of the kitchen staff they wore clogs, wooden clogs and he brought these clogs in. So I grabbed him by the curly hair and told him to take them back straight away. Well, he did take them back because they’d be wanting them the next morning because the kitchen, the floors would get wet and normal shoes would slip whereas the clogs they wouldn’t. One Christmas I remember they had a big Christmas dinner and out on this side of the runway they had a big kegs of beer. So, there were a couple of the guys went around to the field, found one that was pretty full so they took it back to the hut and they were drinking beer out of anything at all until Kenneth, the navigator got sick of it and he threw a slipper to the light and put the light out.
[pause]
AP: Any final thoughts?
[pause]
AP: No. Right. Thank you very much, Wal. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Wal Goodwin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Purcell
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
2017-06-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGoodwinWJ170607, PGoodwinWJ1701
Format
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01:31:39 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Wal Goodwin grew up near Melbourne, was conscripted in the Australian Army but was discharged due to his father’s reserved farming occupation. He later volunteered for the Australian Air Force and received his initial training of meteorology, Morse code and semaphore in Sydney, plus basic combat training – including dismantling and reassembling a Bren gun blindfolded. He recalls a march through crowded streets of Sydney. Wal took flying training at Narrandera by Link Trainer and then Tiger Moth but stopped due to tonsillitis. Further training was undertaken at Point Cook on Oxfords. Next, he awaited embarkation to England at the Showground and Melbourne Cricket Ground. Delays ensued, contracting mumps and then, after departing Australia, Italian prisoners of war and Polish female refugees were added to the sailing vessel at Durban, South Africa. In London, Wal saw barrage balloons and the destruction of the Blitz. In Brighton, Wal listened to an accurate broadcast by Lord Haw Haw and undertook an instrument flying course. He assisted in the control tower at Haverfordwest, then transferred to Milford Haven for aircraft identification. Wal’s destroyer accompanied a convoy to Cherbourg following D-Day. Wal crewed up at RAF Moreton in Marsh and converted to Lancasters at RAF Winthorpe before being posted to 463 Squadron. He completed a decoy operation when the war ended. Unable to contact RAF Skellingthorpe, they landed unassisted and returned to a party at the control tower. Wal was invited to a function at the Duchess of Devonshire’s residence in Knightsbridge where he danced with Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. He remembers flying Cooks Tours. On return to Australia, Wal missed comradeship and struggled to adjust to civilian life; working on the family farm despite hoping to remain in the Air Force.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Victoria
Victoria--Melbourne
New South Wales
New South Wales--Narrandera
New South Wales--Sydney
Great Britain
England--Brighton
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Sussex
Wales--Haverfordwest
Wales--Milford Haven
Wales--Pembrokeshire
France
France--Cherbourg
South Africa
South Africa--Durban
Victoria--Point Cook
Victoria
England--Gloucestershire
New South Wales--Wagga Wagga
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
463 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Cook’s tour
displaced person
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (1926 - 2022)
Lancaster
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
propaganda
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/919/11164/ALastRR151125.1.mp3
1549212534df145caa24e82c2fc713ce
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
Last, Ronald Roland
Ron Last
R R Last
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ronald Last (1921 - 2016, 160501 Royal Air Force). Ronald Last flew operations as a bomb aimer with 466 Squadron before his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Last, RR
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Sutch
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: This is an interview with Ron Last, a bomb aimer on 466 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Honiton, Devon for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. Also present is his daughter Sheila. Ron, thanks ever so much for agreeing for this interview. I’d like to set the scene by asking you about your life before the war. Before you joined the air force. Can you tell me a bit about where you were born and your family?
RL: I was born at Wimborne in Dorset. That was where my grandmother lived. My home address was in 2 Waterloo Road, Bournemouth. I was, I left school at fourteen and I joined the Bournemouth Gas and Water Company as an apprentice gas fitter. When I, when I was, war was broke out I volunteered for the Marines. And the recruiting sergeant laughed and told me to go home and grow up. Well, I was only, what? Sixteen or something like that.
AS: Sixteen. What’s your birthday? When’s your birthday?
RL: I went to the army recruiting office and they looked at me and said, well, ‘Go on home and grow up.’ Well, in the end I volunteered for the RAF. Aircrew. They called me up for a couple of days to go to Uxbridge. Uxbridge, where they gave me a medical and it was a rather funny thing. They wanted to know whether my lungs were strong enough and they offered me a U-Gauge. That, yes, they put water in the U-Gauge you see and of course you blew that up and after you’d done that they filled the U-Gauge up with mercury and gave me the tube to blow up. And of course, I can only hold my breath for a few seconds. And then they told me to sit back, you know and take a real blow and I got a good reading on the thing. And they told me I had to hold my breath for a minute. Well, I blew it up, of course and with mercury being a heavy kind of thing — phew. But I passed that. Well, when you think of it mercury is a poison. It’s not exactly the thing to play with. I was sent home with a paper to see a dentist locally. So, I made an appointment with a local dentist, dentist and he gave me some fillings or whatever had to be done. I was then on the sort of a waiting list to be called up. One day I received a notification that I was to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. So, saying difficult goodbyes to my wife and things. I got up to Lords Cricket Ground and I go into a Sector L. I was supposed to be given a uniform there but all I received was a respirator and a forage cap. Well, apparently, they never had the equipment to give us but we all had some indication of uniform. Well, we used to go for our meal to Regent’s Park Zoo. And one day, and we were living in the flat by Regent’s Park, well one day we were told we were going to have inoculations and things like that. That was really something. We were marched there to a big house with iron fire escapes and when we got to this base of this thing we were given a cap. Kit bag. And we were told to strip off all our top clothing. Well, we gradually moved up this stairway and we got to the building. Then we got to a room where there was a doctor and a medical bloke. One, the idea, the medical johnny was filling up with vaccines or whatever it was and passing them to the doctor who would put it in your arm. Well, it was just like a factory. Now, if you didn’t move after you had it just as likely you got another one, see. The best part about it there was a cast iron radiator in this room. Well there was a lot of people passing out kind of thing and of course this cast iron radiator didn’t do any problems. Well, we had two or three inoculations and then we had one on the chest. Well, of course when we finished we all went on the town that night to some, well the first time we’d seen, were the Regent’s Park and the ambulance bells were ringing like mad where people were passing out. Well, when you were on a respirator the straps went across where you’d been vaccinated which didn’t, I didn’t have them to call. No trouble. Well, after two or three days in there we got a bit more kit but not a full uniform, you know. One day we were told we were going to be on the move so we found out we were going to Newquay. So, bright and early on Monday morning we were all paraded up here. And we waited for hours before we moved off. And we no sooner got moving and I’ll never forget it, coming towards us was a platoon of Guardsmen. Guardsmen. Now, of course they were in step but we, we were come clattering along you know and these guardsmen just walked on by. Well, we got on this train and we still waited and waited. Then all of a sudden we go off. We got, we got on this train and we chugged off from the town, and [pause] No. I beg your pardon. That’s not Newquay. We went to Pwllheli in North Wales. That’s a correction. And then when we got there it was a gunnery school but they never knew anything about what I was going to do so we, we spent time. They never had a gunnery course [pause] Maybe I’m getting confused here.
AS: Did you go straight to gunnery training or did you do some flying first?
RL: We didn’t [pause] no that’s not [pause] Can I just — that was where you were going to do your training. How to walk properly, how to turn around, who to salute and all that kind of thing. But they must have had the foundation to be able to do anything. They marched up and down like that. Well, the officers in our, like platoon were school teachers. They didn’t appear to have any training. They were just brought in as school teachers. We did arithmetic and English and, like that. Well, that was alright in some respects but it, we used to feed. Now, in Newquay, as a fishing port, we used to live on fish. I’m sure that if I’d have stayed much longer I’d have got flippers. It used to be very annoying to walk around to these empty hotels which are our class rooms and then to come out and you could smell this fish cooking. Well, we used to go in to, to the dining room. You didn’t sit where you wanted to. You just filed in and sat on the — and I was unfortunate to be at the end of a line. And of course, the duty NCO came in with the officer. ‘Any complaints?’ And I didn’t think about being me but I was on the end of the line so I was, ‘Yes sir. We think this fish is bad.’ So, he says to the NCO, ‘Get me a portion.’ So, a fish portion was given to him on a plate with a fork and he daintily pushed his fork in to this fish and he’d only had a tiny bit like that and he licks it. ‘I don’t think it’s bad.’ Three night’s fire-watch for doing that. I never sat on the end of a line after that. Well, it was the, these officers they have never been through an officer’s course. I reckon they were just given the uniform as they’d retired. I mean church parade. Act your age in front. And instead of walking by the main road to the church they took us down the road a bit, left turn, right turn and we went ziggyzag, you see. Well, by the time they got to church they only had a half a platoon because when they went around the corners the back people skived off. Prior to this when we were announced we had church parade a Cockney recruit said he was an atheist. The sergeant didn’t argue with him or anything like that. We paraded, you see. When we got down to this church all the other people walked into this church and the sergeant said to this bloke, ‘Stand over there.’ By a wooden seat outside. So, as soon as the service started, he said to this man, ‘Attention.’ And the bloke had to stand to attention all the way. All through the service. And of course, the sergeant was sat down on the seat with his newspaper and fag you see. Funny, that bloke had religion the next week.
AS: When was this? When did you join the air force?
[pause]
RL: There are some dates there.
AS: Ok. So, this was in April, 17th of April you went to Uxbridge.
RL: Yeah.
AS: And then you went arsydarsy [ACRC] in London in September ’41.
RL: Yeah.
AS: And Newquay in October ‘41. So, in October ‘41 all this was going on.
RL: Yes.
AS: Yes. Did you —
RL: And —
AS: Did you do exams after these lessons of maths and things?
RL: Did we do what?
AS: Exams. Examinations at Newquay. Tests.
RL: Well, sort of but I mean we, I suppose these school teachers made their reports. We were all trainee air crew in those days. Obviously, we were all, all was going to be pilots. As we thought, you know. Let me just have that back again will you, please.
[pause]
AS: Can we wind back a bit?
RL: Yeah. Well, we got then we went from Newquay we went to Sywell. That was a Tiger Moth flying station.
AS: Ok.
RL: It was a private aerodrome. We were all dressed up as airmen. Our flying kit in those days was a silk undergarment, a capote over garment and a canvas over jacket. Goggles. Helmets. Sea boot stockings and flying boots. That’s the first time I’d worn all this. Now, it was a beautiful day and you sat outside this, like, clubhouse kind of thing and all of a sudden somebody would come up and call your name and, ‘I’m your pilot,’ you see. Now, you wobbled out to one of the aircraft, lath and plaster kind of thing and you climbed in it. You no sooner made yourself comfortable, well, semi comfortable. By that time you were sweating. It was running off you. Oh, you had goggles on then. Well, he takes off, you see and, ‘Ever flown before?’ ‘No. No.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m going to do a spin.’ And he showed me, you know, you’ll see the artificial horizon come up. You’ll bring that up,’ he said, ‘And you’re going to stall. And you kick the left rudder and you go to the right,’ or something. Yeah. And then he pulled out, you see. Well, all he was doing is looking in his mirror to see whether you were sick or alright. Course no. I was decided. Seeing this spinning around like this. Yeah. Then come back. Then we did it for the next time. And of course, it was lovely seeing the earth spinning around, you know. You didn’t, you didn’t do anything without being told. So, we landed, you know. Well, we were going through our course when we were, one bloke told us to go back to our classroom. And the commanding officer looks up and said, ‘The air force are introducing another crew member.’ So, we said, ‘What is that?’ And he said, ‘Bomb aimer.’ So, we asked a lot a lot of questions, ‘What’s the pay?’ Right. And that kind of thing. And he said, ‘I want volunteers.’ So, nobody volunteered. They all wanted to be brylcreem boys, you know, and that. So, he said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Transport will be outside. They’ll take you back to your civilian accommodation.’ He said, ‘You’ll collect your kit and we’ll —
AS: How many hours flying had you done as a, as a pilot. Very few?
RL: Very few. There was, oh apart from going into the classroom. There was one fella that was going on his solo and we were all watching him and he landed after a series of bumps but pulled up. But I think he got, went on with flying duties but that’s, as I say. So, we, he volunteered us all for the [pause] Well we got down to this, excuse me I’ve got a [pause] We got down to Penrhos. That was a gunnery school kind of thing.
AS: Ok.
RL: And they had not heard about a bomb aimer you see and they didn’t know really what to teach us. So, in the end we started flying around and dropping nine pound spent bombs on the bay just outside there. It was daft really. Ansons. We had a sight and we had to clip this sight on to a spigot. Well, the pilot would go towards the target and you had to give the corrections. You know. Well, you never had a Perspex panel. You had a metal panel used there. Well, the idea is you drop this bomb and you had to mark on a chart where it hit, according to the floating target and there was also a bloke on the headland there. Well, it shows how daft it was. We clipped on our bombsight on to this spigot and opened this door. Well, to drop your bomb you had to inch yourself forward to there. That released the bombsight on the spigot and of course we lost a few bombsights. So, in the end they decided to give us a lanyard. So that nearly pulled you out of, out of the bomb place. Well, we, we did a few night flying and things like that and we always used to drop a five hundred sand filled bomb into the sand pits prior to landing. Well, we never had such a record of this but I [pause] I passed out on that. And apparently, to my log book I had above average. So that wasn’t bad. Well —
AS: What else did they teach you? Did they teach you navigation? Or, or gunnery?
RL: Pardon?
AS: Did they teach you any navigation or gunnery?
RL: Well, yes but only, how can I say? Basics, you know. We [pause] not really in as much as when we used to go out on sort of bombing runs. Like we flew around the villages and had to take a photograph of the church which we bombed, kind of thing. That was, that was bloody silly. Well, looking back it was a bloody silly training. And see, when we used to go around to these villages or sights. There was eight of them. Eight sights you’d go around. Well, you’re up at the front of this bloody Anson, kind of thing. No intercom. You would go on to the skipper like that and come straight up and you’d get these where you were going to drop your bombs. Well, you’d perhaps give them, ‘Left. Left. Steady. Steady,’ blah blah. Right.
AS: All hand signals.
RL: Like that. When you wanted to bomb that meant the photograph and you had this bloody great box in front of you and when you’ve got to it, then you’d turn this bloody handle to take the photograph and then when you finished you wanted to say, ‘Bring her around,’ but they wouldn’t come up, you know. No. And of course he’d be bringing it up and the camera would go back into your turret. Well, when you’d done about six of these you weren’t exactly feeling very bright. If you’ve managed to do eight, get out of the craft, out of the aircraft and rest your back up against it and take a breath you were alright. Of course, if you were sick they used to cost you five bob to clean. For somebody else to clean it up or you had to do it yourself. Well, we spent quite a nice time down there. Apart from being in a classroom kind of thing. And at the end of this day we’d missed the transport to send us back to our billets and of course you weren’t exactly feeling like that but we were billeted in garden sheds. The funny thing, it’s a safe bet if you walked down the main street, about the only street there, and you saw a bloke coming towards you it was a safe bet if you said, ‘Good afternoon Mr Jones.’ They were all Jones’ there.
AS: Did you lose any aircraft on training? Crews and aircraft, on training.
RL: No. They were a bit shaky. They had a lot of Polish pilots that were on relief and I think it was an insult to those men to get put back for relief. All they wanted to do was to fly the enemy. They did some crazy things. You’d go out some nights with one man. If we circled around a village and his girlfriend lived in that village there would be a light come up, you know. They were, they were absolutely [pause] well I think they thought of it as an insult to be took out.
AS: Ok.
RL: But —
AS: When you’d finished there did you have a passing out parade and get your brevet? Did you have a big parade when you finished your training and get your brevet?
RL: No. No.
AS: How did that happen?
RL: We went in as LACs one morning and we were just given a brevet and sergeant’s stripes. I know we went up to Harwell next. That was an Operational Training Wing where you were all crewed up. And then [pause] oh you did more flying. Sort of over to the Isle of Man and things like that.
AS: Ok.
RL: That was normal flying.
AS: How, how did you crew up? How did you choose who you were going to fly with?
RL: How did you choose?
AS: Who you were going to fly with. How did you choose your crew?
RL: Well, how can I say? We mucked in together, kind of thing where I’d get in there and you saw different blokes. You mucked in with or, ‘Do you want to be in our crew?’ Kind of thing. It was sort of, well look at the blokes faces and say, ‘Well you’re not a bad chap, are you?’ No. There was no, no official crewing. No. There wasn’t like, well as I said, I was above average. I don’t, I don’t think we looked for above average crew. I mean, we just mucked in. And then we went down to Driffield for a time. That’s where 466 was starting. That, that was a place where well we didn’t do much there and we were moved up to Leconfield. I was in crew number 3.
AS: That was Healy’s crew was it?
RL: No. That was on squadron.
AS: Yeah. Was Healy you pilot? Was that your, your crew? With, with Healy?
[pause]
RL: Yeah.
AS: Ok. Let’s just pause there for a minute and we’ll get your logbook, I think.
[recording paused]
AS: Right. We’re, we’re back after a break and Ron, I’d like to ask you some questions about joining the squadron. What, what was that like when you’d finished OTU and joined the squadron?
RL: Well, we [pause] we all sort of mucked in and did a lot of crewing. I was, a Flight Sergeant Healy was my pilot for a time. But after a time, a very small time, I couldn’t tell you the date, he was taken off flying.
AS: Was he sick?
RL: What is that — Sheila.
Sheila: Yeah.
RL: What was that letters?
Sheila: Lack of moral fibre.
RL: Lack of moral.
AS: Oh. How did that turn up?
RL: Well [pause] we [pause] we flew with him. Well, we did our first op in 466, 13th of January ’43 and he [pause] he put in a rear turret u/s going to Kiel. Then he had a starboard oil pressure return to base. And then he suddenly disappeared. You couldn’t find out what happened to him but lack, lack of fibre we think.
AS: Ok.
RL: I mean he was here one day and gone the next.
AS: He never, he never discussed these things that went wrong with the aeroplane, with the crew.
RL: Well, we wondered whether, well, he faked it or not. And this lack of moral fibre, well you, there wasn’t any information. But we, we wondered whether that was it. It wasn’t, it was as though he was sick. I mean, he would, one, one day he was worse and then the next day he wasn’t. Now, it’s a horrible thing to have been labelled that. But I don’t know whether I had [pause] I’ve got so much bumph here, I don’t —
AS: Did you all live together? Were you all sergeants? Did you all live together as a crew? Were you all sergeants or some officers?
RL: At Driffield we lived in the married quarters. Three of us — the rear gunner, a wireless op and me. We lived in, like the master bedroom. Now, we got a ration of coal to light the bedroom fire up.
AS: Yeah.
RL: But it was so bloody cold. The only time I ever wore my Irvin suit. We used to light this fire up and take it in turns to undress and put on our Irvin trousers and jacket and climb into bed. Well, Kurdy was something to do with transport and the food thing. So, we decided one night, as the coal ration wasn’t enough, we would break into the coal thing and get some more coal. So, off we go with the wire cutters. Real, real professional, you know. Cut the wire. Got in. Filled up this sack, you know, with coal, kind of thing. And then we realized we couldn’t carry it. You know [laughs] Well, all of a sudden the tannoy came on. And you’d never seen anything like it. Kurdy was only a little bloke. He gets this sack on to his shoulder and he scarpered with Bob and me, we were following on. When we got back to the house there Kurdy was by the fire [breathing heavily]. But, I mean, we could have got court martialed for that. We were warned. But I don’t know. You see, when we were called up — like, like on a train. Now Bournemouth is a, was a big town. If you went for a, on a train for a journey to go up to Southampton well you couldn’t afford it really. But once you got on the train and you kept along and you came to the another station and a bloke gets on. He’s as bewildered as you are so you talk, don’t you? By the time you get to the next station you’re friends. I mean, but I mean some of the poor blokes got on. They were, well, like farm labourers. They’d never been in a train. Get in to a train and look at everything going by. That’s marvelous. I mean three meals a day they got. They didn’t get three meals a day at home, did they?
AS: No. Not at all. No.
RL: They thought they were in heaven.
AS: So, you’ve done OTU with your crew and then the whole crew get posted to Driffield. To the squadron.
RL: Yeah.
AS: And then, this is September 1942. And then it seems the squadron did a long time training. A lot of training was it?
RL: Oh yes. Yeah. We had lots of training [pause] I wonder where that got to.
AS: What, what was that all about? Was it because you were all new crews that there was so much training going on?
RL: Well, 1942 [pause] Where have I got that from? Oh, I expect when they went to sign it —
AS: Not enough room for the stamp. Yeah.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Ok. Can I borrow that back? So, it took about three months before you went on operations. This was on what? On Wellingtons you had.
RL: Yeah. Well, we had, most of our training was at, flying training was at Leconfield, wasn’t it? [pause] Captain, crew. January.
[pause]
AS: I’ll just pause it there for a second.
[recording paused]
AS: Back after another pause. Ron, I’d like to ask you about being a bomb aimer. What your duties were in the aeroplane on a, on a mission. What —
RL: Well, I used to sit on the right of the pilot. My duties were — I used to keep an eye on the instrument panel for any, well, any sort of [pause] well —
AS: Deficiencies I suppose. Yeah. Anything wrong.
RL: Any sort of fault —
AS: Yeah.
RL: That arises. With the Wimpy I always had to turn on the nacelle fuel tanks. That meant I used to, well if we were on oxygen I’d take a bottle of, a small bottle of oxygen and plug in because I had to go down the aircraft, over the main spar to where these toggles were at the side of the aircraft. Now, these toggles were connected up by wire to the nacelle tanks and it was my duty to, when the fuel tanks were nearing the emptying point the skipper used to tell me to go down the back and I’d sit down at the back by these toggles. Now, when he told me to switch on these toggles I had to pull on the toggle and engage a ball bearing that was welded on them into a keyhole slot. It wasn’t very clever.
AS: How many pairs of gloves were you wearing?
RL: And you’d no sooner, he’d say, ‘Starboard,’ and you’d pull on the starboard and you couldn’t get the ball back enough in there when you were tugging. And he’d say, ‘Port,’ and you’d have to grab the other one and pull. Well, we used to say to the, on the, ‘Slow down skipper. Slow down.’ Thinking that if he didn’t go so fast the wings wouldn’t bow out and after you’ve got them in you were [reading for gas then?]
AS: Yeah. So, the flexing of wing —
RL: Yeah. Well —
AS: Was making the cable tight.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah.
RL: I mean it was straight down and we used to feel we bleeding wanted him to slow down so that the wings would go back. It was [pause] it was a horrible feeling because when you’ve got both of them you were pulling like mad, you know. And of course it was only like a keyhole that took the ball. It was rather frightening. Now, a thing we [pause] we didn’t do according to regulations. Of course, you all know that you, you know better. Well, when he used to say to us, ‘Right. Go on down the back there. Instead of putting our portable air line on we used to go [breathe in deeply] go down the back there, you know. When you got to this main spar you had to put your leg up over and it’s true when you go to put the next leg down you can’t push it down to the ground. And then when you do get down you get down to the port and your fumbling for the air line. That’s like the electro light. The maintenance panel.
AS: Bayonet fitting. Yeah.
RL: You swear that they’re going into each other but they’re not, you know. But we, and I often thought if I’d have passed out nobody would have known.
AS: What else were your duties? Apart from the tanks what else did you have to do?
RL: Well, I went to, going over the North Sea to the target I would switch on the bombing panel and get the bombs off, off safety.
AS: When would you do that?
RL: Pardon?
AS: When do you take the bombs off safe?
RL: Well, they had split pins.
AS: Yeah.
RL: In these things. And if you got back to camp the bomber, bomb aimer mechanic, he would collect these things. There was a gadget used to come down — and pull. Engage on the split pin on the bomb. Pull it out. But that meant when I dropped them, they were live.
AS: Was this gadget electrical?
RL: Yes.
AS: Ok.
RL: As I say if you got back to camp and you never had these split pins you dropped the bombs safe. I don’t mean they wouldn’t go off but quite a possibility that they wouldn’t go off.
AS: So, you, you made the bombs, you armed the bombs over the North Sea.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Ok.
RL: Well, like when we came back, we’d switch on the panel and if we got the lights on one place we’d got a hang up so we had to get rid of that over the North Sea because we didn’t like landing with a bomb on board. Sometimes that used to be just a matter of jigging up the switch or rocking the aircraft. When the light went out you knew you were alright.
AS: So, you’ve switched, you’ve turned on the bomb panel. You’ve set the bombs. You’ve armed the bombs. When did you take control of the aircraft? When was it your aeroplane to steer?
RL: Well, as you approached the target it was the pilot. We used to drop our bombs on a red flare or green. Whatever they told us. So, if the pilot, should I say aims at perhaps this odd one or clutch of red bombs and then you sort of took over. I mean the pilot [pause] the pilot could see the target so I mean he was going, he was going for it all the time. It was only when, as I say you got near enough to, ‘Left. Left.’ The next time you were there it might be oh just about, ‘Right. Right. That’s enough.’ It was only an adjustment.
AS: How, how did your bombsight work? How did you bring it on to the target? What, what were you looking for?
RL: How?
AS: How did the bombsight work? What were you looking for?
RL: Well, we never had these H2S. We just had a sight. As long as you put the wind on to direct and things like that that’s all you could, that’s all you did. I mean, as the war went on it wasn’t just a matter of bombing some guns or searchlights. I mean [pause] well you see it on television and on the pictures where the target was ablaze but when you see this target in front of you and its ablaze. I mean, I might have been a poor bomb aimer and not, and not should I say, knocked over these factories but there was a lot of people that had to change our underwear. You see [pause] it was just destroy the city or a town.
AS: Yeah.
RL: And then [pause] I mean it’s amazing for someone. We were on the second wave.
AS: To Hamburg?
RL: Pardon.
AS: Second wave to where? Hamburg?
RL: Well we used to go like the first wave and then there’s the second wave.
AS: Yeah.
RL: Was there. Well, when you could see, well, miles of flames leaping up it was unbelievable. The night that I was shot down there was the Germans shooting up flares and it was just, well can I just say going through [Exeter?] main road with all the street lamps on and you were going up to it and you’re going to raid, and you’d spend.
AS: These were fighter flares. Yeah.
RL: Yeah. With all this stuff. I mean they, they couldn’t miss us.
AS: When you, because you flew as Bomber Command was getting better and better and better.
RL: Yeah.
AS: And better at its job. So, did you notice the difference in the effect from when you started bombing to, you know, say the Battle of Hamburg, the Battle of Berlin. Were the fires getting bigger?
RL: Yeah. I mean the first time I saw, saw it, when we went back home the rear gunner was talking like you could still see the glow in the sky. Not a, not just a low glow. A big glow. And when I, when I was shot down it was my turn to open the escape hatch and my turn to go out first. You’d jump out of the aircraft but in a way that would be silly. There was an open gap there and I stepped out in it but my back thing gets caught on the —
AS: On the edge.
RL: The edge of the, and I can remember, ‘Push me. Push me.’ And they pushed me. Well. Then I dropped. I can’t remember counting three and putting on the, I must have pulled it then. And on this day, ‘Oh bloody hell. I’m going to drop in to that lot.’ The bloody fire is burning isn’t it? Then of course the common sense — oh the wind will blow me off and you gradually saw it was. But I mean.
AS: Yeah. I’ll come to when you were shot down. When, when you were flying over these targets could you feel the heat?
RL: No, I can’t say, I can’t say I ever thought of that. Or what the feelings were.
AS: Did you feel, what did you feel about the bombing? The people underneath. Did it worry you at the time?
RL: Well, they’d bombed London, hadn’t they?
AS: Yeah.
RL: And we were only giving them back what they’d done to London. That’s basically what it was.
AS: Yeah.
RL: You, well when I pulled my parachute and I saw, ‘Oh bloody hell I’m going to drop in that.’ Now, we do know that the firemen, if they saw a parachute coming down in the fire and there was a German raid on they would turn their hoses away from him. I mean they would let them drop in the bloody fire. Well, flying, flying kit you never really wore. How can I say? I never wore my flying trousers on then. I flew, I had my submarine sweater, socks, flying boots, an ordinary uniform and an open neck shirt with a lady’s scarf tied in a knot. And if I had [died from it] they were dress clothes. Now, I can remember floating down on my parachute and untying this knotted scarf because we were told the Germans could catch hold of each end and strangle you. I can remember dropping it and letting it float down. My palm of my hand started itching. Take off my glove. Scratch my palm. Put my glove back on again. Going down. I landed in — there was some wires going along as I got closer to the ground and I surmised these were tram wires. So, I pulled on my chute when I got near straight down. I can’t tell you which hand, you know. I landed in the back garden of this house. Well, to release your parachute you had a buckle. You clamp it and turn it. Well, I was doing this but the wind had got into my parachute and taking me back.
AS: Dragging you down the road.
RL: And a German soldier was there with a long bloody bayonet [laughs] I said all three masses [laughs]. And then he got me there and I put my hands up and he released it. Now, we took, we were took into the house. Obviously a mill had been and there was a man and his wife and this huge German. He had the small, small tin hat on a big head and he had this red and black armband. Like a Home Guard I suppose and he started yanking at me and he slapped me two or three times. There was this man and woman. I think it was a man and wife. And you know the Moses baskets?
AS: Yes.
RL: Where the two halves go together. Well, there was a baby in each and I’d thought he was having a go at me for bombing babies and things like that and I’ve never, so. Oh, one of the babies opened its eyes and let out a yell. Oh, that was a beautiful sound but in the end this soldier seemed to be frightened of this man. Seemed as though I was a spar as far as he was. He’d captured an airmen you know and that. But, oh I never oh that baby crying [crying noises]
AS: And were you, were you still in the middle of this bombing raid? Was it going on around you?
RL: I was on the, I was on the outskirts of the thing.
AS: What did it sound like being underneath it? What did it sound like? The bombing raid. When you were on the ground.
[pause]
RL: [unclear]
AS: Did you hear the vibrations and the noise?
RL: I can’t [pause] I was taken to a, I suppose the picket post.
AS: Were you injured?
RL: Yeah. I was injured but that’s, that’s a funny thing. I was injured. Well, a lot of that there was the bang and there was a hole in the aircraft. I didn’t think any more about it. I went down without feeling any pain. I got to this picket post. I was amazed. There was a German soldier and he talked like an Australian — ‘Hi cobber,’ you know. ‘The war for you is over.’ And he searched me. Well, we’re not supposed to take any documents but I mean I had a wallet. A picture of my wife. A few lucky charms like silver thre’penny bits there. That was the other thing.
AS: They worked.
RL: I don’t know whether this ought to be on tv. He saw a little square envelope and he opened it. He puts it in his pocket kind of thing. Well, then the ambulance is called after he took this — name and number. All that. And I was feeling then my wound. I wasn’t in pain but I, there was something wrong and the blood was trickling down my trousers. Well, when this [unclear] ambulance came, they wanted me to lie down on the stretcher. No. No way was I going to. I wanted to be sat up so I can do something if something comes along. And this flaming soldier drove the ambulance down the main road and he kept on saying, ‘Kaput. Kaput. Kaput.’ And all I could see was the front of a building standing and there was nothing behind it, you know. We drove down this main road and we come to the archway.
AS: Oh, the Brandenburg Gate?
RL: Yeah. Just before we come to that archway we saw FW Woolworth’s and that, but you know on seeing Woolworth’s, well we turned left and we go up the road or we got to a part of it. We stopped at a private hospital. And they didn’t want to know. They didn’t give me any treatment. They had enough of their own I suppose. So, we drove into this hospital and they took me through a line of Luftwaffe people and I couldn’t believe it. There was, well there weren’t soldiers that you could put on a drill squadron. I mean there was one bloke who was a hunchback but I mean he was in the German army. He could do something couldn’t he? And they sat me on the corner of a desk and the doctor put a pad or a dressing on my wound. And in came an immaculately dressed Luftwaffe officer. Dagger, and dirk. Everything. Looked beautiful. He introduced to me as a German master at one of our universities before the war. And he talked to this doctor man and then he talked to me and he said, ‘Your name, number,’ and of course I gave it to him. Well, I didn’t know that leading up. You see the next thing was, ‘What were you flying?’ Now, this doctor, whatever he had to do to my wound he did. I’m not, he didn’t hurt me intentionally. He just did what he had to do and of course instead of saying ooh, you said, ‘Oh Halifax,’ you know. Then I realized what I had to do. Every time he asked me a question I had to say, ‘Oooh.’ And you get this after he gave me a pencil and piece of paper, ‘You have to write home.’ So, what can you do? You can’t put down, “Hello, I’m in Germany. In Berlin. Sincerely, Ron.” You wrote a lot of piffle really. That letter got home.
AS: It did.
RL: Yeah. Then that went through the German postal system. Wasn’t anything to do with the POW form or anything like that. Amazing. They took me on to the hospital and apparently linen bandages were like a gold mine and the outer bandages was crepe paper. Well, they’d fitted me out with a nightie. A long nightie, you see. As I say this crepe paper, I was, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and breathing heavy and of course it just fell on the ground. They cleaned me up again and they gave me a shirtie nightie. Well, you go to bed and you think to yourself I wonder what they’re thinking at home, you know. But it was amazing.
AS: Were you obviously frightened parachuting in to Berlin. When did the fear leave you? When did you think that you’re alright? You’re safe. They’re going to not kill you. When was that?
RL: I think, when I got to the Luftwaffe hospital. Now, in the room with me there was a squadron leader and a flight lieu. The flight lieu was a Aussie. Now, he apparently had got blown out of his aircraft and badly wounded his arm and things like that. Well, the ointment that they had to use, kind of thing, it used to stink. Old Smithy used to, well we used to call him Smithy, but he said, ‘Oh cut it off doc. Cut the bloody thing off.’ I bet if that had been in England I reckon they would have took it off. And the surgeon said, ‘No. No. I’ll send you home with an arm.’ Well, this surgeon came in one night and he was dressed up in his dress uniform. And of course we were all ‘whoo ooh,’ and this kind of thing. Well he came in to see Smithy and Smithy did get repatriated with his arm. He can’t use, well he can use everything but he hasn’t got an empty sleeve. They were marvelous. I mean, I suppose it’s the code. If you need attention you got it. But —
AS: Did all your watch and your clothes disappear?
RL: My flying boots disappeared. My, my sweater. No. That was just all stained in blood. We couldn’t have been treated better in that hospital. And there was a nurse. [unclear] a nurse. She did everything for me and on, at home, there’s a picture of my mum’s mum and if you could just remove the head gear on the painting and put the nurse’s uniform in.
AS: The same. Yeah.
RL: That was my grandmother. But she used to do everything. Like, the other two bods complained. They wanted something to clean their teeth with so she appeared with three toothbrushes. Well, a man who has got it, and I had a kiss. But I think she was great.
AS: This was January 1944.
RL: Yeah.
AS: What was the food like that you were given in Germany?
RL: The food?
AS: Yeah.
RL: Well very sparse. I think we got what the German hospital [pause] I was dead lucky in getting into this Luftwaffe hospital. The food. If you had a soup plate with a pattern on the bottom and you had soup in it if you could see the pattern in the soup. Now for the first day, the first two or three days in hospital I was given white bread as my [unclear] but it turned to the black bread. How can I describe it? The soup was very thin, you know. If you say it was chicken soup it was only like a chicken left the water, running.
AS: How long were you —
RL: Various sorts of sausages. We never, we never had any cooked food. The only one that I could say no to was the blood sausage. I couldn’t. But when you get hungry you eat it. I mean it’s gorgeous.
AS: How long were you at the hospital for?
RL: A couple of months.
AS: Really. So, you were quite badly hurt.
RL: And I — but one thing I never had any dog tags.
AS: No dog tags.
RL: It’s a bloody silly thing. You see, you’re on a squadron. One day you look at the notice board and listed up is R Last is commissioned as a pilot officer.
AS: Yeah.
RL: So, you had to take all your kit back in to the stores. They take your dog tags but they don’t give you the new one. You have to sort of wait about. Well you would have thought they would take the old one, stamp the new ones and that’s that. Well, I never, I never bothered with them. I didn’t think I was going to get shot down.
AS: It’s bloody dangerous though. Flying without them.
RL: Well yeah.
AS: Anyway, you had no dog tags.
RL: But the person in the hospital bed, there was a siren goes off and you see these two other blokes. They can’t move in the daytime but they start moving. And you don’t think anything of it you know. They were directly in the bed. Well, apparently, there was one siren that says planes are coming towards Germany. Then there was another siren that said they are coming in our direction. Then there’s another siren saying, well we’re the target. Well, the Germans naturally take their own staff down to the bombing shelter. And of course, if they can’t get us down we’re left up there. Well, it’s not funny laying on a bed. When you say you can’t move you think you can’t move. Then all of a sudden you hear [bomb noise] and the bed sort of jumps up and down. Then the curtains get blown in. Then the windows. Then a fire seems nearer than it actually is. You think to yourself — crying out loud, there was nine hundred bombers on the night I was shot down.
AS: What was the noise like when you were on the ground with all the aircraft over you?
RL: Well, that was them. It was the ones that you heard. Something like, it was only, a falling [pause] like a huge tree coming down, you know. I mean, I could [pause] we, we back to our beds and our skipper had been brought in.
AS: Your skipper?
RL: Yeah. And he had something wrong with his leg up here. And he had had this leg tied up. This was the second night when I managed to get out to the bomb part. And when we come back we heard, ‘Help. Help.’ He’d had the [pulley?] out the bloody ceiling and he’d gone under the bed. Under the bed. He was going, ‘Help. Help.’
AS: Yeah. So, you saw your skipper again in the hospital.
RL: I only saw him about twice.
AS: Ok. What about the rest of your crew? Tell me what happened when you were shot down. When you had to bale out. What happened that night in the aeroplane?
RL: Well the aeroplane went on for another ten miles before it crashed.
AS: But what got you? Was it flak that got you or a fighter? What got you?
RL: It was a fighter.
AS: Ok.
RL: I’ve got a write up there somewhere but I normally flew, or sat right of the pilot. But the night we were shot down we had a second dickie. Now, that is a pilot of a new crew coming in. He comes, he comes for, more or less, experience. Well, that meant that I was in the bomb aimers place. Now, you can’t see much other than in front of you. So, instead of doing my normal duties I was down in the bombing panel [pause] What was we talking about?
AS: What happened when you were shot down? So, you weren’t the second dickie. You weren’t sitting next to the pilot. You were in the bomb aimer’s position.
RL: Yeah.
AS: What happened then?
RL: Well, I can’t see much. And I’ve not got the tie in with what’s gone on with the skipper. I know I’ve got my intercom but that’s only to, that’s not the chattering. That’s how to, emergency if you are on target. So, I didn’t see any of the journey. By that, he didn’t get injured that sat in my place. So, I was down on the bombing panel. There’s the mid-upper turret gunner there and the rear gunner there. Now, the aircraft must have come up from there.
AS: From underneath. Yeah.
RL: Gone in there and into my back.
AS: Ok.
RL: Now, I didn’t hear what was, any — I didn’t hear anything about that. I mean, as I say your intercom is basically for emergencies and I imagine that the rear gunner saw this plane come in, and he fired and the plane killed the two —
AS: The gunners. Ok.
RL: And then it stopped with me.
AS: So, the two gunners were killed in the attack.
RL: Well, we assume so. The wireless operator was injured. Oh the navigator. I think. The rear gunner. Mid-upper gunner. Navigator. They were killed. So, it must have come up from there.
AS: Yeah.
RL: And I was on the last line.
AS: Yeah. So, he attacked from the underneath on the right hand side.
RL: Yeah. You see, they, they didn’t know at that time that some of the German planes had a gun that pointed upwards.
AS: Schrage musik. Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Now, I don’t think the attack came in from underneath. I think it came in from the, that got, as I say there was three members of the crew that were killed. The wireless op, he was a POW. The engineer was a POW. And the navigator was killed.
AS: Did the aircraft catch fire?
RL: Pardon?
AS: Did the aircraft catch fire?
RL: No. All I’ve got is it crashed.
AS: Ok.
RL: Ten miles.
AS: With the bombs still on board?
RL: I’ve got it all. I’ve got so much.
AS: Don’t worry. Just tell me were the bombs still on the aeroplane when it crashed?
RL: That I can’t tell you.
AS: Ok.
RL: I just had, worried me for a long time. I think they’d gone. They must have gone otherwise it would have been burned to hell wouldn’t it? I mean, no, you see they must have gone because we used to carry a lot of incendiaries. It would have blown up over Berlin.
AS: Yeah.
RL: I must have done but I can’t, you know, I often bring it.
AS: It’s not surprising. There were a lot of other things going on at the time.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. On, on these big raids could you see a lot of other aircraft around you?
RL: No. It’s amazing but you, until you left England you saw a few but no. I mean, I’ve often wondered and it sounds bloody silly but you got four hundred and fifty planes in the air, over a town at one time. Now, it’s bloody dark and I could never understand this but, ‘Bomb doors open,’ and then, ‘Left. Left. That’s right skip.’ Then go on, ‘You’re alright skip. Left, left.’ We’re doing alright. Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed. And then he turns to the left, doesn’t he? As I say, going for home. But every aircraft has got an altimeter. Now, it was supposed to be flying at twenty thousand feet. That doesn’t mean to say that we’re all twenty thousand feet. There are some lower. There’s some higher isn’t there. According to what you left base with. I’ve often wondered how many planes had been lost. I mean, you would have thought that after they heard, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors shut.’ They would have gone on for certain, well a mile or a couple of miles before but you see all the aircraft flying and [unclear] and you — bam. I reckon, I reckon we must have had thirty percent shot down by our own bloody aircraft.
AS: Really.
RL: Yeah. Well. I mean, the sky’s full of it and I’m telling you we’re not all level. It isn’t like we were flying, this one could go under. This one could go over, couldn’t it?
AS: Yeah.
RL: It always seemed to me. It seemed as though it was a ritual. Bomb doors, bombs gone, bomb doors closed. Bam.
AS: Did he wait for the photograph?
RL: Eh?
AS: Did he wait for the photograph?
RL: No.
AS: He didn’t.
RL: I mean that was automatically linked with the bombs gone. And the time that we were going to drop. Oh no. I mean it isn’t as though we had to wait for the photograph. I mean that was automatically tuned in.
AS: Ok. [unclear] When you let the bombs go did you have to let them go in a certain order?
RL: No. No. No, they, all the bombs went as one. The load went.
AS: Just drop the lot at once.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Salvoed the lot. Ok. When you were operating I think the master bomber started.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Could you hear him on your, could you, as the bomb aimer hear him or —?
RL: No.
AS: Who heard him?
RL: Every crew might have been in contact see.
AS: Ok.
RL: But I didn’t hear anything about. And they weren’t so good as they thought they were.
AS: No. I wonder because he’s, the master bomber is circling, talking to the aircraft and I don’t know who heard him. Whether it was the pilot.
RL: The, the master bomber is talking to the bombers where they’re dropping the flares. He’s more, he’s more or less more scientifically geared to make his underlings drop the bombs say, to the left more or to the right. But it was a, it wasn’t exactly all that correct was it? I mean, when the Mossies got in to it there was a great improvement. When the Mosquitoes took over like.
AS: Ok. When you were flying, you started flying Wellingtons to Germany. Were you always at the bottom of the heap? Were all the other aeroplanes above you. What sort of height did you fly?
RL: No. I suppose, the only thing was the Wellington is a beautiful aircraft. It’s, I don’t know, it always seemed to be. It was a lovely aircraft, the Wellington. I enjoyed that more than I did with the Halifax. But no. I think we, we all bombed at the same height.
AS: Ok.
RL: I’m sure we did.
AS: Ok.
RL: The only snag with the Wimpy — when we used to go to briefing you’d see the track and you’d see another pin out in the North Sea and that told you when your petrol was finally out. Now, if the commanding officer went on a raid which he only used to do once in a while but they’d sometimes they’d think, ‘Oh let’s have a go,’ and off they went. When they got back to base, they’d be calling out from the North Sea somewhere. ‘Hello. Charlie one. Come in. When is my turn to land?’ ‘Your turn to land number one,’ you see. And when you get back to base you called the base, they’d say, ‘Oh circle at four thousand feet,’ you know. And you were, the rest of the crew knocked some off. ‘Oh bloody hell. What a load of crap. What a load of crap.’ That meant we’d more or less circle. Now, you’d say, ‘I’m on my emergency fuel. I’ve been on it twenty minutes. I’ve only got ten left.’ See.
AS: Just to jump the queue.
RL: Yeah. But the skipper would always, he would wait in the North Sea and we were dancing around waiting to get down. I think that would be with the Wellingtons.
AS: With the —
RL: You were more or less going to drop out of the sky.
AS: With the Wellingtons you did a lot of mine laying as well.
RL: Yeah.
AS: That must have been bloody dangerous. Low level. What were your, did you, did you map read for the, for the dropping the mines.
RL: Yeah. We, we used to go out to the Frisian Islands. We did the first, the first op I did. The first op that 466 did was to do the Frisian Islands. You used to get a landfall and then go [pause] and at landfall it was like you were so many degrees and one minute to drop your mines.
AS: Time and distance. Yeah.
RL: We had one aircraft that flew in to the building. Well, it was lovely, you see. Mine laying you were low flying. What it said on the panel and we’d been flying over the water and the spray had been hitting the underside of my panel. It’s a lovely feeling but apparently one of our aircraft got off the North Sea and he got to the building and he went into a building. So low.
AS: So, you had to trust your skipper.
RL: Eh?
AS: You had to trust your pilot.
RL: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, when we, we were on a test flight. I suppose the aircraft had been in for its usual maintenance thing and we drove along the cliff. You know. Where the girls were sunbathing. I know they were mined, a lot of the beaches but there was gaps open and we were going at low flying, got it so we were and the skipper for some reason decided to go home. He goes home and then there was a hay making cart. You know the bloke in the hay with the forks putting the hay out with a bloke standing on top. I thought we’d cut his head off. Luckily, being so low and so fast they, they didn’t recognize it but I mean, well, we’d have been in Colditz. Or Colchester rather.
20105
AS: Colchester. Yeah. How long was it before you got a regular pilot and a regular crew after you’d lost your first skipper? ‘Cause you flew with quite a lot of different people. Were you a spare body on the squadron?
[pause]
RL: Well, I became [pause] I flew from quite a different lot of pilots. When [unclear] Healy got off. I, I stepped in to, like if a bomb aimer was sick, I’d step in. That wasn’t very popular. You see, if you flew with any, any established crew they didn’t like it. They didn’t know how you were going to react, I think. And no, I flew with about seven different pilots. I mean, I flew with the commanding officer one night. The flight was, the navigator was a squadron leader. The gunner was a flight lieutenant.
AS: It must have been like flying with God.
RL: Yeah. Even with the commander called me in, ‘Would you fly with me with tonight’s flight?’ ‘Yes sir.’ And he told me all. I thought what, do I stand to attention? And so they would arrive, you know you but —
AS: I, I should imagine that you didn’t like flying with a spare crew.
RL: No. It wasn’t liked. For the simple reason you’d probably not been mentioned with them. You just, you know, knew that you were one of the squadrons crew and that’s that. If you’d have known one of them it would have been different. But there wasn’t. It wasn’t a nice thing to do.
AS: How did you pick up with Coombs, your skipper? How did you meet him and form a crew? ‘Cause you did a lot of your operational flying with him, didn’t you?
RL: Yeah.
AS: How did you meet him?
RL: You don’t half ask awkward questions don’t you?
AS: That’s my job [pause] In July you, July ’43 you started flying with Coombs and then he became your regular skipper.
RL: I don’t know. I don’t know how we met.
AS: It doesn’t really matter but you then became a part of a crew again.
RL: Well, it obviously came with Andy the wireless op. A navigator. And the rear gunner, Butch. Butch was the only married Aussie, and he died. Well, I think, I think we were just detailed.
AS: Yeah. Put together.
RL: The mid-upper gunner, the engineer, me. We were just allocated to that crew coming in. Didn’t know them. I mean, we were really up in arms against the Aussies.
AS: Really?
RL: Well they used to call us, ‘You pommie bastards,’ you know and we didn’t like it. So, we had to teach them.
AS: Some manners.
RL: Yeah. But no. No, I think that we were just allocated.
AS: Was your skipper an Australian? Was Coombs an Australian?
RL: Yeah.
AS: Ok.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. Back to when you were shot down. You were, what happened after the hospital? Where did they take you after hospital?
RL: Down to Frankfurt on Main.
AS: Ok.
RL: That’s a, that’s a sort of —
Sheila: Interrogation.
AS: Oh, is that Dulag Luft? The interrogation place.
RL: After they had gathered all of them and then allocate them to the different camps.
AS: Ok. How did they treat you there?
RL: Yeah. Well that wasn’t a very comfortable journey. I only had the remains of my kit. The blood stained jersey smelt stinky. But we, we’d gone down there on our first trip to leave hospital. And we all got in this utility ambulance. People lined up in slings and me laid on a stretcher and then we got down to this Berlin Railway Station and the driver opens up the back door and all these walking wounded type of thing got out and he shut the door. And I could hear this train noises and things like that. I waited some time and he came back, opened the door and he said, ‘We go back there.’ Apparently, this nurse said that I wouldn’t last the journey and she had created such a stink that they brought me back. Of course, I was going to be one of the last taken out of the thing. Well, German trains didn’t have upholstery. They had the plywood seats with all those holes driven through. Well, I don’t think I would have lasted. But that night we went down that’s what we were in. There was a coach with these hard wood seats. It was bad enough to sort of try and keep up. But you know what happens. You go to sleep and when you’re [makes snoring noise] it’s all a moment [unclear] Then there was all the language under the sun. You’re taken up to an interrogation centre. You’re in a cell, eight foot by about four. And if you wanted to go to the toilet you released a metal arm that went down the side.
AS: Like a railway signal.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. Ok.
RL: And the German soldier who was sat at the top he ought to take you but the snag was he never used to worry about you, you know. If he was reading his paper, well he’d read the page. You know. You were interrogated there by the SS. And I think I was dead lucky again. By then I was in Germany for a couple of months so I was old stuff to him.
AS: Yeah.
RL: My wounds were covered and aircrew in those days, we were given an escape kit. Poly [pause] You there Susan?
AS: Polyurethane is it? Like a plastic.
RL: What’s that, Polyanthus? Polyan?
AS: Polyanthus is a plant.
RL: No.
AS: Never mind.
RL: Pandora.
AS: Pandora. Ok. Yeah.
RL: Pandora pack.
AS: What was in Pandora. Yeah. What was in that?
RL: There was a silk map. A compass button. Vitamin tablets. Things like that to help you escape. Well, this officer, SS officer, took off the bandage to see whether I’d got any of these escape things there. And of course, he didn’t stick the bandage back. Well, in this cell you had an ersatz pallias.
AS: Like a mattress. Yeah.
RL: It’s not like an ordinary sack. It’s made up of, like straw. These things. And of course, the pallias got stuffed with sawdust. So, you have a heater in this room up there. And barbed windows. So, you sit on your bunk and it’s cold so you’ve got all your clothes on. You doze off and it’s hot as hell. They’ve got the heater on, see. Well you take off your jumper and of course you dry yourself off like a towel. And then you go to sleep again and it’s off. Well, that doesn’t improve you. But when, and this fellow, he interviewed me and he said, ‘I’ve seen you.’ And that’s that. I didn’t get asked questions which are two months ago. So, I got away with it. Well, you, then you were released. You marched down the road to a reception centre where they give you a kit of clothes. I mean they gave me a, I only had carpet slippers for walking in the snow, you see. So, they give me a leather belt and I had a pair of American trousers given me. The only thing they didn’t, they didn’t give me was underclothes. Funny thing. I can’t understand that because, I mean, well they’re the things that smell don’t they? They want washing.
AS: Yeah,
RL: And if you’ve only got one pair it’s —
AS: Did you meet up with a load of other prisoners then?
RL: Oh yeah. They were, we were given a medical by this German doctor. They asked if anybody wanted medical attention and I said yes. And when he saw my wound he went bloody mad. Picking, picking sawdust.
AS: From the mattress. Yeah.
RL: I think that hurt more than the wound itself. But they sent us up to the camp.
AS: A POW camp.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah.
RL: I’ve seen, I’ve seen a flight lieutenant that was in charge of that. I’ve seen him since.
AS: Did you?
RL: Yeah. In Bournemouth. There’s a municipal college and I was walking past there one day and I saw a bloke and as he passed I turned and he turned. And that was the bloke.
AS: Good lord.
RL: Yeah.
AS: So which prisoner of war camp was this that you went to?
RL: Stalag Luft III.
AS: At Sagan. Ok that’s the Great Escape camp isn’t it?
RL: Well, they, I got there just before they escaped.
AS: But you weren’t a part of that?
RL: No, no. No. No. They were, oh they were clever. I’ve often wondered whether the men are in prison for what they got up to in those days.
AS: What, the Germans?
RL: Yeah. I mean they engraved. They made rubber stamps. In German. After the Great Escape [pause] The Great Escape was run by what they called Big X. Now, I was in the room where Little X was.
AS: His deputy.
RL: Now Little X coming up and he said to me, there was also in my room a bloke from Bournemouth. Ron. So, I was called Junior. And Little X said to me one day, he said, ‘Can I interest you in helping us with the escape system?’ ‘Well, yeah.’ So, he took me to another hut and I couldn’t help noticing after passing a certain bloke he started going to me like that and pointed here. Sort of strange but of course they was also, they were looking for the German guards, you see. They, they had one type of guard, he was called a ferret and he would go under buildings and all that. So, they were watching him. They were. We got into the bathroom. They had a bathroom in every block with a concrete floor, a soakaway and a shower which was a bit of a pipe up with a tin on the top, you know. All calmly walked in here and there was a bloke in his birthday suit in there. And all of a sudden they lifted up this drain cover and they started baling the water into the bath. Yeah. And of course, I didn’t know. I was watching and all of a sudden they drained off the water in to the bath, dirty water and they pulled up a concrete slab and I could get down there. And when I get down there there was a store room. It was a tunnel, it started off as a tunnel but the Germans built another compound on so that was a waste of time. There was three rifles in there. How did they get rifles down there? And I had to get some ink and I got this thing up and all of a sudden, the slab goes into position see, and the water from the bath is bunged in it. Now, I’m in this place with the candle. Well, one of the goons got a bit near it, you see but then they get rid of him by offering him a cigarette around the corner out of the way or something. And then they pull up the slab and I’m still there, you know. And you see them so they dropped the slab down and the bath that had the dirty water was pulled in. Sealed up. Well I mean —
AS: Can you —?
RL: They made clothes out of, out of blankets and things like that. Made rubber stamps. Documents with a sort of German old markers they’d got. I reckoned if they’d have started up back when they got home they’d be inside.
AS: Can you remember, because you were, you were in the camp when the news came about what happened to the fifty officers —?
RL: Yeah.
AS: Can you remember what happened then? What it was like?
RL: Well, we were all called into the camps and told this. It was unbelievable. I mean they would, we all said what the group captain said, ‘How many wounded?’ So, you know, we were shocked. They said fifty officers were shot. And so, we wanted to know what happened to the other twenty six, seven. Were they wounded? But there was no wounded people. When that, the morning of that escape we were all brought out of our huts and opposite there was this hut where it all happened, and over here kind of thing they set up a German machine gun — pointed. I didn’t like that. They could have, I would have been one of the first to get it. But I mean we were dumbstruck. How could fifty get shot trying to escape?
AS: What was the attitude of the German Luftwaffe officers in the camp?
RL: Well, you see, every camp, that was one of the biggest camps of Germany. They were always escape proof but I mean I think it was only quite bad luck that the tunnel was found. I’ve got an idea it was like a German soldier wanting to take a leak, it was found, you know. I mean, but you wanted guts to escape. I mean here we were in Poland. It’s alright if you were fluent in German language. But if you only knew the basic German you wouldn’t, couldn’t get away. Not from Poland. I mean, they wouldn’t have had a chance. I mean all I knew about was ‘Kaput.’ ‘Ser kaput’ [unclear] I would have been buggered wouldn’t I?
AS: Yeah. Did that stop escaping when that happened?
RL: Well, afterwards, yes. It sort of put the, I think the people regarded it as dangerous. I mean, all you can see, I mean all around Sagan all leave was cancelled wasn’t it? They were all looking for the prisoners of war camp. I know it’s a simple thing but a soldier who’s lost his leave he’d get quite angry wouldn’t he? I mean, I would have in this country.
AS: What was life like in the camp? Was there any homosexuality for instance?
RL: Well there was, they had a theatre. That was marvelous. They had instruments, band instruments. In the cold weather they used to flood the football pitch. I mean the football pitch was only a bit of ground. No grass on it. But they used to flood the place. They had skates and, you know, they played basket, base —
AS: Baseball.
RL: Baseball.
AS: Yeah.
RL: They founded, like different teams like East Canada against West Canada. You know, all that kind of thing. They had, I was in there one Christmas and somebody in the room said, ‘Have you seen the cake they were demonstrating? No, it’s all kind of - height. Thing is beautiful. Cake decorations, you know, cor bloody marvellous. A wooden cake. It was corrugated cardboard down. And they had a wonderful [pause] from the American [pause]
AS: The Red Cross.
RL: American boxes.
AS: Oh yeah, parcels. Yeah. Ok.
RL: They, there was klim powdered milk and they’d, how can I say it — iced a cardboard and the decoration was all in colour. Do you want a colour to be, have a kid’s paint box?
AS: Fantastic.
RL: Yeah. And they’d take some of the blue kind of thing and mix it with this thing. And it bloody marvelous. I’m not a cake [unclear] But you see, I didn’t know until after the war but you could take an OU course there. And one, for some unknown reason if you want to go on exercise around the camp you went anti-clockwise.
AS: Yeah.
