1
25
99
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/86/782/MBeltonSLS190305-151120-030001.2.jpg
268b82cc3c177108213bfb6f9ed04cfe
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/86/782/MBeltonSLS190305-151120-030002.2.jpg
1c6cce7ff93874a60628183e1bfd4219
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/86/782/MBeltonSLS190305-151120-030003.2.jpg
f97b0c77bd58255759005117a1dd5875
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
Belton, Spencer Lewis
Spencer Lewis Belton
Spencer Lewis Smith Belton
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Belton, SLS
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. Photographs, correspondence and newspaper clippings concerning Sergeant Spencer Lewis Belton (1919 - 1940, 581261 Royal Air Force). Spencer Lewis Belton flew as an observer/ bomb aimer with 144 Squadron from RAF Hemswell. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal after an operation to Wilhelmshaven in July 1940 and was interviewed about it by the British Broadcasting Corporation. He was killed 10/11 August 1940 when his Hampden P4368 crashed in the Netherlands, during an operation to Homberg. <br /><br />Additional information on Spencer Lewis Belton is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/101634/">IBCC Losses Database.</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Denise Carr and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-20
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] R.A.F. Station Hemswell [/underlined]
This station was known as Harpswell in 1918 – 1919. The airfield was constructed in September, 1918, as a station designed to carry two training squadrons. No. 199 (Night) Training Squadron moved there from E. Retford on 26th June, 1918, under the command of Major J. O. C. Orton of the Norfolks.
No. 200 (Night) Training Squadron arrived at Harpswell, also from E. Retford, on 10th November, 1918, commanded by Major W. Collison. The station had no separate commanding officer, but came under the direct control of No. 48 Wing of the 6th Brigade.
Both these squadrons were training for night bombing and the machines used were F. E. 2 B’s. These were the pusher type with the propellor [sic] behind. The observer (or passenger) sat in front of the pilot in a small cockpit which projected out in front. Many of the pilots under training were from the Commonwealth, two of the three flight commanders on No. 199 Squadron being South Africans.
The Wing Headquarters was at Gainsborough and was commanded by Colonel Halahan until 1st October, 1918, when he was succeeded by Colonel Watson, a New Zealander. The Wing Adjutant was Captain John Milne, whose home is at 13, Stoneygate Avenue, Leicester. Captain Milne also served on No. 199 Squadron at Harpswell for a time.
R.A.F. Hemswell was opened on 29th December, 1936 as a bomber station in No. 3 Group with No. 61 [underlined] and No. 144 (Medium Bomber) Squadrons [/underlined] in competition. No. 61 was equipped first with Ansons and later Blenheims and No. 144 with Blenheims. The station was transferred to No. 5 Group on 1st September, 1937.
[inserted] red line [/inserted]
Both squadrons re-equipped with Hampden aircraft during the early part of 1939 and their first operational flight after the declaration of war was a search for enemy warships in the North Sea on 26th September. Bombing raids on targets in Germany began in May, 1940 together with minelaying in enemy waters. On 25th August both squadrons took part in the first raid on Berlin. This was followed by attacks on barge concentrations in enemy occupied ports in France and on submarine bases on the Atlantic seaboard. In 1941 there were attacks on warehouses and sheds at Kiel, on Cologne and on the “Scharnhorst” and “Gneisenau” at Brest.
On 18th July, 1941, Hemswell was transferred to No. 1 Group and No. 300 and No. 301 Polish Squadrons moved in with Wellingtons, and docks and harbour installations in Germany and Northern France were the objects of attack. There was also minelaying at intervals. No. 300 Squadron was the first Polish Squadron to be formed in Britain. Both these squadrons contributed to the biggest attack so far made by Bomber Command, that of over 1,000 bombers on Cologne on the night of the 30th/31st May, 1942. This was followed by another “1,000” bomber raid in which these two Polish Squadrons shared, that on Essen on the night of the 1st/2nd June.
No. 300Squadron moved to the satellite airfield at Ingham on 18th May and No. 305 (Polish) Squadron replaced it at the parent station at Hemswell. From this time until September, 1943, the three Polish Squadrons were operating from this Station and from the satellite at Ingham. Most of the targets known to Bomber Command were visited by these three Polish Squadrons from Hemswell. They went to Essen at the commencement of Bomber Command’s Battle of the Ruhr on 5th/6th March, 1943. On 24th/25th July, Wellingtons from No. 300 and No. 305 Squadrons took part in the first of a series of large scale raids on Hamburg which ended on 3rd August, this being the first raid in which “Window” was used by Bomber Command.
Thirteen Wellingtons of No. 300 Squadron also attacked Hanover on the night of the 22nd/23rd September. This attack is noteworthy as featuring the first use of “Spoof” raid technique by Bomber Command. The "Spoof” target on this occasion was Olderburg.
[page break]
The last bombing operation by Wellingtons of Bomber Command was an attack on Hanover on the night of 8th/9th October, 1943 and eight Wellingtons from No. 300 Squadron at Ingham took part in this operation. During the remainder of the stay in Ingham the Squadron was engaged on mine-laying.
In January, 1944, No. 1 Lancaster Finishing School moved to Hemswell from Faldingworth and the function of the Station changed from operations to training. The purpose of the School was to augment the training given in Halifax Conversion Units to bring crews almost up to a standard for operational work. The need for this special type of training ceased in December and after a year Hemswell returned to the operational role and became a sub station of Mo. 15 Base at Scampton. No. 150 and No. 170 Squadrons moved in with Lancaster aircraft and began operations by attacks on German industrial plants, in particular oil installations, as well as on docks and harbours.
During its operations from Hemswell, No. 150 Squadron flew 827 sorties, dropping more than 3,827 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs on enemy targets. In March 1945, the Squadron established its record of 236 sorties and 1,151 tons of bombs. Between November 1944 and May, 1945, the Squadron lost eight aircraft on bombing operations which entailed a loss of 40 members of aircrew. The last sortie by this Squadron was on 25th April, 1945 against Berchtesgaden.
Both 150 and 170 Squadrons took part in the attacks by Bomber Command and the VIII United States Air Force on Dresden on the 13th/14th February, and on Chemnitz on the 14th/15th, and in the great attack on Essen on 11th March, 1945, when Bomber Command dropped 4,680 tons of high explosive, the heaviest load on any single target so far during the war. The next day both squadrons joined in the attack on Dortmund when 4,851 tons were dropped, the heaviest tonnage dropped on one target.
During the month of February, 1945, the Station Commander of Hemswell presented Flying Officer J. P. Dixie with the D.F.C. for his bravery in bringing his badly damaged aircraft back to base under great difficulties from a night attack on Ludwigshaven [sic] on the 1st February. Flight Sergeant W. E. Crabs, the mid-upper gunner of Flying Officer Dixie’s crew was awarder the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal for courage displayed in his attempts to extricate the dead rear gunner from his shattered turret.
In November, 1945, Nos. 150 and 170 Squadrons disbanded at Hemswell and No. 109 Squadron arrived to re-equip with Mosquito XVI aircraft. Another Mosquito Squadron, No. 139, arrived on the 4th February, 1946. The station gradually got back to peacetime conditions and the two squadrons carried out formation flying, day and night cross countries, low level dive marking and test operations. These two Squadrons left Hemswell in November, 1946, and were replaced by Nos. 83, 97 and 100 Squadrons equipped with Lincolns. Three Lincolns, one from each Squadron flew in November on a goodwill mission to Chile.
In April, 1950, Nos. 109 and 139 Squadrons, still equipped with Mosquitos, returned to Hemswell, and from this time onwards, with Lincoln squadrons. No. 83 and 97, remained on the Station until the end of 1955. There was another Lincoln Squadron, No. 199, but this did not arrive at Hemswell until much later in April, 1952. No. 100 Squadron of Lincolns left the Station in March, 1950.
In July, 1950, 12 Lincolns from Hemswell took part in the Farnborough “Fly Past”
The Station, in November, 1951 received a visit from the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Lloyd and the Air Officer Commanding No. 1 Group, Air Vice Marshal D. Boyle, and was presented with the cup won for the neatest Station and best kept gardens in Bomber Command. In January of the following year, the Commander-in-Chief was again at Hemswell to present the Squadron Efficiency Trophy to No. 83 Squadroj[sic] and the Gunnery Trophy to No. 97 Squadron. He remarked that although he had presented numerous trophies, never before had he presented two of them to units on the same station on the same day. The efficiency Trophy had been won four years consecutively by Squadrons at Hemswell, in fact every year since its inception.
[page break]
Canberras made their appearance on the Station in August, 1952, when No. 109 Squadron converted from Mosquitos. No. 139 followed in January of the next year.
In August, 1953, No. 83 Squadron flew its Lincolns to Tengah to assist in operations against the Malayan terrorists. They returned to Hemswell at the end of January, 1954.
Another honour fell to the Station in November, 1953, when the Under Secretary of State for Air presented the Joliffe Trophy to the Commanding Officer of Hemswell. This trophy is awarded annually to the R.A.F. Station in the United Kingdom having the best catering facilities and airman’s dining hall. This was the first time for some years that a station in Bomber Command had won this trophy.
Nos. 83 and 97 Squadrons disbanded at Hemswell on 1st January, 1956, and on the same day No. 109 and No. 139 Squadrons moved to Binbrook, leaving No. 199 (Lincoln / Canberra) as the only squadron on the Station. The Lincoln Conversion Flight moved to Hemswell in January.
R.A.F. Hemswell continues its active role within Bomber Command
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
History of RAF Hemswell
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Outlines the history of RAF Hemswell starting from its origin as RAF Harpswell in 1918 until peacetime operations in the the 50s. The station was equipped with Ansons, then Blenheims. Part of No 3 Group, 61 and 144 Squadrons. Changed to No 5 Group, reequipped with Hampdens. Transferred to No 1 Group. 300 and 301 Squadrons moved in with Wellingtons in 1941. 300 Squadron moved to Ingham and 305 replaced it. Document contains details of various bombing operations. 150 and 170 Squadrons moved in with Lancasters during 1944.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three photocopied pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MBeltonSLS190305-151120-03
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
1 Group
144 Squadron
150 Squadron
170 Squadron
3 Group
300 Squadron
301 Squadron
305 Squadron
5 Group
61 Squadron
Anson
Blenheim
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Hampden
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
Mosquito
RAF Hemswell
RAF Ingham
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/141/1613/PBanksP15010118.2.jpg
cfafa111d2aeef743584a481155cc129
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
Banks, Peter. Album one
Description
An account of the resource
134 items. The album contains pictures taken at RAF Methwold and Feltwell, Battles in France as part of the RAF Advanced Air Striking Force in 1940, 2 Group target photographs, and Venturas and Photographic Reconnaissance Unit Spitfires. There are also a number of aerial photographs of cities and targets in the Ruhr and the Low countries taken at low level during a sightseeing Cooks tour after VE Day. <br /><br />Return to the <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/140">main collection</a>.
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One photograph album
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP1501
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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
Operations board
Description
An account of the resource
Shows the operations board for an operation by two squadrons to Cologne on 31 May 1942. To the left are listed crew captains with take off and landing times. All have returned to base apart from F/O Johnson who is forth up from the bottom. On the right side are airfield, weather and other information.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-05-31
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph mounted on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP15010118
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Germany--Cologne
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05-31
1942-06-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
3 Group
57 Squadron
75 Squadron
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
RAF Feltwell
RAF Methwold
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/187/2467/SMarshallS1594781v10031.1.jpg
127f75d875563164a3ceb15110f8de91
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Marshall, Syd. Album
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Marshall, S
Description
An account of the resource
77 items. The album contains wartime and post-war photographs, newspaper cuttings, and memorabilia assembled by Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force). Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-08
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
ELSHAM WOLDS’ GREAT PART IN BOMBING CAMPAIGN
Four Years of Magnificent Effort
ELSHAM Wolds began to operate with R.A.F. Bomber Command in July, 1941. The airfield was not quite completed when No. 103 Squadron arrived from Newton on July 11, but the Squadron soon settled in and has remained there ever since.
In nearly four years Elsham has built up a high reputation in the Royal Air Force. There was little delay before the airfield was placed on an operational basis and the Wellingtons were out on July 24, from 11 a.m. to 6.45 pm., attacking the battle cruiser “Gneisenau” at Brest.
Before long the Germans knew of the new bomber station, and in August, 1941, enemy aircraft attacked it. They did no serious damage. They tried again several times in later years, though never in strength.
The “Wimpeys” held the fort while the factories got busy with the production of the new four-engined bombers.
On September 10, 1941, Wellingtons flew to Turin for the loss of only one aircraft. By the end of December, Elsham was able to record as many as 17 Wellingtons airborne on a single night.
On one occasion two sergeants brought back their aircraft after four of the crew had baled out; a flare had caught alight in the rear fuselage.
AMONG THE 1,000
After taking part in the May and June 1,000 bomber raids in 1942, there was a lull.
Halifaxes began to arrive and in August made their first sorties from the station, against Dusseldorf. Hardly had the engineering staff accustomed themselves to these aircraft when there was another change, this time to Lancasters. By November 21 the Lancasters had replaced the Halifaxes and were doing excellently.
On the night of May 23-24, 1943, No. 103 Squadron put up 27 Lancasters, which at that time was a Command record.
The Commander-in-Chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, G.C.B., O.B.E., A.F.C., visited the station in September and addressed the crews.
One of the flights of No. 103 Squadron was transferred to No. 576 Squadron, which was being formed at Elsham. This left 103 a two-flight squadron. The two squadrons were together in close association and friendly rivalry until October, 1944.
OVER BERLIN
No. 103 Squadron had 30 aircraft over Berlin on the night of November 26-27. Elsham became a base station from December 1 and controlled the airfields at Kirmington and North Killingholme.
The wild weather of January, 1944, made life at Elsham what the R.A.F. call “pretty raw,” but the ground staff worked wonders in clearing blocked roads, and runways.
During the spring the Base Commander, Air Commodore Ivelaw Chapman, O.B.E., D.F.C., A.F.C., was shot down over France and taken prisoner. He has recently returned to this country. Air Commodore F.R.D. Swain, O.B.E., A.F.C., who broke the altitude record some years ago, took over from Air Commodore Chapman.
In June both squadrons at Elsham dropped a thousand tons in a month for the first time, and kept this up for some time. In the summer people in the neighbourhood were able to realise the full power of Bomber Command. Daylight operations against V sites, railway centres, and in close support of the Army enabled them to see the sky full of four-engined aircraft day after day.
In October, No. 103 Squadron dropped 1,277 tons, and 86 aircraft of both squadrons operated against Duisburg within 24 hours. On October 31, No. 576 Squadron left Elsham for Fiskerton. With 103 Squadron they had dropped 5,748 tons in the previous five months.
BOMBER COMMAND’S PRIDE
Elsham was the home of Lancaster “M.2,” the pride of Bomber Command. Its long life showed what a high standard of maintenance had been kept up. “M.2.” first flew on operations on May 4, 1943, to Dortmund, with 103 Squadron. It was later transferred to 576 Squadron, and had been on 103 operations by the beginning of 1944. It was retired with 144 trips to its credit, 97 of them to Germany and 15 to Berlin.
During the last winter everyone at Elsham was working at full stretch, and the Lancasters were fully employed on targets like the Ruhr, Ludwigshafen, Nuremburg, Munich, Chemnitz, and Dresden. Many mines were laid in enemy waters.
For the last month of operations No. 103 Squadron was joined by No. 100 Squadron from Waltham (Grimsby), and both were in the attack on Berchtesgaden on April 25.
When there was no more bombing to be done, large convoys of Army vehicles began to drive up to the station. They carried food for the Lancasters to take to Holland. Another task was to bring back hundreds of freed prisoners of war from the Continent.
Many Elsham names will go down in history for acts of heroism. On May 4, 1944, an aircraft of No. 576 Squadron, captained by Pilot-Officer Reed, of Wellingborough, Northants, landed with the flight engineer helping Reed to hold the control column and the air bomber clinging to the rudder pedals. The Lancaster looked a total wreck. It had been shot up by a fighter over Mailly-le-Camp; it had caught fire, a large hole was knocked in the floor, electrical and navigational instruments were smashed, the rudders and elevators were damaged, and the rear-turret was hanging by a threat.
Two Lancaster from 103 Squadron were each attacked by two fighters on July 29, 1944, when bombing Stuttgart. All four of the enemy were destroyed in a couple of minutes.
Another 103 crew shot down a Ju. 88 over Karlsruhe on April 25, 1944, but sustained serious damage. The pilot had to ditch, and the crew were on the Goodwin Sands for seven hours before being picked up.
Just before the end of the war one of Elsham’s aircraft came back with a 250lb. bomb embedded in a wing. The pilot told the crew to bale out, and the baled out himself near base.
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
Elsham Wolds' Great Part in Bombing Campaign
Four years of Magnificent Effort
Description
An account of the resource
A history of 103 Squadron's operations at RAF Elsham Wolds.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One newspaper cutting on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SMarshallS1594781v10031
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France--Brest
Italy--Turin
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Munich
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dresden
Netherlands
France--Mailly-le-Camp
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Karlsruhe
France
Italy
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Govert J. van Lienden
100 Squadron
103 Squadron
576 Squadron
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
ditching
Gneisenau
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Ju 88
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Kirmington
RAF North Killingholme
rivalry
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/328/3488/PSmithJ1601.2.jpg
0fe7e11ac29997643bdadaafb0ca7c4b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/328/3488/ASmithJ160312.1.mp3
6c84a152556073ed657df032c82e6d84
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
Smith, Jean
J Smith
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Jean Smith (2105009 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. She worked as a clerk in the aircraft manufacturing industry before the war and later served as a secretary in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She served at 27 Operational Training Unit at RAF Lichfield.
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
2016-03-12
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
Smith, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Jean Smith, who was a WAAF at Lichfield among other places during World War Two, she in fact I met her husband who was a Stirling flight engineer, so this is gonna be a good one. My name is Adam Purcell, the interview is taking place at Jean’s home in McCrae, south of Melbourne and it is the 12th of March 2016. So, Jean, I thought we might start from the beginning, it’s probably a good spot. Uhm, can you tell me something of your early life, what, where and how you grew up, uhm, education, first job, that sort of thing.
JS: Oh, well, I was born on the 1st of January 1922 and born in [unclear] 6, moved to, uhm, Welwyn Garden City and that’s where I spent my school life. I went not to the local primary school and I went to Hitchin Grammar School, was the nearest secondary school to Welwyn Garden City and then I went to Pitman’s College in London and at the same time the family moved to Amersham in Buckinghamshire. I was always very keen on horse riding and show jumping so that’ s where I spent most of my spare time in my youth. I did a secretarial course at Pitman’s College and also studied for my civil service exams, which I passed very well and went in, I chose the Air Ministry, my father told me I was very silly to do that. He was a civil servant, he knew better than me but I wanted to go into the Air Ministry. And then the Air Ministry split and was the Ministry of Aircraft Production which I went into. We spent our time typing out and preparing all these contracts for small firms to make Wellington bombers and Spitfires and Hurricanes a year at least before the war started. Then the war started and by that time I had met a very nice young man at Halton number 1 school of Aircraft Apprentices and he was passing out that year and he was sergeant apprentice and he, when the war occurred, he went straight over to France with the British Expeditionary Force, he was a fitter of course, and then managed to escape back from a French fishing village, on a French small fishing boat back to Folkestone and as soon as he got back to Britain, he, then we were, the Battle of Britain had started and we were very short of pilots for all our new aircraft, fighter aircraft and he trained as a Hurricane pilot and sadly he was shot down in the Battle of Britain. I wanted to go into the Air Force straight away, into the WAAF, but my father wouldn’t let me, he said, no, not until you are twenty one, why that magical number? I got in at twenty in the beginning of 1942 and I wanted to be a flight mechanic or a radio operator but of course they conned me and they said that you’re already trained and you’ll save your country such a lot of money [laughs] and so I went in as a secretary and all I did was my two months training at Innsworth Camp with thousands of other girls, usual routine, learning to march, to salute and hygiene and air force laundry, marches. And there were no mirrors on our training station so we had to learn to do our hair, put our make-up on and put our caps on and tie our ties without anything other than your little compact mirror and that was a bit of a thing. Anyway, I was posted to number 27 OTU Lichfield and I wanted to be in Fighter Command, now I was going to Bomber Command. Anyway, I arrived at 27 OTU and I found out what a lovely station it was, friendly and happy. And, [sighs] I became secretary to the Chief Flying Instructor Wing Commander Jackson, he was a South African and he’d done his first tour on Hampdens and I, my office was part of the orderly room, training wing orderly room down in flying control on the edge of the air field and I was stunned when I used to see all these young officers and flight sergeants and warrant officers coming in, all the instructors coming into our office, I was strapped dumb and they were all decorated and they’d all done their ops on Wellingtons and Hams, not Wellingtons, Hampdens and another aircraft, we used to call them coffin boxes, Hampdens, can’t think of the other one, uhm, and I was so naive and young, all these young heroes coming in, breezing in, and of course I quickly learned all the slang, you know, di digitate and you’re in the fertilizer business and [laughs] so on and so on, the prangs and they really did say jolly good show when they came in up to doing something [laughs], well, uhm, so, the Waafery was two miles down the road, uhm, I think it was a place, a little village called Streethay, it was on the main road and it was two miles away and it was surrounded by high barb wire fencing and sentries at the gate and I remember, some of the aircrew boys saying: ‘Why do they, why do they surround your place as if it’s like a prison?’ and I used to tell all the Aussies: ‘To keep you randy Aussies out’. We had a little pub called the Anchor, a tiny little pub that had been a coaching inn and it was just, all about a quarter of a mile down the road from our camp and, of course we were all armed [?], we were all given service bikes, we could all ride a bike because we had to ride to and fro to camp and coming down on summer evenings, especially when I was first there, lot of the girls used to stop and go in for half a pint of beer before they went in for their tea [laughs]. Oh, I was so pure and innocent, it took me six months before I set my first footstep, I’d never been in a pub in my life, [laughs]. Anyway we used to go into the Anchor a lot for a quick drink and also of course on the nights in the winter, when night flying was cancelled, when it was thick pea souper fog or rain streaming down, you couldn’t see an inch before you, we all used to wait around in our hut after we’d had our tea at night and suddenly over the tannoy the message would come: all night flying cancelled, all night flying scrubbed, over and out. And we’d all say whoopee and get the curlers out and put all the glamour on, those were the days of big pink rouge cheeks and thick horrible makeup called powder cream, we used to plaster all over our spotty faces and big cupids bow lips bright red and mascara [?], which came in little black blocks and you spat on it and rubbed it with a little brush, and thickly coated your eyelashes. The trouble was it wasn’t waterproof so if you went to the pictures and it was a sad film you, also all the girls came out with streaks of black down their cheeks [laughs], we’d all be trying to wipe of our black tears. Uh, we had a lot of fun in the Hut 2 and, as I say, we used to put all our makeup on and then best blue and dash down to the pub and then we’d wait there, we’d order our drinks, just half a pint of beer and you’d hear all the boys coming down and all the bikes going bang, bang, bang on the pub wall and they’d all come streaming in and in half an hour the whole place would be a thick fug, you could hardly see across the room, cigarette smoke and I always remember cigarette smoke and all the wet wall, there was always a big fire on in the lounge bar and the piano, oh, piano would be going like mad with all the songs getting naughtier and naughtier as the night went on [laughs]. And it was good because these boys were doing their, they were doing their operational training, they were, they’d come from all their various schools, pilots from their flying school, wireless school, gunnery and they’d come together and they’d been put in big room and told to make up a crew of five which would be pilot, navigator, wireless operator, he was also a gunner, uh, a gunner and a bomb-aimer and they would then convert onto Wellington, twin-engine bombers, the good old Wellingtons which were nicknamed Wimpies, they were, they were going up doing circuits and bumps all day and all night and it’s all very well, I was shattered actually when I got there, because the number of accidents in training was shocking during the war and I don’t think a lot of civilians, I didn’t think there were going to be all these terrible accidents and my first job, as soon as I settled into my, into my office, my first job was to type out a form 765C, I think five copies I had to do, you had to do five copies, one went to Bomber Command, one went to Group Headquarters, one went somewhere else and this particular form 765C, which was an accident report form for Bomber Command, it was a Cat E, and Cat E was total wreck all crew killed, it started with Cat E which was just nothing, you know, somebody knocked a, knocked a whole in a [unclear] or something like that, but the Cat Es were all full and of course when I’d done that and send that off and I was appalled cause I said to the sergeant in charge of the orderly room: ‘Does this happen often?’. ‘Oh, yes’ he said turning to me, he said, ‘Oh, we’ve had one accident, we should have another two in the next week’. Sure enough we did and next day I, and next morning I, after I’d done the general correspondence with the Chief Flying Instructor, the CFI, I had to go and sit down and we did letters of condolence to the various parents and wives and I know there were two Australian families and I thought how dreadful, all those miles away and I suppose no air mail, so I suppose in five weeks, will take five weeks for the letters to get to the parents somewhere in the outback of Australia and it just hit home, the war really came home to me in those first few days at my new station. And I was to see a lot of very nasty accidents and I think you know there’s always, it always makes me shudder now when I hear of a bad accident to a large airliner, you think of the horrible noise and the smell and that sort of vile cloud of black, black grey smoke and then the dark red flames going up and I’d seen dead bodies being carried out of planes and it’s so terrible and it did happen so often and of course we were very near the Peak District, Staffordshire, Derbyshire was the next door county and of course the Peak District and the boys did their night flying training in all weathers, terrible weather in full blackout and there they were flying around with all the peaks not very far distant and all the, all the Welsh mountains not very far away so, we had quite a lot of accidents hitting mountains. There used to be a comical character, in a magazine which was circulated to the air crew every so often and there was a little pilot called PO Prune and he was always saying: ‘Do not come down to sea!’ and he always held his finger in the air and that was called the irremovable digit [laughs] and he was always telling people all the things they, all the aircrew telling them what they must look out for and what they mustn’t do and constantly it was: ‘Do not come down to sea!’ Never come down lower than a certain height. And life went on very smoothly at 27 OTU. I remember, uhm, I turned twenty one of course at the end of that year, on New Year’s Day 1943 and there was, on Saint Valentine’s Eve there was a WAAF dance. Morale had been bad among the WAAF at that time because we’d had an awful lot of accidents, one girl had lost her young husband only a few months married, several girls had had bad news from their boyfriends in Africa because at that time our tanks, it was the first time when our tanks were being pushed back by Rommel and there was bad news from all our various fronts and the U-boats were having a feast downing our convoys, rations were being tightened for civilians, it was a very bad time, so, all the officers, and our WAAF officers decided, have a dance, I think it was the, our WAAF, the WAAF was formed in 1938 or ’39 just before the war and it was an anniversary for the WAAF and of course we couldn’t be allowed to wear civilian clothes, you weren’t allowed to wear civilian clothes, you had to be in uniform all the time. So, they got round that by saying, we’ll have a fancy dress dance for the WAAF, not for the airmen, the airmen have to come in uniform for the girls. So, we all rushed home, if we had a 36 hour or 48 hour leave, we all rushed home and said to our mothers, what have we got, got all the bits out, my mother dyed some spare cloth, she dyed one lot red and made me a very full skirt and then she found a bit of blackout curtain and made a little bodies and the boys in the dope shop painted a sickle and hammer on it, cause they were, the Russians were our gallant allies in those days and I’d also I got a little [unclear] in civilian life, a little, pretty little embroidered blouse, Hungarian blouse. So I went as a Russian peasant and my aunt had given me a beautiful silk Japanese kimono which she had before the war, it was a really beautiful thing. And my best friend, Hibbie, Brenda was her real name, Hibbie was dark-haired and very petite and I lent this kimono to Hibbie and she did her hair up with a comb in it and went as a Japanese girl, a horrible [unclear] [laughs] and so we all got it, we were told to get in the transport, we could go in our fancy dress and we were all glamourized that, we’d had all our hair set, we’ve had to get in the transport in order to go up to main camp but we had to take our uniforms with us to, to camp, so that we came home, back to camp in uniform. Anyway, we got up to the big NAAFI on the main camp and the station band which was very good started to play and the boys came in and we were dancing and a couple of young men came in and they, they were just in working gear, with scarves round their neck. They walked over to the bar, meanwhile ten of us had coloured a huge table near the bar, so, we were all there, sitting and chatting and these two young airmen came along and the older said; ‘Hello, girls, can we sit with you?’ And I said: ‘Oh, yes’. And they dragged out the young man along, she seemed very shy, blushing about being among with all us girls, anyway this was to be, this was my husband-to-be and he didn’t ask me to dance and I was getting up and dancing with all these other boys and then I said: ‘Don’t you like me or don’t you think I can dance very well?’ He said: ‘I can’t dance, he said, I’ve never danced in my life, he said, there’s a boy in our hut being trying to teach some of us to dance but, he said, I come from the isle of Lewis, and we are free Presbyterians, we are Calvinists, and we believe dancing is very sinful’. But he said: ‘I don’t’. And he said: ‘I’d like to learn to dance’. He said: ‘Will you dance with me now?’ So, he danced with me and trod all over my feet, he was such a, oh, he had lovely blue eyes and he was a very nice boy with that beautiful Highland accent, very soft and of course I really fell for him and he said, so after the last waltz we, he said to me: ‘May I see you at to transport?’ I said, ‘Oh yes’, I said, ‘You have to wait outside because we’ve all got to change back into our uniforms’. So we go into another room, change back and I found that I got all my uniform there except that I hadn’t got my, we didn’t have suspender belts in those days, we had corsets and [laughs] large, pink corsets with suspenders on the end and I found I left my back at camp. So, I put my stockings on, I went out to transport, I was holding my skirt with my stockings up and there is this nice boy waiting for me and eventually, you know, after we all chit chatting and talking, the driver said: ‘Get in girls!’. So, he said: ‘May I kiss you goodnight?’ and I said: ‘Oh, yes!’ and I put my arms up around his neck and my stockings fell down [laughs] and so obviously it must, it must have been ordained that this would be my future husband. Oh, we only had five dates before he went off, he was a fitter on our camp, and we had five dates and he went off for his aircrew training and the young man and the older man who’d introduced him to us girls was Norman Jackson, who went on, he went off on the flight engineers course too, he was a fitter. And he went on to win the VC, he climbed out on the wing of his burning plane, he stuck a fire extinguisher into his tunic and climbed out and the other men were sort of holding onto his parachute pack and then a flame [unclear], he managed to put most of the fire out but the flames blew back all across his face and hands and unfortunately in all the shemozzle, well the fire extinguisher of course went, fell off the plane and but his parachute started to open so he had to go off, they couldn’t drag him back and he was a POW. The Germans cared for him pretty well but years later, apparently he worked, somebody told us that he worked in a high class Rolls Royce showroom selling Rolls Royce, he probably would be helped after the war, but he was a prisoner of war for a long time. Uhm, no, from about 1943 to 5 and uh, unfortunately we tried to get in touch but it was very difficult after the war, everything was in such a muddle and we never got the chance to meet him again. And, so, Jock wanted me to be his steady girlfriend but most of us WAAF didn’t like, didn’t like to be, it was the boys who wanted to be serious but we didn’t like to be serious with any of them or getting, most of us didn’t want to get engaged or married because we all felt with aircrew that once they got married or they were engaged, they were, they became very serious and much more careful and it was, we all felt talking to aircrew boys that it was the worst thing to be very careful, it was far better to be gung-ho and able to take risks than, and not have to think about a wife or a serious girlfriend. But I wrote to him the whole time he was on ops, I didn’t see him for eighteen months, I wrote him the whole time he was on ops, and I’ve got most of his letters and unfortunately he hasn’t, he didn’t, he couldn’t keep many of mine because most of them threw letters away, personal letters were thrown away. Uhm, aircrew on ops, it wasn’t a wise thing to keep anything from love life or anything like because if you were killed or taken prisoner, the RAF police went in and put everything into, uhm, boxes and all that was sent to the parents and sometimes, or wives, and sometimes it was far better that certain things weren’t known. So, I mean, you know, even things like condoms, they were told not to keep in their lockers and things like that because of the attitude in those days. So, uhm, eventually in 1945, I was posted to 3 and 5 Group at Grantham, the top groups which commanded the operational squadrons and we were working in a large country house on the edge of Grantham and we were billeted in a lovely old Edwardian house right in the middle of Grantham, not far from the Great North Road which ran through Grantham at that time. And it turns out, when I was reading the biography of Bomber Harris, when he was a young air commodore at the beginning of the war, that was his living quarters, his house with his wife and young daughter and they, eventually it was withdrawn as living quarters for RAF officers and became the living quarters for mainly the clerical and secretarial staff and actually discipline was very easy in the house, this was the place where we were living, uhm, because we were all very trustworthy women who’d worked as personal secretaries all the war and so were trusted to go and come without having to book in or book out. So, I knew I’d been keeping in touch with Jock and I knew by then he’d finished his tour of ops and he was a fighter engineer instructor at Woolfox Lodge, just down the Main North Road and he’d got a motorbike and so I said, you know, I said, he said, you know, did I feel like taking up the friendship again, and I said if he was interested, yes, fine. So, he came up on his motorbike to Grantham and we renewed our friendship, which of course brought something to our romance and we married at the end of 1945, once all the, when the war was over. But, to go back to Lichfield, I would have gone on Lichfield, unfortunately my very nice Chief Flying Instructor boss went back to do a second tour of ops so I was getting some, I was going to work for someone else. But sadly he went back on ops and he lost his life, his plane crashed over Germany and he lost his life and it was very sad because he’d married an English girl and he had two lovely children because I used to, when there were officers mess dances, I used to go and babysit for him, cause I always felt, I always used to sit next to him in his car when I was taken out to his house. [unclear] for the night and I used to feel like a queen sitting next to a senior officer [laughs] going past the guards [laughs] and they were all saluting [laughs] and so I used to look after the children and then he, and I’d have breakfast with them and he’d go, we’d go back to camp next morning. But very sadly, we were moved from our nice wooden house, we were moved into new Nissen huts, this was when conscription came in for women at the end of 1942 or the beginning of 1943 and we really suddenly became inundated with all these conscripted women, they hated us, we hated them, we were volunteers, they were conscripts, and they didn’t want to be in the services and we made it clear that we wanted to win the war and we were going to win the war [laughs] and so on. Anyway, we were moved to new Nissen huts, which had been built in the winter and were still, the concrete floors were still very damp and it was terribly, terribly cold, I know, we discarded our sheets and used to sleep between blankets and we put on our pullovers and our slacks over our WAAF pyjamas, which were nice and warm and thick but still not thick enough and we heat bricks up and wrap them in newspaper or old bits of cloth to put in the bed and even so in the morning your breath used to be frozen, right down the blanket, a little icicle. Anyway it was so cold, and I got flu and I didn’t do any, I got a cold and then it went into flu and I didn’t do anything about it and didn’t go sick, that went into bronchitis and the bronchitis very quickly turned into pneumonia and I was at work and I went all funny and they had to get an ambulance to take me to sick quarters and I must have been very ill because they put me in a private room which was normally kept for officers and I was wrapped in the officers white blanket because if I’d been, other ranks blankets would have been grey [laughs] and they gave me the new miracle drug, MB363 or some, it was a new sulphanilamide drug and it worked wonders on pneumonia and I was sick for, very sick for a few days and then eventually I lost my voice and I was sent down to Waafsey quarters to convalesce and in Waafsey quarters they had a dreadful sergeant, a woman sergeant, a WAAF sergeant in charge and she used to have all us patients up every morning, we had to get on our hands and knees in our pyjamas and polish the floors [laughs]. I couldn’t speak [laughs]. We had a little wind-up gramophone in sick quarters and the only record we had was some well-known singer of the day singing, we’re having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave, it isn’t surprising, the temperature’s rising, she certainly can, can, can [singing] [laughs]. We played it and played it and played it. So then I went back to work but by then my boss had gone and the senior medical officer decided that I’d been so sick and I’d also had a lot of very nasty boils and said really you should have a series of injections for vitamin B but unfortunately vitamin B is kept for aircrew only so I can’t give it to you, and he said, I’m going to do the very next best thing, he said, I’m going to arrange a posting to group headquarters and he said you’ll have much better food, you’ll get fruit and he said you will be in much better quarters, but of course when I went to group headquarters it was all very nice but no aircrew, no any young men. The only thing was, we had a big Canadian Bomber Command station not far from us and a huge American camp so we used to go to the American camp and that was the first time we saw, for several years that we saw oranges and ice cream, they gave us ice cream [unclear]. But to go back to Lichfield, before I leave Lichfield to go to 93 Group Headquarters in Derbyshire, I must tell of the most exciting thing that happened to all of us and that was our station taking part in the first thousand bomber raid on Cologne, I think it was the 30th, 31st of May 1942 and that was very exciting, I mean, we didn’t know where, that the target would be Cologne but we all knew something big was on. Apparently, I’ve read all about the thousand plan but at first poor old Bomber Harris thought [unclear] make the bombers because the Coastal Command was going to be in it and their bombers were going to take part and the navy bombers, but at the last minute the navy and coastal or they say so, Coastal Command withdrew so we were left with less than a thousand bombers and Bomber Harris said they must: ‘Churchill had said it must be’, and Bomber Harris said it must be a thousand bombers so they racked in all the training stations and every screen was allotted a crew and so cause always at the end of OTU training the aircrews always went on things called bulls eyes [?] or light tight raids just over the coast of France either to straf, shipping or to drop leaflets and just over the coast and then back again, to give the young aircrew a taste of what it would be like but now we were going to have everything, uhm, every crew we could put, even if they were going with an instructor, the screen instructors and so, of course our poor old Wimpies, I mean, all those operational training units, all the heavy conversion units, the aircraft were already second hand, they’d all been used on operational flying, they’d all been used and abused I mean, you, when you talked to a flight engineer as my husband was, they were running those engines very often at revs never put down in the makers note and they came to the instructional units, and they were pretty knocked about a lot of them, a lot of them been hit and repaired and they weren’t very good and that’s probably what caused a lot of the training accidents. And so of course my husband, cause I didn’t know him in those days but than I knew, but I knew all the mechanics, all flight mechanics and fitters were working all around the clock to get service for aircraft and aircraft were taking up on their tests and then repaired again and again, the, don’t you want to stop [whispers]?
AP: No, no, you’re alright.
JS: And then they, then the uhm.
AP: But I will get you to move the microphone if you can, slip down [laughs] it was fine as long as you put your hands on [laughs]. There.
JS: Then, uhm, the uhm, so, they were very, very busy and we knew, because our, the control tower was next to K2 Hangar where my future husband worked and we knew where they were working cause we very often worked very late at night and you could hear all the noise and claying in the hangars and so we didn’t know the actual date until the actual date occurred the 30th of May and suddenly all, everybody was called on deck, everyone, you were just told to do all sorts of jobs, I know I was giving out sealed maps to the navigators and the pilots and we were getting all sorts of things together, all the Red Cross, the Australian Red Cross used to send wonderful parcels across, and the Aussie boys used to share, all the RAAF boys always shared their Red Cross parcels which were marvellous, full of all sorts of goodies and we were getting all those things ready and there were planes obviously being air tested and the whole station was busy with people, all with very definite looks in their eyes, all going about our business, sort of, with a lot of extra jobs to do and wherever you walked on the station normally when planes were bombed up, you wouldn’t see any bombs because they’d just be out of dispersals, but there were bomb trolleys everywhere, you were weaving your bikes all among all the different things, keeping a wary eye on the incendiary bomb boxes, which were painted red because if incendiaries fell off and the box broke open, the incendiaries could, they were very touchy and could often go off and you know, they were very dangerous. So, then of course the boys went for briefing and we were all hanging about, we had, I remember we had our tea and everyone, everyone was very quiet, very serious, the whole station. Of course, when there’s any big operations on the station is closed down and there is no leave and there’s no out coming or incoming personal phone calls or anything like that. So, we were all very busy, doing our various jobs and then I remember after briefing, they all came into the, into our big room in training wing and we were giving out the various, you know, chewing gum, barley sugars, cake, all sort of, parcels and things, cigarettes and off they went. We all had our quick tea and a whole host of us went down to wave them off, and I always remember that night, quite a mass of people were all standing underneath the balcony of flying control and all the top brass of the station, all the senior officers who weren’t flying men were above us, they were all out on the balcony and all the flying men, they were all in the planes, they were all been allotted to [unclear] crews and the three Padres all went, [unclear] and other denominations, Padres, they all went off choice and quite a few of our senior officers, who were ground staff chose to go with the crews, they said they backed them up and they wanted to go, you know, to give them heart as someone was there with them and we heard the first, to see a station, I’d never been on an operational station but my husband’s told me a lot about it but to see these planes or to hear them going, you know, we were standing there and of course always bombers during the war were around in dispersals, all dispersed around the airfield and you’d hear that coughing and choking sound of each engine starting up and revving up and then slowly, slowly. It was a rule that they mustn’t taxi fast because during the war all our rubber came from, well, what’s Malaysia and Indonesia now and of course rubber was very difficult to get and actually it hit the Germans more because of, you know, we were downing any German ships trying to get rubber, they couldn’t know they couldn’t get rubber because it was still British and but all aircraft, all aircrew were told to taxi slowly, because if you taxied fast it wore the rubber out more quickly. We were told that with our bikes, that we must only put our bikes into the bike racks with the rear wheel because if we put the front wheel in, it wobbled about and wore the rubber out [laughs]. All these silly things that happened during the war [laughs]. Uhm, so, then the, the first aircraft came weaving down past the control tower and I always remember the pilots window open and seeing the pilots face, each pilots face white in and his helmet faming [?] his face and he waved to all of us and, as they went slowly past, and we all gave thumbs up and he gave thumbs up and then slammed the window too and they went along to the runway, the end of the runway which wasn’t far away from us and of course they revved up each engine, one must be like a four-engine bomber station where they ramped each engine up to shrieking and you could see, you could see in the dusk, you could see all the dust and leaves and twigs flying and then of course they’d get a green from the airfield control and the caravan down at the end of the airfield and each one revved up and they took all the whole of the runway to get off to clear the hedge at the far end and almost before they were over the hedge, the next one was going down the runway, you know, heavily loaden with bombs and oxygen and high octane fuel, a living bomb themselves and we were all waving and we stood there long after the ground crew had put out the flarepath and long after the dim lights on the balcony had gone out off and all the officers had gone in, we all stood there, sort of not speaking, you know. And next morning of course lying in beds, you know, when the dawn was breaking, we were lying in bed, a lot of us hadn’t slept much that night, hearing the first faint roar of the aircraft coming back and counting back, we only lost one aircraft and they were actually, they had gone to another station, we were lucky but several of our aircraft had to turn back, cause that was the trouble on the training stations, Harris did get his, he got just over a thousand but actually before they got to the enemy coast some were turning back and I mean, once one engine goes in a Wimpey, you know you can’t go on. And of course, you know, we were lucky as I say, we, I and my friend who worked in training, when we dashed down on our bikes before breakfast to go and have a look, I think we run up to Flying Control, up the stairs to Flying Control to have a look at the big board to see who was back and that was quite an exciting night and so, and of course later on Jock told me all about, you know, his operational life and he had some exciting times. But, I went on to, Group Headquarters and of course you were working for senior officers, uhm, there were just one or two flight lieutenants, most of them were squadron leaders, ah, and of course you had air vice-marshals, all the people with the mess of scrambled egg on their caps and you were doing some, we were doing very secret stuff actually at that time and because of course, when I was at, yes, it was, 1945, yes, that was when I, that was when D-Day occurred and we all knew, because they cancelled long before D-Day, they cancelled all long leaves, all seven, fourteen day leaves and even forty eight hours weren’t very, weren’t given out very much. I was lucky, I wasn’t very far from my home and my home was by then in Buxton in Derbyshire because my father was in the civil service and he was in the customs & excise on the Board of Trade, and they were evacuated out to Buxton in Derbyshire. A lot of places, Ministry of Aircraft Production, were evacuated to Harrogate, all the non-military, there only be the Air Ministry, Admiralty, War Office, the Home Office, Colonial Office and, well, the Foreign Office, they were the only ones that stayed in London. All the other departments went out in case of being bombed, so, my dad’s office was in the big Palace Hotel, the biggest hotel in, uhm, in Buxton in Derbyshire and which is a beautiful place and so I wasn’t, when I was at Group Headquarters I wasn’t very far away. I could hitchhike to Derby and get a train to Buxton, so I was lucky I could get home for thirty six hours, but, I, uhm, for D-Day we all knew something was afoot but nobody, I don’t know why none of us put two and two together that it would be D-Day and we were doing all sorts of things so we used to, when you are on duty at night you know we’d be sitting the, only two or three of us on duty and we’d be having to take lots of coded messages and stick them onto paper and they’d go to various officers and the tele printers would be chattering all night with stuff from Bomber Command mainly and of course, then of course we, I came down to early lunch on, actually on D-Day and I went into the airmen’s mess and there was this little huddle around a tiny little radio that they got in the corner of the mess and I said: ‘What’s going on?’ and they said: [makes a shushing sound] ‘it’s on!’ So we all got our ears together listening. And I, cause I was very interested actually and had been interested for a long time because, of course I’d moved up with my parents, I’d left the Ministry of Aircraft Production and I moved up to Buxton when they moved to Buxton in 1940 and, I’d worked for the, I’d had a job as a secretary, as a town clerk in the town hall and the junior clerk who was a year younger than me, he had to wait till he was called up, he was in the home guard, he had to wait till he was called up because his mother was a widow and he was sort of contributing to the family so he waited until he was called up and the non, the local government offices were like the civil service and some big firms. When men were called up, their service pay was made up to their civilian pay, what they were earning in their civilian pay by the civil service and they were very, that was very good, so he had good money all the time. And we used to go out together, I was doing, everybody did voluntary work during the war, my mother rolled bandages and made up, she rolled bandages and made up, she old dressing kits for the army in her spare time, my dad used to fire watch and I used to go and work in the services canteen at the town hall in, about three evenings a week, pouring cups of tea or stirring backed beans for all the troops, cause we had troops everywhere, every town was full of troops, and, this, my boyfriend Morris, he was in the home guard, so he used to come and pick me up after his guard duties on reservoirs and oil damps and so on and, walk me home and I was, he was called up and went into the West Yorkshire Regiment and for years, I mean, Jock knew all about my romance with Morris, and the West Yorks were one of the first, they were one of the first to go on D-Day onto the beaches for the British crowd and I always wondered how he’d got on and my friend across the road, my neighbour across the road, she does genealogy and she’s looked up a lot of my family for me and she looked up Morris for me and if he’s alright and he got through obviously and he married two years after me and they had a daughter. And, so that was nice to know. So, that was our D-Day excitement and then of course I went, I was posted on to 3 and 5 Group Headquarters at Grantham, where of course I met Jock again. And our romance took off but nothing was, I mean, it was very easy living and very easy working conditions at Grantham compared to what I’d had and the war was almost winding down then so we had a very easy time of it and eventually of course once D-Day came, oh yes, D-Day, not D-Day, once VE-Day came, oh, we’ve all danced in the streets, there were civilian women dancing in their nighties in the streets and the street lamps were put on, and of course they’d obviously been preparing for VE-Day because all the street lamps went on and Jock and I, we used to go to a little park in Grantham and we had a special seat and that was our Snogging Seat and [laughs] we used to kiss and cuddle and on our Snogging Seat and we were very put out, after we’ve been down singing, drinking and you know, all the boys, he and all the boys climbed up, they put, they climbed up on the town, Grantham town hall roof and one of the boys tied a pair of WAAF blackouts, twilights, pair of WAAF knickers on the flag staff, certainly weren’t mine and Jock and I went round to our little park and our Snogging seat was no good anymore because there was a big lamp above it and it was lit up [laughs]. So, that was that but, he of course, he did his ops on Stirlings, so, I don’t know if whether you’ve heard, the losses on Stirlings were terrible and whenever we met people after the war and he said he was on a Stirling Squadron, they said; ‘Well, you are one of the few to get through!’ And half way through his ops, they took them off quite a lot of bombing ops and they put onto dropping, uhm, sea mines mainly in the Baltic, up the Gironde Estuary and so on, and then, that was quite tricky stuff, the only two or three would go out, it was quite tricky stuff because those sea mines going down on parachutes of course they were very touchy and they have to be, you have to fly at a certain level so that they would drop into the sea and then they come up to a certain level in the sea and lie there under the sea. And of course, while he was doing that, while he was dropping all these mines in the Baltic and so on, his father, who had been in the Royal Navy during World War I and then he went back into the Royal navy in World War Two and he was on minesweepers off our coast, off the western of [unclear] and the Minch, he was minesweeping for the British convoys coming and going. So, he was sweeping them up and his son was sowing them, they were called gardening operations and so he, they were doing well and also they were dropping a lot of stuff to the Maquis, the French Maquis in the Alps and he said, that was a very leery thing because he remembers, you know, cause Stirlings hadn’t go the height, they couldn’t get the ceiling like the Lancaster could so you often had to fly through gorges, these alpine gorges and he said, very often wingtip to wingtip you’d see this black icy glassy rock each sideof the wingtips and quite a lot of aircraft of course got smashed up in those gorges. And they also dropped to the Maquis, he had a quite an exciting experience, once they were quite high up in the Alps and they had just signalled and they received a torch signal back from the Maquis and they were coming to drop their, they had a lot of stuff including a Gee, of course it was always a flight engineer and a bomb aimer who were pushing it out in a big hatch, they had a special hatch who pushed all the stuff out and they were coming down in a steep curve and suddenly the floodlights, the searchlights went on and guns started, obviously the Germans were waiting for them and because they just went straight up, they took off and went off but he said he always wondered how the poor devils on the ground got on. And they did quite a lot of that sort of thing and they had, they were, they had a nasty time when they took off one night and the plane had been going, they’d been up all day, they’d headed up and down on air test and as they took off, one engine failed as they were taking off and they carried on, I mean three engines were, the Stirling was a tough plane, even though it couldn’t get the height, but second engine failed as they went over the end of the runway, and then the third engine started coughing and it was wintertime and there was a ploughed field next to the airfield, I mean they got a full bombload and the pilot said to Jock the engineer, he said; ‘I’ll have to go in’ and shouted out crash, you know, crash positions and they went in and he, Jock was up with the pilot, he was up in the cock pit and he said, all the earth, we went nose, he said, all the earth came over the cockpit but, he said, fortunately, he said, the little escape hatch so, he said, the pilot went out there and I went out the back and got out and we all got out and he’d expected the bombs to go off but nothing happened. So they were very fortunate and one [unclear] them was, see they’d had problems with this particular aircraft several other times and they had actually come back, they didn’t, I think they’d only returned twice with a bum aircraft and then this crash, and one the engineers, warrant officers came up to them and said: ‘Uh, yellow aye!’ and apparently he got roasted because they found out this aircraft was in a bad condition but it still went on flying and we were very interested because I think the Bomber Command War Diaries gives a detail of every aircraft that flew. And Jock was really through one day and he said, Jean, he said, this is so interesting, apparently it was sent off to a Heavy Conversion Unit and it only did two flights and then it disappeared somewhere over the coast of Ireland, the west coast of Ireland out to the Atlantic it disappeared with the crew, the [unclear] crew and never seen or heard of again, so obviously it was still playing out. He said there were always bum aircraft, lemons, like cars and but they were very lucky to get out of that. And then another time they were on their way to target and they were hit by cannon shell and an Me 109 went underneath them, obviously aiming for the engine, hit the starboard side, blew his flight engineer’s panel out and, cause all the lights, everything went out, and shrapnel flying around and this great big jagged hole and you could see the starboard engine and he was a bit stunned and he said: ‘I couldn’t breathe’ and he said: ‘I could feel this something warm dripping down my back’ and but he said, ‘it didn’t hurt, he said, my knee hurt’, he had got shrapnel, small shrapnel splinters in his knee and but he said, the navigator was groaning and he said, as soon as I sort of pulled myself together, the pilot was checking the crew round, fortunately the intercom was still working and he said, ‘engineer, are you ok?’ and Jock said; ‘I think so, I can’t breathe’. He said: ‘I’ll check’. Well, he found, he got a hydraulic pipe blown around his neck and that was what was dripping hot oil down his back, not blood [laughs] and his, a big lump of shrapnel had hit his parachute, bent his parachute buckle, harness buckle, perhaps bent it and set his Mae West off, that’s why he couldn’t breathe [laughs]. And it had wicker shade and gone, made a real mess, gone right into the groin of the navigator, I mean, the navigator sitting right behind the black curtain, you know, quite nice and all, nice and protected from anything nasty and he was the one who was the worst hit, well, he, Jock grabbed the first aid kit and he went straight up over and he, the navigator was in a really bad way and Jock gave him, cause they all had whole series of small morphines, he gave him morphine and cut and sliced his trousers and put a big shell dressing on his wound, he was and sort of dragged him to a lying down position and then he went to the wireless operator whose poor right hand was pouring blood and he said to him, he said to, don’t give me morphine, he said, cause he practiced Morse with his left hand, he said I’m carrying you on, he said, I don’t want to have morphine and go out to the wood, just shove a shell dressing on this and actually it was worse than it looked actually when they got back but they were still on their way to target so they were among a whole stream of bombers, it was very difficult turning round in a stream of bombers and the pilot said to Jock, he said, engineer, how is our fuel situation? Of course by that time Jock was checking with the torch what was left of his dials and switches and he said, can we get to target and back? As long as we have enough to get back home. And Jock said, that was the time I turned from a boy into a man [laughs] and he said, yes, so they went on and bombed and came back and they landed with very little fuel and the navigator of course went straight to hospital. The wireless op only had a week or two off, his wounds healed and, oh, Jock had only dressings put on his knee. But the others were ok, but, you know, see, they had no officer in their crew and actually that would have warranted in many crews that would have got a DFC or DFM for the [unclear] but DFM was not given out in great numbers and having no officer to sign it all because, yes, that’s it, the navigator was the only officer and of course he was in hospital so he wouldn’t be, he was unconscious by the time, so he wouldn’t have been able to write anything else, that sort of put the kibosh on any medal for the crew but I mean that was quite something I thought to go on to target and then come back. But that went on, as they all, oh you talked to a lot of the aircrew and I mean, that went on, there were so many crews that went west, that should have got medals, you know, for what they did. And, so he was very pleased and actually if he hadn’t died when he did, he would have, he did qualify for the French [unclear] again because he was flying, they did their last two ops just before, just on D-Day, they came, their last operation was on D-Day and that was another well-kept, that was a such a well-kept secret, I mean, the aircrew didn’t know, it went out that night, and they were given targets north of Normandy and they were dropping all these funny little sacking parachuters, which had firecrackers on them, so when they landed, it sounded as if they were firing shots and they dropped them, there a quite a lot of planes dropped them in various parts of Northern France and a lot of Germans did think that that was where the invasion was taking place and of course they went out, I think it was after midnight, cause it was only just into France, and they came back just as dawn was breaking and Jock was busy at his dials and only the pilot, the pilot must have looked down and he said: ‘Oh, boy, it is on!’ and he said, we all rushed and had a look and he said; ‘What a wall of ships!’ he said it the most amazing sight, he said, it send cold shivers down their backs and they’d also gone out and been minelaying a couple of nights before in the Gironde Estuary and he said, that was a terrible place for being armed, and he said, only three Stirlings went and he said their’s was the first to go in and of course they dropped these sea mines which are touchy even in the aircraft, you know, can go off and he said he looked round and his great friend was in the next aircraft, and was hit, went up and then the third bomb went up, so, they’d been given a route to come home across the South of France and then across the Channel, but the pilot had him put the nose down and went out in the [unclear], into the Atlantic and they came in through, came back through Cornwall [laughs], they didn’t want to know any more having lost their team mates [laughs].
AP: Ah yeah.
JS: But they often used to come, cause they laughed after they hit the target, they loved finding trains to shot up and any roadways and shot up any convoys and anything and they’ve would come back with bits of haystack and leaves of trees and [unclear] but the Stirling was, he used to say cause eventually he went on and became a flight engineer instructor on Lancasters and he said, yes, they were, they were wonderful aircraft cause they could do the distance, they could carry the arms but he said, he said, our Lancaster wouldn’t have survived that first crash with a full bombload, he said, they were beautifully built, he said, they were a lovely, comfortable aircraft and he said, they were so sturdy, and then they could fly very low, but how stupid of the Air Ministry to cut their wings of ten feet to get into the normal hangar, I mean why not build the odd hangar to conform to the wing? Say, were some funny things in the, there were some weird, weird things went on, you know, people with all sorts of suggestions and as I say, this front wheel of your bike, I was put on a charge cause I put the front wheel of my bike in, I was late on duty and I flung my front wheel of my bike in and the service police came round and of course you had a number on and tracked it to me and I was put on a charge! And I remember being marched in without my cap and of course was one of the officers I knew and worked for and he [unclear] said: ‘Now, what have you been up to?’ And the WAAF officer looked [unclear] [laughs]. There was a WAAF officer and someone along this sort of thing and he gave me three days jankers and I went down to the cookhouse cause normally you got all these filthy, big greasy ben maries [unclear], huge things, this big cooking greasy stuff, you’ve got them to clean out, but they said: ‘Oh, we’ve got nothing for you to do’ and they gave me some tea and cake [laughs]. It was a good laugh and it’s funny when we’re all, of course now I go into the Air Force Association and of course, we always go, my daughter and I always go to the Odd Bods November dinner and we meet up together and we, it’s, I mean, even for years all those old chaps and they were facing hell and you wondered how they had the nerve to do it and yet they all said: ‘Best years of our lives. Best years of our’, Jock said it, I said it, and I mean our living [unclear], I I’ve seen the ranks, living conditions and food was terrible and the living conditions were often awful and what you had to do. Cause we had, when we were at Lichfield we had to, at one period, probably be ’42, ’42 more than ’43, there was a lot of business, Germans were dropping odd parachutes, two or three parachuters and of course we had a fifth column of people who were Pro-Nazi, Fascists, some even before the war, Royal Family, you know, old Edward the 8th and his bird, you know, they were all quite Pro Hitler and, we, we were, that was when there had been attacks on planes, that was when they used to keep the planes all in a line or on tarmac and they started to put them down in dispersals, the ones that were in use, any spare ones would be dragged out and put on a farmers’, in farmers’ fields under the trees and we had a couple of Wellingtons near our Waafery, near the Waafery and we were asked, we were told to do guard duty and you’d, there’d be two or three of us and, I mean, it was so absurd, was at wintertime and we’d wear our gas capes which came neck to floor and airmen’s wellies so you had to ware about three pairs of socks, because you were in these great big wellies and our tin hats of course and gas mask respirators at the ready and we were armed because see, the WAAF, the Women’s Auxiliary Airforce, the auxiliary women, we couldn’t be forced to carry arms so we were armed with truncheons, there were three girls with truncheons and we’d be out in the rain and mud, parading round these Wimpeys, we opened the hatch, we used to open the hatch and get in and sit up in the pilot’s seat and, oh, I loved the smell of aircraft, so aircraft [laughs] and not long ago the RAF went to the museum at Moorabbin, you know it was so lovely to smell a real aircraft inside, those oils and petrol and everything and sometimes we’d have an airman with a rifle. And at the same time they also had, we had a mock invasion and all they, they didn’t know what to do with the WAAF because all the airmen had arms with, with blank, you know, ammunition, and they had thunder flashes and they were, there were two, there were the enemy and all the ones [unclear] and all the aircrew weren’t armed and they didn’t know what to do with the WAAF so they told us we had to go and sit in the toilets [laughs]. And I remember cause there were thunder flashes, being blasted out against the wall, just outside, cause they knew we were in the toilets and the others were chucking thunder flashes [laughs]. And we, we said, why can’t we be out among it all. Anyway, they, you know, we had all those sorts of funny things and at the same, around the same period, when there was a threat, a real threat of airfields being invaded and they said, if there’s a last minute stand [unclear] on parade one morning last minute stand, would any of you girls volunteer to learn to load Lee-Enfield rifles? And you would be at the back and the men would be throwing their rifles to you to reload, you’d be throwing back loaded rifles and so on and so on. Then we all stepped forward, everyone, we all wanted to carry arms, it was funny because some, quite a lot of men, especially the aircrew said, oh, they didn’t want women to carry arms, we were nice, gentle girls, women, we didn’t need to, what we wouldn’t have done to a German with a bayonet! We, I mean, my dad was in the army in World War I, and I always, you know, used to talk about bayonet charges and things. Anyway, we all learned, we learned to dismantle a Lee-Enfield rifle and to clean it and then we learned to arm it and so on, and then they said, the sergeant down the rifle range said: ‘Would any of you girls like to volunteer to fire a rifle?’ and we all stepped forward and he said: ‘Oh, there’s too many of you’, he said, ‘we only have five rounds each’ [laughs] at least we got to fire a Lee-Enfield rifle [laughs] and I came back with a big [unclear] [laughs]. But, I mean, we very always said that we couldn’t carry arms, it seemed ridiculous they had a whole army there of women who were dying to carry arms. The ATS, my sister in law, Jock’s young sister, she went into the ATS towards the end, she was called up and she went into the ATS and, but she was put in as a cook, they didn’t, as a conscript, they were just, you’ll be a cook, and they had a horrible time but a lot, some of the ATS girls they were our viewfinders on the keg guns but they didn’t fire the guns but they were, they were very good on the viewfinders and but we, we actually in WAAF actually had the best of the women services in the war, I think we worked alongside our main army, you known we were always there and among the aircrew and helping to do things and I mean, we had, you know, there were flying mechs and battery charges and girls they are all among working among the aircraft and we all ate together, we didn’t eat in separate messes, we ate in the airmen’s mess and, I mean, we did everything except sleep together. And some of the girls did [laughs] but, you know, I think we were much closer because the air forces is a nice service, you know, it's a sort of much more specialised and you get different type of person in the air force, I think. And I now belong to the Royal Naval Association, I’m only an associate member, a lot of us RAF people go to the Royal Naval Association which is only a [unclear], [unclear] or [unclear]. They were lucky, the naval people, cause like our RAF Squadrons and the RAAF were all on our squadrons so there was a great closeness between the RAF and the RAAF and the same with the navy, quite a lot our RNAF were in on British ships and there’s quite a closeness and cause they, they obviously got into, they got in with the ones down here, the naval people got down here, got in the British navy got in ex-services associations with the Cerberus crowd, and they bought a block of land and it’s a lovely big block and the Cerberus as a sort of war memorial put up this memorial building and it’s, it’s not huge but it’s got a large hall and big kitchen, toilets, and a bar and outside a big barbecue and it’s really nice and once a month they have a meal and they get together and of course there is always a Trafalgar Day in October, you go and we always have a big Nelson thing, and drink our toast and rum, tot of rum and apparently they British Navy send out every year, they send out this small keg of naval full strength rum which is, cause in the navy it was always, when everybody used to have rum everyday but it was always watered down, it’s very, very strong and they are still saying this Cerberus, this ex-service crowd, still send out, I don’t know how much longer they will do it, this rum and of course the air force crowd, we sit at one table and the navy crowd are so different to us, we are very prim and proper lot, we are behaved, cause they always make fun of us, sailors are very rough and the funny thing, their wives and so on, they all sit at tables on their own and the men all sit at tables whereas we’ve always air force have always been men and women together and they, they told us the first time on when we were invited first for Trafalgar Day and they said, you air force types, don’t stand when the royal toast and the toast to Nelson is said, because apparently in the old sailing ships not very much headroom, do you know, those sailing ships, tiny old sailing ships like Nelson was in and they had a complement of eight hundred, fourteen inches for a hammock, that’s where you slept, fourteen inches, you’ve [unclear] and I noticed that a lot of those ex-servicemen, the old chaps, they, there’s a lot of them missing fingers and arms and hands, quite and I mean, you don’t see this among air force crowd. Quite a lot of them have, you know, half an arm or several fingers off and obviously, you know, I suppose with their big guns and things, I suppose stuff and I don’t know anything much about the navy cause it’s only my, up in Lewis of course most of them go into the navy, there were only four men from the Isle of Lewis who went into the air force during the war, Jock had always wanted to fly since he was a little boy, he’d always wanted to fly, and I mean as a crafters son he got back his chance because there is not work up there and you know, money was small but most of the men went into the navy or the merchant navy and the only ones that went into the army would go into the Highland regiment, the Seaforth Highlanders in [unclear] cause he had two uncles who were pipers and his sister, one sister was called up into the ATS, his, other sister, his older sister, unfortunately she couldn’t pass the medical for the ATS cause she volunteered, and she went into the NAAFI, cause the NAAFI was a good backup, you know, they had those little vans and they had, ran the canteens and they were very, very good and you’d find each station would have its specialised, you know, cakes and things cause I knew at Lichfield they made beautiful [unclear] cakes and we always used to go out to the NAAFI event who did outside about 11, or 10, or 10.30, or 11, everyone used to go, everyone, officers and everyone used to go out with their mugs and you’d always say; ‘Tea and a wad!’ [?] [laughs] [unclear], pig lardy, heavy things, we were always hungry [laughs].
AP: Pretty good. Let’s have a look. You have spoken for an hour and twenty minutes without a break, that’s pretty impressive [laughs].
JS: [laughs] Well, I’ve got no one else to talk to!
AP:
JS: I’ve got the cat.
AP: You’ve got the cat.
JS: He’s lying on my bed in the bedroom.
AP: I’m more than happy to assist. You’re absolutely fascinating so far. Uhm,
JS: I talk too much.
AP: We love this sort of stuff, this is really, really good.
JS: But then, then my cousin, there was my cousin, now I’m talking about the Isle of Lewis and as I say, my husband he once he went to primary school and he won a scholarship which, living in the village where he lived, fifteen miles away from Stornoway, where the only secondary school on the island. He won a scholarship but there was no bus you had to board in town and his parents, this was during the Depression, his parents couldn’t afford the books because, sometimes scholarships had a living allowance for books, uniform and living out but there was nothing like that during that particular year, so he couldn’t go to secondary school and he, I mean, there was me, I had a grammar school education and I was a hopeless scholar, absolutely hopeless, the only thing I was ever good at was English and history, and I never got anywhere with anything until I went to Pitman’s College and then I come out here and I saw one of my daughters teachers, when she was at primary school, said to me, oh, you ought to study and become a teacher, because we were desperate for teachers, so I investigated and I did, I went through, did my GCSE and so on went up the exhibition building and did my HSC and did very well, it was totally different doing it as an adult. Well, I hadn’t got horses or boys, that’s a thing, the two loves of my, oh, I was a terrible flirt in the Air Force. I was a student, I’ve been a quiet, studious girl as I say horse mad and I got in the Air Force and I suddenly discovered men and I didn’t read a book, I had boyfriends galore, I found a little address book and all these addresses are Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, cause they all wanted you to write to them and we wrote letters to all, we’d sit on our beds and write letters to all these different boys you never saw again. But, I mean, love affairs were no sex, I mean to start with, VD, we were shown all these film of VD when we [unclear] training stations and that would put you off sex forever and if you were pregnant you were chucked out of the WAAF and you were never allowed, you could go back into the ATS if you’d had an illegitimate baby but you weren’t ever allowed back into the WAAF. Oh, we were very pure and high [?] but, uhm, cause Jock was shocked when I said, Oh, I said, the only thing that kept me a virgin was VD, the thought of VD and getting pregnant. And he said, oh, he said, I’m very disappointed in you, because I thought you had higher morals [laughs]. Well, I said, I didn’t want to get pregnant and I didn’t want to get VD.
AP: Oh dear.
JS: And when you’ve done the VD report for the station, for all the Czechs and the Poles, they were the worst. They used to have to go to Cosford once in a week to have these horrible, I won’t, well, you probably know what they used to, used to inject them with mercury and where but it was very painful apparently and we used to see the bus going and they all used to have their heads down and we used to see the bus going to Cosford once a week and we all used to go [laughs ironically], they all used to have their heads down [laughs]. And, as I say, I used to do the VD report and Lichfield had two satellite stations, Tatenhill and Church Broughton and they of course used to, uhm, they had Czechs and Poles. Now I mean, the Czechs and the Poles they were, they were so brave, oh, they hated, they loathed the Germans, they absolutely, as long as they could kill a German their happiest time but they were dreadful and of course in this VD report they had to say when they went to the MO and it was discovered, they had to fill in a form, they had to, legally didn’t have to give the name of the woman but they had to give where they, whereabouts they thought they contacted it, usually under a tree or in a field [laughs]. Contracted it, I should say. Or, and roughly the age, and the age could be anything, of the woman, I mean, they wouldn’t know, but the ages could be anything from fifteen to about seventy [laughs]. And of course, all the girls used when I was typing the VD report, all the girls used to come and look through the papers, weren’t supposed to [unclear] and titter and make very [unclear] remarks and, but they were the worst cause I and after the war I met several Polish, ex Polish airmen and I always used to say to Jock, oh, I don’t think I’d better shake hands with him [laughs]. And they were very nice people [laughs] so you know but we had men of every nationality you could think of at the service, you know, of the Commonwealth and so on you. We had lots of South Africans, New Zealanders. Now, the New Zealanders, they never had the funny accent they have nowadays, it’s funny, they spoke much more like Australian men. They didn’t have that funny twisted accent. I don’t’ know where they got that from, cause it’s really weird. And of course New Zealand, when we were going to emigrate, I wanted to go to Australia because I wanted to, we were living in Scotland and I wanted sunshine and of course all the.
AP: So you went to Melbourne [unclear]
JS: Of course, all the Aussies had told me what a wonderful country it was. Jock wanted to go to New Zealand because full of Highland, Gaelic-speaking Highland people and of course their Scottish country dancing is impeccable, similarly if you couldn’t go and of course they were only taking building, tradesmen or farm workers. So he, cause he’d gone back to his basic trade by then, he was maintenance engineer with British overseas, no, British European Airways. And he came out here, the old Australian National Airlines brought him out here cause they were so short of maintenance engineers so he saw it advertised, applied, they took him, brought him out six months ahead of me, cause they had hostels for me and, uh, so, when New Zealand was no good, he went down to London and applied to Canada house [?], he phoned me up and he said, we can be in Canada within three months and it was winter and I’d got flu and I, you know, I get, my nose was streaming, my eyes were streaming, I said, you’ll kill me if you take me to a country with all that snow and so he didn’t and so that’s why we applied for Australia and of course we’d read all these books about Australia and we decided, oh, the best place would be West Australia, the climate there was beautiful, Albany, and you know, the climate was supposed to be absolutely wonderful and cause ANA brought him out to Essendon aerodrome, so, he was Melbourne [laughs]. I remember when the first time we took the caravan up to Darwin and I’d only been in Darwin a couple of hours, and I said to Jock, Gee, how [unclear] would cost to move house and the furniture up here? Oh, I’d loved to have lived in Darwin. Cause Darwin years ago was lovely but the last time we went to Darwin it was, it had grown in population, it was very commercial but the first few years, when we used to take the caravan up North, it was lovely. This, and, people, all the young people used to stop, you know, older people and say: ‘Oh, hope you are going to stay up here, cause we, it was too many young people, we need some grandparent type people’. Have you always been in Melbourne?
AP: No, I’m from Sydney.
JS: Oh, your [laughs]
AP: Yeah, I came down from Sydney about five years ago for work. So.
JS: I’ve, you know, I’ve been through Sydney on the bridge, to go on the car, wiht the caravan, we’d been there over the, on the bridge and we’ve also been underneath.
AP: Oh yeah?
JS: And I’ve been to Sydney to change planes. I’ve never been to Sydney as a town.
AP: A lovely spot sometimes. Anyway, uhm, you were telling me before we started the tape, uhm, about something that was going on, one day when you were doing the, I think it was the group VD report about a certain squadron.
JS: Oh yeas, about that, about the.
AP: Yeah, so, can you tell us that story again for the benefit of the tape?
JS: Yes. God, what was it called the,
AP: Fauld.
JS: Oh yes, the Fauld, the day the Dam went up, yes it was in 1944 and it was the Fauld explosion and uhm, oh yes and I’d gone upstairs and was typing away at this huge, great big long-carriage and those long-carriage typewriters you never see them now, great big thing, very, very heavy and so I was typing away and it was this funny rumble that went through my feet, I have felt this funny and heard, we all stopped because it sounded like air raids and, we, it was only, must have been seconds, barely minutes and suddenly this rumble got bigger and my typewriter really big jammed, it went [makes a repeated booming noise] and I sort of set back and I looked at the dirty, green wall in front of me and there was this little crack and it started to open and it came down in a big curve and I just, I just watched it, cause funny it’s like when you’re in an air raid when you bombs and you tend to watch them, you’re sort of rooted to the spot. I mean I remember once was a terribly bad crash on our airfield at Lichfield and we were all in our office, we heard this terrible thud, screech, metal, you knew it was a crash, that metal noise and we looked out of the window, the side window and there’s this flame and it was sliding across the airfield, right out on the airfield, on the runway and it was beginning to slide straight towards training wing and we just stood there, we were just stood rooted to the spot. That was the time when, it was horrible. The operators see the girls at the radio while the radio operators took the planes up, and now the girls, they rushed to the window when this thing happened and they left us with the intercom switched on and of course, see, those Wellingtons you know were geodetic and they had axes along the body but obviously the boys were burning, the thing was a degrees of heat and they were screaming and you could hear it from above, you‘d hear the screams, it was horrible and we were rooted to the, I, everybody, nobody said a word, I mean, I, nobody passed out or anything like that, but it was really horrible and of course then the fire, cause naturally the blood wagon, the ambulance and the fire engine were always right beside flying control, they went straight out cause they got foam and it had stopped but it was a fact that it could actually, I mean if nothing had been done, it could have banged into our building. We were so struck with that and it was like that in that Fauld thing, and we were sitting, as I say, immediately somebody said, oh, there must be a bad air raid somewhere, funny we haven’t heard the sirens because often we did have [unclear] and I mean once our airfield was very lightly attacked by one aircraft and I mean, you’d simply, you’d, over the tannoy they’d simply say even before the sirens died you’d hear: ‘red alert, red alert’ and we’d always have our respirators with tin hats on our chairs and all you do is [unclear] your respirator on your shoulder, put your tin hat on and all fire alert, slip trenches outside, you’d run like hell once you got outside because you were scared and you’d, the slit trenches were so nasty because they’ve been used as toilets [laughs] by people going to a frat night they were very smelly and I know, a friend of ours, poor men, they jumped, he was the first one to jump into the slit trench and someone had obviously been doing the other business in there and when he got out, all the others came on top of him and he noticed and he was sitting there a nasty smell and when he got out, he found his knee, he’d gone straight into someone’s poo and he said he got a knife and cut his, he said, he couldn’t bare it [laughs]. Like poor Jock, one time on an air test and he was moving about the aircraft and they hit an air pocket cause they were low and [unclear] went up and he and the mid upper gunner were both, and they couldn’t move because of the way you are rooted you know in the planes and he said, he saw in slow motion [unclear] came over. They’re supposed to be emptied every trip and it all come over the two of them, [unclear], he said, we, he said I took my flying without equipment on a stick [laughs]. Oh God, he said, I went straight up to the showers, he said, I just showered in my uniform and then he said, I took that off and he said I was in the shower spitting it [laughs]. But and the mid upper gunner was the same, but poor old Charlie [unclear] but there was, it was always very pooey, very smelly in the, in the trenches because you’d sit there with your tin hats and things do fall on you, you’d hope no bomb would fall on you but, I mean, we weren’t like the fighter stations, they had it regularly, they were bombed regularly, down more on the coast down south we were, we were lucky we were in the Midlands but I mean along it was all Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, cause Jock’s Squadron he was 90 Squadron and they were in Suffolk. Cause they always used to rendezvous at Cromer Pier when they were went off, the you know when the whole gaggle of paints [?] were going out, they’d fly from their station and go up round and round to get height and then go straight out and they’d have some to rendezvous, Cromer Pier was a great place for a lot of them and others would, they’d get into formation and then they’d pick the other formations up, all up from all up the coast and we went to Cromer when we, one trip we had overseas in the 1970s I think, we went to Cromer and it was beautiful day because I know he was swimming in the North Sea and I, he said: ‘Oh, I’m lying here, look at me up!’ Thinking about me circling around over here before we went out, we’d stay off and went in from their area, they went in to France over the Frisian Islands. Cause he always said, I always put, as soon as the pilot said enemy coast ahead, he said that’s when I always pull my, he was always scared of his eyes being burned, you know, injured, and he said, I always pull my googles down cause some of them didn’t and got their eyes burned. He said, I was always terrified of getting my eyes burned. But he never, he still, you know, they had three pairs of gloves, silk and wool and then leather, but he nearly always worked with his silk gloves cause he was using bars and things and [pauses] but as I say, I still think, you know, but we probably don’t remember the nasty parts, you only think of the fun parts. When you say it was, it was the best years of our lives. I tell you why, because after the war it was so horrible. After the war we went back into Civvy Street and you had this awful feeling you weren’t wanted. See, people had, who’d been in fact prison officers [?], they’d all got jobs and they were looking after, this is my job and we don’t want you people coming in and move, you know, with all, you’ve got medals and we haven’t and so on and so on. And then the idea was that we should all forget the war, get on with the peace and everything was so grey and actually we were then more severely rationed, that was when bread was rationed and onions and potatoes. I cued for hours for all those things, because we were feeding Europe and particularly because we had to feed poor old Holland, cause they were starving but we were feeding the bloody Germans, that’s what got up our noses and we should have done what Joe Stalin said, Joe Stalin said at one big conference, he wanted Germany totally disarmed and made into the food bowl of Europe, got rid of those bloody Germans. I still hate them and I’ve got German blood in me, I’ve got Prussian, great grandfather. I still hate them like mad, I can’t forgive but then I was going to tell you about my cousin. Can I tell you about my cousin?
AP: You certainly can. [unclear]
JS: My cousin, there was another boy like my husband, he, now, his was a very sad story. His father, like my father and my father’s two sisters both married men during the war that were in the trenches. My sister Nora married this soldier and he ended up the war, after the Great War, in a lunatic asylum, he’d, he was shell shocked, absolutely shell shocked. And Nora always told her little boy Bill, who was born, she was married I think in 1916 and had him in 1917 and she told Bill, growing up, that his father was dead. And because in those days to be in a lunatic asylum, you know, was like having a baby illegitimately, it was one of these, you didn’t talk about those sort of things, Gee, woman had a Hysterectomy, that was women’s [unclear] and you didn’t mention that, everything was so, [makes a shushing sound] proper, and anyway poor Bill, he grew up. Uhm, Nora went and when my grandfather was widowed, he went up to Lancashire or Derbyshire, where he’d come from and he opened a little corner shop and Nora went up and lived with him and worked in the shop and Bill grew up and went to the local primary school but then Grandad died during those years and the shop apparently wasn’t making much money so, Nora came down and stayed with us and Bill, they stayed in our house for a little while until, and aunt Nora’s a widow of a service man, was supposedly a widow of a service man, she got a council house, we were living in Welwyn Garden City at that time, I was going to the local Handside Primary School and Bill came along too. Now Bill would have been about three or four years older, three or four years older than me, and I’ve got his photo somewhere, and I couldn’t find it today and he was a nice looking boy and of course you know, I was only a little girl about eight or something like that and, eight or nine, and, oh, I was in love with Bill, I used to tell my parents and everybody I was going to marry Bill and I remember, cause Bill loved, he had a Meccano set and Bill loved his Meccano and cause with my little itchy [unclear] fingers, I remember, could I have put that, no! He hated me, I was always around his Mecco, trying to or reading his comics, and I remember at school, we were changing classes one day and the big boys came out of whatever they’ve been and he’s, and of course I’m saying to all my other friends, that’s my cousin, that’s my cousin Bill and you know, Bill’s looking everywhere except, we were twelve or thirteen. So, you know, that’s my cousin and so they went and lived in their house and eventually they moved to Luton in Beds, and Luton was the centre of the hat-making industry, of course in those days I mean everyone made more hats, felt hats, women wore hats all the time, straw hats and felt hats in the winter and my aunt was pretty good at her job and Bill got a job as a young, he had, when he left Handside Primary School, during Depression there were so few jobs he got a job as an errand boy. They would take boys as errand boys on delivery bicycles, like you used to see in that funny comic series Open All Times [sic], it how you would have seen it on TV, and always had errand boys. I mean, when my mother went shopping, she would carry a little shopping basket but she would only get the perishables like the meat or eggs, a bit of cheese or fish, she would carry that home, everything else was delivered either sometimes by delivery man, mainly by errand boys on funny big arm bikes with a huge thing. And errand boys were all everywhere, of course they got a pittens [?], I mean, there was no real big dole or anything in those days, so, they only got a little bit above of what the dole would be and as soon as they, all these errand boys turned eighteen, see, they had to go on to adult wages, so they were all sacked. So that was when Nora moved to Luton and Bill got a job in a factory, you know, he was just a general factotum sweeping up and so on and he could see, like a lot of boys of that era, that it was much better in the forces, so he joined the Royal Air Force in those days when they used to wear the breeches and the grey patties and tunics up to your neck and the peak caps and he was stationed at Cardington where the balloons were, all the big balloons. And RAF Cardington and of course he saved up and bought a motorbike and so on and my dad had had a motorbike and they were motorbike crazy, he used to come over and see us a lot. And then of course, uhm, he, that’s it, he went in, he hadn’t got the educational qualifications to go to Halton, to the School of Aircraft Apprentices to be a fitter because you had to have secondary education for that, with maths and so on. He went into the trade of, is not a trade now, machine tool oiler and setter, next, really, a machine, he would end up as a machine setter which was a very good trade. So, that was what he was doing when war started, and about the same time it was, it was beginning in 1943 when all the four-engine bombers were starting to come in and we were really doing something over Germany, we were the only service other than the navy, the only service really doing anything in the war. And Bill wanted to go as aircrew, I don’t know why he never said why, and he, he applied to be aircrew and they turned him down, saying, you know you are a school tradesman, someone will have to be trained in your place, stay as you are. So he said, right, I’ll go on strike. Well of course he was marched up to the commanding officer who said: ‘I could court martial you and that would be the end of your air force career’. But he said: ‘I’ll tell you what, boy, he said, you can go in as aircrew and can go in as a bloody bomb aimer’. So, he went in, he was trained as a bomb aimer, he was at Skellingthorpe. Now he was on Lancasters. Now, the Air Force in 19, 1943, ’44, I think it was October 1944, the Air Force had been trying to decimate Brunswick because it was full of factories, war factories and they’d been, they’d had raid after raid, there was going to be a really big raid, a huge raid on Brunswick and that night the huge [unclear] went out including Bill’s Lancaster and they were all so even other, this shows you how our Air Force had grown from 1942 when we were couldn’t make, could barely make a thousand, there were other small diversionary raids on that would draw fighters away and it was a highly successful raid. It was, the town was absolutely decimated. They only had three or four minor raids on it afterwards, just to clean up and only one of our aircraft was missing that night. That was my cousin’s aircraft. I managed to find this out. I found out from the Bomber Command War Diaries and then I was in the library only a month or two ago, and there’s was a wonderful book which I had written down somewhere which has all, it’s a big book about all our prisoners of war, it has all our prisoners of war and of course Bill’s name was in. And apparently they were badly hit and their navigator, funnily their navigator, navigators always seem to get hit, their navigator was badly injured and they, I mean, it must have been hell in the plane because apparently, you know, it was going round and how, how on earth you can move about in a plane that is going down like that I don’t know. They, he said, he told us afterwards, he said, two of them, he and another, the engineer apparently, had to drag the poor old navigator to the biggest exit and his parachute came open, started to open in the plane because they just had to bundle everything out but he seemed to go down alright but they, they never, then he jumped and the other man jumped, that must have been the gunner I think. When they got down, when they landed in Germany, cause it wasn’t far from the target, they, cause he’d forgotten all of the correct things to do, he didn’t take his helmet, and all the hoo-ha getting them out, didn’t take his helmet off, and he was nearly strangled, all the cords went round his neck, he was [mimics a strangling noise and laughs] and then his big flying boots he had they were unzipped, they came off, [laughs]. So there he was in his socked feet and they couldn’t find any of the other crew in the dark of the night and they started to down this long road and you know on the continent they very often they put all this plane trees along the sides of the road and there were all these sapling trees with thick sacking wrapped round them, so to keep them up to sporting post cause they were, so he and the other bloke they cut all this sacking off to wrap around Bill’s feet and they looked around and there were all these plane sacking across the road, all these [unclear]. And he said the next thing is a couple of nights, he said, it was very cold, he said, a couple of nights we just got water, rain water, where we could find it in the fields and he said, we got turnips from the fields and ate them turnips and carrots and he said, we got to this little township and he said, in the dark we could see this building with all these bikes outside. We thought if we can get a bike how much easier and cause they knew the direction they were going, you know, towards the west trying to get to our troops. Anyway, they both grabbed the bikes and cause they must have made a noise, next thing all these German troops come out and they take them prisoners and apparently it was outside the SS headquarters [laughs]. Then, the next thing, he was an officer, now, that what I always think about my cousin Bill, his bomber aimer training, he’d been send over on the ATS scheme to Canada and he’d obviously the smart lad, been commissioned, you know, I mean, drop us off a commissioned, who wouldn’t take it, but Bill took it, and he was, he came out as a flight Louie. So, he went to Stalag, the officers camp, Stalag Luft III, the great escape camp and cause he talked, I mean, he didn’t tell us an awful lot but they were all helping, you know, that were these, they made bags to wear inside their trousers to take the earth and they’d sort of sprinkled the earth if they were walking about or playing games and he said, oh, he said, I could have been in the last group, he said, to go, he said, all us tail enders, he said, of course by that time they’d been captured and but he told us quite a bit about that terrible march that the Germans did, not just from Stalag Luft III, but from several of the prisoner of war camps. They were going to massacre the prisoners but why they started, they started to march them to the east and it was the middle of winter and of course a lot of them had thin shoes and uniform thin and they didn’t have any, they had a bad couple of holes of thin potato, growl potatoey water and they were all being marched along with all these German guards and if any of them fell by the way and didn’t pick themselves up, they’d either shoot them or bash them with a rifle butt. And I mean, Bill didn’t say anything much, just told us about this and he said, fortunately, he said, I, and he wasn’t a very strong chap and he said, you know, he said, it was pretty sickening, he said, we were helping the ones that were really, couldn’t walk but, he said, it was pretty sickening and fortunately we ran into, oh, we were spending, we’d been put into an empty prisoner of war camp for overnight and he said, fortunately or unfortunately the Russians came along. But, he said, there was a lot of problems with the Russian soldiers. They were trigger-happy and he said, we were warned that if we tried to sort of get out of the camp to start going to the east again, to try and join up with the British who weren’t far away, that we would, you know, that these trigger-happy Russians and he said, they came into our prisoner of camp and they treated us as if we were the enemy. He said, they just took wrist watches and all the money, anything of any value. They took even cat badges and things like that. And he, so they were told to play it very cool, and be very quiet, and just, they stayed in this prisoner of war camp for a few days and behind the barbwire and the Russians were circling around outside and suddenly the Americans appeared full force, tanks and guns and things and they immediately, the Russians sort of, they ushered the Russians, there were only a few Russians by then, they ushered them off and took the aircrew to an American camp, to a British camp but he said it was a pretty nasty situation. He said, when you’ve been a prisoner of war and then suddenly your allies come and treat you almost as badly.
AP: Said one of my interview subjects a few weeks ago, he said: ‘Then we were liberated by the Russians’, he said.
JS: There.
AP: Actually, we were recaptured by the Russians [laughs]
JS: Yes, that’s what he said, that’s what it was like, and he said, you didn’t feel comfortable, you didn’t feel safe,
AP: Very, very similar.
JS: Weird.
AP: Strange stuff. So, Bill came home [unclear]?
JS: Bill came home but it was all very sad. Now, we came out here in 1952 and Bill had, he’d had a job and he’d got a very nice girlfriend, they were going to get engaged and then his mother, apparently, I mean, we weren’t near him at the time cause my father said, if only I’d known, you know, but his mother then said, you can’t get married Bill, there’s mental problems in our family, in your father’s family and he and I think Nora was very possessive and I think Nora wanted him to be there for her life. And she, I mean, had, we don’t know how she brought it to him but she more or less said, you know, if I, in the end she told him, you’re father’s a raving lunatic in a padded cell and Bill said, I want to go, I didn’t know I had a living father, he said, you should have told me years ago, I want to go and see him and of course there was a real breakup between them and in the end she gave him the address of this place. He went to this mental home and he saw his father, more or less a slobbering lunatic, you know, and in a padded cell. And he came back, broke his engagement, I think he had a complete breakdown and he was having a treatment, he went in as a sort of outpatient and apparently he was getting on very well and he got a job as a gardener and he was still having light treatment but of course he got to know a young nurse there and of course the authorities would never let the nursing staff make boyfriends of the patients. So she was immediately posted somewhere else and I suppose he saw another friendship gone. I mean, the poor boy was probably craving for love and I just, look, I go around, I’m sure these years since Jock died, if I were religious, I mean, I’m an atheist, if I were religious, and if I were a catholic, I’d say I’d be going through a sort of Purgatory because I’ve been looking at all the things I should have done, I should have been a better daughter, I should have done better at school, I should have been a nicer wife, I mean, I wasn’t nasty but I was, you know, things I shouldn’t. And I think of Bill, and torture myself, if only you had kept, you know, written to him more often, if only you’d asked him to come out, we were living in a caravan over on the north side of town on our block of land, building our house out of pocket more or less, building where [unclear} house our first home and I couldn’t sponsor him. And the next thing, he was living in digs and working as a gardener and I suppose he just had this complete, what’s the use, because I know the feeling myself. And I had a letter from his landlady, apparently he put his head, and when she was out one day he put his head in the gas oven and I mean, my lovely cousin Bill, and I, a year I was so fond of him and it broke my heart. And nobody else in the family took more. Jock didn’t know him well and dad and mum didn’t take much notice. And my dad was very hard, he was very hardened by World War I, and what he went through, and you know, I, it haunts me all the time, that nice boy and I mean, you know, flying and so on and then, every sort of romance, every bit of love broken up and I, blame my, well, look as I always think of mental hospitals, because that’s what happened when Jock fractured his skull, and, oh, he was, I mean, I could, it was a huge and I mean nowadays he probably would have had a brain operation, fortunately he had very strong bones but you could feel this huge jagged bone underneath his skin, huge scar and he said to me, he wasn’t going to ask me to marry him cause he said, he said, I in the end he did and he said, look, he said, I lay it on the line, he said, if you marry you are not going to get the man you would have got had I not had this accident, he said, and I know what it’s done to my brain, he said, I know you won’t get the man that you deserve. And, I mean, I was madly in love, I didn’t care and, but, I know he did, he wasn’t nasty or anything, but he had a nose operation, uhm, oh, in the 1980s, ‘70s, had a nose operation and when the, he had a, like me, he had a deviated sept, to my [unclear] had it done, my nose was twisted and his nose was badly twisted and he couldn’t breathe well and he had this [unclear] surgeon, she said his bones were all overgrown and pressing on nerves and he used to have these occasional days, a couple of days when he would have a terrible headache and he would wake up in the morning, he’d still go to work but he would, he wouldn’t talk to me, he’d just look at me, glassy-eyed, his eyes would just sort of glare at me and he wouldn’t say a word, he wouldn’t answer me and it would all clear over, I mean, I didn’t mind that, it didn’t worry me, he wasn’t cruel or anything to me. But, I mean, I put it down to what he had on his head. But, he was taken from the local hospital to the big service hospital at Rauceby out in Lincolnshire, very big hospital which had been a mental home, a mental hospital. And I used to go, I used to walk about five miles, my bosses used to let me off early, they were very good and I used to walk about five, used to walk down the old roman road, the old way and right out in the middle country this big, huge building and all these corridors and every so often they’d be huge, heavy doors with double locks on because they were all pushed back with great big long corridors and then every now and again there’d be a little passage and that led to the padded cells. And I heard groaning one day and I tiptoed, I was on my way to see Jock, I tiptoed down and there was this poor young aircrew boy, I mean, he didn’t see me, he was bandaged over his eyes, he obviously burned top to bottom and he was hung on straps and he just got holes for his nose and mouth and all bandaged up with his arms up like this and he was groaning away and he was and I actually saw all this sort of pale blue padding, all ceiling, walls, floor, everything, they put the very worst burns cases in there, I suppose peace and quiet and, cause a lot of them were screaming you know, would disturb the other patients. But I know Jock must have been very ill because when I first came to visit him, the RAF nursing sister, she said: ‘Are you his fiancé?’, I said: ‘Well, we’re not engaged but we are going to get married when the war ends or when the war’s over’ and she said, you know, you know your boyfriend is very seriously ill, she said, I want to warn you, he is very seriously ill. And I mean, all they did with him there, he had his head sort of wedged in a wooden frame and he lay there for a couple of weeks in a wooden frame and they fed him stuff like [sighs] you don’t see it now, it’s sort of made from bones and, bones and brain and stuff that we used to be called, it was called something in old-fashion, it was like a sort of jelly, carsford [?] jelly, that’s it, it was made by bones and I think brains and it was the most tasteless stuff, cause I had to taste if his, cause it was supposed to help remake bones [unclear].
AP: Ok.
JS: So, that was, he obviously was very ill but they never cleared, they never gave him an x-ray to after, he was x-rayed when he had the accident, never gave him an x-ray to clear him and he managed to get back onto flying because he went for his aircrew board to see if he was fit for flying. And there was, there were two doctors and the old chap more or less told the other bloke he could go, the other doctor he could go, he said, oh, I’ll deal with this case and he was an old doctor and he came from one of the Hebridean Islands and he spoke Gaelic and of course he saw from Jocks docs where he came from and they spoke for about an hour or so in Gaelic and the doctor apparently said: ‘Ah, you are fit for flying!’
AP: So this, I think we were talking about that before we turned the tape on. This was the motorbike accident for Jock.
JS: Mh, yes.
AP: Wasn’t it?
JS: That he, he had scars, I mean, you know, cause his googles were broken and his nose was damaged and the size of his mouth was split, his eyes were all split at the side, he had slight scars, but it didn’t damage his beauty, I think he was quite nice looking [laughs]. But he was the love of my life, he was a lovely man. We laughed our way through time and it was all giggle, giggle, giggle, all the time.
AP: Very good. Uhm, what else do I have. Can you, well, we might back up a little bit. Can you tell me where you were and what your thoughts were, obviously you’ve already told me that you expected war to come but when you actually heard that Britain is at war. What were your thoughts and feelings and what were you doing at that point?
JS: Well, that’s rather dreadful because I told you I was in the Ministry of Aircraft Production and obviously war was coming, well war was coming very close because that, you know, what’s his name, had been over, Chamberlain had been over and come back with a piece of paper and then of course Germany had walked into Czechoslovakia and in that interim period we were working twenty-four hours, they’d got camp beds in a big room and we were and it was a Sunday and I was on duty, I’d, cause I was living at Amersham at the time, I’d come up, I’d think I’d slept the night an hour in the bed there which was in the Ministry of Aircraft Production was, the offices were in Berkeley Square and we, in the West End of London just walked up and Piccadilly was just and the Green Park was just up the road and I, we were called, they said to, we were working and they said to us girls we are all going down to the big hall because there is going to be a speech by the Prime Minister, because we all knew Germany had [unclear] and everyone was cock-a-hoop, oh, we’re going to be at war, oh whack-o!, sort of thing and of course, see [unclear], I mean, in 1939 I was seventeen, young and silly. We all were, a big typing pool of girls, all silly girls and we sat in the hall and the speech came on and he said we are now at war and we all said whoopee! And the air raid siren went and we were told to go to the shelters, or go down the corridor and we all rushed to the big windows and there wasn’t a soul to be seen in Berkeley Square. The Queen Mothers, the Queen’s dressmaker William Hartnell [sic] had room, had his big shop and rooms just opposite, not a soul to be seen anywhere, only a big red big fat barrage balloon going slowly up. And we were all, where are the Germans? And we all thought it was wonderful, then we all sang, Pack Up Your Troubles and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary and we were all throwing paper around and thought it was wonderful. And then of course I went home and my father said: ‘Bloody little fool!’ [laughs] He said, you wait, you don’t know what war was like, he said, now, and I remember when Dunkirk happened because I had an aunt, my mother’s sister married my uncle and they lived on an island at Thames Ditton, which isn’t far from Surbiton in Surrey, an island in the river Thames, that’s where the Thames widens and Richmond Park, beautiful royal park, is on the other side. And my uncle had a little cabin cruiser I think and they were given orders, everyone was given orders to take, the navy came round to, all those people on the island had boats and they were given orders at Dunkirk time to take their boats, they had to take their boat down to some part in the Thames estuary and the navy would deal with them and they were all hitched up to a, I don’t know whether it be onto a torpedo boat or a destroyer, I don’t think a destroyer would be too big, they were hitched up on lines and they were taken over to pick men up and brought them back. He only went over the once, cause I think he had engine trouble coming home and you know, all this sort of thing was happening and I and dad said, after Dunkirk I mean it was only then the Battle of Britain started almost and I remember we, dad and mum and I went for a walk and dad, we were talking about the war and he said, I don’t know, he said, what have we got? He said, we’ve only got these young men and a few young men with planes and he said, they are going to be overwhelmed by the German Air Force, who’d been practicing in Spain in the Spanish war, he said, they are going to be just shot down and he said, I just wish I’d kept my World War I revolver with three [unclear], one for you, one for mum and one for me. And that was dad, he said, it’s going to be a bloodbath if they come over. But then again quite a lot of us in years later in the ex-service things, we were talking, there were all, I mean, there was the man in the street who could do what he’s told and he couldn’t care less, as long as he’s got a warm bed and three meals a day and I mean, Hitler had obviously impressed the German people, I mean, obviously, well, I mean, they had been in a bad, in a terrible way in the Depression and we were, and we’d come through that terrible Depression and I mean, if you had someone who started to tell you, oh, we are going to do this and we are going to do that and we, you know, we are all going to live in a united Europe and do very well, and a lot of the, a lot of the upper crust, a lot of the aristocracy were very Pro-Hitler and, but there was in recent years, there have been things discovered, there’s been an underground headquarters found which, they’ve got no records of anywhere in the War Office or, anyway and apparently it has come out that there was a big, like resistance movement already being organised by Churchill and the patriotic people, very patriotic leaders of the country. Now there would have been civil war I think, I think it would have turned into civil war. You know, lot of us ex-service people have been talking, cause I’ll tell you this. In recent years, with the way life is, with the permissive life and it’s all me, me, me now and the way things are going politically, I mean everywhere not just our [unclear], our politicians are bloody twits, all of them and everywhere seems to be the same and all these do-gooders and letting all these people into Europe and a lot of us ex-service people are saying, perhaps it would have been better, saying, was it worth it? Was it worth all those lives lost? Would we have been better under Hitler? If you’d kept your nose clean and done what you were told you’d probably be just as well off. Cause the German people were. The only thing is of course, you’ve got things like the, those concentration camps, I mean, you’d think of that. The concentration camps, I mean, would we want concentration camps? This is the thing. You’ve got. And I mean, I was only reading the other day about the Japanese, if we hadn’t atom bombed them, they had, form the Emperor down, they had been given orders that every prisoner of war, civilian as well as service, which would have been a hell of a lot of civilians cause they had a lot of Dutch people and so on were to be massacred, it didn’t matter how you do it, squashed them, hanged them up, knifed them, staked them, all the most horrible of things, that every non-Japanese was to be got rid of, so, I was just as well we get the atom bomb off, cause we saved a lot of innocent people’s lives. But I mean, you know, there’s quite a lot of us, especially you know like in the navy get-togethers and things, and everyone says, was it really worth it, when you think of all your mates. And I think more or less one of the reasons that we say it was the best time of our lives, it was a wonderful time in the majority of people, civilians and service, we were all pulling together, we all had one ideal, and it was a very legitimate war. We had one ideal and there was the mateship, the companionship. I mean, I never came across anything nasty, I never came across rape or anything in the services, in the women’s services and everyone was so, you know, working together and the great comradeship and friendship and helping each other, cause life was difficult and harsh at times and we all helped each other. And, you know, you would put your friends before anything else, you know, to help your friends and support them and perhaps I’d think it’s more that when we say it was the best years of our lives, that terrific comradeship. And it really to me and of course to me all the time and then it’s something we all say in the RAF association, you know, those young men who sacrificed their lives and the way they were treated after the war, the way the bomber boys were treated and they must never be forgotten. My daughter gets on my nerves cause she said, oh, one day will come and everyone will forget them, I said, no, they won’t after all they don’t forget Nelson and the sailors that fought at Trafalgar, they don’t forget the soldiers that fought at Waterloo, that saved Britain and there was, both of those were narrow squeaks, [laughs], I mean Waterloo was very near the knuckle, they were and so was Trafalgar, cause Nelson was, cause right from a little girl I always Nelson was my big one time hero and we’ve had a film of his life, we also, one year we had a film of a sort of mock-up thing that they did in Britain of these battleships and they had an actual broadside, cause Nelson, Nelson did it, instead of fighting each ship broadside on and opening the cannons, he got, he laid his flotilla, all the enemy battleships were like front and back, you know, all in lines and then he came along with his flotilla like that and they simply opened up, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, broadsides and split the ships right through and he brought that manoeuvre into being, I mean, he was a real, I read a lot about naval battles, I read, my reading, I read occasionally a biography or a travel book but my reading is all war books.
AP: [laughs]
JS: Oh yeah, I’m on the [unclear] and up there.
AP: I can see in the collection of books [unclear].
JS: I’m, I’ve been getting out of the library, I’ve been reading about [unclear], or I think submariners that’s even worse than bombers. I once met a submarine man and he was such a nice, gentle, little chap and I used to think, how can you go down under the sea, all those thousands of feet, oh, with depth charges?
AP: [unclear] a lot of fun.
JS: But I, I do, I read a lot and I’m reading a lot at the moment about World War I cause there have been a lot of programs, Tony, oh, he’s Sir Tony now, the man who does the walks through Britain, he’s done a very three or four weeks running on a Sat, Sunday afternoon about going through World War I. My dad in World War I, he was in the trenches and then they were sent to Mesopotamia and that’s of course Iraq and then they were sent to Salonica, but they were sent through Palestine cause I know he had a bathe in the Black, in the Dead Sea, and said, oh, you just float on the top of the salt water but he saw Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence of Arabia, he and another man, they came on their camels and he said, we’d just come out of the lines, we were fighting the Turks and he said, we’re all filthy and dirty and he said, we were having our rest and he said, cause dad started as a private and went up to, he went right through the ranks and was commissioned in the field and went up to captain and he said, I was in the headquarters and he said, this man in all his silk, was only a short man, in all his silk Arab robes came in and they wanted maps to getting from somewhere to somewhere and they were going to take a place, they were going to take the surrender of a place and the Aussies got there first [laughs] and took the surrender, and all these [unclear], all these two [unclear] men [unclear] Arabs they got there after us but then before that dad had seen the Australian light horse going up not very far away cause I think it was Damascus and the Australian light horse came through going up to Beer Sheba and he said, again we were all filthy, our poor old infantry, cause he was in the rifle brigade, he said, oh, the poor dirty old infantry and he said, we were all lying around and he said, suddenly, he said, in the middle of all this filth and dust, he said, these, like a vison, he said, these tall, they all seemed to be tall according to them, these tall bronzed young men and he said, everything, he said, their horses were gleaming, their saddlery was glowing and he said they got these, whatever, they got, I don’t know what they’re called in their hands and just, and they were all laughing and the Aussies were all laughing and joking and you know, the rifle brigade gave them a cheer and saluted them and they were all happy and I mean that was a real fluke, that the Turks had their machineguns set for them there, they’d had mown the horses down if they’d been able to and they got them locked all in a mess and apparently, cause you, I mean, if you’re on a galloping horse you know what’s it’s like on a full gallop, it must be pretty deadly to see all these waving their swords and shouting and, you know, shrieking and shouting and horses neighing and the thud of hooves, just imagine it. And it was a complete triumph but that means at some poor devils [unclear] worst of course and horses. Yes.
AP: So, oh yes, I have, we’ve covered a fair bit. [unclear] We’re still going.
JS: I shouldn’t have kept you.
AP: No problem at all.
JS: Four hours.
AP: I’ve loved it, it was really good. However, uhm, I do have one last question. It may well be the most important one all my interviewees is this. Uhm, in your opinion, how is Bomber Command remembered and what legacy has it left?
JS: How is it remembered? Well, I suppose all of us who’ve had anything to do with them will remember them for the, they were the, they were our little white hope in all those long years when we were waiting and waiting to try and get into enemy, try and do an invasion, they were our only white hope and they were, I mean, if it hadn’t been for Bomber Command, bombing the factories, roads, every, keeping them on their toes, and keeping them short of things, it might have been terrible on D-Day if we hadn’t done something, I mean, why isn’t Bomber Command universally, why is it always this bloody Dresden thing comes up? All the time it comes up! And it seems to me, Canada and Britain seemed to have fostered this, I don’t know why and I would like to see Bomber Command remembered for the fact that they were our one big bastion against Germany for those interim years before D-Day and I would, well, I hope that, I would like to see them remembered more as a special thing, as we remember the Battle of Britain, I would love to see a sort of Bomber Command Day or something but the way they are still remembered I don’t like this attitude, it always comes up Dresden. And I mean why, you’ve got a German [unclear] who agrees that Dresden was hiding a lot of things and still there’s these people, so, well, I’m glad that there’s this big memorial in Britain because I think that it’ll be there and it’ll be like that wonderful memorial in Green Park, so at least you’ve got something always there in front of people, but I mean, you know, I still think there should have been a Bomber Command Day and a Bomber Command Medal, I mean, I mixed with these old chaps and it’s so sad, I don’t know, it’s so sad and remembering what they did, I remember you see the crews and their average age was between eighteen and twenty two, I mean, I think Jock’s crew they had their, I think their navigator was, he was grandad he was thirty, no, no, it was their, I’m sorry, it was their rear gunner, he was thirty, he was ex-metropolitan mounted police, cause the only way the police could get in the services was volunteer for aircrew, so he went in and yes, Ron, he was thirty two and married with children and they called him grandad but I mean, they were young men and I look at young men now and think my God, they were either in charge of a bomber and seven men’s lives or they were in a motor torpedo boat, interestingly, I never thought much of Jack, John Kennedy when he was president, I didn’t like the Kennedy family at all but I’ve read a very interesting book about him and he was a very brave young man too in that motor torpedo boat, a very brave young man but you when, and talking to them and of course you’d say how did you feel, what was, when you knew you could be going to your death? And a lot of them have said, well, you couldn’t let your mates down, you didn’t want to go but you couldn’t let your mates down, cause Jock said the first, oh, he said, I looked forward to my first op but he said, after that I didn’t look forward cause he said, oh, he said, when we went over the target and I looked down and he said it was a vision of hell and he said I still, he said, I still wasn’t that scared until I got back. But I remember, see some people, they were, you know they were terribly superstitious, I mean, Jock always, he had a [unclear] bit, those tiny [unclear] bits with a hole through it that one of his relatives gave him and he had a tiny little silver thimble which he got the leaves that he, when he went into the air force, he had a Christmas pudding at his aunt’s place and he got this silver thimble on a chain, teeny tiny little thing, the size of his little nail and he had one of my suspenders and he’d always have them pinned on his flying suit and, when he was cremated and I put, they were always kept in our bedside cabinet and I took them out and I tucked them under his pocket, you know, so that when he was dressed and being put in his coffin, they would go with him on his last flight but I mean, they had, the pilot had a teddy bear and he always had to rub its stomach when you got in so that was always stuck behind the pilots seat and some of them, he always told he’d get through he always said to me, don’t worry, he said, I might get injured but he said I have a feeling I’ll get through, now, other boys didn’t and I remember when I was giving out some of the Red Cross comforts one night when they were going on one of these small ops and from Lichfield, there was a lovely young navigator, he, blue eyed and very fair curly hair and always a lovely smile and you know, he’d been one of the boys, we’d all been in the pub together, singing, we all knew each other quite well and I remember him coming up and he leaned across the table and he was a big tall boy and he picked me up, just picked me up under the arms and gave me a big kiss and he said, bye bye Jean, he said, I won’t see you again, I mean, a great big smile, and I said, I can’t remember his name and I said, oh come off, he said, no, he said, I know, he said, I know I’m on it tonight and he didn’t come back and he was quite jovial about it but quite a lot of them and Jock had friends that he knew and he said some crews, he said, some crews, when you were on your operational station he said you knew as soon as they walked into the mess as a new crew, he said, they had the look and the smell of death on them, he said, you knew that they wouldn’t last long, cause on his squadron, 90 Squadron, theirs was the first crew for ten months to do, to get through full operational tour and actually they did thirty two and they were asked to go on a last one and his mechanics said to him oh, one of his mechanics said, oh god, I wish you weren’t going on this one, but he said, It’ll be alright and it was, thank God, that was the one where the two friends got blown up. But I don’t know ways remembering Bomber Command, how do you make people remember? I just hope that they’re never, well, I just hope they’re never forgotten for what they did because that was a horrible job. And I, you know, you, as I say, we used to see them and they were twitchy, you could see a lot of them were twitchy when they were going down to dispersals and they’d laugh, they’d be like little boys, ah, and they’d light a cigarette and then they’d take two puffs and then put it out and then light another one, I mean, and in transports the WAAF drivers taking them down, they liked the WAAF to take them down to their planes, they much preferred a WAAF than a man driver and it was the same with the wireless operators, the radio operators in flying control, they, oh, Jock used to say, oh, he said, when you are tired out and he said, you know you’re being told, a force comes on telling you, you’re going in a stack and he said, all you want to do is get your feet on the ground and he said to hear that quiet woman’s voice, he said, a man’s voice never did anything to me, he said, you hear that quiet woman’s voice talking you down, almost sympathising with you, and he said, you know, it did something for you and I think, you know I think, they were full of nerves. Jock said, you were, he said, you were always very quiet in the transport, he said, some would joke with the driver, the WAAF driver about her boyfriends or things like that but he said you’d, he said, the worst part was the waiting, he said, the waiting for the word off, cause sometimes when they were down by the aircraft all bombed up, it was cancelled and that was horrible cause he said, if it was cancelled you think oh god, I’ve got to go through all this again tomorrow night and every time they got back it’s one off towards the end of your tour and he said, once you got into your aircraft, he said, cause, engineers, the bomb aimer very often did the second pilot’s job during a trip but always take off and landing, the engineer was always with the pilot cause he helped the throttles and so on and switches and he said, you sat down, you did your cockpit check, you did your crew check, he said, you forgot everything, you had so much to do before take up, off and once you were up you had so much thing cause the engineers were checking labour entring every fifteen minutes, fuel thing and of course any lights going out or oxygen not coming through or things like that, they were always, he said, we are, he said, I was always busy, I didn’t have much time to sit down at all, but he said, you were always so busy, you never thought it was only, he said, we always used to be so glad, we always used to give a cheer when we saw the Channel coming back, he said, when you saw the sea [unclear] those usually be or everything going up from the coast, or defences, he said, you saw the sea, he said, you just prayed you got across the sea cause so many of them didn’t. And the awful thing was that of course some poor sods that landed on beaches and then the beaches were mined or the aircraft went into mined areas and blew up, just as they thought they were there. They did one time come, they were short of fuel and they had to use Woodbridge, you know, Woodbridge was a huge, right just over the coast, gigantic, but he said, they said, and the next one most wonderful thing was when he said you saw your beacon, cause that’s another thing that caused crashes coming home, the, all the, on the east coast all these huge airfields and their satellites all the circuits were intercepting so you got planes twiddling around everywhere, all the time during the war the sky was never free of aircraft, it seemed to be, always aircraft doing something cause they’d all the train, people training and then there were people going here and there to other stations and going off out. One of the most wonderful things was when I was down in London on leave, I was walking near Buckingham Palace I think, it was with my mother and aunt and walking near Buckingham Palace and a huge squadron, cause it was right near the end of the war and I mean they were just it wasn’t easy in those days, they were going over and it was, the war was almost into Germany and all these Flying Fortresses went out, hundreds of them went right over Buckingham Palace flying out, quarter of an hour later [makes a whooshing sound] along comes a little fighter squadron, cause they had to, they picked their fighter umbrella up cause the fighters were much faster, all these Hurricanes and Spitfires all riffing a long, making a lovely noise and it was quite inspiring because I’d only seen aircraft going out at night one by one and circling round and listening to the [unclear] in the clouds and that was, that was not as exciting as seeing a whole squadron, of cause they did a big box formation, they were quite classy, and once they, once their jolly old formations were broken they were really limping and we were better with our open formations and once they had, it was nearly, it wasn’t before the end of the European war but it was not far off, we had a conference at, oh no it must, no, no, this was at Lichfield so it must have been, no, must have been, I left, I left late 1943, I went to Group Headquarters so it must have been 1943, we had a Stirling bomber coming to this conference, a Lancaster bomber and a Flying Fortress, now you could see the three of them, a Stirling just towered, the Lancaster was fair and the Flying Fortress, which everyone said oh [unclear] big planes, it was so small and the Yanks took us, our boys took us over there [unclear] and the Yanks planes, I mean I wouldn’t like to be a gunner on an American fortress and you know with this wide open bitterly cold I mean they wore a lot of warm things must have been terribly cold and they were more or less each side gunner, they were more or less bashing buttons and there were all the machine guns, all strings of ammunition everywhere, you had to pick your way through these strings of ammunition and it wouldn’t have been very nice at all, wouldn’t have been nice at all, so and cause, you know, the Lancaster of course you’ve got the big bulkhead but you’ve got a bigger one in the Stirling cause Jock said there was always the trouble you know when you had to get down to the rear gunner and you got an awful long way to go and it was, and you’ve only got a catwalk, is bitterly cold [coughs] if you hadn’t got, even through your silk glove you could feel the cold if you put your hand on the side of the aircraft [coughs] then you get that bloody great bulkhead, climbing over there with all that flying kit [coughs] horrible.
AP: Quite, quite amazing. Well, I think you’ve covered all the questions I had.
JS: [coughs] [unclear]
AP: I only had to ask three of them. [laughs]
JS: I apologize.
AP: No, no problems at all, there is some fantastic stuff in there. [unclear] I love these sorts of interviews I love the best, cause I come in, I ask one question and I just sit back and listen.
JS: Oh, as long as you don’t mind, I do apologize.
AP: Ah, I loved it.
JS; [unclear]
AP: yeah, yeah.
JS: I’ll make another cup of tea.
AP: Thank you very much. I’ll turn this off.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASmithJ160312, PSmithJ1601
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jean Smith
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:40:04 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary. Allocated S Coulter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Purcell
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-12
Description
An account of the resource
Jean Smith worked as a clerk in the aircraft manufacturing industry before the war and later served as a secretary in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She served at 27 Operational Training Unit at RAF Lichfield.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Staffordshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
27 OTU
aircrew
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
control caravan
control tower
crash
flight engineer
ground personnel
love and romance
memorial
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Lichfield
runway
service vehicle
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/344/3511/PWakefieldJ1601.1.jpg
b92234efa02be14011383a80ecf247aa
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/344/3511/AWakefieldJ161029.1.mp3
434d2e2cf7e487f4db1dbc3d6a3bd309
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
Wakefield, Jack
J Wakefield
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Jack Wakefield (1921 - 2022, 40929 Royal New Zealand Air Force). He flew operations with 75 Squadron from RAF Feltwell and with 38 Squadron in the Middle East.
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
2016-10-29
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
Wakefield, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MS: This is Miriam Sharland and I’m interviewing Jack Wakefield today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Jack’s home in Wanganui and it is Saturday the 29th of October 2016. Thank you, Jack, for agreeing to talk to me today.
JW: It’s a pleasure.
MS: Also present at the interview is Glenn Turner Of 75 Squadron Association. So, Jack can you tell me a bit about your early life before you got involved with the air force?
JW: Well, I was an apprentice upholsterer when war broke out. And I joined the air force and the army at the same time. But the army age was actually twenty one. So when I got the message from the air force that I’d been accepted and that I was going in to camp on the 8th of April 1940. I sent my father down to the army headquarters to say that I was too young to join the army and they weren’t very pleased. But anyway I made the right decision and really enjoyed my time in the air force.
MS: So what made you decide to join the air force?
JW: Well, we were very patriotic as young people and I was actually in the Territorial Army, and that’s why I joined the army at the same time. Most young men were looking forward to adventure. We knew that it was dangerous but it didn’t worry us a great deal. So it didn’t matter a hell of a lot to us which service we went in. But I said years later, there’s one thing about the air force, you go home to bed — if you go home.
MS: So how did you end up in Bomber Command?
JW: Well, eventually, when I arrived in England in July 1940 we were all gathered at Uxbridge in London and from there we were posted to all points of the compass. And I happened to go to number 5 OTU Aston Downs which is an RAF station, training on Defiants. And during that period the Defiants were meeting up with the Messerschmitts and initially the Messerchmitts were coming behind the Defiants which had a four gun turret firing twelve hundred rounds a minute, each gun. They fell to the gunners and the air force were ahead. But once the Germans knew that the Defiant had no forward armament they started attacking from the front, and then things were reversed. The Defiants were, suffered heavy losses and were withdrawn. By that time I’d finished training on Defiants and they had to do something with us. We were trained air gunners after all. No matter what aircraft we were flying in. So we were posted to 75 Squadron. A New Zealand Flight that had evidently a shortage of air gunners. Like replacements.
MS: So did you want to be a pilot?
JW: Yes. I definitely wanted to be a pilot but I, to be quite honest I just didn’t have the education. I was quite capable of passing, you know, exams. I had a proficiency certificate but that wasn’t sufficient. One thing I couldn’t do was mathematics because I’d never seen them in my life. That’s algebra and all that kind of stuff. So I stumbled there. But anyway I was quite happy to go as an air gunner but I would have, right up to the end of my service life I would have liked to have been a pilot.
MS: So can you tell me a bit about the air gunner’s role? What did it feel like when you were in the turret?
JW: Well you felt responsible for your other crew members. You were the only eyes facing backwards. And we had small duties like the navigator might want a drift. Get the drift of the aircraft and things like that but mostly the main function, I suppose, was extra eyes, especially facing backwards.
MS: And did you ever shoot any German planes down?
JW: No. To be quite honest I never fired a shot. But we were fired at occasionally but quite often the target was too far away for me to retaliate so I’d just give the pilot instructions which way to dive to get the darkest part of the sky.
MS: Can you tell us what it was like when you were training?
JW: Well, it was very thrilling getting into a two seater fighter with a Merlin engine up front, even though it was underpowered for the weight it was carrying. We were so keen to fly that there was pilots going up in Blenheim’s solo and we volunteered to go up with them. And one day I went up with this Blenheim pilot and the aircraft — most of the aircraft were clapped out and we got up, he was going up to, I think it was twenty two thousand and we got up to about fifteen and I found I had no intercom. And there was also a light button which we could send Morse. That was u/s as well. And then when I turned the oxygen on that wasn’t working either. And I couldn’t, I could bash and yell and everything but I couldn’t make the pilot hear me. But at seventeen thousand, it’s in my logbook, seventeen thousand you start to overheat so he descended. So, otherwise I would have gone to sleep. That’s just a little side line.
MS: What did it feel like going from New Zealand to England?
JW: Well, it was a great thrill of course. You see, we were, well I was only third generation New Zealander. All our history at school was British history so we felt very very close to English people. And we knew all about, well I wouldn’t say knew all about, we knew a lot of English history. We knew London. All the history connected with London and all that kind of thing. So we really enjoyed getting around. Then we got to Uxbridge. If we weren’t posted in the morning we were free for the rest of the day. So another New Zealander, a navigator, we’d tramp around London until we were absolutely footsore. And I suppose we were glad to be posted [laughs] because we were running out of money as well.
MS: Can you tell us what squadron, what squadrons you were in and what rank you were?
JW: 75 Squadron. I was a sergeant.
MS: And what —
JW: 38 Squadron I was firstly a pilot officer, actually firstly a flight sergeant, then pilot officer and flying officer.
MS: And where were you located? And what was it like on the bases where you were? Where you were based?
JW: Well, Feltwell of course was a permanent base. A peacetime station built in brick and all that kind of thing. You know, a quiet English village and when I got married I took my wife down there and we lived on a farm and the farmer and his wife really looked after us. And we used to enjoy a bit of a social life in the, well one pub was called The Bear. It was right, more or less opposite the gates of Feltwell. And in that pub my wife met an air gunner and he was flirting with her, and I didn’t knock his block off because he was harmless. But anyway two nights later the poor devil got a cannon shot through him and he went to Ely Hospital where he died. That was just one of the things that happened as soon as we got there. But anyway, my wife, living on the farm she could hear the squadron take off and she’d hear us drift back, and of course quite often we were, we couldn’t get down because of fog. So we’d be diverted but I had no way of contacting her to say that I was ok. So if I left, say, left home say at 8 o’clock the night before to take off at ten or something like that. 4 o’clock the next afternoon there was no Jack. And the farmer’s wife evidently went real solid, you know, stern, sad. But I’d just waltz in through the gate and the farmer’s wife would say to my wife, Joan, ‘Jack’s just come through the gate.’ But they really did treat me as their own and gave the wife and I a nice honeymoon. Until I finished my thirty trips.
MS: How did you meet your wife?
JW: Well I think there was three of us. We were on leave in Lancashire and we were wandering around a market there which they had. They had these stalls in the street. Well, you would know about that. And I was looking for pipe tobacco which was hard to get. There was no issue. You just had to get it where you could and we were going around the odd tobacconists and that and asking if they had any. Most of them said no because they’d have it under the counter for their customers. Anyway, there was these two nice, nicely dressed girls, one blonde, one brunette. Well, very well dressed and they were looking for flowers for their mother who had only died roughly six weeks before. And we passed them once or twice and gave the smart remark, you know. We weren’t crude in those days at all. Anyway, we passed them again later on and I asked them if they’d like to go to a local pub, have something to drink and eat. And after we got in there we ordered salmon sandwiches and then we started to sweat. We didn’t know how much they cost and we were nearly out of money because this was the end of our holiday. Anyway, I got on with Beryl’s [unclear] very very well and I promised to write to her because we were going back the next day. And she said to me, her sister Audrey, ‘He’ll never write.’ Well she got quite a shock because I did write. And at that time the girls were, they went home to live with their auntie because their mother had died and the house was sold. And they all got permission from their auntie for me to go there on leave. So that was great.
MS: So can you tell me how you got together with your crew and tell me what your — ?
JW: Oh yes I can tell you about that. I’ve just got to think of the name of the ‘drome for a minute. Oh God [pause] One of those great big personnel aerodromes.
GT: Westcott.
MS: Was it Westcott?
JW: I just can’t remember the name of the place.
MS: Was its Westcott?
JW: No. If you just turn that off I can go and get my logbook.
MS: Sure.
[recording paused]
MS: Ok. So Jack I understand you were a fill-in gunner.
JW: Yes. There were six of us that came off Defiants because they were taken out of service. And there were six of us posted to 75 and they were all people that had trained with me on Defiants. They were surplus to requirements on those squadrons. I think they used some of the Defiants for night fighters, but the chances of detecting anyone was pretty remote. So that’s how I happened to go to 75 and we were just slotted in where air gunners had probably taken ill etcetera etcetera. So, that’s how I became a gunner on 75. The first pilot was an Englishman and he broke his leg doing back flips over the couch in the officer’s mess. So he was [laughs] he was sent away to recover. And I think the next one was a Charlie Pownall. He was a New Zealander. And all the crew wanted to go to the Middle East except me because I’d met this blue-eyed beautiful lady. So I went to the CO who was Wing Commander Kay and said to him that I’d like to stay in England. Now, I wasn’t, I wasn’t dodging anything because naturally it was tougher over Germany than it was over the desert. So he said, ‘Wakefield, if you can get someone to take your place that’ll be ok.’ So one of my mates was Jack Milner from Hamilton, and he had spent most of his life up the Pacific and he hated the snow and ice in England. Absolutely hated it. So when I told him the story he said, ‘I’ll go.’ So Jack went out to the Middle East in my place and he did fifty two trips but he was killed out there. Well, later on of course I finished my thirty trips and then I was posted to a training school. Operational Training School. There I was what they called a screened gunner. I was screened from operational flying but I took crews out over the Irish Sea and we fired on drogue, a drogue towed by another Wellington. And then when we had finished firing we turned around and they would fire on us. And naturally we were firing out to sea. And during that period when I was training other people we were airborne one day, about half an hour, one engine cut out. And we weren’t very high. We were flying across England towards Finningley and we were in sight of Finningley aerodrome and the second motor cut out. So we crashed on the Great North Road. The pilot put the plane down perfectly on the road, but the wing, of course was too wide for the road and we collided with pine trees which ripped the Wellington around and broke its back and in fact broke it in half, and half went down the road. The crew, including myself and the front went through a hedge and the aircraft burst into flames. Being a pretty cunning critter I already had the escape hatch out before we touched and I was laying down with my feet up on the main spar to take the shock. As soon as we hardly stopped rolling I was going out through the top, but the flames were right on our tail. I got one hand all blistered and the chappie next to me, he got his face blistered as he got out the astro hatch. So that was a bit of a shocker. The rear gunner, who was a pupil, and I left him in the rear turret because generally it was the safest place in a Wellington. In this case it wasn’t because the aircraft was doused with fuel when the wing tanks were ruptured and the second half which is, you know is nothing to burn really, went up in flames and the poor chap was caught alive and burned alive, which is one of the horrible memories I have.
MS: So can you tell me what kind of planes you flew in and how they compared to each other?
JW: Well, of course a Defiant was a two-seater fighter and it was too slow for us. With the weight of the turret and the weight of the ammunition of the turret and the weight of the air gunner it was just too sluggish, too dead. The Wellington of course was the heavy bomber when war broke out and a very hard-working work horse. It carried four thousand pound, a four thousand pound bomb. And we went to many many targets in Germany where we were shot at occasionally. Came back once with forty two bullet holes in the aircraft, but most [laughs] most of the time when we got a barrage which appears very close we generally said something like, ‘ship,’ which is my magic word to get away with anything.
MS: Can you tell me about some of those ops that you went on? Any particular raids that stay in your memory?
JW: Well, I can. The memory’s a bit slim on that because they were mostly very similar. They were either good flights or tough ones. But I went to Hamburg five times which was one of the toughest targets to go to. And when the briefing went around they used to have the map of Europe under a sheet during the day. More or less for semi-secrecy and it had a red tape across to the target. And when it was unveiled and it was Hamburg you could hear this audible sigh amongst the aircrew of, ‘Oh God not again.’ I went there five times and you went up, I think it was the Dortmund Ems Canal because Hamburg’s an inland port. And all along that canal was armed and the worst thing was the searchlights because if a searchlight hit on to a Wellington say that was travelling at, we’ll say a hundred and fifty miles an hour they only had to move the searchlight a fraction to keep it on the aircraft. And although our pilots weaved and chucked it around and everything it was almost impossible to get out of. And what we did, there would generally be three on you at once. So they would pass you from one to the other and when you probably got down the end of say, three there would be another three pick you up. And of course if you were blinded by the searchlights you had absolutely no vision outside at all, it was just absolutely blinding. So that’s when a Wellington would be a sitting duck for anything that was hanging around but it never happened. But I remember one night flying past one while another Wellington was getting hammered with the anti-aircraft fire. We sneaked past and I was quite happy about that, another tough target was Berlin. I went there three times and of course part of the endurance I suppose is the distance of those two places. Especially Berlin, you know. All the way from the coast of France you were being tracked. But apart from that, I mean, you felt quite proud of yourself when you got back. You didn’t worry about whether you’d get back or not. But I will admit that on 75 we didn’t lose big groups. Not until I’d finished. And then a night bomber, [unclear] went down there were six crews lost that night. Which was thirty six young men that weren’t there for breakfast, kind of thing. But during my period there would be two occasionally. Mainly because the weather was so shocking. We were snowed in and the Germans were snowed in as well so there wasn’t a great activity. I mean it took me nearly six months to do thirty trips and quite often they would save you until the moonlight period. And I think I did seven in nine nights at one stage, something like that.
MS: So how was the morale on base when you talk about people not coming back. What was the general feeling amongst the crews?
JW: Well, when it was a question of say of two crews they’d just say, ‘Oh we hear old so and so didn’t get back.’ But see there was always a chance that they were a prisoner of war. We didn’t know that they were alive or dead and it may be weeks later before the squadron would know if they were a prisoner of war. So we didn’t worry too much.
MS: Was it hard to get close to people or to make friends? Especially as a fill-in crew.
JW: Well I’m glad you asked that. We were in close groups of friends. In other words chaps that I went there with, you know like the air gunners. I was mostly, you know, we’d go to the sergeant’s mess. We’d form a little group in one corner. And later on I went to the OUT. There was a New Zealander from Fielding and a New Zealander from Hawera and they both worked for Hodder and Tully. Now, this pilot, he was really good friends with us to. So much so that when his wife had a baby and baby clothes were very hard to get in England. Wool was hard to get so my wife gave her Beryl’s baby clothes. And Hugh Kempton was this pilot’s name and I always told my family he was one of the nicest guys I’d ever met. This was as a young man. Always smiling. He had real laugh lines around here. Why he latched on to us I don’t know. Probably because we were Kiwis I suppose. But normally crews mostly, especially crews that were trained in Canada, they would probably stick together most the time but generally if we went out for the evening it would be as our own crew. And we would get drunk, etcetera and stagger back.
MS: So what kind of things, what kind of things did you do in your off times? So you mentioned that you might go out for a few beers with your crew. What other kind of things did you do when you got some time off?
JW: Well, you couldn’t go far from base during the day because you might be called for briefing. This was an operational squadron. Mostly we were on base and you would kind of get in the mess and have a yack. In the case of the air gunners we’d go out and clean our guns. That kind of thing. You always had the odd button to sew on. Or write home. That, more or less just basic stuff like that. You know, mail home took quite a bit of time because everybody wanted to hear about you. I just wish that I’d told my family more. Because we were told to keep our mouths shut I kept my mouth shut. So they didn’t really have a clue what I was doing half the time. I wish I’d been a bit more open about it. I’m sure it would have meant more to them.
MS: So, you mentioned before about things that people did in the mess, jumping over sofas and things like that. What other kind of things did you get up to?
JW: Well, in the sergeant’s mess and I believe it was in the officer’s mess as well, there were these black footprints that went up the wall, and over the ceiling and down the other side. And they were just perfectly in the right place, you know, distance apart and everything. And evidently, they were put there by Popeye Lucas who was one of the early flight commanders of 75 Squadron. He was the culprit but I didn’t know ‘til after the war. I think I read Wing Commander Kay’s book that named him. There was that kind of thing. And we had a chap from Wellington. He was the guy who designed the 75 logo. If we were playing snooker and he missed the, missed the [pause] what do they call it? The pocket. You then took a shot at the lightbulb. So we finished up with no lightbulbs over the, over the tables. So we could only play in the daytime. We couldn’t play at night. We couldn’t play at night until the bulbs were replaced and believe me they’d be very slow in replacing anything during the war.
MS: So, Jack, did you and your, and your fellow crew members, did you have any kind of personal mascots or superstitions or anything that you did?
JW: Well I did. I think it was, I think it was my wife’s sister that gave me a little knitted doll thing that I put on my guns. More or less to please her. But something kept me safe, I don’t think it was that though [laughs] I think it was the prayers of my wife and my mother. We were, I don’t think we were really suspicious. Is that the word?
GT: Superstitious.
JW: No. I don’t think we were really.
MS: What about nose art on the planes? Did any of your planes have any good nose art on them?
JW: Had any what?
MS: Nose art.
JW: Oh yes, they did, Glenn would know this. On Y for York, it had a big soda syphon with a big hand squirting bombs out. And I think it was Glenn that showed the photograph at one of our reunions where I’m standing on a ladder in front of that, and there were several members. Bob Fotheringham was one, and probably a navigator but the fourth guy was the fighter pilot that had only dropped in for the day, and we said, ‘Hey you.’ But that’s, that’s the only one. And that [pause] that Wellington lasted about twenty trips before it went down. And roughly about three I suppose, three or four after I’d finished. That night as I explained before they lost six crews that night, and that was one of them. So —
MS: And I read that you used to drop bricks out of the plane with —
JW: Oh yes. I used to drop half bricks with rude words what Hitler could do to himself. And I think I used to imagine them coming down with a hell of a whistle and then plop, like into a bog [laughs] I mean I can imagine the Jerries ducking and running when they heard the whistle and then there was just a plop.
MS: Can you tell me about the thousand bomber raids?
JW: Yes. I can. I was, I was on OTU at the time. 23 OTU, and I was doing aerodrome control on the satellite. The chief flying instructor asked me if we’d, if a couple of us like to, Kiwis would like to do aerodrome control which is a duty pilot, which was only normally up to that time done by pilots. And we said we’d give it a go, being Kiwis of course you couldn’t have it any other way. So anyway we made a success of that. One day he rang me up and he said, ‘Wakefield.’ he said. ‘I’ll see you out on the runway in about forty five minutes. I’m going to do an air test and I’ll drop in and pick you up.’ And he said, ‘Bring your pyjamas and your tooth brush.’ And when I got in to the aircraft he asked me if I’d just test the hydraulics in the turret. And he said, ‘I can’t really tell you why I’m picking you up or what’s on but briefing’s at 4 o’clock.’ So 4 o’clock we went up and found out the thousand bombers was on. And what they did, they, they got all the front line squadrons in. Then all the OTUs produced fully trained crews that had just barely finished their training. So that’s how they got their numbers. I think the greatest number, I think was nine seventy, they never quite got the thousand if I remember rightly. But pupil crews they went as pupil crews. Us instructors went with other instructors. And in my logbook, I’ve got a Pilot Officer Monroe. And I think he’s the, he was the one ‘cause the timing was about right. He would have been a pilot officer and it kind of tied up with his other exploits in units. But anyways there was a Pilot Officer Monroe and I know he was a New Zealander. I only flew with him once, but I made a comment to one of my mates, ‘These bloody cow cockies are good pilots,’ [laughs] So, anyway we went on those three but with weather we were delayed a lot longer than they expected us to be together because all training stopped during that period. I think they were spread over three weeks. I’ve got the dates in there but I’m sure they were about three weeks. And they were all pretty easy raids because the heavy bomber force had gone in before us. We were on the end because we were more vulnerable. And in some of them we were more or less a picnic. Heavy fires burning, bags of smoke and flashes going off and all the rest of it. But anyway great publicity in England of course. That was, really gave the British people a lift because we’d been hammered before then.
MS: Can you tell me what it was like going to a briefing? What, what happened at a briefing. Can you just talk me through?
JW: Well we used to go in generally like there would be an assembly hall and there’d be a chart of our target for tonight up on the wall. And when the intelligence officer pulled that cover off the map of Europe we knew where we were going. That’s when I told you if it was Hamburg there was a big sigh. So that’s the first thing. The first time we’d know. Well, at one stage they withdrew all permission to live out because they reckoned that they knew where we were going before the aircrew did. Anyway, I still lived out despite orders because they had a friendly hole in the fence and I used to go out there and go home on the farm. Come back the next day about 2 o’clock, ready for briefing about 4.
MS: So you told me that one time you came back from a raid and you ran out of petrol on the runway just after —
JW: Yeah. Marham. Forget where we’d been now. And one motor cut out while we were taxiing and ran out of fuel. It was pretty hairy at times because the weather forecasts weren’t a hundred percent and your petrol load would be estimated. But if you struck an adverse wind of course that would gobble your petrol up. But sometimes they baled out over England if they were lost. They might not be able to land because of fog. Some went right across England and in to the Irish Sea and were lost. So it wasn’t just the operational side of it that was dangerous. There was a hell of a lot of other dangers as well. With Bob Fotheringham — one night we were ready to take off with a full bomb load on. He goes careering off the grass runway and then starts heading straight for the hangar. In other words his trim was all to blazes. So he throttles back, goes back to the end of the runway again ready for take-off. Trundles down the runway, gets up up to about sixty miles an hour and starts heading for the hangar again. Third time we got off but naturally I had no control over that so it didn’t make me very happy. Where we did take off, at the end of the runway was a damned anti-aircraft gun. You know, if you were a bit low that would bring you down. I didn’t like that there either. It’s just another little incident that I was telling you about. Life was full of incidents. Remembering them is the hardest part.
MS: Do you remember James Ward VC?
JW: Honestly, no. He was on the squadron at the same time and I’m positive about that but as we kind of congregated in our own little crew numbers to me he would just be a new chum. So I couldn’t, I couldn’t claim to know him. But you see I’m trying to remember seventy years ago now too. But I probably just looked at him as a new intake.
MS: Can you remember what it was like the first time you went on an operation? How you felt?
JW: Well, I suppose I was a bit apprehensive for a start. I suppose it would only be natural but I think that with the lack of detection methods we had a pretty good chance. And you’ve got to remember that if there wasn’t a moon it was absolutely black, you know there was no lights anywhere. You might see the odd flicker of a train being stoked as it went along the line but in full moon we were open. Really open. From any direction. We wouldn’t even see it coming. I didn’t like moonlight nights.
MS: And you told me before about the time when your aircraft identification —
JW: Oh the IFF. The IFF blew up on take-off and it had a detonator on it to destroy it in case of crashing. So the Germans couldn’t get access to any secrets. And ours blew up on take-off and the pilot called up asking whether to return to base or carry on. We were told to carry on. The ground defences would be warned that we were on our way out. And that was very very good. The only thing is they never told anyone that we were coming in, and we happened to be coming in over Southampton where the navy boys gave us a burst up the backside. It was quite severe naval barrage too. The next thing a fighter, a German fighter err a British fighter came up the side of us. Had a look at me. I had a look at him. And then he veered away which we were rather pleased about. And no doubt he was too. But I knew we were out of range. Probably a Messerschmitt 109. The chance of it being a German were pretty, pretty remote really. But anyway that was just another little incident that happened.
MS: So, as a rear gunner how, how difficult was it to detect whether an aircraft was friend or foe?
JW: Well to be quite honest. There is no other way to say this and there’s no other way to do it. If anything comes up behind you you squirt at them. You can’t possibly tell in the dark what it is. Now, he might be coming up behind you, not, being a friend but not knowing you’re there. But that’s just the way it happens. I had a friend that reckoned he’d put a burst into one of ours one night. He asked me what he should do. I said, ‘Just keep quiet.’ I said, ‘You’re a volunteer. You’re don’t want to waste all that training and experience.’ And it was just one of those things. He was very upset, and he didn’t know what to do but he did take my advice. There’s no point in admitting anything like that. Except to say that somebody come behind you, you knew and you gave them a burst. You can tell them that part of it. I didn’t feel a bit responsible for anything that got behind me. I would shoot at. In the dark and in the moonlight. I mean you can be in a classroom and they would show you all the designs and different shapes of aircraft. It means nothing at night. And of course around home bases you’ve got your navigation lights on. That’s a bit different. Although they did sometimes attack us on the circuit when we were taking off or coming back.
MS: How did you get on with the local people? Did you, did you meet a lot of the other local people and how do you think they felt about the Bomber Command being in that area?
JW: Well, the local people were fabulous for a start. And not only that they really, they really honoured us because Britain had taken quite a hard bombing. Our ships were being sunk at sea. Especially the merchant ships. And we were the only ones taking the war back to Germany. And I think for that reason we had a lot of respect. We were the main ones that were hitting back. The navy boys were fighting their backsides off in the Atlantic but the English people couldn’t see that. The bomber boys, they could hear them going and they could hear them coming back and then there was quite a bit of publicity in the papers. Where we had been to and all the rest of it. Now, I think that, I mean I for instance respected the English people. They were working in factories day and night. My own wife and her sister were working on munitions. And in the winter it was dark when they went to work and it was dark when they came home. So they were putting their backs into it. And the Home Guard were special. I was asked to break up a fight one night in a pub. And this warrant, English warrant officer who was in plain clothes because he was going to a dance, he said, ‘Would you come over here and sort this corporal out. This RAF corporal. He’s picking on a Home Guard. And that Home Guard,’ he said, ‘Is my local butcher. He’s a butcher during the day and home guard at night.’ So I went over to this RAF corporal who happened to be a boxing champion. Nobody told me that of course. And I went over, and I said to him, ‘What’s the trouble corporal?’ I was a sergeant at that time but a very new sergeant. ‘What’s the trouble corporal?’ He looked at my three stripes and of course there would be hundreds and hundreds of air crew around. You know, new sergeants and he would, he was permanent staff guy, so he’d more or less spit on us. So, anyway he called me a bloody sprog, so I hung one on him. And this warrant officer came over and hauled me off and he said, ‘Wakey, I asked you to stop a fight not bloody start one.’ So while, this guy’s hauling off me off my mate from Harborough goes and he gives this bloke another one. So the next day — overnight I heard that this guy was an RAF boxing champion. So the next day he sidled up to me and said, ‘I’ll take you on in the ring anytime you like.’ I said, ‘Do you think I’m bloody silly.’ There’s a difference between a roughhouse and, you know, boxing in a ring where a good guy can get at you and you can’t get at him. But anyway it all well that ended well but, you know, a sprog. Calling somebody that had been over Germany many many times a sprog. That was an insult. That’s why I bopped him.
MS: So you mentioned before about going to dances. What were the dances like in those days?
JW: Well I was a very, very poor dancer so I sat most of them out to be honest. I could go over Germany but I couldn’t face a girl to dance because I couldn’t dance properly. That, the chap from Hawera, Alan Campbell and the English warrant officer pilot. He was on rest with all — he was another instructor. We’d all done our thirty trips over Germany. So we totally resented being called a bloody sprog by a corporal who was PT corporal actually. I mean they have their job but I mean they were a bit officious and they were used to everyone jumping but I didn’t like being called a sprog so I filled his teeth in a bit [laughs] But I actually, I wasn’t, I was never bad tempered or anything like that. My natural nature wasn’t like that. But if someone insulted me that was different. You know, do unto others.
MS: When did you end up on 38 Squadron? Can you tell me about that?
JW: Yes, I served on 75. Then I went on instructions for instructing people for about nine months. Then I was asked to do the three, one thousand bomber raids. And a few weeks after that I was posted to the Middle East. And we went to this big aerodrome which I’m damned if I can remember. A massive one, a personnel base where they trained. Well they were checked crews because most of them had been trained. And we went into a big hangar there and you’d just mill round and if you see a pilot you ask him if he’s got a crew. That’s how we were crewed up. We’d never met each other before. Now, I happened to arrive there with two Englishmen off 75 Squadron and they said, ‘Are you in a crew, Wakey?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re not either.’ So then they came to me and they said there’s a Canadian crew who want to take,’ this was a wireless operator and a front gunner, ‘They want us, but they don’t want you because they’ve got their Canadian friend, rear gunner. So I said, ‘Well you go with them. I’ll find a crew.’ But they absolutely refused over several days. So the Canadians gave in and they decided they’d take me. Just shut that off for a minute.
[recording paused]
MS: So, Jack, can you tell me, you went to Mediterranean Command with 38 Squadron.
JW: Yes.
MS: Can you tell me how that was different to Bomber Command?
JW: Well I suppose it was only really different in living conditions for a start. We were under canvas. Apart from that the operational side of it was the same. And 38 Squadron dropped bombs, laid mines, dropped depth charges. In other words we were a work, you know, a maid of all works as far as bombers were concerned. And it was actually quite pleasant serving out there really. Apart from the odd dust storm.
MS: So can you just tell us the story about the trip where you didn’t get your lunch?
JW: Ah yes we were flying from Gibraltar to Lagos in Nigeria and it was eleven hours forty minutes. And after six hours I thought it was time to have something to eat. I called up on the intercom and said, ‘Any chance of any grub?’ And there was stone silence. And then the second pilot came down with some Jubes which I told him where to put them. And I was very very irate that they could draw our rations and couldn’t count to six as there was on that crew. And so it meant that by the time I got anything to eat it would probably be about thirteen hours. And so I was pretty irate and determined to see the CO soon as I got down to ask for a transfer from that crew. Anyway, I kind of forgave them. Got over it. Later on, when I was promoted, my pilot came to me and he said, ‘I see you,’ he didn’t, he congratulated me when I, when I got my pilot officer, he congratulated me. But when I got promoted to flying officer roughly about six weeks later because it followed me out from England — the commission. He flew at me and called me a little runt. So I said to him, ‘Well if you’ve got any grizzles about pay or promotion go to the Canadian air force headquarters. Don’t moan at me. I’m not even in your own air force. I’m not even the same trade.’ And he did a bit of a snarl. And after that I was asked to drive a truck from Suez to Benghazi for the air force. So while I was away on the road trip my crew went to Malta. And when I got to Benghazi the adjutant asked me if I wanted to follow my crew. And I said, ‘No. I’ll stay in North Africa.’ So we parted. Later on the second pilot came back to 38 Squadron in Benghazi and I did some trips with him. He was ok. I didn’t take it out on anyone else. I’m damned sure it was the pilots work. I don’t know whether he dumped my lunch or what happened to it. Anyway that’s one of things. But in four years of service I only struck two that were similar. Not a great deal to worry about.
MS: Generally, did the crews of different countries all get on quite well together or did you —?
JW: Oh yes. I suppose the only aircrew I took a bit of a dislike to were French Canadians. We didn’t feel that they were trustworthy. We felt that they were a bit devious. Apart from that we could fly with, you know, Irish, Scotch, English, South American, Australian, Canadian, you name it. We had one bloke from South America and I think he was a pilot officer and he started off to say Pilot Officer James Jose so and so and so and so. He had about twenty names. He was quite a likeable guy though. One of his names was named after an Irish hero that led some rebels down there in South America at one stage. He finished up with all these Spanish names and then his last name, his surname was O’Hegans. Quite strange.
MS: Were you all volunteers?
JW: Yes, yes. Definitely so that’s what made all the difference I think. You wouldn’t want reluctant air crew. Not really. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be fair to them. It wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the crew.
MS: On 38 Squadron where were you based and what jobs did the squadron do?
JW: Our original based was Shaluffa near Suez. And as the 8th Army moved up we generally landed on a desert airstrip and tents could go up rapidly. After all they might be already standing when we got there. And we followed Monty right up. Our squadron followed Monty all the way up to Benghazi in different stages. We were just more or less south of Tobruk when El Alamein broke up. And we heard the thunder of the guns in the distance. Montgomery opened up with a thousand guns, artillery. And we could hear the thunder in the distance. We weren’t far behind the front line at any stage but we very seldom got raided. The Germans weren’t strong enough at that time to waste their bombs on airfields or anything.
MS: How many tours did you do for Bomber Command? And can you tell us a bit about how it felt when you completed your first tour?
JW: Well the first tour of course I went on leave and breathed a sigh of relief. And as I told you I was instructing as an air, flight sergeant air gunner. And then I was asked to do the aerodrome control which we took on. My mate and I with half a dozen guys that were waiting to be re-mustered for different reasons. Some would have changed their mind perhaps and thought it was dangerous. I never asked them their story. One tried to tell me. He said, ‘I don’t know whether you know my story, flight.’ I said, ‘Well I’m not worried about your story as long as you do what I tell you.’ And they stayed and disappeared and replaced. So we were always, there was about eight of us most of the time. And of course I used to let these guys a lot of unofficial leave, you know. We had an Englishman live not far away and I used to say him, ‘You can go home for the weekend but remember if you’re caught I know nothing about it.’ I let an Englishman go home to London without an official leave pass and he came back a day late so I really went him and he started to cry. And I said, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ His wife had left him apparently when he got home when he got home. And I said, ‘Well you’d better bloody well go back and find her.’ He came back a couple of days later beaming from ear to ear. He was quite happy. But you know Kiwis are a bit like that. We’re adaptable.
MS: How did they decide it was your time to come back home to New Zealand and when did you come back?
JW: I can’t tell you the exact time I was away but all of a sudden, the word went through the grapevine that if you’d been overseas for a certain time, it might have been three years, you could apply to come home. So I applied to come home. I had a wife and child at that stage and we had to wait for, you know, our civilian ship. Not a troop ship. And we came home on The Akaroa.
[pause]
JW: Then when I got back here I was posted to, I think it was [unclear], once. I was introduced to Hudsons. And then I went down to Blenheim where I was aircraft recognition instructor because I’d done a course in England on that. And then we had a bloke there. Well known in broadcasting circles. Tusi Tala, Teller of Tales. He used to tell stories on a Sunday night on the radio. And there was four thousand men on that base, just out of Blenheim and they got us in the theatre there and gave a great spiel how everybody was still needed. And shortly after that you could apply to get out. So I thought it might be a good time to get out. Otherwise you’ve got thousands of army guys coming out at once etcetera etcetera. So that’s what I did except that I went back to a job I was doing before the war as an apprentice. The boss did his damndest to tell me not to join up, because he had been a soldier in the First World War. And their memories weren’t very nice you know. But being young I thought I was better than the whole German air force and why shouldn’t I give it a go. I mean we did have a certain bit of that about us. You know, we were as good as anybody. So I think that was one reason why we didn’t show any fear.
MS: So you had, from your logbook here you had a grand total of four hundred and ten and a half hours of day flying. And four hundred and nineteen —
JW: Night.
MS: And ten of night flying. Total flying time.
JW: Yeah. Night flying was always done in red ink. But you know some of our operations were over the sea. Over the Mediterranean looking for submarines. We might just be changing from one base to the other. So we’d go over the Mediterranean and then back in again and landed at our new aerodrome. That kind of thing. That was counted as an operation. Still dangerous of course. You know with, you know the reliability wasn’t a hundred percent by a long shot. We lost a wing commander doing this night stuff we were doing, you know. Going around the convoys. And they disappeared. No idea what happened when his rear gunner was washed up months later with his dogtags on. So you know he might have hit the drink, or he might have had engine failure and they never got a chance to make radio contact because we’re going round at a thousand feet. It doesn’t give you much time if you run into mechanical trouble. No matter where you flew in the air force. Training, operational or anything else there was men getting killed. I heard recently, and I think that it’s probably right, I think there was ten thousand killed in training in Bomber Command. We lost fifty five thousand over the six years and probably ten thousand wouldn’t be far wrong from what were killed in training accidents. Because they were taking these men, some of them were just like, boys, straight off the farms, out of the factories and turned them into four engine pilots. Some were bound to have crack up or emergencies that they couldn’t handle. But generally speaking they took their job very serious and they did it well. I’m very, very proud of the guys really.
MS: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command got treated after the war?
JW: Personally I think it was disgusting. When we were flying over Germany in 1940 the papers praised what we were doing. We were taking the flight to the enemy. And as soon as the war was over Churchill turned his back on us. But we were encouraged at that time and he made the great speech there that the so and so wind will reap the whirlwind because we were the only ones, apart from the navy guys, that were taking the war actually back to German soil, German cities. Making them wake up a bit. Our bomb load wasn’t that accurate, and it wasn’t heavy, you still do a hell of a lot of damage.
MS: So you went to the unveiling of the Bomber Command Memorial in London.
JW: Yes.
MS: Can you tell us how you felt at that ceremony and what that was like?
JW: Well, going back to the UK on a military aircraft I felt rather proud of the guys that were with us. I was proud of our exploits. And I was certainly very, very proud of the, rather sad to say, [unclear] there was twenty three thousand names at Runnymede and these were aircrew that have no known grave. In other words they would have come down in the North Sea. Probably in swamps, mountains or whatever, twenty three thousand. So when I see those kind of figures all I can think of are all those eighteen and twenty, and twenty two year olds that I joined with that were full of the joy of spring. And we had one guy with us, he had been washed out as a pilot and he was over the six foot. He decided to be an air gunner. He got in to the turret alright. Once you got in and sitting down you’d be alright. But when he got drunk his party piece was take somebody’s gate off and take it for a walk down the road, like a half a mile. Well there was gate he moved it took two of us practically all our time to lift it. In other words when he was drunk he didn’t know that anything was heavy [laughs] There was all those funny things, you know that happened. Those guys, he was another one that was lost. I think as far as I know I disagreed with Max Lambert because I went through the casualty list and he reckoned eight came back. I reckoned four. I do know this. That one Max Lambert quoted as coming back was lost over Greece because it’s in that book of obituaries, you know, from 1915 or something up to 1945. Jim Bolton — his name was in there. His aircraft collided with another one over Athens. But anyway whether it was four of eight I remember all of them. And I remember what their traits were, you know. Pubs and in the mess and all that and some were real characters. They were all decent guys though. They really were.
MS: Can you tell us a bit about what you did on that trip back to London?
JW: Well, he went to Australia. North Australia. And we spent twenty four hours there and they took us on a bus ride before we went to a hotel and naturally being in a hotel we were well looked after. And I had a friend Ray Tate from [unclear]. It was quite funny because he had hearing aids and my hearing was ok so if anyone knocked at the door I answered. And if there was question of going into lunch or meals he took me down and told me what was in the different terrines and all the rest of it. So we got on very well and I got mixed up one time and I got up early one morning to have a shower and I realised that something was wrong. And I said to Ray the next day, ‘I hope you didn’t hear me. I got up and had a shower about 1 o’clock.’ He said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I just take my hearing aids out.’ So that’s why he didn’t hear me. But anyway he was, he was great. I really admired him and liked him, and I think a certain amount of it was reciprocated. We seemed to just get on so well but he was what you call a really decent New Zealander. But apart from that in England of course we went to [pause] I think we went to Duxford, I think. I think we went to Duxford. A big air force museum there. I get mixed up because I did a few trips with different people. And we went to one of the bases up north where they had a memorial service in the garden.
MS: Have you been inside any old planes since the war? Any of the planes you flew in during the war. Have you been in it. Maybe at MOTAT. The Lancaster there.
JW: I went up to MOTAT. I never went inside the Lancasters. Perhaps because I don’t know whether we were allowed to. But I had a look and of course the turrets are the same but I had a look. I went to [pause] what’s that museum in London? Air force one.
MS: Not the Imperial War Museum. The Imperial War Museum.
JW: No. No. It’s an air force museum.
MS: There’s one at, I think, at Hendon.
JW: Yeah. Hendon.
MS: Right.
JW: I went there and saw a Wellington and walked around it and I couldn’t, couldn’t believe I’d actually flown in one. It was so unreal. It really was. But anyway the funny little thing happened there. I was walking around the museum of Ray Tate and he said, ‘Oh look Jack. There’s a photograph of a Wellington.’ I said, ‘Yeah. I know that photograph. I’m on the end of it.’ And there was two ladies, carers within earshot. And they called all the others over, ‘Oh come over here and take a photograph. Jack’s on it.’ So one of them leant over them and I’ll tell you the story in a minute attached to it, said, ‘Did those grey haired ladies catch up with you in London?’ What actually happened, I had a mate in Blenheim. And I told the story to reporters at, over in Blenheim and I went to the papers and I think they published it on the aircraft newspaper on the way over. But my mate used to say to me that there was always two grey haired ladies waiting on London bridge to catch up with Jack Wakefield. And I used to tell him it wasn’t me and I didn’t do it. So anyhow when we went over to London, to the Memorial, after the ceremony a lady came up with tears streaming down her face and thanked, thanked me for being one that went over. Really filled in for them, you know, during that critical period of the war. And one of these carers came over later, ‘Jack one of those grey-haired ladies has caught up with you.’ [laughs] I mean the grey-haired ladies story was just a myth. It just happened when you start a funny rumour, you know.
MS: Can you tell me about the Memorial unveiling at Mepal? Oh sorry.
JW: At Mepal.
MS: Oh right. Sorry. So after the Memorial service in London can you tell me about when you went to Feltwell and Newmarket and Mepal.
JW: I can tell you. Yeah I can. We were in a pub in Feltwell and I was talking to locals and I said to them that the wife and I were billeted out on a farm close by. And this chap sidled over, and he said, ‘Do you know the name of the farm?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. Chalkwell Farm.’ He said, ‘I own that now.’ He said that little brick bungalow, old brick house that you had, there’s now two American ladies in there that are writers and they’re just tenants. And you know the chances of that happening are one in a million. That he happened to be in there. But at Mepal it didn’t mean much to me because I never served there. But it meant a hell of a lot to the Lancaster guys because I think they went to Feltwell and I think they went to Newmarket and then probably Mepal, I think. So it meant a lot to them, but the service was done in a rose garden and what impressed me was the way that the little church served refreshments and all that. You know, all volunteers through the church. They made us so welcome. And the minister said he was eleven when the bomber boys were milling around the village. So you know there’s quite a lot of stories about these people but I’ll never forget that rose garden.
MS: So that is all my questions Jack but is there anything else that you wanted to tell us about? Any other stories or memories?
JW: I don’t think so. Not off the cuff. I think that pretty well covers it. I just remember one little thing. I should have started off with it. When we went to Levin they gave us about five different shots. You know, Cholera and all sorts of things and the guys were going down on Levin station and falling over. So they stopped leave.
[pause]
MS: So, there are only two Wellington 75 Squadrons air crew left in New Zealand now. That’s you, yourself and Eddie Worsdale.
JW: That’s quite possible. There was, you know, there was, as I say a gunnery officer, he was a gunnery instructor. I was also intelligence officer on a small unit where we sent Maryland and light American bombers. Went out over the Mediterranean looking for downed air crew or enemy submarines. That was another job I did and on 38 I got hauled in to become messing officer, and the guy that was messing officer never returned. You know one of those stories, Glenn. I’ll just take over while he’s away. Alright. And the guy doesn’t come back so you’re stuck with it. So one day I was in the mess. And I was fed up with the Canadians were moaning because the tomatoes were fried and somebody else was moaning because they wasn’t. I did my stack. And I’m in the bar and I’m banging the bar with my fist and I’m saying, ‘Where’s the CO? Where’s the CO? I’ll tell him where to stick his messing officer.’ The next minute there’s a hand on my shoulder. ‘You want to see me Wakey?’ ‘Oh hello, sir.’ [laughs] It’s surprising how you can sober up in a millisecond. Lots of funny little things like that. I remember one night our beer had arrived. Used to come back in a Wellington bomber from the Delta when an aircraft came back from maintenance. It generally had a lot of beer for the officers, airmen and NCOs. And we would probably drink most of it in one or two nights. And I remember the CO climbing up the centre pole with somebody trying to rip his shirt off, you know. The next day, ‘Good Morning Sir.’ [laughs] He was an Irishman. A good, good guy. There was another guy that used to — we only had two records I think. There was a wind-up gramophone and one of these records was, “Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry.” And there was one guy that absolutely hated it. So every time I saw him coming up to the mess tent I put it on. So he was, he ran in to it every time. in the end he lost his temper and jumped on it. That buggered that [laughs] we only had one record [laughs] You see a lot of that stuff was salvaged out of, or purloined out of Italian houses. Even our, we had a nice sideboard in the mess that the barman served behind and all that. All that furniture came from abandoned houses which had probably had the enemy through several times as well as us. And I remember one night we went and we were going to have a bit of a dance and we brought these American nurses over. About five or six. I went with the driver and we picked them up from the American unit and brought them over and they had quite a few dances with the guys. And then the party started to get a bit rough so I decided I’d take them back. So we took them back. And when I got back there was a guy playing the piano. He’d passed out altogether. There was a guy playing the trombone that could only lay on his back and go ‘uhhhh.’ Yeah. I don’t know what happened to the third one but anyway it was a real shambles. There was one night here. It was one morning I had terrible tooth ache and I had an abscess and I went to the dentist and this was out in the desert, you know, in a tent and he said, ‘I’ve got a,’ he said, ‘You’ve got an abscess Wakey and I don’t take them out normally until the abscess has gone down.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t care if you pull my head off the pain’s so great.’ So he said, ‘Last night in the mess,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what happened but,’ he said, ‘I’ve got lumps all over my head.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I saw you doing roly polys back to your tent down the [unclear] Road,’ [laughs] Oh dear. Anyway, excuse me.
[recording paused]
Thank you very much Jack. Interview’s now concluded.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWakefieldJ161029, PWakefieldJ1601
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jack Wakefield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:18:43 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Miriam Sharland
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-29
Description
An account of the resource
Jack Wakefield grew up in New Zealand and volunteered for the Air Force and the Army. After training, he flew operations with 75 Squadron from RAF Feltwell and with 38 Squadron in the Middle East. He describes a crash when he was instructing.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
Germany
Great Britain
New Zealand
England--Norfolk
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Hamburg
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
23 OTU
38 Squadron
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
briefing
crash
crewing up
Defiant
love and romance
memorial
mess
nose art
Operational Training Unit
RAF Feltwell
RAF Finningley
searchlight
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8262/BReattigDWRaettigDWv10001.2.jpg
3ab7c1317a3260b8d81d2bfca748d763
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8262/BReattigDWRaettigDWv10002.2.jpg
679938d3662096d1c517b545a0a22880
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8262/BReattigDWRaettigDWv10003.2.jpg
8f2221257b35b18cf20f1a1d8d3d28e3
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8262/BReattigDWRaettigDWv10004.2.jpg
29e0bb96990de39f42fa7d8e30fc3240
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8262/BReattigDWRaettigDWv10005.2.jpg
c739c590de2078a90fdfbce327a3f99b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8262/BReattigDWRaettigDWv10006.2.jpg
a76a1df8243b287064c5c89c681037c4
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8262/BReattigDWRaettigDWv10007.2.jpg
57d1df346b54197f0dbadb7ae70ed1ba
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
Raettig, Dennis
Dennis William Raettig
Dennis W Raettig
D W Raettig
D Raettig
Description
An account of the resource
72 items. The collection concerns the wartime service of Leading Aircraftman Dennis William Raettig (b. 1920, 1136657 Royal Air Force). Joining the Royal Air Force reserve in 1941 he trained as a flight mechanic (Engines) before being posted to 104 Squadron (Wellingtons) at RAF Driffield. This squadron number was later changed to 158 Squadron flying Halifax at RAF East Moor, followed by moves to RAF Rufford and Lisset. The collection consists of a memoir, correspondence with family and acquaintances, family history, service and personal documentation, lucky charms,personal items, cap, boots, squadron tie, research on bombing in Hull as well as photographs of air and ground crew and aircraft. It also includes an oral history interview with Joan Raettig (Dennis Raettig's wife).
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Sue Burn and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-23
2016-07-08
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
Raettig, DW
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
104/158 Squadron Bomber Command
[photograph of a Wellington]
I started my Air Force life as a Flt./Mechanic (Engines) at Squires Gate, Blackpool, in January 1941. Everyone remembers their service number – in my case 1136657 – and their first months in the forces. The endless marching around, inspections and going for your ‘jabs’ – mine took place in a church hall [italics] ‘Suffer Little Children” [/italics] was written above the stage. Not having been inoculated before, I didn’t really know what to expect, but at the front of the queue grown men were fainting even before they got to the doctor! A punch in the middle of the back by the orderlies seemed to be the cure – it certainly cured me!
It is possible that I am the longest serving member of 158 Squadron, posted to B Flight, 104 Squadron, 4 Group Bomber Command, at Driffield, in the 2nd week of August, 1941. Driffield aerodrome was built in the early 30’s, with the usual living quarters and 4 hangers – there were no runways, just a large grass field, the standard for an airfield in those pre-war days. The aerodrome had previously been bombed - a barrack block and a hanger had been badly [inserted] damaged [/inserted], it was rumoured that several personnel had perished.
104 Squadron was composed of 2 Flights of Vickers Wellington Mk. 2 bombers, powered by Rolls Royce Merlin X engines. The airframe was of geodetic construction, covered by a fabric which was stitched on with a very strong twine. It was designed by Barnes Wallis, who a few years earlier, had been involved with the airship R100 which was built at near-by Howden. The aircraft were mainly disbursed around the airfield, but some were parked in a field across a road which skirted the ‘drome. There was also a Blind Approach Training Flight, with 2 Whitley [inserted] bombers [/inserted], a Fairey Battle used for target towing for air-to-air firing; and most unexpectedly – an Autogiro – definitely not a helicopter! (used for weather observations over the North Sea) I serviced it on 2 or 3 occasions; and finally 4 Westland Lysanders, which were attached to a nearby army unit.
It was during October of that year (1941) that we were confined to camp. A number of aircrew and groundcrew were given 48 hours leave and the rest of us told that we had to prepare the aircraft for a special mission. We were later told that they were all going to Malta and spares would also be loaded on the ‘planes. As soon as I heard of the destination I volunteered to go (due to an accident, my parents were stranded on the island – and later Egypt) I was told that if any of the groundcrew failed to return from leave I would be considered. As it turned out one person failed to return on time and I was actually on the ‘plane when he turned up. [deleted] It was to be an [/deleted]
Aircraft and crews were soon replaced but it was around this time that U Uncle ([deleted] the [/deleted] [inserted] a [/inserted] dual controlled training aircraft) crash landed. This was my time to take over servicing the ‘plane and as new aircrews arrived they all took their turn on the ‘circuits and bumps’ training. However, a few days later I was reading D.R.O’s (remember Daily Routine Orders?) One paragraph read (roughly) that anybody who could successfully design a means of hiding the exhausts on the Merlin engine would receive an award of £200 (the stubs glowed red hot and were thought to be an easy target for enemy fighters). I thought no more about it until someone came from our office and told me that U would be the aircraft to test any of the designs and that I had to move my ‘plane to the parking area across the road from the main airfield and to take reasonable precautions in case of fire. That afternoon I got the tractor to tow U across the road to the parking area
Page 1
[page break]
[deleted] Across the road] [/deleted] and [deleted] I [/deleted] surrounded it with as many fire extinguishers as I could get hold of. The following day the first test arrived in the shape of a cowling to be fitted on the starboard engine, on the inboard [inserted] side [/inserted] so that I could see it all the time I was testing. After fitting the cowling to the engine, I started up the engine and waited for the oil pressure g[inserted]u[/inserted]age to ‘break’, but it was obvious from the way exhaust gases came out that it was a failure. Over a period of several days more were tested until one passed the ground test, so I asked for an aircrew to fly the aircraft. When the crew came out and I explained what the test was they refused to fly it – well any sane person would, wouldn’t they? However, we came to a compromise by agreeing that just the pilot and I would fly as low as possible within the confines of the airfield – which we did – it was a case of ‘Down quick’. On the third occasion of a test flight the airframe mechanic asked if he could go up as he wanted to do a check. I told him no it was too dangerous, however he said it was fairly important for him to check the wing in flight, so the three of us went on the test. Very quickly it was a case of ‘down, down’ both from me and the airframe mech.. Apart from the exhaust burning the cowling, the starboard wing had ‘ballooned’ due to the cord stitching the fabric had worn away. It was all down to the skill of the pilot, he quickly feathered the prop., somehow managing to control the landing despite having a damaged wing, and landed safely. However, all our troubles were not quite over – having had to cut the starboard engine the hydraulic pump no longer worked the flaps or the brakes. So the Pilot’s problem was how to stop the aircraft from crashing into two 500 gal. petrol bowsers on the perimeter track just in front of the hanger. Fortunately, it stopped about 20 yards away. That was the end of U Uncle – the next day it was loaded onto a ‘Queen Mary’ lorry back to the Vickers factory. The problem of the glow from the exhaust system took a little longer – a few days later we received some cans of a specially thick red paint developed by I.C.I., with instructions to paint it thickly on to the exhaust stubs, which was duly applied. When the engines were run the heat turned the red paint black – problem solved.
… and now we are 158 Squadron
As autumn turned to winter it became obvious that without runways, the aircraft would be in difficulties with take-off and landing. At one stage we helped to lay a steel wire ‘runway’, which was duly tested but considered unworkable, so it had been decided some of the aircraft would operate from R.A.F. Pocklington, at the foot of the Yorkshire Wolds.
Due to the lack of living quarters, some of the ground crew were based at nearby R.A.F. Melbourne (which was in the early stages of being built) and bussed to and from Pocklington every day. The bus used to drop us at the end of a short lane to our billet, where a farmer had conveniently (for us) built a potato pie to protect his crop from being frosted. There were about 15 of us and as each one passed the pie they helped them selves to a potato, then on to the cookhouse for tea. One of the gang would talk to the cook, while one of us grabbed a packet of margarine, which we soon found on a shelf at the other end of the counter. Later in the evening in front of a red-hot stove we baked and ate our baked potatoes – never have they tasted better! However, as they [sic] saying goes, all good things must come to an end, as an officer arrived one evening and ‘tore a strip off us’
It was during mid February at Pocklington that we were informed that we were now 158 Squadron and the recognition letters on the sides of the aircraft changed from EP to NP, so as we prepared for operations the airframe mechanic did the necessary alterations to the lettering. That evening the aircraft flew with the new insignia and more importantly, all returned safely from that first operation of the new squadron. 2 or 3 other raids were carried out from Pocklington with the loss of 1 aircraft.
The new squadron then returned to our own base at Driffield, and for the next 3 months was engaged in many raids on enemy targets in which many brave men lost their lives. Some however, were captured and for the rest of the war interned in P.O.W. camps. During early May, we were informed that the squadron was to move to another station and be equipped with Halifax Mk 2 Bombers. In due course we moved to different stations to learn more about these ‘planes.
About 20 of us went to RAF Leeming. The first question any sensible airman should ask on arriving at a new station is “What’s the grub like?” – the answer here at Leeming was mind blowing – pictures of a pre-war summer day, mother bringing a cool green salad to the table in the back garden and as a special treat a slice of [italics] pork-pie [/italics] – here the dream ended. Pork Pies (about 3” diam.) were available for breakfast, dinner, tea and supper at this station. You soon got your fill of them – it was a few years before I tasted another! On the whole our stay was like a holi-
Page 2
[page break]
day as we had no responsibilities and the weather was fine enough for some of us to swim in a small river at the edge of the ‘drome – including my friend Doug. Waddie, who not having any swimming trunks decided to hide behind some bushes and wrap his loins (ahem!) in 2 large handkerchiefs, jumped into the fast running river and immediately lost his dignity much to the amusement of a group of WAAF. I quickly picked up his towel and threw it across, but unfortunately my aim wasn’t good and it landed in the water – there was a great cheer as Doug. revealed all, to retrieve his towel. Shortly after this dramatic incident I was ordered back to Driffield, as I went down the narrow road from the Leeming ‘drome I noticed a fairly new factory with a notice ‘Pork Pie Products’ – so if any of you get posted there, you know what to expect!
Arriving back at Driffield, I was told that I had to report to the Group Captain. On entering his office he told me that he was as mystified as me as to what was going on but I had to check all the remaining aircraft and await further orders. One of my airframe friends joined me later in the day, and together we inspected the planes – there were only 8 or 9 Wellingtons left of the original squadron plus the Whitleys of the B.A.T. flight who had [deleted] there [/deleted] [inserted] their [/inserted] own service crews. On the next day more tradesmen arrived and we serviced those few planes. The following day, the 30th May 1942, was to be an important day in Bomber Command history. We were told to prepare the planes for a special raid. Regardless of trade we all helped each other – whether it was filling up with fuel or bombing-up and finally the aircrews came out started the engines and where [sic] off. It was an amazing sight, as squadron after squadron flew overhead for quite a long time. It was of course the first 1,000 bomber raid. Target Cologne. Two days later the planes were again prepared for ops. This time the target was Essen. That was the last Wellington bombing raid from Driffield by 158 Squadron. A few days later we rejoined the main squadron at the new station…
R.A.F. EAST MOOR
[photograph of a Halifax Mk 2 Aircraft]
Halifax Mk 2 4 Rolls-Royce Merlin XXII
About 9 miles north of York, close to the hamlet of Sutton-on-the-Forest, East Moor was one if the new breed of satellite stations, with well dispersed living quarters in the wooded areas.
The first days were filled with lectures mainly about the new aircraft and one I particularly remember was about security. After this meeting 2 or 3 of us decided to go down to the local ‘watering hole’, but just as we were leaving I was called back to ‘see in’ B Flight’s first new Halifax bomber. About half an hour later I went to meet my friends at the village pub and I saw them talking to a couple of civilians who on my entry, quickly left the premises. I was surprised at their quick exit and asked the lads what had happened. On being told that they had been asking questions about what type of aircraft etc., I asked the landlord permission to use his ‘phone and called the civil police and our own service police. On returning to camp we were interrogated by our police, but heard nothing further.
During the next few days, aircrew and groundcrew were arriving to bring the squadron up to strength. Again I was allocated to P, and was quickly introduced to the new aircrew as they came to test their ‘plane. When the crew came for their next flight I asked the pilot for permission for my new assistant (straight from training school) and I to go up for our first flight in a Halifax. We all climbed on board, and had a very pleasant flight on a lovely summer’s day – except the pilot didn’t warn us that he was going to do a few tests. The first inkling was when the outer starboard engine was stopped then feathered, next the starboard-inner, the nose dropped slightly and was corrected by the pilot, then the port-inner was stopped and immediately restarted when the nose dropped. Test over, and as the pilot lowered the undercarriage preparing to land, a horn sounded, not having heard this before, I asked the Flight Engineer what it was for. “It’s a warning to indicate that the landing-gear hasn’t locked” was the response. The pilot was receiving instructions over the radio. Climbing higher, he went into a fairly steep dive as he attempted to lower the under-
Page 3
[page break]
carriage – still the horn sounded. After a few more attempts he was told to use-up some fuel, then land. All aircrew were ordered to crash positions between the main spars, while my assistant and I lay on the floor with our arms protecting our heads. It was a great relief when I heard the screech of tyres as we touched down – the horn continued all the time till we got to our base. Later, a ground check was made and an electrical fault was found on the system.
Towards the end of the first month at East Moor, planes were prepared for a raid which we learned later was the 3rd 1,000 bomber raid. This time against Bremen. During that month of June several raids were carried out and any loss of aircraft was keenly felt throughout the squadron, partly because we were such a small unit – 2 Flights – 16 aircraft maximum. [inserted] One [deleted] new [/deleted] innovation to our routeen [sic] was the introduction of a heater van [/inserted]
The following story may seem incredible, but it actually happened. All I can assume is that a certain Canadian F/Sgt. rear gunner found a cheap way of getting someone else to pay for his beer – My aircraft was based close to a narrow country road and one afternoon I was working by myself, on top of one of the engines changing plugs when I heard children laughing close by. Looking down I was horrified to see a lady and two young children (about 4 or 5 years old) sat by the side of the plane with a tablecloth spread out with plates of sandwiches, then from behind I heard a man call his wife to ‘come and look at this’. Turning round I saw a man looking into the aircraft though the entrance hatch. I told him to leave the field as he was trespassing. He said he wasn’t trespassing as he had arranged to meet his friend Flt/Sgt - - who had promised to take them on a flight and if I wasn’t careful he would report me to his friend and get me put on a charge. This was getting very silly, so I told him to go to ‘that building over there’ pointing to the guardhouse and they would get hold of his friend for him. So off he went. I don’t know what happened but he never came back for his free flight. Warning! If any of you get called up again (there’s no knowing the way things are just now, they are short of recruits) don’t try the free drinks trick on me, unless you pass me a bottle or two.
[italics] It was around this time that a Group Captain from a neighbouring ‘drome insisted on holding an inspection of all personnel once a month (I must have been born with 2 left feet!). His name was Gp. Captain John Whitley and he was later to become very important to me [/italics].
The Squadron was heavily engaged in August and suffered many losses, but one cheery note was that P.O. Chambers, who had been with the Squadron since the Driffield days, finished his tour of ops.. September was also a very busy month but towards the end we were less busy and I ‘volunteered’ (you, you & you!) for a special mission, in late October. Actually, there were six or so groundcrew, an MT driver and a bus. The instructions were to drive 10 miles south of York on the A19, open the secret instructions and carry on from there. Arriving at the 10 mile spot, the secret instructions were opened. We were to proceed the RAF Harwell and to prepare our Halifax aircraft for [underlined] Glider towing [/underlined]. As we were driven down we discussed the implications and came to the conclusion that someone ‘high up’ didn’t know what he was talking about – not unusual! As far as we knew, none of our aircrews had any training for towing gliders. However, on to Harwell, or so we thought, but leaving the road directions to the driver, it was a little surprising when we entered a small town whose main claim to fame was a statue of a lady riding a cock horse (what ever that is). Fortunately, one of the party knew the area, so beating a hasty retreat – (which included reversing into the statue) and sped like the devil in case anyone had noticed our arrival). We were late reaching the gates of RAF Harwell, only to be told that the operation had been cancelled – and no we couldn’t be admitted to the camp. Our driver pointed out that he had already driven over 8 hours and wouldn’t drive any further, so we had no alternative but to find somewhere to stay for the night. Fortunately there was a farmer near by who agreed to let us stay the night in his stables and led the horses into a field. We had a restless (and smelly) night and set off early next morning for our journey back.
On arrival, we were so exhausted that we went straight to our hut (most of the party were in my hut) and lay on our beds and began to doze off only to be wakened by a Flt/Sgt. telling us that we were supposed to be working on the planes and if not, we had to volunteer to fly on a special trip – it was the easy way out[inserted],[/inserted] so back to sleep. The next morning we were told that we would be
Page 4
[page break]
taking over the duties of the squadron, whose own aircraft (Liberators) had been cannibalised one-at-a-time in order to keep their aircraft flying until they had only one aircraft. Our flight down to the South coast was uneventful, but the cloud base was rather low and we couldn’t see the ground so I cat-napped. Sometime later I awoke and was looking at a strange cloud rising just at the side of our ‘plane., about the size of a large black football – it then dawned on me and just as I was going to shout at the captain he called on the inter-com ‘Navigator we must be nearly there’. ‘Yes, just nip below cloud and confirm’. At least 4 German A.A. guns were firing at us, and looking hastily back, I couldn’t even see the Channel. Quickly climbing above cloud, we eventually reached our destination. But it was going to be one of those days best forgotten. I was given my instructions to try and keep the planes serviceable at all times and to make sure that all ‘planes were fully fuelled, as the trips were to be over the Bay of Biscay searching for enemy subs. Mine laying and submarine attack was the main aim.
As I got out of the ‘plane I saw a petrol tanker on the perimeter track, so I hailed him to come over, and told him we wanted to fill the aircraft immediately. ‘Sorry mate. You don’t belong to us’, was the response. So it was a case of ‘take me to your leader’ attitude. I climbed into the tanker, back to his base and had words with his officer, who more-or-less said the same thing. I was then passed up the ranks – Flt.Lt Engineer Officer, Squadron Leader, Wing Commander and finally the Group Captain. Repeating my request for refuelling the aircraft, I got the same answer – ‘No, I don’t know anything about you’. I tried another way. ‘Sir, someone must have sent a signal for reinforcements.’ ‘No, they would have told me about it’. Feeling that I was getting nowhere – ‘May I use the ‘phone , sir?’ ‘Yes certainly. Who do you want to ring’? ‘Our own base, there is little point in us remaining here, we may as well return.’ Ah! I’d hit a tender spot. ‘Now let us think this out’ he said. The solution he arrived at was that he would call in a WAAF typist, dictate an agreement to the effect that I was responsible for all the fuel used by our unit, and that we would both sign it – I know that it all sounds crazy, but that is basically what happened. [italics] (My recurring worry is that someone in the Air Ministry may find that document, and ask me to repay them for the fuel used. However, I am comforted that my fellow members of the Squadron will dig deep in their pockets to reimburse me.) [/italics]. However, having got permission I rushed back to fuel the aircraft, as a lot of time had been wasted and it was getting towards night-time. The tanker arrived and two of us, one on each wing, commenced to fill up. The driver warned us that if the ‘drome was attacked (France was only 20 or so miles away) the standing instructions were for him to pull away immediately. It rapidly got very dark that night, (remember it was early October). Suddenly, there was a big flash and bang, and without warning, the tanker driver started to pull away shouting at us as he went – we just had time to pull out the nozzles. Quickly fastening down the petrol caps, we slide down the wing stubs and met at the bottom. It was pitch-black by this time and we hadn’t a clue were [sic] any of the buildings were situated and just hoped that the rest of our party had found somewhere to stay. By good luck, the first building we got to was the NAAFI which was practically deserted, except some of our friends were there. They had similar experiences to us in that no-one on the ‘drome was interested in us – so it was a case of do-it-yourself – our lads just commandeered a Nissan hut, ‘pinched’ beds from other huts, bedding from several places and even broke into the coal compound. So, at least we had somewhere to sleep and in some sort of comfort. Someone explained that the big flash & bang we heard was their last Liberator blowing-up on its test flight. One can imagine that the whole camp, from the Group Captain to the lowest ranks, were so demoralised by the situation that there was no point in them being there. We had our own duties to attend to.
Our original instructions were [italics] ‘You’ll only be there about a week, You’ll only need your knife, fork and mug’[/italics] – we were to remain there until we were relieved early in December!. Things ran fairly smoothly at first, but then we all ran out of money.. The normal channels were tried – going to the accounts department and explaining the situation, but to no avail. Finally, a meeting was arranged with the whole detachment and a plan of action arranged – that on the next station pay parade we would disrupt the action by walking in front of the station personnel and prevent them from being paid. The pay day arrived and we caused absolute chaos – we were threatened with dire consequences, but eventually everybody calmed down and the Squadron Leader in charge of the parade promised to look into the affair straight after their men had been paid. We agreed to this and left the parade. The next day we were paid. So at least I could buy a cup of tea at the NAAFI.
We existed (couldn’t think of a better word) there for about 5 weeks – our only possessions knife, fork and mug. [underlined] [italics] No change of clothing. [/italics] [/underlined] One day, one of our own aircraft arrived unannounced, dropped off replacement ground crew (they returned the following day) and flew us back to…
Page 5
[page break]
R.A.F. RUFFORTH
It was the 5th December when we arrived back again in the area of York. Rufforth is about 4 miles west of the city and was a typical war-time ‘drome, with 2 runways and scattered living accommodation. One difference to our previous home, there was a working farmhouse [underlined] within [/underlined] its boundary. I was allocated to P, which was based close to a country road.
Routine was slightly different than before, in that we serviced the ‘planes early in the mornings (remember this was winter-time and day-light hours were short. It would be dark by 5 p.m.) Aircrews air tested, and in the course of early afternoon we towed each plane by tractor, onto the runway, fairly close together, and at a 25o angle to the runway. The planes were then topped-up with fuel (some times overload tanks were fitted), bombed up – often with a mixed load of 2,000 lb. H.E.s and incendiaries.
On one occasion there was an electrical fault and a canister of incendiaries fell to the ground, fortunately very few ignited and we managed to throw, and kick them out of the way. The reason for parking the planes on the runway was to save as much fuel as possible as some of the raids were at Turin or Genoa. I remember on the return of one aircraft, how the crew waxed lyrical of how beautiful the Alps looked in the moonlight.
It was common practice for ground crews who were on night duty, waiting for returning planes, to cat-nap as best they could. One night I was awakened by an odd noise, looking out of the door of the office, I saw a horse, then noticed 2 or 3 more. Rushing back in I rang the control tower. There was quite a panic as the returning aircraft were due in about 1/2 hour. “A” flight office was informed and together with some control tower staff we just managed to get the last horse in when the first planes arrived. Well! I couldn’t face having to eat horse meat for the next week or two.
It was possibly early in 1943 when it happened – [underlined] [italics] the worst day of my life. [/italics] [underlined] The day started just like any other at Rufforth, early breakfast and off to work. After we had ground tested, the aircrew arrived and proceeded with the air test. Everyone going for an early dinner as the afternoon was very busy – only one tractor per Flight, and pulling the ground-starter motors over, ready to start the aircraft. The aircrews came out after briefing, engines were started up, and while the rest of the groundcrew cleared the area of ground-starter motors etc. I remained in the aircraft while the pilot checked the engines one at a time, checked the fine/course pitch, and so on until he was satisfied, checking the petrol and finally signing ‘Form 700’ – which contained the signatures of all who had done any work on the plane.
Closing the hatch, with the ‘700’ under my arm I walked to the Control Tower to watch the planes take-off. It was getting dusk but I could just read the letters on the side of my plane. As the pilot opened up the engines, I was horrified to see white steam pouring from the starboard outer engine – a sure sign of a coolant burst (the planes were all powered by Merlin XX’s at this time). I expected to see the pilot immediately shut-down and stop the plane, but no, the plane carried on gathering speed, as it reached the end of the runway and lift-off. I watched the aircraft as it slowly turned to port with steam still streaming out behind. Then inevitably, there was a dull thud and a flash as the ‘plane disintegrated, killing all the crew.
I was in a state of shock. Had I missed something on my check? My F/Sgt. was on the balcony of the control tower, and he called down to me [italics] “That was your aircraft wasn’t it? You had better give me the 700 before you do anything stupid with it.” [/italics] That statement certainly did not improve my already troubled mind. What of the poor crew – they must have realised that something was seriously wrong and tried to fly to the other end of the runway, so that they could land again. It must have been hell for them before the inevitable explosion. My mind was repeating all the event that had gone on during that fatal day. Would I be arrested and await a courtmartial [sic]? I eventually returned back to my hut, and my friends tried their best to console me
Page 6
[page break]
On reporting for work the next morning the F/Sgt decided that I wouldn’t work on aircraft but work in the office and be a general ‘dogsbody’ for any one who wanted assistance. I heard nothing about the accident for 2 or 3 weeks, until one day I was asked to report to one of the offices, were [sic] I was asked by a Sgt. S.P. to verify that it was my signature on the Form 700 and that was all I heard about it officially.
I was in the office a few weeks later when our office clerk said to me that there was a rumour that we were moving to another station near the east coast called Lissett, do you know it? I thought for a moment, ‘Yes! It’s a hamlet on the Bridlington Low Road. I’ve driven through it a few times. It is notorious for a stretch of straight concrete road w[inserted]h[/inserted]ere idiot motorists ‘open-up’ to see how quickly they can kill themselves.’ – and so on to …
R.A.F. LISSETT
We were still working on Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, a newer version Halifax Mark 2. and Flights A, B, & C. I was very surprised when I was put in charge of R Robert, based just out-side what was to become the Radar Office and close to the bomb dump. [italics] (Most of those who served at Lissett will have realised how dangerous that base was.) [/italics] There were differences in some of the Halifaxes – they now had the large oblong shaped tail, apart from that, most of them had radar blisters under neath [sic], but the aircraft I was working on had a blister made of metal and the rear was wide open to the air. It was suggested that it was intended to be a lowerer [sic] gun position, which never materialised. I went on the first flight and when the ‘plane was airborne I crept into the blister and strapped myself in – I’ve never been so frightened, the flight itself was rather bumpy but the air-drag was trying to pull me out of the open blister. Very carefully I undid the strap and held tight-hold of it, at the same time pulling myself into the fuselage. What a relief!
Page 7
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
Dennis Raettig's wartime memoir
Description
An account of the resource
Wartime memoir covering Dennis Raettig's training at Blackpool and the posting to 104 Squadron at Royal Air Force Driffield in August 1941. Worked on Wellington aircraft and mentions that Driffield also hosted the blind approach landing flight operating Whitley and Battle aircraft. Tells of his time at Driffield including an attempt to deploy to Malta and deployment to RAF Pocklington during the winter. Notes that the squadron change number to 158 Squadron in February 1942. Relates training at RAF Leeming for squadrons eventual change to Halifax aircraft and preparations for the 1000 bomber operation on Cologne in May 1942 as well as the last Wellington operations shortly after. Goes on to tell of his time at RAF East Moor now with Halifax. with some anecdotal stories as well as relating story of a test flight and an abortive trip to RAF Harwell to prepare Halifax for glider towing. Describes another special operation trip to the south coast with problems with getting fuel for the aircraft. Talks of move to RAF Rufforth and describes routine as well as describing witnessing 'his' aircraft crashing on take off and its effect on him as the worst day of his life. Finally relates move to RAF Lisset.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
D W Raettig
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Seven page printed document with illustrations
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BReattigDWRaettigDWv1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1941-01
1941-08
1942-02
1942-05-30
1943
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
David Bloomfield
104 Squadron
158 Squadron
4 Group
animal
B-24
Battle
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
crash
fuelling
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
incendiary device
mechanics engine
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Driffield
RAF East Moor
RAF Harwell
RAF Leeming
RAF Lissett
RAF Pocklington
RAF Rufforth
runway
service vehicle
take-off crash
tractor
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/466/8349/PBallF1502.1.jpg
5ede7f39f4ebaab555201d7f5507a781
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/466/8349/ABallF150826.2.mp3
33f8775a395d909e38abdb459c93e449
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
Ball, Frederick
Frederick Charles Ball
F C Ball
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ball, F
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Frederick Ball and one photograph.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-26
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: So this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is me, Annie Moody, and the interviewee is...err the interviewer is Annie Moody and the interviewee is Freddie Ball and this interview is taking place at his home in Harrogate on the 26th August 2015.
FB:
AM: Yes, tell me where you were born, and what your parents did?
FB: Yes just by the post office in town...
AM: In Harrogate?
FB: Do you know the Post Office
AM: No.
FB :No? Right in the centre, of course, from where we lived we could look right into St Peter’s School playground, so I just had to go around the corner to go to school.and then when I was older, I went to Christchurch School.
AM: How old were you when you left school Freddie?
FB: Fourteen.
AM: And then what did you do?
FB: Err, mechanic, apprentice mechanic.
AM: Yeah.. for what, a garage or a car....?
FB A garage, of course, yeah, in Harrogate yes. I like anything to do with engines, motors, things like that. aah, then I joined in March 1939
AM: Right, what made you join the RAF then?
FB: Er, wanting to you know, wishing to, proud to...
AM; Why the RAF as opposed to the Army, or the Navy?
FB: Oh, the flying side I wanted of course.
AM: Right, you wanted to fly. So what was that like, joining up, where did you go to join up?
FB: Oh gosh I...um... I should really know that... near Leeds somewhere anyway
AM: Somewhere near Leeds? And what was that like?
FB: No, no problem at all, er I just took, er,oh to join up, I thought you meant just arranging it.
AM: No, actually joining up.
FB: I forget where we went, you know I should remember that, where I did the training, not far from Leeds, but I can’t remember where.
AM: It doesn't matter, what sort of questions did they ask you? What sort of... How long did it take? How did they decide what you were going to do in the RAF?
FB: Er, well, I told them, I told them what I wanted to do, they could have said no...
AM: And what did you want to do?
FB: To fly, and use the wireless of course, wireless, and radar.
AM: Mmm why radar?
FB: Oh, well...
AM: Because that's different to being a motor mechanic...
FB: Yes, well, I didn't know if I really wanted to be a motor mechanic, I was interested in motors and engines and things like that before I started in the trade and I did three years sixteen to nineteen and then I joined up in March '39. I was nineteen. I did fifteen years and eleven of it was commissioned, and er, I went into insurance.
GR: Did your brother join up at the same time?
FB: Well he was too young... no he could have done, no... he went into the air force as well.
GR: Yes
FB: And I can't remember, I don't think I remember what he did! But I quickly went into flying...
AM: What was the…..
FB: I went to be a mechanic first of all, then the first chance I got I joined the aircrew.
AM: What was the training like, Freddie?
FB: Er, well, interesting hard rather... plenty of square bashing
AM: Where were you doing the square bashing, Where did you go for that?
FB: Er, er, on the parade grounds, the parade grounds, I can't remember…...
AM: Can you remember where in the country it was? Lots of people went to Blackpool and places like that...
FB: Hmm, I know, it was near Leeds, but I can't remember where...
AM: Right ok.
FB: I spent a lot of time training of course, after that, after flying.
GR: And I think you did your radio training at Yatesbury.
FB: Yes that's right yes.
GR: And that would have been in the summer of 1940 while the Battle of Britain was going on so err
So, er... and then from Yatesbury, I think we ended up going to Cottesmore.
FB: That's right... Rutland.
GR: And you were part of 14 Flight OTU at Cottesmore.
FB: 14 OTU
Gr: That's right, and can you remember what aircraft you were training on then?
FB: Well, Cottesmore was ground training, drillers, and stuff, it was a training station
GR: It was a training station, and I think they had Ansons and Hampdens
FB No, Cottesmore wasn't an air- ground, ground crew
GR: Just ground crew right, so when did you first start training in aeroplanes?
FB: Er, oh, gosh, er, I don't know.
GR: That would have been at an Operational Training Unit, and I think that's where you came across the Hampdens
FB: February '43
GR: No, you were on operations by then.
FB: Yes, that's right
AM: What was it like, going up in the first time, in a plane?
FB: Well, I always wanted to, it was free to go, no problem, I wasn't scared, or anything like that.
AM: No, too young to be scared.
FB: I'm always a fatalist about things like that, that's why I wasn't bothered going on ops, you're going to die, why worry about it?
AM: Yeah.
FB: Your fate is all organised for you, you can't change it.
AM: So you've gone up on your first flight, and you're going to be a radar and radio operator, at what point did you meet up with the rest of your crew?
FB: Well, er, an Operational Training Unit they forms crews...
AM: So they get you all together and you, yeah..
FB: yeah all different trades
AM: Yes
FB: And they had to make certain that you wanted it that way.
AM: That you got...so who chose who? Did the pilot choose the rest of you?
FB: Er, I don't think so, probably the very senior ones did choose from the people available, but I don't think so.
AM: So then you started to fly together as a crew
FB: That's right, on operations, at the OTU, the training unit, which is the drill square, drilling.
AM: Erm, at what point did you, when did you go to your first squadron then to actually do proper operations?
FB: Errrrr
AM: What squadron was it?
FB: 44 Waddington, Lincoln
AM: Waddington, in Lincoln. What sort of planes did...
FB: Hampdens
AM: That was on Hampdens, So what was the radio operator and radar mans spot like in a Hampden? Quite cramped I think, what was it actually like in the plane?
FB: Er, it was comfortable, there wasn't a lot of room
AM: No.
FB: It wasn't that shape, but I felt no real discomfort. Very nice to fly in.
AM: What was the radar part of the job like?
FB: Er, well, you just had the screen in front of you, and you deal with it
AM: and what are you actually looking for, though?
FB: Er, it's geography, where you are, where you going, all that sort of thing
AM: And Gary tells me your first raid to Berlin was in March 1941
FB: Er yes,
AM: And that was your first operation?
FB: Yes
AM: Yes, so what was that like, were you scared, or excited?
FB: Excited, I don't know about scared, I always accepted things.
AM: A cup of tea arriving
[tea served]
AM: So then, you, so you're up there, you're doing the job, was it easy, was it difficult, was it just...
FB: Easy and a pleasure, it's what I wanted to do, I enjoyed it.
AM: What could you see? You're up there, you're in the plane, it is your first operation... what are you actually looking at?
FB: You look out and see everything that's there.
AM: What about all the other planes? Could you see other...
FB: Oh yes, so, if they're there, yes of course, there was hundreds of planes about.
AM: Was it at night?
FB: Our main job was at night, yes. but we did go on daylights.
AM: You did daylights as well, yes
FB: There was a thousand raid, I went on a few thousand raids, a thousand aircraft
AM: A thousand aircraft,in the day? Or at night?
FB: Errrrr
AM: I think they were night, weren't they?
FB: Mostly night
AM: Yes, so what was that like? A thousand planes?
FB: What...?
AM: What was that like, to see, could you see them, did you know there were that many?
FB: I knew they were around, yes, and it's nice to look down, especially on Berlin, all the streets... my first trip was to Berlin
AM: Yes.
FB: I went six times.
AM: Yes, what other sort of operations did you do, apart from the Berlin one?
FB: All, all bombing.
AM: Yes.
FB: We were bombing cities.
AM: In Germany.
FB: Yes.
AM: Yes. When did you move from Hampdens on to... I think you went to Manchesters?
FB: I did er, I did a tour on Hampdens
AM: A full tour.
FB: On Hampdens, then went on a rest at an OTU and instructed on the radio, and...
AM: OK
FB: Err, and then I was commissioned then, later.
AM: So you've done a whole tour, then you've done training at OTU, then you went on a second tour?
FB: Yes, I had a years, quite a long time, on rest, training in wireless and radar instructing..
AM: And then I think Gary says you moved to 49 Squadron.
FB: 49 Scampton, 44 Waddington, both Lincoln.
AM: Both Lincoln again. So you've done a full tour on Hampdens, at 49 Squadron did you start on Hampdens or move straight to Manchesters?
FB: A full tour on Hampdens, Manchesters, and Lancasters
AM: Which was the best out of the three?
FB: Ah, the Lancaster of course.
AM: Of course. Why?
FB: Four engines!
AM: Because of the four engines, all on Lancasters at 49 Squadron. And you did another full tour?
FB: Yes, and in between too, the famous thousand raids cropped up whilst I was instructing. And to get a thousand, they came from all over the place, including instructors, and including some not fully trained, to get a thousand. I did all the thousand raids, the first one was Berlin, it's nice to look down on the city.
AM: yes
FB: I remember quite clearly, yes, all that's there, you'll find most detail...
AM: Yes, I'm looking at your logbook now with all the different raids that you did, as well. Cologne...
GR: The first thousand bomber raid was actually to Cologne. Freddy was actually at OTU training people. Because they were short of aircraft, to make the thousand up, they...
AM: And you've just described the whole city was a mass of flames...
FB: That's right, you look out and there's all flames everywhere in the streets of Berlin.
AM: Petrol tanks, your petrol tanks were hit by shrapnel?
FB: Yes! We were hit a few times but mostly all shrapnel if not we would have been shot down!
AM: So you had to land at Manston because you were short of petrol?
FB: Yes, we ran out a few times actually.
AM: Crikey, and then I'm just looking at a few other things in your logbook...
FB: Red is all midnight flying.
AM: Yes, so a night flight here to Essen, erm, and you had to return from the target because of engine trouble on that one...
FB: Yes.
AM: So you brought the bombs back?
FB: Oh yes.
AM So what happened to the bombs?
FB: You just had to land carefully!
AM: You literally had the bombs? You didn't get rid of the bombs? Oh right.
FB: I would be surprised if a lot of people... we did dump them sometimes, we had to, but erm...
AM: I think sometimes quite often they were dumped into the North Sea, weren't they?
FB: Yes. Oh, you wouldn't do it over land, if there was any other way
AM: I'm looking again, here... Bremen, and again you had to return because of port engine trouble
FB: Yes.
AM: But you always got back.
FB: Well, I'm still here!
AM: Exactly [both laugh] Dusseldorf...
FB: Oh yes, most of the big cities raids, sixty...
AM: Yes... which did you prefer, flying, or instructing?
FB: Oh, flying!
AM: Flying of course
FB: Operational flying.
AM: What did you get your DFC for?
FB: Oh gosh
AM: For the number of tours?
FB: Part of it, I suppose, sixty... two tours, sixty trips
AM: Mmmm, when did you actually finish flying?
FB: March '43, and I got married the next day.
AM: The next day?
FB: I got back from flying, night flying, the same day in the afternoon I was married.
AM: Where had you met your wife?
FB: Whilst in Lincoln.
AM: She was a Lincoln girl?
FB: Yes.
AM: Was she a WAAF, or just she lived in Lincoln
FB: She lived there.
AM: She lived there, yes.
FB: She was older than me actually, 4 years older.
AM: So what did you do, so once you'd finished flying in 1943, what did you do then?
FB: Er, so I finished flying in, er, no I didn't finish flying, I was flying 15 years altogether
AM: Yes. Actually in the war though, when you'd done your two operations?
FB: Oh instructing.
AM: You were instructing
FB: Everyone did, yes,nothing else for it!
AM: And when the war actually finished, so you weren't demobbed, you stayed in... did they....
FB: I was already a regular, long term, I signed up for six years and then I signed for fifteen to qualify for the pension.
AM: Right.
FB: I was very young to have a pension for life.
AM: Yes, very young. Crikey.
FB: I had four pensions altogether, a private one as well...
AM: Yes. What did you do after you left the RAF then?
FB: Insurance.
AM: Right, okay thinking back...
FB: Erm, erm, it’s not like ….it was your own business sort of thing
AM: Yes
FB: You buy a book, from another agent, with all the customers, everything done you pay him for it.
AM: I remember Royal London coming round to our house with this book, yes..... Any stories from the war, any funny stories about what happened?
FB: Er, I dunno, it was nice looking down on Berlin, you know, look down on all the streets and things like that , uh, and I liked to be doing it, I was glad to be doing it, no forcing involved!