RL: Well, when I came out, back out of the service and was a gas fitter I was going up Atkinson Avenue and I had to go into a certain number in this street but I wasn’t sure. So, I pulled up against the curb. Sat on me bicycle. So he locked up the car, you know. He turned like that. I thought bloody hell. I know that ass. So, the bloke mowing his lawn and he was going up that way, you see. So, I waited for him to turn and come back. Yeah, I’d seen him. So, I got off me bike and went up to him, ‘Morning sir. You were a wing commander, were you?’ ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I don’t remember your name.’ But I think he mentioned it. I said, ‘You were in Stalag Luft III.’ ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I think I walked behind you many times, sir.’ I told him. I, as you were like [unclear] we would come out of our hut and we’d join in the, you’d be talking to somebody or walking on your own. I said, ‘Well I recognized your backside sir.’ And I told him and he said do you want to come in here and he called his wife. I don’t know but he didn’t have a peculiar walk or anything but it was just the thing.
AS: Just something that stuck with you. Yeah. So, you were there for over a year in the camp.
RL: Yeah.
AS: What happened at the end of the war? How were you liberated?
RL: Well we were, knowing we were, the Russians were near us. So, we were told that we were leaving the camp. And of course, like everything else, things get altered, don’t you. We’re moving soon. Somewhere. Then another hour. Well we moved out in the morning. Apparently, we were all given a Red Cross parcel. I didn’t get that. I don’t remember that but you see we all went out with what we could carry.
AS: And this was winter time was it?
RL: Yeah. It was snowing outside.
AS: God.
RL: Bloody cold. But we never had plastic sheeting or anything like that. I mean I was in the normal uniform. A sweater and battle dress and a coat, overcoat and a pair of boots. Or socks and boots. Well and we went out in the early hours of the morning and we walked in this slashing snow. I mean the cold, you know. And we stopped on the edge of a moor. And they crowded us into a barn. And somebody said well no lights to be shown, you know because there is straw in there and we could have knocked off quite a few. And I always remember a flight lieutenant gunner. He said, ‘Come on,’ he said. Cuddle up with me.’ And we cuddled up together.
AS: Share warmth. Yeah.
RL: Just to share warmth. And of course, when daylight came we started to get the doors open. Of course, they wouldn’t. But all we wanted to do was get out of the barn and light up for a brew and just to get warm. Had those moments.
AS: So, can you remember what month this was? Was it early 1945 or [pause] It doesn’t matter. It’s just interesting. It was snow on the ground and really cold.
RL: Yeah. Late ’44 or early ’45.
AS: Ok. And how long did this go on for? On the move all the time.
RL: Well, the next day we stopped at a village. I remember, like a corral.
AS: Yeah.
RL: And there was, and there was this bloody horse blanket all made up of all different materials, you know that. There was all these village policemen and, I don’t know — I’m going to grab that blanket, you see. And I got it. You know, I mean, when he wasn’t looking I’d swiped it. I smelled like a horse but I was warmer. Then we, well I’ve got it in a write up there. We went on to another place. They turned out a cinema, and they bundled us in there. Well that was out of the wind but then the toilet facilities was a bit overdone. Then we made it down to a station where they put us on a train. In the cattle trucks. That wasn’t fun. You only had room to sort of sit down. Somebody’s legs would be up the side of you. If you wanted to go to the toilet that was horrible. You see you had to step over bodies and you could, well there wasn’t a place where you could put your foot down. That was, you moaned and groaned. Then the outer, they could open a shuttered door but there was a feeling you shouldn’t pee in the wind.
AS: You get it back. Yeah.
RL: But the poor blokes that were by that door. They were in trouble. No, but you see I’ve heard, like when we were in that barn or when we were in German hospital, people were crying out for their mums. And you can’t do anything can you?
AS: No. And people who were sick and couldn’t keep up. What happened to them?
RL: Well, they had some German party picking them up. I think we had [pause] I think our guards were friendly. I mean even on the march if somebody had a cart there were a half dozen on the other cart and there was a German soldier whose rifle and pack had been put up and he’d be pushed with us. I mean, it got, I think it got to that stage that they really knew they’d lost the war. And I mean we were on a farm when we were released to the British army and these German guards had given themselves up, you know. I mean, I think they only took away their guns and said, ‘Well, muck in,’ you know. I mean, one or two were quite slobs. Friendly enough. They were seen to.
AS: So, you were, you were liberated by the British army.
RL: Yeah. Well, not the British army. A motorbike and sidecar, you know. No fighting. Just come out. It was an ideal farm or an estate. You know. The Russians were all the working labour you know, but [pause] no.
AS: How did you get back to England? Did you fly or go on a ship or what?
RL: Well, you will, you were told you would go on a lorry, you know. Convoy. You were going to. Well at the end of the day you stopped and you were put in a field. British army gave my mum and my wife enough sheets, enough towels and soap. We got a town so that every time we stopped, no food.
AS: Yeah. It sounds like the army. Sounds like them.
RL: We never, we got to Lunenburg and then there was like a big barn sort of with the army. We were told to put down all your gear you don’t want. Go over there and get a meal. A meal. So, people just dropped their bag and when we got over there it was a white bread sandwich. And it was horrid. We’d been used to this black bread which filled you up. When we got back to the shed all our kit had gone. British army stole it. So we formed a band and we went out looking for them.
AS: Did you find it?
RL: We found it.
AS: Yeah.
RL: We were absolutely starving. A lump of black bread would have been a treat, you know. In the end they took us by Lancaster.
AS: Oh wow.
RL: Over to an aerodrome in England and of course put the usual spray up [unclear] and they’d laid on tea, you know. Afternoon tea. Well, little cakes. But I mean while we were waiting for the planes to come there was a British airman there who gave me a tin of peaches. Well, I got the tin open. You know what peaches was like, don’t you? Went in your hand.
AS: It’s all the syrup isn’t it and the juice. Yeah.
RL: [laughs] It’s greasy, you know. You wanted something to anchor it down. And of course, it had gone on the ground. I picked it up slid it up. It was lovely peaches after you’d eaten them but —
AS: Yeah. So, you flew back to England. What happened next? Did you go back to your family or did the air force take you somewhere?
RL: They took us down to the railway station. Where ever it was. And I always remember when the Dunkirk came they put all these soldiers into schools and they had our soldiers around the outside. So that they were, until they’d been processed they were. They didn’t have to do that. We got sent down and surrounded by British soldiers.
AS: Wow.
RL: We couldn’t talk to the natives.
AS: Extraordinary.
RL: They took us on then up to Cosford aerodrome. Oh God. They gave us a meal and rice pudding afterwards and given a bath and hospital clothes, you know. Dressing gown. And we went to bed. Oh, a proper meal we had. We woke, we woke up the following morning. Now, in the RAF or any service if you move from one station to another you had to get a clearance chit. Well, when we woke up all our, all our dirty clothes had gone, you know. So, you walked around with this sheet of paper. You were warned somewhere along the line you’d have to give a sample. Well you walk around. I imagine they got every service doctor within a certain radius of the thing. So, we walked around. He looked in your right ear. Of yeah, that’ll be alright. Then somebody would look in your left ear. And you were marched into a hut, pay hut. You know, how much do you earn? You know. Well you go on through. You had to give a sample. Well you walked through the hut, wooden floorboards and there’s a huge kitchen table. And there’s jam jars, sauce bottles, any jar, but the snag is they’re all full, you see. So you want to pee and you can’t find an empty one. So, what happened? This is absolutely brilliant. They pour out in there. Pour some there. Some bloke came out and he said, ‘That looks a nice colour,’ and he takes that out as a the sample, see. There was ever so much pee floating off the table on to the floor. Stood up in it. I mean they only wanted an eggcup full. But you couldn’t find one. Then you’d go on and in a hut with blankets held up. A B C D and that. [unclear] stools and the idea was to come out of B. The next one would go into B. And I don’t understand some people were coming out of one hut and [unclear] and he would pass it on down. I didn’t take on. I got back to the mess and a bloke came up to me and he said, ‘Is she in there?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean is she in there?’’ Oh, the WAAF officer.’ I looked. ‘No. I couldn’t see her. No.’ I couldn’t see her. He said, ‘Oh, I’ll come in then.’ Apparently this strip room, where you drop them. And you know what happened there. A bloke hadn’t seen a woman for years and he dropped them and [unclear] a strip through, it perks up on it’s own doesn’t it? You know when I was demobbed you get your kit. You had a brown pinstriped suit or a blue pin striped suit. So, I got a blue pin striped one. So I, when it come to the shorts well I want a white or a blue, you know. It’s either a red or a green, you know. I’d think to myself, well got to take something, you know. We got on this train after about [pause] and there was all this changing out of our uniform into civvies. Well, when we got off in London we looked like gangsters, kind of thing. I mean nothing matched. I mean my trilby was brown, you know. I only, I took what was on offer. I didn’t go in and say bugger it, you know. But nothing, nothing matched. We were going, people were going to the train. ‘Got a new, got green shirt?’ You know, just to, but when we got off it was horrible.
AS: So, you were demobbed very quickly after coming back to England.
RL: Oh yeah.
AS: Did you get a pension because of your injuries?
RL: No. Not then.
AS: Oh ok.
RL: I did it later.
AS: Ok.
RL: A colleague at work, my supervisor but he was a good friend too, he had got a pension. ‘Why don’t you put in for it?’ I didn’t think I’d get it but I put in the forms. The doctor came home to see me. He gave me a medical examination, asked me about my hearing. Well, I lost my hearing in the war. And he looked at my bony knee. I can use it but I can’t throw a cricket ball. I could no more, well I’d collapse if I pick up a ball and throw it. And I got a pension.
AS: Excellent.
RL: And it’s very good.
AS: Did you ever keep up with your squadron colleagues or go to reunions or anything like that?
RL: No. No. Well, I think the attitude I won’t even go on a Christmas one. That was the, I’m back in civvy now and that. I often wish I had but it’s only through my daughter what’s got on to this you know.
AS: When you look back now at that time how do you regard it and the air force? Was it something you’re glad to have done or did it steal your youth or how do you feel about, about that period of time?
RL: Well, I regret sometimes. You see, the war took apart my youth.
AS: Yeah.
RL: I was a boy. I didn’t become a young man. I got thrown into the service. I’ve often wondered what it would be like. I mean, I was what? Twenty I suppose. Twenty to twenty six. That’s sort of lost years isn’t it?
AS: And you married during the war didn’t you?
RL: Hmnn.
AS: Yeah.
RL: Yeah. Well, you see they used to say if you get married you’d go for a burton.
AS: Yeah.
RL: Comes to a hard [pause] well, decision. Yeah. We wanted to get married. I didn’t think about prisoner of war. I suppose I thought I could get killed. But in, you see a lot of us kids got married. Well, we were only kids. Well, the husband can say, ‘Well, I’m flying tonight.’ Didn’t tell her when. Probably didn’t know at that time. And then he’s flying as far as, let’s say, Berlin. Now, those girls that were in digs they would count the number of aircraft that goes off and they would count the number of aircraft that land.
AS: Yeah.
RL: But their first worry is oh perhaps he’s landed but he’s not landed here. He’s landed somewhere else. I mean they’re, they’re only babies really.
AS: There’s a wonderful play by Terence Rattigan called “Flare Path.” Have you seen it?
RL: No.
AS: That’s, that’s about the wives waiting at a hotel near, it’s a Wellington squadron actually. It speaks to that very much.
RL: You see, they’d count the aircraft come back. But then get somebody — is flight lieutenant so and so? ‘We haven’t heard anything at the moment.’ Well that’s just a put off isn’t it. And the you see this young girl, she’s miles away from home. The landlady is perhaps not, not helpful. No. It’s not —
AS: And she has nothing to do all day except wait and worry. Yeah.
RL: Yeah.
AS: How soon did your wife know that you were safe after you were shot down?
RL: A chimney sweep came and told her.
AS: A chimney sweep?
RL: Yeah. He tuned into the [unclear] news and apparently they used to give petty officer so and so was washed up ashore. On the —
AS: On the German radio?
RL: On the Thames Estuary. And they gave out that PO Last was a prisoner of war. And this chimney sweep apparently told my mum.
AS: Wow.
RL: It’s [pause] —
AS: I think we’ll stop there Ron. It’s been amazing talking to you. I’d like to come back and talk again someday but we’ve been going for four hours.
RL: Have we?
AS: Yeah. I think we’ll, I’ll thank you very much.
RL: Bloody hell.
AS: We’ll pause there.
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 Ronald Last
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Sutch
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALastRR151125
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Last grew up in Dorset and worked as an apprentice for the local Gas and Water company before volunteering for the Air Force. He attended the reception centre at Lord's Cricket Ground and describes the medical tests and inoculations recruits were given. He trained at Newquay and had started his flying training on Tiger Moths when he was posted away to train as a bomb aimer. He discusses his training in Ansons, dropping practice bombs and the duties of a bomb aimer including the bombing run, mine laying and dealing with hang-ups. He flew operations in Wellingtons and Halifaxes with 466 Squadron from RAF Driffield and suggests that his first pilot was taken off flying due to lack of moral fibre. His Halifax was shot down by a fighter over the target 28/29 January 1944 and three of his crew were killed. He baled out and became a prisoner of war. He describes his decent by parachute, his capture, treatment for his injuries and the conditions at prisoner of war camps including Stalag Luft 3. He describes the escape tunnel 'Dick' and hearing the news that 50 officers who escaped as part of the Great Escape had been shot. The camp was evacuated as the Russians advanced, and he took part in the Long March from Poland to Germany. He was eventually liberated by the British Army and returned to England by the RAF as part of Operation Exodus. After the war he worked as a gas fitter.
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 Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Berkshire
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Oberursel
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
03:09:07 audio recording
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
466 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
arts and crafts
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
Dulag Luft
escaping
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
Master Bomber
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Driffield
RAF Harwell
RAF Leconfield
recruitment
sanitation
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/934/36536/MLovattP1821369-190903-75.2.pdf
51c3fbced3b1e3bd9c7237f2cb79c94a
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
Lovatt, Peter
Dr Peter Lovatt
P Lovatt
Description
An account of the resource
117 items. An oral history interview with Peter Lovatt (b.1924, 1821369 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents, and photographs. The collection also contains two photograph albums. He flew 42 operations as an air gunner on 223 Squadron flying B-24s. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1338">Album One</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2135">Album Two</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nina and Peter Lovatt and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-27
2019-09-03
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lovatt, P
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Reminiscence of the Flying Characteristics of Many Old Type Aircraft
Description
An account of the resource
A detailed analysis of very early aircraft and their flying characteristics.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Air Marshall Sir Ralph Sorley
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Felixstowe
England--Eastbourne (East Sussex)
England--Calshot
England--Bembridge
Atlantic Ocean--Spithead Channel
England--Cowes
England--Stroud
Scotland--Montrose
England--Sunbury
England--London
Monaco
Egypt--Cairo
Iraq--Baghdad
England--Felixstowe
England--Aldeburgh
Iraq
Middle East--Kurdistan
Middle East--Palestine
Jordan
Iran
Middle East--Euphrates River
Syria
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
Singapore
Australia
Borneo
China--Hong Kong
England--Kent
United States
New York (State)--New York
France--Paris
Nigeria
South Africa--Cape Town
Yugoslavia
Norway
Portugal
Spain
Denmark
Japan
Belgium
Argentina
Austria
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Greece
China
Lithuania
Estonia
England--Weybridge
Scotland--Island of Arran
England--Kingston upon Thames
France--Dunkerque
England--Hatfield (Hertfordshire)
Newfoundland and Labrador
New Brunswick
Maine
Maine--Presque Isle
Washington (D.C.)
Massachusetts--Boston
Pennsylvania--Philadelphia
Maryland--Baltimore
Washington (D.C.)--Anacostia
Tennessee--Nashville
Arkansas--Little Rock
Texas--Dallas
Texas--Fort Worth
Texas--Midland
Arizona--Tucson
California--Burbank (Los Angeles County)
California--Palm Springs
California--Los Angeles
California--Beverly Hills
California--San Diego
Arizona--Winslow
New Mexico--Albuquerque
Kansas--Wichita
Missouri--Saint Louis
Ohio--Dayton
New York (State)--Buffalo
Ontario--Toronto
Québec--Montréal
Newfoundland and Labrador--Gander
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Germany--Rheine
Germany--Osnabrück
India
Switzerland--Zurich
Lebanon--Beirut
Pakistan--Karachi
India--Kolkata
Singapore
Indonesia--Jakarta
Australia
Northern Territory--Darwin
New South Wales--Sydney
South Australia--Woomera
South Australia--Adelaide
Victoria--Melbourne
Sri Lanka--Colombo
Spain--Madrid
South Africa--Johannesburg
Kenya--Nairobi
Sudan--Khartoum
Greece--Athens
Italy--Rome
Zambia--Lusaka
Zambia--Ndola
Zambia--Mbala
Heathrow Airport (London, England)
Turkey--Istanbul
France--Nice
Utah--Salt Lake City
Italy--Genoa
Atlantic Ocean--Firth of Clyde
Italy
France
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Kansas
Maryland
Massachusetts
Missouri
New Mexico
New York (State)
Ohio
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
New South Wales
South Australia
Victoria
Northern Territory
Egypt
Sudan
North Africa
Ontario
Québec
Germany
Indonesia
Iraq
Kenya
Lebanon
Netherlands
South Africa
Switzerland
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Turkey
Yemen (Republic)
Czech Republic
Slovakia
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Herefordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
England--Surrey
England--Sussex
England--Great Yarmouth
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 Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
82 typewritten sheets
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971-08-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MLovattP1821369-190903-75
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
aircrew
Anson
B-17
B-24
Battle
Blenheim
C-47
Chadwick, Roy (1893-1947)
Defiant
Dominie
Fw 190
ground crew
Halifax
Harvard
Hudson
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lincoln
Lysander
Magister
Manchester
Me 109
Mosquito
Oxford
Photographic Reconnaissance Unit
pilot
Proctor
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Eastchurch
RAF Hendon
RAF Henlow
RAF Martlesham Heath
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Pembrey
RAF Prestwick
RAF West Freugh
Spitfire
Stirling
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
training
Wallis, Barnes Neville (1887-1979)
York
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/201/10045/MBaileyJD1583184-161207-020002.1.jpg
c5f5a209dd5ea9fc22de4d815c28e5d2
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
Bailey, John Derek
John Derek Bailey
Bill Bailey
John D Bailey
John Bailey
J D Bailey
J Bailey
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Derek "Bill" Bailey (b. 1924, 1583184 and 198592 Royal Air Force) service material, nine photographs, a memoir and his log book. He flew a tour of operations as a bomb aimer with 103 and 166 Squadrons from RAF Elsham Wolds and RAF Kirmington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Bailey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-07
2017-01-13
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. 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
Bailey, JD
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
Bill Bailey's Cadet's Flight Log
Description
An account of the resource
Cadet's Flight log of Bill Bailey issued by City of Leicester Wing, Air Training Corps. It records one flight in a Tiger Moth on 30 May 1942, duration 10 minutes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Air Training Corps
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-05-30
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed booklet with handwritten annotations
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
MBaileyJD1583184-161207-020001, MBaileyJD1583184-161207-020002
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05-30
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22348/MCurnockRM1815605-171114-0680001.2.jpg
a3318733f9a494df21f0457d9510448e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22348/MCurnockRM1815605-171114-0680002.2.jpg
7a91bbe7a25d666d373913799a414f12
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
Curnock, Richard
Richard Murdock Curnock
R M Curnock
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Curnock, RM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
92 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock (1924, 1915605 Royal Air Force), his log book, letters, photographs and prisoner of war magazines. He flew operations with 425 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Richard Curnock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
Air Training Corps Flight Log
Description
An account of the resource
A log sheet issued to Dick Curnock whilst a cadet in the Air Training Corps. On it he he has recorded three flights.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Air Training Corps
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed double sided sheet with handwritten annotations
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
MCurnockRM1815605-171114-0680001,
MCurnockRM1815605-171114-0680002
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
Lysander
Oxford
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/510/8412/PDunnG1501.2.BMP
505c4b2651ad5389c9a6458077b498ac
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/510/8412/ADunnG150405.1.mp3
d86cd9b1133884331255b8b76f63465f
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
Dunn, George
George Charles Dunn
G C Dunn
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dunn, GC
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Two oral history interviews with George Dunn DFC (1922 1333537, 149315 Royal Air Force), a photograph a document and two log books. He flew operations as a pilot with 10, 76, and 608 Squadrons then transferred to 1409 Meteorological Flight.
There is a sub collection of his photographs from Egypt.
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
2017-03-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Andrew Panton, the interviewee is George Dunn, Mr Dunn was a RAF Pilot who flew various types of aircraft during the Second World War, the interview is taking place at Princess Marina House in Rustington West Sussex, on the 5th April 2015.
GD: My name is George Dunn, I was seventeen years of age when the war broke out and I was born at Whitstable on the North Kent coast, so I saw quite a lot of the Battle of Britain and being facing the Thames Estuary all the hoards of German bombers that were coming in to bomb London, when the London Blitz started, at, I joined the local defence volunteers, and then that became the Home Guard, and when I reached the age of eighteen I volunteered for aircrew. I was interviewed up at Chatham and I originally registered for wireless operator/air gunner, but they said to me would I consider pilot training, which I agreed, and after a written exam and a selection board, I was advised that I could take up pilot training. First aircraft I flew was a Tiger Moth because I did all my training in Canada, the first place was at Saskatchewan, a little place called Caron west of Moose Jaw and from there I went on to A V Roe Anson’s at a place called Weyburn again in Saskatchewan. When I came back to the UK in September 1942 I was then posted to Chipping Norton which was a satellite of Little Risington on airspeed Oxford’s this was to acclimatise us to the flying conditions in this country, we had been used to flying with full town lights and city lights, but this was of course flying in blackout conditions. From there I was posted to Lossiemouth which was number 20 OTU, and formed my crew, and we did my OTU on Wellington’s.
AP: So can you say a little bit about the Wellington Bomber, how you found it to fly and what you did [inaudible word]
GD: Well the Wellington Bomber I found was a nice aircraft it wasn’t difficult to fly and we had quite an easy course on it.
AP: What about op’s with the Wellington? Can you remember any?
GD: No I didn’t do any operations on Wellington’s
AP: So from the Wellington, where did you go next?
GD: From Wellington’s I was sent to Heavy Conversion Unit which was at Rufforth just outside York, on Halifax aircraft.
AP: And was that your first op aircraft?
GD: No, surprisingly enough, normally if you went to a Heavy Conversion Unit, you had, you flew a certain number of hours and then you were seconded to a squadron where you had to do two operations with an experienced crew, but in my case I was sent to number 10 squadron at Melbourne to do my two second dickey trips as they were called and believe it or not I had not set foot in a Halifax aircraft until that first raid. First raid was Essen, which was rather a heavy place to go to, to start with but we got through that alright and the following night I did my second, second dickey trip to Kiel, so I got two fairly good targets under my belt to start with.
AP: And could you talk a bit about the experiences you had on those trips, I mean did you engage fighters, flak, ack ack searchlights?
GD: What when I was on my own crew?
AP: yes.
GD: Yes, our first trip as a crew was to Dortmund, and right throughout our tour we were fairly lucky we were never attacked by a fighter but we were coned at one stage.
AP: So can you talk about what that means?
GD: Yes, coning is when you initially get trapped by a blue searchlight, a radar searchlight and once that’s on to you the white searchlights form a cone so you could be, you might call it sitting like a fairy on a Christmas Tree, and the only suitable manoeuvre to get out of a coning, is by a corkscrew method, if you can do that then you’re ok, but on this occasion we managed to get away from the cone.
AP: And
GD: Yes if you are coned the thing is, is to keep your eyes on your instruments, don’t look outside because you will get blinded by the light. On the 17th, 18th August 1943 I was based at Holme on Spalding Moor south east of York and on this particular afternoon the first thing we noticed when we got to the briefing room were there were extra service police on the door which we thought was rather unusual, and when we got into the briefing room and they drew the curtains across we saw this red ribbon going all the way up to Denmark up the North sea, across Denmark, missing the North German coast because of the heavy flak and then we saw this tiny little place on the Baltic coast, and we thought what, what’s going on there, what’s this all about, never heard of it. When we were briefed we were only told that it was a secret research station connected with radar, at no time were we given any indication of the real work that was going on there. The chilling remark that was made at the end of the briefing was that the target was so important that it should be destroyed that night, otherwise we were told quite firmly that we would go back the following night, the night after that until it was destroyed, and you can imagine the feeling we had knowing what reception we would get if we had to go back on the night after. After the briefing of course we went back to our usual pre-op dinner or meal, bacon and eggs usually, and eventually to the parachute room picked our parachutes up, and into the crew room, dispose of all our wallets and anything that might identify us, and took off, reached our climbing height, and proceeded through the Yorkshire coast up towards Denmark. Included in the main force was a low number of Mosquito’s which were used as a spoof raid on Berlin, this was to make sure that the German authorities were thinking that the main force was going to Berlin, and of course as we got nearer the main force veered off to Peenemunde, and the Mosquito’s carried on to Berlin. This caused quite a lot of consternation amongst the German aircrew controllers because they weren’t sure where the main force were, and when the German night fighters were alerted they had no idea what was going on, the German ground controllers were in a bit of a state and one German pilot realising what was going on proceeded to Peenemunde without being told, so of course by the time the German fighters had got there the raid was virtually half over. We were fortunate we did our run in from the Island of Roden which was about a five minute run in from the North, and we went in on the first wave, the target was well marked we went in at about seven thousand feet it was a brilliant moonlight night and my bomb aimer got quite excited because this was the first time that he had actually been able to identify the target because normally we were bombing from eighteen or nineteen thousand feet, so this was quite an occasion, and I can remember telling him don’t get too excited just concentrate on what you are doing. So we moved in no trouble at all the flak was very very light we were able to, despite the pathfinder markers we were able to identify our aiming point visually, dropped our bombs and came out without any problem. We were very lucky that we were in the first wave because we were able to bomb and get away from the target before the fighters arrived, in the original plan, four group which I was a member of, was scheduled to go in on the last wave, but because they were frightened of smoke from the ground generators obscuring our aiming point we were reverted to the first wave which was very fortunate but not so fortunate for those who were transferred back from the first wave to the last. There were three aiming points on Peenemunde itself and our aiming point was the living quarters of the scientists and the technicians, and one wag on our squadron said there would be a prize given to the first aircraft back with a scientists spectacles hanging from its undercarriage. Once you begin your final run in you are really under the control of the bomb aimer because he, he’s the one that can only see the actual line of path to the target so he will be giving you instructions, such as, right, left left, right right, steady, until you actually came to the point where he’d say bombs gone. We were only told that it was a, as I said before, a secret RADAR station, and it was some time afterwards before that it was revealed that it was for rocket research. So, of course the best thing was that the day after, it was only after a Spitfire reconnaissance which evaluated the amount of damage that we knew with some relief that we were not going to have to go back that night. The aftermath of course was what was the overall result and it was generally recognised that the rocket programme was put back by at least two months, and in his book Crusade to Europe, General Eisenhower said that the second front would have been seriously compromised had the Peenemunde raid not taken place when it did. It is possible that the raid on Peenemunde could have taken place a lot earlier, because in May 1940 a note was pushed through the door of the British Naval attaché in Oslo, from the writer claiming to have very important information connected with German activities, and if the intelligence people were interested would they put a coded letter or word in the broadcasts that were made usually to the resistance, this was done and another letter was pushed through the door and the sort of information the writer indicated that they had, was to the intelligence people so ludicrous that they thought it must be a hoax, and it was ignored, and it was many many, well this was 1940, it was some years later when snippets of information came through and two German Generals who were in a , they were prisoners of war, were in a bugged room and amongst the things that they discussed was that they couldn’t understand why Peenemunde had never been bombed, this of course brought it to the notice of the authorities and from then on every endeavour was made to secure other bits and pieces of information, to ascertain whether this was true. The final answer to the problem I think was when a WRAF intelligence officer very keenly spotted a launching ramp on one of the reconnaissance photographs, and this really was the, was the result of good reconnaissance, and it really gave the answer that there really was something going on at Peenemunde, and from then on of course a committee was formed Mr Churchill appointed Duncan Sands to chair this committee and eventually after a few meetings it was then that they decided that this would, Peenemunde would have to be bombed. Of course one of the things was how were they going to do it, Air Vice Marshal Cochrane of five group who’s group had been used to some time and distance bombing wanted to go in with about, I think about 150 Lancaster’s, it was also discussed that a small force of Mosquito’s would go in, but Sir Arthur Harris the chief of Bomber Command, he felt that if a raid was going to take place it would have to be successful one hundred percent at the first go, and he made the decision that it was going to be a maximum effort, so all groups of the Bomber Command were going to take part. Consequently almost six hundred aircraft were sent, probably the decision was right because the place was destroyed, virtually destroyed on the first raid. Four days after the raid on Peenemunde, the place was visited by Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and Albert Speer the armaments manager and they, after a survey Hitler himself decided that the place would not continue to operate, at least on the scale that it had done, and it was then that the whole project was moved to various places particularly the Harz Mountains. Of course the success of the raid was not achieved without some loss and unfortunately the total aircraft loss was forty and two hundred and twenty aircrew were killed, mostly occurred in the last two waves of the, of the raid so as I said before we were very very lucky that we had been moved from the last wave to the first wave, because we were virtually in and out without any problem. Of course the success in some ways of flying on operations is the team work, the crew have got to work together and I was very fortunate I had a very good crew, we originally formed up at OTU at Lossiemouth, it was a question of one person getting to know another. I well remember my bomb aimer coming up to me and saying “have you crewed up yet?” and I said “no” “how about crewing up with me” “yeah sure do you know any navigators?” “Yes I know a navigator” and that’s how it went on, so we finished up with five, and later on we acquired a Mid-upper gunner and a Flight Engineer who was actually allocated to us. We were lucky in this respect because my Flight Engineer’s Wife and Mother ran a pub just outside Horsforth in Leeds so on our nights off all seven of us used to pile into a Morris Eight, and go off to a night out and as you can imagine the customers made a great fuss of us, and we were never short of free drinks. [laughter] I can well remember the only time when my navigator did suffer from, I don’t know what it was, but he suddenly came up on the intercom and said “ Skipper were about ten miles off course” and my reply was “well look we can’t be, I’ve been steering this course that you gave me without any deviation, so get your finger out and get us back on course, otherwise I’ll get the bomb aimer to take over the navigation” this really put the wind up him and he, he got us back on course, don’t ask me why but whether he’d made a mistake with his GEE box fixing it turned out ok at the end. Of course most of our navigation was dead reckoning but the saviour that we had, but it was only I think to about five degrees east that the GEE box from where we could get a fix on our position enabled us to keep to a reasonable course. Of course whilst the aircrew got most of the glory, it was the auxiliary staff that really supported us people like the parachute packers, the ground crew, as far as we were concerned we had an excellent ground crew on our aircraft, everything was tickety boo, the windscreen was all polished they went completely out of their way to make sure that the aircraft we were flying was in one hundred percent condition, and the only way we could reward them was taking them down to the pub on the occasional evening and buying them a few beers, it was our way of saying thank you to them. I well remember that on our last night our very last raid which was a castle, outside the control tower there was a whole host of personnel waving to us a lot of air cadets and when we got to the runway for our final take off the crowd round the caravan way, the crowd outside the caravan the controller which gave you a green light when it was ready for you to take off, and then finally opening the throttles for what you knew was going to be your final operation, and wondering how it was going to go, but of course at that time you were really concentrating on getting the aircraft safely off the ground. I well remember, I don’t know which raid it was but probably my fault we had not secured the front escape hatch properly, and on take off it blew open, my oxygen mask, tube rather was ripped off and I had to borrow the mid-upper gunners oxygen tube, he had rather an uncomfortable flight trying to breathe his oxygen having given up his tube to me, but we did get over it, and we did manage to close the escape hatch with some difficulty, I must take full responsibility for that error. Yes on that final flight when you got the green light knowing that this was going to be your final operation, you had that feeling of great support from those people that were standing there, they knew that it was your final op, and they were willing you to go on and come back safely and that was, that was really comforting, but of course you were more or less concentrating on the take off at that time because that was a very dangerous time for a fully laden, fully fuelled, fully bombed aircraft, until what you reach was known as safety speed, where it was, you were then able to climb to your normal altitude.
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 George Dunn
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Panton
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-05
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADunnG150405, PDunnG1501
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Format
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00:25:12 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
George was born at Whitstable and was 17 when war was declared. He joined the local Defence Volunteers which became the Home Guard. When he reached 18 he volunteered for air crew. He was interviewed at Chatham and sat an exam and selection board to train as a pilot. All of his training was in Canada and his first aircraft was a Tiger Moth. When he returned to England, he was posted to RAF Chipping Norton on Oxfords flying in black-out conditions. From there he was posted to RAF Lossiemouth, operational training unit on Wellingtons. He was then sent to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Rufforth on Halifaxes. George was posted to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. He flew operations to Essen, Kiel and Dortmund. On 17/18 August 1943, while based at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor, he took part on the bombing operation to Peenemünde rocket research station.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Canada
Germany
England--Chatham (Kent)
England--Kent
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Essen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
10 Squadron
20 OTU
aircrew
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
civil defence
crewing up
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
military ethos
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Chipping Norton
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Melbourne
RAF Rufforth
searchlight
Tiger Moth
training
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/253/18670/PFellowesD1501.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/253/18670/AFellowesD160830.1.mp3
dd47a976b8ab40995415cad343d49553
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
Fellowes, David
David Fellowes
Dave Fellowes
D Fellowes
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Two oral history interviews with Flight Sergeant David "Dave" Fellowes (Royal Air Force), documents and a photograph. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 460 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Fellowes 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
2014-11-25
2015-04-06
2016-08-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Fellowes, D
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: Ok.
DF: Why did I join the Royal Air Force? Well, we’ve got to go back in time. As a young lad my interest, or one of my main interests was in fact aeroplanes, my father was an engineer and he and I used to build model aeroplanes and fly them in the local fields. So I had this interest in aeroplanes, later I got, I had a bicycle, and when I had a bicycle I was able to ride out to various airfields, places like Brooklands, White Waltham, Cobham and see aeroplanes take off and land and I used to be this happy, happy little boy, well later on as I grew older the ATC was formed and I thought to myself, this is for me, so I joined the Air Training Corps and whilst I was in the Air Training Corps I did pass the air crew certificate of training and when I was seventeen I nipped up to the recruiting office and volunteered for the Royal Air Force. After a very short space of time I was sent off to a centre where I was given various tests and I was passed out as on a PNB course, they said, go home, oh and they gave me a VR badge and a number and that was it, I went home until the time I got called up.
AP: Right, so, when you were called up, can you go through the next bit?
DF: After having been called up I had this railway warrant, to send me to London to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground or somewhere very similar, to ACRC that’s the Air Crew Receiving Centre which were in fact large blocks of flats in the St John Wood area and also of course quite adjacent to London Zoo and it was here that we first got kitted out into uniform and one of the things I can remember about this uniform being kitted out, we went to Lords and we got our greatcoats and we were all standing in a long line with our greatcoats on and a corporal with a yardstick came along the back to make sure that every greatcoat was the same, bottom of the greatcoat was the same distance from the ground, this caused a little bit of a laugh really among some of us but anyhow we did it and then from there of course whilst we were at ACRC so we did various tests, night vision tests, various medical little tests to make sure that we were fit for aircrew.
AP: How about the next bit when you went to Crewe Station, how you managed to get into the RR, RAAF, Australian side?
DF: After I had passed out I was on, first of all let me go back, I was posted to an ITW down in Newquay and it was here that we did all our basic ground training for pilot, navigator, bomb aimer training, things like meteorology, how an aeroplane flies, everything appertaining to the Royal Air Force and aircrew. We learnt the Morse code, but not very well I might say. After ITW you passed out, you were sent then to a grading school and I went to number 15 flying Tiger Moths up at Longtown and it was there that I passed out and I went to Heaton Park outside Manchester, it was winter time, it was a horrible place, it was full horrible corporals, and we did nothing, there was a hold up on convoys going across the Atlantic or down to South Africa and whilst I was there a notice went up on a board and said, you can be an air gunner in four weeks or something like that, and I thought, that’s for me, if I want to get into this war, that’s what I’ll do so I did. I went to the orderly room, remustered and then I got sent down to number one AGS and it was here that I passed out and after passing out, sent home on leave, there I was, a sprog sergeant air gunner and I had a posting then down to 30 OTU at Hixon in Staffordshire. One of the places where we had to change trains was Crewe, to go then, go into Stafford, put on the train and in tumbled three Australian flight sergeant pilots, we got talking as one would and I said to one, whereabouts do you come from in Australia? And he said Sydney. I said, oh, I said, that’s a bit of a coincidence, but I have an aunt and uncle in Sydney they went out after the First World War, they have a sport shop. So he said, well, whereabouts do you know? I said, yes, they live in the district called Marrickville and the road is called Illawarra Road. Mh, he said, this is good, he said, what’s the name of your aunt? So I said, Mrs. Ivy Evans. Mh, he said, you wouldn’t like this, he says, my mother’s a chapel friend. So we had something in common, so he said to me, would I fly with him? And I said, yes, no problem, so there we were in a 30 OTU at Hixon, I was in his crew, the first one, then we set about looking for somebody else, we picked up an Australian wireless operator, Jack Wilson. We also picked up our bomb aimer, he was a Scot, from Glasgow, he was an apprentice telephone engineer, he was a handy lad cause they had a method of back dialling so we got cheap telephone calls, which was pretty good and our navigator, we looked for a studious looking lad, he was, he had a blonde hair, bushy eyebrows and he was a damn good trombone player, which was something else that we had in the crew. Then we found another gunner, after OTU, well, OTU lasted in two sections, first of all there is ground school and daytime flying, you go on leave for a week, come back and then we did night flying and more ground school. We did get into a bit of trouble there, I don’t think we were the best behaved crew, I know the worst case was our wireless operator, we were sitting in the Wellington waiting to take off and he was fooling around with his radio and he managed to pick up Glenn Miller playing In the Mood and of course he put it through to all our crew stations so we could hear it but alas also the authorities picked it up and oh well, we was in trouble for that but we got over it. And then from there we were posted up to 1656 I think it was, Heavy Conversion Unit on Halifaxes and there we converted onto Halifaxes and then from Halifaxes the skipper was told he was going to go onto Lancasters, so we did a three day course, I think it was the same place, could have been Finningley on the Lanc finishing and it was there that our skipper said, you boys had you like to come to an Australian squadron? And we all said, oh yes, that’s a good idea, why not? And so we were fortunate and we got posted to 460 Squadron at Binbrook. Now this was good because Binbrook was a pre-war station and had married quarters, all lying empty because you weren’t allowed to have your wives or families with you, so each crew was allocated a married quarter and ours was number 13, well, we weren’t superstitious so we settled in, you got a coal and coke ration, you went to the mess for your meals and otherwise you were just left to your own desert. The normal procedure when one joined a squadron was in fact that first of all the crew would be allocated to a flight, in our case we went to B Flight, Bob Henderson was the Flight Commander, he was a very nice chap, he then sent us on a, a nav-ex I suppose you could call it, we went on a long training trip, when we came back, what normally happened would be the captain, your skipper would go with a qualified crew on his Op to see what it was all about, but that didn’t happen to us, the Station Commander was a gentleman by the name of Group Captain Hughie Edwards VC DSO DFC and quite a character, and he turned round and said, oh, take Whitmarsh and his crew on their first trip on block, well, he did, the trip in fact that day was to Freiburg, down in South West, yes, South West Germany and away we went, it was very good, he was very good, he just called us by our Christian names and away we went, and we got just past the bombline, this was in 1944, and we were passing over an American sector, apparently, when all of a sudden we got hit by flak from the Americans, well somehow in those days there wasn’t such a very good feeling between the Americans and the Australians and also it upset us Brits too at the time [laughs], anyhow he did talk about dropping a bomb on them, keep them quiet but he didn’t. On we went to Freiburg but were warned that of course when we got there, you’d most likely do his usual trick, go down and have a look to see how main force were getting on. This he did and then of course, after he’d done what he wanted to do, we climbed back up and flew home. And that was my first introduction to operations. On 460 Squadron after you had kind of settled down, proved that you were up to the work and up to the job and you’ve done about five or six ops, you were given your own aeroplane. In our case our aeroplane was O-Oboe. Now the crew that flew Oboe previously came to see us off and we took it over on our first op in Oboe, when we got out there of course one of the things we were introduced to was the ground staff of which there were four, there was an Australian sergeant, he had lovely black, curly hair, he looked more like an Australian gypsy than anything else but he was in charge of the aeroplane, we also had an armourer, engine fitters and airframe fitter, now those boys were always there before we took off, they were always there when we got back and we were part of the team. They used to call themselves the dayshift, we called ourselves if you like the nightshift and it worked very well and of course the sergeant we used to see in the mess, no problem at all but the others, airmen, we used to take out, oh, every ten days or so, we used to take them down to the village pub and have a few beers together, we were part of a team.
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 David Fellowes. Two
Description
An account of the resource
David Fellowes tells of how he used to build model airplanes and fly them in the fields when he was a boy. The son of an engineer, he first joined the Air Training Corps and then volunteered for the Royal Air Force at the age of 17. Describes his training at various stations and converting onto Halifaxes at 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit and then onto Lancasters. Remembers being posted to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook, from where he flew his first operation as an air gunner, when they were targeted by friendly fire on their way to Freiburg. Emphasizes the sense of comradeship arisen between the air crew and the ground crew.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Panton
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
2016-08-30
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AFellowesD160830, PFellowesD1501
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 Australian Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cumbria
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Manchester
England--Staffordshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:13:55 audio recording
1656 HCU
30 OTU
460 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Binbrook
RAF Finningley
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Hixon
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/160/3631/ATolleyF150702.1.mp3
1f262a350f3520a97a72c9378cac3278
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
Tolley, Frank
F S Tolley
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Frank Stanley Tolley (b. 1921, 1152777 Royal Air Force), his log book and four photographs. Frank Tolley was a Lancaster bomb aimer with 625 Squadron at RAF Kelstern. He completed 22 daylight and night time operations before the end of the war in Europe and also flew on Operation Manna, Operation Dodge and Cook's tours.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frank Tolley and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tolley, FS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok. So this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody, and the interviewee is Frank Tolley. And this interview is taking place at Mr Tolley's home in Sale near Manchester on the second of July, two thousand and fifteen. So, we've talked a little bit about what, what we er, want you to talk about, Frank. Perhaps if you could just start off with with you date of birth, and where you were born.
FT: According to my certificate I was born on the twentieth of July, nineteen twenty one, in Tipton, which was then Staffordshire, now West Midlands.
AM: Right. And what, what, erm, what was your early life like, what did your parents do?
FT: My father was a railway signalman. My mother was a stay-at-home mother, and er working at home. She er, she never went out to work after she married. Erm.
AM: What about family? Did you have brothers and sisters?
FT: I had three younger brothers, no sisters. I didn't know anything at all about girls. When, er you were growing up it was sissy to know girls in my day. (Laughs) How times have changed. No it was all pals. You were always kicking a ball around with pals, or using a bat or whatnot, or cycling. Yeah. Life was great, it was super. (slight pause) School-days. But, er, like most families in the twenties, we were very poor. Dad had to have his smoke, and his ale (unclear), and he was an ex-service World War One Royal Marine, but he received a pension because he developed pneumonia, and became unfit for duty any more, and he used to have his pension, his pocket money, and when he came home he'd turn over all of his wage to my mother, and she had to do the best she could with it. I well remember, I think it was nineteen twenty six or seven, the General Strike. I thought it was great having Dad at home all the time. We were on the coal banks picking coal, and I remember my mother crying on one occasion, and I learned later that Dad had been to the branch office of the union, and came back with a two pound bag of sugar and a quarter of tea, quarter pound of tea. That's all they had coming in for the week. But apparently my maternal grandparents subsidised us during the strike time. To add insult to injury, er, when my father went back he went back for a wage less than he was getting before. That, that's how it was, they came- it was the General Strike! Everybody seemed to come out. The miners started, but er, the miners went back eventually, they left the railwaymen holding the baby, so to speak, (chuckles) and that's – I'm repeating not from what I've read, but from what I learned and what I was told during that time, you see. Yep. And (pause) during that time I did get a place at Tipton Central, which became a grammar school. I only went there for three months, and my father was upgraded, but it meant that he had to move to another signal box which was a few miles away, and we moved out of Staffordshire into Worcestershire. My parents were ignorant to the fact that I could have had a transfer, so I went back to an ordinary school, and left there when I was fourteen. I had to go and get the first job I could to help the family exchequer, my mother. I wanted to go into an office, not realising that as an office boy all you did was lick stamps and put them onto er-, and run errands. The only job I could get, apart from going into a factory, and I didn't want to do that, was as an errand boy with a grocers. Fifty four hours a week for ten shillings a week. When you weren't developing er, delivering orders, you would be in the back of the shop working there, and I lifted – (background beeps and rustling of papers)
AM: So we just had a pause while there was somebody at the door, and Frank was talking about working at the grocers, so off you go Frank.
FT: And then I say, when you wasn't delivering your orders, one of the jobs I did was working at the back of the shop, lifting, I was fourteen remember, hundredweight casks of butter from floor to table. It's a wonder we weren't ruptured, yes, yes a hundredweight would be about er, fifty kilos. It's quite, er, quite a weight to be lifting at that time, cheeses were sixty pounds, and you had to (unclear). And then, another job was having a load of goods in a basket, put on my arm, and sent round side streets selling to women who was waiting for Friday to get paid, and I'd got to try and sell what I had in my basket. It was, it taught you how to work, but it was hopeless, I, I didn't like the job, and when I saw anybody from school, that had left, coming along, I would dodge down a side street because I felt ashamed doing the job that I was, a proper little snob, really (laughs). Because I wanted to do better than what I was doing, that was life's end, and sadly, very sadly, it was the war that gave me my, my opportunity. It was. Joining the RAF was like, er, university for me, met all types.
AM: So, what year did you join?
FT: Nineteen forty when I was er, just after I was nineteen. I would have been called up when I was twenty, but I had a hankering, because I was keen on photography, I used to print my own, and I thought it would be good to be an aerial photographer, not realising it wasn't manual any more, it could be done automatically, and all that, and anyhow, I joined the RAF, and became a ground gunner, and then, when the Regiment was formed, I was one of the founding members of the RAF Regiment. But I was with them for about eighteen months before I was accepted for flying, and er-
AM: What sort of things did you do in the Regiment?
FT: I hadn't got a School Certificate, you see, I didn't have a School Certificate, so I couldn't go directly for flying, but (slight pause) one night I was, in the Regiment, I was manning Hispano-Suiza cannon, the type they had in the fore-wing of the Spitfire and Hurricane, and Gerry passed over our airfield, which was near Nuneaton, it was called Bramcote, RAF Bramcote, to bomb Coventry, but they were too high for the range of this Hispano-Suiza, and next day I went home, hitch-hiked through Coventry, I lived on the West side of Birmingham, of course saw Coventry and saw how, how things were (unclear), and though, 'hells bells, if this war is going to be won, it's going to be won from the air'. That was my reaction. I wasn't being disparaging about the Army, or the Navy, but I felt that's how this war was going to be won. Went back, expressed my sentiments to the fellows in the barrack room, and said, 'look, we have automatic weaponry training, I'm going to see if I can become an air gunner'. And several others, three or four others said, 'that's an idea, we'll join you'. The next week, we went on the same afternoon, but separately, for interviews before the, er, the station commander, the squadron commander, the padre, and the education officer. And er, er, my colleagues, they were accepted straight away, and left the Regiment within three weeks, but they offered me, much to my surprise and delight, the PNB scheme that was to train as pilot, navigator, or bomb aimer. Jingo! If there's a chance of being a pilot, when the war's finished I'm going to be alright! That was me. So I gladly accepted that, apart from which, it was top rate of pay for (unclear). (chuckles) And, but, I had to wait over six months for my course to come through, and do you know that, it was just luck of the draw, my colleagues that had gone as air gunners, they'd all had the chop, they'd all been killed. These three of four of them, including my best pal, and he came from Walton in Liverpool, he was twenty one, and this was in nineteen forty three, and he can only have done three or four operations, (pause) from (pause) I have his memorabilia, which I've had from er, well memorandum actually, from the Imperial War Museum, from the computer there, and I've got the er, grave where he was buried, which was in Belgium, the grave row and number, and maybe this year, if I can, er, I'll go across there, put a British Legion cross, wooden cross on, on his grave. I can't remember the names of the others, but it's er, it's just how, how things were. And, er -
AM: So when you started your training.
FT: Yes, I went up to Scarborough for the, erm, initial training, which was groundwork, and learning the the, er, constellations, because we, we needed this later on, we needed to know the stars, and whatnot. And then, following that, went to an airfield near Carlisle to fly in Tiger Moths, twelve hours in Tiger Moths, but I didn't solo. Some did, some sort of got it very quickly, but I had some ear trouble, and I couldn't hear, and I was scared stiff to report this because I didn't want to be dropped off. And, anyhow, from there I came up to Manchester for the first time, went to Heaton Park, and there was a holding unit to decide what we would train for, be it pilot, navigator, or bomb aimer, and I, I knew it wouldn't be pilot because I hadn't soloed, And (slight pause) from there you went to Canada, or from, or to South Africa for your training, but the camp was chock-a-block with us cadets, and a number of us were billeted with local families, and I was billeted with a Jewish family in Prestwich. The first time I'd had any dealings with Jews, they were delightful people, thoroughly enjoyed it. Could be the fact that I met, was introduced to, one of the neighbour's daughters, and we palled up whilst I was there (chuckles). And anyhow, went to Canada. I couldn't tell my parents where I was going, but I, I said, when I went on embarkation leave, that, 'when I know, I will write to you, and put five ha'penny stamps on the letter if I'm going to Canada, or two penneth and a ha'penny stamp if I'm going to South Africa.' They had the letter with five ha'penny stamps on, so they knew where I was going. I was away for about five or six months, and do you know, whilst I was over there, I met a (slight pause) a physical training instructor, a sergeant, who lived in the same road as myself, he was two years ahead of me at school, two years older than me at school, and he'd been training over here in Manchester, paratroopers. He'd done quite a number of jumps himself, and so they just sent him across to Canada, for a break, I suppose, doing two years over in Canada, as a physical training instructor. And he was shopping, as I was, when we met, for his, his daughter, who'd been born just a week or two after he'd got over to Canada. And I said, 'well, I'll be going back shortly, I'll take those back for you'. Because, his brother worked for the same company as myself, and this I did, I took them for his wife. Later on, another coincidence, when war had finished, to find us something to do before the squadron stood down, we went over to Italy to bring troops back for demob. They'd come back with us in three hours, or by land and sea in three days, and some of them had been out there for years, and I suppose they thought, 'well we've come through all this, we might just as well finish off going with these, with this crazy bunch', and we could put in twelve, lying down in the fuselage, and we left one gunner behind, and took one with us to hand out the sick bags. And I would have a couple of them coming into the nose, give them a break, let them see just what happened, because I had a good viewing in those-, upwards, sideways, and downward, so yes, so they liked that. But the first time we came back, I remember, one chap must have had it blooming hard, because once he got out, as soon as he got out of the aircraft, he kissed the ground.
AM: Yes.
FT: Yeah, yeah, was so touching to see.
AM: So glad to be back. Tell me a bit about the training in Canada, what was that like?
FT: Oh, (unclear) I went first of all to (pause) Pingo. On the north shoreline of Lake Erie to do bombing and gunnery. Did bombing in Avro Ansons, and the gunnery in Blenheims. And then did navigation, went to No.1 AOS, Air Navigation School of the Canadian Air Force, in Malton, that was near Toronto, 'Torronno', they called it, Toronto, and we did, I think about six weeks of a navigator's course, you know, just in case the navigator went for a burton then you'd be able to muddle through (chuckles), probably. But the only navigation that I did was when we went to, over to Italy, in the daylight, and give our navigator a rest, let him take a view all round. I, I navigated us there. But there were times when I had to go into the astrodome that was between the pilot's cabin, er, the pilot's area, and the mid upper gunner, which you saw there, and I would have the astro compass with me, and I would take, and this is where you learned about the stars, the different constellations, I would take a shot of two stars, and the readings on the compass from those two stars I would pass down to the navigator, and providing I'd given him the names of the right stars for him to check, and my readings were correct, he would then plot them onto his Mercator chart, and where the cross was, he would relate that to the cross that he'd got, to see just how near, or how far, he was away, and, you know, that helped sometimes. On one occasion we had the scanner knocked off, and, I think that was on Cologne, and that was a bad night, we lost, we lost three from our, our airfield on that occasion (pause) quite a lot, (pause) lost that night, it seemed as though the Germans knew every turning point that we made, and our gunners had to call out whether they saw aircraft shot down, for the navigator to plot, but they were calling through so many that the pilot said, 'don't call out any more, the navigators got enough to do to get us there'. That's how it was. And weaving and doing, we weren't lost, so to speak, we were unsure of our position. And then suddenly, I saw lights ahead, and I said, 'bloomy, we're coming over Switzerland, and they opened a token barrage at us, not, not to hit us but to show that we were over their territory, and the navigator gave a general direction course from that for home, and daylight broke before we crossed the coast in France, and I was able from my maps, I was able to give the navigator a pinpoint, and he just, 'alter course, only very slightly', to the pilot, and he brought us (pause) over-
AM: He brought you home.
FT: Yes, yes. Aye.
AM: Just going back to the training, you did the training in Canada (FT agreeing in background) to be a bomber, you did some navigation, but the bomb aimer training. So what was that like, the bomb aimer training part of it?
FT: Oh, well it was very much hit and miss. The bomb sight that we had there was the -, not a patch on the one that we used, that's because it was a computerised one that we had before. And er, there was a bigger barrel on the er, aiming, er, in every target area, and you went with the bigger barrel, and if you hit the bigger barrel or you-, that was it. But nobody ever hit the bigger barrel. (chuckles) We got near to it at times. It, it was fun. It just gave you some idea, and you were firing on, at a drone that was being towed by another aircraft, you see, and there were several of you firing at the same drone, but you, you had different er, coloured, er (pause) the bullets were painted or something. Anyway, they knew from the colour of the surrounding holes who'd fired, do you see, and how they, they related your proficiency as a gunner. Not, we only did this to be able to operate the guns. But, I had to on one occasion, not to operate, I had to take the place of our rear gunner. He was a bigger fellow than I was. His, er, he wore a heated jacket, you plugged it in, as I could in the nose, because there are two cold places. His went for a burton on one occasion, and he passed out. We couldn't make any contact with him at all. But I had to go down, get him out, bring him up, and fill him with coffee and get him thawed out, but I had to take his place for a couple of hours. Oh, was I glad that I wasn't an air gunner. You swung to port or to starboard, and your back was exposed, and up there between twenty five and thirty thousand feet,
AM: Cold.
FT: Oh, blooming cold. Be alright for baling out, I suppose, but oh, it was cold and so cramped, too.
AM: Especially if he was bigger than you.
FT: He was, yes.
AM: When you got to the end of your training, what happened then, then, you, how, you came back from Canada?
FT: Yes, yes, came home from Canada, and went to advanced flying unit, you know, to be, er, flying again in Ansons for er, (pause) bombing, er, going on to do bomb sights, and the navigators were there as well, doing navigation exercises and whatnot. And I was operating a camera then, a hand held er, to er, we would be told to photograph at a certain position, and I have several photographs. Some a mile away, some dead on, which was quite good, was important to everybody that er, were able to read the maps, to er, sufficiently to get on that right spot. So that was good. And er, our pilot, after he left us, he got the DFC for er, because we had some good bombing results. But er, (AM interrupts) the pilot and I, we met, after advanced flying unit, we had to go to operational training unit, OTU, and the pilot and I, we arrived within minutes of each other. He was then a warrant officer, and I was still a sergeant, and he and I were put into the same nissen hut. Nobody else in there, we were chatting away there for half an hour. So, we seemed to be getting on. He was an Australian, he'd been over here for a little while, he'd been flying, I forget what, aircraft that they trained the radio operators in, so he'd done quite a bit of flying in this country. And we seemed to get along quite okay. He was a bit younger than me. And he said, 'we'll be queuing up tomorrow,' and then in the next breath said, 'would you like to be my bomb aimer?' And you know, 'why not?', I thought, so I said, 'yes', because we seemed to get along quite well, and I suppose he thought I was okay, and I thought he was okay. Next morning, I was (unclear) around, and he went out and he er, met the gunners, who'd trained together, and the radio operator, and navigator. The navigator didn't stay with us, only for one or two trips, he was a bit behind, so he was given more training there, and we collected a navigator who'd like-ways been in his position, but he was alright, was Bill Porter, we got along quite well with him. He, his home had been bombed down in Essex. Anyhow, we crewed up and did bombing and navigation operations, training from Moreton in the Marsh, and then we moved, we were flying then in Wellingtons, and that's where I, er, handled the aircraft. I would have to have taken over if the pilot had gone, though goodness knows what would have happened, but that's how it went. But when we went to the conversion unit, to go onto four engines, we did just a couple of circuits and bumps in a Halifax, and then they decided er, because they had some Lancasters come in, that we go on to Lancasters, which from the pilot's and my point of view was a much better proposition, that we have to get on to the Lancs. And there we picked up our flight engineer, and with four engines you needed to have a flight engineer, and he was very good. He'd got it almost to a pint, the amount of fuel you had. But he was also a pilot, he was one of these surplus to requirements towards the end, and so a number of them were sent to St Athens(?) to do a flight engineer's course. He was a bit uptight, a bit upset about that because he'd trained to be a pilot, and he wanted to be a pilot. But in doing that I would have been likewise, but it so happened that he had to be er, a flight engineer. But on one occasion when we were still flying dual controlled aircraft, after our pilot had been passed as being okay, we were flying around and Bruce let (pause), I forget his name.
AM: It's gone.
FT: Jo! Jo Platt, land it. He was there ready to take over, but Jo Platt made a perfect landing. 'Oh, thank heaven for that. Hope neither of them get, get done, because I wouldn't want to be taking over on a big aircraft like this'. But, we were alright. We were hit on a couple of occasions, like I say we had the radar scanner knocked away, which may have saved our life, our lives, on that occasion. That was when we went to (pause) Nuremburg
AM: Nuremburg.