AM: When you say you wanted to do it, why?
FB: Because the war was on, duty.
AM: So it was duty to do it?
FB: I did enjoy it, that's the reason.
AM: What did you think, in retrospect now, do you still think that?
FB: Do I think what?
AM: That is was our duty to do it?
FB: Oh yes of course, oh yes.
AM: Yes. I think Gary is telling me that your brother was shot down during the war.
FB: Yes, he was a prisoner of war, he was two years younger.
AM: Yes, mmhmm.
FB: He died, eventually. He died. A normal death.
AM: Not….
FB: Many years later.
AM: I was going to say, many years later...
FB: He had six children
AM: Crikey!
FB: I had four marriages, and one child.
AM: Ha ha, just the one. So, unless you have anything else interesting any interesting stories, I'll switch off and let you enjoy your tea.
FB: Er, I dont know about that er, I don't know what to say...
AM: Anything particular..
FB: I wanted to do it, I volunteered to do it, I enjoyed it, and it was lovely to look down on Germany, knowing they were under, that we'd got them like a... I can't explain now. Doing the job.
AM: Doing the job. Absolutely, yes helping to bring the war to an end.
FB: Thats 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
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frederick Ball
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Gary Rushbrooke
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-26
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:19:36 audio recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABallF150826
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Description
An account of the resource
Frederick Ball grew up in Yorkshire and trained as a motor mechanic, before he joined the RAF in 1939. He completed two tours with 44 and 49 Squadrons, as a wireless operator flying from RAF Waddington and RAF Scampton.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Carmel Dammes
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Rutland
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
44 Squadron
49 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Hampden
Lancaster
Manchester
Operational Training Unit
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Scampton
RAF Waddington
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/474/8361/LClydeSmithD39856v2.2.pdf
e0d96effd48c511db0b4d3f3418f4285
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
Clyde-Smith, Denis
Clyde-Smith, D
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 26 items and concerns Squadron Leader Denis Clyde-Smith Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross, who joined the Royal Air Force and trained as a pilot in 1937. He flew in the anti aircraft cooperation role including remotely piloted Queen Bee aircraft before serving on Battle aircraft on 32 Squadron. He completed operational tours on Wellington with 115 and 218 Squadrons and Wellington and Lancaster with 9 Squadron after which he went to the aircraft and armament experimental establishment at Boscombe Down. The collection consists of two logbooks, aircraft histories of some of the aircraft he flew, photographs of people and aircraft, newspaper articles and gallantry award certificate.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Clyde-Smith and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-09-19
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clyde-Smith, D
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LClydeSmithD39856v2
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot's flying log book for Denis Clyde-Smith covering the period from 10 May 1937 to 31 May 1942. Detailing his flying training, Operations and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Sywell, RAF Sealand, RAF Henlow, RAF Calshot, RAF Watchet, RAF Biggin Hill, RAF Farnborough, RAF Weston Zoyland, RAF Benson, RAF Ringway, RAF Wing, RAF Harwell, RAF Marham, RAF Lichfield, RAF Fradley and RAF Tatten Hill. Aircraft flown in were, Tiger Moth, Hawker Hart, Audax and Fury, Queen Bee, Avro Prefect and Tutor, Moth, Swordfish, Wallace, Magister, Henley, Battle, Gauntlet, Hurricane, Scion, Monospar, Percival 96, Leopard, Vega Gull, Proctor, Walrus, Gladiator, Lysander, Anson and Wellington. He flew a total of 30 operations with 115 Squadron and 218 Squadron. Targets attacked were, Boulogne, Hannover, Dusseldorf, Brest, Berlin, Hamburg, Lorient, Keil, Cologne, Bremen, Munster and Osnabrück.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
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 Air Force. Coastal Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Germany
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Bedfordshire
England--Berkshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cheshire
England--Hampshire
England--Kent
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Somerset
England--Staffordshire
France--Brest
France--Lorient
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Osnabrück
Wales--Flintshire
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1941-02-07
1941-02-10
1941-02-11
1941-02-12
1941-02-15
1941-02-25
1941-03-02
1941-03-03
1941-03-12
1941-03-13
1941-03-14
1941-03-15
1941-03-16
1941-03-30
1941-03-31
1941-04-03
1941-04-04
1941-04-07
1941-04-08
1941-04-09
1941-04-10
1941-04-11
1941-04-12
1941-04-13
1941-04-14
1941-04-15
1941-04-16
1941-04-17
1941-04-22
1941-04-23
1941-04-25
1941-04-26
1941-05-16
1941-05-17
1941-06-13
1941-06-14
1941-06-15
1941-06-16
1941-06-20
1941-06-21
1941-06-23
1941-06-24
1941-06-26
1941-06-27
1941-06-29
1941-06-30
1941-07-04
1941-07-05
1941-07-06
1941-07-07
1941-07-08
1941-07-09
1941-07-10
1942-05-30
1942-05-31
Title
A name given to the resource
Denis Clyde-Smith's pilot's flying log book. One
115 Squadron
15 OTU
218 Squadron
27 OTU
aircrew
Anson
Battle
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Flying Training School
Hurricane
Lysander
Magister
Operational Training Unit
pilot
Proctor
RAF Benson
RAF Biggin Hill
RAF Calshot
RAF Farnborough
RAF Harwell
RAF Henlow
RAF Lichfield
RAF Marham
RAF Ringway
RAF Sealand
RAF Sywell
RAF Weston Zoyland
RAF Wing
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
training
Walrus
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/491/8377/AClarkeE150817.1.mp3
8d1fa9fcebb570507c9570e843139bb8
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
Clarke, Eric
E Clarke
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clarke, E
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Concerns Eric Clarke (1051928 Royal Air Force). He served as a wireless operator / air gunner with 49 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview and two photographs.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Eric Clarke and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Eric, it’s lovely to see you this morning and as you know I want to talk to you on behalf of the Bomber Command, International Bomber Command Memorial Centre. My name’s Annie Moody. We’ve met before lots of times and I’m interviewing Eric where he lives at Carcroft and it’s Monday the 17th of August 2015. So, Eric where shall we start? Can we start by, just tell me a little bit about where you were born and your childhood?
EC: It so happens the first article I did was in the days of, not computer, typewriters.
AM: Yes.
EC: Typewriters. Not a computer. And used to get a sheet of foolscap and my little portable typewriter and I am doing now and then I started. My father died when I was only eight. Now, that is the first line, first page of the article that I have done in recent years and since the impact of the computer. Are you alright so far?
AM: Alright so far. So your dad, your father, died when you were eight.
EC: Yeah. Right, well, that’s interesting. Where was I born? I was born here and here I am.
AM: In Doncaster. In Carcroft.
EC: Go on.
AM: Were you born in Carcroft?
EC: Go on.
AM: Doncaster.
EC: You’ve got a main road called Owston Road. Did you go to the top of the hill? Well, anyway this building is on the edge of a fairly large, which was for a long time, a colliery housing estate built by the, at that time it was, all around here there’s bore holes of some sort. Here, top of the hill, woodlands when you come to the woodlands and eventually they got one bore hole about three, four hundred yards along the lane and there was still a little water in a hollow like that and then the bottom of the hollow where they dug and they left it and over the years it’s been, it’s been called Witches Hollow and all sorts of things. Of course it’s the coaching lane as you go out and you wind around and it goes a little hollow like that and at the bottom of the well, or what do you call it? What’s the –
AM: Yeah. The well -
EC: Well.
AM: The well.
EC: And then down to the main [Aspen?] Road. The A15. Now, this is where I [] looking at the wall, my documentation, you know.
AM: Don’t worry about it. Where did you go to school, Eric?
EC: Here. Let me -
AM: Go on.
EC: Explain my birth ‘cause that’s important. Where we are, oh dear, just give me a minute. Anyway, the Owston Road which is the edge of the colliery housing estate.
AM: Right.
EC: And this Owston Road and then then there’s [Dereham New Street]. Colliery housing goes from two [102 all back?] then the next street, the last one on the estate is Paxton Avenue. That, coming down lower down [used to be] Carcroft, where the post office is. The shops have been developed and I was born and [black jack?] blamed this, it’s something to do with being a hundred and two. I’ve jumped a few years.
AM: Don’t worry.
EC: It’s important. Let me get it properly.
AM: It’s all good stuff.
EC: Right. I wasn’t born here but I lived here ten years old. So, we’ll start from there. I was born at another colliery estate only two miles down the road. Bentley Colliery. It has a history because of an explosion with thirty one killed over the years. Now, a private, a Nottingham, a Nottingham private colliery company called Barber Walker and Company sank a deep mine. They came from Nottingham where they had several mines but they were shallow mines. They came to South Yorkshire for the deep coal mines and my, I’ve got to go back to my father and mother are both Nottingham bred but first of all to my father, see I’ve made a chart that big with the whole family.
AM: With the family, a family tree on it.
EC: Yes. Chart. Oh yes it is my family tree. Well, I’m going back to 1730 and my ancestors, male ancestors all or most of them worked on the land in Chicheley Hall. Have you heard of that?
AM: Chicheley Hall. Yes I have.
EC: A very famous house and one reputation is that he was Lord Admiral on that. Admiral Lord Beatty. Admiral Lord Beatty.
AM: Admiral Lord Beatty.
EC: A famous World War One man. Now he had Chicheley Hall and a massive estate and all my ancestors either worked on the land or in the big house itself. The Hall. From footmen and so on. Right. And the women also on the land and the usual agricultural workers of those days. Right. We’re trying to get along quicker. A little more quickly. In the early 1800s they started a migration north to Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire and finally they came to Nottingham where women went in these factories as part of the, what do you call it the –
AM: Industrialisation.
EC: You can go to the top of the class on Monday. You’re a knockout.
AM: Thank you.
EC: Yes, and my father’s, I think he was a land man anyway but there is one man who didn’t migrate to Nottingham and he was in the army in World War One and got a military medal and he’s buried somewhere in [Chicheley?] Abbey and he’s there again and I built up this -
AM: Your family tree.
EC: They, there was no computer and there were no, I had to do all this on those –
AM: Right.
EC: [I have brochures on this] why I mentioned the estate Carcroft here. That’s where I spent the first ten years of my life. Well my mother and father migrated to South Yorkshire and my father went to Bentley Colliery and we occupied a colliery house. 75 Balfour Road, Bentley. Yeah. I was born there on the 13th of April 1913. Am I reading it right?
AM: Yeah. Yes. You’re a hundred and two so 1913.
EC: [Three weeks’ time.]
AM: Where did you go to school Eric?
EC: Here.
AM: In –
EC: At [?]. My father died when I was only eight. I shall have to move on quicker. It’s taking all this time to explain the first sentence.
AM: That’s ok.
EC: I’m being critical again you know.
AM: It sets the context Eric.
EC: I had a brother three years older than me and he said I was a prickly little sod [laughs] There you go.
AM: When, how old were you when you left school?
EC: Ten.
AM: You were ten.
EC: Ten. Right that’s why this story is a bit difficult.
AM: Right.
EC: The next, my father died. He was only thirty one. He had cancer and he was riddled and in those days there was no pension. No money, no support and you died with what you put in your pockets and all my mother’s family on my mother’s side, it was big family, about five six brothers. However they migrated with Barber Walker Company, brought all the miners to Bentley and Carcroft [?] and as I was born at 75 Balfour Road. Then, as I was born my mother became pregnant again quite quickly and we had, I had a sister, Freda born August 22nd 1914 and this house was only two bedroom, so, and my mother, the roving type anyway she, in no time at all we got a private house on the A15 only two miles from here and he went, carried on and from that moment from that moment of moving I gather my father started to go down and he didn’t go to work. He’d gone. Right, so no pension, no money, started looking around. My mother was very busy, hardworking, all the rest of it, ‘Take that shirt off,’ ‘cause, you know, she was you couldn’t move without her –
AM: Without her washing -
EC: Inspecting me. And Freda was born at the same house and then, as I was saying, there was no money. There was nothing. So the first thing my mother thought well I’ll get back to my roots and dad’s roots and get some help [from home] and start again. She started and stopped because my mother was very unsettled and [couldn’t be nice to anyone.] A hard working person anyway and she, this is rather strange right, she came back over here to start sorting things out she easily, she had a brother who had a motorbike and he fetched her to go to Nottingham and when she was there one time she bumped into [a former?], went on the back of the motorbike and in fact she was [only with him anyway] and it happened that she went to school in Nottingham.
AM: Is that the clock?
1629
EC: It [?] now and again and gives you the right time but not the others.
AM: Ok. Just coming back to school, you said -
EC: Yes.
AM: You left school at ten years old.
EC: Yes. I’ll try to go on to that now. Sorry. She met this, on a trip to Nottingham she met, bumped into a [mate?] from the Nottinghamshire school she used to know. [He was ? anyway] 1914 and he was in her same plight. He was a widower and he’d got four children. Unfortunately, didn’t know then he got two who were backwards, which we called lack of learning. Two very bright children.
AM: Two not. Yeah.
EC: And my mother had got three. Anyway, they came together like, like here was a man who met all her needs. Never mind [how or what?]. He was a miner and so they married and in no time at all apparently they met [only?] two or three months she was there and she was pregnant and again in no time at all upped sticks and here we are. We got to this Bentley Colliery. [I’m trying to remember]
AM: Don’t worry ‘cause I want to get to where you left school and then what happened between then and joining the RAF.
EC: Right ok. They was married anyway and [a child on the] way and we came from Bentley and got married here. Bullcroft Colliery.
AM: Yeah.
EC: That’s the colliery for this area.
AM: Ok.
EC: Bullcroft.
AM: Yeah.
EC: It’s Barber Walker and Company. [pause] And I went to Carcroft School which was at the bottom of the street. One of them modern schools and it was opened the same year as my birth day. I was as old as the school and in fact I attended the anniv -
AM: Anniversary.
EC: Yes, and my name’s on a brass plate outside the school. So that was the start of the bit getting along Eric. Right, and then when I got to school –
AM: What did you do when you left, did you take your school certificate?
EC: Not in those days.
AM: No. What did you do when you left school then?
EC: Right. Right. I was at Carcroft school, they married, my mother and father were still having children and in no time at all from a family of four we, a family of nine.
AM: Nine.
EC: [?] on the chart the results show how it was and we moved here nineteen whatever, I think we moved here in 1910. We did the ordinary school. They did have, you sat for grammar school.
AM: Yes.
EC: And in those days my father who, well you can imagine the terrible family conditions. It was terrible. They never found Eric anywhere because he was crouching under the table in the bedroom upstairs out of the way. But I was doing well at school, quite bright, I can’t remember so much of it [?] skip this anyway. My father, my stepfather was violent. My mother was as violent and so you can imagine how they got on except have children and in no time at all they’d got five. Well, [?] in those days the bright boys in the class were selected to sit for the West Riding County Council for the grammar school at Doncaster.
AM: Ok
EC: Not Very big and there was only a few from this schools because this local government wise was under the administration of the West Riding County Council.
AM: Yes.
EC: And so to cut that story short there was violence and all sorts and I was always missing upstairs doing, trying to do homework of a sort and then the result of all that was that when I was fourteen oh I was chosen to sit for the [?] but my stepfather [?] in the examination, ‘We can’t afford to send you to grammar school,’ and that was -
AM: So you didn’t get to go.
EC: I didn’t go and I was fourteen and on about the 10th of May, something like that I got a bike in those days and it’s from the house to the office in Doncaster. Coming up to fourteen my mother said, ‘You’re not going down the pit. Here write the application for that job, office boy in Doncaster.’ ‘Yes mum.’ Right. I started working in Doncaster as a fourteen year old boy with ten shillings a week.
AM: Ten shillings.
EC: Ten shillings a week and it so happened that it was a family firm. A World War One family but it was a man with five sons. So I started there. I mentioned the five sons because there was no hope of –
AM: Progression.
EC: Reaching forward but at the same time there was no time [for boys going to] grammar school. So I was there plodding away at this and couldn’t get up the ladder and in a way that was [?] office boy, rent collector, all sort of duties [I had a knowledge of] Doncaster because I was visiting solicitors and so forth all at close knit city centre and my firm had dealings with them all.
AM: Yeah.
EC: I was [giving out] ten to thirty letters delivering around town. Anyway, there was no real progression except the ordinary one. Ten shillings a week. One year I got twelve and six. One year I got fifteen. And progress there and I jumped to it and that was all I did from leaving school was work at Ernest Woodman and Sons, 15 Young Street, Doncaster.
AM: Ok.
EC: And very well experienced in Doncaster. Legal, which attracted me. Legal World. Solicitors.
AM: Yes.
EC: Accountants and two other debt collectors. Well you can imagine what the debt collectors were like immediately after the war.
AM: Ahum.
EC: And 1926 strike and so here we go. My mother, hot tempered, she got, she tried to get me away from my stepfather. I was a thorn in his side somehow. I think it was because his children were not as bright as my mother’s so, hang on a second. Hang on.
AM: Do you want me to switch it off? Ok.
EC: This article that you’ve seen, it’s a bit if what I’m doing at the moment. Can you help?
AM: But they want to hear your voice. That’s the thing. We want your voice telling us.
EC: And what a voice at this moment.
AM: Absolutely. So you’ve worked in Doncaster.
EC: Yes.
AM: And you’ve worked there for a number of years
[sound of knocking on the door]
AM: Oh hang on.
[machine pause?]
EC: My mother was always moving on and the family bigger house, bigger house, family, bigger house. Job’s no good to you. Leave the job. Anyway, so we went from Bullcroft Colliery and then the family was enlarging and the house was not big enough for the family. Looking around and we finished up at Woodlands on the Great North Road.
AM: Ok.
EC: Have you been there?
AM: No. I don’t know it.
EC: Well it’s the A1 M.
AM: Yes.
EC: The end A1 M [came our?] house. We moved out, we finished up, finally we moved to Woodlands of course from the age of ten to forty, not forty.
AM: Fourteen.
EC: 1940.
AM: Oh right 1940.
EC: We finished up at Woodlands in a four or five roomed house and got transferred to Brodsworth Colliery because he was cricketer, first class and of course the collieries if you played cricket up there with the nobs you got a job and that’s how it worked. You got a job but it so happens he was lazy and they were clashing all the time and the eldest of this family of ten or more was my brother George and he was similar. He was like [our mother?] and he actually, the two of them fought and knocking the living daylights out of each other and then there was another move and we finished up at Woodland. Did you come by The Highwayman?
AM: I can’t remember.
EC: Come by it at the bottom.
AM: Oh yes. Yes.
EC: Yes. Well the council houses on [the edge of the next] street right down there tacked on to the Brodsworth, so we got to this, how can I put it [pause] well I was, because I was think, I was a good scholar I think and I, with reading and so on and my teacher got me to stand up in class and read right and there was something about wanting to speak because my teacher was a World War One veteran, a tank captain and a captain of a tank as well as a captain by rank. Yeah.
AM: Right.
EC: And I remember once I wanted to do it, do things apparently I was good at. I could stand up, speak well and the boys you know were deep in dialect. I wasn’t. I was avoiding it like the plague. Even at that age. I don’t know why. And –
AM: You’ve told me about working for that family firm.
EC: Yes.
AM: And you’ve told me about doing the debt collecting. What if we move on a little bit what, how did you come to join the RAF?
EC: Well, before then I I married the first girl who winked at me and only had the one girlfriend and we were married seventy years anyway.
AM: You were.
EC: So your question again was?
AM: So you’ve started work and you’ve got married. What made you, when we get to -
EC: Right.
AM: The beginning of the war what made you join the RAF?
EC: Right. That’s, that’s answered as well, in the book, quite clearly. When we were younger, the 1930s, so on early mid-30s, Finningley became an RAF aerodrome and we, I was going around town and so on I was so used to seeing the Hampdens and the earlier ones and also my ten years to fourteen years was a period of being with the family. I liked to go back home at that age I couldn’t stay away and my mum wanted my money.
AM: Yeah.
EC: Only ten bob.
AM: Yeah.
EC: So I decided, I became very interested and my mother said, ‘better not going down the mine.’
AM: That’s not going down the pit.
EC: Not going down the pit and so on and so on and it was that really and my associate in Doncaster, the people. My squadron for instance, 49 squadron were at Finningley.
AM: They were at Finningley.
EC: Finningley.
AM: But can you, can you remember when you actually went to join up and then what the training was like? What year did you join up, Eric?
EC: I joined up, well that, [I’m not sure about] this really, war was imminent.
AM: Yeah.
EC: We all knew that and all knew, some were joining up you know and getting out of the mines.
AM: Yeah.
EC: Some of the younger ones. However, I wanted to, I decided I’m going to fly. That’s all.
AM: Yeah.
EC: Except I’d seen the boys in blue in Doncaster going into the offices, getting, bringing their wives and getting accommodation and all that and it very gradually became a big RAF station and it also became an Operational Training Unit. Operational Training Unit.
AM: Yes.
EC: And then a small squadron moved in and an awful lot of [? moved in]. In 1939 war was declared and there were Whitley’s which were different, a twin engine bomber.
AM: Yeah.
EC: And Hampdens. Twin engine medium bomber sort of thing. Anyway, I got my brother to take me on his motorbike pillion and, to Sheffield which was a local recruiting office for the whole of South Yorkshire really and I went through the routine and passed one way or another although I did have some ear trouble but nothing to worry about and I was, I wanted to be a navigator. I knew damn all about navigation except I’d become interested in it in my classroom with this captain.
AM: So were you accepted as a navigator?
EC: No. No.
AM: No.
EC: That was it because I hadn’t got a school certificate as you say. I didn’t take it and I hadn’t got it so there was no way. They did not employ grammar school, only grammar school boys at least got in to the navigation.
AM: Ok.
EC: But they offered me wireless operator/navigator and I, yes, yes now we’re in. So I went through the various routines and I get the call and reported, report to Sheffield for a medical examination for air crew. [?] air crew. However, [pause] then they sent me, they said that they would send me home with papers. I was accepted and registered as aircraftsman second class. I was in the air force. And that would be August [1913 the year war] and I went back, back home and I went back to my job and got a shock because I’d already asked my firm could I, is it alright if I, and I showed them the invitation. Medical and so on so yeah but when I got back which was more or less a weeks leave I went back to [primarily] carry on working until I was called, I got a shock. They’d set on somebody in my place who, I understood, I didn’t know it at the time but I was told was exempt.
AM: Ok.
EC: So he could do the job I’d been doing and that was the way it was so I was sent home and that happened twice. I was called up. Anyway, I met a local council not many hours away from here, not now, I met him, he was the treasurer, the chairman of the Labour party’s son. Talking about nineteen and he’d become exempt because he was, he’d qualified, not quite as an accountant.
AM: Right.
EC: But in no time at all war was declared and he was treasurer of the council. Right then, he said ‘What are you doing?’ And I explained briefly and, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’re setting on some temporary staff here and if you’re interested you know the district, you know everything and everybody about us more or less so I got a fortnight’s and it so happens I was working then two shilling a week lower than I was paid earlier.
AM: But at Doncaster council. At the council.
EC: No.
AM: No.
EC: No. Oh Adwick.
AM: Oh.
EC: I was, Adwick le Street Urban District Council.
AM: Right.
EC: On April 1st 1915 Adwick, Adwick Council became an urban district.
AM: Right. So you worked for your local urban district council.
EC: So I moved my first, into local government, again its charted and that. Yeah, so from April the 1st 1915 it was an urban district council and [sent to work and it was?] in those days.
AM: Right.
EC: [And often the?] rent collection and so on their offices and all graded and whatnot. [Presumably]
AM: So, so you worked there and then, and then at point did you get your call up to go for training?
EC: Yes. I suddenly got papers through and the call and I had to go to Padgate which was near Warrington. And it was RAF centre of sorts for World War Two and I was issued with a uniform and then blow me they lined up the squadrons, everybody going to the squadrons in there and incidentally I was duly qualified. I had taken to that so I know that. Anyway, the next thing you know and they gave me a railway warrant home. Said you’ll be called by an RAF unit as soon as you’re employable. So I’m back home.
AM: Back home again.
EC: And I went back to [Wolf Lane] the treasurer of the council then and suggested we were doing emergency war measures which meant visiting the council houses, various establishments in the urban district which I knew, you know. I knew every yard. Anyway, that eventually I got the actual call up and again I had to go to Padgate. I think it was there. I’m not sure. And we were lined up one morning and half of us were given railway warrants and we went to Blackpool and I was in the Royal Air Force. Air crew. Now, we should have gone on entering the RAF to an ITW, Initial Training Wing that’s where they [?] speaking get you off the street. Put your feet together, angled at forty five degrees and all that.
AM: And start marching.
EC: From scratch. But not me because I’d already become [duly conscious.] It’s all this detail. Lovely detail really and with one other chappie went to Sheffield and there was procedures and from there I was posted, forgotten that little bit there, where was it? Operational Training Unit.
AM: Up to an Operational Training Unit.
EC: Yes. How we got there I don’t know.
AM: Don’t worry. So what was that like?
EC: Anyway, I went straight on to the, oh what was it? Chipping Norton down south OTUs and there was one there, south of Oxford. Its three letter anyway [pause] anyway I did all the basics ITU and aircrew and posting again home again I think two or three days. Then posted. I went to, about a dozen of us were posted to Scampton and you know all about that.
AM: I do.
EC: I served fourteen months there. At a time when, [you don’t mind] I went straight on to the squadron and then it’s all in the book.
AM: Ok.
EC: All in the logbook.
AM: So you joined 49 squadron. Can you remember crewing up and joining up with the rest of your crew. With your pilot and -
EC: No. I didn’t get that far.
AM: Oh right.
EC: What happened was the ITU and Blackpool were just doing nothing but training. Some people didn’t need training. Straight to squadron or something and I did fly in the ITU on the, [pause] from Blackpool we went by troop train in dead of night because of an air raid. From Blackpool down to Wales down to Bristol where we were in the [?] and everything, no rations, no nothing, six seats a side, no gangway, no nothing and then in the morning we arrived at Yatesbury. That’s on the Bath Road.
AM: Yes.
EC: And that’s where the real work starts. We were just another, well it seemed like there was only a couple of hundred of us but it wasn’t. Not quite that. Very nearly, and that was a first and basic training for air crew. Now in our case that area as big as this was aircraft navigation, no that was further on I think. That unit concentrated on training navigators. Yatesbury was wireless and basics. Pilots, they did their training as pilots and then we started getting together as as crews but not necessarily staying together.
AM: Right.
EC: But putting you, you, you, right, ‘Take M for Mother on a trip, test,’ so on and that was it at any stage a lot of flying. The book tells it all. Have you’ve seen it?
AM: No. I’ll have a look at your logbook afterwards if I may.
EC: You might, well, I’m looking, my son, he used to be a manager, he left and in recent you see I’ve all this is, damaged the brain. You know that. It’s the damage in my brain and that’s why my memory’s gone so I have two brains. One apparently and mainly is normal.
AM: Yes.
EC: But -
AM: You’re doing well Eric.
EC: Yeah. But the other one, anytime soon it will break and I’m in another, the thing was but it’s not permanent.
AM: So, what, what was the wireless operator training like?
EC: Well that was rather intense but first of all it was mainly one track mind. We had to reach, we were, we’d taken over all the ballroom and the big, ballroom, Blackpool front you know, the tower and all the rest of it. Dance halls. There were all tables wired up for blokes. Six in groups of fifty with an acting corporal, a regular corporal, been in the air force since the year dot apparently and then we were two hours [?] and you can imagine it was all regimented at that stage.
AM: Yeah.
EC: You only breathe out when you’re allowed. So that’s it. Right. Test please and you were at trestle tables. Lines of them. Oh and incidentally we had been billeted in Blackpool and all that sort of thing.
AM: Can I stop you for a minute? Do you want -
EC: Yes.
AM: Do you want this tea?
EC: Back to Carcroft School I always remember this captain in the army and tank captain survivor. It on poetry and he got me speaking and reading. ‘Clarke.’ And I’d stand up with my book. Point at it and read. All that sort of thing. And World War One disciplines.
AM: Yes. I’m going to take you back to Yatesbury rather than back to your school. Tell me some more about Yatesbury.
EC: Yatesbury. Yes of course. All we saw were [?] and it was 13th of October.
AM: It’s alright I’m just making sure your tea doesn’t slip.
EC: 13th of October. [?] it’s there.
AM: Tell me a little bit more about Yatesbury.
EC: Oh yes. Yatesbury. We had two, two solid weeks, two solid hours of Morse and our instructor was a retired navy wireless operator.
AM: Ok.
EC: And some people used to say you couldn’t think of anything worse but he was quiet but he was used to, used to thirty words a minute but we got to achieve, we’d never studied Morse. What’s Morse? We were dumb.
AM: Yeah, all new to you.
EC: Yes. What they did people precisely volunteered and in some cases allocated. Even they wanted to go. Like me. I wanted to go so after two hours there was a break and then the acting corporal, the corporal marched out and this is where the journal comes in. Quite a few holiday makers there were in Blackpool at the time saw some smart click click of the air force drill shouting and bawling. 3B3 3 squadron and three wing three squadron and three company and, ‘Clarke,’ ‘928 flight sergeant,’ You caught your last three figures. Mine was 1051928 and you got it’s flight sergeant 928, ‘Take your squad to the park,’ [?] and then we had report back to that certain area in that certain place for the next, which could have been anything from PT, stripping off, in to the baths. I loved that. The baths. I was in charge marching and bathing. Morse. Right up through, ‘Straight through, straight, halt. Stand. Right, space out, space, spread yourselves out. Right. Strip. Get in there. Get in.’
AM: Is this public baths?
EC: Yes.
AM: Yes
EC: And that’s what we did. I’d been delegated to look after them as an acting corporal unpaid and because I had to get out to get them on the go again. Report elsewhere. It might be report to a certain park where the RAF had a PTI, Physical Training Instructor and we had two hours with him. Not at it all the time but some duty other than we had the first two hours get back to Morse at the tower and that was the front. Four times in two hours PTI, break two hours, back. That’s it. Back to Morse again. And to that march left right left right left right all around Blackpool there before this just as an introduction, more or less, to what navigation means?
AM: Yes.
EC: Charts. Do charts and things we’d got. I imagined myself working on a chart.
AM: Yeah. I’m going to let you drink a bit more of your tea.
EC: Yes and then it was high tech training now. How, what wireless sets are made of, you know. We were really into it all. That’s that, that and that but why? It’s there and we [?] Incidentally by the time I got into Blackpool I was twenty six and I was probably standing next to –
AM: An eighteen year old.
EC: An eighteen year old boy who was well away.
AM: You were one of the old men.
EC: I was. I don’t know why but that’s another story.
AM: When did you first go up in and fly in a plane?
EC: Well, at Yatesbury we again this is where the logbook would have come in. From Yatesbury we were warned, six of us, right, at the airfield and we’re going with this sergeant. He takes you. He took six of us out to the airfield. He was doing an exercises anyway. We knew we were going up in the air and we were going to call Blackpool radio station.
AM: Yeah.
EC: And you’re going to make contact and back, and then back to the classroom. See how well we’d done. So it was at Yatesbury and it was probably an hour and a half. We went up in this six seater passenger aircraft and with a sergeant, he’d been in the air force years and he was a technician. So that’s when we first flew. I didn’t fly again then until Finningley and this is again is where the drag occurred and interfered. When final at Yatesbury which had a nasty name did Yatesbury. You know the name given to prisoners you had a bad reputation because it was psych training you know. You couldn’t breathe. Anyway, we were picked out and were queuing up were [all between] get our inoculations and then the next time is railway warrants which are, we two going to the same place. I got used to him. Mahoney. [Finished up?]
AM: How, when did you, after that you went to Finningley. Where did go you after -
EC: Yes.
AM: Yatesbury?
EC: After Yatesbury railway warrants and we thought we were going home or not and we were for a week and then we reported to the squadron.
AM: The squadron. 49 squadron.
EC: 49 Squadron at, no. I jumped. This station south of, south of Oxford I’ve got a memory for stations as well. It’s one –
AM: I don’t know Eric. There’s no -
EC: No. Anyway -
AM: Gary would know but I don’t.
EC: It was an OTU, we were posted to OTU from then for the first time we became flying together.
AM: Right.
EC: Pilot, navigator, sometimes just wireless operator because at that time no aircraft could get airborne without a wireless operator.
AM: Yes.
EC: No RAF could get airborne without a wireless operator and then there were various exercises, flying exercises. In the early part the pilots were doing the circuits and bumps and you had to be, you had to have a wireless operator with him.
AM: What plane, what sort of aircraft were you in?
EC: That was, first time, that was Hampdens.
AM: Hampdens.
EC: Yeah. Ended up in, just a minute, just a minute, this is where, for once in a while I’m lost without my logbook. And we, I arrived at Finningley anyway. I was posted to Finningley.
AM: Yeah.
EC: And it was because I’d been posted but [they don’t know] so they posted me, ‘Where do you live flight sergeant?’ ‘Doncaster.’ ‘Ah right. Finningley.’ And it was Finningley because they couldn’t receive this, they were full up training you see and so I reported to 49 squadron. They were busy flying as an OTU.
AM: Yes.
EC: Operational Training Unit and I just went down to the airfield where there was a crew rooms and outbuildings in between, in between whatever flight programme was on and that, one day that might be navigators which meant pilot, pilot and navigator and wireless operator or it might in between a few circuits and bumps but we were, I was there to get me airborne. I had the temerity to complain. I’m sitting here doing nothing. Nothing to read. No book. No nothing. Anyway, he understood alright. That particular squadron leader eventually did very well right up in Bomber Command. Now then, now -
AM: I’m probably jumping now but when did you do your first operation?
EC: Right. October 13th.
AM: October -
EC: Two minutes past twelve. It was twelve, Midnight. Thirteenth.
AM: This was 1940.
EC: ’40.
AM: Yeah. What was that like Eric? Can you remember it? Well you can remember it.
EC: Yeah. Well I was there, I was there at Finningley and I had to jump a little bit there because this, the squadron commander he said you could do a few rides on the tin. Well the tin was the underside of a Hampden. Underneath -
AM: Right.
EC: You know, where the gun is? No wireless. Just straight, stuck the wireless operator on top with guns and he was a wireless operator on top of the aircraft. So I was there, for air experience. I was in this Hampden. I don’t know if I was doing those cross country and I was just sat in the cockpit and I was getting airborne and that was it. I was not impressed either. I was a little bit of a sergeant major myself I have to admit. A bit, ‘That won’t do.’ Anyway, and then then came the day that Chipping –
AM: Chipping Norton.
EC: No.
AM: Chipping Sudbury.
EC: Oh dear.
AM: No. Oh I don’t know.
EC: Oh I do. I can’t give it you. Ah yes. Oh I can point it to you. I’ve got the book there.
AM: Well never mind because what I want to hear about is your first operation.
EC: First operation. Yes. Well this book. It’s written there perfectly.
AM: Did you get bacon and eggs before you went?
EC: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
[pause]
EC: I can’t move without, I can’t.
AM: So your first operation was on the 12th and 13th of October 1941.
EC: That’s right.
AM: To Auls and Bremen. That’s A U L S and Bremen.
EC: Well, we, it’s all in that report but we actually bombed Huls. H.U.L.S.
AM: Yes, and that was the start of a full tour.
EC: Yeah.
AM: On three different kinds of aircraft.
EC: And they were all, all overcrowded and –
AM: You started off on Hampdens didn’t you?
EC: Yes. Yes.
AM: Let me have a look at the next one. Your next one after that was the 22nd and 23rd of October to Mannheim.
EC: Mann, yes.
AM: Yeah.
EC: And that’s in the, they called it Happy Valley.
AM: Yes. The Ruhr valley.
EC: Yes. That’s right. And here again I was at a loose end and not very happy. I was arriving at Scampton in a crew room and about half of them regulars. One or two were real regulars, went in before the war. [?] flight sergeant who was in before the war, wireless operator and he come to me or called me upstairs and say this is the flying programme and these two ops [that were ops have] just been scrubbed.
AM: Let me look at your -
EC: Now that was, I can’t see it.
AM: What did it actually feel like up in the aircraft Eric?
EC: Well again, mixed feelings. It was no picnic in that undercarriage. They called it the tin. Dreaded it. It was just a cockpit underneath the aircraft with twin Vickers gas operated guns on, like that and you could swing them around and you could strafe or [303?] and then behind me the bomb doors opened like that behind me to the front of the aircraft. Say from, you know, from there to there and they would open and I can’t, well it’s still a case of looking around. The weather we knew nothing about. It was just another aircraft on a training flight. I would listen out carefully. The pilots, mainly it was the pilot and navigator yeah that was the hardest job to do. I realise now.
AM: Yes. There’s another one highlighted here. The 9th and 10th of January to Brest. Mine laying.
EC: Oh yes. From October onwards it was still was the same. You were lucky to get a flight or if you did, in the tin to fill up and now –
AM: Let me look at the, - this is talking about the Bransby Memorial.
EC: Oh yes. And there again I became [this was a Hampden, not this particular one, [pause] there we are, we took off at dusk mainly. Sometimes it was later on and the whole of Scampton is set in the middle of vast farming areas and that’s so and we took off at dusk and it was all a nail-biting time you had to get up because the Hampden was loaded with mines or a particular type of bomb and otherwise it would carry mines and all I know is I sat there looking around and occasionally a tiny light, nothing else, could see the railways and [pause] sorry.
AM: Shall we find?
EC: The navigator was talking a lot -
AM: Yeah.
EC: About -
AM: I’m looking at another one here in February 1942. You went to Bremen, Bremen.
EC: Yes. Bremen.
AM: Bremen.
EC: Yeah. [Should be Berlin?] to military target. Heavily defended. And what I [?] the first one as we, two important things there did at least talk me to otherwise I might not have [?] right I’m looking for a crossing on the coast out crossing the channel there or from Orfordness there over there, that’s where we leave our coast. See. I was looking for that and that was, and then there’s a channel which is when the navigator and pilot had a lot to talk about, ‘Yes. Yes. No. No. Oh that’s –‘. A lot of them before they finally agreed on a, agreed on a course and then it was crossing the enemy coast. That for me was about the first time was really really not knowing what to expect. Anyway, I very soon found out what it was like as we were getting this crossing point, the enemy coast and suddenly searchlights, ackack, fire, aircraft, aircraft coming up, checking the height and the bombs are not just dropped you’ve got to drop from a certain height and then the navigator were the ones doing the talking, agreeing with the pilot on a certain in, ‘We could do with another thousand feet.’ ‘Yeah. I’ll try it.’ and we would, did it say what -
AM: Let me have a look at, let me find the next one. The Channel Dash that you -
EC: Yes. Now, that’s been reported many many times and it still is.
AM: Were you part of that Eric?
EC: Yes. Let me think. Channel Dash. Name the crew first.
AM: Let me have a look. I’m just trying to see if, with my flight. Oh someone, someone had your flying boots on.
EC: That’s right.
AM: Sergeant B Hunter.
EC: Hunter. Yes that’s the one. I think, however, I was in the tin I think. I can’t remember. Oh I do wish. That morning, I were all ready for call to get airborne and I was in the crew room and like, usually and some people knew the crew same as before and others, like me, I wasn’t sure where I’d be. I’d be called. You were given the pilot’s name. Anyway, oh come on, come on, come on. We were briefed. While we were waiting that morning the back room boys and so on they, everybody knew that the three German battleships were based at Brest.
AM: Yes.
EC: And there was the Scharnhorst and [Schweigen?] oh the name of it now, it will come.
AM: I can’t remember but I know that the Scharnhorst was one of the big ones.
EC: Yes. Yeah. [pause] I can’t remember.
AM: Why, why did Sergeant Hunter have your flying boots on?
EC: Oh yes. Yes, this is the story. Again, it’s in here in detail. We’re in the crew room. There’s lockers. Flying lockers. Your flying kit, if you’re not wearing it, should be in that locker. Right. I was, I got to the crew room. I saw the operations board. That’s the only time, sometimes that I found where I was -
AM: Where you were going?
EC: With whom and where we were going. Channel, Brest and I was with this, well Sergeant Hunter, he was spitting feathers for want of, I put the flying kit on to join this particular aircraft which was on the operations board. Next to me is Sergeant Hunter and he’d been on the squadron just a few months or more. A bit more experienced and he seemed a happy type. Now, he, he had left his flying boots at his billet. At that time we were in the old married quarters for, you know air crew and so on and against the rules, the rules flying clothing must be in the locker. Anyway. I’m scrubbed. Oh yes while and I was getting my stuff on and the door opened and Gadsby, Flight Sergeant Gadsby, ‘Sergeant Clarke, you’re scrubbed.’ I said, ‘Oh not again.’ And anyway to Hunter, ‘I’m scrubbed so you he might as well take mine.’ ‘Alright.’ He had no time to go back to the billet. He’d got to get there and out to the aircraft and so he did and I went back to the crew room and [have something to eat] play around till the next morning to see how they got on. Well the next morning I found that Sergeant Hunter’s aircraft and four others had not come back and my, obviously my boots were down. Well, later on Sergeant Hunter’s [?] body was washed up on the French shore two days later, the Dutch shore two days later. Oh and trying to move it on a little bit I’d been out to Holland two or three times [on the] memorial [to him] he was shot down anyway as he crossed the coast and it was a Hampden, low flying aircraft and they were already obviously, from the information there they were already they knew they were going down so the wireless operator in the tin came up and squeezed into the wireless operator’s -
AM: Yeah.
EC: Standing order that for take-off and landing the chap in the tin had to be up top squeezed in. So that’s what happened. They went down. Pilot and engineer went down with the aircraft on a Dutch farm and the wireless operator and gunner they were thrown out of the aircraft somehow and, but they went down with the aircraft into the mud and the Dutch -
AM: Yeah.
EC: So for sixty years that aircraft with two crew, pilot and navigator, and they recovered it anyway.
AM: It was recovered.
EC: That was a long story anyway but –
AM: So that was the story of your boots. Let’s have a look at some more.
EC: I’ve been since and they recovered the aircraft and gave them a military –
AM: A proper burial. A proper burial.
EC: And it’s all about it and everything in here and then I went back to the crew room waiting to see where next. Who I was going to fly with next.
AM: We’ve got the next one February mine laying and leaflets. Were you still on Hampdens or had you moved -
EC: No.
AM: To Manchesters at this point?
EC: All my, all my ops there were twelve on Hampdens, four on Manchesters and twelve on Lancasters.
AM: On Lancasters. Which was the best out of the three?
EC: Oh [laughs]
AM: Which one Eric? You’re pointing at it but I don’t know which it is.
EC: Oh well that’s a Hampden.
AM: That’s a Hampden.
EC: That’s a, it’s a Lancaster.
AM: Oh that one’s a Lancaster.
EC: And if that was a true photo, well it is, that would be up there.
AM: This one would be you.
EC: That was my position and I would be there.
AM: So did you like the Lancaster best out of the three?
EC: Ooh ooh above everything.
AM: Really. Why?
EC: Well first of all it was the space I’d got.
AM: Yes, you’re not down in the tin any more.
EC: In the tin. I was surrounded by wireless there and there.
AM: So you were just crunched up with your knees up to your nose nearly.
EC: Yeah [?] try to write something in the logbook and I’ve highlighted where I am in the crews.
AM: We’ve got, we’ve got the mine laying and leaflets and let me just have a look here. In March 1942, Essen.
EC: Yes.
AM: Were you on that one?
EC: Well am I marked? It gives you the -
AM: Essen. Yes. Clarke. There you are. Let’s have another, - hang on, [pause] in March ’42 again mine laying and nickels.
EC: Yeah. Don’t know. Now the thing is you want the logbook.
AM: Now don’t worry about, Lubeck. You went to Lubeck. In March.
EC: Lubeck. Lubeck. That’s in the South Baltic. That was a little [?] port all ancient but it was a military target used by the Germans for shipping so for us it was a, it was a target.
AM: A legitimate target.
EC: Yes. So we gave them a surprise. Went over the North Sea. Now –
AM: April ‘42 Cologne.
EC: Yes. [pause] Did we lose any?
AM: Let me have a look. Yes. A flight with Pilot Officer D Kay. Became a prisoner of war and the wireless operator and air gunner was killed. Sergeant Waddell. Sergeant Waddell.
EC: Sergeant Waddell, yes.
AM: Yeah.
EC: Yeah.
AM: I’m looking at the ones that you’ve highlighted.
EC: Yes.
AM: You’ve got April ‘42 was a noticeable date. From this date the unit received its first three Avro Manchesters.
EC: Yes. Now they phased out the Hampdens. Now this is where the flying logbook would have come in.
[Knocking on door]
AM: Oh just one minute. Knock at the door.
[machine paused]
EC: [?]
AM: No. Let’s, let’s, let’s move on a bit. When you got the Lancasters -
EC: Yeah.
AM: Where did you go in the Lancasters? Let me look.
EC: Oh we didn’t do any ops for a month.
AM: No.
EC: Because we had to, what was the trouble we had?
AM: Debrief from one plane and learned to fly another one.
EC: Yes. Yes.
AM: Yeah. Were you on the thousand bomber raid?
EC: Yes.
AM: To Cologne.
EC: Yes. That was May the 30th. Was it?
AM: Yeah. May, yes May 30th 1942.
EC: Yes and it had got six crew and it was more or less a Lancaster fuselage.
AM: Yeah.
EC: So I’d got all this room. I loved it. I’d got a desk and I could get up and I could stand, stand up and put my head in the astrodome and look at, you know, for targets and navigational points and then when we got the signal to, to drop the leaflets I, how can I [pause] I site there?
AM: Yeah we’re looking at a picture now of the -
EC: Wireless.
AM: Wireless operator.
EC: I’m back here. Behind my bomb there’s called the main spar of the aircraft.
AM: Yes.
EC: And I go along there, leg over there and I’m in the -
AM: The fuselage.
EC: The fuselage is it where I’d been like this I’d got all this space. So what the fuse, and the packets with the rubber bands and so on and I got on the intercom, connected by intercom by the pilot and navigator and they told me when, coming up they knew the height we were flying at and the instructions as to the best, well releasing the leaflets. There’s no bomb aiming facility as such but it’s something throwing out parcels so they went down in packets of thousands. Well we did that and we got back safely. Another?
AM: What about the thousand bomber raid?
EC: Yes that’s the last -
AM: Yeah. And then Essen in June 1942.
EC: June 1st. That was Flying Officer Jefferies.
AM: Yes.
EC: He became my pilot.
AM: Right.
EC: I knew I was flying with him but I’d done my ops and on the board I knew that I was flying with him. Now then. Pick one with Flying Officer Jefferies.
AM: It says here that over Essen you attacked from nine thousand feet at two minutes past two and bomb bursts were seen in the target area. Large fires started.
EC: Yeah.
AM: So you knew you’d hit the, hit what you, hit the target.
EC: Only four [Manchesters].
AM: Yeah. When did you move on to Lancasters? Can you, what month?
EC: What
AM: What month did you move on to Lancasters?
EC: We had a period of adjustment to another aircraft.
AM: Yes. Yeah.
EC: Does it say?
AM: Osnabruck. These are all August. Osnabruck.
EC: Osnabruck, yes.
AM: Flensburg and Frankfurt.
EC: Yeah.
AM: And then Zabrucken and Bremen.
EC: Which aircraft?
AM: Let me have a look. Let me look at the picture. I’m not sure. I think this might -
EC: The first Lancaster I remember of course was Flight Lieutenant Cook. Cookie as he was. You hear about this one. We, not much to say, we went to pick up an aircraft and we went to a station to pick up a Lancaster and that was our first Lancaster.
AM: Right.
EC: After that we got them all.
AM: You got, it’s talking here about mine laying in September and the Cooke crew of W4107.
EC: Yes.
AM: Attacked their primary target at Warnemunde
EC: Yeah.
AM: And then landed back at Scampton but four aircraft had to go, so Marston Moor and then we’ve got Weismar again.
EC: Yeah.
AM: And Cologne again in October.
EC: Cologne. It was the last of the four. I knew it was a massed operation but I didn’t know that it was the flight. I’d got several to do for my tour [part of that?] [pause] What does it say?
AM: I’ve got another one here where, here we are at about 2130 on the evening of 24th of October.
EC: Yeah.
AM: After W4761 got back to her Scampton dispersal out jumped Eric Clarke the W/Op air gunner to celebrate the completion of his operational tour.
EC: Now where were, where had we landed?
AM: You landed at Scampton.
EC: No.
AM: Oh wait a minute. Let me look.
EC: The day before.
AM: I’m not sure.
EC: I’ll look at it in there.
AM: But you did twenty six operations.
EC: Yes. We landed short of petrol.
AM: Right.
EC: Back at the place where I did all my OTU.
AM: Right.
EC: South of Oxford.
AM: Right.
EC: See. And then next day, in the morning, we got airborne to Scampton.
AM: Back to Scampton.
EC: I’ll show you anyway and you’ll appreciate the details there.
AM: When you finished Eric, when you’d done, when you’d done your last operation what did you do after that?
EC: Right. Well, I’m now, I’d got quite a bit of leave, but I’ve no job, I’m married to a wonderful, and my wife was working all the time. She worked in a paper shop, newsagent shop and with close family and for instance the owners always had the news agent shop and he used to have to be up at five in the morning. It was very very good for them [?] and that was the same one –
AM: Can I just look at the front of this where it’s saying that you became a signals officer?
EC: Oh yes. That’s right.
AM: And a senior signals leader.
EC: Yes. That’s it. Well when I finished the, got back safely and landed at Scampton and then we carried on ops to finish my tour. We were all together and we qualified as staff Pathfinders.
AM: Yes.
EC: We were a special crew. We were good.
AM: Yeah. Let me just look at the front again. You were commissioned and then you rose quickly in rank to flight lieutenant.
EC: Yeah.
AM: Became a signals officer and then a senior signals leader.
EC: Yeah.
AM: You were mentioned in dispatches in June 1944.
EC: Yeah.
AM: That’s when the war -
AM: Yes. And then finally you became a staff lecturer at the number one Bomber Command Instructor’s School.
EC: At Finningley.
AM: At Finningley.
EC: Yes.
AM: Back where you started.
EC: Yes. But again things weren’t always going right. I can finish that part off. I did, I was called for ops back at Scampton after the Cologne raid and we were briefed to go to [?] Stettin to submarines out there, in the Baltic rather. The Baltic. And to cut that short I was briefed twice to do an op and they were both scrubbed.
AM: And that was to Stettin.
EC: Stettin. Yes.
AM: Yes. Yeah.
EC: And it was for mine laying.
AM: Right.
EC: It was a base. A German base. Anyway, it was a stealth, we called it a stealth raid. Right. We got back and expected to go on the next trip, we’ll be on tomorrow night. Ok. And tomorrow night came and I wasn’t there and I thought I would be there [?] and I went back. Anyway it was scrubbed and it was announced that I had completed my tour of ops which was fourteen months.
AM: Yeah. Finished.
EC: On record.
AM: Yeah.
EC: And so on and then I think, it will tell me in the book, I don’t know how long it was before I was posted. Anyway –
AM: What was it like being an instructor?
EC: Well I was very much at home.
AM: Yeah.
EC: Very much at home with it. I indulged a little bit here and there. [?] the smokers in those days. And they were chain smoking and you could tell the type you know.
AM: Yeah.
EC: I wasn’t [I was too disciplined to] smoke really. Anyway, I was, in June what I wanted to get to, I was called for interview by the station squadron commander. Got that right? Yes, in the book. Would I, ‘Would you accept recommendation for a commission in His Majesty’s Royal Air Force.’ ‘Yes sir.’ I was already a Church Lads Brigade officer for four hundred boys, you know. Anyway, ‘Thank you, you will get the papers eventually. You go home, you get kitted up and we will send you on your way.’ ‘Thank you sir.’ Away I went and went home and I got my papers there. I was a pilot officer.
AM: That was your commission.
EC: And that was that. Then it came through and by that time I was in this OTU getting in to the role of reflecting [?] the OTU as I was still a sergeant. And then I was called, [pause] damn it damn it damn it.
AM: I think you were, you were a sergeant, then a pilot officer.
EC: Yes.
AM: Then a flying officer.
EC: There’s a story with that, you see.
AM: Right ok.
EC: Because I was, I was called by the CO on the OTU where I was a senior instructor at that time.
AM: Yes. Yeah.
EC: ‘Your commission has come through, Pilot Officer Clarke,’ and he leaned across the desk to shake hands and I think it was and, ‘There are your papers, your railway warrant, you’ve eight days to get kitted out’ and [?] there.
EC: ‘Thank you sir,’ and away I went. Home. Pilot officer what had happened they found out later on that prior to getting your commission once you’re recommended you start off with the organisation. The quadron commander, the station commander, group headquarters at Lincoln and so on and then to command headquarters and then ten days later you, you’re an officer. Well I went through all that but it didn’t work. Somewhere along the line somebody sat on my papers or misdirected them or whatever and I arrived at this station and what was that station where I arrived at?
AM: Lincoln?
EC: No.
AM: No.
EC: South of Oxford.
AM: I can’t remember. Does it say in here where you were? No. Don’t worry. Don’t matter.
EC: [Pause] Damn. Damn. Damn.
AM: It’s frustrating isn’t it?
EC: It is yes.
AM: Where, where were, I’m just going back to your, where was Number One Bomber Command Instructor’s School?
EC: Finningley.
AM: That was at Finningley. So you did end up at Finningley in the end.
EC: Yeah.
AM: When were you demobbed Eric? How long did you stay in?
EC: October 13.
AM: 1945 or ’46.
EC: [?]
AM: You were demobbed.
EC: Yes. And I did fourteen months.
AM: Yes.
EC: Continuous.
AM: Operations.
EC: Which would be a record but at the time, statistically the lifespan of Bomber Command aircrew was seven or eight weeks.
AM: Yes.
EC: And I did fourteen months.
AM: You did.
EC: And -
AM: Do you know I think I’m going to switch off now.
EC: Yes.
AM: And let you have a drink and a rest but 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 Eric Clarke
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
2015-08-17
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AClarkeE150817
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
01:51:27 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Eric was born in Doncaster and had a difficult childhood. He was attracted by nearby RAF Finningley and decided he wanted to join the RAF when war was imminent. He was registered as an aircraftman second class and trained to be a wireless operator. After training in Blackpool, he did wireless operator training at RAF Yatesbury before going to an Operational Training Unit in Oxfordshire. Eric was then posted to RAF Finningley and 49 Squadron at RAF Scampton.
Eric’s first operation was in October 1941 to Hüls (Krefeld) and Bremen. He did twenty six operations on three different types of aircraft: Hampdens, Manchesters, and Lancasters. He preferred the Lancaster because he had much more space. He was stood down on the “Channel Dash” operation: the wireless operator borrowed his flying boots but never returned.
Eric became a senior signals leader and, after the tour, qualified as staff Pathfinder. He was mentioned in dispatches in 1944 and became a staff lecturer at No. 1 Bomber Command Instructors School at RAF Finningley. Eric was commissioned as a pilot officer and then flying officer.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Cheshire
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-02
1944
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
49 Squadron
aircrew
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Hampden
Lancaster
Manchester
memorial
mine laying
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
promotion
RAF Finningley
RAF Padgate
RAF Scampton
RAF Yatesbury
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/8752/PLucasWE1501.2.jpg
dc00f6a0e3e1fc69c5c9cdae6c5e637c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/8752/ALucasB150405.1.mp3
08574ac4f1191f6ee013bbf1624927f9
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
Lucas, Bill
William Ernest Lucas
W E Lucas
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lucas, WE
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. Two oral history interviews with Squadron Leader Bill Lucas DFC (1917 - 2018, 1255396 Royal Air Force), his log book, brief memoir and photographs. He served as a pilot with 9, 15, 139 and 162 Squadrons. After the war he ran in the 1948 Olympics.
The collection was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
William (Bill) Ernest Lucas was born in Tooting Bec, London on the 16th January 1917, 3 years deep into World War One. Luckily for Bill he was not of age to endure with the fighting in the trenches. However, when Europe was engulfed into another worldwide conflict in 1939, this set way for Bill to become involved with the RAF and IBCC.
Growing up, Bill was an only child and left his school (Bec Grammar School) at the age of 15. He managed to get a job with a printers, which led to his second and only other job at an insurance company called the London and Lancashire. The company’s sports club enabled Bill to find his passion for athletics (especially running) and he was expected to participate in the 1940 Olympics until the war interfered. (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30884)
A photo of Bill in his running gear is shown in https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30865 where he is running down 55 Graham Road in Surrey.
Bill instead competed in the 1948 Olympic Games as the games were also cancelled in 1944 due to World War Two. Luckily the games were hosted in London (https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/london-1948) and Bill had retired from IBCC meaning that he had time to participate.
As seen in ‘Bill Lucas and the 1948 London Olympics’ (1948) https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30866 Bill managed to come 6th in the Second Heat meaning he was one position off of being in the final on the 2nd August 1948! This collection also includes Bill in his older prime wearing his 1948 Olympic Games jacket and the official Olympic Games programme from 1948.
When Hitler invaded Poland on September 1st 1939, Bill was 22 years old meaning that he was eligible to be part of Great Britain’s Army. Combining Bill’s hatred of the sea and his fathers recent experiences in the trenches, the RAF seemed to be the most compatible choice with Bill. (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/30884/B[Author]LucasWEv10001.jpg)
Bill was not involved in Britain’s mightiest air conflict against Hitler’s Luftwaffe however, instead watching ‘The Few’ defeat the Nazi aircrafts and succeed. Being considered to be Nazi Germany’s first ‘major military defeat’, this allowed for Britain to continue fighting in the war (https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/our-history/anniversaries/battle-of-britain/ and to an extent, allowed Bill to continue his path of becoming an Squadron Leader.
It was November 1940 when Bill started his pilot training, but due to a bomber offensive being the only way to properly counter the Nazis, this was huge not just for Bill but Britain as a whole. There had never been a bomber offensive before in warfare. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/30884/B[Author]LucasWEv10001.jpg
As seen in Bill’s official Pilot’s Log Book: (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/24264/LLucasWE122826v1.1.pdf) his training consisted of being part of 16 Elementary Flying School at RAF Derby from 1940 to 41 , 8 School of Flying Training at RAF Montrose in 1941 and 20 Operational Training Units at RAF Lossiemouth in 1941 . He flew three different types of aircraft during his training, Miles Magister, Miles Master and Wellington I’s.
Bill’s training finally finished in August 1941 and he was posted to his first official squadron, IX Squadron at Honington. Here he flew the Wellington Bomber.
Will Cragg
Record of Service:
4 November 1940- 4 January 1941: 16 Elementary Flying Training School at RAF Derby flying Miles Magisters
9 January- 4 May 1941: 8 School of Flying Training at RAF Montrose flying Miles Masters
31 May 1941- 13 August 1941: 20 Operational Training Units at RAF Lossiemouth flying Wellington I’s
14 August 1941- 4 November 1941: 9 Squadron at RAF Honington flying Wellington III’s
4 November 1941- 30 December 1941: 26 Conversion Fleet at RAF Waterbeach flying Stirling’s
30 December 1941- 1 August 1942: 15 Squadron at RAF Wyton flying Whitley V’s
1 August 1942- 3 August 1942: 218 Conversion Fleet at RAF Marham flying Airspeed Oxfords
4 August 1942- 18 August 1942: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Kinloss flying Whitley IV’s
19 August 1942- 13 August 1942: 3 Fighter Instructor Schools at RAF Hullavington flying Ansons
17 September 1942- 18 September 1942: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Kinloss flying Halifax II’s
18 September 1942- 24 October 1944: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Forres flying Mosquito III’s
30 October 1942- 19 December 1944: 1655 Mosquito Training Unit at RAF Warboys flying Mosquito IV’s
30 October 1944- 19 December 1944: 1655 Squadron at RAF Bourn flying Mosquito XX’s
7 June 1945- 28 June 1945: 162 Squadron at RAF Blackbushe flying Mosquito XXV’S
28 June 1945- 29 January 1946: 139 Squadron at RAF Upwood flying Lancaster III’s
29 January 1946: Station Head Quarters at RAF Upwood flying Mosquito XVI’s
William Cragg
William (Bill) Lucas was born on January 16th, 1917 in Tooting Bec, London. He was educated at Bec Grammar School, and left at the age of 15 to work at a printing company before moving to the insurers London and Lancashire to work as an assessor. While working there, he developed his talent for athletics with the Belgrave Harriers, with his best discipline being the 5000 metres. His goal was to compete at the 1940 Olympic games. However, in 1940, Bill was called up to help the war effort and mindful of his father’s advice to avoid the army and his own dislike of the sea, he chose to join the RAF.
Initially he trained as a fighter pilot on Miles Magisters and Miles Masters, but by the time he had finished training, the Battle of Britain had been won and the need for bomber pilots was more urgent. So, he was reallocated to bombers and trained to fly the Wellington at RAF Lossiemouth. Bill Lucas · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)
Following completion of pilot training in August 1941, he was posted to RAF Honington and joined 9 Squadron flying Wellingtons. He flew 14 operational sorties – notably Cologne and Hamburg – before converting to Stirlings at RAF Waterbeach. He then joined 15 (Bomber) Squadron at RAF Wyton, flying the Short Stirling and, by August 1942, Bill had completed a full tour of 30 operational sorties (over 40 operations in total). Bill experienced tense encounters with German defences, having to take evasive action and also getting caught in a cone of five or six searchlights. To get out of the searchlight glare he had to do things with the aircraft which it was never meant to do. Returning from one mission they flew too close to Kiel and the airframe amassed a lot of bullet holes and an alarming loss of fuel. Crossing the North Sea, the tank indicators showed practically nothing and they had to divert into Woodbridge in Suffolk. The groundcrew estimated there was less than twenty-five gallons of fuel left (probably less than 6 minutes of flying time).
He was released from operational duties and was posted to RAF Lossiemouth as a flying instructor. Then in December 1944, he returned to operational flying and was posted to 162 Squadron, part of the Pathfinder force, to fly the Mosquito, an aircraft he described as “a bit quicker and more responsive; a nice aeroplane”. He completed a further 34 operational sorites with 162 Squadron, including missions over Kiel, Berlin, Hannover and Magdeburg. In recognition of his war services, Bill was awarded the DFC and was Mentioned in Despatches.
Squadron Leader Bill Lucas was released from the Service in January 1946 and returned to the insurance job he had left to join the RAF. Eventually, he left the company to become an insurance broker. He also returned to athletics and the Belgrave Harriers; he ran in various internationals and competed for Great Britain in the 5000m at the 1948 London Olympics. Athletics remained with him for the rest of his life and he gave his spare time freely, working in prominent roles in the administration of athletics. He remained a Belgrave Harrier committee member well into his 90s. He became known as “the golden voice of British Athletics” for his many years as stadium announcer at the White City .
In his later years, Bill remained prominent in RAF and Aircrew Associations. He, along with a small Band of Sussex veterans, was instrumental in helping to raise funds for the construction of the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park and the International Bomber Command Centre.
Chris Cann
1940: Volunteered for the RAF
4 November 1940 – 4 January 1941: RAF Burnaston, No. 16 EFTS, flying Magister aircraft
9 January 1941 – 4 May 1941: RAF Montrose, No. 8 SFTS, flying Master aircraft
31 May 1941 – 13 August 1941: RAF Lossiemouth, No. 20 OTU, flying Wellington aircraft
14 August 1941 – 4 November 1941: RAF Honington, No. 9 Squadron, flying Wellington aircraft
1941: Commissioned into the officer ranks
4 November 1941 – 30 December 1941: RAF Waterbeach, No. 26 Conversion Flight, flying Stirling aircraft
30 December 1941 – 1 August 1942: RAF Wyton, No. 15 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
1 August 1942 – 3 August 1942: RAF Marham, 218 Conversion Flight
4 August 1942 – 18 August 1942: RAF Kinloss, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley aircraft
19 August 1942 – 13 September 1942: RAF Hullavington, No. 3 FTS, flying Oxford aircraft
17 September 1942 – 18 September 1942: RAF Kinloss, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley and Anson aircraft
18 September 1942 – 24 October 1944: RAF Foress, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley and Anson aircraft
30 October 1944 – 19 December 1944: RAF Warboys, 1655 MTU, flying Mosquito and Oxford aircraft
19 December 1944 – 7 June 1945: RAF Bourn, 162 Squadron, flying Mosquito aircraft
7 June 1945 – 28 June 1945: RAF Blackbushe, 162 Squadron, flying Mosquito aircraft
28 June 1945 – 29 January 1946: RAF Upwood, 139 Squadron, flying Mosquito and Oxford aircraft
29 January 1946: Released from Service having attained the rank of Squadron Leader.
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: The interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Andrew Panton, the Interviewee is Bill Lucas. Mr Lucas was a RAF pilot in various aircraft during World War Two. The interview is taking place at [redacted] Rustington, West Sussex on the 5th of April 2015.
WL: My name is W E (Bill) Lucas. I was called to the Forces in 1940, and my first introduction towards that was to be seen by a doctor in a Croydon school who, all intents and purposes, er, was to see which — whether I was capable of going in any of the services, that is, if I’d got flat feet or something like that. So we came to the point when he said, ‘Which service do you want to go in?’ So I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to go in the Army’, because my father put me off, had put me off going in to the trenches, et cetera. He himself had won a military medal saving his CO, he was a sergeant in the Northampton Regiment. So, I said, ‘no Army, I don’t like water, so I must go in the RAF’. ‘Oh, what do you want to do in the RAF?’ ‘Oh well,’ I said ‘what is there to do in the RAF other than fly?’ So he then wields his stethoscope and he then said, ‘you will never fly with the RAF’. So I said, ‘why not?’ He said, ‘you’ve got an enlarged heart’, I said, ‘I know that I’ve got an enlarged heart. I have been an athlete for a number of years and that developed the heart’. In fact, I was quite a good athlete, I was up to County standard at that stage, so he then said, ‘you’ve got an uneven heartbeat.’ Well, here I am, um, God knows how many years later, seventy-odd years later, and I’ve still got an enlarged heart and I’ve still got an uneven heartbeat. But anyway, he said, ‘well, I appreciate your enthusiasm. I’ll put you forward’. Well, having, um, escaped the doctor and, er, gone to Uxbridge and been interviewed again there for flying duties, they passed me without any bother at all, and then, having gone through all the introductory things, ground work et cetera, I was then trained as a fighter pilot, um, flying Miles Magisters and Miles Masters. That didn’t work, um, because they didn’t — well, the need for fighter pilots was over because we had won the Battle of Britain with the Spitfires, et cetera, et cetera, so I found myself at Lossiemouth, er, faced with flying a heavy bomber, the Wellington 1C.
AP: And what was it like to fly? How did you —
WL: Oh, the Wellington was a comparatively easy aircraft to fly. It was beautifully situated, it was low off the ground. You could do three-point landings in a Wellington, which you couldn’t do with some other aircraft, so it was quite enjoyable.
AP: And the kind of operations that you flew on?
WL: Operations were, at that time, were entirely over Germany, main cities and things in Germany but, but, er, if I had my log book here I could tell you where I went.
AP: What about —
WL: My first, my first one was, what happened was that when you, at Lossiemouth, you were trained and you finished up at a squadron, and I finished up at 9 Squadron, Honington, and did three trips, um, as a second pilot with a qualified pilot, and then you were given a crew of your own. So, er, I was sent off my first one as captain, they called it a making learner, and it was to Boulogne, so that wasn’t very far so we came back again. And from then onwards it was targets like Cologne and Magdeburg, all those sort of things.
AP: You said you were on thousand bomber raids.
WL: No, that was on the Stirling.
AP: The Stirling.
WL: So after a period of, of, you know, not very long, I completed fourteen operations with 9 Squadron, I was picked and given the honour, they called it the honour, of being one of the first pilots to fly a four engine aircraft, and that was the Stirling. Now, the Stirling was an entirely different aircraft to the Wellington, you’ve only got to see a Stirling to see how different it is. It had a very high undercarriage, you could not do three-point landings on a Stirling, you had to wheel them in. I soon learnt that, because otherwise you would be crashing aircraft all over the place. And then I was then moved to Wyton, W Y T O N, in, in Huntingdonshire, and I then did another full tour, of something like thirty-odd trips, with a crew and the Stirling. The main one of those that I can remember, is the first thousand bomber raid on the 30th of May 1942, er, when we went to Cologne. It was followed the following night with a similar raid on Essen. The Cologne one was quite successful, it was a beautiful clear night, moonlight night. Essen was a bit different, it was too cloudy, didn’t see the target very well, and then two more, two more nights later we did Essen again, still without a great deal of success.
AP: And did you encounter any fighters or —
WL: Oh well, that went without, thing that you either get flak or you get fighters, you know. They weren’t sort of buzzing around you all the time, but you would, you would get one at some time or other.
AP: Did you take evasive action, corkscrewing?
WL: Yes, and your, your rear gunner, if you’ve got a rear gunner coming to talk to you, oh [unclear], used his guns [slight laugh] his eight, eight 303’s.
AP: And was that the corkscrew?
WL: Oh, yes, you did evasive action and, of course, the other thing, which was even more terrifying, was getting caught in searchlights, because the German defences were all geared together that if, er, if a search, if a searchlight got you, then they could swing guns and other searchlights, and if you happened to get caught in a cone of five or six searchlights it was pretty grim. You could, then you started to do things with your aircraft which it was never meant to do, to get out. I had two experiences like that, but I recovered [slight laugh].
AP: And what about the blinding light [unclear]?
WL: Oh, of course, if you’re in the searchlights, you are blinded by them, but you, you hit back, because you got all your gunners to fire down the beam. We used to do a bit of destruction that way [slight laugh].
AP: When you’re coming up to the target now, coming up close to the target, the last couple of minutes, what’s that like?
WL: Well you had to do a straight and level, generally thought to be two minutes dead straight and level, but normally I used to, had a little pattern of my own, where I would weave, um, gently you know, never to be too long on any one thing, up a bit like that down a bit like that, and down a bit like that, still keeping the general thing and it seemed to work.
AP: And the bomb aimer, he’s in control?
WL: He takes over control in the last, um, last run in, yes. He’s the one that supposed to spot the target and set it up. Left, left, you know, right, right [slight laugh].
AP: And then once the bombs had gone, what happens then?
WL: Well, as soon as the bombs had gone, you moved away and headed home as quickly as you could and the thousand bomber raid on Cologne on 30th May, which was in a Stirling, I brought back a picture which, um, showed my stick of bombs going right across the front of the cathedral and the last one emanated at the bridge, the Hohen, the Hohenzollen bridge I think it’s called, in Cologne, so I claimed that. Now, whenever anybody goes to Cologne, I say, ‘stand in front of the cathedral and look at the front, and you’ll find it pockmarked. I claim those pockmarks’ [slight laugh]. Sort of bit of fun but probably quite true actually but, er, you know, I’ve not way of proving it.
AP: And that was a thousand bombers all targeting Cologne that one night?
WL: Well over a period of time, they weren’t all there at once [slight laugh] ‘cause it was done over, I don’t know, half an hour or so or more I should think.
AP: So you did Wellingtons, then Stirlings, and then —
WL: Oh we had Whitleys, and everything they could lay they hands on, so out of partly trained crews from OTUs, flown by qualified pilots, OTU instructors, um, but the crews were, you know, a bit dubious [slight laugh]. Well, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t scared to a degree, but, you know, being nervous and perhaps is something that helps you on your way, but if you gave in to it of course, you would never do it again, and some people did give in to it, and they got taken off, and it was called LMF, lack of moral fibre, so they got reduced to the ground, ground crews.
AP: And the support of the ground crews and all the other people?
WL: Oh terrific, they kept you in the air really. There’s no doubt about it.
AP: So can you say a little bit about all the people that supported you, the mechanics, the ground crew? What are your thoughts about that?
WL: Well I can’t praise them more you see, because it’s like when people say, ‘which aircraft do you like best?’ My answer to that is, ‘all of them, they brought me home’. So that’s what I say about the ground crew, you know, they got us there and back, they entered into the spirit of the thing as much as we did, you know. Their sort of hours were as queer like ours, they were there to see us off, they were there to see us back, see. Counting, you know, the aircraft as they come in. Was our aircraft going to come back in, see? They could be just as upset, I expect, with loss of the crew, their crew.
AP: Are there any memories in particular strike you from those years? You know, when you were flying, anything really vivid, or you feel you would like to relate to today, when you look back?
WL: What do you mean, things that happened to me?
AP: Yes.
WL: Oh, I had one or two scares. I had an engine failure on take-off on a Stirling, the engine went on fire. We had an, we had an engineer on board then and he dealt with it, but we were fully laden and gaining height was very, very difficult. This was out of Wyton, or Alconbury as we were flying from at that stage, um, so we had to get around and we had to lose some fuel, but we still had the bomb load on board, what to do with it? We weren’t getting any height at all so we decided, I decided that we were going to drop it. So it was a nice clear night so we managed to find fields, wide open fields, and we dropped the bomb load, et cetera, et cetera and thought nothing more about it, then came into land on three engines, which was no great problem. Later that, or a few days later, when we were all together, drinking in Huntingdon, we heard a bod way somewhere saying, ‘I was bombed by the Germans this week’, he said, ‘broke a lot of windows’. So we listened to this, and I thought that sounds very much like what we might have done, so we enlightened ourselves, we introduced ourselves to him and said it was us who, who broke his windows, so he was so delighted with that. We had free beer for the rest of the night.
AP: What was the Stirling like to fly in the air?
WL: In the air, I enjoyed flying in the air but it was a horror in the circuit with a big -, had an electric undercarriage too which was not a bad thing, but if the electrics failed, you lost your undercarriage. Well if you didn’t, there was a means of winding it down. Took about half an hour to do it.
AP: And, and this was night flying mainly was it?
WL: All night flying, yes, we did no daylight.
AP: Did you ever use the FIDO for, you know, fog?
WL: No but I might have done, but that was later in the war when I was on, on a Mosquito. I, I was first one back on my squadron and, unfortunately, we’d been sent out and been told we would be back long before weather came down, but we weren’t and when we came back fog was thick. It was really thick, so I made two or three approaches on, on, er, Bourn, which was by Cambridge, and, without effect, decided the last time that I would stay on the ground so we went on the ground, fairly well down the runway into a ditch, tail came over, and then we were upside down there. The ground crew arrived very, very quickly and turned it back up again, so we escaped that one.
AP: So you escaped that one.
WL: They’d been trained individually at various places, whether they were wireless operators, or gunners or navigators and in their own trade. I had a crew which I soon learnt to trust. I did not interfere with them, I let them get on with their job. When you were in the air you, you forbid chatter and you only contacted them if you thought need be, and that’s what the captain would do every so often, he’d say to the rear gunner, ‘are you still alive? Are you still awake’ even. The Met Office had no real means of knowing what was going on, other than outside the realms of the United Kingdom. They used to send an aircraft out sometimes before a raid took place to [unclear], it changed quickly and we had nights when we lost a lot of aircraft. I was on leave from my Stirling squadron, um, I was down in Epsom and I bought a paper, and we’d lost something like eighty-odd aircraft. When I got back to squadron, we’d lost three off my squadron and it was proved later that most of them were lost in weather. They went down in the Channel because wind changes, they weren’t able to, hadn’t got the equipment in those days. We flew with dead reckoning which means that, you know, it was what you could see —
AP: That was it. There was no —
WL: That was it. Then we started to get certain things like a Gee box, which was a sat nav I suppose in a way and —
AP: Did you fly with H2S?
WL: Well I flew with H2S in a Mosquito when my marking days were —
AP: Could you talk a bit about that, because I haven’t met anybody who used —
WL: Well having, let’s say having completed my main tour which consisted of forty, forty operations, um, I then went and spent two years with an OTU instructing others at Kinloss, instructing other people on Whitleys [slight laugh]. Two years later I was withdrawn, posted down south, to find myself allocated to a conversion unit on Mosquitos with a view to joining 8 Group, which materialised, um, I went to a squadron, 162 Squadron, which was a newly formed, newly formed squadron especially for the war-time only, flying Mosquitos. Half of us were markers and the other half did diversionaries and that sort of thing.
AP: So did you actually mark the targets?
WL: Yes, I marked. Not all the time but depending. Mosquitos could fly when the heavies couldn’t, see. We could compete with weather better than they did and in those last two years of the war, er, we did a lot of Baedeker raids. I think going out, we took four, five hundred pound bombs and did Hamburg, Magdeburg, Cologne and somewhere else, came back home, you know, having kept the Germans in their shelters all night [slight laugh]. We used to go out at quarter of an hour intervals you see.
AP: Where did you fly from?
WL: I flew from Wyton.
AP: Wyton? Okay. So —
WL: No, in Mosquitos, I flew from Bourn, Bourn without an ‘e’, just outside Cambridge.
AP: Could you talk a little about marking the targets with the Mosquitos?
WL: Well the basis was that we carried, er, flares which lasted quite a long time and varying colours. I never knew which colour I was going, going to be carrying but we were instructed to fly a course, which we were able to do using H2S, er, essentially to be perfectly accurate, and then at a nominated height, and at a certain point, we would drop these flares, which would burst near the ground if it was a clear night or quite high up if it was above cloud. The main force then comes in and bombs the flares and it’s all worked out that if they hit the flare, then their bombs would hit the target, see.
AP: And was there different colours of flares?
WL: Oh yes. Greens, reds, yellows, everything.
AP: And did they have different meanings?
WL: Well the bomber crew coming in behind knew what they had to do, which ones they shoot.
AP: So they could [unclear]
WL: Well they have some warning you see. They might have a yellow one as a warning, then a green one, that’s the one to bomb or something like that.
AP: Right. And H2S, is that the one you were using, that’s the —
WL: It was a forerunner, really, of television. We had a screen in the aircraft, we transmitted a beam or something like that, er, which picked up the ground. It didn’t pick up, er, sharpness but we could tell the difference between water, and built-up areas, and rivers, and all that sort of thing, and we were provided with a map in the aircraft so we were able to follow that by watching the screen. The screen should agree with the map and therefore we knew — it wasn’t until 1943, ‘44 that we began to get accuracy because of that. There was another means called Oboe, that was done by Mosquitos as well. That was arriving at a point, a cock, a cocked hat as they called it, three beams transmitting from this country, all crossing at one point. They used to have, they would have warnings and then they really did have to fly, er, two minutes straight and level. But Oboe, of course, was only useful, couldn’t be done at great distance. The Ruhr was about as far as we could do with Oboe. We used to drop from anything up to thirty thousand.
AP: Any kind of low level bombing?
WL: No, I didn’t do any of those.
AP: Right —
WL: Not, not in a Mosquito. I did some low level stuff in Stirlings, dropping, um, sea mines off the coast of France and Holland, in waterways.
AP: What kind of height would that be?
WL: Three hundred feet. Flying inside the islands off the coast of Holland and shot at. It was the same with Lorient, on the approach into Lorient we were dropping sea mines there. We used to treat these trips quite mundane really, you know. I was never on any sort of thing like Amiens or those specialised jobs. No, I would love to have done it, but I couldn’t. I mean they made a mess of that one so —
AP: Did you go as far as Berlin in the Mosquitos?
WL: Oh yes, fourteen times [slight laugh]. There’s a story about that because, um, we didn’t go to Berlin for a long time after the war, but off of a cruise, we were on in the Baltic, we stopped at Warnemünde and, and got taken into Berlin, see. Met by a young man who was to be our guide for the day, and I knew what he was going to say, he was going to say, at some time, had I been to Berlin before? So we left him to it. Eventually he got round to it, and I said, ‘Yes, yes. Fourteen times but never on the ground’. See, so he looks at me and he said, ‘I know all about that’, he said, ‘I commend you, you did exactly what you were told to do’, and we had a very good day together [laugh].
AP: There you go. As you look back, is there anything specific? Any memories of your wartime experience —
WL: Well yes, in a way. When you got a big crew on board, we used to have seven on a Stirling and I had the same crew from my Wellington and Stirling days, we got quite matey. We always went drinking together, see. Some were commissioned and others weren’t. I was commissioned during my period on 15 Squadron Stirlings and, er, but we always used to go out in the evenings, start off anyway [slight laugh] together what we got up to later was Legion. That crew was still left when I finished my tour of heavies, with three or four trips to do. The ruling when we first started bombing, was that you did thirty trips, then they changed it to two hundred operational hours, which meant that you probably did more than thirty. Anyway, they were left with, er, two or three to do and I departed up into Scotland, and I’m thinking I was never going to see them again, see. Then I heard that the first time out with a new captain, they’d been shot down. I was quite sorrowful about that, because I’d spent, oh, something like twelve months with them altogether and, er, that, you know, so I was sorrowful about it and nothing happened ‘till about four or five years ago. I was rung up by a young lad who said, ‘I’ve seen a picture of you with your crew in the Sunday Telegraph’, and he said, ‘I think one of them is my grandfather’. So I said, ‘which one?’ And he said, ‘Jack Tailor’. I said, ‘Yes, Jack Tailor was my engineer’. It then transpired that Jack Tailor had been withdrawn on the morning of that, of the time they were shot down. He was then a sergeant engineer. He finished the war as a warrant officer engineer, which was quite something. He won himself a DFC and he died in 1996 [slight laugh].
AP: That’s amazing.
WL: He obviously thought I hadn’t survived and I was absolutely certain that he hadn’t, see, but all the time he was living within a really close distance. I lived just outside Croydon for a time, he was there. I moved down and got remarried to a lady which you might meet later, um, in the Horsham area, he was there, and his daughter and the, and the young lad who rung me were at, um, a place about five miles along the road, on the 272 from us, at Shipley.
AP: Amazing.
WL: Coming home, we came a bit too near Kiel coming home, see, and got lots of holes. We lost a hell of a lot of fuel. There we were, crossing the North Sea, with the tank indicators showing practically nothing, down to nothing, and fortunately we made it, because in those days, they had a special airfield, Woodbridge was the one in Suffolk, where they had three runways. The left hand one was you could go in if there was nothing wrong with you, the middle one if you weren’t sure and the right hand one if you crash landed it, see, so I took the left hand one and the, and we stayed the night there. The ground crew there refuelled, and he came to me and said, ‘I hope you realise how short you were of fuel last night’. I said, ‘Yes sergeant. How much are you going to tell me was there?’ He said, ‘well, according to our estimation, you had twenty-five gallons’. Now a Hercules engine, which is in a Stirling, uses fifty gallons an hour, so that’s two hundred gallons in, you had four, how far would have I got on twenty-five? If I’d overshot at Woodbridge, we would not be here today. You see we never, you got called on, on the day and said, ‘well sir, there’s a crew meeting at 2 o’clock this afternoon’, and you would go to this. The navigators would be taken off, they went to learn the target and go through all their maps and things like that, which didn’t involve the captains and the bomb aimers and things. Well the bomb aimers, yes, he will tell you about or has told you about that, and then of course, you got a long period when you were taken off, 6 o’clock or 8 o’clock or 10 o’clock, and the worse ones were of course, were when, we had a, you know, abortive. All the nerves had built up, see, and then suddenly, oh no, back to the mess, see. Then we got a bit of relief then, so a few pints, we used to go down, and one station I was on, they had a piano like that and so, you know, we would spend most of the evening singing round the piano, so —
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 Lucas. One
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
ALucasB150405
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:29:21 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
W E (Bill) Lucas joined the Royal Air Force in 1940, where he trained as a fighter pilot flying Miles Magisters and Miles Masters, before being posted to RAF Lossiemouth and moving into Bomber Command, flying the Vickers Wellington 1C.
Flew 14 operations with No 9 Squadron at Honnington flying the Short Stirling, before being posted to Wyton in Huntingdonshire where he did a full tour of over 40 operations on Short Stirlings.
He took part in operations to Cologne, Magdeburg and Essen, including taking part in the first 1000 bomber raid on the 30th May 1942.
He then spent 2 years with a Operational Training Unit at Kinloss, instructing on Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys and then he moved to 162 Squadron, flying De Havilland Mosquitos where he marked targets, and did 14 trips to Berlin.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Suffolk
Scotland--Lossiemouth
Germany--Cologne
15 Squadron
162 Squadron
8 Group
9 Squadron
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fear
grief
ground crew
H2S
lack of moral fibre
military ethos
mine laying
Mosquito
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bourn
RAF Honington
RAF Kinloss
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Woodbridge
RAF Wyton
searchlight
Stirling
target indicator
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/8753/ALucasWE170208.1.mp3
80ab136990a1e6cd2bf66c7acb839ff1
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
Lucas, Bill
William Ernest Lucas
W E Lucas
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lucas, WE
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. Two oral history interviews with Squadron Leader Bill Lucas DFC (1917 - 2018, 1255396 Royal Air Force), his log book, brief memoir and photographs. He served as a pilot with 9, 15, 139 and 162 Squadrons. After the war he ran in the 1948 Olympics.
The collection was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
William (Bill) Ernest Lucas was born in Tooting Bec, London on the 16th January 1917, 3 years deep into World War One. Luckily for Bill he was not of age to endure with the fighting in the trenches. However, when Europe was engulfed into another worldwide conflict in 1939, this set way for Bill to become involved with the RAF and IBCC.
Growing up, Bill was an only child and left his school (Bec Grammar School) at the age of 15. He managed to get a job with a printers, which led to his second and only other job at an insurance company called the London and Lancashire. The company’s sports club enabled Bill to find his passion for athletics (especially running) and he was expected to participate in the 1940 Olympics until the war interfered. (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30884)
A photo of Bill in his running gear is shown in https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30865 where he is running down 55 Graham Road in Surrey.
Bill instead competed in the 1948 Olympic Games as the games were also cancelled in 1944 due to World War Two. Luckily the games were hosted in London (https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/london-1948) and Bill had retired from IBCC meaning that he had time to participate.
As seen in ‘Bill Lucas and the 1948 London Olympics’ (1948) https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30866 Bill managed to come 6th in the Second Heat meaning he was one position off of being in the final on the 2nd August 1948! This collection also includes Bill in his older prime wearing his 1948 Olympic Games jacket and the official Olympic Games programme from 1948.
When Hitler invaded Poland on September 1st 1939, Bill was 22 years old meaning that he was eligible to be part of Great Britain’s Army. Combining Bill’s hatred of the sea and his fathers recent experiences in the trenches, the RAF seemed to be the most compatible choice with Bill. (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/30884/B[Author]LucasWEv10001.jpg)
Bill was not involved in Britain’s mightiest air conflict against Hitler’s Luftwaffe however, instead watching ‘The Few’ defeat the Nazi aircrafts and succeed. Being considered to be Nazi Germany’s first ‘major military defeat’, this allowed for Britain to continue fighting in the war (https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/our-history/anniversaries/battle-of-britain/ and to an extent, allowed Bill to continue his path of becoming an Squadron Leader.
It was November 1940 when Bill started his pilot training, but due to a bomber offensive being the only way to properly counter the Nazis, this was huge not just for Bill but Britain as a whole. There had never been a bomber offensive before in warfare. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/30884/B[Author]LucasWEv10001.jpg
As seen in Bill’s official Pilot’s Log Book: (https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/520/24264/LLucasWE122826v1.1.pdf) his training consisted of being part of 16 Elementary Flying School at RAF Derby from 1940 to 41 , 8 School of Flying Training at RAF Montrose in 1941 and 20 Operational Training Units at RAF Lossiemouth in 1941 . He flew three different types of aircraft during his training, Miles Magister, Miles Master and Wellington I’s.
Bill’s training finally finished in August 1941 and he was posted to his first official squadron, IX Squadron at Honington. Here he flew the Wellington Bomber.
Will Cragg
Record of Service:
4 November 1940- 4 January 1941: 16 Elementary Flying Training School at RAF Derby flying Miles Magisters
9 January- 4 May 1941: 8 School of Flying Training at RAF Montrose flying Miles Masters
31 May 1941- 13 August 1941: 20 Operational Training Units at RAF Lossiemouth flying Wellington I’s
14 August 1941- 4 November 1941: 9 Squadron at RAF Honington flying Wellington III’s
4 November 1941- 30 December 1941: 26 Conversion Fleet at RAF Waterbeach flying Stirling’s
30 December 1941- 1 August 1942: 15 Squadron at RAF Wyton flying Whitley V’s
1 August 1942- 3 August 1942: 218 Conversion Fleet at RAF Marham flying Airspeed Oxfords
4 August 1942- 18 August 1942: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Kinloss flying Whitley IV’s
19 August 1942- 13 August 1942: 3 Fighter Instructor Schools at RAF Hullavington flying Ansons
17 September 1942- 18 September 1942: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Kinloss flying Halifax II’s
18 September 1942- 24 October 1944: 19 Operational Training Units at RAF Forres flying Mosquito III’s
30 October 1942- 19 December 1944: 1655 Mosquito Training Unit at RAF Warboys flying Mosquito IV’s
30 October 1944- 19 December 1944: 1655 Squadron at RAF Bourn flying Mosquito XX’s
7 June 1945- 28 June 1945: 162 Squadron at RAF Blackbushe flying Mosquito XXV’S
28 June 1945- 29 January 1946: 139 Squadron at RAF Upwood flying Lancaster III’s
29 January 1946: Station Head Quarters at RAF Upwood flying Mosquito XVI’s
William Cragg
William (Bill) Lucas was born on January 16th, 1917 in Tooting Bec, London. He was educated at Bec Grammar School, and left at the age of 15 to work at a printing company before moving to the insurers London and Lancashire to work as an assessor. While working there, he developed his talent for athletics with the Belgrave Harriers, with his best discipline being the 5000 metres. His goal was to compete at the 1940 Olympic games. However, in 1940, Bill was called up to help the war effort and mindful of his father’s advice to avoid the army and his own dislike of the sea, he chose to join the RAF.
Initially he trained as a fighter pilot on Miles Magisters and Miles Masters, but by the time he had finished training, the Battle of Britain had been won and the need for bomber pilots was more urgent. So, he was reallocated to bombers and trained to fly the Wellington at RAF Lossiemouth. Bill Lucas · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)
Following completion of pilot training in August 1941, he was posted to RAF Honington and joined 9 Squadron flying Wellingtons. He flew 14 operational sorties – notably Cologne and Hamburg – before converting to Stirlings at RAF Waterbeach. He then joined 15 (Bomber) Squadron at RAF Wyton, flying the Short Stirling and, by August 1942, Bill had completed a full tour of 30 operational sorties (over 40 operations in total). Bill experienced tense encounters with German defences, having to take evasive action and also getting caught in a cone of five or six searchlights. To get out of the searchlight glare he had to do things with the aircraft which it was never meant to do. Returning from one mission they flew too close to Kiel and the airframe amassed a lot of bullet holes and an alarming loss of fuel. Crossing the North Sea, the tank indicators showed practically nothing and they had to divert into Woodbridge in Suffolk. The groundcrew estimated there was less than twenty-five gallons of fuel left (probably less than 6 minutes of flying time).
He was released from operational duties and was posted to RAF Lossiemouth as a flying instructor. Then in December 1944, he returned to operational flying and was posted to 162 Squadron, part of the Pathfinder force, to fly the Mosquito, an aircraft he described as “a bit quicker and more responsive; a nice aeroplane”. He completed a further 34 operational sorites with 162 Squadron, including missions over Kiel, Berlin, Hannover and Magdeburg. In recognition of his war services, Bill was awarded the DFC and was Mentioned in Despatches.
Squadron Leader Bill Lucas was released from the Service in January 1946 and returned to the insurance job he had left to join the RAF. Eventually, he left the company to become an insurance broker. He also returned to athletics and the Belgrave Harriers; he ran in various internationals and competed for Great Britain in the 5000m at the 1948 London Olympics. Athletics remained with him for the rest of his life and he gave his spare time freely, working in prominent roles in the administration of athletics. He remained a Belgrave Harrier committee member well into his 90s. He became known as “the golden voice of British Athletics” for his many years as stadium announcer at the White City .
In his later years, Bill remained prominent in RAF and Aircrew Associations. He, along with a small Band of Sussex veterans, was instrumental in helping to raise funds for the construction of the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park and the International Bomber Command Centre.
Chris Cann
1940: Volunteered for the RAF
4 November 1940 – 4 January 1941: RAF Burnaston, No. 16 EFTS, flying Magister aircraft
9 January 1941 – 4 May 1941: RAF Montrose, No. 8 SFTS, flying Master aircraft
31 May 1941 – 13 August 1941: RAF Lossiemouth, No. 20 OTU, flying Wellington aircraft
14 August 1941 – 4 November 1941: RAF Honington, No. 9 Squadron, flying Wellington aircraft
1941: Commissioned into the officer ranks
4 November 1941 – 30 December 1941: RAF Waterbeach, No. 26 Conversion Flight, flying Stirling aircraft
30 December 1941 – 1 August 1942: RAF Wyton, No. 15 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
1 August 1942 – 3 August 1942: RAF Marham, 218 Conversion Flight
4 August 1942 – 18 August 1942: RAF Kinloss, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley aircraft
19 August 1942 – 13 September 1942: RAF Hullavington, No. 3 FTS, flying Oxford aircraft
17 September 1942 – 18 September 1942: RAF Kinloss, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley and Anson aircraft
18 September 1942 – 24 October 1944: RAF Foress, No. 19 OTU, flying Whitley and Anson aircraft
30 October 1944 – 19 December 1944: RAF Warboys, 1655 MTU, flying Mosquito and Oxford aircraft
19 December 1944 – 7 June 1945: RAF Bourn, 162 Squadron, flying Mosquito aircraft
7 June 1945 – 28 June 1945: RAF Blackbushe, 162 Squadron, flying Mosquito aircraft
28 June 1945 – 29 January 1946: RAF Upwood, 139 Squadron, flying Mosquito and Oxford aircraft
29 January 1946: Released from Service having attained the rank of Squadron Leader.
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 8th, Wednesday the 8th of February 2017, and I’m in Cowfold with Squadron Leader Bill Lucas DFC, and we’re gonna talk about his experiences of life, starting with what are your earliest recollections of life, Bill?
WL: Well, I was born on the 16th of January 1917 to poor parents and my father was a bricklayer, er, in Upper Tooting, er, we lived in Upper Tooting all the time. I went to a school, a primary school, and then I went to the Beck Grammar School, as it was then, in 1928 I think it was. I was there until 1942 and, er, that’s it [slight laugh].
CB: So, what age did you actually leave school?
WL: Oh, I was fifteen, was it?
CB: Okay.
WL: Fifteen.
CB: School leaving age was fourteen in those days.
WL: Yes.
CB: What did you do immediately after you left school?
WL: I, um, I worked for a firm down in Surrey somewhere and they were a printing firm, and I was there for about — oh, quite a few months, and then my mother, who had got me introduced to the insurance company, London Lancashire, um, Insurance Company, and I eventually joined them in — oh, don’t ask me the date but I, I did, yes.
CB: Yeah, and during that time you were quite an active, athletic youngster?
WL: Um, whilst I was in the insurance company yes. I was inured into athletics and became a good athlete with Belgrave Harriers, where I’ve just completed eighty-, eighty-one years.
CB: Brilliant. So, you were working for this insurance company and then doing your running in the evenings were you, and the weekends?
WL: Oh yes. Training at weekends.
CB: Training at the weekends.
WL: At weekends and the evenings. Yes.
CB: Yeah and, er, when the war started you were still with the insurance company, were you?
WL: Oh yes.
CB: Now, what made you choose to join the RAF rather than the Navy or the Army?
WL: Well, I was taken to a — or had to go to be seen by a doctor at some school in Croydon, and, er, he said to me, ‘which service do you want to go in?’ I said, ‘well, my father was in the Army and he said — he put me against that. I don’t like water so I’ve got to join the RAF’. So he said, ‘what do you want to do in the RAF?’ I said, ‘well, there’s only one thing to do in the RAF, that’s fly’ see. So he did a few probings around and said, ‘well, you’ll never fly’. I said, ‘oh, why not?’ He said, ‘well, you’ve got a large heart and you won’t pass the [unclear]’. So, you know, I persisted with, with this and said, ‘well, my large heart is because I’ve been an athlete and it doesn’t usually preclude anybody doing anything’. So — but, um, but eventually it worked out that I did.
CB: So, where did you report first?
WL: Oh, er, what first?
CB: For the RAF.
WL: Uxbridge I think it was.
CB: And what did you do there?
WL: Well, I was only just seen there, et cetera. Why did we go there? Now after that, we went down to Torquay.
CB: You didn’t go to Lord’s Cricket Ground?
WL: No, I don’t think so, no.
CB: Okay.
WL: I don’t remember that.
CB: And what happened at Torquay?
WL: We spent time doing ground work and that sort of thing.
CB: This was an ITW was it, Initial Training Wing?
WL: Yes, at Torquay and Babbacombe.
CB: What were the main activities there?
WL: Oh, it was going through ground work, weather, and all that sort of thing.
CB: And at what stage did you know that you were going to be trained as a pilot?
WL: What age was I then? Oh, you’ve got me on a bad day actually.
CB: Okay. Never mind. We can come back to that.
WL: What age was I? Could I have been?
CG: Twenty-one, twenty-two?
WL: Yes, something like that, yes.
CB: So, you joined up in ’39, did you?
CG: ’40.
WL: No.
CB: Not ’40?
WL: No, not ’39, no. I was dragged in in ’40.
CB: Okay. So, after Torquay, then where did you go?
WL: Where did I go?
CG: His log book will help.
WL: Oh, that’s what the log book’s for [slight laugh]. I went to, um, 16 EFTS at Derby.
CB: Right.
WL: That was flying little aeroplanes and then on to AFTS, Advanced Flying School, at Montrose, where we transferred onto a fighter type aircraft. That didn’t last long, and so we finished up at 20 OTU Lossiemouth on Wellingtons.
CB: So, what was your choice, really of — ideally would you have preferred to be in fighters or bombers?
WL: Well, seeing how I survived bombers, definitely that. I don’t think I’d have survived as a fighter pilot, I would probably kill myself.
CB: Too adventurous, were you?
WL: [slight laugh] Something like that.
CB: So, after you start, you did the OTU on Wellingtons. Where was that?
WL: That was in May ‘41.
CB: Yeah.
WL: Three months.
CB: Whereabouts?
WL: Mm?
CB: Whereabouts?
WL: Lossiemouth.
CB: Oh, that was Lossiemouth. Right. Which then took you to —
WL: 9 Squadron at Honington.
CB: What were the bombers there?
WL: We were there three months.
CB: What were you flying there?
WL: What was I flying? Um —
CG: The 1C.
WL: Wellington 1Cs, yeah, and 3s.
CB: But that was fairly short.
WL: Then to a conversion flight at Waterbeach, learning to fly the Stirling and then I went to 15 Squadron at Wyton.
CB: How did you like the Stirling?
WL: Oh, yes, I quite liked it. Bad on the ground, good in the air. Spending time with 15 Squadron at Wyton.
CB: Still on Stirlings, were you?
WL: I was on Stirlings, yes, and then with a conversion flight at Marham, onto Mosquitos.
CB: A bit different.
WL: Yeah. A bit quicker, a bit more responsive, nice aeroplane.
CB: And which role was the Mosquito operating in?
WL: Mm?
CB: Which role was the Mosquito operating in?
WL: Which role?
CB: Was it, was it as a bomber or was it as a anti-shipping or was it a night fighter or —
WL: Night fighter and a bomber, yes. Right. What next?
CB: Yes, I just wondered how you got on with the Mosquito and, er, what sort of raids?
WL: Oh, I got on very well with the Mosquito.
CB: What sort of ops did you do on them?
WL: I did marking for the main force and general, general bombing raids, yeah.
CB: This is before Pathfinders is it? Oh was it actually Pathfinders?
WL: During the Pathfinder period, yeah.
CB: Because Pathfinders gradually worked up, didn’t they?
WL: Oh yes. It was well run. It had a good leader and we did a lot of good work.
CB: On the Stirlings, were you on bombing raids with those or not?
WL: Mm?
CB: When you flew the Stirling —
WL: Yes.
CB: Were you — the raids? You went on ops with that did you?
WL: Oh yes.
CB: Bombing?
WL: Bombing raids.
CB: What sort of height?
WL: Night, night bombing raids.
CB: Yes. Was the Mosquito day and night or only night?
WL: Oh, only night. Yes.
CB: Okay.
Other: Apart from the three thousand bomber raid.
CB: In the thousand bomber raid.
CG: All three of them.
CB: Yes.
CG: In the Stirling.
CB: So what about — in the Stirling, did you go on the thousand bomber raid?
WL: Yes. 30th of May 1942.
CB: Mm. That was quite a busy —
WL: Cologne.
CB: Route.
WL: The thousand, yes. [slight laugh]
CB: To what extent could you see other aircraft when you were flying there?
WL: Oh, always.
CB: And then there were other large raids?
WL: Oh, yes. There were always more.
CB: What did you do after Mosquitos at Marham?
WL: What happened?
CB: Or, or was that a long tour?
WL: Well, it was only a two-day conversion course at Marham.
CB: Yes.
WL: I went to 19 OTU at Kinloss.
CB: Right.
WL: Oh my brain. It’s just not working.
CB: Do you want to have a break?
WL: I don’t think it will be any faster really.
CG: Have a break.
CB: We’ll just have a — stop there for a mo —
WL: I am a hundred years — [background noise] serving on two other four engine aircraft, squadrons, four of us, four squadrons up there doing that, and we were put in a newly built, um, building which was very damp et cetera and that’s where we slept. That was, that was —
CB: This was on operations?
WL: Well yes, yes.
CB: What were you flying then?
WL: I was flying — what was I flying? I was flying the Stirling, was I?
CB: You were flying the Stirling, yeah. And when the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau went through the Channel, what were you flying in order to —
WL: I wasn’t flying. I was just, um, I’d just joined 15 Squadron and on the same day that happened and the CO got everybody on board that could to look out —
CB: Look out for the ships?
WL: Yeah. As Cherry said, we —, I — we said that if we’d been — we did it from low down. If we’d emerged anywhere near them, we’d have been shot out, out of the sky.
CB: And what was the main attack? What aircraft were in the main attack?
WL: Er —
CB: So you were looking out but who was doing the bombing, supposedly?
WL: I was only just looking out, yes. The squadron were doing the bombing, if any.
CB: But this was with Stirlings?
WL: Mm?
CB: This was with Stirlings, was it?
WL: Yes.
CB: Right and the Navy were doing their bit as well.
WL: Oh yes, with what they call —
CB: Stringbags.
WL: Mm?
CB: Yeah. Stringbags, Swordfishes.
WL: Yes. Stringbags.
CB: Yes.
WL: Oh, you’re stretching my mind.
CB: Okay. We’ll stop again. So when you went to Kinloss, you were an instructor on the OTU?
WL: Oh yes, yes.
CB: So, how did that work? You —
WL: Well, you took crews out on night flights and all that sort of thing and cross country flights and, you know, trained them as, as bomber crews.
CB: Yes and, er, how, how dangerous was that?
WL: [slight laugh] Well, you were the passenger without any, any means of flying the aircraft.
CB: Where — so it had a full crew and the pilot, trainee pilot, was the captain —
WL: Well you trained the crew, you see?
CB: And so where would you be? Did it have dual controls?
WL: No, no, no.
CB: So you stood next to him did you?
WL: I sat next to him, yes.
CB: Oh, you sat next to him.
WL: Yes.
CB: Right.
WL: Well, on the step below the pilot’s seat. The pilot up, just up there and you sat down there.
CB: Could you see out, er, fairly well, or was it pretty difficult?
WL: Oh yes, yes. You’re stretching my mind.
CB: Yes. So did you have any hairy moments with the students?
WL: Not that I really recall, no.
CB: And those Wellingtons, were they new and up to date or —
WL: Oh, far from it.
CB: Were they old and knackered?
WL: Far from it. Old 1Cs.
CB: And could you fly on one engine with the, er, Wellington?
WL: Yeah, it flew on one engine. Yes. Most aircrew, most aircraft could fly on lesser engines. They were designed that way.
CB: How did you feel about being an instructor away from the front line?
WL: [slight laugh] I don’t know how I felt. I suppose, I suppose I was a good instructor and that was all they needed of you. [sigh]
CB: I’ll stop again.
CG: You had got a couple of ops more than the rest of your crew, hadn’t you?
WL: Oh yes, yes.
CG: And then his — the rest of his crew were taken on the next operation by another pilot and lost.
CB: This is on Stirlings?
CG: On Stirlings on 15 Squadron.
WL: All but one.
CG: But Bill didn’t know until about three years ago. He thought the whole crew had been lost and then through, um, Facebook and doing our Bomber Command things, somebody in the United States, somebody somewhere got to hear about it, and it transpired that —
WL: Well, I had a picture, I had a picture in one of the Sunday papers, Sunday Telegraph —
CB: Yes.
WL: And they picked it out and, and the boy, the boy said, ‘Oh, that was my father’, and, er, it followed from there.
CG: His — and his flight engineer had survived. He had been ill on this trip apparently and he’d survived and he —
WL: He did another trip. He was a sergeant as an engineer, he survived to do another tour and became a warrant officer and got a DFC.
CG: And Bill found out about three years ago and he was like a dog with two tails [laugh]. He was so thrilled and, and you had lunch with the grandson, didn’t you?
WL: Yes, we did.
CG: Bill, they’ll probably, they’ll want to record that so you’ll need to repeat it, but I just thought I’d jog it because, because this thing about losing your own, your crew. I mean, you was quite upset that another pilot had lost his life for him.
WL: Oh yes.
CG: That —
WL: I’d flown a number of trips with them so naturally to lose them was, was a great harrowing.
CB: What was it that caused you not to be on that particular op and another pilot had to do it?
WL: Because I’d done my stint. I’d, I’d come off, come off and left them to it.
CG: It was the stage when they did second dicky trips so he would do his — or he would do his dicky trips and those counted as ops, so the pilot was often two or three ops ahead of the rest of his crew, you see?
CB: Mm. Yes.
CG: Anyway, they will need to record that probably Bill, so —
WL: Mm?
CG: They’ll need to record it so you’ll have to say it all again [laugh].
WL: What exactly have I got to say?
CB: Okay. So the question — the point here I think is the trauma of —
WL: Of the loss of the crew?
CB: Losing a crew.
WL: Yes.
CB: And so if we could start, please, with why it happened. Is it, was it because you’d finished your tour of thirty ops?
WL: Yes.
CB: And then —
WL: Well bit more than thirty but —
CB: Okay. How many had you done by then, roughly? It doesn’t matter. You’d done your tour but the crew went on.
WL: That’s right.
CB: So what happened there?
WL: At the end of my period of —
CB: This is on Stirlings.
WL: Operational work on Stirlings, I finished my tour and, er, left the crew. The crew still had a few trips to do. Another captain took them over and, er, lost them, all but except the —
CB: The flight engineer.
WL: The — what is he?
CG: The flight engineer.
WL: Flight engineer, um, and lost them and, er, I was very sorry about that because, you know, we got very close together with a lot of trips behind us.
CB: Mm.
WL: Mm.
CB: How did the crew gel in general? So you did the full tour but how well did the crew gel during operations and —
WL: Oh very well, we went everywhere together.
CB: Yeah.
WL: Yeah.
CB: And what about on the social side?
WL: Yeah, and on social side. We all went drinking together.
CB: Yeah, and were — did you have a mixture of officers and NCOs or were, were all the crew at that point NCOs?
WL: No, no. I had a mixed lot, you know.
CB: What — when were you commissioned? Immediately you joined?
WL: When was I commissioned? I don’t know.
CG: May ’42.
CB: Some people were —
CG: May ’42.
WL: May ’42.
CB: Okay. Whilst you were on the squadron. That squadron?
WL: Must have been.
CB: Okay. Right, we’ll stop there.
WL: [background noise] Earlier in the war, um, he was there.
CB: Mahaddie?
WL: I didn’t know him well then but we got to know him very well later. And he remembered me, so he then put me forward to go onto Mosquitos.
CB: Mm. Right.
WL: That’s as how I see it anyway.
CB: And what was, what were, what were the main strengths that Mahaddie had? What was he particularly good at?
WL: He’d done God knows how many, um, bombing trips, early on. One hundred and twenty-odd of them.
CB: Mm and his role in Pathfinders was what?
WL: Mm?
CB: What was his role in the Pathfinders?
WL: Oh, I don’t know. I suppose he must have been second in command to the boss man, whose name I can’t think at the moment.
CB: But was his role to select suitable candidates for being Pathfinders?
WL: Oh, I think, I think he was, yes. That you’ll never know whether they were good, bad or indifferent.
CB: Right. So, in your OTU how did you grade some of these pilots because there must have been various different abilities? How did you find that?
WL: Well, they had to reach a standard before they could move on to go on to squadrons.
CB: Mm.
WL: That’s what we were teaching them to do.
CB: Yes and then you were required to grade between exceptional, good, average and below average.
WL: Was I? [slight laugh]
CB: [slight laugh] And I just wondered how you —
WL: I don’t think I did, I was. I think my, my CO did that. I certainly didn’t do it.
CB: No. I’m just intrigued to know whether you were consulted in that process in order for that assessment —
WL: Oh, no doubt I was but it was a long time back.
CB: Yeah, and some of the people didn’t complete the course, did they, or would you imagine?
WL: Oh, must have been plenty that didn’t. I can’t remember any of that.
CB: That’s okay. That’s okay. So after OTU where did you go then?
WL: Went to 3 FIS Hullavington. What did we do there? Oh, Hullavington was a training thing for, for, um, teaching and I had a course there on being able to fly and talk at the same time. [slight laugh] So —
CB: So was that before you went to OTU? Because you were learning to be an instructor?
WL: That’s right. That was learning to fly and talk.
CB: Yes.
WL: And then I went to 19 OTU Kinloss.
CB: Yeah. So after Kinloss?
WL: Oh, I had two years at 19 OTU Forres, part of Kinloss.
CB: Part of Kinloss, yeah, yeah. What was the accommodation like up there?
WL: It was quite good. We were in nice, nice huts. Yes, up the road from the mess really. We had to walk or we all had a bike and —.
CB: How were the instructors housed? Did you have two in a room or three or how did it work?
WL: Er, certainly more than one, two I think, yes.
CB: Wooden huts or Nissen huts?
WL: Oh, wooden huts.
CB: Suitable for officers.
WL: Now you put Nissen in? [slight laugh], it could, yeah, it could have been Nissen huts.
CB: I was thinking of the comfort.
WL: They were alright, yes, yes. We all had a stove in the middle of the floor et cetera, to keep you warm.
CB: Yeah, and what about the food? What was, what was the quality of the food like when you were at an OTU?
WL: It was acceptable, I suppose you could say.
CB: But on the operational stations it was different?
WL: Oh yes, they treated us well there. Had the expenses of giving you eggs and bacon before you went off and when you came back [slight laugh].
CB: Has that affected your long term interest in bacon and egg? [slight laugh]
WL: Hardly, I love bacon and egg.
CB: I do. Got to have fried bread though.
WL: Mm?
CB: You must have fried bread with it.
WL: Oh yes
CB: So after Kinloss, at the OTU for two years, and Forres where did you go?
WL: I went to an, the MTU at Warboys where I learnt to fly Mosquitos.
CB: Right [pause] and that was a fairly short course I imagine.
WL: Oh yes, a couple of days, that was all.
CB: Followed by?
WL: To be posted to 162 Squadron at Bourn, in Cambridgeshire.
CB: At where?
WL: Bourn.
CB: Oh, Bourn, yes.
WL: Bourn without an ‘e’.
CB: Yeah. Not to be confused with Lincolnshire. And what was your —
WL: And I was there for, er, six months.
CB: Right, and what was your role there?
WL: Oh, I was a bombing and marking pilot.
CB: Right.
CG: Pathfinder.
CB: So could you just talk us through a Pathfinder sortie? So the main force would be following, would be flying along and needing markers. Did you start — did you set off after the main force had already left because of your speed or did you integrate with it at the front? Or how did it work?
WL: Oh, we didn’t see the main force. We had to arrive at a time when we flew H2S on the Mosquito which —
CG: Did you have Oboe?
WL: Had Oboe, yes.
CB: You wouldn’t have had H2S on a Mosquito, would you?
CG: No, it was Oboe.
WL: H2S Mosquito. Yes. Yes.
CB: Oboe.
WL: Where you flew — where you flew — I forget what you did. You flew —
CB: Confluence of the lines.
WL: You flew a beam —
CB: Yes.
WL: Et cetera, and then photographs and et cetera, and you, you dropped the marker on that spot, yes.
CB: Did you have more than one colour marker so that you could go round again, or did you tend to just be in and out?
WL: Oh, in and out. Yes. I don’t think — I don’t remember any bombing raids where you went round a second time.
CB: Right. And I was think — yes. Okay. And was the — your sortie on its own or were there several Mosquitos together doing the marking on a single target?
WL: I can’t — I honestly wouldn’t know. It depended on what, what the bosses said.
CB: Mm. I was thinking —
WL: Funny question that.
CB: I was just thinking of the amount of flares that you’d be using, coloured markers I mean, um, whether your load would be enough?
WL: That’s all we had to do was fly the beam and then drop as instructed, so how many flares went Lord knows.
CB: Mm.
WL: Not within my remit.
CB: Okay. So you did that for six months.
WL: Yeah, something like that.
CB: How many ops were those roughly? Was it as many as when you were doing the —
CG: Forty.
WL: I haven’t a clue.
CG: It was forty Bill.
CB: Forty
WL: Forty-odd, yeah.
CB: Okay. So at the end of that six months, then what did you do after that? Did they think you needed a rest?
CG: It was the end of the war.
CB: Or did the war come to an end in Europe?
WL: Oh yes. It was finished and the, er, aircraft, we were flying did some trips round Europe dropping mail, um, where we landed at Blackbushe, and then I finished up at — you know, the squadron joined 139 Squadron at Upwood before being dismantled in January ’46.
CB: So this was all Mosquito flying was it?
WL: Yes.
CB: Yeah. So compared with the Stirling, which was clearly a different aeroplane, which one did you really prefer?
WL: When it comes to aircraft I love them all. They brought me home.
CB: Mm, people have different affections —
WL: Well —
CB: For different planes for different reasons.
WL: Well, you could hardly compare a Mosquito with a Stirling. So different aircrafts.
CB: Yes but my experience is that people have a huge allegiance to their aeroplanes.
WL: Oh we all loved them. [slight laugh]
CB: Yeah. Yes. Okay, we’ll stop for a mo.
Other: [unclear] Windows stuff.
CB: No, that’s different.
WL: Window was you’d have this strip stuff which —
CB: You didn’t drop Window —
WL: Big aircraft pumped down the chute.
CB: For jamming the radar, yes. You were with Pathfinders, but were you Pathfinding on every sortie, every op, or did you do other sorts of operations?
WL: Oh, I did plenty of others.
CB: And what would they be?
WL: Just dropping a — the cookie, yes.
CB: Yes, so could you describe the cookie?
WL: I can’t.
CB: It’s a four thousand pound barrel.
WL: Four — five thousand pound bomb.
CB: Yes. What’s in it?
WL: Something that explodes.
CB: [laugh] What about locations? What was the worst place to bomb?
WL: I suppose they all were because they were all, they were all protected, yes.
CB: Mm, and how many trips did you do to Berlin?
WL: Fourteen.
CB: What was your reaction to flying there compared with somewhere like Essen?
WL: It’s a target.
CB: The flak?
WL: Oh, well —
CB: The same everywhere, was it?
WL: Yes, it’s all —
CB: Or were they more organised?
WL: If you look at the picture there behind, that is what you see.
CB: Yeah.
WL: That is flak.
CB: Yeah. Were you pleased to move away from Wellingtons to bigger, more modern aircraft?
WL: Well, whether I was pleased or not, I was drawn off of Wellingtons and put on Stirlings, so that’s what the Bomber Command wanted, so that’s what they got.
CB: What were the limitations of the Stirling in your perception?
WL: Well, its speed wasn’t huge and it only had an operational height of about sort of twenty thousand.
CB: With the Mosquito, you could go —
WL: Oh well, you could go thirty-five thousand.
CB: So at what level would you normally fly on a typical Mosquito op?
WL: Oh, twenty thousand or something.
CB: And when you did the marking as a Pathfinder was there — how soon, how far ahead of the main stream were you to do the marking?
WL: Well, whatever the Bomber Command wanted.
CB: I was just thinking of —
WL: I didn’t have any say in it.
CB: No, no, but I wondered whether you could see them arriving almost immediately or there tended to be a, a lag.
WL: Well, it was flying home you could see the bombs dropping and well, you could see the explosions.
CB: Yeah and as the smoke got thicker, did another marker come along to re-set the target?
WL: I haven’t a clue.
CB: So you didn’t have to do that?
WL: No, no.
CB: No. I’m stopping for a mo. [Background noise]. So on a raid, as I understand it, there would be a master bomber. Would he be sometimes in a Mosquito, or always in a Lancaster or a Halifax?
WL: I couldn’t tell you.
CB: ‘Cause he was calling up what —
WL: Well, well you’d hear him but you wouldn’t see him.
CB: Yes. Right. What was your endurance on the Mosquito? Could you hold over the target if it was a long way away?
WL: Mm?
CB: Could you actually circle a target in a Mosquito if it was a long trip, or was the endurance not sufficient? ‘Cause the Lancaster master bomber would be circling, wouldn’t he?
WL: Well, you could. You are asking some impossible questions.
CB: That’s okay. I don’t mind if you can’t answer. I’m just curious because of some of the other bits that have come out. Yes. Thank you. Because we want to know what people’s perceptions were.
WL: It was a very long time ago.
CB: Yeah. I’m stopping again.
WL: [background noise] Scotland.
CB: Right.
WL: The Whitley was the aircraft at, er, Kinloss.
CB: Was it?
WL: Yes.
CB: Yes. So what was the Whitley like in terms of —
WL: Oh, a little worse than the Wellington. A slow aircraft.
CB: Yeah. They’d been all withdrawn from service some time before.
WL: Mm?
CB: They’d been withdrawn from frontline service.
WL: Oh yes. They were replaced by, by the Wellington I think, yes.
CB: Yes. What was the handling like because it was an old design?
WL: Very heavy.
CB: And, um, what about reliability?
WL: Of the Whitley?
CB: Of the Whitley, yeah.
WL: I haven’t a clue.
CB: It might have been its saving grace.
WL: The ground crews would look after them. They always seemed to be flying to me.
CB: Yeah. And on the topic of ground crew, what was your relationship on the — first of all on the Stirling squadrons, squadron, with the ground crew? How did that work?
WL: You had a ground crew, yes.
CB: Yes. How close did you — how closely did you liaise with them?
WL: Well you got quite friendly with the sergeant, yeah.
CB: Yeah, and you talked about the crew being very cohesive and social events as well as in the air. Did the sergeant, your chief, did he get involved in that or did the aircrew tend to —
WL: Not usually, no.
CB: No. Was he not invited or just not thought to be —
WL: Wasn’t protocol.
CB: Right. You also flew the Anson for a bit. Why was that?
WL: The Anson was only a transport aircraft, used when you wanted to transmit somebody or carry something, or, or go somewhere.
CB: Yeah. Now throughout the war people were supposed to be fit. You were a very fit person before you joined. How did you maintain your fitness during the war?
WL: Well, I tried to do a bit of running but I never really found time to do it.
CB: And your running was, um, well recognised before the war. What did the war do to it.
WL: [laugh] what did the war do to me? It deprived me of going to, er, two events 1940 and ‘44.
CG: The Olympics.
WL: The Olympics.
CB: Yeah, so what did you do instead?
WL: Mm?
CB: What did you do instead?
WL: I don’t know.
CB: Retribution.
CG: You bombed Hitler [laugh].
WL: I bombed Hitler instead, yeah. [slight laugh]
CB: So you missed those two Olympics, then what happened in ‘48?
WL: Well, I was in them.
CB: Were you in the Air Force at the time?
WL: No.
CB: Right. And what was it like at the Olympics in 1948?
WL: I don’t remember now.
CB: You — I mean it was a huge achievement to go there.
WL: Yes.
CB: But the winner that time was — in 1948?
WL: The what?
CB: Who was the winner?
WL: The winner?
CB: In your particular speciality in 1948?
WL: Oh —
CB: Emil Zatopek
WL: Zatopek. Yes.
CB: Did you meet him again afterwards? Or was that the end?
WL: Well, it was no good meeting him. He couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Czech so —
CB: Right. [slight laugh]
CG: Bill did actually run against Zapotek in his heat.
CB: Did he?
WL: Yes.
CB: Yes. And after those Olympics did you — you still kept up your running did you?
WL: Good Lord, yes. I did eighty-two years with Belgrave Harriers.
CB: Yeah. Right. And you were running the Harriers, weren’t you?
WL: Well, I wasn’t running all the time, but I was doing administrations.
CB: Yeah. Did you feel after the ’48 Olympics that you would have a go at the next one, or did you think that was one step too far?
WL: After?
CB: 1952 in other words.
WL: Have a go doing what?
CB: At the Olympics, enter the Olympics again in ’52.
WL: Oh, not to perform, no.
CB: No.
WL: I couldn’t possibly, could I? Think of the age I was.
CB: Well, some people go on and on, as you have.
WL: Well, it depends on your event.
CB: Yes.
WL: But you can’t do fifteen hundreds or five thousands unless you’re pretty fit. If you want to run a marathon, then you might do it.
CB: Yeah. And how did you fit in your running and all your activities with Belgrave Harriers with your job?
WL: Oh, it was all evenings and weekend work.
CB: Yes. And the company itself was sponsoring you, was it?
WL: I didn’t need sponsoring.
CB: Your employer? I was thinking for time off and —
WL: Oh no. I didn’t take any time off because of it.
CB: Everything was done in those days differently.
WL: They did indeed, yes.
CB: Yeah. How did you develop programmes with Belgrave Harriers for people in future? As time was moving on, did you run? Did you work out training programmes to improve people’s effectiveness?
WL: Oh no, no. They’d all do their own [pause], oh, um, Belgrave met up at Wimbledon on Saturdays and during the week if necessary. Otherwise you did your, did your work on your own from home, running round roads et cetera.
CB: Right. Changing back to, um, your occupation, you left the RAF at the end of the war or were they — did they keep you on for a while?
WL: You had your option of going on a short service commission, without any assurance that you would be kept at the end of that period so I didn’t.
CB: So your promotion had got you to where?
WL: My?
CB: Your promotions got you to what rank in the end?
WL: In the war?
CB: Yes.
WL: Squadron leader.
CB: Right, and what were your responsibilities as a squadron leader at that time?
CB: I looked after a flight, um, in the Pathfinder Force.
CB: Right. Okay. How many people —
WL: I was OC a Flight.
CB: Right. How many aircraft in the squadron? So how many in a flight?
WL: Twelve probably. There you are. So, twelve I think.
CB: In the squadron or the flight?
WL: The flight.
CB: Yeah. Right so three flights in the squadron or two.
WL: Two usually.
CB: Yeah. Right. So you left because you didn’t feel you wanted to continue your career, is that what you said?
WL: No guarantee to it.
CB: Yeah.
WL: I had a job to go to so I came back to the job.
CB: Mm, and took up where you left off, effectively?
WL: Yes, yes, exactly.
CB: How did it progress from there? Did you keep going with that or —
WL: Oh yeah, I did quite well in it.
CB: Yeah. Good. We’ll take a break. Thank you very much.
CG: What was the equipment you were given? A blazer?
WL: Blazer and, um, shorts.
CB: Who gave you those?
WL: And, er —
CG: A cap.
WL: A cap.
CB: What? The Olympic Committee did that, did they?
WL: Yes.
CG: Just minimal and he got the — didn’t you get the train from home to go and take part?
WL: Oh yes, yes.
CG: There was no Olympic village or anything.
CB: So how did this work then?
WL: I lived in Sanderstead, which is outside Croydon. I had to take a bus down to Croydon, a train to Victoria, Victoria to, to —
CG: White City, was it?
WL: No.
CB: Wembley?
CG: Wembley.
WL: Wembley. Walk in from there.
CB: This is all for the honour of serving your country in the Olympics.
WL: All for the honour of serving my country and what am I getting for it? Sweet —
CG: Carol enclosed those in an envelope [unclear]. [Background noise]
CB: Now just going back a bit. The first thousand bomber raid was an amazing achievement, however you look at it, but was there any significance about some of the aircraft? What about the one you flew? What was that?
WL: Stirling.
CB: Yeah. And did it have a significance in itself on — who had paid for it?
WL: Er, I don’t think so. We had a little bit better navigation equipment.
CG: MacRobert’s Reply. You flew MacRobert’s Reply.
WL: It might have been, yes.
CG: I think you said it was. It’s in your book.
WL: Yes.
CB: So, do you just want to describe that? What was it, the significance of MacRobert’s Reply?
WL: Well, Lady MacRoberts had two sons she lost during the war and in return for that, she bought replacement, um, aircraft.
CB: Right.
WL: That was the sig— significance.
CB: And they were Stirlings?
WL: Oh yes, yes.
CB: Appropriate. Scottish family, Scottish name of the aircraft.
WL: Yes. Bound to have been.
CB: And you flew one of them?
WL: I few one of them, yes.
CB: And it was on that raid was it?
WL: I think it was, yes.
CB: Yes. When you were on a squadron, did you tend to fly the same aircraft all the time or did you move around to different ones?
WL: Oh, you had your own aircraft and you flew it whenever you could, according to availability, you know, whether it was serviceable or not.
CB: Mm, and that would be checked out with you, er, you had to sign for the plane before you took off, did you?
WL: Well, that was part of the ground, um, operation, yes.
CB: Yes, with, and who was the person who handed over the aircraft?
WL: Sergeant.
CB: Of the ground crew?
CB: Yes.
CB: Right and if, if yours wasn’t serviceable they would rustle up another, is that it?
WL: They would try to but if they couldn’t then they couldn’t.
CB: And you didn’t go.
WL: Didn’t go.
CG: Are you sure you haven’t done enough though?
CB: Yes.
CB: This interview was cut short because Bill was clearly was getting too tired. He’s done an amazing job when one considers his recent car accident and also his hundredth birthday celebrations as well as all the media attention associated with that. The interview was in company with Cherry Greveson.
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 Lucas. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-08
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALucasWE170208
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:49:45 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Lucas DFC was born on the 16th January in 1917 and lived in Upper Tooting.
He left school at the age of 15 and went to work in an Insurance Company, before joining the Royal Air Force in 1939.
Bill was sent to 16 EFTS at Derby and then to an Advanced Flying School at Montrose, before finally ending up at 20 OTU Lossiemouth in 1941 flying Wellington Bombers.
He also spent time learning to fly the Short Stirling before being posted to 15 Squadron at Wyton, where he transferred to Mosquitos becoming a Pathfinder for Bomber Command.
Bill completed over 40 operations with Bomber Command flying various aircraft and after the war, competed in the 1948 Olympics where he competed against Emil Zatopek.
Bill spent time after the war with the Belgrave Harriers and took part and organised activities for over 80 years.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Cambridgeshire
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Cologne
139 Squadron
15 Squadron
162 Squadron
19 OTU
20 OTU
9 Squadron
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
Initial Training Wing
Mosquito
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bourn
RAF Kinloss
RAF Torquay
RAF Upwood
RAF Wyton
sport
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/531/8765/AStachiewiczM170119.1.mp3
9b44028290cd64310d035dadb1aa336b
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
Stachiewicz, Mieczysław
Mieczysław Stachiewicz VM KW**
M Stachiewicz
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stachiewicz, M
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Mieczysław Stachiewicz, Virtuti Militari (b. 1917, 1625, Polskie Siły Powietrzne), and his log book. He came to the UK after the Nazi invasion of Poland and flew operations as a pilot with 301 Squadron from RAF Hemswell.
The collection also contains an album of photographs, newspaper clippings and papers relating to his escape from Poland and his tour of operations.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mieczysław Jusef Stachiewicz and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-19
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
CB: Right, my name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 19th of January 2017, and I’m in Acton with Mr. Stachiewicz and we’re going to talk about his experiences both in Poland and then coming through France –
MS: [Unclear].
CB: And into the RAF. So what were your earliest recollections?
MS: Well first I finished my secondary school –
CB: Yeah
MS: In 1937 [doorbell rings]. Oh that’s probably Artur.
CB: Right I’ll stop just for a mo.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
CB: Right so we were talking about your secondary school.
MS: Secondary school. Do you want details?
CB: Yes.
MS: My [speaks Polish].
AB: Subatory [?] school which was a –
CB: A military school?
MS: No, no, no.
AB: No this is a normal primary school, yeah.
CB: Right, okay.
MS: And then all the corporals [?] come in.
AB: And join the core [emphasis] of cadets.
CB: Yes.
MS: That was a military school but we had full training at secondary school.
CB: Right.
AB: Yep.
MS: Plus military training.
CB: Yes.
MS: My –
CB: Like, like in –
MS: And then after that, when I, I [speaks in Polish] final examinations –
CB: Yes.
AB: O levels, like O levels.
MS: That was in the school, that was nineteen, oh dear, thirty-seven.
CB: Yes.
MS: And then I had one a year national service.
CB: Right.
MS: On that your first three months were in the infantry –
CB: Yep.
MS: For [speaks in Polish].
AB: Yes.
MS: And then I volunteered for the Air Force –
CB: Right.
MS: And for the rest of the year was spent in the Air Force. First couple of months was the theory and general Air Force talk, and what is it about –
CB: Yes.
MS: And then we started flying training in [Polish area] –
AB: Yep, [repeats place name] it’s a famous area for training, still a training camp [?] –
MS: Well we spent the first few months in Demlin [?] –
AB: Demlin [?].
MS: Which was Air Force training and schooling centre and some –
AB: Yes, it’s the equivalent to Cranwell.
MS: Sorry?
AB: It’s equivalent, equivalent to Cranwell here in England.
MS: Yes, that’s correct.
AB: Yes.
MS: And then I spent less than a year training. First simply training and then more advanced.
CB: Yes
Other: [Quietly speaks Polish to AB].
AB: [Quietly replies].
MS: Yes, so we started first on, erm, teaching plane Bartor [?]. Each was already withdrawn from the Air Force, but somehow they got [unclear] between [Polish place name] and then you went to more advance training [?] and then [pause] –
CB: Can you remember which type of plane it was?
MS: Just trying to remember –
AB: He’s just thinking –
MS: PWS. P, W, S.
CB: Oh yes.
AB: PWS [speaks in Polish]. PWS-20?
MS: Yes, the twenty and then twenty-six.
CB: Right.
AB: They’re, they’re very good planes, they’re –
MS: Yes, very good planes.
CB: Right.
MS: Twin, single engine but –
AB: Biplane, yeah.
MS: So that’s – and then I qualified as a military pilot.
CB: Mhm.
MS: [Speaks in Polish] –
AB: Yes, so –
MS: Where we had our flying training.
AB: Eradone [?].
MS: Eradone [?]. And then what – the war was approaching. All the [?] reservists I was mobilised to my unit.
CB: Yeah.
MS: Which was the Fourth Regiment, ‘cause in Poland the whole Air Force, the main, main groupings were regiments –
CB: Yes.
MS: [Someone prepares food in the background] same as any other military thing.
CB: Same as the army.
MS: Same as the army.
CB: Yes.
MS: And then I was called to my unit when I joined Rzeros [?] Squadron. Apart from taking some planes to [Polish town] aerodromes, non military, no Air Force flying at that time. That was September 1939.
CB: Yes.
MS: Then when Germans were approaching we evacuated from [Polish town]. Went by goods train, general direction of due west, because the Germans were approaching from the, from, in the direction of the east. The Germans were approaching from the west [?]. The first by train then we were cut off by some German troops so we simply left the train and walked the last sixty, about sixty kilometres to Warsaw. And after waiting for our group, or our squadron, we reassembled in Warsaw, and after a few days waiting we were given [speaks in Polish].
AB: They got, erm, they got – when the army takes over something they –
MS: Yes.
AB: Confiscate, try to –
CB: They requisition.
AB: Requisition [emphasis]. So requisitioned the cars and the vehicles.
MS: So we were put into requisition the cars, and went further west. At first in the, each car [unclear] and then reassemble not far from the Romanian border.
CB: Oh right.
MS: And the Germans still advancing so we got finally to the Romanian border, and when the news came that the Russians joined the Germans and crossed the border not far from us. The, the supposed to be Russian armed unit. We’re just at the border, so instead of waiting to be taken either by German, prisoners of war, either by Germans or Russians we crossed the border to neutral Romania.
CB: Right.
MS: When our unit was, now what would that be?
AB: [Speaks in Polish].
MS: [Pause, then speaks in Polish].
AB: They were interns I think, interns?
MS: Yeah interns, yeah, yeah.
AB: Yes.
CB: Interns, yes. You were interned there, yeah.
MS: Interned there.
CB: In Romania.
MS: Still they ask the unit. It was military papers and civilian papers with us so we interned there. Germany were watching the Romanians very carefully. They were afraid, very afraid of Germans, so escape from the camp was organised and in small groups we got first through Bucharest and then Polish authorities, Polish embassy and so on. And then we got civilian papers, and with civilian papers we officially left Romania. Single group or single person and then through Yugoslavia, Greece to France. In France the Polish forces were already been reorganised, including Polish Air Force, but [emphasis] also came to France at that time, we just put in the waiting counts [?], reserve any duties so assembly, assembly air camps. And there, when Germans attacked France and at the first month at the end of June 1940, when German troops were approaching the place where we were, we crossed to England [emphasis]. Actually there was small – we went first to Mediterranean of course, [unclear] boats there, and then again by train to a small port, French port [gives name]. It was just on the border to Spain, and then already there was – we arrived into England on the last day of June, but already there was passenger ship, British [unclear] escorted by one Destroyer. We were all loaded there, embarked there, and we crossed to Liverpool. So it was at the beginning of the, about the third of July 1940, forty-one.
CB: Forty, forty.
MS: Oh no, forty.
CB: Mm.
MS: And we landed at Liverpool. They put us into several – also several hundreds of us, ‘cause the first Polish Air Force men came in 1939, and first training started I think in early 1940.
CB: Mm.
MS: But most of us were just in assembly camps and we crossed to England at the very [emphasis] end of June, June 1940, June [unclear] 1940. So we landed at Liverpool I think of the first or second of July and we were put into several camps in mostly in Blackpool origin, standard camps. I think they were built there by RAF for training personnel, so we got one camp there. And well, it started with some English lessons and basic training and what the Air Force, Royal Air Force looked liked. And, 1941. After some time, we were one of the first groups which started training on Tiger Moths, and [unclear] Polish Air Force and RAF. And my number, RAF number was 1625, I don’t remember Polish name, number, and then of course there was the usual training. We training – we’re mostly in my groups reserve pilots. So we’ve – but we’re retrained from the very beginning. So we had a course on Tiger Moths. I can’t [?] remember the name of the aerodrome and the camp, somewhere near Blackpool. Then we went secondary course and after that I got my commission, Polish and British as a pilot officer. And in 1941, I found myself being trained on Wellington one in eighteenth OTU, operational flying, operational training unit, and there we formed crews because I was training, I was retrain [emphasis] again as a pilot but then all the other members of the crew were trained separately, so we assembled there and start assembling crews. So I had second pilot, I was in the, in the crew. The first pilot in the cockerman-dral [?], or the crew. I had second, second pilot, navigator, radio operator and two air gunners. And after training there we were posted to 301 Squadron. It was the, in November 1941, to 301 Bomber Squadron as a full crew. The only difference was ‘til then, the crew consisted of two pilot, first and second, and I was the only one directed in commanding [unclear] of the crew, because they changed it. There was still the crews flying with two pilots, first and the second, usually one with the new crew without any training or any experience in all flying, the first pilots they are the second pilots, and a experienced pilot [unclear] the crew or just commanding as on our first flying. So that was the end of nineteen – it was in December, November I think, 1940, 1941. So we were training at the OUT, eighteen OTU as a crew and then in, in December 1941 we qualified as fully trained crew and joined a couple of other crews training with us, 301 Squadron. [Pause] and then it started. Our first flight was in my book, Stuttgart I think it was. But then I was flying there as a second pilot with a very experienced first pilot, and inexperienced crew. So we started with Stuttgart and then our second flight must have been [?] Cologne, thousand, thousand planes on Cologne. I think it was thirties [?].
CB: The thousand bomber raid.
MS: Sorry?
CB: The one thousand bomber raid.
MS: One thousand – well the first one thousand bomber raid. That will be in my logbook.
CB: Mm.
MS: I think that was the first day – December nineteen – and then after that we, few others. Another one was the, oh [pause, papers shuffle]. I got my, in my logbook –
CB: Yep.
MS: There was Cologne. Still, still when we entered all the duties in the book, we’re told we must not put the name of the target, so my second, second flight was without naming Cologne, and then I think the next one was Essen which was really beating up severely [?] ‘cause Essen was one of the industrial parts of Germany, so most of Essen was very heavily defended, and we had the biggest losses during our raids on Essen. And I was still flying as second pilot. My first flight after the first one – shall I have a look at the book?
CB: Yeah, we’ll just stop for a mo while we look at the logbook.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
CB: So let me just put that in. So the service flying unit that you were on to convert to twins was number sixteen SFTS at Newton. Then you went to the OTU where you crewed up, is what you said.
MS: Yeah.
CB: You finished at the OTU in April –
MS: Something like that [?] –
CB: April forty-two and then you went to 301 Squadron.
MS: That’s right, that’s correct –
CB: Right, okay. And the whole crew –
MS: Actually, we went to at the end of 1941 to the squadron because we’re –
CB: Ah.
MS: Because we were already November –
CB: Right, okay. So –
MS: And then we train crew –
CB: Yep.
MS: And our first operation was I think there must be a date there under the name of the target.
CB: Yes your first operational bombing at Stuttgart [emphasis] –
MS: Stuttgart, yes.
CB: Was on the 4th of May 1942.
MS: Er –
CB: Operation, May forty-two, operational bombing.
MS: May forty-two?
CB: Mm. The operation bombing, it said [papers shuffle].
MS: My memory is [unclear]. Because we didn’t start operational flying immediately after –
CB: Right.
MS: Transfer to forty-two [unclear].
CB: Right. And then you went to Saint Nazaire.
MS: [Unclear.]
CB: And your alone trip was the 30th of May.
MS: [Unclear].
CB: Yeah.
MS: I think the thirtieth of –
CB: Yeah, 30th of May –
MS: May
CB: Yeah, 30th of May 1942 was your Cologne bombing, thousand bomber raid.
MS: Yeah, yeah.
CB: Okay, good.
MS: That was the – experienced [?] pilot as a first pilot.
CB: So –
MS: If you wanted the names you find them –
CB: So we’ve got the names here, and –
MS: That was Freschinski [?].
CB: Yeah, Freschinski [?]. So you did a, an operation bombing raid on Dieppe [emphasis] –
MS: Yeah, yeah.
CB: That was the port was it?
MS: Yes, I think – I don’t know the exact place, you’d have to take –
CB: That’s the 3rd of June.
MS: You’d have to take it from my logbook.
CB: Yes, 3rd of June.
MS: You’re not allowed to put the name of the target.
CB: Right, yeah.
MS: So sometimes I put the name of the target after [emphasis] –
CB: Oh right.
MS: In –
CB: In red.
MS: Mostly in pencil.
CB: Yes, okay.
MS: And then there sometimes my area [?] target was Essen –
CB: Yes.
MS: We were very badly beaten up but survived that and got back to our station.
CB: Was the aircraft damaged?
MS: It was damaged.
CB: By flak or fighters?
MS: All flak.
CB: Yep.
MS: We were caught in safe flight [?].
CB: Yeah.
MS: From twenty or more stations at the same time.
CB: Right.
MS: And then I don’t remember what the next one after Essen. We’re quite – were experienced [emphasis] by the Essen raid.
CB: Then, then you went onto Emden.
MS: Emden, yes. Emden was mostly mine laying –
CB: Ah.
MS: Because apart from bombing our squadron did a lot of sea mine against [?] the U-boats mostly near the end after the port. And that was called – the code name was gardening [emphasis].
CB: Oh yes. And what height did you drop the mines from?
MS: Under, under one thousand feet.
CB: Phew, so did you get hit each time by flak?
MS: Not really but sometimes – in one occasion I wandered [?]from there across by land and they’d got [unclear] big operational defence of Germany, on the ports. But we got through alright.
CB: So by now you are the first pilot, but you’re, are you flying with a second pilot or was the –
MS: Always. Never flew with one pilot.
CB: Okay.
MS: So even flying somewhere as the first pilot, and in the logbook on the page where all the crew on that operation was mentioned, the first of us, the first pilot and the second pilot and the navigator and so on.
CB: Yes, right.
MS: And then we flew every few nights. We had one crash but I don’t really remember the exact date.
CB: Were you flying as the pilot on that day?
MS: I was flying as the pilot –
CB: Yes.
MS: But I had engine trouble, and we called, came back to – dropped the bombs into the sea, came back to this country calling ‘mayday’ and for a long time had no help at all. Then they switched the flare path for us. We followed, I followed the flare path to aerodromes and to the rounding [?] point, and at the moment, when I was, touched the ground, they switched off [CB laughs] all the Air Force, and the station lights, including the flare path. So I landed, yeah I landed blindly [emphasis] into darkness and crashed the plane.
CB: When you said you crashed it, did you land it heavily or overshoot the runway?
MS: Well I was trying to land and it was quite a heavy landing, so I broke the undercarriage and the plane was badly damaged by dragging [?] on the ground.
CB: Did the undercarriage collapse?
MS: Undercarriage collapse.
CB: And which – one of the engines was faulty was it?
MS: One of, one of the engines was faulty. That was our first experience of flying Wellington four. It was Wellington with the American engines.
CB: Right.
MS: Which we ended up with a lot of trouble from those engines.
CB: So it hadn’t been hit by flak, it was that the engine had failed.
MS: No, no it was not hit by flak. It was just simply the engine had collapsed.
CB: Right, right. And was anybody injured in that?
MS: No, not really. Slight injure –
CB: Mm. And could the aircraft be recovered or did they have to scrap it?
MS: No, I don’t think so, I’m not really – but I just know my first crash.
CB: Mm.
MS: And from then on, flying on, on ordinary bombing raids –
CB: So on that particular operation had you had to turn –
MS: [Unclear].
CB: Pardon?
MS: We were but not the plane.
CB: Yeah, yeah. And did you have any other crashes?
MS: I had another crash with the, started with the undercarriage. Late on, and that was the end of my tour.
CB: Yes, and what went wrong then?
MS: As far as I can remember, there was a collapsed under, grounding gear.
CB: As you landed?
MS: Mhm.
CB: So you didn’t know that it was faulty?
MS: No, well there was some, some irregularities. So broke all my trip and dropped the bombs into the sea and came back.
CB: Mm.
MS: Grounded [?], grounded [?] without doing my duties but, but crashed the plane.
CB: And this was all at Hemswell?
MS: That was, well, all my flying, operational flying was from Hemswell.
CB: It was? Right. So looking at your logbook then, you went to Bremen, what was that like as a target?
MS: Well, which one?
CB: Bremen.
MS: Bremen, it was quite a heavy firing but not the worst one. Always the one which really frightened everybody was Essen, ‘cause that was the centre of troops –
CB: Yeah, the crocks [?] works.
MS: Yeah, the crocks [?] works.
CB: And what sort of height would you be bombing from in a Wellington?
MS: Usually about seventeen or eighteen thousand feet.
CB: And this is –
MS: So normal bombing was at about eighteen thousand feet, but mine laying was under one thousand feet.
CB: Right. And going to Essen, were you more likely to get damaged by flak or was that a hazard everywhere?
MS: Well, all depends on the target. Some were very heavily defended, like Essen, and all the industrial towns in the Ruhr district. Remember which ones [pause]. Then I did, twenty-nine – at the end I did thirty operational –
CB: Thirty ops.
MS: Which was the – that was the one was supposed to do in one go.
CB: Mhm.
MS: In the Turin [?].
CB: Yes.
MS: When I landed again I had some trouble, engine trouble. Going to Italy to Turin and started from one of the aerodromes at the very, very south of England and when I had to drop my bombs into the sea, came back on eighty-one [?] engines then and when I landed I was surrounded by my friends, say ‘oh, that was your last operational flight, you are posted to Liverpool University.’ And that was my last flight ever.
CB: So what did you do there?
MS: From there, they posted me to Liverpool University and what happens, I think was some arrangement between British and Polish government. Polish authorities were worried because there was no professional training in Poland under general probation. So they were trying to – they opened few schools which were essentially attached to one of the British, like, but I was posted to Polish School of Architecture, Liverpool University. But the same time there were medical schools at Cambridge, actually that was the London, London School of Medicine at London University, evacuated to Cambridge. And then I spent a couple of years of being a student, ‘cause my – they didn’t call me back to the Air Force duties. I was released after I done all my duties, posted to Liverpool School of Architecture where I qualified in 1940, forty, forty-four I think.
CB: Well you went – the end of your tour was 21st of November 1942 according to your logbook when you were flying on that trip out of Tangmere going to Turin –
MS: And then, then –
CB: Then you were posted to Liverpool.
MS: Posted to Liverpool School of Architecture –
CB: Yes. So two years from there.
MS: Spent two years –
CB: Yes.
MS: Then I got my full Polish architecture qualification –
CB: Yep, so that’s the end of forty-four.
MS: That was forty-four. And then, then I married another student from the Polish School of Architecture, and we stayed together after we got our qualifications we moved to London looking for a job [emphasis]. And then changed one job after another [?].
CB: So the war was still running when you qualified –
MS: Yeah.
CB: What did you do because you were still technically in the Air Force?
MS: Well I was, I don’t know whether I was officially, I was released [emphasis] from the Air Force.
CB: Okay.
MS: [Unclear].
CB: And did they give you a particular role?
MS: Sorry?
CB: Did they give you a particular task [emphasis] after you were released from the Air Force, because of course London was badly damaged at the time.
MS: No but – although some, yes but there was not very much work.
CB: Right.
MS: ‘Cause most of the work at the time, especially in London was war damage.
CB: Yes.
MS: There was few offices where they could offer me there – most of it war damaged. Few buildings – married in forty-four.
CB: So who was this lucky lady who you married at the end of 1944?
MS: Alena [?].
CB: Right. And you met her at the university.
MS: At the university, and we qualified around the same time –
CB: She, yep.
MS: Actually she lived in Liverpool at that time because her father, medical doctor and consultant was working for the Shipping Federation.
CB: Oh right.
MS: So she, she lived with her parents.
CB: So what job did you get in London?
MS: [Unclear] sometime I worked for NCC [?].
CB: Mhm.
MS: For housing. Several other jobs, some connected with the Festival of Britain.
CB: Mhm. This is all for London County Council?
MS: For London County Council.
CB: Festival of Britain –
MS: I didn’t stay there very long, up there on the County Council. I found more interesting work in a more private firm.
CB: Mhm.
MS: And then there’s changing form the usual thing – when you wanted to have more interest in work, or firm you’re working for getting more jobs, you look for another firm where there is better pay.
CB: Yes.
MS: And we were just at the end of the war, I think I was generally released from the Polish Forces in forty-three, or forty-four.
CB: Mm.
MS: And that was the end of my war service, and then worked as an architect for a different firm, different firm, and one of them [unclear] new town, which was quite a new thing, and then at the year 2000 I retired completely because I started losing my sight.
CB: Mhm.
MS: And of course, nobody wanted to employ an architect, blind architect [CB laughs] so that’s –
CB: Difficult isn’t it.
MS: The end of my professional work.
CB: Right.
MS: I did some jobs from time to time but – then in 1940 – when I was fifty, seventeen –
CB: That’s only seventeen years ago so you’d been going a pretty long time.
MS: Yes, my wife died three years ago.
CB: Right.
MS: We had three children, and from the end of nineteen –
CB: 2014.
MS: Yes – from January nineteen, what was it, forty.
CB: 2014, yeah.
MS: That’s about all.
CB: Now when you were a student, people used to have secondary roles outside their jobs or their studies. Did you have to do fire watching or –
MS: No.
CB: What sort of jobs did they give you?
MS: Nothing at all, no.
CB: Right.
MS: We were full time students, and that was all.
CB: Was there a Polish military association in Liverpool for Army, Navy and Air Force?
MS: No, no, there was nothing down [?] there, we just members of the Polish School of Architecture.
CB: Right, and –
MS: And then I about the time I finished my studies there I was released from the Polish Armed Forces and the same time from the RAF.
CB: Yes, mm. And in the later years, did you have any links with the Polish Air Force or the RAF associations? Squadron associations or other?
MS: I, yes I was a member of the Polish Air Force association for sometime even in the in the, in the governing council.
CB: Mhm.
MS: And that’s about all.
CB: And now you’re in the Polish Airman’s Association –
MS: In the Polish –
CB: ‘Cause that was the successor of the Air Force Association wasn’t it?
MS: No, I don’t know – Artur will be able to tell you more –
CB: Okay.
AB: There –
MS: Actually there, are you registered anywhere else, association?
AB: We essentially have taken over, but the Air Force Association was turned into a trust –
MS: Okay.
AB: And then the trust was closed down. We’re what remains from that.
CB: Right, okay.
MS: But then you have just friendly relationship.
AB: He automatically becomes a member. All [emphasis] the veterans automatically become members.
CB: Right.
AB: You don’t have to register you on the system.
MS: I, I joined the Polish Perskewsky [?] Institute which was a, the historical [emphasis] association, and when you joined us as members –
AB: Yes, certainly.
MS: When, well –
AB: Ooh –
MS: Polish, when they were one Polish, Polish Architecture Association Awards [?] as well.
AB: Yes, well I, I joined several years ago, yes.
MS: Yes.
AB: About seven, eight years ago.
CB: Right.
MS: So they was a few of them, hidden [?] in the corner of some office.
CB: Yes, always need an office.
MS: That’s about all.
CB: Let’s just stop there for a mo, thank you very much.
[Tape paused and restarted].
CB: Question –
MS: That was the question for us coming from [emphasis] –
CB: Poland.
MS: Poland, directed towards here.
CB: Yes.
MS: Because our all war service, and when you were, the war stopped, we were more or less, not in prison here, but unable to go back to Poland –
CB: Yes.
MS: To Communist Poland.
CB: Right.
MS: For sometimes, in some cases also a bit dangerous. I [unclear] carrying on.
CB: So did some Polish people return to Poland, or was the fact that –
MS: Some went back to Poland but very few.
CB: Yes, because of the Russian takeover?
MS: Because of the Russian takeover, or new system, new government there. And there, I think that there were more Poles from Poland coming here –
CB: Yes.
MS: For work than the other way.
CB: Right. Now when you came to Britain, into Liverpool –
MS: Yes.
CB: You were being, you were then put into training on the Tiger Moth and then the Oxford and then onto the Wellington [clears throat], you were trained by Polish people and British people, where you?
MS: And British. We were doing – I joined – I had one year training in architecturary in Poland before the war.
CB: Oh did you, right.
MS: I started on my second [emphasis] year here –
CB: Yes.
MS: Until I qualified.
CB: Right.
MS: So the – but as I had no experience of civilian British life.
CB: Right.
MS: Expect for the time when we were at the School of Architecture, and then that’s simply getting on.
CB: So we’re, so we’re talking in Acton [emphasis], is that, is this where you started your married life here? Or did you live somewhere else?
MS: I first, no, I first started simply staying in digs –
CB: Yes.
MS: When we were studying in the university there and then my wife then was my wife joined Polish School of Architecture, because Polish School of Architecture was becoming very well known in the architectural world.
CB: Right.
MS: Because we were probably the most modern school, architectural school, where most of the, the university faculties were still in the eighteenth century [MS and CB laugh].
CB: Right, were the instructors, the professors, were they Polish?
MS: Only Georgian architecture and so on.
CB: Yes, but –
MS: But we, we were – the training important, and later here [emphasis] in modern architecture. But we had for the first and second year here, we had to join all the lectures for full time students of the, of the first year and second year of the London, er Liverpool University.
CB: Right. And the instructors, were they, the teachers, were they Polish or were they British or what were they?
MS: Well we had, we had to attend all the lectures –
CB: Right.
MS: Or the second, and first and second year, but we had also our Polish lectures, so our main and most important lectures were Polish, and on the much higher level, than for our English friends who were working under the –
CB: Right.
MS: English professor.
CB: Mm. Now when you came over, you had, to Britain through Liverpool, you said that you went into English classes. How long did that take and how easy was it to learn English?
MS: I think it wasn’t very easy but it was our first time learning English while waiting for our training [emphasis] in the RAF in 1940.
CB: Yes.
MS: So I think us, we, our camps were mostly near Blackpool –
CB: Yep.
MS: So all, a lot of my friends got the girlfriends [CB laughs] in Blackpool, and also some business say some higher school were ever created from London to Lancashire, so we had good contact, especially with the girls.
CB: Ideal [laughs].
MS: Friend of mine, when we were together in France, he was simply unable to learn any [emphasis] beginning of French, but when we were associated [?] into this country, still in this period of our being near and in Blackpool, he got the girlfriend and learn very good English [CB laughs] in very short time. He only died – then they married and he died about two or three years ago.
CB: Oh.
MS: Completely living English life.
CB: Mm. So after – how did they decide that you knew enough English for you to go onto the training? Did they set you an exam or what did they do?
MS: Do you, do you mean the RAF?
CB: The RAF, yes.
MS: Well, I think we were trained in groups or squadrons, and we had a series of lectures and also examinations. More or less, some run by RAF, some additional Polish one. So when we finished the one training on Tiger Moths, we transferred to the next one –
CB: Mm.
MS: And most of us had some training of flying before the war.
CB: Yes. So then you got onto the OTU and the squadron. As it was a Polish, they was Polish units –
MS: Those were, that was actually completely Polish unit.
CB: Yes, and so –
MS: 301.
CB: Yeah.
MS: But we were under the Number 1 Group, Bomber, Bomber one –
CB: RAF, yeah, Bomber Command, right. And what was it, what were the living conditions like? Did you have Polish food or, how did they feed you?
MS: No we were simply normal – I was already officer so I lived in the officers mess.
CB: Yes.
MS: Was fed the same as our English friends.
CB: Yes.
MS: Our – at that time our link with the British people were mostly during our holidays, because the squadrons were completely Polish.
CB: Yes. And when you were flying –
MS: Oh yes flying – the only thing we had to communicate was the instructions, and then communicate with the ground but that was part, part of our training, to be ready for operational flying.
CB: So your radio communication when you were flying would have been in English –
MS: In English, yes.
CB: But did the crew, did the crew speak to each other in English or in Polish?
MS: No, most cases were in English, but in the squadron, some staff in the communication section spoke Polish –
CB: Right.
MS: And some Polish [unclear]. The thing is [?] my Wellington, we have, probably can see on photographs, was recognised by the letters written on the plane.
CB: Yes.
MS: My squadron was I think RG and then my plane, personal letter was O [emphasis]. The one you reported which was any, any RAF station, not necessarily our [emphasis] station, you know emergency calling wasn’t, it was ‘mayday.’
CB: Mm.
MS: So you could ‘mayday’ calling and then in our case, I don’t remember –
CB: Did you use Oscar or Orange?
MS: Sorry?
CB: Did you – to say O did you say Oscar or did you use Orange?
MS: I think – I [unclear] tell you, Orange [emphasis].
CB: Right.
MS: But sometimes when we were known in our own squadrons and all the people, that was my area [?] I started calling – I don’t remember the first letter, the squadron letter, I think RG or something. And then instead of calling Orange, I started calling it Ola [CB laughs]. It’s the Polish girls’ surname.
CB: Right.
MS: [Unclear] the girls, English girls operating the radio on the ground answer me calling me Ola on my plane. [Unclear] you can run [CB laughs]. And that’s what it’s all told [?].
CB: And there were a lot of people who came from Poland, but the ground crews in the squadron. Were they Polish or were they a mixture –
MS: Mixed.
CB: Or what were they?
MS: Mixed, very mixed. In my squadron the ground crews and mechanics were all Polish.
CB: Mhm.
MS: Evacuated from Poland during the war.
CB: Mm. But the rest of the people on the station would have been British, would they?
MS: Sorry?
CB: The rest of the people on the station would not be Polish?
MS: No not necessarily, but mixed.
CB: Yeah.
MS: They were mixed. Sometimes we had some sections like radio, radio sections and whatever else, parachute section were mostly run by English.
CB: Mm.
MS: So we had to use our limited, limited English, but it was good for our girlfriends [CB and MS laugh]. You had to be good for [unclear] our squadron. But I said, at the time when we beginning our training when we first got near Blackpool, and Blackpool’s holiday place for people in Lancashire, all some [?] ever created from London, so some of our people learn English very quickly and very soon by getting girlfriends in Blackpool.
CB: [Laughing] right.
MS: Other than that, it’s about all.
CB: So you did thirty operations –
MS: Sorry?
CB: You did thirty operations. When you got to the end of the tour, how did you feel?
MS: I felt – I didn’t realise. I knew that soon, quite soon I finished, and then when I landed after the last trip which we didn’t complete because we were called back of the operation, it was second operation in Turin. So I was getting out of the plane, there was a group of my Polish friends, they said ‘oh that was your last operation, you are, you are posted to the university.’ We lost life in the squadron, I did feel that, but on the other hand you felt safer because less young people were lost in the university than serving in the RAF.
CB: So the crew was six, how well did they get on?
MS: Well the crew – somebody experienced first pilot took over my crew, but at that time there’s quite a lot of interchange between different crews because some were wounded or killed.
CB: Mm. How many crew members during your tour were killed in your plane? Or wounded?
MS: In my – none, nobody was seriously wounded or killed din my [emphasis] crew, but when I joined the squadron we had I think fifteen crews. When I, during the time I served in the squadron in, we lost sixteen crews. We were losing old crews, new crews were coming, we’re losing them as well. So the losses were quite high.
CB: So what we’re talking about is a tour before the heavy bombers really started to be important in the RAF wasn’t’ it, you were in the lighter bombers, the medium bombers.
MS: Well when I got to the squadron, the squadron was fully operating as a bombing squadron for perhaps a year.
CB: Mm. What was the most dangerous position in the aircraft to be flying in?
MS: About the same, ‘cause if they’re not shooting [pause] person, person but shooting plane. So simply we were flying, one night we were flying full crew, sometimes this crew didn’t come back for something. It was known, there was some communication, radio communication, either badly damaged or simply – one of my last operations was port mining, dropping sea, sea mines against [?] the U-boats, and that night there was only three, three crews were sent for that operation, mine was one of them. Each group had six members of the crew, so there were altogether eighteen, eighteen crew members, and when we came back after operation when we landed, we learnt that one of our crews was missing but they managed to send a signal that they were badly damaged and ditching in the sea. And then it makes sense [?] the first pilot and the commander of one crew and another one of the three and of the three crews two came back.
CB: Right.
MS: So we pressed our squadron commanding officer to let us go and search the sea, because one of the first could simply send a signal that they are badly damaged and there are ditching in the sea.
CB: Yep.
MS: And they have no dingy, been damaged. I said to the commanding, or the other remaining crew, we pressed our squadron commander to let us go and look for that crew. He said, first he disagreed because he said ‘you will go there and you will be lost.’ After all they allowed our two crews to go and search for the third one which signalled that they were going down to sea, and we didn’t find them but another time I found two members of French crews in the dingy [emphasis] and we were flying over them until they rescue unit came to fish them out.
CB: You just circled the down, the dingy did you?
MS: Sorry?
CB: You flew round in a circle above the dingy?
MS: Yes, well all the time I was warning the gunners over [?] the sea and over [?] the sky.
CB: Mm.
MS: Because that part of the sea was in the reach of the German fighter planes.
CB: So it was a dangerous thing to do?
MS: All of the work we did [?] was dangerous.
CB: Yes.
MS: But out of three crews, two came back and one was missing.
CB: Mm.
MS: After all, they were our near friends and crew.
CB: Yes.
MS: So we didn’t initially like leaving them alone there was a possibility that they were in the dingy or some parts of the plane floating in the sea.
CB: Mm.
MS: And I found two in the dingy and the flying around them for a few hours until they were fished out by the rescue unit, and then it wasn’t our crew.
CB: [Laughs] oh. Was the rescue unit a flying boat or was it a launch?
MS: For the rescue?
CB: Yes.
MS: They used the ordinary plane that came to look for the ones that we found. The plane was had some [?] which was a passenger plane –
CB: Yeah.
MS: And then they, they used the, what they called? The boats that are normally used by the Navy.
CB: Yeah.
MS: [Unclear].
CB: To rescue them? Yes. Changing to a brighter note, when you went on social events, was there – did you go out to local entertainments or was it all on the airfield?
MS: Well it depends where we were at the time, ‘cause when we were, during the training when we were near Blackpool there was a lot of entertainment in [emphasis] Blackpool.
CB: Yep.
MS: But then, then there was one or two Polish theatre groups in the Air Force.
CB: Mhm.
MS: And they visited one camp after the other [sneezes]. So after we came back we ended up out of this room [?]. Three crews, one was missing, and when we finally got permission from our commanding officer to get on looking for it, missing crew, there was a Polish theatre in military [unclear] performing in our, in Hemswell. So from time to time we were visited by professionally run and professionally group theatres.
CB: Mm.
MS: But when we had a day off, used to go to different places in Blackpool, like Liverpool. And I, after one of my crews – nobody was even wounded but very shaken and we needed a rest, and I had visit the central medical Air Force station in London and the doctor there. Well, ‘you need some good holiday now to break from your duty. I suggest I send you for one month to the Polish Air Force resting house in Scotland.’ I protested, ‘I can’t leave [emphasis] my crew entirely [?].’ So finally I got two weeks holiday. It was a place in Scotland. What it was, directly under the Polish Air Force I don’t know, but it was run by two Polish ladies and they went there [?], so there were some places where you could rest. Also you all have some English friends whose home you can stay. Also sometimes Polish family.
CB: Now you were commissioned as soon, almost as soon as you landed here. How did your rank change during the ops? You were a pilot officer then what happened?
MS: Well I was – when I was in the squadrons I was, I got flying officer, the rank of flying officer, and that was all.
CB: And did you have an equivalent Polish rank at the time?
MS: Yes, actually we were completely commanded by RAF, same ranks, same duties.
CB: Right.
MS: And same pay of course.
CB: Right, yeah, okay. What would you say was the most memorable part of your service during the war?
MS: Probably at the squadron.
CB: Right.
MS: Sometimes we had very dense periods of flight, flying a few days apart, but I remember a time when we were flying operations twice during three nights, you know what I mean.
CB: Mm.
MS: We did two nights, one after a night –
CB: Yes.
MS: Then one in bed.
CB: Mm. And then off again.
MS: And then off again.
CB: Now, navigation aims were, aids [emphasis] were pretty rudimentary at that stage. How accurate were you able to be in your bombing raids?
MS: How, how we managed to do – first we have all the information we needed from our briefing before the raid.
CB: Mhm.
MS: When all the – special crew room and we were told there was an operation tonight. They released, released all the crews to be used on the operation, and all were briefed by a first station commander or citizen [?] by our own officer, and given all the information there before flying. I think we were quite – as we were informed about our duties and we would be performing them, equally were as our English friends which most of them we don’t know them because the stations in different squadrons and different stations. Did you get your tea and coffee?
AB: We did thank you.
MS: You did?
AB: Yes, yes thank you.
CB: Okay I’ll stop there.
[Tape paused and restarted].
CB: Couple of other things –
MS: Yes.
CB: Here you are, in a country that has been invaded by the Germans and you are able then to contribute to the war effort against Germany.
MS: Yes.
CB: How did you feel as a crew, and yourself, about what you were doing?
MS: Well we were quite pleased or proud [emphasis] of having some practical fighting –
Other: [Speaks in Polish].
MS: Against our occupier.
CB: Yeah.
Other: [Speaks in Polish].
AB: [Whispers in Polish].
CB: So when you went on the raids how did you feel? On the operations?
MS: Er, normally always feel that something might happen to us but it wasn’t the [unclear].
CB: Right.
MS: ‘Cause sometimes using evasive [?] action like spent about fifteen minutes in the reflector [unclear] over Essen. That was very hot then. And then after we got out of the reflectors and the guns we went ‘phew.’
CB: Mm. A sigh of relief.
MS: Exactly [?].
CB: So when you had dropped the bombs, which way did you turn?
MS: We were simply went one way or the other, mostly in the direction leading us later to our base [emphasis]. But simply even right there that one before even dropping the bombs I was using avoiding [emphasis] action.
CB: Mm. What type of evasive action would you use?
MS: Change, change, changing the course, the direction.
CB: Mhm.
MS: So I, one minute I was staying, flying at one direction and then action, action turn ninety degrees or something
CB: Right.
MS: Just not too big because if you were flying on the same course, we were measured by German radio.
CB: Mm.
MS: So they were not aiming at us at that moment – they were – they expected us to be –
CB: Yeah.
MS: In – it was about twenty seconds for measure our position, loading the guns, aim and then sometimes for the shrapnel to leave the, after, after firing from the gun to reach the position of the aiming hut [?].
CB: Mm.
MS: So my opinion was always not [emphasis] to be there in the point in the sky on which they’re aiming or they’d be aiming at me twenty seconds before.
CB: Mm. Did you vary your height much, or was it just direction?
MS: Well changing direction and height as well.
CB: Right.
MS: Trying to mixture everything.
CB: So you’re in a bomber stream here, rather than formation. To what extent was there danger also from your own aircraft?
MS: Not really, not really because they’re not flying near each other, but from the moment takeoff at the station, each crew was completely independent. So we would recommend [?] the type of the aircraft you can see [emphasis] somewhere over Germany.
CB: What was the night fighter activity like? Was it quite intense or very –
MS: In some fire in sometimes yes. Sometimes find [?] the night fighters more dangerous than the anti-aircraft [?] guns.
CB: But when you got into the flak area, the night fighters would not be working there would they?
MS: Not there, no. When you go into the fire, down fire [?] – their own fighters were trained to avoid to be there.
CB: Right. To what extent did the flak find your height effectively?
MS: A rate [?], a rate [?] to measure. Same as the navigation to a great extent, depending on the radio navigation.
CB: Mm.
MS: We simply during – when there was quite a dense, we were in a dense defence, we were not to be in the point of the sky, which according to an enemy gun measure or calculation when we were flying without any avoiding [?] action, to be there.
CB: Mm. Right, thank you.
[Tape paused and restarted].
CB: Just one final question. The losses in 301 on Wellingtons was exceptionally high.
MS: Very high.
CB: And the squadron was disbanded in the end as a result, so what was the reaction of the crews to the high loss rate?
MS: Taken for granted.
CB: Right.
MS: ‘Cause we had no influence of the losses. I have to show you some photographs.
CB: We’ll have a look, thank you.
[Tape paused and restarted].
MS: His stole [?] my squadron.
CB: American researcher?
MS: Sorry?
CB: Did you say an American researcher?
MS: I said Polish researcher.
CB: Oh it was Polish researcher?
MS: Yes, not America. Where are all of my papers? Are they there?
AB: There are some papers, there’s some books or whatever. I’m not sure, we have all –
CB: Mm.
AB: The time [?] books.
MS: Is, is one book which is simply called “301.”
AB: I’m not sure –
[Tape paused and restarted].
MS: There’s near Hemswell there was a pub.
CB: Yes.
MS: Large pub. And one day I invited all the members, flying members and ground, and we went to the pub there. And we went – in the pubs you had usually all the rooms you have in the pubs, in the main drinking room –
AB: And so on, yeah.
CB: The main bar.
MS: So I got with all my flying and ground crews there and they refused to serve us because there were non-commissioned airmen in between us.
CB: The NCOs, they wouldn’t serve?
MS: Not the NCOs, ordinary airmen.
CB: Yes just the airmen. What was, just tell me again would you? What was the relationship between you, the aircrew and your ground crew?
MS: Good. Friendly, but not, but not meeting them too often when they were taking over the plane or after landing, they’re taking the plane from us, and of course whatever went wrong whether it was our fault or not –
CB: So they weren’t too pleased if it had holes in it?
MS: Mm, sometimes very –
[Tape beeps].
MS: The pilot’s badge.
CB: Yes.
MS: But then you, you got green –
AB: Wreath underneath –
MS: Under –
AB: He’s [?] holding it so it’s –
MS: After, after you had two operational flying. So there’s –
AB: So there’s, there’s clutching a wreath in its beak.
MS: The same, the same eagle was carrying the green –
CB: So the, the flying badge is an eagle is it?
MS: [Unclear].
AB: It’s an eagle, there’s –
MS: Anybody had a –
CB: Coming into land. I’m recording again.
MS: There’s –
CB: But there was a clear difference between the flying badges of the other crew, how different were they?
MS: Well the, the pilot had a clear [emphasis] badge.
CB: Right.
MS: Now, the navigator had a badge with a green things and [speaks in Polish] –
AB: Oh lightning, lightning.
MS: And the lightning.
CB: And the wireless operator?
AB: He had the lightning –
MS: I don’t remember exactly what, what, when [unclear]. But they had either clear badge which was pilot.
CB: Yeah.
MS: But there was a green thing that was after that was for operational flying.
CB: Right.
MS: But the navigator had a badge with the flower [?], flower [?] –
CB: Forks [emphasis], sticking out.
AB: Arrow.
CB: Oh arrows, yes.
AB: Yes, arrows.
CB: And the wireless operator had the lightning.
MS: He had the same, he had two lightning.
CB: And what did the air gunners have?
MS: I think they had, they have one. Anyway, you could recognise faction [?] of the member, but how many writings [?] they had to the badge. And only the pilot had a clear badge.
CB: Right, so you had two flying awards. The highest award for bravery is the Virtuti Militari. How did you wear that as a badge on your uniform?
MS: Here in the –
CB: Underneath the wings or –
MS: In the flap [?].
CB: On the, on the collar, right, okay.
MS: On the collar.
CB: Okay.
MS: And the same with the other, other one. There only difference was a different number of lightnings.
CB: And when you had the RAF wings you said were worn later, where would they be worn?
MS: On the, on the other side.
CB: On the right hand side?
MS: On the right.
CB: Okay, good.
MS: But I’m not quite certain how legally we are wearing them.
CB: [Laughing] right. Okay.
[Tape paused and restarted].
MS: Have to avoid going all the way round the peninsular, had to end [unclear] ‘cause all the fire they had, I don’t know how many guns, machine guns [unclear] and the searchlights [?].
CB: This is on the raid to Saint Nazaire.
MS: [Pause] Saint Nazaire, I don’t think I can see very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Mieczysław Stachiewicz
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-19
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AStachiewiczM170119
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Mieczysław describes his military training from his Polish secondary school before volunteering for the Polish Air Force. He was evacuated to Warsaw but the railway lines were cut by the Germans. His squadron reassembled on the Romanian border before spending some time within Romania. Escaped across Europe and crossed into England, entering via Liverpool. Housed in Liverpool where him and his unit were taught English and retrained on Tiger Moths, Halifaxes and Wellingtons. Despite his Polish nationality, Mieczyslaw was fed, paid and ranked the same as a British pilot. Flew thirty operational flights with 301 Squadron, and was involved with mine laying, bombing of Essen and the thousand bomber operation to Cologne. Describes the badges worn by each aircrew member. Following completion of his operational flying, he was posted to the Polish School of Architecture in Liverpool University and spent the rest of his life in England.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Katie Gilbert
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
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1944
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:41:47 audio recording
301 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fear
forced landing
mine laying
pilot
RAF Hemswell
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8814/PLancasterJ1501.1.jpg
794d475655253509adf90821a41de268
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8814/ALancasterJO150406.2.mp3
5eafd09ebb3a1d2459a7b55f8591b8a7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lancaster, Jo
John Oliver Lancaster
J O Lancaster
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lancaster, JO
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Oliver 'Jo' Lancaster DFC (1919 - 2019, 948392, 103509 Royal Air Force), photographs and six of his log books. Jo Lancaster completed 54 operations as a pilot with in Wellingtons with 40 Squadron, and after a period of instructing, in Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He became test pilot after the war and was the first person to use a Martin-Baker ejection seat in an emergency.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jo Lancaster and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
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 Jo Lancaster. Mr Lancaster was a pilot in various aircraft during World War Two and the interview is taking place at xxxx on April the 6th 2015. Apologies for the poor sound quality during various sections of this interview due to static on a tie clip microphone. Talk a little bit about that raid July the 24th 1941.
JL: Well at the time the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were in the harbour at Brest. On that day the Scharnhorst made a run for it down the coast to La Pallice but the Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were still in Brest and a number of Wellingtons, I think of 3 Group were ordered to carry out a daylight bombing raid on the harbour there. We were at Alcon, operating from Alconbury at the time. Near Huntingdon. And we were routed right down to the Scilly Isles. Then doubled back towards Brest and you could see a black cloud of flak smoke from quite a distance away. It was a beautiful, a beautiful clear day and we just had to barge straight in. There was, we only saw two ME109s, one of which went right through the middle and got severely shot up by everybody and the pilots baled out. Everybody claimed it of course but nobody knows who did it. But, anyway, we were in two vics of three. We [weren’t in company?] but our trio sailed through without too much damage. A piece of flak came through the windscreen alongside me and dropped on the floor which I still have and we’d used up a lot of fuel trying to keep formation with constantly altering the engine settings. And so, having, as I say, got away again out over back over the channel we and several others headed for St Eval in Cornwall and quite a number landed there. Many of them in various stages of damage. We’d had our hydraulic system knocked out but apart from flak holes we were intact.
AP: Did the searchlights sort of —?
JL: Well when that happened you were singled out for particular attention by the flak which happened to me several times. On one occasion it was right over the middle of Essen and did some violent evasive action and lost a lot of height and gained a lot of speed and finally outflew the searchlights.
AP: What was the evasive action? Did you corkscrew or did you dive?
JL: Well just various. Mainly sort of spiral diving but keep trying to keep a heading away from the searchlights all the time.
AP: And flying through the flak and the anti-aircraft again.
JL: Well there was nothing we could about that. We heard it and smelled it and when you got back you found lots of holes.
AP: Right. One of the things she was asking about was what it was like when you’re coming in on the final approach to your bomb run. You as the pilot. What are you doing? What’s the crew doing?
JL: I think you made yourself as small as possible. I just used to [unclear] and went in.
AP: So you were just taking orders from the bomb aimer. He was in control. Not the pilot.
JL: Yes. He would take over and he’d say. ‘Steady. Left. Left’ or ‘Right,’ and we would keep laterally level and try and make these small adjustments in heading until he was satisfied and then eventually he would say, ‘Bombs gone.’
AP: And then what?
JL: You felt the thud as they left and usually we had a camera aboard so they had to hold, hold the heading for a few, well about thirty seconds or more. I forget now. Until a camera had, the camera had flashed, had gone off, and then we were free to leave. On the Lancaster we had, usually had cookies and incendiaries. With the Wellingtons the target was usually the Ruhr. That was standard nine, five hundred pounders.
AP: Right. And what was the age? How old were you when you were flying? Can you say a little bit about how old you were? And your crew?
JL: In 1941 I was twenty two.
AP: And your crew. Could you say?
JL: Well, all much the same. I had a Canadian navigator, a Welsh wireless operator, a Canadian front gunner and a New Zealand rear gunner. The navigator, in the Wellingtons the navigator went forward to do the bomb aiming. Later on of course we had the bomb aimers on this, on the way back from Berlin. In a Wellington. And we were rather taken by surprise because you come down with the change in the wind over ten tenths cloud and we adjusted north and we came, we were flying back over Wihelmshaven and Emden and were getting shot at all the way through the clouds and then eventually there was a gap in the clouds and I could see, see through the clouds, the clouds across the causeway across the mouth of the Zuiderzee. And I think we were probably all looking at that and then an ME110 shot overhead and circled around and went into them and I went into a deep spiral dive and he tried to collar us and showed us a bit of [unclear] and I think he should have [unclear] went into the cloud and we never saw each other again so we don’t know what happened to him. In 1941, on a Wellington squadron such as 40 Squadron, each Wellington had its own ground crew. There was a fitter for each engine. That was his engine. And then there were two airframe fitters. And they were more or less permanently with the aircraft so we became very friendly with them. And on operational days they would do what they called an NFT — Night Flying Test and some of the guys would always come with us on that. They were very industrious and proud of their aeroplane.
AP: And other? Other people that you had to rely on? Was there? Can you say, talk about, some other people?
JL: The only people I can think of were the [lovely ladies?] in the parachute section which, on 40 Squadron our parachutes went to [unclear] RAF Alconbury had virtually no buildings at all. A couple of wooden huts and that was about all so all the things like parachutes and things were at Wyton which was our base station. I never went to the parachute section there but at Wickenby on 12 Squadron we had a parachute section there and it was always WAAFs who looked after the parachutes.
AP: OK. Any, any —?
JL: And we had WAAF drivers of course.
AP: Yeah. Ok. Any thoughts about the aeroplanes that you flew like the Wellington or Lancaster? A favourite or, you used to fly? Or —
JL: The Wellington is a well-designed aeroplane but it is grossly underpowered. When they finally put in decent engines in her. The Hercules instead of the Pegasus. It was a very good operational aeroplane.
AP: Right.
JL: But I think everybody loved a Lancaster.
AP: What was so special about it?
JL: I don’t know. It was viceless. It was doing, carried a big load, doing a good job and with the Wellingtons I had two complete engine failures and by the grace of God we were within easy distance of an airfield. On one occasion we took off on operations and the port engine started — oil started pouring out of it and eventually it stopped and we were able to, it was still fairly light and we just lobbed down into nearby Wyton. And the other one I was on in the, actually in the circuit at Wymeswold when I was an instructor at OTU and we were just able to go straight in from there because on the —
[Recording paused]
JL: Oh well. Yes. Well. I was, before the war I’d served an apprenticeship in Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft at Coventry and after the war I went to join Saunders Roe at Cowes but they didn’t have very much going on and I got a bit fed up with that and re-joined Armstrong Whitworth as a test pilot. There were three of us there Eric Frenton was a test pilot and another one — Bill Else, and they had, there was a lot of work going on. Amongst other things we had the AW52G which was a glider, a tail-less glider. Two thirds scale of the bigger versions of the AW52. There was two of those. One with Nene engines. One with Derwent engines. The Nene were more powerful. And the Nene engine one, when I went there, was out of action having the structure stiffened. And then it came out and had the limited speed increased by quite an amount and I was only on my third flight with it and the job was to explore the higher ranges, speed ranges and it’s rather difficult to explain technically but the controls were called elevons. They were combined elevators and ailerons. And in order to get them light enough for the pilot to control them manually they had what they called spring tabs which meant that the connection from the pilot’s control was actually, to the flying control was actually through a spring. And what happened was that while I was doing something like three hundred and twenty miles an hour, we didn’t use knots in those days and a flutter, what they called flutter set in and it became very very violent. Very very noisy. I anxiously estimated the frequency as one and a half cycles per second. The amplitude we don’t know. You could only guess at. It was probably six or eight feet as I was going up and down at that rate and I was rapidly disorientated and I thought the thing was going to break up anyway. But if it didn’t break up I was going to be unconscious so I decided to eject. A thing I’d never even anticipated before and I wasn’t in a very good state by then so I didn’t do the drill properly. I managed to jettison the canopy and I pulled the overhead blind down over my face which fired the seat. I should have put my heels on the, on the rest on the front of the seat which I didn’t do. I just was very lucky I did that because the aircraft had sort of spectacle controls and I think, as an afterthought, they realised that wasn’t very good combined with an ejection seat so they put in another system which jettisoned the hood and fired some cutters which, which disconnected the controls from the stick and I think you was just supposed to push the stick forward too. It was a bit of Heath Robinson system but I couldn’t do that because it was wired off anyway. Anyway, I got away with it with a lot of bruises on my shoulders and on my knees. I landed very badly. I thought I was going to land in a canal and tried to remember the drill we’d been given in the RAF but I only succeeded in making the descent worse by swinging. And when I landed I broke a chip off my shoulder bone and they took me away and x-rayed me and they said that I’d sustained a compression fracture of the first and second along the vertebrae and they said, ‘Not only have you done that but it’s been done before.’ And I have to say that it was in, I don’t remember the date. The 1st of January 1947. We had the SRA1 — that was at Saunders Roe — which has an ejection seat and we went up to Martin-Baker’s and went up on the test rig and after that I had a rather sore tail for a while. That must have been what it was. 30th of May 1949. And after all the kafuffle had died down on it I wrote to Sir James Martin. He wasn’t Sir James then. He was just James Martin to thank him and got a very nice letter in reply and also a custom made little wooden box which came through the post marked, “Explosives — danger” [laughs] which was delivered to Armstrong Whitworth. To me at Armstrong Whitworth. It contained a very nicely inscribed Rolex gold watch and [pause] I’m sorry am I —?
AP: That’s alright. No. That’s alright. Got to watch the microphone. Yeah. The watch. Yes.
JL: [unclear] In 1975 when I was living in the South. In West Sussex. I had a little bungalow with casement windows and some, one of the local villains I think, got in and took that watch and another one and several other small valuables and I presume that both watches had gone straight down to The Lanes in Brighton and by now would probably be melted down but — and just two years ago I was invited to go up to Martin-Baker’s and they showed me around, gave me lunch and I wondered what it was all about. Then they started asking me about my ejection and finally got on to the watch and eventually Andrew Martin produced from his pocket my watch. And the story is that they’d had an email from somebody in New York who had read the — it had my name on it and James Martin and somehow or other they put it together and connected it with Martin-Baker. Whatever company, I don’t know who it was in New York who went over or whoever it was contacted this chap who they said was a very shifty character and they bought the watch back. I don’t know for how much and they gave it back to me.
AP: That’s an amazing story.
JL: What happened then was that I didn’t really want the watch so I asked them to auction it but then they said instead of auctioning it we’ll put it in our company museum and we’ll put five thousand pounds in to the Bomber Command Memorial Trust. It applies to almost everybody. We usually crewed up completely at random and almost always within twenty four hours we were as thick as thieves.
AP: You relied on each other didn’t you?
JL: Loyalty all down the way.
AP: Strong teamwork and trust.
JL: Yes. I was with these two Canadians and a New Zealander. Yes. The two Canadians. I’d never met a Canadian before and I was mildly surprised that they sounded like the Americans I’d seen on the films. And I hardly knew where New Zealand was. But —
AP: I think it’s good to mention that it was an international crew wasn’t it? That they were from all over the Commonwealth.
JL: Yes.
AP: You had Canadians, British.
JL: Yes. And later on on the Lancaster squadron I had an Australian navigator.
[Recording paused]
JL: In the Wellington was to Stettin. That was a nine hours something. And the longest in the Lancaster was to La Spezia which is about sixty miles south of Genoa. A sea port. And that was, that was about nine and a half hours I think.
AP: You were the only pilot. Right?
JL: Yes. We did, we did carry a second pilot but he was just supernumerary. Usually he just stayed back in the astrodome helping to keep the, keep a lookout.
AP: Can you talk a bit about what it was like to fly so long? I mean did you eat anything? Drink. How did you survive on those hours?
JL: I don’t think I ever ate or drank anything until back in, back in safe area. In a safe area. I think most of us were the same. In those days everybody smoked and we sometimes smoked when we were below oxygen level which was ten thousand feet but we probably weren’t supposed to. We didn’t on operations anyway. Once again that would be when we were safe and nearly home.
[Recording paused]
JL: One long drag over France. And we had a thing called Mandrel which was a microphone in one of the engines to the wireless operator and he had, the wireless operators were given a recording of German night fighter RT traffic and they didn’t understand it but they could recognise it and I had a Canadian wireless op, Jordan Fisher, at that time and he was listening out on Mandrel and he was highly excited. He was apparently getting very good results. He could, he could tune in to one of these frequencies where the night fighters were operating and he was doing his Mandrel trick and they get very annoyed [laughs] Shouting.
AP: How did he use it? Did he block their signal? Or reduce it.
JL: Yes. Yes having identified the frequency he transferred the engine noise on that frequency.
AP: I see. So he could block their frequency.
JL: He was having the time of his life apparently [laughs]. Mandrel was a microphone mounted in to, actually in the port inner engine, the [strength of it?] the wireless operator, the wireless operators had been given some training to identify but not necessarily understand German night fighter RT traffic and they would listen out, looking for this RT traffic and when they found it they would tune in the transmitters to that frequency and then transfer the engine noise which blotted out everything and frequently made the night fighter pilots very cross.
[Recording paused]
Having completed a tour you then became a screened aircrew and you went to an OTU where you became an instructor in your particular aircrew job. As a pilot I went to Wellesbourne Mountford OTU and my job was conversion on to Wellingtons which are just circuits and landings, circuits and landings and not only in daytime but at night. And in the winter when I was there the night flying programme was divided into four three hours stints 6-9, 9 to12, 12 to 3 and 3 to 6 and you can imagine what it was like having to get up or be prepared to go down and be ready to start doing circuits and bumps at 3 o’clock in the morning.
AP: Yeah.
JL: It was bad enough at 12 o’clock. So I hated it. I wasn’t a very good instructor anyway. And then they started with these two one thousand bomber raids I was on. They started doing quite regular operations with screened, so-called screened aircrew at OTUs and I thought it was far better to be on a squadron if I had to do all that.
AP: Were you on, did you say a two thousand bomber raid?
JL: I was on the first two.
AP: Two thousand bombers in one raid? Or one thousand bombers?
JL: There were two one thousand bomber raids.
AP: Two one thousand bomber raids.
JL: May the, May the 30th and June the, June the 2nd I think.
AP: Could you say a little bit about what happened? I mean, was that Cologne?
JL: The first one was Cologne. The second one was Essen.
AP: Essen. And so you were flying Wellingtons.
JL: Yes. Wellesbourne Mountford OTU put up about twenty aircraft that night and we lost four. My aircraft still had the dual control in which made it very very difficult to get in and out because the entry was via a hatch under the nose. So in a hurry it would have been very awkward. And the aircraft were generally fairly clapped out. And on the way back I had a screened navigator and a screened wireless operator. And on the way back, when we got back over England the wireless operator came. Came up front and sat beside me. I think together we saw the oil pressure on the port engine just drop off to nothing and fortunately the wireless operator, he was familiar with Wellingtons, knew what had happened. It had run out of oil. We had a reserve oil tank down in the fuselage with a hand pump and he knew what to do immediately. He went scuttling back down. Started hand-pumping oil back in to the engine.
AP: That’s before you got to it.
JL: No. This was on the way back.
AP: On the way back.
JL: What I didn’t say — over Cologne we were quite high and I had two Canadian gunners. You know, they were students and they got very excited and wanted to spray their guns around [laughs]. I told them to sit quiet and keep a good lookout.
AP: What was the weather like on that night?
JL: Clear.
AP: So you had a good shot at them.
JL: Oh yes we could. We were late. Late on target and we could see it from miles away.
AP: It was already lit up.
JL: We were, we were more or less unmolested I think.
AP: A thousand bombers. Did you see the other ones around you?
JL: Oh yes.
AP: Can you say a little bit about what it was like?
JL: Yes. I saw them. Quite a lot. Yes.
AP: There were Lancasters, Halifaxes. Stirlings.
JL: Everything. Most of the ones I saw were Wellingtons.
AP: But you’re not in formation.
JL: No. No.
AP: Loose formation.
JL: Completely random.
AP: But you’re on your course and you’ve got aeroplanes.
JL: Yes. Had to try and keep an eye open. Very occasionally you’d hit the slipstream of one of them [laughs]. There’s one not very far away in front.
AP: So you had to keep a constant picture of that.
JL: Oh yes. There must have been hundreds of collisions we never heard about. Fatal ones.
AP: So when you arrived it was well and truly lit up. .
JL: Yes.
AP: Yeah.
JL: I don’t, I don’t remember actually being shot at.
AP: No? And then the other one was Essen.
JL: Yes. And that was a complete disaster because there was thick haze over the whole area and we just couldn’t see anything so I think we just let them go and came home.
AP: Right. Yes.
JL: Stood down for six weeks to convert. We were operational again on Lancasters on the 1st of January 1943.
AP: The operations that you did then. Can you say a bit about what you did?
JL: I think I did three mining operations. My first operation on a Lancaster was to Norway, to Haugesundfjord, and dropped, I think it was four, fifteen hundred pound mines in the fjord there. When we got caught out by searchlights and the gunners were able to reply and they, they won. Off Emden and the islands. We put a stick of mines there. And another one was at the entrance to St Nazaire harbour.
AP: Oh yeah. That was in France.
JL: Yes. That’s where we did, there’s an island, I think it’s called Belle ile and we had to do a timed run from Belle Ile. Went right up the estuary and let them go. I think the load was four, fifteen hundred pound mines. Parachute mines.
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 Jo Lancaster. One
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
2015-04-06
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALancasterJO150406
PLancasterJO1501
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
After leaving school, Jo Lancaster was an aircraft apprentice with Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company in Coventry. After volunteering for the Air Force, he trained as a pilot and completed a tour on Wellingtons with 40 Squadron from RAF Alconbury. Following a period as an instructor at an operational training unit, he flew another tour of operations. After the war Jo became a test pilot and was the first man to eject from an aircraft in danger using a Martin-Baker ejection seat.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Italy--La Spezia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1943
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:30:15 audio recording
12 Squadron
3 Group
40 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fitter airframe
fitter engine
Gneisenau
ground crew
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 110
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Alconbury
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wyton
Scharnhorst
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8815/PLancasterJ1501.2.jpg
794d475655253509adf90821a41de268
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8815/ALancasterJO170308.1.mp3
0854aad26e9a380b5f2a5cc40af42a9a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lancaster, Jo
John Oliver Lancaster
J O Lancaster
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lancaster, JO
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Oliver 'Jo' Lancaster DFC (1919 - 2019, 948392, 103509 Royal Air Force), photographs and six of his log books. Jo Lancaster completed 54 operations as a pilot with in Wellingtons with 40 Squadron, and after a period of instructing, in Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He became test pilot after the war and was the first person to use a Martin-Baker ejection seat in an emergency.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jo Lancaster and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
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
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 8th of March 2017 and I’m in Hassocks with John Lancaster. Jo Lancaster. To talk about his long career in the RAF and as a test pilot afterwards. So, Jo, what are the earliest recollections of life that you have in the family?
JL: I was born in Penrith in Cumberland. In the Lake District. I was very lucky really. I didn’t realise it much at the time. And my first ideas of aeroplanes were drawn entirely from, from books. They were very rarely seen over Cumberland. If they were they were just a spot in the sky making a humming noise but I became very interested in aeroplanes and made models out of the rough materials I could find to hand. I eventually had a flying model with an elastic band which gave me great, great fun but I never actually saw an aeroplane close to until I was about aged sixteen when a Gypsy Moth made a landing due to bad weather in the, in the area. I left school in 1935 aged sixteen and it was during that summer that Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus visited Penrith and I had my first flight in an Avro 504. I remember that well. There was a bench seat going forward and aft of the rear cockpit on which you sat astride and a young lady who I didn’t know was my co-passenger and she just put her head down in the cockpit and screamed throughout the whole flight. [laughs] But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I could see the engine with the tapits, with the bells going up and down. The exposed bells. And it was on that flight that the pilot had a piece of piano wire on the wing tip and picked up bits of cloth from the ground with it. I was completely bitten by flying then but there was little chance of it in the, in the near future. I left school at sixteen and I didn’t want to go to university. In point of fact I couldn’t really because my father’s business had a bad time during the recession and there wasn’t any money left in the kitty but I didn’t mind that. I didn’t want to go to university. I wanted to go out and get amongst mechanical things and an aircraft apprenticeship seemed to be the answer. We considered the RAF apprenticeship scheme, I forget where now. Henlow. Not Henlow.
CB: Halton.
JL: Halton. Considered the RAF apprenticeship scheme at Halton but I wanted to be in the start of the aeroplane flight and not, not the sort of maintenance of it and so I, somehow or other, got a list of aircraft manufacturers in Britain who were offering apprenticeships. Some of them wanted premiums so that put them out but Armstrong Whitworth sounded the best and in due course my father accompanied me down to Coventry for an interview. And I was accepted and joined Armstrong Whitworth in October 1935 starting a five year apprenticeship. The apprenticeship was very good. We had pay and we had one morning and one afternoon off paid time for, to attend the local technical college. [Cough] Can we have a pause?
CB: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: So you’re at Coventry.
JL: The apprenticeship.
CB: And you’re just on the apprenticeship.
JL: Yes. When I — I went down to Coventry to take up my apprenticeship having negotiated some digs through the local paper. I didn’t like the digs we had, I had but [pause - interference] but when I first started there [I feel sure?] it was at the airfield at Wheatley, an old World War One airfield with still the original hangars. I first of all went to, as a stop-gap to the final assembly unit where they were building Hawker Hart trainers. I found everybody very very friendly and one of the almost time expired apprentices, expired apprentices asked me about my digs and I said I didn’t like them and he said there was a vacancy at his digs so I was very glad to go there and I, I was there for over three years. Nearly four years in fact. In, in the original interview it was, it was stressed that there would be no flying involved in the apprenticeship but I had ideas that I would join the, what was then the RAF Class F Reserve which operated very similarly to the Territorial Army. Consisted mostly of a two week summer camp. But on reaching the age of eighteen that coincided with the start of the RAF Volunteer Reserve and I joined straight away and followed that up with the full time ab initio training course at Sywell in July of 1937. Having done that I went back to, to my apprenticeship of course and attended the local RAF, [pause] oh dear. Elementary Reserve Training School at Ansty. That was local to Coventry. During the day, during the weekdays the instructors there were instructing a course of short service, short service commission pilots and at evenings or other times when convenient as at weekends they were training the volunteer reservists. There instead of Tiger Moths as at Sywell we had Avro Cadets with Armstrong Siddeley Genet engines and I converted on to Cadets and then converted on to Hawker Harts. When I was still eighteen I was flying solo on Hawker Harts which was a beautiful aeroplane.
[pause]
JL: I don’t know how to continue.
CB: We’ll stop just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: You mentioned digs. People don’t seem to have digs now so what were they and how did it work?
JL: Well my first digs, which were arranged through the local, by post through the local paper, when I got there I didn’t know the people. I didn’t care for them very much. I was there for really just over a week I think and I was happy to leave when my new acquaintance apprentice, Tony Carpenter suggested I join him in his digs. There I was with a family, or we were with a family. Mrs Hinder who was a widow, widow of a parson and her two children Ruby and Percy. So there were five of us in the house and Mrs Hinder provided us with breakfast, a packed lunch, an evening meal five days a week and breakfast and all the other meals during the weekend at the princely sum of twenty five shillings a week.
CB: Brilliant. Yes. And what about your washing?
JL: I can’t remember. I didn’t do it. They must. It probably went to, I don’t know. I don’t suppose she did it. I don’t remember.
CB: What sort of hours did you work in those days?
JL: We had to be there at 8 o’clock in the morning. We had a half hour’s break for lunch and left at 5 o’clock four days of the week and half past five on Thursdays. And Saturday morning it was 8 o’clock till twelve [cough] I shall have to go and get another drink.
CB: Ok.
[Recording paused]
CB: That’s really useful so when we have the time to talk about the apprenticeship how did the apprenticeship work?
JL: Well as I said I actually started in final assembly but I was only there a couple of weeks. That was a stop-gap and then I was moved to what they called a detailed fitting shop where all the various parts of the aircraft were made using hand tools. And I was there for probably nine months and then I moved to the milling machine shop. Learned how to work a milling machine and then moved on from that to working a, working on a lathe. Learned all about lathe work. Then I went to sub-assembly where units of the aircraft were assembled. The aircraft going through at this time was the Whitley. And then eventually I went on to, moved up to Baginton. The new airfield and the new factory on final assembly and I was there until the — when the war started. I was, I was held back until I joined the — the RAF decided to have me back in January 1940. But I wasn’t actually called up until June of 1940. Incidentally there was a rather amusing episode in May of 1939. Shortly before the war. Everybody knew the war was coming. They had to re-introduce conscription and I was a bullseye for the first age group and I had to go and have an interview with a little [petrie?] army major so I lost no time in telling him I didn’t want to join his army and I was a trained engineer and a trained pilot and he said, ‘Well you’ll be, you’ll be a dead cert for the Royal Army Ordinance Corps.’ And why he said that and not the Royal Engineers I don’t know. But anyway the war started and in no time at all I received a letter containing a traveling warrant to Budbrooke Barracks and a postal order for the four shillings in advance of pay to join the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
CB: Oh.
JL: So I dashed down to, and by this time they had a combined recruiting centre in Coventry. They’d taken over a skating rink, a roller skating rink. And the air force recruiting officer was no help at all but the naval recruiting officer was a Chief Petty Officer Brown and I went and told him my problem and he said, ‘Well we’ll get you out of that,’ and he took me on for the navy on, on deferred service. So I then got a letter saying please return the travelling warrant and postal order. You need not now apply, attend Budbrooke Barracks. So whilst, whilst I was on deferred service for the navy the RAF changed their mind and decided to have me back and, but I didn’t actually re-join until about June of 1940 starting with a six weeks course at ITW Initial Training Wing at Paignton in Devon. And then we were all disbursed to [pause] God. [pause] Sorry, this is my brain. [pause]
CB: From ITW you went to Initial Training Wing.
JL: Well it was Flying Training School.
CB: Yes but at Sywell again.
JL: The first one was Sywell.
CB: Yes.
JL: But this time, after the war started it was Desford near Leicester
CB: Oh yes.
WT: Yes. Desford. Yes.
JO: Yes. Yes. We were, we were all divided up. I went, I went to Desford with some others. During the, during this ab initio course the Battle of Britain was in full swing and of course we all wanted to be fighter pilots and I was in fact selected to be a fighter pilot and sent to number five elementary flying, 5 Flying Training School at Sealand which had Miles Masters and there I was going to be a fighter pilot. I trained on Miles Masters. Later — later in the — we were down, we moved from Sealand down to Ternhill in Shropshire and continued training there but the, during the winter ‘40/41 it was very bad. The training — some of us got well behind and I was on a course of about forty eight divided into four flights of twelve and our flight was the only one, was the only one who succeeded in doing the night flying part of the syllabus on Masters and at the end of the course the whole flight was posted to bomber OTUs whilst the rest went to fighters. And I went to Lossiemouth, 20 OTU as I remember and was converted on to Wellingtons. I was very cross about this at the time but in the event I think it was the right thing to do. When I got to Lossiemouth we were next door to [pause] oh dear [pause] sorry. A Whitley OTU.
WT: Wycombe?
JL: Hmmn?
WT: Wycombe
JL: No. A Whitley OTU up in Scotland. Oh God. I’m sorry.
CB: Was it on, was it a coastal OTU or was it a Bomber Command OTU?
JL: It was a bombing.
CB: Whitleys. Yes.
JL: I was at Lossiemouth converting on to Wellingtons.
CB: Yes.
JL: At 20 OTU.
CB: Yes.
JL: And there was another OTU only about ten miles away with Whitleys. It was well known. It’s still open.
CB: Yes. Kinloss.
JL: Kinloss. Yes.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
JL: Sorry. Thank you.
CB: It’s ok.
JL: I got an interview with the group captain of Lossiemouth called Group Captain Smyth-Piggott and told him that I had been building Whitleys and knew all about them and that I’d like to convert. To transfer to Whitleys. And he wouldn’t have it so I was stuck with Wellingtons. And so we were paired off as pilots with first and second pilot. I was the first pilot and my second pilot was Derek Townsend and having done our conversion training we then had to be crewed up and we were all ushered into a hangar with the right proportions of pilots, navigators, wireless operators and air gunners. And Derek and I wandered around looking at people we’d never seen before and we eventually finished up with a Canadian navigator Glen Leach, a very Welsh wireless operator called Jack Crowther, another Canadian front gunner and a New Zealand rear gunner. Now, at that time I’d never met a Canadian before and I was just, I was surprised they spoke like people we saw in the cinema. But I hardly knew where New Zealand was. Anyway, we went down to that, to the pub in Lossiemouth that night and we were blood brothers from then for the rest of our lives.
[pause]
CB: Right. Stop there for a mo.
[Recording paused]
JL: What had happened.
CB: At Desford. Yeah.