FT: and we got lost on the way back. And so the (pause) Jerry, because our scanner had gone, he couldn't track on, on to you. Apparently, what happened when we had the H2S working,
AM: The H2S?
FT: Yes, H2S that was called, that was the forerunner of the television and computer, yeah.
AM: Okay
FT: So, getting (pause) Jerry used to track on that, and so to counteract that, in the nose, I used to have bundles and bundles of tin foil to drop through the window chute to scatter about, and it blocked, it blocked their readings, you know, and stopped them tracking us. You know, imagine all these pieces of tin foil, they'd be about so long, and be about that wide, and be opened and scattered, you know, it reminds one of the, er (pause)
AM: So Frank was showing me how long they were, and they were about twelve inches long and a couple of inches wide.
FT: No, they wouldn't have been a couple of inches wide
AM: Less than that, an inch.
FT: This is, it certainly did the trick, dropped through the window chute. We used the window chute firstly because other than that when you needed to go to the loo, you had to go down, and it was situated behind the pilot's, er, behind the rear gunner's place, but we up front, we carried a jam tin, and we used that, and it would be passed down to me to pour down the window chute, otherwise, you see, you'd have to er, take off your oxygen, and take your oxygen bottle down with you (chuckles) it was all very crude compared to today’s flying, sort of thing. But it did us alright. But I did see the result of a miracle on one occasion, we, we'd been debriefed from one raid, we were going off to the mess, and a crew comes in and the bomb aimer is carrying his parachute, and it's torn to ribbons. He had a piece of flak about that long, with the widest part about like that. He'd clipped his chute on, as he always did before a bombing run, leaning over the target, er over the bomb sight, and this had come through, hit him in the chest, (unclear) at the foot of the pilot's controls, and he wasn't marked at all, yet it had torn his chute to ribbons, and he, you know, he was just (unclear) hanging with his (unclear) and they said, with this piece of flak. But his crew, they were going on leave the next day, so I suppose the rot set in, you know, the shock, when this thing hit him when, when he got home, but it's amazing how these things happen, 'cause another crew, on another occasion, brought their bomb aimer, he, he, he had the chop whilst they were up there. But they brought him back, they didn't drop him out. They brought him back. Yes, it was-
AM: Just going back to, you finished your training, you crewed up, you got your pilot, your whole crew (FT agreeing in background), so what squadron did you-?
FT: Six two five
AM: You were in six two five, where was that based from?
FT: That was over in (pause) Kelstern, that was the satellite airfield from Binbrook, Binbrook was the main one. Oh, it was very hard there, the sleeping quarters in the nissen hut was, oh, a good half hour away from the airfield, and the (pause) briefing and debriefing room, and the mess and whatnot (background noises, lawnmower)
AM: I'm just going to-. Okay, we think the strimmer's gone, so we'll continue, so erm, you're in Binbrook, in the nissen huts.
FT: We weren't in Binbrook, we'd like to have been in Binbrook
AM: Oh. You were in the satellite to Binbrook.
FT: Yes. It was very, very hard, in fact we had, we ran out of food, they hadn't even got food to us because er, vehicles couldn't bring food to us and we were there on the airfield trying to dig snow away for the runway, but to no avail, there was far too much, and as I say, we had to have food dropped to us, bread never tasted so good (chuckles). But it was, it was alright, but, you know-
AM: Did you fly your first oper-
FT: We did, we flew- we, we went, we joined the squadron in January forty five, and it wasn't until February the first that we flew our first operation. We had been, er what, er, briefed about eight or nine times and er, (papers rustling in background) I think the second, the second of February when we did our first op, but from my log book I'd copied, I'd lost this, and I found it again, and I've two more, more sheets describing the operations.
AM: So these are some details of the operations that you're showing me now, Frank.
FT: Yes, and-
AM: Might try and get a copy of that afterwards, if that's okay
FT: Oh yes, I can get copies on there for you, but you will see Dresden on here, if I can find some specs (long pause), yeah, here you are, Dresden. Gives you an idea. That was nine hours ten minutes, that flight, and the next night eight hours fifty minutes we went to Chemnitz. From the time of taking off at er, ten to ten at night for Dresden, and returning from Chemnitz , landing from Chemnitz, that was thirty three hours, which is eighteen hours flying in thirty three hours, and the rest of the time we, we'd been to bed, we'd been had three meals, we'd been debriefed from Dresden, and briefed for Chimnitz, but there was no aircrew medal for us.
AM: No.
FT. No, no, we had the France-Germany one which whether you were in action or whether you were desk-bound, or whatever, and desk-bound were people were needed, of course, in Germany, in France and Germany as well as those in action, but there was no distinction, but what happened, last year the Prime Minister decreed that aircrew that didn't receive the Aircrew Europe Medal should have a clasp with Bomber Command on it to go on the thirty nine forty five star, which happened, the er, the fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain, they had a similar clasp to go on the same ribbon with Fighter Command on it, and that, that was just to show that we were aircrews.
AM: Indeed. You were showing me some of the operations that you went on, there, Dresden and, how many operations did you do?
FT: Er, twenty two bombing, but I bombed on twenty occasions, not twenty two, and er, did Operation Manna, did four of those jobs.
AM: Yeah. Tell me about the difference, then, between the bombing runs and Operation Manna.
FT: Oh, it was such a relief after all the bombing to be doing Operation Manna. Sadly, it had to be done, they were dying in their thousands, and the Germany commander of the Western province knew it was all over bar the shouting, and he accepted that a truce be arranged so that we could go over there unmolested with the bomb bays full of food parcels to drop at different points. And, this was fixed for the first of May nineteen forty five, but they were so desperate, as I say they were dying in their thousands of starvation, that the RAF went on the twenty ninth and thirtieth of Feb-, of April, before the truce was official. And we flew at between three hundred and four hundred feet across the North Sea to er, well the first two drops er, before the truce, was in the Hague area, and my crew, we did another two after that to Rotterdam, but we went on leave then, so we, we, we didn't do the eight. The Americans went on the first of May, and they, er, they dropped six thousand tons in six drops in from Flying Fortresses, and we did seven thousand and twenty tons from, from Lancasters in eight, eight drops. And the story goes that the Americans, when they programmed this, they said they were the first to drop food to the Dutch. When I heard this I thought, but my log book proved that that was wrong, and I thought, 'no mate, but they were right'. Maybe they were the first to drop food to the Dutch once the truce had been signed, but we'd been twice before, but that was not mentioned in their programme (chuckles). I can't say, 'because they didn't know', because both forces knew what the others were doing, sort of thing. (unclear) Dresden, because they realised what had happened, what we'd done, the Americans went the next morning to bomb nothing there, just to be part of it.
AM: That was the Dresden bombs that you're talking about.
FT: Because there was no doubt about it, it was a genocidal raid, er, they say twenty five thousand were killed on that one night.
AM: Did you think that at the time, Frank, or were you, at the time you were just doing your job?
FT: Well when we, yes, when we went over there on that one, it was just one, I think we were third wave, it was just one mass of fire and flame, and the master bomber, I remember he called to us, 'overshoot five seconds'. That's a thousand and one, a thousand and two, that's how you got your five seconds. Didn't use the bomb sight, you just released them. He'd have done better just telling us to scoot off, go back. But, I tell you, twice we didn't bomb. On one occasion we went to (long pause) Breman, I think it was, on army support, and as we approached them it was ten tenths cloud, and when we got into the area the master bomber was calling us down, there was about three hundred of us, I was scared stiff, he was calling us down, so we could-, it was on a daylight, we couldn't see each other going through cloud, and I liken it to driving a car at sixty miles an hour, nose to tail, in fog (chuckles). That's how it seemed to me. Oh, I was glad when the master bomber called, 'Return to base'. We couldn't break cloud-base, and we didn't want to be doing as had happened on another occasion before, friendly bombing, you know, er, bombing your own troops, or your own people, so the master bomber said return to base, and we returned to base with er, landing with full bomb loads.
AM: With full bomb loads?
FT: Yeah, but you see, we hadn't, we hadn't got into the target area for me to do the necessary, so the pins were still stuck in the fuses. Yeah. But, er, there was that time, another time, when I said I wasn't bombing. That was in Nordhausen and we went to Nordhausen where the Germans had built, underground, a factory to replace the one that Bomber Command had bombed out at Peenemunde, where they were making the V1 and V2 rockets.
AM: Yeah
FT: And when we got over there again it was ten tenths cloud, and there were no over (unclear) target markers by the er, pathfinders. As I say it was another daylight, but bombs were being dropped everywhere, and I called the pilot, I had got everything ready, like before, 'I'm not bombing'. Because we'd been debriefed, we'd been briefed to the effect that there was a prisoner of war camp nearby, and I thought, 'hells, if any of our chappies had baled out, and been put into there'. I didn't want our bombs to be killing them, so I called to the pilot, 'I'm not bombing, it might be friendly bombing'. But the navigator called, 'oh, I've got it here on H2S'. So the pilot called to him, 'alright, bomb from your desk', which he could in case I'd gone for a burton he could, he, he had a pair switch there to enable him to get the picture on, on his apparatus, and release the bombs from there, which he did. But we found later that it wasn’t a prisoner of war camp, it was a slave labour camp, which was the same thing, you didn't want to be killing them. Anyhow, we failed to er, break through to hit this, this factory, but, and this probably explains why we did so much blitz bombing after that one, papers released since depict that the war would be going on another four months, Germany would have obliterated London with these rockets, and Oxford, where, which was never bombed, Hitler didn't intend having Oxford bombed, that was going to be the, the, er, German operating headquarters in this country, and they reckon that if the war had gone on for another four months Gerry would have got here with smashing London. There. So. That's why Bomber Harris, I suppose, did try getting the, demoralising the people. But we did such a lot of slaughter toward the end, there's no doubt about it. They, they weren't all military targets. No. And it er, (unclear), but you never forget about it. If you didn't talk about it, it would probably drive you round the bend. Fifty years after the war, my grandson er, Paul, up in Scotland, wrote to me from his school, said they were doing a project on World War Two, would I help him? Wrote back, 'alright Nick, how?'. His other grandpa had died by that time. And er, he sent me a list of questions, which I have somewhere, and among them was one, 'What do you think about killing people?' 'Gosh, Nick is that your question, or is this being asked by a teacher?' …. My answer to that was, 'Nothing. Until much later. Until after your father was born'. His father being my elder son. When I get something on my mind I tend to resort to poetry, I wrote him some poetry, and you've got a copy of it, haven't you? That's why er, that was written, just to enable him to understand.
AM: Understand. I'll copy that, the poem. To go with the tape.
FT: Well, I've got (microphone noises) something on the, on, on the Wellington.
AM: We're just having a look for Frank's poem. (Background noises). Here we are, we've found one, so I'll bring this with the tape. Or a copy of it. I can't see it without my glasses, Frank. (chuckles) I'll read it in a moment. (Pause) Do you want to read it out? For the tape?
FT: Yes. “Fifty years after World War Two my eldest grandson enquired of the part I then played, and What Did I Think About Killing People? Replying to this I recalled in nineteen forty I joined the RAF, not for a laugh, or for fun, but because war had begun. One who dared, I was scared. Up there in the sky, hoped I would not die. Later, in a Lancaster bomber's nose, looking down for the target markers. There! To port, the target's lit. Skipper and engineer see it too, and the aircraft's course is altered by ten degrees. I call, 'open bomb doors and report. Still too far to starboard. Left, left. Left, left'. And again, 'left, left. Keep it steady now. Steady, Steady'. With target on the bomb sight's cross, so, pair switch pressed, bombs all go, there below it's all aglow. When I call, 'close bomb doors', all the crew seems more composed. When navigator directs skipper, 'change course. Compass, three twenty degrees'. Now we're returning to base. Will a fighter give chase? Will there be more flak? All crew hope, maybe pray, we will again see Lincoln Cathedral when night becomes day. No thought, or prayer, for those we've killed, until much later. Only that another operation has been fulfilled. Then, at last, the war is over, and the thankful feeling that life is now a bed of clover, and I am proud to become a father. But, now for 'until much later'. Thoughts return of targets bombed, and wondering how many children, how many mothers did we kill in our participation to eliminate the Nazi ill.” That's what it was. (Pause) Don't. I'll sign this one for you. In (unclear) pen?
AM: Yeah. (pause) So it was much later that you thought about it?
FT: Yes, it was er, um, three or four weeks afterwards, you know, you couldn't, couldn't say much in reply to that, but I must find, I must find the other, see I've got here, one of three. It's (paper rustling), some of the information I've got notes, it's not all out of my log book, as you'll see at the very end of the last one, it's, er, it'll tell you how many aircraft were lost.
AM: Yeah.
FT: But I'll have to turn up the others and let you have a copy...
AM: Yeah, we'll copy all those afterwards
FT: of all three, yeah, yeah.
AM: So the war ended,
FT: War ended, thankfully. And then to find us something to do before we stood down we went across to Italy, er, er, to bring troops back, and the first time that we went over there (slight pause) I, erm, I, I, I navigated so the navigator could have an overview of the place. We went to (pause), we were billeted overnight, well for two or three nights, in, in the first instance, er, just outside of Naples, and on one occasion with two of the crew, I went sightseeing around Garibaldi Square, and went up into the Palace of Naples, and coming down the steps, three ATS girls were walking up, and lo and behold one of these was one that was with me at Sunday School years ago. That's how small the world is. But I'd also met her hitch-hiking between Coventry and Rugby when I was in the Regiment. This Army van pulled up, and give me a lift, and when I got in there was several ATS girls in, and she was one of them there. So for her I brought one or two things that she'd bought to take home to her parents. She lived about half a mile from my home. Yeah. (chuckles) How small is the world?
AM: Small world. What did you do after the war, Frank?
FT: I went back to the old company, where I could get a couple of quid more a month there than anywhere else, and it was, my pay, was less than half what I was getting in the RAF two weeks before. (Laughs) But, that was my experience of recession, but the fact was you'd come out all in one piece, probably fitter than when you went in, and that was a, a great compensation. But it took me about four years to catch up with those that had stayed behind. But they were very helpful, I was helped a lot. When I went back, then eventually they decided they wanted someone to come and develop sales up in the North West, and so I was given the opportunity to so do, which pleased my wife well, because she came from Warrington, and she couldn't believe we were coming back north. She'd moved down to the Midlands.
AM: When had you met your wife, Frank? Did you meet her during the war?
FT: Yes, yes, yes. When, er, when I had to come to Manchester, she and I, we had a mutual friend in Birmingham, and Mary said, 'Oh if you're going to Manchester, you must go across to Warrington and meet Bettie', which I did two weeks before I went to Canada. I wrote to her, as I did to other people I met along the way. And the er, (pause) for female cousins and girls that I knew I brought fully fashioned stockings back for them, with what little money I had. But I, I didn't have a pair to give to Bettie, and so she had nothing, and Bettie was the last one that I met, sort of thing. But, er, she came down to our mutual friend's one weekend, and we met up with her in the, in the, er, Mecca one Saturday evening, dancing, and we, we got along quite well, and the thing is, she said, 'Come up, come up next weekend'. Which I did. Because the first time I went, to her home, she was out. She'd gone to stay with, er, she'd gone to visit her friend from school, who was born, they were both born, in that house. There, that thatched cottage.
AM: Frank's showing me a picture on his his wall of a thatched cottage.
FT: yes, yes. That was the school house at Whinney, a little village just outside of Warrington, and at that time, when my wife was born, it had become split into two, one family lived in one part, and another family lived in the other. And my wife was born on the one side of it. And she'd gone to visit her friend. But my father in law, I would say, thought, 'Here's a likely looking fellow here, I'll get rid of one of them'. So he gets on his bike and goes to her, and she comes back on the bus, and I'm absolutely amazed, this big family, they, there were nine of them there, one was missing, she was in the Land Army, she was, er, that was Audrey, who came next to Bettie, Bettie being the eldest. The eldest of eleven. One, Rowena, died at six months when she caught measles from the triplets (chuckles), yeah, my mother-, my late mother in law had triplets among these eleven children. And in the triplets, the middle one, was Derek, he was the only boy of eleven (chuckles). But they seem to have got it so well organised, at the, at the, I had tea with them and everything was so, so well organised, and at times when it wasn't so at camp, I would refer, I would say, 'it needs the Deans here to get it organised'. 'Who are the Deans?' and then I'd have to go into the story and telling of this amazing family that I'd I'd met in Warrington. (laughs)
AM: Your wife's family.
FT: Yeah.
AM: I think we can't end the interview, Frank, without you telling me about the Imperial War Museum. And the zip wire.
FT: Oh, the zip wire (laughs)
AM: Tell me about the work you do for the Imperial War Museum North.
FT: Yeah, (unclear) I was going to a veterans meeting, and I saw what they were doing, and they had several volunteers with whom I spoke with, and they thoroughly enjoyed going, and so I decided I, I, I would help, because they were still after volunteers, and I go, normally, every Wednesday morning, not every Wednesday, but most Wednesday mornings. Sometimes, on other occasions, when needs be, and I generally work in the, on the ground floor, with the computers, on the computers there. Yes, I find it very good indeed. But (slight pause) a while ago, my church, it was (pause), the church hall roof, it was found, needed to be replaced, and the cost for this was going to be forty thousand. So how are we going to get the money? We started fund raising, and it so happened that at the Imperial War Museum they were having a wire erected from the top, right across the er, Manchester Ship Canal, to the Lowry Theatre. They'd done this two years earlier, and I was on voluntary duty on, at that time, and I was so fascinated by it I said, 'oh, what's the age limit?' 'Oh, there's no age limit. Two years ago we had a fellow who was eighty nine'. And, 'oo, I could do it then?', and he said, 'yes, if you have forty five pounds', which I hadn't. So I said to him, 'well, I'm a volunteer here, could I not do it as publicity for the museum?' 'Oh no, no'. Anyhow, about ten minutes later they came after me and said, 'yes, we've decided that you can do it'. So without any more ado, I just did it. And so I became the oldest, at ninety one, to have done it. And then I thought that this would be an idea for fund raising, so I reported at church that I would do this for a fund raising exercise, and so far I've raised, I think it's over three thousand-
AM: Three thousand pounds
FT: Yes, yes, from doing it again. But I didn't tell people that I'd done it before.
AM: So you've actually done it twice then? When you were ninety one, then again this year.
FT: Yes, yes, you've seen pictures-
AM: I was there, Frank. I watched you come down the wire. I did. And er
FT: I came, after, they wanted to film me actually on the wire, this is before I went on, and they were doing this, and then they'd bring me back in again. I said, 'you should have let me go then. People down there that have come to see will think that I've changed my mind, I'm not going'. (Laughs)
AM: But you did it, and you've raised three thousand pounds. And I do have a picture, which I'll put with the tape.
FT: You, you you've got picture, have you?
AM: I've got pictures, yeah, I think we'll call it quits now, Frank, because you've been talking for an hour, so thank you very much.
FT: What a line-shoot, eh?
AM: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frank Tolley
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Tolley was born in 1921 in Tipton and left school at fourteen to work as an errand boy for a grocer. He joined the Royal Air Force at nineteen as a ground gunner, and was in at the inception of the Royal Air Force Regiment. After eighteen months he volunteered to become an air gunner, but instead was selected for pilot, navigator and bomb aimer training. After his initial training at Scarborough, he went to Carlisle to fly Tiger Moths, but didn't solo. He went to Canada to train as a bomb aimer, then came back to Moreton in the Marsh for more training before joining 625 Squadron at Kelstern. He describes some bombing operations and deploying Window. He completed 26 operations. After the war he went into sales in the north west, where his wife had come from. At the time of interview he volunteers at the Imperial War Museum North, and has raised money making two zip-wire jumps across the Manchester Ship Canal.
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-02
Contributor
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Peter Adams
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal
Format
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01:06:43 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ATolleyF150702
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Dresden
625 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
fear
final resting place
ground personnel
H2S
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
perception of bombing war
RAF Kelstern
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
sanitation
Tiger Moth
training
Window
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Spence, Bill
William John Duncan Spence
W J D Spence
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Spence, WD
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Bill Spence (b. 1923, 153645 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 44 Squadron. After the war he wrote of his experiences of the bombing war as Duncan Spence, Westerns as Jim Bowden, and Romantic Fiction under the name of Jessica Blair.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok. So today is Tuesday the 15th of March 2016 and this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command Centre and today, I’m in Ampleforth with Bill Spence. And Bill’s daughter is also here so if an extra voice appears on the recording, that’s who it is. So thanks for taking part Bill, that’s really good of you, and to start with, can you, can I just have a little bit of background about, about you? So date of birth, where you were born, what your parents did, that sort of thing.
WS: Yes, I was born in 1923 in Middlesbrough. My father was a teacher there, he had originated in Ampleforth, where I’m living now, so my education took place there, and the war broke out. And I was seventeen and about to go to teacher training college down in London, and that was still going through, and I went to the training college at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham and everything was going through fine but we had, the course was only going to be two years.
AM: Right. Can I just ask what made you go to Twickenham if you were from Middlesbrough?
WS: Well I applied to go on a teacher training course and I can’t really remember how it came to be Twickenham except that, in all probability, it was maybe done through the parish in Middlesbrough, because it was a Roman Catholic teaching college.
AM: Right.
WS: So I went there, and the course, which should have been three years, if not four, was clipped to two years in order to fit in with our military training.
AM: Ok.
WS: Right. Well then, I did the first year, started on the second year, when we were told that we would only be able to complete it if we did military training of some kind or another, whilst we were still at college for our last year. So the college started an Army Corps and Air Force training and we could have a pick which we wanted to do [laughs], so I picked to do aircrew training, knowing nothing whatever about it. And so we started to do what would have been the ITW course, which was the first course for aircrew if you went straight into the Air Force and we did that course alongside our teacher training.
AM: Right. Who were the, who were the teachers who did it then? Did you do it at the college or did you go somewhere else to do it?
WS: No, we did it at the college but the course had been drafted in through the RAF and so we got RAF personnel.
AM: Right.
WS: Coming over and giving us lectures on various aspects of the, that particular course and at the end of our, end of our term at the training college, we had to sit an RAF, RAF exam along with our teacher training exams. Now if we passed the RAF training that we’d done there, we’d obviously done the ITW course that we would have done if we’d gone straight in to the RAF. So I did, I did pass it, so that when I went home on leave from college, within, what would it be? Maybe a month certainly, certainly no more than a month, I got the papers to report to RAF in London on such and such a date, so I went down there and then I was shuffled around by the RAF until very soon afterwards, I was on my way to Canada for aircrew training.
AM: Right.
WS: Right.
AM: So tell me about Canada then. How did you get there, first of all, because what year would we be now? Nineteen forty —
WS: Well I was at the teacher training college from ‘40 to ’42.
AM: Right.
WS: So it would be July ‘42 I would think.
AM: Right.
WS: When I actually went into the RAF proper.
AM: Can I just ask you something before we go onto that? So in, in ‘40, ‘41, ’42, you’re in London, doing your training.
WS: Yes.
AM: What was that like as a civilian while the war was going on around you?
WS: Oh, the bombing. Oh, the bombing. Well the first, our first contact with that was the fact that when we went to Strawberry Hill College, part of it had been hit by German bombs and so that part of the college was not in use, and so we were all a bit more crowded together and actually made a lot of bunk beds. They were in the basement of the college for us to sleep in and of course, being in London, you were aware of the bombing going on in other parts of London, but I don’t know, we just coped with it.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Got on with it. This was life as it was then.
AM: Never got a near miss or anything?
WS: No, not really.
AM: Because you’re out, you’re about twelve miles outside —
WS: Yeah.
AM: The centre of London.
WS: Yeah. Yes.
AM: In Twickenham.
WS: Yes. But I mean, we were aware of the destruction there because we used to go in to London, and go to the London Palladium and this, that and the other, and so you were aware of it, yes.
AM: Yeah.
WS: You saw evidence of the bombing.
AM: Right. So the training. You’ve gone back down to London.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And I think you said they shuffled you around a bit.
WS: Yeah. Yes. From there we went to Brighton for a short stay of about, certainly no more than a month, and then we were paraded and said the postings are as follows, and we were shuffled off to Heaton Park in Manchester.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Which was a very big Air Force depot and there were a number of sites, so that we went on to one particular site, but the interesting thing about it was that, I mean, I don’t know how many Air Force people would be there, but it would be a lot, because there were so many different sites, but we all ate in one place, which was on a slight hill in the middle of Heaton Park and ate some of the best food I had in the RAF.
AM: Really.
WS: Yeah, and there was no waiting, it was all sort of organised. Ok, there was a queue to get your food, but you went in a queue and it was divided like that. Some went that way, some went that way and got the plates and food was put on it and off you went, and as I say it was some of the best food I had in the RAF. Well, then I got messed about a bit because they paraded one day and my name was called out. One or two others, who I didn’t know, and you see I’d gone to, I’d gone with the lads that were at training college with me, who had passed like I had done. And my name was called out and I had to report to somewhere in Shropshire, I’ve forgotten the name now, and went down there and feeling pretty miserable because I’d lost all my pals. And then one day, my name was called out again and they said, ‘Get yourself back to Heaton Park.’ So [laughs] I went back to Heaton Park, reported in to whereever I’d been told to report in to, and I was shuffled off to a billet and that was it.
AM: What had you been doing in Shropshire? What did you do while you were there?
WS: Painting stones.
AM: Oh right.
WS: Right.
AM: Because?
WS: Mark the paths out.
AM: Right.
WS: In the dark you see. Crazy. Doing something for, something for us to do, that’s what it really was, because I got the impression they really don’t know what to do with us [laughs]
AM: In between the bits of training.
WS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.
AM: ‘Cause up to now its general training that you’ve done.
WS: Yes.
AM: So, except we’d done Air Force training up to ITW standard.
WS: Right. Yes.
AM: We’d passed that of course.
WS: But general. It’s not about your individual training, Navigator, Bomb aimer, whatever, that’s to come.
AM: Not yet. Not yet. That’s to come, that’s to come.
WS: So I was back in Manchester, to Heaton Park, virtually knowing nobody amongst all these people that were there, you see, and then I was enquiring from the corporal that was in charge of our little lot, ‘What’s going to happen to us? What am I going to do? Where am I going?’ and he hadn’t an answer. And then an officer paraded us one day and there was, there would be about twenty of us, and he went through, but he had a list of long personnel, and when he finished there was about twenty of us not on the list. I could have walked out of Heaton Park then and nobody would have known where I was.
AM: But you didn’t.
WS: I didn’t. I pestered them then.
AM: So they just lost a little cohort from the records.
WS: Yeah. Virtually. Virtually. Yes. There, I shouldn’t be saying this should I? But then I went for, I think it was lunch one day, and as I said, I had to go to this centre place, and when I got up there, here’s all me pals from Shropshire come up. I said, ‘Hey, what are you lot doing here?’, ‘Oh, we’re posted overseas, on aircrew training’. I said, ‘What?’ So I then, I went then and made a real nuisance of myself until they said, ‘Righto, we’ll put you back on that course’, so I got back on the course with them. And within, what would it be? Certainly within a fortnight, we were heading up to the Clyde and a ship.
AM: So up to Scotland.
WS: Ye, up to Scotland, on to board ship.
AM: What was the ship like?
WS: It was —
AM: Big one. Little one. How many of you?
WS: Oh [laughs] I don’t know how many there were, but it was crowded because there were, there were postings to various parts. Well, we were all going to Moncton in Canada, before we were diverted off elsewhere but there were, there were some civilians on board that were going back to America, and it was on the RMS Andes, which had just been built as a, well, I presume it would be a cruise ship, but it was a holiday vessel but it never got on to that. We had bunks in the, somewhere or other, one of the halls or somewhere. Of course, we were given various jobs to do and I was lucky again, because I’d palled up with a lad by this time and we got, we got allocated to sweep out the hospital on the ship, and of course, there was nobody in it. [laughs] So until we heard, and then we saw him, that when we were still anchored in the Clyde, this chappie, one night, had been walking around the ship and he’d gone straight out of a door - psst.
AM: In to the water.
WS: Fortunately he was spotted and they pulled him out but they put him into the hospital, on board the ship and he was the only [laughs], he was the only occupation that was there when we were sweeping up. So we swept up and then we, my pal and I were finished. We spent all that voyage sat on the deck huddled together because it was January.
AM: Cold.
WS: And he and I huddled each other to keep each other warm, because if we went down below decks, you just felt sick.
AM: So it’s January. It’s cold and rough seas and everything.
WS: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was rough as well. January, yes, it was cold. And as I say we used to sit, every morning we got up, swept up, came out on deck and then, ‘It’s your turn to go to the canteen. Get some tins of pears and biscuits’. And that’s what we lived on for, we couldn’t, we could not stick going down to have a proper meal, so sickly, there we are. Still it was a good voyage. Rough, but —
AM: How long was it?
WS: Hmmn?
AM: How long was it? How long did it take?
WS: I think it took us ten days.
AM: Right.
WS: I think it was ten days, because it was so rough for one thing. In fact, we lost a couple of life boats and we lost because they turned the ships into armed as well, and so we lost a couple of guns as well. It was so rough, but we made it. So we were then taken to a depot at Moncton in New Brunswick, awaiting posting, and I kept my fingers crossed because I wanted to go as far West in Canada as possible, and they started to make the postings to various training places across Canada, and they started in the East with the surname, beginning with A. And they worked through the alphabet so that I was watching, I’m going further West, further West being Spence, and I finished up in Alberta, within sight of the Rockies. Just what I wanted.
AM: Is that why you wanted to be West?
WS: Yeah.
AM: For the Rockies and the scenery and all the rest of it.
WS: Yeah. Yes. I think it was a five days journey on the train then, and then I finished up, then being posted to a little place called Bowden, about eighty miles north of Calgary and did me, because I was training to be a pilot, you see, but I crashed a Tiger Moth, so they took me off the pilot’s course.
AM: When you say you were training to be a pilot.
WS: Yeah.
AM: At what point did they decide that they wanted you to be a pilot, in the beginning? In the first place. Was that while you were still in England or when you got to Canada?
WS: I suppose they, I can’t honestly remember, but I suppose that they’d assessed me on my earlier training, when I was at college with the ITW course, and probably they were wanting pilots as well. I don’t know.
AM: So you came, you came out top of, top of the cream because everybody wanted to be a pilot.
WS: Oh yeah. Yeah. We did. We did you see, I mean, we all imagined ourselves flying Spitfires.
AM: Yeah. Biggles.
WS: But in actual fact, I mean, it’s ok but being wise after the event and being lucky enough to have survived, in actual fact, I always look back and think that that was my best stroke of luck, was being taken off the pilot’s course and sent to be a bomb aimer because if I’m going to be a bomb aimer, apart from one or two training posts, where you would be an instructor, I was more likely to finish up on a bomber squadron. And as I found out, that was the only life worth living in —
AM: Right.
WS: In the RAF.
AM: Ok.
WS: To be on a squadron. On a squadron.
AM: Right. On the pilot thing though, you said you’d in a, I’ve forgotten what you said now, a Gypsy Moth.
WS: Tiger Moth.
AM: Tiger Moth, I beg your pardon.
WS: Yeah.
AM: So what happened in the Tiger Moth then?
WS: Well I don’t think I were, I don’t think I was all that good as a pilot, but no, I mean I flew solo and did a few acrobatics on my own and so on and so forth, and I did a cross country flight on my own. Had to fly the eighty miles down to Calgary, land there and get turned around and fly back, and so on and so forth. Yeah, I got, got on quite well but I landed one day and made a blooming mistake and ground looped and the Tiger Moth finished up on its nose and I suppose that, coupled with maybe I didn’t have the zip to be a pilot. But it didn’t bother me actually.
AM: Did it not? You weren’t bothered when they said —
WS: No. No, I wasn’t bothered and all. I knew then that I was going to be posted to be a bomb aimer.
AM: Right. How did they decide you were going to be a bomb aimer? Do you know? Or is —
WS: No.
AM: No.
WS: No idea, because there were one or two other lads that were taken off the pilot’s course, but then we got split up, so I don’t really know what happened to them.
AM: Right.
WS: So from Bowden, I was sent to a holding unit, if I remember this rightly, in Edmonton. We were paraded, quite a few of us who had come from various places, and we paraded one day and they said, ‘You’re all going to be issued with passes for three weeks leave [laughs], and you’ve got to get out of here by tomorrow night’. So all these documents were given to us, and that was it. We were thrown on our own resolve, you see [laughs], and I’d palled up with a chappie called Cyril Taylor. I said, ‘What are we going to do, Cyril?’ He said, ‘Well. Three weeks’. He said, ‘Whilst we’ve been at Bowden’, ‘cause he was off the course like me, he said, ‘While we’ve been at Bowden’, he said, ‘I got friendly with a farming family near Innisfail’, which was just down the road from where we were. He said, ‘We’ll, we’ll head back there and we can do a bit of a job on the farm for them, you see.’ Got three weeks to fill in, may as well, but I said, ‘Look, first I’d like to go and see the Rockies close at hand’. So he said, ‘Righto. We’ll hitch-hike to Vancouver’. [laughs] So we set off hitch-hiking and we got to Banff and we thought, oh this is quite a nice place, we’ll stay a few days here, you see. Of course there were always places for like, what do they call them? I’ve forgotten the name of them. Where you could get a bed for the night and so on. YMCA’s.
AM: Yes.
WS: And things like this.
AM: Were you in uniform as well?
WS: Oh yes. Yes.
AM: Right. So —
WS: So we stayed in Banff two or three nights, maybe a bit longer, about four nights because we then explored around about Banff and so on, and then we said, ‘Right. If we’re going to Vancouver, we’d better get going again.’ So we were hitch hiking, and we went outside of Banff, on the Vancouver highway, after breakfast one morning, and by the time it was lunchtime, we’d had nothing stopping for us and we were just outside of Banff, on the main road to where we were going, to Vancouver as we thought. But a pickup truck did stop once and he said, ‘Where are you two lads wanting to be?’ And we said, ‘We’re trying to get to Vancouver’. He said, ‘You won’t get’, he said, ‘You won’t get to Vancouver. There’s been a landslide up in the mountains and the road’s all blocked. You won’t get through’, so we went back into Banff to get some lunch. And I can see it now. We’d had our lunch, we’d come out, the main street was down there. There was a side street coming to join it and we were stood on that corner, deciding what we were going to do and we had decided that we would hitch back to Calgary and go to this farm I mentioned, where my pal had been working. We were stood on that corner and the next thing I remember was he was digging me in the elbow. He said, ‘Back here in half an hour’, and ‘To Calgary’, and I was aware that there was a car had pulled up, and it had to pull up for a car going down the main road, and the lady in the car had turned down the window and said to her husband, who was driving, she said, ‘These two lads look as though they want to be going somewhere’, and she said, ‘Where are you two wanting to go?’ And me pal said, ‘Calgary’. That’s when he dug me, because she said to him, ‘Back here in half an hour and we’ll take you’. Right. So we were back in half an hour, no doubt, we got in the car and off we set to go to Calgary, you see. Well, inevitably, on the way you get, ‘Where are you from? Where are you from?’ [laughs] So when Mr Atkinson said to me. ‘Where are you from?’ I said, ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You won’t know it’, I said, ‘A little place called Ampleforth, in the middle of Yorkshire’. And he sort of, he was driving but he half turned, and he said, ‘I was born in Thirsk’. Right. You made that —
AM: Small world.
WS: And apparently he’d emigrated earlier in his life and had got settled there, and when we met him, he was actually on leave, he was a major in the Canadian Army, and they lived on the outskirts of Calgary and they had a small, small range farm up in the foothills of the Rockies. So on the way back, Mrs Atkinson turned to us and she said, ‘We have two beds made up for any servicemen that we pick up’, she said, ‘You can come, you can stay one night, you can stay two nights, you can stay the rest of your leave’, which was a fortnight. We stayed the fortnight, didn’t we? [laughs] Yeah. So, then, ok, our leave was over. We had to report back to Edmonton, Edmonton sent us to Lethbridge, where we started our bomb aimers training.
AM: Right.
WS: And we finished at Lethbridge, I forget how long that was, then we were sent back to Edmonton, and then we were posted.
AM: Right.
WS: Back to England.
AM: So what was the bomb aimer’s training? How did they train you to be a bomb aimer?
WS: Drop bombs.
AM: So you’re up. You’re flying.
WS: We’re flying.
AM: You say drop bombs.
WS: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: But targeted areas. You’re not dropping bombs are you?
WS: Oh yeah. Yeah. They had set areas. There was far more than one airfield training bomb aimers, but we were, as I say, near Edmonton, which I was quite pleased, because it meant we’d gone further north, so that we were flying over desolate country, but it was quite interesting. And apart from training to drop bombs, we were trained as air gunners.
AM: Right.
WS: Because as a bomb aimer, you were going to man one of the turrets and you had to do a bit of navigation in case the navigator got —
AM: Right. What were you training in? What planes were you training in?
WS: It was Avro, Avro [pause]
AM: Manchester.
WS: No. No. No.
AM: No.
WS: Smaller than that.
AM: Smaller.
WS: Two, two engines.
AM: No.
WS: I’ll look it up for you in a minute.
AM: It’ll come.
WS: I’ll look it up now if you want it on there.
AM: Oh.
[Recording paused]
WS: An Anson. Yes, that’s right.
AM: The Avro Hanson. The Avro Hanson.
WS: No. A N S O N.
AM: Anson, sorry.
WS: Anson.
AM: Anson.
WS: It was, it was a really good plane, a very nice safety plane, good visibility.
AM: Were you training with people who would later become your crew, or was this before crewing up?
WS: No. No. No. No. Nothing to do with the crew. They were training for —
AM: Ok. So this was just bomb aimer’s training.
WS: This was bomb aimer’s training.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yes, and I mean, there would be navigators training somewhere else.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And so on.
AM: Yeah.
WS: I don’t think any gunners were trained abroad.
AM: No.
WS: I think they were all trained over here, but I’m not sure on that.
AM: What were you actually dropping? Things like smoke bombs?
WS: Yeah.
AM: With the dye in and stuff like that.
WS: Yeah.
AM: So you could see whether you’d —
WS: Or smoke.
AM: How close you got to your target.
WS: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Yes. And it was, we’d all be measured because you’d be dropping them on a range. And you see, even when you got to squadron stage, you still did practice bombing and from Lincolnshire, we were down at Wainfleet, Wainfleet was our target there. And there again, they were sort of small smoke bombs. So yeah. So then, where am I? I’ve gone to Lethbridge, gone to, gone back to Edmonton, have I? [pause]. Yeah. I went, I finished my training then in Edmonton, I think that was mostly navigation. I think we maybe did drop a few bombs there but most of the bombs were dropped when we were at Lethbridge. And then we all passed out, and got our wings but, no. No. No. No. No. No. [laughs] I got my wings, there’s your passes, back to Moncton, ready to go back to England. You’ve got, I think we had about four, five days to get to Moncton and a few of us worked it out that we would have time to go to the Niagara Falls, so we did that. That were great. We went on the Maid of the [unclear] and you were right close to the waterfall. Yes. I mean you can still do it, but there’s a but. You see I was a sergeant, having passed out the course.
AM: Right.
WS: And we had, as I say, we had to get back to Moncton. Got to Moncton, found my bunk, and the next day, I was called out and they said, ‘Why are you in that billet?’ I said, ‘Because I want to sleep there’, you see. They said, ‘Didn’t they tell you at Edmonton that you’d been given a commission?’ I said, ‘No. Nobody breathed a word about it’. I said, ‘Look.’ I said, I’ve got sergeant’s stripes on’, ‘Well get yourself off to’, oh what do they call it? Anyway, the offices and tell them and book in there. So I went in to the office and came out ready to put my rings up. Yeah, I got a commission at the end of the course. Came back and —
AM: Was that usual?
WS: No.
AH: What people won’t realise these days, nowadays, is that while dad was in Canada in this day, day and age of communications, his mother died.
AM: Right.
AH: And it was three weeks before he knew that she’d died. In three weeks, she’d been dead and buried before he even knew about it. And nowadays, with mobile phones and communications, I think people don’t realise that. The time it took to get anything anywhere.
AM: And how far away you are.
AH: You are. Yes.
AM: As a young man.
AH: Yes. Yes.
WS: Yes. I mean there was no hope of getting back, even if you could have organised a flight. You know?
AM: So you just found out by letter or —?
WS: Yes.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a letter from my dad. That’s right.
AM: What a shock.
WS: That’s right. But what I should also have said, that when I was sent on to the bomb aimer’s course, there were only probably five or six of us going on to that particular course, because when we got there, it was a Australian course. A lot of Australians came in, so I was put into a course with the Australians and I think, I’ve always thought, that the Australians that were there when I joined them, were probably the Australians that were coming from Australia when we were told to get out of our billets for three weeks. I don’t know, I might be wrong, but it seems feasible to me. Yeah. They were a good lot, were the Aussies, you know. I got along with them very well. Particularly one called Jackie Tong who, fortunately, survived. I’ll tell you a bit more about that afterwards [laughs]. So, yeah, so I finished up with the Australian course and when they went to a different depot in Canada to be shipped to England, as we did, we were going to Moncton, and then we were going to the ship at Halifax, and when I got on to the ship at Halifax, there’s these Australians on board, so met up again. Then later on, I’ll finish that off, later on, when I was on a squadron outside of Lincoln, myself and the crew went in to Lincoln one day, and we went to get something to eat at the ABC Cinema Café. And as it happened, we got into a table in the window, and there we were quietly having our tea, when suddenly, I just leapt out of my chair and shouted, ‘There’s Jackie Tong’. And I’d seen one of these Australians who I’d got very, very friendly with, walking up the main street in Lincoln and I just shot off and down the stairs because I didn’t know where he was. I didn’t know anything about him or what had happened to him, and I caught him up, fortunately up the main street. And he was stationed at Waddington, just outside Lincoln, and I was at Dunholme Lodge on the other side of Lincoln. So we met up again, and then after the war, I thought, I wonder what happened to Jackie Tong? I saw him once or twice in Lincoln but after that, after that we were moved from Dunholme, down to Spilsby. And after the war, I thought, I’ll write to Australia House in London, so I did and asked them and almost straight away, they sent me back details. Said that Jackie Tong, so and so, and lived at so and so in Australia, and he’d survived the war and I got in touch with him again.
AM: Right.
WS: And we remained in touch, yes. So where was I, in the middle — [laughs]
AM: Right. Let’s wheel back again then.
AH: You’d finished your training and you were coming back to England.
AM: So you’ve finished your, you’ve finished your training, you’re coming back.
WS: Coming back. Yes. Now, we came back into the Clyde and then we, as officers, were shipped down to Harrogate, just up the road.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So we were to get our uniforms at [pause], I’ve forgotten the name of the tailors now, it was in Harrogate. We were told to go there so I went there and got my uniform and so on, and then got on the bus and came home on leave. Walked out of the, walked out on [laughs], Joan was working down at the college at the time.
AM: Had you met Joan by this point?
WS: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. We met when we were still seventeen.
AM: So you, you’d met Joan.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Before ever you went to Canada.
WS: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. So I walked down to the college, knowing where she was working and, of course, she [unclear] when she saw me.
AM: ‘Cause there’s no texting to say, ‘Joan. I’m on my way.’
AH: No.
WS: No, so that was it. There I’m back in England, trained as a bomb aimer and then after that leave, I was then posted,. I had one or two postings actually. I went, went back to Harrogate and then I went to Sidmouth, to join a course at Sidmouth, and it was a sort of officer’s training course but it was chiefly survival.
AM: Right.
WS: And from there —
AM: Can I just ask, survival as in, if you got shot down, if you ditched.
WS: Well, that would help. Yes, I mean, it was just finding your way there, finding your way in the dark and through country and this, that and the other, that sort of thing. Apart from a bit of [pause], I can’t remember what it was now, whatever officer’s needed to know [laughs]
AH: You smoked a pipe, didn’t you? And they gave you a pipe with a little tiny compass in, that we used to love seeing as children.
WS: Which was for escape.
AH: For survival.
WS: Until you knew, you know.
.AM: Yeah. And I can’t remember at this point in the war, whether they had the raft, for if you had to ditch in the sea, and maybe that sort of thing.
WS: We had inflatable. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I think they were in the wings, I can’t remember. Didn’t have to use one fortunately. So I had been at Sidmouth, but I can’t remember if we went back to Harrogate again. No, I don’t think we did. I think I were posted directly from Sidmouth to 5 Group and started my training for a squadron.
AM: So we’re in Lincolnshire now.
WS: We’re in Lincolnshire.
AM: So, I’m just trying to remember. So, at this point, have you actually got a squadron?
WS: No.
AM: No.
WS: No.
AM: So you’ve not crewed up yet and you’ve not got your squadron yet.
WS: No. We went to, we went to OTU, Operational Training Unit.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
WS: Ah, no. I missed a bit out. I first of all went to Mona. You don’t know where Mona is, do you? It’s on the Isle of Anglesey.
AM: Oh right.
WS: Right. And we went for some more training there, again dropping bombs.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Little bombs, doing navigation. It was prolonging the final course we did in Canada, sort of a refresher course really, and I went there on January the 1st 1944, when we’d done all the other training. And there I was stood —
AM: New Year’s Day.
WS: In the dark, on Bangor Station, not knowing where I was really going, waiting for a train that would take me to Mona. And through the gloom of the night and the day, because it wasn’t a very nice day, I saw a figure down the platform, and I saw he was in officer’s uniform. So I wandered down to him and I said, ‘Excuse me’, I said, ‘Are you going’, ‘cause I saw he was the same rank as me, I said to him, ‘Are you going to Mona?’, ‘Yeah’, he said, ‘Yes I am’. He said, ‘I’m waiting for the train’. I said, ‘Yes. So am I’. We became pals because it so happened, that we finished up on the same squadron.
AM: Right.
WS: In fact, we wangled one posting, the pair of us, so that’s how I met, met him. So I was there on January the 1st, and I was there until February the, well just after the 20th. February 20th would be our last flight from Mona. And then I went to, on March the 16th, I did my first flight in a Wellington. We’re moving up now, and I was there until April, well, April the 12th was my last flight from Bitteswell.
AM: Right.
WS: And I then flew from Bruntingthorpe, 29 OTU which was the same as, it was a substation of Bitteswell. There was some more training to do, and I was there until May the, May the 11th
AM: It just always seems such a long drawn out time.
AH: Yes. I’m thinking, when he’s saying these dates, I’m thinking, the war’s going to be over before he gets there [laughs]
AM: Well yeah.
WS: Right. So then I went, did my first flight, I can’t tell you exactly when I went. June the 25th 1944, I was sent to Heavy Conversion Unit at Swinderby.
AM: Right.
WS: That’s when we went on to four engine bombers.
AM: Right. So in the meanwhile, we’ve had D-day, and everything’s happened.
WS: Yeah. Yeah. I’m going to slip back in a minute or two.
AM: Ok.
WS: And I was there until July the 17th, when I did my last flight from Swinderby, and from Swinderby, I went to 5 Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston. I did my first flight from there on August the 10th. That was the first time I flew in a Lancaster.
AM: Did you like it? What was the Lancaster like then after the others? A big boy.
WS: Well to begin with, I did not like the Stirling, which I’d been on. It was too big, too cumbersome. Apart from something else that happened. So we were going, the pilot, I said how I joined up with my aircrew, haven’t I yet?
AM: Right. No, no, you haven’t told me about crewing up. When —
WS: I’ll tell you about that in a minute.
AM: Right. Ok.
WS: I’ll just finish this bit.
AM: Alright.
WS: Because we’re talking about the Lancaster. This pilot told us that he was going to fly the Lancaster on a training flight, because he hadn’t flown a Lancaster before. On a training flight, he said, ‘If you want to come, you can come, if you don’t, it doesn’t matter, because it’s just for me’. The pilot. ‘It’s just for me to get used to flying a Lancaster’. I said, ‘Oh no’, I said, ‘I’m going to come’. See [laughs], I found out that the mid-upper gunner wasn’t going to go. He’d already done a tour of operations and he knew the Lancaster, so I said, ‘Right. I’m going to fly in the mid-upper turret and get a nice good view’, you see. So I get up there, and off we go. We’re flying along and the instructor’s telling Mike what to do, etcetera, etcetera, you see and then, suddenly, he says, I might not get these in the right order, but he said, ‘Switch off the starboard outer’. Mike said, ‘There you are’. Flying on three engines, go on a bit further. ‘Switch off the port outer’, switched that off, there you are. Two engines. I, I’m sat up in the mid-upper gunner, seeing these propellers stopping.
AM: Can you hear the instructions? You’re on the intercom?
WS: Oh yes. Yeah. Because I’m on the intercom.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And then he told Mike to switch off one of the other engines. So I thought, where’s my parachute? I might need this, you see. Well, it flew like a bird on one engine and I thought, oh, this is the aeroplane for me, I’m glad I’m on one. Great. Great. So that was my first flight in a Lancaster, and I was there from August the 10th until August the 14th, so I was only there four days. And then posted to a squadron.
AM: Right. Wheel, just wheel back to crewing up then. How did that happen?
WS: Crewing up. Well that happened at, that happened at OUT, Operational Training Unit, which I was at Bitteswell, I think, yeah, I was at Bitteswell. [pause] And from arriving there, and I can’t tell you exactly when I arrived there, but February the 20th, I was at [pause], I was at [pause], I was at Mona. No, we’d moved from Mona. No, we hadn’t [pages turning]. Yeah. I went to Bitteswell and we paraded one day, and there was a mass of men. We were told, ‘Those are all aircrew. Go and get yourself crewed up’. It was just a stroke of luck, and I don’t know how long I, I didn’t get crewed up that day, I know that. It might have been two or three days afterwards, I was in my billet, and it was a Nissen hut with rows of beds on either side [pause], and I thought, really and truly, I’d better be getting crewed up. Because I’d asked one pilot, an Australian, and he said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got an air bomber’, so I tried a New Zealander, and he said ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got a bomb aimer’, you see. So I was sat in my, I was sat on my bed thinking who do I, who am I going to ask for next, you see, and then this six foot four fellow walked in, and as he walked past the bottom of my bed I said, ‘Hey’, I said, ‘Excuse me. Have you got a bomb aimer yet?’ And, of course, he was a pilot, you see, I could see that. ‘Have you got a bomb aimer yet?’ He said, ‘No’, he said. So I said, ‘Well, what about you and I crewing up then?’ He said, ‘Well, let me have a look at your logbook’, so he had a look at my logbook, see what I’d done, and he said, ‘Yeah. Righto’. So that’s how I got, that’s how I got a pilot. ‘So I said have you got any, any other crew?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah’, he said. I don’t know whether it was there and then, but if it wasn’t there and then, it was the next day and he introduced me to two gunners and the navigator and a wireless operator. He’d got his crew except for me, I think. Is that right? Yeah, I think it was.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So I’d got a crew then, you see, and they were a great set.
AM: I counted.
WS: Unfortunately,
AM: Oh we’re missing the flight engineer as well.
WS: Yeah, we didn’t get him yet.
AM: Oh right. I thought I’d only got to six.
WS: Yes. They were, they were a good lot but we, whether this was the cause or not, I have no idea, but we landed one night in the Wellington, we’d been on a night cross country and we landed. I was sat up next to Mike, and I was looking out of that window, and Mike was there, and I thought to myself, I thought, those landing lights are going by rather quickly. And just at that point, Mike shouted out, he said, ‘The brake’s aren’t working’. So I thought, I hope he doesn’t try to turn at the end of the runway, because if he turned at the other road, he’d have gone over, you see. However, he didn’t, he went straight on, off the end of the runway, bounced across the field, through a hedge, banked across another field, finished up in a ditch, nose first. So we, we were scrambling to get out and the navigator was putting his maps back into his bag. I said, ‘Hey’, I said, ‘Get out. Quick’, he said, ‘Mike’s had a heavy landing tonight’. I said, ‘We’ve crashed. Get out’, out he goes, the rear gunner had turned his turret and tumbled out the back, you see.
AM: Right. Yeah.
WS: That’s the way they had to get out. And he was stood outside our plane, I was saying, ‘You silly buggers. Get out. Get out. It’ll be on fire. There’s petrol all over the place. Get out’. Fortunately, it didn’t go on fire, but the control on the aerodrome, didn’t know that we’d crashed. Don’t put that in.
AM: [unclear] these are the interesting bits.
WS: And, of course, as soon as they knew, they whipped the ambulance out for us and ferried us back in, and we had to go and see the MO, and he checked us over. Nobody was hurt, but the aircraft was a complete write off.
AM: Yeah.
WS: It broke its back, so that was our adventure on OTU. I was sorry about the Wellington, it was a nice aircraft. So, where have we got to now?
AM: Right, so we’ve crewed up. We’ve not got our flight engineer yet.
WS: Ah right. Yes, well —
AM: And we’ve not got our squadron yet.
WS: Yes. We got our flight engineer, I think it was the next, let me see. I don’t know whether I’ll have it down here. Yeah, there we are. We got him at Swinderby.
AM: Right.
WS: Which was the next one, after that previous one. We got him on June the 25th. He was from, and we also got a new air gunner. Now why did we get a new air gunner? Because our rear gunner decided he did not want to be aircrew anymore. Now, don’t ask me why, because I never knew. Whether, a little bit of a rumour went around, that his girlfriend had used pressure on him, but I don’t know whether that was right or not, or whether the fact that we’d crashed made him change his mind.
AM: Spooked him. Had he, was he a new one or had he already done a tour?
WS: No. No. He was a new one.
AM: He was new.
WS: Yeah, he was a new one.
AM: So he hadn’t actually been up there in anger yet.
WS: No. No, he hadn’t.
AM: In an operation.
WS: No. No. You see, I don’t know the full story, because you never got to know. You never really got to know.
AM: Were you allowed to just decide that?
WS: You never really got to know. They kept it quiet because they didn’t want it to affect the rest of the crew, which it could have done.
AM: Well, yeah. And was he just allowed to revert to ground crew or —
WS: I don’t know what happened to him.
AM: No.
WS: I’ve no idea what happened to him.
AM: Because sometimes —
WS: He just disappeared.
AM: Right.
WS: He just completely disappeared. Now, as I understood it, I thought they whipped, as I say, the aircrew, if anybody did that [pause] LMF. Lack of moral fibre.
AM: Yeah.
WS: They whipped them out of the way.
AM: Right.
WS: Because they didn’t want them contaminating aircrew.
AM: Yeah.
WS: In the squadron or anything like that, and he just disappeared. And I never, ever heard what happened to him.
AM: Yeah. I wondered about the lack of moral fibre thing, because you’ve done all that training, all the, and then you just decide you don’t want to do it.
WS: Yeah. As I say I’ve no idea. I mean, he showed no sign to us that he wanted, he never mentioned it. I mean he obviously, he must obviously have mentioned it to the pilot, because he was in charge of the crew. He may not have done, of course, he may have gone to the adjutant or he may have gone to some other officer in charge of ground crew, of aircrew, and said he wanted to pack it in, you know. Just have no idea. Never enquired because we got a new air gunner, a warrant, he was a warrant officer, Cole, who had done a tour.
AM: Right.
WS: So that we knew that when he joined us, he would only have to do twenty for a second tour. So he came to the squadron with us, obviously, but when he’d done his twenty, he was finished, and then we flew with just odd bods really.
AM: Yeah.
WS: In the mid-upper turret. Yeah. Where are we?
AM: Right. Squadron. We’ve not got a squadron yet.
WS: Haven’t got a squadron yet. Well, because my pilot was Rhodesian, he was sent to 44 Squadron, which was 44 Rhodesia Squadron, because the Rhodesian government financed the squadron, but they weren’t all Rhodesians, obviously, but he was. He was a Rhodesian and that’s why we finished up on 44 Squadron.
AM: Right. Based at — ?
WS: Well, we were at Dunholme Lodge then.
AM: Dunholme Lodge.
WS: And we were at Dunholme Lodge [pages turning]. Well, we just slip back to, because this is another thing that people won’t realise. Where are we? We were at Swinderby, right, and on the 16th of July [pause], we had finished our course, it was only a short course at Swinderby, because it was really getting the pilot familiarised with the Lancaster. Nevertheless, we had to train as a crew as well, so we finished there on July the 16th, having arrived there on June the 25th, so it was shortish. And as soon as we finished the course, you could go on leave. And we, knowing it was a short course, Mike and I —
AH: The pilot.
WS: Mike and I had sort of palled up a bit with another pilot and a bomb aimer, who were officers, and decided that we knew we weren’t going to be there very long. We couldn’t be bothered to go out, down to Newark or in to Lincoln, night after night sort of thing, so we sat playing cards in one of our billets, and just for a bit of money, pass the time. And so, when we finished the course, we could go on leave. Those two hadn’t finished, so they were still finishing off, but we knew, when we got back, they’d probably be there. So I went on leave then, went back [pause], the two that we’d been playing cards with, had been killed. Been taking off one night, and it was in a Stirling, which I didn’t like.
AM: On operations?
WS: No. No.
AM: No. Because you’re not on a squadron yet, are you?
WS: On training.
AM: On training.
WS: Yeah, and they would have been finishing like we had, you see, but as soon as you’d finished your training, you didn’t really bother. You weren’t on a course really, you could go off on leave. Then we got back and found that they’d both been killed.
AM: And what had happened? Do you know?
WS: The crew, the whole crew had been killed. Now the Stirling was under-powered and they didn’t clear the trees at the end of the runway.
AM: Taking off.
WS: Yeah. You see that’s another aspect people won’t realise.
AM: Well, yeah, because they’re young men, they’ve done all the training, they haven’t even got to a squadron.
WS: So, we joined the squadron on August the 21st. No, sorry, we didn’t. That is when we did our first flight on a squadron, and that was on August the 21st so we would, between [pages turning]. Where are we? Between the August the 14th and August the 21st, I can’t really tell you what we’d been doing, must have had a bit of leave. I know that because, as I say, we came back and found that the other two poor fellas had been killed. But the first flight, was a training flight on August the 21st 1944 from Dunholme Lodge.