JL: At Desford. We did a — went off and did a flight. When we landed he said, ‘You haven’t forgotten how to fly.’
CB: But you still had to go through.
JL: I still had to do the whole thing through.
CB: The whole thing.
JL: Yes.
CB: Because that’s the way the process ran. Can we just go back to your VR time because you might have continued with that but how long were you in the VR, flying and what caused you to cease?
JL: Well I as I say I was being converted on to — [pause] Oh God.
CB: On to the Hart. Yeah.
JL: Cadets.
CB: Oh the Cadet. Yes.
JL: And Harts. I was flying Harts at a very tender age and I was the ace. I thought I was the ace of the base. And one Sunday after a very bad period of weather where there was no flying we had a very fine Sunday morning in April 1938 and I dashed out to Ansty. There were no Harts available but I was given a, alloted a Cadet to go and do aerobatics and off I went. There was something wrong with the engine actually. It tended to choke and had to be re-started. I wasn’t even bothered with that. I went off and I did some aerobatics. I got doing a slow roll. There was a fire extinguisher under the dashboard and the instrument panel and on the final turn with full top rudder the fire extinguisher fell out and got behind the rudder bar so when I got right way up I got a whole lot of left rudder on. I managed to sort of kick it halfway through the fabric so that I could get steering rudder and instead of going back to Ansty as I should have done I became insane and landed at Wheatley. Well it was a Sunday so there was only a sort of a maintenance man there. When he walked up I gave him the fire extinguisher and took off again. And then, then I, my fellow digs chap, Tony Carpenter, he couldn’t join the VR because of his eyesight but he bought all sort of what we would call a microlight called a dart splitter mouse and he had it at a field near Kenilworth and I then went over to him and did a few aerobatics there. Then I did what was actually a perfectly legal exercise. A simulated forced landing where you from two thousand feet or whatever you throttle the engine back and did an approach on to a suitable field, opened it up and go around again at the end. I did what the, I opened up and the engines stopped and I went through a hedge so that’s rather spoiled things and I was thrown out. You’ll find it in there.
WT: Gosh.
JL: I wasn’t thrown out for going through the hedge. I was thrown out for doing low level aerobatics.
CB: Ah
JL: That was because very very close by was Kenilworth Golf Club and playing golf that morning was a chap called Tom Chapman who was a director of Armstrong Siddeley’s who was hand in glove with Armstrong Whitworth’s and he, he reported it. [laughs] Tom Chapman. Bless his heart.
CB: You never became friends.
JL: I never met him.
[pause]
CB: Right. So we’ve got to the stage that you’re at Lossiemouth and you’ve crewed up. This crewing up — could you just explain how it actually happened? The process.
JL: Well Derek and I just wandered around looking at people’s brevets and we got together a navigator. We found this Canadian with a, he had the O brevet.
CB: Yeah.
JL: He was very proud of that. The Observer. Asked him and he came along and we continued the process till we got the full crew. And we all, we all agreed to meet in the pub that night and we were thick as thieves from that time on.
CB: So how long were you together for?
JL: Well from Lossiemouth, when we were crewed up we did a number of cross country exercises [cough] oh dear. To finish the course. Air firing and practice bombing and then we were posted as a crew to 40 Squadron at Wyton. So we all went off on leave and we all arrived at Wyton on the appointed day only to be told that we weren’t supposed to be at Wyton. We were supposed to be at Alconbury. The satellite. And so we got a service bus from Wyton to Alconbury and signed in there and we were promptly all put on a charge for arriving late. And we were, what are the — ? [pause] I forget the expression was. The lowest. The lowest telling off. So that wasn’t a very good start because we didn’t like the WingCo much anyway. He wasn’t a very popular chap. A [jock?]. Wing Commander Davey. Anyway, we were, then Derek, Derek left us to join another crew and we were given a captain in the form of a Jim Taylor who — he’d already done a lot of ops and he took us on our first eight ops and then he left us. He was, he was screened and I took over as captain and we were given a series of second pilots from then on. And we succeeded in surviving thirty operations including a daylight on Brest. And then we, then we all split up.
CB: So this is in a Wellington.
JL: Yes. And I was posted to a Wellington OTU as a, as an instructor [coughs] oh dear. I’m sorry about this.
CB: Ok. Would you like to stop for a mo?
[Recording paused]
CB: So can we just talk about the tour? The aircraft was a Wellington. Which model?
JL: Yes. Throughout this period all my flying was on Wellington 1Cs which was powered by Bristol Pegasus Mark xviii and with these it was very very underpowered. It was supposed to be able to fly on one engine but in fact it couldn’t because it had non-feathering propellers.
CB: Oh.
JL: Fortunately the engines were fairly reliable. The most common problem would be that one of the rocker boxes would break loose from the cylinder head which introduced, which put that cylinder out of use and caused it to be, to vibrate rather a lot. That happened from time to time. But at least you had the use of most of the engine.
CB: So you couldn’t really feather. You couldn’t feather the prop.
JL: No. No.
CB: So you kept it running did you or you stopped it? The drag was huge.
JL: Well if you lost the engine it just, just windmilled.
CB: Yeah. Right.
JL: Caused a lot of drag.
CB: So of the ops, one of them was to Brest. What was that like?
JL: There was one occasion when we went off. Actually it was fortunately in daylight and when we got up to about seventeen hundred feet and the oil, the oil pressure on one engine dropped to zero. I looked out and there was oil all over the engine but fortunately we were just within a mile or so of Wyton and I was able to drop straight down and land in Wyton complete with a full load of petrol and bombs. But had, had it been dark the situation would have been very different. It was too late to bale out and we had a full load of bombs and it was dark.
CB: In circumstances where you’re still, you’ve still got your full load of bombs what was the proper procedure?
JL: Sorry?
CB: In the circumstances where there was difficulty with the aircraft and you had a full load of bombs what was the proper procedure as far as the bomb load was concerned? Were you supposed to jettison or keep them?
JL: Well normally only jettison over the sea.
CB: Right.
JL: But of course you had to be in full control of the aircraft. If you lost an engine and you weren’t able to, to maintain flight you’d probably leave them where they were.
CB: So thinking of the rest of the tour how did the ops go on that? You had a bit of variety. They were all at night were they?
JL: All except one. The 24th of July 1941 there was a major daylight operation on Brest in which we were involved. The squadron sent six aircraft in two lots of three. The other three lost, lost one aircraft in a direct hit but our three all survived. Knocked about but still working.
CB: So the other one was lost to flak.
JL: Yes.
CB: What operating height were you using then?
JL: Twelve and a half thousand feet.
CB: And what bomb load were you carrying?
JL: Probably five. I can’t tell you. I didn’t record these. Probably five hundred pound armour piercing but it was all a waste of time as I discovered later. Much later. I visited Lorient after the war and went and saw the U-boat pens there and none of our bombs would ever do anything to them. They had a huge roof about two metres thick and then a false roof on top of that. You could see where bombs had hit it. There was just a little pock mark. That’s all. We were all wasting our time. I don’t know what our intelligence people were doing. Thinking about.
CB: So for the other ops then. These were at night. Where? Where were they going? Where were the targets?
JL: Mostly in Germany but we did one to [pause] oh Christ, I’m sorry.
CB: Was it a port?
JL: On the Baltic.
CB: Right. Kiel or Wilhelmshaven. Bremen.
JL: Further east.
CB: Ah.
JL: Poland.
CB: Oh. Danzig.
JL: Oh God. I’m sorry. My brain’s going on strike.
CB: Stettin.
JL: Stettin. Thank you.
CB: Right. So that was a port. And what were you after there? The shipping. Were you?
JL: The port. Yes. That was a long one. That’s well over nine hours. We had overload tanks.
CB: The overload tanks were jettisonable or were they inside the aircraft?
JL: Oh no. They were, they were in the bomb bay.
CB: Oh right.
JL: So we had a reduced bomb load.
CB: And this is the early part of the war so how were you getting on in terms of navigation and pinpointing the target?
JL: There was very little to help us with navigation. We had a choice of dead reckoning and any pinpointing we could get. At night, providing there was no cloud, water could usually be seen. The River Rhine. We used to get quite a bit of haze over the Ruhr but you could usually pick out the Rhine. All the coastlines and harbours. We did have Hamburg two or three times. Bremen. Wilhelmshaven. Berlin. Most of them were to the Ruhr though. I think we did [pause], oh God my brain.
CB: So there was flak all the time but to what extent were there —?
JL: Nearly all the time. Yes.
CB: What about night fighters? Were they?
JL: We were attacked. Yes. On the way back from Berlin actually. We were. Berlin was clear but there was, on the way back we encountered cloud and we were being shot at through the cloud pretty well continuously. And we couldn’t understand this because we shouldn’t have been but what had happened was that the forecast wind which was all we had had changed and they’d taken us north and we were actually going down via Hamburg, Bremen, Emden but eventually there was a break in the clouds and as I looked down I could see the causeway across the mouth of the Zuiderzee and as I reported this and obviously everybody, including the rear gunner, was looking down and it was just at that moment that a burst of fire went right over the top of us followed by an ME110. And we didn’t see it. We were lucky. But anyway, anyway we went down a very steep spiral and this 110 tried to follow us and Keith Coleman, our New Zealand rear gunner got a good shot at it and we both went into cloud and we never knew what happened to it but after the war some people checked up on it and there were no night fighters shot down that night but one inexplicably crashed on landing and it’s just possible it might have been the one.
CB: Because you’d damaged it. Yeah. Now, in those days had the corkscrew evasion system operated or did you make up your own technique for avoiding a fighter?
JL: Well, only, only did corkscrewing if you were, if you were attacked. In my second tour actually it was different. It was my own idea. I kept changing course and height. Five hundred feet up. Five hundred feet up. Turned left, then right. Pretty well all the time because the eighty eight millimetre guns were radar controlled and they were bloody good. So by doing that we were never actually seriously shot at. Not enroute.
CB: You mentioned that you had various co-pilots. Why was that? Were they being prepared for captaincy themselves or what?
JL: Yes. They were doing their training before taking over their own crew. I’m very sorry.
[Recording paused]
JL: That was the daylight raid on, on Brest I think.
CB: Oh. We talked about the 110 just now but what, on what other occasion were you attacked by a fighter?
JL: On the daylight raid on Brest in July there were several 110s about. Sorry. Correction. 109s about.
CB: Yes.
JL: But there were a lot of Wellingtons about and they were all, they were all firing at these 109s and one went, certainly went down because the pilot baled out but all the others tend to claim it. [laughs]
CB: Right. Is that your —
JL: In retrospect it’s impossible to say who hit it.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
JL: We had, we had beam guns but both my gunners, front and rear were blasting away and we had two beam gunners with Vickers, Vickers VJOs fitted up and the second, our second pilot and the wireless op were blasting away with theirs as well and of course all the Wellingtons were probably doing the same thing so the sky was absolutely full of CO3.
CB: Right. So in your flying training at Ternhill what sort of people were there?
JL: We had two American air force officers. Sam Morinello and the other one was called Galbraith. But of course they left us to join their Eagle Squadrons. We also had Neville Duke.
CB: Oh right.
JL: And we had David. Oh God, here we go again [pause] oh I’m sorry. My brain’s —
CB: It’s alright. That’s interesting Neville Duke because he took the world speed record in the Hunter.
JL: Yes.
CB: Didn’t he? In the fifties.
JL: He was also on the same course at ITW.
CB: Was he? Yeah. What about these Americans then. What were they like? Because they weren’t in the war and they’d volunteered to join?
JL: Yes. Well most Americans joined the Royal Canadian Air Force but these two didn’t. Sam Morinello had done a lot of parachute jumps. Just what he’d, they’d been doing. I think they both had pilot training. Why they didn’t join the Canadian Air Force I don’t know but I suppose this was the — they wanted to be certain to get to the American squadrons.
CB: So they were posted to the Eagle Squadrons.
JL: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yes. They were. I think they distinguished themselves fairly well later on.
CB: And how did they fit into the general way of things because they were a different culture?
JL: Oh well. Very well. I’m trying to think of the name of this. His father was chief. Well his father was a pre-war, a World War One pilot. He became a chief designer at Bristol and he had four sons. He was killed in 1938 flying one of his own design and the [pause] and the three sons, I think it was three sons. Might have been more. So, anyway, two of them were killed early in the war and this David. He was just one of the boys. Happy. We knew nothing at all about his background at all.
CB: Oh dear.
JL: But he, unfortunately he was killed as well. Oh God. The name, name, name. [I must have written it?] I bet it’s in there.
CB: Ok. Right. We’ll stop just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: So going back to the time when you finished at 40 Squadron. Where were posted and why?
JL: I was posted to Wellesbourne Mountford for instructional duties. Wellesbourne Mountford being Number 22 OTU. Operational Training Unit. Still with Wellington 1Cs. I was attached to the conversion flight. I was converting them to fly the Wellington after which they did their navigational exercises. I didn’t like the job at all. I’m not born, I wasn’t born to be an instructor and I was very unhappy about it. Not only that but it involved night flying details and in the winter the night flying practice was divided up into four sessions being 6 till 9, 9 till 12, 12 till 3 and 3 till 6 and if you were on a late show you know you had to be out at 3 o’clock on a cold, miserable morning and go and do three hours circuits and landings and that was not very funny. I discovered that there was, at Central Flying School, they ran a course for OTU instructors so I asked to go on that which I did but it didn’t help. It didn’t help me much. When I went back to Wellesbourne I was still doing conversion training. Then in July another OTU opened at what is now East Midlands Airport.
CB: Castle Donington.
JL: Castle Donington. That had just opened and I was posted there. When I got there there were four or five other people there and no aeroplanes. So we had a nice time for a while. Then we collected some aeroplanes and started training. Right. Now we start. Originally I was on conversion training but then I went on to the navigation side and I was sent on a cross country with a, a five hour cross country, with a pupil crew and when I got — this was in October ‘42 and when I got back I found I was rostered to go on what they called a bullseye that night which is an exercise cooperating with the Observer Corps and the ground defences. I went to the mess and there was no food and there was no option but to go back down to the flight and took over yet another pupil crew I’d never met before. We went off on this bullseye. We got, we got over the Solway Firth, we were actually going to North Wales but via the Solway Firth and we hit icy conditions. Ice was [cough] ice was banging away on the side. I discovered that the wireless operator had declared his apparatus unserviceable. I’d no idea what the navigator was like. I was frozen stiff so I decided to go home. We were over ten tenths cloud as they called it and so I flew east for a long long long way before letting down safely and then found my way back to, to the airfield. The next day I was on the carpet for abandoning the bullseye. I explained everything but it didn’t cut any ice. This wing commander who hadn’t done a thing I think for himself demanded to see my logbook and in my logbook I’d cut out a little comic thing from a flight magazine where the caption was, “All the way from Hamburg on one engine,” and of course it was a chap sitting astride just an engine and this wing commander took exception to this and told me to take it off. By this time I told him I didn’t want to take it out. And we departed. We departed the worst of friends and very shortly after that a posting came through for me to 150 Squadron at Snaith which I quite welcomed because I was absolutely sick of OTUs. When I got to Snaith the wing commander said, ‘Who are you and what have you come for?’ So I said, ‘I don’t know why I’ve come, sir. [laughs] I’ve just been posted.’ And he said, ‘Well what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go on a Lancaster squadron.’ And so I did about three flights in their aircraft. 150 Squadron’s. They had Wellingtons 3s by then with a Hercules. And then I was posted to, [cough] oh dear. I’m sorry. 12 Squadron at Wickenby. Just outside Lincoln. When I got to Wickenby they still had Wellingtons but they were scheduled to train on to Lancs. I did three operations with Wellingtons. Then we were stood down for six weeks to transfer. Convert on to Lancasters.
CB: We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
JL: And I think a couple of squadrons in 5 Group. That’s all there were at that time.
CB: So how did the conversion process operate? Bearing in mind there were no HCUs.
JL: Conversion on to Lancasters? Well we had a couple of pilots seconded to us. [coughs] I’m so sorry. Let me take a cough pill.
CB: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
JL: Between the Frisian Islands and the mainland.
CB: We’re just talking about your ops on the Wellington before you moved to Lancaster. So one was Hamburg.
JL: Not many on 40 Squadron.
CB: No.
JL: Nor at the OTU.
CB: No.
JL: But when I went back to 12 Squadron as I say we still had Wellingtons and I took over the flight commander’s crew as a going concern. We did one mining operation between Terschelling Island and the mainland and one on the approach to St Nazaire. In the estuary. That was a timed run for an island. I think in between was Hamburg. Bombing.
CB: And with mines you couldn’t drop from too great a height because it would shatter the mine so what height did you go?
JL: I think it was five hundred feet and a hundred and sixty miles an hour.
[pause]
CB: And you operated in miles an hour rather than knots did you?
JL: Yes. Incidentally on that run when I went to St Nazaire I decided to go across Brittany. Low down. It was dark but it was clear enough to fly at two or three hundred feet and I saw quite clearly somebody on the ground with a lantern and they swung it around in a circle as we went past.
CB: Exhilarating at low level at night was it?
JL: Well I think I probably thought it was safer than going higher because the guns couldn’t get at you.
CB: So that was a lone sortie. You weren’t going out as a squadron at the same time.
JL: Oh no. They were all lone sorties.
CB: Right.
JL: Except the, except the daylight on Brest.
CB: Right. So after those three then you do the conversion on to the Lancasters. So what was the process there?
JL: We spent quite a little time learning about the Lancaster on the ground and then we had two pilots from 460 Squadron attached to us and they quite quickly converted us. It didn’t take very long. A Lancaster was quite easy to fly and then we took over our crews and spent some time.
CB: So when you moved to Lancasters the four engines all had an engineer. How did that selection work? Did you have all the crew with you?
JL: Well we had, oh a suitable number of mid-upper gunners and engineers arrived and we didn’t choose them. They were just allocated.
CB: So —
JL: And with a full crew then we started doing navigation exercises, a lot of which, much to our concern, were low level formation.
CB: Daylight or night?
JL: Daylight. We didn’t like the idea very much. In the end we didn’t do any daylights.
CB: So what time are we talking about now? 1942.
JL: 1942. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
JL: My first operation on Lancs was a mining operation. To Norway. Haugesundfjord fjord
[pause]
CB: What was the, that was just in the fjord. Just in the entrance was it? Or close to the shipping?
JL: It was more or less parallel to the coast as I remember.
CB: Right.
JL: It wasn’t, it wasn’t very well defended at all. Searchlights came up and a bit of light flak and my gunners responded quickly and, and they put the lights out again.
CB: What sort of height were you doing your mining?
JL: Five hundred feet.
CB: That was also five hundred was it? Right. Ok. And then the rest of the ops. On that tour how many did you do? With 12 squadron?
JL: I think I did twenty two [pause] on Lancasters. Did thirty on Wellingtons. I did the two thousand bomber raids. And then another twenty two [coughs], another twenty two on Lancs which made fifty four I think.
CB: So that normal tour would be thirty. So why did you stop at twenty two?
JL: Oh well I’d done, I did the fifty fourth operation which was to La Spezia in Italy. And the next morning I was called in by the wing commander. And wondering what I’d done wrong, and he said that a new edict had come through that a second tour was now twenty operations. Not twenty. And as I’d done twenty I was finished as of then.
CB: Right. Not thirty. Yeah.
JL: So I finished very suddenly at fifty four.
CB: So what was the next move from there?
JL: Well I wanted to be a test pilot and I thought the best way of starting was getting a posting to a maintenance unit. The wing commander. Wing commander. [pause] Oh dear. Wood. Wing Commander Wood was very very helpful because my first posting after having finished the second tour was back to Wellington 1Cs at Harwell.
CB: Oh right.
JL: And I complained very very loudly about that so WinCo Wood took me off that and made me sort of supernumerary on the squadron. I was talking to new crews and doing odd jobs and then I couldn’t go on forever so they gave me a posting to the Group Gunnery Flight at Binbrook. 1481 flight. I was, they had a Wellington flight and a Martinet flight — the target towers. I was in charge of the Wellington flight and I had a right royal time there. I was my own boss and we did as we liked. But then a posting came through for me to Boscombe Down. A&AEE which I was rather frightened about that. I wasn’t sure if I was up to it. In the end it was fine. Incidentally, the posting to Harwell, another second tour pilot finished shortly after me [pause] Once again his name’s gone. But he took it because his wife lived near Harwell and within about six weeks he was dead. The engine caught fire and the thing folded. What was his name? All these names are in there.
CB: Yeah.
JL: In ten minutes time I can tell you.
CB: Ok. We can pick it up. So now you’re on the way to Boscombe Down.
JL: Yes. I went to Boscombe Down. I was posted to, there was an armament flight and a performance testing flight. I went to the armament flight and the flight commander gave me a ride in a B, oh dear, B25.
CB: Mitchell.
JL: Mitchell. Mitchell. And that was it. I didn’t have any dual. You just got in to an aeroplane and flew it.
CB: Right.
JL: And that’s just, just what happened. And I amassed a total of, I think eventually a hundred and forty four types.
CB: Really. So what formal process did they have for introducing you to test flying?
JL: None at all then. I was just posted in, as I said given a ride in a Mitchell because I’d never been in an American aircraft before. And that was it. I flew them all. Liberators, Fortresses. What was the, was it a B26?
CB: Marauder.
JL: Marauder. That was a bit of a handful.
CB: Was it?
JL: Very high wing loading.
CB: And when you were doing the flying did you have people with you on instruments? Who were monitoring instruments? What was actually happening at Boscombe Down?
JL: Most of my flying was done for armament purposes and we had armament technical officers. Sort of bombing and gunning and we were supervising the tests. We were just drivers really.
CB: Yeah.
JL: My first job, my very first job when I got down there was to drop a four thousand pounder from fifteen hundred feet. Well in the, in Bomber Command the quoted safety height for dropping a four thousand pounder is six thousand feet. Really it was nothing. You felt, well you heard and felt just a little bump. And all this was, they were doing a lot of tests in preparation for what they called second TAF. Second Technical Airforce for the invasion.
CB: So this is army support effectively. So the four thousand pounder’s the cookie which is just a barrel.
JL: Oh yes.
CB: And did you feel there was some danger in doing that? Or did you prove there wasn’t?
JL: Well as I say we’d been told the safety height was six thousand feet and we were sent off to do it at fifteen hundred but I had no problem.
CB: Which was what they wanted to know.
JL: They were measuring it.
CB: Where would you, where was the range where you dropped those?
JL: Lyme Bay. Just off Lyme Regis.
CB: Yeah. What other things were you dropping? Or was there a lot of gunnery involved as well with the fifty seven millimetre.
JL: A bit of both. I had another job with a Mosquito. Oh incidentally. Mosquito. This was typical Boscombe at the time. There was quite a lot of social drinking went on in the evenings and one of the chaps who was, I was very fond of as an armament officer called Shepherd. He was a school master in civil life but he was involved with the rocket. RPs rocket projectiles which was flown by the [pause] oh God.
CB: The Mosquitos and the Beaufighters.
JL: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Anyway, one night he said, ’Would you like to fly a Mosquito?’ So I said, ‘Yes please.’ And the next day we just walked out to this Mosquito. Let’s say 8RPs. Four under each wing. And I got in. He got in behind me and we went off. That was literally true.
CB: And you’d never flown a two engine.
JL: I’d never flown a Mosquito before.
CB: No.
JL: And I’d certainly never fired rockets but there was quite an art in that because he was telling me what to do all the time. And then another job I had with the Mosquito was — I think they were probably four thousand pound casings filled with [pause] oh dear my brain. Flammable stuff.
CB: Oh yes. Napalm.
JL: What?
CB: Napalm.
JL: Napalm. Yes and this was, this was done we had a range at Crichel Down which, which was, I guess, sometime after the war and low level and so I went off and dropped one of these things at low level. Went back and landed and they phoned up and said, ‘You’re too high.’ So I had another one. I think we did this four times. Eventually I was flying just as low as I possibly dare.
CB: Was this in a Mosquito again?
JL: Yes. And then I saw some cine film of it afterwards but to see this Mosquito scuttling along just above the treetops and a great flame drops the, a great flame went up like a clutching hand way up above the Mosquito. Came down just missing its tail. It was quite frightening to watch and I did that four times.
CB: Blimey. This is using the four thousand pounder casing.
JL: That’s what it looked like. Yes.
CB: When you were doing your four thousand pounder at fifteen hundred feet what plane were you using to drop?
JL: The Lanc.
CB: That was the Lanc. Right. Ok. What other exciting planes? Did you fly single seaters at Boscombe Down?
JL: Oh yes. You could fly anything you wanted. Just go along and say, ‘Please can I have a go at this.’ And you did. There were, well I’d already flown Spitfires. I don’t know where they got that from but I pinched a Spitfire.
CB: Oh did you?
JL: At Binbrook.
CB: You felt it needed exercising.
JL: Yes. You haven’t, you haven’t got on to this one.
CB: No. Go on.
JL: Well —
CB: Right.
JL: 1 Group. They had a, I think he was a New Zealander with a Spitfire. He used to go around all the squadrons doing fighter affiliation. He came. He used to come to Binbrook about once a week I should think. Every time he came I used to say, ‘Give us a go in your Spitfire.’ And eventually he said, ‘Well I’m going to lunch. I know nothing about it.’ So I took that as a have a go.
CB: Have a go.
JL: Yeah. So I went off and did fifteen minutes in this Spitfire and the station commander was Hughie Edwards.
CB: Oh right. [laughs]
JL: Well actually I got on well with him and just a couple of days later, I can’t remember what he said but it was just a very few words just to let me know that he knew about it and having done that I thought well I’ll have another go. So the next time this chap came in I had another go. And then at Kirton Lindsey, not very far away there was a Spitfire OTU. So I went off in — Hughie Edwards used to have a Tiger Moth. He used to let me fly that and I just introduced an Aussie, Aussie wireless op of 460 Squadron. So we went over to Kirton Lindsey and said we wanted to fly Spitfires and they said, ‘Well you’ll have to use Hibaldstow. Our satellite.’ So I went over to Hibaldstow. Now. I can’t for the life of me think how this ever happened but I walked in there and said, ‘Please sir, I have flown a Spitfire before. Can I have another go?’ And then he gave me a Spitfire and I went off for forty five minutes. They’d never seen me before. I’d never seen them before. But this is true. It’s true.
CB: Was this the OTU for the Eagle Squadron?
JL: No. I don’t think so.
CB: No.
JL: I don’t know what it was. It was just a Spitfire OTU.
CB: Yeah. Right. Amazing.
JL: I mean authorising. Who the hell would authorise a flight in a Spitfire from somebody they’d never seen before?
CB: What rank were you at that time?
JL: Flight lieutenant. [pause] Yeah. Lots of things like that happened to me. It’s hard to believe them now.
CB: Yeah.
JL: I guarantee it. I don’t know how you would ever prove it now but [poor old Max Kiddie?] the Aussies. He died. Well most Aussies seem to die young. Most of the ones I knew did.
CB: Yeah. Back at —
JL: Hughie Edwards only made sixty eight.
CB: Yes. Back at Boscombe Down you’ve got all these variety of planes and you’re in the armament flight. So on the single engine planes what are you testing?
JL: Mostly guns. Things like the Avenger I remember, which was quite a nice aeroplane. We didn’t have many single engines. Only for our own test purposes but I used to go around and fly other people’s.
CB: So the Grumman Avenger was — you were doing that for the navy were you?
JL: Yes.
CB: Right.
JL: Yes I remember the Avenger. The Avenger, I think, yes. I can’t remember what. We did anything. And we were all much the same. We were entitled to one day off a week but nobody ever took it. All that happened when there was a non-flying day we all went into Salisbury. Otherwise every day was the same.
CB: Yeah. What other twin-engined aircraft did you fly at Boscombe Down?
JL: I don’t know.
CB: Did you have a Whirlwind for instance?
JL: No. No. Unfortunately not. I liked the look of a Whirlwind. They had the, they had the Wyvern there but it never went into production. It was a sort of larger, uglier looking one.
CB: Wellington.
JL: I’ve made a list somewhere of what I’ve flown.
CB: Ok. So after Boscombe Down. Then what? We’re now getting to what? What time of the war?
JL: Well the Empire Test Pilot School had started and had number one course for only about eight or ten people on that. And they had number two course. That was going on during the time I was there. They were based at Boscombe. I applied for number three course which began on the 13th March 1945 and actually I’d been, I was scheduled to drop the, I can’t remember whether it was the Tallboy or the Grand Slam but the weather had been duff and the 13th of March came up and that was the date of DPDS started so I had to give up that and a chap called Steve Dawson did the dropping of it. But of course 514. Oh my brain. Come on. The Dambusters.
CB: Yeah. 617.
JL: 617. That’s better. They already had them of course.
CB: So talking about Tallboy and Grand Slam. How were you testing those and where?
JL: Dropping them on Ashley Walk in the New Forest.
CB: So did they, they were looking for penetration were they? Or accuracy of flight? What were they looking at?
JL: I can’t remember.
CB: Because they were pinpoint delivery bombs.
JL: Probably the mechanics of dropping it. Yes that would be it. No point in dropping it on Ashley Walk except to make a big hole.
CB: Were they testing the ability of the two bombs to penetrate concrete?
JL: I don’t think so. I think 617 squadron were already doing that. They did the Tirpitz and that thing in France.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Coupole or whatever they called it.
CB: Coupole. Yes. They did a good job on that.
JL: Did a good job of the Tirpitz too.
CB: Yeah. And V3. Tallboys. The guns. The guns in the hillside. So did you, after doing your dropping did they ask you to look at the result of what you’d done?
JL: I can’t remember that. No.
[pause]
JL: I had a wonderful time at Boscombe. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
CB: I bet. So you talked about ETPS the Test Pilot School so what happened there. Number three course.
JL: I was on number three course. Yes. And of course the end of the war came. Chief test pilots round the industry had a habit of coming down and taking lunch with the senior officers and Cyril Feather who was the chief test pilot at Boulton Paul wanted a pilot and somebody suggested me. And I was a bit flattered and thought it would be a good idea so I accepted. And at the end of the course actually we were all being, getting the future sorted out. I had applied for a permanent commission. In the event they didn’t issue permanent commissions immediately. They did what amounted to short service. They didn’t call it short service. Four year contracts.
CB: Yeah. Just Short Service Commissions.
JL: It was a short service commission but they called it something else.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Extended Service Commission
CB: Oh right.
JL: In the event they only issued Extended Service Commissions and I took this offer of Boulton Paul’s but when I got there the chief test pilot engineer was there. He didn’t know I was coming. He was a bit put out understandably. Anyway, we got on alright but there was nothing to do there and I went to ETPS course dinner and we had a number four course I suppose which at this time it was [pause] oh dear [pause] somewhere near Milton Keynes
CB: Oh Cranfield.
JL: Cranfield. Thank you. I’m sorry about this.
CB: That’s alright.
JL: And the Groupie — I can’t think of his name now. A little chap. Said, ‘Are you happy where you are?’ I said, ‘No sir.’ He said, ‘Well, Saunders Roe are looking for somebody. Well, Saunders Roe suited me very well because apart from being on the Isle of Wight my wife lived near Winchester and so I I left Baulton Paul and went to Saunders Roe and [cough] oh dear. I don’t know why my throat’s doing this.
CB: Do you want a break? We’ll just stop for a mo?
[Recording paused]
CB: Now, one thing I didn’t ask you about the Boscombe Down range was you were actually testing American aircraft as well as British.
JL: Oh yes.
CB: One of the night fighters, American night fighters was called Black Widow.
JL: Yes. Flew that.
CB: What was that like?
JL: It was not a very pleasant aircraft to fly really. I think it had remote controlled guns for even firing. It was alright but not a, not a very brilliant aircraft. Yes. The P51.
[pause]
CB: Right. Thank you. So we’re now at Saunders Roe. So what was the task there?
JL: Well they didn’t have a proper pilot there but chief designers [unclear] had been at the fleet air arm. He was doing a little bit. There were, at the time they were building Sea Otters and refurbishing Walruses, the jet flying boat fighter was on the docks. The SRA1. And in the distance was the Princess.
CB: Right.
JL: And so I just joined in flying the Walruses and the Sea Otters and then they, they sent me on a Sunderland conversion course to Pembroke Dock which was very nice. So I had the full OTU course on the Sunderland. Now what had happened at Saunders Roe was that Short Brothers — where did they used to be? On the Thames.
CB: At Chatham. Rochester.
JL: Rochester. Stafford Cripps, who was a trade minister or something, nationalised Short’s and sent them to Belfast. They never did like that including the chairman Sir Arthur Gouge. So he carried these down to Saunders Roe and he was, he was followed by a whole lot of other people including a general manager, Browning and a whole lot and they just didn’t want to be at Belfast. And whilst I was away at Pembroke Dock I got a letter from the managing director [laughs] Captain Clark saying that Geoffrey Tyson would be joining the company as chief test pilot. Well he was one of the Short’s. Well he was chief test pilot at Short’s. I thought well that’s fair enough. He knows his stuff. I don’t. And so I wrote back and said, “Yes, that’s fine by me sir.” And when I got back I met Geoffrey. He was the most peculiar chap. He wasn’t the least interested in me, my background. He didn’t want to see my logbooks. Nothing. He knew nothing about me. And I found it very hard to get on with him. He hadn’t any sense of humour, he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke. But we staggered along and he did the first few flights on the SRA1 and then he let me have a go. Well then, well we, we didn’t get on at all. Face it. We shared the same birthday but he was twelve years older than me.
CB: Right.
JL: And —
CB: In flying boat terms he was a cold fish.
JL: Then he, he told me one day that John Booth, who was another Short pilot was going to join as his number two so obviously that was my invitation to leave. So I rang up Eric Franklin at Armstrong Whitworth and got a job back there straight away and that was, that was the end of the things. I flew the SRA1 at Farnborough along with several other do’s.
CB: Just to put this —
JL: He was a most peculiar fellow.
CB: To put this into a context if I may. The SRA1 was the first jet powered Flying Boat.
JL: Yes.
CB: So what was the concept and what was it like?
JL: I think the idea was it would be handy in the Pacific area where they wouldn’t have to have a runway. It was quite a powerful machine with four twenty millimetre cannon.
CB: It was a fighter.
JL: It was a fighter. Yes. And although it was a bit bulky for a fighter it was quite lively but of course the Pacific war ended and there was no more call for it. Three were completed and two were crashed. One by Winkle Brown and one by a [Pete Major?] at Felixstowe. Another one is at Southampton.
CB: So you did the course on the Sunderland at Pembroke. That set you up.
JL: Pembroke Dock.
CB: Pembroke dock. That set you up in anticipation of flying the SRA1 did it? Was that the idea?
JL: Yes. That was the Flying Boats in general.
CB: And you were flying the Walruses and the Otters
JL: Yes. The Walruses and the Sea Otter you could taxi on the slipway.
CB: Yeah.
JL: The others needed mooring.
CB: So, what, how did it feel flying a jet flying boat? Because compared with flying a piston engine it was quite different.
JL: Well I had flown jets before. I flew the Vampire and the Meteor.
CB: At Boscombe Down.
JL: Yeah. [pause] I don’t know. Didn’t feel particularly different.
CB: Did you have to have particularly unusual handling techniques because of being a jet engine and getting water in it?
JL: Well they had designed in an extended snout but it was never necessary. It was never used because the spray was always well clear of the intake. I’ve got to have another.
CB: That’s alright.
[Recording pause]
JL: At that time the Isle of Wight was bristling with retired naval captains.
CB: Oh.
JL: Actually I thought he was one of those.
CB: Right.
JL: It turned out to be a captain in the Royal Flying Corps and equivalent of a flight lieutenant.
CB: But he called himself Captain Clark.
JL: Oh he was very fussy about the captain bit.
CB: Yeah. How interesting. What was he like as a personality? As the chairman.
JL: He was a bit peculiar. He had very little technical knowledge. How he came to be managing director I don’t know.
CB: Of an aviation company.
JL: Finance I suppose. But he was a bit of an oddball.
CB: Now after the Saunders Roe situation changing you went back to Armstrong Whitworth.
JL: Yes.
CB: So how did that come about? You just made direct contact or how did it work?
JL: Well when Geoffrey told me John Booth was joining as his number two that was obviously my cue to go so I immediately phoned Eric Franklin who — he’d been an apprentice with me at Armstrong Whitworth and he was then chief test pilot and he offered me a job straight away. So I was on my way within a very few days.
CB: So what was Armstrong Whitworth working on then? We’re talking about 1946 now are we?
JL: ‘49
CB: ‘49. Right.
JL: When I, when went back there the bread and butter was the production of Mark iv Meteors which became Mark viii Meteors. Simultaneously we had the Apollo which was a heap of rubbish.
CB: An airliner.
JL: Yes.
CB: An imitation air liner.
JL: It was supposed to be in competition with the Vickers Viscount. That was because it had to have Armstrong Siddeley engines, which were rubbish so it was never made anywhere. They were very [pause] well, a child of ten could have designed it.
CB: Oh.
JL: We had the 52. The 52 glider.
CB: So how, the AW52 was a flying wing.
JL: Yes.
CB: So could you just explain what the concept there was and the use of the glider first?
JL: Well, one of the purposes of it was to try to develop laminar flow over the wing.
CB: Right.
JL: But it wasn’t very successful because it’s impossible to keep the wind surface clear of squashed flies and things but actually it was a very experimental aircraft. I suppose they had ideas of building a massive passenger aircraft in that form but in this case it was just a two seater but they, it only had twenty six degrees of sweepback which was not nearly enough. And on controls they had several choices. What they chose was an elavon — a combined elevator and aileron. They could have split them and had separate ailerons and elevators or power controls were coming along although they hadn’t reached it yet. Well they wrongly decided on the elavons which meant that fore and aft was a very short lever balance, was very vert sensitive fore and aft, very very heavy laterally and they had a compromise and the compromise was through a spring tab. Are you familiar with a spring tab?
CB: Yeah.
JL: On a spring tab the spring had to be very very weak so that your controls are connected to a very floppy spring and my problem was exceeding the [pause] exploring the higher speed range before flutter set in. I was completely disorientated and I believe that I would have passed out very quickly so instead of that I pulled the blind down. I didn’t do anything properly in the ejection. You were supposed to put your heels on the footrest. I didn’t do that. I just didn’t do it. That’s all. And it had spectacle controls. Somehow or other my knees missed that. They were bruised but otherwise, otherwise ok. So once again I was very very very lucky.
CB: What height were you flying?
JL: About three thousand feet.
CB: And what speed?
JL: Three hundred. About three hundred and fifty. The limiting speed had just been increased and that’s what I was doing.
CB: So it’s the —
JL: Exploring that.
CB: Right. And theoretically what was the maximum speed? Fairly low was it?
JL: Oh I expect so. Yes. Yes not much performance testing was done. It was all sort of handling. Trying to get the controls right.
CB: So you’re at three thousand. Three thousand feet. What sort of speed were you actually flying at at that moment?
JL: Well the last I remember was about three fifty.
CB: It was at three fifty. Right.
JL: We were still at miles an hour.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JL: And —
CB: The parachute automatically deployed.
JL: No. No.
CB: You had to do it.
JL: I had to do the whole thing.
CB: Yeah.
JL: I had to release the Sutton harness and pull the rip cord.
CB: Right.
JL: I made a very bad landing and hurt my shoulder a bit. Still hurts.
CB: Where? Where did this take place?
JL: A place called little Long Itchington.
CB: I know it. Yes.
JL: Do you know it? South of Coventry.
CB: Yes. Good pub there.
JL: Yes. I’ve been there.
CB: The Blue Light.
JL: The Blue Light.
CB: Yes.
JL: Used to kept by Wing Commander Sandy Powell.
CB: Oh.
JL: Who had been at Boscombe Down. In charge of C flight.
CB: And he he became a Comet test pilot and that blew his mind.
JL: Hmmn?
CB: He had been a Comet test pilot as well hadn’t he?
JL: Sandy?
CB: Yeah.
JL: Well he’d flown all sorts of things.
CB: Yeah. Right. So that’s where you came down. And the plane came down somewhere. Where?
JL: About two miles further on.
CB: Yeah. What? How did you start off with the gliders? The Glider. How did that handle? You were towed up by something and then —
JL: [laughs]. Not exactly. They had, they had a Whitley to tow it off first of all but when I got there they’d just been allocated a Lancaster. That Whitley was the last off the production line and they took it away and broke it up. There was no Whitley any more. But we had a Lancaster which was much better getting the glider up to a decent height. Used to take it up and then do tests on the way down.
CB: So how manoeuvrable was the glider?
JL: Well it was much better. It was two thirds the size of a big one and it was not metal? It was plywood construction which made it much more rigid and the controls were much better. Still a bit odd.
CB: And what sort of test envelope would you be exploring in that?
JL: Oh I don’t know. I don’t remember.
CB: Then you moved to the AW52.
JL: Yes. I only did two and a half flights in the AW52.
CB: Right.
JL: And the other one was grounded. Then they did some vibration tests with it at very slow speeds. When they sent it to Farnborough where it was regarded as a curiosity. I think they tried to resurrect the laminar flow test but it was no good and it finished up as a curiosity and was eventually broken up.
CB: What was the engine power on that? Was it twin engine?
JL: Yes. Two Nenes. Yes. One had two Nenes. One had two Derwents.
CB: Right. So this was a government contract.
JL: Yes.
CB: To examine laminar flows.
JL: A research. A government supported.
CB: So after that you get out. You’re the first person to use an ejector seat in serious operation.
JL: Yes. The Germans had got on of course during the war. They weren’t as good of course. I think they were operated by compressed air. But I think there were a quite a lot of German ejections.
CB: Were there?
JL: And I was the first of the allied side shall we say.
CB: In peacetime. So you injured your shoulder. What did you do after that?
JL: I was off flying for about a month and then I went to central, CME Central Medical Establishment in London and they gave me a going over and sent me home with a little piece of paper which said, “Fits, fits civilian MOS pilot but not to be exposed to the hazards of the Martin-Baker ejection seat.” And so shrieks of laughter at that. Still are. [laughs]
CB: An interesting point though in practical terms the seat is operated by a cartridge. What was the affect? The seat is operated by an explosive cartridge so what did the ejection itself do to your spine?
JL: Well I had already gone up to [Denham?] and got on the test rig and following that I had a little bit of pain in my tail. I mentioned this to my GP and explained what had happened. He said, ‘Well, I expect you bruised it a bit.’ But the pain didn’t go away. It wasn’t constant and so I ignored it. Then when I ejected they x-rayed me and they said that I’d suffered a compression fracture of the first and second vertebrae and what’s more this was the second time this has happened. So the same thing happened both times.
CB: Right.
JL: I think it’s quite common actually.
CB: Yes. It’s just the modern seats are rocket and they still have a sharp acceleration don’t they?
JL: Yes.
CB: So, ok. What did you do next then? Did you return to flying?
JL: Oh yes. I went to Armstrong Whitworth and started again. And well we went through a lot of productions the Sea Hawk, the Hunter 2 and 5, Hunter 7. We had [pause] God. Come on brain. Javelin.
CB: Oh yes. ‘Cause they were building all of these. Some contractors were they?
JL: Yes. I mean we took over. We took over the Sea Hawk complete. Design and everything.
CB: Oh right.
JL: But the others were just sub-contracts. The Hunter 2 and the 5 had Sapphire engines. We built all those.
CB: How long did all that go on?
JL: Well the Argosy came along 1959. And I participated in that for a while which wasn’t a very good aircraft at all. Didn’t have enough range for the RAF to start with. But Glosters closed down. Who else closed down? Avro. Avro’s closed down [pause] No they didn’t. Glosters closed down. Somebody else closed down and the Hawker Siddeley Group was sort of imploding rapidly and so I thought it time to go rather than just sit about and wait to be picked to be sacked. And so I went to the managing director and said I’d be happy to leave and that I had a suggestion that they see me through the necessary, considerable training to obtain an airline transport pilot’s licence and they happily agreed to that. They paid all my expenses. In all for about three months. I got that licence and they gave me a year’s salary and said thank you very much. And unfortunately I was, met another chap who’d got into crop spraying in Africa. Made a lot of money. And he talked me into joining him in the business but unfortunately he had a wife too many and he bought a house out of the business and things were going very wrong and I lost a lot of money and pulled out. And I needed a job and there was a job down here at Shoreham regional air maps. Doing air survey photography and map making. So I took that job to give me, keep me sane while I looked around for an airline job but the only airline job that came my way was flying a Dakota to Dusseldorf at night with the papers. I didn’t fancy that at all. I was well placed because the crewing manager at British United was a chap who’d been at Boscombe Down, Charles Moss and he was looking out for me. And nothing came along. This was in 1964. So I took this job and I got engrossed in the air survey business anyway and passed the point of no return age wise I think and I stayed there until I was sixty five.
CB: So looking back on your RAF career what was the most memorable point, would you say, of your activities?
JL: I think my first tour with that motley crew I had.
CB: In what way?
JL: Well we went everywhere together. Did everything together.
CB: Yeah.
JL: It was rather different with the second tour. We didn’t sort of mix socially so much.
CB: Didn’t you?
JL: Well I had good happy times but —
CB: When were you commissioned? In the first tour.
JL: In my first tour. Yeah. August 1941.
CB: Right.
JL: This was another little story. I was down in the dispersal one day and an airman came down and said, ‘Here. You’ve got to fill this in.’ [laughs] And it was an application form for a commission. So I thought I’d better fill it in which I did and I had to go to London for an interview and my crew, I went down by train late at night. My crew duly saw my off via the George Hotel and I was in a pretty fair state when I got on the train. Got to London in the blackouts. There was an air raid warning on. I had nowhere to go. I eventually found a dim light which was the Church Army or Salvation Army or something. A little hostel. So I went in there and they gave me a bed for the night. In the morning I never saw the proper toilet facilities. I just got, I just got dressed. I had a terrible hangover and went for my interview. I think it was actually Adastral House in Kingsway. Then went back to the squadron and carried on. And then we went on leave and I still had my car. If you had a car and you went on leave you had petrol coupons for the place you were going so obviously the best thing is to have a destination as far away as possible to get the most petrol. So I had the address of a friend in Shrewsbury and I just gave that as my address whilst on leave. Whilst I was on leave they sent a telegram to this address saying commission granted and never to return as pilot officer so I turned up not knowing a thing about this so I had to rush into Cambridge and get myself fitted for a uniform and rushed in again to put it on and went in as a sergeant and came back as a pilot officer. And my crew all came with me as usual and they marched in front demanding that everybody saluted me. [laughs]
CB: Sounds like a riot.
JL: Yeah.
CB: Didn’t work the same way with the Lancaster crew. Is that because you had two people join later?
JL: Well I had a ready-made crew. The commanding officer had gone off sick. He needed some surgery and I took over his crew which was a Wellington crew. And the navigator was a ex-Exeter prison jailer and he had, he had funny ideas. He used to take a .38 revolver with him on ops. Yeah. The wireless operator was, came from Dublin and surprisingly he was a teetotal. The original wireless op and the rear gunner both changed quite quickly having finished whatever they were on and so I had a sort of a scratch crew to start with and when we changed we changed on to Lancs we had two new members and we were all on happy good terms but we didn’t sort of go down the the pub as a gang as we did on the first tour.
CB: How many other officers in your crew? In that case. On the Lancasters.
JL: There were no officers except me in the first crew. The second crew [pause] I had two changes of navigator and they were both commissioned. The rear gunner in both cases both were commissioned. Just in the last legs I had a commissioned wireless op. A Canadian. Gordon Fisher. The rest were all sergeants.
CB: You had an unusually broad experience because you started early and did various other things. To what extent did you come across LMF?
JL: On 40 Squadron we had a chap. I can tell you his name can I?
CB: Ahum.
JL: [Hesketh?]
CB: Yeah.
JL: And all sorts of things kept going wrong with him. He did a lot of second pilot trips. I had my [unclear] [serves me right?] one time prior to going out on ops he retracted the undercarriage. Almost anything to stop him and he was eventually flying second pilot with the flight commander and that aircraft was seen circling on a point on the East Anglian coast well north off the point where we were supposed to stage through and it spun in and crashed and they were all killed including the flight commander. Creegan was it? And this chap Hesketh. You can’t help but think that Hesketh had something to do with that but why they were, they were about fifty miles north of where they should have been. The other one I only know by hearsay which was 12 Squadron. A crew ditched in the North Sea. The dinghy was upside down and they had to sit on the upturned dinghy for three days and they were rescued and of course they were hospital cases. Apparently for days afterwards when they squeezed [the flesh?] water came out. The wireless op I believe, this was all hearsay Flight Sergeant Rose and he was put back on ops far too soon. He wasn’t ready for it and he was whisked off. Presumably pronounced LMF. Which was very very very unkind. My experience of the RAF was that they were always very kind and compassionate to me.
CB: Well.
JL: Particularly Wing Commander Wood.
CB: Jo thank you very much indeed for a fascinating interview.
JL: I don’t think it was very good.
[Recording paused]
JL: One incident at 12 Squadron again. Lancs. We were right over the top of Hamburg a Junkers 88 went. We heard his engines.
CB: Did you?
JL: Straight over the top of us. Missed us by about ten feet I think.
CB: In the dark.
JL: In the dark.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Well in the dark but you could see quite a lot.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Quite a shock.
JL: Yes [laughs] if he’s close enough to hear the engines he’s too bloody near.
CB: Yeah. And you thanked your lucky stars.
JL: I had another one. I had a very good Australian navigator on 12 Squadron. Anyway, he had to miss an op for some reason or other and we were given a Canadian. A chap called Abrahamson. I’d never sort of met him till we got in the aircraft and the target was Essen. And we went off and by the time we got to the Dutch coast he wasn’t making any sense at all but fortunately the PFF were putting down markers at a couple of turning points and the night was absolutely gin clear. You could see everything. You could see the coast and rivers and I didn’t want to take issue with this Mr Abrahamson so I just carried on and we duly, I made the markers that PFF had put down. You couldn’t miss the target because they were marking that as well. Some duly did deliver the bombs and just flew home. Didn’t need any help flying home. We could see everything and of course when we got back we had to report everything to the squadron navigation officer. Mr Abrahamson was never seen again. By the time we got up in the morning he wasn’t there.
CB: Was he —
JL: Off the station. Where he went? Don’t know.
CB: Did you put that down to stress or just as an incompetent navigator?
JL: I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea. I didn’t know the chap. I hadn’t spoken to him.
CB: Right. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
CB: Wife died.
JL: Well [unclear]
CB: Right.
JL: Very sad. That’s right. We had a legal separation and she wanted to marry again so we did the divorce and then she died 1977.
CB: Right.
JL: I remarried and this wife went a bit berserk. I think she was almost certainly she was got onto drugs. She had her own car. Used to disappear into Brighton for days but she had her father who was a mouse living there and looked after my daughter Jenny and eventually she, well I divorced her and the next thing I knew she’d developed cirrhosis of the liver.
CB: Oh.
JL: And due to her very very peculiar behaviour she hadn’t any friends left at all. She was a very very sad case and she committed suicide.
CB: Right.
JL: In 1964. I’d just retired.
CB: A big strain.
JL: I was left with a daughter sixteen. Just doing her O Levels.
CB: Oh were you really.
JL: Fortunately she’s turned out absolute trumps.
WT: Good. Good.
CB: Excellent.
JL: And the son is fine too. So I have a son of seventy and a daughter forty nine and a loving and loyal family.
CB: Is Jenny married?
JL: She should be.
CB: Oh.
JL: I said, ‘Why don’t you get married?’ ‘What’s the point?’
CB: Oh right.
JL: One of those.
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 Jo Lancaster. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-08
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALancasterJO170308
PLancasterJO1501
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Jo Lancaster grew up in Cumbria and joined the Air Force as soon as he was able. After training as a pilot he flew a tour of operations with 40 Squadron from RAF Alconbury. He then became an instructor before his second tour flying Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He then became a test pilot at RAF Boscombe Down. He continued to be a test pilot after the war and was the first person to eject from an aircraft in danger using a Martin-Baker ejector seat. In all he flew a total of more than 144 aircraft types.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Coventry
France--Brest
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Hamburg
Scotland--Lossiemouth
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Warwickshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:00:18 audio recording
12 Squadron
150 Squadron
20 OTU
22 OTU
40 Squadron
aircrew
B-25
B-26
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
crewing up
Grand Slam
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 110
Meteor
mine laying
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Alconbury
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wyton
recruitment
Spitfire
Tallboy
training
Walrus
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8817/PMellorG1501.1.jpg
ec53d3c84b8db787d307d49e498fe698
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8817/AMellorG151006.2.mp3
341e9971baed998d88890a6e7fe4ee29
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
Mellor, Gordon
Gordon Herbert Mellor
G H Mellor
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mellor, G
Description
An account of the resource
Four oral history interviews with Gordon Mellor (1919 -2018, 929433, 172802 Royal Air Force). He trained in Canada as an observer and served as a navigator with 103 Squadron. He was shot down over Holland in 1942 but evaded capture.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-06
2016-06-07
2016-08-17
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
AS: This is Andrew Sadler interviewing Gordon Mellor in his home in Wembley on Tuesday the 6th of October 2015 for the Bomber Command Centre.
GM: Yes.
AS: Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to interview you, Gordon. Can I start off by asking you where and when you were born?
GM: Oh yes. I was born in Wembley. The other side of Wembley. A place called Alperton. And this was in 1919. November. November the 1st actually. And I lived there with my parents. I went to school locally until I was thirteen. Then I went to the Acton Technical College so that I had an education which was a little different to the ordinary standard county school level. I stayed there. My father died in 1939, in the beginning of the year and I stayed there until my calling up papers came. The reason why I waited until then was that I applied in 1938 to join the Volunteer Reserve. I’d been doing four and five nights a week at evening school during the preceding months and I was a bit below standard as far as health was concerned. Anyhow, during the period in which I was improving my level of health which was during Christmas ‘38 up until the war was declared in September I used to go out for a run early morning, half past six or thereabouts and do about three, three and a half miles and come back. Have breakfast. Dress appropriately and go off to central London to work. On the commencement of hostilities between Germany in September ‘39 the Air Ministry sent back all the, I suppose it was all of them, certainly my papers came back with a general advice to make another application. Well, it wasn’t long before my call up number came so I applied in the appropriate form and I was accepted to go into the air force as a navigator. I don’t know why I particularly chose that from being a pilot but it held a fascination for me. This happened early 1940 and from thence on, after initial working during the day as a, as an ordinary airman. AC2 as we were called. Aircraftsman second class. I improved my health no doubt and no end and eventually we were taken off just what was ground defence. There being such a rush of people joining the air force that they had to farm us out onto other duties for the first few months. We then entered the regular course to become navigators. The first amount of work was common to all trades, flying trades, in the air force, to get us all up to a general standard of education. And after that we then became part of the Empire Air Scheme I suppose you would call it and I was posted to an ITW which was an Initial Training Wing for basic education on navigation. It wasn’t very detailed at all but it got us into the right sort of preparation level. And after some twelve — twelve to fourteen weeks, I suppose it would be. We were all told to pack up and we were then en-trained and taken up to Scotland, put onto a boat and we went to Iceland. And from there we got on to an armed merchant cruiser, I think it was and we were taken over to Canada where we were trained for the particular trades that we’d been allocated. Mine being the navigation and associated items. We trained at various stations around Canada. The planes we flew there of course was the Avro Anson and the training crew were the captain of the aircraft. He had a wireless operator as his regular crewman and had two trainee navigators — which I became, with another man. And we went through the whole course of navigation training which I think was something like three months. And we then had a certain amount of leave and we were then taken on for another four weeks on training particularly with reference to the stars and sites and the like. And then we were posted to another aerodrome entirely which was, in this case, run by the Canadian Air Force and had a bombing and gunnery course thrown in of some weeks so that by the time we came out we were known as observers rather than just navigators. And, as such, having completed the bomb aiming course and the like we then were en-trained back to the east coast of Canada and brought back to the UK. I’m not sure whether it was called UK in those days but we came back and landed at Liverpool and were immediately transferred down to the south coast where we were at a reception centre. Now, do you want me to further on that line?
AS: Yes, please but can I ask you first why did you join the RAF?
GM: Ah. Well, I suppose we had Hendon Aerodrome which was only a few miles away from us as I live in Wembley. The other side it would be from now but there was a little group of us all living in the same road and we all went to the same school. And aeroplanes were buzzing around the Hendon area a fair bit of the time and I suppose we recognised the various makes and patterns and we became interested in the flying and we used to, on a Saturday morning quite often we used to cycle over to Hendon. And there was also another aerodrome called Stag Lane I think it was and we used to stand around the edge of the airfield. Behind a hedge I expect. Not on the actual field itself. And used to watch the planes taking off with the owner pilots there. For an entertaining day I suppose. But certainly, we enjoyed watching the planes and we did gain a fair bit of knowledge about them. Even as youngsters. From, yes, eleven twelve onwards.
AS: Was your father in the First World War?
GM: Not as such. He was in the building trade. He used to be in charge of the whole site and all the work that was going on. I suppose you would call him a foreman or a general foreman. But certainly, it was one which required considerable skill. He had to familiar with all the various trades and I, perhaps got my interest in surveying from him. I can’t say. It just happened.
AS: So, you’d been trained in, mostly in Canada, and you’re now back on the south coast at a reception centre and you’ve trained to be an observer.
GM: Yes.
AS: So, you can do the job of map —
GM: As a navigator.
AS: Navigator.
GM: Yeah. And bomb aimer and also, we had some experience on using firearms. Also, in the form of the turret in the aircraft. They were rather primitive in the beginning but they did improve no end during the war.
AS: Ok. Please carry on.
GM: Well, having got back from Canada I was then posted to an aerodrome in the Midlands and I’m trying to think of the name. Lichfield. That was it. and we were then, we were there to become experienced in flying in the weather conditions which we could expect in this country and in Europe. In Canada we were much further south and the weather was much warmer and more pleasant. But we had to get used to flying in winter. And at the OTU the Operational Training Unit was there purely to bring us up to speed in the conditions in which we would be expected to fly in over Europe. After quite some weeks. It could be six. Six to eight weeks. Perhaps a little bit more. One was then posted to a squadron. And during that training period in this country then of course you met pilots, air gunners, bomb aimers and the like and you formed up in crews so that as we were flying Wellingtons at that time then the number in the crew was five. Or if you had two pilots — one a second pilot then of course it would be six. And I was posted to 103 Squadron with the rest of my crew which was in Lincolnshire. Rather north. And after a fortnight or so of familiarisation with the area and the conditions in, we started as a crew on our operations. First of all, with an experienced operational pilot and our own captain, as we referred to him, played second fiddle to a certain extent. He was the one who was getting the most instruction. And the navigator as well. The gunners had a certain amount of additional training but there was nothing other than the targets being towed by other aircraft as their object of firing at. Anyhow, we got through the early days and started operating against some targets in Germany. That went on until, let’s see, wait a minute [pause] I must have gone to the squadron somewhere around about April or May and strangely enough we were flying Wellingtons there as well as we had done on the, at the training. And then there was a change in the aircraft. The Wellington 1Cs were withdrawn and we were fitted up with Halifax which were Halifax 2s. I think they were. They were four-engined aircraft. More sophisticated in the equipment which we had to learn about. We started coming across the Gee box and all other bits and pieces which were more modern than we had been experiencing. Then we continued after a brief period of training to operate on the, with the new aircraft. Four-engined aircraft. And this did not last very long. About two or three months. Perhaps. Let’s see. It would be [pause] about four months. And we were on the first thousand bomber raids which took place in the middle of 1942. And we survived those ok and went on operating and when I got to somewhere about ten or eleven we were then transferred, as I say, on to the four-engined aircraft. They were, they were ok for flying. They probably weren’t quite the standard of the Lancaster in performance but they certainly were very effective. And that was Ok for a while until we were sent out on one particular raid. This would be the [pause] about the 4th of October 1942 and we hit trouble having bombed the target and making our way from it. A JU110 latched onto our tail and we had a little conversation as a crew. Shall we open fire on him? He seemed to be just following us rather closely at the back and I imagine he was waiting for us to get away from the town and when we got to open country he would probably let us have it. Anyhow, we opened fire on him. Whether we did any damage or not I’ve no idea but certainly we had ammunition flying all around us and we were set on fire in the two inboard engines of the aircraft. And the pilot had done his best to manoeuvre out of the stream of fire but the chap who was firing at us in the German plane obviously was well experienced and he just sank down out of the sight of the mid upper gunner. The rear gunner had a view of him but he was hurt in the initial opening fire from the German plane and it rather put him out of action. And as I say we, we had three or four attempts at shooting at us by the German plane. The fires in the two engines just, just got worse. There was nothing that could be done about it so it was a just a question of baling out which we had a procedure for which we followed and one after the other, I was one of the first so I don’t know exactly what happened to all the others but from visits and talks with the three survivors other than myself I rather gather that it was a disastrous period. The plane was going down fast and it was for everybody to get out of their particular position. More or less following the order in which we’d had dummy runs on. So, having got out of the target area the plane was going down towards the ground at a fair speed and we crossed the target just over ten thousand feet which had been quite low but it was suitable for the occasion. We were under two thousand feet I think when we started to bale out and I was fortunate. I came out of the hole in the floor of the plane, in the nose, because I was sitting on top of it and having lifted the seat there was just this hole there so I went out of there straight away. I didn’t want to hold anybody else up. And I pulled the cord on the parachute and I was one of the lucky ones. It opened and I soon found myself heading towards the ground at a very modest pace with the parachute up above me and swinging about a bit. But the strange thing was that having been in the noise of the four engines of the aircraft for some hours previously and then get the noise of the enemy fire coming through the fuselage around us it was amazing that nobody other than the rear gunner had been hit. But anyhow, as I say, having jumped then I lost contact with all the other members of the crew. The plane carried on going down. Losing height quite quickly . In quite a short time I saw the trees sort of rushing towards me. Which really was an exaggeration because the parachute was open. And I crashed in to the top of trees and I sort of went down through the branches and the canopy of the parachute of course got caught up amongst on all the tops of the tree. It turned out that I had landed in an orchard of some considerable size. The trees must have been fairly old because they were tall. And I came to a sudden halt in the harness. The canopy of the parachute spread over the tops of the trees and we were swinging and in the darkness, I had no idea how high I was above the ground. It could be inches. It could be feet. Anyhow, I sort of gathered my thoughts and I thought — I tried feeling about with my feet, swinging a bit but it did no good. The only thing to do is just to press the lock on the parachute harness and see what happens. So, I did and I fell. About twelve inches fortunately. It could have been several feet but certainly I was very lucky and as I say I fell about twelve inches and landed on my feet quite comfortably. The harness was left swinging in the breeze there and the instructions are to pull the parachute and its accoutrements to the ground and bury it if you can. Well, there were dogs barking close by so I thought — I tried and pulled it and of course the noise of the branches breaking and crackling and what have you set them off barking so I thought well this is no good. So, I stopped that and they stopped barking. Anyhow, I tried again a moment or two later to do it rather quietly but it was no good. They heard it and they barked again. So, I thought I’d leave it. So, I gathered myself together and thought, ‘Right. Let’s get away from here.’ So, do you want me to go on in the same vein? Ok. I was in what appeared to be an orchard hence some of the trees and I saw that I was next to a hedge at the edge of the orchard so I went through it into a field which ran down hill to a degree. Yeah. It was a comfortable slope down and I got out of the orchard and the adjoining field and I became aware, with dogs barking, there was a farmhouse close by. So, I thought, well I’d keep away from there, for some reason or other. I didn’t know where I was even though I was the navigator we had made so many change in course in the battle with the German fighter that I couldn’t be sure to within ten miles where we were. Perhaps even more. And down the slope and through a hedge and there was a road which also ran further on downhill so that’s what I took naturally rather than climbing. And having sort of gone past a building, a house of some sort on my left as I was going down the road with five or six people standing there looking towards the target area which was a bright light in the sky. I just walked past them and nobody said anything and I then realised, having gone another hundred yards or so that I was walking north. I thought, is this a good thing? And I was resolved that if I was going to go north I’d got a coastline up there and how the hell was I going to get over that? All I could go to would be Denmark which I could walk around to I suppose — which wasn’t going to be any help. And I couldn’t get to a neutral country that way so it was, the alternative was to go to either Switzerland or Spain. They were both south of me and I didn’t think that it was going to be much good going to Switzerland because you would then be interned. And so I set off on my walk and crossed country largely and that night I suppose the shooting down had taken place somewhere around about half past ten, 11 o’clock at night and so I was in the early hours of the morning and I had time to get away from the place where the parachute would eventually be found and also, with the plane going down it was going to hit the ground before long. And I got myself on to a track which rose slightly and when I got to the top I could see a fire about a mile and a half or two miles away from me which was obviously was our plane which had hit the ground and already being alight it set the whole thing on fire. So, I couldn’t guess what had happened to the other people in the crew. I had no means of contact. So, I thought, ‘Right. This is it.’ And fortunately, the sky was clear less and I could pick out the North Star. From the North Star I could get myself an angle of somewhat south westerly direction and I thought, ‘Right. This is the way to go.’ So, I picked up my marks and started walking. Strangely enough I hadn’t gone very far when I heard somebody else rustling around in the field. They’d got some sort of crop. I don’t know what the crop was but it certainly had shrubbery about knee level so it could have been cabbages. It could have been anything else. Anyhow, having heard somebody else moving in amongst it I stopped and knelt down so that I wouldn’t have a, anybody wouldn’t, sort of looking up wouldn’t see me so I knelt down and the other person walking, they stopped too. And I thought, ‘That’s strange.’ Anyhow, it was all quiet for a minute or two so I thought, ‘Right. Try again.’ So I started my walk again which was in a general south westerly direction across country and I heard the other person start walking again. I thought well, I don’t know. I wonder if it’s a border guard or something like that that’s on a lookout. Anyhow, I just knelt down again and I stood out and the other person got fed up and I heard him walk away through the shrubbery or whatever the crop was. I never did find out for sure that it was another member of the crew. It could have been. But I didn’t think from the way the plane had been heading at the time that it was likely to be so but perhaps it was. I never did find out. And I continued walking and eventually I came to a roads. So I started to walk along the roads rather than stay on fields and what have you. It was easier walking and you got along much quickly. More quickly. At that time of the night there was nobody else about so I walked down the road. Always taking the direction of sort of south westerly. I had just the one thought in mind. Get to Spain. So, whatever came in between was just luck and we’d deal with it as we came. Got along. So, I continued in that. Walking along roads and what have you the rest of that night and then it started to get light. This is, I have to do something about this. I was on a road and there were some houses intermittently along the plots in between which were built on. Anyhow, I thought, well the thing is not to be out in the open view when it gets light. I was very fortunate. I went between two houses to the fields behind and I found several hedges and the like and there in one of them was a copse of trees on a bank sort of arrangement. And so, I thought, ‘Yeah that looks alright.’ So, I got in to the, under the trees. There was a lot of shrubbery at ground level so I found that if I sort of sat down on the ground then I was well hidden and what else was around me I didn’t know. All I knew I was out of sight to a degree. It was getting just that little bit lighter so I sort of sat down and I must have gone off to sleep. This was October and I suppose it was getting light around about 7 o’clock or thereabouts or perhaps a little bit earlier. Anyhow, I went off to sleep and I came to life again and I could hear traffic, to a degree. And I sort of poked my head up from my hideaway there and I could see that just beyond me there was what apparently was a farm road and it was being used by the workers to get to the farm or come away and go into the various fields. I was fortunate that I had this cover. I stayed there all the hours of daylight. I saw the goings on of the farm and it’s, I suppose somewhere around about sixish or a bit later it got dark and I thought, ‘Oh well, now’s the time to move,’ so I set off on my second night of travel. And this became the rule of thumb, so to speak, for the next two or three days. I did have some emergency rations with me and they were sort of supplied in an escape tin I think they used to call them. They had concentrated foods like chocolates and the like in there. There was a nothing that was superfluous. It was all good stuff and so I carried on walking at night for probably four nights after the initial one by which time I had got a fair way. I don’t know how much or how far I travelled at night. I wasn’t a rapid walker. I used a fairly steady pace but I kept out of sight during the daylight hours. It was always a problem just before dawn to find somewhere to hide for the next twelve or fourteen hours. And I was lucky. In one place I found a cave I suppose you’d call it. A digging anyhow in a bank. It was a cut-out area I could sort of get into and sit there and it was also protected by shrubs and bushes and what have you. So that was a lucky find and I did manage to keep going as far as the food was concerned by having the odd biscuit or what have you. Because I had additional items like that in my pocket. I had anticipated, I don’t know why or anything like that that this sort of event would happen. So I tended when we were on ops to put extra bits and pieces in my pockets and the like. Such as a few biscuits and what have you but it certainly was nowhere near enough. Anyhow, this went on until my last stay over daylight hours. After that initial part of my movements was in a town or certainly a large village centre and I’d spotted a house which had been bombed. It looked as if it had got fire bomb damage. The windows were blown out and the like. And I saw that as I was passing through this village. And then I hadn’t got too far, having got beyond that point and it started to rain and I found myself getting fairly wet so I thought right. I’ll go back to this bombed house. I went in there and it seemed to me it smelled rather as if it was dry and went upstairs and it certainly was. There was no windows in there but the roof was sufficient to keep the inside of the house dry. So again, as had been my practice then I did get a bit of sleep and when I woke up I found the village had come to life as other places had come to life and I sort of looked out of the, one of the window openings and I could see that I was what was obviously the centre road of a small town. There were shops and people going shopping there. And I thought to myself, ‘My goodness me. I wonder where I am.’ Anyhow, I made sure that I didn’t display myself at all but I stayed up on the first floor of that bombed house during the day. At lunchtime it got a bit dodgy because children came out of school and a couple of boys were having a little game down below on the ground floor. Anyhow, they got tired of that and they went off. Much to my relief. They didn’t, as far as I could tell, attempt to come up the stairs where I was on the first floor. As happened nobody else came in. It dried up during the day having rained during the previous night and when it got dark I went off. Most people had, the shops had closed by then, it was fairly dark. There was no lights or anything on display of course and I managed to get out of the small town without being picked up or noticed particularly because I was still in uniform and the only difference were that I had taken the badges of rank. I was a flight sergeant at the time and there was nothing else except my battle dress which I flew in. I had discarded the harness and what have you of the parachute as I previously mentioned and I went on out of town. Anyhow, I sort of ran in to the rain problem again and this time I got wet so, considerably so. This is no good. I’m short of food. I’m not performing too well and I’m wet and cold and dispirited. Anyhow, I turned around and I thought, ‘Well I’ll go back to the bombed-out house and dry off. And tomorrow is another day.’ Well, it didn’t work out like that. On the way back it dried up to a certain extent. I don’t suppose I’d actually gone much more than a mile. Two miles away from my hiding place and so I was heading back there. I went through another small village and I saw a house. It was houses on both sides of the road and I saw a house and I saw a chink of light up on the first floor which would obviously, would be a bedroom. And I thought, ‘Well there are people there. I wonder —’ I pondered the pros and cons of knocking and see if I could get some help and I didn’t know at all whether they were hostile or whether they would be friendly.
AS: At this stage you were in France.
GM: No. I was still in Belgium.
AS: In Belgium.
GM: Yes. And so, I was just on the right side of the Belgian Holland border so I didn’t have to get, get across the border there. So, I was still in Belgium. And –
AS: Did you have a compass?
GM: Oh yeah. Oh yes. Yeah, I had one. Yes. I had a button as a compass.
AS: They had — didn’t you have two buttons that were compasses?
GM: Well, I had one.
AS: One.
GM: Certainly, I had one but it was — no. it couldn’t have been a shirt button. It must have been the battledress button. Anyhow, I had one. It was part of a general sort of hand-outs of escape gear that we were issued with and I largely used the stars to make an initial assessment of where I was going. Certainly, where one gets sufficient light then the compass was a help and I got a feeling I might have had two. One was a fluorescent. I’m a bit hazy on that but there we are. So — oh yes. I was pondering as to whether to knock on this house or not. Anyhow, I came to a decision. It was still fairly early in the evening. It was dark. Blackout was being imposed and, in any case, so I went across the road and I banged on the door with the knocker. What have you. And this was completely unexpected by the people because the window above swung open and a man’s head poked out, ‘Qui est la?’ So I responded as best I could. My French never was very good. And I heard him grunt and the window closed with a slam and I heard him coming down stairs [knocking noise] like that with footsteps. The door swung open and there was this rather short man, pretty much the height that I am now I suppose [laughs] and he looked at me and I showed him my battledress and I showed him my wings and he didn’t say anything he just beckoned me in. And I followed him and he took me into their sitting room or whatever it was, where there was a fire in the room. It was a grate sort of arrangement. You know, a slow burning one which is on all the time and he spoke to me in French. I had sufficient to tell him that I was RAF and I could show him my wings and badges of rank and he seemed to be quite delighted. He pointed to a chair. And his wife came down and she sort of grasped the situation pretty quickly and they immediately fed me which after a fun five days was very acceptable. And I must admit with the warmth of the room and the food I dropped off to sleep. I don’t think it was very long but it was just enough to take the edge off of the tiredness. Probably half an hour or so. In the meantime, they had been busy and they got in touch with the local priest and I’d woken up and made myself as presentable as I could and there was a knock on the door. And they obviously were expecting him because the local priest did come in and he came up, beaming all over his face, put his hand out and said, ‘Goodbye.’ So I thought, ‘Crikey I’ve had my chips this time.’ Anyhow, he was very pleasant and we did get on. He had a fair bit of English and I had a certain amount French and we sat there and he sort of found out who I was and what I was which he was entitled to do of course and he said, ‘Tonight you come with me.’ I said, ‘Ok.’ I was in their hands. I had sort of appealed for help from them and he was the help. So we said goodbye to the man and his wife and I understood they had a boy, a son, who was about, somewhere around about the age of ten asleep upstairs and he was already in bed and asleep by the time I called on them. So, he wasn’t a complication. I don’t know what they would have done if he’d woken up and come down and seen me there. It would have been a very difficult situation for them. So, anyhow, it didn’t happen but I was aware that it could have done. And the priest and I went off and he came from another village so we set off at 11 o’clock, 11:30 at night during the hours when you’re not supposed to be about. Except that he, being the local priest, he had permission to attend his parishioners at any time when other people were supposed to be off the road. And we went out of the village, along some lanes and then came into another village and lo and behold there was the church. And he said, ‘This way,’ or words to that effect and we crossed over from the front of the church, about fifty sixty yards perhaps. I’m not sure. I wasn’t very good at guessing distances. And he took me into his home and despite the late hour his housekeeper was still up and she came and welcomed me there. I thought, ‘Crikey. They’re taking a chance.’ But it was alright and I’d already had something to eat and I’d had a drink and they now made sure I had some sleep. They took me upstairs. There was the bed. One of these typical continental beds which were all sort of like, ballooned. Puffed up. Anyhow, it was very comfortable and I got rid of most of my clothes and there we are. I slept on a bed for the rest of that night which was probably midnight or thereabouts when it started. And I was, I was awake moderately early but when I sort of got up the priest was already out on his rounds so I must have overslept a fair bit. And the housekeeper had me downstairs and gave me some breakfast which was nectar. There was nothing, nothing I could do other at that time. I just couldn’t go on out in broad daylight. I was in battledress. And eventually he came back, the priest came back and he had done his round. Whatever it was and he said, ‘You’ll be moving on tonight.’ Or words to that effect. And I said, ‘Oh that’s great.’ And we, yes, we spent a bit of time getting to know each other. He was a very pleasant man and we had some lunch. He said, ‘I’ve got other duties to perform so, ‘I’ll leave you but we have a visitor to come and see you,’ and he went off out. Where he went to or what he did I’ve no idea but shortly after he left then there was a bang on the door and a lady walked in. About forty I would say she was. Very attractive and her English was excellent. It really was. And so, the housekeeper brought, I think she brought us some tea in, I think. Something like that. We had a drink in anyhow. She then chatted to me for an hour, an hour and a half and it wasn’t just a chat just to pass the time. It certainly was, the intention was to find out I was on the level and not a plant of any sort. So I learned a certain amount about them and she certainly found out more about me. Anyhow, she said, ‘Well, nice to have met you. I’ll be off now to my family.’ And by 4 o’clock or so she was gone. She hadn’t been gone long and the priest turned up again. And I thought, ‘Ah they’ve passed me. They think I’m on the level. That I’m not a plant of any sort.’ And he said, ‘I’ve got a man coming to pick you up to take you into town.’ Or words to that effect. And so, we passed the time of day getting to know each other a bit more. [unclear] I seem to remember the name was. And sure, enough a man came in carrying a coat and he said, ‘The coat is for you.’ I thought, ‘Yeah that’ll cover my uniform up.’ And so we made our, said our goodbyes and we didn’t know when we would ever see each other again if ever but it was very amicable and I went off with this stranger. A little man. He was insignificant in attracting public attention and I hoped I was the same. And we went down. The bus came. We got on. And we’d arranged that he would get on on the front. I would then get on and stand at the back and he would be in the front and when we got to our destination he would get off and I would then follow him but getting off the bus on my own it didn’t — so nobody realised that we were together. So, yes, I was on the back of the bus standing up and we went about half a mile and we stopped outside some barracks and there was a group of, a small group of officers and there was, obviously one was the senior. I don’t know what rank he was. He looked as if he might be a captain or a major or something like that. Equivalent to that but the others all sort of stood to attention and saluted as he got on the bus which I thought was rather amusing. Anyhow, there was one or two other people got on the bus as well of ordinary soldier rank because they had moved away when the officer got on. And we started off. We stopped a few times. The bus got more crowded and we got more crushed up between each other in the back, top end of the bus. Back end of the bus. And there was I. I was surrounded by German soldiers and there was several officers amongst them. Anyhow, eventually we kept going into town and which was obviously a much bigger place than I’d been staying in that night. That was only a bit of a suburb. And I saw my guide, companion, get up. He didn’t look in my direction or anything like that. He just got up at the stop and got off so I did the same. I had to push my way through the Germans to get to the front of the bus, get off and he was waiting for me. And we just sort of nodded and we started walking off together and the bus went on its way with all of its people in it. We walked up a road which was adjoining the bus stop. You know, it went up. It was hilly but it wasn’t particularly steep and we stopped at the front of a house. There was, both sides of the road had houses down them and they were in — they were what we would call terraces. A terraced road. Terraced road. Perhaps dozens all in one continuous building — and rang the bell. The door swung open. There was a lady there and she looked at us and I’m certain she knew the guide. He’d done it before. Nothing was said. We just went in and she pointed us to go down the corridor and the man went away having collected the coat that I was wearing. They’d obviously got a use for it again sometime. So I was then back down to battledress. The ordinary grey one. And the lady said, ‘Come with me.’ She was quite good on English and she led me upstairs and pointed me to go into a room and there was a bloke standing in there in civvies. I looked at him. He looked at me and he said, ‘My God. Another one.’ And I then sussed from that that he was ex-RAF too which so it proved. Except that he was, he’d been a prisoner of war and he’d got away when he was sent out to a farm and apparently, he’d made no promises about not trying to get away or anything like that. They just sent him out and he went and he saw the opportunity and left. And I was now meeting him in somebody’s upstairs bedroom in a family house. And in actual fact the village which, the town which I was now in was Liege in Belgium. And it was quite busy. A lot of people. A lot of houses and what have you. And so, I stayed with this lady and it turned out she had a sister and the two, two ladies were part of an escape route operation and I’d struck oil. I really had. The man’s name. He was a sergeant or a flight sergeant. I’m not sure. He should have been a flight sergeant but he was already in civilian clothes so I didn’t find out for sure. Michael Joyce. And he was Irish and he was a regular in the RAF and he had done a runner from a prisoner of war situation and he’d got as far as this particular house and he was on the same jaunt as I was. Trying to get back to the UK. We travelled together right back to the UK. How much further do you want me to go?
AS: Carry on. It’s fascinating. Do you want to have a break for a minute?
GM: Just for a minute. Yeah. Yeah.
[recording paused]
AS: I’ve started so we’re now re-starting after a break.
GM: Yes.
AS: Ok. This is part — part two.
GM: Two.
AS: Yeah.
GM: Yes.
AS: Ok. Do, do carry on, Gordon.
GM: Yeah. I was saying it’s difficult to remember some names but perhaps they’ll come to mind. Anyhow, the two ladies, the sisters, lived in this house where I met Michael Joyce and we stayed there two or three days at the most. I have a vision of, on the first of the three days that I had there of going somewhere. I’m not sure whether I went somewhere or whether somebody came to me. Anyhow [pause] no, they came. They came to me and we went out in to the back, sort of a, you couldn’t call it a garden. It was a yard, I suppose, at the back of a house and he took some photographs of me and I understood that these were to be for the, an identity card which was necessary to have if you were travelling. And it didn’t take many minutes but he obviously did it as prescribed and I stayed there at that particular house two and a half days or thereabouts and in the meantime they prepared an identity card of sorts with my photographs on it. Ausweis or something like that I seem to remember they called it. And they had up to date pictures of me and I had, yes, another, something on. I wasn’t in the standard battledress uniform at the time. I must have put a coat of some sort on. This man went off and he said the photos would be ready shortly and so, it proved. They produced a document. An identity card, to my mind and sure enough there was my photograph like this, on this particular card. And so that was given to me so that if we were investigated at any time it would be there to support me. And we stayed on and we didn’t go out. We stayed in the house. Except perhaps we went out in the garden at the back. I say garden. It was little more than a yard but it was open air and then suddenly one of the ladies said, ‘You’re off today.’ And, ‘Oh. Right.’ She said, ‘After lunch.’ And that was it. This is what happened. We hadn’t got any accessories to carry. We just were there. I had, in the meanwhile, been fitted up with a suit which I kept for many years after that and eventually it was then passed on to somebody in the family. One of the youngsters who was growing up fast and he would be able to wear it for a short while and then he’d be too big for it but — which was rather strange because I was standing nearly six foot two at that time. Anyhow, it fitted well enough. And so, we came lunchtime on this day of departure from the safe house and we had some lunch and then there was a bang on the door and a youngish lady turned up. A mature lady to some extent. Forties I would say. It seemed to be about the working age of many of the helpers that we saw eventually. And we got our bits and pieces together. Michael — Michael Joyce and myself, we went downstairs and out in to the street and we had this lady with us and we just, in our borrowed clothes, ambled down as if we had got not a care in the world which, in actual fact, I don’t think we really did have. If we got picked up then we would be POWs. Prisoners of war. If a guide was with us the most likely thing that would happen would be — shot. So the danger really rested on the shoulders of the person that we were accompanying. Anyhow, we went down and to the bus stop. Waited for a bus. And we went off and eventually we came to a railway station. I used to be able to put a name to it. It’s gone at the moment. Anyhow, we found that when we got there that the train that we were expecting to catch had already gone. So, we went into the waiting room, sat down and we waited for the next train which was some little time. During that time then other people, passengers came and caught whatever trains they were expecting to catch. And then we started to fill up with soldiers. German soldiers of course. A couple of officers came into the waiting room where we were sitting and they were being a bit officious I thought. Perhaps they were on duty with the other ranks that had also arrived so that when the train came in then there was quite a large number of German soldiers waiting for it. We had a few moments in which we weren’t over happy with the closeness of the opposition so to speak but we acted like some, just ordinary civilians waiting for a train. And as I say, it pulled in and we went up and walked up along the platform a bit and got away from the military reserved section and got into the carriage and there was already some people in the compartment. And Mike and I got in and sat down and the lady sat between us and the other people in the compartment and the train pulled off and away we went. And it was to be, yeah, a period of some speculation in which we sort of had periods in our own, each of us in our own minds we thought well, are we going to make it on here or aren’t we? Because this was our first venture of travelling any space or any length of time with other passengers. There was, I was sitting next to the — on the side of the compartment and opposite me was a lady. My vision of her now is very slim but she was well, she was probably in her late forties, fifties and she had a basket or bag with her and after the train had been going for some short time she then started to unpack her bag and she produced a meal for herself. Bread and cheese and sort of stuff like that that she offered around. And I just refused with signs more or less. ‘Non. Merci.’ Mike did the same and I’m not sure what the other passengers did but I don’t think she had any takers. Anyhow, she sat there and enjoyed her meal and there was no conversation between us and them or between themselves — the Belgian people, at all. Eventually some of them got off and some of them stayed on and we started to run into Brussels. And [pause] now, I’m getting a bit hazy about that. I think we ran straight in. Yes, that’s right, it was and slowed down and made one or two stops until we came to the terminus and obviously that was — which was in Brussels. And we then, of course, had to get out. We just followed the lady to the pedestrian precinct which adjoined the station itself and we had to wait.
[pause]
GM: Now, I haven’t thought about this for a long time.
[pause]
GM: I’m sorry about this. Yes, we came out. Eventually we came out of the station. The lady and Mike and me. So where did we go? Can you switch off for a minute?
AS: Yes. I will. And I’ll, I’d like to change the battery on the machine as well.
GM: Yes, whatever you –
[recording paused]
GM: Let’s make a start then.
AS: Ok. So, part — part three then.
GM: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. Ok. Do carry on.
GM: Right. And so, we arrived in Brussels but having got off the train we found that there was nobody waiting for we had missed the earlier train when we started the day’s journey. And we were now in Brussels and we had to take alternative action with nobody at the station. Our lady, who was conducting us said, ‘Wait here and I will telephone through,’ which she did and she said, ‘It’s alright. We now have got a short journey to make,’ which meant that we — Mike and I and the lady in question got ourselves to the right stop to pick up a bus. Which we did. Outside the station in Brussels. We didn’t go very far but certainly it could well have been as much as a mile and we — the bus pulled up and the lady conducting us got off and we followed distantly so that we didn’t implicate her more than necessary. We crossed the road and she said, ‘It’s alright. We are now on our way.’ And sure enough, within quite a after a short walk we came to one of the roads with houses on both sides again as they were, most of them were in the town and she knocked on the front door of what was a flat or a type of accommodation. As is in most cases there the sleeping compartments were on the floor above. Like in a mini house. And the, having rung the bell, the door swung open and a young girl came and looked out and she looked somewhat as if she’d got no idea who we were which was quite right. She didn’t. But she spotted the lady with us and she said, ‘Oh hello auntie. Here you are.’ And we were then ushered into this house and we met the girl’s, she was practically a young lady by then, met the parents and we were well and truly welcomed. There was other members of the family there as well. We gathered that we were expected to stay there just as a temporary measure for the rest of the afternoon and early evening and that we would be moving on before it was bedtime. So, we settled down to a very pleasant sort of social event. And eventually we were told that it was time for us to move on and somebody else came and picked us, picked us up. I can’t remember for sure who it was but certainly we had a guide accompanying us. And we left the family regretfully because they had been good company to have us at such short notice. We get on a bus again and we turned towards the centre of the city and having reached what was obviously going to be our destination we got off and a short step away from the bus stop we turned sharply into an apartment block. And we had a lift to take us up. I’m not sure what floor we were on but I’ve a feeling it was the second floor up rather than the first. It wasn’t right down on the ground, certainly. But yes, I think it was that one. And we didn’t know what we were coming to but the gentleman who was with us — was it a man? Yes, now I’ve got a feeling we’d had an exchange. We reached a door. He put the key in and let us and sure enough this was a letted property and we were on an upper floor. And as we walked in to the flat he said, ‘Please don’t make any noise. We do have Gestapo people living just on the same floor here.’ Whether that was true or just to warn us not to not make much noise I’ve no idea but it certainly had the effect. And he said, ‘Right. Well you’re here for the night,’ and what have you. Breakfast and the like and I’ll see you then and with that he left us and Mike and I had the flat to ourselves. And yes we made use of it as directed and we, we spent the night there. At a reasonable hour then the following day then we got up and washed and shaved and dressed and by that time our guide who’d been with us the previous evening again arrived and he said, ‘Well, we have a little way to go.’ So, we hadn’t got any luggage with us as far as I can recall except for just necessary pieces of equipment for a shave and a wash and those sort of early morning preparations. And we went down and again we were on a bus. Just the three of us. That’s Mike and myself and the guide and we did get across a fair bit of Brussels towards a railway station and when we got there we found that we had plenty of time so we had a little while to, sort of, look around us and try and behave in the manner as the other people who were travelling and not to stand out. Eventually we were [pause] that’s right, when we got off the bus we then had a walk up a hill in a road which was divided to get one or two lanes. Wide lanes in each case and with a series of plants and trees down between them. So, it was like a two separate roads in the event as indeed it was because they were going in opposite directions to each other. And we went to a particular house. It was one in a whole row and going uphill so it was quite a pleasant road of changing levels. And we didn’t go very far before he, again we found ourselves knocking on the front door of a property. Here we were welcomed in and within a short time we were being introduced to the lady of the property. The name escapes me entirely at the moment but certainly it was a well to do establishment and we were taken upstairs and right to the top where there was almost an individual flat in which we could — certainly was set up for us. For two or three people to stay for a short period. And so we were then in quarters which certainly were very pleasant. We didn’t get out whilst we were there. We were in the premises all the time and the meals came and we found it very pleasant indeed despite the fact that we were in Belgium and it was occupied and it was a danger to the other people to have us there. But when the evening came we were very pleased to be invited downstairs to the lady that owned the property and lived in the property and we found that a meal had been prepared and we were having, what you might say, dinner. But it certainly was straightforward food such as was available for everybody there and we had a very pleasant evening. We even, in the latter part of the evening, had the radio on with the British tuned in, British radio tuned in and we heard the 9 o’clock news. What the news was I really can’t tell you. But certainly, we sat and listened to that just as if we were sitting at home and listening to it on the radio. We then had a very comfortable bed facing us and we were much pleased and appreciative of the owner’s entertainment. Not only food but radio and yeah, we swapped news and opinions for quite some little time. It was — it was in actual fact quite an enjoyable evening and undoubtedly we should at some time find the opposite but it was much appreciated. The next, the next day we were within the premises and I seem to think it wasn’t until the second day that we had the news that we were again moving on and in this case it was another train journey and we — our destination would be Paris which was quite a distance for us to take on in one hop, so to speak. Anyhow, they arrived and we had a very early breakfast and we left the house quite early morning and walked down to the international station. And we were accompanied by men we’d already met and we went on time. I seem to recall that it was still, it was still subdued light. I don’t think it was particularly dark but it certainly was not a bright, bright daylight. It was in between. Anyhow, so we got down to the departure station and took the train. There appeared to be — yes, an arrangement. The tickets were all organised for us and all we had to do was just be there. So we got on the train and whatever the time was, it probably was about 8 o’clock in the morning I would imagine or thereabouts the train pulled out of Brussels station and we headed with the end of that particular part of the journey was to be in Paris. This obviously was going to involve us in getting across the border between the two countries. The train was pretty well full and we did keep ourselves fairly quiet. There was a few undertone comments between Mike and myself and the time passed. And eventually the train slowed down and came to a halt and we did what everybody else did. We got off the train and it was — until it was empty. You got your baggage such as it was and we then followed the general flow of people down the length of the platform into a controlled area where we had to pass through the normal customs and border procedure. Mike and I were split up. He went through. And our guide, he went through. He more or less showed us to behave and what was necessary by example. Not by being particularly close to us but we kept an — I kept an eye on Mike and this bloke and Mike kept an eye on him for his own purpose. I was rather, sort of taken aback by having got through the first stage and turned in to a large room in which there was a number of customs officers. I think they were seated. And that was alright because I could see what other people were doing and I sort of followed the same procedures and I was taken aback by the presence of the German army with machine guns held at a ready — ready position. Not just slung over their shoulder or anything like that. But it was, they certainly were there for a purpose. Anyhow, I took my turn with the customs officer sitting down. He asked me a couple of questions. I’m not sure what they are now. In fact, I don’t remember for sure at all. And I must have been satisfactory. I nodded when it was appropriate and he sort of looked me up and down. He did his part of the job. I got my papers back and passed on. And I was asked if I’d got anything to declare and well, I hadn’t got anything other than what I was dressed up in really and with a, ‘No,’ they waved me on. And with a sigh of relief I walked out of that part of the building into the open air where there more soldiers but they were not interested in me and certainly I was fast wanting to get away from them. So we, Mike was up ahead of me and we were following and he was following the guide so I followed them and when we got back to the right carriage on the train which had pulled through from Belgium into France we then found our seats and sat there waiting until everybody had got reloaded onto the train and we set off. It was a little bit of conversation on the train but I sort of, I don’t think Mike expressed any sort of interest in what was being said and so we had a comparatively easy trip through France to Paris and which, we sort of pulled in and, of course, everybody wanted to move out at the same time so it was no good wanting to get on your way or get out and be unnoticed but just behave normally like everybody else was and take your time going through the station. All we had to do was sort of carry what little luggage or coats or anything like that that we had which was minimal as far as I was concerned. I got quite a reasonable suit on. And our guide eventually went up to a group of people and we just ambled along, one behind the other so to speak and joined, joined the group. There was the usual sort of semblance of greetings and the like. It was here that we were split up. Mike was associated with another person to me and I was to be the guest of a very pleasant man. Was it Monsieur — Monsieur [unclear]? Anyhow, we immediately struck up a sort of accord and he was a typical Parisian and before long Mike had gone off with his particular new partner and I with mine. We went down into the Underground and he did the necessary purchasing of the tickets and what have you and I think we were [pause] we got off the, the Metro at a place known as Sevres Babylone and eventually got up to ground level and we then were in one of the main parts of Paris and we went through a number of streets and he said, ‘Here we are.’ The gentleman I was with had good English really and certainly better than my French which was handy and we came to an open sort of window. Near the front door and sitting at the window which was open, it being quite a nice day anyhow, was a lady and she recognising my companion and nodded. Looked at me. ‘Bonjour.’ We passed through the front door into the block of flats and there was a lift close by and we were way off up to the top very quickly where, having got out, and just a short step and we were in one of the flats at the top of the house and I was being introduced to Madame [unclear] and who was the wife of my leader, so to speak. And I stayed there with them for a couple of nights. Perhaps it was three. I’m not sure off-hand at the moment. I would have to perhaps see if I’d got a record of the days spent there. They were a charming Parisienne couple and I was [pause] the only thing was that they didn’t have two bedrooms so that I spent the one or two evenings I had with them I slept on a long sort of chaise longue piece of furniture in the sitting room. So that, they’d got quite decent accommodation but certainly not a second bedroom because they didn’t normally use one but certainly, during the war, they had quite a number of people who stayed there like me. They slept on the couch and it was very, very pleasant indeed. And I seemed to remember that the gentleman was an insurance agent as a means of being a family and earning a living because there was quite a number of callers who came. Obviously, they were all known to Monsieur [unclear]. And they didn’t hide the fact that I was there and with, one or two of them spoke with me during the, during the short business visit. So it wasn’t kept a secret. And on one particular day Monsieur [unclear] and I went out after breakfast and we were going to a circular walk I suppose you would call it. Whatever. Anyhow, we left the house and we did visit various places in Paris. Even some of the well-known high spots or historical spots. And the churches as well. On the way around we had to cross the Seine and we got nearly half way across when we met, coming towards us, a priest and it so happened that Monsieur [unclear] had some connection with this priest in the work of the church and so, we stood on the bridge over the river and chatted to him for a few minutes. And the priest was left in no doubt as to my identity and we finally shook hands and he went on to the south and we went on across the river up to the Arc de Triomphe and we went down the main road from there for quite some way. The Champs Elysee. And when we got to the appropriate point we turned off to the left, back over the river and back to what I can now, would now call lodgings and it was a half day, sort of outing which was most unexpected and most, most interesting. Whilst I was staying with them I did meet a number of other people and on a couple of occasions on different days then I was taken around the corner in the road there and into another block of flats and there up on to one of the upper floors and was introduced to the lady of the house and she had Mike as her guest and so that we did maintain contact. Mostly when we were in Paris. It was very pleasant meeting these people and they seemed to enjoy bucking the German presence there by really taking on quite a risky job of having escaped RAF people pass through their premises and through their lives.
AS: Can I, can I suggest that —
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 Gordon Mellor. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Sadler
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-06
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMellorG151006
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Gordon Mellor grew up in London and was interested in aviation. He volunteered for the Air Force and trained as a navigator in Canada. On his return to the UK he and his crew were posted to 103 Squadron. Returning from an operation they were attacked by a night fighter and shot down. Gordon baled out and landed in a tree. When he freed himself and landed on the ground, he set off to walk and by tracking the North Star, set off towards the general direction of Spain. He hid in a number of places during the daylight until after a few days he was inspired to knock on a door. He found he was in Belgium with friendly people who started the process that would lead to him being escorted through an escape line from Belgium to Paris and eventually home.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
Great Britain
Spain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942-10-04
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:54:50 audio recording
103 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
crash
de Jongh, Andree (1916 - 2007)
evading
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Lichfield
Resistance
shot down
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8818/PMellorG1501.2.jpg
ec53d3c84b8db787d307d49e498fe698
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8818/AMellorG160627.2.mp3
ef968aa3b9b455b4792ca4b2012f76c9
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
Mellor, Gordon
Gordon Herbert Mellor
G H Mellor
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mellor, G
Description
An account of the resource
Four oral history interviews with Gordon Mellor (1919 -2018, 929433, 172802 Royal Air Force). He trained in Canada as an observer and served as a navigator with 103 Squadron. He was shot down over Holland in 1942 but evaded capture.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-06
2016-06-07
2016-08-17
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
GR: This is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre and today, the 27th of June 2016 I am with Flight Lieutenant Gordon Mellor at his home in Wembley, London. Thank you, Gordon. We’re in Wembley, London. Was you born in London? Are you a —
GM: Oh yes. I —my place of birth was about, I should say, two miles away from here. Also, in Wembley but on the southern borders of the town. Whereas I’m living here in the northwest.
GR: Right. And what year was that Gordon? What year?
GM: Oh that was —
GR: Roughly.
GM: Well there’s nothing rough about it. I can tell you the moment almost. It was 1919. 1st of November being the actual date. And I don’t remember the situation but —
GR: No. [unclear]
GM: My memory does go back to about my second birthday or thereabouts.
GR: That’s incredible. Do you have brothers and sisters?
GM: Oh yes. I had a brother. He, strangely enough, was seventeen years older than me so he was born round about 1920, no, not 1920. 19 —
GR: 01 or 02.
GM: 02 or 03.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Or thereabouts. Yes. But at the same time of the year in actual fact except that he was a few days later than me on the actual date.
GR: In November.
GM: Yes.
GR: So, you grew up in Wembley. Went to school in Wembley.
GM: I did go to school in Wembley until I was about thirteen. My interests were more practical perhaps than other people so I went to a technical college over at Acton at that age and I stayed there virtually three years. And my school friend I found was living within a half a mile of where I lived at that time and we chummed up and carried our relationship forward into the war years and eventually then his sister and I decided to make it a go and we were married during the war years.
GR: Oh right. So, after college, if you was at college in Acton for, what was it, three years?
GM: Well it wasn’t quite, it was a senior school.
GR: Senior school. Yeah.
GM: It wasn’t a college as such. No.
GR: No. And you left there to go and work.
GM: Oh, I had several jobs. Mainly connected with, I suppose, the building industry. My father and brother and other members of the family were all connected with that industry. And what was I going to say? Oh yes, my early experience was in offices of estate agent’s and people who were on the, I can’t say senior side because I was only a youngster then but the prospects were good.
GR: Yeah.
GM: As a surveyor. So, I eventually started work with of firm quantity surveyors in central London. And after the war I returned to that profession and qualified with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
GR: Very good. But obviously you’d started work and war was on the horizon.
GM: Indeed.
GR: I presume in September ‘39 you were still at the chartered surveyors were you? Were you?
GM: Oh yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. I was working for a private organisation. It’s only in the post-war period that I went into the public service.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And certainly in the last, what —thirty five odd years or so I worked with the Greater London Council.
GR: Right. When war broke out did you sort of decide there and then to join up or —?
GM: Well, I was interested in aircraft from a young person.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was the ‘in’ interest shall I put it of the boys who lived and went in the same road as I did and also went to the same schools.
GR: Right.
GM: And we did get a strong interest into flying and the RAF in particular.
GR: Right. Was that an interest? Was it, was it Cobham’s Flying Circus or —?
GM: No. No.
GR: No.
HM: It was RAF Hendon.
GR: Which was obviously nearby isn’t it? Yeah.
GM: Yeah. And also there was a private ‘drome as well. My goodness me.
GR: Did you used to go up to Hendon then and watch the aircraft?
GM: Yes. We used, yes, we used to go over to Hendon and get to a position round where you could see what was going on. Although we weren’t on their ground but we were as near as we could get.
GR: To watch it.
GM: To watch what was going on.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And there was also another aerodrome close by where [pause] the name of it escapes me at the moment.
GR: It doesn’t matter. [unclear] So, it was —
GM: De Havilland’s I think had got a factory there, in that area and their aerodrome was also used.
GR: Not London — not London Colney.
GM: No.
GR: There was something there. I think that was the test place. So, it was an easy decision to volunteer for the Royal Air Force.
GM: Oh yes. Yes. Indeed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was a main point of interest as far as us lads were concerned in that part of Wembley. Yeah.
GR: And did your friends join up as well?
GM: Yes. They either joined up or called up.
GR: Yeah.
GM: In the early days of war. But they went to army or navy.
GR: Navy yeah. So, so can you remember where you joined up? Were you one of the ones who went to St John’s Wood and —?
GM: Where did —?
GR: Did you mention earlier you did some training at Uxbridge. No?
GM: Yes I, yes, my first real connection was when I was called up in 1940.
GR: Right.
GM: Early in ‘40 and I reported to RAF Hendon as many other youngsters did and that’s where we started.
GR: Yeah. Which was quite fitting considering you lived nearby.
GM: Yes. Yes.
GR: That’s quite good isn’t it? So, yeah.
GM: Riding on the train and then out to where Hendon Aerodrome was. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Did you do your training in this country? Or was you sent abroad?
GM: Yes. In actual fact there was a bit of a blockage in the training period and we were drafted out to various places. When I say we, there was about forty of us who were all called up together. And we were then posted out to various places and I was sent to [pause] Yeah. I haven’t thought about this for a long time.
GR: No. It doesn’t matter. ‘Cause what did you decide to train as? It wasn’t a pilot was it? It was a —
GM: No. I —
GR: Navigator.
GM: I was keen on the navigation. So I, yes, I volunteered for that and I was accepted for that purpose. Yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And —oh dear. Oh dear.
GR: It doesn’t matter. Obviously training. You know, I’ve spoken to a lot of veterans and I think training followed the same —
GM: Pattern.
GR: Pattern all the way through.
GM: Yes. Yeah. We had as I say, several months on general duties.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Because there was, seemed to be a bit of a blockage. More volunteers than they could cope with.
GR: Cope with.
GM: So we joined up and we did general duties in many ways.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And in my case then I was posted up to Norfolk and I was on ground defence for quite a time.
GR: Oh right.
GM: And during that time, of course, you did pick up a lot of general knowledge about living in the air force and it was all good useful stuff.
GR: Yeah. Good. So, training, yeah ran its usual pattern when you started. And then —
GM: Yes. I suppose so.
GR: Where did you get posted to?
GM: The first real training as far as flying was concerned was at Aberystwyth which was an ITW.
GR: Yeah.
GR: And we did the course there and a bit more because there was still something of a blockage.
GR: Yeah. Right.
GM: And from there we then were posted to the Midlands as a short stopping off place and then by boat.
GR: Yeah.
GM: We went via [pause] where did we go? Reykjavik in Iceland and then through to the east coast of Canada.
GR: Right.
GM: Once there then things got moving and we finished up at Port Albert which was a training aerodrome in Ontario. About a hundred and forty miles to the west of the main cities.
GR: Yes.
GM: In that area.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. So, I presume life in Canada was slightly different to life in Britain.
GM: Well. Yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. It was. It was somewhat freer I think.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And of course, not having to cope with the blackout. That was quite an interesting period.
GR: How long did you spend in Canada, Gordon?
GM: About seven months I think.
GR: Seven months. Yeah.
GM: There was the basic navigation course which was twelve weeks. We then had a week’s leave and then we did a four weeks course [pause] to follow on the navigation.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And having completed that successfully as a group, we’d all been together since we arrived in Canada, we then went to bombing and gunnery school.
GR: Right.
GM: In another part of Ontario. By the Lakes. And we spent at least six weeks there. I have a feeling we overran a little bit.
GR: Yeah.
GM: But then it was time which you received your promotion as a sergeant and we had parade and this happened. There were a number of, a group of, I think it was about forty of us all together in two main, sort of, groups. And some of the [pause] in each group were granted immediate commissions and the others became NCOs.
GR: Right.
GM: Having got the passing out parade done then we were given tickets and travel paraphernalia and told to arrive in the east coast of Canada. We arrived close by and embarked to come back to the UK.
GR: Right.
GM: So, yes, I thought that we were treated very adequately. Being — having jumped from, what rank was I [pause] oh dear. Oh dear. Something below corporal up to sergeant.
GR: Leading aircraft — LAC1?
GM: Leading aircraftsman. How right you are. This is dragging me into the part that I —
GR: Seventy five years of, yeah, remembering.
GM: Yeah. Yes.
GR: LAC2. LAC1 and then you probably went to sergeant.
GM: I did. Yeah.
GR: And then flight sergeant.
GM: Then flight sergeant.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And then yes. Warrant officer.
GR: Yeah.
GM: By that time, it was a couple of years. Three years on.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And from warrant officer I was commissioned.
GR: Yeah. So, before you got to the rank of warrant officer you were back in the UK.
GM: Oh yeah.
GR: Did you get posted direct to a squadron or was it a Heavy Conversion Unit?
GM: No. It was an extension of our flying experience. Mainly to get experience in flying in blackout conditions.
GR: Oh yeah.
GM: Because in Canada all the lights were on.
GR: Yes.
GM: So, as you soon as you got into the UK air then it was black.
GR: And of course navigation would be quite reasonable with all the lights on and if you knew where cities and towns were.
GM: Well yes. Indeed. There was no problem at all.
GR: Yeah. So, pitch black England.
GM: It was. Yeah. Well, of course you were young and adventurous so you attacked the problem with vigour and got used to it.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Which is what one had to. So, Lichfield was the place that I went to to get the flying experience in the dark.
GR: And was you with a crew then? Did you have your own pilot or —? Was it —?
GM: Shortly after that then we did crew up.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And there seemed to be quite a number of Australian pilots running parallel with us. Most of the navigators, I think, were British. May have been one —oh yes there was an odd one or two Australians as well I think. And just a way of processing us for making up the numbers from other groups of navigators at the same stage as we were. And so, we went to Lichfield and whilst we were climatizing ourselves to blackouts in general then of course we were gaining experience as a crew because we were given the opportunity to arrange, sort of, the membership of the crew during social hours.
GR: So, this was on Wellingtons. So —
GM: It was on Wellingtons.
GR: Was there about —was there five of you? I think it is on a Wellington. Yeah.
GM: Yes. I think it was five at that time.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. Because you would have had your air gunners with you as well. With you at that time.
GM: Oh yes. Indeed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yeah. It was largely done by meeting each other in the mess or during working hours. They had a flight headquarters and also during flying. You got to know who the people you got on well with and it didn’t take very long to get a crew together.
GR: To get together. Yeah. So where did things move on from training? I believe you were —I wouldn’t say rushed but you —
GM: No. We weren’t rushed. We did well.
GR: Yeah.
GM: In actual fact that post-training period abroad, we did broaden our skills quite considerably with the experience we were getting flying around. And we did eventually do a first raid on enemy territory. It was sort of a single effort in which we flew as a crew on our first operation.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And it was a comparatively easy operation.
GR: Yeah. Did they give you something like leaflet dropping or mine laying? Or something like that as a —?
GM: Oh yes. We dropped leaflets on this particular occasion.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: It wasn’t — they weren’t a great deal on this occasion but at least we felt we were doing something towards the war effort.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Yes.
GR: And that’s while you was at the Operational Training Unit.
GM: That’s right. Yes. Having done that single initial trip.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Within days it was postings were announced. And I think we all were all sent home on leave for a week or something like that. When we came back then the postings took effect. We went to the squadron.
GR: Yeah. And that was 103. Yeah. 103 at Elsham Wolds.
GM: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes.
GR: And I believe, was your first operation then the thousand bomber raid?
GM: Oh yes. The first thousand bomber raid. As far as I can recall.
GR: Yeah.
GM: I think it was the very first one.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Where did we go to?
GR: I’m trying to remember. Would that be Cologne?
GM: Yes. It would be.
GR: Essen.
GM: It would have been.
GR: Cologne or Essen.
GM: I think it was Cologne.
GR: Cologne.
GM: Yes. Yes.
GR: And I think that was in a Wellington wasn’t it so —?
GM: Yes. That was in a Wellington.
GR: Yeah.
GM: We had converted from flying Ansons in the early days at IT. ITW. Yes.
GR: Yeah. Initial training. Yeah.
GM: Whatever it was.
GR: Yeah.
GM: When we got back from Canada that we then converted on to.
GR: Yeah. And obviously, I mean, I know you then converted from the Wellington on to the Halifax.
GM: Yes. Indeed.
GR: Heavy bomber.
GM: That was in the summer of 1942.
GR: Yeah. So, and then leading on to what obviously was an eventful night. How many operations did you actually fly Gordon? Can you remember? Roughly.
GM: I think I was on my eighteenth.
GR: Eighteenth.
GM: Yes
GR: Yeah.
GM: I was looking forward to getting, going towards the end. We had thirty to do.
GR: Thirty. Yes. Yeah.
GM: And it wasn’t to be.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Which was a great pity.
GR: And those eighteen were with the same crew? Were you —
GM: Oh yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. Yes.
GR: So, I don’t know whether you can tell us a little about yeah, obviously I know you were attacked by a German night fighter.
GM: Well what it really boils down to — the raid followed the usual pattern and except that when we came out of the target run and dropped the bombs and we were turned away for the return trip back home and we were jumped by this German fighter.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And he just hung around in the background so — I didn’t see him. I was in the front of the aircraft so, but from the rear gunner and the other people who could look backwards he stayed probably something like five hundred yards behind us. He didn’t do anything that was aggressive or anything like. He just sort of sat there. And we did, with the captain making up his mind then, we did talk about what we should do and eventually we said, ‘Well let’s try and scare him off.’ Bad decision. Because we opened up on him from the four gun turret in the, at the rear and also there was a turret —
GR: Mid-upper.
GM: Mid-upper turret. Yes. And that amounted to six machine guns in all. Four with the rear gunner and two mid-upper. And that annoyed the [laughs] chap who was following us I’ve no doubt because having received a blast from our gunners he then opened up and he must have been very good because he really gave us, I think it was —I think four bursts I think we experienced and in that time he set the two inboard engines on fire. He also hit the rear gunner and he missed the rest of us by very small margins because you could see the tracers going past.
GR: And through —
GM: And through.
GR: The machine. Yeah.
GM: Yeah. Yeah. And it set the two engines so named so, we were burned and the pilot put us into a dive to get to a lower level and we were flying at about twelve thousand feet I suppose. Certainly, no more. We found that to be a relatively good level to make an attack and, on this occasion, it didn’t pay off out, pay off in our favour as it had done in the past. So, we were shot down, in plain English. And got down to quite low levels before the order was given to abandon aircraft. And I, in the front of the aircraft was standing on the escape hatch. So all we had to do really was to move ourselves. That’s the radio operator, the front gunner and myself. And just behind and above us was the pilot and his —
GR: Flight engineer.
GM: Flight engineer.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yeah
GR: Was you the first out?
GM: Yes. I was standing on the escape hatch. And they were, having made the decision, the general impression was get out. Don’t hold anybody up.
GR: Yeah.
GM: So, I got the trap door up and I dropped to sitting on the side of the aperture with my legs dangling and I knew the others were anxious to get into that position so I slid my rear end off the edge of the opening and I was sucked out by the slipstream. And I didn’t pull my cord of the parachute until I was well away from the aircraft. And probably somebody else would have got out in the same time. And I eventually did do so but I wasn’t in the air very long. Just time to look around and there was the light and somehow or other it seemed to be yellowy to me. I don’t know what colour the night was there but I’ve got this yellow feeling in my memory so perhaps it was from the flares or something like that burning as the aircraft got closer to the ground and the fire took greater hold. Anyhow, I pulled the rip cord and came to a jarring stop almost, I suppose. And within a very short period — seconds it seemed, so it probably was that I found myself crashing through the branches of a tree. And I was left swinging with the parachute and the harness stretched out above me spread over the foliage of the branches of the tree.
GR: Yeah.
GM: So, I couldn’t touch the ground so I thought well I’ve got to do something. So I twisted the knob on the release on the parachute harness and the straps sort of sprang apart and I was free to drop — which I did. To my surprise I fell about a foot. No more. I mean, if you can imagine.
GR: Yeah.
GM: You pulled the cord and as soon as you were in motion then you stopped.
GR: You were bracing yourself for a bad fall.
GM: Indeed.
GR: And you dropped twelve inches.
GM: Yeah.
GR: Good.
GM: It couldn’t have been more. It was so quick. And so, I got myself out of the tree and dogs were barking around and I could see there was a building close by which I thought, well, sounds like this might be bit of a farm. In that style. I dumped my harness and what have you there. It was largely still attached to the silk of the parachute which was stuck up in the tree and I left it there. It was no good. I wasn’t going to be able to pull it down. It would make too much row in any case. I did try but I gave up when I heard the creaking and the crashing and the scratching on the branches. So, I walked my way down to the, what I thought might be a road and having got through the hedge it proved to be a road going, yes, downhill. Not very steep. So, naturally, I took the road down. I didn’t go up and I found that I was walking, from the observation of the North Star, I found that I was walking more or less in a northerly direction and as I felt then at the moment then that was the wrong way to go ‘cause I would only be walking to a coast.
GR: Was you in France Gordon? Or in Belgium? You know, when you landed.
GM: When I landed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: I was in, on the border of Belgium and Holland.
GR: Belgium and Holland. Right. Yeah.
GM: So, it was about as far as where you could get without being in Germany I suppose.
GR: Yeah.
GM: So, anyhow, I thought well it’s no good staying here. You’ve got to find somewhere to hide for daylight and it was still before midnight. So, I walked off and having made the discovery that I was heading to the north I turned on the first immediate turning and went up a road to the west and I did see where the aircraft had crashed. Having been left. So, I thought —right, well south is going to be over that way so I went that way and continued to do so for the rest of the night.
GR: So, you walked through the night.
GM: Yeah. I don’t know how many miles I travelled.
GR: Yeah.
GM: But I walked through the odd village certainly.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And the odd dog did bark.
GR: So, in the morning as the light’s coming up did you meet anybody or decide you had to get some sleep?
GM: Yeah, well I was still on the road. I was going, from my observations, then I realised I was no longer travelling to the south. I was travelling to the, what’s, south, east, west —
GR: West.
GM: I was travelling to the west along the road and I thought well there’s houses there. I wonder what is around the back somewhere. It was beginning to get light so, I turned off the road into a field path. And eventually I found a copse on the farm and I got myself in and got in to the undergrowth so that I was hidden although there was a road close by. Or a path of some sort close by. And went to sleep. I woke up mid-morning or thereabouts and I could hear people moving about in the field and I found I was in this copse on the side of a rise and there was men working above me in the field there and there was people passing along the road which was in front of this copse in which I was hiding. So, I just kept out of sight as best I could for the morning. The same in the afternoon. I examined what I’d got in my pockets which was edible. There wasn’t much. A few little bits of chocolate and what have you and I stayed there until the farm began to close down for the night and the light was well on its way to disappearing. Leaving it dark. So I just got up and I’d seen the traffic in the roads close by so I went, turned around, turned across the grass that wasn’t very long. Yes, it was grass of the field. Went through the hedge and down the road. Heading more or less in a southerly direction. And I proceeded where the road was going west and south and I took a variety of roads passing through whatever built up areas there were. And there were a few villages. Not big. That one could walk through.
GR: So, did you walk through the night again?
GM: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. I walked through the night. In the early part of the night when I went past a group of houses very often there was a coffee shop or a beer place or whatever it was where people had gathered for their evening’s entertainment. I was being tempted to go and find out whether there was any help there but I resisted that and carried on until I had to find another hiding place on the following morning. And this was repeated. Staying hidden as best as possible in the hiding place which I’d chosen in the dark actually. And as soon as it got anywhere near dark I was on my way.
GR: How long did you do this for before you came into contact with anybody?
GM: Well I saw people. People came.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Did come fairly close to me without seeing me.
GR: Yeah.
GM: When I was hidden in the bushes and things like that. I think it was about the fifth day.
GR: Fifth day.
GM: Fourth or fifth day and I —
GR: And did somebody approach you or did you approach them?
GM: No. No. What happened was I’d been staying in the middle of a village. In the bombed house. Or an empty house anyhow. It wasn’t in very good nick. I imagined from what I could see that it was a bombed-like. During the daytime there in this particular place the shops across the road and on either side and what have you was, were mixed. In some cases, there were shops and there was living quarters there as well. Houses and flats. And people were going about their normal daily business.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And I, up on the first floor occasionally poked my head up and looked out of the windows and I could see these people dressed normally and carrying shopping bags and things like that and they went. They went. The scariest part of it was at lunchtime the kids were out of school and I don’t know whether they had their lunches at school or whether they had them at home but there was a number of them about and two or three of them came into the house in which I was on the first floor. And they messed around a bit as kids do in an empty place and they started coming up the stairs and then something happened. I don’t know what happened but it took their attention. Perhaps their playtime had gone and they didn’t get right up to the top of the stairs so, I was left on the first floor there unmolested. And I just stayed on there until it started to get dark. I can’t tell you what time it was that it got dark but this was October.
GR: Yeah.
GM: So, evenings were getting dark fairly early and the number of people out on the street of course diminished as soon as it came what would have been, in the old days, lighting up time.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And the streets became largely vacant so I took a chance. Went downstairs and got the general direction in my own mind to go south and west and I got out of the old bombed house on to the main road. I just walked through. Eventually I got out of the town and I took where my fancy took me. In actual fact, I was aware of what the countryside was like and whether I was on open ground or whether I was passing through places where there was copses of trees and what have you but I stayed on the road as much as possible. It was easy walking.
GR: Yeah.
GM: That’s what I did. And I had to find, at the beginning of the next day before it got light I had to find a hiding place each time. And the countryside was quite interesting. It was quite hilly and I did come to a river. Wait a minute. No [pause] I’m not too sure where that was. I certainly came to the odd railway so I had to walk along the ordinary road and went across the railway bridge to get to the other side. There were people about. A bit. But it was as good as being, walking on your own.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yeah. It was, it was quite good. So, I walked overnight for the first four or five nights and got away with it.
GR: Got away with it. So again, when did you meet somebody or how did you meet somebody —
GM: Yeah.
GR: Who was involved with either the resistance or helpers?
GM: Well, I stayed in one town as I say.
GR: Yeah.
GM: I think that was probably the last one. Anyhow, I walked from that last town and eventually having sort of just taken the general south-westerly direction I found myself in fairly open country and of course it had started to rain. It had been dry all the time previously. And I got pretty wet. Ok. What do I do now? And it was no good sort of getting under a tree or anything like that.
GR: No.
GM: ‘Cause the summer foliage was disappearing fast and the branches were fairly clear of leaves. So, I thought well I’ll have to go back to the old place where I’d stayed the previous night which was a bit of a problem because it was some miles. Anyhow, I did go back and I came into a village and you needed a map because it affects the story to a certain extent. Anyhow, I got, I passed one of the villages which I’d come through and I saw a house on the other side of the road. There were houses around.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And I was walking down the main street. There was nobody about and looking across the road I could see there was a light in this house. It was surprising because most of the lighting was so subdued that you really couldn’t make any use of it. In any case it would have given one’s position away quite easily. Anyhow, I was in the middle of this village and I was quite amazed to see so much light from it. Anyhow, that was only for a short while but the house was still there and I thought there’s somebody obviously living there. And it took me some time to make up my mind but I thought I’m soaking wet.
GR: Wet, tired and hungry.
GM: Indeed. Indeed. Greater pusher to making up your mind.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And so, I went and knocked on the front door and there was no response from the door but the window flung out from the first floor. And just one question, ‘qui est la?’ Who is there? So, I tried to explain my position to this face up at the window. And I don’t know what he said but obviously sort of —wait. So, I just stood there and I heard him thundering downstairs so he’d still got his shoes on and this was about 8 o’clock in the evening I suppose. From my general recollection. And the door was flung open. And I think I said something rather crass like, ‘Je suis Anglais,’ or something like that. And he looked me up and down. Didn’t say anything. Just beckoned me in.
GR: Just beckoned you in.
GM: And I then followed him into a back room and he put the lights on. He gave me a good looking over and his wife then came downstairs. Whether they’d been going to bed or whether they’d got an upstairs room I don’t know. And so there we were. They sort of, I think they started to dry me off to a certain extent and they also had a, what we call a boiler, a solid fuel fire of sorts.
GR: Yeah. Fire.
GM: And so I’m sort of sat close by to that and his wife, as I say, came down and I tried to explain who I was. I showed them my uniform and the flying and the badge and they were very friendly. Anyhow, it wasn’t long before there was a knock on the door and in came a local priest. So, they’d got a message through to him pretty smartish. Mind you it was — the timing was such that it was now in time which nobody should be about except those who were in authority.
GR: Yeah. Curfew.
GM: There was a curfew.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And this man was the local priest. He’d got some English. He’d got a good lot of English. Anyhow, he understood what was what and his main words that he said was, ‘You come with me.’ So, I thought, well, ‘Great. And by that time the rain had finished and it was dry outside. Well I say dry. It wasn’t raining.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And having thanked the man and his wife for the help I came away with the priest and went and stayed at his establishment which was some walk away. And he was living there with his housekeeper and she was still up so it couldn’t have been so very late. So, she just sort of said hello, so to speak, and accepted that I was one of the opposition to the Germans. They had me in there and I don’t know — they gave me a drink I think. I don’t know whether it was hot or cold now. And a bed. That was the first bed I’d been in for some time. it was typical continental.
GR: Yeah.
GM: One of these great puffed up ones.
GR: It was a bed.
GM: It was a bed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And it was in the warm. In the dry. And they were friends.
GR: And did you find out later were they part of the resistance or were they just somebody — did they put you in —?
GM: Oh, they were in the know.
GR: They were in the know.
GM: They were in the know. How active they were I don’t know but they certainly —
GR: You wouldn’t have known at the time but obviously you were at the beginning of the Comete line.
GM: Yes.
GR: To be passed all the way down.
GM: It may not have been actual Comete people but people who were associated with them.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And yes, I was then [pause] I made the contacts and went on and eventually with the result that I got in with Comete but it was no joyride having found them.
GR: No. No.
GM: As a matter of fact it was downright dangerous in places.
GR: Yeah. Because at the time I presume the Germans knew that something was, they knew airmen were getting down.
GM: Oh yes.
GR: They would have known of an existence of some sort of resistance movement moving them. How, can you remember how long you were actually from being shot down to getting through the Pyrenees how long were you —?
GM: Oh, three weeks or thereabouts.
GR: Three weeks.
GM: Yeah. Yes.
GR: And obviously you and your helpers would have been living on your wits all the time. Like you said it was dangerous.
GM: Yes, well I eventually —
GR: Probably more dangerous for the helpers.
GM: Oh certainly.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Certainly. Yes.
GR: As long as you still had your RAF dog tags you had some sort of security.
GM: Yes. Yes indeed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: But I did take other badges and things off so there was nothing to show for it. And then of course, the priest lent me one of his overall coats. I don’t know whether — he wasn’t as big as me but, so where he got the coat I don’t know but it certainly fitted really well. And I eventually got through to Brussels. From Brussels I got through to Paris. I got from Paris down to St Jean de Luz and from there through the Pyrenees. That was a long run. I don’t know how many miles. Thirty odd. And the —
GR: And this would have been the end of October. Probably the beginning of November.
GM: Yes.
GR: So winter was on its way.
GM: It was the end of October.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was —I got down to the Pyrenees. I think it was the 19th of October. And got across and I then went down. Yes. Yes I eventually got down to — what’s the capital of Spain?
GR: Madrid.
GM: Madrid.
GR: Madrid.
GM: Yes. Eventually they, on the grapevine, they were told in Madrid that I was up there on their side of the border and so they sent a car up to take me down to the British embassy.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And arrangements were then made and we went from the embassy two or three days later and we then finished up in Gibraltar and they sort of were pretty careful about finding out you were on the level.
GR: Yes.
GM: And so, I then went down to the Rock of Gibraltar and eventually, a couple of days later I flew to the UK.
GR: So, you flew back. You didn’t — yeah.
GM: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And that was [pause] how many days are there in October? Thirty one.
GR: Thirty one.
GM: Well that was the night of the 31st of October and we landed down in Cornwall to book in and do whatever official things had to be done and then we were flown up to, now, an aerodrome near London.
GR: Croydon.
GM: No.
GR: Not Hendon.
GM: No. No.
GR: Uxbridge.
GM: No. Further out.
GR: Northolt.
GM: Further out. Anyhow —
GR: Yeah.
GM: We got a train in.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And reported in to whatever place it was. Up in town. Yes.
GR: And then I presume —
GM: I’m sorry. This is getting a bit —
GR: No. Gordon it isn’t and your memory’s very very good. And I presume you were then debriefed.
GM: We came up. We landed in the UK and then we, then came in to, towards central London.
GR: Yeah.
GM: We then, I was with other people. Then there was three, I think, of us. We hadn’t been in our escapes with each other at all. It was just whoever was [pause] happened to be, due to come, return back to the UK.
GR: Yes.
GM: On that particular day. Anyhow, as I say we landed on the first of November and we got, we then, with several hiccups we got up to London and Baker Street. It was a hotel which is still there.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And went in. And it had been taken over by the air force, and booked in and in the next couple of minutes we were asked a question. The question is, ‘Where do you live?’ And I said, ‘Well, my family live in Wembley’. He said, ‘That’s just down the road by train.’ So he said, ‘Right. You can go home tonight.’ So, I don’t know what — oh they gave me a pass, I think. Travel. Yeah. Anyhow, I got on the train in Baker Street along through to Wembley Central and I walked down the old road. The estate. Sort of. Which had been there for quite some time and I turned down the road, our road —Douglas Avenue after travelling down the Ealing Road which does lead one to Ealing still and I banged on the front door. Gave my mother nearly a heart attack I think. She already knew I was ok.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And so, I went in and I was home. And the 1st of November is my birthday.
GR: So, you was home for your birthday.
GM: Indeed. Well, the last couple of hours of it.
GR: So from taking off you spent what, four weeks. Got back four weeks later.
GM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. About the 4th or the 5th of October.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And I walked into home. Thousands of miles away I suppose you could say.
GR: Round trip.
GM: Round trip.
GR: A wonderful birthday present.
GM: Indeed.
GR: Going back to the crew, Gordon.
GM: Yes.
GR: If you don’t mind. I know your rear gunner didn’t make it.
GM: No. He didn’t.
GR: The other five members. Did they evade or were they taken prisoner of war?
GM: No. They were — those that were injured —
GR: Yeah.
GM: Were taken to hospital and they then became POWs.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And the others who were just banged about a bit the same as myself —
GR: Yeah.
GM: They were taken prisoner.
GR: They were taken prisoner as well. Yeah. So out of the crew you were the only one who managed to get back.
GM: Indeed. Indeed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was a great pity but —
GR: And the rest of them had to wait until 1945.
GM: I’m afraid so.
GR: Yeah. So what happened to you Gordon? After you were back and you’d had your leave and obviously the end of the war would have been still two years away.
GM: Oh yes this was, what, ‘42 .
GR: ’42. Yeah. So —
GM: Running into ‘43. Yeah. I had Christmas at home.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
GR: ‘Cause I know they had a rule about not letting you fly again or fly over.
GM: It depended on your experience I think.
GR: Yeah.
GM: But I had, in actual fact, in that four weeks and I’d got to know the identity of a lot of people.
GR: Yeah. Which was good.
GM: So, there was no question of going back on ops again.
GR: No. So did you, what did you actually do for those two years. Did you —
GM: Oh. Well, yes, after the interrogation, the next day.
GR: Yeah.
GM: After I’d been home I had to go back to this old hotel at Baker Street and went through the debriefing and they said, ‘What do you want to do?’ So, I said, ‘Well I would like to do SN course in navigation.’ Staff navigator. And so they said, ‘Well, that’s alright. We can fix that.’ And sure enough they did. I was posted away from London to Cheltenham. The aerodrome at Cheltenham. Or nearby. And I was on the staff there as an instructor until July ‘43. That’s right. July ‘43 and in that time, I was an instructor in —
GR: Navigation.
GM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And I then took the advanced course which was very interesting.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was a good course. And I then was posted, after that, to [pause] now where did I go to?
GR: Again, as an instructor or —
GM: Oh yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. Yes. I was posted up to Scotland. That’s right. And strangely the place where I got posted to was Wigtown.
GR: Wigtown. Yeah. I know Wigtown.
GM: And the chap I was working, that I was sent up to work with was Len [unclear] he was a flight [unclear] officer. Flight lieutenant.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Was he? Yeah. He was flight lieutenant. He was, certainly he was a regular officer and navigation specialist so I worked with him to start with and, well it all turned out very well.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Finishing up, as you say, as a flight lieutenant.
GR: Yeah. And so, I’ll pull to a close. Where was you on VE day? So 8th of May 1945. Was you still up in Scotland instructing? Where was you when you were told the war had finished?
GM: 8th of May.
GR: 1945.
GM: ‘45. I was at Wigtown.
GR: You were still up in Wigtown in Scotland. Yeah.
GM: Yes. I stayed on with the flying training. Still continued.
GR: Yeah.
GM: The air force didn’t suddenly sort of pack it all in and go home. It carried on very much as it had before. And eventually they were closing down the advanced, was it the Advanced Navigation School?
GR: Yeah.
GM: Something. Anyhow, the camp was going to be decommissioned by the sounds of things until something else was found for it to be used for and we came down south and I [pause] There was somebody who was the nav senior instructor who I’d known and met and he put a request in, I think. For me to go to where he was.
GR: Yeah. And obviously by the time you finished your service in the Royal Air Force.
GM: Yeah.
GR: You came back to Wembley.
GM: Yes. Indeed.
GR: And this house we’re sat in. How long have you lived here now Gordon?
GM: Oh, about forty five, forty six years.
GR: Forty five. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And we had another house before this for twelve years.
GR: Yeah.
GM: The other side of Wembley.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And on the same road as where my parents lived and where I grew up.
GR: So apart from a six year sojourn in the Royal Air Force.
GM: I’ve lived in Wembley.
GR: You’re here in Wembley and we’re still in Wembley.
GM: Yeah.
GR: And I have to say, Gordon. I really appreciate what you’ve just talked about. It was absolutely wonderful. Thank you.
GM: I’m sorry to not be —
GR: Do not say sorry.
GM: More.
GR: No. I mean I —
GM: I haven’t thought about some parts of this at all.
GR: Yeah. I mean I knew your story obviously from past experiences and some of the books you’ve appeared in. And I know you’ve got your book coming out in September which is going to be eagerly awaited. But no —that was wonderful. Thank you.
GM: Oh well, you’re very kind.
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 Gordon Mellor. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gary Rushbrooke
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
2016-06-27
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMellorG160627
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Gordon Mellor grew up in London and was interested in aviation. He volunteered for the Air Force and trained as a navigator in Canada. On his return to the UK he and his crew were posted to 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds and his first operation was the thousand bomber operation against Cologne. On his eighteenth operation they were attacked by a night fighter. Gordon baled out and landed in a tree. When he had freed himself and landed on the ground, he set off to walk, by tracking the North Star, towards the general direction of Spain. He hid in a number of places during the daylight until after a few days he was inspired to knock on a door. He found he was in Belgium with people who started the process that would lead to him being escorted through an escape line from Belgium to Paris and then through the Pyrenees to Spain. He was taken to Gibraltar and flown home. After debriefing he was told he could go home and he knocked on his own home door on his birthday four weeks after his escape and evasion began.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
Gibraltar
Great Britain
Spain
England--Lincolnshire
France--Paris
France
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942-10-04
1942-11-01
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:09:16 audio recording
103 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
briefing
de Jongh, Andree (1916 - 2007)
debriefing
evading
Halifax
navigator
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Wigtown
Resistance
shot down
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8819/PMellorG1501.2.jpg
ec53d3c84b8db787d307d49e498fe698
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8819/AMellorGH160817.1.mp3
35ebeb2be6c6e7e0510e47aa5e5abf1d
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
Mellor, Gordon
Gordon Herbert Mellor
G H Mellor
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mellor, G
Description
An account of the resource
Four oral history interviews with Gordon Mellor (1919 -2018, 929433, 172802 Royal Air Force). He trained in Canada as an observer and served as a navigator with 103 Squadron. He was shot down over Holland in 1942 but evaded capture.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-06
2016-06-07
2016-08-17
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
CB: Let me just start off with the introduction.
GM: Sort of introduce the -
CB: I’ll start you off.
GM: Order.
CB: Yeah. I’ll start you off.
GM: Yeah. Yes.
CB: Ok. My name is Chris Brock bank and today is the 17th of August 2016. I’m with Gordon Mellor in Wembley and we’re going to talk about his life and times in the RAF and afterwards. So, Gordon, in practical terms, what do you remember about your earliest days?
GM: My earliest days were, shall we say, from birth to five years old and I do still have a firm memory at the, at the age of two, two years of falling down in some land behind our house and breaking a leg so I was sort of done up with plaster and what have you for some little time at that early age. The rest of the youth was, I should say, ordinary. I went to a local council school and stayed there for quite some years. This was a convenient house, convenient to our house of about seven or eight minutes’ walk so that I have in actual fact spent most of my lifetime in this area which is known worldwide as Wembley. Following the days at the council school that I first mentioned I was not a success on what was commonly known as the eleven plus but I seemed to pick up speed and I successfully entered the excellent technical college where the main subject matter was related to engineering and I must have stayed there nearly three years at that particular place. Then I made great friends with a man, well he wasn’t a man he was a boy like myself but his name was Kenneth Clarke. I mention him because he was, has always been until recent years quite a prominent member of my friends. When I was close to seventeen then I got itchy feet I suppose and I wanted to get out to work rather than spend the last three or four months in school so I looked around and obviously I needed to have some strong ideas about employment and also on subject matter. I decided that I didn’t want to just be a clerk in an office or an engineer of the varying quality so I decided that I would take a job to start with and for the first couple of years of being at work then I was connected with the estate agents and property subject matter and after that I then became a little more concentrated on surveying and I changed direction away from property valuation and the like and became the chartered quantity surveyor. The charter didn’t come until after the national service which will come to light in due course. For this purpose I scouted around and took one or two approaches to surveyors and eventually I picked up what I thought was a suitable proposition and by that time I suppose I was getting near to eighteen, nineteen and I found this particular work to be of interest so I then took classes in, at evening time and I was in this situation taking the class at London Polytechnic. Oh goodness me I’ve forgotten the name of the place. It’s top of Regent Street, near Charing Cross, not Charing Cross.
CB: New Oxford Street.
GM: Oxford Street. Yes. Just north of Oxford Street. So and I I found it interesting and there was a wide range of matter to become familiar with so this then certainly brought me to the period I would say was 1937/38 and the international situation indicated that there was going to be quite a conflict. The only question to my mind and a lot of other people was when? How soon would it be? Well we did find out. 1939, and the entry in to the armed forces as a, shall we say, can’t call it a pastime but it became of interest and we tried to get into the volunteer reserve. Well as I was looking for quite a high qualification in, I was doing anything from four to five evening classes a week at Regent Street Polytechnic. Anyhow, time passed and we found in September 1939 that war was forced upon us and I hadn’t been successful in getting into the volunteer reserve. I’d been doing a day’s job and most of my spare time was in study and the like. So it wasn’t until calling up papers came in the beginning of 1940 that I was brought into the services. The air force had a strong representation in aerodromes around North London. Northwest London. Hendon obviously was one of them and I had tried to extend my knowledge of the air force as, just as a matter of relaxation so when the calling up papers came and I had volunteered for the RAF and in view of my familiar approach to maps and charts and things like that I applied for service in the RAF. Much to my delight we were going to have to do something we might as well l do something that was a principal interest so I joined the RAF as an AC2 as I think most people did unless you were a university graduate or the like and this was in the early days of 1940. Well, I, how far do you want me to go on?
CB: Keep going. That’s fine.
GM: We’re alright are we?
CB: Yeah. Very good.
GM: Ok. I was, oh my goodness me, where were we going, oh yes I was called up to Uxbridge depot and I spent the first week there, joined with about forty, I would say, about forty other youngsters. I wouldn’t say that everyone was a youngster. There was quite some mature men who were also being called up and having gone through the initiation and the approaches to a service life we were then posted up to a discipline, sorry -
CB: Initial Training Wing.
GM: Indeed. Initial Training Wing. That is the correct name of course and we found that it all, it went well on the whole and we came through the first three months and there was still no sign of being posted elsewhere so we had the traditional seven days leave until we came back and all in all we saved an extra few weeks before there was a vacancy for another training course and we were posted. This was an initial training wing and we survived the entrance and the doings and also we were useful in doing odd jobs when we were given the opportunity to train for a post as navigators in Canada. So having had an introduction to navigation in this way we were posted up north to a depot on the coast and from there in Scotland we got onto a boat which was not much more than a cross channel ferry and we went up to Iceland, stayed on the boat and then transferred immediately to a much larger vessel. I used to be able to quote the name of the boat, maybe it will come to mind in a minute but we put, went from Reykjavik in Iceland across to Canada and on the way there we were accompanied by a number of other boats and although we were going quite fast then certainly it wasn’t for the slower vessel at all. It was quite a quick trip. We landed on the east coast of Canada and in no time we were being marshalled off of the ferry boat and I used to be able to -
[Machine stopped]
CB: No. No. That’s fine. It’s my way of just covering it then. So we’re restarting now and we’re in Canada.
GM: Yes.
CB: Just going back a step.
GM: Yes.
CB: So the intriguing thing is the number of places that were training and some were slightly different but you went to Port Albert.
GM: That’s right.
CB: Which is on the Lakes.
GM: Yes. Yes.
CB: So what did you actually do when you were there? How did the course go?
GM: Well it was a mixture of navigation instruction and as that progressed so we did flying exercises which followed the increased knowledge that you gained in the classroom.
CB: Right.
GM: So we were still having lectures on navigation problems and requirements at the end of the first three months much in the same method of training as we were at the beginning of that period. It was the subject matter that improved.
CB: Right.
GM: Then we had the period after that of several weeks and then we were posted to the bombing and gunnery school.
CB: So when you were doing the navigation training, you’re at Port Albert.
GM: Yes.
CB: What’s, what’s the geography like there? Are we in the prairies or are we in a built up sort of area.
GM: We were in Ontario.
CB: Yes.
GM: Which is a major farming area I would have said. It was, we were about twelve miles out of the town of, I think it was Goderich.
CB: Yeah.
GM: And there we learned the techniques and what have you and flying from the, that aerodrome we put what we had learned in the classroom, so to speak, into practice.
CB: Yeah.
GM: In the Ansons which were -
CB: You were in Ansons. Ok
GM: Available. The class was split into groups of twos and I think there was somewhere around about twenty four of us in groups of two all flying in the, at the same time so it looks, rather looks as though we had something like twelve aircraft allocated to half days so to speak. There was a course flew in the mornings and one in the afternoons. And later on of course then we had night time flying as well.
CB: Ok. And when you went to gunnery what were you flying there? How did they run that?
GM: Yes. We had Fairey Battles and still two people in the gunnery position. One chap at the back with the, sort of, fire power and the back towards the back of the plane towards the tail and the second pupil, if I can call us that, the second pupil was stuck on the seat in the fuselage so he didn’t get much to see during that exercise except down below and it was mainly map reading and exercises such as that.
CB: Because this is a three crew aeroplane.
GM: Yes.
CB: And you could change over could you? The roles in the air.
GM: Oh the navigator and, the two navigator’s, yes they could swap over. There wasn’t a lot of room in the plane but certainly the gunnery position as you remember it was the back of the compartment which the navigators occupied was sealed, it wasn’t exactly sealed but it was shut off from the pilot’s position. You couldn’t pass from one, from the front to the back of the aircraft. The pilot had sole use of the front half of the aircraft and the two trainees were in the back half and I thought there was a radio operator on there as part of the permanent crew. Same as the pilot was.
CB: Ok. And what did the gunnery training comprise?
GM: Oh mostly machine gun fire on a target being towed by another aircraft and there was, yes, there was that and this is so long ago and I haven’t really talked about it for a long time. Yes. Certainly the two trainees they each got a spell on each flight so that the time wasn’t wasted at all. You were either doing the exercises which were laid out to be done from the rear gunner’s position or you were map reading or other sort of interesting exercises looking down through the bomb, sort of window, I don’t know, hatch I suppose you would call it which was patent glazed, not patent glazing it was a glazed opening and I think in normal times it was, you could lift it and get into the aircraft in that position.
CB: Ok. So you’ve got two people who are learning gunnery in the plane.
GM: Yes.
CB: They hit the target. How do you know who has shot what?
GM: That’s a good question. They, they must have had a means of telling either the first or the second amount of gunnery which was being tested so -
CB: Was it coloured ammunition?
GM: Well that was hovering in the back of my mind but I’m not oversure.
CB: Ok.
GM: I thought, I seem to remember on occasions we did have coloured ammunition but I can’t be sure that it was at the early part of your gunnery training at all.
CB: Because the plane was only towing one target.
GM: Exactly, no the plane, the other plane was -
CB: Yes.
GM: Tow, perhaps there was a non-identifiable and perhaps there was also another half which was indicated in some way. I should imagine it was sort of a paint arrangement that –
CB: So the course you were on is the observer course in those days.
GM: Yes, yes.
CB: The third aspect of what you were doing was bomb aiming so how was that done and in what aircraft?
GM: To my mind it was a bombing and gunnery course so that one was sort of mentally passed over to the people who specialised in bomb aiming and there was a certain amount of exercising and also [jockeying?] the targets. How they separated it out is a good question because I can’t, I haven’t got the, I shall have to look it up.
CB: Well we can come back to that.
GM: Yes.
CB: So –
GM: I’m sorry but there are now a number of details which have now -
CB: Yeah.
GM: Slipped my memory.
CB: That’s ok. So we’re in 1941.
GM: Yeah.
CB: You went out there in April.
GM: Thereabouts.
CB: You were there during the summer. How many months were you doing that training?
GM: April. So including the toing and froing?
CB: Yeah.
GM: So April. April, May, June, July, August, September, October. That’s about it yeah. Seven months.
CB: Ok. And at the end of -
GM: We had a visit by the New Zealand premier. Not that that’s of any particular significance other than the fact that we did get a visit.
CB: Because they were training New Zealanders as well.
GM: Well he was on a diplomatic tour of something and it was just one day that he came to Port Albert and for whatever it was and he, yes he chatted with us and what have you, it was quite interesting.
CB: At what stage were you presented with your observer’s brevvy? Flying badge.
GM: Oh what a good question. I can remember that. Now the question is what stage? [pause] I should have done some homework on this.
CB: This was before you returned to Britain was it?
GM: Oh yes. Oh yes. Yes. That was immediately before we left. We had the parade and we all got our wings. Most of us had the second uniform suitably fitted out with the, with the badges and we left the same afternoon so it was right at the end of the visit. Of course we left that evening, went to, started on our way back and as long, they didn’t want to know where we were going or anything like that except that they gave us a date to be at the port on the Atlantic coast so that we were travelling at any old time that suited us and we -
CB: Right.
GM: We were given, let’s see yes I think we were probably given five days or something like that.
CB: Yeah.
GM: To get ourselves from the station where we were got our wings and overnight I think we got ourselves to Toronto. It was a hundred and forty miles. It didn’t take long on the, on the train and of course we were all packed up and ready to go and probably another two or three days calling in at Montreal and returning to the Canadian port.
CB: Halifax, Nova Scotia.
GM: Halifax. Was it?
CB: Was it?
GM: I should have got myself a map out.
CB: Don’t worry. So you then take the boat via Iceland.
GM: No. No.
CB: You returned.
GM: We came -
CB: No.
GM: Straight back.
CB: Straight back.
GM: Yes.
CB: Ok.
GM: It was only on the outward journey we went to Iceland.
CB: Ok.
GM: So we came back and -
CB: Then what?
GM: Having landed in the UK we then transferred from the boat to a train and we were taken down to Bournemouth. There was a reception centre there and we then started the familiarisation of being with the RAF and not with the Canadian Air Force. There were differences.
CB: Because you’d been fair weather flyers in Canada. Now you were -
GM: Indeed.
CB: Coming to be foul weather flyers in the UK.
GM: Well certainly the weather was more, shall we say, a part of our daily life in Canada the weather was consistently good. There’s no doubt about that and, it wasn’t all that bad in this country but certainly it was, had to be watched and of course it got colder. It was much further north in Ontario which was south of us yes. And that was a different feeling about the whole thing. It was, you were getting near to being or realising that there was a war going on. In Canada it was like peacetime and back home then of course as soon as you were given leave then you returned home and many of us came from London area and of course we experienced the air raids. That was just part of it. From that reception centre and the familiarisation with English service we were posted to the Operational Training Units and as far as I was concerned that was at Lichfield and I won’t say everyone who had been with us in Canada was on that posting but certainly a fair number of us were so we were maintaining the same contacts as we had for quite some time which was very useful. The visit, as I say, to Lichfield was interesting. The familiarisation with the weather conditions was certainly on our minds far more than it had been under the rather stable conditions of Canada and of course when you did get leave you could go home, be with the family which was a great asset. The training at Lichfield lasted a fair time. Some, some months. It got extended. Now it’s here it was all much more serious in our, in our minds. I mean the next stage was to be as a squadron so it was essential that you got as much experience as you could while you were still in a training situation.
CB: What was the first thing you did when you got to Lichfield?
[pause]
GM: I think it was normal reception procedure. We had quite a pleasant reception on returning to this country and to go down to Bournemouth but you went up to this place and we were on for a fortnight or maybe for three weeks we were not on the main station but we were in the familiarisation situation and as the accommodation became available in the, training establishment which we would occupy for a month or two at OTU. The weather was a bit of shock I admit. It certainly was a lot cooler and flying in the blackout was an entirely new venture as far as we were concerned. We certainly had to get used to that through the winter of course. Then it doesn’t get light until what half past seven getting towards 8 o’clock and certainly it got dark in late afternoon. Five, 6 o’clock at the most so it rather altered our lifestyle but it was good to get into the area where things were beginning to happen and we recovered our enthusiasm I think. After that first two or three weeks we were then posted on to the main station at Lichfield and we then started flying.
CB: Ok let me just interrupt a mo. So you arrive on your own but to fly you have to be in a crew so how did that work?
GM: Ah. This is the point we were, came from various places and we had a period, some of this period was on the earlier three weeks and you just lived with the other youngsters, they were, and we sorted ourselves out into crews so that you’d found some likeness in your thinking and in your, the type of youngster that was there and the crews came together sort of voluntarily. It didn’t always work and you had to make changes providing the instructors there had decided that it was better if you worked with somebody else. So it was mostly a voluntary crewing up I would say and where there was a need for, to get a move on so to speak if you didn’t crew up voluntarily which started usually with the pilots. There were two pilots if I remember rightly and a navigator and then of course, as it was Wellingtons then, we had a couple of gunners and the bomb expert. So that was a rather peculiar setting as we had a bomb aimer as well. There were two of us who were capable of carrying on with that role but we sorted ourselves out and the course progressed and as a crew then you started taking some of your spare time together and, or all of it just depending on how you hit it off and the crews gradually gelled into a working unit. I don’t recall in my particular connection whether there was anybody who couldn’t work with their opposite number.
CB: So when you were on the OTU what were the main tasks preparing you for the next stage?
GM: Well there was the conversion of course from the aircraft that we’d used in the States, not the States, in Canada and pilots were having to do what was necessary and instead of flying Ansons then they were having to change onto Wellingtons which was quite a difference I understand but as far as the navigators were concerned whilst the pilots were doing their conversion then we were flying. I suppose it took about a fortnight, three weeks we were flying Ansons and doing navigation exercises. Of course the British countryside and the British weather and the like whilst the pilots were converting on to the bigger and heavier aircraft.
CB: So you’re all in the Wellington. You finished the OTU. Then what?
GM: We had a bit of trouble with a crash. Whilst we were at Lichfield yes we took off for a morning exercise, the power units started giving the pilots trouble so we converted er completed the approach to the circuit and we were on the way towards the aerodrome on this first, I’d better just start that again. This was a particular period after the training and we took off and the idea was to fly around and go over the aerodrome. That was your start of the exercise so you noticed the time and the details and you went off to do the exercise but in this case we got half way around on the first circuit and we started to get in to trouble with the engines and we couldn’t maintain height so before completing that circuit where you note the time and set off on the exercise as we approached that part of the flight then we lost height rather drastically and we made a wheeled up on approach, crossed over the railway line and a station and lobbed down into the fields on the east side of the railway and buckled the plane up and the pilot was injured so we he was carted off to hospital and the rest of us, who were in the crash positions when we hit the ground, got a few bruises and a shake up and we’d lost our pilot. So we then had a short period and a new chap, Australian, as all those particular pilots were. Another Australian to be the first pilot. So we changed crew a bit and that was that. We survived, survived the crash. Two or three day’s leave. Probably it was a week. I don’t really remember now but we had a short period off and when we came back then we were then reintroduced to the training and we continued until we got to the end. At the end of that particular training then we did a first flight to Germany and back as an introduction I suppose to what it was going to be like. We had a, yes a satisfactory introduction ourselves with the new pilot and we were quite happy as it went. The other chap, who was the Australian, Don Jennings, he was off, I think he had a broken leg. I wasn’t sure but because he got out of the plane and he got a few yards from the nose of the aircraft and he collapsed. I think he’d got a broken leg but I can’t swear to that. Then we were posted having satisfactorily done our first visit over enemy territory and went on leave and we didn’t get our actual place of posting to, at that time. I think it came by letter. I can’t be sure. It’s a detail that doesn’t matter but we were posted as a crew. I’m not even sure whether anybody else was posted with us. We were posted to Elsham Wolds.
CB: Didn’t you go to the Heavy Conversion Unit first?
GM: No. Not, not to my knowledge and this was, this was in early ’42.
CB: There weren’t any.
GM: There weren’t any.
CB: No.
GM: As such.
CB: Right. Ok. So straight to the squadron. What was the squadron?
GM: 103.
CB: And what were you flying?
GM: Wellingtons. 1Cs.
CB: Ok. Yeah.
GM: We were, as a crew given, so to speak, to an experienced pilot there who was already there and got a number of trips under his belt and we then started flying together and getting used to each other’s abilities and moods I suppose. The, we did a bit of flying for a short period and then we were put on our first trip which was a thousand raid on Cologne. We went on all the thousand raids.
CB: Ok. So what was that like?
GM: Spectacular. On sort of a, I mean a thousand aircraft and they got everybody over in about ninety minutes. I think that was, I can’t quote you for sure about this. That’s the general impression that I received. We did two. Was it? And then there was, there was a break and then we did, I think there was a third one but that’s just a detail that doesn’t really matter. And then it was time to be posted and we said, ‘It starts now.’ Yeah. So, and the -
CB: So how many raids, how many operations did you do from, with that, with 103 from Elsham Wolds?
GM: Seventeen but after we’d done ten then we changed aircraft to Halifax. Four engines. I didn’t fly Lancasters at all.
[pause]
CB: Let’s stop.
GM: We went -
CB: No carry on, go on.
GM: We were allocated to an experience pilot of course when we got there and so we had two pilots. Like us the trainee who we hoped we were beyond that stage by now and also a chap who’d been with the squadron for some time so that your early flights were all done with somebody who knew the score so to speak. Essential. Anyhow, the period we started flying seriously of course was, as I say, with the first thousand bomber raids which were oh about a third of the year away in 1942 and we converted on to Wellingtons. No. The -
CB: On to the Halifax.
GM: Halifax.
CB: When was that?
GM: That was roundabout July. We were there in time to do the thousand raids and our score trips was around about ten I would imagine when we changed over and we started operating the four-engined aircraft. That took us through September and in to October and on our seventeenth which was in to the Ruhr. Anyhow, that was a disastrous raid as far as we were concerned. We bombed the target, came away from it, we were only about ten thousand feet. We found at that time between ten and twelve was moderately safe for our purposes anyhow and on the way out from the target we were found by an ME110 and he just sort of hung on to the back of us about four hundred yards back and so it raises the question well what do you do about it. And so we did. We opened fire with the rear gunner and the mid upper and that didn’t please him at all so he then opened up and his accuracy from his point of view was pretty good. Anyhow, he hit the rear gunner, the bulk of the crew of course were up towards the nose end and the ammunition was zinging around. You could see it, some of it inside the fuselage. How I didn’t get hit I don’t know. Anyhow, we caught fire in the two inboard engines. The outside engines in both cases seemed to survive but we weren’t going to be able to get the fires out. There was no way about that. It was too fierce so the skipper said, ‘Bale out.’ I was in the nose of the aircraft in the navigator’s position and I was sitting on top of the front escape or entry position and skipper said, ‘Everybody out,’ and so I got up from my seat, folded it back, picked up the door or the flap whatever you’d like to call it, the hatch and turned it over and dropped it out of the bottom of the aircraft. Nobody was going to want it so and then with the parachute on I did what they said. Get out. So I sat down with my legs dangling out of the hole and gave myself a push and I slid out. I don’t know what height we were. This all happened very quickly and I fell some distance. Pulled the chute. That was the decision and it seemed a very short time, having just got my legs down that I was crashing through branches of a tree from top downwards and came to a rather ragged halt and swinging there I could hear a dog barking and I was just swinging in the harness. I couldn’t feel how high I was. It was pretty dark. So in the end I turned the parachute harness to the on position if that’s the right way and/or the off perhaps and banged the harness catch, the harness flew away and stayed up in the branches of the tree and I dropped. Fully twelve inches I would say and I was hanging there and in then the next second I got my feet on the ground. Wonderful. Started the dogs barking a bit more. I thought well there’s a farmhouse down there, I’d better get out of the way so I left the parachute and the harness up in the tree. It was probably, what, fifty sixty feet high, seemed to be a very high tree and so somebody got the parachute silk if they managed to get it down. I felt, made my way out of the foliage of the hedge in to the next field and made my way down a slope. A hundred or so yards or so of passing down a field and then I went through a hedge and dropped down on to a road and it fell away to the right so I had a quick look up at the sky and I could see where north was so that told me that’s where the North Sea is and I hadn’t got much of a clue where we were because we’d travelled quite a bit and in the plane as it burned. I went a short distance down the lane there and went past three or four people standing outside of a house and I ignored them. They were watching the raid which was going on in the distance away to the east so I hadn’t travelled very far even though it seemed a long time for us to still be within sight of where the raid was being, taking place. Complete muck up of timing as far as I was concerned but there we are so I continued walking. I was going north and decided that wasn’t a good thing and there was a lane turning off to the left and sort of a rise and so I thought well the only thing to do was to get oneself down south. It’s not going to be any easy to get across the sea around Northern Belgium and, or Denmark or anything like that so I decided that I’d make for Gib. It seemed an incredibly long distance but it seemed the best thing to do so I went up this side road, it rose and when I got to the top of the rather meagre rise I could see that the plane had crashed about a mile, a mile and a half away and it was burning away merrily. I had no idea what had happened to any of the other crew having jumped and been, ’cause I was told to get out of the way so everybody else could get out and I obliged. So anyhow I then decided that I’d have to go to the general area of Spain so I turned south taking my bearings from the stars and set off. I walked all that night. This was only about half past ten in the evening, it was quite an early raid and so I travelled a good few miles. I didn’t meet anybody at all. I travelled on the roads and in some cases I crossed fields and the like and just with the general aim of going in a south-westerly direction. I’d got a compass in my gear and that was it. I walked until the light began to show. In that time I’d done quite a lot of road walking and there was one part of it which went due west so I followed that through and then as it was beginning to show signs of getting light I thought, now to do, what do I do now? Anyhow I was approaching a village and there were field on the right, just ahead of me was village buildings started so I thought well I’d better go around the back so I turned right, went past the property there onto a footpath, followed that around and the light was getting a bit stronger so I thought well I’ve got to had to hide somewhere. So I was dead lucky. I found a farm road and I could tell that there was buildings down the end of it and I thought perhaps that was the farm itself and anyhow the clump of trees with some undergrowth and the road towards what I thought would probably be the farm went past it so I got myself into the clump of trees with the yes with a few thickets growing there and so I was out of sight and I went to sleep. When I woke up I could hear people talking and it was daylight and I carefully sort of took stock of my surroundings and workmen were going, of some sort, were going along the, that approach road that I had spotted and they obviously were farm workers because they seemed to go down to the farm and then they started their working day and there was a, the whole, there was a hillock. Couldn’t have been much more than that as part of where the trees where I was sheltering under was part of that so, and I could hear people working at the top of this rise sort of. I’d say that was it. Then I sort of got here into the trees and there was a rise with the trees in a clump and up on the top there where the actual farmable roads were, farmable fields were then there seemed to be a number of men doing whatever men do on fields in the autumn but I could hear them chatting away and talking and fortunately none of them came into the copse where I was trying to keep myself out of sight and that, so the days lasted and sometime just before it was getting, beginning to get dark then they all knocked off and they went past and went to the farm. Presumably at the end of their working day. So I thought well there’s nothing here for me and I didn’t have much in the way of, I had a bit of chocolate and a couple of toffees or something like that in my pocket so I sort of started off as soon as it was dark and went, followed my general trend in a south westerly direction and this went on for something like four days. Maybe it was five. I don’t know. I lost count somehow or another. I certainly covered some fair old ground in amount and each time as it began to get light then I had to find a hiding place and the most exotic one I suppose was I finished up in the middle of a village. It had got a High Street and had a bombed house there. It was beginning to get light so I took a chance on it and I assumed it was a bombed house. The windows had gone and it looked as if it had suffered some sort of damage. It may well be that it was just bad housekeeping and it had got deteriorated in the normal course of events. Anyhow, I sort of went around to the side entrance of the house and I saw there was a water butt with water coming into it, rain water. So I got my first drink for some time there and whilst I was standing there drinking the water in this tank I heard some footsteps crunch and just down about fifteen, sixteen feet away on the front of the, this house there was a road and somebody in uniform stopped and I could see them looking around and then they started looking up the alleyway where I was standing by the water butt and I froze. And after a couple of minutes he went off. So I thought that’s, that’s not much good. Anyhow, I went into the house and it was dry. I went upstairs and there was no furniture in the house. It was empty and it had been, considering that it was, I thought it might be a bombed house but I didn’t see any other bomb damage perhaps it was just general degrading of the property. Anyhow, I bedded myself down on the first floor in the front bedroom and I’d been up all night walking and what have you so I lay myself down and had a sleep and when I came too I could hear people chatting so I just stayed still where I was. I heard somebody, some boys down below and one of them started coming up the stairs and fortunately he gave it a second thought and went back so he didn’t see me and as it was the school lunchtime period they all disappeared and I was left. I could look out of the window and see people doing their shopping and what have you in the shops close by. I kept myself well down so that I wasn’t spotted at all and eventually lights of some sort began to show and then they had the blackout going of course and once the people had got off the street there didn’t seem to be many people occupying the pavements during the blackout period and I thought, time to go. So I did. I got downstairs, out of the house, there was nobody about much so I just made my way out of the property in the general southwest direction and away we went. Well eventually, I, one of these midnight walks and what have you I got soaking wet in rain and I’d been walking about an hour or so I suppose and so I thought, oh well the best thing I could do is go back to my last place and dry out. I didn’t want to get through anything. I hadn’t got any food so I was rather low mentally on that. Anyhow, I did turn around and started walking back and went through in the return direction, a road that I’d already been along and I saw the property which was showing a light. It shouldn’t have been but it was so I stood on the opposite side of the road and watched the house. There was no movement or anything like that at all so I thought well the rain had stopped and I was beginning to dry off, feeling in a better mood and so I went across, banged on the door and obviously I startled the family and a man put his head out, ‘Qui es la?’ So I thought well my French is no good so I said, ‘RAF. Air force.’ And then I had to repeat that and he got it because he didn’t say anymore just slammed the window, I heard him running, coming downstairs, he opened the door, he looked at me and I showed him a couple of my badges on my uniform. I mean I struck oil. That was the beginning of making contact with the resistance.
CB: I’m going to suggest we stop there for a mo.
[machine paused]
CB: So we’ve got to the stage where the man has left you, let you into his house.
GM: Oh yes. Yes. And his wife came thundering down the stairs to see what was happening. And they were very kind. They were very kind. My language was not very good but we managed to make ourselves understood with each other and they produced some food for which I was infinitely grateful. I’d gone through quite a few days without. And then there was a bang on the door and in walked a local padre and he’d obviously been made well aware of my nationality because he started to speak to me with a few questions in English. I don’t think he got a great deal but enough for us to settle with each other that we were both on the same side and he said, ‘You’re coming with me.’ So I thought, that’s, you know, that’s good and we left the couple who had fed me and watered me and we set off and we walked to the next village and we went into the manse. I suppose that’s the proper name for it. Anyhow, it’s where he lived and worked and I was introduced to his housekeeper. She obviously was used to seeing strange people and she gave me a grin and shook my hand and that was it so I was then sent to bed so to speak and waited. Yes. We come, oh wait a minute. Have we got away from the first house I called in?
CB: The house where they, you called in and he was upstairs and came down and opened -
GM: Yes.
CB: And let you in.
GM: Yes. Let me in and they -
CB: Fed you.
GM: Fed me. That’s right. And the local priest then came and he collected me and we went to his home.
CB: Right.
GM: That’s right. Yes. Well that was temporary. I don’t, I must have stayed there overnight. I think they were, they were a little bit perturbed because they had a young son so they sort of kept me out of sight whilst, before he went to school otherwise it would have been all around and during that period on the following day I had a visit from a lady who was in the business of getting people away under these sort of circumstances and so I was taken to another village and I stayed there for a short while. Subsequently men came and we chatted a bit and I went with him on a train journey. [pause] And where did we get? I’ve lost my thread a bit.
CB: We can stop.
GM: Sorry.
CB: We can stop a mo.
[machine paused]
GM: But I banged on the door.
CB: Yeah.
GM: And they let me in and they fed me and I then went with the local priest.
CB: So you went to his house, you said.
GM: Yes.
CB: And then -
GM: And then, having stayed two nights. Yes. I think we can, stayed two nights.
CB: Ok.
GM: I was taken by, to be honest I don’t know who the bloke was there. No.
[pause]
CB: Well it doesn’t matter -
GM: Anyway.
CB: What his name is. If we can just -
GM: No.
CB: Yeah
GM: After the second night sleep there I was collected and escorted into -
[pause]
GM: I’m getting muddled up now. This is ridiculous.
CB: Let’s just have another break.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gordon Mellor. Three
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-17
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMellorGH160817
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Gordon Mellor grew up in London and hoped to become a quantity surveyor when he was called up. He volunteered for the Air Force and trained as a navigator in Canada. On his return to the UK he and his crew were posted to 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds. Returning from an operation to the Ruhr, they were shot down by a night fighter. When Gordon baled out he landed initially in a tree and then managed to find a hiding place and then began his experience of being on the run. Finally he managed to make contact with the Belgian resistance and the Comete line who began the process of guiding him home.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
Gibraltar
Germany
Great Britain
Spain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:28:00 audio recording
103 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
crash
crewing up
de Jongh, Andree (1916 - 2007)
evading
Halifax
Me 110
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Lichfield
Resistance
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/84/9919/PCluettAV1567.2.jpg
dd14c1af0b313c82d87eec0b2a2d2453
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
Cluett, Albert Victor
Albert Victor Cluett
A V Cluett
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
68 items. The collection concerns Leading Aircraftman Albert Victor Cluett (1209046, Royal Air Force). After training in 1941/42 as an armourer, he was posted to 50 Squadron at RAF Swinderby and then RAF Skellingthorpe. The collections consists his official Royal Air Force documents, armourer training notebooks, photographs of colleagues, aircraft and locations as well as propaganda items, books in German and Dutch and items of memorabilia.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Albert Victor Cluett's daughter Pat Brown and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Cluett, AV
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Flying Officer Leslie Thomas Manser, Victoria Cross
Description
An account of the resource
Head and shoulders portrait of Leslie Thomas Manser wearing tunic and peaked cap. Captioned 'F/O Leslie Thomas Manser, V.C. RAFVR (Deceased), No 50 Sqdn. - Avro Manchester --- Cologne (mass raid) --- May 30, 1942'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One newspaper cutting
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PCluettAV1567
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05-30
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.
50 Squadron
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Manchester
Victoria Cross
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/807/10788/PDunbarR1801.2.jpg
c38f885fabde34a9f89d47e0ba505fc8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/807/10788/ADunbarR180624.1.mp3
d7cdd125daadfc734bce7f179423743d
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
Dunbar, Reg
R Dunbar
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Reginald Dunbar DFM (b. 1921, 50747 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 37 and 100 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dunbar, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JB: This interview is being carried out for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jennifer Barraclough. The interviewee is Reginald Dunbar. The date is the 24th of June 2018 and we are at Mr Dunbar’s Apartment in Albany near Auckland. Ok. Thank you very much Mr Dunbar. Could you start by telling us a little about your early life and how you came to join up with the Air Force?
RD: Yes. Of course. It’s a pleasure. My name is Reginald Dunbar. I am a wing commander retired. I think I’d best start with when I was born. I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and moved across to Liverpool when I was six months old. I wouldn’t say that I was thrown out of Ireland but it felt like that [laughs] I attended a normal sort of school. Nothing particularly clever. Just normal schooling until I was seventeen and a half. But during that time I moved around a bit because my father was a baker on the White Star Line that used to go out to America and he stayed out there for a while at one stage to my mother’s rather disappointment. But however, I got a, I left school at fourteen and got a job in a shoe shop which was situated in Liverpool city. I persevered in that job until I was seventeen and a half and at that stage I was at the time a member of a church choir in Liverpool, namely, Emanuel Church. And while there I joined the Church Lad’s Brigade and although you may not heard of it, it was a sort of semi-military affair and they were issued with rifles of all things at the time which we marched off to church with at this, whatever the attention was. What it was called? Anyway, when I reached the age of seventeen and a half I was a bandsman in the Church Lad’s Brigade and used to sort of do a lot of work with my colleagues in the band doing, doing sort of training really for armaments which seemed strange for a church organisation. However, a colleague of mine named Norman King decided he would leave the Church Lad’s Brigade and join the Air Force. Now, he was six months older than me and he decided to leave and I followed him after, about six months after he’d left and left. And when I arrived at the recruiting office in Liverpool I asked if I could be a pilot and they checked on my background and said well, no. They thought something less [pause] less difficult than that and they suggested I join as a wireless operator with a six month training session. So, anyway I did that and left and joined up via a place called [pause] a place called, what was the name of the — ?
Other: [unclear]
RD: Where the R101 were based.
Other: Cardington.
RD: Cardington. That’s right. Cardington. And that’s where they had their recruiting set up and there was nothing in there apart from rows and rows of tables with plates on the table. Six plates on each table. This was for recruits and they had these sort of well, odd looking meals on board. They were sort of cow heels I think they were called. They were white, you know. Obviously the way they’d been cooked. However, sufficient to say at the end of a meal we found that the bins outside the buildings were full of these cow heels [laughs] Nobody had touched them. Anyway, we went from there to our training unit and my unit was, training unit for training was Yatesbury. Yatesbury was down in [pause] where was Yatesbury? Down in the south of England anyway. And I always remember the place because it was hilly around there and they had on the hills these white horses printed you know, and I used to spend a lot of my spare time sitting up on the hill enjoying life. You know, when I didn’t have to be doing any training. I seemed to be sort of by myself a lot. I didn’t make a lot of friends there to be quite truthful. I was by myself most of the time. I met a lot of people that lived local and they seemed to take a lot of care. They’d invite me out for meals and things you know when they saw me in uniform sitting doing nothing there. However, it was quite a comprehensive training they gave you including of course the Morse Code, everything and taught you all about training. And I had a good six months training and when I’d finished I was posted to a place. Where was it? I think it was over in Lincoln as a, on ground, ground equipment. Actually, I was posted to train on teleprinters. They’re the things like a printer, you know and that was shortly before the war broke out. Well, when the war broke out I was, I had volunteered for wartime training for Bomber Command. They were after, they were after volunteers and at that time I was only, what was it? Seventeen and a half approximately. And I went to South Wales to do my gunner training because you couldn’t be a wireless operator by itself. It had to be with the training as a gunner, an air gunner. Well, I went down to South Wales. I’ve forgotten the place it was but I remember doing my training down there which consisted of training on aircraft which was, which trailed a sort of a what would you call it?
Other: Kite? Kite?
RD: It was trailed. A sort of a target. It was a target. It was sort of a round sort of [pause] the idea was you hit it as many times as you could from a distance of over two hundred yards. And I remember the pilot putting up that aircraft putting in a bit of a complaint about me as a gunner as he didn’t know whether I was trying to hit him or the drogue. That’s what it was called. It was called a drogue. I don’t think he was too, he was too happy with me. Anyway, things mellowed and I did, let’s see, I suppose two months training as a gunner and we were trained from an open, open, an open [pause] an open seated. It wasn’t closed in or anything. We were just firing from the, from the side of the aircraft. It was a two seater. A very early one. Anyway, we’ll pass over that one but when I, when I had finished I was posted to Number 37 Bomber Squadron which was a Wellington aircraft. A Wellington aircraft was a two engined aircraft, and it was a geo traffic, a sort of cross of [pause] what was it made of? Aluminium and it was made in crossing and it was covered with fabric and two engined. And it sounds as though it was a very frail aircraft but believe me it was one of the workers of the Air Force. It was a very good aircraft. When you got, if you got a hit, if you got a hit and it made a hole in the side of the aircraft you got back alright because the whole sort of, the whole sort of make of the aircraft held together and sort of stuck together. You know what I mean? And so it sort of saved you from crashing or anything. So that was very helpful. But I, I was consigned to the rear gunner’s position because the crew that I was assigned with, when I was assigned to them had already done fifteen raids on Germany, and a number of raids that they did before they were sent home for a month’s rest was thirty, and they had already done fifteen. So when I’d done fifteen they had already done their thirty. You see what I mean. And the captain was a Flying Officer Warner who’d a big system of clothing shops in England, and I was his rear gunner because the rear gunner that he had at that stage had been dismissed from the Air Force because he had medical problems. Well, of course being at the start there I didn’t know much about it but I soon learned because the raids that we took part in were over Moers, the Ruhr Valley, Dortmund, Leverkusen, Black Forest North, Bremen, Waalhaven, Emden, [Gottensburg?] Hamburg, Munchengladbach twice, Sonnendorf, Soest, [Rossel?] and Rostock. And if you want to know why I remember those it’s only because I took them from my logbook which I haven’t got to show you because my eldest son has it and he’s sent it to me but it hasn’t reached me yet. So I have to apologise for that.
JB: Ok.
RD: But luckily I had made this. And from there I was transferred over to another squadron because I’d only done fifteen raids and I went to a squadron, same squadron of Wellingtons only it was commanded by a Squadron Leader Golding. Squadron Leader Golding was a regular officer and he was a very sort of experienced man and I was very pleased to have been allocated to him. With his aircraft I was posted not as a gunner but as a wireless operator which was my basic trade of course and he must have been quite pleased with me because he gave me an instant first operator’s job and I guided the aircraft by wireless over Hanover, Black Forest twice, Emden. I don’t know whether you want to know all this do you?
JB: Yes.
RD: Flushing, Berlin, Bottrop, Rotterdam, Hamburg, [Benroth] Hamburg, Berlin, Cuxhaven, Hamburg and Kiel. And after this that was my fifteen. So altogether I’d done thirty ops so I had to leave that squadron. They had to do another fifteen before they had it but I was sent on my way to do a month’s rest. So with, I was a sergeant at that time and I packed my kitbag and went to Euston Station on my way to Liverpool, but while I was on the station platform waiting for my train a message came over the tannoy system, ‘Would Sergeant Dunbar please report to the station master’s office on platform 1.’ So I thought to myself well what the heck would I have to report that I’m on my way for a leave.’ However, I made my way across to see what they wanted and the station master said, ‘I’ve had a report from — ’ I’ve forgotten my station. Feltwell. RAF Feltwell, where we were stationed. The squadron were stationed — ‘Asking you to return back to base.’ I wasn’t very pleased with that of course. So I got the train back and when I went back there and I saw the wing commander in his office and he said, ‘I don’t want you to be worried, Reg.’ He called me by my first name so I thought there was something funny. So I sat down on the chair and he said, ‘37 Squadron is going out to Middle East to operate there in North Africa and your erstwhile captain, Squadron Leader Golding asked me to contact you to see if you would be his wireless operator to go out to Middle East with him. And if you don’t want to go you just say so.’ So, I just quickly thought to myself the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know, because if I had gone on my leave when I came back I’d have to be put on another squadron see, and I knew him and he knew me and we got on well together. And so I said, ‘Well, all things being equal, sir.’ [unclear]
RD: It’s ok.
JB: ‘All things being equal, sir I think I’ll go out with the squadron as first wireless operator.’ And I trotted around to the squadron commander’s office and shook hands with Squadron Leader Golding who welcomed me like a long lost son. And we had to do some sort of training where, sort of radio training, you know where we would go away from base and he’d ask me to sort of guide him back to the middle of the airfield. Which I did by using my own sort of loop and everything and he was very pleased with that. So, anyway we were all set to go and we set out in January. January ’41 I think it was. Excuse me if I’m a little out on the dates.
JB: That’s ok.
RD: But out to Middle East. Right. Now, I was first wireless operator. Now, we went from Feltwell and we flew by night and we got to Malta where we were, Malta was our first stop. Malta. RAF Malta. And from there the station commander was a group captain and he was a little concerned at the times the Italians had attacked Malta and seeing the local population being housed in the caves in Malta because there were lots of caves there and they were pushed in there when there was a warning. And he asked Air Ministry I presume if he could hold on to 37 Squadron to get a bit of their own back on Italy. And from there we were, we attacked Taranto twice. That was the Naval base. And Naples which was effective of course, and Castel Benito and they were the total. And then we went and we were released from there. He let us go after that and we went on. We went on to our base at Shallufa which was on the [pause] I was based on the, there as the [pause] excuse me while I just —
JB: That’s ok.
RD: What do they call the canal?
Other: Suez.
RD: The canal. You know the —
JB: The Suez Canal.
RD: The Suez Canal. The Suez Canal that was, yeah. Well, that’s where Shallufa was built. It was an air force base and it was built solely to meet the needs of the Air Force and they were, we were, we were stationed in Shallufa, the squadron and we were used as a sort of heavy bomber squadron to bomb bases on the north, north of the, the [pause] you know the, the north shore of the north. You know where. Oh, well if I give you these actual targets you’ll probably know where it was —
JB: Yes, don’t worry.
RD: Hmm?
JB: Don’t worry.
RD: Yes. Well, we were sent out in a bomber. From there we bombed Bardia, twice. Bardia is a port on the north coast of North Africa. So we did two on Bardia, Derna which is further along the coast. Tobruk, Benghazi, Fouka, Benghazi again. Tobruk again. Rhodes and Fouka again. So we did our fair share of that. After that just the bottom [unclear] I was recalled, personally recalled to the UK when I was sent back by ship. When I got back I was posted to the first, 15. I thought that was first. It was 15. Number 15 Operational Training Unit and that was training people coming on to bombers which was at RAF Harwell. That’s where they later had the chemical —
JB: Yeah.
RD: You remember that.
JB: Yeah.
RD: Right. Well, that was on the 30th posted there to train others. Well, on the 30th of May 1942 we were in our bomber. The bomber that we were allocated to. Oh, I’ll tell you the background of that. The prime minister who you know. The prime minster wanted to get his own back a little bit on Germany and decided he would like to have the Air Force hold thousand bomber operations over Cologne. Just to give them a bit of their own back. To do that he had to shut down the operational flying of the RAF Bomber Command while they got the aircraft serviced because it would have to include training aircraft as well. He wouldn’t have enough otherwise. And so they had to have a sort of a competition and you had to have a sort of a pick, pick, pick [pause] You had to have all these aircraft of one squadron put in a hat, their numbers and you picked one. And some got operational flying Mark 2 Merlin engine modern Wellingtons, and others got aircraft that were old ones and only being used for circuits and bumps. That’s training pilots to, you know land. And unfortunately the one that we picked for the Cologne operation was one of the old ones and the sergeant, the flight sergeant who was the pilot of this first thousand bomber operation to Cologne was a bit, well fed up with it because when we were doing training for this operation he couldn’t get it to fly higher than eight thousand feet which isn’t very much. Anyway, the way he overcome that was on the operation itself. Instead of taking the aircraft to the city he kept it on the outskirts and instructed the bomb aimer to drop his bombs when he did a split, if you excuse my language split arse turn around and, to let his bomb go when his [unclear] And of course the super thing carried the bombs into the centre of the city or as near as he could get them because he wasn’t going to check. He wasn’t going to take any risks with the aircraft because he was too low. So anyway, we got back alright obviously. Well, we went on training. Training the, and in the, what was the prime minister’s name in those days?
Other: Churchill.
RD: The prime minister’s name.
Other: Churchill.
JB: Churchill. Winston Churchill.
RD: Churchill.
JB: Winston Churchill.
RD: Yeah. He was, he was so pleased with the efforts of this that he decided he’d like another one. So they’d done a second thousand bomber operation to go to Essen. Not all that far from Cologne. That’s where they had all the armaments. Well, we were sitting, and we went on this Bomber Command operation, a thousand bomber. It was successful and we did it and we got a few holes in the aircraft to satisfy us. Or satisfy the Germans I should say. We got back alright, and would you believe it that was on the 11th of June 1942, only a month later. Well, would you believe it there was no satisfying the prime minister was there? He decided he’d like to try a third one if you remember. Anyway, we were sitting in the briefing room. I remember sitting next to my friend who was also a wireless operator, a fella named Harry Jordan, and the chap came on and they had a big briefing room for these things you know and they tell you what the weather’s like and what the targets are. It was a typical Bomber Command briefing room and when this chap he got up to start his briefing another chap came on from the Ministry, the Air Ministry and he excused himself and obviously they had arranged it between them because it was his job to put to the audience volunteers for special duties of just wireless, and young pilots. Young pilots. I’ll tell you why in a minute. So I turned to my comrade and I said, ‘How do you feel about volunteering for special duties? I’m fed up with these thousand bomber raids.’ He said, ‘Yeah, alright.’ So we were two of the volunteers, and we went up to a place. I won’t bore you with what happened afterwards but eventually we were sent up to a place called RAF Drem which was a little south of Edinburgh, and we were briefed there. And we eventually, we were posted on to [pause] oh the aircraft there were Defiants. They were fighters. Now, the reason they happened to be fighters, Defiants was because they had been used as night fighters originally but the Germans had soon, they were fighter aircraft with a turret in the top and Germans had learned how to get at them coming underneath. So it didn’t take them long for the RAF to discount them, and so they gave them to us. They had nothing else for them and so they used them to, used them for daylight operations called Moonshine and this, how they did this, the Defiant squadron they had usually around about twelve aircraft, and they had the pilot and the likes of me who was acting as a wireless gunner. If we were attacked we attacked them from the, from the turret. But our wireless job was in the back of the aircraft. We’d have to get down out of the turret and work our way in to utilise our skills on the radio stuff. Now, how it worked was this, you might like to know. I think this is still secret. How it works was this. When we got, when we got up to about a thousand or, how many was it? I think it was about eight thousand feet. Around about that. We were, we were over the south coast and we were met by a squadron of Spitfires or some fighters, and we were waiting there and at that stage we were flying out over the German coast, and we would have had the information to turn on our electrical stuff which comprised of equipment which gave the impression when switched on of there being a sort of a wing of bomber aircraft going out there. It wasn’t of course. It was only us. The Germans, hearing this would take off as a squadron of fighters to attack this incoming lot, which we weren’t and they would be flying this way and when they were over here where we were the Spitfires, who were on a higher level would take up with them, and would sort of have a dogfight with them I suppose. And in the interim period the American squadrons would go out from where they were arranged to go from on the daylights. Now, that’s about all I’m going to say about that but they were, but we went to France, Holland, France, Belgium, France calibration, calibration. That’s where we had to do calibration. Make sure that the equipment was still right. Holland, France, Germany, France, calibration, Holland, France. Oh, and then we crashed at Heathrow [laughs] We got back alright but France and Holland and that was all we did on the daylight. Then we did night operations. Now, a night operation were absolutely different. Dutch, French coast were divided into eight positions of ten miles. It doesn’t matter how long they were, but they were limited and each aircraft of ours —
[knocking on the door - recording pause]
JB: Carry on.
RD: Each aircraft of ours was, was sent to a different position. So we were stationed at, what’s that RAF station near London?
Other: Northolt.
RD: Hmm?
Other: Northolt.
RD: Northolt. We were based at Northolt. But on the days when there was going to be a big bomber attack at night we were sent to the forward landing grounds that we’d been allocated to. Refuelled. Did everything right. And that night when the Bomber Command, the bombers were going out there we were allocated to our different positions and we switched on our equipment from, but we didn’t switch it from, we were sitting in our turret and when we were given the instruction swe lowered the seat which was just a crossbar and got in to the back of the aircraft and switched on our equipment, and this equipment was just jamming equipment. It jammed the German radar and when it, we didn’t do that until we knew the RAF were going over. But when they were going over we switched on and it stopped the Germans being able to sort of get on to our people who were coming out. It’s a very vague way of explaining it, I’m sorry.
JB: That’s alright.
RD: I’ve forgotten most of it.
JB: That’s fine.
RD: And they did that. All I’ve got here is eight positions which were the positions we were in. Position 7 6 7 1 1 1 8 5 7 7. Just all the numbers on the different nights that the Bomber Command aircraft were going out there. And in the end they took me off it and sent me up to Scotland to train others which I didn’t like particularly but then I think it’s in that thing that Richard’s got.
Other: Dumfries. Dumfries.
RD: Dumfries, that’s right. RAF Dumfries. We used to go out taking pilots and crew. Training them, you know. And we, it was while we were up there we heard about the landings in France, you know. We didn’t take part in those. We were probably told that we had done enough. And that’s about it.
JB: That’s about it.
RD: And from there I was taken on as a flight lieutenant in the RAF, given a permanent commission and what did I end up as? Wing commander wasn’t it? Wing commander. And I left the Royal Air Force when I found that I couldn’t get any further, and I went in to the Australian Air Force and did some manpower planning for them which I in the meantime had become expert in. And from there I did a short term engagement with them. I extended a couple of years. They asked me if I’d stay on for a while in Australia which I did. My wife didn’t mind, in fact she was a real wonder isn’t she? She’s a wonder. She stayed. She didn’t mind. And yeah, and from there I came back to England. And from England we went out oh [pause] and we came out to New Zealand and stayed out here. We got permission to stay out here. So that’s about it.
JB: That’s it. Thank you. That was splendid.
RD: [unclear]
JB: It was excellent. I really enjoyed that.
RD: Oh, well I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’ve got —
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 Reg Dunbar
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jennifer Barraclough
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADunbarR180624, PDunbarR1801
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:48:26 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Reg Dunbar enlisted for the RAF in Liverpool and it was suggested that he join as a wireless operator. He went to RAF Cardington initially and then to Yatesbury for training. He also trained as an air gunner, and after training was posted to 37 Squadron flying Wellingtons. When he had completed thirty operations and was heading home on leave he received a message at Euston station to return to base. His pilot requested that he join his crew that they were being posted to the Middle East, and flew to RAF Shallufa via Malta to commence bombing operations. He was recalled back to UK and was posted to 15 OTU at RAF Harwell and it was from here that he took part in the first thousand bomber operation on Cologne in 1942. Reg volunteered for operations at RAF Drem flying in Defiants as part of Moonshine operations to jam enemy radar. He was given a permanent commission and joined the RAAF attaining the rank of Wing Commander.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
France
Germany
Great Britain
Malta
North Africa
Egypt--Suez Canal Region
England--Bedfordshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Wiltshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Libya
Libya--Bardiyah
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05-30
1942-06-11
100 Squadron
15 OTU
37 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Defiant
Operational Training Unit
RAF Cardington
RAF Drem
RAF Dumfries
RAF Harwell
RAF Shallufa
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/10827/PGoldbyJL1701.1.jpg
a45bc6d8a3e3b396aa60a0e197184a52
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/10827/AGoldbyJL171025.2.mp3
eeb8f152cb68ea23e18042b8b5151712
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
Goldby, John Louis
J L Goldby
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Goldby (1922 - 2020, 1387511, 139407 Royal Air Force). He was shot down and became a prisoner of war in December 1944.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Goldby 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
2017-10-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Goldby, JL
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is John Goldby. The interview is taking place at Mr Goldby’s home in Keston in the county of Kent on the 25th of October 2017. Ok, John. Well, if you’d like to perhaps kick off. Tell us a bit about where you were born and about growing up.
JG: Yes. I was born in Bexley, Kent in 1922. The next thing, the following year the family moved to Sidcup and my home until I joined up was in Sidcup. I went to what was then called the Sidcup County School before that was then turned into a grammar school and I went, started there in 1931 and I stayed there until the end of the summer 1939. From there on I, until I joined up I worked for a private bank, Brown Shipley and Company in the City of London. And I worked for them until I joined up in May 19 — 1941.
DM: What, when you, what prompted you to join the air force as opposed to going into another service?
JG: Well, my reason for the air force was I had a friend who was at the school who was about a year older than I was and as soon as he could join anything he joined the air force and became a Spitfire pilot. I thought that’s just the thing. One, one great advantage is if something happens to you when you’re at ten twenty thousand feet up there’s a chance of something might come to your rescue in those twenty thousand feet. Whereas if you are shot on the battlefield that’s where you’ll lie. And if you fall in the water in certain circumstances in the Navy that’s where you’ll end because the water is very cold. I stayed with the bank until such time as I, as I was actually called up because until I was eighteen I wasn’t allowed to go. But when the time came in 1941 I joined and I was, had been recorded as being fit for either pilot or navigator training. Because at that time it was the beginning of the expansion of Bomber Command to the four engine aircraft which meant there were now there was a bomb aimer and a navigator and as it happened the extra body and above that was a flight engineer.
DM: Where? When you say you signed up and then you were called up?
JG: Yes.
DM: To go and train. I assume that was the next thing.
JG: That’s right.
DM: Where did that happen? Where did you go for that?
JG: They were, the receiving wing as it was called was in Babbacombe in, in Devon and I went down there on the 31st of May 1941. After a couple of months or so then started ground, with air crew ground training. Morse code and all that sort of thing. Aircraft recognition. The sort of basic things which would then enable me to go on to flying training. In fact, some of my ground training was up here at Kenley which was a fighter aircraft airfield and was involved in the Battle of Britain or had been by the time I got there. And that was a number, there were quite a lot of these actual operational stations which housed training. Ground training for aircrew. Eventually, having done ground training I was then allocated a position in Air Observer School for training, as they were called then air observers. And the one, and then they were allocated on the basis of alphabetical order. And there were five of us in on the list whose initial was G. And the five of us who’d been looking forward to going to either South Africa or Canada or somewhere exotic like that found ourselves going to the Isle of Man. And I thought what a jolly place to be for the cold winter because that’s where I started training in October 1941 and I stayed there until May 1942. And then it was to Operational Training Unit. And in those days Operational Training Unit, the individual aircrew got together and formed a crew. It was virtually sort of go and find someone who you liked, feel you would like to fly with. It wasn’t mandatory as far as I know who you were allocated or I was and then people were added of course. A pilot who was in army uniform and in fact he had opted to change to aircrew which of course you could do if you wanted to go aircrew. And that’s another thing with the police. The police were allowed to leave and join up for aircrew duties. And so we had, we had a lot of police in our intake if you like who’d done all sorts of jobs in the police. And I flew, we used to fly in pairs on navigational training. And the extraordinary thing really for navigational training we were flying Blenheims which were actually operational aircraft. And it was the fastest aircraft I think I flew in the whole war. That’s — and I flew with a chap who had been a policeman in Glasgow. Actually, he was a mobile policeman. Anyway, the bombing training was from Hampdens, both of those aircraft were of course twin-engine. And then, and air gunnery we flew in, again in Blenheims firing at a drogue. And the training there lasted from the October ’41 to May ’42 and then back to this country. And then in the June on we went to [pause] can we stop it for a moment?
[recording paused]
JG: Still training. An Operational Training Unit which was at Stanton Harcourt which was a subsidiary to, or satellite to RAF Abingdon. When having or while we were there my pilot went on the first thousand bomber raid in, in May ’42 as a sort of, as a second pilot. Then in June, on the 25th of June ’42 we flew as a crew to Cologne in a Whitley. That was on the three days before my twentieth birthday which was the 25th of June 1942. We flew on the 25th. Did I say 25th? The 28th of June is my birthday.
DM: Right.
JG: Did I make a mistake there?
DM: That’s ok. So your birthday’s the 28th of June.
JG: 28th
DM: You flew on the 25th.
JG: The 25th
DM: A few days before. Yeah.
JG: Having finished there at OTU we then went to RAF St Eval. And the policy at that time was that crews that were now finished OTU, certainly from 4 Group went down to do a number, or several months’ worth of flying in Whitleys in, on an anti-submarine role. An anti-submarine role.
DM: So, St Eval is in Cornwall. Is that right?
JG: Cornwall.
DM: Yeah.
JG: That’s right. We, we used to fly ten hour sorties from there and when we came back the next day we were absolutely clear. We didn’t do anything that day. In fact we couldn’t probably hear anything that day but because the conditions of course in the Whitley are pretty cramped. But we had to do the ten hours and the following day was a free day. The next day we were briefed on what the flight was to be the following day. And that was the pattern. And you had a free day, briefing and then the next day you flew. I did, as far as I can recall — one of the problems I have is that my, I never retrieved my logbook following becoming a POW when all my stuff was taken and distributed. So, one way or another I didn’t ever get my book back and I’ll say a bit more about that later. Anyway, after that, after our period down there in Cornwall we came back up to Yorkshire to the, to a Conversion Unit on the four engine aircraft. And that was when I joined or after that period in a, in the Marston Moor was the Conversion Unit in Yorkshire. And we flew then with, now with the extra crew the [pause] I suppose we spent about a month there and then as a crew we went to RAF Linton on Ouse and joined 78 Squadron which was at that time commanded by Wing Commander Tait, T A I T. Known as Willie Tait and who ended his career, I suppose it would have been when he took on the final sortie against the Tirpitz. He, I don’t know — there was a programme on last night. Was of the 617 Squadron and the, and the nine aircraft that flew on this final sortie and demolished the Tirpitz, it was about the fourth or fifth time they’d done it. Had not had a big enough bomb which of course had to be designed by Barnes Wallis who was the author, if you like, of the bomb, the bouncing bomb. Anyway, Willie Tait was a bit of a frightening man. He was not popular because he was so blooming strict and didn’t fraternise really with other aircrew. And it was particularly noticeable because Linton on Ouse was shared between 78 Squadron with Willie Tait and 76 Squadron with Leonard Cheshire and they were so different it’s hardly true. So, we arrived there in October and we started operations. Starting with what we used to call, or was called gardening. That’s mine laying. Which counted for only one operation. People disappeared on those things so how they could justify going down for, on a half an op, I don’t know. And I stayed there with 78 Squadron until March ’43. That was, that was’ 42. ’43, I had gone down at the end of February ’43. I was commissioned and I went down to London to get kitted out. I came back and I developed a raging throat infection. It turned out to be an abscess and I was put into hospital and I never re-joined 78. I then went on sort of sick leave and eventually I had the tonsils out at the time of my 21st birthday before then going on to the sort of thing that one did at the end of a tour of operations which was as an instructor. And that’s when I went in that year down to Moreton in Marsh flying Wellingtons. I stayed there [pause] I’m getting a bit. Will you turn it off a bit?
[recording paused]
JG: My time at Moreton in Marsh lasted until the spring of 1944. Following that I completed a bombing leader course at the Armaments School at RAF Manby in January 1944. At the end of that I then went to RAF Riccall. This was another of the Conversion Units. Yeah. And from there, after doing the bombing leader course I went from the — to this. To Riccall. RAF Riccall which was the conversion [pause] I’d better have it off.
[recording paused]
JG: Riccall. RAF Riccall, on a refresher course before joining a Squadron. And that’s where I was on D-day. So, by the time I reached 640 Squadron it was the end of June 1944 and that’s where I went to take up the post of bombing leader.
DM: When you went — so you were on your new base.
JG: Yes.
DM: You were now a bombing leader. Did you have a crew?
JG: No.
DM: Or were you a sort of a spare bod?
JG: That’s right.
DM: As they said.
JG: That’s right. Yes. Well, I’ve got in my notes down here. In that position I was supposed to stay. Fly no more than two operations a month which was not very much. And I was the one who selected when I would go and with whom. Sensibly and logically really the ones I went on I was actually taking the place of somebody in the crew who was not able to go on that particular flight. Illness or whatever reason. And I was flying, we were coming up to Christmas and I am sure that I had by that time I had done, I’d flown twelve operations and the one that I was going on was to be my thirteenth actually of my second tour. I decided that I was going to have to do at least one anyway in December. So I selected one on the 6th of December because that was where the usual permanent bomb aimer was ill. So, I took his place. So I was flying with that crew for the first time ever. The only one of them, of the crew, commissioned was the pilot. I knew him because we were both commissioned. But the rest of the crew non-commissioned I hadn’t met before even. And of course I made the great mistake that I’d picked the wrong one. It was, shouldn’t have been a particularly dangerous one but anyway over Germany and this is now where there’s a bit of a gap in what happened because I see I’m actually have been recorded as being shot down. I always doubted that because the manner in which we crashed. There was, we weren’t attacked by anything. And what I believe and I’m hoping I will get one day confirmation of this, we collided with a German night fighter. And the reason I say that is because in the report that I got back from the Air Ministry things apparently a night fighter was lost that night in that area and reported a collision. And the circumstances of the accident lead one I think to conclude that it’s certainly much more likely to have been a collision because from going from the pilot completely under control to immediately losing control and I conclude, and most people think it’s much more likely I think that we collided with this thing and it took our tail off because in no time at all we were in a spin. And as we spun down it was impossible to get out of the aircraft because the, what do you call it force?
DM: The G Force.
JG: G. Yes. Really. You couldn’t lift a hand to get out. And then they, there was this crashing sound which I believed was we were hitting the ground. I thought well this is it but in fact within seconds I suppose it would be only I found myself outside in the fresh air on a dark December night. I had my parachute pack on because I’d already put that on as soon as there was an emergency and I opened that up and then descended by parachute. And there was not a sound or a sign of anything which was connected with the accident. So the aircraft had gone down. I was now floating down. Way behind it I suppose. And I don’t believe that was as a result of an actual physical attack. But being shot down it certainly wasn’t. The evidence points to that I think. I’ve tried to find out more about that. With a bit of luck my elder son who is coming down at the beginning of December is going to review records to see if he can find out any more about it. Or if there is any way one can get through Germany. I don’t suppose there’s anything anyway. They won’t have kept much of that sort of record. But we’ll see. But I’ve always had an open mind about this. So, how I came down I don’t know. But I came down in a flooded field. I didn’t realise at the time but I looked down and saw this expanse of water. I couldn’t make it out because we were nowhere near the sea or any large expanse of water. And I came down. I thought I had broken my right leg. I was holding my leg in both hands, both arms because of the pain and the trousers torn. Blood all over the place. And I went in left leg first and sprained my leg because it turned out to be a flooded field which was not very helpful. Fell over and got soaking wet. I spent a bit of time in some bushes trying to find out what was wrong with me if I could and then sort of get myself composed enough to move on. Eventually I did. I moved on in the direction of some houses. I knew by compass the heading of course. I had no idea where I was on the ground. How far I’d fallen before I opened the parachute. Anything like that. So, I eventually got into a farmyard and into an open cart and I examined my body to see what was wrong and also to get rid of my wet things which were very wet. The only trouble was I was going to have to sort of wring them out and put them back on again. Which I did. And while I was in the cart, presumably members of the farm came out, calling out, ‘Is there anybody there?’ Or what I assumed was what they were after. Of course, I kept quiet and they would go away and enable me then to start my escape. Eventually I got out of the farm. I realised I had just flesh wounds on my right leg. It was nothing really serious but my hands were cut, my face was cut. Anyway, off I went in the early hours of the next morning. The 7th. I was walking down a country lane actually with not a sound or sign of anybody when I was stopped by a guard, an armed guard who I believe to have come from the local Luftwaffe station. Anyway, by now I was a prisoner of course and from then on I spent a bit of time there while they organised my — oh no. What am I talking about? No. I was put into a hospital. It was a civil hospital run by nuns. And the four of us who had survived this accident which was me, the flight engineer, the wireless operator and the navigator we, we were not too far dispersed on the ground when we landed. So that they got us together and then planned, I presume what they were going to do with us. And fortunately for me the flight engineer and I were put into hospital where we were very well treated. The flight engineer was very badly injured. He’d broken all sorts of his body and the extraordinary thing is with him we were in this room together, we talked together all the time because there was no one else to talk to and he had not realised what had happened to him. Where he was. He could not remember anything following taxiing out to take off the night before. The 6th. And he never did as far as I know. But he was in a very bad way and he was still in hospital when I left which was somewhere towards the mid to I haven’t got the actual date of this. January. One day a guard appeared at my door and I was told to dress and follow him in about, at least six inches of snow outside and as this was going to be my first walk following the parachute descent I wasn’t too happy about it. But fortunately he had a bicycle and I was allowed to push it in the manner of the zimmer really while he walked beside me. We went to the local Luftwaffe station and then a few days later two guards arrived and started me on my way down to the Frankfurt. The Dulag Luft Interrogation Centre where I was, everyone was when you arrived there you go in to solitary and they liked to make it as unpleasant for you as they can. The bed was just two or three struts across the frame. A blanket and a pillow and that was basically it. If you wanted to use the lavatory you had to operate a little lever on the inside of the thing, of the room which indicated to the guard outside that you wanted to go. Whereupon they either came or they didn’t which was a bit, could be difficult. So you really had to plan in advance. And then of course once you were in there, you got to the loo as soon as you got there and if you wanted to sit down they shouted, ‘Come out.’ And made it, everything was made unpleasant. The food we had for breakfast we would have coffee, and [pause] I think that’s about it. But there would have been the bit of black bread anyway with nothing much on it. If anything. At lunchtime it would be a watery soup. And then an evening meal was the black coffee again and with bread and a bit of something on it. The heating, the room was heated by a radiator which was, made the room, when it was on it was unbearably hot. During the night they would turn it off so you would awaken frozen stiff. And that was where you stayed until they let, said they’d had enough of you in interrogation. There was nothing much really I could have told and everything that they had, they’d had members of my crew already through there so I was having to be careful about what I said. They said, ‘You were a flight lieutenant bomb aimer. You must have been the bombing leader.’ Which they knew quite a lot about but which I denied but whether they believed me I don’t know. But eventually I was on my way and the, we were after, yeah there was a spell while they gathered a number of people to make it worth shipping them off to a POW camp I suppose. But then we would go from there by train to the POW camp. We had no idea where it was going to be but we were led to believe it was somewhere in East Germany. And we then, we discovered eventually what our destination was and that we were going by train via Berlin. Which we were not looking forward to. But we were in ordinary carriages of compartments with ten in each. We took it in turns to sleep on the carriage rack. Luggage rack. Otherwise you couldn’t stretch out at all. After several days and I’m not quite sure how long actually but we arrived at Stalag Luft 1, and it’s address is Barth. B A R T H. In fact — will you turn it off again?
[recording paused]
DM: Ok.