AM: Right.
WS: And I was at Dunholme Lodge then, until [pages turning], that’s right, until September the 30th, when we flew from Dunholme Lodge to Spilsby.
AM: To Spilsby.
WS: Yeah.
AM: I’m going to press pause.
WS: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
AM: So, where are we? We’re in 44 Squadron.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And at the moment, we’re at Dunholme Lodge.
WS: Are we —
AM: But we haven’t done our first, you haven’t done your first operation yet.
WS: Right.
AM: So tell me about the first operation. Where to? What did it feel like?
WS: Twenty eight. That occurred. [pause] Eight days.
[pause]
AM: Where was, where was your first operation to?
WS: I was wondering whether Anne was coming back. Our first operation. We joined the squadron, and had our first flight on the squadron on August the 21st 1944, and our first operation was on August the 29th 1944. Now there was a bit of a, oh, I think people still think today that, and I’ve seen it in writing actually, that aircrew were generally sent on a fairly, what they called, easy target for their first op. There was no easy target, you could be shot down if you’d just crossed the channel, as well as going thousands of miles. But our first operation, we were airborne for eleven and three quarter hours.
AM: So, right, right over to Germany then. The other side of Germany.
WS: Yeah. We were going to Konigsberg in East Prussia.
AM: Right.
WS: And we flew out over the North Sea, over to Sweden, and we went over friendly territory. At least not —
AM: Yeah.
WS: It weren’t a war country, and flew south. We were warned that if you went over into Sweden, you would probably get shot at, but they probably wouldn’t be aiming at you. Just warning you to keep away [laughs]. And then we went to Konigsberg, and we had to, as it turned out, we had to fly around and around for about a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, while they got the target mapped accurately. Did that, we were called in and did the bombing. We came back and we were diverted to Fiskerton because there was fog over.
AM: What was it like? Actually like. How many? Was it a big bomber stream? Because this would be the first time that you’d actually been in a full stream of aircraft.
WS: Yeah, but you see, it was night. It was at night, so we didn’t really.
AM: So you couldn’t really see. You couldn’t see.
WS: No. You might occasionally, if you got a bit near, see just a faint outline of a Lancaster, but otherwise you weren’t, and it was a bit strange, because we did go on, well, we went on one or two daylight raids, but we went on a daylight raid later on. It was to bomb the Germans in Boulogne, and to see all those Lancasters and other aircraft flying down south over England, you just thought. And at night, they would be there as well and you can’t see them. Made you aware of the danger that there was.
AM: Oh absolutely.
WS: In the dark.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And yet the darkness was a cover for you. But there we are.
AM: That first operation. Can you remember, were you scared? Were you exhilarated? Did you —
WS: I always say, that when people say, weren’t you frightened or were you afraid or whatever, I say, yes you were, but you didn’t show it, you kept it in. And I’ve always reckoned, it was the only way to survive really. But yes, you had to be aware of it, otherwise, if you weren’t aware of the danger from other aircraft that were flying nearby, or you didn’t keep a look out for German fighters or whatever, then you probably wouldn’t survive. But I think it all stemmed from being afraid. But as I say you didn’t, you were young, you didn’t bother with it.
AM: Yeah.
WS: I don’t know whether that answers your question.
AM: No. It just interests me the different ways that people felt about it.
AH: Yeah.
AM: Some people really excited to go. Some people definitely were not.
WS: Yeah. I also think, as well, that you knew if you were flying with a good crew, you knew that they were all on top of their job, you knew that they would always be alert and so on, and if a gunner fell asleep, or anything like that, he’s not alert, is he? And he’s endangering your life. So if you have trust in your crew, you were more likely to survive.
AM: And different ones have said, in the bomber streams the, your trust was actually in the navigator.
WS: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
AM: To keep you safe.
WS: Yes. Yeah.
AM: And away from everything else, and on track for where you were going.
WS: Yes. You were, you had certain courses to fly and he directed you onto there. You see, your gunners, where you expected them to be awake, and keep their eye out.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And identify enemy aircraft, or even your own aircraft, and warn you that you might be crashing, so.
AH: What I think I never realised. You talk about the bomb aimer, the pilot, the gunners but you’re down there in the front.
AM: Yeah.
AH: And if you see something, you’re telling the navigator. You’re looking out for the navigator.
AM: Yeah.
AH: You’ve got a gun as well.
AM: Yeah.
AH: If needs be. So everybody’s helping everybody else, aren’t they? It’s not just bomb aimer.
WS: No.
AM: You’re the eyes at the front, the bomb aimer.
WS: Oh yes. If necessary, you would fire the guns in defence and if the, if the navigator got hurt, you would go back and help him, and this, that and the other.
AM: On all the operations that you did, did they, the gunners, ever actually fire the guns?
WS: I can’t remember them actually firing the guns, but on the other hand, I’ve spoken to our rear gunner about this, and he’s quoted one particular time when our radar equipment, which was a big bulge under, under the fuselage of the Lancaster, we came back and when I got out, I saw it was all gone. It had obviously, I automatically thought that it had been anti-aircraft fire, but the, our rear gunner said, ‘No. It wasn’t. It was a fighter attack’. Now I can’t remember the fighter attack, but, but I have no doubt that he was right, because there were fighters that particular night. You knew there were more fighters around.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
WS: You see Konigsberg, if you read the accounts of Konigsberg raid, you’ll find, I think it’s on that one, that there were a lot of fighters around, but I can’t remember them. I don’t think we saw one.
AM: Because you were concentrating on what you were doing.
WS: Well. Yes. Partially and also, partially, the fighter could have been a few miles away.
AM: And actually dropping your bombs, that very first time. So it’s been marked, the Pathfinders have been out, you’ve got your target, you know where it’s going. Did you hit the target? ‘Cause then all the photographs are taken of, of —
WS: Yes. I hope so. I mean, of course, you’re crew would look out as well and see, but there again, you’ve got to be careful, because they wouldn’t want to divide their attention between keeping a look out for fighters coming in, say. But, yes, you could be aware of your bombs, depending on your target, and what sort of visibility was, and whether the aircraft was sort of, going to break away after the attack. You may not see it, but there was, the best example I can give you of that, was that we went, it was one of the canal raids we went on, the Mittenval Canal or the other one. Dortmund Dams canal or —
AM: Dortmund Dams. Yeah.
WS: Yeah. One of those raids we went on, two or three, attacking the canals. Now, when we got to the target area, just before we got to it actually, the master bomber was assessing the aiming point, and there was some confusion arose, because I will swear, to this day, and so would Mike, the pilot, and so would some of the other crew, that we were told to come down to five thousand feet to bomb. From, I think, probably about twelve or fifteen thousand, which was quite a way away down.
AM: That’s quite low. Yeah.
WS: On the other hand, there were reports came in that that, that that was altered to back to the normal level, but we never heard that, and a lot of other crew didn’t either. But Mike said, ‘Right we’re going down’, five thousand feet. Well by the time we got down to five thousand feet, we were below the markers, that the marker force were dropping, so we were lit up like daylight, you see. Well you could see the canal as plain as anything, and Mike said, ‘Right, we’re going in’. So I will swear to this day, that I got a very good sighting on the canal, but on that occasion, I was able to see the bombs actually fall and they did, they fell right alongside the canal bank. So that probably, I can’t swear to this, but probably, from where they fell I would have thought that it breached the canal side.
AM: Breached. Yeah.
WS: And therefore, the water, which we were trying to get rid of, the water we were trying to get of, would have all flooded out. I don’t know. There you are.
AM: I just have this picture of, you, the markers and then the ones that were still at twelve thousand feet, dropping bombs.
WS: Yeah.
AH: And the danger was the other bombs hitting you.
WS: Yeah, I mean, ok, we went in and did the bombing and I thought afterwards, sometime afterwards, I thought, well, every time we go out on a bombing raid, it would be like that. Not that you were dropping below a certain height. No. No.
AM: But you’re all at different heights.
WS: But you are at different heights, yes, but not as marked, as that was because we, the master bomber had assessed it, that if we come down to a lower level, which was a big drop, seven thousand feet or thereabouts, that we would have a better chance of hitting the target. I don’t know.
AM: Did any of your crew get DFM’s or DFC’s or — ?
WS: No.
AM: No.
WS: No.
AM: You weren’t fool hardy enough to get in those situations. What was the story about Hamburg that your daughter was talking about?
WS: She shouldn’t have told you that one.
AM: Go on.
WS: Well we were, we were attacking, we weren’t attacking Hamburg actually, we were attacking Harburg, which was on the other side of the river, the other side of the estuary. And it was a lovely night, and it was dark and flying along, no sign of anything happening, and then, suddenly, there was anti-aircraft fire absolutely pounding around us. Mike immediately took evasive action, which was [unclear], you see, and I’m down in the front with him going up and down, like this. The gunners were wondering what was happening, and so on and so forth, you see, and I suddenly realised we’d overshot the target, and we hadn’t seen any markers, so unfortunately, the navigator got us to the target area too soon. I think there had been a following wind, which he hadn’t calculated for, and we just, we just kept on flying like that, and eventually, of course, we passed, and then we realised that the amount of aircraft fire that was coming up, we’d flown over Hamburg which, of course, was a big target. How on earth we didn’t get shot down, I do not know, but we suddenly, the anti-aircraft fire lessened and lessened, and so we must have passed over, passed right over Hamburg. Passed.
AM: Did you manage to drop your bombs?
WS: Well then, we flew around to the proper target.
AM: Right.
WS: Which was Harburg, not Hamburg. Yeah. And we dropped our bombs and then came home.
AM: Right.
WS: So. Right, we got home. When you get home, you’re out the aircraft, we go to the mess for our bacon and egg.
AM: Yeah. Bacon and egg. Everybody remembers their bacon and egg.
WS: When we got back, we went in to the mess, and there were crews sat there, but one particular crew, he was a Rhodesian, like Mike was, and they’d trained together. The bomb aimer and I had trained together, so we were sort of very pally together, you see. Mike and I sat down, then one of them said, ‘Did you see that silly bugger that was over Hamburg?’ And we, Mike and I, looked at each other, and just said, ‘Yeah it was us’. ‘Well you daft buggers, what were you over there for?’ But I just couldn’t believe that we hadn’t —
AM: That you escaped it.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Got out in one piece.
WS: The damage that you would have thought that we would have. I mean we —
AM: What was the flak damage to it? To the plane?
WS: Well no, there was a few holes, but it wasn’t.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Nothing drastic or anything like that.
AM: You could bodge them up.
WS: No. Talking about that, you go back to our first raid over Konigsberg, which I’ve already mentioned. As we came away from the target, I always had to check in the bomb bay by opening a little door.
AM: Yeah.
WS: To see if the bombs had all gone. Well on that occasion, I opened the little hatch, the bombs had gone, but I saw drip, drip, drip and it was red. And, you see, I was on an eye level with the pilot’s feet and the engineer’s feet, so those two bodies were there and I thought, has somebody been hit? ‘Cause we’d had quite a lot of firing up there. And I ran my hand on the, because I was on, my eye level, I had to go a step up into the fuselage, my eye was on a level with that, so I saw this quite clearly dripping through, and I put my hand on it, and I thought, it’s a bit red is this, so I said, I called them up on the, and I said, ‘Is everybody alright up there?’ And Mike said, ‘Yes. Yeah. What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Well, there’s some dripping, coming through out of the bomb bay’. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it was our hydraulics had got hit. Now, we did not really know whether we would get the undercarriage down.
AM: All the way home.
WS: All the way home.
AM: First operation.
WS: First operation.
AM: I thought you were going to say it was blood.
WS: No, it wasn’t as it happened you see, because it was the same colour, but there we are, and what we didn’t know, whether we would get the undercarriage down, and we thought we’d got it down, but we weren’t, didn’t know whether it was locked or not, ‘cause when they come down, they was locked, you see. We had no indication on the dash board in front of the pilot that it was locked down. And then we found we were going to have to land in fog at Fiskerton.
AM: So, was that the one that you were diverted to Fiskerton?
WS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
WS: But everything was alright, as it happened.
AM: But you got down ok.
WS: We got down ok.
AM: And lived to tell the tale.
WS: Lived to tell the tale. But there you are, you see.
AM: Did you ever have to land in the fog? You know, that they had all the flares.
WS: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: I can’t remember what they were called, all the fire things along the runway.
WS: The Fido.
AM: That’s it.
WS: Fido.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Yes. It’s a very strange sensation that, because you were, you were sort of, lighting fog, and you were going down and down, and you thought we were going to go straight into the ground, you see. You were still in fog. You could see the glows, but they weren’t doing anything really. You could see flames coming up, and then you’d come out of that fog, complete clearance. And by that time the pilot was landing.
AM: You were down.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So the pilot had to be on the ball really. He didn’t want to fly into the deck. Had to know what he was doing.
AM: How many operations did you do?
WS: Thirty six.
AM: Thirty.
WS: Thirty six.
AM: Thirty six. And was that a full operation? That was, no, that was more than a full operation.
WS: No. Thirty. Thirty was a full operation.
AM: Thirty was the full op.
WS: Yeah.
AM: ‘Cause the numbers changed a bit towards the end of the war, didn’t they, but that, so thirty was still a full operation. A full tour.
WS: Thirty was a full tour and also the pilot did what we called a dickie run. He went with another crew just for the experience of a first raid.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So Mike had done that, and including that, in that total, a tour was thirty but during our tour, I certainly spent, through 5 Group, that they suddenly put it up to thirty six, so we had six more to do. I tell you what, you could tell that there was bit of demoralisation, because more aircraft got shot down than generally.
AM: On the final six.
WS: Yeah. So I don’t know.
AM: Where else did you go? Were they mainly over Germany? The ones that you did? Any other interesting stories? I’m sure there are. About some of these operations.
WS: Bremerhaven, Monchengladbach.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Munster, Karlsruhe. That Monchengladbach one, I think that was the one, the 19th of September, we can check it up of course, was the raid that Guy Gibson got the chop on.
AM: Oh right.
WS: He got shot down over Holland on the way back, but I can, I can hear him now telling us, ‘Home chaps. Good prang’. And so on, words to that effect. Bremen, Brunswick, Bergen. Oh, we had to land away there. Dusseldorf, Gravenhorst. No, that wasn’t the one. Harburg, there we are, the one I’ve just been telling you about
AM: Yeah.
WS: Where we flew [laughs], when we flew over Hamburg. That was on the 11th of November and that then, yeah, then the next one was on the 21st, 10 days later. That was the one that I told you about, us having to drop below five thousand feet to bomb, down in here, bombed from four thousand. Did a few mining operations.
AM: And this says on the ground moving up through Europe after D-day.
AH: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Yes.
AM: Yeah.
WS: There was one, I can’t remember which one when we were supporting the advancing troops. Did quite a lot of oil targets, and our last trip was a daylight trip on April the 4th 1945 to a place called Nordhausen, yeah.
AM: What was? I was going to say, what was the difference between the daylight ones and the night ones apart from the obvious, It was daylight.
WS: You could see things.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yeah, I don’t know. You couldn’t see at night but there we are. You might, you’d more easily crash, I suppose, at night.
AM: Did it feel more dangerous? The fact that you could see more things, but of course, more people could see you as well.
WS: Yeah.
AM: If there were any fighters around.
WS: I don’t know we just had to take it as another raid and get on with it. And I’m going to say unconsciously, that’s the wrong word, consciously you would —
AM: Yeah.
WS: Adapt to the change night and day.
AM: To what, way it was. And you were with the whole crew for the whole thirty six.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Ops.
WS: That was good.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Well when I’m saying yes, the same crew. No, because our mid-upper gunner only had to do twenty.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Mid upper gunners were sort of odd bods. We got one that we had five or six times. I did go to Dresden if you — Dresden.
AM: You did?
WS: Yeah. In fact, we were one of the first aircraft to drop bombs on Dresden on that raid.
AM: And you did it because you were told to and —
WS: Yeah. And not —
AM: People have said different things about Dresden
WS: Yeah. Well they’re all wrong.
AM: Yeah. Oh, all sorts of different. Absolutely. All sorts of different things.
WS: Yes.
AM: But as young men.
WS: What was, what was a pity is, that these people who wrote about Dresden, the majority of them had not been there. They’d not been on the raid. And apart from that, they knew little about what, and they jumped to the conclusion that, because it had nice buildings and so on that it shouldn’t have been attacked. They don’t look at the fact that it was still producing war weapons.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And I think the reason for that is because it wasn’t heavy industry, but who was making all the instruments and so on? You never hear that mentioned by some of them. And the majority of people that criticise Dresden, I think you will find are only surmising on facts from the war, in the way they want to interpret them. To me, it was a genuine target and, but we were actually told that they had this light industry. We were also told that it was a big railway centre and that we were bombing it to help the Russians. Disrupting transport. And I think if you look in to the facts, Churchill instigated the raid along with, I mean he was the Commander in Chief. It’s alright talking about Harris, but Harris was obeying orders from above, wasn’t he?
AM: Oh yeah.
WS: I’ve forgotten what I was going to say now. [laughs] The only thing I criticise Churchill about, you know. I think he was the right man at the right time, but he let the bomber boys down at the end of the war.
AH: He was a politician.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Politics, wasn’t it?
WS: Yes. Yeah.
AH: It was all politics after the war.
WS: I mean, ok, they’ll quote that he did say, I don’t know the exact quotation, but he sort of praised the bomber. He said, ‘The bombers will win the war’. That was early on in the war.
AM: Yeah.
WS: But he never said we had done at the end of the war.
AM: That you’d actually done it. Yeah.
WS: But, I say, that even that attitude was wrong because you needed, you needed the bombers, you needed the fighters, you needed the soldiers, you need the Navy. The lot.
AM: The whole allied, the whole allied effort.
WS: To win a war.
AM: To actually do it.
Yeah. You can’t single out any one of us that won the war. Nobody did.
AM: I suppose what you think is what would have happened if you’d taken one of the groups away.
WS: Yes.
AM: If you’d have had no bombers.
WS: Yes.
AM: But yeah. It was an allied effort, wasn’t it? By name.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And that was what it was.
WS: There we are.
AM: Did you, on your last operation did you actually know that was your last one, then?
WS: Yes.
AM: ‘Cause that was your thirty sixth.
WS: Yes. Yes. Yes.
AM: And pretty much, you’re not going to go on another tour after that, are you. Where are we now? April ’45.
WS: Yeah. They asked us if we’d like to go to the Middle East. Not Middle East, the Far East.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And I think Mike was all for it actually. The rest of us said no. We’d managed to come through alright. We were not going to risk going out there.
AM: So what did you do? What happened then, after the last operation?
WS: Well I came on leave [laughs]
AM: And you were married by now. You got, you were married part of the way through the war, weren’t you?
WS: Yeah. I’d only done about five aircraft operations.
AM: When you, when you married.
WS: So I knew I had about another twenty five to do, you see.
AM: Yeah.
WS: But we, Joan and I decided that we would, we would get married, but it would be at the end of the war. We hadn’t really sort of gone into it to that extent but we, I think, without saying a lot about it we had, in a way, decided we would wait till the end of the war. Right. So I come on leave when I’d done about five operations and we went for a day in York, and Joan said to me, she said, ‘Will you come and see Geraldine Kelly with me?’ Now Geraldine Kelly was at the convent with Joan in York and she said Geraldine had got married shortly before that. Her husband was a Canadian and they were flying out of one of the aerodromes around York and he’d been shot down and she didn’t know what had happened to him. And so I said, ‘Yeah. I’ll come and see her’. So, we went to see her. Joan knew which offices she was in, in Coney Street, so I went to see her and had a chat and so on and so forth, and she still hadn’t heard anything about her husband. And we were coming away and Geraldine said, ‘When are you two getting married?’ And we said, ‘Well, we’re probably going to wait until after the war’. And Geraldine said, ‘Don’t’. She said, ‘Don’t wait. I had seven days with John. They were the happiest of my life’. So we came home and got married.
AM: Of course, you didn’t, didn’t know how long the war was going to last at that point.
WS: No. So we came home, we decided that yes, we would get married. We put it all in operation and so it was my next leave was going to be that when we got married. Well, of course, you never knew when your next leave was because you were on a roster. So if somebody ahead of you got killed, you moved up the roster. And then one day, Mike came away from, probably the adjutant’s office and he came over. Fortunately our aircraft was parked near the offices and we always used to gather there, and Mike came over one day and said, ‘You can go on leave tomorrow’. I got to the phone, rang Joan up said, ‘I’m coming home tomorrow. Can we marry on Friday?’ But she had everything in place for a wedding to take place, you see, so she said, ‘Yeah, righto’. [laughs] So I told the crew, ‘You’re coming to a wedding on Friday’, so they, they arranged to come. They were going to stay in York overnight.
AM: Right.
WS: And then come out by Reliance bus to the wedding in the college church, and so that’s it.
AM: So you did.
WS: We got married. And to go back to Geraldine, she heard that he had survived.
AM: He had survived.
WS: He had bailed out and he, I think, I think he must have been taken prisoner of war but it was only a short war, of course. And so they were married and they settled in Canada ‘cause he was Canadian and I think she had six children.
AM: Right. On the, when you’d actually finished your operations, then you came home on leave.
WS: Yeah.
AM: But then, then what happened? How long before demob, because people went all sorts of strange places.
AH: Africa.
AM: You went to Africa.
WS: Well first of all when I went back after the leave, I was then sent to Winthorpe as an instructor.
AM: Right.
WS: To crews going through the process. There is a funny little story, yes, I was instructor at Winthorpe. Then of course, the war finished and they don’t want to be training bomb aimers, would they? And I then got sent on to an equipment officer course at [pause] Bicester. Just outside of Oxford, Bicester, yes.
AM: Bicester.
WS: Yes, just outside Oxford. So I did the officer’s training course and then I was posted to Stafford, where there was a very big, and had been there most of the war, if not all the war, maintenance unit which had several sites. And I was sent to one of those sites as second to the officer in charge of that particular site, but I knew that the next overseas posting that came through to the maintenance unit, I would be on the bike, because they were all ground, ground crew wallahs who had been nicely cosy through the war and didn’t want disturbing, sort of thing, you see. So that was it. Posting didn’t come through, posting didn’t come through, you see. And then was called to the adjutant’s office. ‘Posting’s in for you. You’re going to Cairo’. So I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not going to Cairo’, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Because you can’t send me there’. He said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Because I am under the medical officer’, and I said, ‘You can’t post me as long as I’m under the medical officer’. ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, ‘I’m waiting for an eye test’. Two days later, no three days later, I was at an optician. Right. So the next day I’m called into the adjutant’s office and he said, ‘You’ve had your eye test’, he said, ‘You’re going to Cairo’. I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘You’ve already filled the post’, he said, ‘Yes I have’, he said, ‘But I can get it switched’, and he said, ‘But’, he said, ‘I have to have your permission’. So, I said, ‘No’, I said, ‘I’m not going to Cairo’, I said. He said, ‘Well the next posting that comes in, you will have to go’. I said, ‘I’ll take my luck. I’ll take a chance where it is’. He said, ‘You might be going to somewhere like Singapore out in the Far East’, so I said it didn’t matter, I’d take my chance. The posting came through the next day and it was to Rhodesia. So, so the adjutant said, ‘You’re going to Rhodesia’. He said, ‘You can switch, if you like, with one of the others’. I said, ‘I’m not switching if I’m going to Rhodesia’. ‘Cause my pilot was a Rhodesian.
AM: Well yeah.
WS: He’d been demobbed and gone home you see, for one thing. I said I’d rather go to Rhodesia, so he couldn’t do anything about it. He had to send me to Rhodesia.
AM: And what did you actually do in Rhodesia?
WS: Well I —
AH: He had to get there first.
WS: I had to get to Rhodesia.
AM: Well, ok. How did you get to Rhodesia then?
WS: By ship.
AM: For how long?
WS: You couldn’t fly.
AM: No.
WS: You couldn’t fly, you see, there was no flying. That isn’t strictly true actually but I couldn’t have gone.
AM: Yeah.
WS: On a flight. They were only very official flights, so I had to go by ship. So I came home on leave.
AM: I’m just trying to think of the journey then.
AH: Yeah.
WS: Oh yes. Yeah. Because you had to go through the Med.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Down the Suez Canal.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And you see calling at various places on the way and we did have quite a number of South African troops going home on board as well, so it was really a troop ship in a way, but there were quite a number of civilians on board. And we just jogged along really, I don’t know how long it took us, took us quite a while because we stopped here and there and everywhere. And then having got to Durban where there was an RAF Headquarters they said well we, ‘You are going to Rhodesia, so you will have to get the train from here up to Rhodesia,’ which I think in those days was five days, I think.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So, right, fair enough, off we go. There were four of us, five, four, four I think. One of them, when we got, when we got to Rhodesia, we had to report in to the headquarters in Salisbury. I was a senior officer so he started with the others. He had postings for them. One went to Gwelo, somewhere in Rhodesia, so that was one out the way. Another one went to one of them, in the Middle East. That left two and he hadn’t any postings through for them, and then he sent for me and he said, ‘Will you volunteer to stay on in the Air Force?’ I said, ‘Why are you asking me that?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s ridiculous. They’ve sent you all the way from England’, he said, ‘You’ve only got a month to do before you’re demobbed’. He said, ‘It’ll take you a month to learn the job that you’ve been sent to do’, he said, ‘You would be coming here to be responsible for all the equipment that is coming in to Rhodesia, because we’re going to resurrect the Empire Air Training Scheme again, you see’, because it had been like the one that went to Canada.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So I said, ‘No, I don’t want to volunteer’, so, ‘You’ll be getting promotion almost immediately’. He said, ‘You’d be up to squadron leader very soon.’
AM: So you’re a flight lieutenant at this point.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah
WS: I was flight lieutenant. So I said, ‘No. I don’t. No’. I didn’t go into reasons with him and I didn’t go into, I just said I don’t want to go, and I won’t go into reasons again. There were family reasons, really that I didn’t want to do it. I had come to realise that the only life in the RAF was on a squadron.
AM: Yeah.
WS: I wasn’t going to be on a squadron. I was going to go to a maintenance unit, and I didn’t particularly want that sort of life, out in the colonies. So I said, ‘No, I’m going. I’m going to go home. I’ve got to go home’. So he said, ‘Oh’, he said, ‘This is causing me a problem’. I said, ‘Well I might be able to solve it for you’, I said, ‘There’s one chappie outside that’s come out with me from England’, which of course he knew, because he had the list there and he was going to have to post him. I said, ‘He wants to be out here, because he’s been out here earlier in the war.’ So he must have done his aircrew training out in Rhodesia.
AM: Yeah.
WS: He’d been out there. He’d got on with a girl, and he’d been trying to get back to that part of the world since. I said, ‘Well, look’, I said, ‘I don’t want to change places with him because he’s going to go to Cairo if he is, but’, I said, ‘I will do because of him’. And he said, ‘But I can’t’, he said, ‘I haven’t the authority to change the postings’. I said, ‘Well, what we can we do?’ So he said, ‘Well’, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll suspend all postings’. That’s mine and this other lad and one other who was going to have to go to the Middle East. He said, ‘I’ll suspend those postings until I get word from London’. I said, ‘Right. Ok. But’, I said, ‘Can you tell me how long that will be before you will get permission to do this?’ ‘Oh’, he said, ‘It’ll be about three days. That’s all’.
AM: Three days.
WS: ‘Three days’, he said. That’s all. I thought, ‘Oh blast’. He said ‘report in here, to headquarters, every morning, and then the postings will have come through one of the mornings, and then you can be on your way’, you see. It was three weeks before the postings came through, so we were kicking our heels in Salisbury. Well I didn’t mind, because Mike was at home and I could see him. But the thing I’ve regretted ever since, that I never got to the Victoria Falls.
AM: That you never -?
WS: Got to the Victoria Falls. I could so easily have done with that time off.
AM: Yeah. You’ve seen Niagara.
WS: Yeah. I’ve seen Niagara, I wanted to see the other one. Probably my own fault, I didn’t, sort of, push the matter, could I go off for a few days.
AM: So what did they do then? Just send you back?
WS: They sent me up to, they allowed him to change the postings.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So that I don’t, I don’t know what happened to the other lad at all. Whether he met the girl again.
AM: And lived happily after.
WS: Yeah.
AM: I feel a book coming on.
AH: Yes.
WS: But then I was, then of course, sent up to Cairo ‘cause I’d swapped places with him, you see. So we got up to, where did we get to?
AH: Cairo.
WS: No. No. No. On the way. We had to go to Pretoria.
AM: Oh right. Yeah.
WS: Right.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Because they couldn’t send us from where we were. That was down in South Africa wasn’t it? They couldn’t send us direct from there. We had to go to Pretoria. We get to Pretoria, they said, ‘What are you three doing here?’ We said, ‘Well you’ve got a posting for us’. He said, ‘We have, yes but’, he said, ‘You won’t be wanted for another ten days’. So, right, what are we going to do for ten days, lads? There was only three of us. Well, let’s go down into Pretoria and see what it’s like. See if it’s worth our spending our time here.
AM: That was the capital city at the time, wasn’t it?
WS: Pretoria was, yes, it was, I think it was then, yes. But it was very Boer country.
AM: Afrikaaners.
WS: Yeah. So we took a walk down, we didn’t know anything about Pretoria, we took a walk down into Pretoria, you see. I can see it now. We were walking down this side of the street and we were aware of a big bellied chap come from the other pavement, walked steadily across so that when he got across to where we were, he was in step with us. And he just said, ‘What are you buggers doing here?’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘If you stay here, you’ll get a knife in your back.’ Didn’t like us, you see. The Boers.
AM: Is this from, from the Boer war?
WS: And we were in uniform you see.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And then he went away. So we just looked at each other, we thought, we’re not going to stop here, so we hitch- hiked back down to Durban, because Durban was much friendlier and we knew that. And also one of the chappy’s had some very distant relations living in, and he said, ‘We’ll go and look them up’, which we did. We went and spent some time down there and then we had to hitch-hike back up to Pretoria to get to Cairo.
AM: So how long were you in Cairo?
WS: In Cairo.
AM: And what were you doing in Cairo?
WS: Well these other two had postings, so they’d gone.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Poor little me, all on my own, knowing nobody whatsoever. It was a huge camp and was only a holding camp, and it was hardly used, there was hardly anybody about. And it was under a tent as well, and the days went by, I thought, well there’s a posting coming through for me, so then eventually when, well after a few days, I went to the orderly room and said, ‘What about a posting for me?’ ‘Who are you?’
AM: Oh no, you’ve not dropped off, dropped off the list again.
WS: So I told him. He said, ‘Oh, we’ve got your name but’, he said, ‘We haven’t got any posting for you’. I said, ‘Well flipping heck, get me one’. I said, ‘I’m not, I’m fed up sitting in my tent reading, reading Agatha Christie’, then I pestered them for a couple of days and they got me a posting. They said, ‘You can go to a job in Cairo. You can go into the Junior Officer’s Club as your billet’. So that was ok. The job was nothing, I mean it was just sending little, I don’t know supplies of goods into one or two of the units that were out in Cairo, I was only just filling time in really.
AM: That’s, that’s —
WS: So I had nine months in the RAF.
AM: Nine months.
WS: From leaving, from leaving, when I was training operations [pause], until I was demobbed. Nine months sitting around Africa doing nothing.
AM: And that’s more or less what everyone says. Most.
WS: Amazing.
AM: Most people were waiting for demob —
WS: Yeah.
AM: Sent all sort of places to do nothing very much.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And just waiting.
WS: Yes.
AM: Waiting for demob.
WS: Yes. I mean, I reckon I was sort of lucky really because I was sort of on the move, more or less. And seen places I’d read about and -
AM: Yeah.
WS: Sort of thing, and also saw my pilot again. So I was pretty lucky really, I mean I think if you asked me to sum up my war, I would say it was a lucky one [laughs]
AM: Well yeah you got through it one piece
WS: Yeah.
AM: And saw Niagara Falls and the pyramids into the bargain.
AH: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Saw the pyramids.
AH: Yeah. The Rockies. Yes.
WS: The Rockies. Yes. I wanted to see, yes.
AM: And then you came back. You never went into teaching, did you?
WS: No.
AM: No.
WS: No. No. Got a job.
AM: And then eventually, you’re going to have to tell me on the end of the tape, just a little bit about Jessica and how Jessica came. What did you actually do? You came back. So you didn’t go into teaching.
WS: No. I got a, you see, I’d had experience of controlling stores.
AM: Yeah.
WS: As an equipment officer.
AM: Yeah.
WS: It just so happened the college was looking for somebody. They had no system.
AM: Ampleforth College.
WS: Yes.
AM: Yeah.
WS: They had no system of controlling, particularly on the catering side, and one of the priests knew that I’d done this course in the RAF, so they offered me a job to go there.
AH: ‘Cause there wasn’t any central.
AM: That’s what you did.
WS: There wasn’t any central.
AH: The boys lived in school houses, and ate in school houses, so somebody’s got to order the stock and see that it gets to the houses.
WS: In the right quantities.
AH: In the right quantities, and they hadn’t had anybody doing that.
AM: Right, and they got a RAF man organising them.
WS: Yeah. Yeah. A tall point I suppose and, then you see, Joan was in the post office.
AM: Yes. So Joan was there anyway.
WS: I mean, that was one reason why I chose not to stay in the Air Force.
AM: Yeah.
WS: I knew that Joan wouldn’t have liked Air Force life, nor would I really, in peace time, so when they offered me this job at the college, I thought well, fine.
AM: And then you were telling me last week about how you got into writing.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And what have you.
WS: I always, I don’t know, I think I must have always felt like writing. I always loved reading, loved storytelling and I love facts, so I love non-fiction, and I thought I would like to write a non-fiction book about my time in the RAF, but then I would like to do a story so why not combine the pair of them. Then I could have some fictitious character based on the crew, and based on other people I knew in the Air Force, and knew the situation and knew about going down to Skeggy every night when we weren’t flying and all this sort of thing. And I just started to write this, just for my own satisfaction and it included quite a bit of what we’ve been talking about. I finished it and that was it, I mean, I knew nothing whatsoever about the publishing world, not a thing, and I put it in the drawer and that was it. But I still had this gnawing at me to do a bit more writing, you see, then it just so happened that one night we got the evening paper out of York, and I’m a poor newspaper reader, and I probably was then as well, but for some reason this particular night I, something must have moved me and I looked at it. There was a little piece in it, about this much, saying that there was a paperback company looking for war novels. I thought I’ve got one of them [laughs], so I sent it off. It was, they were running a competition actually, so I sent it off and whilst it didn’t win, they said they would like to publish it. And, hey, I’ve got a book published. Yeah, I can get this published, sit it up on the shelf next to Dickens and next to Shakespeare, you see.
AM: And Agatha Christie.
WS: But then I thought, I liked writing that book, what do I write about now? And for some reason, I thought I’d write a Western, because I’d read a lot of Westerns and I knew a lot about the West, and so I wrote a book. Again, what do I do with it? I don’t know what to do with it. What do I tell anybody that ask me that question now? I say go and look at who publishes them, but I never thought of that. I was about twenty miles out of York, and it wasn’t that easy to get in to York in those days, so I thought well there’s a thing called the Writers and Artists Yearbook and I think that lists publishers in it, and I had a look at that and it does, and it tells you what they publish. But it always said — fiction. Fiction. Fiction. Fiction - among the other books they published. Well that didn’t tell me what sort of fiction, so I thought, oh well, I’ll make a list of about six of them and send it out to them. Then it came back, ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, you see. And I thought well this is a bit of a dead loss isn’t it? Well, I thought I may as well send it again, a couple of times. ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, and then one came back, because they’re always, you can always tell they’re typed out by the secretary and then someone scribbles on it and signs it. ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, and he’d taken his pen and signed it, and then that dear man had taken the trouble to write with his pen, ‘Try Hale’. I thought, hello, he will know the publishing world and he said, ‘Try Hale’. I knew that Robert Hale’s were a publisher. The man that had taken the trouble to write, “Try Hales was Alan Boon, of Mills and Boon fame.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So I thought I’d send it to Hale, so I sent it to Hales, and Hales said, ‘We like this. Go on writing Westerns for us’. So somehow or other, I’d got the right length and the right sort type of thing and so I wrote thirty six of them before I finished.
AH: He became Jim Bowden from his place where he was in Canada.
AM: I’ve seen the books in the bookshelf.
WS: Bowden was the first place I was —
AH: Posted.
WS: Posted in Canada.
AH: In Canada.
WS: So that’s how I got more and more into writing, and whilst I was doing these Westerns, I got interested in whaling. The history of whaling through going to Whitby.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And eventually, I only did it out of interest really, but eventually, I realised I was getting sufficient information together to do a history of whaling, and I put the idea out and so on and so I was said yeah —
AM: Yeah.
WS: Somebody was interested in the history of whaling so I completed this book. What did I do then?
AH: Well that was “Harpooned”.
WS: That was “Harpooned” yeah.
AH: And that was published.
WS: That was published in 1980.
AH: And you’d got all the information.
WS: Yeah.
AH: About whaling and decided to put it into a novel, so you wrote a novel based on whaling.
AM: And that was, and that was “The Red Shawl”, and that was, “The Red Shawl.”
WS: That’s right.
AH: But it wasn’t initially, but they sent it off to one or two publishers, didn’t you, to start with?
WS: Well then it went to —
AH: Piatkus.
WS: Piatkus.
AH: And Piatkus said they would like to publish it.
AM: However —
WS: Sorry. Sorry Anne, no, it wasn’t Piatkus that published it, it was Conway Maritime Press.
AH: No, that was “Harpooned”. We’re on to, that was “Harpooned.” Yeah.
WS: “Harpooned”. Yes. That was “Harpooned” yes but that led to the —
AH: The novel.
AM: On to the novel.
AH: Yes.
AM: So the novel is going to be published, but we don’t want it to be by Bill Spence. We would like you to be called —
WS: Jessica Blair. That’s right.
AM: Jessica Blair. And how many novels later? How many Jessica Blair novels later?
WS: Twenty six. I’m finishing twenty six.
AH: Yeah, you’ve just finished twenty six, you’ve just finished the twenty sixth. The twenty fifth has just been published.
AM: Yeah. And on that note.
WS: I don’t know.
AM: It just shows you though doesn’t it? That, you know, bomb aimer, RAF, Bomber Command, Jessica Blair. The twists and turns that life takes.
AH: Yes.
WS: If you want to be my publicity —
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 Bill Spence
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-15
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASpenceWD160315, PSpenceWD1601, PSpenceWD1603, PSpenceWD1604,
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:58:58 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Spence was born in Middlesborough. He abandoned his teacher training and joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 becoming a bomb aimer. He completed 36 operations during his time in Bomber Command. Bill tells of his experiences while training in Canada, how he hoped that he would be posted near the Canadian Rockies, and reminisces the people he met. He tells of being taken off a pilot training course because of an incident with a Tiger Moth where he ground looped it and it ended up on its nose. He flew in Ansons and Wellingtons, and was then posted to 29 Operational Training Unit; then, in 1944, to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Swinderby. He eventually went to 5 Lancaster Finishing School at RAF RAF Syerston, where he flew on his first Lancaster.
Bill was transferred to 44 Squadron based at RAF Dunholme Lodge. He tells of his operation to Harburg, which was their intended target, but they ended up over Hamburg in the middle of a bombing operation because wind had not been accounted for. Bills also recounts how his aircraft was one of the first to drop their bombs on Dresden; he contends that the city was a legitimate target and distrusts the judgement of those who did not take part to the operation. After the war, he spent time in Rhodesia and also in Pretoria, where he tells of his encounter with an Afrikaner who threatened him because of his ethnicity. After the war, Bill worked at Ampleforth College controlling stores for the catering side. After writing a war novel which he had published in a local newspaper, he then tried his hand at writing westerns with Hales Publishing. His pen name was Jim Bowden, after the place he was stationed in Canada. He also writes under the pen name of Jessica Blair, and is now on his 26th book.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Hamburg
South Africa
South Africa--Pretoria
Zimbabwe
Canada
Alberta
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
44 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
coping mechanism
crash
crewing up
fear
FIDO
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RCAF Bowden
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/613/8882/PMottersheadN1504.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/613/8882/AMotterheadN150719.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mottershead, Bluey
Nevil Mottershead
N Mottershead
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mottershead, N
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Squadron Leader 'Bluey' Mottershead DFC (b. 1922, Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as a pilot with 158 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-19
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok. So this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is me, Annie Moody and the interviewee is Bluey Mottershead. And the interview is taking place at Mr Mottershead’s home in Brailsford on the 19th of July 2015. So, off you go. Tell me a little bit about your, your childhood.
NM: Yes.
AM: And leading up to why you decided to join the RAF, Bluey?
NM: Well, I was born on a farm in Shropshire. I was the sixth child of my parents but they had lost two previous to me arriving on the scene and therefore, when I arrived I was treated something special. And that special has been with me all my life. And my best friend from my youth, in my youth, was also, had joined the Royal Air Force for aircrew duties and he was in a place called Honington. On a live station in Suffolk. And while they were taking a NAAFI break a bomber came over, dropped a bomb, hit the NAAFI and killed four of them. And then thereafter I was stood in the churchyard of my village while they were burying him. There went the past and so —
AM: What age would you be then Bluey?
NM: Eighteen.
AM: You were eighteen.
NM: And so, when it came around to the January after Christmas I thought I have got to go and revenge for my friend. And so, on the 18th — on the 8th of January 1942 I went to Shrewsbury and signed up for aircrew duties and I became nineteen at the end of that particular week. And so I was sent home on what they called deferred service following the medicals that I had at Shrewsbury and going to Cardington for forty eight hours to have the medicals there. And when I returned I received this letter from the Air Ministry, shall we say, saying, ‘You are now going home on deferred service and we will call you when we’re ready.’ Well, I thought that date would never come but anyway, eventually I received information from them which said report to Lord’s Cricket Ground on the 7th July 1941. No. That would be wrong. No. 1941 it was.
AM: ‘41.
NM: And there was hundreds of us there. All from over the country. The same men who had been on deferred service and they were all called together to the, to Lords Cricket Ground. And then were allocated sleeping accommodation in St Johns Wood. In a lovely place called Viceroy Court. And we were lying on palliases on the floor and there was no furniture but quite obviously the flats would be luxury flats. And having done that they decided right we can’t keep all these men here. It would be rather dangerous. There were thousands of us in a very small area and if the Germans had got to know, then bombed the area they’d have killed thousands of us. And they decided to send parties of us out and I was sent to Scampton. Just the job. And of course Scampton was a live station and we were all very interested to watch these Hampdens and things taking off. The Hampdens I didn’t care two hoots for. In fact, I did go to one of the satellites of Scampton and had a ride in one which I didn’t think was fit for purpose. And so when that was over came back to St Johns Wood which was called ACRC.
AM: What did you actually do at Scampton? Did you just —
NM: Oh just normal.
AM: Square bashing.
NM: Square bashing and all sort of things connected with the air [pause] I’m sorry. My –
AM: Oh don’t worry.
NM: Identification of aircraft and all that sort of thing, you see.
AM: Right.
NM: But anyway we were shipped back, back to ACRC at St John’s Wood and from there I was sent to Newquay in Cornwall for my ITW. Now, having completed all that we then were sent to a little airfield by High Wycombe called Booker and there we were introduced to the Tiger Moth. And I had a very senior flight lieutenant, old flight lieutenant as my teacher sort of thing. And he and I got on very well and in the end I discovered afterwards that having been sent on for the next stage I’d never gone solo in this Tiger Moth. I’d flown it time enough again with him in there. So, then the time came they said, ‘Right. Off you go home. Take a bit of leave at Christmas and report to —' a place at Manchester. A park. Something.
AM: Heaton. Heaton Park.
NM: Heaton Park. Heaton Park. There once again there was thousands of us and we were billeted out and I was billeted with a family — together with a friend of mine, Ron Champion and we were there. And funny things happened which don’t, have nothing to do with my life’s —
AM: Oh no. Tell us. Tell us.
NM: We [pause] there was a small area within the park itself was RAF property. And outside that, outside that we were ourselves again and of course we were staying with these people. Well, one young lad was seen walking around outside the RAF area after midnight. And so of course they called him in and said, ‘What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘Well, my landlady keeps getting in bed with me.’ And [laughs] do you know there must, must have been fifty or so had been there before and they never said a word and he had to go and let the cat out of the bag. After completing all that of course it was decided because we had not got the facilities in this country to train two thousand pilots and so it was decided to send us overseas and I was very fortunate in as much as in the January 1942 we sailed out of Liverpool for Halifax, Nova Scotia. And I do not recommend being in a smaller boat crossing the Atlantic at that time of the year. There was a little, a Polish destroyer with us and he kept disappearing out of sight and coming up the other side. How the hell they kept stuff in their whatever they call them. Where they keep — do all the food for them. I can’t remember.
AM: The galley.
NM: The galley. And anyway one or two of them the first morning out — the boat we were [pause] I think it was lunchtime. No. It had got to be morning and the boat did this. Twice.
AM: Rocking about in the sea.
NM: And everything on the table went whoosh in to a ruck on the floor. Well half of them looked at it and since they were little bit of somehow or other being affected by being at sea half of them went [laughs] went missing the next, the next day and boy could I eat, and I ate everything that came in front of me.
AM: You were not seasick then.
NM: No. No. It didn’t trouble me one little bit and then having landed we got on the train and went to Moncton. The PDSI. Personnel department of the –whatever it is. I can’t remember. And there we stayed. And one of the lads on the boat —I said, I said to him, ‘Shall we go to St George’s Church tonight? To the service.’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ So we went to the service and there we made friends with a family and I’ve been in touch with that family right after the war and they came and stayed with me. How wonderful things are. And then it was decided then we were ready and we were going to be shipped down to the United States. So, we got on a train and we were on that train for two days and three nights. It stopped at Toronto and I managed to get somebody on the train to contact my cousin in Toronto and he was, he came to the train to see me. Well I didn’t know him because he was in uniform and the last time I’d seen him he was in civvies. And he didn’t know me because I was in uniform. But nevertheless it went ok and on we went down into, into Georgia. Turner Field, Georgia. After a short time there they divided us up and I was sent in to, in to Lakeland in Florida.
AM: Yeah. We’re ok.
NM: Yeah. Lakeland in Florida.
AM: Actually. [pause] Ok. I think we’re ok.
NM: And then we were flying Stearmans and having completed what was necessary we were then shipped to Macon in Georgia to fly in the second stage. They called it Advanced Flying School. And we were flying multi —whatever the plane was called. I ought to have my logbook here. That would have helped a great deal. But nevertheless we were flying. And I was very lucky that the instructor that I got was, had been a pupil himself in class 42a and I was in class 42i. We had reached that stage there were so many classes. And we did all the necessary and then we were passed on to Valdosta which was Advanced Flying School. And there we were flying twin engines. Three types of twin engine as well as the A6 which we called [pause] we called the Harvard. And my instructor was an American lieutenant and so he said, ‘Come on Mottershead. We’re going in the Harvard today.’ So off we go and get in this Harvard. And he said, ‘Right. Do the checks.’ So, I did the check. ‘Ok. Taxi around and take off.’ Everything alright, but my right wing was down, and my left wing was up there and I couldn’t get the damned thing right. I thought what have I not done? And I realised the lock that was in the joystick — I hadn’t pulled it out [laughs] so then the wing came up and everything was nice. He said, ‘I shouldn’t do that again if I was you. Watch it in future.’ [laughs] And got back and landed and he said, ‘Right. Off you go and fly it yourself.’ So I did do. And it was a beautiful aircraft to fly. It touched down on all three wheels. No trouble at all. So, having completed there we then on the, in the October, came up for our papers of authority as being a pilot under the United States Army Air Force and I’ve got my silver type wings. The American wings. Then it was a case of I went before a board of four senior American officers and they looked at all my paperwork and said, ‘Would you like to stay behind and teach future classes of UK,’ and because of something that had happened while I was at Macon, Georgia I had to say, ‘I’m very sorry, but I can’t.’ I’ll tell you that separately. And so, on the train back to Macon —back to Moncton in New Brunswick of course I’d already made contact with the family, so I re-made the contact with this family and got on so wonderfully well but the main thing about being here in Britain and being over there was the fact that we were limited by ration books to XYZ whereas they —it was there for you to buy and eat etcetera. Marvellous. And of course, I could eat. There’s no argument about it. So, after a while they said, ‘Right,’ — get your knapsack, not your knapsack, the bag with all your bits and pieces in. ‘There’s a boat in for you.’ So, right, we got on the train, landed in Halifax and walked off on to the quay. You can say that again. A boat. It was the original Queen Elizabeth. Oh dear. And we got on board that feeling millionaires. But there was that many on from different countries and different regiments and all the rest of it. All coming across with one purpose in mind and that was to kill Nazism. And so, we crossed the Atlantic unescorted. Our liner was doing twenty six knots during the day and through the night she was doing thirty two ‘cause that gave it that little bit extra to get out where the Germans might well have figured out where we might be on such and such a time and so, one morning we woke up and we were in the Clyde.
AM: Just like that.
NM: Just like that. We’d gone through the boom and we were in the Clyde. So we had to then gather our things together and come down stairs after stairs ‘til we came to water level. And then we got on tugs which took us over to dry land and there was a train waiting for us to take us to [pause] well you’re asking me now [pause] well-known place up in Yorkshire anyway. And of course they said, ‘Right. Well you’re here now. Right. Take a bit of leave. You’ve been away three —six months.. Go and see your parents,’ etcetera which I did do and then I got notice, right —'Report to Little Rissington in Gloucestershire.’ And that’s where I was flying Oxfords. I had a little student tuition on the Oxford and then the instructor said, ‘Right. Mottershead go and get yourself some practice.’ Now –
AM: So how big was an Oxford? What?
NM: Oxford aircraft.
AM: Yeah. How big? How big was that?
NM: Twin engine.
AM: Right. Ok.
NM: The American when they open the throttles get hold of the throttles get hold of them and pull them back. We do this. Get behind the throttles and press them forward. So I was more or less getting the American system out of, out of use and back in. So he said, ‘Right Mottershead. Take that one and go and get a bit of flying yourself.’ So me — I flew at about two ninety. Something like that. And flew until I picked up the River Severn and I flew up the River Severn until I got to within a mile to where I lived and I flew around and around and around. And after a while I thought, right, well I’d better get back. In the meantime a front had moved in and I was above cloud. And I was flying down towards back in the general direction of Little Rissington and I did not know where I was. And I’ve got, I came up with —I shall either A) I can jump out with my parachute and let my aircraft go and crash in to something. Or B) I can go down through and hit something that I wouldn’t wish to hit like a church tower or something like that. And as I was pondering over it I looked on my port beam and there was an aircraft coming towards me and he passed in front of me and I said to myself, ‘If you know where you’re going I’m going with you.’ And I followed him and he, it was a, it was a radar station where —not radar. Signals and all the rest of it. At a place called Madeley near Hereford. And he landed and I landed after him. And so they just picked up the phone and rang Little Rissington, ‘One of your boys has touched down here.’ So he came over and I took off and followed him home. Went the day well. Having done all that I was then posted to Harwell where we had clapped out Wellingtons who’d done all the necessary they wanted to or at least they were wanted for and were in a clapped-out situation. And as we stood there we crewed up. I did not choose anybody. I just stood there.
AM: I was going to ask you about crewing up. How that went.
NM: I stood there, and they came and joined me. It was as easy as that.
AM: Yeah.
NM: Right.
AM: Together or in ones and twos?
NM: Well, I don’t whether they’d been talking with one lot over there and they looked at me and thought well I like the look of him and so they came over and joined me. So, I’d got everything except the flight engineer and the second gunner at that stage. Well, I didn’t stay at Harwell but I went to one of their satellites. A place we called Hampstead Norreys near Newbury and we were flying out of there. Well, we had been warned, ‘Don’t over shoot.’ Come in and land properly because there was a big pit, gravel pit at the end of the runway and people had gone in. Oh dear. The trouble. Anyway, we flew that and did all the necessaries and then having finished they said, ‘Right off you go home and get some leave and report to a place called Riccall,’ near –
AM: York.
NM: Yes. Selby. There we go, there we were introduced to the Halifax. Four engine bombers.
AM: So, you finish your training, you’ve got your crew and you’ve gone to Riccall. Have you been assigned to a squadron at this point?
NM: No. Not yet.
AM: Right. Ok.
NM: And there at Riccall I picked up a flight engineer and another gunner. And once again in latter years I said to the flight engineer, ‘How did you come to join me?’ He said ‘Well, I saw you standing there and I walked over and stood with you. It’s as easy as that.’ And so the same with the gunner. He came and joined me. And then of course on completion of that but before then the chief flying instructor at Riccall was called Harry Drummond. So, I got used, just used to flying the Halifax. He said, ‘Right, Mottershead take your crew and there’s, one of the planes over there. One of the Halibags. Take that and get a bit of flying hours in with them.’ Fair enough. Thank you very much and off we went. We got in this aircraft. Taxied around to the runway. Ok. Right. Open the throttle. I was belting down the runway and looked at my speedometer. I hadn’t got any. No speed. And it was too late to stop so I took off without it. And I flew without a speedometer around a time or two. And we tried to, what had happened we’d left the cover on the pitot head. Once again checking beforehand. We tried — first of all we opened the hatch in the front and tried to push it off and we couldn’t do anything like that. We couldn’t reach it. And so I switched on the heater and the heater wouldn’t burn it off. I thought, ‘Well, righto. Well, I’ve got you up here. You lads. I’d better get you down again.’ So, I said, ‘Right, we’re going in now.’ And I approached a little too fast because I didn’t want to stall and go in before I reached the runway. And so, I sort of hit the runway and bounced a little bit which wasn’t good for old Halifax bombers and whipped around and parked up where I’d taken it from and the crew got out. The wireless operator stood on the shoulders of the flight engineer, reached up and took the pitot head cover off just before Harry Drummond arrived around the corner. And he gave me a rollicking for landing the way I did but I didn’t tell him what had gone wrong. Went the day well again.
AM: Yeah.
NM: And so the day came that we had to go to Lissett. We were transferred to Lissett. Now, I think I’d probably heard of Lissett but we all went. There was Doug Cameron and his crew and myself and my crew. And of course, we had to get a bit of flying in together before we went on operations. I arrived there. Can you switch off a second, I’ll go and fetch —
[recording paused]
NM: Are you on?
AM: Ok. We’re back on.
NM: Right. I arrived at Lissett on the 15th of June 1943. And after a familiarisation on the 16th and the 17th — on the 21st was my first operation. To Krefeld. Now, all targets, as Bomber Command will tell you, have got searchlights and flak as well as fighters waiting to get hold of you. So, we went, went through the — etcetera. And poor Doug Cameron — a different story. I must tell you about him. Not on my record. And as a result, when we got back — you see a rear gunner never sees what’s ahead of him. He can only see what’s behind and he could see the fires in Krefeld burning thirty miles away. So when we arrived back at Lissett we went to the debriefing room and he said to me, ‘I’m not bloody going again.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I am not bloody going again.’ And he was taken out and stripped straightaway of his brevet, sergeants and all the rest of it. What happened to him I don’t know but in, in hindsight he did me a very good turn. For they took my other gunner, mid-upper gunner from me and a couple of gunners had just completed a tour — a Canadian pilot’s tour of operations. But they needed another five runs themselves so, one of them related, the Groupie, said to — ‘Go around and see Mottershead. He’s looking for some gunners.’ And they came around to see me and we were discussing one thing or another. And I said, ‘Right. This is the position. My job is to fly that thing. And if you tell me to dive to port I shall dive to port. Don’t you worry about it. Everything you tell me I shall do.’ They said, ‘We’re in.’ And so they stayed with me for their five ops which cleared them. Then I got my original gunner back. Mid-upper gunner back.
AM: Mid-upper.
NM: Having lost the rear gunner. And then I had nineteen different gunners on my tour of operation which was must be a flaming record with the exception of perhaps a wing commander and that who had to grab a crew where he could get one.
AM: Why did they keep changing, Bluey?
NM: Well, I had to have gunners and they [pause] Smith and Edwards were the names of the two gunners were and we got on a like a mountain on fire and so it went on one after another. I went to Berlin on three occasions. I went to [pause] oh hell. Where’s the cathedral?
AM: Oh.
NM: We went —
AM: Dresden. Not Dresden.
NM: No. Cologne.
AM: Oh Cologne. Yeah.
NM: I went to Cologne on three occasions. I went to Mannheim on three occasions and in between all the other nights that we were bombing etcetera. On the second visit to Mannheim we were, people do not realise this, we were flying in complete darkness and other than the fact we saw markers ahead so the bomb aimer led us, led me to it, and he said, ‘Right. Bombs gone.’ Two or three seconds later there was such a hell of a bang. I said, ‘What the bloody hell was that?’ And what had happened an aircraft above us had dropped his load and hit my port inner engine. It sheared the blades off the engine. Off the propellers. And of course, the engine ran away and with it going like that it shook the plane as though it was really in trouble. Anyway, fortunately I’d got a very good flight engineer. He shut the engine down. Closed it down. Then he pumped all the fuel out of the tank nearest to the port inner across the wing to the tanks on the other side you see. Now, my reaction was, when that happened — stick the nose down let’s get out of here which I did do. Because the explosion had hit the Perspex around me on the port, especially on the port side and did other damage etcetera and so it was, we were down to five thousand feet before we could make headway. Now, everyone in Bomber Command will tell you if you are on your own flying at five thousand feet by heck you’ll soon have somebody on your tail. So, we were crossing and as we flew cross country in the dark I could see the lights of this town or city, whatever it was, I could see all the street lights because being under Nazi control they didn’t have to have a blackout. And so I said, ‘Right, get some Window ready in case the searchlights come up,’ etcetera. And we gave a dose of Window and they didn’t come on and we kept flying and I crossed —
AM: What’s Window?
NM: Window.
AM: What’s that mean?
NM: Slips of paper, silver backed paper.
AM: Oh yes.