JG: I’ll go from where we left Dulag Luft following interrogation at about 1 pm on Saturday 13th and arrived at Wetzlar at 6am on the Sunday. Where that is I don’t know but the distance between the two camps was a little over forty miles. Here we stayed until the following Saturday living twenty four men to a room and eating three times a day in the mess hall. It was at this camp we had Red Cross clothing issued. Two — what they were I don’t know, two packets of American cigarettes and a subsequent issue of ten a day while we were there. Most important was the shower. My first decent wash in Germany. On Saturday January the 20th 1945 of course we’re talking about here a party of eighty of us left for Stalag Luft 1 situated at Barth on the Baltic coast. The journey was expected to last anything from four to seven days and we were there and we were provided with a half a Red Cross parcel per men together with a ration of a fifth of a loaf of bread per day. We travelled in a carriage. Ten men to a compartment and the coach was hooked on to those engines and shunted back and forth in the manner of a freight car. We never actually left the carriage throughout the journey. We ate very well but sleep was difficult and we were relieved to hear that we were making good time. On route we passed through Berlin where we had to wait several hours for the next and last connection. It was a sigh, with a sigh of relief that we left the capital and continued on our way. On Monday evening at 4.50 or 4.30 we arrived at Barth. We spent the night in the railway carriage and on Tuesday morning marched to the camp some three miles north. On arrival we had a shower and our clothing was deloused. Later we were issued with mugs but also knife, fork and spoon and palliases and pillows. Once again we slept in rooms built to hold twenty men. The beds they arranged in three tiers. That evening we had a very welcome bowl of hot barley soup. And our first night’s sleep since we left Wetzlar. And that’s that. The rest of it is really conditions in the camp.
DM: Were you reasonably well treated in the camp?
JG: Oh yes. Yeah. They had sort of given up on us really I think. The only thing is one didn’t mess about. If you didn’t, if you came outside your hut after curfew you could be shot. They wouldn’t worry about it. And while we were there I think at least one person was outside when he shouldn’t have been and was shot.
DM: Did you get news of how the war was going? Was there a sort of —
JG: Oh yes.
DM: A bush telegraph or —
JG: Yes. Yes. Well, there were some parts of the camp had radios of course. Secret radios. I don’t think we were ever issued anything by the authorities but we knew exactly what was going on. And eventually we got the news that we — of course Hitler was declared dead at the end of April. And the camp commandant on our side, he was the senior allied officer was a chap, an American fighter pilot and he he came on the communications system and said that the Germans were going to evacuate the camp. And he had said to them, ‘What will you do if we refuse to come?’ And they said, ‘We’ll leave you behind.’ And of course we knew that the Russians were getting very very close and the Germans were of course terrified of these murderous people who they, ahead of the regular organised army came up and just did what they liked. And their behaviour was dreadful. And the population was pretty well scared stiff of them. At the beginning of May, I’ve not, I haven’t got the date of it I think. Or have I? [pause] Yes.
[pause]
JG: Yes. We were following Hitler’s death. Then things were collapsed on the German side quite considerably. But before that, in the March we had, we had the RAF prisoners had a briefing in which we were told that plans were afoot for us to break out of camp. The whole of the camp would break out. The RAF would act as armed guard to the main body of prisoners going back west who would have been American. And as we were going, ‘How do we break out of this place then?’ ‘Arms will be dropped to you,’ we were told. This was the sort of rubbish that came from Whitehall. You know, that sort of thing. Absolute, well as I say complete rubbish. And we came out of the briefing and we were flabbergasted. And I was, walked out with a pilot from 4 Group who had been the pilot of a Halifax which was involved in a head on collision over Cologne. I can’t imagine anything much worse than that. Having a aircraft — and he was the only survivor. But the fun, or interesting thing it was the first occasion he was wearing a seat parachute. Up until then the pilots only had the ordinary pack which clipped on. Whereas, they had, at the end of the war, a bit late, at the end of the war they were issued with a seat pack so that if something happened and the aircraft came adrift [pause] Is it on? Then they would get away with it and it was the first occasion he’d worn it. And of course this was the first occasion he really needed it. You know. He said, well he thought it was rubbish and we were a bit taken aback and alarmed. Because if people were going to the extent of dropping arms to us they obviously wanted us to use them and we, having got that stage in our lives having survived we didn’t want to stick out our necks much longer. Particularly now. It’s obviously at the end of the war. Hitler is now dead and things are going to move quite fast. Anyway, we, we sat waiting for news of our evacuation and it was, nothing seemed to be happening until a group captain from our own side got through to the lines in Lubeck to allied headquarters to find out what was going on. Only to find of course nothing was going on. But as a result of that arrangements were made for the US Air Force, 8th Air Force, the B17s to come and pick us up and take us home. Adjoined, quite close to the camp was a Luftwaffe base which by now of course the Russians moving in it was now part of Russia as far as they were concerned. And no way were they going to allow any aircraft, allied aircraft in there until Eisenhower got behind it when he heard that we were not. He wasn’t going to have for a start any idea that we should break out and march west. It was the last thing he wanted. He’d got enough people rushing around the place. And he didn’t sort of want gash POWs. And so we were to stay where we were. And as a result of that RAF chap getting through to our lines and getting some action how much longer we would have been there goodness knows. And then [pause] now, I’ve got here at the end of the war, our time in the camp with the Germans. Now, having gone that Monday the 30th of April 1945 the Germans have been demolishing detector installations and equipment in the flak school which on this airfield. By the evening most of the items have left the camp and it looks as though we shall be left here in the care of the senior administrative office. Many heavy explosions in the flak school and on the aerodrome around. There was no count on today, parade tonight but the Jerry major appeared to be tired. At 9pm the somebody [pause] Well, anyway, 9pm we were told that from 8am tomorrow, that’s the 1st we would no longer be POWs as the commandant was officially handing over. We had an extra biscuit, butter and marmalade to celebrate. Tuesday the 1st of May — today the guard posts are occupied by Americans wearing MP armbands. That’s Military Police of course instead of the usual old goons which was our name for the German guards. A white flag flies over the camp. The rumours are thick and fast and everyone is wondering when we shall get away. The Russians are supposed to be pretty close. The latest is that they are two kilometres south of Barth. The bürgermeister of Barth is said to have shot himself. At 1pm we heard the BBC news and now at 14.20 we are listening to, “Variety Band Box.” Tonight at 22.15 approximately a Russian lieutenant and either a civilian or Russian soldier arrived. Cheers echoed throughout the compound. We’d been awaiting this for some time. Good Old Joe. The main Russian body captured Stralsund, which is on the coast, tonight, today. Listened to the BBC news. Public House time it to be extended on VE Day. I hope we’re home for it. At 22.30 it was announced that Hitler is dead. I hope it was one of Berlin, was in one of Berlin’s sewers. Perhaps these will capitulate now. Lights on until midnight by order of Colonel Zemke. He was the allied commander I was talking about. Special cup of hot milk at 23.15. More Russians expected tomorrow. Water shortage. On the Wednesday the 2nd the Russians said we were to march out and be packed in preparation to leave at 6pm. One Red Cross parcel issued to each man for the journey. We ate several meals in quick succession to get rid of our [pause] this is the one [pause] yes. We had to get rid of [pause] Red Cross parcel stocks. Share out the ones that we had left. Then we were told to be ready to march in the morning and a little later we heard that the march was not definite. Most of us left camp in the evening to have a look around. Some even got into Barth. Rumours are flying out, hope it’s true, British and Russians are supposed to have linked up in the north. Chaos reigned all day. Poor water situation. German armies in Italy and Austria surrendered to Alexander. Monty’s boys in Lubeck. Russian. Russians in Rostock. Berlin has fallen. Hamburg declared an open city. I’ve been told the airfield is becoming clear of mines. We may be flown out. Hope it’s true and that the kites —
[pause]
JG: I heard earlier today that we’re in contact with London, Washington and Moscow to see what they intended to do. Or for us to do. A colossal [pause] comparatively speaking, announced all day. The water situation a bit better. From midnight tonight we use Russian time. An hour in advance of our present time. Friday the 4th — airfield expected to be clear by 2pm. All Germans in northwest Germany, Holland, Denmark, Heligoland were ordered by Admiral Doenitz to surrender unconditionally. This is to take effect from 08.00 tomorrow Saturday the 5th of May 1945. Saturday the 5th of May — a Russian general inspected our barracks in the morning. In the afternoon Marshall Rokossovsky to some [pause] oh no, came to report with Colonel Zemke. A very tough looking bunch. One of the generals made a speech to some of us in Russian. An American colonel arrived by jeep from our lines and made final arrangements for our evacuation. Wish they would get a move on. Listened to a radio recording of the signing of the unconditional surrender by the German staff. The commentary was by Monty. The 6th. Sunday the 6th — still waiting. The colonel repeated his former broadcast saying things were being done for our evacuation. Monday the 7th — a lieutenant colonel of the 6th airborne Division came to Wismar today to reassure us and we needed some reassuring too that we could expect to be flown out within the next few days. He could not say which day it would be but would definitely be only a matter of a few days. Question — how long or short is a few days? Apparently, we shall be flown back to England. Good deal. Other POWs are still being flown back by Lancs. [pause] Daks and Commandos are being used. Twenty five in a Dak, forty in a Commando. Most POWs have to be helped into aircraft. They were given a shock here. We shall run like stink when the kites come. I’ve heard that tomorrow is VE day and the following day a holiday. I’m bloody annoyed that we’re not going to, we’re going to miss the celebrations and so is everyone else. Saturday, Sunday the 6th of May — saw a Russian concert this afternoon and it was very good. No one or very few understood a word but what the hell. Monday the 7th of May — at the moment, 21.50 Russian time someone, I think it’s Alfredo Campoli, is playing a composition on the violin which I heard once at one of the St John’s socials. St John’s being the Parish church in Sidcup where I come from. It has just been announced that the BBC have broadcast a message to the effect that Stalag Luft 1, Barth, Pomerania has been liberated and the next of kin are being informed. Goebbels, his wife and daughters took poison apparently. War ends after five years and eight months. Unconditional surrender made at 2.41 French time today to Field Marshall Montgomery. Location Reims. Or Reims. Tuesday the 8th of May — I’ve just heard the prime minister’s speech declaring that the European war is at an end. The ceasefire officially takes place at 00.01 tomorrow. Wednesday, May 9th but fighting, except for some of the Resistance in Czechoslovakia ceased on Thursday morning. It is VE day and this morning I spent some time sun bathing on the peninsula north of the camp. I hope soon to be doing the same in England very soon. Listened to the King’s Speech. I guess the family were listening too. Do they know where I am? I wonder. And did they hear the announcement on the radio last night to the effect that we had been liberated by the Red Army. Lancs landed in Germany for the first time and flew back with four thousand five hundred POWs. Come on boys. Let’s get out of here. Wednesday the 9th of May— sunbathing again today. Allied parade this morning. A Russian officer made a speech to us. Same old story. Be patient for a few more days. Plenty of rumours floating around [pause] At 08.00 hours on BBC radio all men at Stalag Luft 1, Barth, near Stralsund, Pomerania, Germany are to remain in the camp and not make for the allied lines. Well, I don’t know whether anyone did. Thursday, the 10th of May — on KP again today. You know, that’s cleaning up the camp. Ten thousand more POWs flown out by five hundred BC aircraft and we’re still here. Colonel Zemke made an appalling speech again tonight. He’s going to get out all souvenirs. The rumour is that all British personnel are going to be taken by transport to Wismar and flown home from there. Also, that we should have been there yesterday. Group Captain Weir is said to have gone to try and get us out. He may have split with Colonel Zemke. I hope so as Zemke hasn’t a bloody clue. Listened to ITMA. Last time I heard it was on Wednesday the 6th December. I was changing in my room for the op and could hear it on someone else’s radio. That was of course the day on which I went down in Germany. Friday the 11th — sunbathed again today. There’s a meeting of the wheels, you know they were the top men, tonight. Final arrangements for our evacuation are said to be the subject of discussion. Group Captain Weir seems to have been arranging with the Russian commander of the area, Colonel General Batov for aircraft to land here to take us out. Colonel Zemke has just announced that aircraft expected here tomorrow or on Sunday. Russian passports are being signed up in preparation. It really looks as if we are going to move soon. Squadron Leader Evans had to fill in forms of interrogation which he signed. This gives us clearance, a clearance chit to be presented on arrival in England which should hasten our departure from the Receiving Centre. A cabinet order said that all POWs are to be with their families within twenty four hours of arriving in England. Length of leave is uncertain. Nearly eighty thousand POWs have been returned to England so far. There can’t be many more. Eisenhower has just repeated his, ‘stay put’ message. The 12th, Saturday the 12th — Group Captain Green on parade this morning said evacuation was to begin this afternoon. Sick quarters are first on the list. Then come the British personnel in the following order and its by blocks eight, nine, ten, eleven etcetera. So we were in a good position. What’s the betting I click for a cleaning job which would mean a delayed departure. At 2pm the first US aircraft arrived at Barth aerodrome. Two Daks for hospital cases and the rest Fortresses. Joe here is in charge, that’s me, in charge of operation [unclear] so I shan’t get away until tomorrow. The rest of the boys in the room buzzed at 3pm. Six lads and I stayed from 3pm until 9pm cleaning up. What a bloody awful job. Managed to get a shower at the end of it. Packed for the morning, nearly losing my fags as the Yanks still in the compound were on the prowl and almost swiped them. Saturday the 13th of May — paraded at 6.30am and after roll call we marched out to the airfield. At 7.30am the first Forts arrived. We were then split into groups of twenty five and as each Fort came around the perimeter track we embarked. That was Sunday the 13th. We were airborne at 8.30am and flew fairly low direct to England having a very good look at Bremen and Hamburg enroute. As we were using Russian time we had to put our watches back one hour to correspond with double British summertime. PBST. We landed at Ford in Sussex at 11.30. This completed the trip I set out on on December the 6th last. It took a bloody long time for my liking. Too long. I have recalled the following dream I had some time during my incarceration. Obviously, it was prompted by my fear that my family didn’t know my fate in the dream. I returned home to reassure the family that I was safe, in reasonable shape and in a POW camp. Having told the family this I prepared to leave, much to their puzzlement. ‘Why,’ they asked, ‘Did you, now home do you propose to leave?’ ‘Because I’m still a POW and my place is in that German POW camp,’ [laughs] I replied. And that took me to the end of the war.
DM: So, that was the diary you kept.
JG: Yes.
DM: When you were in the camp. Yes.
JG: That’s right. And that I didn’t much do much until the last days. Little point really.
DM: So, you obviously then had leave after you got home.
JG: That’s right.
DM: Repatriation leave.
JG: Yes.
DM: When did you actually leave the air force the first time?
[pause]
JG: I don’t [pause] I’m not sure that I’ve got it.
DM: It doesn’t matter precisely.
JG: Yes. It was —
DM: It was in 1945 was it?
JG: Yes.
DM: That you left.
JG: That’s right. Yes. What happened was that after the end of leave, which was extensive I did an air traffic controller course and I ended my days in the RAF as an air traffic controller at Henlow in Bedfordshire. And it must have been September I think. I’m trying to think when I got it [pause] Righto. Thank you.
DM: When you left the air force —
JG: Yes.
DM: What did you do in Civvy Street?
JG: I had a number of jobs. The last one was an, with an insurance company called Friends Provident. They’re still around. Quite a minor one I think. But I had, the first job I had was [pause] air freight. It was a company that dealt with arranging air freight in and out of the country. We were based in Victoria. It was a fiercely boring thing. And —
Other: You didn’t go back to Brown Shipley did you?
JG: No. I often wonder what would have happened had I because Brown Shipley’s still around.
DM: What prompted you to join up again in 1949?
JG: The fact that I was bored stiff and really and I was by now living in what we used to call digs in Reading and coming home to Sidcup at the weekends. And I didn’t really enjoy it much. And so it was when this announcement was made I thought, ‘Oh I can’t do worse than this.’ And if I’m going to go back on my terms because what I want now I want to settle down. If possible to get a house. I want to make some solid progress and get employment which I can guarantee until normal retirement age because I’ve not got much in the way of money. Certainly the RAF would provide the income that I was looking for and if I can get in with my flight lieutenant rank. And also, I actually had the nerve to talk about a permanent commission. And to my amazement that’s what happened. And I’ll never know whether the chap who was by now Air Marshall Sir John Whitley who had been the station commander at, at St Eval in 1942 when I was there and whom I was interviewed by him on the way to getting a commission and I wrote and reminded him of that. Whether it had any affect I just don’t know. I’d like to think it did and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he hadn’t sort of put a recommendation in on my behalf. Anyway, that’s in I went. And 31st of May 1949 and I — my first Squadron. I went having done a number of courses to 1949. Refresher navigation courses. I then went to a course where I went as a navigator to a pilot whose name was Wing Commander Oxley and this was a organised — I’m not sure what exactly it was called but it was at [pause] now —
[pause]
JG: I have to turn this off again. I’m very sorry.
[recording paused]
JG: Obviously then, this refresher training thing I was posted.
[pause – doorbell rings]
JG: To RAF Swinderby at an Advanced Flying School and where we flew Wellingtons and I flew with the pilot Wing Commander Oxley between September and November. In late December of ’49 I was posted to Number 236 Operational Conversion Unit at RAF Kinloss, Scotland flying Lancasters. Until April the 5th of April when I was posted to 38 Squadron Luqa, Malta flying Lancasters on maritime operations.
[pause]
JG: Apart from maritime operations which included various Naval and air force. Naval and air operations, training operations and also on air sea rescue duties.
[pause]
JG: At the beginning of 1953 where I was then posted to Number 1 Maritime Reconnaissance School. And that was at St Mawgan in Cornwall. And during my time there I found myself recruited to take part in the Queen’s coronation and I, for the spell which included the coronation I went up to Henlow. And we were trained in basically marching long distances. And I took part in the actual Review on the 2nd of June 1953. And then subsequently in the July I took part in the Queen’s RAF Review of the — at [pause] well I think it was the RAF Review. The Queen’s Review of the RAF took place at Odiham in Hampshire. And that was [pause] I haven’t got the actual date. Later in 1954 I was posted to headquarters, 64 Group Home Command at Rufforth, York as PA to the AOC. Non-flying apart from accompanying the air commodore and visits. From ’56, September ’56 to the 23rd of January I attended a Bomber Command Bombing School, Lindholme. Navigation training for the V force. In summer that year I was posted instead to Air Ministry, London Air Intelligence Branch. And in October 1960 I was posted as assistant air attaché, British Embassy, Paris. I retired from the RAF in May 1962 and in September I joined Shellmex and BP Limited soon to become separate companies. I stayed with Shell until retiring in June 1982. And that’s really leaves me coming out.
DM: The, near the beginning you were saying that because you were a POW.
JG: Yes.
DM: You didn’t have your hands on your logbook.
JG: That’s right.
DM: And you didn’t get it back. And that was one of the ones that was ultimately destroyed I assume.
JG: Yes. As far as I know if you want to record it.
DM: It’s going. Yeah.
JG: When I came back I made enquiries and I discovered that in October or November 1960 [pause] Either ’59 or ’60. When did I go? [pause] Yes. It would be October 1960. A decree had gone out earlier that year, no in that month, it was certainly while I was in Paris the Air Ministry issued a decree to say that the, there were a lot of logbooks unclaimed and unless you claimed the thing by whatever date it was, I don’t know, they would be destroyed. And so by the time I came back and I didn’t know that, I didn’t get that news while I was in Paris and I can’t, and I’m surprised they didn’t think to tell people all over the place. Or else I just missed it. But anyway the fact is then any enquiries I made just drew a blank. So, there’s no point really. It isn’t, doesn’t exist anywhere unless someone thought oh I’ll have this. But why they would do that I don’t know.
DM: No.
JG: I can’t imagine it’s of any interest to anybody but me. But it’s been a nuisance really because [pause] well just all I’ve got, I’ve got it here but the as soon as I rejoined of course I got another logbook and that’s the one I’ve got. But it doesn’t help looking back at things that happened during the war.
DM: No.
JG: The only one of interest that, it was an event which occurred while I was on 78 Squadron at Linton on Ouse and it’s documented actually in Bomber Command records. It — we took off from Linton on the 11th of December 1942 heading for Italy. So, we were virtually a flying petrol tank with one or two little bombs. Anyway, we took off and immediately one of the engines caught fire and the situation was such that we had to get out of it. Out of the aircraft. Fortunately, Linton is not all that distance from the North Sea, although it is the other side of Yorkshire. And so what we proposed to do, the initial plan was to drop our bombs in the sea or where they could be safely dropped and come back and land. But the situation was getting rapidly out of hand and so it was a question of dropping the bombs first thing and then, if possible to have a crash landing somewhere. However, and as I was a bomb aimer down in the front I had to get rid of the hatch so that we were going to drop out of it. That’s the way we were going to go. But I soon had to tell the pilot, ‘We’re going to be far too low to bale out.’ So, he said, ‘Well, I’ll see if I can crash land somewhere.’ But by this time it was getting worse than that. He said, ‘I don’t know. I think I can reach the sea.’ And that’s what we did. We ditched in the North Sea. Just a few miles out, three miles out from Filey and we all got away with it. There was no, had we stayed much longer of course we could very well have burned up. But we did, we got down in the water and we got picked up. Interestingly enough we were picked up by fishermen who had just landed in Filey and had looked back to see this aircraft going into the sea and turned their boats around and came out to pick us up. And, but some of those poor chaps got some stick because what they should have done because some of them were lifeboatmen they should, they should have gone, and gone out with the lifeboat. So they weren’t very popular when the lifeboat did come out and found out some of their men were actually there having done the job for them virtually. Because we didn’t need any help other than something to take us back to land. Now, I was recently, a few years ago now I was contacted by someone by the name of Paul Bright who had written or was writing actually, he hadn’t finished it — a book called, “Aircraft Activity Over the East Riding of Yorkshire,” which included not only RAF but Luftwaffe things. How he got it I don’t know. Anyway, he had got the records of 78 Squadron and this ditching thing and he [pause] he got in touch with me via the chap who wrote 640 Squadron history and as a result of that I was, gave this chap Paul Bright all the information and he’s included it in his book. There’s the thing, “On a Wing and a Prayer,” about what happened from my time in 78. And I’ve been in touch with him. We’ve been, both T and I have met a number of times when we’ve gone up that way and also because the — we’ve been going up there to the Memorial of 640 and at the same time met Paul Bright. But I don’t know what’s happened. A book which I’ve got a copy of I think. A member of the family must have it but it’s, it’s a most extraordinary detailed book of what happened in the air over the East Riding during the war. And including what’s happened to various air crew including German air crew.
[pause]
JG: And I’m in touch with him every time something significant comes up. Like today for example. I told him about the organisation that was going ahead on behalf of Bomber Command in that area. And I don’t know whether he has been in touch but of all the information I’ve had of course is via Carol and her visits up there.
DM: Ok.
JG: Right.
DM: In September 1944 whilst engaged on an attack on a synthetic oil plant the aircraft in which Flight Lieutenant Goldby was flying was severely damaged by heavy anti-aircraft fire. One engine was hit and rendered useless. Three petrol tanks were holed and a shell fragment entering the bomb aimer’s compartment damaged his equipment. Despite intense physical discomfort and shock Flight Lieutenant Goldby continued calmly to direct his captain onto the target. This determination and skill resulted in a successful attack. This officer has participated in many operations over enemy territory and among his targets have been such heavily defended areas as Essen and Duisberg. He is now engaged on his second tour of operations and in his capacity as bombing leader has been a source of inspiration to his section and has materially contributed to the high standard of efficiency attained. And therefore, the DFC was awarded.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John Louis Goldby
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-25
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
AGoldbyJL171025, PGoldbyJL1701
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:30:05 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
John Goldby was born in Kent but the family moved to London the year after. He was inspired to join the RAF when a schoolfriend joined and became a Spitfire pilot. John believes that it was a mid-air collision with a night fighter that led to his crash. He became a Prisoner of War at Stalag Luft 1. He kept a detailed diary of events leading to his eventual liberation and return to the UK. After demob he was soon bored with Civvy Street and returned to the RAF. He had an interesting post-war career including time as air attaché to the British Embassy in Paris.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-05
1942-05
1944
1945-01-20
1945-04-30
1945-05-05
640 Squadron
78 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
ditching
Dulag Luft
Halifax
Hampden
Lancaster
mid-air collision
observer
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Riccall
RAF St Eval
RAF Stanton Harcourt
Stalag Luft 1
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/939/11298/AMackieGA171222.1.mp3
e9ca13049823098df01cd69c65a59715
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
Mackie, George
George Alexander Mackie
G A Mackie
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with George Mackie (1920 - 2020, 855966 Royal Air Force) with his log books, diary extract, list of operations, battle order and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 15 and 214 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Mackie, GA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GM: In that silence, revulsion of what Bomber Command did and a claim for what Bomber Command did, were in that silence, that trivial monument in Green Park is for the benefit of the multi-millionaires that erected it, in [unclear] in Flanders, every name of the dead is inscribed in stone, the only names inscribed in stone at Green Park are the millionaires names, the rest are painted, this cheap, cheap gesture on the part of about half a dozen millionaires, so, if you want to carry on with that knowledge of my opposition to monuments, I’d be
CB: That’s fine. Did you go to the opening of that? Were you invited to it?
GM: Of course not [laughs]. I wouldn’t be seen dead near that monument.
CB: Did they invite you though?
GM: No.
CB: Right.
GM: Very glad they didn’t. I wrote against it. It’s also a hideous piece of architecture. So, let’s talk about the war
CB: OK, we’ll do that, I need to be able to. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 22nd of December 2017. We are in Stamford in Lincolnshire, talking to George Mackie about his experiences of life and the RAF. So, what are your first recollections of life, George?
GM: I can’t remember. I think
CB: You were born in Cupar, in Scotland
GM: Yes, and I was in my teens, was waiting for the war to begin.
CB: Right.
GM: It began and I wanted to fly so I presented myself in Dundee at the recruiting office. On Monday because the war had started on a Sunday but nothing happened for weeks until I went back to Dundee school of art and then I was called down to a place in the Midlands for medical which lasted two days, Warrington and I wasn’t actually called up until June of 1940 and sent to Babbacombe near Torquay for a month or six weeks square bashing which I thoroughly enjoyed, squad of fifty people being drilled,
CB: Yeah
GM: And from there [unclear] Cambridge, St John’s college, lectures on navigation, meteorology and so on, contrast to Babbacombe and from Cambridge again a contrast to Stoke-on-Trent to begin flying on Magisters, very difficult conditions for flying because there was no horizon. A horizon is very necessary for learning to fly and there was none, was just smoke and no one said the absence of horizon is going to be difficult, so we thought we were [unclear] and but I got through. From Stoke-on-Trent to Cranfield which is a very inconspicuous place compared to today and we flew Oxfords and I started liking flying for the first time. I remember engine failure at a thousand feet [unclear] the fuel and diving down to [unclear] the fuel that was good, good stuff, that was exciting. And from Cranfield onto Wellingtons, a place twenty five miles south of Cambridge whose name escaped me, flying Wellingtons, one day a Stirling through across at a thousand feet, they were very silent, Stirlings, compared to other aircraft, they were huge, very impressive and I went straight to the adjutant and said, I want to go to the Stirling squadron, now, further or not, that had any bearing on the final decision I don’t know but the point was I was posted from the Wellingtons to 15 Squadron at Wyton, one of two squadrons with Stirlings and I have almost one thousand five hundred hours flying in Stirlings which I think is higher than anyone else. You have to switch thing off [unclear]
CB: That’s ok.
GM: So, there I was in 15 Squadron during 1941 and what I didn’t know was how appalling the mess was that Bomber Command was in, we was sent off solo, there was no such thing as a bomber stream, we went off fifteen minute intervals trying to find a target in Germany, we were hopeless at navigation, we were, my navigator had a sextant to try and navigate with, can you imagine?
CB: I’ve used it [laughs]
GM: We weren’t hitting targets
CB: Right
GM: And by the beginning of 1942 the retrenchment of Bomber Command and I was posted to a newly formed Heavy Conversion Unit to train pilots on the new four-engined aircraft, the Stirlings were just coming in and mostfully I was at Waterbeach for eighteen months in which time I only did three ops, they were the thousand bomber raids and I didn’t go back on ops until the Autumn of 1943 in 214 Squadron, so my eighteen months in Waterbeach was a wonderful period of learning to fly the Stirling cause until you instruct on an aircraft you don’t know it and I got to know the Stirling intimately, the most peculiar airplane, take-off, particularly take-off, the talk from the four engines plus the fact that the rudder was out of action until the tail was up in the slipstream meant that the take-off had a colossal urge to veer right off the runway, so the first thing you did was to put the stick fully forwards and open the throttles diagonally, now in Mark I Stirlings, the throttles were parallel, topped by large bulbs, large knobs, which my hand could not encompass
CB: Right
GM: So it was quite tricky trying to open the throttled diagonally nor could my legs reach the rudder bar because they were too short so I had to stuff a parachute behind me to reach the rudder bar so that couple with the Stirlings own eccentricities made flying the aircraft rather tricky. That I got to tell [unclear] sort of course, switch off.
CB: The Stirling was a Marmite type airplane, was it? People either loved it or hated it?
GM: What is Marmite?
CB: You either love it or hate it.
GM: Oh, I loved it because I survived in it and it was [unclear] in design, it was made to be, it was supposed to be the [unclear] version of the Sunderland flying boats with a wing span of a hundred and ten feet, in the event the wingspan was cut down to ninety-nine feet to enter peacetime hangars which were a hundred feet wide, of course, most of the maintenance was done outside anyway, day and night, and that made the aircraft most peculiar, a huge undercarriage and the angle of take-off was absurd
CB: Well, you were sitting twenty-eight feet above the ground, weren’t you?
GM: Well, yes.
CB: So that meant the tail was very low in comparison with the
GM: And until the tail was up, the rudder didn’t work
CB: Yeah, that’s interesting
GM: The [unclear] was switched
CB: Yeah. What sort of speed would you have to get to, in order for the tail plane to get up?
GM: Oh, maybe fifty
CB: Right. And then, when you got to V2, what would you be taking off at?
GM: Oh, ninety?
CB: Right
GM: [unclear]
CB: Right, yeah, oh, one [unclear]
GM: Well, a hundred with bombs
CB: Yeah
GM: A hundred and ten, it depends, it depends on the aircraft, they varied quite a bit
CB: Right
GM: And from Stirling to Stirling
CB: Right. As we were talking about the HCU, what condition were the planes in at HCU, Stirlings?
GM: They were all second hand, they were all ex operational, the groundcrews worked twenty four hours a day, we didn’t give them sufficient credit for what they did, we took them for granted, I’m sure you’ll find this a refrain from aircrew, we took them for granted.
CB: And did, what was the reliability like, as they were clapped out?
GM: Oh, various having an engine failure, no, the Hercules engine was extremely good
CB: You mentioned thousand bomber raids, three of those or three ops to [unclear]?
GM: Well the thousand one which has gone down in history
CB: Yeah
GM: That was a [unclear]. I remember standing by the Stirling while the Wellingtons were going out, dozens and dozens and dozens at about a thousand feet climbing. When we took off, I mean, across the North Sea, you could see a long distance away Cologne bombing, a clear night and we got to the target, we were towards the end of the raid, it was an excellent opposition, next to no searchlights, next to no flak and I had a telescope, I remember trying to identify Cologne through this telescope, we finally got the [unclear] bombed, it was an absolutely easy job, operation but militarily of no significance, psychologically yes
CB: We’ll stop for a mo. So, the reason that the Lancaster and the Halifax didn’t have the yawring problem same was because their [unclear] were
GM: Because they had two rudders
CB: Two rudders
GM: Directly in the slipstream
CB: In the slipstream, yeah, whereas yours was part of the fuselage so it was blanked off
GM: Yeah
CB: Yeah. You mentioned that early on in your ops you flew as second pilot, what was the
GM: Everyone did
CB: Right
GM: Was standard until in 1942 as part of the re-organisation of the Bomber Command was a man called Peirse, was before Harris,
CB: Right
GM: a disaster, a disaster of a man, I can’t tell you how badly organised Bomber Command was in 1941
CB: So how it operate there then?
GM: Where?
CB: In 1941, how was it operating on operations?
GM: Well,
CB: They didn’t use bomber streams, so what did they do?
GM: Well, we went off at endurance, I should write this down
CB: You should, yeah. You’re going to get this back as a written testament anyway
GM: Mercifully Harris took over and he at least organised things, although he finished up there being a quite psychopathic about bombing German cities, that was, you know, in terms of military advantage it was a crazy, compared to what the Americans were doing
CB: So, with Peirse, can I go just back to Peirse? With, you took off at intervals and
GM: Very few of us, I mean, a maximum effort by Stirlings squadron in 1941 would be say half a dozen aircraft?
CB: Out of
GM: Half a dozen
CB: Out of how many in the squadron?
GM: Well, maybe ten and four only on serviceable
CB: Right
GM: I mean, compared to late, the late war, two Lancaster squadron were maybe forty, fifty aircraft
CB: Yeah
GM: That was a form of the fulfilment of Bomber Command
CB: Yeah, a Lancaster squadron would typically have at least twenty, wouldn’t it?
GM: Yeah
CB: Yeah. But in your day, with the Stirlings, much less
GM: The Stirlings was electrical and it was a nightmare to keep serviceable
CB: Eh?
GM: Everything was electrical and nothing but short, short brothers
CB: Short brothers and short circuits. What was the most common reason for them going U.S.?
GM: I don’t know. We took, I took no interest, I just put the thing U.S. and that was [unclear]
CB: So, early in the war, you were still, you were using flight engineers on the aircraft.
GM: Oh yes
CB: And they were busy dealing with
GM: Oh chiefly petrol, tanks, we had fourteen tanks so they kept on manoeuvring the petrol, two tanks for take-off and then after [unclear] minutes changed the tanks and also I believe the flight engineer held the throttles and things like that, never in my time
CB: Right
GM: I did it all, get airborne, get the throttles fully open, undercarriage up, up,
CB: Electrical undercarriage as well, not hydraulic
GM: Seems as they were [unclear] retract
CB: Yeah
GM: If it retracted. If it didn’t retract, it had to be done by hand, it took about fifteen minutes, yeah
CB: Who would do the winding?
GM: Oh, anybody, not the pilot
CB: Right. So, initially, your first fifteen ops, you said were as second pilot, then you became the captain after that
GM: I did two as a captain and then I was posted off ops, as were quite a few of us
CB: Yeah
GM: To become instructors
CB: Right
GM: At the newly formed Heavy Conversion Unit and as I said, I was there for eighteen months
CB: Yes
GM: Before going back on ops and when I did go back on ops, I knew the Stirling aircraft, down to flying it, I mean, intimately, and it increased my chances of surviving my second tour of ops
CB: Yeah
GM: And in 214 Squadron I had the great good fortune to start flying fortresses in a hundred group
CB: Yeah
GM: Radar, anti-radar [unclear], we accompanied the bombers, carrying no bombs and if I were a German night fighter pilot and he’s a Stirling, a fortress full of electronics, and here the Lancaster full of bombs, and go for the Lancaster, so we had very few fatalities on 214 Squadron with Fortresses
CB: Because they knew they didn’t carry a bomb load
GM: There’s a piece of paper with the rotors
CB: Yeah. Here we are. So, we’ve got a piece of paper with your ops on and then
GM: There’s the Fortress losses
CB: Yeah
GM: There’s the Stirling losses
CB: Right, yeah. So how different was the Fortress to fly?
GM: The Fortress was child’s play, the perfect aircraft, from mass production for mass produced pilots, the Stirling was the worst possible aircraft for mass produced pilots, it was like something unique, the Fortress, you pushed the throttles open, the throttles were perfectly attuned to your hand and it just took off like a dream and landed like a dream, child’s play, perfect for formation flying, stable, very stable, the Stirling wasn’t, the Stirling was agile, frisky,
CB: Well, the Fortress was designed in the concept of formation box flying
GM: It was designed for formation flying
CB: Yeah
GM: And it was perfect for formation flying
CB: Yeah
GM: It didn’t want to do anything but [unclear] flying
CB: And on the Fortress, the B-17, did you fly with a co-pilot there as well?
GM: Occasionally
CB: But not normally
GM: [unclear] second pilot just for one or two trips, for experience, the idea of doing fifteen as a second pilot was out by 1942
CB: Yeah. Because of the HCU
GM: Was useless
CB: Yeah. The HCU system dealt with that, HCU
GM: Yeah
CB: So when people joined the Stirlings, they, you said they were difficult to take-off, was there a high accident rate associated with that?
GM: Hundreds.
CB: Which did it, it bent the aeroplane but did it, were there fatalities linked to that or just?
GM: No, just crashed, swing and take-off
CB: What was the best thing about the Stirling?
GM: Agility, agile, remarkable, remarkable manoeuvrability, unbelievable for an aircraft that size. I, mastered a stall turn, which is going up like this, can you imagine a large four-engine aircraft at this angle? And kicking the rudder bar stalled, I got quite a reputation for it at Waterbeach.
CB: Was this proving a point or because it was exciting?
GM: Just showing what the Stirling could do, stall turn, quite remarkable
CB: So, a steep climb and then kick the rudder
GM: Yeah. It had a very bad reputation, didn’t carry more than two thousand pounds weight of bombs, I mean, because of the bomb containers
CB: The size of the them
GM: What the Lancaster does was quite stupefying, the weight [unclear]
CB: Yes
GM: Stupefying, nothing in the world like it
CB: Yeah
GM: At the time
CB: Yeah
GM: I mean, Britain did lead the war [unclear], not like today leaving Europe
CB: What was the crew’s reaction to the, your crew in 15 Squadron, how well did they work together?
GM: They were [unclear], various of camaraderie
CB: What were they frightened of mainly?
GM: Death
CB: But the aircraft or
GM: Death,
CB: Or just
GM: Death,
CB: The raid?
GM: I mean, the whole squadron was infected by fear
CB: Was it?
GM: Oh, I think so. Cause when you are not doing anything positive
CB: Yeah
GM: Just being exposed
CB: Cause this is part of, is it, what you were talking about earlier, the disorganisation of Bomber Command meant that it worked in a very inefficient way
GM: [unclear] If you look at the dates of ops
CB: Yeah
GM: Quite absurd, the Stirlings just in service. July in 1941 the 6th and the 7th, then the 12th and the 23rd, 25th and then a month before August 25, then between August 25 and September 19th, October the 12th, the 24th, why weren’t Stirlings used more often? Yes, it’s frightful indictment
CB: What was your conclusion about why they were not used more often?
GM: Oh, we didn’t conclude anything, we didn’t even know the morale was bad, how do you know that morale was bad at the time? You don’t know
CB: Right
GM: You think, this was my first operational squadron
CB: Yes
GM: For all I knew this was normal
CB: Right
GM: In that respect, I know that morale was bad
CB: So, can you talk me through a raid, starting with the briefing? How would this evolve over the course of the night?
GM: Well, briefing didn’t change, it got more complicated
CB: So the briefing was everybody together in the ops room to hear the target and the route, is that right?
GM: Yeah. Well, that didn’t change, only towards the end of the war there were half a dozen streams instead of one, well, in fact, there were no streams to begin with, just [unclear] the target and the navigator worked it out how to get there
CB: So in the ops room, in the briefing room you would be told what the target was and the route.
GM: Oh yes.
CB: Was the route, the navigator had to work it out but was the route straight or was it?
GM: I think it was, I think it was [unclear] the navigator to work out how to get there
CB: Oh, right.
GM: Which is part of the amateurness of the role
CB: Yeah. So, as the war developed then, none of the raids would have a direct route to the target. So in your day initially, what was the state then?
GM: Well, I suppose, I suppose so. I suppose we knew where the concentration of searchlights were, but I don’t know. Later on in the war, you not only had different streams of bombers but you had dummy streams which 214 Squadron did, we set off on spoofs, half a dozen Fortresses charring out Window
CB: Right. Yeah
GM: To simulate five hundred bombers, that was quite important, quite a safe job too
CB: It was safe because the Window secured the view of your aircraft, did it?
GM: Well, the night fighters were after these real streams
CB: Right
GM: And we didn’t go far into Germany, we just went across Holland and then turned back home. 214 Squadron was so lucky, so fortunate with its Fortresses, that was a stroke of gigantic luck being posted to 214 Squadron
CB: So, the crew is the same, was it? As the one [unclear] flown in
GM: The one [unclear] to 214 Squadron
CB: Pardon?
GM: We were a mixed lot, New Zealand, Peruvian. My flight engineer was called Pedro Honeyman. Obviously of Scottish descent. Didn’t keep up with any of them. We had extremely good adjutant to 214 Squadron called George Wright, what George had done before the war I do not know, but he loved being adjutant to a bomber squadron, the aircrew, he loved the aircrew and they really good for us, so before my ops came to an end, I said to George, when I finish, I want to go on Transport Command. [unclear] Before I got a posting to Transport Command where I finished the war. And that was before I was sent to India and North Africa. It’s interesting. George Wright was seen after the war in 1951. My wife-to-be and I were on our way to Paris and we went into the 1951 exhibition on the South Bank and who was selling tickets? George Wright. [unclear] come down for you. I went back to art school
CB: When were you demobbed? When you were demobbed?
GM: Yeah
CB: In 1946.
GM: Yeah
CB: Yeah. How long were you at art school?
GM: I did my fourth year at Edinburgh College of Arts, post diploma fifth year, then a year of travelling scholarship was six years
CB: How did you finance yourself in those days?
GM: Oh, paid for, paid for. People don’t remember but we were privileged, we got no fees at university, a grant, I had a pension, three pounds, ten schillings a week, [unclear] for ten schillings a week, so I had three quid to spend, were privileged
CB: You received an RAF pension because
GM: No
CB: Was it?
GM: I suppose it was
CB: Yes, because you started the war when it started, when, at the beginning of the war
GM: Yeah, I suppose it was RAF
CB: So, in that context, you weren’t VR, were you? You were RAF
GM: I was RAF VR
CB: Oh, you were VR
GM: Yeah
CB: Right
GM: I’ve got the four-volume history of Bomber Command
CB: Yeah
GM: Which you really ought to know
CB: I’ll just stop there for a mo. Yes. The History of Bomber Command
GM: Harris, he is in this book
CB: Did he?
GM: Oh yes
CB: Noble Frankland, and who is the other chap?
GM: Sir Charles Webster
CB: Yes
GM: They’re both historians. Yes, you promised me your book, your [unclear] for it
CB: I shall put, I shall get hold of it, cause these are really important and this links together with your testimony
GM: You [unclear] and your job, you must have it
CB: I do, yes, need it. They’ve got it at Lincoln.
GM: Have they?
CB: Yeah
GM: It’ll be in the university library
CB: Yes
GM: Or it should be
CB: Yeah. Well, we’ll check actually as you come to ask. Can I just go back
GM: I was once in publishing so I can get things at cost
CB: Ah, right. Can I go back to your comments about 15 Squadron? You said that the crew effectively lived in fear all the time, the fear of being shot down or the fear of the aircraft not performing?
GM: No, the fear of not coming back.
CB: Right.
GM: I think that was general, the morale was low
CB: Yes
GM: When morale is low, you lose confidence
CB: Yes. And what was the RAF doing about it in your perspective?
GM: Nothing
CB: Right
GM: Nothing
CB: And what was the squadron commander doing to get together?
GM: Nothing
CB: Right
GM: Nor the Wing Commander. Everyone was tainted
CB: Yeah
GM: In my recollection. The crew I trained with, what’s the name of that place?
CB: At Wyton, oh, at Bassingbourn
GM: Bassingbourn
CB: Yes. On the Wellingtons
GM: Two pilots, flight engineer, navigator and bomb, gunners, I trained the guy called Metaxi, M-E, M-A
CB: Yeah
GM: So, when we got to Wyton a line was drawn under MA and I went as second pilot to an established crew,
CB: On Stirlings
GM: Metaxi crew went to a newly promoted captain, he had no training with the new captain, they disappeared on their first op, the first op, no training, Pierce, group captain wing commander, why? Of course they went down on their first op, they didn’t know each other. That was my introduction to operational flying. Nobody mentioned it.
CB: No. And in the ops in those days, you went off as individual crews, you said, rather than in any kind of orderly fashion. What was the process of finding the target?
GM: Looking at the ground [laughs].
CB: In the dark?
GM: What you could see.
CB: At what height were you flying in the Stirling?
GM: As high as you could go. Which was sixteen, seventeen
CB: On a god day
GM: Right down to twenty. Oh, what a business.
CB: And how did you, when you returned, you were debriefed by the intelligence officer, were you?
GM: Yes, yes.
CB: And what would you have to tell him?
GM: [unclear] we always thought we bombed the target of course [unclear] the first target I properly identified was Cologne, the thousand bomber raid,
CB: And at that stage you were at the HCU. At that stage you were at the HCU, weren’t you? For the thousand bomber raid
GM: Yes, yes, yes
CB: Yeah
GM: Little diversion from training
CB: Yes
GM: The following day you, circuits and landings, circuits and landings again, I don’t know how many landings I did in the Stirling, it must be ten to hundreds
CB: How did you feel about the student pilot flying it?
GM: Oh, they all arrived in a state of great anxiety, the Stirling had a very bad reputation and so the first thing you did was to show them what it was in the air and then the New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans, all nationalities, the most democratic outfit Bomber Command became, I wouldn’t have missed it
CB: What was the most exciting experience you had on operations or in the HCU?
GM: Well, the most dangerous experience I had was five hours in icing cloud trying to get to Hamburg in which 1651 Unit lost four out of nine aircraft in one night through weather and that was touch and go in cumulus cloud.
CB: So the icing cloud should never have been entered but how was it
GM: We should never have set off
CB: Exactly
GM: Again it was a cock-up and no one of course was never held responsible but to lose four out of nine is quite a shock. But the following day, take off and landings, take off and landings
CB: So that goes back to the point about debriefing, there was a met man who did part of the briefing, was there?
GM: That, the North Sea was [unclear] of clouds and of course we dropped the odd bomb to try and get more height, couldn’t and that was just flying skill to survive that night and one of the survivors was Frazer Barron, to finish that was nineteen ops, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar, he lost his life later on of course, he was smaller than me, so how he could get the rudder bar I don’t know. Frazer Barron, one of the so-called Barron
CB: Barn Brothers
GM: Barnel Barnes [unclear]
CB: So, when the crew went back to 15 Squadron, you talked about the low morale, in the off-duty times what happened, what did people do? Cause you are all NCOs in the aircraft, are you? At that stage
GM: We did nothing. After time boring, there was no overall intelligence trying to further our training as bomber aircrew, it’s just, it was, the whole thing was inept. You know, we were losing the war like mad
CB: And what were the senior officers doing?
GM: I never saw them, I was in the sergeant’s mess. I mean, we arrived at Wyton by train, a bus from the station to the airfield, no welcome, put into such and such a fight, didn’t meet the flight commander, no one would tell you hello, this is 15 Squadron, this is what we do, we just arrived, oh, dear, oh dear, that was bad, it was shocking [unclear]
CB: Wyton was an expansion period airfield, so what was the accommodation like?
GM: Nissen hut. We took off from Alconbury, Wyton had no runways, so we flew the aircraft at Alconbury where it was bombed up, and then we went back to [unclear] and got briefly briefed at Wyton and then bus to the station light. I remember the bus going through Huntingdon, people going about their business, going into pubs and so on, where am I going?
CB: Yeah
GM: 21 squadron was quite different cause the war had been going on for years by that time, September 1943, Stirlings would have been taken off German targets, again the luck I had, being posted to a Stirling squadron cause they were being withdrawn and then we heard this extraordinary rumour going on [unclear] and the rumour proved to be true till, we got an American pilot with half a dozen landings and off we went solo, captain of a Fortress, throat microphone, all up to date
CB: Yes
GM: Electric flying suit, all up to date, American
CB: The whole crew had the electric flying suit, did they?
GM: I don’t know about the crew, I took the crew for granted. I hadn’t a warrant officer, my navigator was a flying officer and that was my two fingers up to the system, you see and it didn’t last long, I was a commissioned officer within weeks
CB: We’ll stop now. How often did you get hit?
GM: Once, oh, well, the aircraft got hit more than once of course
CB: Did it?
GM: I got hit personally once, over Leverkusen
CB: Oh.
GM: To an [unclear] squadron to Leverkusen to [unclear] as a souvenir, one of the aircraft came home with shrapnel quite often
CB: So what was the wound that you experienced?
GM: It was?
CB: What wound did you get?
GM: I didn’t get wounded, didn’t even draw blood. Spent shrapnel upper left arm. Colossal braw. If I hadn’t been strapped in, I’d be off my seat.
CB: Was the explosion in the aircraft or just outside?
GM: No, the shrapnel, piece of shrapnel. Flak
CB: Did that hit you hard?
GM: Flak I suppose.
CB: Yeah
GM: Didn’t even draw blood. The arm was swollen of course
CB: Yeah
GM: And that was nothing
CB: What about other members of the crew, did they get?
GM: Nothing
CB: Nobody
GM: No. A nasty surprise flying along in the black, suddenly shrapnel [unclear], flak and this enormous bash which as I say, would have got me out of my seat but for being strapped in
CB: Amazing. This was in the Fortress, was it? Or in the Stirling?
GM: Probably Fortress.
CB: There was a bigger crew in the Fortress, so?
GM: Yes.
CB: That was more gunners.
GM: The Fortress crew
CB: Right
GM: [unclear]
CB: Have a look at that. So, with the Fortress, you, the Americans flew with two pilots but you flew with one pilot in the Fortress in the RAF fashion
GM: Yes, yes. They flew by day, of course
CB: Yes
GM: What the Americans did was remarkable I mean, seeing them go down, we saw them going down in darkness
CB: Yeah. Did you get any planes exploding next to you?
GM: There were things, in Bomber Command we believed in a thing called Scarecrows
CB: Ah, yes
GM: Have you heard this word?
CB: Yes
GM: But there were no such things, they were actual aircraft and we kidded ourselves, another Scarecrow and some could be very close
CB: So, the Scarecrow notionally was an enormous shell when actually it was a German fighter firing upwards with Schrage Musik
GM: [unclear] bomber going down in flames
CB: Yeah
GM: But mercifully we didn’t know. I was never attacked by a night fighter and that may be part of the fact that wherever over dangerous territory I was endlessly weaving the aircraft, endless, to give the rear gunner [unclear] a vision of the area, a vision
CB: You did that on both aircraft
GM: Oh yes
CB: Yeah
GM: Oh yes
CB: Same technique
GM: Endless, gentle weave
CB: And how many reports of air sickness did you get from the crew?
GM: Oh, never. Weaving, that’s nothing, you don’t even know you’re doing it, didn’t know I was doing it, but it’s so far more.
CB: Yeah
GM: I’ve heard a Lancaster sitting a straight and level being shot at, not least by a member of who, by ex-member of my crew, he was shot down later on and we were attacked and the pilot froze, froze, that’s why we were shot down
CB: Froze over the target or [unclear]?
GM: Night fighter attacked, there was no evasive action team
CB: I see, right. But you were trained in the corkscrew?
GM: Oh yes
CB: And could you do the corkscrew with the Fortress or not?
GM: Yes, nothing like [unclear] nothing like this
CB: A big aeroplane
GM: Nothing like this, cleverly, let me have that logbook, thanks,
US: That’s the last, this is the first one. Is this the one you want?
CB: No, he’s just checking
US: Do you want to have a look at it now?
GM: Hey?
US: Do you want to have a look inside it?
CB: I’ll just stop there a minute.
US: [unclear] Air Force for you.
GM: We flew an aircraft from East Anglia to Belfast
US: Right.
GM: You get a cask of Guinness for a party. When you think of the cost of that pint of Guinness
US: [unclear]
CB: Amazing. But you did need that training experience, didn’t you? Was this from the HCU or the squadron?
GM: From the squadron
CB: Yeah
GM: The things were so relaxed. I had the memory of the friend of my father’s came down from Scotland, Ed [unclear], wanted to go up in a Stirling so I just said, an aircraft needing a flight test such and such took off in fifteen minutes
CB: What was the reaction of your family to your flying as a pilot in Bomber Command?
GM: My father and I didn’t communicate, ever.
CB: And you mother’s reaction wouldn’t be cause she
GM: Stepmother
CB: Stepmother, I meant
GM: Stepmother, no communication
CB: Right, ok. Any other members of the family you spoke to? Just stopping there again. Because your father had been in the trenches.
GM: Yeah, I mean Bomber Command is admired beyond reason, the worst that could happen was five minutes in [unclear] alive going down, think of the trenches, think of my father survived after three years in the trenches compared to what I had, Bomber Command was lucky. We lived well
CB: Yeah
GM: You know, it’s over exalted but easy, easier, the troops after the invasion going up through Holland far, far worse than Bomber Command was. I didn’t see a dead body. My father not only saw dead bodies, he saw the remains all around for years, no wonder he didn’t speak about it. Bomber Command too much talk saving your presence. No, it wasn’t all that difficult, it wasn’t.
CB: Now, when you went to 214, you had a completely different crew there,
GM: Yeah
CB: Because you’d come from the HCU
GM: I inherited a crew
CB: Oh, did you? Right, so how well did they gel together?
GM: After
US: You know, I can’t remember
CB: Anyway, professionally as a crew
GM: There was a romantic tosh spoken about Bomber Command crews how they gelled, how they drank together, how they did this together, how they did that, I suspect in many cases that just wasn’t true, wasn’t true in my case
CB: But it also varied, it would appear depending on whether it was an entirely NCO crew or a mixed commissioned NCO crew, in terms of them socialising.
GM: No, in my experience, socialising went on between commissioned and non-commissioned, there was no sense of division. No, no, Bomber Command was very democratic, a great mixture of people, no, no, there was no bullshit. No, no, none. I remember one parade, I can’t remember where, there was no discipline, in my experience, there was self
CB: Self-regulation
GM: Self-engendered discipline, there was no bullshit, no, none. You did your job in the air, you were left alone. Me, when I put that Tiger Moth on the [unclear], I didn’t even get a rap on [unclear]
CB: So, when was that? When were you
GM: Waterbeach
CB: Right. So, what happened there, you borrowed it, did you?
GM: I was in the mess, I had this aircraft flying over and landing and [unclear] and I went down to the flight centre, it was the wing commander giving ATC cadets a touch of flying experience and he saw me and he said, hey, Mackie, you take over. Well, I’d never flown a Tiger Moth and I took over. I took off with the first cadet, flew around and landed after a, a second cadet started getting too cocky, anyway, that’s how I got to [unclear]. It was a lovely summer’s evening and I was quite excited to land, there was earth, [unclear], trees and this great big wide river, flat, not a ripple on its surface, inviting, irresistible, I did a perfect landing, tail down
CB: Yeah. Who was in the back?
GM: I was on the front. I think, we passed over the back, we got to the surface and he was saying, do you mind, look at my dress to dance tomorrow! And I said, you shut up! So and so, I got worries of my own now, the wing commander’s aeroplane
CB: So, were you actually practising an emergency landing or did you feel that you
GM: No, I got in a high-speed stall
CB: So, what were you doing in your manoeuvre at the time?
GM: [unclear] trees
CB: So you were really low, you were going round the trees
GM: Breaking the law and all sorts of things
CB: That’s right
GM: But I didn’t know you had to increase the throttles, [unclear] control, high fifteen tons, you’re supposed to increase the engine revs
CB: Right. In the Tiger Moth
GM: Cocky
CB: But you would have had to do it in the Magister anyway
GM: I don’t remember doing high speeds, [unclear] the Magister
CB: No? So what was the attraction in the river?
GM: The flatness
US: Yeah
CB: But the people, what about the people in the river?
GM: They [unclear] spectacle
CB: So you were busy just
GM: You’re alright? You’re alright? I said, yes, I’m alright, [unclear] job trying to get the parachute on board the, onto dry land, the weight of it [unclear] water
CB: And they helped you pull the plane into the side as well?
GM: No, the plane was just right in the middle of the river, I was completely submerged
CB: And what was the result of this then?
GM: Not, no, nothing happened. I was a confident Stirling pilot, that was the important thing
CB: Right
GM: This, the Tiger Moth just an aberration
CB: So the wing commander said
GM: Nothing. He wasn’t even crossed
CB: And your logbook said
GM: [unclear] somewhere, he was a very good man, he was the best wing commander I ever had, I had some poor wing commanders, he was particularly good, he was called Menaul and he finished up in charge of atomic bombing tests in the South Pacific just after the war and he lived quite near to where my elder daughter lives and she kept on saying, why don’t you look him up? And I kept on saying, no, no, and I wish I had. M-E-N-A-U-L, he’s a good man. I had the worst commander in 214 Squadron called McGlinn M-C-G-L-I-N-N, he didn’t take to me, part because I was a warrant officer I think and froze the normal distances of promotion and once the aircrew were altogether for a talk by him and he suddenly, said, Mackie, what does that mean? And he pronounced a long German word, you know, a multi syllable, multi [unclear] and I said, I don’t know, Sir, and I hope I never do, the squadron erupted. This is still a German prisoner of war camp name, I said what? Anyway, that was my come up and stand up to the wing commander. No, he wasn’t a good type.
CB: So, you reached warrant officer and then when you went to the HCU, you were still a warrant officer, were you?
GM: I became warrant officer at Waterbeach, yes
CB: At the HCU
GM: Not automatic [unclear], sergeant, flight sergeant, warrant officer,
CB: Yeah
GM: A good rank, taken miles
CB: Absolutely
GM: Have you heard that expression?
CB: Yeah
GM: Doesn’t exist [unclear] expression
CB: No. And your commissioning took place when you joined two, joined at 214?
GM: Having more than doubled the hours than any other pilot on the squadron then and the [unclear] ranking, it was this to the system, it was meant to be, I’d finished the war as [unclear] there was anything left [unclear] but they made me take commission
CB: Was McGlinn, this, this CO, was he part of
GM: The station commander intervened
CB: Ah!
GM: He saw, he told me, you’re taking commission, Mackie, which I knew was inevitable and [unclear] didn’t have to ask for it
CB: So what was the process that you went through for that?
GM: Nothing. A new uniform and that was it
CB: But they took you off somewhere for a briefing, did they? Or selection?
GM: I got five minutes
CB: Ah, right
GNM: At Mildenhall
CB: What did they have, a board of assessors?
GM: No, no, just one man, [unclear] after all be all the way as Mildenhall and all the way back for this formality, out of the comedy, tragicomedy
CB: So there you had the opportunity to move into the officer’s mess
GM: I had to and the airfield we shared with an American squadron and the first formal dinner evening took place, when I say formal, peacetime thing, towards the end of the war [unclear], towards the end of the German ascendancy and being the most junior officer, I had to give the royal toast and the toast to his, the president of the United States of America, not a single ring of having lost my [unclear] morale. No, there is one thing I want to emphasize, it was easy
CB: An easy war for you
GM: Easy war, an easy war for most of the crew, if you got shot down, five minutes. I mean, think about it, that’s quite a good way to go, five minutes.
CB: Did you come across Guinea pigs, who’d been burned?
GM: Yeah
CB: And how did they take to flying after being Guinea pigs?
GM: Well, I don’t know, I mean, well actually, I knew them, I met them, I saw them, never knew them personally
CB: Right
GM: But that was extreme. If you got killed, you got killed, in a burning aircraft, you know, you are going down. You see, in 15 Squadron, going out seven, half a dozen aircraft, one missing, that’s quite a lot of proportion, week after week, one again, one again, one again, one again.
US: It is here, Tiger Moth [laughs]
GM: Of course, nobody knew at the beginning of the war. Bomber Command did no night flying in peacetime
CB: No. Were your original ops with 15 Squadron in daylight or were they always at night?
GM: There were two daylight ops on Northern France with Spitfires and Hurricanes, protection. That was so-called circuses, supposed to engender combat between our fighters and their fighters, they never materialised, it’s a waste of time
CB: And how did you feel like flying in daylight bombing on a, in a Stirling?
GM: Well, glad that I missed it. By that time the RAF had learned the sense of not flying by day over Germany
CB: No
GM: To begin with, we thought we could do it with impunity, flying in formations of Wellingtons or, what’s the other aircraft?
CB: Or in Blenheims
GM: Blenheims. 50 percent loss, time after time, sheer incompetence, wasted for nothing, peacetime air force, but by [unclear] what a transformation in 1944, target could be identified and destroyed, terrifying, pinpointed by Mosquitoes, TIs, target indicators, and the [unclear] watching, watching, doing nothing
CB: So in your two and four, flying your B-17 Fortresses, what was the activity going on in your aircraft?
GM: I don’t know, I didn’t know, yeah, I took no interest
CB: What was it supposed to be doing?
GM: Jamming control, jamming communication between ground control and German night fighters, that was one thing, we carried a German speaking wireless op and in a minute he got on to this German night fighter frequency, he jammed it, I believe but there were other, we carried a [unclear] radar which is one reason why operational flying was so infrequent, it was the [unclear] in the world and constantly tinkering new this, new that, but it was so complex, I wasn’t interested. I was interested in one thing, survival.
CB: And these German speaking operators, did they tend to be of foreign origin or were they?
GM: They were German.
CB: On the aircraft?
GM: Yes. But I, when I looked back I missed, actually I should have been more interested in what they were and how they came to be aircrew in the RAF, they were perfect German speakers, I believe. Pedro Honeyman, how did he come to England from Peru? And no one charged him. Cause Honeyman is a Scottish name
CB: He was a signaller, was he? He was a signaller.
GM: He was my flight engineer
CB: Oh, flight engineer.
GM: We all smoked of course, like chimneys
CB: In the aircraft?
GM: Coming back, yes, once you’re over water, down to a thousand feet, open the window, switch off the oxygen, first cigarette, oh, the bliss, the bliss of that first cigarette
CB: So, for non-smokers, explain please what, why it was such an important thing
GM: Well, salvation,
US: You’re a non-smoker.
GM: You were over the North Sea, you’re at two thousand feet, in half an hour you can see the flashing beacons, you’re safe, you survived, you’re off the scaffold, that was why, and the nicotine in the blood stream. Oh, I was a confirmed smoker. I regret having, had to give it up, but I wish I hadn’t. My father smoked forty a day until his late eighties when he died. He had the right answer. Were you an ex-smoker?
CB: No.
GM: You’re both non-smokers?
US: I smoke
GM: What’s that? Pack?
US: Rolling.
GM: You’re rolling [unclear]. Oh yes, so did I. I used to have brown paper, cigarette papers, I’ve [unclear]
CB: What made you start smoking? Did you start because of the flying?
GM: No, before the war I started.
CB: Right. And what made you give up?
GM: Oh, slow asphyxiation. [unclear] for five before the war, the day’s ration. [sighs] Well, Chris
CB: So you, that’s really good. We’ll stop for a bit.
GM: Yeah. Fifty percent of Bomber Command aircrew died for nothing. There’s no way of proving it but that’s my feeling.
CB: Do you mean particularly in the early days, do you mean? Because it was so disorganised
GM: Yes, but it extended into the, towards the end of the war, how many aircrew did damage to Germany? One [unclear]. I’d have had been killed, the damage I had affected on Germany was minimal, minimal, at what expense?
CB: Well, in your two and four days with the Fortresses, you weren’t carrying any munitions, so any bombs.
GM: Were not very successful,
CB: Oh
GM: It was a colossal enterprise involving fighter squadrons, Halifaxes, Fortresses, but it never did enough damage, I suppose was expected. I mean the hundred fighter squadron used to go out at night and circle German airfields
CB: The Mosquitoes, the Mosquitoes did
GM: Yes
CB: Yes
US: Interesting
CB: Interdictors
GM: And they weren’t successful, I believe. And then Transport Command, when I think about the expense, six thousand feet all the way to Germany, straight to India, four days, bed and breakfast, North Africa, bed and breakfast, Palestine, bed and breakfast, Iraq, Karachi.
CB: And what were you flying in Transport Command?
GM: Stirlings, the Mark V, an extra ten miles an hour
CB: And you wouldn’t want to get there too quickly, with all that nice hospitality on the way, did you?
GM: Oh, just a routine bed and breakfast, you know.
CB: What could the Mark V Stirling carry? What could the Mark V Stirling carry?
GM: Sixteen passengers or so much freight, a lot of postal freight, you know, letters [unclear] was abroad
CB: So, did you enjoy that, overall?
GM: Oh yes
CB: How did you come to be posted to Transport Command after 214?
GM: I’ve told you, George Wright
CB: Yes, but in the mechanism of the system, it just automatically
GM: Well, George Wright got me posted to Transport Command
CB: Yeah, as the adjutant
GM: That was it
CB: Yeah. There’d be a less smaller crew there cause you didn’t need gunners, so what did you have?
GM: Oh, navigator and flight engineer
CB: And that was it. No signaller?
GM: Wireless op, possible, you see they were going a-begging, they weren’t needed
CB: No
GM: [unclear]
CB: How did you meet your wife and when?
GM: When did I meet her?
CB: Yes
GM: I don’t know the exact date although I can recount it in detail but I shan’t
CB: [laughs]
GM: My wedding was in [unclear], 1952 in the registry office in Scarborough, cost five quid, got back to Edinburgh that same day, that was the beginning of our marriage
CB: Where did you meet her in the first place?
GM: Edinburgh College of Arts
CB: Edinburgh College of Arts, right. After the war, in other words.
GM: Oh yes, oh yes,
CB: Yeah
GM: ’48 or ’49, the best thing I ever did.
CB: And how many children have you got? How many children do you have?
GM: Two daughters.
CB: Right. Local?
GM: Two daughters, two granddaughters, two great granddaughters. I don’t want any competition [laughs]. Let the name Mackie die
CB: And no brothers or sisters of yours? You have no brother or sister yourself?
GM: Well, no, my mother died after my birth
CB: Cause you were the first child, right
GM: And my stepmother had no children
CB: We’ll stop there. Post-war, what career did you follow?
GM: Well, I taught in a college of art for some years, I free-lanced, I became royal designer for industry, designing books for Edinburgh University Press, I am a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters and Water Colour, and now, I don’t know, that’s about it.
CB: So, how did you get down here, in Stamford?
GM: Retirement. Driving from London to Aberdeen, I took the wrong turn at Millhill roundabout, six bloody [unclear], following the A25, and then the A1, and Aberdeen seemed a long way away, roundabout, roundabout, roundabout. I came to a sign saying, Stamford, one mile and so help me. I turned off. [unclear] this is a wartime thing, I don’t know, a monumental thing to do, because it changed my life. The entry into Stamford from the south is the finest entrance to any town that I know.
CB: Yeah, past Burghley.
GM: It’s Extraordinary
CB: Yeah
GM: The George Hotel. So I kept on coming back and found a slum, I’ll let you see what it was like
CB: When is this, 1980?
GM: Yes
CB: Ah, right. It had just been neglected
GM: Completely
CB: Yeah
US: Of course, it’s a lovely building
CB: And you said it was affected by a fire behind it
GM: Oh, that was later on
CB: Ah
GM: When I saw it, I saw [unclear]. The fact is I made it. In Aberdeen I had a wonderful house with twenty, how many years? Twenty-four years there. Wonderful, wonderful. When it came to selling, it was valued forty eight. I said, nonsense, it’s worth seventy. I got in a week [laughs]. Forty-eight to seventy in 1980. And a bloody Scotch lawyer charges a thousand pounds for the convenience for half an hour’s work.
CB: That was a bit much, wasn’t it?
US: Yeah
GM: I had an interviewer here and told him what I thought, he said, I’ve never been spoken like this before, I said, well, it’s high time.
CB: Quite right.
GM: Bugger
CB: Yes
GM: A thousand pounds, in 1980
CB: That was a hell of a lot of money
GM: I mean, I sold it, I did the ad, I did the interviewing, I said, excessive, five hundred, even that, [unclear] enough, that’s a long time ago but still rankles
CB: Yeah
GM: Scotch avarice
CB: Quite right. But you never got the
GM: Anyway, then I could buy this and do tens of thousands of pounds on the house, new electricity, new walling, new this, new that, new [unclear], and it’s been a wonderful house for the family and [unclear] buggered up all went downhill
CB: When your wife became ill
GM: The worst possible conclusion. God, if he exists, is a master sadist. Oh, gentlemen, can I offer you anything now?
CB: I haven’t had anybody else criticize Bomber Command
GM: You haven’t?
CB: No. But that partly for the reason perhaps that you mentioned earlier which is that you were there right at the beginning, when Bomber Command was in a powerless state, and the leadership clearly, from what you said, was lacking severely. The bit I forgot to ask you about because it links quite well with the early comments you made about lack of morale, because this comes out of it in a way, what about LMF?
GM: Oh dear, LMF, how these initials frightened us. We didn’t quite know what it was all about, very effective
CB: Was it?
GM: Oh very, frightening words, frightening initials, and partially frightening because we didn’t quite know what it was. I only came across one [unclear], a commissioned officer, commissioned RAR cause he trained with me this man, the majority of us became sergeants, he became a pilot officer, [unclear] in a flying boat [unclear] blew a tool off and he had a history of early retirements
CB: A pilot?
GM: Pilot
CB: Yeah
GM: I never saw him again.
CB: Do you know where they sent him?
GM: He just vanished. But that was LMF. Poor man, is he still alive? The memory will be constant, he should have died.
CB: Yeah
GM: And of course, LMF was designed to make sure you died rather than anything else
US: That was on the doorbell
GM: Ah, thank you.
CB: What would you say it did to the, what effect did it have on the crew?
GM: Made them bloody sad, they wouldn’t be LMF. Tell me what lack of moral fiber, cowardice
US: Right
GM: Frightening initials. Till today
CB: Sure
GM: That was crude but that was effective and so unfair, it could [unclear] that someone that had done almost a tour and impact in, you know, he proved himself time and time and time again and you’d have reached the end of his [unclear] but LMF had no respect for that kind of achievement, oh, is cruel. We never talked about it. Never talked about it, never mentioned it. You must have found this is the constant in your interviews.
CB: Yes, I have, had a number of people talk about it
GM: Not mention saying what was mentioned
CB: Right, so, it’s been mentioned, yes, by several people
GM: Yeah
CB: And the effect on the crew
GM: Yeah
CB: Because it’s very unsettling
GM: Yeah
CB: And also the deterrent effect, the objective of deterrence
GM: It worked
CB: Yeah
GM: Yeah. Oh God, I’d have died rather than being labelled LMF, oh quite clearly
CB: So, he was commissioned and vanished but what was your perception of what would happen to the sergeants, if they were?
GM: What?
CB: What would happen to the sergeants if they were labelled LMF?
GM: They were stripped of rank of course and just vanished; I suppose. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to the commissioned officer, whether he was uncommissioned or I don’t know. The whole thing’s a mystery.
CB: Yeah
GM: Well, is it Chris?
CB: Yeah
GM: Sorry
CB: It’s alright.
GM: Well, you promised me that you will get access to these four volumes
CB: Yes, absolutely
GM: It’s not the easiest of reading but it’s right up your street
CB: Oh yes, it is
GM: There’s a whole appendix, giving the details about how many bombs fell [unclear] explode for instance [unclear]
CB: Yeah
GM: The bombs were inefficient
CB: Yeah
GM: So many things were incompetent
CB: Yeah. It’s not as though it was new because they had a very high failure rate in the First World War
GM: Yes
CB: Of bombs and shells
GM: My father never once asked me about Bomber Command, very most peculiar, I envy sons who had a good relationship with their fathers,
CB: What was the main stumbling block would you say?
GM: Well, losing his wife when he did, that buggered him, buggered him. Small town [unclear], like his father before him, like his grandfather before him and I would have been the starter, if the tractor hadn’t come, the tractor saved me.
CB: What did the tractor do?
GM: Made [unclear] redundant, no horses, mean this [unclear] two or three [unclear] all gone
US: All gone
GM: My hometown is like, Stamford, you know, agricultural market town. Have you always lived in Stamford, nearby the airfields? [laughs]
CB: In the dark
GM: Yeah, training
CB: Right
GM: Waterbeach, we were sent to other airfields, you see, and I [unclear] all apologetic but five miles apart the circuits overlapping
CB: But it must have been quite difficult, how did you, coming back from an operation or any sortie, how did you identify your airfield in the dark?
GM: Well, the flashing beacons, the Germans knew them all, out, you know, two initials, they never changed, the Germans must have known them all. And the three searchlights intersecting at two thousand feet all over the place, oh God it was a, what a performance! What [unclear]!
CB: So every, when you returned, there was always the searchlight on,
GM: Oh yes
CB: Unless the Germans had followed the bomber stream in
GM: Oh yes, and that should help from the German point of view, why they didn’t do that more often? What an advantage to have their fighters come across
CB: It could’ve been a turkey shoot
GM: It would’ve been a massive one. And they did it, well, they did it, when I was training the Wellingtons it happened once and it scared the daylights out of me, trying to learn to fly and at the same time, knowing there is an enemy aircraft around. Bassinbourn?
CB: Yeah. So if
GM: They missed a great opportunity
CB: If there was a known interdictor, intruder, what did the airfields do, they turned off their lights, did they?
GM: Oh yes.
CB: Then, what did that leave you with?
GM: That never happened to me. No, there was no trouble getting home, I mean, finding one’s way, I mean
CB: Because of all these lights
GM: Oh, the, and you had the radio beams and things, you know
CB: Yes
GM: I took no interest in, QDEM or something
CB: Yeah, did you have DREM lighting as well? The DREM lighting round the airfield?
GM: Yes, of course, I suppose so
CB: They do
GM: Round again that was nothing, I mean, you know, running at night, night flying was easy, it wasn’t difficult, above the weather
CB: And fog?
GM: As [unclear] it is, pilots, well, they know pilots, I when I was in an aircraft going to Boston one day, [unclear] stupid, so I wrote a wee note to the captain, I said, my last flight was from Gibraltar to Lyneham, sixteen passengers, height six thousand feet, and [unclear] speed a hundred and seventy five, can I come up to see you in your office? So the attendant sent up study staring into his cockpit
CB: Ah, this is on a 747
GM: Was it? I don’t know what the hell that was. Anyway, there was a vibration, you couldn’t see a bloody thing and they are all rushing but half a dozen of them, I thought, this isn’t flying, nor is it, we flew through the weather
CB: Yeah
GM: Christ, we, I was flying, you were actually controlling the bloody thing. It was good, you were doing something.
CB: God!
GM: You were in control.
CB: Yes
GM: It was responsive.
CB: How much did you use the auto-pilot on your aircraft?
GM: What you had to do, it was a chore. Invaluable. That night, when I survived the icing cloud, that was thanks to the link trainer, there’s a record at the back of the books somewhere
CB: Of the amount you did on link trainer?
GM: Yeah
CB: But on the aircraft itself, on the Stirling, did they have an automatic pilot?
GM: Oh yes
CB: They did?
GM: I never used it, at least I did in Transport Command, but not over Germany, ever
CB: Because you were always weaving
GM: For a fraction of a second, you know, [unclear]. But the thing is, Bomber Command was never on air, [unclear] my father’s trench war
CB: Yeah
GM: It was boring, can you imagine spending eight hours most of which when nothing was happening, eight bloody hours, Stettin and back, nothing happened, what a bore, all the bombers over over valued because it was dramatic. What the trips, after the raids above Holland, 1944, is undramatic compared to what happened in the air, so Bomber Command was overvalued. Which is why you’re here.
CB: Flying a B-17, how was that different from flying the Stirling?
GM: You couldn’t Make the bloody thing maneuver, it didn’t want to, it just wanted to stay straight and level, which was its job
CB: Yes, absolutely
GM: I mean, the Americans, the Air Force, they didn’t fuck around
CB: No
GM: They [unclear] straight and level
CB: In daylight
GM: Flew it all in daylight, my word, that’s bravery
CB: Absolutely
GM: That’s bravery. Oh yes, we had it easy
CB: And
GM: We had it easy, too much a cream,
CB: And simple comforts on the
GM: All sheets of a kind [unclear] breakfast, drink, cigarettes,
CB: In the Fortress
GM: No, in the Air Force
CB: OH, I see, yes, right, in the,
GM: [unclear]
CB: On the ground, yeah
GM: And too much prestige, too much
CB: In the war
GM: Too much
CB: Yeah
GM: No [unclear], too much. I mean, think what a submarine is like compared to what we did, bloody weeks in the air compared to a submarine, we did a few hours then we were all back to civilisation, so we are overvalued, overestimated. It took me a long time to work this out, I’m convinced of it now
CB: It’s unusual for people to have done more than two, one tour, you did two and then a third one.
GM: No, I did less than two. I did forty-four ops
CB: In total
GM: Supposed to be fifty. I came back from a spoof, nothing, and the wing commander said, Mackie, not [unclear], he’d been a [unclear], Mackie, you’re finished. That’s it, [unclear], I’ll never forget, completely, Mackie, you’re finished
CB: George Mackie, thank you very much indeed for a most interesting conversation
GM: Thank you for coming
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 Mackie
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
AMackieGA171222
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:39:10 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
George Mackie served in the RAF as a pilot. He flew forty-four operations, fifteen as a second pilot. Was posted to 15 Squadron in 1941 and critically examines the state of Bomber Command at the time. He was posted for eighteen months to RAF Waterbeach where he flew three operations and took part at the thousand bomber operation to Cologne. Describes the Stirling, its characteristics and performance and compares it to the Flying Fortress. Remembers being hit once by anti-aircraft fire over Leverkusen but without being seriously injured. Was then posted to 214 Squadron, where he flew on Flying Fortresses. At the end of the war, was transferred to Transport Command as an adjutant. Talks about low morale among the aircrew and mentions Scarecrow shells. Remembers his most frightening experience when he flew for five hours in an icing cloud on the way to Hamburg.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
15 Squadron
1651 HCU
214 Squadron
aircrew
B-17
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fear
ground crew
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
memorial
Oxford
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Cranfield
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Wyton
Scarecrow
searchlight
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1001/11341/BHiltonPHiltonPv1.2.pdf
4df75a71f26ae98e9ae65a7e04afb7fd
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
Joseph, David
D Joseph
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. The collection concerns Flight Sergeant David Joseph (1576383, Royal Air Force) and contains his decorations, log book, memoirs, correspondence and a list of prisoners of war at Stalag Luft 4. He flew operations as a pilot with 76 Squadron from RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor until his aircraft was shot down on 18 March 1944 on an operation to Frankfurt and he became a prisoner of war. The collection also contains a letter to Mrs Ramsay about the loss of her son, Flying Officer Kenneth Ramsay and photographs of his final resting place. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Brian Joseph and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on Kenneth Grant Ramsay is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/223173/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-05-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Joseph, D
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Blank front page of booklet]
[Page break]
Written by Paul Hilton.
[Underlined] CHIEFY [/underlined]
On the night of 1st June, 1942, Bomber Command mounted the second of the now famous thousand bomber raids on Germany. The night before, amidst much publicity, we had taken part in the first thousand raid on Cologne, my first as Captain of a 4 engined Halifax.
All 35 Squadron (at Linton-on-Ouse) returned safely that night and we all felt that at last we were doing something positive to help the war effort.
The Germans were somewhat taken by surprise and our overall casualties were low considering the number of aircraft taking part.
On 1st June our target was to be Essen in the Ruhr valley with Krupps as the pinpoint.
Tremendous excitement and enthusiasm was general with ground crews as well as aircrews and we all attended briefing and prepared for the take off with hopes for another successful show.
In due course we were taken to our dispersal point in the usual trucks where we unloaded parachutes, harnesses, charts etc., and duly went through the run up and check procedures. We had air tested our aircraft that morning and everything was still functioning satisfactorily, so in due course form 700 was presented to ne for my signature by the LAC of our ground crew.
I signed and then with all four engines running we started the slow crawl from our dispersal point towards the end of the main runway.
We must have moved about 50 yards when one of the ground crew ran in front of us furiously waving two torches. I pulled up smoothly, strict RT silence of course, and soon someone shouted up through the front escape hatch “return to dispersal.” We managed to turn the heavily laden Halifax and return, where I was told to switch off engines. Flight Sergeant (Chiefy) McKay, a dour little Scot then appeared and told us we had a glycol leak in our port inner engine. How did he know?
[Page break]
- 2 -
He said he could smell it. He had just happened to be walking behind our aircraft when he caught a whiff. No doubt, we couldn’t go.
I was furious, how long to fix it. Not tonight, too bad.
The rest of the Squadron were all taking off and disappearing into a black sky, and soon all was quiet. We trooped back disconsolately to the Sergeants Mess feeling very dejected and sorry for ourselves. Once again, our Squadron operated without loss, only this time we had missed out.
On reflection, however, we would almost certainly have lost that engine either during take off or very soon afterwards and the thought has often gone through my mind, would a 20 year old pilot with just 400 hours in his log book have coped with an aircraft full of fuel and 6,500 lb of HE and incendiary bombs. I know I would have tried a landing had we managed to get airborne, but who knows.
I can’t remember if I thanked “Chiefy” for almost certainly saving us. I don’t think I ever bought him a drink in the Mess. If he is still around I should like to do it sometime. You see we didn’t have much time, we were shot down the next night, so perhaps it didn’t matter much after all.
[Page break]
[Underlined] Gone for a Burton [/underlined]
Early in May 1942 I returned to my old station “Linton on Ouse” in Yorkshire, where I had previously served with 58 Squadron on Whitley Vs. I had been with “58” from October 1941 until they joined Coastal Command at St. Eval in Cornwall early in April 1942. At this point I elected to convert to Halifaxes at “Marston Moor” near York and managed to get posted back to Linton where I joined 35 Squadron.
With 58 I had survived the winter as a second pilot, sitting helplessly in the right hand seat for five operations and in March had successfully completed the customary two “Nursery Trips” as Captain.
During May I was crewed up and together we did a number of cross countries and other details working up towards the big thousand bomber raids starting with Cologne on 30th May.
Both my parents lived in Seremban, Malaya and with the entry of Japan into the war, they had been forced to make their way with other Europeans to the Island Fortress of Singapore. The surrender stunned us all and I had anxiously awaited any news of my parents whereabouts.
I had lived through the winter at Linton and had no illusions as to our chances of survival on Bomber Command. Both 58 and 35 had had their share of losses. Of the course of six pilots at Driffield just after Christmas on a blind approach procedures course, I was by then the only survivor.
Singapore had fallen in February and the chances of either of my parents reaching safety by now seemed somewhat remote but with the complete lack of news there was nevertheless a remote chance that one or the other might still turn up.
I thought in that case, particularly my mother might need some financial assistance which would ultimately be my responsibility. If I was around, I would be able to arrange a dependant’s allowance, but in my absence, this might be a bit difficult.
[Page break]
- 2 -
I decided to seek the advice of the Squadron Accounts Officer and had an interview with the Flying Officer Assistant i/c Accounts. He listened to my unusual story and was obviously at a loss to comment. He was used to straightforward questions with answers neatly tabulated in his little book or covered by the syllabus of his Chartered Accountants examinations and seemed reluctant to pass this on to higher authority. He paused for a while and then at last drew himself up in his chair and with great deliberation said, “Well Sergeant, if you are afraid of going for a Burton, why don’t you make a will?
My total assets, £25 in the Post Office Savings Bank and a broken down Austin 7 in the car park, seemed unlikely to be much help in the support of either parent for any length of time and I felt that further discussion was unlikely to lead anywhere so I thanked him kindly and took my leave.
I intended bringing the matter up with “Welfare”. I believe we had someone in that capacity, or more to the point, Wing Commander Marks or my flight commander, Sq.Ldr. Peveler. I knew either of these two would have raised the roof, but I determined to await an appropriate moment.
I had often wondered what “gong for a burton” was really like and very soon on the night of 2nd June I found out.
Incidentally, neither of my parents were in need of any help I could have given them. My father stayed the whole time in Changi Jail, Singapore, but Mother nearly made it. She was on board one of the last ships to leave Singapore, the “Vyner Brook”, a small coastal steamer loaded with refugees which was bombed off the south east coast of Sumatra. Mostly women and children, they were all interned in camps at “MuntoK” and “Palembang” where more than half of them, including my mother, succumbed to the rigours of malnutrition and tropical diseases.
Bomber Command crews had a slim chance of survival whilst actually flying but once we became “Kriegies” (POWs), thanks to a comparatively civilised enemy and thank God also for the Red Cross, most of us lived to tell the tale.
[Page break]
[Underlined] Curse my luck. [/underlined]
Not many of us fighting on the Allied side ever thought we would welcome the sight of advancing German troops. In my case, I reckon they arrived just in time to save my life.
I was pilot of a “Halifax” returning from a raid on Essen in the Ruhr valley on the night of 2nd June, 1942 when we were unfortunately jumped by three JU 88 night fighters. It was a clear night with a full moon, our exhaust flames must have been clearly visible for a considerable distance and the fighters soon made short shrift of both our inner engines. Our two gunners put up a spirited fight despite the unequal battle between out 303 rifle bullets and the enemy’s canon fire, but the action was inexplicably broken off, leaving us limping homewards on our two outer engines.
We were just sorting ourselves out when alas our starboard outer developed an internal glycol leak, whether it was overstressed or due to enemy action we shall never know, but this meant the end and I had to give the inevitable order, “Bail Out”.
We were a bit low by then and when my turn came, the thought of ditching on what looked like a patch of swamp or water seemed my best chance. I turned off course towards this area but very soon found this to be ground mist obscuring a row of trees and some houses. Too late, I was on the point of a stall and mushed into a house. The starboard wing was ripped off at the root and the remainder of the aircraft spun around in a flat cartwheel through 180 degrees. I was in fact thrown backwards in my seat.
I must have been unconscious for a second or so as when I came round, the port outer engine had just caught fire. I then had a violent struggle with the escape hatch over my seat. It moved at last and then I managed to crawl out onto the top of the fuselage and jump down onto the port wing. The dinghy was inflating and I just had enough presence of mind to grab the package of iron rations as I passed.
[Page break]
- 2 -
My first reaction was to get clear as quickly as possible, there were still several hundred gallons of high octane too close to the burning engine, so I started running towards the cover of the trees I could see almost alongside in the moonlight.
I ran between two of them and was just about to go along the road that they were bordering when there was a piercing scream of “Halt” from right behind me. Almost immediately I was prodded with a viscious [sic] jab from a rifle muzzle in the small of my back.
A terrified lone German sentry had just escaped being hit by the Halifax which by now was nicely ablaze and too darned close for safety. My captor didn’t seem to be aware of our imminent danger and continued prodding and screaming in a hysterical manner. I wondered where his trigger finger was. The safety catch would certainly be off and guns, I was always taught, were dangerous and shouldn’t on principle ever be pointed at anyone. My greatest fear was that he would let the darned thing off by accident. He was so excited that anything could happen. He might do it on purpose, “The Englishman started to run”, no one would disbelieve him. Perhaps his family had been bombed in Cologne three nights before. Such thoughts raced through my mind. The fire was getting hold of the port wing and I knew all those gallons of high octane were bound to go up at any moment. Any minor explosion would make him jump and pull the trigger inadvertently. The prodding and screaming continued, how long could this last, my all too short twenty years seemed almost over. A pity, I had so much to experience and done so little. This was the moment of truth. I felt so helpless and had no control of the situation and this was when I really knew what fear was. I was hot but the sweat running down my back was cold. A minor bang, one of the outer wing tanks had blown up and another prod. I was still there, but how long could this go on. Suddenly a torch shone in the distance and I heard some shouts and saw another torch. Fortunately my sterical [sic] captor saw and heard them too, and the tension began slowly to ease, eventually after what seemed an eternity, I was surrounded and someone had the sense to move us all away to a safer distance. Just in time, the main wing tanks went up with a muffled roar and we could all feel the blast of heat. My original captor melted into the background. I never even saw him but could hear his excited story being related in the distance.
[Page break]
- 3 -
I stood for a while with my liberators and we watched the remains of the Halifax burning furiously. A fearsome sight, one I hope never to get too close to. I remember one of the troops found my parachute harness and “Mae West” life jacket which I had dumped in the field in my haste and I was then led off to the local barracks. I was later to find out this was in St. Leonard near Brecht in Belgium, right in the middle of an intense curfew area, literally crawling with German troops.
I was taken inside and led to a standard German army double tier bunk bed, complete with wood wool palliasse, a type I was to get to know so well over the next three years. I suppose I must have been suffering from a certain amount of shock as I lay down, boots and all and went out like a light.
I didn’t have time to curse my luck at having been shot down, but later I came to realise that far from being unlucky I had in fact survived a whole succession of miracles in the short space of less than half an hour.
[Page break]
[Underlined] FOR YOU THE WAR IS OVER [/underlined]
By now we were some way inside Germany en route from Cologne to Frankfurt in a corridor type railway coach. We were free to wander along to the toilet and our three guards had completely relaxed. They undid their belts and left their revolvers lying on the seats. After one visit to the toilet I actually sat for some time on one of these weapons and only moved off because it was somewhat uncomfortable.
I was dressed in the usual clothing, battledress, submarine sweater and, of course, the inevitable flying boots, the old green canvas type, fur lined, in which one shuffled along as if wearing oversized carpet slippers. The thought of being able to walk any distance, let alone run from a train in broad daylight, was quite out of the question.
When first captured in Belgium the story was quite different. I was pounced upon within minutes of stepping from the blazing wreckage of the Halifax, and the local German army unit and the Feldgendarmarie kept a very close watch on my every movement. They handed me over to the Luftwaffe in Antwerp airport who continued the process. Sitting on a toilet seat looking at a jackboot keeping the door open is an unforgettable experience and quite puts one off the job in hand.
Our guards on the train were flying types, one Feldwebel (Sergeant) and two Obergefreighters (sort of Corporals). One spoke a little French and with him I tried to carry on something of a conversation. I learned he was a Navigator and had recently seen service on the eastern front. He and his comrades would get a couple of days leave near home after escorting us to Dulag Luft, the reception and interrogation centre at Frankfurt.
The time was early June 1942. The Germans were at the height of their success. Tobruk had recently fallen and their troops were at their furthest points in the Caucasus. Our position was not encouraging. Singapore had
[Page break]
- 2 -
fallen only four months previously, but we still endeavoured to keep up the appearance of high spirits, even though we knew we were in for a long wait. Sooner or later the obvious remark had to come. My navigator friend grinned from ear to ear and said, “For you the war is over”. I smiled back and said, “Yes, aren’t we lucky, but for you it has not yet started.”
[Page break]
[Underlined] GOOD APPETITE [/underlined]
We always called him Cyril. This wasn’t his real name but that of the chap with whom he had swopped identities. I was one of the large mob of new Kriegies brought in to Luft 3 Sagan just after the thousand bomber raids on Cologne and Essen in May and June 1942. We were housed in 39 and 40 Blocks, but somehow a few old Kriegies from Lamsdorf, the big Army Stalag, had been pushed in with us. Most of the batch from Lamsdorf were swop overs.
When Goering decided to bring all the RAF Kriegies together at Sagan, quite a mixed bag was collected and Cyril was one of these. What his real name was I have quite forgotten. It was unpronounceable. He was from Israel, ‘Palestine’ in those days, and he had served in the British Army, Military Police I think, and was captured in Greece. I believe he was born in Riga but had emigrated to Palestine when quite young. He already spoke a number of languages, Russian, Polish, German, French and, of course, Hebrew and Yiddish. Only English seemed to have escaped him and so, finding himself among British soldiers was a blessing in disguise. He soon set about the task of learning the best of English with all the necessary Anglo-Saxon descriptive adjectives. When I knew him these were apt to get somewhat out of context, especially when he got excited, with comic results.
I an effort to learn better English he decided to swop identity with an RAF navigator. As a private soldier he had to go out on working parties and at Lamsdorf many RAF sergeants swopped over to get out of the camp with the obvious possibilities of escape.
At Sagan, Cyril made the best [sic] use of the library, such as it was, and was soon one of the best read among us. I was also trying to learn German and Cyril was always a great help. He had a great sense of humour and was able to tell a joke against himself.
[Page break]
- 2 -
English, it would appear, is about the only language that does not have an expression equivalent to “Bon Appetite” or “Guten Apetit”. We only have “Cheers” or “Bung Ho”, or some other equally fatuous expression before we drink, but, alas, nothing before we eat. Whilst in his early days at Lamsdorf, Cyril was endeavouring to say the right thing to his British Army comrades and one day noticed one of his friends just about to start on a bowl of soup. He quite naturally made a literal translation of “Bon Appetite” and said, “Good appetite my friend”. His friend stopped short, looked up and said, “What do you mean ‘Good Appetite’? Of course I have a ****ing good appetite!”
[Page break]
[Underlined] 40 HOMMES 8 CHEVAUX [/underlined]
It would be interesting to know just how many thousands, nay, millions, of troops, prisoners, internees and others have travelled, some on their last journeys, in this famous four wheeled French rail wagon in both the last two wars. I can well remember our trips from Heydekrug (East Prussia) to Thorn and later from Thorn to Fallingbostel during the summer of 1944.
The side doors were opened wide and each end was crossed off with barbed wire spread over wooden frames. A small door or gate was built in for access.
Three guards occupied the central area, about one third in total, and 24 prisoners were confined to each end. Space was somewhat limited and we all lay heads to the outside with a pile of feet in the middle. No toilets were provided. On long trips prisoners had to wait until the train stopped and were then allowed out in batches to operate in the countryside. The two trips I remember were relatively short and there were no stops for calls of nature, however, during daylight we were allowed singly to come through our little holes in the wire and pass water along the line through the side door, hanging on to the vertical rail on the side of the wagon.
I recall the journey from Thorn to Fallingbostel was by night and at first light the queue started. This became a verbal process among us and my turn was some way down the line, by which time I was nearly desperate and had built up a good head of steam. At last it came and I scrambled through the hole and clung on to the vertical rail with my right hand, with my left I feverishly undid the remaining metal trouser buttons (they were always popping off, no zips in those days), and started literally groaning with relief.
At this point or shortly before, the train had been slowing up and to my horror (I was still a bit embarrassed), I saw that we were slowly approaching a level crossing on the outskirts of a German village. About
[Page break]
- 2 -
thirty citizens of Hitler’s Reich were patiently waiting to cross and I passed slowly by, just out of reach, still in full spate.
I noticed no reaction from my hosts, so I can only assume that they were used to being shown respect by their captives in this manner. Needless to say, my embarrassment soon passed and I enjoyed my unique point of vantage. I even had an almost uncontrollable urge to give a Nazi salute which I thought would be appropriate, but of course, my right hand was fully occupied in holding on to the rail at the side of the door. A pity, I felt this would have completed the performance.
[Page break]
[Underlined] “Welche Nummer” [/underlined] (What Number)
There are few more morale shattering sounds than that of a heavy cell door shutting behind you and the bolt going clonk in the lock. There is something positive and very final about it and it gives one a feeling of complete helplessness. There you are, it’s no good banging on the door, no one will take any notice.
It was early autumn 1943 in Stalaf [sic] Luft 6 Heydekrug in East Prussia near the Baltic coast. One particular morning an unusual number of ‘Ferrets’ (security troops) in dark blue overalls with all their tools had descended on our barrack block. They were proceeding to turf us out and to tear the place apart. I don’t know what they were looking for, a tunnel perhaps, but they meant business. In the initial confusion we were all milling around and I happened to be close to a table where a lot of the tools had been laid, hammers, crowbars, jemmys, saws, screwdrivers and a large pair of pliers. I took a fancy to the pliers and when no one was looking they quickly disappeared into my trousers pocket. Unfortunately, when I grabbed them they were open and in my haste they clicked shut. One of the Ferrets heard this, looked round and started asking his friends whether any of them had picked up his pliers. I took this as a cue to get lost and started to saunter out of the block. I looked for anyone I knew to off load but before I could get a dozen paces away out of the door I was grabbed and hauled up before the security officer, Major Peschel. He growled something which I suppose meant “Lock him up”, and there I was in the so called “Cooler”.
The cell was six feet wide and nine feet long. It had a double bunk bed with a complete set of boards but no palliasse, a stool and a metal jug for water. The tiny barred window had a “Lichtfanger, a wooden partition on the outside allowing a view of sky or a small area immediately beneath the window.
I sat down on the stool for a while to assess the situation. I was there for I knew not how long, so I supposed I had better make the best of it. I was allowed to send a note into the camp for a few things,
[Page break]
- 2 -
tooth brush, razor, knife, fork and spoon, and a couple of books. One was a German Grammar which I was steadily ploughing through. Now here was a chance, I could really get some useful work done and might even get some help from my jailers.
There were about half a dozen other inmates in the twelve cells and one soon learned how to make contact and to know the ‘drill’ or mode of life. The legendary W/O John Snowdon was already there doing one of his numerous stretches, so advice was readily available.
The cooler was a rectangular building with only one entrance. The guard room was just inside the door. A corridor with six cells on either side had a toilet at the far end. I forget what type and a fire bucket of sand near the toilet served as a post box. Only one inmate was allowed out at any one time apart from the half hour daily exercise when we walked around in a large circle, well spaced apart.
When you wanted to visit the toilet you knocked on your door. The duty guard would come out of the guardroom and shout “Welche Nummer” to which you had to reply (in German of course) the number of your cell. In my case “Sieben Bitte” (seven please). He would then say “Komme sofort” (coming) and go back and fetch the key to your cell. He would then have to hang around while you operated, no doors or partitions, and when complete lead you back to your cell and by then someone else might be waiting to take their turn.
The cooler was outside the main compound but in the so called “Vorlager” an outer area but still within the main outer barbed wire fence. Our own medical officer had pronounced the cooler water unfit to drink so we had to have bottled water from the main camp cook house. To this was added milk and sugar and tea or coffee. It was understood that the guards helped themselves which was allowed for at the cookhouse. Food was another problem. We were supposed to be on bread and water with one day of normal food in every three. Sometimes if the guards were willing. A prisoner on his good day would be sent in enough food to feed the others as well. It depended on the guards. There were two shifts of 24 hours each with an “Unterofficier” (Corporal) and two or three men.
[Page break]
- 3 -
One of these shifts I remember well. We didn’t see much of the Corporal, but I got to know “Bruno”, a thick set chap with closely curled hair and “Franz”, a tall, gangling, untidy type with spectacles somewhat out of line. He had no pretensions as a soldier. It wasn’t for the sake of cigarettes or any other form of bribery but Franz and Bruno both wanted a quiet life and seemed to respond to common courtesy. Impatient inmates who shouted abuse and banged on their cell doors generally had to wait while those of us who “cottoned on” got the best service, or at least the best of what was going. As I was trying to learn German I was soon learning all the best polite phrases and making good progress through my grammar book.
As the cooler emptied somewhat (the population was always fluctuating), the service improved. We dropped to about three inmates and by then Franz used to knock on my cell door first thing in the morning and I would say “Come in” and Franz would hand me my coffee in bed. With a cheerful “Guten Morgen Herr Hilton” we would converse for a while, any news, the weather etc. We both seemed to know instinctively that this was the sensible way to behave. It cost nothing and generally made the best of a bad job. We were not alone in this. At another time in the same cooler I heard tell of a German guard trying to learn English who was taught to say “Good morning, Sir. Your coffee, Sir.” I never managed that, but to both Franz and Bruno I was always Herr Hilton, even though they were both considerably older than I. But alas, all good things come to an end. One night the Heydekrug tunnel broke and unfortunately only five or six managed to get away, the remaining thirty odd being dug out and pushed straight into the cooler with us.
Chaos reigned for a day with up to four to a cell until all were documented and the majority sent back to the main camp to await their turn for the customary sentence of fourteen days.
For the rest of my time in the cooler we stayed two to a cell. No more coffee in bed and I was now subjected to a companion who talked incessantly.
One had to wait ones turn, quite a long time on occasion, for the inevitable trip to the toilet. On one of these poor Franz quietly apologised to me for the deterioration in the service, but hoped I would understand.
[Page break]
[Underlined] The Hero’s Return [/underlined]
Appearances do seem to have a marked effect upon the way one is treated through life and the healthy, robust figure usually commands respect. The invalid or under-nourished, on the other hand, has often to struggle to keep his place in society and to attract any attention.