NM: And that dropping by the millions fill their, their —
AM: The radar.
NM: The radar.
AM: The signal.
NM: What we call Grass.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
NM: They couldn’t pick out what was what and [pause] where’d I got to —
AM: So, you’re on your way back.
NM: On our way back –
AM: You’ve seen all the lights.
NM: We crossed the coast and I said to the flight engineer, ‘What’s the fuel like?’ He said, ‘We’ve got enough to get back to Lissett.’ And so, we went back to Lissett. Now, the hydraulics on the Halifax is controlled by the port inner engine. The hydraulic. And I didn’t know whether my undercarriage was locked. So I called in and they said, ‘Right. Fly down the runway as low as you can, and we’ll put the searchlight on you and have a look at you.’ So, having done that they said, ‘Right. We think you’re locked in alright.’ I said, ‘Right.’ So I went around again and landed. Went the day well.
AM: Again.
NM: We were back home. And it went on until the last. My last trip was to Berlin on the 22nd of November 1943 and the Wing Commander Jock Calder was on that night. I feel sure he was on. So when we came, you know, came from our aircraft in to debriefing Jock said to me, ‘That’s it Bluey. No more.’ And that was the end of my tour. The end of my flying altogether. I never did fly anything else.
AM: Ever.
NM: Ever.
AM: DFC.
NM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I then, they decided they needed controllers for operating Oboe. Now, Oboe was controlling aircraft over Germany from, from either — the main station was in Norfolk. Winterton. Did you happen to see the programme last night on — it was all about the lighthouses turned into houses etcetera. And Winterton was the Cat station. Now there was another station down in Deal in Kent and that was called the Mouse station. And the Cat station was controlled — the Cat station controlled the pilot. The Mouse station was talking to the navigator, bomb aimer. We’re talking about Mosquitos. And so, he would, when he reached the area he wanted to he’d pick up our signal. If he was too near he had dots. If he was too far out he had dashes. He had to have a steady signal and kept flying at a distance from the station in Norfolk at a distance of say two hundred and fifty miles away. And if he kept flying he would complete a two hundred and fifty mile circuit all around us, you see. But [pause] so, I had to go down to Swanage to learn all about this Oboe business at a little place called Tilly Whim. Down there. They seemed to have a station of the same thing. So when we’d finished. Right. I had no say on where I was going and I was sent to Winterton in Norfolk. Not to the one in Kent. The next morning after I arrived there I walked into the signals office and there was a young lady on the teleprinter talking to headquarters for 8 Group. Headquarters at — I forget the name for the moment. On the tele — on the teleprinter. And when she’d finished she looked at me and I said, ‘You’re wearing too much makeup.’ I’d found my wife. So —
AM: What did she say back?
NM: She didn’t. She [laughs] she was, she was a WAAF, you see. Oh dear. Oh dear and then of course that went on until the war had finished and then they didn’t want anybody there then.
AM: So what exactly were you doing there, Bluey?
NM: I was watching the younger part of the air force. That they’d got everything set up alright. The distance and all that sort of thing. What was going on. And I was even taken from there and posted down in to Deal. The Cat station. For a while.
AM: The Cat one.
NM: Anyway, when the war was over we didn’t need either of them. And so of course I had met Kay and there we are, by hangs another tale. So, I was still in the air force and they decided well you’ve done a lot of link trainer flying. The link trainer aircraft in the dark. It’s a statutory thing but you’re all closed in. You can’t see what was going on. You had to fly by instruments. And so, I learned, I learned how to do that and they posted me first of all to Prestwick in Norfolk.
AM: In –
NM: In Ayrshire. To the airfield there well that was then being taken over to become the airfield for Glasgow.
AM: Yes.
NM: The main airfield. So, I was on there a very short time and they said, ‘Right. Well we’ll post you to Marham in Norfolk.’ And I was on the same thing but when I got there and set up everything and ready for pilots they said well the war’s over we don’t need to do this anymore. And so, the rest of my time I was doing all sorts of jobs. Particularly, orderly officer and all that sort of thing and then I reached the stage where I thought, ‘Right. Look. We’ve got to go ahead now. We’ve got civilian life ahead,’ and so my dear wife and I decided —
AM: So, you were married by this time.
NM: We were getting married then.
AM: Ok. Yeah. Sorry.
NM: The war had finished up. We had already arranged the marriage up in Lanarkshire because she was a Lanarkshire girl, for the 18th of August 1945. The war finished in the Far East the 15th of August 1945. And so, we went up there and got married and thereafter settled down and I didn’t quite know what to do. Like a lot of people who had been in the services it was difficult to know exactly what to do. Anyway, there was a company in Liverpool called Silcocks Animal Foods that supplied to farming communities and I’d been a farmer’s son. And the position I was in and a decent sort of looking fellow the Silcocks agent who used to, who went to Shropshire, covered Shropshire said, ‘Well why don’t you join us?’ And so, I made enquiries and I joined Silcocks. I was sent to Nuneaton under an agent who had been there years to help him and I did all the necessary. And then came a vacancy of an area in Derbyshire and so I was sent from there to Derbyshire and landed in Brailsford on the, in August 1952. Something like that. And settled down and I was going around the farms and of course they knew I was a flying type and at that time Brooke Bond had a certain types of cigarette. Not cigarettes but cards in the thing.
AM: Yes.
NM: And that helped me to get familiar with the families etcetera. Swapping and one thing and another. And I reached the stage where one Remembrance Sunday morning at Brailsford, after that Mr Cecil Dalton who ran Silkolene Lubricants at Belper said, ‘Neville, will you come and work for me?’ And I said, ‘Mr Cecil, I will come and work for you.’ And I went and worked for Silkolene Lubricants until I retired.
AM: Right.
NM: Good.
AM: Neville. It sounds funny to hear you called Neville. I always think of you as Bluey.
NM: Yeah. Well I’m still known as Bluey of course. As you know.
AM: Just tell me why you became called Bluey.
NM: Because of my hair. I had ginger red hair. Now, the Australians — those big kangaroos in Australia which have reddy brown hair were called Blues. And so, when the first Australian saw me he said, ‘Well you’re a Bluey.’ And that’s it.
AM: It stuck.
NM: And it’s been with me ever since.
AM: Can I ask you a little bit about the 158 Squadron Association.
NM: Yes.
AM: And you became chairman I think. Tell me a little about that.
NM: Yes. Well I started looking, I started when I came [pause] when I’d finished. Well as soon as I could, I can’t remember exactly, I decided to draw up a register of all those who had been with 158 Squadron and [pause] now I’m looking for something in particular. I think I left it next door. But it’s the book with all the names in. The complete crews. And I kept getting these names of these, of these people and inviting them. And so in 1989 I think it was I got the freedom of entry into this town of Bridlington for the squadron and that’s how it developed from there. And I’m still now president of the squadron until such time as I kick my boots and somebody else will take over.
AM: So, every year you go up to Lissett.
NM: Every time. Yes. Yes. Yes. Now I’ll —
AM: And what about the memorial? Tell me a little bit more about the memorial at Lissett.
NM: Yes.
AM: How did that come about?
NM: Well. After Lissett the old airfield became a farm. Belonged to a farmer. And the powers that be decided it would be the ideal site to put up wind generators. So they put up twelve wind generators on the old airfield. In the meantime, 158 — if you reverse those figure you’ve got 851 and that was the number of young people who were killed on that squadron alone. Eight hundred and fifty one. Eight hundred and fifty males and one female. The one female was a sergeant WAAF in the Met office and she’d never been in an aeroplane and she went on a flight with someone unscheduled just to show her what went on. The damned thing crashed on [pause] that Head that comes out north of Bridlington. Crashed there and killed the lot of them. And she was one of them. So there was eight hundred and fifty airmen, men, who were killed and one WAAF. And so, it was decided by the people who were going to put these generators up that they needed a memorial and of course we were behind it and said yes. And that memorial is still drawing people. Just as the Angel of the North drew people to see it so the one at Lissett. Is that still on? In fact, the other day, one of our members who lives up in the Wakefield area had been up there and gone to have a look at it. He said, ‘It looks awful,’ he said, ‘All we’ve got is stalks left.’ What happened is there are flowers which bloom.
AM: Yeah. There’s poppies there.
NM: And then it’s all left so that the seeds from that drop down to the ground and re –
AM: Yeah.
NM: Come alive again. And he went at the bad time of the year. So, when he rang again I said, ‘Look there’s nothing I can do about it. As much as I appreciate you ringing me and telling me. I know what its like. But,’ I said, ‘We have nobody in that area at all to do anything.’ But the locals do it. Anyway, I understood that they’d even called in the East Midlands, East Yorkshire organisation had called in people to go and have a clean up there.
AM: People.
NM: I hadn’t ordered it. They just went and did it.
AM: Excellent because it’s a lovely memorial isn’t it.
NM: It’s a lovely memorial. A friend of mine from Derbyshire whose funeral I attended this year — he always talked about me and us and I said, ‘Well take a run up there and have a look at the memorial yourself.’ So he, along with another couple and he and his wife went to see it and then I saw him a few days afterwards. I said, ‘What do you think of the memorial?’ And he said, ‘It’s a very very wonderful thing.’ He said, ‘I read every name on that memorial and yours wasn’t on it.’ [laughs] So, I said, ‘Well it won’t be will it? I’m still here.’
AM: Still here. They’re the ones that are not.
NM: He didn’t realise that you see. But it really is. Oh, and let me go and fetch something first.
[recording paused]
AM: So I’m looking at a picture of the first meeting of the Squadron Association.
NM: In 1947.
AM: Ok. Were you there? Are you on it?
NM: Yes. Yes. I’m on the back row. You’ll see me.
AM: Point. Point yourself out to me.
NM: This little chap here, look.
AM: Oh of course you are.
NM: And that was arranged by Scruffy Dale at — I forget the name of the place now. And we all turned up for this and that photograph was taken. And there’s all sorts of people on that photograph and I can — there’s no one left on that photograph as far as I’m concerned. Only me. All the rest are gone. Now, I want to show you this because this is what I’m working on.
AM: Bluey’s showing me the most beautiful tapestry. Is it tapestry or cross stitch?
NM: No. It’s tapestry.
AM: Tapestry of the Halifax and —
NM: The crew.
AM: The crew and it’s beautiful and we’ll take a photograph of it.
NM: It’s not finished yet ‘cause I’ll go and fetch the other bit if I haven’t got it here. This is the other bit.
AM: How long have you been doing this for Bluey?
NM: [laughs] Oh heaven knows.
AM: It’s lovely. I’m going to end the interview now but we’ll take a photograph of this — of the tapestry that Bluey’s been doing.
NM: Now that fits. That will be fitted in there.
AM: Right.
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 Bluey Mottershead
Creator
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Annie Moody
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-19
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Sound
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AMotterheadN150719
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:45:34 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Born on a farm in Shropshire, his best friend from his youth joined the Royal Air Force as aircrew and was killed at RAF Honington when a German aircraft bombed the station. A desire for revenge made him enlist for flying duties in January 1941. He was sent to RAF Scampton for basic training where he had a flight in a Hampden which he rated as "not fit for purpose".
Flying training commenced at RAF Booker on Tiger Moths and he was then sent out of England as part of the Empire Training Scheme. Flying training on Stearman aircraft recommenced at Lakeland in Florida followed by multi-engined training at Macon in Georgia and Valdosta for advanced training. In October 1942 he became a pilot under the American Army Air Force System and declined an offer to stay and become an instructor.
Returning to Britain on an unescorted Queen Elizabeth liner, he trained on Oxfords at RAF Little Rissington. Posted to RAF Harwell to fly, in Bluey's terms "clapped out Wellingtons" he describes the system for forming a crew. They were posted to RAF Riccall to fly the Halifax.
The next posting was to an operational squadron at RAF Lissett where he did his first operational flight to Krefeld in June 1943 and trips to Berlin, Cologne and Mannheim. After his trip to Krefeld, his rear gunner refused to fly and was removed. On his second trip to Mannheim, Bluey's aircraft was struck by a bomb from an aircraft flying above. They had to reduce height and so used Window to disguise their location. The final trip was to Berlin in November 1943 and, having completed his tour, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Bluey never flew again. Sent to Tilly Whim, Bluey was trained to operate Oboe and explains the device. Posted to an Oboe station at RAF Winterton to monitor junior operatives, he met his future wife.
After the war had finished he became an instructor on the Link Trainer and sent to various RAF stations and finally to RAF Marham from where he was demobilised and returned to civilian life. In civilian life, employment in the farm feed industry was followed by time in the lubricant industry until retirement. Bluey compiled a register of all crews that flew with 158 Squadron and formed a Squadron association in 1947, of which he became president, and organised a memorial to the squadron at former RAF Lissett.
Temporal Coverage
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1943-06
1943-11
Spatial Coverage
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England--Gloucestershire
England--Norfolk
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Canada
United States
Florida
Florida--Lakeland
Georgia
Georgia--Macon
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Mannheim
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
158 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
Halifax
Hampden
Harvard
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
love and romance
memorial
military ethos
Oboe
Oxford
pilot
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Honington
RAF Lissett
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Marham
RAF Riccall
RAF Scampton
recruitment
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/634/8904/PRobinsonD1601.1.jpg
6f5724486c610bd863a402940f8cc060
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/634/8904/ARobinsonD160911.2.mp3
4f37bc0e490f864de3f1ed0ae6cedfbd
Dublin Core
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Title
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Robinson, Douglas
D Robinson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Robinson, D
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Douglas Robinson (1922 - 2017 1215638, 170413 Royal Air Force) and five photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 158 Squadron and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Douglas Robinson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-09-11
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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DR: Unfortunately, when I came to Oundle people started calling me Dougie and if I, if there’s one thing -
GR: You don’t like. Yeah.
AM: Right. We won’t do that. Right. Here goes then. So, my name’s Annie Moody and I’m a volunteer with the International Bomber Command Centre and today we’re in Oundle and it’s the 11th of September 2016 and I’m with Flight Lieutenant Douglas Robinson and he’s going to tell us his story. So I’m going to start off, if I may, just asking what your date of birth was.
DR: Date of birth.
AM: Yeah.
DR: 27th of July 1922.
AM: ’22. Right. And where were you born Doug?
DR: Where?
AM: Where were you born?
DR: I was born in Skegness.
AM: Skeggy. And what, what did you parents do? What was your family background? What was your family like?
DR: Well my father was a retired warrant officer from the Indian army and that’s, that was it. He was retired. He did a job as Registrar of births and deaths for the district around there. Well the, not the district. Skegness and one or two surrounding villages.
AM: Yeah. Did you have brothers and sisters or -
DR: Sorry?
AM: Did you have brothers and sisters?
DR: Yes. I had three of each. Three brothers. Three sisters.
AM: Right.
DR: My eldest brother also went in to the Indian army but he, not until during the war and he was commissioned into the Indian army. Had to come out I’m afraid when they gave India independence.
AM: Right. And what about schooling? What was your schooling like?
DR: Skegness Grammar School.
AM: Yeah. Did you enjoy it?
DR: Well. I didn’t dislike it. Didn’t really enjoy it.
AM: No.
DR: It was alright at times.
AM: How old were you when you left? Sixteen.
DR: Sixteen.
AM: Sixteen. So you would be, that would have been 1938.
DR: Yes. 1938. Around there.
AM: So what did you do when you left school?
DR: I went into a bank. The, have you heard of the TSB? I started as a junior clerk in the TSB and it was strange actually because it was a brand new office. They built it and you know there was no business there and there was the manager and me. The manager was only in his early twenties. He lost his life in the navy during the war.
AM: Right.
DR: I don’t know whether you’ve heard about it but there was a [terrible buzzing noise from interference on microphone -] [a ship, a naval ship escorting the Queen Mary from the [?] across the Atlantic bringing American troops and I think it was the Mary was a lot faster than the cruiser that he was on and so it zigzagged to keep the -] And one day bright sunshine as it is today, middle of the afternoon the ships came together and neither of them gave way and the Mary went straight through it, total loss of life. He was on that. His widow, she was, she’s dead now, she got a pension from Cunard as a result of that.
AM: Blimey.
DR: [?]
AM: So there you were though, a bank clerk with your, with your young manager.
DR: Yeah.
AM: And along came the war.
DR: [not then?] What made you join, what made you join the RAF?
DR: I don’t really, I don’t really know. I did a year in “dad’s army,” The local defence volunteers and then I don’t know I began to think I ought to be doing a bit more -
AM: Ok.
DR: For the war than this.
AM: What were you actually doing in the defence, in “dad’s army” then?
DR: Well we used to guard things that didn’t need guarding. The electricity power station, power thing and the gas works and the funny one was the telephone exchange because they’d built a new post office at Skegness and the telephone exchange was on the top floor so you’d be defending the telephone exchange but people would be coming for posting letters anyway[laughs] I mean.
AM: When you say defending it, defending it with what?
DR: Rifles.
AM: Oh you actually had rifles.
DR: For a year I had a 303 rifle and, I think it was fifty rounds of ammunition in my bedroom every night.
AM: Did you ever, did you ever use it in anger?
DR: No. No. We practiced firing but we never used it in anger.
AM: Yeah. So -
DR: There was -
AM: Sorry. Go on.
DR: There was a scare, a national sort of scare about September of 1940 that the invasion was about to start and we were called out with one of the local, one of the army units that was stationed locally and went out in to the country and spent a cold night out there. Came back next day when it was all cancelled.
AM: But I interrupted you ‘cause I asked you how come you joined the RAF.
DR: Well as I say I felt I ought to do a bit more and I think, oh what really eventually did it. One of my jobs at work was to go to the post office and I went in one day and they’d got a leaflet there which was in sort of three sections and the first one it was about pilots joining and they got twelve and six pence per day I think it was and the next one was navigators and they also got twelve and six pence a day and the third one was gunner eight and sixpence a day so I thought well I can’t fly, well I’ll never be able to fly and I’d done reasonably well in my school certificate maths so I thought well navigator must involve mathematics so I went. I sent this form off to become a navigator and I went to Lincoln for an interview. I’m not sure whether it was at Lincoln or if it was somewhere else but anyway there was a board of three officers. I think it was a group captain and he said, ‘Why do you want to become a navigator?’ And I told him and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you want to be a pilot?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think I could, could do that,’ so he said, ‘Well, I think you could. Would you be guided by me?’ And so I said, I said in my ignorance, I said, ‘Well if I went on a pilot’s course and failed it could I then become a navigator?’ ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘You’ve my assurance on that.’ It shows how green I was. But anyway I agreed to become a pilot and that was it.
AM: And that was that. So, so talk me through it then. What happened? So they’ve decided you’re going to do pilot training,
DR: Yes.
AM: How did that all start? Where did you go first for -
DR: Well first of all I went down to a place near Torquay. Babbacombe near Torquay and I got in a flight there of about thirty five of us and it was my first experience of RAF jiggery pokery because the NCO in charge of the flight said, ‘I know the postings clerk and for,’ I think it was, ‘sixpence a head I can get you posted where you want to go,’ you see so we all wanted to go to the same place. So I paid my sixpence and all the rest of it and we paraded in the little theatre they’d got there on a Saturday for the posting and of course they posted the wrong Robinson. He, he went on my sixpence. So I had to sort of stay there. I stayed the next week and went along for the posting things and I wasn’t on that one. Then on the next week I found out the, I found the NCO who I’d paid my money to and I said, ‘Look I’m fed up being here. Get me posted this week or else.’ And I got posted but instead of going where the others had gone to Torquay I was posted up to Scarborough and I did my initial training at Scarborough and from there I went to Southern Rhodesia.
AM: Right.
DR: To do my flying training.
AM: How did you get to southern Rhodesia?
DR: By troop ship. Really packed with troops. They were going to -
AM: Where did it sail from?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Where did it sail from? Can you remember?
DR: It actually sailed from Glasgow. We were, we were in West Kirby in the Wirral for a few days and then they took us up to Glasgow and we sailed from the Clyde in a convoy, a big convoy. Called at Freetown on the way and then around to Durban.
AM: How long did it take? Ish.
DR: It seemed forever but -
AM: Yeah.
DR: We were in Freetown for several days whilst they refuelled and one thing and another and then as I say went around to Durban.
AM: Were there any scares while you were on the boat?
DR: Not going out. No.
AM: No.
DR: No. We were all at, we had a big convoy. We had, I was trying to think of the battleship that was with us. It was in Freetown near us. It went on from there to the Far East and when they sank the Prince of Wales it was sunk at the same time. I can’t thing which one it was now.
GR: Was that the Repulse?
DR: Repulse.
GR: Repulse. Yeah.
DR: Yes. Repulse I remember sailing past it as we went out of Freetown. Went. Yeah.
AM: So there you are a boy from Skegness.
DR: Sorry?
AM: So here you are a boy from Skegness.
DR: Yes [laughs]
AM: In Rhodesia.
DR: Yes. Yes.
AM: So what was that like? What?
DR: Well it was, it wasn’t bad at all really. We, there was a transit camp we went to first which was the old, it was a showground really and we were in the cattle shed, cattle, where they used to display the cows and so on, had the things on the floor we sat on but it was alright. That was just near Bulawayo. Then we went up to what was then, well now Harare anyway and that’s when I started my flying training. Initial training.
AM: So what was the training like? How did you -
DR: Training on Tiger Moths. And I had a very nice Australian instructor. Very good with me otherwise I wouldn’t have passed but –
AM: How, how did they go about teaching you to fly?
DR: Well he sat in the front cockpit and I sat in the back and communicated by tubes but, but he, he told you what you do and you would do a movement with him and then he’d tell you to do it on your own. It wasn’t really all that difficult.
AM: Could you drive a car at the time?
DR: No. No.
AM: No.
DR: I learned to fly eleven years before I learned to drive a car.
AM: The reason I ask that is because it’s pretty much the same I guess. Somebody’s showing you how to do it and then you do it.
DR: Yeah.
AM: And how long was that training? Were there any alarms and scares in that?
DR: That, that initial training we started at the beginning of November and finished at Christmas.
AM: Right.
DR: And then –
AM: So quite quick.
DR: Moved back down towards Bulawayo for the service training which there were two lots of stations, for service training. One for single engine aircraft by and large expected to go on to fighters and the other for twin engine so we went on the twin engines, the old Oxfords.
AM: How did they decide which you were going to be?
DR: Well you were asked your preference but you didn’t necessarily get it but they obviously had a certain number to post to each place and they made up the number if, but I went on the one I wanted to do actually. The twin engine one. And -
AM: So what did you go on to then then as a twin engine -?
DR: That was the Oxford. It was a –
AM: Right
DR: Wooden aircraft actually. It was designed, it was a nice little aircraft actually.
AM: Yeah. Tell me a bit more about the training then. Any alarms and scares or did it all go smoothly?
DR: Well, yeah, I had a, had a little prang on night flying. The airfield there, it had, it was strange ‘cause it was a grass airfield but there was a concrete thing across one end which we taxied on. You’d land and get on there and beyond that there was a lot of wasteland which was sort of elephant grass you know and that, this night I took off. I think it was my first night solo and I took off but didn’t do it very well and I finished off skidding along the ground in this elephant grass. So I got out and started to walk back and I met the crash thing coming. He said, ‘Have you seen the pilot of that aircraft?’ And I said, ‘Well I am the pilot.’ [laughs] So that was it. But that was all. That wasn’t much. It wasn’t very scary. I mean, just slid along the ground.
AM: Just skidded. It was like a skid.
DR: It was just, I mean, you know, people weren’t overjoyed with you [laughs].
AM: I was going to say, well that was going to be my question. What happened? How much damage did you do to it?
DR: Oh I -
AM: And what happened as a result?
DR: I imagine, I don’t know really what they did. Whether it was written off or not. It probably was. I don’t know. But no. We, we got away with it.
AM: And what happened as a result? Did you just get a telling off or just -
DR: Yeah I got a bit of a telling off and that was about it, about it but the funny thing was they immediately rush you to sick quarters because they think you know there must be some [laughs] you must have some injury, internal if not, but I was in sick quarters overnight I think. That’s all. And then I had to go down to the flight and went with an instructor around, around the low flying area. Supposed to get over your nerves or something.
AM: Climb back on the bike.
DR: Yeah.
AM: So to speak.
DR: Yeah. So that wasn’t really much though.
AM: So what next? You’ve -
DR: Well when we eventually passed out from there and got our wings and so on we went on a train down to Cape Town and then we got on a troop ship that was coming back to this country, almost, there were a few people on but there was about a hundred of us from Rhodesia and there were also some people who had been on air crew training in South Africa. I’ve got a book by one of them in there. Coming back we got on this ship in Cape Town, the Oronsay which was, there was a line called the Orient Line and they only had about four or five ships and they all started with the letters OR Orient, Orion, Orontes and so on and we’d been on our way to Free, going to go to Freetown on the way back, on our way and then in the early morning when it was still dark there was a horrible bang [laughs] and a torpedo came in. I heard the torpedo hit, hit the ship, I heard it hit the things, heard the in-rush of water and I heard the torpedo go bang and I thought it’s time to get up so we got out. There wasn’t, there was no panic. People went quite quickly but quietly upstairs. Unfortunately when we got on deck, well I suppose we knew it before we got on deck but my boat station was on the port side but it had developed a great list to starboard which was where the torpedo had gone in. So all the boats on the starboard er on the port side couldn’t be lowered so which, so went around to the starboard side and there didn’t seem to be any. They’d all either gone or, so I went, I went back to the port side and they had several rafts there and I let one of these rafts go and it went down into the darkness and I thought well there’s not much point in following that. I didn’t know where it had gone so when I went back around and where, oh there was a boat about to go, the last boat. I met a friend of mine actually on the way around and so we went to get on this boat and the chap standing in the thing said, ‘Just room for one more,’ and my friend got on first. He said, ‘Room for one more.’ My friend said, ‘Can’t you get my friend on? There’s room for,’ ‘No, only room for one.’ So he got on and I didn’t [laughs].
AM: So then what happened?
DR: Well there were, this ship, I think with it being a converted ship, you know it was a peacetime liner and they’d converted it for a troop ship and they’d got it so that they’d got one boat inside another. Both used the same lowering gear, what do they call them? Davits or whatever and somehow they’d managed to lower this one right on top of the other and it was across it.
AM: Right.
DR: And so quite a number, well half a dozen people had gone down and were trying to get the top one off so I thought well I might as well go and have a go with that so I went down the ropes and having a go, put my shoulder to it and all the rest of it. You couldn’t budge it at all. It was [?]. We saw the captain’s boat go down, the captain get in and his officers and they started to go away and we thought well, you know, this is a bit odd but anyway he came back for us.
AM: Right.
DR: So we got off in his boat although after a while he transferred us to other boats to even the load out. So that was it.
AM: So where did you all get? So you’re all there in the lifeboats. Where did you get to?
DR: Well -
AM: And had it, had the main the ship sunk by this time?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Or –
DR: Well we, no it was, we were all in these lifeboats. I think there were about sixteen lifeboats successfully launched and we’re all sort of around the ship and the captain decided that it wasn’t going to sink so he started calling for volunteers among his crew to go back and sail the thing and I thought, anyway he’d no sooner done that then there was another great bang and another one, another torpedo went in. I think, I think they fired another three and eventually the thing instead of being listing it righted itself but then it gradually went down, the stern went down and the -
AM: Yeah.
DR: Nose came up and then down she went.
AM: That was it. So what happened to the lifeboats? How did you -
DR: Lifeboats.
AM: How did you come ashore then?
DR: Well we rowed for eight days.
AM: Eight days.
DR: Eight days yeah. Actually the first night it rained and rained and I had the misfortune to sit or probably, probably the good fortune to sit near the pump and it were only a little diddly thing you did this with. I was doing that all night, pumping but everybody else was baling so probably I had the easy job but we, we had to pump a few times and then after about, as I say eight days, we tied up actually, we tied nine boats in a row. It was the captain’s idea we’d stay together. I think we had nine boats in our row and there was six in the other I think. Six or seven. And after the first night we never saw the others again. They sort of disappeared but our nine stayed together. On the eighth day the, a lot of the crew were getting a bit restless. They said it would be better to be separate. We’d make more progress if we were separated and in the early afternoon the captain said, ‘Alright. Separate.’ We all separated and we’d no sooner separated than somebody spotted a Sunderland Flying Boat. It was only a little dot miles away. I mean people started sending up flares and I wondered what was happening and then I realised what it was. This Sunderland came over and circled us and dropped a few things with food in and he was in touch with the CO in Freetown and they said they’d be sending a destroyer out to us at midnight. So we sat patiently in the boat until midnight and then this destroyer appeared and we thankfully went up the scramble nets and we just sort of -
[machine pause]
GR: Life boats.
DR: I think so. I think so.
GR: Yeah.
DR: I’m not, I wouldn’t be certain.
GR: And did all the lifeboats make it to the dest -?
DR: Well some of, there were different stories. You see our nine, our nine stayed together and we were all picked up, I think, at that time, taken in.
GR: By the destroyer. Yeah.
DR: By the destroyer. Taken into Freetown but of the others some, some were adrift for about twelve days I think.
GR: God.
DR: And some were picked up by the Vichy French.
GR: Yes. Of course.
DR: Taken in to Dakar
GR: Yeah.
DR: And they were interned there for some time and there were quite a few ladies actually. Well half dozen or more. I think they were nurses. I know there was a squadron leader and his wife. Well, time expired and coming back and his wife -
GR: Yes.
DR: And what happened to her I’m not sure but apparently when they interned these blokes in Dakar they took these ladies to the border with, I forget what the British territory was but whatever it was.
AM: I can’t think.
DR: And they just set them loose and they were quite a few days trekking to the nearest place.
GR: And you never saw anything of the U-boat, the U-boat didn’t come after the survivors or –
FR: For years I thought it was a U-boat and people said that it had.
GR: You’d better record that.
DR: People had said it had surfaced and the captain -
GR: No.
DR: But it actually wasn’t a U-boat. It was an Italian ship, Italian submarine.
GR: Submarine. Right.
DR: Called the, I forget what it, I’ve got a book, a little book there.
GR: Yeah.
DR: But it was written by one of the chaps who was trained in Southern Rhodesia, er in South Africa and he actually became, he was, he’d been a foreign officer clerk and he went back to the foreign office and he became ambassador in Norway I think and somewhere else and is now sir somebody.
GR: Sir Archie Lamb.
DR: Archie Lamb. That’s right.
AM: Goodness me. That came as a, all of that came as a surprise because I don’t think you knew that did you?
GR: No.
AM: No.
GR: No. No.
AM: So you all finally get back, I mean I’ve got loads of questions I could ask like what did you eat and drink on the boat?
CR: I was going to say –
AM: Were there provisions on the boat?
DR: Sort of you know emergency rations. Small biscuits. Probably two or three of those a day. Horlicks tablets. You remember Horlicks tablets? Well we had those. They were nice. The funny thing was there was a lad from Spalding. I think he was a member of the crew, I think he was a steward or something and he was in the lifeboat with me and he didn’t like Horlicks tablets so I got all his Horlicks tablets [laughs] and then we had some water and they had a thing like a test tube. They used to bring it up about and you’d half full of that and you’d watch everybody drinking ‘cause you were making it last as long as you can you know swilling it around.
AM: Was anybody in charge on the boats or –
DR: Yes.
AM: Making sure that -
DR: Yes. One of the crew was in charge of it.
AM: Right.
DR: I forget what they called him now. I don’t know whether, whether it was his position on the ship or whether it was just, bosun. They called him bosun. Whether it was ship’s bosun or if it was just his title for being in charge of the lifeboat I never knew.
AM: But you all got back so -
DR: Yes. We got, we got back.
AM: So you all got back then. How did you all get back to Britain from there?
DR: Well we, the destroyer took us into Freetown and we didn’t get, we even get ashore in Freetown. They ferried us across to another troop ship which was actually a Greek, had been a Greek ship the Nea Hellas and we were on that coming back. There was apparently a bit of scare that it was being shadowed by a, but anyway we never, never got worried by it. It was never. We got back to England alright.
AM: So that was that. So then what happened? So you’re now a qualified pilot.
DR: Oh yes I was a qualified pilot. Well we landed at Glasgow. As the air force would arrange these things they put us in a train and took us down to Bournemouth. And the Bournemouth was run by, it was a receiving place for the Canadians mainly and it was run by the Canadians and there was a Canadian group captain there. Oh, whilst we were on the boats the merchant navy blokes had said to us, ‘When you get home you’ll get twenty eight days leave. Survivors leave. We all get it,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it.’ So when we got back we asked for this survivors leave and do you know what we got? They said you get twenty eight days. We got seven days. And that is the, that is how I got the title of my book. We had a, paraded in a cinema in Bournemouth and a group captain came on because he was welcoming the Canadians to this country and so on and he said something about, ‘Welcoming you to this country.’ He said, ‘Some of you have had great experiences in getting to this country but then life is a great experience. Adventure. Life is a great adventure.’ So I thought when I wanted a title for my book I thought that’s it. The group captain’s given it to me.
AM: So you’re in Bournemouth.
DR: Hmmn?
AM: Then I’m just trying to think chronologically of what happens next. Do you carry on with your training but go to Heavy Conversion Unit? What? I can’t remember what order things come after that.
DR: Yes, yeah from I’m not sure where, we went first to Operational Training Unit.
AM: Yes.
DR: To get crewed up.
AM: Right.
DR: Started at a place called Wymeswold and finished at Castle Donington which now of course is East Midlands Airport.
AM: Yes.
DR: And that was on Wellingtons and from there we went to Marston Moor which I’ve already told you about. Meeting Cheshire. And from there to 158 squadron.
AM: Ok. Do you want to tell me the Leonard Cheshire story again for the recording? Tell me the Leonard Cheshire story again for the recording.
DR: Well the night after we got to Marston Moor we decided we’d go in to York and three of us went to get on the bus but the bus had gone so we went out on to the road and decided to thumb a lift which sergeants weren’t supposed to do and we were, it was quite a long road. We could see a car approaching and we stood there thumbing and suddenly realised it was an RAF car and as it got nearer we could see it was an officer driving and when he pulled up we could see that he’d got four rings on his sleeve and he was a group captain. And he said, ‘Alright. Get in.’ So the other two jumped in the back and I had to get in, open the front passenger, well I opened the front passenger door and his cap was on the seat and so momentarily, momentarily you don’t know what to do. So do I, I can’t touch his cap, I can’t sit on the seat while it’s there but anyway eventually he said, ‘Don’t sit on my bloody hat.’ So I picked the thing up, put it over the back and got in.
AM: And he took you to York and dropped you off at –
DR: Bettys Bar. Yes. You’ll finish up there anyway.
AM: So, anyway, so back to the chronological order. You’ve crewed up. How did they crewing up go? Who chose who?
DR: Crewing up well yes it was, it was reasonably good. I was in a hut and I got to know ‘cause they bring in, I mean if they’re making say twenty crews they bring in twenty pilots, twenty navigators, twenty bomb aimers and so on and I was in this hut with quite a number of other people of various trades, and I got to know a number of the wireless operators and I met them actually in a pub in Loughborough as well and they’d got an air gunner with them so the four of us seemed to go out quite a lot together. I had to make a decision which wireless operator I had. I could only have one of them and so I selected one and so that was my wireless operator and my rear gunner. I needed a navigator and a bomb aimer. There was a navigator we’d got quite friendly with and I asked him to be my navigator and he said he’d already agreed to be somebody else’s but he would find me somebody who was, and he found me a navigator. A very nice bloke and a good navigator and the navigator found me a bomb aimer. It was funny actually because all the bomb aimers, bomb aiming had only just, bomb aimer as a, as a trade had only just been introduced and they were trying to popularise it I think and so they commissioned most of them. I think of the twenty, twenty five that we had there were only three who were non- commissioned.
AM: Right.
DR: So nobody wanted the non-commissioned ones. They thought there must be something wrong with them if they [laughs] so I got a commissioned one and that was the initial crew until we went to -
GR: Heavy Conversion Unit.
DR: Heavy Conversion Unit on to Halifaxes when we got another gunner and a flight engineer.
AM: And a flight engineer yeah.
DR: And they were just detailed to me so I didn’t get a chance to -
AM: Ok. But you got the full gang.
DR: So I got the full gang but didn’t always keep them I’m afraid. The rear gunner I had, we were very friendly together but one night he refused to fly. Well, he didn’t refuse to fly. We, we were going to Berlin actually and we taxied around, do you know Lissett?
GR: Lissett, yes. Yeah.
DR: Well normally we could approach the runways on either way. This particular night as it happened we were all coming from one direction and it was very fortunate because I got the green light and as I got the green light to go on to the runway this gunner said to me, ‘I don’t think I ought to go.’ I said, ‘What did you say?’ He said, ‘I don’t think I ought to go.’ And I thought well I can’t go anywhere. What do I do? I can’t, can’t call up the flight control because of the radio silence but as I say with the other side being vacant I just taxied straight over and parked on the, on the taxi -
GR: On the side. Yeah.
DR: The, the other side and I thought well air traffic control are going to see me there. They’re going to think well what the heck’s he doing? And they’ll find out and fair, true enough, after a little while the officer in charge of night flying was Brian Quinlan. I don’t know if you knew Brian. He came out on his motorbike and I said to my, my temper by this time was a little frayed and I said to this gunner, ‘You’d better get out and tell this officer what you’ve just told me.’ So he got out and within a few minutes Brian Quinlan appeared in the cockpit and he said, ‘Taxi back. Taxi to the next intersection, you know, where the runway came in, turn and come back again and wait here.’ Which, which I did. And when he got, when I’d no sooner got back there then he appeared on the runway on his motorbike with a spare gunner on the pillion and this poor bloke got in, got in the rear turret and that was it. We went away.
AM: And what happened to the other one? Just disappeared.
DR: Yeah. Well yeah.
AM: Lack of moral fibre.
DR: He was court martialled and it was a sad old time really. I had to go as a witness. I don’t know who I was witnessing for but I mean I, but it was, I felt sorry for him in a way because he looked so dejected and you know he’d been a nice enough bloke.
GR: How many operations had you flown by then?
DR: I don’t know. I should think probably about eight or something like that.
GR: About eight. Yeah. Ok.
DR: What, what he, I think what probably happened the one the previous one we’d done was Milan and it was over nine hours and it was in, coming back anyway, it was in bright daylight and he, I think he was a bit nervy all the way. He kept saying, ‘What’s that on the port starboard, on the port bow Paddy?’ Paddy, being the mid upper and Paddy in a broad Irish accent, ‘Och it’s only, only a bit of cloud,’ you know, and this sort of thing but you could tell really. I mean at the time I never thought anything of it but afterwards, after the refusal to fly and so on it struck me that his nerve had gone by that time I think.
GR: Because when you flew back from Milan it was complete, you flew back over France didn’t you?
DR: Over Switzerland.
GR: Over Switzerland.
DR: And France.
GR: And France yeah. In daylight.
DR: Yeah.
AM: What, what, so when he was court martialled what did they actually do with him?
DR: Well. Well he was court martialled. The funny thing was they questioned, when they questioned me it was strange they wanted to see was he actually ordered to fly. Well I mean they didn’t order for a standing place, ‘You’ll fly tonight’. ‘You’ll fly tonight.’ I mean it wasn’t like that. Just a board went up and the names of the pilot was on and -
GR: Yeah.
DR: You took that crew went and that was it but he was actually as I say court martialled. Ordered to be reduced to the ranks and to serve eighty four days detention but the AOC didn’t confirm it so he got away with it.
AM: Right.
DR: He got off and Calder I don’t know whether he rang me, or spoke to me one day and said, ‘As he wasn’t found guilty he’s still on the strength of the squadron and I don’t suppose you want him back do you?’ I said, ‘You’re right there.’ [laughs]
AM: That’s a no then. Yeah. So what did they do with him? Did he stay or -
DR: I don’t know what happened to him eventually.
AM: As ground crew or -
DR: I don’t know what happened to him eventually.
AM: Yeah.
DR: He would be posted away I think somewhere.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
DR: But it was, I don’t know, a pity, you know how Group Captain Pickard was at -
GR: Yeah.
DR: He wasn’t there in my time. He was there before I got there but he had a couple of horses at a farm there and our dispersal we lived on was one field away and this gunner was a real horsey type so he used to go and look after these horses. Groom them and one thing or another and then we [laughs] we used to ride them down to the pub [laughs]. Well we used to get on and they knew the way to the pub and so we’d go. There were three of us. One would ride a bike and the other two would go on a horse and we’d tie them up outside the pub and have a drink or two and then they’d know their own way home and of course we lost all that when he went but –
AM: We’ve jumped a little bit because we’ve gone from the Heavy Conversion Unit. What we didn’t say was that you were posted to 158 squadron at Lissett.
DR: Yeah that’s right.
AM: So I’m just. So you’re on 158 squadron now.
DR: Yes.
AM: So the stray bod that you got did you keep him or did you get another?
DR: No. No. He, I got another one.
AM: Right.
DR: I got a Canadian.
AM: And kept him.
DR: Yes. I kept him. I was with his, one of his sons and two daughters last week at 158.
AM: Wonderful.
DR: They come over every year.
AM: I’m going to jump again now then. So I know that you’ve done a number of operations now and I know that you either have done or are going to do Berlin.
DR: Yes.
AM: So tell me about Berlin and what happened.
DR: Well this night of course with having this kerfuffle with the, we were about fifteen, twenty minutes late taking off so I tried to make that up as best I could but it could, got to Berlin and nearly everybody else had gone so we had the whole Berlin defences to ourselves and it’s a long way across Berlin and it was very, very well very, very lonely flying across it. We think there was a fighter had a good, started to attack but I’ve an idea that it was a Mosquito was around and chased him I think so we didn’t get attacked. We got over quite safely that time.
AM: That time.
GR: Yeah.
AM: So tell me about -
GR: How many times did you go to Berlin?
DR: Three.
GR: Three.
AM: Three.
GR: Yeah.
DR: It was -
AM: So, on the third one -
DR: On the third one we were, we’d just dropped the bombs, the bombs had gone and there was an almighty bang. It really was. I’m sure it was a direct hit and the nose of the aircraft just started going up, straight up in the air which isn’t very healthy, I mean it could go into a stall in no time but I just could not seem to get it to stop and I said, ‘Prepare to bale out,’ because I thought we’ve had it and I realised the moment I’d said that the intercom was dead so I thought I’ve got to do something about this. I got a chap, you know we used to take a, when a crew came to the squadron he usually did an operation with an experienced crew.
AM: Yes.
DR: Well, and I’d got this chap, second pilot. I got him to put his leg across my legs and push on the control column. I was, I’d got it under my knees like that and he was pushing with his leg and we flew I think for over two hours, two and a half hours like that and the nose was trying to come up all the time and it was just above stalling I think. And I flew along. The Baltic was on the right and I thought to myself, shall we go to Sweden? And I thought, incidentally, we were all supposed to be on leave, we should have gone on leave that night. It was an incentive to get back but I was thinking about Sweden and of course I knew nothing about Sweden. With my boyhood knowledge I thought it was very mountainous so you know how could we flying in to mountains trying to get, so I decided I wouldn’t go to Sweden. We’d try and get home so we kept on and weeventually got to the Dutch coast and we were there at the time we were supposed to have been back at Lissett. We’d got winds against us of very nearly a hundred miles an hour. The aircraft was only just above stalling speed and I thought well I’m not going to go, I couldn’t risk going across the North Sea. We wouldn’t have got, we wouldn’t have got any more than half way across. If that. So I thought, and by this time we were down to five or six thousand feet. I can’t really remember but there was a light flak battery firing at us and doing a bit of damage so I thought well the only thing is we’re over a friendly country. Bale out and we might get in with the underground and you know so I baled them out.
AM: If the intercoms had gone how did they know to bale out?
DR: The only way, actually, the flight engineer. I told him to go around and tell everybody to bale out which he did. He, and then he came back and I said, ‘Have they all gone?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Well you’d better go then’. Of course we stowed his chute and my chute together and he was supposed to get the chute, two out, bring me mine, put his on and go. He came back and he said, ‘One of them was damaged.’ ‘So I said, ‘Well you’d better take the other one then.’ ‘No. No. I can’t. I can’t leave you.’ I said, ‘No you get in. Take, put that on. Get out.’ And he argued and I’m not going to argue and told him three times to get out so I said, ‘Well if you’re going to stay you’d better get back in to the rest position and brace for,’ I didn’t know, you know I realised I’d got to somehow get the thing down and I flew along looking for a decent, a good field and eventually, well it wasn’t long actually before I saw a field I thought I could do it -
AM: Was it daylight by now?
DR: No. It was -
AM: ‘Or dawn?
DR: Yes in-between sort of thing. Yes. It was sevenish in the morning. Something like that. And it was, I think it was lighter looking down than when you actually got on the ground. Anyway, we got down and skidded to a stop and got out and had a, well the funny thing was I thought I’d better go back and see if he’s alright and this is [laughs] this is the truth I walked back to him and instead of being braced he was standing up and he said, ‘Are we down?’ ‘Who the heck’s flying this thing?’ [laughs]. You know.
GR: Well that’s a compliment to the pilot.
DR: It was. Yeah. Anyway we got out the escape hatch and then we were having, I thought we’d have a quick look at the damage and we were having a look and as you say it was half-light or not quite half-light and he said, suddenly said to me, ‘There’s somebody the other side of the aircraft.’ And so I went around. I thought the only thing to do, whoever it is, oh and he said, ‘He’s got a gun.’ I thought well the only thing you could do is confront the chap so I walked around and didn’t need any confront, he was friendly. He said something about, I don’t remember whether he said, ‘Have you had a meal?’ Or, ‘Would you like a meal?’ And I thought, I was thinking I want to get away from this aircraft as far as I can as quickly as I can so I refused it and we walked. We left the thing and we walked on. We walked out through a village and up a country road and there was a bend in the road and there was a farmhouse there and the farmer outside so we went to him and asked if he could give us a drink of water or something and we had a drink of water and I asked him where we were and he brought out a little school atlas and, ‘There.’ And there just about covered the Netherlands. [laughs]. I thought well I was a little bit clued up about –
AM: Yeah.
DR: Which country it was. Anyway, we went in his house and to get to his house you went through a cowshed. I noticed there was a sort of hay loft sort of thing you know so I asked him if he, if we could get up there and he said, you know shook his head and talked about the Germans you know, shoot him and so on. I can understand his point of view.
AM: Yeah.
DR: So we decided, well I decided we wouldn’t stay and we got out of the house and two Dutch policemen came around the bend on bikes and they came to us. One was a young bloke and the other was a bit older and they, I don’t know for certain but it seemed to me that the young chap wanted to turn us in and the older one wasn’t very happy. He looked as if he was a bit tearful actually but anyway they, he had to go along with what the younger one wanted to do so they took us back to the village we’d come through and telephoned the Germans. And that was it.
AM: And for you the war is over.
DR: Hmmn?
AM: For you the war is over.
DR: Yes. Well, that, that was the greeting yes. For you the war is over.
AM: So what year are we in now? Is this -
DR: That was January ’44.
AM: ’44.
DR: January the 29th ‘44.
AM: So when the Germans came and got you where, then what?
DR: Well they took us to what was obviously a house which they’d taken over as a sort of place for their troops to live in and we were there most, so funny actually because they made us turn our pockets out and all this sort of thing and Lofty the engineer he’d taken an orange out of the, that we had in the flying rations and of course he’d got this orange and he put it on [laughs] and it was so funny ‘cause there were Germans coming in and poking it. You know. They’d never seen an orange before [laughs] But we were there most of the day and then they took us down to the station, local station and we went by passenger train up to Leeuwarden. I don’t know whether that’s the pronunciation L E E W A R D E N. And there was an NCO in charge of us and two other blokes and the NCO, he walked in front with a drawn pistol and one of the others walked at the side of us and the bloke with a submachine gun walked behind us and I thought well if you let off with that you’re going to get your mate in front here as well but anyway they paraded us through a long street in Leeuwarden and it was so funny I mean there were people walking past victory signs, thumbs up and there was a tram car came along and it just kept pace with us and you could see all the passengers in there doing this -
AM: Thumbs up and -
GR: Victory signs.
AM: V for victory to you.
DR: And we were sort of, yes. Acknowledging it all. I mean, it was, it was so funny really because it wasn’t what they were intending but they were showing off to the Dutch that they’d got the, you know -
AM: They’d captured you.
DR: Yeah. They got the terror fliegers and all the rest of it and anyway they took us along in to a big compound. Well a sort of parade area. It was a naval barracks and they opened a cell door and pushed us, well didn’t really push us, made us go in and there was all my crew there except one. They’d picked them all up except one.
AM: All of you. The whole lot. Did they know that they were your crew?
DR: I don’t know. I imagine so. I imagine so. And he, actually he, the one that was missing wasn’t really one of my crew, my mid upper gunner was a Southern Irishman and we were all supposed to go on leave that night. Well he used to get a couple of days extra for travelling to Southern Ireland and he’d already gone so this chap that was with me, this Canadian standing in and of course they hadn’t got him and he was the only one who did make it to the underground.
AM: Right.
DR: Apparently some farmers found him. They’d got the little pens out for the sheep to go in, supposed to be lambing or something and they found him hiding in one of these and so they took him in and looked after him for a time and I don’t really know the full story but he was eventually picked up with the underground in Antwerp or somewhere so he they’d got him quite a way away but he were betrayed and that was it. He was finished in another prison camp. I never met him again. He didn’t get, I did meet him again in a reunion after the war but I didn’t during the war. We thought he was dead. I thought he must have had an accident baling out and you know and that’s it. And -
AM: We, we spoke to someone else who exactly the same thing happened and I think the escape line, the escape line was the KLM line.
DR: Yeah.
AM: That he’d been, and exactly the same. Captured at Antwerp.
DR: Yes.
AM: So the whole lot of you there minus one. And where did they take you from there?
DR: From, yeah, they took us, the same night I think they took us to a Luftwaffe station. Actually it was a Dutch station it was about the biggest or only sort of regular air force station. I can’t remember its name. And we were in the cells there for the best part of a week I suppose. They tried to interrogate us and so on and then from there they took us to Amsterdam and we were incarcerated in Amsterdam jail for a week or so. Yeah.
AM: Where did you end up? Which prison camp did you end up in?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Which prison camp did you end up in?
DR: Well, from, after we go into the interrogation place we went to, or I went to, some of us went to Stalag Luft 6 which was up on the borders of East Prussia and Lithuania. We were there until July of ‘44 when the Russians were pushing the Germans back. The Germans had got right in to Russia.
AM: Yeah.
DR: And the Russians pushed them back and we could actually hear the artillery fire and we were beginning to get a bit worried about what might happen if we were liberated by the Russians but anyway they then took us, not all of us but I was one that was taken, they took us to, in the cattle trucks down to Memel which was in the port of Lithuania. I don’t know what it is now. I couldn’t pronounce its name now but it was called Memel. We were put in a little tramp, in the hold of a tramp ship which was filthy and we were about, I think we were about four days from there to, oh dear, I forget the name of the port now.
GR: Don’t matter.
AM: No. It don’t matter.
GR: Don’t matter.
DR: A German port in
GR: Yeah
DR: Sort of [?] When we got off into cattle trucks again and we had, I think, one night. Oh they, as we got off that, the boat they handcuffed us in pairs. I thought I was being clever and I asked if anybody was left handed so we had could have one left hand and one right but we didn’t. I got this Canadian but apparently he was right handed too but he had his right hand handcuffed to my left and we were, officially we were handcuffed together for about three or four days but we soon learned how to take them off actually.
AM: Oh good.
DR: So people were taking them off.
AM: I’m just thinking when you’re doing the necessary -
DR: Yeah.
AM: Ablutions and things like that you don’t necessarily want to be handcuffed –
DR: That’s right.
AM: To someone.
DR: No. We, people soon learned the key of a corned beef tin came handy with that. It used to be out -
AM: But where did you get the key of a corned beef tin from?
DR: Off the corned beef tin. Red Cross parcels.
GR: Red Cross Parcels.
DR: Red Cross parcels.
AM: Oh so that was your rations. Right. Ok.
DR: Anyway, we and then we got to Stalag Luft 4 and we had a very rough reception there. We got, we got to the station, or the siding, very early in the morning and it was a really hot day and they kept us in the cattle wagons ‘til about two in the afternoon and we got, got out and of course to try and carry all your, what belongings you had, I mean, for example I had a greatcoat. We were wearing greatcoats. It was the easiest way to carry them and it was really hot. And anyway about 3 o’clock they got us out of the things and we lined up and there was a German officer got up, and he, he’d got, he’d got an immaculate white tunic on. Oh really. And instantly, instantly became known as the ice cream man. But he was obviously in charge and they marched us out on to the, on to the road, lined up and there was a lot of cadets, naval cadets that came and they were all armed, all, and he ordered them to fix bayonets which wasn’t a very friendly thing to do and we started walking along, or marching along this road and they started saying –
GR: Thank you.
DR: They started saying, ‘Quicker. Quicker. Quicker’ and we were getting, until eventually we were sort of running and then we were in a wooded thing then suddenly they turned left and there was steep hill and we were going up this hill and they then tried, they were then aiming to jam you in your backside with these bayonets and of course people were throwing all their stuff away to lighten the load. I’d got a haversack thing on my back which I couldn’t take the stuff out so the Canadian who was running with me he got it open. He was throwing stuff out and we ran up this road and you could see people with blood coming down them, and I passed one poor lad I knew. I don’t, I can’t remember his name but I knew and the chap he was with had obviously passed out and he was there -
AM: And he’s still handcuffed.
DR: Handcuffed to him. Couldn’t move. You could see he was absolutely terrified the poor lad. He was only a very young lad I think. And then we got to the, eventually got to the top of the hill and turned and about a half a mile away was the prison camp and we, we got there. I hadn’t been touched actually until I got there and then one of them got his rifle up and started having a go at my ribs but he didn’t really do anything hard. He tried and didn’t. And then they called them off and we went into the vorlager, sort of first place. Not right in to the camp and we were there all night.
AM: When you said, you said they were cadets so were they just, were they teenagers or young. Young.
DR: Well I suppose they were, no I suppose they were eighteen year olds.
AM: Right.
DR: Sixteen, eighteen year olds. Yeah. But, they’d, all the other guards of their own but a lot of them, but it was, it’s always been known as, ‘the run up the road.’
AM: Yeah. So how long were you in there for then? Where are we now? July did you say? July 44?
DR: July then until February of the next, of the next year when we started on the Long March.
AM: So you did the Long March.
DR: Three months of that.
AM: And what was the worst bit of that?
DR: Sorry?
AM: What was the worst bit of that?
DR: The weather. It was so cold. Snow and ice and sleeping out at, some nights, we did sleep outside some nights. Most nights they found a barn or something like that more or less but we had one or two nights out. But one night we went to a farm and there were three large farm buildings in a row with thatched roofs and I think they put some of their own transport in one. In the end one. We were pushed in the centre one and some army prisoners in the left hand one and we were tight in this thing. When we, they’d got straw in the floor and when we laid down at night we were head to toe in a row and touching each one. It was as close as that and during the night we heard an aircraft flying over and we could hear it approach and it dropped a bomb on the, and it hit the thing where they’d put all their stuff and it flew away again. Came around machine gunning and I was lying down there. I could see tracer bullets coming through the straw you know and he hit the wall on the side and before there was a little ring of fire and it just spread like mad and it was, the whole lot was going and people just sort of got up and walked out and that’s it. They didn’t really run.
AM: No.
DR: But um -
AM: Did you, did you see it? Was it an allied?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Was it a British plane or a German?
DR: Oh we take it that it was probably a Mosquito. We’ve always called it the Mossie raid. I mean we were just guessing at that. We sort of -
AM: Yeah.
DR: I think it would be an allied one.
AM: Then when –
DR: I think there were, there were three or four of our blokes were killed.
GR: And then towards the end of the long march I presume you walked into allied hands.
DR: Well yes. We were very, it was a great day to remember. We, we were stopped in a village and we sort of spent the night in a barn and this, and I got up to make the coffee and there was Americans with us as well and I suddenly heard an American voice shouting, ‘The limeys are here. The limeys are here.’ And looked and it was the 6th Airborne Division coming through the village.
GR: Brilliant.
AM: Yeah.
DR: What a day that was.
GR: What a day that was.
DR: And they were throwing tins of their rations to us you know and we didn’t eat half of them, more than we, actually it was, everybody was just having a good time.
AM: What condition were you in by then?
DR: Well -
CR: He looked a bit thin on the photographs.
DR: Yeah I was very thin and I think I got frostbitten feet. They were always cold. We was lousy. [laughs].
AM: Yeah.
DR: But apart from that we weren’t too bad.
AM: So how did you get back home then from that, that stage?
DR: Well, they, the 6th Airborne asked us to stay there that day because they were bringing all their stuff through and then we get up to, oh what was the name of the place, what was the place where Montgomery took the -
GR: Luneburg Heath.
DR: Yes.
GR: Luneburg Heath. Yeah.
DR: Well that was the town.
GR: Yeah.
DR: And we had to get up there the next day and it was quite a thing because people were pinching bikes and cars and all sorts of things to get up there and we were a bit slow off the mark. We couldn’t find anything but we found a bloke who was going out in a pony and trap thing so we got on board there and I sat, jiggling mind you it was a beautiful sunny day. It was quite a nice ride, trip and we eventually we got to a village and we stopped for a drink. Went in the pub and demanded a drink and of course when we got out the pony had gone but one of the Canadians, our Canadians came along driving a bus so we piled on to this bus and it was so funny ‘cause there were Germans were walking back on the side of the road and everybody was trying to get a good hat.
GR: Souvenir.
DR: If you could see an officer with a nice smart hat. Boom. [laughs] No. It was. I got a sword.
CR: Yes you got a sword didn’t you?
DR: Going through a village, a great big pile of swords so I got out and had a look and picked one I liked and still got it.
AM: Wonderful. Might have to have a photo of that.
DR: Sorry?
AM: We might have to -
GR: Have a photograph of that.
AM: Take a photo of that. How did you eventually get back though to England?
DR: Well, we, we were flown back. RAF Dakota.