I had just returned from Germany after three years as a P.O.W. I was one of the first batch to be released and we had gone through the RAF reception depot at Cosford rather before they were ready for us. Although they had done a surprisingly good job, they had nevertheless omitted to order enough badges of rank so the first of us, mostly Warrant Officers due to automatic promotion, were sent home on leave in Airmen’s tunics and greatcoats with no badges on our sleeves. Not that we cared much for that but these things seem to make a difference in a somewhat class conscious society.
I was released early in April 1945. Most of our camp were marched eastwards towards the River Elbe, but because I had spent most of the winter in our camp hospital with a chronic form of bronchitis and a bout of pneumonia thrown in, I was left behind in our camp hospital. My 6ft. 2 inch bone structure was carrying an all up weight of about eight stone with a “Belsen Horror” like expression to match. RAF Cosford clothing stores had done their best, but I was never an easy one to fit anyway.
I left Cosford on leave with new kit but also as much of my old kit as I could manage to salvage which had survived the delouser. I think we were done at least three times, clothes and all. DDT was squirted up sleeves and trousers with reckless abandon until I was quite raw in many sweaty and tender areas.
I passed through London and deposited my considerable collection of kit at the Services left luggage office on Victoria Station. I wanted to visit the hairdresser in the catacomb under the station. A haircut was long overdue, “these things were important then”.
[Page break]
- 2 -
I settled in the chair for the first proper haircut for some considerable time. I thought that this was also a special occasion and I would be having to kiss a number of female relatives within the next two hours or so, so on completion of the haircut I suggested a shave. The barber stroked my 23 year old chin contemptuously with the back of his hand and said, “You don’t need a bloody shave.”
To this day I have still never had a shave at a barber’s.
I crept back to the left luggage office and started to load up my two kit bags and haversack only to hear a loud Australian voice, which could be heard halfway across the station, “Why don’t you hang your ( ) out mate”, a well known coarse service expression meaning if you load up like a horse why not dress like one.
In the compartment of the train to Haywards Heath I was obliged to listen to the sad tale told by an ATC officer of a young clerk who had recently been jailed for masquerading as a Wing Commander, complete with DSO’s, DFC’s etc., and who had given thrilling lectures to factory workers and ATC squadrons. It was considered by all to be a huge joke and such a pity the poor lad was jailed. The authorities certainly lacked a sense of humour.
I am afraid I couldn’t comment. I had known too many real ones, mostly now dead, and if anything I felt sick. I crouched further into my featureless greatcoat and when we arrived at Haywards Heath I loaded myself up again like a horse and crept quietly home.
[Page break]
[Underlined] CORNED BEEF [/underlined]
I had just arrived back from Germany and was unpacking my kit. Apart from being equipped with new clothing from Cosford, a specially organised reception centre for ex-POWs, my belongings were meagre. I had a half kit bag of new gear and a small army rucksack which I had acquired just before leaving Thorn the previous August.
I took out the few items brought from Germany, tin mug, fork and spoon, toothbrush etc., and a small tin, 1/2lb I believe, of Corned Beef. I can’t remember when I first got hold of this tin, sometime during the last autumn when Red Cross stocks were still available. These petered out during the winter and we had been subject to very small issues for some time, leaving us on German non-working civilian daily rations, i.e. 400 gm bread, margarine and jam to cover this, and about 1/2 litre thin swede soup (pea soup Sundays).
Being a careful sort of chap I usually had a few odd bits left over, a small tin of jam but not much else. Once opened, a tin of meat had to be eaten and I had managed to hold on to the corned beef for the last emergency. I remember eating one in the cattle truck ride from Thorn to Fallingbostel, digging the meat out with my pocket knife and gnawing at a piece of hard bread. My reactions were to do that again, but I then thought ‘Why, here I am back home in civilisation, I can’t behave like that now’, so I took the tin downstairs to the kitchen and handed it to my aunt.
I was staying with my father’s two sisters, one was married with a daughter a little older than myself. Despite the war time shortages, my relatives always kept up appearances and did their best to live in proper style. The next lunch time was no exception.
The highly polished dining room table was, as usual, set with place mats and lace doilies. The sub [sic] shone on the cut flower vase and the two sparkling cruets. Each place set with two, or was it three, knives, forks,
[Page break]
serviettes in silver rings, the lot. Salad was the order of the day with the usual salad creams, vinegar etc., and then, somewhat to my surprise, a large plate was produced upon which stood in solemn state, a small naked piece of corned beef. My long treasured tin had been breached at last.
My uncle, an engineer, took great pride in his ability to carve and was always meticulous in the sharpening process. I remember this day he paid particular attention to a long corrugated knife which he then used with great dexterity on the tiny lump of corned beef. Wafer thin slices soon started to fall to one side and at last these were dealt out rather like cards.
At this point my cousin came into the room and exclaimed, “Corned beef, Mummy! Where did you get that?”. “Paul brought it”, was the prompt reply. Here my other aunt joined in, an ex-nursing sister and sometime deputy matron with a voice and manner to match, “Paul brought it! Good heavens, we haven’t seen corned beef for months.”
Like most ex-POWs I was suffering from so called “withdrawal symptoms” and I was quite unable to add anything to the conversation. My throat contracted and it was some time before I was able to swallow. My thoughts at this point were ‘What’s the use.’ I soon forgot this incident and only remembered it about ten years later when I was able to regard it with some humour.
[Page break]
[Blank back sheet of booklet]
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
Flying Stories by Paul Hilton
Description
An account of the resource
Nine accounts of flying activities during the war.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
'David Joseph's son Brian met Paul Hilton in the 1980's through work, and he was wearing a prisoner of war tie. In conversation it became clear that Paul had some common experiences with David's, and a meeting was arranged. They had been in the same camps and on some of the same forced marches, had many common memories, but had never previously met.'
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Paul Hilton
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
20 typewritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany--Essen
Belgium
Belgium--Antwerp
Poland--Toruń
Lithuania--Šilutė
Germany
Lithuania
Poland
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Bad Fallingbostel
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BHiltonPHiltonPv1
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
35 Squadron
58 Squadron
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
dispersal
displaced person
Dulag Luft
fear
ground crew
Halifax
Ju 88
prisoner of war
RAF Cosford
RAF Driffield
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
Red Cross
sanitation
shot down
Stalag 8B
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/978/11389/AMarshallJ180116.1.mp3
937541350d7b0cdb88fee6af6c8323f8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Marshall, Jack
J Marshall
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer Jack Marshall DFC (b.1920, 391865 Royal New Zealand Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 115 and 7 Squadron Pathfinders.
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
2018-01-16
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Marshall, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GT: This is Tuesday, the 16th of January 2018, and I am at the home of Mr. Jack Marshall, born 1st August 1920 in London, England. RNZAF air gunner, NZ391865, flying officer in Christchurch, New Zealand. Jack joined the RNZAF in 1939, trained as an air gunner in Levin, New Zealand, and he completed a tour of ops on 115 Squadron in Wellingtons, and another tour on 7 Squadron PFF in Stirlings as a tail gunner. Jack was awarded the DFC in 1943, and returned to New Zealand in November 1943. Jack has completed numerous interviews, and they feature on the internet and his story is widely told. Thank you Jack, thank you for allowing me to come and have a chat with you
JM: It’s a pleasure.
GT: And would you, would you please give us some- A little bit of background of you joining in the RNZAF here in New Zealand, of course you being from England?
JM: I came out to New Zealand in 1937, and we, we’d landed up in Napier, and in those- At that age it was very difficult to find a job, but I finished up with the gentleman’s club in Napier as a steward, and I was only there a couple of years when they war broke, that was from ‘37 to ‘39, and when I could see there was definitely going to be a war, I decided to rush up the street and join the local- Join the air force. We went into Levin in [unclear] just before Christmas, about Nov- Sometime in November ‘39, we took off on the ship for England, I think either late January, early February. We arrived in- I don’t know what time we arrived in England, and we went to a place called Uxbridge where we did all our foot slogging and where they got asked colonial interline[?], and then from there we were, we were sent to our OTU’s, operational training units, where we had our basic training, learning how to strip a Browning gun down and put it together again, that sort of thing, and then finally we were, we were set off to our squadrons. I finished up with 115 Squadron in Marham, in Norfolk, and did my first tour there. I’m not quite sure just how many trips I did from Marham but, after completing my tour out from Marham, I then went to OTU at Bassingbourn, did a stretch there as a, as an instructor, and then went on back onto ops with 7 Squadron, just out of Oakington, that’s in Cambridgeshire, and I did the rest of my trips, which finally amounted to forty-six. There you are, why did we survive forty-six? No, I have no idea [chuckles]. Some went down on their first trip, amazing.
GT: And for the Wellingtons, for the tour on the Wellingtons there, you, you- Have you mentioned to me a very famous- The chap Fraser Barron.
JM: Oh, no that was on my second tour, Stirlings. That’s Fraser Barron, yes, he’s a wonderful guy, a wonderful pilot, and we had a wonderful navigator. Possibly one- Two reasons why we survived [chuckles].
GT: And unfortunately, though he was, he was killed in the air, I believe you said?
JM: Fraser unfortunately was on a trip over Le Mans in France after the second front, and he- Very unfortunately he collided with one of our own aircraft, and I believe it was from our squadron, and the two of them blew up, and I would say there was very, very little left of them, and my wife and I were in France in 2002, and we visited the grave and I have a strong feeling that there was very little in the grave, after such an explosion as that. Anyway, we paid our respects to Fraser.
GT: Brilliant. So, the tour for- You did with 115, was there anything special that you- That happened on your trips there?
JM: Yes, we had one or two hairy, hairy days. One of them was a trip to Genoa in Italy, we did three in a row to Genoa, and on one of them, we- Approaching the alps on the way out, we iced up very badly and Fraser the skipper, said- Talking to Bob the navigator and he said, ‘Bob’, he said, ‘We’re not going to get over the alps’, he said, ‘We’re icing up to badly’. So he said, ‘Well, looks as if we’re going to have to turn round and go home’. Bob pipes up and said, ‘No, well if we can’t go over the alps’, he said, ‘We’ll go through them’, and I’m sitting in the tower thinking, go through them, what’s he talking about? Anyway, he knew exactly where we were, he knew exactly where this big pass was, and we motored up alongside the alps for, I don’t know, probably fifteen or twenty minutes, something like that, and finally found this pass, a huge pass, and I always remember it because way up high on the left-hand side of the pass was this floodlit building, which obviously was a monastery, they were just letting us know that it wasn’t a fortification. So anyway, we got to Genoa, we did our bombing in the shipping in the harbour there, and of course without the bomb, bomb load we were able to come back over the alps this time, and we arrived back at our base and we found that we were the only aircraft in the air that- Anywhere near our base, we got immediate permission to land, and as we touched down, the tail went back down, three of the engines cut on us [chuckles] and- Which obviously we would never- We- If we hadn’t made a decent landing, we’d never have made it. Next morning, we were talking to the ground crew and they- We- They said to us that we had- They reckoned we had about three or four minutes fuel left. So, if we hadn’t made a decent landing, we certainly would never have got round for another one [chuckles].
GT: Astonishing, and you had an incident of a night fighter attacking you that-
JM: Ah yes. We were attacked by two air- Two fighters. The first was a Junkers 88, and he came in with a long burst and disappeared completely, we didn’t see him again. Second one came in was a 109, and he also gave us a very long burst as he came in underneath, which was their, their usual method of attack. He disappeared for a few- A minute or two, and then next minute I'm watching out for him and in the meantime, I find that my turret wouldn’t operate and me guns wouldn’t operate, he’d obviously severed out hydraulics and there he was at the dead stern of me, large as life, and I thought Jack, this is it, you’ve had it this time, and all of a sudden he just peeled off and disappeared, and the only thing we can think, or I can think, is that he had given us such a long burst, and been in combat before us and then when he came in dead as stern of us he had nothing left. How lucky can you be? [Chuckles]
GT: Very lucky indeed. You- Did you have a choice to be an air gunner, or was that what you went into to achieve?
JM: The reason I became an air gunner was they, they needed more air gunners than they do pilots for a start, or navigators, and they were short of gunners and they asked for volunteers, they put a notice on the board calling for us to volunteer to be gunners. So, I thought, why not? [Chuckles]
GT: You were awarded your DFC for you work? What were you awarded your DFC particularly for?
JM: That’s a good question. I, I’ve never really fully understood that, except that I was lucky enough to survive forty-six, and also, I volunteered for the last one, I- Actually I had- I really finished with forty-five, but they had an aircraft on the tarmac with a full crew except a gunner, and they asked me if I'd volunteer and I did, I volunteered the forty-sixth trip. So, whether that had anything to do with it, I don’t know. But I had someone approach me, not so long ago at the, at the village here and he said, ‘By the way’, he said, ‘Not many gunners got the DFC, did they?’, and being honest I had never even thought about it.
GT: Well, I have the citation for your DFC, it’s dated 12th April 1943, from 7 PFF Squadron, RAF Stirlings, ‘This officer has at all times displayed a keenness and desire to engage the enemy which is most praiseworthy. His dependability and conscience, completion of his duties render him a valuable member of aircrew. Throughout a long and successful operational career, he has set a high standard of reliability and enthusiasm’. So, you obviously well deserved the award, for sure.
JM: Fair enough [chuckles]. Well, they thought so.
GT: Now you also were shot down and spent some time in the water you tell me?
JM: Oh, that was on the first tour with Wellingtons. We’d been to Berlin, on the way back we were, we were south of- Somewhere south of Hamburg, and we got, we got hit, and we’d lost the port engine I think it was, and- Anyway, we struggled on and we got forty miles off Great Yarmouth and we finally had to ditch. Before that as we got- Reached the Dutch coast, we cruised on down to Dutch coast with the idea of landing on the beach- On the beach there, but we didn’t like the idea of the gunning placements, of the concrete embarkments, or the barbed wire and what have you. So, we decided to try and get home, we knew weren’t going to make it, but we thought we might get near enough to the English shore to be picked up in a hurry. Anyway, we got forty miles off Great Yarmouth, so we finally ditched the aircraft. Fortunately, the skipper made a perfect sea landing, which is not always easy, and it was a heavy swell at the time, so he’d- His timing was perfect. We made a very good landing, the aircraft filled full of water straight away, and I went out through the astrodome, the others went out through the front cockpit, and when I got out, the dinghy was floating away from the, the aircraft and I walked across the wing and I realised that there’s a possibility that the dinghy was going to be washed well away from me, so I thought well here goes, so I, I jumped straight into the water and fortunately the dinghy came back onto me and they- The boys grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me into the dinghy. So that was the beginning of it. So, during the [unclear] in the dinghy, a Wellington came out, evidently vectored to us from, from the base, came out and had a look at us, we fired a very cart at him just to make sure he, he had seen us. He circled us for- Probably for forty, fifty minutes, or maybe an hour and then he disappeared and another one took his place, and this went on during the day. Were sometimes quite long periods between visits, and then finally at the end of the fifteenth or sixteenth hour, the HMT Pelton. a trawler, a fishing trawler- These fishing trawlers that normally, in peacetime of course, did fishing trips, they weren’t able to do this during the war, so they used them for mine laying, they used to drop these magnetic mines over in the [unclear] area and this one, HMT Pelton, was vectored onto us from the base and they finally drew up alongside of us, much to our relief, and I can remember the- These couple of burly sailors leaning over the side of the ship, grabbing me by the shoulders and hauling me over onto the deck like a wet fish, and we just lay there because we’d completely lost the use of our legs, and they were very, very good to us they- I remember they put a rope round our- Round us, and they lowered us down a very steep companionway into the engine room, and they got us a bucket of water each, which was steam heated and we stripped right off and poured this bucket of water all over us and washed all the salt, urine and what have you off us, and then they brought us pyjamas which must’ve been theirs and they tucked us up in their bunks and next, next thing we’re all fast asleep, I went off like a light. And next thing is, we arrive in Great Yarmouth alongside the wharf there- Oh, during the, during the night, a royal air force rescue launch came tearing out and wanted to take us on board and take us back to base, and the skipper, due to the heavy swell refused to, to do a transfer. So we were left alone until we got into, into Great Yarmouth. From there we were taken into the naval sick quarters and- Where we were given us a meal and another lot of pyjamas and we were tucked up for the night, in the hospital. Next morning, we were given breakfast and the truck arrived for- Pick us up from the base and we all climbed aboard the truck and went back to our base. That was the end of that [chuckles]. Incidentally, the dinghy was lying on the wharf, and I don’t know where I got the knife from, but I got a hold of a knife from somewhere, and I cut myself out a souvenir out of the dinghy, because it actually got punctured while we were trying to get it away from the aircraft it- We, we lost the outer skin, fortunately we did have two skins, an inner and outer, reason for that was because we had an old dinghy and evidently all the new dinghies were single skin, and I have a letter from the Irving[?] people that made the dinghies, I have a letter from them congratulating on our survival and being so lucky to have had an, an old dinghy [chuckles].
GT: So that claims you for a member of the goldfish club?
JM: That’s right, made us a member of the goldfish club.
GT: Fascinating, fascinating for the- Your survival, and did you have a crew of five or six at the time?
JM: Seven, oh sorry, no, no, si- Wellington, we had-
GT: Did you have a second dicky? Or a second pilot?
JM: No, we had five, I think. Used to have six, we used to carry two pilots but they dropped the second pilot. Losing too many.
GT: I only asked that ‘cause there’s a comment there about- That was 15th of November 1940-
JM: That’s right.
GT: - on 115 Squadron, Wellington, and when returning from a raid on Berlin, you and the crew, except the second pilot, were picked up by Her Majesty’s trawler Pelton at about eighteen-hundred hours. During his rest tour, you were an instructor on 11 OTU, which was in Wellingtons and 11 OTU was Westcott?
JM: That’s right, it was, it was while we’re on the OTU that we did those two-thousand bomber raids. I did Cologne and Essen.
GT: So, were they included in your, your log books as operations, official ops?
JM: Yes, yeah, matter of fact I did three, Cologne, Essen, and Bremen.
GT: So effectively you flew in three units?
JM: Yeah, that’s the bomber- Thousand bomber raids. That was an extreme effort on the part of the RAF, they, they were using OTU aircraft as well as normal squadron aircraft
GT: So, were the rest of your crew qualified personnel? Or were they-
JM: No, they were all-
GT: Students?
JM: They were all green horns like me.
GT: Yeah.
JM: [Chuckles] But I wasn’t-
GT: You’d done a tour.
JM: At that time, I was on my- In between my two tours, I was instructor.
GT: Fabulous. So, did- Did you have any reservations, was- The war was in full flight at that time and, did-
JM: About survival you mean?
GT: Yeah, yeah.
JM: No, I, I schooled myself not to even contemplate the idea of it. I just- From that angle I went blank, and I never ever thought that I wouldn’t survive, never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t survive, that was the only way to get though.
GT: Were there any chaps that you recall that didn’t want to fly again?
JM: I don’t doubt there were quite a few that perhaps after their first tour pulled out. I could’ve pulled out, after the ditching I could've pulled out too, I could’ve- What was it? The lack of moral fibre?
GT: LMF.
JM: I would’ve been accused of that, I would’ve been- I'd have gone as an instructor for the rest of the war. But I didn’t, I, I went back into PFF.
GT: So, you asked for the PFF role?
JM: Yes, I did. Actually, it was quite funny how that happened, they were queuing up- Crewing up for PFF and I approached a Wing Commander Olsen, I rather looked- Liked the look of him, big fella. He became the, he became the com- Chief of air staff in New Zealand for a while. Anyway, he said, ‘Ah, I’m sorry’, he said, ‘I’ve got a full crew’, but he said, ‘I believe that fella over there, Fraser Barron he’s looking for a gunner I believe'. So, I said, ‘Oh thanks’, and I tore across the Fraser and I said, ‘Believe you’re looking for a tail gunner’, he said, ‘Yes’, I said, ‘Well you’ve got one’ [laughs].
GT: He had to accept you then, yeah.
JM: Yeah, we got on very well together anyway, we were the only two Kiwi’s on the aircraft actually. So, we got on very well, used to go into town with and- I always remember when he got his DSO, he- Well he had- Already had his DFM and DFC up, and he was very modest sort of a guy and he got- He wanted me to go into town with him ‘cause he was so embarrassed [laughs].
GT: So did you, did you like the Stirling?
JM: Yes, loved it. It’s a very nice aircraft. It lacked a bit of speed in comparison to the Lancaster, but- And it- I believe the Lanc carried a much- Quite a bit bigger bomb load. Also, it had larger wings, strange to say. But-
GT: Could they have made the Stirling better?
JM: It was better all round, yes.
GT: It was better than the Lancaster?
JM: Oh sorry, no, the Lancaster. The Lancaster was better all round, although I never flew in one, but I’m just going on information.
GT: And you, you left 7 Squadron just as the Lancasters were coming in?
JM: The first two arrived the day I pulled out, and I, I rushed down to have a quick look through one, and I had to be quick ‘cause there was a truck waiting for me to take me to the railway station [chuckles], I was going down to Leigh-on-Sea to join my wife.
GT: So they were pretty keen to, to- Once you’d finished your second tour to send you back to New Zealand, were they? Or did you stay in the UK for a while?
JM: No, we- I'd just done what you might call embarkation leave, and- One of the things I've never understood, why I got married while the war was on, it was a stupid thing to do and I’m surprised her father allowed us to, but he did [laughs]. Anyway, she was a wonderful, wonderful person my wife, we had seventy-three years together.
GT: Wonderful.
JM: Yeah, fantastic, very clever too, very, very talented.
GT: And you, you came back to New Zealand and where did you, you start from there? Nelson, Christchurch? Where did you move?
JM: Nelson.
GT: And you had a family?
JM: Actually my, my brother had a biscuit business in Nelson which unfortunately went, went bung eventually, but I was supposed to join him in the biscuit manufacturing business, but that never happened [chuckles].
GT: And you’ve had, your family obviously now since then, sons, daughters?
JM: Yeah, we’ve got a son and twin daughters, yes. Tony is, I think, seventy-three, seventy-two or seventy-three, and the girls- He's seventy-two I think, the girls are sixty-eight. Twin, twin girls [chuckles] yeah.
GT: Fabulous, so you, you’ve been telling me you’ve been interviewed a lot for your, your wartime exploits.
JM: Yes, I have, yes, I have.
GT: Who has interviewed you then? Newspapers, or television?
JM: Books and magazines mostly, I’ll show them to you.
GT: Yep certainly, and that’s why for the purpose of our interview here, Jake, your story has obviously been well documented, so we’re going to refer the International Bomber Command Centre to your- The interviews and the stories that have been said to you, which will give in a lot more detail your, your time with, particularly the RAF and the RNZAF, so that’s, that’s fascinating for us to know. Now, as far as your time military wise, was, was there anything you thought that they could’ve done better? Or, they were dealing with the best they could, with what they were given?
JM: No not really, we were well- We were reasonably well fed, I mean, not large meals but we had, you know, bacon and eggs, and that sort of thing which the civilians got very little of, if any. We were looked after with cigarettes and chocolates and things like that. They were very good. They gave us Horlicks tablets to suck on trips, and that kind of thing, you know? We were looked after, and I, I’d like to put this in too, that I think the New Zealand government have been wonderful to me since I came out. They’ve been really wonderful.
GT: You emigrated at the age of seventeen, went back to Blighty, fought in the war, come back to New Zealand and have had a wonderful life time here.
JM: Yeah.
GT: Fabulous.
JM: I have had a wonderful life, yeah. The three kids are wonderful, they’ve all done very, very well in life. No, they’re not waiting for my departure that’s for sure [laughs].
GT: And your next birthday, the 1st of August, how old will you be?
JM: Sorry?
GT: And on your next birthday, how old will you be?
JM: Ninety-eight.
GT: And I'm sure your- The folk who know you are very proud and pleased to know you, as a ninety-seven-year-old, you’re still very much able, and a driver [emphasis], you’ve just shown me that you’re an excellent driver by the automobile associations.
JM: [Laughs] I’m happier behind the wheel that I am on my legs actually. My legs are getting a little bit crotchety but no, I’m very happy behind the wheel of a car and-
GT: Fabulous.
JM: I think partly- That partly is due to the fact that I used to have a taxi business, I had a taxi business for about twelve years, so I've done a fair mileage [chuckles].
GT: Yeah, well that’s, that’s very pleasing to know, and so-
JM: Love it, prior to that, I was a company representative, used to cover the whole of the South Island [chuckles].
GT: So, you’ve driven much, much mileage.
JM: So, I've done a lot, a big, big mileage.
GT: The roads here in New Zealand aren’t particularly good for long distance driving at times.
JM: [Laughs] Yeah.
GT: Well, Jack I’m, I’m going to finish our interview here and then, then we’ll look at listing the material and the other interviews that you’ve been able to be a part of and publish, or have published on your behalf. So, I'm very grateful for you to- By appointment to meet me today in your home, your lovely place, and I will package this up for the IBCC and they will be very grateful to have your history, your time and your experiences of two tours ‘cause your sacrifice for your King and your countries [emphasis] pretty much was awesome, and I thank you for your service. Thank you, sir.
JM: You’re welcome.
GT: Ok, great, thank you then, bye-bye.
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 Jack Marshall
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Glen Turner
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-16
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMarshallJ180116
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:28:26 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Jack went to New Zealand in 1937 and became a steward in a gentleman’s club in Napier, where he stayed two years until the war broke out. He joined the Royal Air Force and went to England where he did train at RAF Uxbridge to become an air gunner. With 115 Squadron he went to Operational Training Unit at RAF Marham and RAF Bassingbourn, where he spent time as an instructor. The squadron did three operations to Italy and on one occasion the Wellington aircraft iced up so badly that they went through the Alps at low attitude, rather than over. On landing, three engines cut out, with only three- or four-minute fuel left. Jack recalled two other incidents. One when they were attacked by two fighters and the other when their Wellington was shot down on the way back from Berlin. They lost an engine 40 miles off Great Yarmouth and had to escape in the dinghy before being rescued by a fishing trawler. The crew became members of the Goldfish Club. The crew were posted to RAF Oakington in where they joined 7 Squadron, carrying out 46 operations in Stirlings. Jack volunteered for the Pathfinder Force as a rear gunner. After the war Jack returned to New Zealand. Jack was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for a long and high standard of reliability and enthusiasm.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Tilly Foster
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Italy
Alps
New Zealand
England--Great Yarmouth
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-11-15
1943-04-12
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
11 OTU
115 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
ditching
Goldfish Club
Lancaster
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Marham
RAF Oakington
RAF Uxbridge
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/980/11391/AMartinA170830.1.mp3
e8835f22bcaa76fa9456d0867fa305fb
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
Martin, Alfie
Alfred Martin DFC
A Martin
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Alfred Martin DFC (1920 - 2017, 120240 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an observer with 102 Squadron and was shot down and evaded.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-30
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Martin, A
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Right.
JW: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. My name is John Wells and my interviewee is Mr Alfie Martin. The interview is being held at Mr Martin's home [buzz] Dunmurry. Today is Wednesday the 30th of August 2017 and the time is ten minutes past eleven. Also present are Mr, Mr Martin's daughter, Julie and my wife Helen. [pause] Right. I wonder if you could, if you could start by just giving me a little background to your, where you were born and where you went to school.
AM: Well, as you know my name is Alfred Martin. I was always referred to that at home but during my time in the services I was always known as Paddy. Anyway, I was born in Finaghy which is a small area just outside Belfast. And I was born in 1920 so my age now is ninety seven. I’ve been fortunate in having relatively good health all my life. I was educated in [unclear] Avenue and then a Friends’ School in Lisburn. And I passed my senior certificate at the age of sixteen which was about two years earlier than most. I got the first job I applied for which was in the insurance business and I started that on the 20th of July 1936. Towards the end of the ‘30s the British government was beginning to get a little apprehensive about the desires of Hitler and there was a strong effort to increase the Territorial and Reserve services. I applied for the air, air force by signing up at Ann Street in Belfast and I would have been flying on weekends but when I got home my mother insisted that it was much too dangerous in the Air Force and I should not go forward with it. So I went down the next day and cancelled it. However, I continued to have a desire to help the Services and in [pause] towards the end of 1938 I joined the Territorial Army. Royal Engineers Antrim Fortress Company. And I was stationed with them during the war. I was called up on 28th of August 1939 and I went to Grey Point first of all but I also served at Kilroot and at Magilligan. That was for twenty months I was in the army, getting more and more bored because — but at the same time I I learned how to dig trenches, dig latrines and in addition put up barbed wire. At least in later years the experience in putting up barbed wire was of some, some help. As I’ve said, I was called up in August ‘39 and I served until 1941, at which time I found that there was an edict in the office stating that the air force were looking for volunteers. So I, I volunteered after requesting permission from my officers and four of us were selected to go for interview. As far as I can know I was the only one who was accepted at Clifton Street. And I was, at the same time I was accepted to go forward as, as an observer. That was their, their request. I was prepared to be a pilot but I was so tired of being in the army that I was quite, very happy in fact to, to train as an observer. It was only about two weeks later after that that I was called up for a real push job in my first station with the Air Force and it was the first army intake of the war. The first lot of army people who were taken into the air force. We had a really, a very cushy life initially. Initially [pause] initially we were stationed in Stratford on Avon at the, put up in the Shakespeare Hotel. And from there I went to Scarborough where we were in the Grand Hotel. Quite a luxury life. And then it was to a little place called Wilberforce or Wilbur. Not sure. Anyway, from there it was obvious we were going overseas for, for training. We sailed first of all from Liverpool and I and a lot, a crowd of us aboard the [pause] the, I can't remember the name of the, oh the Ulster. The Ulster Monarch I think it was. It was a boat which normally went between Belfast and Liverpool but we were on it to Iceland where they tossed us off and we had to spend about three weeks there. It was the middle of August so it was light for twenty four hours and the weather was quite pleasant. We enjoyed swimming in hot springs which were nearby and a temperature of about eighty five degrees highs. I enjoyed it very much. The water from that was then siphoned off to heat the houses in Reykjavik which was about twenty miles away. From [pause] after about sixteen days I think it was we, we were told to return to Reykjavik and they put us aboard the, the Canadian Pacific liner Montcalm which, in effect returned to to Belfast to pick up a convoy and we went on from there. And that, that that was my first experience of sleeping in a, in a hammock. And it was a really [pause] while you were in it it was quite comfortable but to get out was a feat of great strength and persistence. And I wouldn't really say I had desire to get into having hammocks again. Anyway, from there we went to St John in New Brunswick, unloaded and from there to Prince Edward Island, to a little place called Charlottetown where we were scheduled to do navigation. From there we, after about six months we, we were considered to be fit and we were sent for bombing and gunnery at Lake Ontario in a wee place called Picton. There we flew in, in Fairey Battle aircraft and we were able to bomb from a bombsight in the floor of the aircraft and fire a Vickers machine gun from the open cockpit. It was quite a cold experience. The temperature was about minus twenty and standing up in an open cockpit was, was not a thing to be desired. Having graduated from that we were all sent on leave and we were all made, having been leading aircraftsmen we became flight sergeants. And we were promoted to flight sergeant and sewed on our extra stripes and then returned to the [pause] a Scottish friend and I went to Boston for our, our short leave. On return I was, I was surprised but not displeased after being granted a commission for us, six of us we were granted commissions out of about thirty in the course. So, I returned to, returned to Britain in the SS Bayano and [knocking noise] Here are my carers. In the SS Bayano, and it took sixteen days of absolute boredom. But we kept a look out for enemy submarines and were fortunate enough to not have anything happen. I’ll just break for a minute.
[recording paused]
We kept look outs. On return we were posted to Bournemouth where we stayed in a top class hotel. And then we were posted on to Stanton Harcourt, Witney which were satellites of Abingdon and we did cross country runs from there. Very often across the Irish Sea up to Scotland and back again. Low level flying. In fact, one pilot managed to get the tips of his wings in the water and bent them a wee bit. And it was lucky he hadn’t got bent completely but the, that was flying up to Wigtown. Later on it was, it was as if the, the practice flights and so forth we were sent up to Scotland one time and I, and we were crewed up and I had became a navigator for a Canadian pilot who was a great big hefty fellow but not the best of pilots I’ve got to say. Anyway, coming back he seemed to get tired of flying and we saw lights below us which were Berwick on Tweed and he decided he was going to land there. So we did. We landed all right but the trouble was we landed about three hundred yards short of the runway in little, among little trees. We were flying a Whitley. A Whitley bomber, which was, had a very low landing speed fortunately for us. We sawed off the tops of a few trees and we came to rest but we were uncertain whether we were on the ground or where we were. I climbed out of the [unclear] wing and I found a tree, tree stump and I slid down it to the ground. And all, in the distance I could hear the station ambulance and fire crew calling out to keep, ‘Keep shouting. Keep shouting. We'll find you. We'll find you,’ and eventually they did. They took us in and they gave us medicals and packed us to bed. And then in the morning they packed us onto a train and sent us back to, to Stanton Harcourt. But after that my first operation took, took place a few days later. It was one of the thousand bomber raids and we went in a Whitley aircraft to Dusseldorf. And then the second one was to, was about three days later and that was to Hamburg. From there I managed to do about a dozen operations. It was early in the bombing command and the targets were pretty dangerous. I’m just going to say I went to Berlin and I went to Stuttgart. I went to Happy Valley, that's the Ruhr, a couple of times. And Nuremberg, Hamburg and then on to Lorient, St Nazaire, Turin and Genoa. Most of them quite long trips. The thirteenth trip was to Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. And we set off about eight o'clock in the evening and had to cross a lot of Germany. And we did. I think we landed. Sorry. We, we got to Pilsen at sometime about midnight. Our navigation aids at that time were very limited. In fact it was mostly by [pause] by ground. Ground marks and so forth. But I would think our bombs were dropped about fifty miles short of Pilsen. However, it had been a long trip. We turned and set the way back and again it was long. At 4.05 in the morning we had noticed that there was aircraft, there was foreign aircraft and being very active. And anyway shortly after we heard bullets coming from a gun and hitting our aircraft. At that stage we, we gathered out into the front of the aircraft, a Halifax and I prepared to parachute out if required. Unfortunately, I, I was in the nose side of, of the escape hatch which was about that size. And the job was to take it off its hinges and drop it down through the aperture. Well, in our case the lid as I'd call it refused to go because the wind caught it. The air stream caught it and jammed it angle-wise across. I was unable to have enough strength to clear it. I tried to get one of the crew on the other side of the [pause] of the [pause] of the —
JW: Aperture.
AM: Aperture. On the other side of the aperture to, to hit it or kick or something but he didn't seem to understand. Finally the pilot came on again and he called out with great vehemence, ‘Port engine on fire. Port engine on fire. Bale out. Bale out.’ And it was a wee bit stronger than that and I looked out and there was, certainly there was just a blue flame like a blow torch coming from the engine. It didn't look very healthy. I saw that the crew on the far side were doing nothing about the, the door of the aperture and I disconnected my, but I adjusted my parachute and to remove my [pause] my intercom apparatus and I just stood up and jumped on the edge of the, of the aperture door and out it went and I went out with it. And that started me off. It was absolute silence for [pause] I don't know. While I was, while I was out. Up ‘til then I’d been hearing the engines roaring for, as I think I said to you it was four o'clock in the morning when we were shot down and we'd been hearing the engines for at least eight hours so the silence was very welcome but rather unexpected. Anyway, I floated down. I checked to see what was, I was coming in to. I tried to turn around in the parachute but couldn't get it to turn so that I could see what was happening. All I could see was that there was the aircraft was burning on the ground and I couldn't see any other members of crew. But in retrospect they all got out with the exception of the rear gunner. And we presume that he was killed trying to get out of his, his turret which was not an easy thing to do but we were uncertain. When I hit the ground I just rolled over on my back but it kind of came out to hit you. Everything seemed to be very slow until the last sixteen feet and going down. But then our training took over and we were, had been advised to hide our parachutes. So I sorted around and found a damp place in a corner a field and stuck it in but it was a very bad hiding job. But anyway it was out of sight and then I set off hoping to go in a westerly direction. But as the aircraft was in that direction I had to go south. And it was through the fields and for it, for a couple of, for all night I stopped up the next morning and sort of decided I’d rest and see what was what. So, I think that was a Sunday morning I believe. And I found a little place between two hedges where I was kind of covered. About one o'clock, having had a bit of a doze suddenly there was a great rustling nearby and a cow appeared. And behind the cow was a little boy aged twelve who was driving it. And he stopped and stared me up and down and I got up and kind of stared him up and down. And then suddenly he saluted me. And I was extremely touched by that because I don't know how he recognized that I was anyone other than a refugee of some sort. But that little boy was Andre [Lelu], and he looked, he was the first to meet me. To recognize me. He brought along his mother and father and they brought me some food and they tried to help me on my way but said they couldn't really help. It was too dangerous for them. So I left it until the next evening when I set off. Again, I said I would only walk in the evenings and I did the best I could that evening but I I approached a couple of farmhouses but every time I did there was a dog barking and I was a bit scared of it and I moved on. And late in the morning, or late in the night I should say I got a bit tired of that then looked for somewhere to rest. And the only place I was able to find was a broken down chicken hut in which I slept by some of my equipment and I did a bit of changing of my appearance. And I stayed there for an hour or two checking on my escape equipment etcetera. That, that morning I set off again and I was told to go to a place by the name of [Lessies] where I should be able to get a train, I'd been told. But when I did get there after walking and crossing a river or two I found that it was very remote. All that was in the railway station the only thing you could see were a couple of men sitting outside on a, on a bench and quite frankly I was too frightened to go up and look for a train. So I set off further down the hill. Following the line but off the road. And suddenly I came in sight of a couple of gendarmes talking to a lady down below. Maybe a hundred yards away. And I think they had spotted me but I had decided that it was, it would be dangerous for me to turn and retrace my steps so I decided to go ahead and walk past them. And I did get part way past when they, one of them said, ‘Attention monsieur.’ And I stopped and they asked for my carte d’identite which I didn't, which I did have but not for publication. And I I acted dumb and sort of appeared to search in my pockets and so forth and tried to answer their questions in what I thought was the best answer. After about five minutes of this silence and so forth they indicated they wanted me to come with them and they set off up the hill the way I had been coming and I I went up beside them. And what I thought was the senior one of the two looked at me and said, ‘Anglais monsieur?’ And I said, ‘Oui.’ And he said, ‘Allez. Allez. Vite.’ And I allez-ed vite very vite-ly indeed. I understood and got back on my journey down the hill until maybe an hour later I came across a railway crossing and I was, went out on the road to cross there. I saw a lady in, in a house and I [pause] saw a lady in the house and I decided to go and speak to her. She was very frightened but I persisted and finally she kind of took me in and gave me a little bit of beer or wine and so forth and she said she'd find me a place for the night. So about, after a short period we set off up the road about a mile until we came to a farmhouse which was off the road. I was taken up there. We knocked the door. A man answered and my guide explained the situation. I was brought in in the understanding that I would be looked after for one night and then they'd have to do something else. But that one night turned out to be six weeks. And I was there for six weeks with people by the name of [Collene] and they couldn't be better to me. I, more or less, I’ve been in touch with them all my life. Although now most of them have passed on. But anyway I’m going to say from there on during that six weeks I had my, some of my coats and things dyed black and I had my hair dyed black because I was a ginger type. And I was told that we would have, there would be a lady come for me on the following night. But that night passed and no one appeared. However, a lady appeared the next night accompanied by a man. And that lady was Madame [unclear]. And incidentally the man was Monsieur [pause] I’ve forgotten his name in the moment but unfortunately he was shot later for helping. But that wasn't connected with me. Anyway, we, they took me to the railway station and we got on a train later than expected. We went to Lille and stayed in a third class hotel there. And I walked around on the streets which were full of German soldiers having a Saturday night out. It was up about four o'clock next morning and we got a train off to Arras where Madame [unclear] had a house. A safe house. And I’m just going to say that from there on I had all sorts of, a number of different helpers. Some, mostly female but some male. I went on to Paris. From Paris to a place called [pause] from Paris to Bordeaux. From Bordeaux to Dax from Dax to [pause] Biarritz. And I’ve forgotten the name of the —
Other: St John de Luz.
AM: Pardon?
Other: St John de Luz.
AM: Yes. But another place from that where we stayed one night. The following night we went to St John de Luz. De luz. And I omitted to say that in the, this railway station in Paris, in the east Paris — Gare de l’Est I found a group of men talking. And I looked hard at them and there, one of them was my pilot. And I had expected that he wouldn't have survived because we were quite low in terms of getting out of the aircraft but he told me later that he got out about five hundred feet and he’d no sooner opened the ‘chute when he hit the ground. I was delighted to see him but we couldn't talk to each other because it was too dangerous to show any expressions. But one of them was Wally Lashbrook. He and an American by the name of Doug Hoehn. We formed a little group who went on to, as I say Bordeaux, Dax, St John de Luz and from there over the border to Irun and St Sebastian and into a safe house in San Sebastian where we stayed for about four days. We were taken out in the evening. A car stopped beside us and we were told to get in. And it was a consulate from, from Spain, from Madrid who picked us up. And he, he was with his wife and the three of us were in the back and we were driven all through the night to Madrid where we stayed in the embassy for three days taking, getting the first opportunity to write to our folks at home and let them know we were alive. And after a few days we were put on a train to Lleida in the south of [pause] or the west of France, west of Spain. And from Lleida we walked over the border and into a Gibraltar. About three days later, having been issued with new uniforms and so forth we flew by public aircraft to Bristol. From Bristol by train to London where we were interviewed and given leave passes. And Wally and I, and we couldn't, we didn't have time to get home on that night so we decided to go to Pocklington which we had been stationed when we left and we had a right nice get together with our pals. From there it was back to Belfast and a meeting, a very fine meeting with my parents and my friends. And that's about my story but —
JW: Do you want to have a rest. Hold on a sec.
Other: You might find it interesting to look at this. Have a read.
JW: I’ll have a look at it afterwards. Yeah. When did you actually leave the RAF then?
AM: Well —
JW: Oh sorry. Before that did, did you go on further operations?
AM: I did say, I don't know that I gave the date but the date of being shot down was the 17th of April 1943.
JW: Right.
AM: So there was a fair bit of time and we were not permitted to return to operations because we might give away the — we might be interrogated again and give away the names of people who’d helped us and so forth. That precluded what we were going to do but in my case I, I was actually, I was posted to Britain to do a staff navigator’s course. And I was, the staff navigator’s course I was posted, but I exchanged with one of my friends who had been posted to Canada. So in effect I went to Canada to do a staff navigation course which I did and I was out in Canada for about fifteen months at, mostly in Ontario but also out in Winnipeg. My demob came in the end of ‘45 and I was, and I returned to Britain and sent up to near Catterick and demobbed in December [unclear] but it wasn't effective until March. Anyway, my job in the insurance business had been kept open for me and in effect, and well, in fact they had made up my salary in the early part of my induced, my Air Force career when I was getting about one and, one and three, one and six a day which went up to seven and six a day. But anyway the insurance company made it up to what I would have been getting with them which was very good. They called me back and I, I went back in the beginning of ’46 and I was an insurance inspector for the counties of Fermanagh, Monaghan and Cavan for about a year. And then I, I got, I wanted to emigrate. I checked on South Africa and Australia but I decided to go to Canada because I knew it and I knew I could get a job. So anyway, I went off to Canada where Sheila was born. Julie rather. And my wife, who came from Benburb.
JW: Right.
AF: She joined me in Canada and we were married there in ‘53. Yes. That is about it, I think.
JW: Thank you very much for, I’m amazed at the amount of stuff you've been able to remember. Can I ask you what rank you were when you were finally demobbed?
AM: Flight lieutenant.
JW: Flight Lieutenant. Yeah. Yeah. And I was going to ask if you knew your old service number because what they —
AM: Well —
JW: Will be able to do is dig out your old record.
AM: 2068004. That’s, that’s my army one. The original. 2068004.
JW: Two —
AM: 068004.
JW: 2068004.
AM: That's my army one. In the air force I was, in the air force I was 120240. I did have another number in between but it wasn't —
JW: And your actual date of birth you said was —
AM: 26 3 ‘20.
Other: And did you mention the DFC dad?
JW: Oh that. We forgot to mention. So —
AM: I was awarded the DFC on, on return from, from the Continent. So was Wally.
JW: Yeah. Congratulations on that.
AM: That’s about it.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Alfie Martin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John Wells
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
2017-08-30
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
AMartinA170830
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:49:16 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-04-17
Description
An account of the resource
Alfie Martin was born near Belfast in 1920. He applied for the Air Force but his mother was worried about the dangers and so he withdrew his application. He joined the army and when the RAF advertised for soldiers to transfer the RAF he volunteered. He trained as an observer in Canada. He was posted to RAF Pocklington with 102 Squadron. On his twelfth operation their aircraft came under attack and he baled out. While in hiding he heard a rustling and a cow appeared in view along with a young boy. The boy saw him and saluted. Alfie was enormously touched by this. This was the start of his evasion and eventual return to active duty in the UK.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
France
Great Britain
Spain
England--Yorkshire
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Paris
Northern Ireland--Belfast
Spain--San Sebastián
Great Britain
102 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
evading
fear
Halifax
observer
RAF Pocklington
RAF Stanton Harcourt
Resistance
shot down
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1167/11733/ATrotmanPJ180604.2.mp3
4c11d1e2b9ac76fcd78b3c8a985d3116
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
Trotman, Percival
Percival John Trotman
P J Trotman
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Percival Trotman DFC and bar. (b. 1921 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 150 and 692 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-04
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
Trotman, PJ
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DH: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Dawn Hughes, the interviewee is Mr John Trotman. The interview is taking place at Mr Trotman’s home in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on the 4th of June 2018, and thank you John for agreeing to talk to me today. So can we start off with, if you remember last time we talked about the lead up to joining the RAF so what made you join the RAF? How did it come about?
JT: Well the, obviously there was, everybody was being taken into the services, Army, Navy, Air Force. And I considered the Army but, you could volunteer of course, if you volunteered you would be taken instantly, but otherwise you would be called up, so I felt I should volunteer. So I considered the Army, and I thought about the first world war and I thought there is no way if we get into trench warfare that’s, that’s something I don’t want to be involved in. Navy, I‘m not a very good swimmer so if I’d off into the ocean in the mid Atlantic I’m not going to get very far, so I decided the Air Force was obviously the thing to do, and in any case they had a much nicer uniform. So that was my decision to join the air force. And so, I went and applied at Reading, I was given an interview and then subsequently I was sent up to an airfield in the Midlands where I spent twenty four hours going through a tremendous [emphasis] number of tests. Overnight we slept in a bell tent, all with our feet towards the middle and er, the food wasn’t too bad and then we came home. And then I had to sit and wait, to be called up. And in fact from the time I was there, which was in May 1940 I wasn’t called up until the September, which was quite amazing, first, first of September. I was called up to, went down to Torquay for two weeks and then six weeks in Aberystwyth for basic training. And life changed of course, no longer [laugh] was life a sort of semi-leisurely situation, you were under military orders and of course your life changed completely, of course, and I wasn’t unhappy about that. Obviously like all the others we were keen to go through the training and get on with the job.
DH: Okay. So, what was the initial training like? Can you tell me a bit more about that.
JT: Initial training at Torquay well, you know, it was sort of getting your hands and feet in the right direction and doing all the right things according to drill, and of course you quickly adapt to that. So it was a question of drilling, marching up and down and doing about turns, and you know, there was responding to orders which was what it really was all about; time passed very quickly, until eventually we got our posting, which was to Aberystwyth. To do that we had to go by train, so we got on the train at Torquay but the train got stopped just outside Bristol because there was an air raid going on and we went across and stopped outside Cardiff because there was an air raid going on, and then this train chuffed its way right up to West Wales coast; took a total from midnight when we embarked on the train to Torquay till three o’clock on the following afternoon, on a train with no food, no toilets, we got packed sandwiches, but no toilets so every time the train stopped at a station there was a mass city central in the toilets! [Laugh] Anyway we finally got into Aberystwyth and then we got oriented of course. Where it started, you were out of bed at seven in the morning, in fact you were doing PE at seven o’clock in the morning, so you had to be ready for that, and you did that for half an hour each morning on the sea front, then from half past seven you went back, changed and you had to be at breakfast within quarter of an hour, quarter to eight for breakfast, breakfast finished at quarter past eight, on parade at half past eight, then march to the classrooms and spent all day in the classrooms. That happened every [emphasis] day, except on Saturdays we were, eased off wee bit; we still had things to do on Saturday, but you got Saturday afternoon, and Sunday, except Sunday we had to church parade, in which case I decided, I was Church of England, but I decided I’d try the Catholics and the Jews and everybody else [laugh] so I went to their services as well. That was interesting. At the end of the course, [clock chime] you had to pass and you had to reach a certain standard, and if you didn’t pass that standard then you were out, or as I say you were moved to other things, ground jobs within the air force.
DH: So at that point in time had you, had your trade been established?
JT: Sorry, had it?
DH: Had it been established that you were going to be a pilot or - ?
JT: Oh yes, once you had reached a certain level to their satisfaction yes, you were destined to be a pilot, considered so.
DH: So did you [emphasis] choose that, or did they choose you to do that?
JT: I wanted to be a pilot and I didn’t know until long afterwards that apparently I was rated above average, through sheer hard work and it was that I think got me through to what I wanted to do. That was what I was posted to, Coventry, just outside Coventry.
DH: Can you tell me what happened then, ’cause I believe you had a part in the clear up in the Coventry bombing.
JT: Yes, I was posted in on the, Coventry, the airfield just outside Coventry and that night there was an air raid warning, so we went down into the shelters and of course that was the night that Coventry was blitzed. So the next morning we were loaded into trucks to what, taken into Coventry to see what we could do to help in any way at all. To try and help the military and the civil authority maintain some sort of order and help clear up the worst situations. And the worst situations were something, I don’t think you want to, talk about very much. For example the Owen Owen’s department store had a whole lot of people in it when the air raid started.
DH: It did.
JT: So they were all bundled down to the basement; it was a shelter, but unfortunately Owen Owens got a direct hit: the whole building collapsed in on itself and they were buried, alive and of course I think over eighty people died in that alone. So you can understand that some of the other situations were [sniff] not very nice. So aft, at the end of that day I think we’d had enough and glad to, well right get on with your training now and that’s what we did.
DH: Yeah.
JT: So, that had certainly instilled in me [emphasis] the effects of an air raid at first hand and I thought, like everybody else, we’ve got to give it to them back, they’ve got to know what happens under these circumstances you just can’t do this willy nilly. Obviously they were after targets in Coventry because there was a high concentration of companies: tool makers, aircraft part makers, I think there were six main manufacturers virtually in the centre of Coventry because that’s the way the city became built. And that’s why the centre really, the centre of Coventry got such a battering.
DH: Yeah. I can, I can understand why that would make you think, yeah, I’ve got to do that back, yeah. So from, so that’s your initial training so how did you come to start then, next? You went to Cranwell, didn’t you.
JT: Yes, basic training just outside Coventry then went on to advanced training on twin engined Oxfords at South Cerny in Gloucestershire, at the end of that course they then decided, which way, you qualified for your wings, so you were a qualified pilot at that stage. They then decided your future. Most other people were sent to either to a squadron at that time of the war, or for operational training unit where, for heavier aircraft, at that time Stirling. But for some reason I was sent instead, again I was above average on the course, and I was sent to Cranwell to train as a flying instructor, which surprised me no end. And that meant three weeks on, learning to instruct on the bi-plane and another three weeks learning to instruct on twin engined Oxfords, and it was hard work because there was so much to do. You had to go through twenty eight subjects on each aeroplane, and you had to not only learn that but you also had to espouse this, that as an instructor and I didn’t know how to do that, so it was really hard work for six weeks. While we were there incidentally we suddenly heard a funny noise, rushed to the windows to look outside, and saw an aeroplane take off and it’s got no propeller, this was absolutely amazing! How actually does an aeroplane fly without a propeller? This was of course the basic first jet, so quite amazing sight to see, but, er filled us with wonder and tremendous encouragement I think we’d got the thing that might end the war, for flying anyway, did help, but not till much later, had to be developed. Anyway after that I went back to Shawbury as a flying instructor.
DH: So you were on Oxford Airspeeds there?
JT: Yes.
DH: So, so at this point you’re, you’d done training, you’re an instructor, but you hadn’t seen active service.
JT: Oh no. I stayed in Shawbury for nine months and quite frankly I got to the point where enough was enough, I felt. You trained a few people to fly the plane and then subsequently supervised later in lessons as you went through it. Then the next course came in and you started all over again, and then the next course came in and you went through it all again, very repetitive. And it tested your flying skill at times, because for example the undercarriage and flap levers on the early Airspeed Oxfords were side by side, and if in fact you wanted to, took off an aeroplane for example, you wanted to lift the undercarriage, and you or, you lifted the flaps instead, it can be a hell of a job to get off the ground at all, or alternatively, if you do what we call an overshoot in other words you come in to make an, you do an approach to land and then you command the pupil to open the throttles and go round without landing, and at that stage your flaps are fully down to retard the speed of the aircraft, so in this case if the chap pulled up the wrong lever, the flaps would come up and the plane just sank like that, hit the runway and where it would explode virtually, so you had to be very [emphasis] sure that he pulled up the right lever, [chuckle] and you watched like a hawk to see which one he was going to pull up, and one chap did pull up the wrong lever, I was there, and without any hesitation I whacked my fist down on the back of his hand and knocked the lever back into position! He was protesting strongly that I’d bruised his hand! I said well that’ll remind you which lever you’re pull up in the future. [Laugh] Anyway, life goes on. But at then at the end of nine months I’d had enough, decided to leave. The circumstances of my leaving were unique perhaps in a sense that I took a pupil down to, just north of the A5, towards the midlands and there was a low flying area specifically where we trained people to fly low. The purpose of this to evade enemy fighters because no enemy aircraft can get under you if you are low flying of course, and that’s your vulnerable part. So I took this pupil down there and he wouldn’t fly below two hundred feet so I said, ‘look this is nonsense, you really must get down, now let me show you.’ and I took him down, right down, so low we that were actually hedge hopping over hedges and flying between trees, and he looked with horror at the moment, for a moment or two and then suddenly he began to get the excitement of it all and we came out across an airfield that was under construction. All the work was lots of sea of mud and two runways and right at the intersection of the runways was a big caravan on wheels. And two chaps on the veranda of this were looking out over the scene. Obviously discussing things, the engineer or the architect. It just so happens that this caravan was in my line of flight, and I was only about ten feet off the ground. I flew towards this thing, hopped the plane over the top and these fellows jumped for their lives, unfortunately down into the mud, which was a very naughty thing to do really. But in fact it was, had results because one of the gentlemen was the officer commanding Shawbury, a group captain, and his gold, hat with gold braid fell into the mud which had to be sent away for specialist cleaning and his wonderful uniform got into a mess. I was posted forthwith.
DH: Oh wow!
JT: And frankly it suited me down to the ground actually and I think I got a detrimental report on my, on my record. Still.
DH: So you got moved for doing what you were supposed to be doing!
JT: Yeah, well.
DH: It’s just he got in the way.
JT: He got in the way.
DH: Yeah. Oh wow!
JT: I was very sorry for him afterwards, really.
DH: Yeah. I’m sure you were! [laugh] Not. So when you were posted then, where did you to go then?
JT: I then went to an Operational Training Unit which was at Pershore, in Worcestershire. There, as the Operational Training Unit you had to fly Wellington bombers and to do that you had to have a crew. You got a navigator, wireless operator, front gunner and rear gunner; the front gunner also being a bomb aimer. So you collected your crew, and you met people, you formed a crew, which we did. And then we went through the appropriate training period for that, for that aircraft. Towards the end of the training period, lots of night flying, cross countries where you would fly from that place up to, virtually up to Scotland, down the Irish Sea, to, down to sort of bottom end of Wales, and then fly back into this, that would be a normal night cross country exercise to get the idea of long distance flying at night, and so, you know, we were just, getting towards the end of that training, and suddenly Bomber Harris - chap in charge of Bomber Command of course - decided that he would like to wanted to bomb, do the first thousand bomber raid. Now, Bomber Harris had not got a thousand aircraft in Bomber Command. So he had to take some from the Training Command, some - one or two from Coastal and various other sections - to make up his thousand, which he did. So despite the fact we hadn’t finished our training, six aircraft were designated from our training unit to join this thousand bomber raid, though we hadn’t completed our training at that stage. Fortunately the other five people had a qualified pilot sitting alongside them, so they were all right, but since I was also, got lots of flying hours in, been an instructor, I was told I was going on my own. And so we flew to Cologne which was the first of the thousand bomber raids. Which was quite, that was the first time we did, and quite spectacular it was. The defences were completely overwhelmed with one thousand aircraft did the whole job in about ninety minutes, and that’s really [emphasis] intense bombing, and it virtually destroyed Cologne, most of it in the centre and the outlying areas: devastating. And of course two nights later we all went to Essen to do the same job there, but since, at Cologne we could see everything, visibility was perfect; at Essen there was cloud and we actually had to bomb through the clouds, because we hadn’t developed the Pathfinder thing to the right extent at that stage. And then they said right well you’re operational we’ll post you to a squadron and that was it. So I was posted to, eventually to an Australian squadron just north of the Humber. And when I arrived there the commanding officer was on leave, so we went down to the flight and got us out an aeroplane, one of their aeroplanes and flew it around on navigational exercises we decided on our own, to get used to the area. The engines were not the beautiful engines on the, ones we were used to, these were American Pratt and Whitney engines and if you, they had notorious, they were absolutely notorious because when they took off the noise was out, absolutely outstanding, very noisy aeroplane due to the design of the engine, well, anyway we got used to this, and at the end of the week we were told the CO was back and he wanted to see us. So we marched in, lined up in front of his desk, he points to me, ‘Right, what’s your name and where you from?’ [Australian accent] So I told him, he said, ‘You’re a bloody pom! I don’t want any bloody poms on my squadron, you’re posted!’ - that was it. And so same with my rear gunner who was also English, ‘cause the other three guys were Australian, in my crew, and so they remained, formed another crew, and unfortunately they didn’t survive the war. But the other gunner and I survived the war, that’s, the way things went. We were posted another British squadron this time and to carry on to do the other twenty eight trips necessary to make up the total thirty. So, our crew, Aussie crew, were hell of a nice guys, one from Sydney, one from Melbourne, I forget where the other one was from, and when we first met, when we’re crewing up in the first place, in training, they took one look, said to me ‘Christ we’ve got bloody poms running our, bloody, on us’, I said, ‘Christ we’ve got bloody colonials working for us!’ [Laugh] So all together [cough] we got on like a house on fire, great guys, thoroughly enjoyed it.
DH: Good.
JT: That part.
DH: At what point did you go to RAF Binbrook on the Wellingtons? Is that the period of time you’ve just been talking about?
JT: Yes, that was the time when I was posted just for a brief time to Binbrook.
DH: Yes.
JT: And this turns out to be a mistaken posting for some reason, so we weren’t unhappy about that one. From Binbrook we went to the Aussie squadron and from there we went on to the English squadron.
DH: Right. So. You did some raids, or a raid on, at St. Nazaire. Can you tell me about that?
JT: St. Nazaire, yes. Well, St, Nazaire, like Lorient on the west coast of France of course, were submarine bases, with huge concrete submarine pens there, they were bombed incessantly and so they built these huge concrete pens, so that submarines would come from the sea up, a narrow channel and then dive under the concrete shelters so that they could then load, refuel and ready to come out again. The trick was, while the bomber command had tried all sorts of bombs to penetrate this concrete, waste of time because they were just bouncing off concrete: they could be six nine feet thick, reinforced. So the trick then was to try and catch them either coming in or going out. The most effective way to do that was to drop mines, sea mines, in the, in the channels leading into the bunker, you know. And that we had to do. So to do that you had to fly an aeroplane one hundred feet above the water, at a set speed, because of the, it has to be about, only about a hundred knots, that’s about a hundred and fifteen miles an hour, and then you open your bomb doors and absolutely accurately from one hundred feet above the water, in pitch dark, [emphasis] you had to drop your bombs up the line of the channel. And these bombs, the mines in effect, would sink into the water and they would lay there, and just any metal boat that went across the top of them, the bomb would explode; just lay there all the time. So about six or eight aircraft sowing a whole host of these things on the water, would stop submarines coming back for refuelling and that all sort of out in the Atlantic and they certainly stopped the loaded boats from coming out, ‘cause they couldn’t get out that was the principle of it. It was effective in a sense, but the Germans of course decided that all these mines had got to be set off, and the easiest way to do that was to get a French trawlerman with a metal boat to travel and explode the bombs, and killed the Frenchmen on the way: didn’t matter. That’s effectively what they did.
DH: So they were magnetic I presume.
JT: Hmm.
DH: So they’d come up and hit whatever was metal.
JT: Aye. Well they’d trip, trip a magnetic mechanism within the bomb and [explode sound] go up yes, and sink any French, metal boat that was going over it or submarine for that matter, German submarine. It would sink them The idea was that if we could get a few submarines sunk in the channel that they would stop using the top, have to use the, the two depots.
DH: How long did that, did you do that for? You know, did they make a decision right to stop them?
JT: Yes, virtually, almost continual basis over a period of time, perhaps once a week, once every two weeks you’d go back and have another go and because of this the banks on either side on the approach to this, these were lined up with anti aircraft so when you went there with your hundred feet steadily at that speed with anti-aircraft fire coming in from both sides and you just crossed your fingers you would get through safely and of course you couldn’t take evasive action a hundred feet above the water, the slightest movement you’d be in the water yourself. So it was a, rather a dice with death situation. Not as simple as it sounds.
DH: And can I ask were, did many crews get killed, doing that?
JT: Sorry?
DH: Did many, were many aircraft killed, shot down?
JT: Yes, a few, I don’t know the total frankly, but certainly a few. Well, you were a sitting target so just the way but once the mines were in the water, it was quite effective in inhibiting where the submarines could get, go in and out.
DH: Reading your book, you talked about Lorient, the Bay of Biscay. What happened there? Was that, is that around the St, Nazaire?
JT: That is, yeah, one is up the coast, one is further down the coast, exactly [emphasis] the same sort of situation. Again, the thing was, again there was a channel which the u-boats went in and out and again we were throwing these mines into that channel, to stop, stop their progress.
DH: Yes.
JT: This was particularly important as we, as we got to D-Day of course, we had to stop them dead.
DH: Okay. You mentioned in your book about, is it Mainz, to do with a gentleman called Viv Parry.
JT: Yes.
DH: Can you talk about that please?
JT: We did bombing raid in Hamburg and we had a hard time with that one, and coming back we realised that we were losing fuel, one of the petrol tanks had been holed and we were, not losing fuel from it, and so we got to the point where almost half the way back across the north sea and I had to stop, the engine just stopped for lack of fuel and I feathered the propellers and we were now flying on the one engine, bit tricky because we hadn’t got very much fuel left, so in the remain, tanking on the other side, so by cutting its power back, on the engine, so it consumed less fuel, we also were losing height until eventually we crossed the Yorkshire coast very low indeed and we were desperate to look for somewhere to land and I was really dicing because it was a question as to how long we would stay in the air, give us time to find an airfield to land on. In fact we ran out of fuel. And so from about a thousand feet I had to suddenly look round in the early dawn, to find somewhere to land the plane. I suddenly spotted one just about the last hop would do the trick, dead engines, the plane just wasn’t exactly a good glider, it came down fairly rapidly, I managed to screw it round get into the airfield and do a perfect belly landing which I thought this is absolutely superb, marvellous. I even thought, you know how good it was, until eventually, we approached a copse where were quite, fairly slow down, then suddenly the wing tip on the right hand side collided with a young tree, just projecting out, and this had the effect of swinging the plane round, rapidly, it came to a stop. Now part of the procedure in all this crash landing is that the crew goes into what we call crash position and brace themselves. I stayed in the cockpit doing the flying and they all brace themselves. The rear gunner turned his turret to one, to right angles like that to the, to the line of flight, and he opened his little back doors and he unstrapped himself so as he could get out quickly, and the unfortunate effect of this, this catching the wing, swinging the aircraft like that it ejected him from the rear turret, he must have flown through the air about twenty, thirty feet, landed, unfortunately broke his neck and it was me was, to discover this. A complete shock, you know one of your own crew, one of your best and close friends; suddenly there he is lying dead. You can’t stand there, do nothing.
DH: No.
JT: So, was a question of having him covered up, one chap stayed with the plane and the body, and the other guys were sent in different directions, and I went off to look, we all went to look for help get to a telephone and get to the air force and that’s where I sort of waded into a, through a canal, put my boots back, on knocked on a farm door, the farmer eventually answers the door, looked at me, I was bloodied, because I’d cut my head badly, blood all over my face, I was wet, I looked a wreck, and, he didn’t know what I was, in fact he thought probably I was a German, he didn’t, my speech was a bit slurred. Anyway I managed to convince him who I was and he invited me in and put through a phone call, called his missus down from upstairs and she came down in her nightie, a little dressing gown over the top, being a practical woman of course, she immediately got a bowl of hot water and started cleaning up the wound and making me reasonably respectable and for good measure stuffed a big double whisky down me, [laugh] in to me which made me feel just a little bit better at that time. So we got recovered, plane and everything else. And we set off on leave of course. Viv Parry was buried in a graveyard in Anglesey, where he lies to this day.
DH: Was the plane re-usable after that?
JT: No, only in parts. The strain put on the crash landing and the effect of hitting the tree couldn’t support some of the metal parts, so they weren’t prepared to risk taking off the wings and trying to get it to fly again, when they reassembled it, so I think they used it for spares, so we never saw it again.
DH: At some point after that I understand you went to Tilstock, as an instructor. Was that after, that was after that was it?
JT: Yes, after the tour of operations I was posted to Tilstock in Whitchurch. I was there for quite a time. Flying Whitleys, Whitley, old fashioned Whitley bombers. You took pilots up and you trained them to fly the plane and when they were qualified as you felt fit and you, you put the crews in and then they went off on to practice, cross country work round the country, all round the country, the bombing range at er, just across, not far from here, they used that as a bombing range, of course other bombing ranges were in different parts of the country. So they had to navigate their way to this particular bombing area, do the bombs and then carry on a circuit, prescribed circuit and then come back. In other words it’s a virtual imitation of what they’d be doing when they qualified. And it was from there, they went on, at that stage of the war most of them would go to what we call a conversion units to convert from two engines to four engines, and then from the conversion unit, with a crew they would go on to operations, operational trips. Tilstock was a nice post. It was a relief to survive to become an instructor on that, one or two adventures of course, there always is. Which isn’t always totally reliable.
DH: So you completed, was it thirty ops, you completed thirty ops before you went there.
JT: Yes, at that stage.
DH: So that’s where you got the DFC.
JT: Er, I didn’t get the DFC till much later in the war, I realise is utterly wrong, when I joined the Pathfinders.
DH: So after Tilstock what happened then?
JT: Well, they decided at Tilstock should, was approaching the end of 1943, and they decided they wanted to train people to gliders, towed gliders to go in into the invasion, and so the whole airfield was converted to a different type of aircraft and towing gliders and mixed in with the Army. And so I was moved on to a place called Peplow, not far from Wellington, and there I became an instructor on another different type of aircraft altogether, Wellington. Which I gave up after a while became test, briefly a test pilot for every one that, every aeroplane that came out of over, being overhauled I would fly it to make sure everything was in order. I decided early on, that to avoid any errors, I’d, the chaps who worked on the aeroplane, the fitters and riggers, had to fly with me when I did the test flight. They quickly cottoned on, they made sure that if they flew with me on the test flight it had to be right, and so apparently the quality of the servicing shot up! [laugh, cough] Just a little trick you learn.
DH: That’s a very good trick!
JT: From there on, after D-Day I decided I had to get back into the war, that’s you know, going on to Mosquitos.
DH: Can you tell me about Mosquitos then?
JT: Sorry?
DH: Can you tell me about your time on Mosquitos then please?
JT: Yes, the Mosquito was a beautiful aircraft, it was never given an awful lot of publicity, but was a workhourse and did a lot of good work. So we had two weeks on a training course, joined up with a navigator, chap, navi, Tubby, Bernard Tubbs his name was, my navigator, thin as a rake, but because of his name he was called Tubby, and we got on like a house on fire. He already done a tour of operations himself on Lancasters, so he was a good navigator and an experienced one and I’d done a tour and been an instructor. So we went in to Pathfinders and in two weeks, we’d not, I think only a short four hours, flying the Mosquito. Lovely aeroplane to fly, really was, we were very pleased with that. In fact one stage I think I flew over the centre of England and I could see Ireland on that side, and half way across the north sea on the other side, in those days yo,u flying at thirty five thousand feet, was something so rare, you know, didn’t happen. Today it’s commonplace of course, had to, had to have oxygen, and it was a nice scene rarely, rarely you get weather that good in Britain. Anyway, from there we went, posted to Gravely, in er, not far from Cambridge, and we did our second tour of operations, another forty operations over Germany with the Mosquito. The Mosquito was used in various ways Pathfinder squadron. So either you would join in an air raid on a particular German city. The principle was that the main force, of Lancasters and so on, would go to the target. We would take, they were, we would take off after them because we were a lot faster, we then flew over the top of the bombing raid, got in to the target ahead of them and then dropped right the way down and spread markers on the ground so that they knew what to bomb. So by the time they came in, we’d put all the markers there and so they could come in and bomb the markers and know that they’d done an accurate bombing job. So as we were Pathfinders we were prime targets for the Germans of course, but that was the way it was. But apart from that, we did not many of those strangely enough. We were sent off, because at this time of the war, the idea was to be bombing as many Germans cities every [emphasis] night as possible. That meant the workers were down in the cellars and if they’re down in the cellars they couldn’t be making guns and ammunition and aeroplanes. And it was quite effective in that sense. So a lot of the trips we did, fifteen, twenty, twenty five thousand feet, over various, while the heavies were doing all their damage over one part of Germany and we were scouting out and dropping bombs on other parts of Germany. That was the general idea of it all. So flying at twenty thousand, twenty five thousand feet, today’s jets, was quite common. We were very fortunate, because they developed one type of Mosquito that could specially fly that high, the engines were slightly more, got more beef in them, they provided heat, and they provided some pressurisation which was virtually unknown in those days. So in fact we were flying in a pressurised, heated aeroplane, rather like today [laugh,] really deluxe stuff. In fact we were the only squadron who had this type of aeroplane. Quite remarkable, but it was a nice way to go! Until you had trouble of course, and then, then it wasn’t. Because if you suddenly lose the heat, and the oxygen, at about twenty five thousand feet, you got difficulties.
DH: Yes, I can imagine.
JT: Because above fifteen thousand feet, no oxygen, you’re [pooft sound], you then become unconscious quite quickly, apart from the fact that you’re flying at temperatures of, at that height, could be minus thirty, minus forty degrees.
DH: Did you ever have any close shaves like that?
JT: The only time I’ve ever had was, was, having flown down to, started off and flew to the target in south Germany and, in the normal way you climb up to, in that case I think it was twenty five thousand feet, and then head off for the target. But the plane I was in, I’d got up to about five thousand feet and suddenly I looked the temperatures and the pressures on the engines and the temperatures were up and the pressures were down, which meant the engine was over, both engines were overheating; that wasn’t good news, particularly when you’ve got a bomb, big bomb on underneath you. So I levelled out and flew the plane a short while, level, throttled back the engines and they seemed cool down, to almost normal. So again I opened and climbed another three or four thousand feet, again they overheated and I levelled out, they cooled down, then I went up in steps to about seventeen, eighteen thousand feet I think, and I thought this is silly, so I flew along for a while at, about that height, eighteen thousand I think it was, and the engines came down, to, temperatures were up, slightly up, pressures slightly down, not enough to worry about anyway, so I thought right we’ll go, but of course this was all time consuming. Whereas we should have been first on the target to mark it, the other guys were way ahead, including the main bomber force. So we plodded our way down towards the target, and we got within sight of the target which we, thirty, forty miles ahead, I suddenly looked at the port engine temperatures were up, way up [emphasis] pressures right the way down, if I left it running it would just stop, catch fire, and in a wooden aeroplane that it not good news, so immediately cut the engine, switched everything off, cut the fuel and everything else, carry on with one engine but I daren’t open the other engine because we got ourself in trouble with that one, so I had to leave that one as it was, which was in a cruising position because one engine, two engines support the plane, one engine doesn’t, so the plane progressively started to lose height. So instead of bombing the target at twenty five thousand feet that night or whatever, we were down to five thousand feet by the time we got to the target which was thoroughly well alight, but fortunately the bombing raid was over and the Germans were all rushing around putting out the fires and dealing with everything. So we flew in straight over the target at five thousand feet, which is very low, let our bomb go right bang into the centre of the target we were aiming to do. And of course, as soon as the Germans spotted that, they’d heard a, an aeroplane with one engine, not two, so they thought it was one of their own that far down in Germany.
DH: Wow.
JT: So they assumed it had to be one of their own with those engines, so that’s why we got in dropped the bomb and it was only then that they realised who we were and then suddenly there was a whole barrage of stuff, heading out at us, we just did a quick turn, that way rather, and vanished into the darkness, and worked our way back up, in fact because we hadn’t got a bomb, we’d used half our fuel, so made the plane was much lighter of course. So with the one engine left in that cruise position it actually climbed and back up at eighteen thousand feet. So we kept a sharp eye out to be sure we weren’t going to be followed or attacked and crossed over the border into Belgium, and suddenly I looked at this engine, the temperature had crept up, the pressure was down, and I thought that’s it, you know, just the way these things were going, we had no hope of getting it back to the UK. So that’s when we called it, started calling up ‘Mayday, Mayday’. Got no response. So I thought there’s only one thing to do, let’s try, may, I think I sent out nine maydays altogether, in groups, nothing and er, so I said right, we’ll go. So Tubby went down and tried to release the bottom hatch which is the normal way to go out, but of course we were pressurised. So the only other was out was through the top, you pull emergency lever and the hatch flies away, top hatch, flies away. The whole plane was depressurised, that meant that anything lightweight [swooshing sound] was sucked out of the plane: chocolate bars, baps everything went out the top, [laugh] which didn’t matter at that stage anyway. And so he clambered up, and went out through, I brought the plane back to as low a speed as I dare, which was only about ninety miles an hour, and he went out through the top, and parachuted. I thought well, that’s me, I’m next. So the idea is, you switch off the engines, chop the fuel, put the plane into a glide and you go out through the top as well. By that time I could have got out through the bottom with the pressure’d been released, either way I was just about close the engines down I thought I’ll give one [emphasis] more try and I went, ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,’ and immediately a voice came back, in English, and said, you know, ‘what’s your problem?’, so I told him, and in no time at all they’d put up a cone of searchlights and the engine by this time was on its last legs, I really pushed it [cough] I landed the plane with almost, one, just, barely an engine working at all, managed to get the undercarriage and flaps down and landed and it was, it was a forward English fighter aircraft base, fortunately was also a maintenance unit, so I thought well that’s good. So I checked in with the people there, and they said we well can’t do anything tonight, but we’ll send a wire to er, I said why don’t you just send a wire back to the squadron to tell them where I am? ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well, I’ll send a signal’ but he said, ‘no chance,’ he said, ‘there’s so much going on in Europe at the present time, the chance of your getting a signal back are fifty-fifty.’ So I said ‘well how do the squadron know that we’re missing?’ I said. ‘Well the only way they know you are missing is ‘cause you don’t come back, from their point of view.’ So just had to hope that somehow a signal could find its way through in the end. So I, they found me a bed to sleep on that night, and we looked around the aeroplane the next day they said well they were too busy today with other fighter aircraft to get them in the air, so we’ll try and look at your plane tomorrow. So that was it. That night we went out to a bar, we got in the car trundled along, and there’s nothing on the road generally at night, except we came across a couple of wagons, French peasants, and there hanging lanterns under the wagon that’s to tell, so you know that if coming up from behind, [laugh] you know there’s something in your way. We went into a bar there and, had a couple of drinks and were drinking away happily, and suddenly there was a click, click, click of heels, sorry, we decided, having had a drink we decided go to the loo. So we were standing there was we gentlemen do, and suddenly a click, click of heels and women walked right past us, so I looked at this gentleman and ‘Oh’ he said, ‘don’t worry chum, you’re in Belgium now, men and women use the same toilets.’ [Laugh] I’d learnt a lesson! Anyway the next day they did look at the mossie, the one engine that had failed they said nothing much we can do with that its either a new engine or we’ve got to strip it right down, and refurbish it which will take time, so I’m sorry you can’t use your aeroplane unless you can take off on one engine and the runway wasn’t very long and in any case each side of the runway was lined with German planes that had been dropped off their, down off all their undercarriages, so you daren’t deviate off the runway. So I said no, I’m not going to take this plane off like that. The plane had a tendency to swing to the left on take off and if you tried it, you came to that, the left hand engine, running ahead of the right hand and that’s how you took off a mossie, the way, as long as you knew the trick, that was the way to do it. So I said if you try to take a mossie off with the starboard engine running full out and nothing on the left hand side, the tendency to swing to the left is going to be accentuated and I have no way of countering it. If I had got a very, very long runway of about three or four miles, I could gradually ease it up and with time, I could work it, get power up and get off the ground, but you haven’t got that long a runway. And if I did take it off on your runway, once I’m airborne, the chances are the plane will just flick over on its back and dive in the ground and I don’t intend to commit suicide at this time. So I said no, you’ll have to repair it. So they said well can you fly a Wellington bomber? I said yes, I can fly a bomber. We’ve got one in the hangar we want to get back to the UK, we can have it ready by tomorrow. So I said all right I’ll fly that back. So we that night, we went to a local, he said come on, we’ll go to a better place than we did last night. So we went to this place, semi-circular building, and virtually in the centre, sort of half a circle, as it were, circle in the centre of that was a woman behind a humendous cash, national cash register, biggest one I’ve ever seen, and stairs going up, and a lot of dance music seemed to be coming down from upstairs, I thought that’s nice for the lot of air force lads, lot of army lads, said it must be nice for these lads, a night out. And so I was chatting, we got beers brought across to us, and sitting there chatting away and suddenly a very beautiful [emphasis] woman, girl must have been in her early twenties I suppose, came across, sat down beside me. I glanced at her, didn’t take any note, carried on talking. She tapped me on the shoulder, says, ‘You no like me?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah, very, very nice,’ and carried on chatting. She tapped me again, I forget her name was, she gave me a French name, ‘oh yes, I recognise that, but I’m talking to this, my friend,’ and suddenly she was stroking me round the, [chuckle] round the unmentionable area. I thought what the hell’s going on here and my colleague was laughing like hell. Of course we’d come to a, an appropriate place for that sort of thing! I said, ‘Look I’ve got a girl, I’m not going to get into this sort of situation.’ ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘you can’t leave now you’ll insult the girl, insult the management and if you get like that they’ll think nothing of cutting your throat when you get outside.’ ‘Oh’ I said, ‘that’s a difficult situation,’ and I thought, I turned to this girl with my friend, so I said to her, ‘I’m sorry, but we are only here for a short time because we have to go flying, so I would like to come back and see you tomorrow, at seven o’clock.’ And she said, ‘oh, oui monsieur’. So I stood up, she stood up, shook hands, kissed on both cheeks, I got this bloke and went out the door and said [mutter] ‘spoilt my whole evening!’ [laugh] So we got out and the next day I flew the Wellington back to the United Kingdom. And then finally got back to the squadron. My navigator landed in a ploughed field and because you got the plough, the way the ploughed field is, you put one foot on, down the trough and one foot on, got himself a black eye so he didn’t feel so good, but anyway managed to bury his parachute in a ditch, kind of off the main road because there’s no hedges or fences, and looked at the stars, decided which was north, south east and west, and decided he’d go west, or north west, which is, the road was generally in that direction. He plodded along for a while and he came to a village. He looked around the village for a plaque, you know doctor, found plaque there, banged on the door, finally chap opens the window upstairs, you know, ‘Qui est la?’, - who is there? - and so he told him who he was, in his fractured French, and ‘Non, non, non. Allez!’ Slammed the window and told him to go away, which he thought well that’s not good for a doctor, so he banged on the window again, door again and the chap opened the door and pointed a double-barrelled shotgun at him. ‘Allez, allez!’, you know, and so there’s no arguing with a shotgun, so he walked away and told the, told the chap he should have married his wife in b, in voluble English language –
DH: Yes.
JT: - hobbled along and down the road for a while and suddenly he heard some vehicles coming towards him from the west and thought well now, are they retreating Germans or are they advancing Allies? So he dropped down the ditch out of sight. All the stuff trundled past: vehicles, tanks, trucks. And eventually one stopped just above him, stayed silent as the grave because if he’d emerged from the ditch and decided he was English, they would just shoot him and leave him in the ditch. So he kept very quiet, till a voice said, [American accent] ‘Hey Mac, will you give me a cigarette?’ He was out of the ditch like a shot! The headlights of the jeep across, identified himself and they said, ‘horrible weather, mac,’ they were pointing at, two cocked pistols pointed at him. Americans, you know, quick on the draw, anyway eventually he identified himself, one American soldier sat at the back of the jeep, he sat in the front by the driver with a pistol in his back and they went back to the local military depot and before long they get into another American airfield, I’m sorry, and given food, medical treatment, sorted out and sent to bed. And they said well, we’ll see if we can get a message back to you, into Britain but you know how it is, we have to report back to brigade headquarters and they have to report to London, and London has to report to the Air Ministry and by the time they get around be an age, he said until you are identified, positively identified back from your Air Ministry you’ve got to stay here! So a couple of days went by so enough’s enough, then eventually a chap flew in, came in to the mess where he was, an American pilot, he got chatting to him, ‘Yeah, I’m on delivery, at present on Dakotas and I’m bringing in supplies sure I can give you a lift back, take you to Southampton, is that all right?’ So he flew back, back in this thing to Southampton, and got some money out of the American adjutant to get him back home, and went home to check with his parent to say, tell them he was all right, and then got to London and then came back to the airfield and I was very pleased to see him. So he had his little adventure in his own way.
DH: He certainly did, didn’t he!
JT: And then we carried on with the war, as you do. [Rustling]
DH: So is, after that had happened [rustling] obviously D-Day had happened by then, and we were with the allies as plans, so what part did you take then, after that, before the end of the war?
JT: Well, we, we continued bombing into Germany because that’s where, you know the stuff was, ammunition, guns, tanks were still being made. and it was important to stop those. But there was a case where, just before Christmas 1944 that we established that there was a tremendous build-up of arms, ammunition, everything else, in West Germany where, at the point where they go through a series of tunnels and they come into France. They quickly picked up that there might be an attack down there, but, so what happened they were a bit slow in getting the, moving troops into the area to contain it, and that was where the Americans did a breakthrough actually about that time, unfortunately the weather was, we couldn’t fly in the weather that was going on at the time, so there was nothing really to stop these guys actually, bursting their way back, Germans bursting their way back into France. So the only way we could tackle this was to close down the tunnels, that’s where the supply route was. So the job was to fly down the banks, where the tunnel was, fly down the banking on either side, down along the tunnel railway tracks about twenty feet up and then drop a bomb, so it was actually, you thew, literally threw your bomb into the tunnel with a delayed action fuse and hoped that it worked, and of course it was unfortunate that all the tunnels had got machine guns rooted round them so you went in, you know under those conditions, it was, just so happened this happened when I was on a day off, or stood down for the day anyway, but I know that our squadron did go in and they did drop some bombs, blew up a lot of the tunnels in that area, so as to stop the trains getting through. And one of my colleagues was last seen going down in flames, was obviously shot into bits. But it was a tough time. Anyway, it all helped to stop the Germans and their supplies getting through, and in the May, stopped because they only got so far, then they ran out of fuel and they had to pick up the fuel locally where they could, there sort of, there was no further supply of ammunition, so they were isolated and the whole thing failed of course.
DH: Was that still flying Mosquitos then?
JT: Sorry?
DH: Was that still flying Mosquitos?
JT: Oh yes, yes. So we were getting towards the end of the war at this stage and just wanted to finish, but still we had targets we had to hit. Hammering Berlin was the usual; we went to Berlin nineteen times. Try and hammer them into submission, you know. I’m not sure the public wanted submission, but they’re not being allowed to submit, under those circumstances, and then Hitler committed suicide, and his lady friend and the war ended quite quickly after that.
DH: So how regular were you going, in that period of time, how regularly were you going? Like, every day? Every two or three days?
JT: Sorry?
DH: To do a bombing run. How often were you going?
JT: I’ll tell you. [Shuffle of paper] Trying to catch up, yeah, so many pages, ah yes, yes, it’s er, ah right, 21st October: Hamburg, 10th of November: Hannover, 11th of November [indistinguishable], 21st of November: Hannover, 24th of November is Berlin, 25th is Nuremburg, so it’s sort of two nights running quite often then a break. 27th of November was Hannover, 29th was Duisburg, 30th was Duisburg. December 1st was Karlsruhe, so you know, it was -
DH: All over the place, and regularly.
JT: December, that’s when I had the trouble, December the 5th, I didn’t get back to flying operationally, until February the 5th after it was, I forget what happened earlier, it was Berlin, Mannheim, Berlin, Berlin, [tuning pages] Erfurt, Berlin, Berlin, Dessau, Berlin, Berlin, Bremen, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Dessau, Berlin, Berlin, Hamburg Munich Berlin, Berlin, Kiel, Munich, airfield and so on.
DH: Yeah.
JT: Some of them little bursts of two or three days and then a break.
DH: Yeah. So in between bombing raids what did you get up to?
JT: Oh well, you went out to a local pub and had a few beers! [Laugh] The main thing was you drank in the mess sometimes but the tendency was to get away from the atmosphere, the flying and everything else, into a local bar and meet with normal people.
DH: Can you think of any capers that people got up to?
JT: Oh, I can’t think of anything particularly but I’m sure they did! [Chuckle] There were sometimes you’d get to the pub and there’d a drinking party going on, not very common the publican in those days had to close at ten o’clock prompt at night. So he’d close the front door at ten o’clock then open the back door, so if you wanted to drink you went to the back door and kept going till two or three in the morning, as long as his beer ration lasts.
DH: I was going to say that, was there much beer?
JT: There seemed to be a reasonable amount of beer going round but you, if one pub ran out of beer then you moved on to the one that had beer - the word quickly got around on these situations.
DH: Very good. So.
JT: In other words get away from the military atmosphere get into a relaxed atmosphere. It was good to do that –
DH: Absolutely
JT: - otherwise the whole thing would bear down on you and you’d be no good to anybody.
DH: So after VJ day how do you think the war affected you, did it affect you in any way?
JT: Well I think a) we were glad the European war was over, but remember the far east war was still on. We were given some opportunities to choose what we wanted to do. I’d always thought the idea, we were still ferrying Canadian built Mosquitos from Canada, and flying via Greenland, Iceland to Europe and then you went back on a commercial transport of some sort and then brought another one in. But then fortunately I investigated it, and I found that in Iceland the weather conditions can be such that suddenly like a cold air meets the warm air and a blanket of fog [noise] just descends on the airfield and you could be flying from [cough] Greenland to Iceland, suddenly arrive at Iceland and they’d be blanked out with fog. there was no way you can land the aeroplane and you certainly wouldn’t have enough fuel to head to England, or Scotland. So they were stuck there bail out waste of aeroplane so on, and if you landed in the sea up there you didn’t last very long anyway.
DH: No. Oh my god!
JT: So I thought this is almost as bad as operational flying, so I thought right I think I’ll give that one a miss! [Laugh] So I went to an Operational Training Unit then, so I could train people to fly, and it was a more relaxed atmosphere, in any case the air force had decided the there’s no point now doing operational flying; the war’s over, so the amount of flying it was doing less and less and less, and so they had to keep us occupied, with either courses or you had to take parades you were in to the old pre-war military situation of parades and officialdom really came into its own. And these characters who had been sitting around, administrators and everything else, been doing as they’re told for all this time emerged from the woodwork and didn’t make life too easy for the people flying. [Clock chimes] In the end I decided anyway the particular airfield I was on, that I wouldn’t, I’d got extended service, that is to say I applied for, and they gave me extended service, that meant I could continue with the service till it, the air force had sorted itself out in which case I could remain in the air force and carry on using it as a career, so I thought I might well do that. Until I got to this station, particular airfield, where I became an instructor there, along with others, but one of the problems with it, in the officers mess at I was at this time there were two squadron leaders, and they were bango whizzo type characters who didn’t think the war was over, so they’d think nothing of walking on the ceiling and drinking themselves silly and making the whole, most in fact people didn’t go into the mess any more, they couldn’t stand these two characters. But unfortunately there was no one in a senior position, the group captain who ran the station was due to leave the air force anyway any minute, so he’d lost interest in the field, the wing commander also in charge, he was in a similar situation so there was no real [emphasis] somebody to do something about it. And one of the, favourite trick of these two drunks, was about two o’clock in the morning they close the bar in the officers mess and they’d go round tossing people out of bed just as a, just for fun, and I remember about half past two in the morning you’d suddenly find yourself on a mattress on the floor being tipped out of bed, and these two characters guffawing like mad and going ahead and trying somebody else. I thought this just isn’t going to happen. So I thought, all right, and three nights later, drunk again, I could hear them coming down the passage, so I got up, stood behind the door, one of them barged in, I closed the door right behind him. I got hold of him, slammed him up against the wall, he was drunk mind you, and I put my fist under his nose and I told him, you ever come in here again, you’ll know what you’ll get. I made sure he understood that, and I opened the door and pushed him out and he fell on the floor, drunk of course, in the passage outside, when he looked at me I knew one thing, right there and then, I was a flight lieutenant, he was a squadron leader. I had insulted and virtually assaulted a superior officer and I could be in real trouble. So I thought that’s it, I thought about it, so I sat down and wrote my resignation from the air force there and then and requested immediate, you know, removal from the air force, and I went first thing in the morning at half past eight I was in the, put the letter in the hands of the adjutant officers. And at ten o’clock, or half past ten I think it was, I was told to report to him, and he was an old timer, a bit of a character, and he threw the, he threw this thing across the desk at me, ‘what’s this nonsense about, why should you leave the air force?’ And that’s when I’m afraid I lost my dignity and a lot of temper, we were all stewed up about the situation, I let him have it, hard, about how the station was not being run properly, about the mess was a mess, mess was a mess, these two squadron leaders acting like overgrown schoolboys and disgrace [emphasis] to the service and gave him a long lecture about this. Me a flight lieutenant, lecturing the commanding officer, and he was going purple in the face, nobody’d ever spoken to him like this. I said that’s my decision to leave, sir, gave him a smart salute, about turn and walked out! And I was out of the air force in a week, that’s in a week, I was gone, civilian life, got rid of me. But [emphasis] I still had contacts back in the, back in the mess, and a chap actually ring me, er two weeks later and said I don’t know what you did but by god things have changed, you rattled the CO something rotten and he went into the mess at about eleven o’clock one night, found these two squadron leaders drunk as, like I have described to you, making a mess of themselves. and he you know, suddenly they spotted him, standing in the background, ‘Hello sir, good evening sir, come and have a drink. sir,’ you know, something stupid like that. He turned round and walked out. So the two squadron leaders were posted forthwith to different areas, left the station, and this chap said suddenly the whole atmosphere of the mess, everybody came back into the mess, the whole atmosphere changed, wonderful, nice to have it back again, nice to have our mess back again. So he said I don’t know what you did, by golly it worked. So I was rather pleased that something had come out of it anyway.
DH: Did you have any regrets about leaving?
JT: Sorry?
DH: Did you have any regrets about leaving?
JT: In a sense no, because the air force was changing, it was no longer, the wartime service was, I know it was death and destruction but you were in, a tight family, you knew everybody, knew what was going on, were up to date, but suddenly there was nobody to fight. And so, as I say they had to keep us occupied, so we were up to, a lot of administrative duties were thrust at us, which, a lot less flying was being done, the whole atmosphere was beginning to change, as I say these people who’d been in the background: administrators and everything else, now came to the fore and weren’t making life too easy for the flying people. It was just one of those situations at that time. So I said enough’s enough, I’m off and that’s really precipitated my leaving.
DH: So what did you do then with your life after you left?
JT: Well, I hadn’t made up my mind really what I wanted to do, except that in my home village for many years, they decided, the local authority decided that the village should be by-passed and the by-pass was rumoured for a long time and then it became something more important after the war, something they could get on with. So I thought well, the situation was that my father ran a garage anyway, and what we would do was open up a petrol station on this by-pass probably with sort of motel type accommodation or accommodation of some sort, and that would be a good idea. So, I knew the, roughly where this thing was planned to go, and so I approached the landowners with a view to possibility of purchasing this land, but the word had obviously got around what was happening, so the idea of a) they refused and b) they raised the price so, it was all, eventually I gave up on this it was a good idea, but not practical for me, a rather penniless man trying to get into the world, it just didn’t happen. So, er, I was escorting my lady friend at that time, she lives up here and obviously offered me a chance of connection up here and the chance of joining Hoover, I thought well, something to do keep me occupied for a while. So I went on a training course, a few training courses, before I knew it I was the manager, regional manager and the whole of Birmingham and the Midlands was all, then moved down, they moved you about every four years, moved over and looked after the western half of London and out in to the counties, east part of London and into the counties, then up to the west country taking over the whole of Devon and Cornwall and all that sort of area like that, and then moved up to the north as you do, every four years until we finally settled there, just up the road in Cheshire. So it was a very nomadic sort of life particularly when you’re bringing up youngsters and various schools they had to attend. No, I enjoyed that, responsibility and everything else, just upsetting moving for the children’s education point of view, but from the housing point of view it was an advantage, because that was the time after the war onwards, house prices were rising. First house I bought was a semi-detached house on the outskirts of Birmingham for £1,975. Then we moved to Harrow where I paid £3,200 for a four bedroomed semi-detached, from there I moved to, er, Chelmsford, about £4,900 for a brand new, four bedroomed detached property with double garage, and from there I moved down to the west country. I paid £7,250 for a four bed detached double garage in a nice area, and from there we moved up to Cheshire where I in fact, I bought a piece of land and had a four bed detached property with double built there. So I took advantage of the rising prices, I don’t know what the last Cheshire one was, about, I don’t know three or four hundred thousand, something like that. Ridiculous when you think about the prices.
DH: I know. It’s daft isn’t it.
JT: Crazy. And as long as the land is restricted to build on, so the prices will maintain their, and that’s the problem Where do you find land to build that doesn’t upset people.
DH: That’s right.
JT: So. But there’s a lot of land available that’s not being utilised. Anyway, that’s another story.
DH: Can I ask, can you think of any occasions when you were absolutely scared to death during the war?
JT: [Breath out]
DH: Did you get scared?
JT: Oh yes, I think you did get scared. You, the thing about being a pilot, you daren’t, particularly when you’ve got a crew, you daren’t show it, you know your heart’s in your mouth and all that sort of thing, I know that dropping these mines in that water at a hundred feet with people springing out everywhere ‘am I going to make it, am I not going to make it,’ and when you go in, you think, well there’s a job to do, I’ll do it, but whether I’ll survive it I don’t know, and I did. But somehow and I think I explained in the book, my mother, grandmother on my mother’s side had this virtue of, or they called it a virtue, had second sight, that is to say she could, tell you things that are going to happen, before they happen. For instance, for example, she was doing some washing in her house, my mother told me this, suddenly she took off her apron, put on her hat and coat, took a tram in those days to the other end of Eastbourne, she knocked on the door of a house she’d never been to before in her life, she told the woman who answered the door she was to go immediately [emphasis] to a hospital in London, her husband was calling for her. She so convinced the woman that she caught the train, went in to London, she arrived at the man’s, her husband’s, bedside half an hour before he died. How did she know that?
DH: Wow.
JT: My mother had it to a lesser extent, I never really thought, well I’d heard these stories but you don’t take, as a kid you don’t, it doesn’t mean much to you. It was strange enough I got to one point on the squadron where I knew instinctively [emphasis] whether a crew would survive or not. At first that was a frightening experience, you get the guys and then a couple of weeks later they’re gone. And you know, when you’re losing crews like that, that’s not, it’s no good, you know, this instinctive feeling I had about it I just had to submerge it, forget about it. But it was there, I could tell if they were going to live or die when they came on the squadron. Never happened before or since. Can you explain it?
DH: No, I can’t.
JT: Probably inherited in the family, something like that.
DH: Probably, yeah.
JT: But, er, something my sons never had, not that I’m aware of.
DH: You said right at the beginning that, when you’d gone to Coventry and when you saw what happened there, you wanted to, you wanted the Germans to understand what we were going through. By the end of the war did still think that, did you have any regrets about what you’d done? Any dilemma in your head or anything?
JT: Not really. The idea was you know, to, really try to bomb them into submission, to agreeing to stop the war was all we wanted, to stop the war, and that was what the bombing was all about, apart from the invasion of course to stop these people fighting, that was all we wanted, and when it was over that was it. I think perhaps we tidied it up a bit better after this war than we did after the first world war, but it was not doing the job properly after the first world war enabled the Nazi party for example, to rise. It hasn’t happened so far in Germany and we hope that, it is obviously a reasonable country.
DH: Is there anything else that I haven’t, or we haven’t covered, while we’ve been talking that you think might be of interest to people?
JT: Not really, I can only express this from a man’s point of view in the situation, from the women’s point of view: wives and sweethearts, and all that sort of thing, it was tough because the men, we go off to war and you’re never going to know if you’re going to see them back ever again, that was a tough situation particularly as the families were concerned that was, was rough because there were many widows as a result of all this, plus the effect of war which was disastrous really, we don’t want wars but if you’re forced: you fight back, and that’s the result of what happens. A modern type of war, the second world war anyway, was a bit disastrous for civilians, no doubt about it. If you have another war it’ll be rather a different kettle of fish, again just whole civilians war, be engulfed. But I don’t know what would happen, have fair idea what will happen, but just hope it never will.
DH: Absolutely. Right. Can I say thank you very much.
JT: Oh you’re most welcome.
DH: It’s been fascinating to listen to, and very informative.
JT: As I say, there are stories in the book you might want to include.
DH: Yes, yeah. Your book’s fascinating.
JT: Hmm. Anyway, it was very nice to see you.
JT: Is it still recording?
DW: I shall turn this off then, okay.
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 Percival Trotman
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dawn Hughes
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-04
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
ATrotmanPJ180604
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:21:24 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Applying for RAF Bomber Command in May 1940, Percival Trotman was called up in September 1940, training as a pilot at RAF Towyn in Aberystwyth. Being present at Coventry when the town was bombed, he recalls deciding that the Germans deserved to have the same done to them and pushed to do well in his training. Completing his advanced training at RAF South Cerney, Percival was rated above average and was sent to RAF Cranwell to train as a flight instructor, without seeing active service. He gives some examples of training, including low flying over hedges and almost crashing into a caravan, which eventually led to him being moved to an operational training unit where he trained to fly Wellingtons. Whilst completing his training, Percival was drawn into the ‘thousand bomber raid’, without completing his training. Posted to RAF Binbrook by mistake, Percival took part in operations over France and minelaying. Explaining a close call on a return from am operation on Hamburg, Percival gives insight into how he dealt with a crew member's loss during a crash landing. He explains that he felt fear during operations, but kept it hidden so that his crew remained strong. Completing 30 operations in total, he was eventually transferred to the Pathfinders, earning the Distinguished Flying Medal and flying Mosquitoes. Percival recollects his crew members fondly, including his Pathfinders navigator ‘Tubby’. Percival outlines what the aftermath of a crash contained, including making it back to Great Britain, giving insights into another crash he had on the return from an operation.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Cheshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Coventry
England--London
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
France
France--Lorient
France--Saint-Nazaire
Wales--Ceredigion
England--Warwickshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-05
1940-09
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sam Harper-Coulson
Anne-Marie Watson
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
150 Squadron
692 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
final resting place
Flying Training School
forced landing
Initial Training Wing
military ethos
mine laying
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Binbrook
RAF Cranwell
RAF Graveley
RAF Peplow
RAF Pershore
RAF Shawbury
RAF South Cerney
RAF Tilstock
RAF Torquay
RAF Towyn
recruitment
training
Wellington
Whitley