GR: Dakota. And back to England was you? Was you demobbed straight away?
DR: No. No. Actually I stayed in the air force for three years after the war.
GR: Oh.
AM: You were probably deloused first weren’t you?
DR: Hmmn?
AM: They deloused you first.
CR: They deloused you.
DR: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CR: You were lousy when you came back.
DR: They more or less did that when we landed. We landed at a place called Wing. I don’t know.
AM: Yes. Yeah.
DR: And I was posted to Wing.
GR: Yeah. We know Wing.
DR: Soon after but they arranged it quite well actually. They sort of deloused you and they set it out like a restaurant or café and the ladies would bring you tea and coffee and then the buses took us into Aylesbury and put us on a train up to Cosford.
GR: Yeah.
DR: And then I went on leave from Cosford.
AM: Had you been able to tell your parents? Did your parents know that you were alive?
DR: Yes. Yes. Actually, yeah, I think the Red Cross had told them that I was.
AM: Right. Ok.
DR: And the night we got back the RAF gave us forms that we could send telegrams. So we got telegrams to say we were back.
AM: Yeah.
DR: But -
AM: And that was that but you stayed in for another three years.
DR: Yes. What happened was that when I was shot down I was a flight sergeant but had been interviewed for a commission and the commission came through backdated about a month before I was [laughs] before I was shot down. So I came, when I came back I was actually a flying officer and it rather appealed to me. I thought well here I am, a flying officer, I’ve never been in an officers mess in my life and I was when I got back though and I thought, they gave us interviews to see what we wanted to do and I said, ‘Well I would like, I want to stay on flying.’ And, ‘Oh well, you know everybody wants to do that who wants to stay in.’ People who, others just want to get out. And I applied for a permanent commission and when they put me on flying I thought that’s it I’m getting my permanent commission but it wasn’t so. I extended my service for two years and towards the end of the two years I extended another year. At the end of that time I had a letter telling me that the king thanked me for my services but he didn’t want me anymore. [laughs] So that was that.
AM: Thank you and goodbye.
GR: Yeah.
AM: In the, in that three years though you were flying. Where? Whereabouts? What -
DR: I flew Lancasters then instead of Halifaxes.
AM: Yeah.
DR: Yeah I flew. I was in, well, we had to more or less had to go, start our training again. What happened you see there people there who’d been POWs four or five years so they had, obviously had to have a refresher course if they wanted to go on and so they didn’t really just make a refresher course for us they stuck us on the course that the new entrants was doing, you know, people doing for the first time which was alright. We went back on to Oxfords and I did Oxfords and then on to Wellingtons and then on to the Lancaster Conversion Unit and then from there I went to the central signals establishment which was at, we did about, I think I did a bit over a year there and Cicely and I lived out. It was just after we got married actually I went there and -
GR: ’Cause that’s the one question we’ve never asked. Did you two know each other during the war?
DR: No.
CR: No.
GR: No.
CR: I didn’t even know him.
GR: Right.
DR: Yeah it was quite an interesting job on central signals. We used to, well we got various things. There were two squadrons, one calibration squadron their job was to go around calibrating the approach landings. I forget what they were called it now. The blind flying approach.
GR: Yeah.
DR: That was their main job. We were the development squadron. We were supposed to develop, test fly new things but of course we were test flying things that had been used during the war [laughs] and, but we had other things to do. We used to test the Gee coverage over France and Holland and so on and over Wales and Ireland and so on. We used to have a route to fly and pinpoints to go over and it had two cameras in the aircraft which took pictures simultaneously. One of the ground and one of the set so that they could be compare the -
AM: Right.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
DR: But invariably one of them went wrong so they’d say, ‘Let’s do it again.’ But it was quite interesting. We also had to, people that were doing the calibrating and what not in Germany we used to have to take them over with all their equipment and fetch them back and so on. That was a bit of bind but one of the funniest, probably the funniest thing in my career was when I went to fetch a load back once and they weren’t ready. I went on the Friday and they weren’t ready. They was going to be ready on the Saturday morning so I said, ‘Well I want to be off by 8 o’clock at the latest,’ And they got to get all their equipment there and so on. But anyway when we eventually got them in the aircraft it was the COs monthly parade on the airfield. Lutzendorf I think it was and they’d no parade ground, they used to parade on the runway. So I was about to taxi out and the parade was getting on, forming up on thing there and my temper was getting a little frayed to say the least so I had words with air traffic control and then after a few minutes they came back and said, ‘Well the parade’s going to march off the runway onto the overshoot area until you’ve gone so you’re alright to go along there, turn and take off.’ So I, ‘Fair enough. I can do that.’ And they all marched off and I got along there and I turned, as I turned I opened up the throttle up. All the caps went. [laughs]
AM: Wonderful.
DR: Didn’t stop to see them sorting them out.
AM: And off you went into the wide blue yonder. What did you do after the, after you’d left the RAF?
DR: Sorry?
AM: What did you do after you’d left the RAF?
DR: I went back to the bank.
AM: To the bank.
DR: Yeah. Eventually. Yeah.
AM: At Skegness?
CR: He did one flight in a Lanc over Biggin Hill didn’t you? The first Biggin Hill.
DR: Yeah. Well yes just before I came out. It was the first time they’d done this Battle of Britain day thing you know and all the stations wanted a Lancaster. They all wanted a Lancaster and -
CR: Winston Churchill was there.
DR: And I think our people agreed to supply about four or five or something. Well I wasn’t going to do it on this Saturday. I know they didn’t put my name down for it anyway and then my boss, the squadron leader, said to me, he said, ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ he said, ‘I’m going down to Biggin Hill. We’ll have a day out’. So I said, ‘Alright.’ So that was on the Monday. On the Tuesday he went off on leave. He said, ‘I’ll see you on Saturday morning.’ ‘Alright.’ On the Friday afternoon air traffic got on to me to say Biggin Hill had been on the phone and they would like the Lancaster to go down today for obvious reasons. They’d only got a short runway and if you make a mess of it they can clear the mess up before the crowds come in tomorrow. I mean that was obvious what it was. So, you know they said Duchy is on leave. You’ll have to bring it so I thought fair enough. I took it down and -
GR: Sorry to interrupt you but when you do flights like that -
DR: Yeah.
GR: How many crew did you have? Did you have like a flight engineer with you, a radio operator?
DR: I think I had a navigator, a radio operator and, an engineer, I think.
GR: Yeah. So the four of you.
DR: I don’t think we needed any more than that.
GR: Yeah. Sorry.
DR: I had a lot of odd bods who wanted to get away for the weekend you know. Poured out when I said that.
AM: But you didn’t really need a rear gunner.
GR: No [laughs]
DR: But no it was funny actually and of course it was a big display.
GR: Yeah.
DR: The guest of honour was Winston Churchill.
GR: It was the first Biggin Hill Air Show.
DR: Yes. The first Biggin. Yeah. Winston Churchill was and the funny thing was that, you see nearly all the other things were fighters and doing aerobatics and so on and the CO of the squadron came to me and he said, ‘Would you do three engine flying?’ So I said, ‘Yes. I can do three engine flying. I’ll do two engine flying.’ ‘Oh that would be nice,’ he said. Afterwards I thought I’m an idiot because we were supposed to practice three and two engine flying but the maximum height, rather the minimum you weren’t, I think for two engine flying you weren’t supposed to come below five thousand feet. So I thought well five thousand feet they won’t see me. So Winston Churchill’s going to be down there. What the heck do I do? I think eventually I compromised a bit but I didn’t, I didn’t go the full hog down to a thousand feet or anything like that. We went down a bit below what we were supposed to do. I did the two and two on one side look spectacular.
GR: What you flew with two -
DR: Two on one side.
AM: So both on one side.
DR: Yeah.
GR: And both -
AM: Going and the other one’s not.
DR: Yeah.
AM: Does that not make you –
GR: Yeah.
DR: No.
AM: Swing around.
DR: You hold it alright and the -
AM: Ok.
DR: But the big shock, the only trouble you get is if, if they cool down to much and you can’t get the flaming things started [laughs]
GR: I’m sure you were alright.
DR: Yeah but -
CR: Would you like a cup of tea or anything?
AM: I think we’re done. I think we’re done actually.
GR: Yeah.
AM: I’m going to switch off now.
[machine paused]
GR: It wasn’t Len McNamara was it?
DR: Sorry?
GR: It wasn’t Len McNamara.
DR: No I don’t think so. I don’t think it was McNamara. No.
GR: Because Len had rear gunners.
AM: The one question I would have asked as well was just, so you flew the Halifax operationally but then the Lancaster after so which -
DR: Yeah.
AM: Was your favourite and what are the pros and cons of the two?
DR: Well I’m still a Lanc, er a Halifax man.
GR: Halifax.
DR: I think it’s nicer to handle. Certainly nicer to get in and out of and you know there was not a lot to choose between them I think but it’s on things like that that I would judge it.
GR: And to be fair everybody who we’ve asked the question of who -
AM: Prefers Halifax.
GR: Served on Lancs and Halifax they all said the Halifax.
DR: Halifax. Yeah.
GR: They said, ‘Alright the Lanc -
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 Douglas Robinson
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-09-11
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ARobinsonD160911
PRobinsonD1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:33:56 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Lithuania
Zimbabwe
Germany--Berlin
Lithuania--Šilutė
Great Britain
Lithuania--Klaipėda
Mediterranean Sea
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-09
1944
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas was in the Local Defence Volunteers before joining the Royal Air Force as a pilot. After Babbacombe, he did initial training at Scarborough and then in Rhodesia. Initial flight training in Harare on Tiger Moths was followed by service training on Oxfords at Bulawayo. Douglas had an eventful passage home when his troop ship, the Oronsay, was torpedoed by Italian submarine Archimede and he spent eight days in a lifeboat.
After returning to the UK, Douglas went to an Operational Training Unit to get crewed up, initially at RAF Wymeswold and then RAF Castle Donington on Wellingtons. He went to RAF Marston Moor and on to 158 Squadron at RAF Lissett on Halifaxes where he describes an encounter with Group Captain Leonard Cheshire. Douglas relates how a rear gunner refused to fly and was court martialled.
Douglas flew three operations to Berlin and on the third took a direct hit. After most of the crew baled, he managed to land in the Netherlands before being taken prisoner. Stalag Luft VI, on the border of East Prussia and Lithuania, was followed by Stalag Luft IV after the Russians approached. For three months Douglas was part of the Long March before being rescued by the 6th Airborne Division and flown back home.
Douglas stayed on for three years after the war. He was posted to RAF Wing and went up to Cosford as a flying officer. He attended a Lancaster Conversion Unit and flew Lancasters. He finished at a development squadron at the Central Signals Establishment. He recalls flying a Lancaster at the first Biggin Hill Air Show in front of Winston Churchill.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
158 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
forced landing
Gee
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
promotion
RAF Lissett
RAF Marston Moor
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
submarine
Sunderland
the long march
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1058/11437/PPackhamG1610.2.jpg
58c4a9d2c6787baca9a3a0abe04e24a8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1058/11437/APackhamGH160825.1.mp3
a83e7a7090890f9795d36e04d3cb1040
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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Packham, Geoff
G Packham
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Geoff Packham (b. 1922, 161076, 1214349 Royal Air Force), photographs and documents. He flew operations as a pilot with 550 Squadron from RAF North Killingholme and became a prisoner of war after being shot down in June 1944.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Geoff Packham and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-08-25
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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Packham, G
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AM: We’ll ignore that then. OK, so today is Thursday 25th of August 2016. I’m in Hersham in Surrey with Geoff Packham. And also with us is Gary Rushbrooke who we’ll also hear on the tape in a bit and I’m just going to talk to Geoff generally about his life and the RAF and Bomber Command in particular. So, what I’d like to start off with, Geoff, if you will, is just a little bit about your childhood and your background and your parents, just to give a bit of context about your early life, if you like. Where were you born?
GP: Well, I was born in Sheffield, which isn’t far from here of course.
AM: No.
GP: And my father was in the RFC. I have his cap badge still. He was a Lieutenant in the RFC and then they became the RAF of course later on and he actually was posted to an airfield near Canterbury on the London defence and he was flying Sopwith Camels and SE5s, that type of thing. And one day, he was up on patrol when he got shot down, well we think he was shot down by the flak because there was activity in the air and he’d been sent up to patrol, and the big guns of Kent there, used to just fire off. Anyway, poor old Pop’s aeroplane was, err, err, his engine was set on fire and of course they didn’t have parachutes in those days, so poor old Pop had to come down with his aeroplane and crashed very, very badly. Unfortunately, they had just one little seat belt in those days and he got — that broke. It was tied to the tail or something. Anyway, he shot out over of the top and hit his head on the Lewis gun, that was on the top, and was unconscious when he hit the ground about forty feet away. Well his aeroplane of course was still blazing, of course, and some villagers from nearby were looking for the pilot and couldn’t find him. Anyway, he was in the bushes and he finished his flying in the hospital for Officers at Blackpool.
AM: Right. What year are we talking about here?
GP: Pardon?
AM: What year are we talking about here?
GP: Oh, that was 1918.
AM: 1918.
GP: Just towards the end of the War. But they had this squadron there. He was in 50 Squadron. So of course, I was brought up in the aviation world and when the War came of course, I was in Sheffield. I left my Grammar School in 1938. Firth Park Grammar School. And I took a job with the Town Hall, in the audit department. Anyway, this lasted for a couple of years and during that time, we had the Blitz and a couple of Blitzes on Sheffield and by this time, my father was an ARP Warden and I went out to help him with the incendiary bombs and things that were running around the place, and of course this decided me that I’d, I was eighteen at the time, I’d join up in the RAF and [coughs] and go and help out with the War.
AM: Just before we get to the RAF bit then. What was it actually like being in the Blitz?
GP: Oh, it was quite amazing ‘cause they used to drop these mines and things and incendiary bombs, and all we had was a stirrup pump and a bucket of water or some sand to get these things out and even in Broomhill, where, at the south west of the city.
AM: I know it, I know it.
GP: It was bad but of course the main part was the factories and the centre which got bombed.
AM: ‘cause it was armaments. Quite a lot of Sheffield was armaments wasn’t it.
GP: Oh yes. And there were quite a lot of casualties and things. So I joined up and just after the Blitz and my first posting was to Cardington for registering and uniform and things and that was the blue sheds at Cardington and from there on they kept posting me to various stations because they were waiting to get me in to the Training Scheme in Canada, for flying.
AM: So what year was this? Forty —
GP: This was nineteen forty —
GR: Early 1941.
GP: One. Yeah. And all 1941 was taken up with ITW, the training section and you see the stations in there [sound of pages turning], and I was posted up to a station in Acklington, just north of Newcastle, to do odd duties, and eventually I got on to a boat which took me to Halifax in Canada and from there —
AM: What was that like? What was it actually like on the boat? Where did you sail from?
GP: Oh, that was a big boat and there were a lot of submarines and things around, so it was zigzagging all the way across the Atlantic and it was bad weather of course. It was —
GR: Of course this would have been August 1941.
GP: Yeah, that was —
GR: Which was the height of the Atlantic U-boat war and everything so —
GP: Right, yeah.
GR: Yes, it would have been a very dangerous crossing.
GP: Yes, anyway we got there and they took us across to Calgary and in Calgary of course, we got a fine reception because a lot of the people out there were English people who’d emigrated after the First World War and they wanted to know what was happening back home etcetera. So I made lots of friends there and eventually passed the — there were two stages – the Tiger Moth stage and the Oxford.
AM: Had it been decided what you were actually going to be, at this point?
GP: Well they put me on the twin engine ones for the second part of the training. So I was obviously going on Bombers.
AM: So had it already been decided you were going to be a pilot at this stage?
GP: Well that's decided after the first stage of training.
AM: Right, OK.
GP: In the Tiger Moths. I was lucky there because I always seemed to be dubbed with difficulties and I went up on my first solo and the — It was a lovely day, no problem, and the instructor just sort of said, ‘Well, off you go then.’ We'd been doing a bit of drill and spinning and things and he said, ‘OK, well, straight out and go around and come in and do a few landings.’ You see. So I did this. Anyway, in between that time — Oh, the last flight, the wind had blown up the Rockies. It used to produce a strange sort of change of winds and things and the wind had changed and I didn't even look at the wind sock [laughs] and I wondered why I was going a bit fast, but fortunately, it was on the approach. It seemed fast, but I couldn't understand why. But there was a nice long concrete runway, because Air Canada used to use it for civil purposes, you see. And so I managed to stop, and then they came out and started grabbing the wings because the wind was blowing up and they were frightened it would turn over.
GR: Terrible, isn't it.
GP: I got through the test anyway and with a good result and then went on to Oxfords and it got very cold in the winter time and eventually, I think it was January '42 by this time, and I — They gave me a railway ticket and said, ‘You've got a boat going back to England.’ As they did to all the course, and we were one of the first courses out there you see. They said, ‘Go to Halifax and report there.’ And you got three weeks to do it. It takes about four days for the journey and by train, of course, all the way from Medicine Hat there, by that time and to —
AM: Yeah, I'm just visualising.
GP: Nova Scotia, and some of the boys stayed if they had girlfriends. I just went and had a look round Winnipeg and Montreal.
AM: On your own, or with friends?
GP: On the way. Pardon?
AM: Were you on your own or with friends? With other chaps?
GP: No, I was on my own by that time.
AM: Right.
GP: We were allowed to do what we liked so long as we got to Halifax by a certain time, you see.
AM: By the right date.
GP: It was all very informal. So, we — I got across and we went back to the UK where I was shuffled round all over the place. And you'll find most of these stations here and the most I did was as a Staff Pilot at, err, in South Wales. I was flying Whitleys then. I've done most of my time on Whitleys.
GR: Was that while you were still training, or had you done your training?
GP: No, no. I was [pauses] what happened was that they wanted pilots to fly the Whitleys with gunners in the back and we had a Lysander coming upon us with a drogue on the end that they shot at and they did that over the Bristol Channel. So, this was, um, err, let’s see. Porthcawl.
GR: Yeah.
GP: Is the nearest place. Stormy Down was the station and I was there for a year all together because in between, they'd already posted me twice to Brize Norton which had Whitleys towing gliders.
GR: Right.
GP: And for a very short period, I went twice to Brize Norton and came back to my little place in —
GR: So you'd been sent to do, not training, but you were flying as a Pilot Instructor for the other people.
GP: Yes but I didn’t do many hours at all and I don't know why they sent me there. And from there —
GR: 'cause you'd have been expecting to go to an Operational Base.
GP: That's right.
GR: Sure. Yeah.
GP: And at Brize Norton, of course, they were training the Army Pilots to fly the gliders.
AM: Right.
GP: The Horsa gliders. So, um, yeah. I was there for a little while. And then of course, finally to my great pleasure, I got posted to Bomber Command. And I was very lucky because I got the Doncaster set of airfields where I went through the Operational Training Unit. But by this time, I’d got sort of, I should think something like eight hundred hours flying Whitleys.
AM: Flying Whitleys.
GP: And things like that, you know. And it was a piece of cake.
AM: You must have been far more experienced than a lot of the others at that stage.
GP: Yes. I went to one place, by the way, in there and it was on the Wash.
GR: Yeah.
GP: It was an experimental Unit and we had the old Battle of Britain pilots with their Spitfires and we had Wellingtons and we — All fitted with camera guns and it was a station where they were experimenting with tactics to get away from and shoot the other bod down, you know, but I think that’s —
GR: That was Herne, wasn't it?
GP: But — No, no. That's at Bournemouth. It's Kings Lynn, you know.
AM: Yes.
GR: Sutton Bridge.
GP: Sutton Bridge. Yes.
GR: That's it. Yeah. Just before you went to Stormy Down.
GP: Yes. Anyway, yes, it was Finningley, of course, for the Bomber training and I did some time on Wellingtons. In fact, it was a Wellington where we — we used, for dropping. They were dummy raids. When a big wave went out, we went on a decoy and dropped some information, you know, leaflets and things.
AM: Leaflets, yes.
GP: To the French. And also, some, the aluminium foil that we used to use as a diversion to make the Germans think that they were —
GR: Window.
GP: Window. So, there were a few things on the way which were interesting.
GR: Which was quite good because Finningley, Worksop, Windholme.
GP: That's right.
GR: Was all near Sheffield, so you were based near home.
GP: And I was very fortunate because I got a motorbike and my brother and I — I had a brother who also was a pilot. He'd been to America but on the way [telephone rings] he'd burst an eardrum.
AM: OK, we've just paused for the telephone, but we're back. So, we've been talking about the fact that for almost two years, before you went to your Operational Training Unit, you'd been effectively piloting for other trainees learning to shoot and all the rest of it.
GP: Over two years. Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
GP: So, yes, it took a long time to get there but we finally made it and I had this motorcycle of course.
AM: That’s right.
GP: So with my brother who’d been across to America, but because he’d bust his eardrum, he was put back. He was going to be a fighter pilot and he would have made a very good one but he had to come down quickly because there was a tornado coming along and he burst an eardrum and they put him off and he finished up supplying [coughs] food to the Chindits in Burma etcetera, on DC3s. But, so there were three pilots in the family of course. Anyway, he rode motorbikes as well and we did that after the war, but yes, um —
AM: Were you — so all these two years when you were doing piloting, were you anxious to go on Operations? Or were you happy where you were?
GP: Oh yeah. I’d been wanting this right from the very start.
AM: Right.
GP: I was a bit unlucky in that respect. Or lucky.
GR: Or lucky.
GP: But anyway, in the end, I managed it and I got decent reports and I got a crew that selected me actually.
AM: How did that work?
GP: [Laughs].
AM: How did that happen?
GP: And they’d heard that I’d had a lot of experience etcetera and I’ve got the Bomb Aimer’s little letter here that suggested that they chose me because, you know, because of my experience they thought it was better than none. [Laughs]. So, I got a very good crew with me but of course I was spending a lot of my time riding back to Sheffield to see my parents because they’d got two sons, one out in Batavia and places like that. Burma. And me. I’d been out for a year longer of course. Brother Pete was just a little bit younger than I was. So. Anyway we got on well and eventually, I was very fortunate in being just in time to do the first D-Day raid.
GR: ‘Cause you ended up going to 550 Squadron.
GP: Yeah, that’s it.
GR: At Killingholme. And you arrived there on the 24th May 1944.
GP: That’s right.
GR: Yeah.
GP: And it was just in time to — Normally, they gave a couple of flights with the Flight Commander, just to get you experienced on the raid itself but I was lucky that, but unlucky in one way but I went with the Flight Commander. Yeah. And it was the first raid and we raided a coastal battery on the Cherbourg peninsula there.
GR: And I’ll just interrupt to say —
GP: So I had a sort of supervision there.
GR: That your first Operation was on the night of D-Day.
GP: It was.
GR: Because on the night of the 5th of June going into the 6th of June — So your first ever Operation was on the eve.
GP: Yeah.
GR: And then your next Operation was you flew to Paris – was actually on the 6th of June.
AM: Was on D-Day.
GP: That’s right. Well we’ve got some information on there [turns pages] Now wait a minute.
AM: I’ll take copies of this after, if I may.
GP: Yes. Oh yes.
AM: Were you aware, then, so it’s the 5th of June – how aware were you of —
GR: D-Day.
AM: What was actually happening? And you know, that it was —
GP: Oh, we saw them going across actually as we crossed our coast. We saw the fleet and yeah, we have actually a certificate here [sound of pages turning].
GR: So what was the first Operation like? Did it all go smoothly?
GP: Err, it was, yes. Oh, here we are.
AM: Here we are.
GP: That was the original copy.
AM: I’ll take a copy of that, if I may, afterwards.
GR: Yeah.
AM: What was it actually like then on — You’re an experienced pilot, but here you are on your first Operation. Describe it to me.
GP: Well. I was under supervision there you see, of course, which was a little bit of bad luck I think. But, no, I was excited. I’ve always liked danger. [sound of pages turning] You know, we used to race motorbikes and things eventually. No problems as far as that is concerned. But that was the first raid. Incidentally, that bloke, eventually, when I got shot down —
AM: When you say ‘that bloke’ you’re talking about the Com—
GP: Yeah. My Squadron Leader.
AM: Yes.
GR: Yep.
AM: Yep.
GP: He gave me his old aeroplane. And he took a new one and it made quite a difference actually. Because we were both shot down on the same raid, ten days later actually. You can’t believe it, can you? There were three of us shot down out of eighteen that took part. But, yes, it was the same Peter that, I got blasted on Sterkrade.
AM: Yes. We’ll come back to that.
GP: Oh yes. Here we are. We’ve got all these. [sound of pages turning] This is the first raid on D-Day.
You can have a look at all these.
AM: OK.
GR: Yes. There’s a certificate’s given to you for —
AM: Yes. So I’m looking here at a Diploma. La Croix de Guerre. A citation certificate. The — a Valeur Militaire, which hopefully I’ll be able to copy afterwards.
Other 1: Certainly.
AM: What was it actually — I need you to describe to me what it actually felt like.
GP: Well that was an easy raid.
AM: Um.
GP: But —
AM: By ‘easy’ —
GP: Very vital.
AM: Why do you say it was easy?
GP: Well there wasn’t too much flak, ‘cause —
AM: OK.
GP: It was in France.
AM: Umm.
GP: Germany was the worst place to go, of course. And I only did two more. The second one I got shot down on Germany, you see, another [unclear].
AM: So how many Operations all together?
GR: There were seven Operations all together and the first [counting] one, two, three, four, were all over the Normandy coast. But within the space of eleven days, after three years of being in the RAF, in the space of eleven days, seven Operations and shot down on your seventh.
GP: That’s it. Yeah.
AM: Tell me about that then.
GP: Well. It was — night flying was very difficult because the Germans by that time had got a very intense flak system going and they had a very good radar system. Not only on the ground, but in the air. And all these night fighters, some of whom got up to two or three hundred victories, because they were guided on to the aircraft, and they were put in a position where they could see us, but we couldn’t see them ‘cause we were just looking out with our eyeballs, of course. So. And this is what happened to me on the way back from this thing. Anyway, the flak hit us on that last raid and we’ve got — There is a description of that.
AM: I’ll find that.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Let’s find that afterwards. You tell me in your words.
GP: OK. That isn’t quite accurate, but —
AM: Put it down for a minute. Tell me in your own words.
GP: Yes. What happened was that, on that raid, again it was night time and it was about 2 o’clock in the morning on Sterkrade and that again was in the Ruhr which is a heavily defended place. And we got hit something like about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour before we actually got to the target. So, one engine went out and then the second one followed it. Both on the same side. And there was a hole in the nose of the aeroplane. There was a little fire started which went out fortunately. And some of my instruments were missing. And all the hydraulics had gone.
AM: Right.
GP: So we — Oh, the first thing was, we were flying at eighteen thousand feet and everybody else was up at twenty, because we were using an old aeroplane. And there again you’ve got the details of that in the papers. But the Squadron Leader had been using previously etcetera and he got the new one. Anyway, we’d been two thousand feet lower than everybody else all the way of course, which is —
AM: Sitting duck.
GP: And I staggered along with the — I had my bomb aimer, the navigator was helping ‘cause by this time we could see markers going down over the target. The navigator and the radio operator. And they’re all working on this problem down below.
AM: On the hydraulics.
GP: On the hydraulics and such like.
AM: What was the flight engineer doing?
GP: The flight engineer was down below.
AM: He was down there as well.
GP: Yeah, there was a crowd down there and I didn’t know what was going to — because I was having to fly the thing manually of course. And keep it in the air on two engines. So, anyway we were flat out on the other two and we got to the target eventually and we’d lost height obviously but when we circled round we couldn’t open the bomb bays. So we’d got six and a half tons, I think it was, on the aircraft and still quite a bit of fuel so it wasn’t a nice situation and after about five minutes we decided we’d better leave the area ‘cause it was getting too hot. And I set course for — tried to miss the big towns in Holland and we’d only just passed over the — oh, we were still in Germany when we had two fighter attacks on us [laughs] which — At least the gunners shouted. And I did my corkscrewing to evade him.
GR: On two engines.
AM: Even though you’ve only got two engines.
GP: Oh yes. And they could see him at two o’clock in the morning so it was obviously fairly close, and yeah, so we lost more height and more height and what I’d intended was to try and get to the English coast, drop the crew off and then head out to sea.
AM: When you say ‘drop the crew off’, you mean —
GP: Do what I could do with my dingy and my —
AM: Abandon.
GP: Mae West and hope somebody would rescue me, but there was no chance of that after the fighter attack, you see. Anyway.
AM: So where did the fighter get you? You’ve already lost two engines, your hydraulics aren’t working, your bomb bay won’t open.
GP: Yeah. That’s it.
AM: And then the fighter, where did the fighter get you?
GP: And actually, the gunners tried to fire but the gun turrets wouldn’t turn ‘cause they’re on the hydraulics.
GR: ‘Cause of the hydraulics.
GP: So everything was against us. I don’t know why they bothered firing. You know. Anyway. The fighter disappeared, fortunately and we were just over the Dutch border by that time so I bailed the crew out. And they went off and the last thing the bomber mentioned as he went, he was the last one out, he should have been the first. But he’d lost a boot. Tried to kick the — There was a little panel down below that they dropped through and I checked them all out through the front, you see, I got time to do that, and then I left of course and I had to close the throttle on the other two engines to keep the aircraft, well, flying really but I had to take off my mask and helmet and all the communication cables and things like that and the seat belt and things. When I left the controls, I’d been fighting those for a long time then, the aircraft started going down in a spin and the tendency is for you to be thrown around and pulled towards the back of the aircraft so I had a job trying to get down into the little hole that they’d left in the bottom. Anyway, eventually I pulled my parachute cord as soon as I got out and I must have been, well, I hadn’t tightened up my straps. I couldn’t do that. They’re uncomfortable to sit at the tension that you’d normally fly, you know, [background aircraft noise] so they were on but they weren’t tight enough and as I fell through this hole, I fell through the harness and I was left sticking head downwards on my parachute when it opened you see. Anyway, all the others got out ok. But, oh, I’ll continue with my story anyway. But, yes, I managed to pull myself, I was very fit in those days, and I managed to pull myself and hold on to the straps which of course swings the parachute, you know, when you’re pulling on one side and that was fortunate because when I hit the ground, it was right on my backside. The old coccyx took it, and of all things, I landed — It was pouring with rain. Absolutely pouring with rain. It was June and it was a wheat field that I landed in and it was June when all the crop was up.
AM: Yep.
GP: And not only that —
AM: Slightly softer landing.
GP: They explained that to me afterwards that I would have killed myself ‘cause it’s like jumping off the ceiling with those sorts of parachutes. It’s quite a hard landing. And as I was on my backside, it must have been on the upswing of the parachute when I touched down, because I didn’t feel any shock.
AM: You didn’t damage your back. You know, so as you’re coming down, you probably had too much to think about but you’ve left the plane, that’s still —
GP: It’s all very dark.
AM: Could you see what happened to the plane, or was it – Had it gone too far by then?
GP: Well no. It landed fairly close to me.
AM: Right.
GP: So I wasn’t very far away from it.
AM: ‘Cause it’s still got a full bomb load on it and lots of fuel.
GP: And it all went up. Yeah.
AM: Right.
GP: And it landed on a farm in [unclear] and killed seven people unfortunately. I’ve got a picture of the memorial there.
AM: But you wouldn’t have known that at the time. You knew that afterwards.
GP: Well I couldn’t do anything about it.
AM: No, no. And you wouldn’t –presumably you wouldn’t have known anyway at the time.
GP: It was an area where there wasn’t any big buildings but there was a village and this was the interesting thing, that as I’d landed, I just screwed up my parachute and it was in the wheat field and nothing else I could do. But I saw by the glow of the fire that — a church steeple and it was the village steeple, so I made my way. I knew that the War would be over fairly shortly after. We thought in about six months. So, I went to the church to find help which was our briefing as Bomber pilots, of course. If you wanted to get help, you normally went to a church. And I went and sat in a graveyard for the rest of the night and it was only about three hours because it was June and it was about two o’clock I think when I got out of the aeroplane.
AM: Can you remember how you actually felt at this point?
GP: Yeah. [laughs]
AM: Are you really scared? Were you —
GP: Well no, no. It all happens very slowly. I think when you race motorbikes, it’s the same sort of thing, you know.
AM: It’s like slow motion.
GP: Everything seems to slow down. Yeah. And your decisions – I’ve had a lot of experiences in civil flying when I’ve had engine troubles and all sorts of things happen. I’ve been flying passengers around with one engine gone on a twin.
AM: But not with a full bomb load.
GP: And I didn’t tell them either. [laughs]
AM: So you’re sat in the graveyard. Then what?
GP: It’s funny but there was no fear at all.
AM: No.
GP: But I was feeling miserable because it was pouring down with rain still and I was sitting on this — somebody’s resting place and it was a bit hard, so in the morning, I peeped over the wall to the vicarage when I heard a noise and it was the vicar’s wife. I’ve even got the name of the vicar who helped me actually. But it was the start of an Underground movement. This is where the story gets interesting because they got me into the Underground movement and —
AM: What did the vicar’s wife say when she saw you?
GP: [laughs] Well, she looked at me, and you know, well I was in uniform of course so she knew what had happened ‘cause —
AM: Seen the plane.
GP: Things going bang just beside of me [laughs] and yes, I was given a civvy suit and a cardboard collar [laughs] as a tie and a little green Carte d’Identité which said I was deaf and dumb, with a picture on. Yeah, a picture of me. Eventually. And, so I started off down the KLM Line. The Dutch KLM Line.
AM: Dutch KLM Line. What does that stand for?
GP: Well, that was the name they gave it.
AM: Ok.
GP: It was —
GR: All the escape lines had different names.
GP: Yeah, they had different names for all these escape routes.
AM: So, like the Comet Line and things like that.
GP: Yeah. Anyway, you went from safe house to safe house etcetera and amazingly enough, at one of them, they said, ‘You’re going to be joined by another aviator.’ And guess who it was. It was my mid- upper gunner, old Jackson. And he was a bus driver from Salford and he’d joined right on the limit for them. He was thirty-four years of age when he joined and I was only twenty-two by that time, you see, and he looked like Methuselah to me because he’d – They’d dressed him up, you know, in civvies and from there on, we went down this Underground line together. Well, we always walked separately, you know, about thirty metres behind each other and we always had a guide. An armed guide. Who would take us to the next place, you see. Anyway, I got some pictures of one of the helpers. ‘Cause a lot of them were shot after the War. Well, during that time of course, when they were caught. But anyway, we went all the way through and we went through Brader which was a Leave Centre for the Germans during that time and it was full of Germans and there was me, you know, fresh-faced little bloke with a thing.
AM: Deaf and dumb.
GP: And if anybody had asked me for my passport, or even shouted, I would’ve turned round, you know. [laughs]
AM: You couldn’t speak. You were dumb. Or supposed to be.
GP: [laughs] I’d have said I was Russian or — it wouldn’t matter, you know. But, I was deaf and dumb. It was as sophisticated as that. And I’ve got a full report on the KLM line until it got to the border in there, which is interesting. Anyway, we finally came to Antwerp in Belgium and we were put in a flat with — And I’ve got a picture of the lady who was there, and the rest of it. We stayed for three days and we ate beautifully.
AM: Still just the two of you or had other people —
GP: There were two of us, yeah.
AM: Still just the two of you.
GP: Oh, all the rest had been picked up except for the bomb aimer who went a different route down the escape things. He was caught eventually. But they were sent off to the NCO Camps and I was an Officer of course, so I got sent to a different camp.
AM: Oh, hang on. You’d not been caught yet.
GP: Yes, so we finished up in this flat and we were fed well and a very nice woman there and of course we chatted and the Front was advancing, of course, towards Belgium by that time. And then they said, ‘Well, we’re going to go and try and get through to the lines,’ you know, ‘We’re going West.’ And they were going to put us in an ambulance and bandage us up and take us. [laughs] Anyway, we went out to this place and we got into a car to take us out to the ambulance and all of a sudden — Oh, we were being escorted by a great big bloke who was supposed to be the girlfriend of this, the one in the flat, you see. Er, sorry, her boyfriend.
AM: Her boyfriend.
GP: And yeah, we thought we were on the way and all of a sudden he pulls out a gun and said, ‘OK. So for you, the War is over.’ And this is the fascinating thing, he turned out to be — [laughs] It’s all in here and it really should be read because it’s a lovely, lovely story. [sound of pages being turned]
GR: Which we will do, but tell us who he was.
AM: We will do. Carry on telling me. We’ll come to the [unclear]
GP: A character called René Van Muylem. And he was a Belgian who had Nazi sympathies.
AM: Right.
GP: And what had happened was that he’d got hold of the papers from one of our SOE agents who were being landed in France to help set up these lines, you see. And they’d captured this bloke, taken his papers off. Oh, René had them. And then he started organising the thing. Of course, instead of running up the line and picking everybody up, he just stayed there.
AM: Waited at the end of it.
GP: And a hundred and seventy-seven airmen were caught with the same system. And they used a flat, the flat that I was in, and a café for the two places in Antwerp were —
AM: They were all picked up.
GP: They were put. Yeah.
AM: It’s like drawing you to the centre of a spider’s web.
GP: Yeah.
AM: Just drawing you in.
GP: That’s right.
AM: Did the woman in the flat know about — Was she an infiltrator as well or was she a goodie?
GP: This is what worried me, because I didn’t know whether she was one of them or one of us. So, nothing happened actually because the papers weren’t allowed to be released until fifty years afterwards. And that was to avoid —
AM: Reprisals.
GP: Revenge attacks and things like that. So it wasn’t until 1995 that they were released and I’ve got a picture of, I’ve got another paper from the Escapers Society which explains all this, about it.
AM: Right. In the meanwhile, so for you, the War is over, then what happened?
GP: Oh, that was it. Well of course we went off to the place where they interrogated us. Still in Belgium. And then we were taken to Frankfurt.
AM: What was interrogation like?
GP: Well it wasn’t tough. I think the Germans were beginning to realise that they were losing the War and they were afraid of, you know, retribution afterwards, of course. So, they interrogated. It wasn’t pleasant. They threatened you, but, that sort of thing, but they obviously weren’t going to beat you up and things, so it wasn’t bad. And while I was in Frankfurt, this is another interesting thing, we had an air raid and it was night time of course. Another RAF one. And we were all sent down to an enormous underground shelter and there were all these Germans in there and there was thirty of us.
AM: Were you still in uniform? No, you weren’t in uniform by this time, were you? ‘Cause you were in disguises.
GP: No, I’d got civvies. And old Jack had too. Anyway they, yeah, they put us down there and put us in a little corner but I expected to be, you know, strung up from the roof because Frankfurt had been absolutely battered for a long time and in the morning, we came out and all I could remember seeing was the cathedral spire. Everything was as flat as a pancake, you know, it had all been bombed. I’m amazed that the Germans were so, you know, controlled. You know. Yes. Anyway, so there we were. Oh, I missed out just one little bit. We were put into Antwerp prison first and waited until there was thirty people there and then they took them all down for interrogation together.
AM: Together.
GP: Frankfurt thing. So. And we were the first ones in, so they were picking out one a day, I calculate, because it took about a month before we were shifted from Antwerp jail. From where we watched the fighter bombers attacking the local airfield at Evère. And it was — it wasn’t a very pleasant place. We used to have to amuse ourselves by killing the bugs, you know. They were full of blood and things. [laughs]
AM: What about food? Did they feed you ok?
GP: Yeah, oh, the — In Frankfurt, that was the second time I’d been Blitzed, you see. A third time. We’d had two by the Luftwaffe and then this one by the [unclear]. You can’t believe it can you? Anyway, from there I was taken up to Bath. It was an Officers’ place. So we didn’t have to work or anything like that. And the others were taken over to — I don’t know whether it was Sagen [?] or — but anyway, they had one of these — that was the navigator and well, all the rest had these marches when the Germans —
AM: Long march, yes.
GP: Were trying to get them West to keep them out of the Russians’ way.
GR: Just backtracking, did all the crew get out? Did all —
GP: They all got out, yes. And we met again at the squadron afterwards. You know, after the War. But they had this long walk to do and — nasty for them. And I was all the way up near Lübeck and it was so far that they decided that they’d send us Flying Fortresses to get back home. Which was rather nice. We were right by a Luftwaffe airfield. A fighter airfield which had been mined etcetera so we were delayed while the —
AM: How long were you there though, before the end of the War? How long were you there when —
GP: Well I wasn’t long there. I was in the prison camp by August and we came out in May.
AM: So, for nine months.
GP: ’45.
AM: Nine months.
GP: Nine months, yeah.
AM: What was that like?
GP: The prison camp, it was fine and it was run by an ex Luftwaffe pilot from the First World War so he was very good and he was very strictly according to the rules and things. The only trouble was, of course, that we’d bombed all the railway lines and all the junctions and things and they couldn’t get Red Cross parcels through, except on a very small scale and so we got very thin and also of course, we were writing letters but they never got home.
AM: No way of getting them.
GP: Because there was no, even the Red Cross couldn’t get them through, so my parents of course, all this time, had got the message that I was missing but no news, and of course, as time went on, with brother Pete still fighting the Japanese, it wasn’t a happy position.
AM: No.
GP: And this is another thing, of course, that very fortunately, one of those letters that I wrote home, which didn’t get there, was read out by Lord Haw-Haw. The whole thing. I’ve got a copy there. Over the radio. Well my parents didn’t listen to the broadcast, but we got letters. Well, Mum and Pop got letters from all over the place.
AM: We’ve heard —
GP: ‘Did you hear that your son was alive?’ You know. ‘He’s in the prison camp.’ You know, sort of thing. And I was asking them if my motorbike had been sent back from the squadron, and things like that. You know, [laughs] so, yeah, old Haw-Haw.
AM: Fame.
GP: He was a friend to me.
[laughter]
GP: I’ve got a wonderful, wonderful thing here. You must reproduce that.
AM: I will do.
GR: Oh, we will do.
GP: It’s an explanation of why he was actually — It’s a whole thing of why he was hung.
GR: Hung. Yeah.
GP: Hanged.
GR: Hanged after the war.
AM: Yes.
GP: But that is a real gem of a thing because — I think it’s written by the son of the lawyer who actually was taking the trials at Nuremberg.
AM: Right.
GP: But yes, so, you can photograph all these things, yeah.
AM: I will do. I’ll look at that after. So you’ve been there nine months. Were you able to — Did you know how the war was progressing? Had you got any news of that?
GP: Oh yeah, well, a little bit, yeah. We had a radio etcetera in the thing. And in fact, apart from getting very thin, we used to entertain ourselves. And one of the big entertainments was the arrival weekly — Our toilet facilities were very basic there. It was a long trench with a pole and you sat on the pole and that was it. But they had to empty it you see. Every week.
AM: When you say ‘they’, who’s ‘they’?
[laughter]
GR: The prisoners.
AM: The prisoners had to empty it?
GP: Yeah. [laughs loudly] Anyway, there’s six horses pulling a tank, you see, with a cap on it. A sprung cap. And what they used to do, oh, and a pipe which used to down into the Mess. And we’d all stand around. There was about two thousand of us in this camp. We’d all stand around and the bloke would throw in some petrol or something, and it lit. And it blew the top off and of course all the air went out and produced suction in the pipe. [laughs] And the old six horses would go off and that was the job done. It used to amuse us, you know. We had little — We had, from the Red Cross, who’d been able to operate previously, we had twelve chess sets and the, er, we had the Canadian champion chess set man and he used to lie on a bunk. We used to have bunks, three deep, you see, in these wooden huts with about a hundred and forty people in them. The huts were built off the ground so you couldn’t dig a tunnel or anything. And in any case, it was so far from anywhere, it wasn’t worth trying, you know. But he used to lie on his thing and he’d say, ‘OK, well, you move your things and tell me what you’ve done on your chess sets.’ And he’d play eleven people and he’d win every time. And he’d got a memory of everybody’s move.
GR: So he was playing eleven different people at once.
GP: And we used to have little shows and things, but time went very quickly because we knew the War was finishing. And then the Russians came, of course. And that was a tricky moment because we were let out of the camp. Well, the Germans disappeared.
AM: So the Germans just went.
GP: And we got out of the camp. And then the Russian — It was the people behind the front, they weren’t the actual soldiers, came charging in and we’d commandeered bicycles [aircraft noise] from anybody we saw, and things like that, and we were killing anything we could find to eat, you know, and things like that. Anyway, the Germans had let us keep our ordinary watches on. Our private watches. Perhaps somebody was riding a bicycle, or they’d got a watch on and these Russians would just, you know, say, ‘I want that.’ Sort of business. And if anybody refused, they shot them. Or killed them. You know. We had three or four people actually killed. So what we did was, to lock everybody back into the [unclear] camp again. It was an amazing situation. Only for a short while. But it also took in the time when we were de-mining the airfield of booby traps and things like that.
AM: Again, when you say ‘we’.
GP: Well, I was one of the bods who was given — about a hundred of us, you know, stayed out. Well, we had our bunks still. And we got out of the place.
AM: Okay. But who did the de-mining?
GP: Pardon?
AM: Who did the de-mining? Who actually did it?
GP: De-mining, yeah. And booby trap, looking for, you see and things like that.
AM: But who?
GP: And that took — No, I didn’t do that.
AM: No, ok.
GP: But anyway, yeah, after about, oh, it’d be a couple of weeks, in which time, I’d already sat in a Focke- Wulf 190, one of their airplanes! And been hauled out by a Russian actually. Yeah. Because he thought it was going to be mined and if I touched anything it might blow up, you know. But anyway, it was all good fun and eventually we were taken off by Flying Fortress and flew back into England. Yeah. So it was quite a trip and all very exciting, but when you go through a place like Breda, and you’re sitting in a tram or a bus, we used to use bicycles and all sorts of things to travel, and people are looking, you know, opposite you, and looking at you and you wonder whether they’re German, or, you know, ‘cause there was a lot of [unclear] intelligence people floating round, Gestapo and things. And even the bods with tin helmets on and things, you wonder whether they’re going to stop you, and things. And with this little green pass it would have been hopeless. If they’d talked to me, I would have involuntarily, sort of, [laughs] responded to them and turned my head or something like that.
AM: When the Flying Fort— There were two thousand, did you say, there? Did you say there were two thousand of you in the camp?
GP: Yes, yeah.
AM: So when the Flying Fortresses turned up, how long did that take then to actually get you all out?
GP: Oh, I don’t know, but, oh, and I went in the hangar you see, and pinched a whole load of tools, ‘cause I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to get something out of these bods.’ [laughs] And I got this little bag of tools, well it was quite a heavy one, and tried to get on the Fortress and they said, ‘We won’t get airborne with that lot.’ And I had to throw half of them away and I’ve still got some millimetre spanners in there. And I had an electric drill and all sorts of things.
GR: Oh God.
GP: That I’d pinched from the Luftwaffe.
[laughter]
AM: So where did you — What was it like when you landed back then? Where did you land back in the Flying Fortress?
GP: Well, um, I don’t know where we landed actually.
AM: In England or —
GP: Then, what happened was that Princess Elizabeth, before she was Queen, had a house in Ascot.
AM: Yes.
GP: And the first thing they did was send the Officers, some of the Officers, there to just generally feed them up and get them back to a decent weight and things and give them time. They could go to lectures if the wanted to and we had a little WAAF to look after us and things like that.
AM: Did you have to be de-loused?
GP: Yeah. And we used her house in Ascot there. It’s now a big administrative building, but, in Sunning—
AM: Sunningdale?
GP: Not in Ascot. It was Sunning—. Sunningdale. Sunningdale. Yeah. So. And we had a little time there and then I was posted off to Ely as an Assistant Air Traffic Controller.
AM: At what point did you get to go home and see your parents?
GP: Oh, I was able to go home.
AM: More or less straight away.
GP: Yep. So, but, yeah. So that was a little bonus. But I stayed in the RAFVR because they weren’t quite sure about whether we were going to fight the Russians and things like that, so I stayed there and eventually I got my green ticket, you know, that allowed me the commercial pilot’s licence and then started looking for a job. But I didn’t get a job for six years. Yes, BEA, of course what had happened was that I’d been in the prison camp without flying for, you know, um —
AM: Nine months.
GP: Nine months at least, so — And all the jobs had gone by that time and they were mostly transport aircraft pilots who were given the jobs, so — And it wasn’t until 1952 and I was on my honeymoon.
Other 1: Yes.
AM: I was going to ask you where you met your wife.
[unclear background conversation]
GP: Taken there. She’s sixty years of age there, do you know.
AM: Gosh.
GP: We were retired and that’s just at the bottom of the road there.
AM: Yeah.
GP: Anyway.
GR: Did you meet your wife after the war? Or had you already known her?
GP: No, I met her after the war because what I’d done was to go back to my audit department, you see.
AM: I was going to ask what you did in those years before you actually got your job in flying again then.
GP: Yes, so, it was a good time because brother Pete came back from Japan and we raced motorbikes. These sort of things.
AM: When you say you raced motorbikes. What level? [sound of aircraft]
[sound of pages being turned]
AM: What? Where? Gosh.
GP: That’s us. [laughs]
AM: I’ve got some wonderful pictures here, for the tape.
GP: Oh, yeah, but I —
AM: Of Geoff and his brother on motorbikes.
GP: Don’t take that. This sepia, I tried to wipe something off and it’s —
AM: And it’s —
GP: Those are my nephews and things.
AM: Gosh.
GP: But there’s some lovely pictures there.
AM: I’m sure I can scan one of them.
GP: Yeah.
GR: So would that have been speedway? Was that —
AM: With motorbikes.
GP: We used to do grass tracks, trials, hill climbs and even the road racing at Cadwell Park and things.
GR: Oh yeah, I’ve heard of Cadwell.
AM: Yeah. So, but, so —
GP: Those were in Belgium, I took those.
AM: So you went back to the audit department at the town hall.
GP: So I went back to the audit department.
AM: But had the time of your life on motorbikes.
GP: And there, I met my fate, you see because I was an auditor and my wife was a cashier in the education department and by chance, I happened to be given that. We used to swap over these departments to audit, you see. I was given the education and there was a great big conference room with a mahogany table and a whole load of busts and things around the side looking at you. And I used to sit there and the cashiers’ office was right by. There was Stella and a good friend. She’s still living. As two little girls in the cashiers’ office, you see, and she used to bring me ledgers and journals and things to look at, you see. So, we had a six — we had a five-year courtship because she was looking out for an old Mum who had a very violent husband and she wasn’t in a hurry to get married and of course I was racing motorbikes with my brother, so we were both in the same boat really.
AM: Well, not quite.
[laughter]
AM: You were enjoying yourself on motorbikes.
GP: [laughs] That’s right, yeah. Well eventually, yeah, we decided that this was it and by sheer chance I met — oh, no, an advert came up from Sabena and they were short of pilots, you see, and they wanted a dozen to make up their fleet and I wrote in to them and I’d got my commercial by this [unclear] from the RAF really. Anyway, yeah, I was one of those selected, so I threw up my job and it was a bit of a gamble because I had to go over there and my English licence wasn’t good enough for the Belgians.
AM: ‘Cause what was — I was going to say, what was Sabena? That was Belgian.
GP: Commercial, yeah. So I had to take all my exams. There were about twelve different subjects and things in it and I also had to pass a medical every six months and things and flying tests and the rest of it. So I took a chance and they put me in Brussels of course. Well, you know, Brussels, and I could have gone and seen this woman of course but I didn’t because I still wasn’t sure.
AM: Still wasn’t sure whether she was a goodie or a baddie.
GP: Anyway, I passed the exam. I think partly because I took one or two of them in French which I could speak anyway and they were laughing at my accent [laughs]. Always used to do that. Yes. And from there on, I did ten years with them and then Stella had little chicos and we had to evacuate the Congo. And that was quite a thing. It was war-time footing and I was without sleep for two consecutive nights occasionally and still flying the aeroplane.
AM: Was this commercial aircraft then or passenger or —
GP: Sabena did it, yeah. We had our internal lines in the Congo.
GR: Because the Congo at the time was Belgian wasn’t it.
AM: Oh, of course, Belgian Congo. Of course.
GR: And that’s why the Belgians would have used their civil aircraft to evacuate.
GP: That’s right.
AM: I understand. I’m with you.
GP: There was two blacks fighting it out too. Tshombe and Lumumba. And they were trying to get the Belgians out. There were a lot of Belgians used to work down there, of course. It was a very good place. Especially Katanga, the — And Elizabeth. They were very, very wealthy places ‘cause they had the gold mines, the copper mines and all that sort of thing and Léopoldville was the centre of the place. Anyway, we had to go and get all these people out from their places and it was a question of twice as many people, on occasions, than there were seats for them. And they were sitting in the aisle and in the toilet and they were in the cockpit with us and everything. And the aircraft were overloaded and things and we were having to — on the return journey, and we were so overloaded that we could only take a little bit of fuel so we’d have to land in all these odd places in Africa on the way back. My job was the captain, you see, was in those days, getting the women and children out first, was to put on — there wasn’t a lot of steps to our aircraft and stand at the top and stop anybody else coming in. We used to get some people saying, ‘I’m the Ambassador to so-and-so. And I need to get —’ [laughs] And you’d say, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t get on here.’ And while the First Officer used to — the only people who were left in the Congo really were the Air Traffic Controllers who were usually English. Amazing isn’t it. But it was a time when my wife had just had the babies and of course I could get home and sleep for twenty-four hours, take her out to lunch and back on the job.
AM: Where was she —? Where were you living? Where was she living?
GP: We were in — She was in Brussels.
AM: In Brussels.
GP: We used to live just outside and we had this little — a dozen of us. The other pilots and their wives, if they weren’t flying, would look after the one whose wasn’t there. But we used to fly — one of the reasons why Sabena was good was because they used to pay twice as much as BOAC but of course we used to work twice as hard, you see, so, but in the end, it was the children that decided me to pack up the flying and by sheer chance, here again you know, someone’s looked after me, they were starting up the Flight Ops Inspectorate in the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation. They’d had an accident at Hounslow, where an aircraft had piled in to a load of council houses and killed a few people and they found out it was overloaded and under-serviced and things for repairs and things and they needed some check and they were looking for airline pilots of course, because when you check a company out, you’ve got to check the pilots as well. As the cruises will. So, we used to look at the ops manuals and training manuals, look at the standard of things and then give a certificate to fly certain type of aircraft in a certain part of the world depending at the facilities at the — you know, what sort of training they have and that. And it turned out then the most interesting job I’ve ever had because they gave me all-weather operations so I flew the Trident, before the pilots did of course, with the manufacturer, and I flew that right to the very end of my career, in 1982. There’s a lovely picture I think of my last — [pages turning] oh, that was the one with the Concorde and that’s before there was a Concorde aircraft available. They hadn’t got one then.
AM: So you flew — Did you fly Concorde?
GP: And that’s a mock-up for the —
AM: Did you fly Concorde?
GP: No, no, I — Unfortunately. That’s a bloke from Stansted, our —
AM: We’re looking at a photo in the album now.
GP: And that’s me at the other end.
AM: Right.
GP: And I’m with the Inspector you see.
AM: Got you.
GP: And they made him into — When I retired, this is —
AM: He became you, yeah.
GP: I only did about five years on this. So I used to do the simulator. Oh that’s old [unclear].
AM: No, I’ll look at that. I’ll look at these afterwards. Can I ask you one last, one last thing. So the — going back to the escape line, and the flats and the lady who you didn’t know whether she was a goodie or a baddie, but you eventually did find out.
GP: Yeah.
AM: So how did you find out? When the papers were released, I think you said.
GP: Um, well, it was, hang on.
AM: Did she turn out to be a goodie or a baddie? A goodie I assume.
GP: She was a goodie.
AM: Good.
GP: Yeah. And yes, she was clean and I felt so sad but by this time it was fifty years later.
AM: Did you meet her? Did you go and meet her?
GP: No, I didn’t, no.
AM: No.
GP: I don’t know whether she was alive or not. But anyway, we can — whatever you want to talk about.
AM: OK. I’ll —
GP: We’ll go through these in a bit.
AM: We’ve got lots of papers to look at, so I’m going to switch off now and start looking at these.
GP: Ok.
AM: And get my scanner out.
GP: Well there we are. That’s the hill where my aircraft was —
AM: OK. Who put the memorial up?
GP: Well, now of course, the whole place is built up.
AM: Yes.
GP: And by sheer chance, my mid-upper gunner, old Jack Jackson has a daughter who’s married a Dutchman and they took these pictures.
AM: Who actually erected the memorial though?
GP: Um?
AM: Who actually erected it? The Dutch people?
GP: Oh yeah. And that’s the — the thing on there, that’s part of the aircraft. That’s the aluminium that’s come off the aircraft.
GR: Just before you go on, that Dutch escape line was actually — The whole thing was turned by the Germans in 1942. From 1942 onwards, the Germans controlled all the SOE coming into Holland. They knew what was happening and everything.
GP: Yeah.
GR: And, as I understand it, ‘cos I spoke to a couple of other chaps who were turned over, exactly the same as you. And I believe after the war, the big bloke who got his gun out to you, he was hung.
GP: He was. No, he was shot.
GR: Shot. Yeah, I know he was —
GP: In a baker’s yard. And the story is here.
AM: We’ve got the story of that as well.
GP: Oh, I see.
AM: Ok.
GR: But I do believe all —
AM: So the bloke who actually turned Geoff in, [reading aloud] ‘Robert René Van Muylem is a very interesting and complex character. He was finally arrested in Paris in 1945 whilst working as a bartender at Camp Lucky Strike. It was one of the US Army Air Force Repatriation Centres and was where, unfortunately for him, he was recognised by Second Lieutenant Robert Hoke of the 388 BG, one of the airmen he betrayed. He was sent back to Belgium and thoroughly de-briefed and he was executed in 1947.’
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 Geoff Packham
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
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
2016-08-25
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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APackhamGH160825, PPackhamG1610
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:21:22 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1944-05
1944-06
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Alberta--Medicine Hat
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Alberta
Alberta
Canada
Nova Scotia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff’s father had been in the Royal Flying Corps and Geoff joined the Royal Air Force at RAF Cardington. He was posted to various stations before going to Halifax in Canada to train as a pilot on Tiger Moths and then Oxfords.
On his return, Geoff was posted to RAF Stormy Down on Whitleys and RAF Brize Norton where he trained army pilots to fly Horsa gliders. He was also posted to fly Wellingtons at the RAF Sutton Bridge experimental unit.
Geoff was eventually posted to Bomber Command and trained on Wellingtons at RAF Finningley. They did dummy raids, and dropped leaflets and Window. Geoff went to 550 Squadron at RAF North Killingholme in May 1944. He completed seven operations within 11 days and was shot down on the seventh. The first four operations were over the Normandy coast, starting on 5 June 1944 around D-Day.
Geoff describes how his plane was shot on its way to Sterkrade in the Ruhr. They baled out just over the Dutch border. Geoff landed in a wheat field whilst the aircraft hit a farm, killing seven people. Geoff found the church and was given clothing and a false identity card. He went down the escape line with his mid-upper gunner to Antwerp. They were betrayed by the Flemish collaborator, René van Muylem, who had set up a false escape line.
Geoff was interrogated and taken to Frankfurt. He was then sent to Stalag Luft I prisoner of war camp in Barth for nine months. There was little food but it was otherwise acceptable. His parents learnt he was a prisoner when his letter to them was read out by Lord Haw-Haw. The Germans left before the Russians arrived. Geoff was returned on a B-17.
Geoff was posted to Ely as Assistant Air Traffic Controller and stayed in the RAF volunteer reserve until his commercial pilot licence was granted.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
550 Squadron
Air Raid Precautions
B-17
bale out
bombing
civil defence
Dulag Luft
evading
Horsa
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
prisoner of war
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Sutton Bridge
sanitation
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1982/41574/LHope169139v4.2.pdf
781dde810de17852ace660d30587286a
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
Hope, Arthur Denis
A D Hope
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
2017-11-12
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
Hope, AD
Description
An account of the resource
26 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Arthur Denis Hope (169139 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, correspondence, documents, newspaper cuttings and photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 62 Squadron before becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bruce Neill-Gourlay and Pat Hoy and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A D Hope’s personal flying log book. Four
Description
An account of the resource
Personal flying log book 4 (aircraft operating crew) for A D Hope, covering the period from 15 March 1950 to 15 February 1963, Detailing his civilian flying duties. He was based at Broxbourne, Southend, Stansted, and Gatwick airports. Aircraft flown in were Tiger Moth, York, Tudor, DC4, Super Trader, Bristol 170, Britannia, Viscount, DC6 and Comet.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Arthur Hope
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Essex
England--Hertfordshire
England--West Sussex
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHope169139v4
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1950
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
aircrew
Tiger Moth
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/289/9665/LLarmerLO430037v1.1.pdf
ab62da7bcc4b6cb26a31883a47285725
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
Larmer, Lawrence
Lawrence Larmer
Laurie Larmer
L O Larmer
L Larmer
Description
An account of the resource
17 items concerning Flying Officer Laurence O'Hara Larmer (1920 - 2023, 430037 Royal Australian Air Force). Lawrence Larmer volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force and trained in Australia and Canada. He flew operations as a pilot flying Halifax with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith. The collection consists of one oral history interview with him, wartime photographs of aircraft, aircrews and targets, his logbook, route maps, and an official certificate.
The collection was donated by Laurence Larmer and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-12
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
Larmer, LO
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
Laurence Larmer's Royal Australian Air Force flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Australian Air Force flying log book for Laurence Larmer covering the period from 7 April 1943 to 3 August 1945. Detailing flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAAF Benalla, RCAF Dauphin, RAF Fair Oaks, RAF Banff, RAF Dallachy, RAF Lichfield, RAF Riccall, RAF Snaith and RAF Driffield. Aircraft flown were, DH-82, Cessna Crane, Oxford, Anson, Wellington and Halifax. He flew a total of 4 night and 5 daylight operations with 51 squadron. Targets were, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Homberg, Hagen, Travemunde, Bayreuth, Boizenburg, Heligoland and Wangerooge. He flew as a second pilot on operations with Flying Officer Chatting. In July 1945 he flew a number of Cook's Tours flights, described as European cross-country.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Australia. Royal Australian 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
LLarmerLO430037v1
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
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Staffordshire
England--Surrey
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Bayreuth
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Lübeck
Germany--Wuppertal
Manitoba--Dauphin
Scotland--Banff
Scotland--Moray
Victoria--Benalla
Germany--Wangerooge Island
Victoria
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Boizenburg
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1945-03-12
1945-03-13
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-11
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-18
1945-04-25
1945-07-04
1945-07-09
1945-07-30
1945-08-03
1658 HCU
27 OTU
466 Squadron
51 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Banff
RAF Dallachy
RAF Driffield
RAF Lichfield
RAF Riccall
RAF Snaith
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/514/11307/BGoodmanLSGoodmanLSv1.1.pdf
95e2e091735c5cb46cad20f313332cb3
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
Goodman, Benny
Lawrence Seymour Goodman
L S Goodman
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Goodman, LS
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Squadron Leader Lawrence 'Benny' Goodman (1920 - 2021, 1382530, 123893 Royal Air Force) and a memoir covering his activities from 1939 to 1945. He flew 30 operations as a pilot with 617 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Benny Goodman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BY BENNY GOODMAN
It was September 1939. A few of us were sitting around the wireless waiting for the Prime Minister to make an announcement. He did so and told us we were now at war with Germany. I was a student, in digs, and a long way from my home in London. I decided to telephone my parents and talk things over with my father. My first instinct was to leave my studies – not a hardship really! – go home and join up. Eventually, my father agreed, much to my mother’s consternation. I discovered later. He had served four years in the 1st World War. There was no doubt in my mind I was going to join up. However, I did not want to join the navy or the army and it was only then I realised I wanted to become a pilot.
I was almost nineteen and had no idea what was entailed, but with the ignorance and cheek of youth I presented myself at the RAF recruiting office and told the officer who interviewed me what I wanted to do. He didn’t say a word, finished filling in the form he had in front of him and told me I would be hearing about my application very soon. Not long afterwards I went for a general medical and when I passed this I was sent to an RAF medical for a more involved air crew medical. Everything went well except when it came to the eye test. My eyesight had never been top class so I went to the back of the queue and learnt the two or three lines each candidate was being asked to read. I passed! After attestation, I went home to await call up. It came a few weeks later and I reported to RAF Cardington, where I was issued with a uniform and all the accoutrements for an AC 2. This is it, I thought. I shall be a pilot in a couple of weeks and will save the world!
Things didn’t quite turn out like that. After about 10 days at Cardington, we were told to pack our kitbags and were marched off to the local railway station. Rumours were rife! And if you listened to everyone, your posting was to anywhere in the world. In fact, we went to RAF Bridgenorth for six weeks square bashing and all that went with it. ‘Bull’ was the order of the day – the camp had four parade grounds) Then I and another chap were posted to RAF Abingdon. When we got there nobody had any idea we were coming and so the Orderly Room Sergeant asked us our trade. We both said ‘U.T. Pilot’ and consequently we were sent the aircrew quarters, which were in fact the married quarters on the station. Abingdon was a straight through course for Whitleys and so, with much justification, we thought we would be on the next course.
However, there was a war on! It was decided that the Whitley course running at the time would be the last one and again, no one knew what to do with us. The next day we were moved from our relatively comfortable billet to a remote part of the airfield. There was a Nissen hut with six beds, no sheets, no pillowcases and a Fairey Battle packing case as a so-called recreation room. The latrines were self-dug, but permanent. We were to be ground gunners!
It was explained to us that this was a temporary move but as such we had to learn, amongst other things, how to strip and re-assemble the C.O.W. gun and the water-cooled Lewis gun. Duties were 4 hours on / 2 hours off in the gun pit. We patrolled the airfield at night and challenged anyone on it for the password of the day. You can imagine the sort of answers we got from aircraft technicians with their bags of tools in the pitch black trying to find the Whitley they were to work on. At dawn every morning we had to march around the perimeter track with our gas masks on in case of a German paratroop invasion from the air.
Our food was brought out to us in hay boxes and so was never very warm! We used to try and sneak in once a week or so to the airmen’s quarters to see if we could get a bath, but if we were caught the airmen billeted there showed no mercy! In our off-duty time, we were sent to the coal dump to load coal bags and to carry out various other domestic duties on the camp. One of these included cleaning out the grate in the Officers’ mess before they came down for breakfast. On many occasions I did this and always had to finish by black-leading the grate and all the surrounds. Some years later I went back to Abingdon as the Adjutant of the Overseas
[page break]
2
Ferry Unit. When I went into the mess, I looked at the grate and the few officers sitting around it in armchairs and thought to myself: “If only you chaps knew how many times I cleaned this thing!”
A posting came through eventually to start pilot training and I was sent to Stratford-upon-Avon, which was a Reception Centre. As I walked into the Orderly Room to report my arrival, a voice shouted “Airman, you’re on a charge”. I looked around and saw no one else -I had the horrible feeling that I was already in trouble, and this was the case. Having spent some months as a ground gunner and living in my uniform it was, to say the least, scruffy, as was the cap. Not very politely I was told I was a disgrace to the service because of the state of my uniform. All the other chaps, of course, were wearing brand new uniforms and I stood out like a sore thumb. I tried to point this out to the Sergeant but he wasn’t interested. Next morning, I appeared before the O.C. unit who was sympathetic but clearly felt he had to back up his Orderly Room Sergeant. Seven days jankers was my reward.
A posting duly came along to Initial Training Wing (I.T.W.) and there we did six weeks of ground school prior to E.F.T.S. Just about everyone passed and I was sent to 17 E.F.T.S. Peterborough for ab initio training on Tiger Moths. The course was about 48-50 hours and to the horror of another chap and myself, we were posted to RAF Woodley for an instructors course. Both of us could just about manage to fly the Tiger Moth and so to be told we were going to be instructors frightened us considerably. Following this, after a couple of weeks at Clyffe Pypard a holding unit, and a spell at a Manchester park, awaiting posting, we were sent to Canada to do a S.F.T.S. on Ansons. Boy! This was living. A twin engine aircraft with retractable undercarriage, even though we had to wind it up! The course included night flying, the first time I had experienced this, and I can truly say that on my so-called first circuit I varied between 600 ft and 1,500 ft AGL and lost site of the airfield completely. I hadn’t got a clue. To my surprise, my instructor didn’t seem at all phased and by the end of the detail I had at least got the circuit and the heights more or less sorted out. What a brave man he was! After another night sortie, I was passed fit to do a solo circuit and I truly believed I was just about to die! However, all went well and I was then sent to Kingston, Ontario, to – believe it or not – instructing on Harvards. This aircraft is still in use to this day.
The thought of flying this monster, let alone instructing on it, made me feel quite sick. Kingston Ontario was an RAF station dedicated to the training of Fleet Air Arm pilots “is everybody mad?” I thought. The other instructors, all of whom had done an operational tour (and one was Fleet Air Arm) readily accepted me – the sprog in every way. The Flight Commander took me up and put me through my paces on the Harvard and pronounced me fit to start instruction. However, he showed me and tested me one lesson at a time, so that I could take up an acting leading naval airman and show him the particular procedure. Nobody else had a clue how inexperienced I was, except the other instructors in the flight who thought it was a great joke. So, I started with one lesson at a time and over a few weeks built up to the whole syllabus. I have to say the Harvard was a wonderful and responsive aircraft to fly and, despite the tales of woe and misery about ground looping, I never saw one instance of it … and that includes me!
By this time I was a Pilot Officer and because there was no room in the Mess I had digs in the town and even bought myself a Chevrolet with a dicky seat. My Canadian driving test consisted of reversing the car about 2 feet, and being told to ‘stop and get out, come into the office’ … and I was presented with my Canadian driving licence. In a short time, I had come from cleaning the grate in the Officers Mess as an AC 2 to a Pilot Officer Instructor, with a car and living in digs! Was I dreaming?
All good things come to an end and I was posted back to the U.K. to prepare to go on ops. We set sail on the Awatea from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and of course nothing ever goes well for long. Twenty-four hours later in the Atlantic, we were torpedoed. Fortunately for us, a US Navy destroyer intercepted the torpedo and took most (90%) of the subsequent explosion and sank, leaving us damaged. We had no rudder and there were several other things wrong with the ship; we went round in circles for some time. Rough repairs were made and we went back to Halifax. We kicked our heels there for a while and then were put on a train journey which lasted for several days, to New York. There we transferred immediately to the Queen Mary. There were huge numbers of American troops and O.C. Troops was an American Officer. He called all the officers together before sailing to tell us that, if we were torpedoed
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We must remember that the officers were last to leave the ship. Bearing in mind our recent experience, this didn’t exactly cheer us up. We did arrive safely in the U.K. and I found myself flying Martinets for a time, carrying out simulated air attacks on Wimpeys and for their air gunners to cine-gun their replies.
At last a posting came through to an O.T.U. at Silverstone. By this time I had already met Tony Hayward, who wore an Observers brevet, and we became good friends. We went to the O.T.U. together and there we picked up our full crew. Crews selected each other in what seemed a very haphazard manner, by talking to those we thought would be suitable, but I can’t remember ever meeting any crew member who was subsequently dissatisfied and wanted to leave his original crew. In the end, everyone was crewed up.
From Silverstone we went to the Heavy Bomber Conversion Unit at Swinderby flying Stirlings, and then to the Lancaster finishing school at Syerston. At the end of my course, the Flight Commander sent for me and my crew said: “What the hell have you done, Benny?” I protested my innocence but everybody laughed. When I entered the Flight Commander’s office I felt sure I had done something terribly wrong because there, facing me, were the Flight Commander, O.C. Flying and two or three other officers. My heart sank into my boots and the only thing I could think of was a ‘court martial’. I felt slightly cheered when the Flight Commander seemed quite friendly as he spoke to me and one or two of the other officers questioned me about my flying and the practise bombing results that we had obtained. I felt further heartened and, knowing the results, couldn’t believe that was what I was being called in about. After a couple more questions, one of the officers said to me: “How would you like to join 617 Squadron?” I truly didn’t believe that I had heard correctly and said: “Excuse me, sir. Did you say 617 Squadron?” He answered: “Yes”. I felt a heavy weight suddenly had been lifted from my shoulders and said that I and my crew would be delighted to do so.’ At that time the only other crew which had been invited to join the squadron had come and had come directly from training was headed by Tony Iveson, and he had been a Battle of Britain pilot. He had been on the Lancaster course immediately before me.
I was told that we had been selected for 617 and to report for duty within 48 hours. When I got back to the crew and told them the news, at first they didn’t believe me. Eventually, I convinced them and we all packed up and got transport to Woodhall Spa.
On arrival and after checking in at the Mess and going through the usual procedures, I reported to the Squadron Adjutant. I waited a few minutes and was ushered into Wing Commander Tait’s office, who was O.C 617 Squadron. We had a chat, or more accurately – he spoke to me and allocated me to a flight. I reported to the Flight Commander Jonny Cockshott. He welcomed me and told me that the crew would have to go on a short training course devised by the squadron and, importantly, to get used to the S.A.B.S. bombsight and to obtain bombing results within the limits prescribed by 617 Squadron. We did this and found ourselves accepted as fully operational on the squadron.
My first trip was with Flight Lieutenant Bob Knights … without my crew but with his. I sat in the dicky seat where the Flight Engineer usually sat. I couldn’t have been luckier in the choice of captain I was to fly with. Not only was Bob an extremely nice chap but he was most helpful as well. To give you an idea of his value, he was a Flight Lieutenant with a D.S.O. and I think you know there aren’t many of those to the pound.
I did a full tour of thirty trips with the Squadron. The first trip as a crew was to Brest and, of course, being a sprog crew things had to happen, didn’t they? Over the sea, I suddenly found the cockpit full of smoke and the wireless operator telling me his radios were on fire. He and the navigator were trying to make sure the fire didn’t spread. Just the sort of confidence booster you need on your first sortie on a new squadron! I opened the D.V. panel and fortunately the combined efforts of the wireless operator and navigator dealt with the fire … we carried on. One thing was certain: none of us could have faced a return to the squadron without completing the trip saying: “We couldn’t do it. We had a fire on board.” How’s that for luck?
Some of the trips we did were quite well known. There was the Tirpitz trip (13 1/4 hours) and a 9 hour 25 minute night trip to Politz-Stettin. That was the first time I could truthfully say that, at 18,000 ft with
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oxygen masks on, I can remember smelling cordite from the flak that was thrown at us. That may sound like a line shoot, but it certainly wasn’t at the time. A further notable op was against the Arnsberg viaduct, when we were selected to drop the 22,000 lb Grand Slam on the viaduct.
We received Grand Slam in March 1945. To carry this a number of modifications were made to the Lancaster – a Lincoln undercarriage was fitted to allow for the increase in weight; mid-upper and front turret were removed, along with the wireless operator’s equipment and the W/Op himself. Other armour plate was taken out and the ammunition load reduced, all to save weight. The bomb doors were removed and replaced by fairings and a chain link strop with electro-mechanical release was fitted to hold Grand Slam in place.
As I recall it I was number three to release a Grand Slam, Jock Calder was the first, and Johnny Cockshott the second. This was in March – yes we are still in March, and Arnsberg Viaduct was the target. On release I remember the aircraft went up vertically about 100 – 200 feet. My flight engineer recalls hearing a loud bang at the same time, as the release slip parted.
In all 617 dropped 41 Grand Slams before the end of the war in Europe. I like to think Grand Slam punched its weight. We were the only squadron to have this bomb.
Another op that had high squitter value was against Hamburg. We had the misfortune to have a hang-up and the bomb dropped a few seconds late, which meant that it didn’t fall on the target but into the residential area beyond the target. We didn’t feel good about this, but there was nothing we could do. We set course for home. About fifteen minutes later my flight engineer nudged me and nodded his head toward what I thought was the instrument panel. I looked but could see nothing wrong, so went on flying. He nudged me even harder and moved his head rather more urgently towards the starboard side. I looked out and to my horror saw the latest German twin engine jet fighter, a Messerschmitt Me262, in formation with us on our starboard wing. I thought I must be dreaming but I knew very well I wasn’t, and thought: “This is it.” It seemed to me that if I tried a 5 Group corkscrew we wouldn’t have a chance against the German aircraft. We had no mid-upper turret and clearly the rear gunner was completely unable to train his guns on him. So, there we were at the mercy of the Luftwaffe. The flight engineer and I looked at each other again and then I looked at the German pilot, but there was no friendly wave from him – so much for fellowship of the air! Suddenly the Me262 disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and I wondered if we had all been smoking opium the night before! It was only some years later when I was talking to Air Commodore John Langston, who at the time was a Flying Officer navigator, that what appeared to be the same aircraft had attacked and shot at John’s aircraft. The German pilot must have just left training school because, although he clearly used all his ammo on John’s aircraft, he hadn’t shot him down. I thought later how fortunate we both were.
Three more incidents out of a number of lucky escapes makes one ask the question. Did Lady Luck really play a part?
On one raid during the bombing run the nose section of the fuselage was hit. Everyone seemed okay, but after landing back at base the bomb aimer discovered that both heels of his flying boots were pitted with shrapnel. An inch or two either way?
On another raid the wireless operator was tuning his radio and leaned a little closer to the set. As he did so, a large projectile or piece of flak entered one side of the fuselage and exited the other. After we landed, the wireless operator sat normally in his seat and we measured the two holes and the position of his head. If he had been sitting in this position at the time of the attack, the projectile/flak would have pierced one side of his head and exited the other. An inch or two either way?
There were three Tirpitz sorties. The first trip involved a direct flight from the U.K. to Yagodnik, Russia, land there, refuel and stay the night. From thereon the next day, the first Tirpitz attack was attempted. This was a hazardous plan as it included flying over Europe both ways and in the end the attack was not successful. However, we unfortunately lost one aircraft.
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For the second and third Tirpitz trips, amongst the modifications, two large fuel tanks were fitted inside the fuselage. Health and safety, eat your heart out! The flight engineers had to master the new fuel system very quickly, and indeed they did. Both these trips were made from an advanced base at Lossiemouth. On both occasions the squadron flew up to Lossiemouth with Tallboys already on board, refuelled and attended final briefing. On the second trip, at midnight, we lined up around the perimeter track, taking off in turn at a green signal from the control tower. The weather was unkind – low cloud and rain – just the job for a night low level trip across the sea! Our turn was approaching and I was having a last look around the cockpit when the flight engineer poked me in the ribs, pointing at the canopy. I looked up and saw a massive pair of main undercarriage wheels heading straight for us. There was nothing I could do as there were aircraft either side of me. We both sat there, like rabbits caught in the headlights, and waited for the inevitable. At the last moment, the wheels cleared our canopy and all was normal again. Just the sort of experience you need before take-off on a foul night!
Later we discovered the errant aircraft was flown by Tony Iveson. He had suffered engine surge on the point of leaving the ground. By a masterful piece of crew co-operation and training he and his flight engineer finally kept the aircraft straight and it just cleared the top of our canopy. But we were all young and I suppose took it in our stride. Now, I’d have the vapours. Lady Luck again.
Due to cloud and an efficient smokescreen, it was not possible to bomb the Tirpitz with any accuracy and we returned to Lossiemouth. However, on the third trip – a replica of the second – 617 Squadron finally sank the Tirpitz.
My last trip was to Berchtesgaden, the Eagle’s Nest, and I understand we were followed by Main Force. We, 617, certainly made a mess of the Waffen SS barracks. This was my last trip with the squadron although we were already made aware of a possible raid, I believe to Denmark. However, a truce was declared before this. After the war, I went into Transport Command but everything seemed so tame after 617 Squadron.
Finally, but certainly not least, I pay tribute to the ground crews. Working out in all weathers, often in wind snow and rain-swept dispersals they were always there to ensure the serviceability of our aircraft. Despite working long hours, they were always there to see us depart, and waited in uncertainty, eager to witness our return… …and woe betide us if we damaged [underlined]their [/underlined] aircraft! For 365 days and nights they made it possible for us to do our job. All of us who flew knew their worth, but why were they never publicly recognised? We would have been wingless wonders without them.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Service History of Benny Goodman
Description
An account of the resource
Begins with his decision to cease his studies and join the Royal Air Force. Covers recruitment activities and life during initial training including employment as ground gunner while waiting for flying training. Describes basic training on Tiger Moth at 17 E.F.T.S. followed by Anson and Harvard in Canada. Relates being torpedoed on return voyage home and subsequent return to Halifax, train to New York and return to United Kingdom on the Queen Mary. Tells of flying Martinet as targets for air gunners course, crewing up at O.T.U and subsequent training on Stirling at Heavy Bomber Conversion Unit and eventually Lancaster finishing school. Describes selection to go to 617 Squadron and his arrival there. Mentions that he did 30 operations with the squadron and describes some in detail including first sortie to Brest as well as against Tirpitz, one of which involved landing in Russia. Mentions Grand Slam operations as well as one to Hamburg and another where they were formated on by an Me 262. States that his last trip was to the Eagles Nest at Berchtesgaden.
Creator
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B Goodman
Format
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Seven page printed document
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BGoodmanLSGoodmanLSv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Shropshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Peterborough
England--Berkshire
England--Woodley (Wokingham)
Canada
Ontario--Kingston
Nova Scotia--Halifax
United States
New York (State)--New York
Germany
Germany--Hamburg
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
France--Brest
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Russia (Federation)
Russia (Federation)--Arkhangelʹskai︠a︡ oblastʹ
France
New York (State)
Ontario
Nova Scotia
Russia (Federation)
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Ashley Jacobs
David Bloomfield
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
617 Squadron
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Flying Training School
fuelling
Grand Slam
ground crew
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Martinet
Me 262
military discipline
military living conditions
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Cardington
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Silverstone
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Woodhall Spa
sanitation
Stirling
Tallboy
Tiger Moth
Tirpitz
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/202/3337/PBartonER1701.2.jpg
071666ab6479ce7a37ce4cb7127bc494
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/202/3337/ABartonER170121.2.mp3
3cddedabe14a45c9452ae83e436c2bba
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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Barton, Eric Reginald
Eric Reginald Barton
Flying Officer Eric Reginald Barton DFC LdH
Eric Barton DFC
Eric Barton
Eric R Barton
E R Barton
Description
An account of the resource
One interview with Eric Reginald Barton DFC (423589 Royal Australian Air Force).
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
2017-01-21
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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Barton, ER
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BJ: Ok. It’s Barry Jackson continuing the interview with Eric Barton. Eric, we spoke before about your training and, and where you came from and all that sort of stuff. When you were flying different types of aircraft were there the good, the bad, what was the good things about the good aeroplanes and what was the bad things and was there anything that you thought was, that you remember about the different types of aeroplanes?
EB: Yes Barry. Well first up of course was the Tiger Moth and mastering the art of flying and I can recall nearly getting scrubbed as a pilot because I used to land about twenty feet up high and the CFI said where do you look and I said straight ahead and he said that’s wrong look out to the side you’ll see exactly where you are at forty-five degrees. And I did a first one it was a greaser, a three pointer and he said OK you’re off, away you go. And I remember that all throughout my flying years that no matter where, what sort of aircraft, if you looked out to the side you’d see exactly where you were and I was able to do, what we call then, three pointers. Just as a side comes to my mind, we had a thing with the crew my rear gunner used to come up on the intercom after we’d like come back from a raid and he’d say we’d land back at base and he’d say excuse me skipper but tell me have we landed and I [laughs]
BJ: Showing off now [laughs]
EB: That got to be a real line shoot you know. So —
BJ: Yes. Yes.
EB: Never, never forgotten that.
BJ: And what about —
EB: We, going from the little Tiger to a war plane type situation like with the Anson was the next one. Which was a twin engine, Canadian Ansons. Finally, when we went to Canada in Macleod and Alberto which was we went through winter and summer but the early twin engines, that our first twin engine aircraft the old Ansons was a wind up under carriage so it was about, I don’t know about sixty or seventy winds of the crank handle to wind the wheels up and sixty or seventy to put them down. And, of course, when you are doing circuits and bumps you were supposed to take off, flying the wheels up do your circuit and wind your wheels down to land. Well, being Aussies we didn’t take too kindly to all that bull, bull dust so we would give her a couple of turns and the wheels were still there. Half way through our training they, they replaced those aircrafts with the, the Canadian built Ansons which I see had Jacobs L6 motors and they were hydraulic and that was, they were then constant speed propellers, the early ones were fixed speed which entails a different way of flying. Constant prop and hydraulic landing so that was our, our thing to a, a good war type aeroplane. From Ansons we went to Oxfords and then we did our final training as far as twins are concerns then a little bit more into Wellingtons. Wellington was of course and ex, early bomber in the early RAF days that was a very good bomber and very, very good aircraft to fly. A beautiful aircraft to fly. From there we went, we went, we went to, to OTU. That’s where we crewed up. You’ve probably have heard stories about how you crewed up. Very briefly you were — pilot would be told OK you go and select your crew and go and get yourself a cup of coffee or something I don’t think it was a lager or beer. Go to this big hanger and there was milling around a lot of chaps, find yourself a navigator a wireless operator, bomb aimers and so on and so forth. The first crewing up situation was the pilot, would be select your navigator, your wireless operator and later on, further you would select your bomb aimer and your air gunners. The air gunners were the, were the last to be selected. At, at the point of first selection you were put in with New Zealanders, Aussies, Canadians, South, South Africans, all the, the British Empire chaps. They were the ones that were that supplied the pilot, navigator, wireless op, bomb aimer, if you like, the highly technical like people. The gunners were all British, RAF they were. There was no gunners from the Empire outside. So [clears throat] I was fortunate, I think, to get together a bunch of fellows that all filled in together. The thing that comes to my mind just now I’m thinking, when you first made your selection as a pilot you started to be accepting some responsibly. Up until that time I was just a bit of a wild boy I, I was living for myself doing whatever the hell I wanted to do and it was lovely flying airplanes and so on and so forth. When I got to get a crew I thought, I remember thinking to myself, my god I’m going to be responsible for these fellows’ lives for the next what, however long we live.
BJ: And how old were you then?
EB: I was then just turning nineteen
BJ: Right.
EB: And I’d never accepted any responsibility for anything.
BJ: Yes.
EB: And it was when. I can still remember the first time I sat in a Lancaster ready to go I thought this is it, this is where the whole thing starts from now.
BJ: Big responsibility?
EB: Yes. There by, their lives are in my hands.
BJ: Yes. Can I ask you —
EB: Banff in Scotland. There were two Banff I was at actually one was Banff, Calgary, Alberto which was up in the Rockies and the other Banff was in Scotland which was the Northern most part of —
BJ: Was probably just as cold [laughs]
EB: Lands End, Lands End to John O’Groats. But anyway, we were at Banff in Scotland and we were doing a night flying exercise at the end of my training there. We did start to do a cross countries we came back in with I think two, two crew, a navigator and myself. I can’t remember if it was more. Anyway, we came in and we put the thing down a perfect three pointer on the runway but the Oxford had a, sort of a nose, it’s three pointer was the wheel in the front and two wheels under the wing so it was a tricycle sort of under carriage. We landed and the front tyre blew out and with the result that it ended up on its nose and I can remember sitting, the Oxford has a plexiglass nose you can look through it from the pilot seat. You look between your legs and down through the instrument panel you see the runway and I can remember flying and hearing next to you and I’m on the runway and I can see sparks and I thought what a pretty sight.
BJ: [laughs]
EB: Here’s, here’s two wheels and I’m sliding along on the thing on the runway until it finally came to a halt. Fortunately, it didn’t go off to one side and stick it’s nose in and turn ourselves upside down but we’re still strapped in and I thought now, what do I do now. How the hell do I get out of this jolly thing? First time I’d had a really good prang in an aircraft and I thought perhaps I better get out of this quick smart as there’s bloody petrol and all that which I did. And later on, I got castigated from my mates who were sent flying around and around and around in circles until they got Barton off the end of the bloody runway to make room. Cause there was only one runway [laughs]. So that was that. Now then we went to Stirlings and throughout [phone ringing] now you know you are going to ops and how good a pilot I am I’m still a pilot and flying and [long pause]. The Stirling was a very difficult thing to taxi and take off. It had breaks and a, and the, the steering wheel had clamps which is how you steered it. Taxi wise it was absolutely terrible. Very difficult but once you got it up in the air it was, it was – no we were talking about the Stirling actually and its way of taxiing but once you got it up in the air it was a beautiful aircraft
BJ: Yep.
EB: But we didn’t do too much, too many hours in the Wellington but that was my first four engine aircraft and I can see in my log book that we only did about a month in training of a four engine then we went straight onto Lancs because they needed pilots very quick smart.
BJ: Yes.
EB: So, we didn’t get too much training as far as going from twin engines to four engines. The, the Stirling had huge [unclear] legs and you could drop, drop it in from a great height so it didn’t matter very much.
BJ: Yes.
EB: But going from twins to four engines wasn’t to my mind, wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be. You had to have a flight engineer. Be aware that the Aussie RAF and I think most of the RAF we didn’t have second pilots. We had a pilot and we had a flight engineer. The engineer was responsible for checking your mechanics of, of the thing, how much fuel you got and motors were ticking over alright, etcetera, etcetera. So [pause] going from twins to four engines taxiing wise you, you used your two outer motors because that was, so to enable it to be manoeuvred easily rather than the inner motors. So, you’d land with four engines, get off the runway with four engines and shut, not shut down but idle the inners and use the outers for steering and so forth. Very quick. The important thing was you had to manoeuvre and get yourself off the runway very quickly because you had mates coming in behind you. Some needed urgently to land, pretty much I, I was never in a bind or a problem in landing. Two or three times I had to land on three motors, couple of times I ended up with two motors which is something that is very, very difficult to do. Talking about three motors, the [laughs] I’m trying to remember which motor was the worst. If you lost an inner it wasn’t too bad, losing an outer was bad enough. I’m sorry but I forget which ones had the hydraulics and which ones didn’t. The inners had hydraulics to them I think, some of the outers had [pause] dynamos charging, charging your batteries, charging things. The, an occasion I can recall we lost one motor we were hit by flak on one motor and it burst into flames and I said to the flight engineer, a fellow of the, the port outer and it’s on fire, further put it outer and pull the tip. Which is pull the fire extinguisher. In his panic, and we were over, we were under, under attack from various sources, in his panic he fell at the port inner but when I told him to pull the tip on the port inner, the fire extinguisher, he pulled the wrong one, so the fire extinguisher went off on the starboard inner, so with the result that we ended up with two motors instead of three. Fortunately, they were on either side.
BJ: Yes.
EB: Rather than two on one side. We were able to fly, just to maintain height and things with two motors. From memory I think we were pretty close to the target, but I can’t remember where the target was but if I look in here I can find where the target was, but we were able to get to the target on two motors and get rid of the bombs and then gradually come home. I don’t whether we’ve touched on one of the raids I did on Skagerrak in Norway. Did we do that? Did we touch on that one?
BJ: No.
EB: When you, when you done your briefing and all the rest of it and all the crews are all clued up and ready to go. We probably, mostly we did night time trips and usually we’d do our briefing early, sometimes it was put back a little bit so we’d end up at the pub and we’d have quite a, I reckon I used to fly better when I had a few beers in, pretty damned happy than when I didn’t. Traditional thing is as you know is to piddle on the tyre, as you kick the tyre and piddle on that’s for luck. Everybody climbs on board so by enlarge you, you [unclear] on board personally and a fair amount of liquid inside [laughs]. A pilot cannot, he has a parachute which he sits on, he can’t easily leave the stick but operations, the reason is the pilot, you kept, you did, the Lancaster does have an automatic pilot but the automatic pilot is hydraulic so any pilot worth his salt never ever left it or engaged the automatic pilot because it was a) too hard to get rid of the jolly thing if you wanted to cancel it out and b) by the time you sorted it out if somebody was attacking you and had a good go at you before so you always flew with your hands on and you [phone ringing] always sat. So, on one occasion I can recall having a need to do a whizzer in fifteen, sixteen thousand feet and icy conditions and I had an ability that I adopted through my pilots window just to slide it back a bit. They were sliding windows, we call them windows and I used to be able to in those days being much younger, quite easy to get the proverbial, necessary things organised and I’d let the whiz go just, must beside the venturi and out, the liquid would be sucked out quite easily.
BJ: [laughs]
EB: So, we’re flying along in icy conditions in a very nice clear lovely night and the mid upper gunner came up and he said skipper, skipper please get down quickly, get down we’re icing up, we’re icing up and I looked out my, my cockpit, my window and I said what’s wrong Jordy you’re crazy man, there’s nothing wrong it’s beautiful up here. Oh, my cockpit’s all covered in ice, I’m iced, I’m iced up I said oh my god I’m sorry mate I just let, let go. He said I’m all covered in, in brown ice, oh my god. Oh, I said I had to let it go. Oh, you dirty rotten nasty skipper, you’ve [laughs]. That was that sort of a situation
BJ: [laughing]
EB: As I say a couple of times we lost loaders we got shot at a few times. The three main things. The three main areas of, shall we say, activity that you were very aware of. One was searchlights. We were routed to go zig zag routes towards the target never in a straight line for the reason that a) the, the in the wisdom the bosses had planned out that the track to be taken to dodge searchlight, known searchlight stations, known pockets of searchlights, anti-aircraft guns, fighter aerodromes and so forth. So, you had to zig zag right a sort of a zig zag situation and, and [pause]. So, yes, the three main things were searchlights. Now there’s two types of searchlights, the blue searchlight and the normal white searchlight. You got caught with a searchlight it’d shine in your eyes and most uncomfortable you couldn’t see instruments and so on and so forth so, you’d immediately do a zig zag or take evasive action to get out of the, the white of the searchlight. Now if you were caught with a blue searchlight however, that’s the master searchlight and if you got caught with that, which is, they are all electronically controlled and he fixed onto you it was very, very difficult to get away from him but more importantly he controlled probably eight to ten other searchlights so the key searchlight the blue one. So, if ever you got caught in a blue one you could start counting where, where you might be or where you might not be. To get a searchlight whether blue or white, evasive action could be called for importantly and a Lanc had a, a very nice aircraft to fly in in all respects and it was easy to, to do evasive action. I’m trying to think of evasive action you used to just about every facet of your, your hands, your ability, your feet, your rudders, ailerons, throttles, pull the throttles up, stall the aircraft pretty near. Do everything but stick it on its back. Some people got stuck on their back and that was very difficult with a loaded aircraft. I can recall a guy in one, one of our aircraft, XYG, it had, had a bad back door a crook lock on the back door and they were trying to fix it but eventually they did but on this occasion they didn’t and so I said to wireless op, I said Johnny, go down and shut the jolly back door and so he went down to shut the back door and as soon as he did we got caught in the searchlight and I remember taking evasive action [clears throat] and half way through that there was an almighty scream on the intercom and Johnny said what the bloody hell are you doing I’m, I;, shutting the back door and next minute half I’m out of the aircraft and the next minute I’m back in again oh Jesus Johnny I’m sorry mate I forgot you were down there, so that felt, was not accepted very well either but anyway. So, the searchlights are the other thing, fighters were always around. I had pretty good gunners we used to do a lot of training, air gunnery training though at the attack from above or behind and often you, you knew when you were going to get attacked, my other mates would let you know they would see you in a, in a stream. You would sometimes still see your mates from one side or the other so we kept, kept lookout for each other but the worst fighter, and I’ll talk about a raid we did which was [pause] in a moment, but the worst fighters was called the Schlarge[?] fighter which is a Messerschmitt, or [unclear] or one of those twin engine things with a, a vertical firing cannon, gun. So, he would fly under your belly and pull his trigger firing straight upwards and it was very, very difficult to get out of those they were responsible for many, many losses of our mates. If you didn’t know you had a fighter under your belly you were pretty near had it.
BJ: You were relying on your crew to spot it weren’t you?
EB: Yes, and more importantly of course the, they gunners were the ones and the bomb aimer when the bomb aimer is also the front gunner and he was also a gunner to look down.
BJ: Yes.
EB: So, he was pretty near the only one that would, could spot a fighter under your belly. Of course, the mid upper obviously can’t and the rear gunner can’t they were looking out for aircraft attacking from either side anyway.
BJ: Yeah, yeah.
EB: Shall we, shall we talk about, one raid which was, was quite important and I was chosen, myself and two other aircraft to lay mines in the Skagerrak in Norway in the Norwegian Fjords. A special very heavy parachute mines to trap the, the two German battleships, the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau and also the Emden later but the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were in dock, they were in, they were our target. The idea was they’d send three of us to Skagerrak in Norway which are in the Fjords where these battleships, German battleships would hide and rest at night. They would rest rather. They would come out of the Fjords into the Atlantic and pounce on the, on the convoys coming from the States full of aircraft and, and supplies and these two battleships would wreak havoc very badly to the, the [pause] supply ships, shall we call them. So, we were sent to Lossiemouth north of Scotland. My aircraft was a newly issued, I’d bent the other one [laughs] and they gave us another new one and she had beautiful motors. She had a, a, the Lancaster Merlins Mark 12, Mark 14’s.
BJ: Wow.
EB: Packard Merlins not Rolls Royce. No sorry Rolls Royce Merlins the previous one was a Packard the American Merlin but the Rolls Royce Merlin was a much better Lancaster. There was three of us we were recruited to go across to the Skagerrak and lay two mines. We had very good navigators who were trained to be Pathfinder navigators. We did some raids but not many we weren’t proper Pathfinders we were attached to go on some of their raids. So, our navigator was pretty good, and we were to fly at two hundred feet from Lossiemouth across the North Sea to the Skagerrak, lay our mines exactly latitude and longitude where they said they were because it had to be exactly, because the British Navy had to know exactly where the mines were.
BJ: Um.
EB: So here we go, night time, they fitted us with lay lights, twin lights similar to the technology of the Dambusters. Two hundred feet, black, pitch black, no lights no nothing starring down your, your front nose because your altimeter was no good to fly at two hundred, two hundred and fifty feet across. Four and a half hours, I think it was about an eight-hour trip there and back, about four hours across the North Sea. It wasn’t too bad going across but later on, I’ll come back to it, it started to get a bit blowy and bumpy but we got to the coast, up, up to three thousand, four thousand feet over the, the mountains, the ridge, down to about three thousand, lay your mines exactly where they were and get rid of them and climb up, out and, and off ideally straight back home at full pelt. But we did lay the mines and all the rest of it, however what we didn’t know was that it was near a German fighter base just over the other hill. We got hit with one fighter, it got one of our motors just as we got to the top of the ridge so it wasn’t too bad we were able to come down on the three. The Lanc can climb on three.
BJ: Right.
EB: Which we, we basically did pretty much but anyway we got down onto the thing so I thought oh well, ok. Now I was planning on going back home at about five or six thousand feet, you know just literally a quick thing back home. But I thought now hang on this thing is a Schräge fighter which is the first time I’d been attacked by a Schräge fighter well if that bugger is going to have another go at us we better get down on the Sea again so it can’t get under our belly, so we did. Well that was alright until we got about half way across, not far, not too far away from home, and the other motor packed up because the, the wind had blown up and the water had, had we’d got hit by the spurt or something and had buggered up the carburettor. So, we ended up with two motors. And so, I said to the fellas, well we’ve only got two I don’t know whether, we can, we got, you got two or three chances what should we do. We could throw out, we could ditch it but not too good at ditching a Lanc or an aircraft. We could be successful or we could not. We could, it’s too low to jump out with a parachute, so that’s, that’s out. The only other thing is I’ll try to make and go for base should you join me I’ll take the aircraft back, yes, they say, they all said yes, yes, yes. So, we threw, throw everything out and anyway cut a long story we did and we got back home quite safely on two motors. We landed at the big drome, I think it was called Manston or something, where you can just put any sort of an aircraft down and it’ll, it’ll got plenty of room to land. So that was showing you what fighters can do and what a good Lanc can do.
BJ: Yeah. OK Eric, one last question. How do you think Bomber Command and the sacrifices of the men who served in it should be remembered by future generations?
EB: Um, Barry that’s a very good, a very good question and I can just answer that in a, in a couple of little fashions. One we know today and some of the, our, our people, the Vets, who are, we’re still alive we feel very, very bad, very disappointed that the British Government that the British didn’t remember Bomber Command. You’ll know from your history that there was never a Bomber Command medal struck whereas there were for other services. After the war because of our, our ability to wage a very good war, we wiped out a lot of targets and that was necessary. I didn’t touch too much on the Dresden raid, but we did the Dresden raid and I saw the, that devastation so there is, hasn’t been a proper memorial until now. I think it is very, very important that a, a, a solid memorial is, is struck and, and erected, shall we say, a, a physical thing that children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and generations can look to and say well what, I, I understand my grandfather, my heritage goes to a man who served in Bomber Command and he achieved certain things and he and he’s, a lot of his mates gave their lives for safety of a country that we now have. If it wasn’t for the sacrifices that, that our people made we wouldn’t have the country we’ve got. Now we talk about Bomber Command. Bomber Command waged a war which was very successful. We carried out our duties, our duties very successfully. Its been written up in history how effective it was. I’m not forgetting of course there are a lot of fellows in the Navy and lots of fellows in the Army who did likewise sacrifices, but for the fifty-five thousand people in Bomber Command that didn’t come back, their contribution far exceeds the blood, sweat and tears, shall we say. So, they gave to wage the war and so I, I think it’s terribly important that we have a physical memorial and that once a year is recognised and there’s a dedication carried out in, in any, every little part of Australia in particular and other countries that I think the Australians we do it very well compared to a lot of other countries. So, I think that’s terribly important too.
BJ: Well done.
EB: Is that sufficient?
BJ: Yeah, no that’s good.
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ABartonER170121
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Interview with Eric Reginald Barton
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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00:38:52 audio recording
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Pending review
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Barry Jackson
Date
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2017-01-21
Description
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Flying Officer Eric Barton flew operations with Bomber Command. Eric Barton talks about the various aircraft he flew in, and recalls an incident at Banff in Scotland where following a night exercise his tyre blew out on landing. He gives an account of an operation to at Skagerrak in Norway where they were sent from Lossiemouth to drop mines on the German battleships; Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the return journey where they ended up flying back on two engines. He talks about the losses of Bomber Command and how he feels they should be remembered.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Canada
Great Britain
Norway
Atlantic Ocean--Skagerrak
Scotland--Moray
Contributor
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Tracy Johnson
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
Gneisenau
Lancaster
memorial
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Lossiemouth
sanitation
Scharnhorst
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/756/10754/PCrabbJL1701.1.jpg
efe82770ad47f3a8a8d8230c433ee667
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/756/10754/ACrabbJL170604.2.mp3
6b99b4940a0e55a188574e1f8cd0bfac
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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Crabb, John L
J L Crabb
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Crabb (1920 - 2022, 158596 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 49 Squadron and 162 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-04-24
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Crabb, JL
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BJ: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Brenda Jones. The person being interviewed is John Crabb. The interview is taking place in Mr Crabb’s daughter’s house in Burnside, Lanarkshire on the 4th of June 2017. Thank you, Mr Crabb for agreeing to speak to me today.
JC: That’s fine.
BJ: So, could you tell me a bit about your early life please?
JC: Just an ordinary childhood. No, as I say just, I was interested in sport, cycling, football. Just the normal run-ins. And then eventually I decided that I’d like to be a civil engineer so I went into that particular, well industry shall we say and was doing that when I went to the, joined the territorial camp. My boss was quite happy about that. It was mobilised and that was the end of civil engineering. So when I came back to start the civil engineering again to go in university etcetera it was just going to be too much. I’d been away for six and a half years which is a long time. So I decided, no. My father was in the Customs and Excise I thought, and the exams for that particular Customs and Excise came up and I sat and I passed and that was my life as a Customs and Excise officer. Distilleries, tobacco warehouses. All that sort of stuff.
BJ: And where did you grow up?
JC: Where? In Glasgow. Over in Dennistoun.
BJ: Ok.
JC: That, that was me. We got married and we moved out and got a house in Burnside and that’s where we’ve been ever since.
BJ: So, how did you come to join the RAF?
JC: Well can I go through that?
BJ: Yes.
JC: What I said to you.
BJ: Yes.
JC: I had no, I had no intention of going into the forces but war clouds as I said gathered and a friend and I decided we’ll have a fortnight’s camp in Gailes, get some money and have a nice two week holiday. So summertime came and we went to Gailes camp. It was lovely. The second week war was declared. They read the riot act. Everybody [laughs] Why I don’t know. And that was us. We were in the Army. I mean we got home for maybe a week or two but then we were called up and you started Army life. And I had that for two and a half years. I was the most healthy I think ever when I was in the Army. But conditions, food, tenting in winter time and all that was not happy. And then by good luck after two and a half years it was advertised they were wanting pilots. So we applied, myself. I’m talking about myself. I applied for the, to the colonel but [unclear] because at that time I was, at that time I was a qualified surveyor in the, in the Army. But with one of the conscripts had come in to, met with the conscripts had been conscripted and been put in to the Army. The same Army as I was in. And one of them, a friend of mine wore pilot’s wings. He had had an accident and he’d been washed out of the Air Force and had been pulled into the Army. But he, when he heard that, he also wanted to get back into the RAF, when he heard that a colonel had turned down my particular push he got in touch with somebody in RAF Command and we got our transfers. And we were going to get and it was like the life was between like chalk and cheese. Shirts. Nice tables laid out. Nice mugs. Chairs. Tables. Crockery. Chalk from cheese. And that was the start. So after that I was in the RAF and that was my life as a RAF.
BJ: So what happened when you first joined the RAF then?
JC: Well, when we first [pause] I think, I’m a little bit vague. I think we went to Newquay and we were, we were, I think we, aye we stayed at hotels that had been taken over and we just sort of had various lectures on planes and RAF life etcetera. But before, no, I’m a wee bit of touch. Before all that we went to Cardington. You know the airship hangars? And went through the medical tests, physical, all different types of tests and passed there. Then we went to Newquay and we were hanging about. So I was there for, I don’t, I can’t just remember but the next thing was I was posted to a flying school at Fairoaks outside of Woking and my pilot there, I cannot just remember his name I think he would have been a Spitfire pilot who was on rest. It was on a resting period for him. So we were flying Tiger Moths there. So flying Tiger Moths. I finished the course there and we were standing by. We didn’t know what was going to happen. And the next thing he said, you’ve got to go to a certain, I can’t remember if it was Manchester, and wait there. And the next thing we knew we were going to Canada. We were going to be sent out to Canada. So the next thing, by good, well not good luck we were sent back to Glasgow and we picked up the Louis Pasteur ship and we were off to Canada. It was quite funny. My father was still living in Glasgow and we managed to get word that we were going on this particular ship [unclear] So that was that. The Louis Pasteur. The next beautiful thing were the lights of Halifax. And oh boy, boy were we, well we got off and then we were, we were immediately, no time in Halifax. We were entrained and we went to a place called [pause] it was New Brunswick we went to. To a holding camp. And there it was, there were drills, lectures and various things. And the next thing we knew was you’re going down to America. But America at that time was at peace so we were inducted into the American Army. And because [laughs] because I had been in an Army they made me a corporal. I’ve got the certificate to prove that I was in the American Army. And that was wonderful but it was a completely different Army life. There was worked in peacetime everything. Drills. It was ridiculous things. Drills. And they had a, I think it was called the honour system. If I saw you doing something wrong I had to report you. And if I didn’t want, if I didn’t want to be reported you were told, they would say to you. ‘Right. You are now an aeroplane and you have to fly around the quadrangle and you have got to, you know go over as you go around the corners.’ It was ridiculous. Food every, everything you could think of for food. And as, as for hospitality you, you weren’t allowed out until you had what they called the Open Post and when you went out there all the girls in their cars, ‘Come on and meet the folks. Come on meet the folks.’ So that was that. From there I was sent to, that was Maxwell Field I was sent to. The name doesn’t come to me. And we were then on training again but this time on what they called Stearman planes and my instructor was Ray [Farenger] who was a Hollywood cartoonist. But for some reason he decided to, I don’t know whether he still did his cartooning with Walt Disney or that was only part time and he decided to be a pilot trainer. So he had three pupils. Training there was strictly to the letter. You had to do everything exactly right. But unfortunately after quite a long time doing very well in a Stearman some of our landings weren’t as good and of the three pupils three of us were washed out. Five pupils. Three of us were washed out. So what happened? We were sent back to Canada. To Trenton. At Trenton you had the option. You could either train as an observer or I think it was w/op ag wireless operator air gunner. So I chose to go on observer’s training. And that took, I think that it took about [pause] aye took just well over four months. And that was the a place called Portage le Prairie which is just outside of Winnipeg and we were flying Ansons. Ansons. Again were just two planes, two engine planes. So we completed and got the wings. At that time you got an O with one wing. But the minute, apparently the invasion of Europe, after that you were either got an N for navigator or you got a [pause] I forget what the other thing was but you didn’t, the O was done away with and that. As an observer you did bombing, you did navigating, you did gunnery, you did photography and all the rest. So went in a boat. And I just can’t [pause] it was a P&O boat. I can’t just remember. Got back safely to London and I was, we were actually I think we went down to Bournemouth and we stayed in Bournemouth. Then we did a bit of training in [pause] where was it now? It was one of the coastal towns in Scotland. Did some training there and then eventually we went up to Kinloss. At Kinloss they were Whitleys. You know, the bigger planes. And there you crewed up. Well, seven in a crew in in the, in Lancasters so what you did you went into a big, just into a big room, a big hangar. And everybody was there. Gunners, navigators, pilots. And you just mingled about and you decided or asked, ‘Can I fly with you?’ Well, I saw an elderly, I think he was a London solicitor. I may be wrong. But he had one medal. The Air Force medal which I thought now this guy can, he’d obviously done some training. He’s been good at it and he’s been awarded the Air Force Medal so I approached him. Yes. And then we got other people. The bomb aimer, gunners and w/op ags and we formed this crew. It was flying, maybe he was a flying, no he was a pilot officer then. Miller, Miller. I think he was John Miller, M I L L E R and he was an officer but the rest were NCOs. So that was us. The first, our first if I can get the page. I’ve got to keep thinking. Revise. Our first operation was Dortmund on the 23rd of May 1943. That was our first operation. And I did thirteen operations with them and they were all over Germany. And the next operation was going to be an Italian one. And we thought that’s great because compared with Germany Italy was, it was a different picture as regards the flak and night fighters and all that. So we were looking forward to that but unfortunately myself and the bomb aimer developed colds. You weren’t allowed to fly with colds. So we grinding our teeth watching, we were actually watched the crew with another operator, operator and the bomb aimer fly off. But they never came back. They were killed.
BJ: What happened?
JC: I don’t know. They’ve never, they’ve never, quite often go down to visit foreign sites where the bombers have come down they’ve identified the people but I think myself they must have been shot down over the sea or something went wrong. But there was nothing. Never heard anything about them. So I went with a brand new crew. My bomber went with another crew and on his last trip he was killed. So that was, that was it. So, the fact was that on a Lancaster you had to do thirty trips. Normally the Lancaster trips were five hours, six hours, seven hours and eventually I worked my way through. And I came to my thirtieth trip which had been my last trip and that last trip I knew that if I, if I managed to survive that last trip I’d become an instructor again. And the last trip was, let’s see, Munich. And instead of a five hour trip it was eight hours forty minutes. And boy was I sweating all the way home [laughs] But I made it. So after that they sent me to Market Harborough and I was an instructor in certain of the navigational aids, and also a screened navigator. In other words you flew with navigator pupils. Just to make sure they didn’t get lost or they got into a panic you’d bring them home. So that was, oh I did for, I suppose it must have been about a year. I have to refer to this to find out. I would imagine it must be a year. Then you were told you were going back on. You had to go back on operations. Now, the alternative was twenty trips on Lancasters or fifty trips on Mosquitoes. Well, I looked back on the folk I knew that had been killed and how it was. I mean Lancasters went into operate normally bomb at about twenty feet, sorry twenty thousand feet. And I mean the flak along that, when we were actually flying through flak bursts you know that the people on the ground have got your heights or the heights of the main planes going in very accurately. And you see them going down. You see the planes going down in front of you. Going down on fire. You think. But what kept, what more or less kept you going was it’s not going to happen to me. It’ll happen to somebody else but it’s not going to happen to me. So, and there was night fighters as well shooting you down. The night fighters quite often there’d be two of them. If they picked you out and they were going to attack you normally there was two of them and one had a light and that was to sort of attract you. That’s, that’s where he is. But the other one had no lights and they were the ones that would come and shoot you down. It was exactly the same when you were caught in certain searchlights. You were actually coned. You could read a paper it was so bright. All you could do was to dive and all the rest of it. But anyway I had the choice. Twenty on, going back on Lancasters, or fifty on Mosquitoes. So I chose Mosquitoes. And that was, went to a place called Bourn just outside of Cambridge, aye. It was Cambridge. So, on a Lancaster Berlin was about seven hours forty. On a, on a Mosquito it’s five hours forty. It’s three hours safety. And you’re flying at twenty nine, thirty thousand feet. And you were, as Mosquitoes was one of our practically the fastest bomber in the war. But you’d no guns. I know there were two types of Mosquitoes. There was the bomber Mosquito where we carried no guns but we had the Perspex noses. And the fighter Mosquitoes which had closed in noses because they had the guns. I mean they also bombed but their main aim was as fighters attacking. So that was that. So we carried on and got forty three in out of the fifty when the war was declared but then we were stood down to go out as a Mosquito squadron to fight the Japanese. And that war finished so we were put on just flying all over Europe, visiting practically Rome, Naples, Copenhagen. Norway. All over. All over the place. And that was what I kept up to ‘til I was finished with the forces altogether. But I had one, one good spell on the Mosquitoes. They were filming a big raid on the Amiens Prisons. The Amiens Prison was, it was, I can’t remember which [unclear] it was. It could have been in France at that time. It was full of prisoners of war, of people who, British spies and that and they wanted to get these people free so they’d got hold of London and asked if anybody, anybody could release these prisoners. So they decided to mount a Mosquito raid which did breach the walls and made a lot of prisoners escape. The actual man in command of that raid was shot down and killed. So they wanted to make this film. So to make this film myself and I forget who, the pilot’s name we were sent over to Paris and we carried the cameraman to film all the shots of the, the [unclear ] the pilots going in to attack the walls and see the walls getting shot down.
BJ: So this was after the war was it?
JC: This, oh this was after the war.
BJ: Yeah.
JC: So some delightful days in Paris [laughs] Came back to this country. That more or less is my war.
BJ: Ok. Do you want to take a break now then?
JC: Pardon?
BJ: Do you want to take a break now?
JC: Well, I can’t, I can’t think of anything more what to tell you. But that was —
BJ: Ok.
JC: What happened. So that was as I say we were flying. We flew all over the country which was very interesting.
BJ: Ok. Alright. We’ll take a break there.
[recording paused]
BJ: So, interview with Mr Crabb continuing. Ok. So, Mr Crabb can you tell me what it was like when you got to your first operational RAF base?
JC: Well, you knew that the people who were there were experienced bombers or flyers. They’d been over Germany. You hadn’t been over Germany. Now, initially they used to do what they called a second dickie. In other words I think it was observers were also included but for some reason only my pilot went on the second dickie. So, when we, myself and the rest of the crew went that was our first operation. So you, you were, well you didn’t know what to expect. You just hoped for the best. That you’d come back.
BJ: What was it like? The first one.
JC: It wasn’t anything like what I had experienced because part of the journey until you actually got to the target was comparatively quiet and you could see all these other planes, you know going in the same direction. You thought well again it won’t happen to us. It’ll happen to the other person. So that was really the first and then after that well you get used to it. You knew the risks and you say, well you still thought it won’t happen to us. It’ll happen to the other chap.
BJ: What was it like being in the plane for that length of time?
JC: Well, we were, normally you were too busy. You didn’t see anything because in a Lancaster there was a curtain drawn between you and cut out the engineer, cut out the pilot and there was a big metal door that prevents you going down the fuselage. So the only person you could see was the wireless operator sitting to your left. And you were at the particular table and you were working more or less all the time because wind changes and changes of direction and you had to be able to give the pilot the changes etcetera. Maybe two or three minutes before it actually had to happen. So you, you were busy all the time really.
BJ: And were there any particular memorable missions that you flew on?
JC: Not really. The only one I really remember as I mentioned was the fact that my thirtieth trip was from Munich and that was an eight hour. I think it was eight hours forty and I was more or less sweating all the way home. But I made it so that was, that was it. But normally it was just you’d go to briefing and you could, if you knew what the actual petrol, amount of petrol put in the planes you could have a rough idea whether it was the Ruhr you were going to, in other words called Happy Valley or you were going, you were going further to the Berlin which, which was the Big City. So you’d a rough idea but really until you went in for briefing and you saw the charts with the red lines. I mean once, once they pulled the curtain off you saw the red lines you thought, oh God, it’s the Big City tonight. You just, fair enough. Navigators and, and pilots went in one hour before the rest of the crew because you’d your flight plans to make out and various other, and then the main briefing would go in. The commander would give a chat and the pilot, the wireless people were given a chat and the weather persons would give a chat and that was it. It was finished. Just went to your lockers. Got your equipment. Your equipment on and got to your particular van. Took you out to your plane and you sit about. If you were a smoker you sat around, or you’d sit around smoking. And occasionally you would think, I wonder whether it will be scrubbed. In other words, cancelled. And then you knew eventually that operations were on that night so, so you get into your plane and once you get in to your plane you settle down. You’d a job to do. You did the job and you hope you were successful and that was it. Come back and go for your nice cup of coffee or tea and a fried egg and a bit of ham and get to bed. And the minute, more or less get back to your cabins you were out. You were fast asleep.
BJ: What was it like getting, flying through flak?
JC: Well, again, you just, the flak’s bursting all around you and as I said before it’s, if you’re flying through the smoke signals or the smoke from the actual explosions you knew that you had the right, the right height of the planes flying in. You just. There was nothing you could do about it. You just hoped for the best. The night fighters were the worst because eventually they did develop the technique of having their guns, instead of their guns pointing straight ahead of the plane they elevated them so they were up at probably angle of probably forty five degrees. And what they did was to fly below the Lancasters and fire upwards to get into the tanks and once they did that and the tanks were on fire that was it. You either baled out or you went down with the plane but that was, they were, they were flak you could see it, searchlights. You knew you could get through them but the first thing when you were approaching the target you see the flak going up all over the place. You think how are we going to get through this? You get through it. You find it’s not quite as deadly as it looks from a distance, it’s [pause] you look as though there’s no possible way you could get through that without being hit. So that —
BJ: Did, did you ever get hit by a night fighter?
JC: Well, I had a Canadian and an Australian gunner and they both shot down two. Well, the two of them shot down two German fighters. And the great thing about that is the smell of cordite from their guns coming into the cockpit. It was that sort of acrid smell. But there you are. They both went down in flames so we knew we’d killed them and that was —
BJ: Did your plane ever get hit?
JC: Twice we had a bit of shrapnel. Shrapnel. And on one occasion we were flying along and the mid-upper gunner shouted, ’Oh I’m hit. I’m hit.’ So you’d got to have an emergency oxygen can to go and see what was wrong and what had happened was the shrapnel has come up through the floor of the plane, hit the bottom of his seat and gone through it and gone in to his Mae West and it had stopped there. But obviously he’d felt the tremendous impact of the shrapnel coming. But he wasn’t cut or anything. But it was the only time really. I mean, you had bits of flak through occasionally but on the whole, no. We didn’t have any. We were lucky. We didn’t have any trouble in that respect.
BJ: And you said earlier that after VE day your squadron got sent off to Japan.
JC: No.
BJ: Oh.
JC: No.
BJ: Oh.
JC: As I said before I did forty three of the forty operations. The forty third and forty fourth were scrubbed because the war had finished. But then we were stood by to go as a Mosquito squadron to fight the Japanese. The Japanese capitulated and that was that. So we were, the whole squadron we left Bourn, and were sent down to Blackbushe. And from Blackbushe we were carrying diplomat mail, newspapers, mail, all over Europe. Just, just depended where you were sent. You didn’t know. You just went to a sort briefing and say you were flying to Copenhagen. Ok. Off we’d go. Flying up to Norway. And that was it.
BJ: What was it like visiting those places and actually landing?
JC: Oh, it was great. It was great. Up in, up in Norway the Germans, there was lots of Germans soldiers still there. Unarmed of course. The war was finished. You went past. You’d get the Germans saluting you, aye. But that that was it. there’s nothing more you could do about it.
BJ: And, and what did you do after you left the RAF?
JC: Well, after, after I left the RAF I went back to civil engineering. But after six and a half years I reckoned that I wasn’t really fit for the real studies to get the degrees. So I thought well the civil, the Civil Service examination you got for the Customs and Excise. I thought I’d sit for them and I passed them. And I’ve been happy ever since in the Customs. Well, I’m retired now obviously. But it suited me fine. But six and a half years is a is a big, part of your life.
BJ: How do you think it affected the rest of your life?
JC: Well, as the years pass you, you begin to forget about what the war was like and what you, what you actually you did. You just contented yourself. Got married, had children, settled down. That was it. Just a normal life with, but you got plenty of memories obviously.
BJ: And did you stay in touch with the people that you’d gone through the war with?
JC: No. I lost touch with all of them. And as I say the ones I was most in contact with were killed. So there was no, nobody that’s, but I’m still in touch with I can’t remember whether it’s called TM I get this little booklet from. From, it’s a squadron, purely 49 Squadron booklet that comes out. It keeps you in touch but now most of the actual original members of the squadron are, are gone. But people who were associated with these people are still interested in 49 Squadron and keep writing in. And others who are still alive who served in the actual wars still write in or they ask about do you know anything about such and such a person? So it keeps you in touch to a certain extent but apart from that the war is over.
BJ: Yeah. Ok. That’s the end of my questions. Anything else that you —
JC: No. I can’t think about. I had two crashes. Once in a Mosquito and once in a Manchester but it was nothing serious. We walked away from it. It was just —
BJ: What happened then?
JC: Well, the Manchester we were about to take off and one, they were not very good engines in a Manchester. It caught fire. So it was nothing you could do but get out quick. Now, the Mosquito well we were we must have been hit by flak because when the pilot put down the landing gear it still looked as if it still had got the green lights or whatever it was that the landing gear was ok but when we actually landed it just collapsed under us. We just, we didn’t, we just slid along the runway so we were perfectly safe, jumped out. There was no fire or anything. But the plane was, well I don’t know whether it was a write off or not. But that, that was all really. The rest of the time there was nothing much really that I can think about or would be of interest. If you have any questions.
BJ: What was it like when, did you get leave when you were on service?
JC: Oh right. You had regular leave. You’d come back home. You were in to your civilian clothes and forget about the RAF.
BJ: Yeah. What was it like coming home then?
JC: Oh very, very good. Coming back home. There was nothing like home.
BJ: No.
JC: East west home’s best.
BJ: What did you say to your family about life in the RAF?
JC: Never talked very much about it. My mother’s, when I went back on operations the second time I never told her at all because I mean she was worrying all the time.
BJ: Right.
JC: We kept most of, we kept, kept it away from the papers the folk who were getting killed on the Mosquitoes. I didn’t tell her at all. She just —
BJ: So she thought you were still.
JC: Training.
BJ: Still training. Goodness.
JC: She knew. She knew I was training at Market Harborough and I presume she, she wasn’t that terribly interested because she thought I was simply training people or instructing in classes.
BJ: Did anybody else, did anybody else in your family know you were back on operations?
JC: Not really. Well, my father. My father. But as I say my wife didn’t know. My father knew but he also kept my mother in the quiet too because she would have been a worrier too. But I just twice decorated and I had to send a telegram home just to let them know obviously. After I said, ‘Oh God. They’ll think it’s I’ve been killed.’ I couldn’t [laughs] I couldn’t stop it going so but —
BJ: Oh. Could you tell me about the decorations that you got? From the war.
JC: Well, I got the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Distinguished Flying Medal. Went down to Buckingham Palace and shook hands with the King. But unfortunately that was with the Distinguished Flying Medal. The second Distinguished Flying Cross, it was simply sent home to us because the King was ill. And I thought it was a great, a great loss to the people who had been given the decoration and didn’t have the opportunity of going down to the Palace and meeting the King. Your parents, my father and mother got free passes to London. There and back. Had good friends there. Stayed with them. But I mean to go as a, in to this great big room. There’s a little orchestra playing. Your parents are sitting facing the rostrum and it’s, you had to go up some steps to this little rostrum. The door behind that. That’s where the King came through. And as you went up, before you went up they pinned a little clasp. You go up. Your name is called. You go up. You stood in front of the King. You bowed. You shook hands. I forget what he said. Something about missions or something you’d done. You stepped back, bowed again and went down the side. Rejoined your folk. Your parents. But I thought for those who were decorated and didn’t get that it was very, very disappointing. I thought somebody else could have officiated in the King’s place. But that didn’t happen.
BJ: What did you get decorated for?
JC: Just keeping alive [laughs] That’s all. That was all. Nothing, nothing special.
BJ: Ok. Ok. Well, thank you very much, Mr Crabb.
JC: Thank you very much for the interview.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John L Crabb
Creator
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Brenda 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
2017-06-04
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACrabbJL170604, PCrabbJL1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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00:40:11 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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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Munich
Description
An account of the resource
John Crabb transferred to the RAF from the Army. He began training as a pilot in the USA but then returned to train as an observer in Canada. On his return was posted to 49 Squadron. After thirteen operations he and the bomb aimer developed colds and were unable to fly. Their crew left for an operation and were killed that night. John and his bomb aimer went to other crews. The bomb aimer died on his last operation. John’s last operation was to Munich and he worried for the entire time whether he would make it home. After being an instructor John went on a second tour of operations. This was with a Mosquito squadron based at RAF Bourn.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-05-23
1945
162 Squadron
49 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
forced landing
Lancaster
Manchester
Mosquito
navigator
RAF Bourn
Stearman
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/656/8929/AWilsonJ161231.1.mp3
930df0a00d934d17a8714a098fe71eb3
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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Wilson, Joseph
J Wilson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Wilson, J
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Joseph Wilson (1923 - 2019), 1486434 Royal Air Force), his log book, identity card and a photograph. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 102 and 76 Squadrons before being posted to 624 Special Duties Squadron where he dropped supplies and agents to the resistance in Southern Europe.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jenny Wilson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-29
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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BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Joe Wilson at 3.15 in the afternoon on Thursday 29th of December 2016 at his home in Billinge. Joe, can you confirm for me please when and where were you born?
JW1: When and where? Oh, I was, I was born in Orrel Road, Orrel, 18.5.23.
BW: And how many other family members were there in, in your family? Did you have any brothers and sisters?
JW1: Oh yes. I had, I had a brother and sister.
BW: And were you the middle child or —
JW1: I was the youngest, the youngster [slight laugh].
JW2: You, you had step-sisters and brothers.
JW1: But they weren’t —
JW2: They were older, weren’t they?
JW1: Oh yeah, they weren’t — as you say, step-sisters. They weren’t my —
JW2: They weren’t yours but they all lived together.
JW1: All lived together, yeah.
BW: With me during this interview —
JW1: I beg your pardon?
BW: With me in this interview is Joe’s daughter Jenny, who will also be, um, prompting further information and assisting Joe with, with some of the answers just to help his recall of memory. So what was your early life like Joe, growing up round here?
JW1: What was?
JW2: What was your early life like? How would you describe it, growing up round here? Was it a normal happy childhood or —
JW1: You mean, as a civilian you mean.
BW: yes.
JW1: I had a very, very — I was getting five bob a week as a —
JW2: As a child?
JW1: As a child, yeah.
JW2: As a child — is it OK for me to — as a child you, um, your father was a miner.
JW1: Pit. Yeah.
JW2: And your mother —
JW1: A school teacher.
JW2: Was a school teacher.
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: And your mother married her sister’s widower.
JW1: My mother married —
JW2: Your mother married your sister’s, your, sorry, her sister’s widower.
JW1: Who was that?
JW2: So, um, that was Nellie died and William married Agnes, your mother, and then had three more children and you lived in a semi-detached house, 176 —
JW1: Orrel Road.
JW2: Orrel Road. That was when you were five. Before that you’d lived in a, in a terraced house. So when you were five you lived in 176 where you stayed for quite a long time.
JW1: That’s OK.
JW2: That’s right, yeah. But you had a happy child — would you say you had a happy childhood?
JW1: [slight laugh] Not really.
JW2: No?
JW1: No.
BW: Were your parents strict Joe?
JW1: I beg your pardon?
BW: Were your mum and dad strict with you?
JW1: Not really. My father worked in the pits, down the pits, five shillings a week and my mother was a school teacher, wasn’t she?
JW2: Yes.
BW: And where did you go to your school yourself? Do you remember?
JW1: Nearby, yeah. It was a Catholic School, St James’s, Orrel, yeah.
BW: And what did you like learning there? Were you there until age fourteen or did you leave? Was it a primary school and you left to go to another school or what?
JW1: I was, I was there most of the time I suppose, yeah. Not altogether.
JW2: Do you recall that you, er, left — when you left St James’s do you remember which school you went to then?
JW1: After St James’s. You mentioned the name [unclear].
JW2: I think there was three children from St James’s from your year that went to West Park Grammar School.
JW1: Grammar School, St Helens, yeah.
JW2: And one of them was John Orell, who was your friend from Rock House in Upholland, and the other was Brenda Green.
JW1: Brenda Green.
JW2: And John Orell also went into the RAF during the war.
JW1: Was he lost in the war?
JW2: He was. You told me that the, um, time you had at the grammar school was limited because a lot of your teachers were conscripted. Would you like to say something about that?
JW1: Conscripted? What do you mean by that?
JW2: They went into the war. They, they had to sign up for the war when you were at West Park Grammar.
JW1: Oh yeah, yeah.
JW2: You told me that you wanted to leave school because you didn’t like art and you had to do art and lost some of your favourite subjects.
JW1: That’s true.
BW: What didn’t you like about art Joe?
JW1: I couldn’t draw.
JW2: Didn’t like it.
BW: Didn’t like it. What were your favourite subjects then?
JW1: Mathematics, I suppose. My mother was a school teacher.
JW2: And her nickname was?
JW1: Eh?
JW2: What was her nickname?
JW1: I don’t know.
JW2: Mrs Metric.
JW1: Was it? I’d forgotten.
JW2: And she was very literary, as you are, and you loved poetry.
JW1: Oh yeah. Loved poetry. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall what were you doing when war was declared? Were you at home that day?
JW1: Well, I was at school that day wasn’t I when war was declared?
JW2: I don’t know.
JW1: 1939. Born ’23. I was probably in the top class, sixth form, er, sixth form. I was —
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Joe Wilson on the afternoon of Thursday 29th of December 2016 at his home in Billinge, Lancashire. With me is his daughter Jenny Wilson who will also be adding information, prompting and asking questions of Joe to help clarify some of the information. So, we were just talking before, in the first part of the interview Joe, about you being a trainee pharmacist and you’d heard that war had been declared and you decided to join the RAF and there were two reasons. One of which was pay and the other of which you thought was glamour. Is that right?
JW1: Probably.
BW: And you thought the uniform would help you attract more girls?
JW: Yeah.
BW: I believe you wanted to train as a pilot?
JW: Yeah. I was, I was in a reserved occupation there but yeah, pilot only, yeah. In fact I wasn’t allowed to — because I got, I got [unclear] I wasn’t allowed to apply for anything else. Pilot or observer, they were both the same, er, price, wage, same wage.
BW: And it was more money than what you were on as a pharmacist?
JW1: As a pharmacist. It was do you mean fully trained?
BW: Yeah.
JW1: I was about, I was getting about two pounds a week then but, er, I worked till half past seven through the week and, er, 9 o’clock Saturday night. That was what I should have done but I, I always had plenty of — what do you call them? What do you call them where they —
JW2: I’m not sure. Oh, they had a lot of outlets?
JW1: The Air Force.
JW2: Oh, the Air Force. I’m not sure. Barracks?
JW1: Eh?
JW2: The barracks.
JW1: Before I joined — I’ve forgotten. I was, I know I was a, I was a, so they say a laughable airmen [?] really.
BW: Where did you sign on or sign up? Did you sign you in Wigan? Was the nearest recruiting office in Wigan?
JW1: Yeah, oh yeah.
BW: And where do you go from there? Do you remember where did they send you for training?
JW1: It, it was overseas but I can’t remember where?
JW2: Initially, I don’t think it was overseas. I think you started your training in this country.
JW1: I probably started, yeah, but I didn’t finish.
BW: Did you actually get on to do pilot training in the first stage or were you drafted to be an observer instead?
JW1: Well, I was, I had, um, I wasn’t considered good enough to be a pilot really.
BW: Did you actually get to learn to fly a plane at any stage or were you just told that at the beginning?
JW1: No, I never saw, never saw an aeroplane in those days.
JW2: He did [emphasis] get to fly.
BW: I think you said you flew a Tiger Moth, didn’t you?
JW1: Oh, well yeah. Yes. What do they call it when you do a couple of hours just to see whether you were going to be air sick or, you know, not suitable, really. That was the idea. It wasn’t, it wasn’t to teach you anything really. [JW2 talking quietly in the background]
BW: So, you started on a flying course in this country doing a couple of trips on a Tiger Moth and then you were told you weren’t suitable to be a pilot. Is that right?
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And from there you went on to train as a bomb aimer instead. Is that correct or did you go into air gunnery?
JW1: No. I wanted to be a — no I wasn’t a gunner because the pay was terrible. It was terrible as a pilot but it was better than an air gunner’s pay.
JW2: Joe, your grandson recalls you saying that you learned, you were learning how to fly in Hamptons and Wellingtons?
JW1: Hampdens.
JW2: Hampdens, sorry. And Wellingtons. Is that correct?
JW1: Yeah. I know I went solo as, as, er, training to be a pilot when I was about, well I’d only be eighteen, that’s all.
BW: You were flying solo?
JW1: I was, I did, to be in a flying job really. I was but I only did a very, very short time.
BW: What do you recall about your training to be a bomb aimer?
JW1: I didn’t like it [slight laugh]. I didn’t like joining it but after a while it became a better, better paid job, slightly paid better, but that was about all really.
BW: And I believe you went up to an Operational Training Unit at Lossiemouth, number 20 OTU?
JW1: Number 20. Yeah.
BW: Would that have been 1942?
JW1: Probably. Yeah. ’42. I was born in ‘23. I was nineteen then.
BW: What do you recall of your time up in Scotland? Anything?
JW1: Well, I had relatives close by. My wife was a Scot, eventually.
JW2: Event— but you hadn’t met her then.
JW1: No. I hadn’t.
JW2: You hadn’t met her then. Later on you had relatives in Scotland but when you were nineteen I don’t think you had relatives in Scotland.
JW1: I didn’t like it then [slight laugh]. I’m surprised anybody cares these days about it.
BW: From then on I believe you went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Pocklington, 1652 HCU is that right?
JW1: Pocklington. Yeah.
BW: And do you recall the people you met there? The crew you met there?
JW1: I don’t recall it but some— somebody, one of them was here and mentioned it to me to bring it back to me, I suppose. That’s all. Five bob a week wasn’t much working about fifty hours or more. That was all I got. Five shillings.
BW: Your log book shows that you were training on Wellingtons and your pilot was Sergeant Griffiths.
JW1: Yeah.
BW: What do you remember about Griffiths?
JW1: Nothing really but if, if somebody mentions something it would bring it back to me. He was a Scot, I know that. I don’t remember. I don’t remember.
BW: You did a lot of cross country training and some of it was at night, flying Wellingtons.
JW1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And you’re up at the front in the nose.
JW1: Yeah.
BW: What, what was like that?
JW1: Bloody cold. It was — we got all the breezes there. It was considered, it was quite laughable to everybody that I was a pil— I was going in for a pilot, yeah. I’m trying to think what we called it. Nobody has ever talked about it since then so I don’t remember.
BW: So, from your log book you left training on the Wellington on the 20th of September 1942, having done just under twenty-three hours day flying and thirty-one, sorry, forty-seven hours night flying?
JW1: How many years, forty-seven?
BW: Forty-seven hours, forty-seven hours. You then joined the conversion unit early in 1943 and you learned to fly Halifaxes. And your pilot on the Halifax was a Sergeant Griffiths. Do you remember the names of the other crewmen at all?
JW1: Not off-hand, no, but if anybody mentions them it would bring it back to me.
JW2: Can you remember anything about somebody called Marsh, Wilf Marsh?
JW1: Wilf Marsh. He was an observer. He wasn’t very athletic really. He was quite a fat lad.
JW2: He was married wasn’t he?
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: Was he the only married one on your crew?
JW1: As far as I recollect, yeah.
JW2: Right.
BW: There was another crewman, Flight Engineer Charles Walker?
JW1: I don’t remember that.
BW: No. Navigator, er, Anthony Holmes, or Tony Holmes.
JW1: Do you know, I don’t remember that even.
BW: No [clears throat].
JW1: I don’t know why they are interested.
JW2: It is interesting dad.
BW: It looks like your regular aircraft was code letter P. Do you have any recollections of P? Did you have a nickname for the aircraft at all? Was it —
JW1: I don’t recollect P. I’ve forgotten what you were —
Other: Is he talking about the nickname for the aircraft?
JW2: Yes.
Other: It was something ghost. Something ghost related.
JW1: What’s that?
JW2: Can — did you call the Halifax — did you have a name for, a nickname for your aircraft? Your grandson seems to remember that it was something related to ghosts.
JW1: I don’t remember.
JW2: You can’t remember.
JW1: I don’t remember.
BW: So, you haven’t done many trips. You’ve done about nine or ten trips maybe, in the early part 1943, most of them in March. Do you remember where you were flying to, what your targets were, in March ‘43? Were you flying to the Ruhr, Ruhr valley?
JW1: I can’t [clears throat] recollect them but if someone jogged my memory and told me, gave me a name, I might.
JW2: Do you recall that you did — you got some time off when you did a reconnaissance trip. Can you remember that?
JW1: I got what?
JW2: You took some very good photographs of a target or your plane did and, um, they were so helpful that they gave you some time off. Can you recall that?
JW1: No.
JW2: Well, you told me it was an armaments factory at Essen?
JW1: Essetene [?]
JW2: No Essen.
JW1: Oh, Essen. Oh yeah.
JW2: And you told me they were so pleased with the helpful photographs for target information that they gave you some days off.
JW1: I can’t remember.
JW2: You can’t remember that, no, no. It might have been Krupps.
JW1: Krupps.
JW2: Might have been Krupps. Does that sound —
JW1: I think we lost, if I remember rightly, fifty-five one night, from, mostly from —
JW2: Bombing.
JW1: Yeah.
BW: There are some details, some brief details here. Your second operation, in March 1943, was gardening.
JW1: Was what?
BW: Gardening. Which means mine laying.
JW1: Oh yeah, gardening, yeah.
BW: Do you remember anything about dropping mines in the water?
JW1: No. It was cushy but no. I mean, we were not didn’t go on trips anything like as dangerous as that was. They, they were all mine laying operations, just round, round the drome, that’s all.
BW: And then your third op at night was to Essen, followed by three days later Nuremberg.
JW1: We lost about fifty aeroplanes.
BW: On the Essen raid?
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And then you went a few days later to Nuremberg.
JW1: Oh yeah. That was a long one.
BW: That’s deep in Germany. And then the night after that you went to Munich which is in the south of Germany.
JW1: I remember the name but I don’t remember anything about it really.
BW: You then had one raid at Stuttgart, followed in April by another trip to Essen and this is, I believe, is interesting because your comment in your log book says you were coned for eleven minutes. You were in the searchlights for eleven minutes. Do you remember that?
JW1: No.
BW: And you got back to base and you had to go and see the CO, the station commander, following that and he took you up for a flight. His name was Gus Walker.
JW1: Oh, ay. I don’t remember. I remember the name, that’s all. Yeah.
BW: I believe what happened, you were lucky to survive the raid over Essen, being in the path of the searchlights for so long.
JW1: Lost fifty, fifty planes.
JW2: But then when you got back the station commander took you and the rest of the crew up for a flight to show you how to, to show your pilot Griffiths how to take evasive action.
JW1: Oh yeah. I don’t, don’t remember anything about that either.
JW2: I think, I remember you saying that, um, you weren’t sure — you wanted to call him, ‘Sir,’ and he said, ‘Call me Gus.’ Can you remember that?
JW1: Who, who was that, Gus? Who was it?
JW2: Who do you think it was?
JW1: I don’t know.
JW2: Gus Walker.
JW1: Oh yeah. Little fella.
BW: Air Commodore with one arm.
JW1: Was it? Oh yeah. He was quite well famous then, really. Gus Walker.
JW2: He showed you how to do evasive action.
JW1: Yeah. Throwing the plane about, yeah.
JW2: You told me that you that you’d waggled your plane before you learned how to do evasive action.
JW1: Yes. I did that. That were evading.
BW: Just dipping the wings.
JW1: Yeah. Yeah. Why do they want to know all—
JW2: Can I — I think that it’s something that would be quite interesting for — you were doing your bombing trips and you, you had a strategy that you think helped you, your crew to survive. Can you remember what your strategy was because I think Brian would be interested?
JW1: Just dropping markers, you know, that’s all really. We, we didn’t bomb anything then, we just gave the impression that we were going to go that way and they all turned and went that way and we went the other.
JW2: You told me — is it OK to — you told me that when you were in the briefings you always took a great interest in why they would navigate a particular way and you asked a lot of questions so sometimes you would say so why, why would we take that route and not this route and you seemed to be asking pertinent questions about the route.
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: You did use the stars. You said that you used the stars and sextants to work out where you were and you felt your mathematics helped with the navigating because your role was a navigating as well, wasn’t it?
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: But you told me as well that your aim as soon as you knew where you had to go to was to get there as quickly and efficiently as you could. So I don’t think that you always went with the column when you flew with your crew. Can you remember?
JW1: Well, I only remember it as much as you’re, you’re talking about now but —
JW2: Tell me what you remember about not flying with the column.
JW1: Well nothing really accept —
JW2: That’s a shame.
JW1: Where was it? Where was that?
JW2: You told me that you had that as a strategy that you would, you didn’t fly with the column.
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: And that it was such large numbers that did happen, that people would go astray and then return to the column further on. You told me that on occasion you would still be circling the target when the Pathfinders arrived so by the time the target was marked — do you remember what would happen? What you would do?
JW1: No. Go on.
JW2: You told me that you would bomb it and you would be on your way back when the rest of the column was arriving.
JW1: Yeah. I [clears throat ] I wasn’t — I hadn’t been in the Air Force but I knew more about navigation and, you know, the work of the pilot or whatever, flying, in those days. Yeah.
JW2: There was a question about why you were chosen to do — work with 624 because 624 was special ops and the dangers were very different. You could fly into a mountain if you did not know where you were going so there was a question about whether you were chosen for the special ops work because your navigation was so good.
JW1: I think that’s probably true.
JW2: Because you tended to reach your target and come back before the others.
JW1: But I was a bomb aimer, not navigator. Bomb aimer.
JW2: No you weren’t but you told me you that helped with the navigating.
JW1: Oh probably.
JW2: So you were the bomb aimer, yeah. And you felt that your matriculation helped you with the navigation.
JW1: Oh yeah. I just got —
JW2: Was the observer not bomb aimer and navigator.
BW: Observer was a generic name. The trades tended to be, um, how can I say? Co— combined, in that you could be called a — it dates back to the First World War when the pilot was also listed as an observer but then the trades began to separate and some of them retained the old title of observer as well but, strictly speaking there would be, in the Halifax, there would be the pilot, navigator, wireless operator, um, bomb aimer and three gunners, front, back and mid upper so —
JW2: Did I speak too much then? Was that too —
BW: No, that’s alright. That’s alright. [clears throat] I believe when you were flying on operations before you went to, um, the briefings that you would take communion as well as a Catholic?
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: So did you attend services every time or just occasionally?
JW1: Well, all the time then, yeah.
BW: And do you feel your faith gave you comfort or, um, support?
JW1: I think so, yeah, yeah. Support, yeah.
BW: Did the other crew members go with you or not?
JW1: No, they didn’t. They were — I was the only Catholic there. I don’t know what you’d call them.
BW: But they I believe also felt reassured when you —
JW1: They what?
BW: They felt reassured when you’d been you to the service and had communion as well. Is that right?
JW1: Say that again. They felt what?
BW: They felt reassured that you’d had communion before you went flying.
JW1: Oh they liked that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
BW: Did that make them feel they feel like they had God on their side?
JW1: They thought it was a safety movement really.
BW: So you was bit of a talisman for them. You were a bit of good luck charm.
JW1: Very likely, very likely, very much likely because I was quite young then. In 1940 how old would I be? Twenty-three? Born in ‘23 to ’40. Oh, phew —
BW: Seventeen.
JW1: Seventeen would it be?
BW: But you were slightly older than that. You were nineteen and twenty when you were on these operations.
JW1: On ops, yeah.
BW: Did the rest of the crew have good luck charms or mascots?
JW1: I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.
BW: No? But with that and your skill as a bomb aimer/ navigator they must have felt they were going to come back every time with you on board.
JW1: Oh yeah. It was, it was the relationship with the pilot and the bomb aimer and the navigator in between, yeah.
BW: And when you were over the target didn’t you have control of the aircraft?
JW1: Oh, I sat next to the pilot to help him with it. He sometimes he’d take so much evasive action he, he would be out of action, you know. He’d lose control of it really.
BW: And were there any instances over the target when you had to take control if he lost it?
JW1: Well, no. I was alongside, alongside the side of the pilot. I’m trying to think now. We were the first to bomb there usually, you know, because I was — well I’d been in the sixth form at the grammar control, you know, as a mathematician so what they thought was difficult wasn’t to me.
BW: You obviously have a logical or engineering type, mathematical type thinking pattern or brain, don’t you? You were a, um, pharmacist before the war but then you had this mathematical/ logical skill to see them accurately and quickly to the target and come back. And what was it like for you over the target being in the front, very front of the Halifax? Can you remember what you would do?
JW1: Well, not really but bomb aimer, navigator or observer was two people.
BW: Did you feel you worked well as a team then?
JW1: Sorry?
BW: Did you feel you worked well as a team?
JW: I think so, yeah. I knew more mathematics than any one of them in the crew, even the pilot ‘cause I’d been in the sixth form at the grammar school.
BW: You had to lie prone in the front of the aircraft, looking through the nose, looking through the glass canopy down at the target and tell the pilot to stay on course or to manoeuvre so that you could drop the bombs accurately. You also had to keep the aircraft on course for another thirty seconds so a photograph could be taken, didn’t you?
JW1: Yeah. Yes.
BW: And did you take the photograph?
JW1: Pardon?
BW: Did you take the photograph?
JW1: Well, I told them when they should be, er, marking the, you know, the ground, what you call it? Phenomenon, ground — I don’t know what you call it really but they weren’t con— weren’t considered worth talking about, um, bomb aimers, you know — they thought we knew nothing about navigation and flying, flying an aircraft.
BW: And do you recall what you might have seen on the ground below you when you were over the target? Could you see searchlights and fires?
JW1: Oh, searchlights, yeah, yeah. They would very often have, where the target was, um, stations nearby where they could light the, you know, they could light the searchlights in the hopes that anybody up, up above would think they were the target. I weren’t. I didn’t. I knew more navigation than the navigation officer because I’d got through to sixth form in grammar school in mathematics.
BW: But you could tell the difference between decoy fires, which is what you’re talking about, and the actual target you were aiming for.
JW1: Yes. The fires and the decoy would still be there after we’d done about half a dozen or more of them trips because it would still be there lit but, er, I don’t think any of the others knew anything like as much navigating as I did you know. They, they just obeyed, obeyed the lights really.
BW: Do you recall the different colours of searchlights that you would see over the target?
JW1: No. No recollection, no.
BW: There was one, called a master beam, which was a blue beam and it was radar controlled so if it locked onto an aircraft all the other yellow or white lights would, would lock on, would switch over and lock onto it.
JW1: Yes. That’s true, yeah.
BW: Did it happen to you at all?
JW1: Sorry?
BW: Did it happen to you and your crew at all?
JW1: I don’t remember really.
BW: You talked of a raid on Essen when there was over fifty aircraft were lost. Did you see any of the other aircraft being shot down?
JW1: Yes. All the time. All the time but, er, we made a good partnership, the pilot and observer and myself and we used to go higher up than they did so really the anti-aircraft shots were at a lower level really.
BW: So you flew above the level of the flak. That’s what you’re saying. You flew above the range of the guns.
JW1: Did I say that? I don’t remember that.
BW: Well you flew, you say that you flew higher than the rest of the aircraft presumably because you were then higher from, above the guns.
JW1: So we could dive down and allude, well, the defenders, you know, down below, really. Yeah.
BW: And when you were briefed about the target did you question the height and the positon at which you were going to bomb these targets? Did you think you could do better?
JW1: Did I question what?
BW: Did you question what they were briefing you about when they, when they told you where you should bomb the target, what direction you should come from and what height? Did you try and do it differently?
JW1: Did I what?
BW: Did you try and do it differently?
JW1: I forget really. We were a lone aircraft. One, you know, we — and all the rest of the bombers went on the official target I suppose but I didn’t.
BW: And what made you do that? Why did you decide to do that?
JW1: Well, I’d been long before I joined the Air Force we studied the tactics, you know, we knew what was expected of us really, I suppose, so very often I could go in and out of the target and be on my way back from the target and not have any anti-aircraft anywhere near us, you know.
BW: So your aircraft never got hit?
JW1: Never got hit? I’d forgotten about that really.
JW2: You did say, you did say that you got shrapnel in your face.
JW1: I did yeah. Little sparks, yeah, but I could have been on my way, not at the target but defence, on the way to the target. I could have been miles away.
BW: Do you recall when that happened?
JW1: No.
BW: But it wasn’t serious enough for you warrant you spending time in hospital?
JW1: Well, I didn’t tell them I was hit. I didn’t lead the life that was expected of me from the rest. I was keeping clear of the rest of the bombing — what did we call the list of, tier?
JW2: The column yeah.
JW1: Did we call it a tier?
BW: I don’t know.
JW1: T I E R.
BW: So while everyone else is flying the official route, while everyone is flying the official route and doing what they were told presumably you’ve given the instruction to the pilot as where to go and what to do, to stay out of the away from the main force?
JW1: Tell the pilot to stay away from — oh the pilot of our aircraft you mean? Oh yeah. I was in and out of the target before the rest of them had started bombing really, very often.
BW: Even before the Pathfinders arrived.
JW1: Yeah, yeah. It was handy being a, a Pathfinder because we got extra defence, if you like, and we could bomb the target and then go and mark nearby and, you know and a lot of them would bomb where we dropped these markers, really.
JW2: We need to clarify this but you told me that you had advised that it would be a good idea to drop false markers.
JW1: Oh, we did that. Yeah.
JW2: Who did that? Did you do that as, first of all, you requested that, that as a strategy? You put it forward?
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: And what happened then?
JW1: Well it meant there were fewer bombers going to the target, fewer who should have been on the target, dropping bombs nearby and they were glad of it because it kept them out of serious anti-aircraft fire. I’m surprised they’re interested in this so many years after [slight laugh].
BW: That, that was about your time on 102 Squadron and you then moved to number 76 Squadron at Linton on Ouse and according to your log book you changed pilot. You then had Sergeant Povey.
JW1: Yes. Les, Les Povey.
BW: Les Povey. And your original crew at 102 Squadron apparently were shot down and killed after you left.
JW1: Shot down what?
BW: They were shot down, they were brought down and killed on a mission, weren’t they?
JW1: Were they killed? Yeah.
JW2: You were supposed to go on that trip and we, we —
JW1: Which trip?
JW2: It was a, a raid on an armaments factory in Stettin and it was a birthday present for Hitler.
JW1: For whom?
JW2: For Hitler. It was on the 20th of April 1943 and you were supposed to go on that trip but you had cold sores on your face and couldn’t wear your oxygen mask.
JW1: No. I wasn’t allowed to go.
JW2: You were not allowed to go but you did go to the briefing.
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: And someone else went to that briefing as well. We met him later. Tom Wingham wrote about it in a book called, um, “Halifax Down” and he said that people were very anxious about the trip because it was a full moon and they were advised to go high over the Channel and low over Denmark to evade anti-aircraft. So we, we read about that afterwards. So your crew were lost. You waited for them to come back. You waited on the runway for them to come back.
JW1: And why wasn’t allowed? Tell me again why wasn’t allowed to go with them?
JW2: You had cold sores on your face and you couldn’t wear your oxygen mask. Can you remember waiting for them?
JW1: It’s coming, coming back to me yeah. Just a very slight recollection that’s all.
JW2: You told me that beyond a certain time you knew that —
JW1: They couldn’t get back, yeah.
JW2: That they were either going to be prisoners of war or the plane had come down or there was a vague hope that they’d landed somewhere else in the country but you waited.
JW1: That’s true yeah.
JW2: Can you remember what happened when you saw your name with another crew after you lost your own crew?
JW1: It was the pilot that was —
JW2: No. After you lost your crew and you saw your name was put on a board with another crew ready to go off again. Do you recall what you did?
JW1: No.
JW2: You put it in your back pocket. You put your name off the crew list and in your back pocket and then what did you do?
JW1: I don’t know.
JW2: You went home.
JW1: Did I?
JW2: And when you walked down the front path your mother had just received a telegram saying you were missing in action.
JW1: In action, yeah. They thought I’d gone with the crew, yeah.
JW2: This was the same period of time that someone at The Stag asked if you were dodging the column.
JW1: And he was chucked out the pub.
JW2: He was because your father and the landlord knew why you were home. You were absent without leave because you’d lost your crew.
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: Can you remember seeing your crew’s families, going to see the crew members’ families?
JW1: No, I can’t remember it.
JW2: I think you wanted to tell them what had happened because you knew they wouldn’t learn for a long time.
JW1: I can’t remember.
BW: If I read you the names of the crew that were lost would that help?
JW1: Go on.
BW: Your pilot was Wilfred Ambrose Griffiths, the second pilot on that raid was Thomas Samuel Eric Bennett, a New Zealander.
JW1: A what?
BW: A New Zealander. He was from New Zealand.
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: The flight engineer was James Thomas Smith.
JW1: I don’t remember any of them really.
BW: There was Wilfred Charles Marsh.
JW2: Wilf Marsh.
JW1: Wilf Marsh, yeah. I do remember him. I do remember.
JW2: How do you remember him?
JW1: I remember Wilf Marsh but I need some, for somebody to remind me what —
BW: He was one of the oldest of the crew.
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: He was thirty-one.
JW1: Thirty-one?
BW: The same age as, er, Tom Bennett. The other observer on the crew list was James Campbell, James Kenneth Campbell. You knew him as Ken.
JW2: Ken Campbell. What do you remember about him?
JW1: Nothing.
BW: The — you mentioned this guy before, the wireless op, the wop, AG, Sergeant Arnie Jenkinson.
JW2: Jinxy [?].
BW: Arnie Jenkinson.
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And the two gunners were Alex Cuthbert Weir. He was Canadian. Do you know if he was the mid-upper or the —
JW1: Pardon?
BW: Was he the mid-upper gunner or the rear gunner? The Canadian?
JW1: I forget.
BW: And the last one was Sergeant Bertram Charles John White.
JW1: John what?
JW2: White.
JW1: I don’t remember.
JW2: Can I try and jog your memory about Arnie Jenkins?
JW1: Son.
JW2: Son, yeah. You said that his mother had a haberdashery shop, 360 Ashton New Road.
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: Do you remember?
JW1: It’s coming back to me when you mention it.
JW2: What about your Magdalene? Your Magdalene used to make clothes and she knew that family didn’t she?
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
JW2: Or she met them through you, I don’t know.
BW: Well, I had so many that I had to recall and the crews, but she would, I would expect this one to remember, you know, the one you — that parents, do remember, yeah.
JW2: Ken Campbell was from Widnes.
JW1: Was he?
JW2: Yeah.
JW1: I went there didn’t I?
JW2: I think you went to —
JW1: And they didn’t want to know me.
JW2: You went to 360 Ashton New Road but that was Arnie Jenkins’ house.
JW1: Jenkinson.
JW2: Jenkinson, yes, sorry. But he was an only child and it’s a shame you didn’t go back.
JW1: Was he lost?
JW1: You, you told me his mother couldn’t speak to you. She was so upset and she had to hurry off the doorstep and when you got muddled up in your older age and you thought it was because you’d replaced, they’d replaced you but Arnie Jenkinson wasn’t replaced, wasn’t the replacement for you. Ken Campbell was and he was from Widnes.
JW2: I’ve forgotten.
JW1: I think it would be hard for anybody to see a familiar RAF uniform on the doorstep and know you weren’t going to see your son coming back.
JW1: Yeah. I can understand that.
BW: So, you went drinking in the local pub when you were at home called The Stag?
JW1: Yes. They said I was dodging the column, the other people, yeah, so I left and didn’t go back there.
BW: And was your dad a regular in the pub as well?
JW1: He was but he wasn’t — he worked down the pit. He wasn’t a member of the crew really.
JW2: Was he proud of you?
JW1: Eh?
JW2: When you came home in your uniform was he proud of you?
JW1: Oh yeah, yeah.
BW: Did your family ever worry about you when you were on the raids?
JW1: Well, they wouldn’t acknowledge that they were bothered, you know, but they were.
BW: And you used to cycle home to Wigan from Pocklington.
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
BW: Did your family make a fuss of you when you went home each time?
JW1: Well there was only my parents really there. The rest were based either in the Army or the Air Force. I don’t know where they’d be.
BW: So, you being the youngest, when you came home you were spoiled by mum and dad were you a bit.
JW1: A bit yes.
BW: Did your dad take you out drinking?
JW1: Did what?
BW: Did your dad take you out drinking or not?
JW1: He did after a while but he, you know, he didn’t like me being in the pub really.
JW2: You told me that he used to ask you to put your uniform on.
JW1: Yeah, I know he liked it. You got special treatment in the pub even if they didn’t know you personally, you know.
BW: Did people buy you drinks when you went in the pub with your uniform on?
JW1: Phew. Not really, er, occasionally one might but, um, it was, er, it was —
JW2: What can you say about the bottles of whisky that you used to bring home?
JW1: I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.
JW1: You told me that you were given bottles of whisky and you used to bring them home in a kit bag and give them to your dad.
JW1: Where did I get the whisky from?
JW2: I don’t know. I don’t know.
JW1: I’ve forgotten myself.
JW2: From Pocklington somewhere.
BW: You were based at Yorkshire with 102 Squadron at the time the dams’ raid took place.
JW1: A what?
BW: The time the dam busters’ raid took place.
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: Were you feted at all because you were part of bomber crews?
JW1: Was I what?
BW: Were you feted at all? Did people make a fuss of you when you went home at that time, simply because you were in bomber command?
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: And did the uniform pay off? Did you attract many girls?
JW1: No. I had a girlfriend of my own, Cathleen McGraw.
JW2: I’ve been told that your half brothers and sisters had children who used to dote on you. So they would be your nieces and they used to dote on you and there was photographs hanging up in your brothers and sisters houses of you in your uniform. They all recall a particular photograph of you in your uniform.
JW1: I can’t remember.
JW2: But I was also told that you wore leathers like Marlon Brando and you had a motorbike. Can you remember having a motorbike?
JW2: Did I have a motorbike?
JW2: Did you have a motorbike then?
JW1: I had a motorbike once upon a time but it was only for a few days and then —
JW2: Oh right. OK.
JW1: I got a little aeroplane [slight laugh]. I was lucky to survive really.
BW: And you had a few months flying with 76 Squadron at Linton and then Holme on Spalding.
JW1: Holme on Spalding where?
BW: Do you remember much about that base?
JW1: Pardon?
BW: Do you remember much about that base?
JW1: Not really.
BW: There were some accidents, um, at Pocklington and at Holme on Spalding by Halifax crews coming back that crashed. Did you see any or hear of any crashes?
JW1: No, I didn’t realise that. We were usually the first back because I, I’d studied navigation and mathematics at the grammar school, you know. I knew more about it than the navigation people on the squadron.
BW: From your log book on the 10th of August 1943 you started flying with 138 Squadron at Tempsford. Now that’s down south in Sussex and it was a special duties squadron. Did you volunteer for special duties?
JW1: No but I was — but they thought I was good enough for it I suppose.
BW: So, somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said you’re going down south?
JW1: Yeah. Mind you, it wasn’t as a hazardous a place as the squadron, going from the squadron, you know, up north. The German fighters would be patrolling along the coastline waiting for them to go.
BW: Waiting for you to go out?
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And did they patrol waiting for you to come back as well?
JW1: They would be, yeah, but we were, didn’t come back as a —
BW: A squadron.
JW1: Yeah. We came back individually all over the place.
BW: Did you see any action with night fighters or —
JW1: Oh yes. We saw them. We saw planes going down sometimes but my pilot, the second pilot I had, could get higher up than they, they were.
JW2: Can you, can you recall why Les Povey was such a good pilot?
JW1: No.
JW2: Because he’d been a gold prospecting pilot before the war, in Africa.
JW1: Was he? I’ve forgotten.
JW2: That’s what you told me. He was a gold prospecting pilot so he was a very experienced pilot before he joined up.
JW1: I’d forgotten that.
JW2: And he was older as well.
JW1: He was almost forty then.
JW2: And he looked like Errol Flynn.
BW: And you moved with him down to Tempsford.
JW1: Yes.
BW: So what happened to the rest of the crew? Did they just keep you and Les together?
JW1: I don’t recollect what happened to them but they, very often, with other crews a very experienced person, trying to get them out of that aircraft and, you know, with the special squadron and we came in that category.
BW: And you moved then in August ‘43 abroad. You went and flew to Blida in Algeria.
JW1: Blida, yeah.
BW: To join 624 Squadron.
JW1: Blida was in, er, I don’t know what you’d call it now, with a lake. What do you call it now?
BW: So, we were talking just before Joe about your transfer to the special duties squadron, when you flew to North Africa, to Blida in Algeria. What do you remember about that?
JW1: Very little, if anything really, but because I’d been learning maths at school and, you know, they used to, even though I was one of the least experienced, er, air people, air crew they, er, still wanted me to tell them about it, you know.
BW: And you conducted operations, again in a Halifax, but you were dropping supplies and spies I believe in different parts of Europe.
JW1: Oh yeah, yeah. I’d forgotten about those. I’d forgotten details of them.
JW2: You told me that you can remember, um, dropping agents that were also dangerous people.
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
JW2: And that they —
JW1: They were let out of jail you mean?
JW2: Yes and you told me that, that one of them — do you remember one particular case where he was dropped with handcuffs and when he landed he would be able to access the key to unlock himself because it was zipped up inside his outfit? Do you remember that, um, Jim Rosbottom was the despatcher?
JW1: I’ll just have a sip.
JW2: Jim Rosbottom was the despatcher.
JW1: Jim. It wasn’t Jim.
JW2: Jim Rosbottom.
JW1: It wasn’t Jim though was it?
JW2: Yes he was the despatcher and you said that he was the despatcher and you said he used to tie himself to the fuselage when he was dropping some dangerous people to ensure that he didn’t get pulled out of the plane as well.
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
JW2: And he also used to, he used do his own form of bombing sometimes by throwing whole packets out, of leaflets out instead of cutting them up sometimes.
JW1: Oh yeah [slight laugh].
BW: Did you ever talk to these agents that you were dropping?
JW1: I forget that really. I think they were kept apart from us, you know, in the aircraft so we wouldn’t do.
BW: Were they put on at the last minute after you’d all been briefed and got in the aircraft?
JW1: Not really. They’d been let out of jail to do that job. Is that my tea, love? Is that mine? I’ve got a recollection of it, yeah.
BW: What did you do?
JW1: I don’t know. I just put it inside my satchel with my shirt over it [slight laugh].
BW: So, you were told to leave your log book with the CO and you took it instead when he wasn’t looking. He nipped out the office and you slipped it under your shoulder and put your jacket over?
JW1: Very likely.
BW: And you flew, on these missions you flew to quite a few different places. You flew to Yugoslavia and you flew to the south of France, Corsica and Italy as well.
JW1: And what?
BW: And to Italy as well. Do you remember how you dropped the supplies to the resistance, the partisans?
JW1: Not really. I’ve not thought about it. I’ve not kept the memory going. I used to know it.
BW: But there was another member of the crew, Jim Leith.
JW2: No he was a different. He was in 624 but they were not dad’s —
BW: In a different aircraft.
JW2: But dad, you told me about when you went over the — is it the Samarian Gorge, is that right?
JW1: Go on.
JW2: Is that right. Is it called the Samarian Gorge in Greece?
BW: I don’t know to be honest.
JW2: And you told me, you told me that your Halifax was so heavy with your load that you had to jettison it and when you got back you had a lot of explaining to do because you discovered what your heavy load was. Do you remember what your heavy load was? It was gold bullion but you didn’t know you were carrying it.
JW1: No.
JW2: I wonder whether that was an orthodox war practice and I wonder who found it.
JW1: People used to, if you were dropping money or gold, they would to take a bit of it for themselves.
JW2: Off the flight, yeah. Well, you would have crashed into a mountain, you would have crashed into the Gorge, if you hadn’t dropped it because you were losing height.
JW1: Oh, happy days [slight laugh].
BW: Were all of these flights at night?
JW1: Yes, as far as I remember. I think there may have been the odd one, overseas ones, that were in daylight.
BW: How did it feel when you were flying these missions as opposed to being over Germany?
JW1: Oh it was a lot easier.
BW: Just because it was secret did you feel any heightened sense of danger?
JW1: Not really, no.
BW: Did you treat it like any other sort of job?
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And what was it like when you on the base in North Africa. What were the facilities like? Can you remember? Was it a rough strip?
JW1: Not really but it was fairly close, you know, to Britain.
JW1: Do you remember that you almost got into trouble one night because you snuck out somewhere to go drinking and, er, or for a night out and I think you missed your transport back and you had to come through territory that you didn’t know very well but you had to walk all the way through the night to get back on for parade the next day.
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
JW2: You’ve forgotten that? Do you recall, um, do you remember that you got fined and you thought it was a miscarriage of justice?
JW1: No.
JW2: What do you remember about the, the revolver that you left on the plane, the Halifax overnight?
JW1: Nothing. I know, er, I took a revolver, you know, in case we were shot down and we —
JW2: You left it on the plane and it went missing.
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: And you got hauled up for questioning about it and I seem to remember that you said in your defence — well they said you should not have left it on the plane because it was in your care, and you said, ‘Well maybe we should have taken the Browning off the plane as well.’
JW1: Take what?
JW2: Maybe we should have taken the Browning off the plane as well because there’s an armed guard there. Anyway, they, they didn’t accept your response and they fined you. So you had to pay. Can you not remember what your fine was? You were fined a few pounds for losing that revolver or not looking after it so somebody took it but you were very annoyed about it.
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: Because there was an armed guard and it still went missing.
BW: Your CO, when you were in North Africa, your CO was Wing Commander Stanbury. Does the name ring any, ring any bells with you?
JW1: Oh, [unclear] . I remember the name, Stanbury, yeah. Because they had a shop or something then didn’t he?
BW: No. No.
JW2: Clive Stanbury?
JW1: Clive, yeah.
JW2: What do you remember about him?
JW1: Not much.
JW2: Do you remember him asking you to do another mission when you done your two tours?
JW1: What did I say, ‘Bugger off?’
JW2: I’m not sure [slight laugh]. I think you said you didn’t have to do it. You told me at the time that you felt this particular one would be suicidal.
JW1: I’ve forgotten that one. I’ve forgotten the incident.
BW: So it was a case of one more trip but you said, ‘No.’
JW1: I bought these carpets while I was there.
JW2: That was much later.
JW1: Eh?
JW2: Yeah. That was much than that, dad.
JW1: Was it?
JW2: Yeah.
JW1: I thought it was from the Air Force?
JW2: No, no they weren’t.
JW1: Are you sure?
JW2: Yeah.
JW1: I’ve forgotten then.
BW: Your last operations were in early March 1944 and then you flew back in a Dakota by quite a circuitous route, by the look of it. You got lifts here there and everywhere through Egypt and then you went down to Bulawayo in Rhodesia.
JW1: Oh, yeah. Was I instructing there?
BW: It doesn’t say so but did you come an instructor after the war.
JW1: Afterwards yeah. For a bit until I was demobbed.
BW: And what do you recall about being demobbed? Were you happy the war was over?
JW1: I think I must have been but I don’t recollect much. Do you do many operations with people such as I?
BW: Yes.
JW1: And did as many aircraft, as many trips as I’ve done?
BW: Some have but not many because usually after thirty ops that was it. That was the end of their service but you went on to do forty-seven.
JW1: I did forty-seven trips? Amazing.
BW: In total.
JW1: Amazing.
BW: And were you ever injured at all during that time?
JW1: Sorry?
BW: Were you ever injured at all during that time?
JW1: No.
BW: You mentioned that you received some shrapnel in the face.
JW1: I don’t remember.
BW: At one point.
JW1: It’s gone out of my head.
BW: It must, it must not have been a serious injury. What happened after the war? Did you continue in the RAF?
JW1: Not really. I was chucked out. They didn’t want me then after the war. Well, I say they did but a group of them from the local squadron, er, knew who I was, you know, and I’ve forgotten anyway.
BW: Do you remember when you left the RAF?
JW1: No. What does it say there?
BW: Would it be about 1946?
JW1: ’46?
BW: Would it be about that or was it ’45?
JW1: Oh, forgotten.
BW: What did you [clears throat] what did you do when you returned home? Did you —
JW1: What job did I do?
BW: What — did you meet up with your girlfriend?
JW1: I’ve forgotten that even. What did I do when I came out of the Air Force?
JW2: Well you’d broken up with Cathleen McGraw because you were a Catholic and she wasn’t and it was, it was irreconcilable I think and you went to teacher, you went to teacher training.
JW1: Where at?
JW2: Strawberry Hill in Twickenham.
JW1: Where?
JW2: Strawberry Hill. Richmond was it?
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: And you met my mother when you were teacher training. You were in her classroom. You were an assist— you were learning how to be a teacher and she was already a teacher.
JW1: Where is she now? She’s not with us?
JW2: No. Its twelve years since —
JW1: How long since?
JW2: Twelve years.
JW1: Was it?
JW2: Mm. [background noises]
BW: [pause] Do you remember anything else from your teaching days?
JW1: Did I what?
BW: Do you remember anything from your teaching days? Did you back come up here to teach or did you stay down south in London.
JW1: What’s he say?
JW2: Well, you fell in love with my mum.
JW1: Where was she?
JW2: Well, she was down south and you decided to go, when everyone else was on rations, you decided to go and live in Rhodesia and you, you got married secretly in London. Your family didn’t know because you’d — it was complicated because you had broken up with your — someone who was still visiting your mother’s house and, um, you got married and then you went to live in Africa for five years, Rhodesia, and then you came back and had my brother John. And so after that you were teaching in Rhodesia, in Cyprus, Limassol, and Korea.
JW1: I’ve forgotten that.
JW2: That’s what you did.
JW1: Runcorn [?] before you retired.
BW: OK.
JW1: That it?
BW: What do you, er, what do you think of the commemorations being given for Bomber Command?
JW1: What do I think about what?
BW: The commemoration, the remembrance that’s being given to Bomber Command now?
JW1: I don’t know. I think I went to one and I wasn’t allowed to — for some reason or other. The first one, early in the — I wasn’t allowed to join the rest of them because I, I was in civvies really. You know, to be in civvies, they wouldn’t acknowledge that, what we’ve been talking about now.
BW: So did they not mention Bomber Command? Was, were you sort of side-lined a little bit?
JW1: Yeah. They didn’t mention it. They were glad to see the last of me ‘cause I knew more about it than what they did, you know, being left in England.
BW: But what about the respect or the commemoration that’s being paid to veterans of Bomber Command now. How do you feel about that?
JW1: Never thought about it.
JW2: We went to it dad. Were went to the celebrations. A statue showing several airmen on the way back from ops looking tired and dejected and, and, um, exhausted that was unveiled and it was very powerful. We went up there when the Queen opened it at Bomber Command and we, the whole family went with you to that and you went, you went up to the statue. After all the fuss had gone down and we had a few, we had some beers at the area where we were, and then we went just to look at it when the crowds had gone down but the crowds were still there. And there were a lot of people asking for your autograph and they wanted you to shake hands with other veterans and lots of photographs were taken. I think you were surprised at all the fuss then as well. But there was a big campaign to, to, um, to acknowledge the role that Bomber Command played in the war because some people think you were ignored or that you were demonised. Bomber Command did not get a campaign medal.
JW1: No.
JW2: And it took till a few years ago for you to get a clasp.
JW1: I never got it.
JW2: I need to apply for it yet.
JW1: Eh?
JW2: You are entitled it and I need to apply for it for you.
JW1: You can have it if you get it.
JW2: Right, thank you. I’ve got it on tape now.
BW: It’s official. OK, well that’s all the questions I have for you and thanks to you Jenny for all your help.
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Title
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Interview with Joseph Wilson
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-12-31
Type
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Sound
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AWilsonJ161231
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Pending review
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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
Joseph Wilson was training to be a pharmacist when he volunteered for the Air Force. He trained to as a bomb aimer and completed 47 operations with several squadrons. He recalls flying a Tiger Moth early on in training and discusses mine laying and bombing operations. He later flew with 624 Special Duties Squadron dropping supplies and agents to the resistance in Southern Europe. He became a teacher after the war.
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Format
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01:27:34 audio recording
102 Squadron
138 Squadron
624 Squadron
76 Squadron
Absent Without Leave
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Halifax
memorial
Pathfinders
RAF Pocklington
Special Operations Executive
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington