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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/7/3394/ADerringtonAP150715-02.1.mp3
6cd1f162411f8a65aa035d4d1151c5ab
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Title
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Derrington, Arnold Pearce
Arnold Pearce Derrington
Arnold P Derrington
Arnold Derrington
A P Derrington
A Derrington
Description
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Two oral history interviews with Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington DFC (- 2016, 187333 Royal Air Force), a navigator with 462 and 466 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Derrington, AP
Date
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2015-07-15
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Transcription
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AS: It’s 15th July 2015. My name’s Adam Such. I’m a researcher for the International Bomber Command Centre and this is the second half of an interview with Flight Lieutenant Derry Derrington former DFC, former navigator on 466 and 462 squadrons RAF.
Derry first of all good morning thank you for allowing me to come back.
DD: My joy.
AS: Great. I’d like first of all really to take you back to briefings. I know that they weren’t all exactly the same but can you give me a general idea of how long they’d go?
DD: Well a briefing used to last about three quarters of an hour at most. Sometimes it could be done in a quarter of an hour and once we had the briefing the navigator would settle down to make out what his flight plan. Do you know what a flight plan is?
AS: Roughly. But if you’d like to go through it.
DD: It’s on every chart and every log I’ve got here and you’ll see that we knew the complete journey that we had to make and it wasn’t always direct. It would appear that it should be but we had to do all sorts of diversionary courses in order to fox the enemy and I’ve got a chart that I want to give you which shows every target we went to with, as it were, a straight line going from Driffield or our take off point was called Flaxfleet and it wasn’t a straight line as my chart shows but it’s easy for anyone to notice and we didn’t go in straight lines like it appears to be. I’d like to give that to you now while I think about it.
AS: Ok.
[pause]
AS: Now I now have your chart in front of me with your thirty one missions on it.
DD: Yes.
AS: Yeah, as you say straight lines but the doglegs would be quite substantial I suppose depending on where the -
DD: Well depending on the time. We could always lose time. We couldn’t pick it up unless the pilot really stepped on the gas but two minutes was the most that we have to, we mustn’t get there too early or we had to lose some time but we didn’t do that very often but of course once your jigging around like that you’re crossing the path of other members of the stream of aircraft and you were taking a risk. You’ve got to be very alert. You don’t want collisions in the air.
AS: Back, back to the briefing where we started did, did the whole crew go just to one briefing or was there separate briefings for pilots and navigators.
DD: No it was a total, all the crew was there for it and they went back to do whatever they wanted to do with their equipment but we had to sit down and work out our flight plan and the flight plan was a very handy thing because it depended of course on the forecast winds of that time. They may have changed completely by the time we would do the operation but they would have been just about five or six degrees difference perhaps from one course to another and it wasn’t just a case of the calculation course you had. You had to work out deviation and also each aircraft was tuned differently so that you had to amend the calculated course that you were going to steer. You applied correction and deviation but that was the navigators job to do that and well it took some time with the computer working out the courses that we had to go but the bomb aimer might have been with me on these occasions. Jonah our bomb aimer was quite keen and he would be watching what I was doing. And we were great pals. They were wonderful crew to be with.
AS: After, after the briefing and you’d worked out your flight plan it’s, what happened then? I mean
DD: Well.
AS: We hear about the operational meal, the operational egg. What -
DD: Well we had, some of the chaps said they had a good meal beforehand. I only seem to remember a good meal afterwards [laughs] they gave us plenty to eat. Two Eggs on My Plate is, I believe is the title of one book written about our experiences in those days. But they did feed us very well with a good old fry up.
AS: Then out to the aeroplane.
DD: We felt we were very privileged people because in those days were the days of rationing.
AS: Then out to the aeroplane. How long before take-off would that, would that be?
DD: Probably two hours, two and a half hours or so before take-off. And it wasn’t a case of being waved off we just were there and we went and didn’t know who was waving us off or what we were just intent on being there and doing our job.
AS: You were, were 4 Group, in, in Yorkshire.
DD: I was - ?
AS: 4. In Number 4 Group.
DD: 4 group yes.
AS: Now that’s between the 6 Group North.
DD: Yes.
AS: And the other groups South. Did you climb out directly on course or or did you have to avoid the other aircraft from -
DD: Well we had a collecting point to move from near Spurn Head, a place called Flaxfleet and we didn’t set course from the airfield as such we were out warming up and going around, flying in orbit around the area but we wanted to be at Flaxfleet by the time of take-off. TOT time of take-off or time over target TOT. And we set off from there and well we were on the alert all the time to see we weren’t too near other aircraft. I say we - especially the gunners. They were the eyes of the plane and the pilot.
AS: Once, once you had formed up and I presume for daylight operations there was more of a coming together than, than at night time?
DD: You mean the aircraft flying close to each other?
AS: Yeah.
DD: I suppose there must have been. Most of our operations were night time, dark, in the darkness but we did some daylights. The Yanks were daylight people. They didn’t do too much dark, night time flying but we were day and night. And our trips were not quite as long as some people spent a long time. I suppose the maximum length of time you’ll see from our logbooks the maximum length of time on any of our operations was approximately eight hours but some people had time longer than that.
AS: Yes, I -
DD: We didn’t have any very long drawn out operational time. I’m amazed we did what we did in such a short time.
AS: I see Magdeburg probably was, was the furthest you went.
DD: Probably, yes.
AS: On your trips or perhaps Koblenz.
DD: Ahum
AS: Yeah. Coming, coming back now if I may coming back from the trip was there much of a desire to be home first? To open the taps? To -
DD: No. No, we went along steadily the only thing was in the funnel when we were coming to land we sometimes the Germans had a fighter lurking around and we had to be equally alert at landing time as we were taking off. That was that. Have you heard much about that happening?
AS: No I’d like you to tell me about -
DD: Well -
AS: The whole process.
DD: They had fighters in the funnel sometimes and of course our fighters were up to combat them but we had to be on the alert because of that.
AS: Could you talk I know you were inside behind your curtain but could you talk me through perhaps the, the sort of aids to final navigation? The funnel lights, the drem pundits, Sandra - that sort of thing. Could you talk me through the process of coming back to base and landing?
DD: Well I didn’t have much to do with that. I got them back to the area where we had to be and the crew looked after that as a whole. They got their eyes open and the pundits, those are, those are the flashing lights you’re talking about?
AS: Ahum.
DD: Well the pilot had his job to do and the bomb aimer might have been there to help him and be observing with him but as a navigator I’d was, I’d got them back to very near the base and I’d done my job but I was alert to write and record whatever had to be done and I’d hear the conversation of the crew and if I heard anything significant then I’d make a note of it on my log.
AS: Which brings me nicely into afterwards. After landing. You said you’d done your job but perhaps you were the most important man at the debriefing. What was the debriefing like?
DD: We were asked all sorts of questions and were you at the target in time? What opposition did you get there? And of course the crew would say as much as I would about that. If they’d said at the time they would have been on my log recording it. I believe my logs are pretty neat. I’m not as tidy and neat now as I was then but I know you’ll their fairly clear. I did everything printing. I didn’t do anything cursive writing at all. It was fine print.
AS: And they, they would they go through your navigation log either then or afterwards,
DD: Oh they’d have an overview quickly. And after the operation was over the navigation leader would have a look at the log and the chart. They were handed in together. And he’d write a comment do you see there are comments on the front page of it - A satisfactory trip or did you take enough fixes, take more than you do and what they may say what was your opinion of H2S when it came in to us initially. You’ll see one or two of my charts are in a colour different from the others instead of the normal red printing on a white background.
[OTHER: LONG PERSONAL CONVERSATION NOT TRANSCRIBED]
DD: Yes they had a white background and the towns shape is in brown and the brown showed up very good against the white background and if a town it isn’t just a red glowing dot on the fluorescent screen it was a shape on the chart that we had and if there was some projecting point in some way that you could identify then that a bearing on, from that could be taken and that would give me my position. It was, your attempt was to get a position every six minutes at least apart from any visual sightings there may have been and this radar was a wonderful help.
AS: Was it generally reliable?
DD: Oh yes. They did try to jam us but we didn’t have much of that to worry about. They couldn’t jam the H2S but the window that we scattered was supposed to confuse their ground systems for identifying us.
AS: But the actual installation in the aeroplane? Could you be confident you’d go in there and turn it on and it would work?
DD: Oh yes.
AS: And work in the air
DD: Oh yes it was very reliable.
AS: Was that generally true for the aeroplane? You’d walk to your allocated aeroplane and it would be fully functional for the trip.
DD: Yes. Oh yes.
AS: So the standard of maintenance was, was pretty high.
DD: Very good indeed. The ground crews were very helpful. And if we weren’t satisfied they soon knew it. [laughs]
AS: Were your ground crew predominantly Australians by the time you were on ops or a mix?
DD: We were a totally pommie crew with an Australian captain. And I don’t think we were, it wasn’t a case of tolerated we were treated as equals. We had a very good company. A jolly good lot they were too.
AS: The ground crew? Were they mostly Australians?
DD: No I don’t know any ground crew were Australian. They were all British I believe.
AS: Ok.
DD: One thing which was rather interesting I ended up as a lecturer in Manchester University eventually and there was one fellow who came on the staff. He said, [?] ‘My job was I trained as a navigator but they were beginning near the end of the war not to need any more air crew things were going on so well and it was my job to load you up with our bombs, with the bombs. I was doing that job’. So he has diversified to be loading up bombs for us and well we just took off with what they gave us.
AS: When we talked yesterday we talked a bit about the French at Elvington. Did you have much to do with the Free French squadrons?
DD: We just knew they were there and we were just delighted I think that we were cosmopolitan as we were. We had a Maori in our squadron and well we were British and the French were there and well they had the same directions and the same intentions as we did and we were just delighted I think that we were a multinational gang, 4 Group
AS: Yeah. Indeed you definitely were.
[pause]
There we are. So we talked that you were an Australian squadron fully accepted as English people.
DD: Ahum.
AS: The Australians were far from home can you tell me a bit about their life. What they did for leave and how - ?
DD: Well quite a few Cornish people went overseas mining years ago. There’s an adage if there’s a hole in the ground there’s a Cornish miner at the bottom of it. And the thing is that some of these Australians who came over had relatives in England. They weren’t all convicts [laughs] and they went off and had leave and visited relations and well they liked going to London to see the bright lights.
AS: Did your Skipper, did he come home with you? Did he?
DD: No. He has been home since but not during operational time.
AS: On the squadron can you recall any real characters and why they were characters?
DD: Oh there was a chap called Tiny Cawthorne. He was a very big chap. Very tall. There was a man called Ern Shoeman and Ern Shoeman was reputed to be a millionaire property wise and he and I were good friends. He used to write me quite a bit and he knew we had a handicapped daughter. Our daughter Mary is fifty nine, she’s Downs Syndrome and she’s a very sweet, gentle little soul. She’s at a home up in Wadebridge and she’s got a very good carer looking after her. My nephew Michael is very good to her, takes her out for morning coffee and so on. She doesn’t speak because she lost her voice when my mother in law died and she was annoyed. Or Mary’s reaction was, ‘I’m not going to speak any longer ’cause granny’s not here and she didn’t tell me she was going.’ And we’ve had speech therapists for her and she is not speaking but my son David is coming down, takes her off for a walk somewhere when they’re the only two there and she’s able to make herself known. She understands sign language and she’s a great joy and friend to us and we’re very relieved to think that she’s looked after so well because we’re ancient and we shall probably pass on before she does but normally Downs Syndrome people don’t live beyond the age of fourteen but we were told that she wouldn’t live beyond the age of two but she’s still going on ok.
AS: That’s
And they treat her like a little doll up there where she is with the Home Farm Trust. That’s the name of the organisation looking after her at Wadebridge.
AS: And she, she used to interact with this character from the squadron. The property developer.
DD: Oh no, Ern Shoeman -
AS: Yes.
DD: Used to write and ask how she was getting on.
AS: Ok.
[phone ringing]
DD: He was a very pleasant man. He was a pilot I think.
AS: Are there any other characters that you can recall?
DD: Well there was this chap Jackson who used to smoke his pipe through the inside of the oxygen mask [laughs]
AS: That was insane.
DD: Very risky business.
AS: Presumably when he was on oxygen.
DD: I think so.
[PERSONAL CONVERSATION REGARDING PHONE CALL NOT TRANSCRIBED]
AS: So there was room in the squadron for characters was there? Discipline was, was reasonably relaxed?
DD: Oh yes. Yes. We didn’t go on parade very much. I can’t think of many more. We were characters I suppose.
AS: Characters and survivors yeah. So, what, what would a day on the squadron, a non-flying day on the squadron have been like?
DD: Difficult to say. I did some of my book. You’ve seen the -
AS: Yes.
DD: Song of Songs. Places like, let’s see, Mablethorpe. That seems people used to go there for a day out if there was a forty eight hour pass or a stand down I ought to know if I thought of that I could think of that easily I just can’t think of any. They would go to one or two coastal towns between Spurn Head and oh I just can’t think of the names of them.
AS: Don’t
DD: [I ought to. I’m ancient you see [?]
AS: Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. So switching tack a bit. You have the DFC.
DD: Yes.
AS: How did you hear about your award and how was it presented to you?
DD: I’ve got a newspaper cutting about it there. It was in the Gazette. Rotherham Gazette I think and I had a very nice letter from the George VI - Secretary presumably. The king was indisposed. Wasn’t able to be presenting personally as he would wish to do and wished me well in my future career and it came through the post [laughs]. No ceremony or whatever. My wife has the MBE. We went to Buck House to get that and my sister in law and my daughter could go with us.
AS: Fantastic.
DD: But there was no ceremony about it and immediately after the war and for at least twenty years Bomber Command was almost in the dog house. They were thinking in terms of all the damage they did to oh someplace or other. Let’s see which would be the one?
AS: Was it Dresden?
DD: Dresden.
AS: Yeah
DD: That’s the one. Well we weren’t involved in that at all. We don’t know if we injured many civilians. There were bound to have been at times but you couldn’t be that selective. Necessary they might have been injured or killed. We tried to do our best not to damage local human beings but bombing is a very, well not exactly indiscriminate but we had taken, aimed to be as accurate as we could.
AS: You mentioned at Bomber Command as you put it was in the doghouse after the war. Was this a real feeling that, that you and your comrades had that your -
DD: Oh we didn’t feel that. It was the attitude of the general public and Bomber Command wasn’t popular with the national attitude for some time. It was some, afterwards I think people have come around to believe and to know that we were the only ones to really get to the heart of Germany and the industrial heart of it. And if it wasn’t for Bomber Command well the war would have gone on much longer. And of course Guy Gibson’s dam busting that created havoc and that shortened the length of the war, the length of the time of the war finishing.
AS: I’m, I’m really interested in the fact that you think that it’s, it’s changing. For what it’s worth I agree. But do you think things like the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park and what we’re doing up in Lincoln, do you think that is, signifies a change in public attitude?
DD: It was very popular at a time when the green park memorial was the biggest attraction in London and some silly fools went and defaced it with some paint.
AS: Yes I saw that. It was
DD: You saw that?
AS: Yes I was up there for the opening as you were.
DD: Oh it was a lovely day.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Yes they fed us well. They provided positions for us. We booked to go to it in good time to go see it. I went a day or two earlier I was so excited about going and Charlie and I were together and my son and my grandson went with me. They were the two guests I had and they were very impressed and delighted.
AS: There, there was this feeling amongst the aircrew that they weren’t appreciated before that. Is that the case?
DD: We didn’t think or care about it.
AS: No just -
DD: We were there and did the job and it had to be done. We didn’t care what the public thought. I will say this in terms of the public and Bomber Command I’ve been to a few reunions and I sometimes had a taxi to go from Paddington to another station, our reunions were often up in York, and I met a taxi man and he said, “Oh come with me I wouldn’t dare charge you chaps. I know what you went through.” And that was a lovely gesture. I’ve met that on two or three occasions.
AS: Moving completely different track if I may for a moment - use of wakey wakey pills - amphetamines or Benzadrine I know they were in the escape packs but were they ever offered to you before flying?
DD: I don’t recall anything about it at all. I don’t think so. No, we didn’t, I didn’t take any. I knew they existed but I didn’t want any or need any and neither did our crew.
AS: Excellent that’s good. Continuing on with the escape kit theme did you have any sort of escape training?
DD: Yes.
AS: And what did that consist of?
DD: We went to battle school and I seem to remember walking around on my hands and knees and I believe we had details to store a map in our caps or in our shoes in case we needed to make reference to the land to find our way around. We did escape training about a fortnight as far as I know.
AS: In your training before going on operations what, what sort of, of flying did you do? I’ve heard of bullseyes for instance. What were they all about?
DD: Yes they were practice flights to targets and they gave the bomb aimers and the gunners experience and the bullseye was operational experience and the bullseye was operational experience and a part of operational training. We didn’t do that when we were on operations. That was prior to operations.
AS: And did you get involved in leaflet dropping as well in training?
DD: No. I think the wireless operator’s job was to throw leaflets down through the chute and he’d take a handful every three minutes or so and they were in different languages. Some of the leaflets were like little booklets. I’ve got one or two there stuffed away in my general folder but I did have a lovely collection of leaflets and I went out to give a talk on one occasion and I’m sorry to say someone obviously pinched them.
AS: Oh Lord.
DD: I reckon I lost about twenty different leaflets on that occasion.
AS: That’s not a very nice thing to do.
DD: One leaflet I remember particularly was about the flying bomb site Watten that we went to and that’s now a visitor attraction with a coloured leaflet to hand out to people. And we knew that we had an aiming point. There was a great hole beside of the take-off place for these V1s and the walls of it were eight feet thick so you can imagine they needed to give good protection to the missiles which were stored inside.
AS: And you destroyed it.
DD: Hmmn?
AS: And the bombers destroyed it.
DD: Well they shook it up a lot [laughs].
AS: All the way through the crew has been the major part of your experience I think. Since the war I think you’ve kept in touch. Have you had -
DD: All the time.
AS: Have you had reunions?
DD: Oh yes we’ve had reunions. We went to Llanelli where Charlie the, Dennis Cleaver was, he married a Welsh girl. Whether we went to the wedding or what I don’t quite know. I did give an address at Jonah’s funeral. I am a Reader in the church and I wanted to talk about Jonah at the time. He was my particular close fellow ‘cause he sat beside me while we were on operations.
AS: What, what, what form did the reunions take? Would you all go off to a hotel somewhere or go back to Driffield or what?
DD: In York itself I think, mainly. It was Betty’s bar they used to talk about. They used to meet there when - you said what do people do on their day off or when they had free time - Bettys Bar in York was popular. I wasn’t a drinking fellow and that was very popular. They were a very hearty, jolly lot the Australians. Very easy to get on with.
AS: And you’ve been to Australia yourself a number of times.
DD: I’ve been nine times. Not just because of our daughter but there have been reunions in Australia. I did have some reunions to do with South Africa too. The [Hornclip?] Association. [Hornclip?] was a volcanic mountain with a flat top near where we flew from and that Association has packed in now but that was quite a popular meet up. I think we had one or two reunions in London.
AS: I think we’ll, we’ll pause there.
[pause]
DD: I don’t think we were using H2S until the end of our tour.
AS: We have from your fantastic folder here we have a, a collection of souvenirs[?] papers from each mission and one of them we have here - Mission 25 to Cologne does in fact have your H2S map here. Could you, could you talk me through what we’ve on this map?
DD: Well we had a fluorescent screen same size as the Gee was and the shape of the town would come up as a darker pink glow against a faint background and the shape came up like you see here. These different shapes of towns. You see London over there, a big patch, different towns in England and that was a case of navigating by H2S and I could take a fix every six minutes with no difficulty. See the scattering towns look.
AS: Yes.
DD: That’s the Ruhr there. You can see the shape of towns alright there.
AS: But on here you have a number of different coloured lines and writing could you, could you talk me through those. Base at Driffield there with -.
DD: Yes on the track that we wanted to keep there’d be two arrows and the wind that we found would have three arrows on it, the vector with the wind and we took off from Flaxfleet but you see our base Driffield is about twenty miles north of Hull and there’s a place called Flaxfleet not far away. That’d be the start of that thing. It was a village I suppose. I’ve never been to Flaxfleet. I’ve got a, somewhere over in that file over there big file I think I’ve got a postcard with a picture of Flaxfleet on it. Not that it’s very important but that’s the name of it.
AS: And then this, this is your track pre-planned. This is the track you’d planned beforehand.
DD: That’s right. On the way out. That was the wind vector there. That green.
AS: Ahum
DD: The target would have a triangle there.
AS: So you’re routing over, over Reading on this particular occasion.
DD: Yes.
AS: Is that, is that a regular route?
DD: I don’t know. Not often.
AS: But would you, would you always avoid London?
DD: Oh I suppose so. It’s such a sprawl. Anyway so long as I got my fix every six minutes that was all I really needed to have, needed to do.
AS: And you’re calculating a lot of wind vectors. One two -
DD: We were probably wind finders about that time and maybe[?] transmit that to PFF. There’s a rash of towns along -
AS: And as you say they all have different, different shapes.
DD: Shapes.
AS: What was the -
DD: Cologne.
AS: What was the target in Cologne?
DD: Railway. Railway marshalling yard.
3549 Other: Morning.
DD: Morning Abigail everything ok
PERSONAL CONVERSATION WITH ABIGAIL FROM MARKER 3605 - NOT TRANSCRIBED.
AS: So an enormous amount of information on here and you put this, which of this would you put on before you took off.
DD: Nothing.
AS: Information -
DD: Maybe that green, we dropped leaflets or something.
AS: That’s window, says window or something.
DD: Oh yes that might have been put on there before we took off.
AS: Also with your chart here we have a second chart and that’s -
DD: Sometimes we were asked to replot an actual operation and that might have been such a case. I don’t know.
AS: At short notice.
DD: After the operation. Analysing what we did.
AS: Ok.
DD: They kept their eye on us pretty well.
AS: And we also have a flight log. Flight plan, excuse me.
DD: Yes that was, that was target there. Before the target. After the target.
AS: Ok.
DD: What does it say here?
AS: Ok. - KJ Brown , Flying Officer.
DD: Hmmn
AS: So he was -
DD: He improved.
AS: Entirely satisfied with that one, with the Cologne trip. Can you, can you talk me through some of this. Here where it says watch - fast and slow. What’s that all about?
DD: Oh by watch when they gave us the time signal. Was it four seconds ahead of the actual Greenwich time signal or four seconds behind. That would be recorded there and the time would be important if I was doing anything to do with astro navigation but to the nearest minute well in terms of astro navigation a minute meant, a minute in time meant a four miles position difference and we had to correct for that.
AS: So you were navigating to that, that degree of accuracy?
DD: Yes.
AS: Ok. Here we have - is that required track?
DD: Yes, and those were the different winds we used.
AS: These would be given to you before the op would they?
DD: Yes. Yes that’s right.
AS: And then is this after take-off. This section of the form is
DD: That’s right
AS: After take off
DD: Yes.
AS: What actually happened rather than -
DD: That’s right. Watches synchronised so my time was what the pilot had in front of him. Why did I underline that I wonder. Is that take off time?
AS: Airborne. Yeah.
DD: Yes.
AS: Climb to six thousand over base. That must have taken quite a long time with a -
DD: Heavy aircraft.
AS: Heavy aircraft.
DD: The pencil’s a rather light colour. You can read it anyhow.
AS: Ahum [pause] and what’s that say?
DD: Master switch off. The master switch meant that the bombs couldn’t be released afterwards once it was off. We had a hang up or two once or twice with bombs. It’s not easy landing when the bombs are held up.
AS: Can, can you recall what size of bombs they were?
DD: Oh there’s a list of it. I’ve got a list of it on, let’s see, I think in the logbook there’s a list of the weight of bombs which we carried. You remember you’ve got the logbook?
AS: Yes. Yes, we can, we can have a look through that but this is marvellous this is a record of every single thing that happened isn’t it?
DD: Well that’s what the navigators job was you see. Not that we were going to do a post mortem or anything like that but at the debriefing they may have had questions to ask us.
[pause]
AS: And also you have a target photograph.
[pause]
DD: Cologne.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Anything on the back? No.
AS: What’s that telegram say?
DD: Best wishes and love, Helen.
AS: Fantastic.
DD: And that was the envelope the telegram came in. You don’t get greeting telegrams, you don’t get telegrams at anymore I suppose.
AS: And what’s the address there? Is that something Hall? Is that your officer’s mess?
DD: [Arley?] House, Marazion. That was my home address.
AS: Ah ok. Right. Shall we?
[pause]
Derry in amongst the things that you’ve kept is this Gee lattice chart here.
DD: Yes.
AS: Gee lattice chart North German chain. Could you talk me through what Gee was and how you used this chart?
DD: Well Gee was signal which came to us from a ground station and sometimes of course those did get attacked but we were delighted to be able to pick up these transmissions and we had a screen in front of us and we could find out where we were and the position lines as you see had certain values written on them and the value on that it made sure we were keeping to the same signal all the time and we had to record our position and we wanted to get two signals. One signal to cross the other and the better it was in terms of being a right angle it was more spot on. If it was say a thirty degree angle between the two position lines it wasn’t very satisfactory so we had to pick out the signals that were the most suitable to give us an accurate position and when we got our fix we used to make a mark with a cross on the chart according to where we were and it was my hope all the time to take a fix whichever method we did it every six minutes because six minutes being a tenth of the hour it was easier to work out by moving the decimal point the speed that we were doing and the Gee fix that we got showed us our ground position. By joining the air position to the air position we got an angle, a vector from which we could work out the wind direction and speed and that was the navigator’s job. The duties of a navigator are shown very well in the AP1234.
AS: Yeah, we, we’ll come to that.
DD: Does that tell you a lot?
AS: That does tell me a lot thank you and I can see here the crosses that you, some of the crosses that you’ve made.
DD: Yes.
AS: The lines are the Gee lines, the lattice lines are in green, red and purple. So were they different lines for different stations?
DD: That’s right. Yes.
AS: Ok and what would you see on your instrument, your Gee instrument? Would you see the values or -
DD: No I would set with some little tuning knob which station I was on which, and then take the reading for the position line and transfer that on to the chart I was navigating on.
AS: Ok and on here also apart from the crosses we have this pencil line coming down from [Maesemunde?] along the Dutch coast and then inland to by Krefeld.
DD: Yes.
AS: What, what was that? What does that represent?
DD: I don’t know. It might be if we were flying in that area whether we would be dropping window or whether we’d be dropping leaflets. It should be labelled but I’m not aware of it if it’s not labelled.
AS: Ok
DD: Is it a man-made line or a printed one?
AS: It’s a thick, thick pencil but no matter, it was a general query. Do these grid squares do they match up to a GJ there. HJ
DD: Pardon?
AS: They match up to your squares on your -
DD: The transmitting units? Those are different, the transmission would be here.
AS: Yeah excellent.
DD: Well modern laptops, on the computers are quite a frequent things but this is a laptop and it’s a circular side, slide rule and here we set the speeds and we used to prop the wind from that centre point how long it was, each one of these is ten miles and when we rotated this we set on the course that we were going to fly and take the reading off at that point there and I don’t really remember how I used this completely but it was a very useful tool.
AS: Which course would you pass to the pilot? Would you pass the true course?
DD: No. No, it had to compass the deviation and the compass correction and the true course was just, was a mathematical figure but that wouldn’t be handed to the pilot. And that was for converting statute to nautical. Centigrade to Fahrenheit. Indicated air speed.
AS: That’s a remarkable tool. It has a green and red pencil. What, what was the significance of the green?
DD: Well.
AS: And the red end?
DD: We used green for the fixed position and red for the target position but the green was used much more frequently than the red. And you’ll see the different colours on the charts that I’ve got.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Used occasionally but I think more likely than not ordinary pencil is more significant in my calculations than the different colours.
AS: Ahum
DD: I hope I’m talking sense.
AS: Absolutely. Now amongst your souvenirs alongside the computer is this air navigation.
DD: Oh AP1234.
AS: Now that is your bible perhaps.
DD: Yes.
[phone ringing]
DD: The ladies will answer that.
AS: Yeah. Now it -
DD: Somebody will come up very soon
AS: It seems.
DD: Oh she’s got the extension with her I expect.
AS: Fantastic. Quick thinking. It seems incredibly comprehensive
DD: Yes.
AS: Scope of navigation, bearings, compass error - was this a tool you used every day or something like a textbook from, from training or both?
DD: In training time. It wasn’t taken in the air with us. If you look somewhere around page thirty.
AS: Page thirty.
DD: Yeah that’s, that’s the -
AS: The circular slide rule. Excellent. Which is what we’ve just been looking at. The navigation computer mark III.
DD: Yes, I used that which is in your hand if I was giving a talk somewhere and that would have been put on top of that page I expect.
AS: Ok.
DD: These straps were there for a Mosquito pilot who was wearing it. He’d strap it to his knee and it had, it mustn’t move, like that. That would keep it from falling off his knee and being readily found if he needed it ’cause more likely than not he didn’t have a navigator with him and that was, he did his own navigation.
AS: Good Lord.
DD: [mentioned?] about arrows? Yes. Track two arrows the course that the pilot had to go was with that single arrow and three for the wind I think. Yes the vector of all wind velocity. The triple arrow.
[pause]
AS: It’s completely comprehensive isn’t it? The formula and the dos and the don’ts.
[pause]
What sort of examinations on all this did you have in training that you had to pass? Were they very detailed or - ?
DD: I don’t remember at all.
AS: Ok.
DD: We passed those exams that’s the thing.
AS: Yeah. You did your training in South Africa. Was there any anti-British feeling that you came across amongst the Boers?
DD: Oh yes we had to walk out in fours because there was a group of desperate Boers called the OBs [?] the Brothers of the Wagonette they were horse drawn people and they, they would assault air force people because of the pro-Boer feeling. South Africa had apartheid going on out there, colour bar, and that was cancelled later on but we kept together if we were walking out so we wouldn’t be attacked by these desperadoes.
AS: Was there, the other side of the coin was there a lot of kindness shown by other -
DD: Yes. .
AS: South Africans to you?
DD: Oh yes. South African families. Met some very interesting people called Thornton at East London and the lady of the house her husband was supposed to have the best stamp collection in South Africa. He was delighted to show that to us. They had a son and his friend, same age as myself and a friend, and they were training as doctors and I kept in contact with their son Geoffrey until he died about ten years ago and they, they were delighted to look after us. And the lady, Mrs Thornton, it so happened that when we moved to Queenstown from East London they were in a Red Shield Club, Salvation Army there was a friend who’d been to school with the lady that had met us in East London.
AS: Incredibly small world isn’t it?
[pause]
AS: Derry, one of the other the other things you’ve kept is your, your logbook.
DD: Yes.
AS: Observers and Air Gunners Flying Logbook. It’s not a blue one. It’s not a nice blue one. Why is that?
DD: Oh yes well of course the thing the normal ones are issued in England had a cloth binding. This one in South Africa just the bare boards. And this started to come to pieces and the repair I had done with that that blue colour there is the colour it should have been and it’s repaired somewhere in the St Just area. There’s a very good shop in St Just called Cookbook and they, I buy books there occasionally, I sell them books occasionally and they bind books as well and they repaired this for me.
AS: It’s a wonderful job.
DD: That you see there was my log when I went to grading school at a place called Ansty near Coventry flying Tiger Moths. Only small amounts of time.
AS: And these exercises 1, 1a, 2 they’re still used today.
DD: Oh are they?
AS: Yeah. Still used today. Very short time. September the 13th to what, the 26th is there any more on the back. Less than a month. Twelve hours.
DD: Ahum
[pause]
That’s Guy Gibson.
AS: Yes. So grading school and then in October 1942, and then jump straight to Queenstown in South Africa.
DD: Ahum.
AS: In October ’43.
DD: That’s when I passed out.
AS: Ok. Qualification.
DD: Do you know the pewter tankard I’ve got? It’s got a glass bottom in it. Do you know why?
AS: No.
DD: You don’t know?
AS: No.
DD: Well if it was a solid bottom and you were drinking than someone could easily draw a knife or whatever and give you a prong and that’s so you can see what was happening.
AS: I didn’t know life in an officer’s mess was so dangerous.
DD: Hmmn.
AS: Right. This is your result of your ab initio course.
DD: That’s right.
AS: At Shawbury.
DD: Shawbury?
AS: Ahum.
DD: Ahum that was a speck end course we called it. I’m entitled to the letter capital N like people put BA after their name but I don’t use it.
AS: And what, what’s your remarks there? What do, what do they say about you?
DD: Good results on course. With his pleasant personality and keenness this officer can satisfactorily fill a staff position. So you see I was called a staff navigator. They might have called me into a briefing room or something like that and there we are, that’s part of it.
AS: I’m just trying to get a sense of how much flying you did in training.
DD: I don’t think I did more than six hundred hours.
AS: It’s quite intensive Derry.
DD: Ahum.
AS: In South Africa on Ansons. I mean here - 14th of July. Good Lord, that was, 14th of July 1943, that was seventy two years ago yesterday.
DD: Yes ahum.
AS: Yesterday. You did three trips in an Anson.
DD: Ahum. Usually two as first navigator and second navigator. My friend Harry Dunn I was telling you about would be flying with me then and they had all sorts of strange names, Dutch names, these Boer people. South African Air Force they wore a khaki uniform.
AS: And army ranks.
DD: Yes.
AS: I believe. Yeah. In training did you feel it was high pressure and very intense or was it reasonably relaxed?
DD: Oh reasonably relaxed. My terrible feeling all the way along was will I be ready in time to do something worthwhile and we used to blame Air Commodore Critchley who was supposed to be a Training Command Officer and we used to blame old Critchley for not moving us on quickly if we got waiting and waiting and waiting for the next posting and I didn’t think I was going to live long enough to do operations but thank God we did.
AS: So did you get the feeling that there were an awful lot of aircrew in the system by time this time?
DD: No. No, we just accepted the fact we were a course going through and they must have planned well ahead to make places for us in South Africa and in Canada and in Rhodesia. I did write something about our overseas training. The Empire Air Training Scheme they called it.
AS: Was that published somewhere or -
DD: I don’t think so.
AS: Ok.
DD: It might have appeared in, there was an aircrew magazine called Intercom and I believe it was published in that but I’m not sure.
AS: I can look out for that. And then from South Africa by the time you left South Africa you had done what forty two hours day.
DD: Not very much.
AS: No eighty eight hour day flying and twelve hours twenty at night. Total flying. Left South Africa. And how did you get back to -
DD: On a troop ship called the Orduna.
AS: Ahum
DD: A South American boat. And there were a lot of women and children on board being repatriated out of India, service wives and children, and we went up through the Red Sea and we were kept at Tufik on the Red Sea until the Germans were cleared out of Italy and then they were afraid that we might meet some submarines in the, in the Mediterranean so we were well protected. They made well and truly sure that we’d be safely transferred.
AS: Ok. And you came into, to Liverpool?
DD: Liverpool again, yes.
AS: Super. Had you been commissioned by this time?
DD: Oh yes but we didn’t have commissioned uniforms until I’d travelled from Liverpool to Harrogate and that’s where the measurement and fitting of pilot officers uniform came into it.
AS: I hope you got a first class travel warrant.
DD: I suppose so [laughs]. I expect I did.
AS: And then we’re at Number 4 AFU is that Advanced Flying Unit?
DD: Yes, Advanced Flying Unit yes. Was that West Freugh?
AS: West Freugh, yeah.
DD: Stranraer.
AS: Yeah. And this was still, I suppose, individual training for you. You hadn’t crewed up at this point?
DD: No.
AS: And this was on Ansons?
DD: That was Ansons again. To get used to British conditions.
AS: Navigating in the fog. Yeah. Was it, was it a shock coming from the, the bushveld and the plains of and South Africa to what, what we have in the UK.
DD: No. We just took it for granted that it would be slightly different and we coped.
AS: And all the principals and all the training were - you could carry them straight.
DD: Yes.
AS: Straight across. Ok. Right, so we’ve got here a pundit crawl. Can you remember what that was all about?
DD: Travelling from red light to red light I think.
AS: Really ok.
DD: Whether it was the gunner’s point of view or from my navigation point of view I don’t know. Maybe I just had to record what was done. A pundit crawl.
AS: Yeah. And then 21 OTU.
DD: That’s Moreton, Much Binding in the Marsh.
AS: And it seems to get really serious at this point. You’ve got a page of dinghy drills, parachute drills, wet dinghy drill.
DD: We went to the Baths at Cheltenham for that. In the middle of England well away from the sea.
AS: Yeah. And by this time you, you’d crewed up?
DD: Yeah. No.
AS: Ok.
DD: Yes at OTU we crewed up, that’s right.
AS: Ok and you were using Wellingtons.
[pause]
Right.
[pause]
And that is super we did your OTU and crewing up and whatnot yesterday so I think we’ll draw a pause there if we can.
DD: Ahum
[pause]
DD: Turning on now?
AS: Yes.
DD: Occasionally we had a little wicker cage with pigeons in it and I believe the idea was that if we were shot down or if we were captured then the homing pigeons would come back with the news [laughs] and it only happened to us two or three times but I was aware that it did happen occasionally.
AS: And did you carry them on every trip or just -
DD: No. No.
AS: Just a few.
DD: Just occasionally.
AS: What, one wonders how you could release a pigeon from an aeroplane at two hundred miles an hour but perhaps it was if you crash landed.
DD: The crash would release the cage. The poor pigeons.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ADerringtonAP150715-02
Title
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Interview with Dr Derry Derrington
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:08:21 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Sutch
Date
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2015-07-15
Description
An account of the resource
Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington grew up in Cornwall and joined the University Air Squadron at Exeter. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and completed training at RAF Ansty, South Africa, RAF West Freugh and RAF Moreton in the Marsh, where he trained as a navigator on Wellingtons. He was posted to RAF Driffield where he served with 462 and 466 Squadrons. Most of his operations were over the Ruhr. He discusses H2S and Gee in detail. He was later an instructor at RAF Moreton in the Marsh and was demobbed in 1945. He kept a diary of his time in Bomber Command.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Gloucestershire
England--Warwickshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
France--Watten
France
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
462 Squadron
466 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
animal
Anson
bombing
briefing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
memorial
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Ansty
RAF Driffield
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF West Freugh
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/568/8836/AFittP150519.2.mp3
81db65d296c732124d3b40d329ce903a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Fitt, Peter
P Fitt
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Fitt, P
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Fitt (Royal Air Force) and two photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 467 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Fitt and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AS: So that is now recording –
PF: Right.
AS: Right, as I’ve explained, this is an interview with Peter Fitt, Flight Lieutenant Signaller, from the Royal Air Force Bomber Command during the war. The interview’s carried out by Adam Sutch at Cromer, on the 19th of May 2015. The interview is also for the International Bomber Command Centre digital archive, and also present is Peter’s daughter, Jane.
PF: Yep, right.
AS: Peter, thanks ever so much for agreeing to be interviewed, I’d like to set the scene by asking you to describe your life before joining the Air Force. A little bit about your home, your parents, brothers and whatnot?
PF: Well, well that’s very quick. I was in horticulture so, and my father was a head gardener, and he was keen – I wasn’t – he was keen on me going into horticulture. I wanted to go into the Air Force, ‘cause I was still at the grammar school and there was opportunities to, to join the Air Force, but I – it didn’t materialise, and I was a bit angry at the time, but it didn’t matter, when your children, you get on with these sort of things, and the war came along [chuckles]. Course I went into the Air Force, and that was that, I’d, I became aircrew and I flew on operations during the war, against Germany, and in Lancasters like the one up there, and that’s [laughing] about all I can say apart from describing every trip which is – I don’t want to do that.
AS: No, no of course. When you were growing up, whereabouts was this? Where did you grow up? In Norwich?
PF: Where did I grow up? Oh yeah well, I went to Thetford Grammar School, and I left –
Jane: Where were you born?
PF: Oh, where was I born? Yes, well I was born at Earlham Hall here in, in Norwich where my father was head gardener, and erm, see the connection to horticulture [chuckles], and then I – where was I until you, I –
Jane: Then you went to Breccles Hall.
PF: Ah yes, then I –
Jane: But your father moved –
PF: My father, my father moved as head gardener at Breccles Hall and I was four I think when we moved, I went the local council school, and then I went to Thetford Grammar School when I was eleven, and that’s where I was until I, until I left. Got the usual thing one gets from grammar schools, a school certificate and things like that, and [pause] then it was – a war was declared and I always wanted to go into the Air Force, and my father wouldn’t let me go, and, ‘cause when I was at Thetford Grammar School, there was chances every year, the Air Ministry used to come send people round and, canvassing for chaps to go into the Air Force, but he wouldn’t let me, so when the time came along when he didn’t have anything to do with it, and of course I went into the Air Force [chuckles].
AS: What, what year would that be? What, what month and year?
PF: This would be at the outbreak of war, round about ’39 time.
AS: Okay, so what, what did you want to do in the Air Force? What was your plan when you joined?
PF: Well, my plan was, when, when I joined was to be a pilot and, let me think, I gotta get some things straight. I was at Uxbridge, and oh, there wasn’t a vacancy at the next pilot school, he gave, they gave me an excuse anyhow, perhaps they didn’t want me or what, however I didn’t get, I didn’t get my course, and I carried on and I wanted to be aircrew, so I became a wireless operator [chuckles], a diddy dit dah dit man.
Jane: Was it Bicester?
PF: Pardon?
Jane: You went to Blackpool to learn Morse code.
PF: Yes, that’s where I started – yes well – yes at Blackpool and Yatesbury for wireless operating.
AS: Could we go back a bit? What did you do, what, to join the Air Force? Did you –
PF: What was I before the war?
AS: Sorry?
PF: What was I before the war?
AS: No, what did you do to join the Air Force? Did you go to a recruiting office or, or, or what?
PF: Well, I, I just went to the St Martineau Hall in Norwich here, and I joined the Air Force from there, ‘cause I was working at Crown Point, during [unclear] horticulture actually, and I was at Crown Point, I lived in the boffy there, and, so I naturally went to the recruiting station in Norwich and joined the Air Force.
AS: And that was it, you just –
PF: That was it. And I was in, I think I was in the Air Force for a fortnight and I was flying in a fortnight or so.
AS: Good lord. When, where, after the recruiting office, can you describe to me a little bit about the process of joining the Air Force? So, what they did to you, where you went, how you were messed about, that sort of stuff?
PF: Well, I was messed about quite a bit, by waiting to go – be – [pause] to, to sign on as it were, and I had to go to a place called St Martineau Hall, is that right?
Jane: No that’s County Hall. Martineau Lane is where County Hall building is now.
PF: Where who is?
Lucy: Norfolk County Council building is actually on Martineau Lane.
PF: Oh, are they? Oh yeah, oh of course –
Lucy: That’s where the archive centre is actually –
PF: Well that’s why I joined the Air Force there, and signed on, because I, I was determined to go into the Air Force, my father – I was at the grammar school, I had a chance to go in the Air Force when I was fifteen, course they use to take boys from grammar schools, and I, he wouldn’t let me do it, so the time came, when I was all on my own, so I did it, and I went into the Air Force and that was it. I was, I was a wireless operator – trained as a wireless operator. I did my first tour of ops as a sergeant, a flight sergeant, and then I was, I was commissioned, and then I got a permanent commission and I was a flight lieutenant, and so that was my life in the Air Force. I was a signals, I was a signals leader in the in, and so that was my lot – my life was spelt and spent in the signals actually.
AS: Great. Let’s just wind back – we’ll get onto operational flying for sure – let’s wind back to how they got you into the Air Force. So where did they, where did they send you for kitting out, and what was the process of actually becoming an airman?
PF: Oh, what was the process?
AS: Yeah.
PF: Well, I, I of course volunteered here in Norwich, forgotten the name of the street now, and I just went and signed on there, and within a few days I’d been called up, and I was at Uxbridge [chuckles] in a uniform, much to my parents’ horror. You can imagine my mother [chuckles].
AS: Absolutely. And this, this was as selected for aircrew already, or was this basic training to start with? Basic recruit training?
PF: Yes, that’s right, yeah. It was recruit training and as I was going in for the signals, I was naturally pushed to places where you could – you got used to the life, and the Morse code and all that sort of thing. However, that’s roughly how it worked, is it – was that all you wanted to know? I can’t give you a lot of detail.
AS: No, no, we’re fine –
PF: My logbook is up there somewhere –
AS: We’re doing well. Perhaps we could do it from your logbook to an extent. So, when you’d done your recruit training, and you were selected for aircrew, what happened then, for your signals training? Were you selected for signals straight away, or given some sort of tests?
PF: Well, I wanted to be a pilot, and I tried to be a pilot – I went through numerous selection things, and every time they said, ‘well Mr Fitt, we recommend you to go to Yatesbury’, I think it was to Number Two Radio School, and go in for, and go in for signals. Become a radio operator aircrew, which I did of course, and I was a signals leader and I went right up the ladder in the signals side, but – there we are. But I was a flight lieutenant, signals leader. What is it, Jane?
Jane: [Unclear]
AS: Thank you. Yes, so Yatesbury was your initial contact with signal, was it?
PF: Yes, well no, it wasn’t really. Blackpool was, Blackpool not only was a recruiting centre where I had to go when I first joined in 1940, but it was done by One Radio School or something, so I had a little bit of wireless training there, but my main wireless training was done at, in Number Two Radio School in Yatesbury in Wiltshire. That’s where I started – I did all my training right the way through to OTU crewing up, and or not – I was on operations in early ’43, 1943, and I had a Norfolk pilot which was rather good [chuckles] from Ormesby [chuckles] –
AS: So, can you tell us – the period – you joined up sort of ’39, ’40, and the period between then and going on operations, were you being trained all that time?
PF: All that time yes, on radio, yes. But that, not – to answer your question correctly – not all that time. There was three or four months where I found myself at Royal Air Force Watton, two miles from where my parents lived, so that was very, that was very handy, and I was there as a radio – as a wireless operator. Well it wasn’t bad because I was, I was in keeping with the Morse code and all that sort of thing, and then from there, that’s where the whole career started, and I was flying and I crewed up and I did my tour of ops in 1943, I made thirty trips and went back again in – oh God I can’t remember, 1945, in between time I was at, back to Yatesbury as, ‘cause I was commissioned, so I went back as officer in charge of the wireless flights, so I [unclear, chuckles].
AS: When you went to Watton, early on –
PF: Ah yes, I was – that was before I was commissioned. I was there as a ground operator actually, as a wireless operator, and Watton near – my parents lived three miles down the road [chuckles].
AS: As a, as a ground wireless operator, were you involved with DF-ing aircraft? What were your duties?
PF: No, I could have been, but it was purely SHQ, station headquarters, radio operating, which was station to station. It wasn’t for very long, and I was back in aircrew training again.
AS: Okay. Did you do very much flying whilst you were training?
PF: Yes, I did, I did a tour of ops in 1943, doing my thirty trips, and I went back again, on my second tour – I can’t remember the date – what was the – have you got my logbook there, Jane?
Jane: Yep, yeah it was –
AS: When you were training as a wireless operator, did you do much flying or was it mostly on the ground?
PF: Oh yes I did, we flew in Proctors and Dominis at Yatesbury funnily enough –
AS: Really?
PF: And, yeah that’s all it amounted to and that wasn’t – these aeroplanes were fixed up with four-five sets, and you just went up there with an instructor and that was that.
AS: Mhm. And you learnt Morse code obviously, what –
PF: Yes, I had to do eighteen words a minute, for a start before you ever did anything, and then I became a signals leader, and I had to do twenty-one words a minute for that. But I never – you never use twenty-one words a minute. Twenty-one words a minute is very, is very fast Morse and it’s usually about eighteen is the comfortable Morse speed.
AS: Aside from the Morse, what else did your training consist of? Processes and procedures?
PF: Well, I [pause] fault detection, fault finding, if anything went, if anything went wrong with the transmitter or receiver, you were taught to look for different things to, try and trace it through. Didn’t always work, however, but you had to do it. FF - fault finding.
AS: Mhm. How about wireless bearings and things like that?
PF: Oh yes well that was all part and parcel of your work, and I had to take bearings knowing where and how to call up, using the, you know the Morse code getting a bearing, and that was your job really. That was – and getting, what was it [pause], oh God, I’ve forgotten the name of them now, getting QDMs [chuckles], you’re nodding your head as if you know what I’m talking –
AS: I know some of them, I know the important ones. I know QDM and QFE and one or two other things. Did you get involved with these flimsies at all? Little papers with secret information about station call signs and things like that. Was that part of the stuff you went flying with?
PF: Well, we always had, we always had a, carried a – what did we call them – a flimsy, which was, could be eaten if you were [pause] caught by the enemy, that contained all the wireless information, station frequencies and call signs that you required, so that was what happened. And most of us, you – you’re doing it yourself. [Pause] there was a picture somewhere – where is it? Oh there it is, of me sitting at my 11-54-55 there.
AS: That’s in a Lancaster, isn’t it?
PF: Yeah it –
AS: Yeah.
PF: You know the sets, did you? The 54-55 –
AS: Not a lot no –
PF: No, I didn’t know whether you were a wireless man.
AS: I – my father was a wireless man, not me. [Pause] was it all work? Did you get quite a lot of leave when you were training?
PF: Well, no – we got, at the end of each course we got leave, but there was no fixed leave like when, what we got on the squadron, and we were operating, you used to get seven days leave every six weeks, and that was, that was very useful, ‘cause I was married then, and yes and [pause] what else was there? Yes, that was about all, we were just lucky, only because I was aircrew.
AS: Before you got to aircrew, still on the training, apart from Morse speed examinations, did you have to take any other sort of technical examinations? Written –
PF: We had, had examinations on fault finding and [pause] repair work and, you know – what’s the word for, you know, there is a word that one uses, not second-hand, [pause] when you have a breakdown on a car, you –
Jane: Maintenance journal?
AS: No, no it doesn’t matter, I know what he means –
PF: You know what I’m trying to say.
AS: Yeah. Repair’s a good, repair’s a good word, yeah, it is. Okay. The chaps you trained with, did you form close bonds with them during training, as a unit?
PF: When, what? I’m not with you –
AS: When you were training as a wireless operator –
PF: Yeah –
AS: Did you form close friendships with others on the course? Other trainees?
PF: Well, no, we didn’t, well yeah, I think we got – one or two of us found ourselves on a squadron, but some weren’t fortunate, I think it just depends on your ability and how good you were at Morse and things like that [chuckles].
AS: Yeah. Again, during training, did you ever fly out over the Irish Sea on training flights?
PF: No, honestly, I never flew over the Irish Sea period.
AS: Okay. Now I have a special interest in asking, because of an organisation called The Training Flying Control Centre, but if you didn’t fly over there, we’ll pass that one.
PF: No, no I can’t get into that, because I wouldn’t know anything about it.
AS: When you’d finished your training, you’re entitled to your aircrew badge. Did you have a big parade with dignitaries, or did they send you to the stores to get it? What happened?
PF: No, no we had a – I was at Yatesbury and we had a proper passing out parade, which was purposely laid on for the benefit of the, what’s the word, esprit de corps, and that was it. A parade and an inspection by the CO, who would pin your brevet on [chuckles].
AS: And at that point, were you promoted?
PF: Well, immediately I became aircrew, I became a sergeant, then I was a flight sergeant, and then I applied for a commission and I was commissioned [pause] in the September, I think it was, and I became a signals leader, and I became a flight lieutenant, and I became a signals leader on a squadron, and so that was my history in, where signals are concerned.
AS: When you passed out and got your flying brevet, did you choose to go to Bomber Command or were you just sent?
PF: I was posted to Bomber Command. I was quite happy about it, because I didn’t fancy going into Fighter Command or, or into these fighter bombers, like Blenheims and Bostons, that wasn’t my cup of tea. I imagined myself like that sitting in the cabin [chuckles] and with, a large, with seven other members of the crew, and I was quite happy about that. That’s how I continued, I became a signals leader and a, what else, all sorts of things, a leading, you know how it goes, and the pay was good, leave was good, I was at Mildenhall only about twenty minutes away from my home[chuckles].
AS: So did, once you’d passed out, did you go straight to a squadron or, what happened then?
PF: Oh, we’re back in training? Well, I did operational training on a Wellington, on Wimpies –
AS: Whereabouts?
PF: Finningley, and Doncaster. Then I went to the squadron, via a, oh God, I can’t think of words, a conversion –
AS: Heavy conversion unit.
PF: Heavy conversion unit. At, can’t think, Winthorpe I think it was. Gosh, this is going back a bit, but it’s in my logbook, doesn’t matter, I don’t want to look it up, and that was the, my history in the Air Force. So, I was connected with signals all the time, even when I’d finished operational flying, I went as a signals leader somewhere. I was mainly at Mildenhall which was a bit of luck.
Jane: Can I just ask you, what about RAF Cranwell? When were you there then?
PF: Yeah, I was, I went to a course at Cranwell while I was at Mildenhall, Jane. Yes, Jane’s reminding me I had to go to Cranwell, mainly because I was commissioned, and they were feeding a, pilot officers into Cranwell to give you a taste of bullshit you know [chuckles], how it is and that’s how I, that’s how I got to Cranwell.
AS: Okay. What did you think of the Wellingtons that you were training on at the OTU?
PF: Well, the Wellington was, it was a wonderful aeroplane, it was so reliable and erm – I did all my training on Wellingtons until we were told we were going onto Lancasters, and that we would be going onto Manchesters to convert, and that was my routine, and on Manchesters and on Lancs and that was that.
AS: And at the OTU – was it the OTU you met your crew?
PF: Yes, I was crewed up at the OTU. We were still on Wellingtons then, and that was at Finningley.
AS: Can you tell me a little bit about the crewing up process? What you were looking for in a crew?
PF: Oh yes well, that, it was left to you, the courses arrived at the OTU, the operational training unit, and we were all called to a meeting [pause], the whole caboodle, and then we were told by the CO that we were all going to be put in so and so and so and so, some large room or dining room or something like that, and then we gotta leave it and you must crew up. So that’s the way we crewed up, we just, how did I crew up? Well Dennis was in – I recognised Dennis as a Norfolk accent, so that’s how I got my pilot, and the rest came from there, the others were just dillying around and that was that, we crewed up. We stayed together all those years, all those months rather, because we did a tour in about nine months. So that’s history.
AS: How long was the OTU process, and what time of year was it? Was it swift, or did you get weather problems or –
PF: Oh yes, we did have weather problems, particularly when we were having to do forced cross countries, and the weather was pretty lousy, and that was in sort of November, December time. And this was at, this was at Bircotes which was a satellite at Finningley in Yorkshire, and that was that. I did my OTU, went to, we crewed up at OTU, crewed up with five and we all went on Wellingtons, and we were then posted to [pause] an HCU, a heavy conversion unit where we converted, and this was at Swinderby, and we converted onto Lancasters, and that’s the history of the thing. I never flew on anything else, only on Lancs with the same crew.
AS: Can you remember what sort of training exercises you would do at the OTU? Things like nav-exes or bulls-eyes?
PF: Oh yes, going back to the OTU, that was before the conversion courses, well it was, mainly cross countries at night to get you used to the navigator and the navigator getting used to you and your wireless operating [pause] speciality, if that’s the right word, expertise is the word really, and that was that. That’s what I did, we crewed up and five of us were sent to – we crewed up in five, in Wellingtons and then we were posted to RAF Swinderby where we converted onto Lancasters, with, had to have two more crew, that was an engineer and another gunner added to the five, so that made seven, and then we trained there and we went to the squadron and we were on operations, just like that.
AS: How did you interact with the navigator?
PF: At, at the what, process?
AS: When you were airborne, how did you interact with the navigator? Providing him information, or -
PF: Well, Bert and I, Bert Tischington was the navigator, we got on very well together. We trained on Wimpies as a crew of five, Wellingtons that is, and so we got to know each other very well and we, so we never looked back. We did a tour of ops, complete tour on Lancs [coughs] ‘scuse me [coughs] good God. And that was that [chuckles]. Oh dear, excuse me.
AS: Yeah of course [pause]. Did you have to learn other things that you hadn’t learned in training when you were actually preparing for operations? Things like Z-procedure, using the wireless for landing? Did you get involved with that at all?
PF: I wasn’t involved with that at all. [Pause] my main job was with the navigator really, ‘cause we were training for long distance stuff with Lancs, ‘cause that’s where we were destined to get onto Lancaster squadron where we, which we were, we went to I should say, so henceforth, I was on Lancs until the end of the war I suppose, [pause] but it was just like that up there [chuckles].
AS: Right, we’ll pause the tape for a little while if that’s okay –
PF: I’m sorry, you’ll what?
[Tape paused and restarted]
PF: [Unclear] – with my logbook –
AS: Peter, I’d like to go back to the OTU a bit –
PF: Yeah, that’s fine, I’m going back to [unclear] if I can find it, Bottesford, so back still further [long pause, chuckles]. Oh dear, there’s a note I’ve written here, the mess and the modern, and the modern obliterations in this logbook, are necessary because my son Tim, when he was a little boy, pretended he was like his father and started filling my, filling all the bits and pieces in the logbook [laugh] ‘cause there’s a mess. So, I, I had to put a note in there about that. So, what are we, am I –
AS: We’re looking up OTU on the Wellingtons.
PF: Oh right, oh gosh –
AS: You alright?
PF: Yeah, in a minute. I’ve just got, my back was killing me. Ah, oh. So, OTU, that would be 1942, oh gosh this is going back a bit [turning pages], October ’42, yeah, I’m getting near [long pause]. Here we are, 25 OTU Finningley, 16th of September 1942.
AS: That’s your first flight at the OUT, is it?
PF: Yep –
AS: As a crew?
PF: As a crew, yeah.
AS: Yeah. And did your captain immediately take you off as a crew, or did he do some flying with somebody else first?
PF: Oh no, we all met as sprogs, nobody, no crews – we were assem – we were all, we were all assembling in a very big hall, and we got given four, five hours to crew up, and how did I crew up? Only because of being a Norfolk man, because Dennis Claxton was a baker at Ormesby, came along in his old broad Norfolk accent and said, ‘hello Peter, will you fly with me?’ I thought, oh my God, and I said, ‘yes of course I will’, and as I said, cause that’s how we crewed up, and I flew with him right through the war really. He was a good pilot. Claxton, his father was a baker at Ormesby.
AS: Were you all sergeants to start with?
PF: Yes, then I became a flight sergeant, and among the very few members of aircrew as a wireless operator, I had to take examinations would you believe, to get any, any promotion, in the wireless world of course, and until I became a grade one, I couldn’t get any promotion, so I was, I was messed about a bit. However, I got, I did it and I got my promotions and I became a flight sergeant, and then I was commissioned, and so I, and a signals leader, so I never looked back really. I had a good life, I enjoyed, particularly while I was at Mildenhall, this is after the war, this was in between tours, it wasn’t after the war. I finished my first tour and I was about to go back on my second tour at Mildenhall. I was near to home, I was near my wife, who lived just outside in a place called Ownedge, just outside Bedford, and so I was quite happy there really.
AS: You’ve still got your logbook open at the OTU, how much, how much flying did you do? Can you track that back?
PF: Yeah, well, I’ll tell you in a minute, I did [long pause], oh that’s the [unclear] synopsis, Finningley. Was that, Jane?
AS: Yes.
Jane: Sorry –
PF: At 25 OTU Finningley, I did [pause], there’s loads of it, oh dear, all at sea, yeah, one hour and half hours [long pause] I did twenty, in this instance, it was twenty-nine daylight and six at night. So this has, this has got to be more. [Pause] oh here we are, Bircotes now, so that was the next station, still on OTU, so that puts me up to ninety-five, nearly one hundred hours at OTU.
AS: Wow.
PF: And so it goes on. Oh, this was on the conversion, and then I went – a hundred and fifteen hours, including the OTU on Wellingtons and conversion on Manchesters to Lancasters, ‘cause it was only fourteen hours [chuckles], oh God.
AS: Were you a –
PF: What we, what we looking for do you know?
AS: Well, we’ve answered it actually, the hours, yeah –
PF: Oh, have we? Oh, fair enough. It was a bit complicated, looking up logbooks.
AS: Yeah. Were you straight wireless or did you do air gunner training as well?
PF: I did very little air – I didn’t want anything to do with air gunnering. I was quite happy with signals and I was, I was, would be a signals leader and things like that, so I, quite honestly, I had nothing to do with gunnering. I perhaps should have been a gunnery leader but I didn’t want to know [chuckles].
AS: That’s fair. Did you do any bulls-eye exercises?
PF: Oh yes, lots of bulls-eyes.
AS: What did they involve?
PF: Pardon?
AS: What did they involve?
PF: Long night cross country runs, let’s just look back. OTU Finningley that would be [pause], just give you an idea how long they were, ooh er [long pause], look I’ve got notes everywhere [long pause]. Why are logbooks so complicated when you look back through? Bottesford, that’s all good, I want training [long pause].
AS: No, so the bulls-eyes were at Bottesford were they?
PF: What, just a minute, I’ll just try and get back to Bottesford, I should be there in a sec, because I remember writing – oh that’s 1660 Conversion Unit, that was after that, so it’s got to be here. Bulls-eye here we are. I did a bulls-eye [pause] with Warrant Officer Buzz [unclear] as pilot [pause], five and a half hours from RAF Bircotes which is a satellite at Finningley. Oh you know it, don’t you?
AS: Yeah.
PF: Yeah, so that’s it. Well, that was when I was first flying with Dennis Claxton, who was my pilot during the, during the Lancs time, who lives out here at, he was a baker at Hemsby.
AS: Was, this was winter time, wasn’t it? OTU and HCU?
PF: Yeah, it was 15th of November, yeah.
AS: Yeah. Did the weather cause many problems, many interruptions, or many losses? Did you lose many aircraft in training?
PF: We, yes, we did, because of bad navigation. We didn’t have the things like Gee and that then, and navigation was pretty [pause], what’s the word –
AS: Haphazard?
PF: Basic, yeah. The, you hadn’t got the, what you had later, the radar bit, the Gee box, to get your fixers. No, I was there as a radio operator and I had to get my navigator fixers on numerous occasions, you know. Get a WT fix.
AS: And what speed did you get down to? How quickly could you do that?
PF: Well that took an age, it used to take them an age to wind my training aerial out for a start, and then there was the getting through, well it would take me about half an hour to get a fix I should think. Main time spent cranking the bloody lot of, the aerial in because it was airmen dear, and that means I had to have a training aerial. You’re nodding your head as if you understood [chuckles]. Oh dear, that’s history, that’s the first time anybody’s asked me that question, you know, but –
AS: It must have been hard work in flying kit and on your knees, was it? Winding down?
PF: Yeah, that wasn’t, in the cockpit you had to – it was usually in the, the winding gear was in the panelling of the aeroplane, and that was pretty knuckling, what’s the word [pause], knocking the skin off your knuckles –
AS: Grazing your knuckles, yeah. Did you ever lose one? Forget to wind it up?
PF: No, I didn’t. I must admit, I never, I always – because we had to write it in on the log, and we got seriously chastised, if we hadn’t done it and so we were always very careful, ‘cause they said they were gonna start charging us for any aerials that we lose, and there were not a lot of chaps lost them. What’s that, dear?
Jane: Actually that’s, I haven’t seen that before. I can’t remember the actual picture; I don’t know where the original is –
PF: Oh my God, this is ancient. That was one of the first pictures taken, when, oh God, what was it? When we first joined the Old Ed fifty, 541, my wife’s name was Edna, she was called Ed, and of course up there, it was ED541, so that was Ed-541, that one [chuckles]. So, four-six-seven Wimpies away –
AS: So that on the wall, I understand now, that on the wall is a painting of your aircraft, A-Able isn’t it?
PF: That’s right, yeah.
AS: Now I understand.
PF: Yeah, that was my, that was my first aeroplane that we were allocated for, on operations, here we are, ED541 July 1943, now that’s, that must have been that picture then, yeah, ‘cause I started operating in nine, nine, July, August, yeah that’s right. Oh dear, I get confused about these dates –
AS: We can go through your logbook later for the, for the operations if you like. When you were training, perhaps moving from the OTU to the HCU, did you start meeting equipment in operational aeroplanes that you hadn’t seen before?
PF: Oh yes.
AS: Can you tell me about that?
PF: We had, well not so much from the HFDF from the normal 11-54-55 Marconi stuff that I was using for Morse and communication generally, that was the same, that never altered, the things that were altering were the Gees and H2S, and all the up-to-date radar equipment, that was always changing, but that had nothing to do with me, I was quite happy with my, my Morse code [chuckles].
AS: Did you have things like Fishpond to look after?
PF: Yes, we did, but I didn’t have to look after it, the navigator looked after that. It was, he, we didn’t have it at – we were training on, with it, we never used it on operations or anything like that, but we did, we did have it, that was H2S two-three-one, I can’t remember the damn things now. [Pause] I would have remembered had I had to operate it, but I didn’t have to operate it. I had enough work to do of my own.
AS: It’s quite busy, was it? You didn’t just take off and fly round and come back again?
PF: Oh no, no, I mean, you had to take your broadcast every half hour, and that was numbered so you had to make sure you got that down in your logbook, erm, oh yes there was, there was never a dull moment, not where a wireless operator was concerned, because you were busy nearly all the time, from the time you took off to the time you landed.
AS: So, what sort of things would you be, would be coming in and going out? Position reports or-
PF: For start, things coming in would be your half hourly broadcast, which you had to rec – you had to log, and that was usually [unclear] text, it was numbered, and then after that, it was mainly work. We were always given exercises to do and, with ground stations, with, in particular DF stations, getting QDFs, QDMs, all that sort of thing, and, so there was never a dull moment where I was concerned. As a matter of fact, I suppose I was pleased in a way, because I had plenty to do, I didn’t have a chance to think about anything else. The navigator always kept me busy.
AS: When you knew you were posted to Bomber Command, how did you feel?
PF: Well, I was pleased in a way because we were told we were going onto Lancs, and the Lancaster had just been introduced, so everybody was keen to get onto a Lanc squadron, and as it happened, I was lucky and we got on one, and that was, that was quite good. So that was, that answers your question doesn’t it really?
AS: Yeah. When you were crewed up, formed as a crew, you were all sergeants, were you living together in a mess, or in huts or –
PF: Oh yes, we all lived in – there was, there was an aircrew sergeants mess, because all aircrew were sergeants then, not when I first joined up and flew, there was an LAC erm, yes there was a special mess for the aircrew sergeants.
AS: And did you live as a crew?
PF: Pardon?
AS: Did you live all together as a crew, or –
PF: Oh yes. When we first crewed up, we were always messed together in the same, and always, always in the same hut, and that went on for, through the OTU, through the conversion units when we went from Wellingtons to Lancasters [pause], to when we arrived at the squadron and converted onto Lancasters.
AS: Did it get [pause] –
PF: Sorry?
AS: Did it get too much sometimes, being with the same people all the time, in the air and on the –
PF: No, we were very pleased in a way that we had our own crew, we were like a family really, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way really. Dennis, my pilot, was, lived at, he had a, he was a baker at Ormesby, Hemsby and his wife and my wife were very good friends, and we were all very close knit, we were close knit as a crew. Yes, that was all, that was all good fun really, if you could call it fun.
AS: What were the losses like during training? Were there many aircraft lost?
PF: Oh no, there wasn’t. We were, touching wood, no, there were very few losses while we were training. There were losses when, for example, on OTU, on operational training units where crews got lost and went down in the mountains somewhere you know, if we, if we were doing foreign cross countries and things like that where we did for training. So yes, that used, that used to happen, but not, not very often fortunately.
AS: Mhm. Did you form close links with your ground crew as well as your aircrew mates?
PF: Oh yes, oh yes, we did. We have a very – while we were on operations, I, we, we flew on ops from Bottesford near Nottingham, and we got very close to our ground crews. We used to entertain them a lot, and we used to go out, always meet in the pubs and things like that, and yes, that was, yes, we were, answering your question, yes, we were quite close.
AS: Whose aeroplane was it? Was it your aeroplane or their aeroplane?
PF: Well, that depends, it was theirs in their camp and then ours in our camp.
AS: How did they maintain it? Was it mostly working outside?
PF: Oh yes, it was all outside. They did the daily inspections, the special inspections, and that was all done on the, what do you call it, the dispersal on the airfield.
AS: So, what, what was the daily routine before, before flight? What would you do before flight with your equipment?
PF: Well, I had, I had to check the, all the radio equipment, intercom, anything which was radio or radar, I had to check it worked alright. And the radio, the RT, the radio telephone part.
AS: So, I think we’ve done quite a bit about OTU and HCU. Did you say your HCU, you were actually on Manchesters?
PF: Well, I flew on Manchesters – when I finished on, let me give you the story, when we finished operational training on Wellingtons, we knew we were going to be posted to a conversion unit because we were going to go onto heavy bombers, and we knew that before we got onto them we would have to fly Manchesters, that was the Lanc with two engines if you can perhaps remember, and, so we went onto Lancs – onto Manchesters and then Lancs in that, in that order and that all went quite smoothly. I must say, it was, it was exciting going onto a Lancaster after a bloody old, twopy, old Wimpy, [pause] it was like getting into a – well as Dennis our pilot said, it was like getting into a Spitfire, though he’d never flown a Spitfire [chuckles]. He guessed as much because the Lanc was so much faster than the Wimpy, and more manoeuvrable of course.
AS: When you were learning to fly the Lancaster, before you go to the squadron, was the, was the aeroplane to an operational standard, with all the equipment that was in it?
PF: Oh yes.
AS: Okay. Did you have to learn different operational techniques as well as this equipment when you were at the HCU, or had your training taken care of the –
PF: Oh yes, yes it did –
AS: It did. So, you were –
PF: Pretty well [unclear] up, yeah.
AS: Gemmed up with the operational techniques –
PF: Yep, yeah indeed.
AS: Okay. So, did you pass out of the HCU? Was there a parade?
PF: Er, no, there wasn’t. We were – it was just very ordinary; we were only five or six weeks from OTU to HCU. I was at Swinderby – God, we were there and we were gone and we were on the squadron. As a matter of fact, we were nearly operating, it was that quick. Much to our horror, but there –
AS: Shall we pause it there for a moment?
PF: Okay.
[Tape paused and restarted]
AS: This is a taped interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Fitt, carried out by Adam Sutch, on the 19th of May 2015 for the International Bomber Command Centre. Peter Fitt was on 467 Squadron for his first tour of operations, and perhaps Peter, I could, I could start by asking what happened when you came to the squadron before you went on ops, when you arrived as a crew?
PF: Right, well, first of all, I want to go back a bit to OTU, Operational Training Unit, where we crewed up. We all arrived there as individual pilots, navigators and wireless operators, air gunners, and – [interrupted] – is somebody coming?
Other: Sorry, would either of you like a hot drink?
[Tape paused and restarted]
AS: Right, let’s start again Peter shall we, now the tea lady’s gone –
PF: Yeah, yeah, you carry on –
AS: You were going back to the OTU when you crewed up, just before you got on the squadron.
PF: Yeah, yeah, yes, and that was 1942 I believe, would that be right?
AS: ’42, ’43, yeah, I think, we did before, so you left, left –
PF: Yes, yes it would be ’42, because I started off – I did my ops in ’43, and this is OTU we’re talking about, yes ’42, August ’42.
AS: Yeah, okay. And what can you remember about your OTU time?
PF: My OTU time was a bit strange, we all arrived at the sta – were posted to this RAF Finningley actually, in Yorkshire, and we all mingled in the, hmm, whatever it was, an old hangar or something, and one officer came along and he spoke to us and said, ‘well I’ve got you all gathered here because we want you – this is the OTU and we want you to crew up, and that’s, it’s got to be up to you. You can mingle with each other and find a pilot and a pilot will find a wireless operator and the wireless operator will find an air gunner’ sort of thing, you just sort it out yourselves’, they don’t print one up to say you’ll fly with so and so, you just sort it all out, and you’re given two or three days to do that, which we did, and I, I crewed up quite easily because it was a Norfolk man, a Norfolk baker from Ormesby, he came over and said, ‘you’re Norfolk, aren’t you?’ I said – he’s real, broad Norfolk – I said ‘yes’ and ‘I am’, and he – I can tell you because he had a real broad Norfolk accent, and he said, ‘why, I’m a pilot’, and he said, ‘I was wondering whether you would, you would, as we’re Norfolkites, you can come be my wireless operator’, ‘yes’, I said, ‘I’d love to’, and in the meantime, he’d sorted out the rest of the crew, so there was five of us. We were crewing up for Wellingtons actually, at OTU, on which we – the aeroplane we did our OTUs on, and so that’s how I crewed up. And then we, we did three months there I suppose – this is RAF Finningley in Yorkshire, and then we were posted to – oh God, I can’t remember the name of the bloody place now, not Finningley, Swinderby, where we went, transferred to four engined aeroplanes, so that was the beginning on the, on the Lancaster episodes, the aeroplanes we flew in for the rest of the war. Now that was, that was, that was rather all good fun, well wasn’t good fun it was bloody dangerous but, but, erm, it was all part of the adventure, wasn’t it?
AS: Exciting, exciting.
PF: So there, that was, so we crewed up and we, we stayed together all those years – we did a mini two tours of ops – this is late ’42 I’m talking about – and we were still flying in ’44, ’45 together, and, and the war came to an end and we kept meeting you know, ‘cause of, Den was a, he was a baker from Ormesby actually, and we used to – we all got, you all get very, very friendly, you know, and the whole families become friendly, and so that was, that was quite a nice episode in my life. It was a bit dangerous for me, during ops but I, Dennis was a good pilot and the rest of the crew were good, and we were, yeah, that was, that was quite an exciting time. I often think back on it, and we, we have our crew reunions still, and that’s jolly nice to get together again.
AS: What sort of skipper was Sergeant Claxton, Dennis Claxton?
PF: What sort –
AS: Yeah, was he a disciplinarian, or relaxed, or?
PF: No, no, he was a typical, what did we say, ordinary bloke who liked driving, a chauffeur if you like, he was conscientious, he always knew what he wanted, he always knew what to ask the navigator, he always knew what to ask us all actually, if he wanted to know anything, and, and yeah, he was quite knowledgeable, and a good pilot. That’s what we were after, we wanted someone who really knew the aeroplane and could throw out a boat when, if we were attacked or anything like that, and he was that good, so we were happy. As a matter of fact, I was a – no, poor Dennis died five or six years ago, his wife is still alive, and she comes and sees me here sometimes which is, which is rather nice.
AS: Absolutely, continuity.
PF: And, and of course – my wife, well she’s dead now, but my wife used to like Iris, which was Dennis’, the pilot’s wife, and they became very friendly – well, we all became friends actually.
AS: So, you finished HCU on Manchesters and Lancasters, and –
PF: I, I finished what?
AS: HCU. Heavy Conversion Unit.
PF: Yeah.
AS: On Manchesters and Lancasters was it?
PF: Yeah, Manchesters and Lancs, yeah.
AS: Yeah. And then you were posted to F –
PF: This, this was at Swinderby where we, we, we er went onto four engines, in the Lanc, and from Swinderby. And from Swinderby we, we – now what, I’m just trying to think of what that was called, when you converted to four engines, not a confighter, it was, it had a, it had a special name –
AS: HCU was it? Heavy Conversion Unit?
PF: Heavy Conversion, well done, you, you’re a gen-king you know.
AS: [Laughing] just, just lucky.
PF: Yeah, yeah on HCU –
AS: HCU, yeah.
PF: And, and Dennis converted to – and he took to the Lancs, he thought it was a great aeroplane, and he was a good pilot, and erm, so that, and we were together all that time. On two tours.
AS: On the aeroplane, did you feel a very great difference when it was loaded and not?
PF: No, no. It was a bit – Dennis used to say it’s a bit, you know, he had to be a bit more careful on takeoff because there was a lot more power, and they used to have to – he said, ‘I’m not supposed put, to go into S-gear’, but he said, ‘I bloody will go into S-gear’, ‘cause he said, ‘I wanna get off safely’, and so he did, that – that S-gear was. It’s called S-gear was a special gear that you, you put the throttles in and that connects to the engine [chuckles], and as the throttles are connected there it does something, it gives you that extra power –
AS: More power, yeah. So, you were posted to 467 Squadron I think?
PF: Yes. We went to – we were posted to – we finished Swinderby, that’s Conversion Unit, and we were posted to [slight pause] Bottesford and, near Nottingham, where we were – joined an Australian squadron, 467 Squadron, and I was with them for a complete – I did my first tour there with them.
AS: Did it feel like an Australian squadron? Were many of the aircrew Australian?
PF: They were nearly, they were nearly all Australian, yes it did feel like, you know – that’s a nice way of putting it, they were real Aussies and that was, that made it rather nice. And erm, so I was very pleased I served on an Aussie squadron and [pause] it was, it was nice, and – what is the word when you’re a mixture, I can’t think of a name but it was, it was very good. And I, I enjoyed myself there, as one can enjoy yourself while you’re risking your bloody neck at night, but it was, that was – I had a very good crew, Dennis Claxton, my baker from Ormesby, he was good, he was a good pilot [pauses] and I hoped I was an average radio operator for, get my navigator some good bearings.
AS: You brought them back.
PF: Brought them back? Oh yeah.
AS: When you were on the squadron, did you do a lot of training flying still?
PF: Did I what?
AS: Do a lot of training flying still, while on the squadron?
PF: No, no, no. The only training you did on the squadron – well it was training I suppose, ‘cause they were called training flights, and that was, you would do cross countries, mainly for navigation, for the navigator and the wireless operator and, for the pilot of course, so that was what we did, yes. Cross countries. We used to call them – they were called bulls-eyes and you used to do a lot of bulls-eyes. Well, they were good really because they make you accurate at, and careful what you’re doing.
AS: Were the skies full of aeroplanes doing the same thing, over England?
PF: Over where, not –
AS: Over England, while you were training. Did you find it really crowded skies, or?
PF: No, no, ‘cause I was trained at night. I was, I was, we were trained for night flying, and we did our training at night, so we didn’t really see a lot of other aeroplanes anyhow. The only time you saw them was when you were taking off and when you joined the circuit to land, when you got back. But that was, that was good training, and well I, I mustn’t say I enjoyed it – that’s not quite the right word, but it was interesting, and I was quite happy [chuckles], I had a good crew, our Dennis was a good pilot, and [pause] we, we survived.
AS: Did you encounter night fighters at all?
PF: Yes, yes, we were, we were attacked several times, mainly by Junkers 88s actually. I thought they [unclear], we thought they’d been Messerschmitt 109 Es and Fs but it wasn’t, it was, we were always attacked by Junkers 88s, which is quite a heavy aircraft is a – it’s nearly as a big as a Wellington, and we just couldn’t imagine them using them as night fighters but they were.
AS: But obviously not brought down, your pilot’s skills and your gunner’s skills –
PF: No, no we evaded all attacks, and the gunners and that, we didn’t – the gunners didn’t shoot any down, any attackers down but I think they were sufficiently awake enough and aware to let the German know that we were around, we knew he was there, sort of thing.
AS: How about the – I know it wasn’t your trade, but how about the navigation equipment when you were doing your first tour? Did you have Gee and H2S by then?
PF: Ooh yes, we had Gee, ooh yes, I had – well I know I was a wireless op, but I had to know all, how to use the Gee and the H2S and all those sorts of things, which were very good, I mean we’d all, could literally be lost without, without them, and they were inc, incredibly good. H2S in particular.
AS: Mhm, did –
PF: Now don’t ask me what H2S stands for, because I don’t know, I never knew, I never did ask. I bet you’ve got to tell me actually –
AS: Not at all, now I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know. In your logbook here, you’ve got a, an Astra recall, or Astro recall, as a, do you know what that’s all about?
PF: Ah yes, that was [interrupted]. Is somebody [unclear].
Other: Hiya, [unclear], I’ve come to change your water jug.
PF: Okay, alright.
Other: Thank you.
PF: Thank you. Erm, what were we talking about, Astra recall? The, they, they’re two separate words actually. Astra meaning we were doing navigation by stars, by, and what was the other word?
AS: Recall.
PF: Recall, recall was to do with diversions and things like that, but that, that’s what that was. Astra navigation, the navigator didn’t like it and I had to help him and I wasn’t keen on it either. The, the, when you’re in cramped conditions and, you’ve got to keep referring to tables and cross referencing all the time makes – it’s hard work.
AS: Hmm. From your station in the aeroplane, could you see very much? Could you see out? Did you want to see out?
PF: Well, yes, I did want to – I liked to see out, there’s something – it’s nice to know that the world is passing by and if you were being attacked, you see it coming. Well, you know, I sat just behind the [pause] wireless operator, well, well you can’t quite see, there was a, there was an astrodome just behind the main cockpit coppola, well that’s what, that’s where I sat under that. That’s why there’s – there was always good light there. That’s where the warmth was, and it was, that was a good position, next to the navigator and course we used to work together.
AS: What were your fears on, on ops really at night?
PF: What was what?
AS: Your fears on ops?
PF: Well, well my fears were pretty awful really, I dreaded it. Well I think we all did, that was, it was alright, go to briefing and you, you were told the target and what to do and what not to do, and that’s frightening when you know the target, ‘cause it was usually a hotspot, and warned about night – it’s all very alarming, but once you get airborne, you’re, thing’s aren’t quite so bad until you get attacked [chuckles], but on the whole I, we were, we were very fortunate, we were, I mean we were only attacked once by night fighters. Used to get, we used to get anti-aircraft [unclear] of course, but the dread of course were night fighters ‘cause the Germans had a very good set-up.
AS: Could you sense or see other aeroplanes in the bomber stream around you?
PF: No, but you knew they were there because of the, of the turbulence you know, and the, and the airmen being in, being in people’s prop turbulence that used to, used to shake you about a bit. That’s the only indication you, you, you had. We were attacked two or three times but we – the gunners were alert enough to shoot away as it were.
AS: I see your first operation was to the Gironde in France –
PF: That’s right, yeah.
AS: What were you doing there?
PF: Laying mines. That, that – all freshmen aircrew, their first, their first raid over enemy territory was a gardening trip, and gardening was laying mines [chuckles], and the Gironde was one that, that was my first, that was my first trip, and that was, that was laying mines in the Gironde River, just off Bordeaux actually.
AS: So, these would be solo trips, would they? Just send one aircraft to, to lay mines, or?
PF: Well, well no, there would be, there would be squadrons doing it, and, and, but it wasn’t mass [pause], wasn’t mass operations, but there were several aircraft doing it, to keep their, their [pause] fighters, things, alive.
AS: Hmm, yeah. Another thing you’ve got here is SBA, local flying, is that standard beam approach?
PF: Yeah, yeah.
AS: Did that involve you at all, or, as the wireless man, or?
PF: No, it didn’t involve me in any shape or form, even though I was the wireless operator. It was, it was only the bomb aimer and the pilot’s concern because the bomb aimer was the first, virtually the second pilot because we didn’t carry a second pilot on Lancs, but we, but the bomb aimer took the part of the second pilot [chuckles].
AS: Okay. And did, he knew enough to fly the aeroplane?
PF: He knew enough to fly the aircraft. Whether he would have had enough – I don’t think Taffey would have been able to land, land it, but he would get you back, and you could do a ditch in the sea if you wanted – if you couldn’t land.
AS: Could I talk about some of the aids? Did you have any contact with Darky?
PF: Well, that, that rings a bell, Darky – now that was to do with RT, wasn’t it?
AS: Yeah, yeah.
PF: Now, now what was Darky? Oh gosh that’s right, on the [pause] forefront of my mind [pause] –
AS: Darky was local transmitters at, at observical posts and aerodromes, and if you were lost you could call up –
PF: Yes, yes oh God, yeah, I remember. I remember, yes, Darky very well.
AS: And did you use it?
PF: No, no, fortunately we never had to [pause]. We had a good navigator and we had Gee which we used to use a lot, and we erm, we didn’t have to use anything else. And none, none of us did courses on that while we got through.
AS: What – sounds like a silly question really, but what was the tension like as you approached the target?
PF: What was the what?
AS: The tension like in the crew as you approached the target?
PF: Well, as a matter of fact – it’s funny you should ask that question because that does cross my mind many times, ‘cause nearly everybody asks you that question. The funny part about it is, that when you’re approaching the target, all fear seems to have gone and dissipated, and you, you, everybody was looking out to find, to look at, to find the target and see what the defences were like and what attack we were going to do, and, and bearing in mind. what you’d been told to do, so yes, yes, that was, that was – rephrase your question because I was getting a bit out of touch with it.
AS: No, no I just – I wondered whether the tension really grew as you were approaching the target, but you’ve told me that the fear left you.
PF: Oh, I see, you mean as you approached the target, did the tension increase? No it didn’t, funnily enough, it rather dissipated, mainly I suppose because you, you were there, you’d seen what you were going to do. The defences hadn’t erupted and all you got was a target which was coloured red, which had obviously been bombed earlier, and that was, that was it, it never crossed our, never crossed our minds. Well, it never crossed my mind because I was a wireless operator and I was busy, and I never, I never even looked out. I was, I had, I was busy on the – ‘cause we had all sorts of messages coming in and that, so I had to listen all the time.
AS: Yes, so you listened on the main sets. Did you also control the RT, or, the radio telephone? You were on the radio telephone as well.
PF: Yes, yes, we were but the pilot used the RT, radio tele, used that for landing and takeoff purposes –
AS: Okay.
PF: But apart from that, there were, there were, the RT was never used.
AS: Hmm. How about the master bomber?
PF: Oh, the master bomber? Yeah well, we, that [pause] he was, it was all done by, by voice actually, and – to be quite honest, we were never impressed with it. It was a bit of a, of guidance you know, but sometimes he was a bit out, and sometimes he couldn’t find the place, but, on the whole, I suppose it worked because the, with their know-how and, and our own know-how.
AS: And you could hear it? You could hear what the master bomber was saying?
PF: Oh yes, it was very clear. Clear as crystal.
AS: Hm. So you were, you were on 467, that’s 5 Group, isn’t it?
PF: That was in 5 Group, yeah.
AS: 5 Group were a bit special, weren’t they?
PF: They were the, THE group, yeah. If you hadn’t have said that, I was going to say that.
AS: [Laughing] Sorry.
PF: But I’m glad you said it, so, you knew about it.
AS: Yeah.
PF: Yes, we used to get all the posh jobs as we’d call them, the posh and dangerous ones.
AS: And one of those that you got was Peenemunde.
PF: Peenemunde, yes, I was on that raid.
AS: Could, could you tell us a little bit about that?
PF: [Pause] yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you [long pause]. Oh, you’ve got my logbook there.
AS: Yeah, yeah, I got –
PF: I just gotta think of the date, what was it, was it August something, wasn’t it?
AS: I’m just looking actually –
PF: It’s ‘40, ’43 [pause.
AS: Do you know, I can’t find it. You’ll probably quicker than I would. Berlin, Berlin [long pause]. There we go, August, spot on, 12th of August.
PF: Yeah, I remember that very well. That was the [unclear], that was the most effective raid of the war, you know, everybody was so accurate, and trained to be accurate, and it was a very efficient raid result.
AS: How much did they tell you at briefing about Peenemunde and why you were going there? What did they tell you?
PF: Well, I’m just trying to think [pause]. We were told of course that, that, that they were specialising in speciality model aircraft to bomb London, and well, we knew that and that did make us more attentive to detail and sorted out, which we did.
AS: Is it true that the, the aircrew were told that if they didn’t do it the first time, they’d have to go back the next night, or is that just a story?
PF: Oh yeah that happened to me several times. Air-chief Marshal, our boss man in 5 Group was, erm, oh God, why has his name escaped me –
AS: Ralph Cochrane?
PF: Pardon?
AS: Was it Cochrane?
PF: Was it who?
AS: Cochrane. Ralph Cochrane.
PF: Oh yeah Ralph Cochrane, that’s the chap, well done, you know more about what I did –
AS: I wouldn’t say that sir, I wouldn’t say that at all.
PF: I just forgot, I just forgot his name, and, and, he was, he wanted you to do everything right, and he was like that and, ‘if you don’t bloody well get it tonight, you’ll go tomorrow night and you’ll go the next night’, and so on, he talked just like that. It was if he was talking to a class of kids, you know, and, yes, he was a very efficient man, and we had – we didn’t applaud him, we appreciated him, his air [unclear] and things like that. Yeah, I remember the briefing for the Peenemunde raid.
AS: Is it like we see on the films, where everyone sits down and the station commander comes in and they pull back the curtain – was it like that?
PF: It was like that, yeah, yeah, but it wasn’t quite so, not quite so dramatic as that [laughs] you know.
AS: How many briefings were there?
PF: Well, that was just – there was only one main briefing, but the navigators, the pilots and the navigators always had to go half an hour early to have their separate briefing, which was – I don’t know why, and the rest of the crews went afterwards to the main briefing. But we all had – as I was signals and we all had our separate briefings by our own leaders.
AS: So, what was the procedure then? The aeroplanes would be test flown, flying test –
PF: Would be –
AS: You’d have a flying test, a night flying test with the aeroplane –
PF: Oh yes, and then an active course, yes, yeah.
AS: Yeah, and then you’d have your briefing, and –
PF: Yes well, the, the, it wasn’t quite as close as we are saying it. For example, if, if the operations were on the Friday night, or any particular night, you would do your flying – we had a special word for them and it escapes, it escapes me, not NFT, something like that – you’d go and do that in the morning somewhere and check everything was alright, and that would be your, your [unclear] practical briefing. And then we’d go to the main briefing and having done all that we, you knew exactly where you were.
AS: And then you’d have, have a meal, or -
PF: We’d have a meal, our eggs and bacon, twice. Eggs and bacon before and eggs and bacon afterwards [laugh], and, yes so that was, that was a very exciting life but it was bloody dangerous, and you got, you get a bit worried about it, particularly if you’re married and that, but there.
AS: How did you get out to the aeroplane?
PF: We were taken out by, by bus, ministry, you know, Air Force busses. They were specially, they were specially made for that purpose. They used to take the crews. They, you had enough space for all the parachutes and the stuff to go inside your – me and my pigeons, I had to carry, we had to carry pigeons, that sounds good doesn’t it [chuckles], and, that, that was it. We would then be taken out to our aircraft, ground crew would be waiting for us, we would be ushered into our seats, and they would carry the stuff in for us, and that was that, and the pilot would get the engines started and run up and we’d all, we’d all do our bits and pieces. I’d do mine and away we go.
AS: Tell me about the pigeons. I mean, they weren’t to eat, were they?
PF: Pardon?
AS: They weren’t there to be eaten, were they? Tell me about the pigeons.
PF: [Pause] it was quite a joke really. They, it used to be one to tell your children. We had to carry pigeons and they’d say, ‘what, you had pigeons, did they tell you where to go Dad’ [chuckles]. I’d say, ‘yeah, we’d let them out and then we’d say Berlin and we’ll follow you’ [laughs]. What was I saying? Yes, we had, we had pigeons.
AS: Whereabouts did you keep them?
PF: What, my – I was responsible for them as the wireless operator, and right behind me were the armour-plated doors, which was ideal for me really, but behind the armour-plated door was a rest couch – oh I thought I saw them earlier – and erm, that’s where we used to place them on that, just right, they all fitted there nicely.
AS: So by the time you’d got to the aeroplane, was it all bombed up and fuelled up?
PF: Oh yes, it was, they were all done up in the morning, if you were taking off in the evening. All the bombing up – everything would have been ready in the morning. That was, that was very, very efficient, and then we would go to the briefing in the afternoon and then take off in the evening.
AS: Hm. Did you feel that you had enough fuel all the time, for the distances and trips that you –
PF: Oh yeah well, we had a, our engine – we all had, every crew had an engineer, and that was his responsibility to make sure that the bowsers had put the right amount of petrol in, and they got the [pause], they got it all laid on so that if the, if the pilot wanted to change engines or something, they did sometimes, that could all be done by stopping an engine and starting another up sort of thing.
AS: Okay.
PF: That was all very complicated but all was very well organised. Everybody knew what they had to do.
AS: Yeah. So, you, you’d done your Gironde mine laying trip, and then you went to Saint Nazaire. Was that the same sort of thing?
PF: Yes, same thing, yeah.
AS: Dropping –
PF: Yeah, well I’m just trying to – why was that? It was because that was the – of course, Saint Nazaire is on the Gironde River, so that was, it was something to do with that trip.
AS: And then the big one, the Big B, operation to Berlin.
PF: Yeah. That was the Big B yeah, they were big trips. Dangerous ones, the losses were always heavy. Well, they were mainly night fighters – Hitler made sure that his beloved Berlin and all that area round there was well guarded by night fighters, which were the Junkers 88, which was a very efficient aeroplane, and they caused us proper problem.
AS: Hm. Did you lose a lot on the squadron to –
PF: Pardon?
AS: Did you lose a lot on the squadron to night fighters?
PF: No we didn’t, funnily enough. We used to have losses to ack-ack and the odd fighter, but that was, there was nothing catastrophic from fighters.
AS: But over the period you were on ops from March 1943, were the losses heavy? Severe?
PF: They were. I wouldn’t say they were severe, they were heavy. I didn’t know what the statistics are on this, I can’t remember them, but – oh you could, people used to hear it on the radio and they would say something about aircraft missing; that used to be an indication of what the night was like. Some nights were pretty awful, mainly due to night fighters.
AS: And could you get a sense of this at the squadron as well? People just disappearing?
PF: Yeah.
AS: Hm. And then, then two days later, you went to Berlin again, and it says ‘bombs dropped on Flensburg’. What was that all about?
PF: Oh yeah, that was a, that was a – that wasn’t a catastrophe, but it was an embarrassment. Let me think now. Oh yes, we were set off and we were briefed to bomb Berlin, and crossing over, oh gosh, what’s the name of, Jutland area, you know –
AS: Oh I – Denmark there.
PF: Denmark?
AS: Yeah.
PF: Yeah. The, there, to the right of Denmark is Flensburg, which is German obviously, and if you drifted off course, you got it in the neck from Flensburg. Well, that was what was happening. And yeah, that was a dicey old area, and we never, I never liked the Berlin trips, ‘cause that was, it was a long way there and you had to go through, like Flensburg, and so many other hazards, there was no sort of sitting back and relaxing and saying ‘oh well, let’s go’ [chuckles].
AS: Did you always feel yourselves well informed about where the German hazards were? Where the flack was –
PF: Oh yes we were. The briefing was very accurate and – no we never had anything, no faults to find with that.
AS: And how about –
PF: And our intelligence was very good too.
AS: How about the debrief when you got back? Was that – what happened in the debrief? Was that a long time or just very cursory or?
PF: No, no that was, it was done quite quickly. We, we just, we landed dead on time as always, found your way back to the debriefing room and sat yourself down at a table, and the debriefing officer would come along and start asking us the routine questions, and that was that, you know. Nothing in particular about it, we just wanted to get back to the mess and have a meal.
AS: Can you remember what –
PF: Our eggs and bacon [chuckles].
AS: Okay. Can you remember what some of the questions were? I know it’s a long time ago, but what were they interested in?
PF: They were interested in the concentration of anti-aircraft from the guns, and particularly the fighters. That’s what they were interested in, because they were becoming a menace, and to trace what airfield they were coming from so they could take care of them with a separate force. But that was the, that was the main thing was night fighters, and he had a very good, he was, Hitler had a very good night fighter force, or Goering I should say.
AS: A moment ago, you talked about getting back and landing dead on time. What was the procedure as you approached the English coast to return?
PF: What, what was the procedure? Well, well actually, we were on tracks that the briefing officer had given you and, so they always knew exactly where you were going to do. If you were off track as it were, you, I, we would just let them know that we were off track.
AS: And then you’d spot, what, you’d spot the pundit light for –
PF: Yeah, yeah, a pundit or a something, a light, strip of light and that would, you’d pick it up and that would give an indication. Everything was so well organised.
AS: You, when you got back to base, what happened then? When you were in the circuit, did they stack you up or, or?
PF: No, no they didn’t stack us up at all, they would get us down as soon as possible, which was right, and we would land and the transport would be there, the aircrew bus would be there to pick you up. We used to have a bus would you believe? And take us back to the debriefing. They’d sow us with coffee [unclear] and that was that. Everybody thankful to be back, having looked round the room to see who was missing [chuckles]. I’m laughing about it, I shouldn’t –
AS: Yeah, but as you said before, you lived in your self-contained crew world.
PF: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. This – you’ve got quite a lot of trips to, to Italy, and I noticed you –
PF: Yes, yeah. I did eight Italian trips.
AS: You got the Italian Star for that.
PF: What’s that?
AS: Was that what you got the Italian Star for?
PF: Oh yes.
AS: So, what were the Italian trips like? Did you go over the Alps?
PF: It was – mostly yes, mostly. Not all trips took us over the Alps but the majority did, and they were quite – we used to like the Italy trips, ‘cause they were quite uneventful. You had all that track across France and there were very few night fighters, which was, which was the problem, attacking Germany or France, and there were very little problems then. It wasn’t until we got nearer to the industrial areas that the night fighters, night fighter problem increased. [Knocking] come in.
Other: Peter, returning back with the water.
PF: Alright, yes, thank you.
Other: Here we are.
PF: Yes, thank you.
Other: You’re welcome.
AS: Yeah, so Italy was a long time but a comparatively easy trip, was it?
PF: Oh yes, the Italian trips, we [chuckles] used to like – when we’d arrive into the briefing room and you looked up on the wall and there’d be the big map up, and you’d see the, that Italy was the target, were the targets and sigh of relief because the, you know, going all the way across France, there were very few night fighters and, not until you got to the Italian area that they become concentrated. But Italy trips were always good. We always looked forward to those.
AS: Did you end up coming back in daylight from them, or was there enough time to –
PF: Mostly we got back in daylight, no in, at night time I should say, but we used to do – oh God, what were they [pause], we used to do trips and there was a name for them and that, that’s slipped my mind [pause]. They were virtually daylight raids, but we were given courses across Germany and France which, which weren’t defended heavily, but, yes, we used to, but that, on the whole we used to like these light trips as we called them [chuckles].
AS: And there were some others, some really difficult trips, some really difficult trips like the Ruhr trips, like Essen and –
PF: Oh yeah, the Ruhr trips were, Happy Valley as we called them, were very severe and strong. We used to hate Happy Valley, because the, the ack-ack concentration – Hitler had done it to please his own people actually, that all, the whole Ruhr Valley was saturated with anti-aircraft guns [pause]. But we did most, that was most of the operation with the, on the Ruhr Valley you know, Happy Valley – you see that? Oh God, handkerchief, oh there it is [long pause].
AS: Are there any particular moments that really stick in your mind of, of carrying out this campaign? Airborne moments?
PF: Well, I, I’m just trying to think. I had an idea you were going to ask me a question like that [long pause].
AS: Were any of you wounded at all?
PF: I was never, fortunately I was never wounded, I was never, we were never hit. We were knocked about a bit by German night fighters, but they weren’t very heavy attack, heavily, they weren’t heavy attacks because our gunners were good enough to keep them at bay. So no, to answer your question, no we, we, it wasn’t a problem. Thank God, because that could – he had an extremely good night fighter force.
AS: And you, you flew the same aircraft, A-Able?.
PF: On A-Able, yeah. There’s a painting of her up there. Er yes, we, we were fortunate enough to have our own aeroplane right through the, my tour.
AS: And did she always start on four engines and come back on four engines?
PF: Yeah –
AS: Mechanically very reliable, yeah?
PF: Yeah, but sometimes the pilot had to give an engine a rest, and we’d come back, perhaps come back on three, but on the whole we managed. Well, it’s nice to know we had – the old Lanc would fly well on two engines.
AS: And on, on takeoff, was that a particularly worrying time with –
PF: Was what?
AS: On takeoff, with, full of full and bombs and –
PF: Well, what, well yes it was, but it was a touch and go sort of thing. The, the tanks, the petrol tanks would be full up and the bomb racks would be full, so you had a, what did we used to call it, a maximum load, or it was called something else, a maximum effort I think it was called, and, and we managed to get through okay.
AS: Were you, had you got married by the time you were on operations?
PF: Pardon?
AS: Had you got married by the time you were on operations, on 467?
PF: I was, I was on operations in ’43, and no, I got married in ’44.
AS: Okay, so when you’d finished ops.
PF: No, and I – when I went back on my second tour, when the second, after the second front had started, that was in ’45, then, yeah I did my second tour, which was in ’45, yeah. I don’t know what when I was leading to, I’m sorry.
AS: No, no, we were talking about when you got married. Did you feel differently on your second tour, when you were married on ops?
PF: No, no I didn’t. We, you treated – it was a job, you know, and that’s how you looked at it, and kept your fingers crossed. I was very fortunate but I, when I, ‘cause I did, my first tour was pretty grim, but I wasn’t, but I wasn’t married then, but apart from that we had a reasonably efficient –
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Peter Fitt
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Sutch
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-19
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AFittP150519
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:49:04 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born in Norwich. His father was a head gardener and wanted him to follow that occupation and so refused to let him join the RAF. With the advent of war the situation changed and Peter volunteered at a recruiting station and after selection tests was accepted as a wireless operator. Peter completed his ground training at No. 2 radio school At RAF Yatesbury and air training at RAF Watton which ended with a passing out parade.
Sent to an operational training unit to fly Wellingtons, he remembers the high rate of losses due to accidents, particularly of flying into high ground. Crewed up at RAF Finningly in September 1942, he was converted onto Manchesters and then Lancasters at the heavy conversion unit at RAF Swinderby. He describes in detail the equipment available to him, which made for a very busy job, and remembers that all the codes were written on 'flimsies' which could be swallowed in an emergency.
Sent to 467 Squadron which, as a special unit, Peter felt were given the "posh and dangerous" jobs. He completed a full tour including minelaying to the Gironde and St. Nazaire, Berlin and also eight trips to Italy, which he considers were easy compared to 'happy valley', as the Ruhr valley was known . One special trip was to Peenemunde and the crews were warned that if they didn't do the job properly, then they would be sent back every night until it was completed. He recalls being attacked by night fighters but the gunners kept them at bay and so completed his full tour in the same aircraft, A-Able.
On completion of his tour Peter was commissioned and put in charge of the wireless flight until 1945 when he commenced his second tour which was terminated with the cessation of hostilities.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France
France--Gironde Estuary
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Peenemünde
Italy
Contributor
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Terry Holmes
Vivienne Tincombe
467 Squadron
aircrew
animal
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
briefing
crewing up
fear
Gee
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Manchester
mine laying
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bottesford
RAF Finningley
RAF Swinderby
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/888/11127/AHughesWH151021.1.mp3
33613f53da69484a983e122f2ed1e463
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hughes, Harry
William Henry Hughes
W H Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM (- 2023, 159079 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 102 Squadron and then with a Mosquito Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hughes, WH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HH: It’s all in the book, I think, mainly, isn’t it?
AS: Most of it is, but we need to get it on tape. I think. This is an interview with Harry Hughes, flight lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM, a navigator in wartime Bomber Command on 102 Squadron and then later on Mosquitos. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Harry’s home in St Ives. Harry, thank you ever so much for agreeing to this interview. Perhaps we can start by going over a little your early days. I believe, you were born in Dorset.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. Did you have brothers and sisters?
HH: A sister, yeah. But I went to school in Sherborne, the Grammar School in Sherborne not the big school, not the public school. And, it was a good school but there we are, I think it was a good school anyway but they’ve, in their wisdom they’ve closed it down now and they amalgamated with the Lord Digby school, ‘cause the Lord Digby school is gonna cost too much to repair or something and I think some builder wanted to get hold of their building anyway and make flats out of it. You know, usual thing.
AS: Yeah. How did you get on at school? What were your subjects? What did you do well at in school?
HH: Mainly in maths. I got a distinction in Maths and a distinction in Physics and Chemistry. Otherwise I got all passes except English language in which I got, I didn’t fail, I got a pass, just got a pass so I didn’t get my ‘tric. Did so⸻
AS: Sorry.
HH: Anyway that’s beside the point. Anyway I left there in 1940 and my very first job was a night watchman for some lady at Lewisham Manor near Sherborne, who lost all her staff and she wanted somebody to be in the house at night and to patrol the grounds. While I went round the grounds once, no, never again, it was too bloody scary [laughs].
AS: Things that go bump in the night.
HH: Yeah, there was hooting and things [laughs]. Anyway that’s beside the point.
AS: But this was 1940. Was this, was the Battle of Britain going on over your head or had that finished?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: What, was that what pushed you towards the air force or?
HH: No. Well, I think. Well, what pushed me towards the air force was the fact that I went, my father wanted me to join the navy and I, I went down to Portsmouth to sit an exam to be a writer or a supply probationer [unclear] his own clerk, and I didn’t fancy that, but anyway they gave you twelve blocks of pounds, shillings and pence to add up that way and then you had to add up that way and then you had to add them all up across and then the figure you got down here and the figure you got down here should have been the same. Mine was nowhere near. Anyway.
AS: But your maths were good so, you threw it really, didn’t you?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Did you deliberately mess up, because your maths were good.
HH: Yeah. Yes, I know, but not the accountancy type [laughs]. Anyway, we then, coming back on the train, I was pretty certain I’d failed, so, coming back on the train, I had to change at Salisbury and I had about an hour to waste, wait at Salisbury so I went in the town and I saw an RAF recruiting office. So I went in there and saw a sergeant there and I signed on for aircrew.
AS: Just like that?
HH: Yeah. And they took me on as a pilot or navigator and then I had to go to Oxford for attestation and I went there and with all the gunners from South Wales and what have you became gunners rather, from the mines, you know, and so that’s how I came to be in the air force.
AS: Okay. Did you go through the aircrew recruiting centres in London at Lord’s and?
HH: Yes, I was the first one there.
AS: Really?
HH: Very first one to go there, I think. In July ‘41, I suppose, yeah.
AS: That’s pretty early. What, what happened then? They’ve taken you into the air force at that stage, I suppose, you didn’t know what you were going to do.
HH: Well, we went to ITW and⸻
AS: Where was that?
HH: Down Torquay, which is very nice and, I’ve got my bloody reading glasses on, no wonder I can’t see, and then I was sent down to America to train.
AS: Okay.
HH: In the United States Air Force.
AS: Straight from Initial Training Wing.
HH: Yes. Straight from ITW. We didn’t get a chance. Later on they used to, they did a little course on Tiger Moths up on somewhere in the world, somewhere up that way.
AS: So, you hadn’t actually flown in an aircraft when you went to.
HH: No.
AS: How did you, obviously they wouldn’t fly you over, but how did you get across the Atlantic, in a convoy or?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. What was that called?
HH: I went out on a ship called the Highland Princess, which I ended up selling. I sold the Highland Princess, the Highland Brigade and the Highland Monarch.
AS: Presumably not during the war when you got there.
HH: No. Four of them, I sold them in about ’51, or ’52, something like that
AS: Okay. So, you’re going across the Atlantic in convoy. Was the ship crowded? What was the conditions like?
HH: Well, we were in hammocks, you know, on meat hooks in the, you hung your hammock on meat hooks in the lower hold, you know?
AS: Gosh.
HH: And we are right up on the stern of the ship because every time the, I think she was twin screwer if I remember rightly, because every time the ship rolled the prop shoot [mimics a sound] [laughs].
AS: Is that the prop coming out of the water?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh! Gosh, and so, there must have been hundreds of men on the ship with you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: All [unclear]
HH: The one thing you found out, you had to hang on to your four and a half hat because one went missing, what did he do? Go and pinch another one. So, it went all round the ship [laughs]. [unclear]
AS: Like measles, isn’t it? Yes, yeah, absolutely.
HH: Yeah, I remember that so, I hid mine, anyway.
AS: So, you went across in uniform with
HH: Yeah.
AS: Hundreds of other people.
HH: No, when we got to, we were being issued with, at Wilmslow I think it was in Cheshire, we’d been issued with a grey flannel suit to wear in America, ‘cause we all had to go down grey worsted suits, you know.
AS: Ah, ‘cause America wasn’t in the war then.
HH: ‘Cause they weren’t in the war then, yeah.
AS: Right.
HH: So, and so we went down to Maxwell Field in Alabama first of all for acclimatization.
AS: Wait, where did the ship come in?
HH: Halifax.
AS: Oh, so you landed in Canada.
HH: Went to Canada first, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: And then, I think, yes I think we were there, we were trained down to Toronto, I think, and then we went from Toronto down to Alabama, to Maxwell Field, to Montgomery, Alabama.
AS: Okay. Was the whole journey really well organised⸻
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: Or was is the usual service mess up?
HH: No.
AS: No. It was good?
HH: It was good, yeah, everything seemed to go to plan I think, pretty well.
AS: How were you received at Montgomery, at Maxwell Air Force base?
HH: Oh, pretty well. In fact, the very first Sunday we were there, first weekend we were there, the American officer came round and, when we were having lunch, and he said, there’s a fair in town at the moment and they’ve heard that you boys are here, so we’d like you, they’d like you to come along and be their guest. So we thought we were going there but no, it was a scam, we were all scammed out of our money. Yeah, so we woke up in the morning, everybody had lost all their money, it was a real American type scam you know and I saw a coach loading up with American service people all in uniform. So I said, ‘Where is this coach going?’ ‘Oh’, he said, one of them said, ‘We are going to a little village called Prattville just outside of Montgomery and we’re going to church and if we’re lucky we will get invited out for lunch afterwards.’ So, I said, ‘Can we come along?’ Then the three of us got on board anyway. And we went in and sang all the hymns [laughs] and, real gospel stuff too it was, yeah.
AS: Deep South, isn’t it?
HH: You know, happy happy-clappy type of fellows, kind of stuff, you know, and anyway afterwards all the American were all invited out to lunch and we were there, standing there, wondering what the hell to do, because it was a long walk back to Maxwell from Prattville ‘bout twelve miles I should think and then suddenly this lovely blonde comes up, she says, ‘You all from Maxwell?’ I said, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, we are.’ ‘Oh’, she says, ‘Matter of fact what sort of language is that?’ she says. ‘Well’, I says, ‘Well, you probably wouldn’t understand but we are English’ [laughs]. ‘Oh’, she says, ‘English, you are English?’ And she rushed around and she got all the Americans to cancel so that we were all invited to and she was a daughter of a, she collared me anyway and the other two were taken off somewhere else, I don’t know where. And then, we had lunch and her father was the local judge and he said afterwards, after we had lunch, he said, ‘I guess you would like to take my daughter out for a drive, would you? We gotta a nice Buick in the back. Buick with a steering column for your change’ and I didn’t even have a licence [unclear] never mind [laughs]. Never mind, and I got in anyway and I drove her out, bit of snogging and came back. And that was that and I never saw her again, she, I heard later she married an American navy pilot, who got killed in the Pacific. Yeah. So I could have followed it up if I wanted to but I didn’t but by that time I was back in Canada anyway.
AS: So when did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Well, when I go to, we went down to, we were posted from Maxwell Field down to Albany in Georgia to an aerodrome called Darr Aero Tech, that was the owner of the aerodrome, I think, Darr Aero Tech. And it’s still there, I was there not long ago. And so, I suddenly had to do a flight commander’s check and he decided, he decided to wash me out so I went back up to Canada and trained as a navigator.
AS: On the flying piece, how much flying did you do? Do you think it was fair that you got washed out?
HH: No.
AS: How did that come about?
HH: Well, they wanted, they, the Air Ministry wanted as many people washed out as possible who could train as navigators, bomb aimers and gunners and what have you. They weren’t too short of gunners but they.
AS: I believe you had an instructor with a German sounding name.
HH: Oh yeah. Schmidt.
AS: Schmidt.
HH: Yeah, that was a joke really. That was in the book, wasn’t it? Yeah.
AS: So maybe he sabotaged your flying career, your piloting career. So, I presume that a lot of people were washed out at this stage.
HH: They were, but [unclear] was never washed out.
AS: Wow.
HH: Over eighty percent. I know it was a whole lot of us came back. And on Pearl Harbour, the day of Pearl Harbour we were giving an exhibition rugby match in the town. And suddenly over the tannoy came an announcement that Pearl Harbour had been attacked by the Japanese and so everybody went home, they all packed up and went home. So we went home as well. And that night, I had a place I used to get under the wire and go into town at night, you know [laughs] and when I came back to get under the wire there was a man there with a gun [laughs]. And he was trying to shoot me because he thought I was a Japanese. He said, look mate, I don’t like your look, you look like a bloody Japanese [laughs].
AS: Did you go out of through the gate after that?
HH: No. Well, I didn’t bother after that.
AS: So.
HH: I went back, well, the following day we were on the train to go back up to Canada.
AS: Is that quick?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Flight commander’s test and then pack your kit and off you go.
HH: About for, about a week later I suppose I was back, I was on the train going back up to Canada. And it’s quite an experience travelling by train out in America, isn’t it? In those days with the dining cars and everything, and the bars and but we had to change, we were on what was called the Chattanooga Choo Choo, but going the wrong way [laughs]. We were going there, were going north but the Chattanooga Choo Choo goes, comes south, doesn’t it? But we were on that line anyway. And I remember we stopped off in Boston and we had a bit of a wait there so we decided to go into town, we never did see Boston because we got on the way into town, we got attacked by these Irish Americans.
AS: For being British?
HH: We had taken them into the war.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s our fault but [laughs]. And they were at war now. And they’d be getting called up and be killed. And then anyway we got away with that alright.
AS: You were physically attacked?
HH: Yeah, yeah. They had knives and God knows what. They weren’t very nice people. Anyway, I say Irish American but I imagine they were Irish Americans, being in Boston, wouldn’t you?
AS: Big population there, isn’t it?
HH: So, then I went to Trenton where I was interviewed by a group captain and he was Raymond Mass‘s brother.
AS: God lord, Raymond Mass of the Agfa?
HH: Yeah. It was his brother. He looked just like him too. Yeah. And.
AS: Was that a sympathetic interview?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: You wanted to be a pilot and then suddenly that stopped. Was the system generally sympathetic to you?
HH: Oh yes. So they were quite keen to take me on as a navigator. And so then I went from there to Quebec City, L’Ancienne-Lorette. And from there up to Rivers in Manitoba. Which was a dry town, that was, Prohibition there.
AS: Oh dear. Good lord.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Were you in uniform by this time? RAF uniform?
HH: Yeah. Wearing a Canadian uniform in fact [laughs]. They issued us with a Canadian uniform, which were quite smart actually. And they were very similar to ours but the cloth is a little kinder, shall we say?
AS: So, you’re in Prohibition and you went out, presumably looking for a drink, do you?
HH: Well, we knew that Mont-Joli was dry but there was a little, there was a port just down the river called Rimouski, which was a timber port mainly. I remember when I took my Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers exams, one of the questions was, could you explain what were the, how many and what sort of cargo was exported from Rimouski, well everybody else thought it was in Russia, didn’t’ they? [laughs]
AS: But you had a clear mental picture.
HH: Yeah, I’ve seen it. Anyway, we were trying to, we were drinking some, we went to a bar and we were drinking this clear liquid, we had asked for whiskey but they served us up with this clear whiskey, clear liquid and when we were coming back in a taxi we were, we’d had about two each of these, we were all very sick we had to stop the taxi we were really sick and we saw afterwards that [unclear] don’t drink anything that is given to you because there is a stuff called alcool which is made from wood alcohol and it’s can make you blind.
AS: It’s like drinking anti-freeze, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh, lucky escape!
HH: And so that was that. So then from Mont-Joli we went to the staff end course at Rivers in Manitoba which was astronavigation, advanced navigations course it was.
AS: What was the basic navigation course? What was your basic navigation training like? Was it mostly classroom or?
HH: A lot of in the air.
AS: What were you flying in?
HH: Ansons. Yeah. Mark 1 Ansons you had to wind up the undercarriage, you remember?
AS: Yeah. Did you take to it easily, to the navigation, because of your maths proficiency or?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: And you found it easy to be an accurate navigator?
HH: Yes, I mean, you’re training all the time of course and right the way through when I came home from Rivers, came home over on the Union-Castle ship, called the Cape Town Castle, which I didn’t sell. And, what’s the time?
AS: Now.
HH: [alarm clock rings] The taxi, yeah.
AS: Okay. We’ll pause at there, shall we? [recording paused]
HH: Yeah. Astronavigation course A and it was mainly a flying by using star shots yeah. But when I got on the squadron, I mean you had to carry about three sets of books, you know, and a naval almanac as well. Had to work out your star shots. But when I got to the squadron they had a marvellous bit of equipment, a little projector over the navigator’s tail [unclear], which about that high off the table and you had to measure it up with a special stick to make certain it was in focus and on this astrograph there was three stars you could use and, two stars rather, two stars plus Polaris you use to get a three star fix, and you worked out a datum point for the time before you, before you got airborne and drew it on your chart and then you lay your chart down on the table and lined it up with the astrograph and then this projected the position lines of these stars onto your chart. So all, so, the bomb aimer, all the bomb aimer had to do was to take the star charts, he was, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator anyway and I think he’s still alive, I’m not sure, and.
AS: So it was very much team work.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Between you and the bomb aimer but actually on astros. So, you, we jumped straight on to being on the squadron. Did you know, as soon as you started navigator training, that you would be going to Bomber Command?
HH: Well, it’s pretty obvious I would be. Yeah.
AS; Okay. And, so, you finished your training in Canada, came back to the UK by ship, and what happened next before you got on to the squadron?
HH: I went to [unclear], is it Cumberland?
AS: I think Scotland.
HH: Up near Carlisle, north of Carlisle then, between Carlisle and Keswick I suppose. And a little aerodrome there and we learned to fly in wartime conditions, you know, where the balloon barrages were et cetera. Where to avoid them.
AS: And is this when you stepped up from Ansons to bombers?
HH: No, no, this is still on Ansons. And then from there we went down to Hampstead Norris still on Ansons and then we went to Harwell, Hampstead Norris was a satellite of Harwell at the time and then we crewed up with our pilot and wireless operator, I think we already had a wireless operator and we crewed up with bomb aimer and engineer, no, no, we didn’t have an engineer at that time, this is on Wellingtons and.
AS: What were they like the training Wellingtons, were they in good nick, were they ropey old kites or?
HH: No, no, pretty ropey, they were draughty as hell, oh God they were draughty. The wind used to whistle through that fabric, you know. [unclear] construction, wasn’t it?
AS: What was, was there a step up in gear going on to heavier airplanes and operational tactics?
HH: Oh yeah, yeah.
AS: You are moving much more quickly in your calculations and navigation than perhaps when you were training?
HH: We did quite a lot of cross countries and Bullseyes we did in OTU.
AS: What’s Bullseye?
HH: Bullseyes we did down, we’d go down to, say the Channel Islands and experience a little bit of flak there and then we’d come back up again and fly across to Portsmouth or somewhere and fly across the coast there or else we’d fly, out to the North Sea towards Denmark and come back into Hull.
AS: So this was almost a simulated bombing mission, was that?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Training, for training. Okay.
HH: They were called Bullseyes anyway in cooperation with the army, I suppose, with the the ack-ack.
AS: So, when you’re at OTU, you’re on Wellingtons.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Then we went up to a place called Riccall in Yorkshire, near Selby, and we had to, we trained, we converted onto Halifaxes.
AS: What, can you remember what year, what month this would be when you?
HH: Well, that would be about Christmas of, just around Christmas in ’42, I suppose.
AS: Wow, so what type of Halifax would this be? The Merlin one or the?
HH: The Merlin one, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yes, so the Hali, Hali 1, what’s his name? Not Gibson, what the hell was his name?
AS: Cheshire?
HH: No. Gus Walker.
AS: Gus, oh yeah, yeah.
HH: He was a lovely man, Gus was, and he’d taken out, all the mid upper turret and the front nose cone as well, there is a very big heavy turret in the front nose and like the Lanc was, you know. And then, it’s pretty useless that front turret was but anyway. Then, eventually we got the Hali II.1 A which had a four gun [unclear] turret on the top, yes, same as on the Hali 3.
AS: So your mid upper then got his job back.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, Gus Walker he took these turrets out to save weight, to carry more bombs?
HH: To save weight, yeah. Just to save weight, to make it improve performance a bit. And get a better height. I better ring up my taxi.
AS: So, by taking the turrets off, Gus Water was giving his aircrews more of a chance really, wasn’t he?
HH: Yeah, but then later on they improved the, we still had the Merlin 22s, same as the Lanc had, you know. Merlin 22s, but the Mark II.1 A was a much better aircraft, you could get up to, you know, eighteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two thousand.
AS: Loaded?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Which is, you were at the same height as the Lancs. And the Lancs had the habit of dropping their bombs on you. Which happened on our very first trip. We went to, we were waiting to have a nice easy trip but no, we got Essen. And then, when we were over the, when we were over the target on our bombing run but a whole lot of bombs dropped on us, a whole lot of incendiaries dropped on us and the engineer and myself had to go back and kick them out the door [laughs] and which is good practice actually, because it happened to us again over Wuppertal.
AS: Really?
HH: But that time there was a, I think it was a two thousand pounder or a thousand pounder, I don’t know, and it came and took our port rudder right off, and the port tail and the port tail blade yeah.
AS: And what sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Mh?
AS: What sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Well, we found, she was, it was still flying alright but I found that we were crabbing a bit. And I remember seeing a light below and I said, take a drift on that, would you? And anyway we found that we were crabbing quite about ten degrees to port, I think, yeah.
AS: So you do all your sums again and take that out by adjusting the.
HH: No, I just took ten degrees off every course [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: That must have been quite a hairy landing I would think.
HH: No, [unclear], yeah. I can’t remember it being anything but normal.
AS: Wow.
HH: And when we got back, the little corporal in charge of our ground crew, he came out, what the bloody hell have you done to my aircraft! [laughs] as if it was our fault, you know.
AS: Did you fly your own regular aircraft that you got attached to?
HH: Yes, yeah. D, we always flew in D, until one time we let, we were on leave and I think it was an Australian pilot took it and he was very conscious of saving fuel. So he throttled right back coming back and the result was that the, when we went to run the engine up the following day, the engine started to shake, port engine started to shake and suddenly the prop came off and went right through where I’d be normally sitting and sliced my table in half, but I was in the rest position now for take-off you know.
AS: Wow. So that was one of your nine lives gone?
HH: Yeah. I tell that story I say, as you can see I’m still here [laughs]. I wasn’t sitting there at the time.
AS: So, did they repair the aeroplane or was that the demise of D-Dog?
HH: But that was it finished, D-Dog was finished then and we got the Mark 2.1 A then.
AS: Still as D-Dog or was there a superstition about that?
HH: No. We were still with D, yeah. But, Jackie Miles, he was our mid upper gunner, he was really pleased to get that. We got four guns, he was really happy [laughs]. But it was much safer to have somebody in a blister looking down underneath.
AS: Is that what he used to do before he got the target?
HH: Yeah. Yes, and he used to put it in his log book, duty, rear gunner’s me [laughs].
AS: Yeah. On, when you were on ops, had the idea of the bomber stream come in by then?
HH: Oh yes. Yes, we were on the very first time they dropped, the Pathfinders used Oboe on the Essen raids. I think it was first used on the 5th of March, wasn’t it?
AS: I don’t know, 1943. This was.
HH: Yeah, ’43, ’43 by this time, yeah.
AS: So, it was quite early on in the idea of the Pathfinders.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, you went on ops just as the stream and the concentration were starting to take place. I know you were deep in the bowels of the aeroplane at your navigation table. Did you, did the crew see other aircraft around them, feel the other aircraft around them?
HH: No, you are in the slipstream the whole time. Especially when you got near the target, when you’re on your final run, you sort of you feel the slipstream and you have got to remember that five percent of our losses were due to collisions, it has been estimated.
AS: That’s a high percentage.
HH: I think we were told that at the time to be extra vigiliant, you know.
AS: Against the dangers of collision. What about enemy aircraft on your first tour? Did you have any encounters with the German night fighters?
HH: Oh yeah. [unclear], he shot down two, he shot down a Ju 88 and an Me 110 I think it was, yeah.
AS: And this, this was your rear gunner.
HH: And he had a problem as well. A lot of Battle of Britain pilots would have given their eye tooth for a score like that. Probably would have gotten a DSO and a DFC.
AS: [laughs] there are a lot of unsung deeds in Bomber Command.
HH: Anyway then we finished up in October ’43 and I got sent up to 6 Group, it was a Canadian crew.
AS: With the Canadians. How did you?
HH: And they wanted everybody to be Canadians, you know. They didn’t want an English instructor so I got, I quickly got posted down to 3 Group. And
AS: Somewhere along the way you, you picked up the DFM. Was that during your first tour?
HH: Yes, was the first tour.
AS: And what was the story behind your DFM?
HH: I don’t know really. It’s not in the book even, not even in the, my citation is not there, there’s a book of DFMs in the RAF, book of DFCs and DFMs. And I think there was an Australian, called Cameron, he found this book of DFMs but I don’t know, I think Gus Walker probably. You see, I’d broken my left foot, I’d broken a bone in my left foot and what with having leave, we were due for leave I went on leave on with my foot in plaster, came back and had the plaster taken off and then I fell off my bicycle [laughs]. Didn’t help. So, the doc said, ‘Right, I’m going to keep you in hospital until your foot’s cured. I don’t want any arguments.’ And the following day Sam came in, he said, we are on tonight, [unclear] and they want me to take a spare navigator and I said, ‘No way, Sam, let’s go and see the doc.’ The doc was in a good mood ‘cause he was going on leave. So, have you read all this before?
AS: No.
HH: So, [pause] he said, ‘Alright you, you can go this time, but’, he says, ‘Provided you come back into hospital as soon as you get back. If you get back’, he said, ‘If you get back.’ So, he then went on leave. Anyway, I duly arrived at main briefing, done my navigation briefing, I think we came at main briefing and Gus Walker was on the door. And Gus said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m on crutches you see. I’m going on ops.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t where my crew is going, I don’t want them to go without me.’ ‘Well, oh alright then.’ So I went in and we went to Berlin that night. And when I got back, Gus was still on the station. ‘Cause he was in charge of three squadrons, wasn’t he? Up there. And he said, ‘Right, young Hughes,’ he says, ‘I’ve been hearing all about you, he says, ‘It’s alright, I’ll take you back to the hospital myself.’ And then I got in his car and he tore me off a bit of a mild strip for being irresponsible and some of that and then as I got out, he said, ‘Bloody good show anyway, Hughes.’ And I think it was he who recommended me for a DFM, I don’t know, probably.
AS: Excellent. It’s a wonderful, wonderful story. What happened, you said, you tried the book in the RAF club to find your citation. Have you explored anywhere else, to try and find the DFM citation?
HH: I did write to some time ago, I don’t know, I think they did, you get from RAF records I think.
AS: Okay.
HH: Because I wrote to them the other day and asked them if, ‘cause I had a letter from them to say that I could retain the rank, substantive rank of flight lieutenant when I finished in the reserve and use the courtesy rank of squadron leader. But I’ve never used it. So I thought it would be a nice thing to have on my tombstone, so I wrote and asked them if that still pertained, shall we say.
AS: And you are still waiting for a reply.
HH: Well, they wrote back to me and said that I’d have to give them some more proof of who I was, you know, passports, et cetera so I sent them up a copy of my, one of my utility bills and my council tax demand.
AS: Well, hopefully that’s good enough.
HH: It only went off last week, so we will have to wait and see.
AS: You mentioned briefings. I know the targets were different and the weather was different, but could you give me some idea of an average preparation for a mission from waking up in the morning to taking off. Is that possible, that sort of things that?
HH: Yeah, because you went down to the, you went down to the flights and you stood in the apron outside the squadron offices and at ten to ten on the dot, if you were on that night, the phone would ring. You knew you were on that night then and then, but if you waited and waited until ten past ten the phone would ring again to say the squadron’s stood down by which time we had all disappeared ‘cause we’d all. Didn’t want to go to on a bloody route march or something [unclear].
AS: So it was all incredibly secret but the routine gave it away.
HH: Yeah [laughs].
AS: So if the phone call came at ten to ten, you knew you were on ops that night, what would happen then?
HH: Well I did, we’d go down to our aircraft and check all the equipment in it and then if necessary you take it up on an air test and then you were back on the ground again by, about eleven, eleven thirty, and then you’d either come back and go to lunch and or else you’d and then after you’d had lunch you’d go on for navigation briefing at about two o’clock.
AS: So the navigator was the first person in the crew to know where you were going, what timing was.
HH: Yes, we knew where we were going, yeah.
AS: Was that a very full briefing, with weather? Is this when you drew up your courses, you got your turning points and what not?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Was this a very full briefing?
HH: Oh yeah, well, the navigation briefing, yes, you got your various tracks you had to go on to and hopefully they’re taking you around the defended areas you know.
AS: The flak and the searchlights, yeah. Was there a lot of work involved for you to prepare your charts?
HH: Yes, it took quite a time. You were mainly with your bomb aimer to help you, you know. Harry Hoover, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator, he trained in South Africa I think.
AS: So, you two were the only ones that knew at the navigation briefing the target. Was it difficult to keep it secret from your skipper and your crew?
HH: Oh no, you didn’t have to keep it secret but you just told the rest of the crew where we’re going so all this business about being a gasp when they, when the curtains were pulled across from the map.
AS: Probably you already knew.
HH: We all knew where we were going by that time, at least my crew did.
AS: So, you’ve done your navigation briefing and what happened then? Just sit around waiting for the main crew briefing or did you have duties to do?
HH: No, we just, by the time you finished doing the nav, it’s about time for the main briefing and then having done the main briefing you then went for an ops breakfast. The ops breakfast, which was bacon and eggs, baked beans, all the things you shouldn’t eat.
AS: Baked beans?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’re flying at twenty thousand feet.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Oh, that could have been interesting. What was the atmosphere like? Was there a lot of tension? Was there a lot of horseplay? Was there a lot of fear? What was the atmosphere like?
HH: I don’t know, I can’t remember now, there was a feeling of are we gonna make it or not, you know.
AS: Was that a personal thing or something that you talked about with the crew?
HH: I would never, never, never, never, my mid upper gunner, he, one day, we were in our room, I shared a room with him and he packed up all his biscuits on his bed and folded up all the blankets and sheets. What are you doing that for? And he said, ‘I don’t think we are gonna come back. So I’m putting the things in order now.’ And he got all his paperwork out and everything, letters and everything to his wife and things.
AS: What did that do to your morale?
HH: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t very happy about it but it was a scrub that night anyway. Then he said, afterwards he said, ‘God, good job we didn’t go to [unclear] because we weren’t going to come back.’ He knew.
AS: But after that on future trips he was fine.
HH: Well, I said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again, Jackie, I said, ‘You never do a thing like that again.’
AS: Tempting fate. What about off duty, what sort of things did you, you guys get up to that you can talk about?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Off duty, did you get much time off to yourself? Or to yourselves as a crew?
HH: Yeah. We, I used to go out with, mainly with another crew ‘cause all our crew, our skipper was commissioned, so we were all and the rest of them, Jackie Miles he lived in Leeds so when he had an evening off, he went back to Leeds and the rear gunner was the same, he was somewhere just outside Leeds. Sam was from Leeds as well, the pilot, so it was only the engineer and myself.
AS: So you latched onto another crew for the,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The social element.
HH: Yes, [unclear] crew, yeah. I was pretty friendly with his navigator but he got killed.
AS: And did the rest of the crew come back?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And brought him back?
HH: They brought him back, yeah.
AS: Your, we were talking about your navigation training and astro, during your time, your first tour on ops, did you start to get Gee in the aeroplane or any other navigational aids that you used?
HH: We had Gee.
AS: You had Gee.
HH: Right from the start, yeah. We had the Mark 1 Gee which was, used to have to tune it, the narrow knobs on the side and you had to tune it to get a signal and it’s like tuning one of those. Televisions, you know.
AS: Keep wandering off. Did you, was it as a big revolution in navigation as people say?
HH: The Gee was, yeah.
AS: The Gee was, it really did make a difference.
HH: Yeah, well, it did make a difference because, but you didn’t get it beyond the Dutch coast, it wouldn’t work beyond the Dutch coast but you had we, well, you had LORAN later, in Mosquitos we had Gee and LORAN. In fact, it really annoys me now to hear the met men talking about the jet stream because we found the very first jet stream. I found a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots at thirty thousand feet.
AS: Tailwind.
HH: Hundred and ninety five knots and when we got back, I told the met man, I said, ‘I got a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots and you were forecasting forty five to fifty knots.’ He said, ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!’ So he went to Group headquarters and the Group headquarters said we don’t believe it. They went to Command headquarters and the met people up there said they didn’t believe it either. But then everybody else came back with these winds and they suddenly realised what was called jet streams but now they talk about jet streams all the time. And what they mean is where the warm front, the warm tropical front meets the polar maritime front and all the way along that you get depressions form and then, and with it you get this so-called jet stream would form as well. Ah, so which comes first? The frontal systems or the jet stream?
AS: Must be the fronts, must be the fronts. So, when you are doing your tour, you’d had the nasty experience of being bombed twice by your own people, probably 5 Group above you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Was that the limit of the difficulties you had? Was the aeroplane mechanically reliable or did you suffer?
HH: Oh, we, came back on three engines more times than we came back on four.
AS: Really?
HH: Yeah. I think we came back on three engines eleven times out of our tour.
AS: And what did your ground crew chief say to that?
HH: Well, it wasn’t their fault, necessarily, well, he didn’t think it was anyway.
AS: It’s just overstraining them, is it, full fuel, full bombload climb to heights. Coming back from the raids, what was your pilot like? Was he one of those that, wanted to pour on the coal and get home early or did he stick to heights and courses as briefed or?
HH: Well, he couldn’t do much else with a Halifax. But when I was on Mosquitos, with our New Zealand pilot, we were always first back [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: Becomes a matter of pride. On your first tour still perhaps we can talk a bit more about that. As you got towards the end, did the, you knew presumably you were going to stop on, what, thirty trips?
HH: Well, I did twenty six in fact.
AS: Okay.
HH: Which we were screened two trips early. I would have done twenty eight for my first tour, ‘cause the pilot had already done two second Dickey trips to start with. [door bell rings] That’s my taxi now.
AS: Okay.
HH: So I’ll just pause this. [recording paused] We were just talking about your tour length. The question I was going to ask is did you feel a real rising tension as you got towards the end of your tour?
HH: But we didn’t know we were towards the end, we thought we had another two trips to do.
AS: Okay.
HH: But, I remember Sam coming in and he says, ‘I have some good news for you, we’re screens and you’re off on leave from tomorrow. You are all going on leave tomorrow.’
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Mh?
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Ah, it was good feeling but I forget what happened now. When I was on Mosquitos I think when I was doing my last trip on Mosquitos ‘cause you had to do fifty on Mosquitos you see for a tour.
AS: So, you finished on 102 Squadron and were there many crews that went all the way through like yours did?
HH: No, not a great deal, I wish I had the [unclear] I’ve got it somewhere, might be in that case there, book of all the losses, you know. 102 Squadron losses.
AS: Oh, perhaps we can look at that tomorrow or now if you like.
HH: Well I, it might be in that case, I’m not sure.
AS: Let’s pause this and we’ll go and have a look. [recording paused]
AS: Harry, good morning, it’s day two of our interview sessions. It’s very good of you to agree to this interview. Can we start by going back to your first tour of operations during the Battle of the Ruhr on Halifaxes. Were you conscious at the time that this was a major battle or was it just one job after another?
HH: We were trying to hit Germany where it hurt, ‘cause we didn’t only go to the Ruhr and we went to places like Pilsen, and then we did Nuremberg and Munich and.
AS: Were you briefed on specific targets in these cities and told what you were going after?
HH: Oh, we knew that Essen was the Krupp works, yeah, and we were given a good, pretty good briefing by the intelligence officer what we were gonna hit because one time we went, we were going to. There was almost a mutiny one day because they were sending to some place I forget, Gelsenkirchen or somewhere, I forget where it was now, and [pause]
AS: What happened then? What was the mutiny all about?
HH: Well, the intelligence officer said that he didn’t know why we were going there, there was nothing there, there was just a spa town that we were going to hit but what we didn’t know, of course, it was a leave centre for the Gestapo and the place was full of the Gestapo officers and but you know initially we said, no, why are we going there, you know? And there was almost not exactly a mutiny but it was a fear of you know, why are we bombing this place, we probably would just hit a lot of women and children.
AS: So, this was 1943. So even at that stage.
HH: This is ’45. ‘43 rather.
AS: So, even at that stage there were some concerns amongst the crews about what you were doing and where you were going.
HH: Yeah, we didn’t, the Hamburg raids for example. That’s the first time there was a real firestorm and we went on three or four of those raids, I forget now, it’s in the book, Hamburg in July ’43. That book is falling to bits, isn’t it?
AS: Well, it happens to all of us, doesn’t it? As we get older. Here we go, 24th of July ’43 and the 27th of July ‘43. Ops Hamburg, yeah. And then the 2nd of August.
HH: Yeah, the 2nd of August when we, we’d already realised that the firestorms, you know, in then, we were dropping our incendiaries first and setting fire to places and then dropping four thousand pounders, two and four thousand pounders on top of the fires which, that’s why it’s called the firestorm, the blast from the comparatively thin-cased two thousand pounders and what have you, would suck in the air and the oxygen, you know, and cause these firestorms.
AS: So, the thin-cased bombs would blow the roofs off and then the incendiaries would go inside and.
HH: Well, you know, in that, wish I could find that, you could sit and watch that, the CD I’ve got somewhere in there of.
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Yes, the first or second of the Hamburg raids which caused the firestorm. And I remember watching this from over the bomb aimer’s shoulder and watching these fires spreading and I remember saying, I felt very sorry for the people down there.
AS: At that time.
HH: At that time, yeah. In fact I said a little prayer for them.
AS: Is this something you discussed with the crew or any of your friends?
HH: Not really, no. I just said a prayer to myself, yeah.
AS: And was that really specific to Hamburg or to?
HH: Just to Hamburg, yeah. ‘Cause that was where the firestorms first started. Well, it was worst then Dresden actually.
AS: I believe so in the numbers lost. So, your first tour was absolutely in the thick of what we call the Battle of the Ruhr and extremely, extremely difficult and dangerous missions.
HH: The people who came after me, they’d done Hamburg and the Battle of the Ruhr, and then they had to follow on doing the Battle of Berlin. You can find my very last trip was to Berlin I think, no, it was Hanover. It was one of my last trips was to Berlin, that’s when I went on crutches, yeah.
AS: Home on three engines, that one?
HH: Was that Berlin?
AS: Yes, 23rd of August. And then you did a Munich and a Hanover. What was Berlin like? Was it special, was it the
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was Berlin perhaps the best defended target? What was Berlin like?
HH: It was the length of the trip really. You know, on heavies, on Lancs and heavies it took us eight and a half hours there and back. What’s it say there? [paper rustling]
AS: Seven hours fifteen, that’s still an incredible time. People talk about eight hour days, and that was a full day’s work at night.
HH: Was a full day’s work was being shot at too.
AS: And, I mean, was Berlin the best defended target, do you think or was that the Ruhr, perhaps?
HH: No, I think, I don’t think it was as bad as the Ruhr but it was, there was plenty of activity there but mainly a lot of fighter activity there over the target, over Berlin.
AS: And you, you could see the enemy?
HH: Oh yeah. They were coned and searchlights one time I was on Mosquitos, there was two Mosquitos, an Fw 190, and an Me 109, all on the same cone.
AS: Wow!
HH: And there is a painting of that somewhere. I described it, you know. And there is a painting somewhere that is called Berlin Express. And [unclear] have got the original.
AS: Okay, I’ll look for that.
HH: [unclear] then.
AS: Okay. Some trips to France as well. Le Creusot. You weren’t after a saucepan factory there were you, what was, can you remember what that trip was about?
HH: Oh yes, that was, they were manufacturing parts for tanks and things, I think.
AS: Gosh, here, after Le Creusot, Muhlheim, home on two engines.
HH: Yeah [laughs]
AS: What’s the story behind that? Did they just pack up or was it flak or?
HH: Yeah, they just packed up on us yeah, these Merlins were you know they were way overstressed on the Halifax and we came back on two on that occasion, yeah.
AS: After a lot of, after the Hamburgs that we talked about and Berlin, Munich. Now, can you remember that trip? September ’43 to Munich.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First off, first back, in your log book, eight hours, fifty five minutes. Did the stream hold together, the bomber stream hold together over these long distances?
HH: Yeah, you we were all given certain times, you know, you had to be at certain times on all the way along the track, at the various turning points, you know. And I think it did help, you know, no doubt about it and then with the advent of Window of course, it just threw their ground tracking, we had a little device, did I tell you, a little device called Boozer in Mosquitos.
AS: No, you didn’t, no.
HH: We had a little device which, when they were tracking you from the ground, a little yellow light used to glow. But when they were tracking from the air, a red light used to glow. And one night, we were coming back, and somewhere around about the Hamburg, sorry the Bremen Hanover gap, and this red light came on very bright and we knew the red light meant we were being tracked from the air you see. And then suddenly over the top of us, about the height of this building, just came two, I think they were Me 263s,
AS: The jets?
HH: The jets, yeah. Right over the top of us. And they didn’t see us. I got a photograph of a Mosquito somewhere I don’t know what she’s done with it now. I meant to ask her that when she was in last night.
AS: No worries, maybe today. So, this, the 262s had the speed, they were the only ones with the speed to catch you, really.
HH: Yes. They were doing about a hundred knots faster than us. Fifty to a hundred knots faster than us. And they just sailed over the top of us and disappeared in the distance. There were four jets, two of them.
AS: So they had radar airborne in the jets.
HH: Yes.
AS: That is a pretty dangerous development, isn’t it? That was another one of your nine lives gone, really, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Your slices of luck. Back to your first tour, you, when did you come off ops?
HH: I went to a conversion unit, at a place called Wombleton.
AS: Okay, was that Stirlings?
HH: No, it was Halifaxes actually but.
AS: Okay.
HH: Canadian group, they are mainly on Halifaxes.
AS: In 6 Group, how did you get on with the Canadians?
HH: Not very well.
AS: Really?
HH: No. They are very, they didn’t want to know us, you know, they just wanted to get rid of us as quickly as they could.
AS: I’ve heard this that they were running,
HH: They wanted to run their own show.
AS: [unclear] as part of the Canadian.
HH: I remember getting one crew and I said, I wanted to send them back for further training because the navigator was absolutely hopeless. He really was, he couldn’t, it was like putting, I don’t know, he was thick as two planks, he couldn’t. So, I said if you’re sending this crew with this navigator they don’t stand a chance of getting through, not a chance at all. They’ll be shot down on, within their first five operations, they’ll be shot down.
AS: And do you know whether that came to pass?
HH: No. They didn’t like this, you know, the fact that I’d criticised one of their Canadian crews and I was posted down to 3 Group and, which suited me, and the crew got to squadron, got to a squadron and they did one trip and got hopelessly lost and I heard it afterwards that the CO of the, I think it was Lane, what was his name? Lane. He said, what the hell are you doing sending us crews that are, they should have been send back for further training. And I had recommended that.
AS: Had you been commissioned by this point?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: I was commissioned at the end of my first tour, I think.
AS: What sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: Pardon?
AS: How did, what sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: I just had an interview, I don’t know, who I had an interview with now, I can’t remember. And I mean after the interview I was then a pilot officer but I was a flight sergeant before and my pay was sixteen shillings a day as a flight sergeant but as a pilot officer I was only going to get fourteen and four pence a day. So they said, oh, we can’t have that so they gave me a six pence rise, six pence a day rise so I was getting fourteen and six a day as a pilot officer. And then eventually when I was a flight lieutenant after a couple of years, I was out in India by that time, and I got, well I was on Indian rates of pay anyway so, it didn’t factor.
AS: Back to the instructing. You finished an operational tour, had some leave and presumably your crew dispersed.
HH: Yeah. Pilot went to Rufforth converting many French Canadians and to go to Elvington, French, I mean French crews rather, French crews to go to Elvington, to 77 Squadron.
AS: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew members after?
HH: I came up to York a couple of times and met Sam, Jackie Miles I used to see and my gunner and Harry [unclear] the, the last time I’ve heard from him, he was up at near Shrewsbury.
AS: You all went to instructors jobs, do you?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did they teach how to be an instructor or did they just send you off?
HH: No, I just went in and just talked to them and told them where they were going wrong, you know, and how to waste time and things like that.
AS: In the air this is.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, did you do any formal classroom training of these chaps or was it just, what, supervising in the air and on the ground?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Supervising?
HH: Yeah, just going through their logs and charts individually with them and showing them where they’d gone wrong.
AS: And I believe the same sort of thing used to happen on ops, that when you came back your nav leader would go through your charts, is that right?
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: They’d assess your, that’s the assessment on each one there.
AS: That we saw before.
HH: The little design on his wall, Charlie had, he had sort of a little square beside each one of you and you had two dots for very good, one dot for reasonably good, no dots at all for
AS: Average.
HH: Just average. Yeah.
AS: That’s his way of keeping track. So, on 3 Group, is this when you went to Stirlings? When you were training?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When you left the Canadians and went to 3 Group, that was, what was that, Stirlings, was that the Conversion Unit there?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yeah, it’s down at Chedburgh.
AS: Okay.
HH: And, yeah, Chedburgh, near Bury St Edmunds. There was a beer drought down at that time and we used to cycle miles to find a pub with beer [laughs]. Then we’d keep very quiet about it [laughs].
AS: It’s not too bad.
HH: Me and a Canadian called Connors and we wanted to, we’d heard about that 8 Group wanted Mosquito pilots and navigators, so, we both applied to go, we both applied to go back on ops together. So, our first application, we were turned down because, being in 3 Group on Stirlings, you know, they were rather short of crews, and so we were turned down anyway. So we waited a couple of weeks and we applied again and we got turned down again. So that night, I got a tin of black paint from the stores and I wrote a message, a letter on the ceiling of the mess to the group captain, quite a polite letter, would you kindly pull your finger out and get us posted back on ops. We’re fed up with this instructing so could we please get back in so and so and signed it Connor and Hughes. The following day we were up in front of the old man and he said, ‘Right, you’re both going back, no way you’re going on the same crew or on the same squadron. In fact, you go back first, Hughes. Connor will follow you in about two- or three-weeks’ time.’ And this is what happened.
AS: It’s amazing. So you weren’t actually instructing for very long, were you?
HH: No, from October until July, so I suppose six months.
AS: Okay.
HH: And you’re supposed to have six months, at least six months rest, you know? From operations. Between tours.
AS: Okay. And then, in July having arranged your own posting really, you arrive at 1655 MCU. What’s MCU?
HH: Mosquito conversion unit.
AS: Okay.
HH: At Warboys, yeah, and Weston [?].
AS: I imagine this must have been a completely different sort of navigating. Was it?
HH: Oh, just very quick, but you, you wouldn’t think it now but I was very, very neat and tidy in what I did. I knew exactly, I used to keep my pencils in my flying boots, my dividers as well, [unclear] my Douglas protractor I kept in my hat with my dividers, which was behind me and my Dalton and, and then we used to take as your [unclear] fix, as soon as you got airborne, you got to operational high I’d take fix, fix, fix, every three minutes, then work out a tracking ground speed wind velocity and then another three minutes later another fix, a nine minute tracking ground velocity plus the sixth, the latest sixth one and another one, further on, six, and I can tell you exactly which way the wind was going, how far out the met was on their winds.
AS: And these fixes would be visual fixes or Gee fixes or both?
HH: Gee fixes.
AS: Gee fixes.
HH: So I’d take fix, fix, fix, you worked really hard to get the timing, you know, of the.
AS: Whereabouts was the Gee screen in the aeroplane? You were sitting on the right in the [unclear]
HH: I was sitting on the right and the Gee was behind me and LORAN as well.
AS: Okay. So.
HH: Gee and LORAN which was behind me.
AS: So, could you operate the equipment with your harnesses done up?
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: ‘Cause you just turned your head and⸻
HH: I just turned my head. It was just like there, behind me, there, but I could turn easier then and it was there, you know, just behind about there, about that angle to me.
AS: And it is just, as you say, second nature, three minutes, three minutes.
HH: It didn’t take long to take the fix but it took a long time but we, we had charts with the letters, lines of the Gee chart superimposed on top of it. So, this really worked very well.
AS: So, what came up on the Gee screen? What allowed you to compare the screen to the map?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the presentation on the Gee screen? What actually came up? Was it numbers or?
HH: Yeah. Well, you just, you could, you worked out, you knew what, you strobed the whichever signal you wanted to take, you know, and then you, you strobed the two of them and then fix and then you just read it off.
AS: I guess it’s, so you gotta an alphanumerical printout did you virtually.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Wow. So that could be done quickly.
HH: It’s quite, it’s very quick to work it all out, yeah, to work it out to get, to actually calculate the winds on your Dalton.
AS: How did you operate at night, because I imagine you had no lights in the cockpit?
HH: Well, we had enough.
AS: Okay.
HH: We had a red light and then, what’s his name? Anderson, our group navigation officer, he found that red, you couldn’t see the red markings on your chart. So, that was all orange and green.
AS: Which was easier to see.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. So, when you’d done your Mosquito conversion unit or at the Mosquito conversion unit, you must have crewed up with a pilot, how did that go?
HH: Well, I had already wanted to fly with this Australian so, when this New Zealander came along, I thought, he’ll do, I crewed up with him.
AS: As simple as that. And did you do, did the aeroplane Mosquito take some getting used to it, so different from a heavy bomber, with different performance and.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: What was she like to fly in?
HH: It was nice and reasonably fast. And I don’t think you really noticed it until you were doing some low flying.
AS: Shall we take a pause there? Okay. [recording paused]
HH: The Mosquito was, it was terribly difficult for a navigator to get out of.
AS: Why was that?
HH: Well, you had to, first of all you had to get hold of your chute and you kept that on, then you had to jettison two hatches to get out,
AS: Underneath.
HH: Underneath, yeah. Slightly forward towards the nose, yeah. And but by which time your pilot probably gone out of the top and you were spiralling down and the chance of you getting out was pretty slim.
AS: This hatch underneath must have been very close to the starboard propeller.
HH: Yes, we, yeah. Yes, it was quite close, yeah.
AS: Did you practice this on the ground a lot?
HH: No. I don’t think they thought you were, it was worth the risk. But the, a friend of mine used to fly with a man called Gill and he went down, got killed, Ronnie Knaith went down with his aircraft, and Gill got out and came home and he went to see Ronnie’s parents and they just slammed the door in his face, they wouldn’t talk to him. ‘Cause they had thought that he’d should have stayed onto the controls until Ronnie got out. Which is really what one was supposed to do.
AS: I hadn’t realised that the drill for the pilot was to go out of the top.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Because there’s a tailfin behind.
HH: Yeah, you jettison, you jettison the hood I think, the whole hood went. And theoretically the navigator could’ve gone out after him, I suppose, but.
AS: I think overall the losses were less on the Mosquito.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: I think you were safer flying in a Mozzie than in a Halifax.
HH: Yes, I mean, there’s somewhere I got the losses in Hamish’s book, in Hamish Mahaddie’s book, all the losses in 8 Group and you will see that 692 do feature quite regularly, you know.
AS: Yeah, so you were posted to 692 Squadron after the conversion unit. You’d had, I suppose, eight months away from ops by then, ten months, had things changed a lot in that time?
HH: I don’t think they’d changed all that much for the heavies, no. And we operated separately and we used to do Window opening for the heavies, we used to do, we used to fly out with the heavies and used to meet up with them at Reading, they’d all congregated there, what’s that? There is something squeaking, did you hear?
AS: I don’t know, let’s pause the tape.[recording paused] Well, Harry, we discovered what the squeak was, it was the smoke alarm. We were talking about Window opening and you meeting the heavies over Reading.
HH: Yeah. We used to fly down with the and meet up with the heavies and then we’d weave in and out of them, stream, you know, and you could see the strength of the stream then because, you know, there was just a whole block of them all over the horizon.
AS: And these are daylights.
HH: Yeah, in daylight, yeah, it would be. And then somebody in one of the heavies would be signalling to us, you lucky bastards or words to that effect. So I was sent back, been there, done that [laughs].
AS: Fair do’s. Because you could fly a lot faster and a lot higher than they could.
HH: Well, we used to be, weave in and out of them, you see. And then, then when you got to the coast, you climbed very rapidly above and you got to your operational height. If we were going to say, if we were Window opening say for Stuttgart, we’d probably do a, you go to Cologne first and drop a few bundles of Window there making them, making them think that was the target, you see. And then we’d go along to wherever, Stuttgart, and where the main force were going, and we’d, we’d do Window opening for the first wave of Pathfinders going in.
AS: Okay. This was the, was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Yeah, well, we were the light night striking force, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: But our main role was to bomb Berlin every night.
AS: Oh, you were involved in this Berlin shuttle?
HH: Yes. So, we used to drop our cookie, we used to drop Window for the heavies and then we’d go along to Berlin and drop our four thousand pounders, keep them awake.
AS: Ah, so, did you have those special Mosquitos then?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Those with the pregnant bomb bay?
HH: That one there, isn’t it?
AS: Yes. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, who got to drop the bomb? Was it you or the driver?
HH: Me.
AS: You.
HH: Yeah. Unless we were doing low level. And even then it was me up on the front, up in the nose.
AS: How did you, how did you drop Window from a tiny little aeroplane like Mosquito?
HH: We had a chute, little wooden chute which used to go through the two doors and we just dropped bundles of Window through that. Remember to grab the string as it went down, otherwise you’d just drop bundles [laughs].
AS: You don’t want them falling on someone’s head and hurting them, do you?
HH: No [laughs]. So, it’s a nice day now, isn’t it?
AS: It’s wonderful out there. It’s great. So, sometimes you were operating with the main bomber stream and sometimes as 8 Group by yourself or squadron by yourself?
HH: Individually, yeah.
AS: Individually too?
HH: We used to fly, we used to sing, I made up, there was a song going round at that time sung by Hildegard, I walk alone, to tell you the truth I’ll be lonely, I don’t mind being lonely, when my heart tells me you are lonely too. So, I made up the words for our squadron, we fly alone, when all the heavies are grounded and dining, 692 will be climbing, we still press on, it’s every night, though they never will give us a French route, for the honour of 8 Group, we’ll still press on.
AS: That’s fantastic.
HH: It’s always a [unclear] no matter how far, one bomb is slung beneath, it’s twelve degrees east, one engine at least [laughs]. It’s a pretty horrible little song.
AS: it’s brilliant. It sums up what you felt.
HH: Not as good as some of the songs, you see, erks used to make up in India and down in Burma, you know. One they used to sing, rotting in the jungle, on a [unclear] marshy shores, dysentery, malaria and bags of jungle sores, living around in a bloody great heap, our beds are damp, we cannot sleep, we’re going round the corner, we’re going round the bend, two trips to Meiktila, maybe three or four, AOL’s a keen type, he thinks we’re doing more. When we get back as you can guess, we’ll put this effing kite US [laughs] and we’re going round the, and there’s about two more verses to that, I can’t remember, that’s when the mail arrives, and there’s two for you and f.a. for me you know [laughs].
AS: I think we will have to try and get you a recording contract. This could be an excellent CD on the wireless.
HH: I don’t think they’d allow it to be broadcast.
AS: Probably not, probably not. But see, you, it sounds as you had very high morale on the squadron.
HH: Oh yeah. But, yes, this was when I was on ferrying.
AS: And on 692, as you say, opening with Window and then lots and lots of trips to
HH: Berlin.
AS: To Berlin. Did you ever get involved in a double trip, I believe some people, some crews did two trips to Berlin in one night.
HH: Yeah, we did, on one occasion we did. I think we did Duisburg in the morning and Berlin that night. Came back, and refuelled and bombed up again and we were away again.
AS: There must have been, I would expect, a cumulative tiredness at that level of operations. I’ve seen your ops on your second tour are very close together.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First of October, third, fourth, fifth, two on the fifth, very, very very close together and then Berlin followed the next night by Cologne. Did you, were you conscious of getting tired?
HH: Well, no, because when you’re off, you went into town and into Cambridge and I met up with my girlfriend and she was lovely, my girlfriend, I must have a picture of her, I did have a picture. She was beautiful, she was lovely red hair and creamy skin, you know, and green eyes, oh, she was beautiful. I used to walk down the street with her and everybody would stop and stare, at her, not at me [laughs].
AS: I was going to ask that. And you met her when you joined the squadron?
HH: When I joined 692, yeah. Yeah, we were walking, you remember, do you remember the Red Lion in Cambridge?
AS: I don’t know Cambridge well. I know where the airfield is.
HH: There used to be a passage where you could go through, you’d start off in the Baron of Beef, down by the river there and, and then you go from there to the Bun Shop and to get to the Bun Shop you have to walk through the Red Lion right, right the way through there, the foyer, there is a bar, two bars there and when I walked through there one night, there was Red sitting there with two of her friends and as I walked through, I said, ‘Cor’ to who I was with and I caught red hair and no drawers, and I said, ‘I’m in’ [laughs]. And she followed me through to the Bun Shop and that’s how I met up with her [laughs].
AS: Excellent. Probably best not pursue that story too much further, I think. So, you’ve got here on a trip to Berlin, landed Woodbridge. Now⸻
HH: Yeah.
AS: I know that Woodbridge is one of the emergency landing grounds.
HH: Yeah, well we, very often we had to land, when we took S-Sugar, which is a bloody awful aircraft with a terrible fuel consumption, if we took that to Berlin, we would end up, always end up landing short of fuel at Woodbridge. In fact, one night, when Harris was on this station, we were the only squadron operating that night, so he came to our briefing. [phone ringing]
AS: I’ll pause there. So, after the phone call, we were talking about S-Sugar and its ability to drink fuel.
HH: Yeah, on this night Harris was at the and [unclear] Northrop, our CO was reading out the battle order, you know, and he said, came to, flying officer Mormo, S-Sugar, ‘S-Sugar?’ said Roy, ‘What’s wrong with our Robert?’ ‘Well, that’s got a mark drop on the starboard engine, you’re going to have to take the spare.’ ‘But S f for Sugar, sir, that bloody kite flies like a brick shithouse!’ [laughs] and old Harris was standing there, and he was trying his best not to laugh, you know, his moustache had a twitch and [laughs] you could he’s gonna laugh every minute, you know. But he didn’t, he held it in [laughs]
AS: What was Woodbridge like? Is an emergency landing ground very different from a normal airfield?
HH: Oh yeah, you, huts with the roof off, you know, half off and snow would come in, on a snowy night, yeah.
AS: Not finished?
HH: No, they had just blown off. That’s a nuisance that thing, isn’t it?
AS: Your smoke alarm, yeah. As we got to this time or you got to this time in the war, this was late 1944.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Had the scene changed in terms of aids to navigation, things like Sandra lights and Darky and ground organisation, was there a lot to help you?
HH: [unclear] Much on the ground I think, mainly H2S, Oboe, things like that, you know. And G8, wasn’t it? G8.
AS: G-H, yeah. I didn’t, I don’t know how that worked, I never had that but we were quite content with LORAN. In fact, I got a wind over, going down to, I forget where I was going, Berlin I suppose, but yeah, we were going over to Berlin I think and I got a wind just north of the Ruhr, a hundred and ninety five knots.
AS: Wow!
HH: And what we’d done, we hit a jet stream, you see, and but when I came back, I said to the met man, I got a wind of a hundred, impossible, impossible, impossible, and it went to Group and Group said impossible as well, went to Command and Command said impossible well then when everybody started to get them, they suddenly realised there was something in this jet stream. Now they talk about nothing else but the bloody jet stream and it annoys me that because they ignored their existence during the war, the met people did and we kept telling them, look there is something up there and it didn’t last very long, you see, you were in it and then you were out of it, you know. So you couldn’t use it as a general wind to carry on to Berlin, shall we say for example, and nor could you use it when you were coming back. You might hit it again but it’d be in a different place slightly and.
AS: It must have meant that you had to be on your toes with your fixes all the time.
HH: Yeah. Anyway we,
AS: In your logbook, it suddenly goes from duty as nav to duty nav b. What was the significance of?
HH: Well, I stood in as bomb aimer as well.
AS: Ah, okay, that’s what it was. Tremendous number of operations over the winter of ’44-’45.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So I presume you must have flown in most weather with the nav aids that you had.
HH: Oh yeah, I remember one night, I don’t know if I should say this because it’s a bit derogatory to somebody who’s now dead, and that’s to Don Bennett. He was in the control tower on this particular night and we were getting hoarfrost all along the wings of our, as we taxied out we were getting hoarfrost develop all along the wings, so Roy got onto control and he says, ‘Could we have the de-icing bowsers out, please?’ And Bennett said, ‘Never mind about the de-icing bowser, just get off the deck.’ Well, we didn’t go, we said, ‘No, no. It’s too dangerous.’ Anyway, another aircraft came after us and they ploughed into the end of the runway and they were both killed of course when their bomb blew up. And Bennett never said a word to us afterwards, he was, we came back for briefing that night and he’d left the station. We came back and got the de-icing bowser and got cleared of the hoarfrost. He literally left, you see. And then we went to Berlin that night, I think.
AS: I should think, with fuel and a four thousand pounder you must have needed all the runway to get off.
HH: Yeah, well, there is another tale attached to that, the, you see, we started off with four thousand pounders, I think we were the first squadron to have four thousand pounders, and then they put fifty gallon drop tanks on each wing which were increased eventually to seventy five and then a hundred and then, and then we ran out of four thousand pounders and we had to borrow four thousand pounders from the Americans, which were four and a half thousand pounds. So another five hundred pounds to get off the deck. But the old Mozzie just used to take it all in its stride. No bother.
AS: You had no concerns.
HH: No, and I remember one day when I’d finished tour. I was sitting in the crew room minding my own business and the CO, a Canadian called Bob Grant came in and he said, ‘You doing anything Hughes?’ I said, no. He said, ‘Grab yourself a ‘chute would you and I’ll see you out at the aircraft.’ I said, ‘What do you⸻’ ‘Just bring a local Gee chart and local maps, would you?’ So when I got out to the bay, they were loading a four thousand pounder and I said, ‘Well, what fuel have we got?’ ‘You’ve a got full load of fuel and two hundred gallon drop tanks.’ And there’s a wind blowing right the way down the 330 runway which was fourteen hundred feet or something compared with two thousand feet on the main runway. I said, ‘What are we gonna do then?’ He said, ‘We’re gonna see if we can get off with this wind, the scale blowing, see if we can get off on this, on the fifteen hundred runway.’ So, we got to the end of the runway, and he waited until there was a gust of wind blowing, until the airspeed indicator was indicating about fifty or sixty knots. And we went. And I dropped the cookie on the live bomb target in the Wash and then we came back. And he got a report and said it wasn’t possible. I said, ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ [laughs] it wasn’t possible. And he said, ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t think the crew, you could expect the whole crew to wait’, the whole squadron rather to wait until there was a lull, that’s turned till there was a gust of wind which would get them off the deck.
AS: It’s a good example of leading from the front though, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Doing the test himself.
HH: It was old Bob Grant, he’s dead now, he married a Yorkshire, he was CO of 105 Squadron, amongst other things and he was, when he got back to Canada, of course he was made up to brigadier, I think. He was a group captain here, so he was a brigadier. That was equivalent to air commodore, wasn’t it?
AS: I think so, yeah, yeah.
HH: I don’t know.
AS: And, ah, there it is Group Captain Grant, 19th of March 1945, bombload take off fourteen hundred yards. That was pretty much the end of your operational flying, I think, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: On the Mosquito. Last trip, February, February ’45.
HH: Hanover, wasn’t it? Or Hamburg, Hanover.
AS: Frankfurt, I think, Frankfurt in your log. And did you know that that would be your last trip or you’re just told you’re screened?
HH: Yeah. You knew you had to do fifty on Mosquitos. So.
AS: And what did happened after that? Did you go back instructing or?
HH: No, no, we were sent on leave and when we came back, we’d been posted, several crews had been posted down to Pershore to ferry Canadian built Mosquitos across the Atlantic. And I crewed up with a different, Lloyd had gone back to New Zealand and he used to fly with Air New Zealand after the war. And thanks to me, because someone had put a bottle through his hand and all the tendons had gone. And so he couldn’t, when we were taking off at Whiten once doing a cross country, we got airborne and suddenly the throttle went back and he grabbed hold of them and held it with his hand and because you had to keep the throttle up so loose ‘cause of this weakness in his left hand. So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Roy, from now on I’ll tighten the throttle knot for you when you’re ready. As soon as you want, you just say, throttle knob and I will reach through and grab the throttle knob and turn it and tighten it for you.’ And we did that every trip. And but I, ‘cause I had to reach over, I couldn’t strap in, so I did all my trips without strapping in [laughs]. I never strapped in again, not with Roy flying. So he’d of never, I mean, he was flying with Air New Zealand afterwards he’d never have passed their medical if he’d of disclosed it, you know.
AS: But eventually, not in a Mosquito, but he’d be flying with throttles on the other hand, wouldn’t he? So the problem,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The problem would go away. So you’d had some leave, you were posted to fly to Pershore to fly Mosquitos.
H: Yeah. And we were sent on indefinite leave, Pershore sent us on indefinite leave. And I thought, oh God, I’ll be grounded for sure. So, I got on a train and went up to Air Ministry and saw a wing commander there and I said, look, there is a war going in in the Far East [unclear] aircraft ferried out there, coming back for maintenance and what have you. And he said, what a good idea, you know, come back in the morning, will you? And I got the whole lot posted out to the Far East. Fifteen or eighteen, I think I told you this before, didn’t I?
AS: I think so but we didn’t get in on the tape, I don’t think, no.
HH: No.
AS: I bet you were popular.
HH: Fifteen, oh God, when I got down to Lyneham they were moaning, ‘I’m just due for demob for God’s sake, why the heck do I have to, due for demob any day now.’
AS: I bet you kept quiet.
HH: And here I am, so I kept very quiet. And so, I mean I wasn’t due for demob for some time.
AS: So here we are, Lyneham in July ’45. A huge trip as a passenger on a deck. Thirty two hours flying.
HH: Yeah, back to Karachi, yeah.
AS: So by going, going East, you, did you, before you went, did you see, did you go on any of these trips over, over Germany to see all the destruction?
HH: No, no.
AS: Okay.
HH: I missed all that.
AS: You’d said earlier that you said a prayer for the people of Hamburg. What, at the end of the war, did you reflect at all on the, or during that, on the bombing? And what were your feelings about being involved in it in the war?
HH: Well, I’ve spoken to our vicar about it, you know, and said, do you think Saint Peter’s gonna let me through the gates? Or not. So she sat and he said a prayer for me. Lady vicar of course. Anyway, but I was invited out to Hanover as a guest of the mayor and the local newspaper to commemorate the 60th anniversary of when we bombed them.
AS: And you went?
HH: So I went over, yeah, well, I was asked to volunteer and I remember, at the Bomber Command meeting they said, did anybody go to Hanover, I said, well, I did. When I got home, I found out I’d been to Hanover about eleven times and [laughs] so I was well qualified.
AS: And are you pleased you went, did it turn out well?
HH: Yes, they were very, very, very nice, I like German people.
AS: So do I.
HH: I got two of them coming over now. Here any day now. I think. They stay up at [unclear] castle, ‘cause he’s paraplegic, he can’t get down my steps.
AS: Yeah.
HH: He’s, he had polio when he was a youngster. But they come over by air this time so he couldn’t bring his invalid scooter with him so I don’t know whether he’s gonna hire one when they’re here or not, I don’t know what they’re gonna do to get around.
AS: That should be possible, I think.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And these are friends you made when you went to Hanover?
HH: Yeah. Well, they were both reporters with the Hamburger Allgemeine. And anyway I was, the last day I was there in Hanover I was there for about three or four days, I had to attend a meeting of all the survivors from the raids and all the students from university there and the colleges and what have you and a little girl gets up and question time you see and she gets up and says, can I please explain what was the duty of the navigator? Well if you ask me a stupid question like that, I’m gonna give you a stupid answer, for sure. So I said, ‘Well, the reason why we carried a navigator, because we had to have someone on board who could read and write’ [laughs] and their mouths fell open, he went like this, everybody, so I said to my interpreter, I said, ‘Tell them, it was a joke, will you?’ ‘Ah, a joke, yeah, we got no sense of humour, we Germans, we’ve got no sense of humour at all.’ [unclear] So then, later on somebody, one of the survivors said, ‘Why did you bomb the city?’ So I said, ‘To be perfectly honest, we couldn’t hit anything smaller but just remember this,’ I said, ‘Right in the centre, almost within half a mile from the centre of Hanover there was the biggest rubber factory in Germany, so it made Hanover a very legitimate target.’ ‘Yes’, this man says, ‘But you didn’t hit it, did you? ‘Cause it’s still there!’ [laughs]. I said, ‘Well, and you tried to tell me that the Germans got no sense of humour?’ [laughs] And then I was on their side from then on.
AS: I’ve lived there for eleven years. I’m with you. I’ve lived there for eleven years.
HH: Have you?
AS: Yeah. They’re great people, great people. I think.
HH: In which part were you?
AS: I was in Munich for five years.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And then in Bonn and Cologne, in the Rhineland for about six altogether. Some of the places you visited by air, in fact. That’s the feelings of the Germans. How, there’s been a lot of controversy about how Bomber Command were treated after the war. Have you got any views on that?
HH: Well, I think, first of all, we should never, never have bombed Dresden, I think that was the biggest mistake we made. And Portal should have stood up and said, no! But he didn’t have the guts to do it, he didn’t have the guts to stand up to Churchill and it was Churchill who, on his way to Yalta, he stopped off at Malta, And they’d agreed to bomb five cities within reach of the Russian lines, you know, and I think Dresden was one and what’s that? And Leipzig and one other I think. Anyway he sent back this signal to Portal saying, from Malta saying, where is my spectacular, get on with it. So, Portal looked at the charts and he consulted the Met people and the only target available that night was Dresden. I didn’t go to Dresden, I went to Magdeburg, Magdeburg that night, you can see it on there, in that book there.
AS: You believe it was, that Dresden was the turning point and that?
HH: Mh?
AS: You believe that Dresden was some sort of turning point?
HH: Yeah.
AS: How Bomber Command were treated?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you, do you feel now that it’s changed with the memorials and the clasp?
HH: Yeah, I think so. I think, there was a time just after the war, when the people who were against us were the people who were in the Air Force or in one of the forces and they felt that we were, they didn’t want us to have any publicity, you know.
AS: After the war.
HH: Yeah. And then, and then since then, they’ve suddenly realised that you know, we had the highest losses of any unit in the, our forces, fifty five thousand killed, which is quite a lot, wasn’t it?
AS: Yeah. Fifty five thousand, five hundred and seventy three.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’ve seen a, well, or you see a change in attitudes now.
HH: Yes, I think, younger people are much more inclined to want to hear about it and talk about it and understand why we did it and there is no good saying, well, we were under orders to do it, because that’s what the Germans excuses were, you know, for their treatment of the in the concentration camps. We were under orders.
AS: And you did it because it was right?
HH: Well, we did it because we thought we were, ‘cause we were shortening the war and therefore less people would be killed.
AS: Is it, I agree, you say, that now people want to hear about it, is it good for you and other veterans to be able to talk about it after all this time?
HH: It’s getting more and more difficult, there’s so many books have been written on there, now.
AS: And you are actually in one of the books.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Steve Darlow’s book. How did all that come about? Did you get involved with him?
HH: I don’t know. He wanted, I think I was recommended by probably Bomber Command, you know, Dougie Radcliffe.
AS: Oh, the Bomber Command Association.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Have you always played a big part in that?
HH: No, no, I was mainly in the Pathfinders Association.
AS: Oh, okay.
HH: We were separate from, we were separate from the Bomber Command Association, but I’d already joined the Bomber Command Association when we disbanded. I’d already been a member for several years.
AS: And do you belong to your squadron or 102 Squadron association as well?
HH: Yeah. Yes, it’s, I’ve written a letter to, when I went to the VJ-Day celebrations⸻
AS: Yes.
HH: We had to fill out a form travelling expenses and I got three hundred pounds from the Lottery Fund.
AS: Excellent.
HH: And my son Jeremy, who’d driven me up there and then he got three hundred pounds as well. And I don’t, I hope he hasn’t. So I wrote a letter to the Big Lottery and said, thanking them for their, I said, so, twice a year I’ve got to go to, up to Pocklington in Yorkshire, which is rather expensive for me now ‘cause you got to go up Virgin cross country you know, right the way up to York and it’s a long journey that. It’s an interesting journey but there’s no, there was a little old lady pushing the tray along, pushing the trolley along, you know, that’s all that you get to eat with some coffee and a fruitcake or something.
AS: It’s not the same as a full dining car.
HH: I like the dining cars on, I’m going up on the 22nd of October I think, coming back on the 23rd, I always travel back down on the dining car which, on a train with a dining car which leaves at seven o’clock in the evening.
AS: Do you still have wartime comrades that you’ll meet in Pocklington?
HH: Oh yes, yeah. Most of them are dead now but.
AS: So, a lot of reminiscing and’
HH: Yeah. There’s a friend of mine, who was a previous chairman, Tom Wingate, who, he wrote a book called Halifax Down, ‘cause he was shot down on his second tour, and I used to have a copy but I can’t find it now. I don’t know what I have done with it, I lose things all the time now.
AS: I have a copy at home, I can send you one.
HH: Pardon?
AS: I have a copy, I can send you one.
HH: You got a copy of that?
AS: Yeah, I have.
HH: Halifax Down, yes, it’s not a bad book, actually. Except that he joined the squadron the same time as I did, his crew did. And he’s quoted in his book, as if he was there three or four months before me. He’s quoted various trips and he’s got these out of those old war diaries, wish I could find that. I wonder where I put it?
AS: Well, you’ll have to take your logbook the next time you meet him.
HH: Oh no, he’s dead now.
AS: Okay.
HH: That’s why I’ve taken over as chairman.
AS: After you came off ops, you did this trip out to the Far East, did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: In what?
AS: Did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s quite a lot really. My very first trip was down to Akyab, on the Arakan coast. I think I told you, didn’t I?
AS: Yes, but not into the tape. So, what happened on that trip?
HH: I don’t think that particular trip’s in there, actually, I looked for it the other day and I can’t find it. I must have left it out for some reason.
AS: This was the trip with the Japanese.
HH: Yes, all the way around us were Zeros, you know. We could hear them yacketing away and then this Indian crew comes on with their Hurricanes and the Japanese just disappeared.
AS: What was the radio conversation about with these Indian squadrons, red flight?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the radio conversation story about the?
HH: Oh, well, the Indian crews? ‘Yes, red leader to yellow leader, how do you read me, over? Yellow leader to green, you are not red, you are green, you know? Red leader to yellow leader, I am not green, I am red. And this Aussie voice comes up by the blue, you are black, you bastard’ [laughs].
AS: So, it’s still a combat area that you’re flying replacement aircraft I suppose in to the squadrons?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you get involved in flying damaged aircraft for repair?
HH: Oh, I used to fly back from say Kamila or with two Pratt & Whitney’s engines in the back and a load of ENSA girls as well amongst them [laughs], sitting where they could and trying not to get greasy, ‘cause these, and yeah.
AS: Yeah. Shall we, pause there I think?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And wind it up. Thank you that, It’s been absolutely wonderful to hear.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Harry Hughes
Creator
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Adam Sutch
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-21
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHughesWH151021
Format
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02:28:15 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Hughes volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1940 and trained in America, where he was washed out as a pilot and then retrained as a navigator in Canada, flying Ansons and Wellingtons. In 1942 he converted to Halifaxes and flew operations with 102 Squadron over Germany, being awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying an operation to Berlin whilst on crutches. He recounts the routines of preparing to go on operations and his use of navigation aids including Gee, LORAN and later, Boozer in Mosquitos. He was bombstruck twice during operations. He completed 26 operations including the bombing of Hamburg which he describes as a firestorm and recalls saying a private prayer for the people of Hamburg below. After his tour finished, he then instructed before applying to go back on operations with 8 Group, flying Mosquitos with 692 Squadron and dropping Window for Pathfinder forces in 1944/45. In 2004 he visited Hanover and discussed the raids with survivors of the war. He was a member of a number of post war service associations and kept in contact with his crewmates.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Southeast Asia
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
United States
Alabama--Montgomery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
1945
102 Squadron
3 Group
6 Group
692 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
Anson
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
faith
Fw 190
Gee
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
incendiary device
Ju 88
Me 109
Me 110
Me 262
medical officer
meteorological officer
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
promotion
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Harwell
RAF Riccall
RAF Wombleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
Window
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/348/3516/AWaughmanR150401.2.mp3
55b93fe44cab5a19fbaf370e4af18862
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
Waughman, Rusty
Russell Reay Waughman
Russell R Waughman
Russell Waughman
R R Waughman
R Waughman
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Russell Reay "Rusty" Waughman (1923 - 2023, 1499239 and 171904 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 101 Squadron.
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
2015-04-01
2015-08-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Waughman, R
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 Rusty Waughman. The interview is taking place at Mr Waughman’s home in Kenilworth on the 1st of April 2015. Mr Waughman was a Lancaster pilot in 101 Squadron.
RW: The old Lanc was a remarkable aircraft to fly. On one occasion I was going on a transport plan target. We were going to Hasselt in Belgium, Northern Belgium, German borders and we were about ten minutes from the target when another aircraft crashed side wards into us and the, the engineer, Curly was looking out of his window. Of course, it was dark and night time, cloud was about and all he saw was this aircraft just closing in and approaching and clout, clouted straight into the side of us. His engines cut through our bomb, bombing position when he was just six inches behind his feet. It cut off our starboard wheel. The mid upper turret which sticks up on top of the other [unclear]. It was Another Lancaster, a mid upper turret carved just behind our bomb bays, cut right through the fuselage, cut a big hole in the fuselage. Most of our tail was damaged. All our electrics went. And there we were, we were sitting on top each other all very closely linked and my controls was just like sitting on the ground, like driving on ice. I had no control of the aircraft whatsoever. The controls just went limp in my hand. I just couldn’t, couldn’t respond at all. It seemed like for, long time but it was only for seconds, only for seconds really and then the other aircraft fell away in pieces. I didn’t see it but the bomb, the navigator and the wireless op said they saw that his top canopy is all gone and he was just falling to pieces. We didn’t see any parachutes opening. So he crashed on the ground. We found we could still — didn’t affect our engines, we found we could still fly. So we got Norman, the bomb aimer, to check the bomb bays and the bomb doors. He’d lost control of the bombs but, er, all the bombs were still there and we could open the bomb doors and seeing as we were only ten minutes from the target so he said we’d press on and we’ll bomb the target. Not realising that having lost our electrics the master bombers had said don’t go in and bomb so we, we [laughs] roamed off on our own. We did hit the bomb, hit the target all be it, it was 4 ½ miles north of where we should of gone. But anyway we hit it, we hit a railway line and of course we had to come back and we were in such a hurry we realised that the major damage had happened at the back end of the aircraft. We realised later that two of the main [unclear] were damaged and had we had to take evasive action we could well of broken up. So I said to Harry, the rear gunner, come up front Harry, bring your parachute just in case but he said ‘no I’ll stop here and keep a lookout.’ These are the sort of lads they are. Anyway we had to do a crash landing when we got back and there was a casualty sadly that night. It was skidding towards the control tower in the dark and all the people in the control tower came out on the balcony to watch this idiot land his aeroplane and one of the little girls jumped back and sprained her ankle and that was our casualty for the night. But the reaction of the crews, I gave the crews the chance to bail out but they said no they wouldn’t do it and they all stuck with me and you realise as a pilot, and a very young pilot for having that reaction from the crew, you know, they were wonderful. And I was so lucky with the crew, all from various parts of life. School boys, council workers, a gunner, myself as I was a little, I was student.
AP: And the age group, average age?
RW: Yeah.
AP: Your age?
RW: Yeah. Well many, many years later for our eightieth birthday we had a reunion in Lincoln. They were sitting in the pub and about four or five of us were sitting round and he said we’ve all had our eightieth birthday. When’s your eightieth birthday Alec and he said it’s not for another two years yet. So he actually joined us when he was seventeen and he was operating with us when he was eighteen. Mind you I was getting on a bit, I was twenty, the bomb aimer was nineteen he had his twentieth birthday, the engineer had just had his twentieth birthday. The navigator was eighteen, Taffy was nineteen, twenty. My mid upper gunner, he was the old man of the crew, he was twenty-six and Harry the rear gunner he was twenty and but you know, it’s, it’s as though we all gelled and we all got on so well together. So much so that we still meet even now. There’s five of us left, our two gunners and the special duty operator had died but there’s five of us left and we still meet every year. And we’ve kept this going all these years and it’s been a wonderful experience. And like most of the crews you end up like a band of brothers. Yes, when you, when you got up in the morning and had your breakfast which was fairly relaxed because most of our, well all of our operations were at night so we were either sleeping late or having a normal day but when you went up to the crew room and looked at the notice board, there on the notice board was pinned the battle order and that, you looked to see if your name was on the battle order. If you saw your name on the battle order you went and changed your underwear. It was a very, tense, tense little situation and just seeing your name there was quite something. But then of course you had to go and, the battle order told you that you were flying, what aircraft you’re flying, the crew you — the crews name and the time of the briefing and the time of the meal, the flying meal. So after you — going off late in the evening you had a flying meal late afternoon which was bacon and eggs, you know, and really had bacon and eggs and sometimes we had beans and they were not the best of things for when you’re flying at altitude when you’re not having any compression in the aircraft. So you, you had your flying meal and then of course you had to go and have a special time to go for briefing. So all the crew assembled, except the navigator went off on his own little special briefing drawing up his chart and then he joined us at the main briefing. And you all sat in a big room, it was smoky, you smoked like a chimney, it was just like, almost like a church with all the benches round about and a big high table at the front, where all the section leaders came and gave the information about the raid. The intelligence officer, the met officer the arms officer, all gave their instructions for what you’re going to do on the raid itself. So, and then on this particular raid the, the uncertainty of the whole thing left a little bit of a, a nervous tension. There was always a bit of tension anyway, so, but this was even more so and having just had to go out to the aircraft, not expecting to go at all you were a little bit tense. And of course you went outside and had the crew bus which drove you out to the aircraft and it was quite a contrast. in the crew room, sitting in the crew room waiting for the — to get onto the crew bus people were sometimes were just silent, just couldn’t talk, didn’t talk at all and others were just the opposite or a little bit hilarious and out of character completely. My little wireless operator said he was always going to come on operations drunk ‘cause he couldn’t stand the atmosphere in the crew room and this particular, a particular night we were waiting to go off and it was — we were all a bit on, on edge and he came up behind me pretending to be drunk he said [imitates someone slurring words] and I turn round and said a very rude word to him but he disappeared and left two little WAFs standing behind me. So this is the sort of thing that the atmosphere that it created. And that was quite a tense little period waiting, so some over expressing themselves and some absolute silence and going out on the crew bus you tend to be a little bit over excited and some over talked and when you got out the aircraft it was the usual system of some chaps had little ideas of getting over the stress and getting through the raid, whereby they’d have a little wee by the tail wheel and some used to sit, kneel down and have a séance, kneel down and have say a pray beside the aircraft. And the — all very, very tense. on this occasion we weren’t expecting to go so we weren’t really expecting to have to get onto the aircraft until the green [unclear] light went up and we had to get going and that was, that was a little bit stressful but you had a job to do and you went and had to go off to do it. The age of my crew we were all very young except one, my mid upper gunner, Tommy he was twenty-six and he was the old man of the crew and all the rest of the crew were nineteen, twenty. I was twenty years old. My navigator lied about his age to join up and he joined us when he was seventeen. He was operating when he was eighteen. But the tension didn’t relax everybody. Norman my bomb aimer, a very dapper little man, he used to come on operations with a crease in his trousers and he, he, he, he liked the sight of the aircraft and the dogs going off and the searchlights. He thought that was great, isn’t that lovely isn’t that nice, isn’t that nice and the crew used to go for Christ sake Norman shut up and this was on — the same effect on the Nuremberg raid where we saw him, mayhem and chaos going on all round about, and he, he wouldn’t say he thought it was nice but he, he thought it was quite spectacular and it was very spectacular and in reflection it was frightening. When you think of our ages, at that age for I was twenty, having been a very naive and sheltered youth, a sickly youth at that, how on earth I got in the air force I don’t know but we were very naive, most of us at that age were very naive. We didn’t have the background or experience of life so we were just doing a job. And it did become frightening. How, how I felt — my first recollection of this being so when you went to learn to fly in Canada it was a big gun hall and you came back and you went onto an Operational Training Unit and picked up a crew and then you went onto the squadron and we went to a Heavy Conversion Unit first and there, er, I was not getting on terribly well because I’ve got little short legs and I had a little bit of a problem keeping these black monsters straight down the runway. My friend who I’d trained with had been parallel for a long, long time he was posted to 101 Squadron and when my turn came a couple of days later when I’d mastered these beasts, er, I said can I go and join the squadron with Paul and the flight commander said well it’s a Special Duty Squadron we only send the best ones there. I said oh thank you very much and that was a bit of a come down but a couple of days later he said right Waughman off to 101 Squadron. So off I went to 101 Squadron. I said have you had a change of heart he said no, he said it’s a squadron with the highest attrition rate in the service and you’ve got the first call on the availability of aircrew. The day I arrived on the squadron my friend Paul had been killed the night before. Then it started to sink in, it really was quite an alarming experience. And, er, the first five raids, first five operations on raids that’s when I had the most casualties, causality rates for new crews, could be anything up to forty percent particularly on our squadron with the special duty operating. But it was, er, quite [unclear] you certainly realised this stuff was serious and of course when you went on operations people used to shoot at you, you know, and you used to think well this is, this is really, this is really something and most raids you nearly always had searchlight activity and on one occasion we were flying over, towards Hanover and we had, we were picked up by the searchlight, the cant really [unclear] control [unclear] searchlight and we were in the searchlight for something like twenty, twenty-five minutes trying to get out of it. With fighters flying all round the place and with the gunners we managed to get out but that was, that was quite alarming and the German night activities were brilliant they really were very, very good and particularly round the Ruhr area where the concentration of industry was and they had their Vicksburg radar which could, could get fighters into the bomber stream and we were attacking the Ruhr this particular night and as we approached the flak was so thick it looked as if you could get out and walk on it. This was one of the old expressions they used. And for the first time, you were always a bit apprehensive and frightened at times, but at this time I, I experienced terror and I’d never experienced terror before and I was, my knees were shaking, I was shaking, I think I was sweating with all that gear, which you did anyway but I really was terrorised. So I dropped my seat so I couldn’t look out and funnily enough, I don’t know why, but I said a little prayer that my mum and dad used to say when I was about six years old by the side of the bed, but I’d never ever said it before and I’ve never said it again until then. it was a little prayer that went ‘now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul will keep’ and the important bit is ‘if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul will take’ and I said this little prayer. I don’t know why, it just came to me and you know the terror disappeared. I was still apprehensive and frightened but the terror went. And I raised my seat and we carried on. And we had experiences like this later on the operations on the tours but I was never terrorised again so power of prayer, makes you wonder, but I’m sure this affected no end of aircrew like that and sadly some of the aircrew getting into these situations just couldn’t cope and the, one navigator just walked down to the back of the aircraft, he wanted to jump out and the crew had to strap him. He couldn’t talk, he couldn’t speak and when he got back he never spoke and he went to a psychiatric hospital at Matlock and eventually one of the nurses clattered a trio of instruments and he woke up and he said ‘oh Christ they’re shooting us, they’re firing at us, we’re on fire’ and they sorted him out. And that’s the sort of thing that used to affect some of the lads. Sadly the little engineer that I had first of all, he was like that and on our first raid he, he just couldn’t do a thing. He just sat on the floor and shook and sweat, sweated, and on our second raid we had our problems and he just couldn’t do a thing. On the third raid we had engines on fire, particularly the starboard outer, and he just couldn’t do a thing, he couldn’t do anything to help at all so I had to get out, half out of my seat because the [unclear] buttons were down on the left hand side, right hand side and operate them myself. He just couldn’t do a thing. So when I got back I reported it to the wing commander and he said you know he’s got to go and he left that day. we never saw him again. Whether he was made LMF, lacking moral fibre, we don’t know but he should never of been — and people who suffered like this but carried on operating, they were really the heroes of the aircrew ‘cause they knew they were frightened and they were frightened but they carried on. And it says a great deal of credit for them and there was no end like that as well. You see the experience of arriving at a target, you usually saw the target ahead because it had been marked by the Pathfinders and this was where about a couple of them before you actually dropped your bombs, the bomb aimer would take over control, not the actual physical control of the aircraft but you were still flying it but he told you what to do and where to do, and what to do and for that while you were flying pretty well straight and level , it was left, left, right, right, and then as you got up the target you had something like two minutes or a minute and a half dead straight flying with the bomb aimer controlling you and that was quite an alarming time because you are over the target with searchlights, fighters round about, bombs dropping round about you. You’d occasionally see the odd bomb drop past your aircraft with [unclear] and you couldn’t do a thing about it. Or you shouldn’t do a thing about it and you didn’t until the bomb aimer said ‘bombs gone’ but that wasn’t the end of it. To get a photograph of where your bombs burst you carried a photoflood, a multimillion [unclear] little explosive which dropped out of the flesh out of the back of the aircraft which exploded in the air when your bombs burst, so you had a picture where your bombs burst. And at one time they said well unless you got a photograph of where your bomb burst the raid won’t count, but that didn’t always apply. But you had that couple of minutes in the last bit of flying, straight and narrow [coughs] and you couldn’t, you shouldn’t take any evasive action at all and you were just sitting waiting and all round about you’d see all this activity going round about you because on the ground the ground was lit up and [coughs] the ground, ground was bright, quite bright and that’s one of the things the fighters liked because the fighters would get up above you and see your silhouette on the ground.
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AWaughmanR150401
PWaughmanR1501
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Interview with Rusty Waughman. One
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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00:21:05 audio recording
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Pending review
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Andrew Panton
Date
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2015-04-01
Description
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He discusses a mid-air collision during an operation with 101 Squadron. to Hasselt. He describes what it was like prior to a operation and the feelings experienced by the crew, from seeing the battle orders on the notice board, the pre-flight meal, the briefing and the tension and atmosphere on the crew bus out to the aircraft as well as the rituals that some of the crew undertook.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Belgium
Great Britain
Germany
England--Lincolnshire
Belgium--Hasselt
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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Tracy Johnson
101 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
briefing
coping mechanism
faith
fear
flight engineer
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
mid-air collision
military ethos
military service conditions
navigator
pilot
RAF hospital Matlock
RAF Ludford Magna
superstition
target photograph
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/277/7906/PIronsH1501.2.jpg
62e8999adc6227a8e1dcf9d08e401fbc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/277/7906/AIronsH150723.1.mp3
113b2cff64ef934152b89828f1ea404f
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Irons, Harry
Harry Irons
H Irons
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Harry Irons (1924 - 2018). He was an apprentice tailor in London, but lied about his age and joined the RAF aged 16. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 158, 462 and 9 Squadrons.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-23
2016-07-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Irons, H
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AM: Okay so, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moodie and the interviewee is Harry Irons. The interview’s taking place at a hotel near Kings Lynn and we’re here for the 9 Squadron Association hundred year dinner.
HI: Yeah that’s right, yeah.
AM: And it’s the 23rd of July 2015. So, off you go Harry. Tell us –
HI: Er, actually I won a scholarship to go to a grammar school, but my father insisted that I left school at fourteen so I could go to work and earn a wage. So, being in the east end the only jobs you could get was either tailoring or cabinet making. There was a whole area that’s – it was a big Jewish area and the, most of the people were either tailors or cabinet makers, and they were good, very good, brilliant craftsmen. So I took a job on as a trainee tailor and I was doing that for two years until I was sixteen, nearly sixteen, and we lived in an area of London called Stamford Hill and one evening we, me and a few other chaps were on the hill, and we see the huge blitz on London, and we actually see the whole of the City of London literally ablaze. Enormous, as far as your eye could see was buildings all, all ablaze, that was the City of London. Actually, they weren’t after the City of London, what they was after was the Docks, and they just, their bombing, what we used to call creeping, crept back from the Docks into the City of London and once it hit the City of London course everything went up in flames so, two or three friends said ‘we’ll, we’re gonna join up.’ I was sixteen at the time, so we went up the recruiting office in Kings Cross, London, and I told ‘em I was seventeen and a quarter, how they believed me I don’t know but they said ‘alright you’re in,’ and that was at the end of 1941, and I was called up in January 1941 [unclear]. The blaze was – the bombing was in 1940 and we joined, we joined up at the end of 1940, and 1941 they called me up and I went to a place near where it was called Bridgnorth then six weeks square bashing [?] there and they said ‘you’ll have to wait to sele’ – they asked me what I wanted to be in the air force, I said ‘I wanna fly,’ they said ‘alright, we’ll put you down for either a pilot, navigator or an air gunner and we’ll sort that out later on.’ Anyway, I went to Bridgnorth, done my six weeks training, and they sent me to a RAF station, Wisbech in Cambridge and I had to do menial jobs there, in the cook house, in the stores, waiting for, to go on a course. In the mean while they told me I was gonna become a wireless operator air gunner, and I’ve got to wait for a course to come up, a vacancy for the course to come up, so I stayed at Wisbech ‘til August ’41, and then they posted me to Blackpool on a wireless course and everybody in the RAF went to Blackpool to do their wireless course, and you had to stay in a, all the border houses were commandeered, and all the aircrew used to live in these border houses and the thing was when you’re at Blackpool you got up to twelve words a minute which we all did, and then from there you’re posted to another sta, er, air force station to continue your study ‘til you become up to eighteen words a minute –
AM: When you say eighteen words a minute, doing what?
HI: Morse code.
AM: Morse code right, okay.
HI: Yeah, dit dah dit dah dit dah dit. Anyway, we was all queuing up to wait for postings and the sergeant came out just like that he said ‘you lot, over that side. You lot, that side,’ and fortunately or unfortunately I was in that lot on that side and we become airgunners. Not wireless operators, airgunners. Just airgunners. And the reason for that, I didn’t know at the time, was the heavy bombers, the Lancasters, were going on production, and there was, they were short of airgunners, because they had to carry another air gunner so they said ‘you lot over there, you become airgunners,’ and I went back to Wisbech – I was a bit cheesed off about it all anyway, couldn’t do much about it, and I waited another couple of months and then they sent me on a gunnery course, a place called Manby [emphasis] in Lincoln, it’s a big air force gunnery school there, and we done six weeks training there as gunners, gunnery, and I got the huge total flying hours of nineteen hours, that’s all I got, and they said – and from there you’re supposed to do a four month, five month operational training course, that’s getting accustomed to actually doing bombing raids on enemy territory. But then whatever happened they said to me ‘you’re being posted straight on a squadron’ and I tell you what, I was a greener than this.
AM: [Laughs] we’re sat on a green settee, for the record.
HI: Yeah, yeah. It was as green, I was as green as anything then. ‘Cause I got nineteen hours and I didn’t know what to expect. Anyway, I was posted to Waddington [emphasis] to Number 9 Squadron. And when I arrived there, as it was luck [exhale of breath] was in my favour because a flight lieutenant named Stubbs came up to me and said ‘you’re gonna fly with me as a mid-upper’ and I said ‘fair enough.’ They’d already, he was already on his second tour, he’d already done thirteen trips on Wellingtons [emphasis].
AM: So you didn’t do the usual crewing up thing?
HI: Never done anything like that, no.
AM: You just –
HI: No, no they just sent about ten of us to 9 Squadron, ‘cause I was just converting from Wellingtons onto Lancasters, and consequently they was one gunner short because the Lancaster carried a mid-upper. So he said to me, anyhow I didn’t know what it was all about actually, he said to me ‘the rear gunner I’ve got at the moment is a big Australian,’ he was about six foot three [unclear] ‘and he’s too tall for the turret’ he said ‘what we’re gonna do is you’re gonna do your first trip in the mid-upper and after that you’ll go in the rear turret, and the Australian will go’ –‘cause in the mid-upper you can pull your legs down, straighten you know, you’ve got plenty of room, so what we done then, we done – as time’s gone on, this was 1942, round about June 1942 and we started getting to used, well the crew getting used to flying a Wellington twin engine bomber onto a four engine bomber. And that, you use what they call conversion, and that’s pretty difficult ‘cause you learn how to fly an entirely different aircraft, land it, you got to find out all the different things, the different systems and the turrets, anyway we done about six weeks training, well not, training it was, well converting from the one engine to the Lancaster, and then September ’42 we was in a crew, we had a big crew and we used to lay and loll about smoking, swearing everything else [laughs] anyway, they said ‘ops tonight.’ So, before you went on operations you done what they call a night flying test [emphasis], you took the aircraft up, you tested the bomb site, you tested the, the bomb bays open and closing, you tested the turrets and you give a, you went outta sea and give the guns a little squirt, see everything was alright, the compass [emphasis], check the compass and the, the under carriage we’d dropped up and down a couple of time to make sure it was alright, and we landed, and as we landed, the bomb aimer had already done thirteen trips on Wellingtons, and this is vivid, and as we’d come out of the steps of the Lancaster, the bomb aimer’s behind me, and coming along the road was tractor carrying a four thousand pound bomb, and fourteen hundred incendiaries, and the bomb aimer said to me ‘oh, we’re going to Happy Valley tonight.’ He said ‘by that bomb load, we’re definitely going to Happy Valley,’ and I thought ‘well that don’t sound too bad, Happy Valley,’ I thought ‘well Happy Valley, that can’t be too bad,’ I didn’t know that that was a nickname for the Ruhr Valley. The whole of the Ruhr Valley was called Happy Valley, and I didn’t realise at the time but the Happy Valley, the Ruhr Valley, as you went in you got a brilliant [emphasis] reception and a better, a, what you say, a bye-bye on the way out, and I tell you what, right I’ll go on, anyway we – it was always ritual, always [emphasis] for bomber crews to have bacon and eggs before they went on ops, always. Didn’t matter where you were, all the time I was in the air force, I done sixty bombing trips, and every time we went on a bombing trip we got bacon and eggs [emphasis] and if we come back we got bacon and eggs. And that was a luxury in those, in wartime, and then of course the joke was, always the joke ‘if you don’t come back, can I have your bacon and eggs?’ you know. Anyway, we went to the, we got – there was a bit of a rigmarole getting ready, you had to, you had to have your bacon and eggs and you go down to – most, most aircrew wrote a last letter, most of ‘em. I think the majority of aircrew wrote a last letter home to their wives, and they used to put them on the bed, and I’m afraid to say, I seen many, many, many letters being collected by the padre, many, that’s why I never wrote one myself. Anyway, we had our food, our bacon and eggs, we were all laughing and joking, you know we were young blokes, and we went to the crew, to the briefing room and we all sat down to see who would come in, and the map [emphasis] had a huge sheet over it, and the CO always, always done it, come in, whipped the sheet off and there was the target. So the bomb aimer said to me ‘I told you.’ It was Dusseldorf, he said ‘there you are,’ he said ‘I knew we were going there’ he said, ‘we’re going to Happy Valley,’ and I still didn’t twig on, ‘oh well, that don’t sound too bad,’ thinking of German girls tryna start [?] kisses you know what I mean. Anyway, we went down to the crew room and the atmosphere changed completely [emphasis]. We went in the crew room and the whole squadron was in the crew room ‘cause we had cabinets for all our flying gear and used to get dressed in there, and as I walked in, all the crews were there, it was dead silence, and everybody was looking at each other, there was no jokes, no laughing, nothing. And there was simply a – the atmosphere was incredible [emphasis] to what it was in the mess having our egg and bacon. Anyway, we got dressed and it was – airgunners dressing was long underpants, pure silk, and a vest that was silk and then your shirt and then your pullover, and then a, over the shirt you put a, I think it was, no, before you put the shirt on, as we put the shirt on we put an electrical heated suit with gloves and electrical heated gloves and body and feet, which was really, really important. And over that we put our uniform ‘cause you had to wear a uniform, if you never wore a uniform, I never realised but at night if you’ve was parachuted out in civilian clothes you was likely to get executed, which many, quite a few boys did get executed, especially by the civilians. And over that we used to put a huge [emphasis] fur jacket and fur trousers, fur lined boots, and there we were –
AM: Fur trousers?
HI: Fur trousers, yeah [murmur from AM]. You know, thick, made of the same material as your jacket. Irvin jacket, you had Irvin trousers, thick Irvin trousers and they used to tuck them inside your boot, zip your boots up and there, you could hardly move by then, but – and I’ll tell you what, on a warm day you was walking out you was absolutely sweating [emphasis, laughs]. Anyway, we went out to the aircraft and everybody smoked, everybody smoked [emphasis] except the skipper, the skipper didn’t smoke, he never drunk, never went out with women, he was absolutely – they said in the officers mess that they couldn’t understand the man, he wouldn’t, he never swore, he never smoked. Anyway, he – a good pilot mind you. Anyway, we got in the aircraft and I was in the mid-upper, first time. And in the mid-upper turret of the Lancaster, I’ve got a picture of it, you had a fantastic [emphasis] view –
AM: Hmm, all round.
HI: All three hundred and eighty degree. You could see everything [emphasis]and I got in the mid-upper, and I never got, I was still raw, we done, only done six weeks training, and I plugged in the electricity for the heater ‘cause if we, even in the mid-upper the temperature was about forty-five, fifty below zero. Worse still in the turret, rear turret. Anyway, we got ready and then the crew room, nobody was talking, it was like that, nobody spoke, and off we went. We took off at Waddington, and the thing was at Waddington they had no runways at that time. There were two squadrons of Lancasters there and no runway. All we had was grass, and in the winter it was very, very difficult with full bomb loads to takeoff. Before that, when we arrived at Waddington there was a squadron there, 44 Squadron, a Rhodesian squadron, and apparently they was the first squadron in the RAF to be equipped with the Lancaster, in March, April, round about April. And what they’d done, they’d decided to do a daylight raid, a low level daylight raid on a town called Augsburg in Germany. They sent six Lancasters flying at zero feet right across France, right into Germany –
AM: At zero [emphasis] feet?
HI: Zero feet, I mean zero – well when I say zero feet, about half of these buildings.
AM: Right okay.
HI: Can you imagine six Lancasters –
AM: No [laughs] –
HI: At that height over, just ducking over the trees, going as low as low as they could, else they would have invade [?] the radar.
AM: Right.
HI: Anyway, what happened – unfortunately there was squadron of Messerschmitts flying, I don’t know if it was practicing or flying, and of course they see these six Lancasters, and they immediately they shot down five [noise of shock from AM]. So outta the six they sent, one come back badly, badly damaged, and his name was Nevillson [name unclear] and he got the VC. The other five that was shot down got nothing [emphasis] so, he was fortunate, he was leading the squadron from the front and they gradually cut the other five down and he managed to avoid and managed to get back badly damaged. So, I’m just telling you that because it deal with another operation I went on. Anyway, we all got ready to takeoff, and everything was quiet in the – nobody spoke, when we was on ops, very rarely we spoke. The only time we spoke is when we was being attacked, when the navigator was giving instructions to the pilot, or the bomb aimer or me or the mid-upper or the rear gunner could see something downstairs they could identify and then inform the navigator what we see, and that helped him to crack the course. ‘Cause in those days, 1942, we had no radar. We had what they called Gee-box up to the coast and once we hit the coast the Germans blocked it, so it was from then onwards it was the navigator used to have to go from one spot to another spot, estimate the time of arrival at the other spot before he made a correction to the course, and of course things improved later on in ’43, and the gunners helped a lot because they could, especially the rear gunner could see, or the mid-upper could see different –
AM: Rivers, train lines and stuff like that.
HI: -- objects, yeah. And sometimes that wasn’t possible, there’d be ten-Thames [?] cloud. And then navigation become very, very difficult. And don’t forget we didn’t have no radar help whatsoever, but we managed and we flew over, as we took off we flew over the Dutch coast and the bomb aimer, he used to lay pronged in the nose [very unsure about what was said here], he said ‘skipper, enemy air coast [?] ahead, flak, flak.’ Always gunfire was called flak [emphasis]. So I looked down and I see all these beautiful, indescribable [?] lights, every colour, reds, blues, greens, there all tracers [?] from what they call night flak. They went up to about eight or nine thousand feet and then it dropped down again. And that’s when flak –
AM: And how high were you at that point?
HI: We was about twelve thousand feet. So when I looked down from mid-upper and I see that flak below us and I thought to myself ‘if that’s flak, we’ve got nothing at all to worry about.’ So we flew over Holland, don’t forget this was the early phase of bombing. Before that the bombing was nothing ‘cause they had obsolete bombing, bombing aircraft and no idea whether they reached the target. It was only in beginning, half way through 1942 they was giving the apparatus so they didn’t really find the target. Anyway, you crossed the Dutch coast and I’m in the mid-upper, spinning it round, and for about, I should imagine it was about hour, hour and a quarter, then the bomb aimer said ‘target ahead skipper.’ So then I thought to myself ‘well I’ll have a look to see what this target is all about,’ and I swung the turret around and I had really [emphasis], really the shock of my life. In front of us, with no exaggeration, was one solid massive explosion of shells. Absolute whole area was full up of high explosive shell fire, and we gotta fly through that. And searchlights were creeping about, and they had one searchlight which was radar operated and it was a different colour, it was blue, very light blue. And that was a searchlight, never missed. It went up bang, like that, straight onto an aircraft. It was radar controlled [coughs] excuse me [pause to drink] so when I see this huge massive explosion ‘cause I had a beautiful view, so I thought to myself ‘cor blimey, surely we haven’t gotta go through all this.’ And I could hear it, and the plane was bumping up and down from the force of the explosions and the skipper said to me ‘mid-upper, keep an eye above you, because bombers above you will drop their bombs on you’ which happened many times. So I said ‘okay skipper,’ and – we called the pilot skipper, always called him a skipper. Doesn’t matter what rank he was, always a skipper. Anyway, we, I started looking up and there right above us was a Lanc, bomb bay open, ‘cause you know the bomb bays were enormous, I says ‘there’s a bomber above us skipper with his bomb bay open, dive port.’ We dived port, good job we did because he was ready to drop his load, so we slammed our bomb bay shut, because we was on a run as well and, and the bomb aimer said ‘we’ll have to make a correction on our way into the target.’ You must realise that all around us these huge [emphasis] explosions of shells, I’m telling you not few, hundreds [emphasis] of ‘em exploding into the sky. Anyway, as we were flying in, the skipper said ‘skipper, I’ve lost the target point,’ he said ‘we’ll have to round again.’ And I just told you, the skipper never swore. I’ll tell you what [laughs] he said to the bomb aimer ‘you are a silly chap’ [laughs]. There was a few more words. So we slammed the bomb bay shut, went right through that target, went all through that explosions and the plane was rocking about, could hear shrapnel hitting the bloody machine, in our machine, and we went round and we do a dogleg. We approached the target like that, and then we go like that, like that, in again. But you had to be very, very careful ‘cause when you left the target and you was gonna come in again, you was coming across the last of the bombers that was going in. And it was very, very, very dangerous. Anyway, when we went round, and by that time the German radar was on us and it was giving us a real, real shellacking [?] I’ll tell you. Anyway, we made our run round, opened the bomb bay, dropped our bombs, slammed the door, slammed the door shut and what we usually do then, you couldn’t – slammed the doors shut but you couldn’t get away, you had to stay straight and level for another forty seconds because the camera was turning around and at the same time you was dropping what they called a photo-flash [?]. That was in the fuselage. And as the photo-flash dropped down, the cameras turning over, and they took a picture, an actual picture, of you bombing the target, which was very, very important because if you didn’t bring back a picture the intelligence officers said to you ‘well it’s your word against mine that you went there,’ even if the aircraft was full of bloody holes, they still say ‘we don’t believe you,’ well, ‘not saying we don’t believe you but you’ve got no proof that you went to the target so it don’t count, so you can go all that way there and back for nothing,’ which happened several times. Anyway, we slammed the bomb bay down, we made a dived [emphasis] to the port, turned round and come back and that’s when your trouble started, the fighters. But that time they wasn’t so dangerous as what they were to be. They, we used to see the fighters flying about and straight away, I don’t know if it was instinct or not, when I see a fighter, I wouldn’t fire on him unless he was interfering with us, I let him go, because generally you’d find on a fighter he had huge [emphasis] canons and you had no chance, I tell you, you had no chance whatsoever.
AM: So you’re just causing trouble for yourself really –
HI: Yeah because they could stand off from two, three hundred yards and you couldn’t do nothing about it, ‘cause your 303 went about a hundred yards and started dropping what they called a gravity drop. They had canons and he could rake you [?] which happened a couple of times. Anyway, we slammed the bomb bay shut, and we started coming back, and the bomb aimer said to the skipper and the navigator, ‘skipper, we can’t breathe. We’ve got no oxygen.’ And what had happened, the shrapnel had cut through the oxygen lines, so the skipper said ‘alright, so what we have to do is dive down below ten thousand feet,’ which we did do, and coming home in the mid-upper I thought to myself, ‘if this is bloody Happy Valley, I hope we don’t go anywhere that’s miserable’[laughs]. And I’ll tell you what, it’s a terrible, terrible place. Anyway we got down to – we crossed the Dutch coast at about four thousand feet, and these beautiful lights we see were flashing past us like that, all over, and lucky enough we managed to get through a few bangs and we were damaged but not that bad. And we dropped down about two thousand feet and we headed home, and I thought to myself ‘dear oh dear, I got thirty of these, thirty trips to do like that before we get a rest.’ And we landed, and I was exhausted. Even at that age, at seventeen, I was exhausted. And we went into the briefing room and I stood there and we was asked a load of questions, and they said to me, it was only my first trip, they said to me ‘what do you think?’ And I said ‘I see four or five bombers exploding in the sky,’ I said ‘apart from that everything was alright.’ He said ‘you never seen no bombers’ – this was the officer, the briefing officer telling me that, he wasn’t even a flyer. He’s saying ‘you didn’t see no bombers blowing up, that was scarecrows.’ What the Germans were firing up shells to mimic a bomber exploding, and they kept this up right the way through the war.
AM: So it was true, you hadn’t, you’d seen the scarecrows, not a bomber blowing up.
HI: No, no they were actually aircraft blowing up in the sky. They did admit after the war there was no such thing as a scarecrow.
AM: Ah right.
HI: They admitted it, the Air Ministry, but they kept it a –
AM: So why did they say that?
HI: Well they – one of the reasons was they didn’t want us to duck and dive about. They wanted us to fly straight and level, ‘cause it was dangerous anyway, ducking and diving. But every time we went back we say we seen three or four, sometimes more than that, explosions, literally exploding in the sky. They said ‘no, that’s German scarecrows to demoralise you.’ Anyway, we got back and in the briefing room he said, he told me about the scarecrows so I thought ‘oh well, that’s it.’ Anyway, I didn’t know how exhausted I was, it was only a four and three-quarter hour trip. I went to bed and I felt absolutely exhausted. And I think the mental strain of the first trip. Anyway, we went back to the mess, we went to bed, and I think next morning we had a day off. The following day I think we went to Bremen, and the reason why went to Bremen, or Bremen [different pronunciation, shorter vowel sound] as they called it, they was building the submarines, the U-Boats there.
AM: Right.
HI: And we went across the Baltic that time. We didn’t see no flak until we hit Bremen, and the flak was unbelievable. It was worse than Dusseldorf.
AM: Were you in the rear gunner at this –
HI: I was in the rear turret, yeah.
AM: So you’d moved to the rear turret by this time?
HI: Yeah. And different position and the different visibility of the – when you’re in the rear turret you can see that way, see the bits you couldn’t see really above you or at the side of you –
AM: Or behind you.
HI: And at that time, the Germans were only attacking from dead astern, port over or starboard over . That was the method of attacking at that time [emphasis], things were getting much, much worse, but they had a little bit of a chance because if they come in close you had four guns here and you could – you had a bit of a chance, not a lot, but you had a bit of a chance. Anyway, I think it was after that trip, couple of trips, I complained to the engineering officer that the rear turret, that the oil for the Merlin engines was coating the Perspex in the rear turret, which obviously, the exhaust was coming out. So we was sitting in the crew room, the officer come in, he said ‘we solved the problem of the oil on the turrets,’ and I thought ‘well that’s good’ ‘cause after about two hours this oil used to go onto the Perspex, it was starting to be difficult to see outta it, and when we went out there [chuckles] what they had done, they had taken the whole Perspex out [chuckles]. So there we were in a rear turret with no bloody Perspex, and I tell you what, it was cold [emphasis].
AM: How did that – what so nothing between you –
HI: No, just – they took the whole of the front of the Perspex out. We used to look through, they took out because the oil.
AM: So it was just you [emphasis] and sky –
HI: Yeah, yeah.
AM: Nothing between you?
HI: No, no. Well the Perspex only stopped the slipstream but they took the Perspex out. Yeah, on all the Lancs, but they solved the problem [laughs]. Anyway, we –
AM: But the oil would just hit you in the face instead.
HI: Yeah, but it was, it wasn’t so bad because you could just wipe it with your glove with it [AM laughs]. But, we got rid of the – it wasn’t such a huge amount but it was enough oil to stop, to obscure your sight a bit, you know. And you had to be really, really on your toes all that time you was in that turret. It was bitterly cold in there, forty-five, fifty below zero, was nothing.
AM: Did you ever have an occasion when your suit didn’t work, or?
HI: Yes sometimes it, it didn’t work a couple of times. I burnt me foot ‘cause it was a new, new idea you know, they’d, after the war they made electric blankets [AM laughs] that was only through the electrical heated suits and it’s the short shirts – it’s like everything in the war, everything was crash, bang, wallop, get ready , but every gunner was issued with an electrical heated suit, and they were good when they worked. So I’d done my first op, and I thought I was proud of myself, but I had other twenty-nine to do. I mean, twenty-nine successful [emphasis] ones, so you can, you can go all the way there, and you get, you get engine trouble and you gotta come back, that don’t count. Even in respect of what you’ve gone through, it didn’t count.
AM: You had to drop your bombs on the target for it to count.
HI: Yeah, the gunner target, yeah. You see, what actually happened, I think at the beginning of the war, the few of them used to go to North Sea, drop their bombs and come back and say yeah they’ve, they’ve, and they – ‘cause they realised Germany wasn’t being bombed really, it was a, the most that we got to was five miles from the towns [?] so what they decide to put the camera in, and the photo-flash. And that stopped it all, ‘cause you had to bring back a picture. The first thing they asked for when you walked in, ‘have you got your picture?’ It was the first thing – [unclear] you’d land on the aircraft, there was a [unclear] photography unit come out and take the film out, and there’d be developed or they used to take it back to the crew, the, where we was being briefed, and they could see if we bombed the target or not. Anyway, so we went to Bremen, we gained a good shellacking [?] and we done a bit of damage there, and we come back, and I was blowing my chest out, I’d done two trips [laughs]. The following, following day, er day after that, we went to Wilhelmshaven, and that was worse. That’s where I was really in full, full strength of building submarines there, and we did – it was devastating the bombing we done there, it was very successful, they held up the submarine building for a long while, and then I’d done, I’d done three trips, and I was, you know, thinking to myself, well –
AM: Were you scared?
HI: Frightened outta my bloody life. The first one, I told you, that first one, Dusseldorf, I could not believe, I could not [emphasis] but everyone was the same –
AM: Did you talk about it?
HI: No, no we never talked about it, no. I’ll tell you one thing, we used to get crews coming straight from OTU into the squadron, ‘cause their losses were horrendous you know, we was losing so many aircraft, and they’d say ‘what’s the ops like?’ and we’d always used to say ‘you find out, you find out yourself.’ We never said ‘oh it’s terrible over there’ or nothing, never. And I don’t know if that helped them or not, but a lot of the crews only done one trip before they got shot down, hell of a lot of ‘em. Just one – in fact, what they used to do when a crew come from OTU, they used to let the pilot fly with an experienced crew on his first trip, so he’d understand what an actual raid was. Very often he never come back off his first trip, it happened time and time again. The crew used to be walking about the station with no, waiting for a new pilot. Yeah, happened many times. Anyway, after Wilhelmshaven we went back to Happy Valley again, and this time, I tell you what, I thought Dusseldorf was bad, we went to Essen [emphasis] and Essen was something out of this [noise of disbelief] something outta, I tell you what, it was absolutely ferocious. The flak was enormous, everywhere you look there was shells bursting, aircraft blowing up in the sky, aircraft going down in flames, and I had something with me because we just went through – we always got hit, always got hit with flak, big holes in the aircraft, but when we got back they used to bang ‘em and tap ‘em back and –
AM: Bodge [?] ‘em up.
HI: Yeah, that’s it [chuckles]. Anyway, we went to Essen, then we went to Munich, and I’ll tell you how my luck is, what happened, losses at Waddington on 9 Squadron, even those few weeks I was there, was horrendous. So they sent two scientists down from Cambridge with a new device to put into the rear turret so that when a fighter was five or six hundred yards away, which we couldn’t see, they could see us on their radar, this instrument was radar. It could pick up the fighter and warn us with a red light that there was a fighter in the close vicinity. Unfortunately the first time the squadron was equipped with them, we lost two aircraft and the Germans must have sorted the, must have examined the wreckage and seen this device in the rear turret and copied [unclear] a wavelength or whatever it was, anyway we went to Munich and that was a long trip, that was about eight and a half hours and we went over, and how the navigator found Munich I’ll never know ‘cause we went over in ten-tenths cloud, that means to say underneath you was solid cloud, but he found Munich as – before we reached Munich the cloud broke and there was Munich and we did, we did give it real good hiding.
AM: Is this day time or night?
HI: It’s night time –
AM: It’s night time isn’t it?
HI: Never, never done daylight.
AM: But you could still see it, so how come you could see it at night time?
HI: We could see it yeah because the – a couple of people had been bombing it and the searchlights –
AM: Right.
HI: And you could see the town anyway. You – but that’s why bombing – they, they said ‘well why did you bomb areas’ – the only way you can do night bombing was to, at that time was area bombing and in that area you probably got a load of factories you could destroy, but you couldn’t pick out – it was very, very difficult to pick out an individual target so you had to bomb an area, they used to pick an area out. This was before pathfinding [murmured agreement from AM] so we used to drop flares ourselves, we dropped a few flares as we was going in, or people before us would drop a few flares, and you’d sit and the bomb aimer would see the target.
AM: Who dropped the flares, the bomb aimer?
HI: The bomb aimer, yeah. Someone on the squadron [very unclear what was said here] would drop a few flares and then down they went, but that was the beginning, when we really first started bombing Germany, before that it was a joke. Anyway, we bombed Munich and we made a good frame [?] on it actually, and coming back the skipper said ‘I think we’ll fly through cloud’ because the fighter activity, we could see the fighter flares, and so he said ‘if we go through cloud we won’t meet any fighters,’ which we did do, so we was flying for about an hour in the cloud and all of a sudden the cloud broke clear, and believe it or not, right by my rear turret, as I looked outta my rear turret was a Ju-88. I tell you what he was no more than thirty yards [emphasis] behind us. And he opened fire with his cannons and the tracer went just above the aircraft, just missed us. The reason was that he was so close and we was up and down like that and I suppose as we went down he fired and he missed us. Anyway, we opened fire, me in the rear turret and the mid-upper ‘cause he was right close to us, and down he went, he spun over and down he went.
AM: So you got him?
HI: Yeah we got him, yeah.
AM: Which one of you got him, do you know?
HI: We don’t know, I think –
AM: Both of you?
HI: We both opened fire on him, and he was more surprised than what we were, he never expected it, and down he went. Lucky enough because usually once the night fighter got on your tail, it was very, very difficult. Anyway we, when we got back we told the intelligence officer that this night fighter had followed us through ten-tenths cloud for an hour ‘till the cloud broke. So they put two and two together and realised the apparatus they’d put in the turret was sending out a ray for the Germans to pick up and that’s what he was following us on. So what – immediately they took the radar thing out of the turret and I don’t know if it made any difference or not. After that we were talking and laughing about it and they said ‘you gonna do some low level formation flying in daylight,’ so we thought ‘well surely we’re not gonna have another daylight raid after the huge loss to 44 Squadron,’ and I mean we never even considered [emphasis] that they would do anymore daylight raids. So anyway, we done this practice formation, well it’s not formation flying – at that time there was over ninety Lancs in 5 Group, and there was ninety of us flying over Lincoln, around this area, right on the ground, well I don’t mean on the ground, as high as these buildings. Everyone was moaning down below because can you imagine ninety Lancasters flying about thirty or forty feet and they said ‘you’re gonna have to cut the squadron of Spitfires doing damning runs [?] on you.’ So I’m sitting in my turret, and the Spitfires come straight for me, and he was so close our slipstream hit his, hit his wings, and he turned like that, and being so low, he couldn’t, he couldn’t get outta the dive and he went straight in the deck. And I was ‘that don’t sound too bad, that’s gonna happen.’ Anyway –
AM: What happened to him? Crashed? Killed?
HI: Crashed, just crashed yeah. And when I looked along the road there was about three or four Spits on the deck, burning [emphasis] doing the same thing, come straight in –
AM: So they were killed?
HI: And the slipstream, they had no chance of correcting, correcting, ‘cause it’s too low on the ground. Anyway, on the Saturday they said ‘there’s gonna – report to your flights ‘cause there’s gonna be a daylight raid.’ So we went out to do the what they call a night flighting test, and when we landed there was the trailer, but all it had on it was six [emphasis] one thousand pounders. So we knew it was gonna be a long, long journey. We were – a bomb load like that was only a third of the weight of what we’d usually take to the Ruhr, so we were, obviously it was gonna be a long journey. We went to the briefing –
AM: Can I just ask, so why obviously, ‘cause that would conserve the fuel because you had a lighter load?
HI: Yeah we had to take more fuel and less bombs, so –
AM: Yep, okay.
HI: So actually we knew the distance when we see a big petrol load [emphasis] going in we knew we were on for a – we see a small bomb load we knew, the petrol, it was being loaded up for all the tanks and we knew we was on for a long trip. Anyway, we went and had our – even at that time, we’d already had breakfast, but they sent us out and said ‘we’re gonna have bleeding bacon and eggs’ [laughs]. That was always done, it don’t matter what time of the day it was bacon –
AM: Well what would happen if you didn’t like bacon?
HI: Well –
AM: What did they get, sausage?
HI: There were a few Jewish people who, they had to eat the bleeding bacon [laughs].
AM: Did they, they ate it?
HI: Yeah, well, by then I’d done five or six trips, and I thought ‘so I better eat the food, you never know what’s gonna happen.’ Anyway, we went to the briefing at about ten o’clock, Saturday morning, it was, in October, round about, I forget the date, about the tenth of October, and we went to the briefing, and the officer come in, pulled the blind down, and there it was. Place called Le Creusot. It was right on the other side of France, nearly on the Swiss border. It was a nearly ten and a half hour trip and we were looking at each other, and they said ‘you’re to fly as low as possible, even lower than that if you can,’ and they said ‘there’ll be two hundred Spitfires,’ or hundred, two or three hundred Spitfires ‘escorting you to the coast,’ but the trouble was the Spitfires went to the wrong bleeding place, we never see ‘em. So we crossed the French coast at about the height of these buildings, and then you imagine what a sight that must have been , ninety-two Lancasters flying –
AM: What a noise [emphasis] never mind a sight.
HI: Yeah, there was loads and loads of ‘em. And all we got was the French girls waving at us and I thought ‘that’s handy,’ and everybody was coming out and waving, it was a beautiful day, and we went right across France. I mean right across France, looking, wondering where the fighters was ‘cause there was thousands of by that time, ’42, there was hundreds and hundreds of fighters in France –
AM: German fighters?
HI: Yeah, German fighters in France. Anyway, we went right across France, there was no incidents, everybody was waving, and we approached the target [coughs] excuse me, and six of us had to break off and bomb the power station that was supplying the electricity to this huge armament factory in Le Creusot. It was a huge armament factory, nearly as big as what the Germans had, and they was producing armaments for the German army. So we broke off, telling you now there was six of us who broke off, Guy Gibson was with us, he was on our port side, and he was on 106 Squadron, Guy Gibson was on, and his second in command was flying the other Lanc, and on our starboard side was two Lancasters from 50 Squadron on the other side, we was in the centre and there was six of us. We broke off and went straight to this power station. Oh, and as we approached the power station, one of the Lancasters on our starboard side just went straight in the deck and exploded. We were – he had six one thousand pound bombs on it, and it literally went straight in the deck and exploded. What happened we don’t know.
AM: Don’t know.
HI: Anyway, the five of us carried on, Gibson was on our portside with his second in command and we was in the centre, and the last one of 50 Squadron was, was on our starboard side. Anyway, we bombed the power station and we absolutely flattened [emphasis] it. We was carrying six one thousand pounders, and we went and we climbed up a little bit and dropped ‘em, and we could see that the whole place was flattened. In fact, the factory was – actually I went back there last year, to the factory and it’s bombed, still bleeding bombed [unclear, laughs]. Anyway –
AM: Did you get your photo?
HI: Pardon?
AM: Did you get – not last year, I mean in 1942.
HI: No we didn’t, I don’t think we took a photo because it was daylight and everything –
AM: So they knew –
HI: Everyone was bombing the same target. Anyway, the ninety Lancs turned round, it was ninety-two ‘cause when we turned around there was only ninety-one, one had blown up in the sky, and we came back over the – by the time we’d got to the French coast it was getting dark –
AM: Still flying really low level?
HI: Yeah, and we started climbing when we got to the French coast, and as we passed the French coast it was getting dark, and we was flying for about another thirty or forty minutes, and all of a sudden the sky was smothered in bloody high explosive shells again. So the pilot said ‘where the bloody hell are we,’ so the skipper said ‘ I think we’ve, I’ve miscalculated and we’re flying over Jersey,’ and we were over Jersey with these huge explosions coming up, anyway the pilot called him a nice fella again, he said ‘stupid chap you are’ like that, and we branched out and come back, but that was a catch that, Jersey was very, very heavily armed, and anybody strayed off the course they wait for you. Shot down quite a few bombers over there. Anyway, we got back and went to the briefing, we were told exactly what had happened, and they confirmed that we done a good job there –
AM: Good.
HI: And I thought ‘there won’t be no more daylight raids after that.’ And we went to, in a week, we had a couple of days off and we went to Genoa [emphasis], and we couldn’t make out why we was going all the way to Italy, it was eleven hour trip to bomb Genoa, but we soon found out because on the Thursday [emphasis] they said, a briefing for Saturday, a daylight raid. So we said ‘surely we’re not having another daylight raid, we was lucky we got away with La Crusoe.’ Anyway, believe it or not, the target was Milan, and we was gonna bomb it, in daylight, taking it from a very, very low level ‘till we got to the Alps, we couldn’t go low level so we had to wander through the Alps, and there was ninety- two Lancasters, darting and diving through the Alps.
AM: Had the Spitfires turned up this time?
HI: No we never see no bloody Spitfires at all this time, and same again, we went right across France, no opposition whatsoever. We went through the Alps, and this is what I call a terror raid. We went across Lake Como about hundred feet then, we climbed to three hundred feet, and there was Milan waiting for us. No air raid shelter, no flak, they never expected British bombers to come all the way from England in daylight, never expected.
AM: Could you, were you low enough to actually see people in the –
HI: Pardon?
AM: Were you low enough to actually see people?
HI: It was, we was that low, we dropped down to about a hundred feet, hundred and fifty feet over Milan, we could see everybody in the streets, in the restaurants, we could see ‘em all. And we see ‘em started running about, there was no alarm given, and the city was completely open, and imagine ninety-two Lancs with six one thousand pounders on. We caused absolute havoc there, and a few of the boys I know were machine gunning, which I thought was wrong. Anyway, we climbed up again, came back, slid our way through the Alps, dropped down again to nought [?] feet and came right across France again.
AM: You missed Jersey that time.
HI: Yeah, we missed Jersey that time. We had our pullovers on [laughs].
AM: What did you feel about that then? The fact that you could actually see people?
HI: Oh we could see ‘em yeah, yeah because we –
AM: What did you, did you talk about it afterwards?
HI: No, we never talked about air raids, never mentioned it. Once you got back it was finished. No body, and same as the logbook, all we used to put in the logbook was the raid, the time, we never, what we should have done was put a little, exactly what happened, but when you put your books into the commanding officer to be signed once a month, [unclear] shooting, just put down what the raid was and that was it, that was what we used to do. But we should have done, we should have put the whole story of what exactly went on. And after that raid believe it or not the Ities [?] didn’t want to know anything more about the war, and there was huge – we had a big publicity the next day in the Daily Express, had a huge photo of Number 9 Squadron, coming back off the raid, and they reproduced it in Italy with, English Gangsters they called us, and there we are. I think we lost four aircraft that night, I don’t know where we lost them, might have been technical trouble, I don’t know, but, to go all that way in daylight and not see a German fighter was incredible. And after that we felt ourselves very, very, very lucky. It was about my ninth trip then, I was one of the top, experienced men then –
AM: And you’d shot somebody down by then.
HI: Yeah, yeah. But we’d, we were the top men in the squadron, we’d done about nine or ten trips.
AM: And you were seventeen.
HI: Yeah, yeah. And from then things got worse. Worse and worse and worse. The –
AM: In what way worse, Harry?
HI: The fighters got much more efficient, and their radar got much more efficient. Their guns got more efficient. Search lights got better, and more, and they had guns that fired with radar and they never missed. I remember later on in the year on my second tour we was bombing a place in the Ruhr Valley, and we was going in, our squadron, and as we was going in, there was people in front of us bombing, and they’d already turned starboard and coming out again, and for some reason, I don’t know, a Halifax [emphasis] I don’t know if it was in our squadron or the squadron beforehand, instead of going hitting the target, I don’t know what happened, he turned and joined the aircraft that was coming out of the, from the bombing run, which was in daylight, and there was a big gap between us going in and those coming out, and then he flew across, and as he flew across the flak went bang, bang, and the third shell hit him right underneath, and just exploded, yeah. Why he done that I don’t know, ‘cause we was all in the shadow of the silver paper we was dropping, and that helps with the – this one had got outta range with it going across and they shot him down straight away, yeah. And as it went on, we used to get leave every six weeks, and Lord [pause] what his name, Rank, Rank, wasn’t Rank, it was the er, the bloke that owned Morris, BMC, owned BMC, and he said, and he gave every aircrew bloke that was on ops, when he went on leave he doubled their pay, for a weeks leave yeah, he done that right through the war. Must have cost him a fortune.
AM: Every airman?
HI: Yeah, well it was in Bomber Command.
AM: In Bomber Command.
HI: Who was flying. He used to give ‘em – he used to, he used to double our pay, yeah.
AM: You know what, just going back to operations, you know the gaps between them, as in a day, a couple of days?
HI: All depending upon the weather. It was entirely dependent upon the weather. If the weather was, it was a bright – I’ll tell you one we went one, we went on one and I still think about it, it was a full light night, getting onto Christmas I think it was, and they said ‘there’ll be no ops tonight because there’s bright moonlight and no cloud,’ and it was suicide to go over there. Anyway, they said they’d picked out sixteen Lancasters, they’d picked out about eight from our squadron, four from 44 and I think four from another squadron, they said ‘we want you to do a low level night time raid on small towns just outside the Ruhr Valley.’ And the excuse they gave us was that the civilian population wasn’t getting any rest from the bombing raids on the Ruhr Valley and they was letting them come to these small towns to get rest. That’s why they wanted to go over there and liven ‘em up. So, it really was a terror raid and we carried sixteen one thousand pounders with a delayed charged of about half an hour, and we found this small town, we was after, just outside the Ruhr Valley, and we went right down, it was brilliant [emphasis] moonlight we were in, we went right down this village or small town and dropped the sixteen one thousand pounders right down the centre of the town. And I often wonder what happened about that, but I don’t, there was no need really to do that bombing really, but there you go, that was war.
AM: Well you called it a terror raid.
HI: Pardon?
AM: You called it a terror raid?
HI: Yeah, yeah, and that was Christmas, went home and had some leave, came back and we started again. And by that time, all the crews that I knew when I joined the squadron in June had all gone, they’d all gone. All been shot down.
AM: Every single one.
HI: Yeah, and they was all new recruits except us, and we was all NCOs.
AM: What do you think kept your plane – why your crew when all the rest of them got shot down? What can you say?
HI: I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ll tell you, shall I tell you?
AM: Go on.
HI: Well, what they used to do, before you went on a raid they used to give us a bag of sweets –
AM: Go on, keep going. I know the story, but keep going.
HI: Oh you know the story do you?
AM: You told me earlier on, but tell me again.
HI: And, we couldn’t undo the sweets with the cellophane, so we used to throw them out of the rear turret, and the Germans knew that and that’s why they never shot us down. ‘Cause they wanted the sweets [laughs]. That’s only a joke [both laugh]. I don’t know, I got no idea. Well, what actually happened, the crew I was with, I said they’d already done fourteen trips on Wellingtons when I joined them, they finished, and they finished, we finished our tour, was up to about sixteen, fifteen or sixteen trips, and I was left with no crew, and I was sitting in the mess, and a bloke walked in, I knew him as Sergeant Doolan, pilot, and he said ‘my rear gunner Robbie has just been killed, would you take his place?’ That was, that was luck really, so I said ‘alright, I’ll become your new rear gunner’ which I did do, and we was an NCO crew, and we was the only crew to, that I know of, all the time I was there, that finished the tour. And how many crews we lost, Lord knows.
AM: But you were the common denominator.
HI: Yeah, yeah –
AM: From the first sixteen and then fourteen and then the –
HI: Yeah, and then, we was all NCOs and we finished the tour, yeah. And I think the pilot got the DFM, and none of us got even a mention of a medal. And there was – but the thing was, what was happening by then was the Germans had come up with a new technique called Schräge Musik, that was what they’d come up with, they’d put two cannons at eighty degree, put the two cannons behind the cockpit at eight degrees so there was the aircraft, and these two guns stuck up like that –
AM: Okay.
HI: And all they had to do, they had radar, and all they had to do was coast [?] yourself underneath a bomber and just fly underneath him. You didn’t have to have no sight, no tracer, it just went underneath the aircraft, up to the petrol tanks, quick squirt, and we used to see ‘em blowing up but we couldn’t make out, we used to come back and tell ‘em that we seen aircraft blowing up in the sky, there was no flak and no fighters we could see, and the, and they literally shot down thousands [emphasis] of bombers, and not once did they ever mention what was going on at the briefing, not once. Never.
AM: Would there have been any way to avoid them if you’d have known about them?
HI: Well, if we knew and known about it, which they knew what we’d be doing, we’d start jiggling up and down, so they wouldn’t get a clean shot at us, but then when you think about it, you get five or six hundred bombers doing that in pitch darkness, you’re gonna get, gonna get a lot of problems. And that was it, but they were shooting them down, ah, unbelievable. Yeah, you had to be lucky really, because if you bowed out you had to be lucky, because if the civilians, you come out near a target and the civilians get hold of you they’d rip you to pieces. Yeah, and the Gestapo shot a few as well. If you was lucky the Luftwaffe got hold of you, was alright, but, or the army got you –
AM: But you never got shot down?
HI: No, I never got shot down, no.
AM: What happened at the end of your first tour, then?
HI: What happened then, finished my tour, didn’t get no bloody medal, don’t know why not –
AM: Even though you shot one down, ‘cause people got medals for that didn’t they?
HI: Yeah I know. Anyway, I went as an instructor, and then I realised how risky this business was, because all [emphasis] that was coming from OTUs were crews being trained in Canada. And when you think they were being trained on single engine aircraft in beautiful weather, all they had to do was follow the railway line from one point to another, everything was easy. Of course when they come to London, especially, and England, especially where, with the weather, and was OTU we had to train ‘em for three or four months before they went on operations, and hell of a lot of ‘em got killed on accidents, but they were very raw, they should have had much, much more training, but then again –
AM: And how old were you at this point? Eighteen?
HI: Yeah, eighteen, about eighteen and a half yeah. And I was an instructor, and apparently, I carried on for a little while and the, we had a bit of a go – oh they sent me up to a place up in Scotland to a gunnery school to do some – the instructors up there wanted to get on ops, don’t know why, but they said ‘you go up there and relieve them,’ about ten of us went up there, and we were in the mess one night, and we all got drunk and caused a bit of a havoc and we went in front of the CO next day, he said ‘I’ve had enough of you blokes, I’m posting you.’ So I thought ‘oh go on, I’ll be posted somewhere out in the Middle East’ or somewhere like that, and anyway I got posted to South End, about fifteen miles from where I lived, and I was thinking ‘be at home every night’ and while I was there, what we was doing there was flying drogues [?], the flak along the south coast, we had a big drogue pulled behind, and I tell you what, when I see that I knew we had no chance at all. They had these, we had to use a toeless drogue, and they used to fight, not at the drogue, a couple of degrees past the drogue, because they kept hitting the drogues and it was becoming expensive. So, but the flak [emphasis] to follow you, right, same height, would follow the drogue all the way along. Anyway, after a while they said ‘you’re posted,’ and this I knew was why the government knew what was going on in Germany with the fighters. They said ‘you’ve been posted to the 77 Squadron, Halifaxes.’ So I thought ‘alright,’ so and when I got up there –
AM: Where was that? Where was it?
HI: Er, Full Sutton I think, yeah Full Sutton. And when I got up there, the CO said he wanted to see me when I got up there, so I thought ‘that’s handy, the bloody warrant officer and the CO wants to see me, I must be important’ and he took me out to the, where the arment [?] officer, out to a Halifax, and what they had done they’d cut a big hole in the bottom of the Halifax and placed a point manual point five over the hole –
AM: Point five –
HI: Yeah, point five, point five machine gun.
AM: Okay.
HI: A much bigger shell than the 303. And they said ‘have you seen any German fighters coming, coming at you, you’ll be able to handle ‘em.’ So they knew what was going on. Anyway, we took off for Duisburg and I was sitting there – I was bleeding freezing, can you imagine there’s a big hole like that, about twenty thousand feet and –
AM: Hang on where’s this, is this in the middle of the plane?
HI: In the middle of the plane.
AM: Right, okay.
HI: A big hole.
AM: Where the bomb doors would have been?
HI: Er, it was different in the Halifax.
AM: Okay.
HI: It was different from the Lancaster. Most the bombs – up, further up and underneath the wings as well.
AM: Right.
HI: Anyway, they dug this hole, cut this hole in the Halifax and they had a point five there, and I sat there, and can you imagine it was about forty-five below, and it seemed the whole world was coming through that bloody hole. The pilot was moaning, the bomb aimer was moaning, and the – anyway, we’d done the bombing raid, come back and they complained bitterly about it, and that was the last that – and they said to me ‘we’re posting you to Driffield, to an Australian squadron’ and that’s where I went then, as a rear gunner at 462 Australian Squadron. I stayed there for a couple of months and I don’t know what happened there, I don’t know if I’d lost my logbook or – anyway, I done about eight or nine trips here and never even registered, and then they posted from there, from 64, er, 462 Squadron on Driffield to its other squadron which was at Driffield –
AM: Why did you keep, why did you keep getting posted to different ones?
HI: Well the pilot I went with in 462, bloke, Australian called Heurigen [unsure of spelling] – 462 they posted away completely [emphasis] but he, he stayed, he said ‘no I wanna stay here at Driffield’ and he went onto 466, and he took me with him. And when he finished, I was in, I didn’t know what to do, and they said ‘we want you to go to 158 Squadron at Lissett’ and that’s where I finished. I don about another ten trips there, and they said to me ‘you done enough, that’s it.’
AM: What was Lissett like?
HI: Nissan huts, terrible. Baking hot in the summer, freezing [emphasis] in the winter. And you come back off an op and you had to go in one of them bloody tin huts. The bedding was wet, yeah. But I survived.
AM: You did.
HI: Yeah, I really survived, yeah. All, most of them, all my friends went there, yeah, a lot.
AM: Was the DFC then for the number of operations you went on?
HI: Number of trips I done, sixty trips, yeah. Yeah, I done more now actually, but –
AM: Well the ones that didn’t yeah, didn’t get counted.
HI: Yeah.
AM: And then so from that point, when you did your last tour, sorry your last operation, then what happened, were you sent to demob?
HI: No, they said to me ‘what was your trade?’ The war had finished, and they said to me ‘what was your trade before the war? What did you do?’ and I said ‘I was an apprentice tailor,’ they said ‘we’ve got the job for you’ I thought – they sent me down to Newmarket on the racecourse, in charge of about eight or nine WAFs on sewing machines. I don’t know why they thought I was – they were making lorry covers on these machines, and they put me in charge of ‘em. Oh, when I was there.
AM: What was that like Harry?
HI: [Laughs] had a little giggle [laughter].
AM: So what, how old are you at this point you’re about twenty –
HI: About twenty, yes. Yeah, about, getting on for twenty.
AM: So go on, you had a little giggle [HI laughs], tell me [HI laughs] go on, tell me some stories.
HI: Yeah I was charge of them, that’s it [laughs].
AM: Right, alright then.
HI: Yeah and then I stayed in Newmarket – oh blimey, it’s, oh it’s only twenty past.
AM: No, we’re alright.
HI: Newmarket was a bombing station if you believe it or not. The Rowley Mile was a runway for 75 Squadron, a New Zealand squadron, and after the war they turned it into a Prussian [?] depot. They was dropping all the aircraft into Newmarket and crushing ‘em.
AM: Crushing them?
HI: Crushing ‘em. Hundreds of ‘em. Into this big machine they just went pfft like, just crushed ‘em up, piled ‘em up. As far as we could see was one huge pile of aluminium.
AM: Going back to you though, so you’ve had your giggle with your WAFs –
HI: Yeah.
AM: Then what? Did you get –
HI: I had a couple of giggles [laughter from both] but it was handy there because we could get up to London from Newmarket, they had a railway station –
AM: How long was it before you were demobbed then?
HI: Er, got demobbed in forty, 1946, August ’46.
AM: So quite early, a lot earlier than a lot of ‘em then? ‘Cause you’d been in the whole –
HI: I’d been in the whole, since [unclear] yeah. I come out, about to find a job, I couldn’t go back to tailoring, I’d missed it you know. Anyway, I tried, went back to tailoring and learnt a little bit. Things were very difficult when we come out, we had no houses, you can imagine London, there was all bloody roofs off the buildings, and then we had to wait for a house. I was married then.
AM: I was gonna say, where did, where did you meet your wife?
HI: I knew her from the, from the blackout. I was sitting on a seat in the blackout and she came along with her friend and we started talking and that’s how it started, and I, it was only when I [unclear] and we got married in forty, 1945, Christmas 1945, and I remember we, we done a couple of trips, and I remember I bombed Dresden, we bombed Dresden just after Christmas, February, but we got married on the Christmas, and I shouldn’t have got married ‘cause we had nowhere to bloody live, better than living with the mother-in-law for a little while, got fed up with 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/.
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-23
Format
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01:15:35 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AIronsH150723
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Lincolnshire
Title
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Interview with Harry Irons. One
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Irons left a tailoring apprenticeship to join the Royal Air Force and trained as a wireless operator but actually became an air-gunner. He describes the uniform he wore and the unreliability of heated suits. Discusses the invention of scarecrows which crews believed were sent up by the Germans to distract and demoralise them. Also describes a number of operations including to the Ruhr Valley and a number of daylight operations including Le Creusot (17 October 1942) and Milan (24 October 1942). Goes on to discuss the removal of Perspex from Lancasters to prevent oil from exhausts from affecting visibility, the introduction of radar into the rear turret and it’s quick removal after it was found as used by Germany and Schrage Musik. He returned to tailoring following his retirement from the Royal Air Force.
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-10-24
1942-10-17
158 Squadron
462 Squadron
5 Group
50 Squadron
77 Squadron
9 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing of Augsburg (17 April 1942)
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
Gee
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Halifax
In the event of my death letter
Ju 88
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Nissen hut
radar
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Driffield
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Lissett
RAF Manby
Scarecrow
Spitfire
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/94/889/MBartlettA[Ser -DoB]-150520-040001.jpg
4f8832ffb6710dc182c8b89bc93aef09
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/94/889/MBartlettA[Ser -DoB]-150520-040002.jpg
4b0fe4244522fb292d0dcab4be90aea5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Bartlett, Anthony Bertrand
Anthony Bartlett
A B J Bartlett
A B Bartlett
Identifier
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Bartlett, A
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection consist of documents concerning Flight Lieutenant Anthony Bertrand Joseph Bartlett’s service. It includes a poem and two memoirs, one a recollection of a mine laying operation and one about an officers’ mess function.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Antony Bartlett and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
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2015-05-19
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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AN ANXIOUS MOMENT
One moonlit dawn on 28th March 1943 from base in East Anglia we headed south over Selsey Bill. France and the Gironde River near Bordeaux was our objective – to lay mines.
My task in the second pilot’s seat was to help with controls when flying to the target, to go down into the bomb bay and, when there, release the bombs or mines in a stick formation to cause maximum damage to enemy shipping.
Seven boys aged around 20, clad in leathers, harnesses, helmets with intercom mike and earphones, plugged in for oxygen, flying at 15,000 feet. Our four-engine Stirling Q-Queenie was slow compared with the Lancaster.
Nothing challenged us across France and we were hoping the trip would be easy. This turned out to be far from the case. Over the target all appeared quiet and sleepy. The ships moored in the river were not showing lights. What a peaceful scene! I asked for “Bomb doors open”. “Bombs gone!” Just then all hell broke loose. One of the seemingly docile ships turned out to be an anti-aircraft vessel. We were right overhead and he couldn’t miss. Our tailplane [sic] was shot off and fuel was leaking from the tank. The engineer turned on the reserve fuel tank, but he then cried out as a shell left its mark. Ready hands tried to stem his wound whilst Ken and I struggled to pull back on the controls with engine revs at full strength.
Miraculously, as the giant engines clawed the air and we hovered for what seemed ages – but in reality were seconds – we seemed to be doomed to fall back into the river. Somehow we edged forward on full throttles and regained some height – sufficient to be able to pull away from a possible drowning end. We later found out tailplane [sic] had been completely shot off. In addition, we were down to three engines, so regaining height was another problem. Meanwhile, first-aid – albeit rather crude – had been enough to stem the engineer’s flow of blood and we covered him with a blanket to keep him warm.
The route home over France was quickly passed from navigator to pilot and, dreading a possible attack to further destroy our ailing craft, we limped towards the coast at 2,000 feet, dropping height all the way. At last I spied through cloud, the English coast as we limped over the Channel. A hundred feet over the cliff we called up Boscombe Down for permission to crash-land, giving details of our state as far as we knew. Directions were given and we staggered over the lights switched on a moment before we scraped down. A truck appeared with helpers as we almost fell down our steps from the hatch. An ambulance crew took
[page break]
charge of our wounded crew member as we made our way to the control tower. Our Irving jackets unzipped, our faces blackened with oil and grease, we looked a sorry sight. But we were home.
A briefing officer asked questions about our trip whilst we drank tea, also puffing on a cigarette. Some memories remained vivid, others dimmed in a need for rest and sleep. Charts were produced by the navigator as we endeavoured to recall every little thing of significance; the strength of the flak around the target – the attack by enemy planes – plus the behaviour of our aircraft engines, controls, armaments and so on. We traced our route to and from Gironde as best we could.
At last we could walk across to the Mess for something warm, stumbling thence to our billets and bunks. Often we were unable to undress, but flopped on to our beds to try and sleep.
The next night was another story!
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
An anxious moment
Description
An account of the resource
Describes events during a mine laying operation in a Stirling to the Gironde River near Bordeaux. Relates how the aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire which damaged the tail and an engine as well as wounding the flight engineer. Describes the struggle to regain control, treat wounded and the return flight to England culminating in a crash landing at RAF Boscombe Down. Mentions after flight activity including some details of the debriefing.
Creator
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Antony Bartlett
Format
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One typewritten sheet
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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MBartlettA[Ser#-DoB]-150520-03
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
France
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Wiltshire
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-03-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
3 Group
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
briefing
debriefing
military service conditions
mine laying
RAF Boscombe Down
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1912/35970/MHayhurstJM2073102-170725-11.2.pdf
1c6506547020969c83d9a7232acfd4bb
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
Hayhurst, Jose Margaret
J M Hayhurst
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hayhurst, JM
Description
An account of the resource
108 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Jose Margaret Hayhurst (2073102 Royal Air Force) and contains decorations, uniform, documents and photographs. She served as a radar operator in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Andrew Whitehouse and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
WAR
[underlined] Frankfurt Revisited [/underlined]
ISSUED FORTNIGHTLY BY THE
ARMY BUREAU OF CURRENT AFFAIRS
ABCA
[boxed] RESTRICTED
The information given in this publication is not to be communicated, either directly or indirectly, to the Press or to any person not authorised to receive it. [/boxed]
No. 62 January 22nd, 1944
[page break]
Lines of Thought
1. The ideal way to cover the subject of bombing is to invite a member of a bomber crew to talk about his job, and use this pamphlet to provide the questions to keep him talking. But failing this, the first half of the story is best reported on, and the second part which deals with the actual flight is best read aloud. Assume that everyone would like to have been on a bombing raid. Here is the detailed story of someone who had the good fortune to do so.
Remember that in spite of all that has been written about Bomber Command, the details of its day to day work are still extremely vague in most people's minds. The result of your talk should be twofold: firstly to give a matter-of-fact account of life in an air crew; secondly to provide a starting point for a discussion on the value of our bombing effort.
2. Perhaps the outstanding military moral is the complete unity of the bomber crew. This unity grows from their technical interdependence and from the nature of their work. A similar spirit is natural to the tank crew, the parachute stick, the mortar team, or in any situation where everyone feels that everyone else knows his job. There could be an interesting and useful discussion on the teamwork situation in your own group. It may not be easy to start because it depends on personal relationships about which people are reluctant to talk. But such a talk, arising in this apparently irrelevant way, can be exceedingly helpful. A useful point on which to launch this discussion is your own experiences of co-operation in previous military or civilian life.
3. During 1943 R.A.F. Bomber Command dropped 136,000 tons of bombs on Germany. Or more than twice the 65,000 tons dropped on this country since the war began. Another 15,000 tons fell on occupied territories and 6,000 tons on Italy; making a total average of 430 tons of bombs on the enemy every night of 1943.
The answering German total was under 7 tons a night, or 2,500 for the year.
By the end of 1943, 20 of Germany's 50 most important cities had been so devasted that they were more of a liability than an asset to the German war machine. Many others, including Berlin, had been severely damaged in varying degree.
ii
[page break]
[symbol][underlined] Frankfurt Revisited [/underlined]
Did I ever tell you about my operation?
By Major ANTHONY COTTERELL,
WAR Staff Writer
THE fact that there is going to be an operation is generally known to the crews about 10 a.m. of the morning of the operation. They don't know where it will be until the briefing later in the day. In the case of the R.A.F. Bomber Station visited, transport left the officers’ mess, a requisitioned hotel, two miles from the aerodrome, at 9 a.m.
The pilots report to their Squadron Leader in his office. Three mornings a week there is P.T. for aircrews at 9.30 a.m. to 9.45 a.m. But the general impression is of them waiting around for the decision which is the focal point of their day.
The point is that though they may not have operated for more than a week, they never know each morning whether or not they will be doing so. Of course, extreme weather conditions are a pretty good guide when they get up in the morning. But the weather overhead may have no particular bearing on the weather over Germany that night.
About 10 o'clock the telephone rings to say whether or not there will be operations.
What is the General Time-table for the Air Crews?
Every morning, whether or not they are operating, each aircraft must be tested. If there is no operation they probably make a practice flight. They may do some practice bombing with small practice bombs. If, on the other hand, they are going to be operating that night they will probably do their night flying test – N.F.T.s as the morning tests are called – on the ground. This takes up most of the morning.
In the afternoon there are probably lectures. There is a school for each operational job in the air crew. For instance, the navigators have lectures, inquests and discussions of their own. So do the wireless
1
[page break]
operators and the gunners, and the bomb aimers. They finish about tea-time, and the rest of the day is their own.
On this particular day the crews had been flying in the morning, and, at the point when I was introduced, the members of the particular crew to which I had been allotted were on their way to spend Sunday afternoon cleaning their Lancaster, T for Tommy.
There were seven in the crew: pilot, flight engineer, navigator, air bomber (or bomb-aimer), wireless operator, mid-upper gunner and rear-gunner. The Lancaster didn't look sensationally large despite its sensationally large bomb load. The pilot, Knights, showed me round it and indicated where I would stand for the operation, while the rest of the crew cleaned it. Apparently a pilot had to pay a half-crown fine if the Squadron Leader found any uncleaned portion of the aircraft.
Are Any Inquests Held?
We weren't there for long, as we had to be back at 4 p.m. for a post-mortem discussions on the last Berlin raid, which had taken place a few days before. It was held in the briefing room, which was about the size of a small church hall, with a table and forms for each crew.
The Group Captain conducted the meeting. Apparently it was the first of the kind held on this station. He explained that after each operation the report and photographs brought back by each crew were individually considered. He hoped that if the post-mortems were held in the presence of all concerned very useful lessons might be learned. It might help to counteract the tendency to think you knew a thing when you weren't really sure.
But criticism was to be constructive, not destructive. "When I ask why were you 20 miles off track, I don't mean why the hell were you 20 miles off track, I just mean why were you 20 miles off track?"
The various specialist officers, Intelligence, Radio, Ordnance, etc., and the two Squadron Leaders and the Wing Commander sat on each side of him. The Group Captain sat alone at a small table raised on a shallow platform. He had a pile of dossiers before him, one relating to each crew. He took these in turn.
Now, Was Priority Really Necessary?
"Tomlin came back with two engines U/S. and a third likely to go. Very good performance. Now, the point is this – he asked for radio priority, and he couldn’t get it because another aircraft already had priority. Now, was it really necessary for the other aircraft to have priority, and why was it necessary?"
The navigator of the crew concerned stood up and said that they had become uncertain of their whereabouts because he, the navigator, had been attending to another member of the crew who was unconscious through oxygen failure. The Group Captain went into the question of why there had been an oxygen failure. He prescribed a revised and
2
[page break]
tightened up arrangement for inspecting each man's oxygen mask before taking off.
One crew had complained that the door of the aircraft had blown open. The room became divided into two schools. Those who maintained the official view that it was mechanically impossible for the door to blow open. And those with experience of doors inclined to blow open.
T for Tommy was the last aircraft to be considered. There was laughter in the post-mortem when the Group Captain read out that Knights had bombed on the reciprocal. That is to say, he had been unsatisfied with his first bombing run and hadn't dropped his bombs, but had turned and made another run. To do this had to fly in the opposite direction to the general traffic path for aircraft over Berlin. It was considered very funny. "I don't know what to say to you," said the Group Captain. "Don't know quite what to say."
"It would have taken too long to circle the town and come in again in the ordinary way, sir," said Knights.
"Yes, couldn't do that over Berlin. Quite hopeless. Yes, I think you were justified. After all, you achieved your primary object. Dropped the bombs on the target. Yes, I think you were justified. Very creditable."
The rest of the day was our own.
Is There Much Excitement Beforehand?
Next morning the pilots were hanging round the Squadron Leader's office in the same way as yesterday.
Nothing definite had come in by 10 o'clock when we went out to the aircraft, though the weather was considered ominously suitable. Accumulators were being changed out in the aircraft, the radio was being tested. A girl's voice said, "I hear you strong and clear. I hear you strong and clear."
Discipline was informal but definite. Or rather, there didn't have to be any. The sense of interdependence between various members of the crew was complete. They all looked to the pilot for guidance. Each one was conscious of his own vital part in the crew. Apart from the pilot, the outstanding character was the tail-gunner who was referred to as "the old man" or "Dad" because of his pessimistic and hypochondriac tendencies. Apparently Dad was inclined to be an alarmist, to see fighters in a clear sky. But this increased the general confidence in him as a tail-gunner. They were convinced that no fighter could possibly catch Dad napping.
"Look at this, that's ominous," said Knights. A 4,000lb bomb was being towed up to the aircraft on a ground level buggy. The engines were given a ground run. There was a sense of pleasurable excitement as they started up one by one. The compartment warmed up very quickly. A new zest was detectable as it became evident that there was going to be an operation tonight. The sense of adventure is infectious. You feel that you are taking life by the throat and shaking it.
3
[page break]
After a cup of tea at the Y.M.C.A. mobile van we drove back to the mess for lunch at noon. My room-mate was changing. He put a small German dictionary in his pocket. "Come in handy in the Stalag," he said.
There was an atmosphere of quietly mounting excitement at lunch. People's minds were obviously slightly ahead of the current meal. Certainly mine was.
Is Briefing Just Like in "Target for Tonight"?
Pilots were to be briefed at 1 p.m. We sat around on wicker chairs and forms in a small room just off the main briefing room. The windows looked out over the airfield, but the aircraft were too dispersed to be visible. This room was the Intelligence Library. It was covered with training pamphlets, intelligence reports, not to mention the ABCA pamphlets. We were still waiting at 1.35 p.m. The pilots were discussing possible destinations.
Eventually the target map was brought in and unveiled. Coloured cords and pins marked the route to and from the target. It was Frankfurt, in South-west Germany. "I hate that name," said Knights. "Biggest concentration of searchlights you ever saw."
Roll call was then taken. The Group Captain came in and sat up on a table.
"Met., will you give your story?" said the Wing Commander. The Meteorological Officer started his technical monologue, illustrated by a large and complicated cloud diagram. "No fronts definitely affecting your route . . . bases should be O.K. to land all night . . ." and so on.
The Intelligence Officer described Frankfurt. Population about 570 thousand, a very important town; a commercial and financial centre; with very vital railway ramifications, also of considerable importance as an industrial centre. The docks had been badly damaged in October of this year.
Are Tactical Details Discussed?
The pilots had each been issued with a map of the target area set in a map-case, on the back of which there was a space marked off under various headings for them to make notes. The Wing Commander said that there would be several hundred aircraft on the raid (he gave the exact figure). The attack would be in waves. He read out which aircraft would be in the various waves.
He went on to give particulars of the petrol load, the bomb load, and the overall or all-up weight of the aircraft. One of these aircraft weighs as much as a small convoy of motor lorries.
"You'll set course over base at 17.50 hours. Must be comfortable at your height – 20,000 feet – shortly before crossing the enemy coast. Remain at maximum height all the way to the target. You can climb up afterwards but not above 23,000, as the wind increases at that point."
There was to be a spoof attack on Mannheim, to divert the enemy
4
[page break]
defences; this would go in earlier. There would be coffee and sandwiches in the crew-room at 3 p.m., transport at 3.35 p.m. We were to be at the aircraft by 4 p.m. First take-off at 5 p.m. Zero hour would be 7.35 p.m. Zero hour for the last wave would be between 14 and 17 minutes later.
We moved into the neighbouring room for the main briefing. Here the crews were sitting, each of them on their separate tables. Ours was in the middle of the room. Knights started telling them what had gone on in the pilots' briefing. When all the pilots had finished telling their crews the Group Captain stood up on the platform at the end of the room and read out one of the Prime Minister's messages of congratulation to Sir Arthur Harris. The Group Captain said he was sure they would all be glad to hear that Sir Arthur had sent a message expressing their appreciation of the Prime Minister's thoughtfulness. "And I'm sure you will join me in congratulating our late Wing Commander – Wing Commander Abercrombie – on his very well deserved bar to the D.F.C. I wired him congratulations from us all."
He went on to say that Frankfurt had often been scheduled as a target, but bad weather had often interfered. Tonight was perfect. "The Met. merchant won't dare to show his face if anything goes wrong.
"Now let's have 14 first-class aiming-point photographs for the Wing Commander's first trip. Have a good trip – 14 aiming-points, remember, and 14 back."
What is it Like, Waiting to Go?
We went to dress ourselves. I put on the whole rigmarole; flying suit, fleece-lined boots, sweater, parachute harness, and Mae West.
We were driven out to the aircraft and stood around warming ourselves at the ground crew's fire which was burning outside their little shack. It was pretty cold. Things were very quiet. No sensation of being surrounded by an air armada waiting to take off. Just a small party in a corner of a big, windy field. It was about twenty to five when Knights said: "Well, better be getting in." The engines were started at 4.50 p.m. The pilot and the engineer started going through their checking and testing rigmarole. I stood just behind them in the gangway which leads past the pilot's chair from the nose where the bomb aimer was reclining to the navigator's position just behind me.
The navigator was a rubicund country boy. He sat at a table which grew out from the wall of the aircraft and worked at his maps. [symbol] I had a very good view out of the right-hand side of the aircraft which consisted mostly of glass. I could see out of the left-hand side, but only a limited range of vision owing to the high back of the pilot's seat and the blackout curtain which partitioned off the navigator's
[symbol] Navigators have a separate and elaborate briefing: "The major responsibility for arriving at the right place at the right time rests with the navigator of each aircraft. He maps out the route, and then, using the wind directions and speeds obtained from 'met,' plots the times over the turning-points en route. In flight as often as possible he checks his course by obtaining a 'fix'; then calculates any change there has been in wind speed and direction and revises his flight plan.”
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[diagram]
Diagram shows a German newspaper impression of an R.A.F. raid on Berlin, reproduced by courtesy of the News Chronicle.
compartment. Outside the ground crew were shivering with their hands in their pockets.
Do You Climb Up Quickly or Gradually?
"Is the door shut, Bill?" asked the pilot over the inter-com. On hearing that it was he began to start the engines, one by one, from right to left, until the four of them were roaring. Almost immediately the cabin began to get noticeably warmer. The aircraft edged out on to the taxi track. Other aircraft were lumbering in the same direction. Presently we wheeled into the runway past the little group of blue figures standing to watch the take-off and wave good-bye.
The sense of adventure was further enhanced by the gathering darkness into which the aircraft ahead was just disappearing, followed at about 30-second intervals by our own. The pilot and the engineer were meanwhile carrying on their technical dialogue. "Under-carriage," said the pilot.
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"Undercarriage up," said the engineer.[symbol]
We flew over a river. "Let me know when I'm right over the drome," said the pilot.
"O.K.," said the navigator. "O.K., that'll do."
"O.K., Navigator."
There was a band of olive green, orange and scarlet across the general greyness of the sky: it was like marzipan. Turning round I could look down the length of the aircraft; it looked much bigger in the air than on the ground. There was a slightly sinister red glow from each of the four engines.
The navigator asked the pilot to give him the air speed and height. "170; 11,200," intoned Knights. We started passing large formations of aircraft flying in the opposite direction and distinguishable by their navigation lights. Sometimes they flashed past, seeming to be
[symbol] Every 20 minutes the engineer logs the engine temperatures and oil temperatures. He watches the boost and R.P.M. to prevent using fuel unnecessarily. The more fuel they land with the better everyone is pleased. If, say, an engine catches fire, he must feather it, turn off the petrol, try to extinguish the fire; and, if possible, get the engines going again. If the aircraft has to be ditched he is responsible for launching the dinghy.
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dangerously near. All this time we were climbing. At ten to six I noted that the stars were looking down.
"O.K. Turn right now," said the navigator, and we started wheeling round.
What Does the Pilot Watch For?
I noticed that Knights always looked behind before turning. In the Squadron Leader's office there was a list of instructions for pilots headed "Experientia Docet," in which one of the rules was "Always look behind before taking off. Also before doing a turn in the air. The machine you are flying isn't the only one in existence. Neither are you the only fool. Make a habit of this, but not the habit that makes you screw your head round without seeing anything."
There were other rules. "A good pilot when travelling by train or car should subconsciously be seeing the passing country in the light of a forced landing ground." "Always regard the other man as a fool. Then if he turns out to be one, you won't be surprised." "Do everything in the air smoothly – one might almost say with rhythm. Treat the machine as you would a lady." The one which I hoped Pilot Officer Knights had taken most to heart was: "A steady, consistent pilot is of far more use than a brilliant, erratic one."
"Is that the coast?" the rear-gunner's voice suddenly asked, over the inter-com. I looked down and just made out the division between land and water.
"Yep, Norfolk," said Knights.
"There's a convoy off Great Yarmouth," announced the navigator.
At 6.25 someone asked if we could have the heat lowered. I couldn't identify the inter-com. voice, but he said he was getting fairly sweating. The rear-gunner excitedly announced the approach of an aircraft and then said, "O.K., Lancaster."
"Keep a good look round, Dad," said the pilot.
What Does Europe Look Like?
Distant flashes and searchlight cones began to be visible. The aircraft broke into an odd swaying motion. As we drew nearer Europe the whole horizon was punctuated by signs of strife. These activities were forbiddingly widespread.
"Coast coming up," said Knights presently.
"You're heading straight for flak," said the bomb aimer.
"That's right, run right into it," said the engineer sarcastically.
Knights was suddenly concerned that his windscreen was icing up. The engineer bent up forward and rubbed the rag round it.
"Two searchlights on the starboard bow," said the tail-gunner.
"O.K.," said Knights.
The aircraft started weaving slightly. The two searchlights were creeping with sinister purposefulness around the sky; every now and then executing a dart as if to demonstrate their reserves of mobility. They seemed to stroke the sky all round us, playing cat and mouse. It seemed unlastably [?] good luck, that they didn't find us. There would
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be no trouble about the morale of searchlight detachments if the men could be taken for a ride in a bomber and experience the attention and respect induced by the weapons they wield.
I looked at my watch, which I could read quite plainly in the reflected light of the searchlights. It was 6.45 p.m. We seemed to be passing through a belt of searchlights, which in the way of searchlights switched on and off without much apparent logic. There seemed to be no telling where they would spring up next, and this was horrifying.
There seemed to be a lot of gunfire, but nothing came near us. Our relative position to most of the clusters of searchlights took a long time to change, which meant, I suppose, that they were much farther away than I imagined. Quite suddenly, after flying in this atmosphere of action and enemy protest for some time, we were in the clear again. We were in fact clear of the coast, or in the fighters' parlour, according to how you felt. Incidentally, there isn't much you can feel.
Do the Crew Talk Much?
"I think everybody's early, Bob. There's no searchlights at the back now," said the tail-gunner after a little while. The tail-gunner seemed to be easily the best-informed commentator on the social scene. He seemed to know the most and talked the most. [symbol] Perhaps his isolation stimulated his appetite for sociability. Presently he said, "There's one going down in flames. Right behind us."
I looked back and couldn't see anything until the engineer pointed it out. I could distinguish a faint shapeless glow of flames.
It served to emphasis that admission to these quarters was not free. The gate was shut behind. The house was haunted. Europe was all around us and we were all alone. Looking down on the ground you could see odd, inexplicable, unaggressive looking lights from time to time. They had no apparent significance, and may even have been blackout infringements of the grosser kind. But they served to emphasise our sense of being cut off. I need hardly say, because it has been said so often already, that this gives one a tremendous sense of comradeship with the other members of the crew. Your companionship with each other knows no inhibitions of temperament or prejudice. Friendship is perfect and complete. The idea of carrying an irritation or a resentment against one of them into the air seems quite out of the question.
"Fighter flares in front," said Knights. "Keep a good look out, Dad."
I began keeping a good look out immediately. I saw a row of orange flares hanging pendant in the sky. They seemed to be quite a distance away, but I distrusted them none the less for that. Having already underestimated the distance of some searchlights, there seems no reason why I shouldn't be overestimating the distance of these flares.
Back in the rear-turret, Dad seemed to be having a whale of a time. He kept asking Knights to switch the aircraft in different directions
[symbol] He said his main job was keeping warm and seeing the fighter first. Fighters usually approach from astern and below, unless they get an aircraft silhoutted against a cloud, when they approach from above.
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so that he could get a better view of points where he thought he saw a fighter. (Incidentally, though he had nearly finished his operational tour and been on many of the severest recent raids, he had never yet been opened fire on by a fighter.)
The Ruhr ("Happy Valley") was now pointed out to me. I looked and saw nothing but distant cones of searchlights. "I think that's Cologne," said the engineer, pointing at nothing in particular. It wasn't really a very satisfactory view of the Ruhr. But I felt glad to have seen it. It felt very grand to be able to look out of the window and say to oneself: "Oh, yes, of course, the Ruhr.”
Are There Many Collisions?
"That's Mannheim. Looks as if they're going in early," said Knights.
You could see it quite plainly ahead of us to the right, though it must have been about a hundred miles away. You could see the clusters of searchlights, the flares, the fires and the flashes. Mannheim is about fifty miles from Frankfurt, and it was about this time that we began to come in sight of our target. There were the same flashes and searchlights, but much more clearly defined. It was quite unlike what I expected. Everything was so neatly beautiful.
"Hello, Bob. Junkers 88 coming up, starboard," said Dad in a sudden urgent voice. Knights threw the aircraft over to allow the gunners to get a better view.
"No, O.K., sorry it's a Lanc.," said Dad. I looked up and saw that it was indeed a Lanc. Coming towards us in what seemed like a sideways motion. One second a vague shape, it alarmingly materialised and defined its outline. There just seemed no possibility of avoiding collision. It was all over in a second, but it seemed quite a time. It passed just to the rear and slightly high. I looked up and saw its underbelly skim over us. "Jesus, did you see that," said Knights.
"I thought we'd had it that time," said the engineer. The aircraft was still rocking from the impact with the other aircraft's slipstream.
What Does the Target Look Like?
We were now coming up to Frankfurt proper. You could see what looked like hundreds of thousands of electric light bulbs carpeting the ground. It took me some little time to realise that these were incendiaries. They looked so regular and artificial, so naively pretty, that you couldn't associate them with any work of destruction. There was a large, long area of them shaped like the lobes of a gigantic liver.
The sky was suddenly filled with the regular grey puffs of a flak barrage. These barrages seemed to me extraordinarily consistent in their strength. They don't just throw up a few hundred rounds and stop. They continue with what seems like unlimited regularity.
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With the flares dropped by the pathfinders, the flares dropped by the enemy fighters, the waving searchlights, the bead-like pattern of incendiary fires on the ground, and the flashes of gunfire, there is a sense of supreme experience and excitement.
Knights was working to keep us out of the clutches of some peculiarly inquisitive searchlights, and away to the right another aircraft had failed to keep out of the way. You could see it wriggling in the cone of searchlights doing their best to hold it there while the guns concentrated on this one aircraft.
The cruel thing is that one's only sensation is one of relief that the searchlights are temporarily diverted elsewhere. You feel no urge to go to the assistance of the unfortunate aircraft that is cornered. Of course, obviously it would be senseless to do so, but it seems extraordinary that one doesn't feel any urge to do so. I noticed the same indifference to the troubles of others when flying with the Americans. There is complete unity within the individual aircraft, but for some reason that seems to be the limit of one's horizon. Nor is it simply the expression of my own individual idiosyncrasy. It was obviously a general state of mind.
Is There a Strict Time-table?
All this time the pilot and the navigator were keeping up a running dialogue on how the time was going for the approach to the target. Apparently we were a minute or two early, so we had to lose that amount of time. It was pretty impressive, if the word isn't too banal, to hear the young men talking about losing a minute or two while passing through this firework display. I hadn't much idea of what was going on. I didn't know whether we were running up to the target or still cruising round, and I didn't want to disturb the crew in any way. It hardly seemed in my best interest to do so. I was anxious that they should give of their best, and concentrate closely on the work in hand, i.e., my safe return to England. But presently I realised that we were running up.
"Get weaving, Skipper, the night's too long," said someone.
"I can't see that river," said Knights.
"Bomb-doors open," said whoever's business it was to open them.
"How're we doing?" said someone.
"Fine," said someone else.
Do They Just Drop Them Anywhere?
The first time over the target, conditions weren't apparently satisfactory. They couldn't see the pathfinding flares which they were supposed to bomb, so we flew across the town, then circled round and
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approached the target area from almost the diametrically opposite direction to the main stream of bombers. Coming back on to the target, it was like bright daylight.[symbol]
[diagram]
It is very difficult to describe. Nothing that I have ever read on the subject of bombing gave me anything like the impression which I actually had on the spot. I expected something of the atmosphere of a fire-blitz on the ground. I hadn't allowed for the sense of detachment produced by being 20,000 feet high. You knew that down there was a town of half a million people. By staring round the engineer's shoulder I could see the bomb aimer preparing to press the button which would release another 4,000 lbs. on to the town. But it seemed quite unreal.
Can You See the Fires?
The incendiaries were dropped first and then the 4,000 lb. cookie. Just beforehand there was an appreciable tenseness of the crew. The pilot, of course, had to keep the aircraft flying as level as possible for the bombing run. He turned and half rose from his seat as if he was willing the aircraft to a supreme effort. I tried to write down the dialogue between pilot and bomb aimer, but it was too fast for my hobbling shorthand. I wrote it down, but now I can't transcribe it.
I did not feel any appreciable lightness of the aircraft when "bombs away" was announced. All I knew was that the dialogue of "Steady," "Hold her steady," "O.K., Bob," "O.K., Bomb-aimer," and the sing-song intonation of members just before the dropping, subsided.
Knights asked the bomb aimer if he thought they had obtained a satisfactory picture; the bomb aimer thought he had. They were all professionally satisfied with the delivery of the bomb. There was a sense of achievement. The engineer pointed out the burning streets of Frankfurt. I could just make them out from an orange streak in the carpet of fairy-like lights produced by the incendiaries. I tried to think of the spectacle in terms of what was going on twenty thousand feet below, but it was just impossible to worry about. Mostly, I
[symbol] Approaching the target the bomb-aimer report every indication of position to the navigator. "When the navigator judges the aircraft to be over the target area the bomb-aimer guides the aircraft through the flak until he sees his target in the bomb-sight and releases his bombs." He tries to drop the cookie in the middle of the incendiaries. When the bombs drop the navigator logs the time, heading of the aircraft, speed and height. These particulars enable Intelligence to plot where the bomb has fallen. The diagram on this page is reproduced from a rough sketch made by the navigator.
N. & P. T51–1087
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suppose, because we had plenty to worry about twenty thousand feet above.
The amount of fun and fury and fighter flares are extraordinary. The sky was simply full of trouble. Yet, oddly enough, it was difficult to think of us in this particular aircraft as actively threatened by sudden death. I don't mean that, speaking for myself. I wasn't afraid. Certainly I was in a state of great alarm. But I didn't really expect that we in this aircraft would buy it.
Were Many Shot Down?
There seemed to be plenty to buy. The tail-gunner reported that he counted 49 fighter flares. Just afterwards he reported a fight going on behind us to starboard. I looked back and saw the flares and stabs of flame. This and the one we saw just after crossing the coast were the only two aircraft we saw going down, though we later learned that 42 aircraft had been lost that night.
"Is there a small defended area on the starboard?" Knights asked the navigator. Two or three of the crew got into an argument as to whether it was Aachen or Brussels. "That's Antwerp a bit further up," said one of them. It was ridiculous to hear the young men talk of the cities of Western Europe in terms of where they were last Friday, no, I'm a liar, that was Tuesday; or knowing their way so matter of factly round the Continent in these bizarre circumstances. They knew them not by their cultural monuments, their political significance or their hotels, but simply by their flak and searchlight barrages. They all looked alike to me, but I was told that after only two or three trips you remember the way awfully well.
There was quite a lot of flak going up over Brussels. We crossed the coast in the neighbourhood of Rotterdam. And just before doing so were nearly caught by searchlights. "Hello, they're having a go," said Knights, as the light seemed to lift the fuselage. The aircraft started weaving as, amid the incongruously factious encouragement of the crew, Knights went about the routine of evasion.
When you consider how large the coast of Europe is it seems extraordinary how difficult it is to cross it without coming up against resistance of one kind or another. "Keep a good luck out, Dad. See we're not being followed," said Knights. "O.K." said Dad.
Do You Get Anything to Eat?
It seemed a long way back over the North Sea. I was getting very tired of standing. The engineer let me sit on his seat for a spell, but then he had to have it back to go on with his business.
Coffee was now served from Thermos flasks. I opened the paper bag of rations with which we had been issued. There was an orange,
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a packet of chocolate, some boiled sweets, and two packets of chewing gum. I ate the chocolate, but with difficulty, as it was frozen hard. I then ate the orange, which was also frozen. In fact, the emotional experience of eating that orange was quite lost. It was painfully cold in the mouth.
We were now down to 10,000 or 11,000 feet and had taken off our oxygen masks. It wasn't long, but it seemed long, before we were skirting the English coast. There were searchlights here, too, but what a difference in their attitude. These were kindly lights pointing the way to security, not fingers of fate contriving your doom.
It was now something past 10 p.m., and we were due to land at 11 p.m. That last hour seemed interminable. I found it odd that I hadn't any particular sense of achievement, such as I had anticipated. All I felt was awfully tired.
The landing grounds were illuminated by circles of tiny light. And over each aerodrome there was a guiding cone of searchlights. The odd think was at this height they seemed so very close together. It was as if all the landing grounds were in adjoining fields, instead of being many miles apart. I got to the point where I didn't think we were ever going to land, but eventually we did.
We were driven back to be interrogated, and then home to the mess for bacon and egg.
I got to bed some time after 2 a.m.
This crew had been on operations for some time, and expected to finish their term in a month or so. The operations weren't at all monotonous, said Knights, but they were all of a kind. After the first few trips you learned your way round. Some crews regarded the business as getting progressively easier with each raid, but this crew made a point of regarding each raid as the first. They thought that was the surest way of getting through.
Two Footnotes
1. An R.A.F. officer with whom this pamphlet was discussed, said:-
"It may be a good thing to stress the immense amount of scientific knowledge that crews must have, despite the blasé way in which they refer to 'luck' and one trip being very much like another. It is only their intensive training before ever they reach an operational squadron, the continuation of training and practice when they do get to an operational station, the mastery of their aircraft and weapons, and their experience over enemy territory, that can make them appear to be so blasé."
2. An American Fortress crew with which I flew on daylight operations said that they would be scared stiff to fly at night in the R.A.F. fashion. While the R.A.F. crew said that they would be scared stiff to fly by day. There seems to be a moral lurking somewhere here.
iv
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WAR - Frankfurt Revisited
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A booklet with information about the progress of the war. This edition covers RAF Bomber Command activities.
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Army Bureau of Current Affairs
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1944-01-22
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Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Mannheim
Germany
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
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eng
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16 printed pages
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MHayhurstJM2073102-170725-11
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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1944-01-22
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Sue Smith
aerial photograph
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
bomb aimer
bombing
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
flight engineer
ground personnel
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Ju 88
Lancaster
meteorological officer
navigator
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
propaganda
searchlight
target indicator
target photograph
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/201/10044/BBaileyJDBaileyJDv1.1.pdf
3a146f510c94f18f8643a8ac43ad6772
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Bailey, John Derek
John Derek Bailey
Bill Bailey
John D Bailey
John Bailey
J D Bailey
J Bailey
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Derek "Bill" Bailey (b. 1924, 1583184 and 198592 Royal Air Force) service material, nine photographs, a memoir and his log book. He flew a tour of operations as a bomb aimer with 103 and 166 Squadrons from RAF Elsham Wolds and RAF Kirmington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Bailey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-12-07
2017-01-13
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
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Bailey, JD
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Transcription
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[centred] “WAS IT ALL A DREAM” [/centred]
[centred] The Memories of a Wartime Bomb Aimer Bill Bailey with No. 1 Group Bomber Command February 1942 to April 1947
These things really happened. I now have difficulty in remembering what I did yesterday but happenings of Fifty-odd years ago seem crystal clear, or
Was it all a dream? [/centred]
[page break]
Chapter 1. Enlistment – Royal Air Force Training Command.
The story begins on 2 February, 1942, my 18th. Birthday, when I rushed off to the recruiting office in Leicester and enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as potential aircrew. Being a founder member cadet (No. 6) of 1461 Squadron Air Training Corps was a help. I passed the various medicals, etc[sic] and was sent to the aircrew attestation centre in Birmingham for the various tests for acceptance as aircrew. Like most others I wanted to be a pilot but on the day I attended I think they had that day’s quota of pilots. It was said my eyesight was not up to pilot standard but I could be a navigator. I was said to have a ‘convergency’ problem and would probably try to land an aircraft about ten feet off the deck.. I was duly accepted for Navigator training. The procedure was then to be sent home, attend ATC parades regularly and await further instructions. This was known as ‘deferred service’ and with it came a letter of welcome to the Royal Air Force, from the Secretary of State for Air, at that time Sir Archibald Sinclair, and the privilege of wearing a white flash in my ATC cadet’s forage cap which denoted the wearer was u/t (under training) aircrew.
So it was that on the 27 July 1942 I was commanded to report for service at the Aircrew Reception Centre at Lords Cricket Ground, St. Johns Wood, London. I was now 1583184 AC2 Bailey, J.D., rate of pay two shillings and sixpence per day. We were billeted in blocks of flats adjacent to Regents Park and fed in a vary[sic] large underground car park at one of the blocks or in the restaurant at London Zoo. Talk about feeding time at the Zoo!! A hectic three weeks followed, issue of uniforms and equipment, dental treatment, numerous jabs, endless square bashing - the ATC training helped. Lectures on this, that and everything including the dreaded effects of
[page break]
VD, the latter shown in glorious Technicolor at the Odeon Cinema, Swiss Cottage. Not that this was of much consequence at that time because we were reliably informed that plenty of bromide was put in the tea.
One day on first parade I and one other lad from my Flight were called out by the Flight Corporal, a sadistic sod, who informed us we had volunteered to give a pint of blood. Apparently we had an unusual blood group and some was required for what purpose I have never really understood.
Having completed the aforementioned necessities it was a question of what to do with us next.
The next stage of training was to be ITW (Initial Training Wing). but there was congestion in the supply line from ACRC to the ITW’s so a “holding unit” (this term will crop up from time to time) had been established at Ludlow and it was to there that we went.
Ludlow consisted of three Wings in tented accommodation and was progressively developed into a more permanent establishment by the cadets passing through, using their civilian life skills. We were allowed (officially) one night in three off camp so as not to flood the pubs, of which there were many, with RAF bods, and cause mayhem in the town.
Four weeks were spent at Ludlow. It was said to be a toughening up course and it was certainly that.
Next stop from Ludlow was to an ITW. Most ITW’s were located in seaside towns with the sea front hotels having been requisitioned by the Air Ministry. In my case I was posted to No.4 ITW at Paignton, Devon where I was to spend the next twelve weeks living in the Hydro Hotel, right on the seafront near the harbour.
Twelve weeks of intensive ground training. At the end of this period I was at the peak
[handwritten in margin] followed (needs a verb[?]) [/handwritten in margin]
[page break]
of fitness and having passed my exams was promoted LAC – pay rise to seven shillings a day.
One of the subjects covered at ITW was the Browning .303 machine gun and I well remember the first lecture on this weapon when a Corporal Armourer giving the lecture delivered his party piece which went as follows: “This is the Browning .303 machine gun which works by recoil action. When the gun is fired the bullet nips smartly up the barrel, hotley [sic] pursued by the gases …”. Applause please!
Another subject learned was the Morse Code and here again the training in the ATC stood me in good stead.
The next phase would be flying training, but when and where?
On New Years[sic] Day 1943 we were posted from Paignton to yet another ‘holding unit’ at Brighton. The move from the English Riviera to Brighton was like going to the North Pole. At Brighton we were billeted in the Metropole Hotel. More lectures, square bashing and boredom, until, after about three weeks, on morning parade it was announced that a new aircrew category of Airbomber had been created and any u/t Navigators who volunteered would be guaranteed a quick posting and off to Canada for training.
Needless to say, yours truly stepped forward and within a week had been posted to Heaton Park, Manchester which was an enormous transit camp for u/t aircrew leaving the UK for Canada, Rhodesia or America for training.
They used to say it always rains in Manchester and it certainly did continuously whilst I was there. Anyone who has seen the film “Journey Together” will have seen a departure parade at Heaton Park in pouring rain. I am told that on the day that film was shot it was fine and the fire service had to make the rain. Sods Law I suppose!
[page break]
Chapter II. Canada – The Empire Air Training Scheme.
Next, after a farewell meal of egg and chips (In 1943 a delicacy), and a few words from the C in C Training Command, it was off to Glasgow to board the “Andes” for our trip to Canada.
The ‘Andes’ was said to be jinx ship in port. She didn’t let us down. In the Clyde she dropped anchor to swing the compass and when she tried to up anchor a submarine cable was wrapped around it. After a couple of days we finally left the Clyde and I endured six days of seasickness before arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia and then to yet another enormous transit camp at Moncton, New Brunswick where we enjoyed food that we had not seen in the UK since the start of food rationing. It was in a restaurant in Moncton that I had my very first ‘T’ Bone steak.
The first task at Moncton was issue of cold weather kit to cope with the Canadian winter and Khaki Drill to cope with the very hot Canadian summer. We were at this time in the middle of the winter and colder than I had ever experienced before.. The next stop should have been to a Bombing & Gunnery School but before that there had to be the inevitable ‘holding unit’. So it was off to Carberry, Manitoba, five or six days on a troop train, days spent seeing nothing but trees, frozen lakes, the occasional trace of habitation and the odd trappers cabin. At intervals on the journey across Canada, people were taken off the train suffering from Scarlet Fever. It was believed that this disease came from the troopships.
As we passed through Winnipeg on our journey, for the first time we were allowed off the train and as we went from the platform to the station concourse we were greeted with bands playing a huge welcome from the good people of Winnipeg. They had in Winnipeg the “Airmens Club” and an invitation to visit if there on leave. They
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had a wonderful system of people who would welcome RAF chaps into their homes for a few days or a weekend when on leave. This was to stand me in good stead as you will hear later.
Shortly after arrival at Carberry I fell victim to Scarlet Fever and spent five weeks in isolation hospital at Brandon after which I and a fellow sufferer by the name of Peter Caldwell had two weeks sick leave in Winnipeg and the Airmens Club arranged for us to stay with an English family. Wonderful hospitality. The Canadians were wonderful hosts to the Royal Air Force.
Carberry and Brandon were, of course, on the Canadian Prairies and whilst in hospital at Brandon, one night and day there was a terrible dust storm and despite the usual Canadian double glazing, everywhere inside the hospital was covered in black dust. This is probably of little interest but to me at the time was an amazing phenomenom.
Now it was back to reality and a posting to 31 Bombing & Gunnery School at Picton, Ontario. A two day journey by train around the North Shore of Lake Superior to Toronto and Belleville and then twenty plus miles down a dirt road to Picton. The airfield still exists, on high ground, overlooking the town on the shores of Lake Ontario. The bombing targets were moored out in the lake and air gunnery practice took place out over the lake.
The weather during this spell was very hot and flying was limited to a period from very early morning until midday. Canadian built Ansons were used for bombing practice and Bolingbrokes, which were Canadian built Blenheims, were used for air to air gunnery practice. The target drogues were towed by Lysanders.
Nothing outstanding took place at Picton except perhaps for our passing out party which we held in Belleville. In my case, being full of Canadian rye whisky of the
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bootleg variety I literally passed out and for many years afterwards could not even stand the smell of strong spirits.
Having recovered from the passing out the next stop was No. 33 Air Navigation School, RAF Mount Hope, Hamilton. Ontario. Mount Hope is now Hamilton Airport. Navigation training in Ansons was fairly uneventful and ended with us receiving our Sergeants stripes and the coveted “O” brevet. (Known to all as the flying arsehole) The “O” brevet was soon to be replaced with brevets more appropriate to the trade of the wearer, ie “B” for Airbombers, “N” for Navigators, etc. Next it was back to Moncton for the return to the UK.
The return voyage was on the ‘Mauritania’ where there were only 50 sergeant aircrew who were to act as guards on the ship which was transporting a large number of American troops. O/c. Troops on the ship was a Royal Air Force Squadron Leader. To our amazement when the Americans boarded the ship they had no idea where they were going. Most seemed to think they were going to Iceland and when we told them Liverpool was our destination they could not believe it. We were asked where we picked up the convoy and when we told them we did not go in convoy this caused a great deal of consternation. All the troopships going back and forth between the UK and North America were too fast to be in convoys and fast zig zag runs were made across the Atlantic. It was very long odds against the likelihood of encountering a U Boat..
Having safely arrived in Liverpool our next temporary home was yet another ‘holding unit’.
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Chapter III. Flying Training Command.
This time it was the Grand Hotel in Harrogate overlooking the famous Valley Gardens.
The RAF had taken over both the Grand and Majestic Hotels. Sadly the Grand has now gone. I rcall our CO at the Grand was Squadron Leader L E G Ames the England cricketer. Time at Harrogate awaiting posting was filled by swimming, drill, the usual time filling lectures, etc. We did, of course, get what was known as disembarkation leave. I went home and whilst there my granddad, with whom I had always had a very close relationship, took ill and died at the age of 85 and I was very grateful that I had been able to talk to him and to attend the funeral.
Christmas was spent at Harrogate, there being a ban on service travel during the Christmas period. On, I believe, Boxing Day, Maxie Booth and myself were in Harrogate, fed up and far from home, when we were approached by a chap who asked if we were doing anything that night, to which we replied “No”. He then said he was having a small party at home that night and had two Air Ministry girls billeted wit6h his family and would we like to join them. We readily accepted and when we arrived at the party we found that one of the girls was Maxie’s cousin. Small world! Still at Harrogate on my birthday 2 February, now at the ripe old age of 20. My room mates contrived to get me very drunk. I will spare you the details.
After a short time we were posted to Kirkham, Lancs to yet another holding unit, for a couple of weeks and then onward to Penrhos, North Wales, 9(O) Advanced Flying Unit for bombing practice. We were using Ansons and 10lb practice bombs. In Canada the Ansons had hydraulic undercarriages but at Penrhos they were Mk1 Ansons and it was the Bombaimers job to wind up the undercarriage by hand. A hell
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of a lot of turns on the handle – not much fun.
Next move was to Llandwrog, Nr. Caernarvon for the Navigation part of the Course. Same aircraft flying on exercises mainly over the Irish Sea, N. Ireland, Isle of Man, etc. Llandwrog is now Caernarvon airport with an interesting small museum. [handwritten in margin] museum since closed [handwritten in margin]. Llandwrog was unusual in that the airfield and our living site were below sea level, a dyke between us and the Irish Sea. Because of this there was no piped water or drainage on our site and it was necessary to carry a ‘small pack’ and do our ablutions at the main domestic site which was above sea level. I, and a pal or two went into Caernarvon for a weekend in the Prince of Wales Hotel to get a bit of a civilised existence for a change. However our stay at Llandwrog was quite brief.
The 1st. March 1944 was very significant in that it marked the move from Flying Training Command to Bomber Command. 83 Operational Training Unit at Peplow in Shropshire. Never heard of Peplow? Neither had I, it is a few miles North of Wellington. [handwritten in margin] Peplow was formerly Childs Ercall – renamed to avoid conflict with High Ercall airfield, nearby, I understood. [handwritten in margin] We arrived by train at Peplow, in the dark, station ‘lit’ by semi blacked out gas lamps. Arriving at Peplow were Pilots, Navigators, Bombaimers, Wireless Operators and Gunners from different training establishments.
Somehow, the next day, we sorted ourselves out into crews of six, Pilot, Nav, Bombaimer, W/Op and two gunners and were ready to start the business of Operational flying as a bomber crew.. We had never met each other before but were to spend the next few months living together, flying together and relying on each other, and developing a unique comradeship..
Peplow was notable for several things. From our living site, the nearest Pub was five miles in any direction. Having twice walked in different directions to prove the
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mileage we quickly acquired pushbikes. At that time there were no sign posts. One night doing ‘circuits and bumps’ in a Wellington we were in the ’funnel’ on the approach to the runway, skipper put the flaps down and the aircraft started to make a turn to port which he could not control. He ordered me to pull up the flaps and he then regained control. We then climbed to a respectable height and skip asked me to lower the flaps. The same thing happened again, an uncontrollable turn to port and quickly losing height. Flaps pulled up and normal service resumed. Skip then got permission from Air Traffic to make a flapless landing which he managed without running out of runway. We taxied back to dispersal and on inspection found that when the flaps were lowered only the port side flaps came down. Apparently a tie rod between port and starboard must have come apart. Could have been nasty!
On a lighter note, when cycling back to camp from Wellington one night I had a problem with the lights on my bike and was stopped by P.C Plod and booked for riding a bike without lights. Fined 10 shillings.
Another incident clearly imprinted on my mind was one day in class we were being given a lecture on the dinghy radio. I had heard all about the dinghy radio so many times I could almost recite it. I was sitting on the back row in class and I put my head back against the wall and must have dropped off. Suddenly a piece of chalk hit the wall at the side of my head. I awoke with a start and the guy giving the lecture (A Flying Officer) said, “I suppose Sergeant, you know all about dinghy radio”. To which I foolishly replied “Yes Sir”. He then said “In that case you can come out and continue the lecture”. Even more foolishly I did.
When finished I was asked to stay behind to receive an almighty bollocking for being a smartarse.
Finally whilst at Peplow a young lady I met in Wellington gave me a red scarf for
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luck and after that my crew would never let me fly without it.
We were now getting down to the serious business of preparing for actual operations and on the 24.5.44 we were despatched on an actual operation which was known as a ‘nickel’ raid, leaflet dropping over France, a place called ‘Criel’. 4 hours 35 minutes airborne in a Wellington bomber.
[Where is chapter IV?]
Chapter V. No. 1 Group Bomber Command.
On the 26th. June we were on the move again, ever nearer to being on an operational Squadron in Bomber Command. This was to 1667 Conversion Unit at Sandtoft where we were to convert to four engine aircraft ‘Halifaxes’. These were Halifax II & V which were underpowered and notoriously unreliable and had been withdrawn from front line service. In fact Sandtoft was affectionately known as ‘Prangtoft’ because of the large number of flying accidents. One of my pals from Harrogate days, Harry Fryer, got the chop in a Halifax that crashed near Crowle.
So that I do not give any wrong ideas, let me say, the Halifax III with radial engines was a superb aircraft and equipped No. 4 Goup.
It was here at Sandtoft that we acquired the seventh member of our crew, a Flight Engineer, straight from RAF St. Athan and never having been airborne.
We obviously survived ‘Prangtoft’ and then moved on the 22 July to LFS (Lancaster Finishing School) at Hemswell, which supplied crews to No. 1 Group, Bomber Command, which was the largest main force group flying Lancasters. We were only two weeks at Hemswell, the sole object being to familiaise[sic] with the
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Queen of the skies, the LANCASTER. A beautiful aeroplane, very reliable, able to fly easily with two dead engines on one side, and to withstand considerable battle damage and still remain airborne.
Chapter VI. The Tour of Operations. 103 Squadron.
Now for the real thing. On the 10th August we joined 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds, in North Lincolnshire.
At this point I should like to introduce our crew:
P/O George Knott. Pilot & Skipper.
F/Sgt. Ron Archer. Navigator.
F/Sgt. Bill Bailey. Bombaimer.
F/Sgt. Gus Leigh. Wireless Opeator.
F/Sgt. Wally Williams. Flight Engineer.
F/Sgt. Jock Greig. Midupper Gunner.
F/Sgt. Paddy Anderson. Rear Gunner.
After a bit more training we eventually embarked on our first operation on the 29th,. August. I now propose to go through our complete tour of Operations as recorded in my flying log book and other documents.
Before doing that perhaps I should give an insight into Squadron procedure. We were accommodated in nissen huts on dispersed sites in the vicinity of the airfield, two Crews to a hut. The huts were sleeping quarters only and were heated by a solid fuel stove in the centre. Bloody cold in the bleak Lincolnshire winter. The messes were on the main domestic site. Every morning (provided there was no call out in the night)
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it was to the mess for breakfast, check if there was an Order of Battle and if you were on it. If not, we made our way to the flight offices and section leaders. I would go to the Bombing Leader’s office where we would review the previous operation and look at target photographs. Releasing the bombs over the target also activated a camera which took line overlap pictures from the release point to impact on the ground.. We would then return to the mess to await the next orders or perhaps take an aircraft on air test, although after ‘D’ day this practice was discontinued because the aircraft were kept bombed up in a state readiness. Temporarily at least Bomber Command was being used in a close support role to assist the Armies in France.
When a Battle Order was issued, the nominated crews assembled in the briefing room at the appointed time and when everyone was present the doors were closed and guarded. On a large wall map of Europe in front of us was a red tape snaking across the map from Base to the designated target. The length of the tape dictated the reaction of the assembled company.
Pilots, Navigators and Bombaimers did their pre-flight planning prepared maps and charts ready to go. Each crew member received a small white bag into which he emptied his pockets of everything. The seven bags were then put into one larger bag and handed to the intelligence office until our return. We, in turn, were given our ‘escape kits’ and flying rations. The escape kit was for use in the event of being shot down and trying to evade capture and return to England. We also carried passport size photographs which might enable resistance workers in occupied countries to get us fake identity documents. Phrase cards, compass, maps and currency notes were also included. The flying rations issued were mainly chocolate bars (very valuable at that time) also ‘wakey wakey pills’, caffeine tablets to be taken on the skipper’s orders. All ready to go. Collect parachutes, get into the crew buses and be ferried out to the
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Dispersals A visual check round the aircraft and then climb aboard. Start engines when ordered, close bomb doors, complete preflight checks and taxi to the end of the runway. The airfield controller’s cabin was located at the side of the runway and on a green lamp from him, open the throttles and roll. We were on our way. The Lancaster had an all up weight for take-off of 66000 lbs and needed the full runway, into wind, for a safe take-off. The maximum bomb load on a standard Lancaster was 7 tons but operating at maximum range the bomb load would be reduced to about 5 tons to accommodate a maximum fuel load.
On return from operations, after landing and returning to dispersal, shut down engines, climb down and await transport back to the briefing room for interrogation by intelligence officers. Hot drinks and tot of rum available and back to the mess for the customary egg, bacon and chips..
At this time were confined to camp because of the possibility of being of being[sic] called for short notice operations.
THE TOUR OF OPERATIONS.
No. 1 29.8.44 Target – STETTIN.
Checked Battle Order to find our crew allocated to PM-N.
Briefing for night attack on the Baltic Port of Stettin. Bomb load mainly incendieries.[sic] The route took us across the North Sea, over Northern Denmark, S.W. Sweden and then due South into the target, bomb and turn West to cross Denmark and the North Sea back to base. The force consisted of 402 Lancasters and 1 Mosquito of 1,3,6,& 8 Groups. It was a very successful attack and 23 Lancasters were lost. We suffered no damage from anti-aircraft fire and saw no fighters. Whilst crossing Sweden there was
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a certain amount of what was called friendly flak, shells bursting at about 10,000 ft whilst we were flying at 18000 ft
This was my first sight of a target and something I shall never forget, smoke, flames, bombbursts, searchlights, anti-aircraft fire. It was also very tiring having been airborne for 9 hours 25 minutes and flown some 2000 miles.
Used full quota of ‘wakey wakey’ pills.
No. 2. 31.8.44. Target .Flying Bomb launch site. AGENVILLE France.
Daylight attack, Master Bomber controlled This was one of several targets to be attacked in Northern France. Seemed like a piece of cake after the long trip to Stettin. Not so! We were briefed to bomb from 10,000 ft on the Master Bomber’s instructions. On approaching the target area there was 10/10 cloud and the call from the Master Bomber went like this: “Main Force – descent to 8,000ft and bomb on red TI’s (Target indicators). – no opposition” We descended to 8,000ft and immediately we broke cloud there were shells bursting around us, Fortunately dead ahead was the target and I called for bomb doors open and started the bombing run.. At the appropriate point I pressed the bomb release and nothing happened. A quick look revealed no lights on the bombing panel. Whilst I was checking the main fuse the rear gunner was calling “We are on fire Skip – there is smoke streaming past me” The ‘smoke’ proved to be hydraulic fluid which was vaporising. We climbed back into cloud and assessed the situation. Whilst in cloud we experienced severe icing and with the pitot head frozen we lost instruments which meant skip had no way of knowing the attitude[?] of the aircraft and for the one and only time in my flying career, we were ordered to prepare to abandon aircraft and I put on my parachute pack. However we emerged from cloud and normal service was resumed. We had no
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electrics, no hydraulics, bomb doors open and a full load of bombs still on board Skip decided to head for base via a North Sea designated dropping zone where I could jettison the bombs safely. This was accompanied by going back along the fuselage and using a highly technical piece of kit, a piece of wire with a hook on the end, pushing it down through a hole about each bomb carrier and tripping the release mechanism.
Having got rid of the bombs it was back to base, crossing the coast at a spot where we should not have been and risking being shot at by friendly Ack Ack gunners. We arrived back at base some one and a half hours late. Now for the tricky bit. The undercarriage, in the absence of hydraulic fluid, had to be blown down by compressed air. This was an emergency procedure and could only be tried once, a now or never situation. Now we have to make a flapless landing and hope that the landing gear is locked down and does not collapse when we land. Not being able to use flaps means the landing speed is greater than normal and then we have no brakes. Skip made a super landing but once on the runway could only throttle back and wait for the aircraft to roll to a stop. This it did right at the end of the runway.
On inspection after return to dispersal it appeared that a shell or shells had burst very near to the bomb bay and shrapnel had severed hydraulic pipes and electric cables in the bomb bay. I should think we were very close to having been blown to bits. This trip was a little bit sobering to say the least. The aircraft resembled a pepper pot but luckily no one was injured.
No. 3 3.9.44 Target Eindhoven Airfield, Holland. Daylight Operation.
Allocated to PM-X (N having been severely damaged on our last sortie)
A straight forward attack on the airfield, one of six airfields in Southern Holland
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attacked by.675 aircraft a mixture of 348 Lancasters and 315 Halifaxes and 12 Mosquitoes, all very successful raids and only one Halifax lost.
This was my first experience of the ‘Oboe’ target marking system now used by Pathfinders flying Mosquitoes.. A very accurate system – the markers were right in the middle of the runway intersections. Very impressive.
No.4 5.9.44. Target – Defensive positions around LE HAVRE.
Aircraft allocated PM-W. Bomb load 15,000 lbs High Explosives. Daylight operation.
This attack was in support of Canadian troops who were demanding the surrender of the German garrison. The first phase of Lancasters orbited the target awaiting the outcome. This was negative and the attack took place. In clear visibility our riming point was 2000 yards in front of the Canadian troops and the area around the aiming point was completely destroyed.
No.5 10.9.44 Target – LE HAVRE again. Daylight operation.
Aircraft allocated PM-E Bomb load 15000 lbs High Explosive. Daylight operation. 992 aircraft attacked 8 difference German strongpoints only yards in front of Canadian troops. All were bombed accurately. No aircraft were lost.
No.6 12.9.44. Target FRANKFURT. Night operation.
Aircraft allocated PM-G. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
This was an unusual operation in that we were one of several crews who were briefed to bomb 5 minutes ahead of main force, identifying the aiming point ourselves. The
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object was to occupy the defences whilst the pathfinders went in low to mark the aiming point for main force. Our route to target took us South into France, near Strasbourg and then a turn North East towards Frankfurt. Our navigator Ron at some point realised we were well off track because he was getting wrong positions due to distortion of the ‘Gee chain’, wither by jamming or almost out of range.
As well as being bombaimer I was also the H2S radar operator and so I switched this on to try to verify our position I managed to identify Mannheim on the screen and was then able, with Ron, to fix a course to the target. As we approached the target there were hundreds of searchlights but instead of combing the sky they were laid along the ground in the direction of our track. It took a few minutes to realise that what they were doing was putting a carpet of light on the ground so that any fighters above us would have us silhouetted against the light. Gunners be extra vigilant! I dropped the bombs and we headed for base without incident. Intelligence reports said it was a very successful attack.
No. 7 17.9.44 Target Ammunition Dump at THE HAGUE, Holland Daylight.
Aircraft allocated PM-B, Bomb load 15000lbs Gen. Purpose bombs.
This attack by 27 Lancasters of 103 Squadron only and was carried out without loss.
No. 8 24.9.44. Target CALAIS. Close support for the Army. Daylight.
Allocated aircraft PM-B Bomb load 15000 lbs GP Bombs.
103 & 576 Squadrons were chosen to attack this target, gun emplacements, at low level (2000 ft) in the interests of accuracy. The weather was atrocious, almost as soon as we got off the runway we were in cloud. However we set course for Calais flying
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at around 1000 ft so as to keep the ground in view. As we approached the Channel the cloud lifted a bit and we were able to climb to 2000 ft but as we approached the target the cloud base lowered again and we had to descend again to 1000 ft for the bombing run. A we approached the aiming point, I was lying in the nose and could see everything on the ground. And being in the best position to see what was going on. could see where I thought the worst of the anti-aircraft fire, and indeed small arms fire was coming from.. I therefore ‘suggested’ to skip that when I say “bombs gone” you put her over hard to port and get down on the deck. Bugger the target photograph, we’ll have a picture of the sky! George did this and where we would have been if we had gone straight on whilst the camera operated, were shell bursts. We got out of that unscathed. Of the 27 aircraft that started that attack, one was lost, 8 landed away with various degrees of battle damage and of the remainder only 3 aircraft returned to base undamaged. “B” was one of them. As Ron recorded in his notes “Oppositions – everything”.
No. 9 26.9.44. Target Gunsites at Cap Gris Nez Daylight.
Allocated aircraft PM-B Bomb load 15000 lbs GP Bombs.
This was a highly concentrated and successful attack with very little opposition. Obtained a very good aiming point photograph.
No. 10 27,9,44.
We were briefed to bomb in the Calais area again on 27th. Sept but this operation was aborted due to the bombsight being unserviceable.
This ended our operational career at 103 Squadron. Only two of our operations had been at night.
Ourselves and one other crew from ‘A’ flight were transferred to 166 Squadron at
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Kirmington, one of the three stations forming 13 Base, to form a new ‘A’ flight at 166.Squadron.
As a matter of interest, Kirmington is now South Humberside Airport. Before moving on to the next phase I should explain that operational aircrew were given six days leave every six weeks which will explain some of the gaps in the story.
Chapter VII. The Tour of Operations. 166 Squadron.
166 Squadron, Kirmington, Lincs.
When we arrived at Kirmington we were allocated a hut on a dispersed site in Brocklesby Wood, about as far as could be from the airfield. Primitive living arrangements, but not too far from the Sergeants Mess.
By now we were no longer confined to camp and “liberty buses” were run from camp to Grimsby and Scunthorpe. Most of us used to go to ‘Sunny Scunny’ where there was a cinema two well known pubs, The Bluebell and The Oswald, the latter became known as 1 Group Headquarters. This establishment had a large function room with a
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minutes after other aircraft had set course. We took part on second aiming point and catching up 20 minutes on round trip landed No.3 back at base.
No. 14 28.10.44 Target COLOGNE
Allocated aircraft AS-D Bomb Load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
Daylight operation. 733 aircraft despatched to devastate residential areas in NW of the City There was heavy flak opposition and our aircraft suffered some minor damage A piece of shrapnel came through the Perspex dome in front of me whilst I was crouched over the bombsight It hit me on the shoulder on my parachute harness but did me no harm.
This was a very good operation as ordered.
No. 15 29.10.44. Target Gunsites at DOMBURG. Walcheren Island, Holland. Allocated aircraft AS-M Bomb Load 15000 lbs HE. Daylight attack. 6 aircraft from 166 squadron together with 19 others attacked 4 aiming points. All were accurately bombed. There was no opposition.
No. 16 30.10.44. Target COLOGNE, Night operation.
Allocated aircraft AS-K Bomb Load 1x4000lb Cookie plus 9000 lbs HE.
No. 1 Group was assigned to attack aiming point which was not successfully attacked on 28th. October. Over the target there was clear visibility, moderate flak opposition. This was considered to have been a very good attack.
It was on this operation, whilst we were on the bombing run an aircraft exploded ahead of us. At least I believe it was an aircraft although the Germans used a device which we called a “scarecrow”. This was a pyrotechnic device which exploded to
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simulate an exploding aircraft. Presumable meant to put the frighteners on us!
On the 31,.10.44 we were again briefed to attack Cologne but having climbed to operating height a crew check by the Skipper revealed that Paddy our rear gunner was unconscious in his turret. Gus, wireless op went back and pulled him from the turret and onto the rest bed in the centre of the aircraft. He fitted him up with a portable oxygen bottle and skip made the decision to abort and return to base where an ambulance was waiting to whisk paddy[sic] off to sick bay. Apparently the problem had been a trapped oxygen pipe in the turret. We had been airborne for 2hrs 15 mins.
To depart for the moment from the tour of operations, it was about this time when I developed at[sic] rash on my face which turned to a weeping eczema which meant that I could not shave and I had to report sick. The Doc took a look and said, “OK You’re grounded”. I replied “You can’t do that Doc, my crew will have to take a spare bombaimer and I shall have to complete my tour with other crews”. After pleading my case Doc agreed to allow me to continue flying provided each time before flying I reported to Sick Quarters and had a dressing put on my face so that I could wear my oxygen mask. The Doc was treating me with various creams which had little or no effect until one day the WAAF medical orderly who applied the treatment said to the Doc “Why don’t we try a starch poultice”. The Doc suggested that was an old wives remedy. However as nothing else had worked he agreed to let the Waaf[sic] give it a try. I know not where this young lady learned her skills because I gathered she was a hairdresser in civvie street, in Leicester, my home town. She applied the said poultice and the next day I reported back to sick quarters where she removed the poultice and whatever was clinging to it. I went back to our hut and very carefully shaved. The starch poultice had done the trick. I thought frostbite had probably caused the
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problem in the first place but I was to learn some months later the real cause which I shall reveal later in the story.
No. 17. 2.11.44. Target DUSSELDORF. Night operation.
Aircraft allocated AS-C. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie and 9000 lbs HE.
“C” Charlie was now to become our regular aircraft, for which we developed a great affection and a very special relationship with the ground crew.
992 aircraft attacked Dusseldorf of which 11 Halifaxes and 8 Lancasters were lost. It was a very heavy and concentrated attack with extensive damage and loss of life. This was the last major Bomber Command raid of the war on Dusseldorf.
At about his [this] time friendships were struck up. In my case I was returning from leave and whilst waiting for my train at Lincoln Station to Barnetby (where I had left my bike) I met a Waaf, also returning from leave and who was, surprise, surprise stationed at Kirmington. I asked how she was getting from Barnetby to Kirmington and she said she was walking. No prizes for guessing that she got back to Kirmington on the crossbar of my bike. (No it was not a ladies bike). We became good friends and she along with others, would be standing alongside the airfield controllers cabin at the end of the runway to wave us off on operations.
Also at about his [this] time George and Gus acquired friends from the Waaf personnel, one of whom was a telephonist and the other a R/T operator in the control tower. When returning from operations George would call up base as soon as he was able, to get instructions to join the circuit. First to call would get the 1000’ slot and first to land. The procedure then was to make a circuit of the airfield around the ‘drem’ system of lights, report on the downwind leg and again when turning into the funnels on the
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approach to the runway. We would then be given the OK to land or if there was a runway obstruction, go round again. I understand that word was passed to those who wished to know that “Knott’s crew were in the circuit.”
No. 18. 4.11.44. Target BOCHUM. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000lbs HE.
749 aircraft attacked this target. Unusually Halifaxes of 4 Group slightly out numbered Lancasters. 23 Halifaxes and 5 Lancasters were lost. No. 346 (Free French) Squadron, based at Elvington, lost 5 out of its 16 Halifaxes on the raid. Severe damage was caused to the centre of Bochum, particularly the important steelworks.
This was the last major raid by Bomber Command on this target
It was about at this on return from an operation, I felt the need of a stimulant and so, instead of giving my tot of rum to Jock, I put it into my ovaltine, which curdled and I ended up with something resembling soup and a chastising from Jock for wasting ‘valuable rum’.
No. 19. 11.11.44. Target DORTMUND Oil Plant. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load, 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000lb HE.
.209 Lancasters, all 1 Group, plus 19 Mosquitoes from 8 Group (Pathfinders) attacked this target. The aiming point was a synthetic oil plant. A local report confirmed that the plant was severely damaged. No aircraft were lost.
No. 20 21.11.44. Minelaying Operations in OSLO FJORD Norway.
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Aircraft AS-E. Bomb load 6 x 1800 lb Accoustic[sic] and Magnetic Mines.
Six Lancasters from 166 Squadron and 6 from 103 Squadron detailed to plant ‘vegetables’ in Oslo Fjord. AS-E to mine a channel half a mile wide, between an island and the mainland. This was to catch U Boats based in the harbour at MANNS. The attack was carried out at low level and required a very accurate bombing run.. It was a major sin to drop mines on land as they were classified Secret This was a highly successful operation with no opposition and no aircraft lost. Time airborne 6hrs 45mins
No. 21. 27.11.44. Target “FREIBURG” S.W. Germany. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
Freiburg was not an industrial town and had not been bombed by the RAF before. However. No. 1 Group 341 Lancasters, which was maximum effort for the Group, plus 10 Mosquitoes from 8 Group, were called upon to support the French Army in the Strasbourg sector. It is believed the Freiburg was full of German troops. The target was accurately marked using the ‘OBOE’ technique from caravans based in France. 1900 tons of bombs were dropped on the target from 12000 ft in the space of 25 minutes. Casualties on the ground were extremely high. There was little opposition and only one aircraft was lost…
On this operation we carried a second pilot as a prelude to his first operation. He Was Charles Martin, a New Zealander and he and his crew were to claim “C” Charlie as their own when Knott’s crew had finished their tour. Martin’s wireless operator was Jim Wright, who now runs 166 Squadron Association and is the author of “On Wings of War”, the history of 166 Squadron.
This crew completed their tour on “C” Charlie and the aircraft survived the war.
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No. 22. 29.11.44. Target DORTMUND. Daylight operation,
“C” Charlie. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000 lbs HE.
This was no ordinary operation, 294 Lancasters from 1 Group plus the usual quota of Mosquitoes from 8 Group. At briefing we were told that as Bomber Command had been venturing into Germany and particularly Happy Valley in daylight, and, unlike the Americans, had not been attacked by large numbers of fighters, there was concern that because of our techniques in Bomber Command, each aircraft making its own way to the target in the Bomber stream, we might be very vulnerable to fighter attack. We could not possibly adopt the American system of flying in mass formations and do some boffin somewhere had come up with the ‘brilliant’ idea that we should indulge in gaggle flying. No practice, mind, just – this what you do chaps – get on with it.. The idea was that 3 Lancasters would have their tail fins painted bright yellow and would be the leading ‘Vic’ formation. All other aircraft would take off, find another squadron aircraft and formate on it. Each pair would then pack in together behind the leading ‘vic’ and the lead Navigator would do the navigating with the rest of the force following. The route on the flight plan took us across Belgium crossed the Rhine between Duisburg and Dusseldorf then passing Wuppertal and North East into the target area. All went well until we were approaching the Rhine when the lead navigator realised we were two minutes early. It was important not to be early or we would arrive on target before the pathfinders had done their job. The technique for losing two minutes was to do a two minute ‘dog-leg’. When ordered by the lead nav, this involved doing a 45 degrees starboard turn, two minutes flying, 90 degree port turn, 2 minutes flying, 45 degree starboard turn and we were then back on track.
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Unfortunately the apex of the dog-leg took us directly over Dusseldorf, a town which was very heavily defended. All the flak in the world came up, especially among the three lead aircraft and suddenly there were Lancs going in all directions. I actually saw a collision between two aircraft which both spiralled earthwards. Once clear of this shambles we found we were now in the lead and so we continued to the target and there being no markers down, apparently due to bad weather, I followed standard instructions and bombed what I could see. We had suffered slight flak damage but nothing to affect “C” Charlies[sic] flying capabilities and we arrived back at base 5 hours 35 mins after take-off. Six Lancasters were lost.
This was our one and only experience of ‘gaggle flying’.
No. 23. 4.12.44. Target KARLSRUHE. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
The railway marshalling yards were attacked by 535 aircraft. Marking and bombing were accurate and severe damage was caused. A machine tool factory was also destroyed. 1 Lancaster and 1 Mosquito were lost.
No. 24. 6.12.44. Target Synthetic Oil Plants “MERSEBERG LEUNA” Nr. Leipzig.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie 6000 lbs mixed HE.
475 Lancasters and 12 Mosquitoes were called upon to destroy Germany’s largest synthetic oil plant following numerous ineffective raids by the U.S. Air Force. This was the first major attack on an oil target in Eastern Germany and was some 500 miles from the bomber bases in England. “C” Charlie and crew were detailed to support pathfinder force (We were now considered to be an experienced crew). This meant we were to attack six minutes before main force. Weather conditions were
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very poor and marking was scarce and it was thought the attack was not very effective. However, post raid photographs showed that considerable damage had been caused to the synthetic oil plant and it was later revealed that the plant manager reported that the attack put the plant out of action and the second attack on 14.1.45 was not really necessary. 5 Lancasters were lost.
No.25. 12.12.44. Target ESSEN. Night attack.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie 10000 lbs HE bombs.
This was the last heavy night raid on Essen by 540 aircraft of Bomber Command. Even the Germans paid tribute to the accuracy of the bomb pattern on this raid which was thanks to “OBOE” marking by pathfinder Mosquitoes.
6 Lancasters lost.
No. 26. 13.12.44. Target Seamining [?] KATTEGAT. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load. 6 x 1800 lbs mines.
6 aircraft from 166 Squadron and 6 from 103 Squadron were detailed to lay mines in the Kattegat. This force took off in poor visibility but over the dropping zone the weather was good. On this occasion the mines were to be dropped using the blind bombing technique. I was to use the H2S radar which was a ground mapping radar. The dropping point was a bearing and distance from an identifiable point on the coast which gave a good return on the radar. On reaching the dropping point the pilot had to steer a pre-determined course and I had to release the mines at say, one minute intervals. The H2S screen was photographed so that the intelligence bods back at base could check that the mi8nes had been put down in the right place. In this case – spot on!! We then received a signal from base informing that the weather had
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clamped and we were diverted to Lossiemouth. We landed at Lossie having been airborne for 5 hrs 45 mins. At Lossie we were given beds and of course food, with the intention of returning to Kirmington the following morning.
The next morning we were given the Ok to return to Kirmington and went out to the aircraft. One engine failed to start and a faulty starter motor was diagnosed. A replacement was to be flown up from Kirmington. There we were dressed in flying kit with no money or toilet requisites and not knowing when the aircraft would be serviceable It certainly would not be today. We managed to secure a bit of cash from accounts and towels, etc from stores. That night Jock and I decided to go out on the town breaking all the rules about being out in public improperly dressed. However we got away with it. On the 17yth. “C” Charlie was serviceable and we were permitted to return to Kirmington. When we joined the circuit we could see Flying Fortresses on our dispersals having been diverted in the day before. The weather was certainly bad in the winter of 44/45.. The Americans crews allowed us to look over their Fortresses and we in turn invited them to look at our Lancaster. Their main interest centred on the Lancaster’s enormous bomb bay compared with their own.
21/12/44/ Seamining BALTIC Night operation.
Aircraft AS-H. Bomb load. 5 x 1800 lb mines.
This operation was aborted shortly after take-off due to the unserviceability of the H2S which was essential for the accurate laying of the mines. The visibility at base was very poor and we were given permission for one attempt at landing and if unsuccessful we were to divert to Carnaby in Yorkshire which was one of three diversion airfields with very long runways and overshoot facilities. We therefore
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jettisoned fuel to reduce the landing weight and made the approach. The airfield controller was firing white Very lights into the air over the end of the runway to guide us. We crept in over trees in Brocklesby Wood, trees which had claimed other Lancasters coming in too low, and made a perfect wheeled landing. It does not bear thinking about what would have happened if the undercarriage had collapsed, we were sitting on top of 9000 lbs of High Explosive. Good work skipper! Did not count as an operation.
The Squadron had a stand down at Christmas and on Christmas Day there was much merriment and a fair amount of booze put away and we went to bed a bit the worse for wear. It was therefore a bit upsetting to be got out of bed at 3am on Boxing Day morning, sent for an Ops meal and told to report for briefing at some unearthly hour. So to operation No. 27.
No. 27.. 26.12.44. Target “ST-VITH” Daylight operation.
Aircraft ‘B’. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie and 10000lbs HE.
“The Battle of the Bulge”, the German offensive in the Ardennes was in progress. A large force from Bomber Command was called upon to support the American 1st. Army trying to stem the German advances in the Ardennes. The attack was concentrated on the town of St. Vith where the Germans were unloading panzers to join the battle.
The whole of Lincolnshire was blanketed in fog with ground visibility of only a few yards. After briefing we went out to the aircraft, climbed aboard and waited for the time to start engines. Just before time there were white Very Cartridges fired from the
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control tower which indicated the operation was scrubbed. We returned to the mess and were given a new time to go out to the aircraft. Another flying meal.
We went out to the aircraft again and had a repeat performance. Third time lucky, we sat in the aircraft and although there was still dense fog, time came to start engines. This time no scrub. A marshall appeared in front of the aircraft with tow torches signalling us to start taxying and we were guided to the end of the runway. A glimmer of a green from the airfield controller and we turned onto the runway, lined up, set the gyro compass and we roared off down the runway at 1.15pm. Airborne and climbing we came out of the fog at about 200 ft and it was just like flying above cloud. We set course according to our flight plan and visibility across France and Belgium was first class. No cloud and snow on the ground. We did not really need navigation aids, I was able to map read all the way to the target. Approaching the target area there were a few anti aircraft shell bursts and it was apparent the Germans had advanced quite a long way. We bombed from 10000ft and the bombing was very concentrated and accurate. In fact it was reported that 80% of the attacking aircraft obtained aiming point photographs.
It was now time to concern ourselves with the return to Kirmington. The fog was still there and the only 1 Group airfield open was Binbrook, high up on the Lincolnshire Wolds, which stuck out of the fog like an island. The whole of 1 Group landed at Binbrook. There were Lancasters parked everywhere. Whilst we were in the circuit awaiting our turn to land, I was looking out of the window and noticed a hole in the wing between the two starboard engines. When we had landed and shut down the engines, we went to look at the hole. On top of the wing it was very neat but on the underside there was jagged aluminium hanging down around the hole. Obviously a shell had gone up and passed through the wing on its way down, without exploding.
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An airframe fitter looked at the damage and said the aircraft was grounded. This meant that after interrogation we were allowed to return to Kirmington by bus and proceed on leave.
Our next operation was not until 5.1.45 but some of us returned early from leave to attend a New Year party in the WAAF mess which was actually situated in Kirmington Village.
No.28. 5.1.45. Target HANOVER Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
325 Aircraft of Nos. 1 and 5 Groups were briefed for the second of a two pronged attack on Hanover.
Nos. 4 and 6 Groups had bombed the target two hours earlier with bomb loads of mainly incendiaries. When we crossed the Dutch coast, the fires could be seem[sic] from at least 100 miles away. Our track took us towards Bremen and was meant to mislead the enemy into believing that was our target. However we did a starboard turn short of Bremen and ran into Hanover from the North. The target was well bombed and rail yards put out of action. I don’t know what we did right but “C” Charlie arrived back at base 4 minutes before anyone else.
No. 29. 6.1.45. Seamining. STETTIN Bay. Night operation.
Aircraft AS-D. Bomb Load 6 x 1500lb Mines.
Knott and crew started their third and final gardening trip (As seamining was known) 48 aircraft of Bomber Command were detailed to plant ‘vegetables’ in the entrance to Stettin Harbour and other local areas. The enemy was able to pick up the force 100 miles North East of Cromer because bad weather condition forced us to fly at 15000
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ft to the target instead of the usual 2000ft,. As a result of this early warning enemy fighters were waiting and the target area was well illuminated by fighter flares. It was believed that the enemy thought this was a major attack on Berlin developing. Knott and crew dropped their vegetables in the allotted area, securing a good H2S photograph and again returned to base first.
No. 30. 14.1.45. Target MERSEBERG LEUNA (Again) Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie plus 5500 lbs HE.
200 Aircraft attacked this target to finish off the job started on 6th December. A very successful attack.
No. 31. 16.1.45. Target Oil refinery ZEITZ Nr. Leipzig.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 6000 lbs GP Bombs.
This was the one we had been waiting for, our last operation. We went into briefing and were told by the intelligence officer that although we were being briefed the operation might be cancelled because a large force of Amercan[sic] Fortresses and Liberators had been to the target earlier in the day and a photo recce Mosquito had gone out to photograph the target and assess the results. Before the end of briefing it was confirmed that that[sic] the Americans had missed and our operation was on. At 1720 on the 16th January we took off on this operation. Over the target there were hundreds of searchlights, the markers were in the right place and we completed our bombing run. The target was well ablaze and there were massive explosions. At one point Paddy called out “We’re coned skip” meaning we were caught by searchlights.
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It was briefly very light in the cabin but the light was caused, not by searchlights but by the explosions from the target.
Of the 328 Lancasters that attacked the target, 10 were lost.
When we returned to base all of our ground crew, including one guy who had returned early from leave, were there to welcome us and join in a little celebration.
George Knott was awarded an immediate Distinguished Flying Cross, said to be a crew award for completing a tour of operations.
All seven of us were posted from Kirmington, on indefinite leave to await our next assignments.
Apart from activities in the Officers and Sergeants Messes, and trips into Scunthorpe where the “Oswald” was the central drinking point, the main point of activity was the pub in Kirmington village. The “Marrow Bone & Cleaver” or the “Chopper” as it was known, was the meeting place for all ranks. The pub is now a shrine to the Squadron, there is a memorial in the village, lovingly cared for by the villagers’ and memorial plaques in the terminal building at Humberside Airport.
There is also a stained glass window in Kirmington Church.
I have mentioned our off base activities but, of course, a lot of time was spent in the Mess and the radio was our main contact with the outside world. I think the most popular program was the AFN (American Forces Network). They had a program which I believe was called the “dufflebag program”. Glen Miller and all the big [inserted in margin] this sentence needs a verb! [/inserted in margin] bands of the day. The song “I’ll walk alone” was very popular and was recorded by several singers. The British one was Anne Shelton, an American whose name escapes me and another American called Lily Ann Carroll (Not sure about the spelling of that name). This girl had a peculiar voice but it had something about it.
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Since the war I have not been able to find anyone who ever heard of her but I did hear the record placed on one of the archives programs on BBC, two or three years ago. If anyone knows of Lily Ann Carroll I would love to know.
I can’t remember where it was but on one occasion when we were out together as a crew, someone asked what the “B” meant on my brevet. Quick as a flash Paddy jumped in “It means Big Bill Bailey the bastard Bombaimer”.
The completion of our tour of operations was of special relief to Gus Leigh, our wireless operator who incidentally had a few weeks earlier had[sic] been commissioned as Pilot Officer. Gus was married and his wife Enid was pregnant and lived in Kent. George our skipper had relatives who lived near Thorne which was quite near to Sandtoft and not really too far from Elsham and Kirmington so it was arranged that Enid would come to stay with George’s relatives and Gus would be able to see her fairly regularly. As we approached the end of our tour you can appreciate the tension. I was to hear later that after we had left Kirmington, Enid had a son and then suffered a massive haemorrhage and died. What irony, a baby that so easily could have been fatherless was now motherless.
Before leaving the scene of operations, so to speak, I would like to clear up one or two points.
I have often been asked the question, were you frightened? I can only speak for myself and maybe my crew. I don’t think ‘frightened’ was the right word, apprehensive, maybe but except for a very few, I believe all aircrew believed in their own immortality. It was always going to be the other guy who got the chop, never yourself. Had this not been the case then we would never have got into a Lancaster.
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Ron Archer used to tell me he thought we were the luckiest crew in Bomber Command.
There were, of course, a very few aircrew who lost their nerve and refused to fly. All aircrew were volunteers and could not be compelled to fly but if that became the case then they would be sent LMF (Lack of moral fibre) and would lose their flying badge and be reduced to the ranks.
Much has been said and written in recent years about the activities of Bomber Command and in particular our Commander in Chief, “Bomber” Harris. I believed then, and still believe that what was done was right. I did not bomb Dresden, but had I been ordered to do so, I would not have given it a second thought.
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Chapter VIII. Lossiemouth.
I was at home in Wigston, Leicestershire and my 21st birthday, the 2nd February was fast approaching. Parents and friends were trying to organise a party, meagre rations, permitting. They need not have worried because I received instructions to proceed immediately to 20 OUT Lossiemouth, At 9.30 pm the eve of my birthday I caught a train from South Wigston station to Rugby and then onto a train bound for Scotland. I arrived at Lossiemouth at 11pm and following day. What a way to spend a 21st birthday!
The next day having completed arrival procedures I duly reported to the Bombing Leader for duty. At the same time I discovered that George Knott had also been posted to Lossiemouth as a screened pilot. I flew with him ocassionally[sic] when he needed some ballast in the rear turret when doing an air test.
The role of 20 OUT was to train Free French Aircrew, again flying Wellingtons and my job was to fly with them on bombing exercises to check that they were using correct procedures. I used to say, “Patter in English please”, which was alright until they got a bit excited and lapsed into French. Bombing took place on Kingston Bombing Range, on the coast East of Lossiemouth. One of my other jobs was to plot the bombs on a chart using co-ordinates given by observers at quadrant points on the
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range. These were phoned through to the bomb plotting office. The student bombaimer then came to the office to see the results of his aiming efforts. 10 lb smoke bo9mbs were used for daylight bombing and 10 lb flash bombs for night bombing. In the summer at Lossie, night flying was almost impossible due to the short night in those Northern parts. It was quite common to take off after sunset and then see the sun set again.
After a few weeks I was attached from 20 OUT to 91 Group Airbomber instructors school at Moreton in Marsh for 3 weeks before becoming an official instructor. I returned to 20 OUT and shortly afterwards was again sent off on a course, this time to the Bomber Command Analysis School at Worksop. Here I became an alleged expert on the Mark XIV Bomsight.[sic] This was a gyro stabilised bombsight [sic] which was a tactical bombsight [sic] rather than a precision bombsight.[sic] It consisted of a computor[sic] box and a sighting head and obtained information of airspeed, height, temperature and course from aircraft instruments plus one or two manual settings and converted this information into a sighting angle. The only piece of vital information to be added was the wind speed and direction which had to be calculated by the Navigator. The bombaimer was then able to do a bombing run without the necessity of flying straight and level.. It took account of climbing, a shallow dive and banking. The sequence of events when bombing was, when the bomb release (hereafter called the ‘tit’ [)]was pressed several things happened, the bombs started to be released in the order set on the automatic bomb distributor, so that they were dropped in a ‘stick’. The photoflash was released, the camera started to operate and as the bombs reached the point of impact almost immediately beneath the aircraft, the photographs were taken. Having used this equipment for the whole of my tour of operations I can vouch for its performance. The Americans had their much vaunted Norden and Sperry Bombsights [sic]
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which were claimed to be very accurate but required the aircraft to maintain a straight and level flight path for an unacceptable time against heavily defended targets. The Mk XIV was so good that the Americans adopted it for their own aircraft and called it the T1 Bombsight. Many T1’s were used by the RAF in lieu of the MkXIV. A matter of production I guess.
On my return from Worksop, with glowing reports from my two courses, the Bombing Leader said “OK Flight Sergeant you had better apply for a commission.” This I did and after going through all the procedures was commissioned in the rank of Pilot Officer (198592) on the 5th June, 1945.
Of course ‘VE’ Day took place on the 5th May after which it was only a matter of time before the OTU’s were run down and in the case of Lossiemouth this was to be sooner rather than later. The Wellingtons were all flown down to Hawarden in Cheshire for eventual disposal, I must record one tragic incident which happened whilst I was at Lossiemouth. One Sunday morning a Wellington took off on air test and lost an engine on take-off and the pilot was obviously trying to make a crash landing on the beach to the East of Seatown. He didn’t make it and crashed on top of a small block of maisonettes killing most of the inhabitants who were still in bed. A tragic accident!
The question now arose as to where next we would all go. We were given the option of being made redundant aircrew, going to another OTU or going back to an operational Squadron. My problem was solved for me, ‘Johnnie’ Johnson, ‘A’ Flight Commander, came into the plotting office and said “I’m going back on ops, I want a bombaimer”. Thus I joined his crew and other instructors made up a full crew with the exception of a flight engineer, all having done a first tour. Johnnie had to revert
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from his Squadron Leader rank to Flight Lieutenant. All the other members of the crew were officers.
Chapter IX Tiger Force.
On the 6th. July we went to 1654 Conversion Unit at Wigsley, were not wanted there and were sent to 1660 Conversion Unit at Swinderby. It was necessary to do a conversion course becaused[sic] Johnnie had done his first tour on Halifaxes and needed to convert to Lancasters. We also picked up a Flight Engineer who was actually a newly trained pilot, who had also done a flight engineers course, there now being a surplus of pilots. He happened to be a lad I knew from my ATC days.
We were now part of “Tiger Force” which was 5 Group renamed and we were to fly the Lancasters out to Okinawa to join in the attack on Japan. The Lancasters would shortly be replaced by the new Lincoln bombers which were bigger, more powerful and had a longer range.
We commenced our training, for my part I had to familiarise myself with ‘Loran’ which was a long range Gee for use in the Pacific. I did say earlier in the story that I would tell you about my ‘rash’. At Swinderby I had a recurrence and immediately reported sick. The Doc took a look at me and said “Oh! We know what that is, it is oxygen mask dermatitis, when you sweat your skin is allergic to rubber. We will make you a fabric mask. Problem solved. The new mask was not needed, however,
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because the war ended and with it my flying career.
VJ Day was a wild affair, In the “Halfway House” pub at Swinderby my brand new officer’s cap was filled with beer when I left it on a stool.
In a final salute to the mighty Lancaster, Swinderby had an open day to celebrate the end of the war and the Chief Flying Instructor, the second on three, the third on two and finally the fourth on one engine. What an aeroplane! What a pilot!
Chapter X The last chapter.
There followed a strange period. First to Acaster Malbis, nr York where all redundant Aircrew handed in their flying kit. Then to Blyton, Nr. Gainsborough where we were given a choice of alternative traded. Seldom did anyone get their first choice and I was chosen to become an Equipment Officer and after a brief spell at Wickenby was posted to the Equipment Officers School at RAF Bicester. A four week course and I was meant to be a fully qualified equipment officer. I was posted to Scampton but not needed there and so was posted on to RAF Cosford where I was put in charge of the technical stores. The Chief Equipment Officer was fairly elderly Wing Commander who took me under his wing and kept a fatherly eye on me. The Royal Air Force was beginning to return to peacetime status and Wingco[sic] warned me that it was probably not a good idea to fraternize with my ex Aircrew NCO’s in the “Shrewsbury Arms”. If you must, get on your bikes and go further afield, was his advice.
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One Monday morning I was called up to the WingCo’s office to be asked “Where is F/Sgt. Brown (Not his real name) this morning”. “I don’t know sir” I replied. “Well I will tell you” he said. “He is under arrest at Shifnal Police Station”
This particular ex Aircrew NCO lived in a village quite near to Cosford and had permission to ‘live out’. It transpired that almost everyone in his village had new curtains made from RAF bunting and quite a few people were wearing RAF or Waaf shoes. I was ordered to do a stock check on my section and for his part he was charged by the Civil Police and at Shifnal Magistrates Court received little more than a slap on the wrist. No doubt his war service stood him in good stead. Because he had been dealt with by the Civil Courts he could not be charged and Court Martialled by the RAF and all that happened was that he was posted away from Cosford and released early into civvie street.
At the time, lots of POW’s were passing through Cosford on their way from POW Camps in Europe to their homes.
Monthly “Dining In” nights were also resumed in the Officers Mess. Due to officers leaving the station or being demobbed, at every “Dining In” we were “Dining Out” those departing., always ending in a wild party. I remember one night which was extremely boisterous ending with Bar Rugby, footprints on the ceiling, the lot. I had better leave to the imagination how the footprints on the ceiling were achieved. That night I went to bed at about 3 am and when I went in to breakfast the following morning the mess was immaculate. The staff had obviously been up all night cleaning up.
On the 4th. November 1946 I received my final posting from Cosford to Headquarters Technical Training Command, at Brampton Nr. Huntingdon to be Unit Equipment
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Officer. The Headquarters Unit consisted of a Squadron Leader C.O., a Flight Lieutenant Accountant Officer, a Flight Lt. Equipment Officer and their staffs. I had a hairy old Sergeant Equipment Assistant who I believe was a regular airman and probably looked upon me as not a real Equipment Officer. However, his knowledge and experience were invaluable.
I enquired as to the whereabouts of my predecessor to be told that he had already gone having been posted abroad. There was, therefore, no handover of inventories. The next surprise was even greater, I was told that I also had RAF Kimbolton to finish closing down. I took myself to Kimbolton to find a ‘care and maintenance party’ of three airmen and one Waaf. Two were out on the airfield shooting rabbits and the other two were dealing with some paperwork. The entire camp had been almost cleared, barrack equipment to a storage/disposal site, fuel to other sites and/or the homes of the local population. Legend had it that a grand piano from the Sergeants Mess had gone astray. One day a Provost Squadron Leader came into my office and said: “Bailey, I want you to come with me to St. Neots Police Station to identify some rolls of linoleum which they have recovered from a farmer”. We went to St. Neots and a police sergeant showed us several rolls of obvious Air Ministry linoleum standing in a cell. I examined the rolls and could find no AM marks so I told the Provost that I could say the rolls ere exactly similar to AM Lino but I could not positively identify them as AM property. The provost told the police sergeant to give the lino back to the farmer. Heaven only knows how many houses had their floors covered in Air Ministry lino in the Kimbolton area. No doubt this sort of thing was happening all over the country. The politicians were so anxious to get servicemen back into civvies street that establishments were seriously undermanned.
When I, a mere Flying Officer, did the final paperwork for RAF Kimbolton I raised a
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write off document well in excess of £1 million at 1947 prices and this only involved equipment known to be missing.
With regard to Brampton itself, the winter of 46/47 was extremely severe with heavy snowfalls. Even the rail line between Huntingdon and Kettering was blocked. When the snow thawed there was severe flooding. One weekend I went home and returned to Camp on Sunday afternoon to find that the previous night there had been a severe storm with gale force winds and Brampton was a scene of devastation. Trees had been blown down crushing nissen huts. The camp was flooded and the sewage system was completely useless. The following morning I located a stock of portable loos (Thunder boxes so called). A four wheel drive vehicle was despatched through the flood waters surrounding Huntingdon, to RAF Upwood to collect these things. Things gradually returned to something like normal but it was a terrible time. The Officers Mess at Brampton was in the large house in Brampton Park and the Headquarters Staff from the C in C Technical Training Command down, were housed in Offices adjacent to Brampton Grange. There were far more senior officers at Brampton than junior officers because of the very nature of the place.
The PMC of the mess was a Group Captain and one day he came to me and said “Bailey, we are going to have a Dining In and I thought it would be nice if we could have some proper RAF crested crockery and cutlery”. I informed the PMC that these items were not on issue whereupon he suggested that I use my initiative.
It just so happened that whilst I was a[sic] Cosford I learned that in the Barrack Stores the very things I was being asked to get were in store, having been there throughout the War. I spoke with the Wing Commander, my former boss, who
agreed to release a quantity of crockery, etc. I informed the PMC of my success and he arranged for a De Havilland Rapide aircraft from our communications flight at nearby Wyton to take
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me to Cosford to collect the two heavy chests of crocks. I am sure the Rapide was overloaded on the flight back to Wyton but the mission was accomplished and the PMC was able to show off his ‘posh’ tableware at the next Dining In.
I was shortly to have to make a major decision, the date was fast approaching for my release back into civilian life, I had agreed to serve six months beyond my release date and had made an application for an extended service commission which would have kept me in the Royal Air Force for at least another six years. However my civilian employers became aware that I had done the extra six months and were not amused. I, despite having access to ‘P’ staff at Brampton could not get a decision from Air Ministry and I made the decision to leave the service.
On 1st. April, how significant a date, I headed off to Kirkham in Lancashire to collect my demob suit. A very sad day.
This is the end of the ‘dream’ but not quite the end of my love affair with the Royal Air Force. But that, as they say, is another story ……
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Two photographs in RAF uniform; one in 1942 aged 18 and the other in 1945 aged 21.
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Was it all a Dream
The memoirs of Wartime Bomb Aimer Bill Bailey
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Bailey's wartime memoirs, from enlistment, training in UK and Canada and detail of each of 31 operation in Bomber Command. After completion of his tour he was transferred to Lossiemouth to train Free French aircrew. After successful progress he was offered a commission. Later he trained for Tiger Force ops at RAF Wigsley and Swinderby. When the Force was cancelled he became an Equipment Officer at Bicester then Cosford, Brampton and Kimbolton.
Creator
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Bill Bailey
Format
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45 typewritten sheets and two b/w photographs
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Photograph
Identifier
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BBaileyJDBaileyJDv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
Free French Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Norway
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
England--Birmingham
England--Devon
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Yorkshire
France--Domléger-Longvillers
France--Ardennes
France--Calais
France--Cap Gris Nez
France--Le Havre
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Leipzig
Manitoba--Carberry
Netherlands--Domburg
Netherlands--Eindhoven
New Brunswick--Moncton
Norway--Oslo
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Ontario--Hamilton
Ontario--Picton
Poland--Szczecin
Netherlands--Hague
France
Ontario
New Brunswick
Nova Scotia
Netherlands
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Warwickshire
Manitoba
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Sue Smith
David Bloomfield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1 Group
103 Squadron
166 Squadron
1660 HCU
1667 HCU
4 Group
5 Group
576 Squadron
8 Group
83 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
B-17
Bolingbroke
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
flight engineer
Gee
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
Lysander
Master Bomber
medical officer
memorial
mid-air collision
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Mosquito
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
promotion
RAF Acaster Malbis
RAF Bicester
RAF Binbrook
RAF Blyton
RAF Brampton
RAF Cosford
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Hawarden
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kimbolton
RAF Kirmington
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Paignton
RAF Penrhos
RAF Peplow
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Scampton
RAF St Athan
RAF Swinderby
RAF Worksop
RAF Wyton
Scarecrow
searchlight
superstition
Tiger force
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1568/35500/BFreemanWFreemanWv1.2.pdf
3f3caa442d86d0abdb3348aa0c6b5c21
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
Freeman, Bill
William Freeman
W Freeman
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-07
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
Freeman, W
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. The collection concerns Bill Freeman (1806695 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book memoir and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 550 and 300 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Monica Snowball and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] 1 [/underlined]
5TH APRIL 1943 SAW ME LEAVE TWICKENHAM to REPORT FOR SERVICE IN THE ROYAL AIR FORCE. MOST OF MY FRIENDS HAD ALREADY BEEN CALLED UP, SO IT WAS A RELIEF TO BE JOINING THEM AT LAST. EVEN SO IT WAS A WRENCH TO BE LEAVING HOME. I MADE MY WAY TO LORDS CRICKET GROUND NEAR REGENTS PARK IN LONDON, UPON REPORTING TOGETHER WITH MANY MORE, WE FILLED IN MASSES OF PAPER WORK & WERE KITTED OUT. FIRST A MASSIVE KIT BAG & EVERYTHING ELSE WAS JUST SHOVED IN. IT WEIGHED A TON. AFTER LUNCH WE WERE PARADED IN SOME SORT OF ORDER & MARCHED TO VICEROY COURT. A RECENTLY BUILT LUXURY BLOCK OF FLATS, WITHOUT ANY LUXURIES. THE FLOORS WERE PLAIN CONCRETE, THE ROOMS CONTAINED 1 BED AND 1 CUPBOARD PER BODY, OF WHICH THERE WERE ABOUT 1 DOZEN PER ROOM. WE WERE INSTRUCTED TO UNPACK OUR KIT, CHECK EVERYTHING FOR SIZE. ANYTHING NOT FITTING WAS TO BE EXCHANGED THE FOLLOWING DAY. PARADE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, IN UNIFORM WAS AT 8 AM, BREAKFAST WAS AT 7 AM BED HAD TO BE MADE UP IN ARMY FASHION, READY FOR OFFICER’S INSPECTION. A DRILL SERGEANT WAS ASSIGNED TO INSTRUCT US AND INFORM US ABOUT WHAT WAS TO BE EXPECTED, THERE WAS ABOUT 20 OF US IN OUR FLIGHT. OUR FIRST DAY WAS TO BE TAKEN UP WITH MEDICAL & INJECTIONS. SO OFF WE WERE MARCHED TO SOMEWHERE NEAR THE ZOO. WE WERE A RAGGED LOT, BUT HAVING DONE TRAINING & DRILL WITH THE HOME GUARD IT WAS EASY FOR ME TO FIT IN. THE MEDICALS & INJECTIONS & LUNCH TOOK ALL MORNING QUITE A FEW OF THE LADS WERE OVERCOME & LAID OUT ON BENCHES. THE SERGEANT WASN’T TOO PLEASED AT THIS, HE [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
THAN THE OTHERS, COULD YOU FIND YOUR WAY BACK TO VICEROY COURT?” I SAID “YES SERGEANT” HE SAID “VERY WELL, MARCH THOSE THAT CAN WALK BACK, I WILL HAVE TO GET A WAGON TO TAKE THE OTHER SHOWER BACK”. STAY IN YOUR BILLET UNTIL I COME BACK” I TOLD THE OTHER LADS WHAT WAS GOING ON & THEY ACCEPTED THAT IT WAS BETTER THAN HANGING AROUND FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS. SO OFF WE WENT AND IN 15 MINUTES WERE BACK AT VICEROY COURT. THE LADS WERE GLAD TO LAY ON THEIR BEDS FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON, I MANAGED TO SEE THE SERGEANT IN THE KITCHEN AND SCROUNGED TEA & BISCUITS, WHICH WENT DOWN WELL. THE DRILL SERGEANT WAS QUITE HAPPY ON HIS RETURN TO SEE ALL HIS FLIGHT WAS ACCOUNTED FOR & DISMISSED US UNTIL 8 AM PARADE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, BUT WE HAD TO REMAIN IN QUARTERS, NO TRIPS INTO TOWN. THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS TAKEN UP WITH CLASSROOM WORK ON AIRFORCE PROCEDURE & WORKING. AFTERNOON FREE TO GET OVER THE EFFECTS OF THE INOCCULATIONS. THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS TAKEN UP WITH DRILL & MARCHING, AFTER A WHILE THE SERGEANT PULLED ME OUT & TOLD ME TO TAKE OVER. HIS WORDS WERE “LETS SEE JUST WHAT YOU DO KNOW”. SO THE HOME GUARD TRAINING WAS COMING IN USEFUL & ALL WENT WELL. IT WENT SO WELL THAT FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK I WAS GIVEN THE JOB OF DRILLING THE OTHERS WHENEVER THE NEED AROSE. TO MY ASTONISHMENT THE LADS TOOK IT WELL – WE HAD NO TROUBLE. MAINLY BECAUSE AT THE END OF THE DRILL SESSION WE WERE ALWAYS FIRST IN THE QUEUE FOR MEALS. WE WERE POSTED to [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
of THE WEEK. BEFOR [sic] WE LEFT, THE DRILL SERGEANT SAID “GOOD LUCK, YOU’VE HAD A GOOD REPORT ON YOUR RECORD, THIS WEEK HAS BEEN AN EASY ONE FOR ME.” BRIDLINGTON OUR BILLET WAS A HOUSE IN RICHMOND ROAD. THE COURSE WORK WAS AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION MORSE CODE SIGNALLING & GENERAL DRILLING ETC. THIS LASTED 6 WEEKS. THOSE THAT PASSED THE TEST WERE POSTED TO BRIDGENORTH IN SHROPSHIRE. HERE WE WERE INSTRUCTED IN THE WORKINGS OF THE FRAZER NASH TURRET & THE BROWNING 303 MACHINE GUN, AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION WAS AGAIN A MUST. ALL WAS CLASSROOM WORK WITH A MAJOR EXAM AT THE END OF A FUTHER [sic] 6 WEEKS, THEN OFF TO STORMY DOWNS IN SOUTH WALES. STORMY DOWNS WAS APTLY NAMED. THE DROME WAS ON THE HILLS CLOSE TO THE SEA & THE AIRCRAFT WERE AVRO ANSONS WITH A GUN TURRET MIDWAY ALONG THE FUSELAGE. THE PILOTS WERE THOSE BEING RESTED AFTER A TOUR OF OPPERATIONS. [sic] ALL OF US CADETS HAD NOT FLOWN BEFOR [sic] & THE PILOTS TOOK GREAT DELIGHT IN THROWING THE AIRCRAFT ABOUT TO SEE IF THEY COULD MAKE US AIRSICK. FORTUNATELY I STOOD UP TO IT PRETTY WELL, AND WHILST FEELING A BIT SQUEEZY AT TIMES, MANAGED TO KEEP THINGS UNDER CONTROL. HERE WE DID AIR TO AIR FIREING [sic] & PRACTICE CINE CAMERA GUNNERY, WITH OTHER AIRCRAFT ATTACKING. HAVING AT LAST GOT THE RUDIMENTS OF WHAT AIR GUNNERY WAS ABOUT, WE WERE EXAMINED & PASSED OUT AS AIR GUNNERS, GIVEN 3 STRIPES & THE RANK OF SERGEANT AND SENT ON 7 DAYS LEAVE. I [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
AIR GUNNER, ALL IN A MATTER OF 5 MONTHS OF JOINING. THE LEAVE WENT QUICKLY & I HAD BEEN NOTIFIED THAT I WAS TO REPORT TO HIXON IN STAFFORDSHIRE, TO BE CREWED UP, & SO IT WAS AT THE END OF AUGUST ’43 THAT I WAS TO MEET THE CHAPS I WAS TO FLY WITH. IT WAS A QUEER MEETING. WE STOOD AROUND IN OUR VARIOUS GROUPS WIRELESS OPS, BOMB AIMERS, NAVIGATORS, & AIR GUNNERS THE PILOTS THEN APPROACHED EACH GROUP AND ASKED INDIVIDUALS IF THEY WOULD LIKE TO JOIN HIS CREW. BY THE TIME HE CAME TO THE GUNNERS HE HAD ALREADY GOT THE OTHERS TOGETHER. HIS OPENING LINE AS HE CAME UP TO ME WAS “CREWED UP YET GUNNER?” I LOOKED UP TO SEE A CHAP OF MY OWN AGE, FAIR HAIRED & WITH A BIG SMILE AND A TWINKLE IN HIS EYES, AND A SERGEANTS STRIPES ON HIS ARM. WHY I ASKED MYSELF WAS HE ONLY A SERGEANT. MOST PILOTS WERE OFFICER RANK. I REPLIED THAT I WASN’T CREWED UP, HIS NEXT WORDS WERE OFF PUTTING “HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BECOMING A HERO & WINNING MEDALS” HE SAID. “NO THANKS” I REPLIED “THE ONLY MEDAL I WANT IS THE LONG SERVICE ONE” HE LAUGHED AND SAID “YOU’LL DO, COME AND MEET THE OTHERS” WITH THAT WE INTRODUCED OURSELVES. THE PILOT WAS RON JONES FROM BRIGHTON. HE HAD BEEN PUT BACK TO SERGEANT PILOT BECAUSE HE HAD UPSET too MANY “BIG WIGS” THE NAVIGATOR WAS ART CRICHE CANADIAN FARMER. THE BOMB AIMER ANOTHER CANADIAN DAVE BREMNER A YOUNG COLLEGE BOY FULL OF FUN THE WIRELESS OPERATOR WAS KEN SMITH, SHORT, TUBBY FROM DEWSBURY & A COMIC. SO [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 5 [/underlined]
GET THEMSELVES INTO A TEAM, FOR THE ESSENCE OF A BOMBER CREW WAS EACH TO HAVE THE CONFIDENCE OF THE OTHERS. HIXON WAS AN OPPERATIONAL [sic] TRAINING UNIT. FLYING WELLINGTON TWIN ENGINE BOMBERS, OR WIMPYS AS WE LOVINGLY CALLED THEM. WE FLEW AS A CREW MAINLY. PRACTISING TAKE OFFS & LANDINGS. HIGH & LOW LEVEL BOMBING CROSS COUNTRY NAVIGATIONAL TRIPS OF 4 TO 5 hours AND GUNNERY EXERCISES. I ALSO HAD TO GO ON A SPECIAL GUNNERY COURSE & RECOGNITION COURSE AT THIS TIME MY SHOOTING WAS NOT VERY BRILLIANT, BUT THANKFULLY IMPORVED BEFOR [sic] IT WAS NEEDED. GRADUALLY IN THE WEEKS AHEAD, WE BECAME RELIANT ON EACH OTHER, WE WORKED HARD TO BECOME A TEAM, UNTIL WE ALMOST KNEW WHAT THE OTHERS WERE THINKING. SOCIALLY WE HAD VERY LITTLE CONTACT WITH EACH OTHER, BUT ONCE A WEEK WE HAD A CREW MEAL IN A LOCAL PUB, THE 2 CANADIANS BEING OFFICERS, PAID FOR THE MEAL & THE SERGEANTS PAID FOR THE DRINKS. OUR OTHER CONTACT WAS ONLY DURING FLYING TRAINING, WHICH WE ALL TOOK SERIOUSLY AND IT PAID OFF LATER ON. MY SPARE TIME, MOSTLY EVENINGS WAS SPENT IN STAFFORD, DARTS SNOOKER & DRINKING IN THE LOCALS. I HAD MADE FRIENDS WITH ANOTHER GUNNER NAMED TONY. HE WAS ABOUT THE SAME AGE AS MYSELF. A BLONDE, BLUE EYED, HANDSOME FELLOW. AN ONLY CHILD OF DOTING PARENTS & VERY SHY. I DONT THINK HE HAD EVER HAD A DRINK BEFORE JOINING THE AIRFORCE. MANY TIMES I HAD TO TAKE HIM BACK TO CAMP WORSE FOR WEAR. DURING ONE OF OUR EVENINGS [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 6 [/underlined]
GIRL FRIEND, WE USED TO GET THE LORRY TO TAKE US IN TO STAFFORD, THE [sic] INTO THE PUB FOR DRINKING DANCING. HE WOULD GO OFF WITH HIS GIRL & I WOULD PLAY DARTS OR SNOOKER, UNTIL IT WAS TIME TO GO BACK TO CAMP. ALL OUR MATES WOULD PILE INTO THE LORRY, IN VARIOUS STATES OF INEBRIATION ESPECIALLY TONY, TOWARD THE END OF OCTOBER ’43 OUR CREW HAD BEEN ON A CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT OF ABOUT 5 hours AND WERE READY TO LAND, WHEN WE SAW THAT THERE WAS A PLANE ON THE GROUND ON FIRE. WE WERE ALLOWED TO LAND & IN THE FLIGHT OFFICE WERE TOLD THAT THE CREW WAS TONY’S & THAT THEY MANAGED TO GET OUT, EXCEPT TONY IN THE REAR TURRET BEING TONY’S MATE I HAD THE TASK OF COLLECTING HIS PERSONAL BELONGINGS AND PRESENTING THEM TO HIS PARENTS WHEN THEY CAME TO CAMP. I VOWED THEN THAT I WOULD NOT GET INVOLVED IN ANY CLOSE FRIENDSHIP WHILST FLYING AGAIN & NEVER DID. THE EVENING AFTER THE ACCIDENT I WENT INTO STAFFORD, INTO THE PUB WHERE I KNEW HIS GIRL FRIEND WOULD BE. AS SOON AS SHE SAW ME ON MY OWN SHE KNEW THAT SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED. THERE WERE NO TEARS AS I TOLD HER. WE FINNISHED [sic] OUR DRINKS AND SHE JUST SAID “THANKS BILL” & OFF SHE WENT WITH HER CROWD. SHE HAD SEEN IT HAPPEN BEFOR [sic] & NO DOUBT WOULD SEE IT HAPPEN AGAIN, AS WE ALL DID. A WEEK LATER WE HAD OUR LAST FLIGHT AT THE OTU it was TO BE A TRIP OVER SOUTHERN FRANCE. WE WERE LOADED UP WITH [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 7 [/underlined]
DETAILING ALL THE NEWS OF THE PROGRESS OF THE WAR. ALSO WE HAD BUNDLES OF FOIL STRIPS WHICH WERE TO BE RELEASED AT A GIVEN TIME AT A GIVEN PLACE, THESE FOIL STRIPS REFLECTED THE SIGNALS OF GERMAN RADAR & GAVE THE APPEARANCE OF A HUGE FORMATION OF BOMBERS, IT ACTED AS A DECOY & DREW FIGHTER AIRCRAFT AWAY FROM THE TRUE BOMBER FORCE. WE ACCOMPLISHED THIS MISSION WITHOUT MISHAP & WERE THRILLED THAT AT LAST WE HAD BEEN PART OF A RAID. THEN IT WAS A 14 DAY LEAVE. IT WAS DURING THIS LEAVE THAT I CELEBRATED MY 21ST BIRTHDAY ALBEIT, A LITTLE EARLY, BUT AFTER FLYING IT SEEMED QUEER NOT TO HEAR THE ROAR OF AIRCRAFT ENGINES. ALSO THE FLYING ROUTINE WAS MISSING, SO WHILST IN [sic] WAS NICE TO BE HOME WITH THE FAMILY I WAS NOT SORRY TO BE GOING BACK. THERE WAS MORE TRAINING TO BE DONE & I HAD TO GO FOR A WEEKS GUNNERY COURSE TO BINBROOK. THIS WAS AN AUSTRALIAN BOMBER STATION, VERY OPPERATIONAL [sic] & THEIR LOSSES WERE HIGH. THE FIRST PERSON THAT I MET AT BINBROOK WAS A CHAP I HAD DONE MY INITIAL TRAINING WITH AT STORMY DOWNS. A WELSHMAN FROM TREDEGAR & AN EX POLICEMAN NAMED VICTOR JONES. VIC & I HAD BEEN PUT FORWARD FOR OFFICER SELECTION AS WE HAD TOPPED THE COURSE TABLES. THERE WAS ONE OFFICER PLACE PER COURSE. I WAS NOT OVERKEEN & THOUGHT THAT ONLY 5 MONTHS DID NOT JUSTIFY BEING MADE AN OFFICER. THE BENEFITS [sic] OF BEING AN [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 8 [/underlined]
WHEN SHOT DOWN YOU WOULD BE ENTITLED TO BETTER TREATMENT. VIC GOT THE OFFICERSHIP, MUCH TO MY RELIEF. AFTER THE DAY’S GUNNERY PRACTICE, I USED TO MEET UP WITH VIC, BORROW HIS SPARE UNIFORM & WE WOULD HAVE A DRINK OR TWO IN THE OFFICERS MESS, WHICH WAS VERY ENJOYABLE. AFTER A WEEK I LEFT BINBROOK THANKFULLY MY SHOOTING HAD IMPROVED & I WAS MORE CONFIDENT IN MY JOB. SADLY I HEARD A FEW MONTHS LATER THAT VIC HAD BEEN SHOT DOWN I REJOINED MY CREW AT BLYTON 1662 CONVESION [sic] UNIT. WE WERE TO FLY HALIFAXES. ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS AND CONTRARY AIRCRAFT AND SO EASY FOR INEXPERIENCED PILOTS TO CRASH. HOWEVER, RON, OUR PILOT MASTERED THE BRUTE & WE COMPLETED 10 DAYS THERE. DURING THIS TIME OUR CREW INCREASED BY 2. THE FLIGHT ENGINEER CALLED GEORGE, I NEVER DID KNOW HIS SURNAME. HE WAS A LONDONER & HAD WON HIMSELF THE GEORGE CROSS MEDAL FOR HIS PART IN THE BLITZ. OUR PILOT TOOK AN INSTANT DISLIKE TO HIM & ALWAYS FELT THAT GEORGE WAS ONLY WAITING TO WIN MORE MEDALS, WHICH WAS AGAINST OUR CREWS WAY OF THINKING. WE ALWAYS SAID THAT OUR JOB WAS TO REACH THE TARGET DROP THE BOMBS & GET HOME IN ONE PIECE. HOWEVER GEORGE WAS GOOD AT HIS JOB & WAS NEVER GIVEN THE CHANCE TO PLAY THE HERO. – MUCH TO HIS DISGUST - . THE OTHER MEMBER WAS THE MID-UPPER GUNNER JOHNNY JOHNSON, SHORT & [missing words]
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[underlined] 9 [/underlined]
HIMSELF TO HIMSELF & CAME FROM NORTHAMPTON OUR ORIGINAL 5 NEVER REALLY GOT USED TO BECOMING 7. BUT WE ALL DID OUR JOBS AND MADE A DECENT CREW. WE TRANSFERED [sic] (MUCH TO OUR RELIEF) to LANCASTERS AT HEMSWELL FOR A WEEK AT ELSHAM WOLDS AFTER A COUPLE OF FLIGHTS IT WAS FINALLY ONTO 550 SQUADRON AT NORTH KILLINGHOLME NEAR GRIMSBY, OUR FIRST TASTE OF OPPERATIONAL [sic] LIFE. IT WAS NOW MARCH 1944. KILLINGHOLME KILLINGHOLME [sic] HAD ONLY JUST OPENED UP IN JAN 44 & THE FACILITIES WERE VERY SPARTAN & WE HAD TO ROUGH IT FOR SOME TIME. SLEEPING ACCOMODATION [sic] WAS A NISSEN HUT, STRAW MATTRESSES ON IRON BEDS & TWO COKE STOVES FOR HEATING, BUT AS THE C/O SAID “YOU’LL BE PLENTY WARM ENOUGH, FLYING.” WE SETTLED IN WELL TO SQUADRON LIFE. WE STILL HAD TO TRAIN DURING THE DAY. WE WORKED WELL TOGETHER & DEVISED A SYSTEM SO THAT WE WERE AS EFFICIENT AS WE COULD BE. THEN ON THE 10TH APRIL 1944 OUR PILOTS NAME APPEARED ON THE FLIGHT LIST. THE ROUTINE THEN & IN FUTURE TO BE REPEATED OFTEN, WAS, 10 AM IN THE MORNING, CREW BUS TO THE AIRCRAFT WE WERE TO USE. Q-QUEENIE, EACH OF US CHECKED & RECHECKED HIS PART. THE ENGINES WERE RUN UP & THE PILOT CHECKED EACH ENGINE SEPERATELY. [sic] ANYTHING HE DIDN’T LIKE WAS ATTENDED TO & CHECKED AGAIN THE WIRELESS OP. CHECKED HIS EQUIPMENT. WE [missing words]
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[underlined] 10 [/underlined]
HAD TO CHECK MY GUNS WERE IN WORKING ORDER AMMUNITION RAN SMOOTHLY INTO THE GUN. THE AMMUNITION BELT WAS FOLDED INSIDE THE FUSELAGE & RAN IN TRACKS INTO THE TURRET. COULD NOT AFFORD A JAMMED BULLET, IF NEED AROSE, TO MESS THINGS UP. THE TURRET HAD TO WORK SMOOTHLY THE HYDRAULICS FREE FROM LEAKS & AIRLOCKS THE ELECTRIC HEATING FOR MY FLYING SUIT HAD TO BE WORKING, FROZEN FINGERS AT A CRUSIAL [sic] MOMENT to BE AVOIDED. THE INSIDE PERSPEX WAS CLEANED so THAT VISION WAS CLEAR. EVERYTHING CHECKED & RECHECKED, THEN & ONLY THEN THE PILOT WAS ADVISED THAT EVERYTHING WAS O.K – THE BOOK SIGNED. WE HAD A FIRST CLASS GROUND CREW & RARELY FOUND A FAULT, WHEN WE DID, IT WAS PUT RIGHT. BY FINDING OUT HOW MUCH PETROL WAS BEING PUT IN & THE WEIGHT AND TYPE OF BOMBS WE COULD WORK OUT THE DISTANCE AND TYPE OF TARGET of the opperation. [sic] ALL WAS TO BE REVEALED AT THE BRIEFING ABOUT 2 hours BEFOR [sic] TAKE OFF NO ONE WAS ALLOWED OUT OF CAMP UNTIL TAKE OFF. AT THE BRIEFING it WOULD BE DISCLOSED THE TARGET, THE COURSE to BE SET TIME OF TAKE OFF, TIME OVER TARGET & TIME BACK. WE WERE ISSUED WITH AN ESCAPE KIT IN CASE WE HAD TO BALE OUT & CHOCOLATE & CANNED DRINK FOR THE JOURNEY. ALL RELEVANT INFORMATION WAS GIVEN & DIJESTED. [sic] THE NAVIGATOR THEN HAD TO WORK OUT HIS FLIGHT PLAN. OUR NAVIGATOR WAS SLOW & METHODICAL. I NEVER KNEW HIM TO [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 11 [/underlined]
ON, TOO SOON OR TOO LATE MEANT THAT YOU WERE ON YOUR OWN & EASILY PICKED UP BY RADAR, SEARCHLIGHTS or FIGHTERS, SO THEN TO TAKE OFF. OUR TARGET ON THAT FIRST TRIP WAS MARSHALLING YARDS AT AULNOYE. TAKE OFF 23.35 time over TARGET 02.25 WE PILED INTO THE CREW BUS WITH 2 OTHER CREWS & WERE TAKEN OUT TO OUR AIRCRAFT THERE WAS A BIT OF LAUGHING & JOKING & AS EACH CREW LEFT, IT WAS “CHEERIO, SEE YOU AT BREAKFAST”. WHEN OUR AIRCRAFT WAS REACHED, WE ALIGHTED, SAID “CHEERIO” to the GROUND CREW & CLIMBED ABOARD, THE JOKES STOPPED & WE WERE EACH LEFT TO OUR OWN THOUGHTS “HOW WOULD WE COPE UNDER FIRE” WE SHOOK EACH OTHERS HAND, PATTED THE SIDE OF THE AIRCRAFT & MADE OUR WAY TO OUR POSTS. MINE WAS A LONG WALK TO THE REAR, STOWING MY PARACHUTE OUTSIDE THE TURRET I SWUNG MYSELF IN, PLUGGED IN MY ELECTIC [sic] HEATER, CHECKED IT & SWITCHED OFF, RUNNING THROUGH ALL THE CHECKS I REPORTED OVER THE INTERCOM THAT ALL WAS O.K. EACH MEMBER IN TURN REPORTED AND ALL WAS SET. AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME THE ENGINES WERE STARTED & CHOCKS AWAY WE WERE MOVING TO THE END OF THE RUNWAY. GIVING THE THUMBS UP SIGN FROM THE GROUND CREW SERGEANT. ONE PLANE AFTER THE OTHER WERE SIGNALLED OFF & SOON WE WERE AIRBOURNE [sic] & REACHING 20,000 FT [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 12 [/underlined]
LIKE A TRAINING EXERCISE. SOON IT WAS OVER THE FRENCH COAST & COURSE SET FOR TARGET TARGET [sic] REACHED SPOT ON TIME. FEW SEARCHLIGHTS AND A BIT OF “ACK-ACK” GUNFIRE. THE BOMB AIMER LINED UP HIS TARGET & GAVE THE PILOT DIRECTIONS. I FELT THE AIRCRAFT RISE AS HE REPORTED “BOMBS GONE SKIPPER” THE PILOT REPLIED “THANK YOU BOMB AIMER, LETS GO HOME” & AS WE PASSED OVER THE TARGET I COULD SEE A SERIES OF EXPLOSIONS, FIRES BURNING & SEARCHLIGHTS TRYING TO PICK US UP, VERY LITTLE “FLACK” SUGGESTING THAT THERE WERE A NUMBER OF NIGHT FIGHTERS ABOUT. I REPORTED THIS TO THE SKIPPER. HE SAID “KEEP YOUR EYES WELL PEELED GUNNERS. THE WORST IS BEHIND US.” WE HAD A QUIET JOURNEY BACK. LANDED. REPORTED IN & WENT TO BREAKFAST. ALL OUR CREWS WERE BACK SAFELY AFTER WHAT WAS A RELATIVELY EASY TRIP. BUT AS ONE OLD CREW SAID IT DOESNT HAPPEN OFTEN, COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS BREAKFAST WAS A GOOD FRY UP AND SUDDENLY I WAS TIRED & SURPRISED TO SEE IT GETTING LIGHTER IT WAS 6 AM THE TRIP HAD TAKEN 5 hours NO REPORTING UNTIL 12 NOON AND SO TO SLEEP. AS IT HAPPENED WE WERE NOT OPPERATIONAL [sic] AGAIN FOR OVER A WEEK, BUT THERE WAS NO SLACKING, WE STILL HAD TO PRACTICE AND WERE ALWAYS KEPT INFORMED OF DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES BEING USED. IF WE WEREN’T REQUIRED FOR FLYING WE COULD GO INTO GRIMSBY FOR CINEMA, PUBS & ENTERTAIN [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 13 [/underlined]
WHICH WAS USED BY THE RAF, AND NICKNAMED THE “MUCKY DUCK,” NOISEY & SMOKEY. IT WAS THERE THAT I FIRST MET UP WITH THE “YANKS”. WE GOT ON REASONABLY WELL ONCE WE WERE USED TO THEIR WAYS, BUT COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND WHY THE WHITES WOULD INSIST ON BLACKS BEING FORCED TO DRINK ELSE WHERE, AND ANY TROUBLE USUALLY AROSE BETWEEN THE TWO. BACK IN CAMP WE KEPT LOOKING AT THE OPPERATIONS [sic] BOARD AND AT LAST ON THE 18TH APRIL WE WERE DETAILED. OUR ROUTINE CHECKS OF THE AIRCRAFT WERE DONE AND ABOUT 8 pm WE HAD BRIEFING. THE TARGET WAS ROUEN. THE DOCKS & MARSHALLING YARDS. AGAIN EVERY THING WENT WELL. WE STAYED OUT OF TROUBLE, DID THE JOB AND CAME BACK TO BASE. TWO NIGHTS LATER WE WERE FLYING AGAIN, THIS TIME TO COLOGNE IN THE RHUR. THE HOT SPOT OF GERMANY. THE LARGE MUNITIONS FACTORIES OF KRUPPS & STEEL WORKS WERE ALL ALLONG [sic] THE RHUR. WELL DEFENDED. THIS TIME IT WAS NO JOY RIDE. WE SAW IT ALL. SEARCHLIGHTS “FLACK” AND THE AIRCRAFT TOSSED ABOUT BY NEAR SHELL BURSTS. NO DAMAGE TO WORRY ABOUT. WE SAW OTHER AIRCRAFT BEING ATTACKED BY NIGHT FIGHTERS & GO DOWN IN FLAMES. THE TARGET WAS ONE MASS OF FIRES & BOMB BURSTS. IT SEEMED ENDLESS. BUT EVENTUALLY WE WERE THROUGH, BOMBS DROPPED & TARGET BEHIND US. THE SKIPPER CHECKED EVERY ONE WAS O.K. APPOLOGISED [sic] FOR THE BUMPY RIDE & SAID “I’LL BUY YOU ALL A BEER WHEN WE GET BACK”[missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 14 [/underlined]
A COUPLE OF SCARES FROM NIGHT FIGHTERS, BUT MANAGED TO EVADE THEM AND LOSE OURSELVES INTO THE DARK NIGHT SKY. THE C/O HAD BEEN RIGHT, IT HAD BEEN PRETTY WARM FLYING NO NEED FOR COKE FIRES. TWO NIGHTS LATER WE WERE IN THE RHUR AGAIN TO DUSSELDORF. MUCH THE SAME HAPPENED, BUT WE RETURNED O.K. NO DAMAGE. THEN KARLSRUHE A COUPLE OF NIGHTS LATER, WE HAD A BIT OF DAMAGE, BUT MADE IT HOME, BUT THAT WAS A LONG TRIP AND TOOK 6 1/2 hours. MOST OF IT TRYING TO KEEP OUT OF TROUBLE, WE HAD TO PICK UP ANOTHER AIRCRAFT FOR OUR NEXT FLIGHT TO ESSEN ON THE 26TH APRIL. BY NOW WE HAD EXPERIENCED IT ALL. EVERYTHING THAT COULD HAPPEN AND THOUGHT WE WERE BEING LUCKY TO GET AWAY WITH IT. WE HAD DEVELOPED A GOOD WORKING SYSTEM BETWEEN US GUNNERS WHICH KEPT US OUT OF THE WORST OF IT. THE REST OF THE CREW ALWAYS CAME AND SAID THANKS ON LANDING GEORGE WOULD HAVE PREFERED MORE ACTION. ON THE 27TH WE WERE BRIEFED FOR FRIEDRICHAFEN AFTER ABOUT 30 MINUTES ONE ENGINE BEGAN SIEZING UP AND HAD TO BE CUT, THE SKIPPER SAID WE WOULD HAVE TO GO BACK. GEORGE WANTED TO CARRY ON ON [sic] THREE ENGINES BUT RON WAS AGAINST IT & TO GEORGES DISGUST TURNED THE PLANE ROUND AND HEADED HOME. RON RADIOD [sic] BASE & WAS TOLD TO JETTISON THE BOMB LOAD OVER THE NORTH SEA. THIS WAS DONE AND WE [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 15 [/underlined]
ENGINE WAS PLAYING UP, SO IT WAS A RELIEF TO PUT FOOT ON LAND. ON THE 30TH APRIL WE WERE BRIEFED FOR A TRIP TO MAINTENON MARSHALLING YARDS IN FRANCE THIS TIME A NEW TECHNIQUE WAS TO BE USED. WE WERE INSTRUCTED TO ARRIVE AT THE TARGET AREA AT A GIVEN TIME. TARGET INDICATORS WERE BEING DROPPED (YELLOW FLARES) AND WE WERE TO CIRCLE UNTIL ORDERED TO OUR SPECIAL TARGET (GREEN FLARES) OTHER AIRCRAFT WERE GIVEN (BLUE FLARES OR RED FLARES TO BOMB ON. EVERYTHING WENT ACCORDING TO PLAN AND THIS WAS THE BEGINING [sic] ON THE PATHFINDER TECHNIQUE AND PROVED A GREAT SUCCESS FOR PINPOINT BOMBING. THE AIRCRAFT USED WERE THE MOSQUITO’S WITH A 2 MAN CREW THEY WERE FANTASTIC. THERE WAS, HOWEVER, TO BE A SERIOUS SET BACK A FEW DAYS LATER A PERIOD OF FULL MOON HAD JUST BEGUN, AND USUALLY THAT MEANT A STAND DOWN. WE WERE THEREFOR [sic] SUPRISED [sic] ON THE 3RD MAY TO SEE THE ROSTA UP FOR EVENING OPS. AND OUR CREW DETAILED. WE DID OUR USUAL CHECKS IN THE MORNING. EVERYTHING O.K AND THEN BRIEFING ABOUT 8 PM. WE WERE INFORMED THAT THE TARGET WAS MAILLY-LE-CAMP IN FRANCE JUST SOUTH OF PARIS. THIS WAS A GERMAN PANZER TANK TRAINING CAMP AND WITH THE IMPENDING INVASION WAS BETTER DESTROYED. THERE WAS TO BE TWO TARGETS. WITH OUR NEIGHBOUGHS, [sic] GROUP 5 TAKING THE FIRST. OUR GROUP [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 16 [/underlined]
TO DROP TARGET INDICATORS AND EACH GROUP TOLD WHEN TO ATTACK AND WHAT COLOUR FLARE TO BOMB ON. GROUP 5 ARRIVED AND CIRCLED ON YELLOW MARKERS UNTIL GIVEN THE ORDER TO BOMB. THIS THEY DID SUCCESSFULLY. GROUP I (OUR GROUP) ARRIVED, SOME A LITTLE EARLY AND WERE INSTRUCTED TO CIRCLE OVER THE YELLOW MARKERS UNTIL GIVEN THE ORDER TO BOMB. IN THE MEANWHILE GERMAN FIGHTERS HAD ARRIVED AND GIVEN BRIGHT MOONLIGHT AND LANCASTERS FLYING AROUND IN CIRCLES, HAD EASY PREY. THE PATHFINDERS ORDERED THE PLANES TO KEEP THEIR POSITION AND THE AIR WAS BLUE WITH PILOTS REMONSTRATING, IT WAS PANDEMONIUM. OUR PLANE WAS APPROACHING THE AREA AT THE CORRECT TIME AND THE PILOT DECIDED TO CIRCLE SOME WAY AWAY FROM THE ACTION UNTIL WE HAD THE ORDER TO BOMB ON THE RED FLARE. THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH DUE HASTE AND ACCURACY. ONCE THROUGH THE TARGET WE WERE CONTINUALLY HARRASSED BY GERMAN FIGHTERS. ONE IN PARTICULAR CAME FROM AFAR AND I COULD SEE HIS TRACER BULLETS GOING OVER THE TOP OF US. AS HE GOT WITHIN RANGE I OPENED FIRE AND HE PEELED OFF. I KNOW SOME OF MY SHOT HIT HIM. HE WHEELED ROUND AND CAME IN AGAIN, WELL OUT OF MY RANGE. BUT AGAIN HIS TRACERS WERE HIGH AND I SAT THERE FULLY EXPECTING TO GET THE FULL IMPACT. OUR PILOT WAS TWISTING AND TURNING [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 17 [/underlined]
SUDDENLY HIS FIRING CEASED AND ROUND HE WENT AGAIN. THIS TIME HE JUST SAT OUT OF RANGE, WAGGLED HIS WINGS AND FLEW OFF. – WHY? – EITHER HE HAD RUN OUT OF AMMUNITION, OR HIS GUNS HAD JAMMED, EITHER WAY, IT WAS A RELIEF AND I SAID A FEW WORDS OF THANKS TO OUR GARDIAN [sic] ANGEL WE HAD OTHER ENCOUNTERS AFTER THAT BUT ARRIVED BACK WITH ONLY A FEW GASHES. ALL OUR OTHER CREWS ARRIVED BACK TO BASE AS WELL, AND HAD FARED [sic] IN THE SAME MANNER. OUR GROUPS LOSSES WERE 28 AIRCRAFT AND GROUP 5 LOST 14. WE WERE LUCKY BUT NONE OF US WOULD EVER EXPERIENCE ANYTHING LIKE IT AGAIN – OR FORGET IT – THE PATHFINDERS NEVER AGAIN MADE SUCH A MESS OF THINGS AND WENT ON TO BECOME A GREAT SUCCESS. THERE WAS A STORY THAT WENT AROUND SOME TIME AFTER. THE SPECIAL DUTIES FLIGHT AT BINBROOK UNDER COMMAND OF SQUADRON LEADER BILL BREAKSPEAR HAD BEEN AGAINST THE RAID BECAUSE OF THE BRIGHT MOON AND CLEAR SKY AND HAD SAID SO TO HARRIS, BUT HAD BEEN OVER RULED. AT THEIR NEXT MEETING BREAKSPEAR STORMED OUT OF THE ROOM WITHOUT SALUTING, HARRIS CALLED HIM BACK AND SAID “DON’T YOU SALUTE AIR CHIEF MARSHALLS” BREAKSPEAR REPLIED “NOT STUPID ONES – SIR,” HARRIS WAS NOT NAMED THE BUTCHER FOR NOTHING AND APPEARED NOT TO CARE ABOUT LOSSES OF MEN. AFTER MAILLY WE HAD A REST FOR A [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 18 [/underlined]
WHICH BY NOW WAS BECOMING A WAY OF LIFE RENNES (FRANCE) DIEPPE (FRANCE) ORLEANS (FRANCE DORTMUND, AACHEN (GERMANY) TWICE ACHERES (FRANCE THIS WAS ON THE 6TH JUNE (D. DAY). WE TOOK OFF JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT AND RETURNED 5 1/2 hrs LATER TO BE TOLD THAT BRITISH & ALLIED TROOPS HAD MADE A SUCCESSFUL LANDING IN FRANCE. ALL OPERATIONS AFTER THAT WERE TO FULLY SUPPORT GROUND TROOPS FLEURS (FRANCE) ON THE 9TH ACHERES (FRANCE) 10TH THEN ON THE 13TH JUNE CAME THE SHOCK. WE WERE TO BE POSTED TO 300 (POLISH) SQUADRON TOGETHER WITH 5 OTHER EXPERIENCED CREWS IT SEEMED THAT 300 SQUADRON WERE LOSING A LOT OF AIRCRAFT AND WAS UNDER STRENGTH NO ONE WANTED TO LEAVE KILLINGHOLME WE HAD BUILT UP A GOOD REPUTATION LOSSES WERE LOW MISSIONS WERE ACCOMPLISHED AND WEIGHT OF BOMBS PER AIRCRAFT WERE THE HIGHEST IN THE GROUP. HOWEVER, ORDERS WERE ORDERS AND WITH MUCH MISGIVINGS WE WENT TO FALDINGWORTH NEAR LINCOLN. WE ARRIVED AND WERE SHOWN OUR QUARTERS, SAME NISSEN HUTS SAME TYPE OF BEDS NO OTHER COMFORTS THEN TAKEN TO THE MESS FOR A MEAL. TO PUT IT MILDLY POLISH FOOD HAD LITTLE ATTRACTION FOR US AND WE SETTLED FOR A GOOD FRY UP OF EGGS AND BACON. WE MANAGED TO INSIST ON AN ENGLISH MENUE. [sic] THE AIRCRAFT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO FLY WERE A DISGRACE AND FALLING TO PIECES [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 19 [/underlined]
to FLY THEM AND OUR C/O BACKED US UP. WITHIN 2 DAYS WE HAD NEW LANCASTERS DELIVERED AND ON THE 14TH DID OUR FIRST OPERATION FOR 300 SQUADRON TO LE HAVRE. THE STATE OF THE OTHER AIRCRAFT THE POLES WERE FLYING GAVE US A GOOD IDEA WHY THEIR LOSSES WERE SO HIGH. BUT WITH OUR SUPPORT THINGS WERE TO CHANGE AND NEW AIRCRAFT ARRIVED ALMOST DAILY. THE POLES WERE A FRIENDLY LOT. VERY QUICK TO BUY A DRINK FOR THEIR ENGLISH FRIENDS, WE HAD BEEN WARNED NOT TO DISCUSS POLITICS, AS PART OF POLAND HAD BEEN HANDED OVER TO RUSSIA IN A DEAL BETWEEN ROOSEVELT CHURCHILL & STALIN. WE SETTLED IN VERY UNEASILY TO OUR NEW SQUADRON. MORE THOROUGH CHECKS ON EVERY NUT AND BOLT. WE DID OPPERATIONS [sic] TO AULNOYE (FRANCE) RHEIMS (FRANCE) AT THIS TIME LONDON WAS BEGINING [sic] TO GET ROCKET ATTACKS AND WE WERE SENT OUT WITH PATHFINDERS MARKING TARGETS, TO THE ROCKET SITES, THESE WERE MAINLY IN WOODLANDS HIDDEN BY TREES AND HEAVILY CAMAFLAGED [sic] WE STARTED DAILIGHT [sic] BOMBING. SOMETHING NEW FOR US. WE WERE USED TO BEING ON OUR OWN, NOT FLYING IN FORMATION. WHICH WAS FOR US, DOWNRIGHT DANGEROUS & DISPENSED WITH RIGHT FROM THE START. THE “YANKS” HAD OUR ADMIRATION FOR THE WAY THEY FLEW IN FORMATION AND IT WAS LAUGHABLE WHEN, AS [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 20 [/underlined]
IN PRETTY PATTERNS AND OUR STRAGGLY LOT ALL OVER THE PLACE. IT WAS ABOUT THIS TIME I WAS PROMOTED TO FLIGHT SERGEANT THIS MEANT A LITTLE EXTRA CASH AND WAS MOST WELCOME, AS VERY OFTEN WE HAD TO VISIT A RESTAURANT IN LINCOLN TO GET A DECENT MEAL. I BECAME QUITE A REGULAR CUSTOMER AT MRS HOLDEN’S FOR HER DELICIOUS CHICKEN LUNCH, AFTER WHICH AN EVENING IN THE SARACENS HEAD. OR AS IT WAS AFFECTIONALLY KNOWN “THE SNAKE PIT”. BY NOW THE 2ND FRONT WAS GETTING ESTABLISHED AND WE WERE ATTACKING TARGETS SUCH AS AULNOYE (MARSHALLING YARDS) RHEIMS (TROOP PLACEMENTS) SIRACOURT (ROCKETS) VIERZON (TROOPS) ORLEANS ROCKET LAUNCHERS IN DAYLIGHT, ALMOST EVERY DAY AND NIGHT WE WERE OUT. SOMETIMES RUNNING INTO FIGHTER AIRCRAFT, SOMETIMES HEAVY GUNFIRE BUT WE STEERED CLEAR OF TROUBLE. THEN CAME CAEN ON THE NORMANDY FRONT. THE BRITISH TROOPS WERE BEING HELD UP IN THEIR ADVANCE AND THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR US, WERE TO BOMB A VERY HEAVILY DEFENDED TOWN AND PANZER DIVISION. THE PATHFINDERS WERE TO GO IN FIRST AND DROP THEIR FLARES AND GIVE US INSTRUCTIONS ON WHICH COLOUR TO BOMB WE TOOK OFF AT 8 PM AND STILL VERY LIGHT WE COULD SEE ALL OUR OTHER LANCASTERS MAKING THEIR WAY TO DIFFERENT TARGETS, THERE WOULD BE 20-30 PLANES ON 1 COLOUR FLARE [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 21 [/underlined]
WAS STILL LIGHT. OUR USUAL BOMBING HEIGHT WAS 20,000 FT FOR THIS ONE WE STARTED OFF AT 10,000 FT. BUT BECAUSE OF CLOUD HAD TO DECEND UNTIL WE COULD SEE OUR FLARE. BOMBING HAD TO BE SPOT ON BECAUSE OF THE NEARNESS OF BRITISH TROOPS ON THE GROUND. WE COULD SEE THE HOUSES, TROOPS, EVERYTHING – ESPECIALLY OTHER AIRCRAFT CONVERGING ON THE SAME TARGET SOME LOWER SOME HIGHER, THOSE THAT WERE HIGHER WERE OPENING THEIR BOMB BAYS RIGHT OVER HEAD OF US, AND AS I HEARD OUR BOMB AIMER SAY “BOMBS GONE” I COULD SEE ABOUT 3 OTHERS HIGHER, RELEASING THEIRS. I JUST SAT THERE AND PRAYED. THE BOMBS WERE FALLING ONE AFTER THE OTHER AND THANKFULLY MISSED THE TAIL, BY HOW MUCH I DONT KNOW BUT IT LOOKED PRETTY CLOSE. OUR LOSSES DURING THAT TRIP WERE PUT DOWN TO OUR OWN. WE WERE TO DO A COUPLE MORE TRIPS LIKE THAT. ON ONE WE EVEN GOT DOWN TO 1500 FT WHICH WAS VERY, VERY LOW. THEN ON THE 31ST JULY WE WERE TO DO OUR 30TH TRIP AND THE LAST ONE OF OUR FIRST TOUR. THEN ON TO 14 DAYS LEAVE. WE TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT UNTIL WE HAD OUT FOOT ON ENGLISH SOIL AGAIN, THIS TIME A ROCKET SITE. NO HASSEL. [sic] NO FLACK. NO FIGHTERS ONLY ON THE RETURN DID AN ENGINE PACK IN, AND WE HAD TO LAND AT A DIFFERENT BASE. WE WERE DEBRIEFED, AND WHEN THEY HEARD IT WAS OUR [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 22 [/underlined]
THE AIRCREWS CAME OUT. IT WAS ABOUT 3 AM IN THE MORNING. WE HAD A BIT OF A PARTY BUT WE WERE LOOKED UPON LIKE FREAKS THE QUESTIONS WE WERE ASKED, IT WAS ALL A BIT OVERPOWERING. NEXT MORNING WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO FLY BACK TO BASE THEY SENT A CAR TO TRANSPORT US AND A FRESH CREW TO TAKE OUR PLANE. ON ARRIVAL BACK AT FALDINGWORTH WE WERE DROPPED OFF AT THE C/O’S OFFICE TAKEN IN HAD A SHOT OF WHISKEY WITH HIM, SHOOK HANDS AND TOLD THAT ON THE FOLLOWING DAY WE WERE TO START OUR LEAVE. GET EVERY THING PACKED. THAT EVENING WE MET UP AS A CREW FOR THE LAST TIME. HAD A DRINK OR TWO AND SAID OUR CHEERIO’S. THE FOLLOWING MORNING RON, OUR PILOT & I WENT TO LINCOLN STATION CHANGED TRAINS AT PETERBOROUGH AND HENCE TO LONDON. THERE HE WENT OFF TO BRIGHTON & I TO TWICKENHAM.
JOB DONE, - NONE OF US MET UP AGAIN.
[page break]
TAILENDERS END TALES.
[circled 1] IT WAS DURING OCTOBER 43 THAN [sic] OUR PILOT CALLED A CREW MEETING. HIS OPENING WORDS WERE “WE HAVE BEEN TOGETHER LONG ENOUGH, I TAKE IT THAT WE ARE HAPPY WITH THE WAY WE OPPERATE [sic] TOGETHER”. WE ALL AGREED. HE CARRIED ON. “AS I SEE IT. I AM JUST THE DRIVER. ART (NAVIGATOR) GIVES ME THE COURSE. I FLY IT OVER THE TARGET. DAVE (BOMAIMER) [sic] GIVES ME DIRECTIONS. – I FLY IT -. KEN. [deleted] YOU [/deleted] I RELY ON YOU TO GIVE ME CORRECT MESSAGES THAT COME OVER THE RADIO. AND I ACT ON IT. BILL. – AS GUNNER, YOU ARE OUR EYES. ANY TIME YOU SEE WE ARE BEING ATTACKED, YOU GIVE ME DIRECTIONS FOR EVASIVE ACTION. – STRAIGHT AWAY. ALL OF YOU, TELL ME, I WILL FOLLOW YOUR ORDERS WITHOUT QUESTION OR HESITATION. – ANY QUESTIONS NOW.” DURING PRACTICE RON & I EVOLVED A SERIES OF MANOEVERS [sic] FOR EVASIVE ACTION. THAT THEY WORKED WAS ONLY DUE TO THE WAY THE LANCASTER WAS BUILT.
[circled 2] ONE NIGHT WHILST ON A TRAINING FLIGHT WE RAN INTO AN ELECTRICAL STORM. LIGHTENING FLASHED AND THE AIRCRAFT WAS TOSSED ABOUT BUT WHAT WAS MOST FRIGHTENING WAS THE WAY SPARKS WERE LEAPING FROM ONE METAL OBJECT TO ANOTHER. RUNNING THE LENGTH OF THE GUN BARRELL AND ALL ROUND THE TURRET I WAS GLAD WHEN WE WERE OUT OF IT.
[circled 3] ON SQUADRON THE GROUND CREW WERE FANTASTIC
[page break]
THE SERGEANT WAS THERE IN THE MORNINGS AND THERE WHEN WE TOOK OFF AT NIGHT. – AND THERE AGAIN ON OUR RETURN, WHEN HE SLEPT I DONT KNOW. BUT THEY WERE DEDICATED TO GIVING US THE BEST SERVICE.
[circled 4] OUR SQUADRON BASE AT KILLINGHOLME WAS CLOSE TO THE HUMBER RIVER. THE PORT OF HULL ONE SIDE AND GRIMSBY THE OTHER. VERY OFTEN BOTH PLACES WERE SUBJECTED TO HEAVY BOMBING BY THE GERMAN AIR FORCE. QUITE OFTEN THESE RAIDS CO-INCIDED WITH OUR TAKE OFF TIME, SO THAT BOTH AIRFORCES WERE IN THE AIR OVER GRIMSBY AT THE SAME TIME AND WE WERE OFTEN CAUGHT UP IN OUR OWN SEARCHLIGHTS. WITH THE NEXT GROUP OF SEARCHLIGHTS HOLDING A GERMAN BOMBER IN ITS BEAMS. WE HAD TO SIGNAL IN MORSE TO THE GROUND FOR THEM TO SWITCH OFF.
[circled 5] DURING THE TRIP ON AACHEN AT THE END OF MAY, ART, OUR NAVIGATOR ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS ALWAYS SO BUSY PLOTTING THE NEXT COURSE AFTER THE TARGET, THAT HE HAD NEVER THE CHANCE TO SEE THE TARGET. THE NAVIGATORS CUBBY HOLE WAS ALL SHUT IN BECAUSE HE HAD TO HAVE LIGHT TO WORK BY. ON THIS TRIP HE DECLARED HE WOULD GIVE THE PILOT THE COURSE TO FOLLOW BEFORE HAND. SWITCH HIS LIGHTS OUT AND SEE WHAT WENT ON. THIS HE DID. IT HAPPENED THAT IT WAS A HECTIC NIGHT. AND THE FIREWORK DISPLAY WAS BRILLIANT. WE HEARD ART GASP. [missing words]
[page break]
I WOULDN’T HAVE COME.” I DONT THINK HE PEEKED OUT AGAIN.
[circled 6] 3RD MAY. THE PERIOD OF FULL MOON. WE TOOK OFF CLIMBED THROUGH BILLOWING WHITE CLOUD AT 10,000 FT INTO FULL MOONLIGHT. THE SIGHT WAS BREATHTAKING THE MOON SHONE ON THE CLOUDS LIKE DRIFTS OF SNOW. YOU COULD SEE FOR MILES, LANCASTERS ALL OVER THE SKY. OUR PILOT WAS SO CARRIED AWAY AT THE BEAUTY OF IT, HE FLEW THE AIRCRAFT LIKE A SLEIGH, SKIMMING THE TOPS OF THE CLOUDS AND WHOOPING LIKE A COWBOY. IT WAS INDEED A GRAND SIGHT. PITY IT WAS GOING TO BE SPOILT LATER THAT NIGHT.
[circled 7] AFTER WE HAD FINISHED OUR TOUR AND THE CREW HAD GONE OUR DIFFERENT WAYS, I WAS TO BE POSTED TO BRIDGENORTH AS INSTRUCTOR. IT WAS THERE THAT I WAS INFORMED THAT I WAS ELIGIBLE FOR 2 SERVICE MEDALS. THE 1939/45 STAR. AND THE AIRCREW EUROPE STAR AND CLASP. MY THOUGHTS IMMEDIATELY WENT TO GEORGE. HE MUST HAVE LAUGHED HIS SOCKS 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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bill Freeman's Service Career
Description
An account of the resource
A detailed account of Bill's time in the RAF, starting with drill at Lords, training at Bridlington and Bridgnorth then RAF Stormy Down. He passed the course and after seven days leave reported to Hixon for crewing up. He discusses training and his social life. He then transferred to Binbrook then Blyton, Hemswell, Elsham Wolds and N Killingholme.
He describes individual operations in detail. He and his crew were transferred to Faldingworth where the condition of their aircraft was poor. These were quickly replaced with new aircraft. His crew were successful and survived their 30 operations never to meet up again.
He concludes his memoir with seven tailender tales.
Creator
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Bill Freeman
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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25 handwritten sheets
Identifier
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BFreemanWFreemanWv1
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--London
England--Brighton
England--Dewsbury
Canada
England--Stafford
Wales--Tredegar
England--Northampton
England--Grimsby
France--Rouen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Karlsruhe
Denmark--Frederikshavn
France--Maintenon
France--Mailly-le-Camp
France--Rennes
France--Dieppe
France--Orléans
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Aachen
France--Paris
England--Lincoln
France--Le Havre
Poland
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Caen
France--Vierzon
France
Germany
Denmark
France--Reims
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Northamptonshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Sussex
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Tricia Marshall
Temporal Coverage
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1943-04-05
1944-03
1944-04-10
1 Group
1662 HCU
300 Squadron
5 Group
550 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944)
briefing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
entertainment
flight engineer
George Cross
ground crew
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
navigator
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Binbrook
RAF Blyton
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Hemswell
RAF Hixon
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Stormy Down
searchlight
Stalin, Joseph (1878-1953)
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
training
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/858/11100/AHarrisHST150909.2.mp3
0644ea5d3fae401b624fe3f915057fc0
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Harris, Harry
Harry Stracan Thomson Harris
H S T Harris
Sam Harris
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Stracan Thomson Harris (162261 Royal Air Force). He flew two tours of operations as a navigator with 103 Squadron and later with 105 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Harris, HST
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: Alright. This is Brian Wright and I’m interviewing Mr Harry Harris on Wednesday the 9th of September at 2:25 in the afternoon in his house. So, Harry, you were in the RAF, in Bomber Command. What was your rank when you left?
HH: Flight lieutenant.
BW: Ok. And start us off. Just please tell me about your home life before the war.
HH: Well in 1939 I lived in ‘Trose and I went down to London to start a chef’s course at the Westminster College for Cookery and I stayed with an aunt who lived in London. I was there during the Blitz and then my, my cousin and I didn’t agree so I was evacuated to Exeter as an evacuee.
BW: Right.
HH: But I didn’t like it at Exeter and I came back to London. Started, re-started on the course and I lived in a sort of YMCA place beside the River Thames and it was the centre of the bombing there and, but I liked it. I went out every night to watch the bombers. But then I had to leave and I found out later, my aunt had been paying for my education and she had to stop work and look after her parents. So, I had to go home and I worked for a year in a mental, the hospital of a mental asylum.
BW: And what year was that?
HH: That was in 1941. And then when I became seventeen and a half — it was 1940, I came back. And when I became seventeen and a half I volunteered as a pilot at Aberdeen. Then I went to Edinburgh about July to do the course. The tests and things. And they drilled me then as a navigator and I found out much later, when I was at the RAF flying college that if you got a certain, they did a maths test and if you got above a certain number you automatically qualified as a navigator. Under that you became a pilot or an air gunner. And we used to, when we found out we used to call them the dim pilots [laughs] because they couldn’t pass the test. But then I went to, went to London to Lord’s Cricket Ground. That was where we think we met. And then went down to Torquay. Babbacombe near Torquay, for the first course. Training course. And then from there to Eastbourne for another course and from there went to, to South Africa for our flying. We landed at Cape Town and went up to Pretoria and then down to Port Elizabeth where we did our course. Our flying course. And then passed out and got our wings. I got mine in November 1942.
BW: And this was your navigator wings.
HH: Navigator. Yes.
BW: Right. What prompted you to become a navigator? I think you mentioned earlier you wanted to be a pilot.
HH: A pilot. Yeah. Well when I went —
BW: Why the change?
HH: When I went to this board at Edinburgh. I forget what they called the board. Screening board. And we did, you know, oral interviews. We had written tests and one was a maths test and apparently that’s when the heavy bombers were coming in and they wanted navigators and so they did this by choosing above a certain percentage in the maths test. You were automatically selected as navigator.
BW: Ok. And when you went down to Cape Town for the, for the flying was that the navigational instructional part of flying?
HH: Yes.
BW: So you were put in an aircraft and learned to navigate.
HH: That’s right. Yeah. We flew in Oxfords. Yeah.
BW: Ok.
HH: At Port Elizabeth. And there used to be three u/t navigators in an aircraft. One was navigating. One was sitting beside the pilot and using the wind to find out the winds and the other one did the Astra. And —
BW: The Astra being the star navigations.
HH: Astra navigation. Yeah. And on the second last one of our course we flew out over the sea and our course commander was an ex-naval officer and we flew over the sea and we saw all these lifeboats. A tremendous number of lifeboats. We couldn’t communicate with them so we came back to Port Elizabeth and they sent out a boat and picked up all the survivors. But the next day we went out again. This time I was sitting in the front with the pilot and I saw a boat. It was a U-boat.
BW: Right.
HH: And the pilot, the South African pilot and he turned towards this U-boat and started diving. Now this U-boat came up, there was three gunners at the far end of the boat with a gun and they were firing at us and the shells were just going two or three feet above us because they weren’t allowing for us going down. So we carried a depth charge and as we got closer the three men ran towards the conning tower. As we got closed the conning tower was closed so they couldn’t get in. We dropped the depth charge and at this time we were only about fifty feet and this time we turned. There was nothing left. The U-boat had gone. And years, years later I met the course commander and, you know I asked if anything had happened about that. And he said, ‘No. They never confirmed the loss of a U-boat.’ Yeah.
BW: So you weren’t sure whether it had dived and avoided it or whether it had been hit.
HH: No. We didn’t know.
BW: There was no trace of it.
HH: No.
BW: Right. And that was just on, that was just on the training.
HH: [laughs] Yes. On training. That was our last trip. Funny. We went back to Cape Town and then, I forget where and we got on the boat again to come home. And we were in the South Atlantic when we, the ship ran into the wreckage of a ship that had been torpedoed. We lost a propeller and had to go in to New York and we got there on the 26th of December. And we were there for three weeks. Beautiful.
BW: Very good. And so, you then must have come back from America.
HH: We came back to New York.
BW: At some point.
HH: Back to Glasgow. Yeah. And then we did more flying at Wigtown on Ansons. Just to get acclimatized, you know, with the country. And then we went to the Operational Training Unit and it’s all written down there. That’s where we met the first of the crew. The pilot was Ken Murray and he’d trained in America and he wanted to fly on fighters. And when he found he was going to be flying on bombers he wasn’t a very happy chap I can tell you. But we got on well.
BW: Good.
HH: And the first day there they had to crew-up and at the end of the day there was twelve of us hadn’t crewed-up. That was two crews. So we want to the pub in Loughborough and somehow we got together and we stayed together.
BW: And this was The Golden Fleece in Loughborough. Is that right?
HH: Yeah. And the other crew that were there that night they were killed at the Operational Training Unit. They crashed on take-off and they were all killed. So if I’d gone with the other pilot I wouldn’t be here today.
BW: That’s fate isn’t it?
HH: It is. Yeah.
BW: So you were based in, in Lincolnshire.
HH: Yeah. Elsham Wolds.
BW: Or Leicestershire. About there. Is that right? At that time?
HH: Pardon?
BW: You were based around Leicestershire at that time if you were in Loughborough.
HH: At that time. Yeah. We must. We did our first operation from there.
BW: So where were you, where you were based at this point on — had you joined operations at this stage? Now you’d crewed up.
HH: No. No. We, we went. We did our flying training on Wellingtons. Wellington 1Cs. And at the end of the course we went on an operation to Dunkirk. And it’s all written down there. And when we got over the target we got hit by flak but we managed to get back home. The hydraulic system had gone. So had to wind down the undercarriage. Wind down flaps. And the next morning the engineer came and said that the shell had missed the fuel tank by three inches [laughs] And we wouldn’t be here.
BW: Wow.
HH: Yeah. He had it all. He said three inches.
BW: And so the early part of your flying career then you were flying in Wellingtons.
HH: Yeah. Wellington 1Cs. Yeah.
BW: And from then on, I mean we understand that you went on to fly Lancasters.
HH: On to Lancasters. Yeah.
BW: How many operations did you fly on Wellingtons?
HH: One. Just the one.
BW: Just the one.
HH: Yeah.
BW: And how was the change made, or the decision made for you to fly Lancasters?
HH: Well we, from the Wellingtons we went to train on Halifaxes. And then when the pilot was capable of flying the Halifax we went on to Lancasters. And then when they were satisfied that he was fit then we went to 576 Squadron, Elsham Wolds.
BW: And Elsham Wolds is also in Lincolnshire isn’t it?
HH: Yeah. Lincoln. Lincolnshire.
BW: And how did you find that change from Halifaxes to Lancasters? Was there—
HH: Oh, I loved the Lancaster. Yeah. That was, yeah.
BW: And there are more, are there the same number of crew in the Wellingtons?
HH: Yeah. Same number of crew. Yeah.
BW: Ok. So you were able to keep the same crew together?
HH: Oh yes. The same crew. Yeah.
BW: And what were the living conditions like on base at that time?
HH: Well, there was Nissen huts. I suppose we got used to them. Each Nissen hut got somehow fourteen, somehow twenty beds and you just got used to it. You had, well they just had the basics I suppose.
BW: Just a bed and blankets.
HH: Bed and blankets in them.
BW: And a stove in the middle.
HH: Yeah. Yeah there was three, I forget what they call them now. Three square things made up the mattress. Yeah. And that’s all there was. And the washing facilities were always outside. And in the wintertime there was no heating in the ablutions and so the water was freezing cold. Sometimes frozen altogether. And the heating inside the stoves [pause] well you used what you could. Logs or anything we used to use just to keep the place warm when we were there.
BW: Did you have the hut to yourself or were you sharing with another crew?
HH: We shared. Until we got to the squadron we shared with another crew. When we got to Elsham Wolds we had to wait until they got the Nissen ready. And we got the Nissen and we found out later that we had to wait because the crew that had occupied the Nissen had gone missing. And there was room for two crews actually but we only ever had the one crew in it. The losses was pretty heavy so we only ever had just the one. Just ourselves.
BW: And were you fairly close to the aircraft? Or to the mess?
HH: No. We had to get —
BW: Whereabouts on the base were you?
HH: We all had cycles. It was about a mile, a mile and a half to cycle.
BW: Each day. Just to —
HH: Yeah. Just to get up to the main part.
BW: Right.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. All the living accommodation was spread away from the airfield.
BW: Right. I’m just going to pause the recording for the moment.
[recording paused]
BW: I just paused the recording there to allow us to just put the door to and avoid any background noise. So, continuing on you were at Elsham Wolds then. You were flying Lancasters. And you were living in Nissen huts.
HH: Yeah.
BW: At the edge of the airfield. What were your, or describe for me if you would please a typical sortie for a Lancaster operation from sort of getting ready to do the operation and then flying it and then coming back. What was that like?
HH: Well we, we used to, every morning we went and got breakfast. Went up to the squadron offices and sometimes we would go ahead and do an air test and we’d wait until about lunchtime and then they would say whether the operations were on that night or not. That was usually around lunchtime. And then the briefing was with, there was a navigation briefing first. Just the navigator, the bomb aimer and the pilot there. And we got told the target, the route and I made out the flight plan. And when that was finished we went to the main operations room where the station commander, he would, all the crews were there and he would tell them where the operation was and that was the first they would know. We had known maybe half an hour, three quarters of an hour before but then they only knew then. And they went through the drill — what was happening, what the target was and any questions. And I can’t remember anybody ever asking a question [laughs] and then we went to the aircraft and took off at the allotted time.
BW: It, it’s been said at certain times that aircrew had superstitions. Were there any that you were aware of on your aircraft or in your crew?
HH: Any? Any what?
BW: Superstitions or habits or, guys would take, for example personal items with them as lucky charms. Were there any instances like that?
HH: See that picture behind you.
BW: There’s a, on the wall is a picture of, like a little gollywog.
HH: Yeah.
BW: Was that yours?
HH: Yeah. My wife, when we came back from South Africa my girlfriend, now my wife she bought me that and I wore that every time I flew. For the rest of my flying career I flew with that.
BW: And what’s —
HH: It’s downstairs.
BW: What sort of size is, is that? Is it, it must only have been a little figure was it?
HH: It was — high. Yes. It’s downstairs.
BW: So about three to four inches. Yeah Three or four inches tall.
HH: It just fitted inside the pocket. Yeah.
BW: Right. So that was your lucky charm that you took on a mission.
HH: That was my lucky charm. Yeah.
BW: It seems to have worked.
HH: The lucky charm and a box of matches in that pocket. And twenty cigarettes in the other one [laughs]
BW: About —
HH: I never ever flew again without that mascot. And I flew over nine and a half thousand hours.
BW: Wow. And did the, did your other mates have any similar things?
HH: Yeah. They had similar things but I can’t remember what they were.
BW: Right.
HH: But every one of them had a mascot. Every one [laughs]
BW: So you get into the aircraft. You get into the Lancaster and prepare. What sort of things would you start to do and the others start to do to, to get ready?
HH: Well, we, first of all we went to pick up our parachutes and Mae Wests. And then we got in a truck that took us out to the aircraft. We’d get inside and prepare. Like the pilot and the flight engineer would do all the checks. Checks. Myself and the bomb aimer, you know would get the flight plan and check all the other instruments were there. The wireless op was the same. And the air gunners, they would check all their equipment. And then it would be time to, to go to the take-off point. The take off point was a caravan and they gave a green light to take off. And beside that caravan, every time I can remember there was a crowd of WAAFs there. And airmen but mostly WAAFS would come to see us take off. And, and that, I was thinking back. That was the time that we were most frightened. Take-off time. Every time we talked it was, in case we would crash on take-off.
BW: Because the aircraft is fully loaded and fully fuelled.
HH: Fully loaded. Yeah. Had full fuel and we had a big cookie each. What was it? Two tonnes plus incendiaries. And one night we didn’t take off properly. We went through, past the end of the runway, through the fence at the end of the runway and luckily there was a quarry underneath and we went down in the quarry and came out at Brigg before we started to pull up again.
BW: So if there hadn’t been a quarry at the end of the runway — ?
HH: That was, we would have gone [laughs] That was, that was the worst one. Yeah.
BW: Wow.
HH: Yeah. That quarry saved us. And it was a long time it ever happened because we would fly over Brigg which was quite a few miles away before we started to climb.
BW: And yet the other aircraft would have been similarly fuelled and armed.
HH: Yeah but they —
BW: And they got off all right.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Don’t know what it was. No. No.
BW: So, on the flight out you’re now airborne heading towards the enemy coast. What sort of things are happening in the aircraft at this stage?
HH: Well, on the Lancasters then we had a navigation aid called Gee. You know, where we could fix our position within, you know a half of mile. But once it got outside Britain the signal faded and the Germans were jamming it anyhow. So after that you relied just on, I don’t know the Pathfinders would pass winds and you used to use these winds because they had H2S which gave a map of the ground. But the winds weren’t always accurate. Sometimes a long, long way out. And so we, we just had this Gee. That was all.
BW: And apart from that there was just dead reckoning presumably.
HH: Dead reckoning. That’s all there was. Yeah.
BW: Did you —
HH: But then we got an aircraft. It was fitted with H2S [laughs] That was towards the end and that, that was absolutely different altogether. Yeah.
BW: Made the job a lot easier.
HH: Yeah. It did. Yeah.
BW: So did you have to circle the airfield to form up?
HH: Oh yeah.
BW: Or did you meet the formation over a certain point?
HH: No. We, you were given your take-off time and the first crews took off first so, and then you had time to set course over the airfield. That’s sometimes you’d get airborne and it was twenty, twenty five minutes before you got back over the airfield for the right time to head out. And it was strongly, they put, always had the new crews on there. They should have put the older crews on that but they didn’t. They didn’t in our squadron.
BW: So you had, you had a separate take off time to be airborne.
HH: Yeah.
BW: And you then had to be overhead the airfield at a certain time to set course.
HH: Yeah. All aircraft. Well if it was fairly light you could see the other aircraft. Otherwise you didn’t.
BW: And did —
HH: And I think there were some crashes there too.
BW: And did you see much of the other aircraft throughout the rest of the sorties?
HH: No. No.
BW: Missions.
HH: Not unless they were caught in the searchlights. No.
BW: So —
HH: We did, it was all night stuff we did.
BW: So presumably then very rarely would you actually see other aircraft in the, in the formation.
HH: No. You wouldn’t. No.
BW: How did it feel then? Did it feel as part of a combined effort or did it feel pretty much as a lone crew out there?
HH: Well it just, it was just the sort of thing you did, you know. I don’t know. As I said the only time we saw other aircraft was when they were caught in the searchlights. And over a target, you know when the target was all lit up then you could see other aircraft. Usually then there was full searchlights. But no. In the darkness we never saw anything.
BW: So when you left the shores of England and you were flying out over the Sea were you able to see France or the Dutch coast at all?
HH: No. No. No. It was always dark. Always dark. Never saw the ground.
BW: Did you ever receive any attention from the flak guns on the ground below or from night fighters at all?
HH: We once had night fighters and the rear gunner, he fired his guns but then I don’t know what happened. It just disappeared. That was the only time.
BW: And so when it came to being over the target what would be happening in the aircraft then?
HH: Well, the bomb aimer would be down giving directions. He’d find the [pause] the what do you call it? [laughs] The target indicator. And it was red, blue, whatever it was. And he’d find that and he’d head towards that and give directions to the pilot — left, left, right. And then the flight engineer and the pilot were in their seats. I would get out of mine and I would stand behind the flight engineer to see what was going on. And the, then there’s bombs gone and then they had to wait because the camera would take a photograph. So it was like forty seconds I think till the bombs went down and once the photograph was taken it was bomb doors closed. I would give the pilot the next heading and off we’d go.
BW: And all this time on the run in to the target and the run out you had to keep straight and level.
HH: Oh yes.
BW: One, in order to, to allow the bombs to fall accurately but also to allow the photograph to be taken.
HH: Had to be absolutely straight and level. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Were there times when that wasn’t possible?
HH: The only times if you’d got behind another aircraft and then you’d go bumpety bump. That was awful. But when I was, later when I was in Mosquitoes and doing the bombing that was beautiful. The Mosquito could hold itself nicely. But the Lancaster, no. There was always aircraft in front. It was a bit bumpy, you know.
BW: Just because of the turbulence —
HH: Turbulence. Yeah.
BW: From the aircraft ahead. And so once you’d dropped the, dropped the bombs and turned for home what sort of things were going on then? What —
HH: Well, that was, I think that’s when we lost a lot of the aircraft but I’m not sure because the German fighters then, they were all from over the place, had gone. They knew where the target was and had gone there and there was lots and lots of fighters.
BW: So the gunners were pretty active.
HH: We could, we could see the other aircraft being shot down. We’d see the tracer bullets and this sort of thing. It’s quite a lot of, the worst one was on the Nuremberg raid where we lost ninety five. And on the way out it was a long, straight course and the fighters got up. And I was inside there, I didn’t see anything but the flight engineer was saying, ‘There’s another one,’ and the pilot said, ‘It’s only dummies. It’s only dummies. They’re just shooting dummies. There’s no aircraft there.’ And when we got back to base, at the debriefing he said, ‘And we lost an awful lot of aircraft on the way out.’ Oh [laughs] Trying to keep us from being frightened. Yeah.
BW: When, during the flight back did you begin to feel safe again?
HH: I think we felt safe all the way really. It was just we’d done the job and I was just getting back.
BW: Ok.
HH: I can’t, all I was worried about mostly was when we could pick up the navigation. Gee. You know. To be sure we were in the right place. But I, I don’t think we were. I could be wrong but I don’t think we worried too much going back. You know. It was going out. The very worst time was the take-off. That was, we all agreed that was the worst time.
BW: So once you were in the air the nerves started to settle a bit with doing your job.
HH: You were doing your job then. Yeah.
BW: So, roughly how long would each sortie or each operation have been then?
HH: About six hours. It’s all in there somewhere. Each one. About six hours I think. Yeah. But then after a while we started going to the French targets and that was, you know five hours maybe. And the very last one was on D-Day. We went to Vire Bridge in Northern France. And that was the first time that the bomb aimer had seen where the bombs landed. And two of them landed on the bridge. He was so happy we hit it.
BW: What was the name of the bridge again?
HH: Vire. V I R E.
BW: Oh. I see.
HH: Yeah. My eldest daughter’s, well she’s been going to France for years to a motorbike thing and she brought back a picture of somewhere around. There is a picture of Vire Bridge.
BW: Obviously rebuilt since your bomb aimer put two bombs on it.
HH: Yeah. Funnily enough on Mosquitoes I only once saw where the bombs dropped. It was a Cookie we carried. No, I wasn’t. Sometimes. And I can still see it. Yeah. There was a very, very wide road. A canal running along the side and a building with a massive door at the side. The bomb landed in the middle of this so it must have blown the door, must have blown the side off the factory. That’s what we were aiming for. The factory. That was the only once.
BW: And the bomb hit. It landed on the road. Or landed in the —
HH: Landed on the road. Yeah. It was halfway between the building and the canal.
BW: But it still blew the factory down.
HH: It would have. It was only about ten fifteen yards from the wall so it must have blown it right, right out. And the factory too, I hope.
BW: And when you returned to base after a successful operation what then happened? You mentioned debriefing.
HH: The debriefing. Yeah. You went in front of the intelligence officers and they, they mainly the questions, you know. They wanted to know anything and we just told them about the trip.
BW: And what sort of questions would they ask?
HH: Oh, about the Pathfinders. Did they drop the right, did they drop the right colours and that? Did you think they were in the right place? And this sort of thing. About the timing. Did you see any enemy aircraft and enemy gunfire? That was the sort of things they wanted to know. Just the defences.
BW: And once you’d had the debriefing? What? What then?
HH: Oh, we went back. Handed in our parachutes and Mae Wests and then went for a meal in the mess.
BW: How did you spend your spare time between operations?
HH: Well, we were at Elsham Wolds and it was quite, quite a long way to, Brigg was the nearest place. And Scunthorpe was beyond that. And we’d, initially we’d all go out together, all seven of us and we’d go to Brigg and drink in the pub there. And we had bicycles so we’d cycle there and cycle back. And then the pilot got commissioned so he sort of left us then and we split. We did the same as before. And then the bomb aimer and the flight engineer, they met a couple of people and they went to their home. You know and they sometimes stayed overnight if they could. And the two air gunners, they went on their bikes and they cycled all the way up to the Humber and they went together. So there was the wireless operator and myself and we just went our own way to the pub and the dance hall and back. That was it. Go to Scunthorpe. Got the train to Scunthorpe and get the last train back.
BW: And were you on ops every night or were there periods —
HH: Oh no. No. No. No. Very seldom it was two nights in a row. Sometimes there’d be a week’s gap or something. And every four days, every four weeks we had a week’s leave. But because of the losses sometimes we got leave every three weeks. Yeah. The losses were pretty heavy at the time.
BW: How did you spend your leave when you got the opportunity?
HH: With my wife. She, we lived not far apart in the village and we used to go out dancing and that sort of thing. That was all. In the summertime, well in the summertime then we had the bikes and we went biking, walking. But in the wintertime that was all there was because she was working all the time.
BW: How did you meet?
HH: Well we lived, my father and mother, my father was in the Royal Marines during the First World War and my mother was in the Women’s Royal Air Force near [unclear] in 1919. And they both lived in ‘Trose and they both went as nurses at the asylum, Montrose Royal Asylum. They both went as nurses. They met and got married and then I came along. And in that asylum, it was a small community and Mary’s father was the grieve. I don’t know, the head farmer. He was in charge of the farm. It was a great big farm. A really huge farm. So, you know, all the kids, we used to all play together and that in the grounds of the asylum. That’s how we met.
BW: And so you’d knew each other for a while before the war started and before you joined up.
HH: Oh knows, we played together and her brothers and that since we were five years old, you know, so. But it wasn’t until I was going overseas that I had a few days leave and I met her. And we just had a couple of days, you know going out and then we wrote and then it was another about fourteen months I think before we met again. Yeah.
BW: And how did you re-meet? When did you —
HH: Oh we kept writing all the time. Yeah. And then we got married in 1947 because I was going to be posted to an airfield in London, or near London. And I’d phoned the adjutant and he said accommodation was no problem. My wife would get a job. That was no problem. He guaranteed everything. So we got married. Went on honeymoon. Three days later we were going out the hotel and the porter came around and said I was wanted on the phone. I thought, ‘Oh. There’s only, there’s only the Air Ministry know I’m here.’ So I went and they said, ‘You’re posted to Singapore. You’re leaving in one week’s time.’ And so I went off to Singapore and at that time you weren’t considered married until you were twenty five. Well I was only twenty three. So it was eighteen months before she could join me.
BW: Just because of the service rules.
HH: Oh yeah. Eighteen months.
BW: So just, I’d just like to go back. You mentioned about flying Mosquitoes. At what stage during your career, your service career did you change to Mosquitoes?
HH: Well, when we finished operations on Lancasters I was posted to a Canadian run Operational Training Unit. They were flying Wellingtons. It was run by Canadians for Canadians but in this country. And the only RAF people there were the station commander, a group captain and a wireless operator. He’d done a tour of operations himself. But we were the only RAF personnel. And instead of lecturing I used to just to go up, fly with them in an aircraft with the trainees. And that was all that was done so I got fed up with this and I went and saw the station commander and said I wanted a posting. And he said, ‘No. No.’ And every Monday morning I went. In the end he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve arranged for you to go before a commissioning board.’ And so myself and the wireless operator went before this commissioning board and got our commissions. And the next day I went to see the group captain [laughs] He said, ‘Now, don’t tell me.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And a week later he, he arranged for me to go on Mosquitoes. That was good.
BW: And did you move onto that squadron on your own or were there any mates that went with you?
HH: No. Just on my —
BW: Just on your own.
HH: Just on my own. Went to the, what do they call it where you all met? The pilots and navigators. And I crewed-up with this George Nunn. He crewed-up with me. He picked me [laughs] And so we flew together. We flew on Oxfords at first during this training and then on to Mosquitoes. And then on to the squadron. And then when the war finished in Europe I had a navigator friend, he was from the West Indies and he was going to London to meet his own people. So, I went down to London with him to this pub. It was full of West Indians and, but we had a good time. And then they said that 105 Squadron, Mosquito squadron was going to start training for the Far East. I thought — oh. So, I went back to thingummybob and saw the wing commander and I said I would like to transfer to 105 Squadron. And he went up in the air because he was organising this sort of, what do they call it [pause] West Indies. A big aircraft thing. Commercial aircraft. He was going to be the boss and he was looking for people to fly. And so I kept on and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You haven’t got a chance going by yourself. You have to find a pilot.’ Well, George wasn’t keen because he wanted to go back to his old job but when he, when he heard that he said, ‘Right. Away we go.’ So we got posted to 105 Squadron. And we were doing this, this new bombing aid they had. And we were ready. Just to be ready to go to the Far East when the war finished.
BW: But you got, you got out there it must have been late 1945 then.
HH: Yeah.
BW: In that case.
HH: Yeah. So 1945 finished with Mosquitoes and I went on the training on what they called BABS. It was a blind landing aid. And we went to various Transport Command stations and taught them how to fly this. And then I got, got married and then Singapore on 48 Squadron.
BW: And what were you flying there?
HH: Dakotas.
BW: How long were you out in the Far East?
HH: Just over two and a half years. I flew a lot to Hong Kong. India. Bangkok. A couple of times to Australia. It was quite good. A good trip. Yeah.
BW: How did you find the change from navigating in Lancasters to Mosquitoes? Both aircraft have different, slightly different reputations.
HH: Yes. Well —
BW: What was the experience like for you?
HH: The big, the big thing with the Mosquito was the space. It was the pilot sitting, like a pilot would sit, sit there.
BW: Yeah.
HH: And I would sit here [laughs] and he had all these instruments in front of him. And just down below was the bomb bay. So that, you know, after the space in the Lancaster, you know, a table this size you just had a thing you picked up like that.
BW: A notepad.
HH: It was a chart and everything there.
BW: Yeah.
HH: So it was quite different.
BW: It seems different in the sense that when you were in the Lancaster you would be working as a single navigator.
HH: Yeah.
BW: But yet, when you were in the Mosquito you would be doing two roles because you were the bomb aimer as well.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, we got trained on bomb aiming. Yeah. We got, we did our training, bomb aiming training on Mosquitoes and I remember flying over somewhere in Lincolnshire one day bomb aiming and something happened going towards the target and something happened and the bomb went. The bomb released. And [laughs] you saw it and it landed in a farm yard. So we went back and, you know reported it because there was maybe something wrong with the bombing. Anyhow, the next day we got a phone message from a farmer. He invited us all out for a drink [laughs] Because they’d gone to the farm, they’d apologised. He wanted to know who they were and he invited us all out. Not us but the whole squadron for a drink. So I don’t know what had happened. If he had insurance or something like that.
BW: Was it a practice bomb that had dropped? Or —
HH: A practice bomb. Yeah.
BW: Yeah.
HH: Fifteen pounds. You know.
BW: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
BW: And it just happened to come off the —
HH: Yeah.
BW: Off the release and into the farmyard. What sort of operations were you flying in Mosquitoes then? And how, how different were they to those on the Lancasters?
HH: Well the Mosquitoes we did, I think it was fifteen trips to Berlin. We did nineteen trips altogether and fifteen to Berlin. And it [pause] it was, I don’t know. In some ways it was easier that a Lancaster trip. We never worried we’d take-off. That never worried us. And it was just a case of getting to the target and it was a lot shorter time. Four and a half hours to Berlin and back instead of nine hours. And now, you used to get down, do the bombing and never had any problems.
BW: Were you part of the Pathfinder Force on Mosquitoes?
HH: No. No. Not the Path, no.
BW: Or were you —
HH: We were just ordinary. Yeah. No, we had the Pathfinders in front of us. They dropped the target indicators. And it was, no, it was, I don’t know it was just the two of us there sitting like this, close together. And sitting in there somewhere we left Berlin one night and we were always they always got coned by the searchlights. Every time we went there. And I just, I used to like that because I could see inside the bomb bay, you know. See the bombs and everything. We never minded. And we were coming back out one night and the searchlights, you know and it was no good trying to dodge them and suddenly the searchlights stopped. They all dropped. And I looked. There’s was a blister at the side and I looked behind and I could see lights. Red and green lights and I thought, I said to George, I said, ‘There’s some silly bugger going in there with his lights on.’ I said, I said, ‘No. He’s overtaken us. I said, ‘Direct to starboard. Go.’ And George, and they were pffft. The cannon shells came right across. And one of them took the top off the aircraft. We went down and the searchlights had come on. George got blinded and we were going whoooa and essentially —
BW: Apparently down.
HH: There were, the heavy aircraft were bombing, I forget the name of the place and we could visualise that and he turned and got the aircraft right and then looked at the altimeter and we were only about fifteen hundred feet above the ground and we’d come from twenty four thousand [laughs] Oh God. And anyhow we made it back. And it was years later when I was at the RAF flying college I was reading about, you know this thing and on that night, at that time, at that place, this German fighter that shot down a Mosquito [laughs]. I thought that’s great. It was the exact time and everything as that.
BW: If, if that’s the same account as I read about that was a raid over Potsdam. Near Berlin. Is that right?
HH: No. No. That was. We were at Berlin actually itself.
BW: Berlin itself.
HH: Yeah.
BW: And is it, was it right that the report said it was a Messerschmitt 262. It was a jet. A German jet.
HH: Yeah.
BW: So they were using those as night fighters.
HH: Yeah.
BW: And, and you were very lucky not to have put his bullets into the cockpit.
HH: Yeah. Just lucky we dived in time and just in the, oh and one, one of the bullets had gone through the tail fin. Right through the middle. The next day the ground crew there were sticking sticks through it [laughs] I thought, oh my God, that was close. Yeah. It was nice.
BW: I believe on that, on that particular raid on, as that was happening and you were spinning down you ended up upside down and you were on the, on the canopy.
HH: On the top. Yeah.
BW: So you were being pulled out of your seat.
HH: Yeah. Oh yeah.
BW: While the aircraft is upside down and you were on the canopy trying to get your parachute together. Is that right?
HH: I undid my harness to, to go down and get my parachute and open the bomb doors. Open the exit place. And it wouldn’t open. And so I got back and then I was sitting on the seat and she went pffft. Yeah. On our first Lancaster raid we never got to the target. We lost two of the engines and we had a full bomb load and a fuel load so we turned back and headed for The Wash to jettison the bombs. And the bomb aimer thought, you know, we thought well in case anything happens we’d better get ready to bale out. He couldn’t open the doors. Just, it was the pressure and that, it just wouldn’t open. So if anything had happened we couldn’t have got out. But we jettisoned the bombs over The Wash and then jettisoned some of the fuel because it was a tremendous amount of fuel we carried.
BW: But you managed to land safely.
HH: Oh yeah. Yeah. We did. Yeah.
BW: And were you ever caught in searchlights on other raids as well? You mentioned —
HH: Oh yeah. Lots of times. Yeah. Especially on Mosquitoes. Every time we went near the target they picked us up because they had a lot, a lot of searchlights then. But on the Lancaster I think there was only two or three times we got caught in searchlights. Just for a short time.
BW: Did the pilot have to take evasive action?
HH: Well in the Mosquito, we stopped because we couldn’t get out of them. They were, you know coming from all sides and it didn’t matter. On a Lancaster he could get out of them. Yeah.
BW: But you were never intercepted by fighters except for the, for the one occasion.
HH: Except for that once. Yeah. And very lucky.
BW: Were there other raids over France that you, that you recall? You mention one on the —
HH: Vire. Yeah.
BW: Vire Bridge.
HH: The one, the worst one of all was [pause] oh my memory. Starts with an M. It was the marshalling yards in the north of France. Now, what Bomber Command didn’t realise was that the Germans were sending troops up to the battlefield and the big anti-aircraft was based at this railway station. And we went in. If I remember rightly it was ninety five Lancasters from Number 1 Group. And we went in and just it was murder actually. And I think we lost forty nine. It’s all there somewhere. This stuff. Ninety five and we lost about half of them. That German anti-aircraft unit was stationed there and we were, for the Lancaster we were flying, you know at fifteen thousand feet. Which is ideal for them. Yeah. That was a tremendous loss.
BW: There’s a lot of reports I’ve seen of the German anti-aircraft fire being extremely accurate. It was always at the right height.
HH: Oh yeah. Yeah.
BW: But you never got hit yourself.
HH: No. Just that once in a Wellington. You know, that first flight. That’s the only time we got hit.
BW: You mentioned about flying on or around D-Day. Were you flying operations in support of D-Day? Do you remember anything about the build up?
HH: We didn’t know anything about it. D-Day was the 6th of June. We went out to a target in Northern France on the 5th of June but we didn’t know. Nobody knew it was about D-Day. And coming back, on the H2S on the Channel I saw the Channel was full of ships. And I said, ‘It’s the invasion. It’s D-Day,’ and we went back to, to Elsham and they said it’s D-Day in the morning and we just all laughed. And I said we saw them, you know, on the radar. And of course it was. Next day was D-Day. It was tremendous seeing all these ships. Yeah. But then we did our last trip then and that was it.
BW: And so very soon after that you finished flying on Lancasters. Just after D-Day.
HH: Yeah. On D-Day. That was our last trip. Yeah.
BW: And then you changed then to flying Mosquitoes.
HH: Now the pilot, he went back on Lancasters in ’45. Mid-upper gunner and the rear gunner, they both went back on operations ’45. But the wireless operator he just got to a squadron when the war finished. And the flight engineer, he didn’t want to do anymore because he’d got married.
BW: And did they let him? Let him —
HH: He was training. Yeah. He was. Yeah. Oh yeah. He spent his time training.
BW: But all the way through that you managed to keep together as a crew.
HH: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then we met again in 1978. It’s all written down there. It’s a long long story. It was a young chap. He went to Bristol to see the boat racing there. And he was staying the night in a pub and he saw an axe hanging up behind the bar and he asked the barman. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I used to break up aircraft after the war. During the war and after the war. And that’s from one of the aircraft.’ And he says, ‘Oh which aircraft?’ And he said, ‘Oh it’s got on it.’ And the bloke went and found out and it was our aircraft we used to fly in. And he lived in Kent. And he went to an air gunner’s meeting and met our air gunner and said, ‘Do you know, and it was our axe.’ And so from there you know we all got together then. It’s all written down there.
BW: Yeah.
HH: Bit by bit we wrote. And then they formed the Elsham Wolds Association. That’s how they got in touch with me from there.
BW: And were there more than one squadron based at Elsham Wolds?
HH: Yeah. Two squadrons there. 576. Was it 103 Squadron, I think? Yeah. I’m not sure. I think it was 103.
BW: And were they both Lancaster squadrons?
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
[pause]
BW: And so it seems you’ve had a pretty eventful and successful career and managed to avoid the, sort of impact of anti-aircraft fire.
HH: Oh yeah.
BW: And night fighters.
HH: Yeah.
BW: And all the sort of other dangers that people experienced in, and you —
HH: I was really lucky. Yeah. Really, really lucky.
BW: Did you ever know any crews that became prisoners? That had been shot down over France?
HH: Yeah.
BW: Were any captured?
HH: I think it may be in there. If not I’ll —
BW: Ok.
HH: I tried to, there was thirty two of us passed out in South Africa. At the end of the war there was only eleven of us alive and three of these was prisoners of war. I contacted you know because like the magazines, aircraft magazines they used to print losses you know. Who was killed and that. And I used to keep a look out for it all. Yeah. There’s eleven and I met, you know I met all eleven eventually.
BW: So you’ve done a lot of work to keep track of those guys that you met.
HH: Oh yeah. Well that’s —
BW: You keep in touch with them.
HH: Yeah.
BW: And that chance reunion in a pub down south with one of your, was it a bomb aimer who saw the axe over the, over the, at the pub?
HH: No. No. It was another bloke. Just a chap who was out there.
BW: I see.
HH: He lived in Kent and he went, he went to the Air Gunner’s Association because he thought maybe somebody knows about this axe. And he was right. Our mid-upper gunner did. And so it was he was he that formed the Society at Elsham Wolds. John. He’s been here once or twice. John Wiltshire. That was his name.
BW: John Wiltshire. And is he still around? Has he passed?
HH: I don’t know. I don’t know.
BW: Right [pause] Something I’m intrigued about if I could just ask. It’s your nickname. You have a nickname. Sam. Is that right?
HH: Yeah. Well —
BW: How did that come about?
HH: Well when we were going out to South Africa on the boat we used to have drills. You know. We had rifles and bayonets. We used to do drills and one day we were doing a drill and I dropped my rifle. And the course comedian, of course he says, ‘Sam, Sam pick up thy rifle.’ That was a song that was going at the time.
BW: I see.
HH: That stuck with me ever since. ‘Sam, Sam pick up thy rifle.’ [pause] Then when I went to that Canadian OTU I got Jock then. Jock Harris.
BW: Jock Harris. And you have the same surname of course.
HH: Oh yeah.
BW: As Bomber Harris.
HH: Yeah. The RAF.
BW: Was that ever put to you? The same nickname or —
HH: No. No. No.
BW: The RAF only had room for one Bomber Harris.
HH: Yeah. Only room for one.
[pause]
BW: Are there any other sort of memorable operations or, or events that perhaps spring to mind?
HH: Let’s think. No. I think we had it very easy really. [pause] No. The first Mosquito operation was fogged-in at base. It was fogged-in and we were running out of fuel and the pilot, George, he’d seen an airfield further back so we went back. We found this airfield and we were just, just wait to land and the engine stopped. Went bump on the runway and the fire brigade and that came out and got us out, you know. Bundled us out the aircraft and left the aircraft on the runway. And Lancasters, it was a Lancaster base and they were circling around the top because they couldn’t land. So we went and got debriefed and went to the mess and were having a cup of cocoa or something and there was a great thump on my shoulders. And I looked around. It was a chap who I lived next door to, we were born within three weeks of each other. We lived next door to each for about fourteen or fifteen years and he was on the one of the Lancasters. And he said, ‘Is that your heap of wood lying out there?’ [laughs]
BW: Is that your heap of wood lying out there?
HH: Yeah.
BW: Yeah.
HH: Jim Cassell. He’d got a mighty slap [laughs]
BW: What a way to meet up after living all that time next door to each other.
HH: Yeah.
BW: And then bumping into each other.
HH: Yeah.
BW: Literally in the, in the debriefing room. Which was your favourite aircraft, do you think to fly?
HH: The Lancaster during the wartime. But after that the Britannia was a beautiful aircraft. Yeah. That was the best one. But during the war the Lancaster. Yeah.
BW: You mentioned when you went out to serve with 105 Squadron in the Far East and you continued to stay out in the Far East for about two and a half years. At what stage then did you leave the RAF and what prompted the move?
HH: Oh 1968. I went to [pause] let me see. I left 48 Squadron. Came back to this country. I did a course, instructor’s course and then I instructed people to become navigators. In two places. And then I went to a place where they were training pilots on Meteors. I was a navigation officer and all sort of things. Then I went to RAF flying college as an instructor and was there for a while. Then went on Transport Command on Hastings, Britannias and VC10s.
BW: So you pretty well stayed on multi engine aircraft.
HH: Oh yeah.
BW: All the way, all the way through. Even though when you were instructing navigators for Meteors.
HH: Yeah.
BW: You weren’t flying Meteors yourself.
HH: Oh yeah. I flew in Meteors.
BW: You were. Right. You flew Meteors as well.
HH: Yeah. I, one of the blokes, he was a Polish bloke and at that time there were at the Farnborough thing. You know flying an aircraft straight up and then it would sort of come down, you know so he said, he got me flying. He said, ‘We’re going to try that today’ [laughs] We went up and the thing toppled over backwards and I was going to, I said, ‘I’m going to eject,’ and, ‘No. No. No,’ and he pulled it out then.
BW: So instead of going up nice and vertical and coming back tail down there the same axis you fell out backwards.
HH: Yeah. That’s the last time he tried it. Yeah. And I flew with Gus Walker on Canberras at the flying college. We did a trip to the North Pole from Norway but we ran out of oxygen just about seventy miles from the North Pole and we had to come back and we descended to the oxygen level and we landed at this place in Norway, Bardufoss. And as we landed we ran out of fuel and bump. She came down with a crash.
BW: You were very lucky there again.
HH: There. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Just made it home in time.
HH: Just made it.
BW: With no fuel.
HH: Yeah. Gus Walker. He was a really nice bloke. Gus. We were up to the top there once before and the Canberra couldn’t get back in. We were going to land then further south and there was a Hastings there and no pilot except Gus and he’d never flown a Hastings before [laughs] And he says to us, he says, ‘Will it be alright if I fly it? And we said, ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ And he flew it down there. Flew it to Oslo. It was alright. One of the funny things was when we was on Britannias there was a scare over Germany where a German aircraft or something had buzzed a civil aircraft. And somehow it got arranged that newspaper people would come and fly in a Britannia and this sort of thing would be, would be happening. And I was a navigator and Gus Walker was in charge of this lot. And he came up to the flight deck and we were chatting there and forgot all the fact that everything was going through to all the passengers as well [laughs] And then I looked up and I said to the pilot, ‘That’s not the airfield. We’re at the wrong airfield. Another airfield across there.’ And then I thought oh my. And Gus Walker went back and when we landed all the press came out and then one of them come across. He said, ‘That was good. I listened to all that. That was really really good. I enjoyed that.’ But nothing came out in the papers happily.
BW: So you managed to find the right airfield eventually.
HH: Yeah. Gus Walker. Yeah.
BW: Did you come across any famous pilots in the RAF at all? There were well known guys. People like Gibson flew Mosquitoes. Did you ever come across —
HH: Douglas Bader. I met him twice. Once when he was doing the instructing on, just after the war. I met him down south somewhere. And then when I was on 48 Squadron in Singapore he, I don’t know, he came in there to the mess. I don’t know. I can’t remember. And he recognized me in the crowd and I thought [laughs] and everybody’s [pause] yeah. He was a nice bloke.
BW: Ok. Is there anything that you would like to show us on the computer at all. But I think —
HH: I think you’ve got it —
BW: It might be a case of printing it.
HH: I think it’s all on there.
BW: Ok.
HH: Wherever you have it. Yeah.
BW: Ok.
HH: It’s all there. I hope. But if there’s anything else just phone. I’ll get it.
BW: Ok.
HH: I’ll tell you about these logbook pages.
[pause]
BW: Just going to have a look at some logbook pages.
[pause]
BW: We’re just, we’re just looking at one of the logbooks. Would you just describe what it says on the citation there? It’s dated 8th of October 1946. Is that right? At the bottom there.
HH: On 8th October 1946. Yeah. Something Headquarter 46 Group. Letter reference 46 at C250 something, something dated 20th of August 1946.
BW: What does the, so it says at the top. “Incidences of avoidance by exceptional flying skill and judgement of loss or damage to aircraft or personnel.” And it says, “Flying Officer HST Harris DFC, whilst navigation instructor on an Oxford aircraft EB798 during — ”
HH: “Exercise.”
BW: “Exercise.”
HH: “On eureka.”
BW: “On eureka.”
[pause]
HH: “Eureka homings”
BW: “Eureka homings from St Mawgan.”
HH: “From St Mawgan. The starboard engine failed and was feathered by — ”
BW: “By his skill.”
HH: “In operating the radar screen he enabled his pilot to carry out the shortened BABS. Let down.”
BW: “Guidance.”
HH: “And made a good landing in conditions, bad weather and poor visibility after breaking cloud at two hundred and fifty feet with the runway immediately ahead. By his knowledge of his radio aids and his skill in the operation of these he helped his pilot to save the aircraft from —"
BW: “Damage. Saved the aircraft from damage and the crews from —"
HH: “Injury.”
BW: “Injury.”
HH: That’s a long time ago [laughs]
BW: So that —
HH: 1946.
BW: Yeah. That is a citation that was presumably made into your logbook for skill in flying and avoiding an accident and injury to crew.
HH: Yeah.
BW: That’s very unique.
HH: That’s this one here.
BW: Well done.
HH: In six —
BW: So, 608 Squadron.
HH: Downham Market.
BW: Downham Market.
HH: That’s operations. Yeah.
BW: I’ll just pause again while you look for another document.
[pause]
BW: So —
HH: This is a bit here.
BW: So, for your services you were awarded the DFC. Was that because it was standard for aircrew or —
HH: No. It’s —
BW: For people to be awarded after so many missions or was there an act of gallantry.
HH: There wasn’t anything definite. But all pilots, when they did a tour of operations, all pilots automatically got a DFC. But I did fifty operations and I suppose that’s why I got it.
BW: Because you’d done over fifty ops.
HH: Hmmn?
BW: Because you’d done over fifty ops.
HH: No. The war finished then. No. Yeah, I could have done a lot more. Yeah.
BW: It’s quite something though to have come through so many operations. As you said before particularly because so many aircrew were killed during that time.
HH: It was just less than two months ago on the television they were doing some sort of programme and they said only one aircrew member in forty [pause] only one aircrew member in a hundred was it, survived forty operations. I forget the exact number now. I know that was forty operations and there were very few people.
BW: Yeah.
HH: That had done that.
BW: Yeah. That’s quite something. That’s quite an excellent sort of achievement really.
HH: See these things here. You’ve seen them [pause] This. My navigation logs. That’s, I think, I don’t know which aircraft that is. Put that other light on.
BW: So these are on, let’s have a look.
[pause]
BW: So these navigation logs are also recorded in —
HH: Yes.
BW: Wartime service so did you have to fill out effectively two logs.
HH: Some of them. Some of them are. Not all of them I don’t think. I’m trying to see.
BW: You Ok?
HH: Yeah. Where’s the switch? Oh, it’s up here [pause] The light switch is on there.
BW: So did navigators have to fill out another log as well as their own flying log?
HH: No.
BW: For operations.
HH: No.
BW: Or was this just done as an instructor?
HH: This light doesn’t work now. Oh wait a minute. Maybe it does. No. It’s broken. That’s why it’s off. I think the bulbs gone. Yeah. It’s —
BW: It’s alright.
[pause]
BW: Ok.
HH: You’ve got that all on there.
BW: So these records are all on the disc as well.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Ok.
HH: It’ll take a lot of printing out.
BW: It looks like it. Yeah.
HH: And that’s.— [pause]
BW: Ok. I’ll just pause the recording while we look through for the documents.
[recording paused]
What I’ll do I’ll end the recording there. We’ve had a look through some documents and photographs of your time in the Far East. So all that’s left to do is, on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre is just to say thank you very much for your time Mr Harris. It’s very good of you.
HH: You’ll find a lot of things in these.
BW: Thank you.
HH: These CDs. Yeah.
BW: Yeah. We’ll arrange to get your CDs and documents copied by one of the other volunteers. They will send somebody out but they weren’t able to do that today. So we’ll sort that out for you. Thank you.
[recording paused]
BW: Very much so. Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Harry Harris
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-09
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AHarrisHST150909
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:19:59 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry ‘Sam’ Harris grew up in Scotland and volunteered for the Air Force. He trained as a navigator in South Africa. On the penultimate day of his training he flew over a multitude of lifeboats bearing the survivors of a torpedoed ship. The next day he flew over a U-Boat above water and the pilot turned the aircraft to attack it. On return to Great Britain he was posted to 576 Squadron at RAF Elsham Wolds. After his first tour he wanted to continue to fly and was posted to a Mosquito Squadron. He discusses being attacked by a Me 262. He notes that of the thirty two men who passed out with him in South Africa only eleven were left after the war and three of those had been prisoners of war. After the war Harry stayed in the RAF and flew in a wide variety of aircraft.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Norway
South Africa
Arctic Ocean--North Pole
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Scotland--Montrose
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1944
1945
1946
105 Squadron
576 Squadron
608 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
briefing
C-47
control caravan
crewing up
debriefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
Gee
Halifax
Lancaster
love and romance
Me 262
Meteor
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
promotion
RAF Downham Market
RAF Elsham Wolds
searchlight
service vehicle
submarine
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/150/1571/PBellinghamPF1602.2.jpg
249a7f80083ee604a3acfc4b9e41b2c6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/150/1571/ABellinghamPF161121.2.mp3
927964b5233017d1c89457d142da31c4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bellingham, Peter
Peter F Bellingham
Peter Bellingham
P F Bellingham
P Bellingham
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Peter Frederick Bellingham (b. 1923, 1391638 Royal Air Force), a photograph and his log book. Peter Bellingham trained in South Africa as a bomb aimer and flew 30 Special Operations Executive operations in Halifaxes and Stirlings with 138 Squadron from RAF Tempsford.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Bellingham and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bellingham, PF
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: And it’s now rolling. So my name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 21st of November 2016, and we’re in Whitfield near Brackley speaking with Peter Bellingham about his life and times before, during and after the RAF. So, what are your earliest recollections, Peter?
PB: Well, I was born in Charlton in London, SC18, at three – believe it or not I can remember, 3 Kinveachy Gardens [CB laughs], and I left when I was three years old. My parents bought a house in Welling in Kent. In those days it was in Kent, I believe it’s part of Greater London now, and it was very, very agricultural. We were part of a large estate, but our house actually overlooked a farm and you could not, not see another house at the rear. My father was at Siemens [emphasis] the electrical company, and he unfortunately died when he was fifty, just before when he was going to be made a director of Siemens. He had a very – he was in the First World War in the artillery, in the Territorials, and he stopped in the Territorials and was commissioned, and then he joined the Home Guard and ended up as a Lieutenant Colonel, Honorary Lieutenant Colonel after the war. In fact he led the parade of the Home Guard at the march past of the Victory Parade in London. Unfortunately he developed a brain tumour, they don’t know why, but it killed him in 1947 when he was fifty. That’s really enough about my parents. My mother carried on, she never married again, and she died when she was about eighty, I can’t honestly remember off hand. I went to school in Welling in Kent, which was in Kent then, and I spent the last two years at a Iris [?] technical college. I was destined to be an engineer because [laughs] I was good with my hands, and that, in my father’s view made me an engineer. But unfortunately, I left school in July of 1939, sixteen years old, and war broke out on the September. It wasn’t my fault incidentally [GG laughs] and I really, I was going to be a student of engineer, but all of those things stopped in the war, and I never got round to doing it, but I went into the Post Office Engineers for a short while. And I remember the Blitz very well, from the outskirts, and I remember walking home one afternoon, late afternoon, and watching the first daylight raid on London, and seeing all the fires from, on a wide arc, ooh something like about forty-five degrees I expect, and then making a resolution that I was going to be a Spitfire pilot. I didn’t as I say, I joined the Post Office Engineers as a makeshift job really, and in 1941, I’m not sure exactly when, but the government or the Air Ministry decided that they would recruit pilots and observers who had reached the age of seventeen and a quarter [CB laughs] and then they would attest them and then send them back in civvy street and call them up when they were ready for them. I was a bit over the seventeen and a quarter mark, but I did volunteer and went to Adastal House I think it was, in London, where I was – I didn’t have to move to London, I travelled to London each day for three days, and I did my attestation there. That was very simple for anyone just left school, mathematic test, intelligence test, and an essay on a choice of subjects, which I chose the importance of Gibraltar, a medical and I was duly accepted into the RAFVR, RAFVR [emphasis], as a pilot under training. Was given a little lapel badge RAFVR and a number 1391635AC2, pilot under training and sent home to be called up [emphasis] when necessary, when ready. In the beginning year, I’m not sure as, I think it was January of forty-two I was called up and went to Aircrew Receiving Centre, I think it was Number 1 Aircrew Receiving Centre, headquarters was at Lourdes Cricket Ground, and we were there for just short of three weeks. We ate and dined in the zoo [emphasis] [GG laughs] and we lived in the high class hotels [CB laughs, clears throat] overlooking, or near St Johns, in St Johnswood, very near the Lourdes Cricket Ground. But of course, instead of one bedroom for one person or two, there was about ten or twenty in it [laughs] but we slopped around there for nearly three weeks, and we were in flights of thirty, and then on the Thursday of the third week we were paraded out, and we were assigned to ITW, initial training wings. There was about ten or twelve of us that was left standing with nowhere to go and Corporal Speller, I remember his name [CB laughs], Corporal Speller, probably even an acting corporal [laughs] and he said ‘look,’ he said, ‘I’m not allowed to tell you this,’ but he said ‘you’re going to Southern Rhodesia, but don’t tell anyone I’ve told you.’ So sure enough, we were sent home to report to Blackpool on the Monday at the beginning of the fourth week in the Air Force. We did a bit of square bashing and getting inoculated and one thing and another at Blackpool, and then after a little while we were shifted up to Liverpool and kitted out – I can’t remember whether we were kitted out at Liverpool or whether we were kitted out at Blackpool, but we kitted out with tropical kit and had ATT and TAB injections and blood tests and whatnot, and then we were told by a very, very gnarled group captain that just because we’d got our tropical kit ‘means that you’re going to the tropics, it’s all done to fool the enemy’ [emphasis] [CB laughs]. So eventually after a week or two of medicals and one thing and another, we went off to Liverpool where we were stuffed almost into a boat, and we wallowed around for a week [emphasis]. After a week we sailed up to Scotland [emphasis], I’m not sure where, where we formed a huge convoy, and we left after about a week, and we headed north-west, more north I think than west, and it got very, very cold, and we began to think the group captain was right and we were going off to America or Iceland or somewhere [laughs] but we gradually turned south and we ended up after a while at Freetown. Incidentally, the convoy I counted I think it was over seventy ships, it was a huge [emphasis] convoy. In the middle were the troop ships, so there were all the Empress boats, the Empress of India, the Empress of Australia. I was in a uni, a Union Castle liner, the Arundel Castle, and that was pretty grim. We had a mess room, which I suppose there must have been about thirty people in, and then above the tables we had our hammocks which we strung. Well, as I say, we arrived – I could, I counted, did I say I counted about seventy ships [emphasis] I think it was. Huge [emphasis] convoy, the aircraft carriers and all sort of things, and lots of crumps [?] in the night and various rumours that floated around, and we arrived at Freetown. I can’t remember whether it was Sierra Leone but its Freetown [emphasis] and we were there for a week. It was jolly hot, and then we went off again south, and we ended up at Cape Town after about six weeks [emphasis]. And we spent a couple of nights at, days, nights, at Cape Town, and then we took a wonderful [emphasis] train journey up through the Hex River Mountains, to Southern Rhodesia in Bulawayo. We went to ITW I think it was, Initial Training Wing, which was completely different from other ones in Canada and England, in that you did six months at Bulawayo just on the ground course and went up to the wings exams, and I graduated from there. Had a wonderful holiday at Victoria Falls and then went up to EFTS, Elementary Flying Training School which was at Belvedere, which I think is now Harare [?] Airport. But it was the main airport in Salisbury in those days. But unfortunately I didn’t make the grade as a pilot – the old story you know, that they either had to ban everyone else from the air or ban me [CB laughs] so they banned me, but I, I did, I was very disappointed when I failed my, my flying. And then I was called in front of somebody and they said ‘but we have a marvellous new category. They’re splitting the observers into navigators and air bombers, and as an air bomber, you will continue your flying lessons and you will end up with a double wings brevy with a B in instead of RAF, and you will be the second pilot.’ So I thought that sounded good so I said ‘yes.’ So I went down to South Africa and went to East London, I can’t remember the name of the school. It was groundwork, very, very simple because I’d done it all before it was very simple stuff. And then went to Port Elizabeth, that was 42 Air Squadron, it’s all in here [bangs hand on something, presumably his book]. And then graduated as an air bomber [emphasis]. It was a bit early in those days for air bombers, and we were presented with the old O [emphasis] brevy, and we didn’t get that changed until we got back to England. Well we messed about in Cape Town which was a wonderful holiday, and then we sailed for England in the Moritania [?], and whereas coming out we took about six weeks, I think we took about ten days to get back to England. Very, very wonderful. I will say that when I was at East London I think it was – Port Elizabeth I think it was, I’m not sure where it was – anyway we, it was very much like a peacetime. We never did any work at weekends and we used to spend a lot of time at the sea. Beautiful surfing, without a surf board, we didn’t have a surf board in those days, and they had a boom [?] across the bay, a shark boom, which was supported by a big steel metal cable, and we used to, flew out to this cable and have a rest and then swim back. And this was I think for me the most scariest time for me in the war. I’d swam out once to this cable, by myself, and I was sort of hanging on resting and there was three fins, so I thought ‘oh my God I’ll get back inside.’ So I swam back inside and to my horror I found these three fins were circling me [laughs]. Course they were dolphins, but to me they weren’t dolphins [CB laughs] they were sharks [laughs]. And I swam like hell and clambered up the beach, and that was I think that was one of the most, if not the [emphasis] most scary time in the war believe, believe it or not. So anyway, we graduated, came back to England, went to Harrogate to wait for our kit, the CO of the unit there was Squadron Leader Legames [?], the English and Kent wicket keeper, and then we went off to Millom AFU. I don’t remember the number. The AFU is Advanced Flying Unit I think, I don’t remember what it was called. Millom is just opposite Coniston, and we had a lovely month or six months there, but we could get into Coniston in the Lake District there, beautiful. And it was there that unfortunately I found out that my brother was shot down, eventually became a prisoner of war. But then from three we went to Number 11 OTU, operational training unit at Westcott, with a satellite at Oakley. And I will just mention, you probably are aware but I’ll just mention, that’s where the individual aircrew, apart from the engineer, were pushed into big hangar or room, and told to sort yourself out and become air, a, a crew. And someone came up to me and said ‘are you crewed up yet?’ and I said ‘no,’ and they said ‘well come and meet who we’ve got.’ And there was a pilot, who was ancient [emphasis], he was about thirty-two [both laugh] and he seemed a very decent chap, and the others, so we were crewed up with a pilot, navigator, air-bomber, wireless operator, and two gunners. Six is that? Is that six?
CB: Mhm.
PB: Should be anyway. And, so we bombed around there, and did our flying training. We had several episodes. We had one particular episode where as we came into land, the Wellington, the radial Wellington was subject to pushing out flames from the engines – it was a radial engine. And this time we decided that it was more than usual and that the engine was on fire. So he called, the pilot called up and we were told to land on the runway and come to a halt and switch everything off and we’ll be sorted out. Well we were sitting there thinking ‘oh thank god we’ve made a nice safe landing on one engine,’ and there was a great war [emphasis], roar, and [laughs] Wellington [?] took off and sailed overhead. We found out afterwards that it was an instructor pilot thank God and we dived out of the aircraft but before we could get very far away the blooming Spitfire took off [laughs]. The wing commander and the squadron leader ops [?] whatever he was called, they came flying [emphasis] out and they, they blew their top and they said ‘you knew very well that it pushes out flame,’ and we said ‘well no it was more than that, it was the engine was on fire, and you press the gravendor [?] switches and you know, that kills the engine and ruins it.’ So anyway he said, more or less, ‘I’ll have your guts for garters [laughs] if you, you’re wrong’ and we weren’t wrong, but I should imagine someone really got called over the coals for it, because obviously the caravan that they have at the end of the runway which gives you a green light to takeoff, and the flying control weren’t in control [emphasis], and we never heard anything so we presumed it was on fire. Well we’re convicted it was on fire. Another little episode we had – we had many a sort of scrape with single engine landings and what thing or another. It was notorious [emphasis], the Wellington at an OTU, officers, operation training unit, for accidents. But one of them which was damned nearly my demise, was that some boffin at Air Ministry decided that it would be a good idea for air crew to have a sort of maintenance exercise, so if they were shot down in the middle of Berlin they could patch up their aircraft and takeoff. It’s a wonderful idea but absolutely useless I think [CB laughs]. Anyway, one very, very foggy day, we were sent out to, what do they call them now, the dispersal units, and there was this Wellington and we went round and did our job. I finished mine, and I went round to the rear gunner, and of course the Wellington rear turret was right on the ground, I mean the aircraft in those days did three point landings, they didn’t have tricycle things. And the two guns were sticking out, and I was leaning against this machine gun, a Browning, right into my ribs, and I suddenly thought ‘well that’s not a very bright thing to do.’ So I moved across and because it’s all open at the back, and I had the two guns either side of my ribs, and I was just about to speak to the rear gunner and the damn thing went off [both laugh]. There was a huge whine [emphasis] as the bullet travelled and we knew we were somewhere around the houses, and we thought ‘my God.’ And the mechanic saw the machine gun is if there’s one up the spout, if the breech goes forward it goes off bang and that’s it, and someone had obviously left one up the spout, which is a thing you shouldn’t do. But we kept very quiet and no one was reported killed [laughs] so we thought we were alright [CB laughs]. Eventually we were messed around a bit, I won’t say where we went, I can’t honestly remember, but we ended up at 17 HCU, a higher conversion unit at Stradishall, and there we converted to Stirlings [emphasis] which was a great thrill, wonderful aircraft to me. And the very, very remarkable, not remarkable, memorable [emphasis] thing of that place was we were, took off once on some night trip, and – I can’t remember now, perhaps it wasn’t night. But anyway, took off and one of the wheels, the tyres burst, and the distance on the ground to the cabin was about twenty-six feet I think on a Stirling. You’re nodding, I think, I think that’s right. Anyway, we were fortune with the squadron leader, the flight commander and instructor, and he said ‘well that’s it,’ he said ‘we’ve got to do a belly landing’ he said, ‘we can’t land because if you try to land on one wheel, you’ll just, as your speed decreases to about eighty you would just drop a wing and you’d cartwheel and that would be the end of that.’ So we went to Woodbridge –
CB: Mm.
PB: Have you heard of Woodbridge? Woodbridge was a particularly designed aerodrome. I think, I think [emphasis] it was about a quarter of a mile wide and about four miles long. Now that’s probably an exaggeration but it was a huge [emphasis] airstrip basically, and it was designed for shot up aircrafts to come and land on it, you know if they got people who were injured, or the aircraft. So we were told to go and land at Woodbridge and go get rid of our fuel. So we bummed [?] around and dropped our load of fuel and then we went in. And I say, fortunately we were with a, with a squadron leader and he did a wonderful belly landing, and of course the danger is that if the props are milling around, or even the sparks, and ‘poof,’ you know, you go up like anything. But I can remember seeing a blood wagon one side and a fire engine on the other. Whether or not they operated the fire engine I can’t remember, but anyway we came out and we were okay, it was wonderful [emphasis]. So eventually, we were to be sent to a squadron. Now, as I said my, my pilot was a, I think he was a journalist but his father was the equivalent of an MP, and he had a lot of clout and he was a great mate of the High Commissioner, would his name be Fraser? Memory’s – but anyway, he came back from, from a leave once, a weekend or something, and he said ‘ooh’ he said ‘I’ve met an old friend of mine that’s just finished a tour of operations with a special duty squadron.’ Now he said ‘I can’t, he won’t tell me what it’s all about but,’ he said ‘for God’s sake try and get on that squadron. It’s 138 Squadron.’ So as I say, this chap had a certain clout and he came back and he said ‘how do you feel?’ And we said ‘oh yes, anything’s better than the bluming’ old coffin run or whatever you’d call it,’ so sure enough we got posted to 138 Squadron [emphasis]. Well we had a wonderful welcome, Wing Commander Burnett, he was a Canadian, and there was another crew with us, and he paraded us, well we went into his room and he said ‘well,’ he said ‘I’ll be honest with you’ he said ‘the sooner I can send you back the better, because’ he said [laughs] ‘I don’t want Stirling pilots, we operate Halifaxes,’ but he said ‘don’t mose around or anything and keep your head on the ground.’ And he called us in the next day and said ‘well I’ve been told that I’ve got to accept you because we’re going to transfer to Stirlings’ [CB laughs]. So that was [laughs] quite a start but we did. And we had to do a certain amount of training obviously because it was a different type of operation. The air, mid upper gunner was made a dispatcher. He didn’t get a different brevy but he was called a dispatcher, they did away with the mid upper turret on the Halifax and later on the Stirling, and he was sent on a parachuting course, and I had to go on a map reading course for about a month [emphasis] I think it was. And the pilot had to transfer onto Halifax, which was quite easy really. And we, that’s what we did. Oh, to go back [emphasis], it was quite true to start with that I did do a lot of pilot training, a lot of link [emphasis] work, you know, the link trainer, and on a, on a Halifax I was a second pilot, and on a Stirling that was wonderful – I liked the Stirling that was wonderful. We had great armour plating seats and there was dual control it was really lovely. But later on, the Lancasters of course the engineer was the second pilot, so we started off on ops. I, my first op, the navigator, the bomb aimer and the pilot had to do an op with an experienced crew for the first op so we did those and then we started doing our normal ops. And a very strange thing happened to me, and it was after somewhere around five ops. We used to get bacon and eggs, we were very privileged, we got bacon and eggs before we took off, and I went down after several ops and I began to feel awful. My head felt it was imploding [emphasis]. I can’t describe it but I just couldn’t, I couldn’t, couldn’t do anything. And so I got up and paced around, and then we went out to the aircraft and believe it or not when we got in the aircraft I was perfectly alright. And it happened for two or three ops, and I really don’t know what it was but I think it must have been an anticlimax. My father being in the Great War, and sometimes unbeknown to him I sometimes used to hear some of his stories with his friends, and I had a great worry that I would not be able to make it, and I think it was all to do with that, I don’t know. Unfortunately it only happened a couple, three times and I was alright ever since then, perfectly alright. We had more or less a trouble free, more or less a trouble free tour of operations, and I finished, but I tell you that the squadron, in fact the whole, whole, both squadrons, 161 was the sister squadron, we were very lax in our discipline. We, we didn’t have parades and our type of mission was the fact that there was very rarely more than one aircraft on a target. I think there was sometimes two but I don’t think there were more than that. And believe it or not – well we couldn’t have a general [emphasis] briefing like they do on the films and things, we had individual briefings, and the pilot, navigator and air bomber, they went in and we discussed our route, and we chose our own route [emphasis]. I mean it doesn’t sound possible but we did. We used to say ‘right, well from experience from both us and other crews, we don’t want to go over that place, and we don’t want to go there,’ and we used to choose [emphasis] our own route to the target. And we used to fly low, I mean how low to give you an example was that once the rear gunner said to the pilot, ‘oh skipper, can you please go up a bit, I’m getting absolutely soaked with the slipstream.’ And I can remember going across Denmark once and seeing, I think it was a bungalow I can’t remember exactly, but seeing a house or a bungalow lit and the woman cross over and then the lights went out. That’s, I mean that’s how low we were. And I think that’s really what saved our bacon, being so low, because we were unexpected and too low for the radar and various things. We used to navigate mainly by map reading. Very, very difficult to get fixes whether they were radio or G-fixes, but the ideal thing was bends in rivers of course and woods [emphasis], and the woods on the continent were absolutely perfect [emphasis] on the maps and we used to plop from a corner of a wood to a bend in a river and – so we would arrive and the targets were invariably lights, three lots of lights a hundred metres apart, obviously, you know, downwind. And we would approach and they would signal up and we would – obviously each, each target had a different signal, an A, a B or something, and we used to go in and we used to drop our load and the dispatcher would push the parcels out, whatever they were, at four hundred feet, and if we had any what we called Joes [emphasis], agents onboard, that was six hundred feet, and they jumped with a static line, and the dispatcher used to make sure they went – I don’t know if they used to kick them out the back door or not [GG laughs]. I don’t think they had to they were wonderful people. And that was it. We got shot at once or twice but nothing to worry about. One day we were told that we couldn’t make base, and we’d have to go to Woodbridge, and that was quite an experience because the whole place was covered in fog and they’d brought out a new thing called FIDO, have you heard of FIDO? Basically I think it was cans of fuel [emphasis], kerosene, diesel, something, each side of the runway, and they’d generate so much heat that the fog would lift. Well I think we must have been one of the first crews to do it, because when we went in we were on a Stirling and we had dual control, and when we went in, we went in and obviously we couldn’t see the land but, at that stage, but we were tossed around like a cork in the ocean. I mean one minute there was nothing on the clock and the next minute there was eighty and – anyway we got down and we were okay and that was at Woodbridge and then came back. Erm, we had, as I say, no real discipline [emphasis], no parades, nothing like that, and one day we, we were stood down – I mean the fortune [emphasis] thing as regards us was we only operated I think it was about ten days, ten days either side of full moon for obvious reasons, and this was during the operational period, but we used to do two nights on ops and then one off, and on our night off and the next day we weren’t flying, we took our ground crew out for drinks which we did regularly, and we got a little bit too much to drink. We were all NCOs at the time, the crew, and we went to sleep and then someone came rushing in and said ‘God you’re in trouble, they been tannoying [?] for you from the flights, you’ve got to report to the flights,’ which was almost unheard of. Anyway we, we went down and the Squadron Leader Rothwell, he was as mad [emphasis] as hell, and he said, you know ‘I’ve been looking for you, you’re in front of the wing co.’ And we went in front of the wing commander, who gave us a bit of a ribbing, and said ‘right’ he said, ‘I’m sending you to Sheffield,’ and that was a discipline course of three weeks, and it was where Spitfire, well [emphasis] where fighter pilots who landed with their wheels up – I mean we were far too valuable [emphasis] to get court martialled but we had to be punished [emphasis]. But after about three or four days, we got returned to base, and there we learnt that the whole trouble was that our flight commander, Squadron Leader Rothwell, he was about twenty-two I think, or twenty-three, and he was like a, you know, like a big school boy. And he thought it would be a brilliant idea to post the, we were A flight, B flight commander to the Far East, but unfortunately the Squadron Leader Brogan, he was married and got a little baby and they lived out, probably unofficially, but he was very, very upset, and he did it officially through the Orderly Room. I mean you don’t argue with a squadron leader, or you shouldn’t do [CB laughs] and a lot of friends, and probably the same rank as him said ‘look, you just coming [?] yourself too long, it’s no good it’s gone beyond a joke,’ and they told this Squadron Leader Brogan and they almost, I hear, they almost came to fisticuffs. We didn’t learn this until we got back. Now the reason we got back after three days was [laughs] because Rothwell, he went on an op – now it’s conjecture that he might have taken the op that we should have taken because the squadron leader was only allowed to do so many ops a month and a wing commander so many, and it’s conjecture that he might have taken our place. But anyway he, he went down on his, I think it was about seventy ops he did, seventy, seventy-two, and he went down by hitting the cables of balloons just off the coast of Holland, and he was taken a prisoner of war. And of course he gets to a PW camp, POW camp, and it’s [?] the flight commander [laughs]. My brother [emphasis] was under him but he never, isn’t it coincidence [emphasis], he never –
CB: Phshhh –
PB: Admitted to my brother that I was, you know, on his squadron. But anyway, perhaps it would have been best if wing command, if Squadron Leader Brogan had gone to the Far East because he was appointed CO [phone rings]. Oh, would you excuse me?
CB: I’ll stop it for now. [Tape is paused]. Brogan should have gone to the Far East.
PB: Pardon?
CB: Brogan should have gone to the Far East.
PB: Yes, I think he should have gone to the Far East, because he became wing commander of 161 Squadron and was shot down and killed shortly afterwards. So – and we had a habit of that. We had a – Watson, Squadron Leader Watson was a flight commander, I think it was, he took over from Rothwell, and he was made wing commander of 161 and he was shot down and killed so, it seemed to be a death warrant, going to wing commander 161. So anyway, what happened. So we were commissioned. In fact, our pilot, his commission came through before he actually went to Sheffield and he went to Sheffield as an officer, which was a bit better. My commission came through a couple of months later. What else happened – well we – it was a wonderful squadron, wonderful squadron, and I went through and finished my ops, did thirty ops. Went to France, Denmark, oh we did a trip to Germany, that was a bit out of the ordinary. That was in the Battle of the Bulge, you know, the Ardennes campaign. And our squadron and 161 Squadron were sent off to a just inside Germany to do a spoof attack, and we dropped dummies and fireworks and things to, you know, spoof attacks. So that was, that was, yes, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, went to Norway several times. I think the longest trip I did was ten hours fifty-five minutes. We, we used to take off and go to the target if we could find it, and then we’d come back to Lossiemouth or Kinloss and come back from there. Well them, then in, right at the end of the war, it was March – oh we did about the last op, with others, different [emphasis] targets, to Norway. No I think I must have – my last op was Denmark [emphasis], but anyway in March, I was finished my thirty ops, and the squad – 138 Squadron was, went to onto Lancs, and they retrained on Lancs, but they didn’t, I don’t think they ever did much after that because it was the end of the war. And I came to, up here Turweston. That was 17 OTU. And, well Turweston was the satellite of Silverstone, and I came as in instructor. I took an instructors course, a group instructors course, a Bomber Command’s instructor course and then a bombing leaders course, and saw out my time up here and then at Silverstone. They shut this place down and then I went to Silverstone and I was demobbed in 1946. I had a chance of a short service commission but by that time I’d got engaged to my present wife and I wouldn’t take the risk, I thought ‘do you know, there’s not the huge future for me,’ and I left the Air Force. I went back for a short while into the Post Office but I wasn’t at all happy and I came farming. My father-in-law had quite a large farm in those days, here in Whitfield, Manor Farm, and we got married and I, I worked on the farm. Do you want to know anything more of what I did?
CB: Yeah sure.
PB: Erm –
CB: Because farming’s a pretty varied experience in itself.
PB: Well that was, I thoroughly enjoyed farming – in fact of my son till carries on farming, and his son. I became chairman of the parish, I think mainly because no one else wanted to do it. I became church warden and we, the rector, he retired, and me being church warden, I had to take over the duties of – and I, they, we were priests in charge of Mr Payne at Sareshom [?] and he didn’t want to be, he said ‘I’m not going to be the chairman of the parochial church council’ so I had to be the chairman of the parochial church council, and eventually I, I left being church warden, and I went into Rotary, I became president of Rotary, Brackley, and I’m a [coughs] I’m an honorary member of Brackley Rotary, and I took up golf [emphasis] and I was a member for many years at Buckingham, and then a member at Silverstone, and I’m actually [coughs] an honorary member of Silverstone, and I got two sons. One’s coming up sixty-seven and one’s coming up, what would he be, about sixty-five in October I think. Got four grandchildren, one grandson and three granddaughters, and five great-grandchildren – what have I got? Three, three great-granddaughters and two great-grandsons. And my son, my eldest son still carries on the farm. But unfortunately the HS2 is going to go straight through his house. And my wife unfortunately, about four years ago, she got Alzheimer’s and she’s in a home now. She’s, she’s struggling, put it like that. I’ve got erm [pause] authro, no – what do you call it?
CB: Osteoarthritis?
PB: Arthri - that’s right [pause] osteo – one of bones. Anyway, arthritis in the knees, I’ve had a cataracts operation in the left eye, I've got material, material degeneration in the left eye and bleeding, bleeding in the right eye, and bleeding in the right eye, which I have injects for so [laughs]. You know [laughs] I’m struggling –
CB: And you’re only ninety-three.
PB: Pardon?
CB: And you’re ninety-three.
PB: I’m ninety-three.
CB: Yes [laughs].
PB: I’m ninety-four next birthday, yep. And I think that’s, that’s all –
CB: What kind, what kind of farming was it, arable?
PB: No, no it –
CB: It’s livestock is it?
PB: I had a mixed farm, but my son’s turned it into a very large dairy farm. He’s got five hundred head of cattle and he’s got a milking herd of two hundred cows, but it’s all going to stop I think in a few months time. I don’t know what’s going to happen [coughs]. Which is rather a shame really. My in-laws came here in 1914 [CB laughs] and [wrapper rustles] it was a big farm then, it was about five hundred acres [continued rustling]. But that’s, that’s, I think about it – would you like a sweet?
CB: Thank you.
[Tape paused and restarted. Rustling continues]
PB: Shortly [?] I was –
CB: So where, where did you meet your wife?
PB: Well that’s what I was saying –
CB: Yes –
PB: My wife, Stella –
CB: Yeah –
PB: I, I met her at an officers mess party up at Turweston here, in about April of forty-five, and erm, we hit it off straight away [zipping noise] and we got married in 1947. [Puts something, presumably a sweet, into his mouth.] Sixty-nine years ago, isn’t it?
GG: Mm.
CB: Quite a while.
PB: Pardon?
CB: Quite a while.
PB: Quite a while.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
CB: That’s very useful because it’s covered right through your working life, but going back to 138 Squadron, what were the crew members like, individually?
PB: Erm –
CB: So the pilot was quite old.
PB: What, what my crew –
CB: Yeah, yeah.
PB: - In particular? Well there was one [emphasis] one, erm, odd one, and as I said before – I didn’t mention actually, what I didn’t mention was that when we went to Stradishall [emphasis] to pick up a, to train on a Stirling bomber, we picked up a flight engineer. And he was always [emphasis] the odd one out. He was married, but we know that he had a girl in the village [CB laughs] and he was the odd one out. Otherwise all the other crew we were very close, we used to – right from our Westcott days, our OTU days we used to go out to out to the pub to drinking together and – we did drink too much in the war, there’s no question at all. But another very interesting thing which I might add, was I had a friend there who was a, a Lysander pilot on 161 Squadron, Bob Large. I don’t know whether that name’s cropped up at all.
CB: No.
PB: But Bob Large was an ex-one squadron [?], fighter of, erm, what – Battle of Britain pilot. And his wing commander was a chap called Boxer, who ended up air marshal or very high rank indeed. He’s dead now but he’s very high rank. And he wasn’t terribly popular this Box, Boxer, but Bob Large, he was a very popular chap. Flight Lieutenant Battle of Britain pilot, and he was, erm, what’s the word – framed [emphasis] if you might like to put it, by Boxer because one night when birds were grounded there was no flying at all, Boxer knew that Bob Large had gone off to the pub, local pub, and he put out a tannoy for him, and of course he didn’t turn up, so he court martialed him. And the rules of court martial are the court can’t have people that are on the same squadron on same unit, so the way they got over it, they posted the court, several of the senior officers, to other stations for the court martial. But he was found guilty and the facts were there and he was sentenced to be cashiered [emphasis]. And he told me afterwards – I’ll tell you why, he told me afterwards that he, he told me afterwards that he was the only one as far as he knew that was reprieved [emphasis] by the king, and the king stepped in and said ‘no.’ So he was, he lost two years seniority which was, didn’t mean much at all to him, but I didn’t learn this until after the war, and the reason I learnt this, going back to Peter Westcoombe [?], he invited me to, to Bletchley when they opened an SOE section, and he introduced me to the director who was a woman, I didn’t catch her name, but afterwards I was chatting to her. ‘Oh, my father-in-law was at Tempsford,’ I said ‘oh yes, when was he there?’ such and such. ‘Oh I was there then, what was his name?’ ‘Large.’ I said ‘good gracious me,’ I said ‘I know Bob Large very well, I knew him very well,’ and he gave me his, she gave me her telephone number and I rang him and we had a long conversation and he told me that he, he said ‘I’m sorry,’ but he said ‘I did deserve to be cashiered,’ you know, ‘I knew I was wanted for, I should be available,’ but of course as I said the birds weren’t flying. But anyway, he, he went back and lost his seniority for two years and ended up flying commercially for different people [CB laughs]. But, and he bought back that, what was her name? Violet, Violette Szabo?
CB: Szabo.
PB: He bought her back once –
CB: Mm.
PB: From France. And in this book – you should, I’m not going to let you have this unfortunately, I don’t want this to leave my – but if you, if you want [emphasis] you should be able to get it from the library –
CB: This is “By Moonlight” –
PB: And, erm –
CB: - Is the name of the book.
PB: In there it said that, which is unbelievable [emphasis] but I’ve read it and it said that only two Lysanders were missing on ops in the war. Incredible [emphasis] isn’t it?
CB: Extraordinary.
PB: And one [emphasis] of them was almost certainly shot down by a Mosquito [CB laughs] in mistake for a Fieseler Storch. And you remember, course the last pin point of it, well they knew when it was shot down, but when the Mosquito reported that it had shot down a Fieseler Storch at such and such a place, there was no doubt the Mosquito shot it down. You can’t really blame the Mosquito I suppose, but, yeah.
CB: And it was in the night.
PB: Well there are – if you look at the history of 138 and 161 – 138 in particular, the, the heroes, illustrious people that were associated, it was, they were, the chap that did the Amiens prison break out –
CB: Mm, Pickard.
PB: What was his name?
CB: Pickard. Pickard [emphasis].
PB: Yeah Wing Commander Pickard. He was on, I think it was 138 Squadron.
CB: Mm.
PB: ‘Cause 138 Squadron were started as a flight, and it was the King’s Flight. The group captain, who was still a group captain when I was at Tempsford, was chap called Fielding, Mouse Fielding. And he was the King’s Pilot, and there was all the different squadron officers and people. They were all on, they all wore, they all wore scarlet [laughs] lining to their jackets. And as I say, it started as a flight, it, it really – you really, I’m not going to lend you this because things go astray –
GG: Mm.
PB: But if you can get a copy, then it’s quite interesting reading.
CB: Hmm, mm.
PB: But, erm. It started off as a flight and they flew these two engine things to Poland and places and then gradually they got more sophisticated and they were landing Hudsons as well in the war. That was 138 Squadron, one, one, 161 Squadron I mean. But, and then they split one, 138 and 161 they made, and all the landing people like the Lysanders and the Hudsons were 161, and the heavies were 138.
CB: Now when you arrived at Tempsford, you didn’t know what you were in for –
PB: No –
CB: You said earlier –
PB: No.
CB: But 138 and 131 had a specific –
PB: 161.
CB: 161, sorry – had a specific requirement to re-affirm [emphasis] their –
PB: Well as Churchill said ‘set, set’ er –
CB: Official –
PB: ‘Set France alight.’
CB: Yes but Official Secrets Act you had to go through that again, so what was that? Tell us what that was.
PB: The Official Secrets Act?
CB: No, no. You had to reaffirm it because of what you were doing.
PB: You know I don’t remember that.
CB: Okay.
PB: I don’t remember, but we were, as I say it was very, very laid back, and when the wing commander Burnett said ‘well I’m afraid I’ve got to accept you, I, we’re going to re-master with Stirlings soon,’ so –
CB: Mm, [laughs].
PB: ‘I’ve been told that, you know, I’ve got to accept you.’ And he didn’t say, you know, ‘keep your head down’ or anything, he just said ‘welcome to the squadron.’
CB: Yeah.
PB: And we went our separate ways, we, as I say I had to go on an intensive map reading, low level map reading round England [CB clears throat]. The mid upper gunner was, lost his guns, lost his turret, and he went on a parachute course to Ringwood I think it was. And [pause] it was, looking back it was amazing really how informal [emphasis] it was.
CB: Mm.
PB: And I mean it was unbelievable when you hear about it and when you see these big briefings where, you know, ‘your target for the night is Berlin, urghhhh,’ [CB laughs], I mean we had nothing [emphasis] like that at all. We, we just used to go into a room, pilot, navigator and air bomber [CB clears throat], and they’d say ‘your tar’ – and there again [emphasis] I don’t know whether you realise this, I haven’t mentioned it, but your target was given a code name, and all of France was part of a horse, have you heard that?
CB: No.
PB: Yeah, the – it was Saddle One or Girth Two or Stirrup One or Denmark, I don’t remember what Denmark or Norway were, but they were never anywhere [emphasis], not in my logbook, it’s just Operation France or Operation Denmark, there’s never any mention – there must be some records in the Ministry somewhere of where these targets were.
CB: Mm.
PB: I remember we were in the South of France and that was no problem at all [emphasis]. There was a great big bonfire and we had a thing called S-Phones, which was new to us, and it was a walkie-talkie thing from about fifteen miles, and also it had red and green direction finding onto the target. So we went and dropped our goods, and then this voice said, oh it said ‘when you go back to England, will you look my sister up?’ [CB laughs.] ‘She lives at such and such a place,’ and we said ‘there’s no way we’re gonna look his sister up’ ‘cause if that got out we really would [emphasis] be for it, you know. So I’m afraid his sister never got the message, but erm, it was – I mean we used to drop our, we used to fly [emphasis] and then ascertain with the signal that it was the target and then we’d continue and drop our load and we’d go [emphasis], not because we were frightened but because it would give the enemy a clue if an aircraft was circling around.
CB: Sure.
PB: Erm –
CB: So if you missed a target what did you do?
PB: I’m afraid you just came back.
CB: Right.
PB: I didn’t, I didn’t lose many, I think of the thirty I did I probably didn’t, didn’t make six or something like that.
CB: Mm, so –
PB: I mean several of them were in Norway. I don’t know whether you’ve been to Norway but it’s a lot of snow [emphasis] in Norway –
CB: Mm.
PB: And if you’re given a target in Norway believe you me, it’s very [laughs] it’s very difficult to find.
CB: Identification points are very difficult aren’t they?
PB: Pardon?
CB: Identification points –
PB: Yes.
CB: Are very difficult.
PB: Yes.
CB: So could you just, can we just look at the briefing and how the sortie went? So at the briefing, how would that go?
PB: The debriefing?
CB: No, at the briefing itself, beforehand, so –
PB: Well as I say it was the pilot, navigator and air bomber and the others weren’t really concerned, they were just concerned with their job.
CB: Mm.
PB: And if there was any new things with gunnery or new things with signalling they would be told, but the actual trip, we sometimes had an agent [emphasis] who’d come back and he’d tell you what the business was like, but no, we were told that ‘this is your target, there it is, here’s your maps and which way do you intend to go?’ so you know, we’d say ‘well from past experience and what other crew have told us, it’s no good crossing the coast there, we think we should cross here,’ ‘yes,’ you know, ‘we agree with you,’ ‘and then we’ll go to this bend in the river, or this edge of a forest, road junction, avoid towns of course,’ and we’d get there.
CB: What – how would you plan the heights that you were flying at?
PB: Just low [laughs]. Damn low, as low as you could.
CB: Mm.
PB: And I think that’s what saved us a lot.
CB: Mm.
PB: That’s not on is it?
CB: It is, yeah.
PB: Pardon?
CB: It is now [emphasis], yes.
PB: Oh –
CB: Yeah.
PB: Oh, I won’t say anything more –
CB: What? Well I can stop for a moment.
PB: Well I just mentioned that we had a shortage of crews once –
CB: Yeah.
PB: And you can check it up, but erm, we had a shortage of crews before I got to the squadron, not sure when it was, it was something like, could have been June or something 1944, but they said ‘well obviously the best squadron is to have three aircraft from the Dambusters Squadron,’ and they sent three aircraft that promptly shot [?] the place up, marvellous flying marvellous pilots and everything, and everyone stared in awe, and they parked their aircraft and our ground crew went and said ‘oh no you can’t go in here we’ve got secret equipment,’ great fuss you know, so they said ‘alright, we’ll refuel and here’s your, what you’ve got to do.’ But unfortunately for them out of the three only one got back. And – is that on?
CB: Yeah.
PB: I got my theories and I’ll probably be court martialed [laughs] or something for this –
CB: Not now you won’t [laughs].
PB: [Laughing] I’ve got my theories that the reason that the 617 Squadron lost so many planes on the dam raid and also for a short while afterwards they, they really come, came unstuck was because low level to them was not low level what I call –
CB: Mm.
PB: And I mean the most vulnerable [emphasis] place to be is about three-thousand feet. I’m not saying they flew at three-thousand feet but I think that if they’d have flown a bit lower – I don’t know about this I’m talking a load of rubbish I know, but I think if they’d have flown a bit lower they might have got away with it, you know, but that’s – but they certainly came to us and, and out of the three only one got back.
CB: And what were they doing when they were with you?
PB: Pardon?
CB: What were they doing when they came to you?
PB: Well they’d just done the dam raid –
CB: Yeah but those three [emphasis], what did they, what, what were they doing?
PB: [Pause] what when they came to us?
CB: Yes.
PB: Well they were doing just the normal job that we did, because we were so short of crews we wanted, you know –
CB: So they were dropping supplies as well?
PB: Yes, yes.
CB: Right.
PB: Dropping agents, I don’t know about agents, I don’t think they dropped agents, there’s no mention of agents being killed, but they certainly were dropping supplies –
CB: Mm.
PB: And two of them, whether they were shot down or not I don’t know, but it said that only one returned to base, which, I think Cheshire was the wing commander and he wasn’t very pleased about it, but erm, yeah.
CB: So when you were on your ops then, what was the division of labour? Because you were right out, right out at the front, you were – were you feeding stuff back to the navigator or were you telling the pilot directly where to go?
PB: Erm, I was mainly in the second pilot’s seat, I did my map reading from the second pilot’s seat. And then when we were over the target obviously I was in the nose, but I didn’t have a bomb site, we just flew down the, the lights, bonfires or torches or whatever they were, and dropped, as I say, it was four hundred feet for parcels and the canisters and six hundred feet for agents.
CB: So at what stage from the target would you be moving to the bomb aimers position? How many miles out?
PB: Well when we were probably on the circuit. Just before we went, just before we, we – I made sure if possible that we were at the target and check that I was sure we were on the target I think we got the signal, then I would go into the bomb aimer’s position.
CB: Mm.
PB: But it wasn’t a question of getting anything fixed up. All you did was select the bomb switches and then press the button when the pilot flew down the –
CB: So the stores are all in the bomb bay –
PB: Pardon?
CB: The supplies are all in the bomb bay, and –
PB: Yes, and in the fuselage –
CB: Right.
PB: Packages.
CB: And could you drop the lot at the same time or did you have to have a sequence?
PB: Well there was a sequence which was automatic on the, on the –
CB: On the release.
PB: On the release –
CB: Mhm.
PB: I mean, I think it was almost instantaneous you know, one one one one, wasn’t a question of the whole [emphasis] lot together and it wasn’t a question of many seconds in between. It was a question sort of one two three four five, like that.
CB: Were they just dropped as they were or did they have parachutes?
PB: [Pause] they had parachutes [emphasis].
CB: Right.
PB: Yeah [laughing] yeah. For a minute [laughs, GG laughs] I couldn’t remember, but no I do remember they had parachutes, yeah, yes.
CB: Including the ones that were pushed out by the dispatcher?
PB: Oh do you know – I would imagine so but I don’t know [emphasis].
CB: With a static line? [?]
PB: I think if they’d have landed [coughs] without, they’d have smashed when they hit the ground.
CB: Mm.
PB: [Coughs]. But [pause] but –
CB: So you’re going over the target and you’ve dropped your supplies. How did you proceed back from there?
PB: Well the navigator had already worked out a course for home, and I don’t think I took much of a part. I, I think I’d checked obviously on what was going on –
CB: Mm.
PB: But I think the navigator gave the courses and we got back home [emphasis]. But the unfortunate thing was that after the V1s started we were ordered, all aircraft were ordered to come back into England over ten-thousand feet, and that was a damn nuisance. I had a friend that was shot up with the Royal Navy, and he was flying at a nice comfortable ten-thousand feet and the – that’s, that’s the story – is that on?
CB: Yeah, yeah.
PB: Well this is the story – I can’t remember the pilot’s name now. He was a New Zealander and he got shot up by the Royal Navy and he said ‘fire [?] the colours of the day [emphasis].’ Well the colours of the day were in a varied [?] pistol above the signaller’s head, in the roof. And he didn’t know what to do, and when they landed, the pilot was absolutely mad [emphasis] and he said ‘you stupid idiot,’ or words to this effect, probably more tastier than that [CB laughs], but he said ‘look,’ he said, ‘here’s a pistol, you just press it.’ [Laughs, GG laughs]. And he pressed it and set fire to the aircraft [all laugh]. And I don’t know whether it was a – I think it was probably superficial damage but, erm, yeah.
CB: So, the point, am I right in saying, of flying above ten-thousand feet was so that the people on the ground would not be shooting at higher level aircraft? Because they were shooting at the V1s.
PB: Yes, yeah. But, erm, we were, we were shot up by the Americans once as we, as we were going into the tar – well not going into the target but crossing our lines, and I suppose you can’t blame them really if they hear or see any aircraft they’re going to take evasive action, but – there were lots of instances. I remember a friend of mine he became a roommate of mine when I was first commissioned, and they couldn’t make the, the height [emphasis] above the clouds, the cumulonimbus, and the pilot went underneath and they got struck by lightning, and he was blind for a week. He walked around with the dark glasses, but he got his sight back. But he ended up with a DFC, he shot down two one-nineties [emphasis] which was very unusual.
CB: Was he mid upper or rear gunner?
PB: He was a rear gunner. He – and there again, coincidence and everything, he, he was my roommate, we were both commissioned together and he finished his tour just before me, and he went away, I lost touch with him. And years later my brother had returned from being a prisoner of war, and he was made CO of a, of an aircrew reclassification unit in Hereford I think it was, where the, all the redundant aircrew were put other jobs, you know, administrative jobs and various things, and who should be one of his pupils but this flying officer Dunning? Very strange.
CB: Hmm.
PB: But a story about him which is perfectly true and a modern person wouldn’t believe it I don’t think, but we used to go, about a flight of thirty, and have our different injections, TAB and ATT and blood tests, and he was a Liverpudlian, or near, near Liverpool, and he lined up and he had his injection, I don’t know which one it was, and within milliseconds [emphasis] he collapsed, and they said ‘oh my God,’ you know, ‘another wimp.’ Put him on the couch and then someone happened to look and said ‘my God he’s gone the colour of crimson’ [emphasis]. So they called, you know, the hospital, and called his mother [emphasis] actually, his father was in the army. But he was touch and go, and what had happened was, you, I don’t know about in your time, but in those days the doctors just used a needle until it was blunt. I mean there was no question of use once and throw away, but unfortunately for him the doctor had changed shift and put his syringe down with the serum in it and the next doctor picked it up and gave this friend of mine the lot, and this previous doctor had put about five doses in the syringe [emphasis].
CB: Jeez.
PB: And the doctor that took over didn’t realise this and he gave this friend of mine the whole [emphasis] lot.
CB: Jeez.
PB: And it damn nearly killed him.
CB: Mm.
PB: I mean, I know that’s true because he told me, but.
CB: Mm. Hm.
PB: We had another crew that – if they were right down in the South of France, I never did have the luxury of doing it, but if they were right down in the South of France, very often they would fly through to Northern Africa, Algeria I think it was, Blida [emphasis], is Blida North Africa?
CB: Mm.
PB: And they would refuel and everything and then come back, and I think probably drop some more supplies on the way back, but this crew, they started back and they’d got all the goodies which you’d never see, oranges and things [CB laughs], and they started losing height, and I think that part of Africa, I think was a thousand feet above sea level, but they gradually lost height until throwing everything that was movable [emphasis] over board, they said ‘it’s no good’ and they’d seen a, a ship which was lights on and they landed by it. And it turned out to be a, a Portuguese ship, neutral ship, and in the ditching, this friend of mine who’s an air gunner, he got a DFM for it, he rescued someone, but one of them was killed. I can’t remember who it was, and they came back to England and they, they were landed somewhere in Portugal and they flew back. But talking of that sort of thing, is this on?
CB: Mm.
PB: There’s a friend of mine who’s well tabulated, he’s, he’s in Max Hastings’ “Bomber Command” book – did I say a friend? He was a brother-in-law actually, my [CB laughs] wife’s sister’s husband, chap called Bill McGrath. Have you heard of him?
CB: Nope.
PB: Well he’s in the official history and everything. And he was a pre-war observer, and he was on the Blenheim Squadron, eighty-seven I think it was. Anyway, he was on the squadron and the Battle of France, before the Battle of Britain, Battle of France, and they used to go out in formation in Blenheims at about ten-thousand feet, and really get messed up, and he went out one trip and he was the only crew to return, and the next trip he went out the whole lot were shot down. And this is absolutely true, it’s, you know, it’s in the official recordings, and he was, he ditched [emphasis] and he was badly injured. He lost the sight of one eye but he never lost the eye, and he was injured but he was made a prisoner of war. He escaped [emphasis] three times [CB laughs]. And the first time, or second time he was recaptured, and the second time he gave himself up, the two of them because they were so cold and hungry, and the third time they made it from Paris, all the way down through France, over the Pyrenees and he got a [pause], what do you call it, erm, a military medal for it. But he carried on flying [CB laughs]. He was instructing [emphasis] and carried on flying, but he hadn’t got sight in one eye, he’d lost it. But he used to memorise the sight chart, and one day he, they changed the sight chart and they said ‘my God you’re blind’ [CB laughs] and he said ‘yes,’ so they says ‘right,’ and he was Irish, Northern Irish actually, or Southern Irish, Irish, and they said ‘right, you’re –’ he was a warrant, I think he was a warrant officer, sure he was a warrant officer. Anyway, he was, erm, reduced to a ground duty job and lost his seniority, and so, being Irish he wrote to his mother [emphasis]. He said, knowing that the letter would be, you know, scrutinised –
CB: Mm.
PB: And he said ‘I’m seriously thinking of leaving. I’m, I’m, I’m Irish so I can [emphasis] leave,’ said ‘it’s disgusting treatment,’ and the CO got to hear, course, course it was –
CB: The censor read it.
PB: Pardon?
CB: The censor [emphasis] read it.
PB: Censored, yeah. And he went in front and he said ‘what’s this McGrath,’ and he said what had happened, and he said ‘oh well don’t do anything,’ he said ‘we’ll see you’re okay.’ And he got commissioned in the [coughs] what was called Flying Control. But that’s the way they treated them. If he’d not been Irish he would have lost all his flying pay and his rank and he was, it was, yes he was – and he’s quoted in I think it’s Max Hastings’ book “Bomber Command,” Bill McGrath [emphasis]. We used to call him Mac but he’d referred to as Bill McGrath. My brother, they [laughs], they say that all air crew are volunteers. I don’t think that was strictly [emphasis] true to be perfectly honest, probably ninety-nine percent, but my brother did the same as me and he was older, and he was attested and they said ‘yes okay,’ you know, ‘pilot under training. Now do you want to come in the Air Force or do you want to wait to be called up?’ ‘Oh no’ he says ‘I want to come in the Air Force,’ so they called him up and put him on a wireless operator course at Yatesbury, Wiltshire, and then when he passed his wireless operator course he said ‘well,’ you know ‘what about my pilots course?’ And they said ‘oh God no,’ they said ‘you’re a wireless operator flying, and you’ve got to do fifteen ops’ or something so he was I think an LAC when he came out of the radio school, and he went on about a six week air gunners course [laughs] and came in as a sergeant, wireless operator air gunner, and then eventually he was told that he’s got to do fifteen ops and unfortunately I think he was shot down on his fifteenth op, but he was a POW, but, yeah.
CB: How did he get on with that?
PB: Not at all well [emphasis]. He’s, he’s one that just didn’t – he was, he was I suppose only [emphasis] sounds awful, but he was about two years as a POW from August forty-three until about May of forty-five, and he stopped on the Air Force for a little while, for about three or four years, and he left the Air Force and got quite a nice job in the city and then he was, they used to go and have a ploughman’s lunch and he suddenly got up and he was vomiting blood in the gutter, and he got a burst ulcer, but he recovered from that. But the POW business really [emphasis] upset him and he couldn’t go on the top flight of a bus [emphasis] and all sorts of silly things. He held a job, but lived on drugs and then eventually they killed him, you know, the drugs were just too much, and –
CB: Mm.
PB: And, he was in his sixties when he died, but [pause] he was just one that didn’t take to being shut up.
CB: Mm.
PB: Incidentally, he said that they were, erm, what’s the word [pause], released [emphasis], that’s the wrong word. I can’t think of words nowadays, by the Russians [emphasis].
CB: Mm.
PB: And they all started to go out of camp and the Russians were really [emphasis] nasty, and the senior camp officer went to the Russian colonel and said, you know, ‘we’re on your side,’ so he said ‘oh yes of course’ and so he said ‘okay, now is there anything you want?’ and he said ‘well we’re very short of food,’ and my brother said they were terrible [emphasis], they were barbarians [emphasis], they used to go round to the farms and places, and they said ‘oh we want that pig, we want that,’ and if they said ‘oh no,’ bang [?] they’d shoot them, and when he came back, and he wasn’t the only one, he said to me ‘we should go straight [emphasis] into Russia now,’ and he was convinced [emphasis] that there would be trouble with Russia. He wasn’t far wrong but it didn’t develop into anything, but he, he was convinced [emphasis] that Russia wanted tackling straight away –
CB: Mm.
PB: But, erm, yes. I’ve been prattling on – I don’t know what you, probably –
CB: When you –
PB: Edit a lot of this [laughs].
CB: Well, you –
PB: [Laughing] cut it out.
CB: When, when you were on, on an operation [clears throat], what were you actually doing most in the – how were – what was your task during the flight?
PB: Map reading. Very intensive, I mean it’s, it’s like if, it, well it’s a bit more intensive obviously, but if you go from here to Scotland all with a sat-nav. They call them sat-navs?
CB: Mhm.
PB: You know, you sort of concentrate, ‘oh you turn right here, you turn left here, go over the roundabout,’ well I mean that was my job, I never had time to – unless they said ‘there’s an enemy aircraft’ or ‘there’s an aircraft’ or something I never, I never left the map, I was, you know, concentrating on the map, making sure that we were on track.
CB: And you could do that perfectly well from the co-pilot’s seat could you?
PB: Yes, yes. You could see pretty well. Yes I didn’t, I didn’t very often get down in the bomb bay until as I say, until we’d got right near the target, and identified the target. And the target was, each target had its code name, which sometimes was a lovely audislamp [?] and sometimes seemed to be a candle [laughs] yeah.
CB: And, er, it was only in the later part of the war that you had the walkie-talkie link?
PB: Yes we only used it once and that was getting on for the end of the war in the South of France.
CB: Yeah, so apart from that, how were you identifying your target when, say, the outside visual, immediate visual distance, so at twenty miles how would you be getting close to be sure that you were on target?
PB: Well you, you, you got as near as you could until you saw the fires or the lights, and erm –
CB: ‘Cause we’re in the dark aren’t we?
PB: Pardon?
CB: We’re in the dark all the time.
PB: Oh, well [emphasis] it was moonlight –
CB: Moonlight.
PB: And believe you me, flying sometimes like ten days each side of the moon, full moon, it was almost like daylight.
CB: Oh, right.
PB: And once they could hear you coming, and it didn’t take much to set fire to these bonfires –
CB: Mm.
PB: Or to have a light and flash the light –
CB: Mm.
PB: And they were always, you know, downwind, upwind, wind was – and there would be three of them, a hundred metres apart, and at the downwind end there was someone would be there, with a bit of luck it would be a nice audislamp [?] and if you were a bit unlucky it would be a dodgy flashlight [emphasis] which would [pause]. But it was remarkably [emphasis] efficient actually. I don’t know – I suppose somewhere along the lines someone could find out what the percentage of successful drops were, but I think they were fairly high.
CB: Mm.
PB: I’m not sure but I think I missed – I could do it now if counted them, but I think out of thirty I think I missed the target about six times.
CB: Mm.
PB: And as I said, two or three of those were in Norway, and that was, that was –
CB: Mm. Very difficult.
PB: Really horrendous [emphasis]. Flying over that snow, it was very difficult indeed.
CB: Erm, how often was the aircraft attacked [emphasis] during your operations?
PB: We were very lucky, we were hardly attacked at all. Very [emphasis] lucky indeed, I mean – in fact I think, I think you’ll find that if you were attacked you’d usually had it, because there’s no way of bailing out at that height.
CB: Mm.
PB: So I mean you’d – and if you’d crashed you’d – like this squadron leader chap, flight commander, I mean he hit a balloon cable the story is there –
CB: Mm.
PB: And he was, I think all the crew was safe [emphasis], but erm. If you were actually shot down at that height there was very little chance of [pause], yeah.
CB: But it was quite difficult for the night fighters to get down to you because their radar wouldn’t work against you close to the ground.
PB: No, no that’s [coughs] their radar?
CB: Yeah.
PB: No, no their – and of course unfortunately our radar [laughing] didn’t work when we were close to the ground.
CB: Mm.
PB: But –
CB: And did you have Monica?
PB: Hmm?
CB: Did you have Monica to test, to check if anything was following you?
PB: Did we have –
CB: Did you have the Monica receiver?
PB: No. No, we never had them. No, all we had was G.
CB: Yeah.
PB: And, and just on the one trip we had these things called S-Phones.
CB: Mm.
PB: But they only operated about something like fifteen miles away from the target –
CB: Mm.
PB: And it was a walkie-talkie thing, and then it had red and green and you could home in on the red and green [pause]. Yeah I personally don’t think there’s enough credit given to the resistance, I mean when you read of – you see that, what was his name, the armaments boss of Germany?
CB: Oh, Speer [emphasis].
PB: Speer.
CB: Mm.
PB: And he said that, erm, many more attacks and Germany were finished.
CB: Mm.
PB: And yet –
CB: Particularly after Hamburg.
PB: Yes, but you see I never – I, I, I’m a great admirer of Churchill, but he was a politician, and I’ll never [emphasis] forgive him for what he, his action [emphasis] he took after the Dresden raid.
CB: Mm.
PB: Now, I’ve got the official history of the RAF, three or four volumes of it, and it’s all [emphasis] tabulated there, letters and memos and things, and Russia wanted Dresden bombed [emphasis on last four words]. And they told Churchill and Roosevelt they wanted Dresden bombed. And Churchill said ‘yes, yes, okay.’ And the chief of the air staff did as he was told, and they said to Harris, Bomber Command chief, ‘we want you to bomb Dresden.’ Now it’s documented [emphasis] that Harris said ‘there’s no point [emphasis], absolutely no point, it’s civilian [emphasis] sort of population and it’s a lot of rubbish to say that’s it’s a complication of troops coming,’ and for two weeks he stalled, and then – I’ve got all this in print [emphasis]. And Churchill said ‘look, if you don’t do as you’re told you’re out.’ So he was an officer, he did as he was told and bombed Dresden. Within a short while, I don’t know whether it was days or weeks, days I think, Churchill was up in parliament condemning the raids on unnecessary civil populations. And of course, another thing which I won’t forgive him for which is all the same thing, was that he never gave Bomber Command a campaign medal.
CB: Mm.
PB: I mean, there was the Italian campaign, there was the Burma campaign, but never [emphasis] Bomber – I got a clasp, I got a Bomber Command clasp [coughs] a nice fibre [?] campaign [laughs] clasp.
CB: Did you get your French Legion of Honour?
PB: No, no, never got that. I never said I deserved it, I don’t think I did anything more than what hundreds of other people did. But I do think that the French should, perhaps they have done, honour the French Resistance more, I think they – and I think our government should have recognised the French Resistance, definitely. I mean there’s a story, one of the stories I remember – I used to read a lot of war books after the war, and there was a great big unit, regiment or something, from the south, and because of the French harassment, the resistance, Maquis Resistance. They took not days but weeks [emphasis] to get up to Normandy, and they, these things aren’t recognised [emphasis], you know, there’s –
CB: Mm. When you got to the end of your tour of thirty, how did you feel?
PB: [Pause, laughs]. Believe it or not, I applied to carry on with the squadron that were due to go out in the Far East [laughs]. I must have been mad [laughs] I think, I must [laughing] have been mad. But, my, my pilot as I say, he had a bit of clout, and he stopped on, on the squadron when it changed to Lancasters, and he got a job as an instructor, or a coordinating chap, but my, the present, the flight commander at that time, he asked people that were in the know, our bosses, if I could go as his bomb aimer but they wouldn’t let him, they said ‘no, he’s done his thirty ops and that’s it, he’s finished.’
CB: Mm.
PB: Tony Darsefton [?], and I read after the war that he was killed in a civil air crash. He became a civil airline pilot and was – I saw in “The Telegraph” obituary that he was killed.
CB: Mm.
PB: But, oh life is full of ifs.
CB: What would you say was your most memorable point about your RAF service?
PB: Most memorable [emphasis] point [pause]. I can’t answer that, you know, I, I’d have to have an hour to think about that I think. I suppose it must be when I did my last op. I suppose it must [emphasis] be really, to think that I’ve – and then again you see ,the war when I finished was nearly over, so I’d got every chance of surviving the war. Sounds melodramatic but, erm. But one never, one never actually thought about dying or getting shot down or anything, or, if you – I mean one or two friends [emphasis] were killed, but a lot of them were ships [?] in the night, ‘oh hasn’t that one returned tonight?’ and that sort of thing, you didn’t, you didn’t know too many people intimately.
CB: And after the war, did the crew keep together, in touch?
PB: Well [coughs] the short answer to that is no [emphasis], but, erm, I did have one of my, the mid upper gunner, dispatcher [coughs] he came to my wedding, and the rear gunner, he came and brought his little daughter, but it didn’t last long, just the one visit.
CB: Mm.
PB: And there were two squadron reunions I went to, but I’d grown so away from that sort of life and the majority of people that I’d met from the squadron were sort of used car salesmen [both laugh], and I just, I just lost touch with them really. And I lost touch with my actual crew members, even the one that came to my wedding, and the one that came and visited us when we were both married and had children.
CB: When you were commissioned just after the pilot, what effect did that have on the social events of the crew?
PB: None at all. No, I mean, I was still a Christian name and we were Christian names, and – in fact, erm [laughs] to get commissioned I was called into the, well not called [emphasis] in that sounds a bit haughty, but I was, called, well called, I can’t think of any other word, to the orderly room and they said ‘oh your commission’s through’ [CB laughs]. I said ‘oh, okay, what do I do?’ They said ‘oh just report to the, the officer, the mess officer’ or something, so I went up to the officers mess and said ‘oh, commission,’ ‘oh yes,’ they said, ‘this is your room now,’ and [pause], I don’t know, but I mean, I just took my, I was a flight sergeant, I just took my stripes off my battle dress and put the ring on my shoulder [laughs]. And I was fortunate that my brother [emphasis] his uniform was at home, and I was easily, it was easier to go home for me from Tempsford in Welling, to Welling, and I used his uniform, and I went to my tailor in London, and I had my uniform made by my tailor, you know, who made my suits and things.
CB: Mm.
PB: An, but that was being commissioned [emphasis]. I mean the, I think the naval and the army people will be horrified [emphasis, laughs]. As I say, one minute I was a flight sergeant and the next minute [laughing] I was an officer.
CB: Mm. And was the navigator also commissioned?
PB: Eventually yes.
CB: But not then.
PB: No he was, he was [pause] – he must have been commissioned when were on the squadron. Oh I – he was about three months after me, that’s right, ‘cause I was commissioned probably in about the August [emphasis] of forty-four.
CB: And the engineer?
PB: No, none of the others were commissioned.
CB: Right.
PB: And again [emphasis] I don’t – you see, as a pilot, navigator and air bomber, you were automatically a flight sergeant after twelve months. But I don’t know whether the air gunners were or whether they have to do – I think they had a bit of a hard task, you know, they probably had to wait a couple of years.
CB: Mm.
PB: I don’t know how long you were between flight sergeant and warrant officer. Might be twelve months, or – but I was never a warrant officer, I was, I went from flight sergeant to –
CB: Rigjhy.
PB: And my pilot [emphasis] of course one day he was a flight sergeant, on the next day he was a flight lieutenant [emphasis].
CB: Oh.
PB: Acting flight lieutenant. Well, not on the next day but within a month certainly.
CB: Mm.
PB: But he was never a pilot officer. I think he was a flying officer from flight sergeant and then a, then an acting flight lieutenant.
CB: Why would that be do you think?
PB: Pardon?
CB: Why would that be?
PB: It was a pilot’s Air Force [laughs].
CB: Now, Tempsford was a wartime constructed airfield. What were the facilities like?
PB: Very good really, very good. I mean, as a, as a flight sergeant I think there was just our crew in the Nissan hut, there might have been a couple of crews. But when I was an officer, I was given a room with this chap I mentioned before, who had the injection and – in a house called Hassles. And it was a country house which the group captain lived in, and he entertained a lot of these important agents, and we had a room, ooh I think it was bigger than this room, with twin beds, above the stable block. And the group captains batman [?], we shared a batman [?] and we shared him part time, and he used to give us the odd gooses egg from the group captains [laughs] flock of geese. But it was very comfortable, it was a bit bigger than this room I think, very, very comfortable.
CB: Hmm. This is about eighteen square.
PB: I think this is [emphasis] about sixteen square, yes, I’m not sure but yeah, it was bigger than this room. Bit, bit bigger than this room and it was very comfortable, and we had – it was about a mile away from the ‘drome, and the, erm, this – he was made the flight commander after Rosswell [?], no after Watson moved onto to – Watson followed Rosswell, and Watson was 161 Wing Commander and got killed, but the chap that followed Watson was Tony Darsefton [?], and he used to live out at Hassles, he had a separate room, and he used to give us lifts in and it was, we’d always be able to get RAF transport if we had to go into the, well we had to go in. But it was, the discipline [emphasis] was almost non-existent, it really was. It was very laid back, but we did our job.
CB: The aircraft went of individually presumably, rather than in pairs or more?
PB: Well, well you couldn’t [emphasis] – I mean you couldn’t, obviously [emphasis] you couldn’t have a mass briefing because you’d have on the squadron alone you might have twenty different targets. I mean each flight consisted of about twelve aircraft I think, and twelve crews, but of course they weren’t all on the same night, but erm, but it was a very [emphasis] exciting time, and of course we got a lot [emphasis] of leave, we got a terrific amount of leave. We used to get I think it was something like ten days one months and six days the next. I was always [emphasis] home. And you used to get, as an officer, as a pilot officer, you used to get a first class travel warrant. In fact it didn’t apply to me, but most [emphasis] of the people [coughs] lived [coughed] up north, they used to put an aircraft on for what’s called a night flying test [CB laughs]. And they’d take them off to York or Scotland for their leave, and then lay on an aircraft to pick them up [emphasis]. Bloody selfish I suppose really [CB laughs], but it was done, I mean they –
CB: Mm. And they could have flown you to Biggin Hill.
PB: Hmm?
CB: And they could have flown you [emphasis] to Biggin Hill.
PB: Yes [laughing], yes I’d have more job to get from Biggin Hill to Welling [both laugh] than from Tempsford. The train was very good from there, yes. Very –
CB: Final –
PB: Very exciting times and –
CB: Right. So what was the most exciting thing do you think?
PB: The most what?
CB: The most exciting [emphasis] event that you had.
PB: In the Air Force? [Pause.] I don’t know.
CB: ‘Cause they were all exciting.
PB: Erm, some of them were boring. I mean the, the trips to Norway, I mean they were five hours there or so and five hours back, they were very [emphasis] boring. And we didn’t have any television or – I suppose we could have got the radio, I don’t know, never tried, but – they used to give us wakey-wakey tablets.
CB: Mm.
PB: I don’t know whether they worked or not –
CB: Benzedrine.
PB: Hmm?
CB: Benzedrine tablets.
PB: Was it?
CB: Mm.
PB: I don’t know whether they worked – I never, never gave them a chance to work. We used to do as we were told a lot. Not always, as I say I got into trouble for oversleeping. You see, going – is this on?
CB: Mm.
PB: Oh perhaps I –
CB: Go on.
PB: Well you can cut it out if you don’t want it –
CB: Yeah.
PB: This, this engineer, flight engineer, he wasn’t [emphasis], he’d gone to flights, and he wasn’t affected by our absence from flights when we went up to Sheffield, and yet you’d have thought he’d have said ‘ooh my God that’s my crew, I’d better go and wake them up and tell them that’ – I don’t know, very strange. But he was a real loner [?][emphasis] sort of chap, you do get them I suppose –
CB: He was the only one married, was he?
PB: He was married.
CB: He was the only one of the crew?
PB: No [emphasis], no, no the wireless operator, wireless operator air gunner was getting on a bit, he might have been twenty-eight or something [CB laughs], he was married with a child, yes.
CB: So you returned from an operation, and had a debrief.
PB: Yes.
CB: How did the debrief go?
PB: Erm, very simple really. I mean you’d – we had to fill out air bomber – one of my jobs to fill out a weather report. Mostly, obviously, the only thing you could report was well, fog I suppose, but was the cloud formations and different heights, and in those days I, I knew what the cloud formations was. I can’t say I do now. And what interference we had, erm, whether, whether it was easy to find, whether there was a good reception or whether it was a terrible reception. There were lots of stories – one story that floated around, I don’t know how true it was, but I think there might have been two crews, but there was one crew that went to this target, and they flashed their identification but it wasn’t quite perfect [emphasis] for some reason, and they thought that they’d best to not drop their load. I thought ‘this is a bit suspicious,’ and after several attempts this signal didn’t come through clear, I mean if it was dot dash dash dot they’d get the dot dash and then they might not get the dash dot. So they decided to bring this stuff back, and – this is rumour [emphasis] as I say I don’t know how true it was, but the story was that these resistance were surrounded by Germans, and every time they went up to, you know, press the signal, they were shot and killed, and if they’d have dropped the containers they would have stood a good chance of putting up a resistance. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, you got all sorts of things.
CB: Mm. Could have worked all ways.
PB: But the stories that are true and I’ve read in a couple of these resistance books – I used to get a lot of books after the war. And it was terribly [emphasis] laid back, gosh [emphasis]. In some cases there was a chap that was dropped, and he went to his safe place and the thing is you don’t walk in and rap on the door and say ‘hello, I’m here,’ you sort of observe the place and, and sure enough he kept an eye on it and it looked safe. So he went in and they said ‘oh come in’ in English you know, ‘come in,’ and they were talking in English [laughs] and he was absolutely flabbergasted [emphasis] at the lax security, but –
CB: Did you ever get to talk to the agents, you were dropping?
PB: Yes, yes. We had – on several of the drops we had an agent that had just come back, and he would give you a few tips, I can’t remember what they were but he could have told you that so many miles south west of the drop there was a German fighter unit or an AK-AK battery or something, which you know, did prove very useful.
CB: Mm.
PB: We did – yeah we had quite a lot of – and sometimes they were a bit of an organised talk by an agent who to tell you what was going on, but of course the tragedy was, I think it was the Dutch [emphasis] – don’t know whether you’ve heard of this, but the Dutch resistance was penetrated [emphasis] –
CB: Mm.
PB: Did you know this?
CB: Yep.
PB: So I’m, I, if I tell you –
CB: Go on, keep going.
PB: I’m only repeating –
CB: No keep going, keep going.
PB: Well as far as I know, they have a call which if they don’t use it, the signallers, then they know that they’re captured. And this signaller, he didn’t use his call sign, and the chap the other end he said ‘oh he’s just forgotten, don’t take any notice,’ and there was one chap at Baker Street which was SOE headquarters, who said ‘I don’t like this at all’ but he was more junior, and they said ‘no,’ you know, ‘everything’s alright don’t worry.’ And unfortunately they were just pitching agents right left and centre into the hands of the Nazis.
CB: Mm.
PB: And it wasn’t until sometime afterwards that they closed the whole circuit down.
CB: Mm.
PB: I, I never did do a trip to Holland.
CB: Mm, tragic.
PB: It was, it was infiltrated.
CB: Now you talked earlier about your later contact with Bletchley Park. To what extent were you aware of any contact while you were in 138?
PB: Was I [coughs], sorry, was I –
CB: Aware of contact with Bletchley Park?
PB: None, none at all. Well, funnily enough, the only contact which we had, and I didn’t realise the significance of course, but when I met my wife up here at this officers mess which would have been about April 1945, they’d imported a lot of Bletchley Park girls, and these two girls were standing by the fireplace there, and a friend of mine said ‘they fancy you,’ and I said ‘oh don’t talk such nonsense,’ you know, I said ‘go on’ I said ‘you’re a lady-killer, you go and ask them for a dance.’ [Laughs] so he went over and he came back and said ‘no they want to dance with you.’ I said ‘oh well you don’t know to treat women.’ So I went and it happened to be my future wife, and erm, I said, you know ‘would you like to dance?’ And they said ‘well, we’ve got the tip that the food’s coming up,’ course my brother-in-law’s, you know, here, the chap that was escaped from POW. So, but that’s how I met Stella. But what, who I thought [emphasis] was a girl, civil servant from Bletchley Park was actually Stella. But that’s the contact I had with Bletchley Park but I didn’t know exactly, I just thought they were evacuated civil servants, but, we didn’t, we didn’t know an awful lot to be perfectly honest. I mean, I met a chap in Rotary, I went to a, what do you call it, a district do, and this chap said he lived at Sandy, I said [CB laughs], ‘oh’ I said ‘I was stationed at Tempsford,’ he said ‘ooh were you?’ I said ‘yes,’ he said ‘well,’ he said ‘do you know, when your aircraft flew out they used to come found and padlock all the telephone boxes.’ I couldn’t really see the point of that but he assured me it was true. But it’s – they never, the Germans never attacked Tempsford. I’m sure they must have had some clue about it, they must [emphasis] have done. But, they, they never attacked Tempsford. They did have one huge raid in about March I think it was, in forty-five, and it was really like, like picking cherries off a tree for them. Because they sent a whole lot of fighters and they followed the bombers in as they landed and they were absolutely sitting ducks and they did do a lot of damage that particular time.
CB: Mm.
PB: But they never actually singled – as far as I know they never singled out Tempsford at all.
CB: Mm.
PB: You never know what dealings went on in war. There’s so much going on. I mean it’s a well known fact that we were dealing with Sweden and Germany were dealing with Sweden, and [laughs] you know it was sort of like this.
CB: After you’d finished your tour you went to the OTU, so how did that –
PB: Up here?
CB: Yes. So how did that work? What did you do there?
PB: I didn’t like it to start with, I didn’t like it a bit. But of course I met Stella shortly afterwards, my wife, and that made life very agreeable. I spent most [laughing] of the time playing tennis down here. But far as the work was concerned it was very good because I did a lot of flying instructing, I didn’t do much ground instructing. To be perfectly honest I didn’t know much [laughs] about the ground. I couldn’t very well say ‘when you get over the target you do this’ [laughs] because I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about main force bombing.
CB: So you went up with the trainee crews in the Wellingtons?
PB: Erm, only with an instructor pilot. I never went up with just a trainee crew. I went up – sometimes on the cross countries where there was a bombing attack afterwards or a, what do you, a bullseye [emphasis] they used to call – where you went to London and you took an infrared photograph of the target. But I don’t think I ever flew with, with a trainee crew there was always an instructor pilot with me.
CB: So what were you doing as an instructor at the OTU?
PB: I often wonder [laughs] ‘cause I couldn’t tell ‘em how to operate the bomb site. Erm, I don’t know, it’s just one of these things that, you know, you’ve got to have an instructor. Well I can understand having a pilot instructor. To a certain degree I can understand having a, a navigator instructor, but why you need an instructor to, to – ‘cause you should know how to use the bomb site on the ground before you fly up. They had, I forget what it was called now, but the bomb site that I trained on was called a setting bomb site. A very, very primitive thing which you set the course, the air speed, and told the pilot to fly on a certain course, and a certain speed, and you dropped the bombs and they were miles [emphasis] away [CB laughs]. They really were miles away. Well I don’t know about miles but – the story, there’s one story which was round, going around, and this Polish [emphasis] crew, and you did a – last trip you did was a cross country, and you ended up from an OTU, a training point of view, you ended up in the Severn or one of these bombing ranges and you dropped a couple of five-hundred pound bombs [emphasis], and the story is that this Polish crew went up and they said ‘to blazes with this, we’re not wasting this on the sea’ [CB laughs] ‘we’re going to take this off to France.’ Have you heard?
CB: No.
PB: And the – I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but the story is that they went off and they dropped their bombs over in occupied Europe. And I think they got told off a bit but they were Poles, and I met several Poles and they were great people, really great people, really were. And good pilots come to that.
CB: I think we’ve had a good run, thank you very much.
PB: Well I told you a lot of –
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Peter Bellingham
Identifier
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ABellinghamPF161121
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2016-11-21
Format
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02:05:02 audio recording
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Pending review
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Bellingham worked as a post office engineer before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He trained in Rhodesia and South Africa and completed a tour of operations as a bomb aimer, dropping supplies with 138 Squadron from RAF Tempsford. He describes the different roles each crew member was given, the briefing, the lights which signalled the target, the release of the parcels, supplies and agents, and the debrief. He then became an instructor and after demobilisation in 1946 he worked in agriculture.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
South Africa
Zambia
England--Bedfordshire
England--Cumbria
England--Suffolk
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
11 OTU
138 Squadron
17 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
briefing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
crewing up
FIDO
Flying Training School
Initial Training Wing
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Millom
RAF Silverstone
RAF Tempsford
RAF Turweston
RAF Woodbridge
Special Operations Executive
training
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Green, Langford W
Bill Green
Joe Green
L W Green
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Langford William Green (1923 - 2022, 2236292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, service documents and photographs. After training, Langford Green served as an air gunner with 218 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh. He flew 18 operations and several Operation Manna supply drops to Dutch civilians.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Langford Green and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, these items are available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln.
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Green, LW
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Interview with Langford William Green
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Chris Brockbank
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2016-04-28
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Julie Williams
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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01:23:26 audio recording
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eng
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Sound
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AGreenLW160428
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Langford "Joe" Green was born in Wales but moved to Marlow, Buckinghamshire with his family when he was still a child. He worked in a factory from the age of 14 until he joined the Royal Air Force. After training he flew operations as an air gunner with 218 Squadron RAF Chedburgh. On a cross country training exercise, his aircraft suffered engine failure and the crew were told to bale out. Only the bomb aimer managed to exit the aircraft and the pilot landed with the rest of the crew on board. He also discusses the corkscrew manoeuvre.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Suffolk
Germany--Dresden
Germany
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1945
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CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and today we’re in Marlow and the date is the 28th of April 2016. We’re interviewing Langford Green known as Joe and we’re going to talk about his experiences as a wireless operator/air gunner particularly in 218 squadron. So, Joe, what was the earliest recollection you had of life and what did your parents do?
LJG: Well, we were poor. I remember that. It was just an ordinary life really. Yeah. I mean I had two brothers and a sister older than me and we lived in Wales and then when the job finished when I was four I think, we moved to Marlow. My father was working in [?] in Pontypridd working and the job was finishing so he got on his pushbike, cycled all the way to Marlow because I had an uncle living here on, he was a signalman on Great Western Railway and he put my father up for the night. He got a job and a house and cycled back again and we came back on the train ‘cause dad was only allowed one ticket a year. The posh people on the railway could get have than one but because he was a labourer we only had the one. And we moved to Marlow in 1927. I went to school at the Church of England school. Infant school in Oxford Road and then the big school and at fourteen I left school. Went to work in High Wycombe in a factory. Just an ordinary, everyday, like everyone else did. There wasn’t, there was very little employment in Marlow. I mean we had a brewery. And we had a few independent builders but they only employed a few people. They didn’t do many apprenticeships so my father got me a job as an apprentice in to marquetry and then of course in ‘39 the war started so that was the end of my working career. The war started when I was just over sixteen you see. The company went on to war work. They were doing the parts for aeroplanes I think. They were doing big bases anyway so and then I got fed up with that. I got away with it and joined the air force. Another experience.
CB: Why did you join the RAF and not the other?
LG: Well I thought it was the best one to do. I wanted to fly actually but I’m afraid my education wasn’t good enough to be a pilot or a navigator or anything like that but I went to Wycombe to try and join up and they said you’ve to go to Reading. I’d never been to Reading in my life. Didn’t even know how to get there. Then luckily I the sergeant who looked after, the police sergeant who looked after me when we was couriers he said, ‘Well get on a bus to Reading and ask the conductor where Broad Street is,’ and that’s where I went. I joined up that particular day. I had all my checks, exams and I come away with the kings shilling and I’d signed up for the air force as an air gunner. They said go home and we’ll send you a letter or a telegram to tell you where to go and that happened about two or three days later and there again I got this telegram report to Lords Cricket Ground. I mean I’d heard Lords Cricket Ground on the wireless but I didn’t, had no idea where it was. Hadn’t got the faintest. So back I went to see my police sergeant. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘No problem Joe,’ he said, ‘Get on the train at Marlow, you get off at Paddington and you’ll find a big red sign that says RTO, Rail Transport Officer. Go and ask him and he’ll tell you exactly how to get there. In fact,’ he said, ‘He might even send someone with you.’ So goes to Paddington, saw this officer and he put a squaddie with me. He said, ‘Take this gentleman down, show him how to get on, which train to get on to and where to get off.’ I finished up at Swiss Cottage which was the station nearest to Lords and I was there for about three weeks having all the injections, got my uniform. I lived in one of those big flats just outside Lords Cricket Ground. We had a room about three times the size of this, two of us. Lap of luxury. I thought this is great [laughs] but it soon changed. Yeah. Yeah I was there in London for about three weeks. Yes. Quite enjoyable. And then we were put on a train at Euston to Brignorth to have initial training. Then I, I was there for like five or six weeks I suppose. Waiting to come home and they said you’ll get a telegram report to gunnery school and there again had the same problem. You’ve got to go to Northern Ireland. How do I get to Northern Ireland? So when I got up to, I got the travel warrant. I went and saw this officer again. He said, ‘Oh that’s no problem. Euston station,’ he said, ‘And the train will be there.’ he said, ‘It takes you to Stranraer so you see, goes to Glasgow first and then goes back again,’ and off I went. Quite enjoyable it was too. I was a bit frightened at first. It was a long way away from home. Of course it wasn’t all that exciting but you do whatever they ask you, muck in and make the best of it. I quite enjoyed it in the end. I was there a few weeks and then I qualified, got my three stripes and my wing, came home and got another telegram to report to OTU at Peplow. That was a great bit that because you get there and you’ve got masses of people walking about. Pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless ops, air gunners trying to, joined up to make a crew. They weren’t getting at you, just try and find yourself people you like. I, I met one of the air gunners that I trained with in Northern Ireland. We walked around together and finished up with the crew that we got. It was great. Found it a bit strange because the navigator was a pilot officer. All the rest were sergeants. The pilot, skipper Alfie Kemp was a sergeant, the bomb aimer was a sergeant but Dickie. Dickie Ball, the navigator, was a flying officer, a pilot officer but we got on well. He was alright. And as I say we done our training there and we were posted to Sandtoft to convert from Wellingtons. Twin engines in to four engines. We started on Halifaxes actually. They were, you know, clapped out old planes that weren’t fit for service but were good enough for training but as I say we did have one hair raising experience if you want to hear about that. We were doing a cross county on a Halifax and we were diverted because of fog. It really was, really foggy and we were diverted to Stradishall, or Mildenhall, I can’t remember, and we were losing height. Two engines. One engine had gone and then another engine went and we got on to traffic control and said put it in [George] head for the North Sea and bale out. Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a Halifax, there is an escape hatch in the front by the, between the, in front of the pilot, behind the bomb aimer and of course everything in the air force is done in routine. Bomb aimer goes out first cause he’s in the front and he goes out first and he goes head first, and the navigator goes out but unfortunately to get open this hatch you have to lift up the navigators seat ‘cause he’s facing crossways and Dicky Ball goes out feet first but his harness catches on the seat so there he is hanging outside on his harness and the door shut and of course luckily the skipper called us up the two gunners have an escape hatch at the back. He says, ‘Don’t go. We’ve got a problem.’ So we managed to get Dickie back in alright and by that time we were down less than a thousand feet which is far too low to bailout and with a bit of luck we saw a Lancaster with the wheels down so we followed him in. Got told off mind you but we got down on the ground safe and sound but the bomb aimer was in the police station at Peterborough [laughs] trying to convince them that he wasn’t a spy, he’d baled out. ‘Where’s the rest of them?’ ‘Don’t know,’ he said. Quite exciting isn’t it? But there again we got through it. And then we converted on to Lancs which was a blessing as far as I was concerned ‘cause I didn’t like the Halifax at all. I didn’t like a Lanc with the radial engines but I did like the Lanc. Yeah. It was such a beautiful aeroplane to be in. It flew like a fighter, like a fighter plane. We enjoyed it. And we gradually graduated. We were posted to 218 squadron which had moved from Downham Market to Methwold and when we got there they had moved to Chedburgh and that was where we spent the rest of our, the war. I’d done my first op. Munchen Gladbach I think, 1st of May, 1st of February 1945. Done a few more till the war finished. We were a distinctive squadron because we were one of the first squadrons to do Operation Manna. That was on the 29th April. The week before the war was officially finished. Dropping food on Holland. That was quite cheering. The war was still on officially. The High Command gave us permission to fly. We had to fly a direct route. They told us which way to come in and I think it was Rotterdam the first one. We’d done quite a few. Three I think because we were due to go on leave but because of this we, it was postponed and so we did have our leave in the end. They call it a week’s leave but you travel on a Thursday and go back on a Wednesday which is seven days really but it’s only five days at home isn’t it? Even from Bury St Edmunds it was a long, a long day to get there, get home to Marlow. Get in to London, across to Paddington and hopefully you’d get a faster train but that wasn’t always the case and when we went back off leave we done what was called Operation Exodus bringing POWs back. Twenty four in the base of a Lanc, Sat on the floor with their legs apart. Two rows of twelve. Yeah. And that’s where I finished my flying career. Chedburgh.
CB: What did you do after the war? When were you demobbed?
LJG: 1947. May 1947
CB: So what did you do?
LJG: Pardon?
CB: Between, what did you do between the end of hostilities and being demobbed?
LJG: We were given an option what we could train and I decided I’d be a storekeeper. Nice quiet job. So I went to Blackpool. Done about a three month course I suppose and graduated from that I suppose they call it and went home and said report to North Weald and I flew out to Singapore via Karachi and I spent the rest of my service career in Singapore. RAF Seletar till May the 9th. I got home and was demobbed. Went to Blackpool to be demobbed. Yeah. Great.
CB: Then what?
LJG: Well then I had a job to settle down. It’s such a different world, you know, coming back in to the real world. You had everything done for you in the air force. In Singapore I was a flight sergeant then. Got reasonably well paid. Everything found. Come home. Tried to find a job anything like it but couldn’t you know. Eight or nine pound a week was a lot you could get. Then you had to travel to get it. I had loads of jobs but none of them, I went into Parker Knolls in Wycombe being a store keeper but it didn’t last long. I used to cycle to Slough and I got a job in [Citroen?] cars being a storekeeper there and I moved from there into repair work in the factory all the small [?] I used to have. Used to repair them. Odd jobs. Then 1960 and I was getting fed up with it anyway. It was a long cycle ride and it was, the bus fare took a lot out of the pay packet. So my wife was working at [Broomways?] in High Wycombe then when it was a big factory and she said there’s plenty of jobs going over there. Go and try and get a job there which I did and I was there sixteen, seventeen years. Then I found I was getting on in years and I worked in a heavy division in [Broomway?] big compressors. Twenty six, twenty seven inch pistons. Had a job to lift them in and I got a job, oh I went to a company in Cressex called [?] Spark as a fitter, a general fitter but I was only there three years and it was taken over by an American company and most of them were made redundant. Fortunately, my luck was with me again. My brother was a union man. He got me a job at Harrison’s which used to be the sand factory in Wycombe and that’s where I stayed until I retired in 1948. Yeah. And that is my career as such and since then I’ve done nothing really exciting.
CB: So what age did you retire?
LJG: 65.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So not 1948.
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: Not 1948.
LJG: [laughs] No, 1988 sorry.
CB: ‘88.
LJG: Yeah sorry I apologise. Yeah 1988.
CB: Ok. What was your most memorable experience of flying in the war?
LJG: [laughs] well the most frightening was Dresden I think. It was such a long way. It was over nine hours and when you think flying don’t start until the wheels are off the ground. When the skipper says, ‘Undercarriage up.’ That’s when you start flying. That’s when the time starts but you could have been in the plane a half an hour. I mean you get in, make sure everything alright, taxi around, you could, that could take you ten minutes and the same coming back you know as soon as the navigator feels the wheels hit the ground then you stop flying but you’ve got a long way to go back to dispersal and sort things out.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So what was frightening about Dresden?
LJG: Well I think it was just tiredness you know and –
CB: What do you remember about the raid itself?
LJG: Well, that was, that seemed to be quite easy but we did have a scare. I suppose you know that the actions of a pilot if you’re attacked by a fighter is dive and corkscrew.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Right. Well, George, the rear gunner thought he saw a Messerschmitt so he said dive port so down we go but nobody’s ready for it you know so all the papers the navigator’s got – all over the place. And he brought us back by the stars which was great but other than that we had quite an uneventful, just a job really. Just get in, go over there, drop the bombs, and come home again, you know. Go and have a drink.
CB: On how many occasions did you shoot at another aircraft?
LJG: Never. I never fired my guns once.
CB: Why was that?
LJG: No need. We only have to defend. Not to attack. Try to get out of trouble if you could rather than look in to it you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: My skipper was married and he wanted to get home to his wife [laughs]. No chances. No.
CB: No.
LJG: No it really was –
CB: Did you get attacked and hit on any occasion?
LJG: We did have one which only affected me. I suppose other people will tell you towards the end of the war the Germans didn’t attack individual aircraft they had a barrage of anti-aircraft guns and they decided to lose, let the bullets explode at a certain height so you had to go through it. That’s why we staggered at different bombing heights. Halifaxes went in lower because they couldn’t manage the height and we went in higher but they’d alternate it. Hopefully we could get away with it you know and that and so the explosion on hitting you, an explosion at a certain height. Well I had one. An 88 and through the fuselage at the floor, between my legs, between the guns, out the top and never went off.
CB: Oh a complete shell.
LJG: A complete shell.
CB: Yeah. And how did you know it was an 88?
LJG: By the size of the hole.
CB: Right.
LJG: Well that’s what, I’m only going with what the ground staff said.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. So this is the flak box -
LJG: Yeah. Oh yeah.
CB: That you’re talking about.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And their detonation is based on a time.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: At height.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: To hit the height. Yeah. So it went wrong.
LJG: Yeah I mean when you get a raid of six or seven hundred aeroplanes you probably have four or five different heights. The first one would go in at say twenty thousand feet. The next hundred would go in at eighteen thousand feet and I think we were one of the lucky ones. It went straight through and out the other end.
CB: Did the, you were in the dark so it’s difficult to see but could you see effectively when you were approaching a flak box?
LJG: No. No. Only if it was I mean because me as mid upper I was always circulating.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: You know. George the rear gunner done ahead and below. Not so much above because he had a job to see above so I had the bits above and then I could, sometimes you could see it but often or not it was below you.
CB: Did you ever get attacked by a fighter from underneath?
LJG: No. No this one that George saw coming back from Dresden it was way up, you know. And he seemed to think it was coming towards us and then it veered away but we got away with it.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Unfortunately a lot of them didn’t but we did.
CB: Yeah. And as a crew how did you get on?
LJG: Great. We had a great time ‘cause funnily enough George, the rear gunner, lived at Clare and if you know that area at all in Suffolk Clare’s only about seven miles from Chedburgh.
CB: Right.
LJG: And the skipper had an old Austin 7.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And the bomb aimer, the er flight engineer didn’t drink. He’d have a half a shandy last him all night. So he would buy his half a shandy, sit in the mess near the phone and near the phone was where battle orders went up the following day for the following either morning or night so we was off, we’d go down to Clare. Six of us in an Austin Ruby. If the weather was bad you stood on the running board if it was foggy and go down to George’s local and then when battle orders went up if we were on Don would give us, give us a ring. We’d say we’ll be in The Globe tonight or be in The Cock in Clare so he’d ring up, ‘Oh you’re not on tonight,’ so we’d stay there till one or 2 o’clock in the morning but we did get caught out once. I can’t think where it was we were going but it was we had a phone call at 7 o’clock to say, ‘You’re not on, there’s a raid, a daylight raid, take-off is at 6 o’clock but you’re not on it, we’re not on it.’ He rings up at 11 o’clock to say, ‘We are on it,’ so we had to get back, try and have a shower, sober yourself up and do a trip at about 6 o’clock the following morning. But that was life you know.
CB: When the battle orders went up how did the briefing work?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: When the battle orders went up how did your briefing work?
LJG: Well -
CB: Because some of the crew were briefed differently -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: From the others. So how did that work?
LJG: Oh you were woken up by one of the people on guard, you signed a book to say you had, you’d been woken up. You had your breakfast. Then go to briefing. Then you get dressed afterwards. I mean the, it was only the two gunners really that had to get dressed as such. We wore a kapok suit with electric wires down it, and slippers with electric wires in it and gloves, the same. All connected up in your boots and, but the others they just wore the uniform.
CB: So the, how did the electric system work? You plugged it in how? ‘Cause you’re the mid upper. How did you plug that in?
LJG: Well each engine done something. I can’t remember which one was which.
CB: Right.
LJG: One done the electrics. One done the hydraulics but it was great because it wasn’t very comfortable in the mid upper turret. It wasn’t a very big comfortable seat. I mean George was alright in the rear turret. He had quite a cushy, and all this but my seat it reminded me of a child’s swing and that’s about what it was. A piece about so big. Fifteen by eighteen by six padded and you dropped it down off the hook to get in and you stood up and you hooked it back up again and got on it but it wasn’t very comfortable. Especially a trip like Dresden. Nine hours or something. No. But there we go. We got it.
CB: Just going back to the briefing. The pilot and the navigator would be briefed together would they? And how -
LJG: We’d all be briefed together.
CB: All briefed together.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: Well in my day anyway.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So you come out, you go into a large room.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where the initial briefing is carried out. Is that right?
LJG: Yeah. The -
CB: All the crews go in.
LJG: At the end of the hall it would be a big map.
CB: Right.
LJG: With the route.
CB: The route marked on it.
LJG: The route from Chedburgh to where we’re going to bomb.
CB: Right.
LJG: And then, I mean the squadron commander which in my case was warrant officer er Wing Commander Smith. He would tell you which way you were going and which way you were coming back and he’d ask then for questions from experienced pilots that was it, was anything going to be made better or easier. All we do is get there. I mean some places flak was quite heavy. Some it was quite light you know so it was, and then of course the weather man would get up and have a chat but he was never very good [laughs]. Our weather was more predictable from George’s parents. They had a small holding in Clare and he would tell you, you know what it was going to be tomorrow. Over here anyway and he was never wrong but sometimes the weather man got it wrong but you just accepted it didn’t you?
CB: What sort of mistakes would he make?
LJG: Well I mean he would tell you you were going to have clear skies and no cloud at all and when you got there you couldn’t see a thing but of course you must remember that in ‘45 a lot of bombing was done on flares and bombs with colours.
CB: Markers. The markers.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
LJG: So it didn’t really matter much about the weather being bad. You could, you could see a yellow marker at twenty thousand feet even if it was foggy you know so you had a good idea and of course towards the middle of April, February, March and April H2S was coming in which was another godsend. That was the, helpful for the bomb aimer wasn’t it? Yeah.
CB: Ok. Now you said you did three sorties in Operation Manna which was supplying food to the Dutch civilians. Yeah.
LJG: That’s right.
CB: Because they were starving.
LJG: I’m sure -
CB: So what, what how did that work? Initially, as you said there was no agreement with the Germans so how did it work over here? In other words what was the briefing for that because there was no agreement?
LJG: Well the, it was packed in sacks in the bomb bay and we were given a special route and a height and a speed so, we, it was quite an easy route really. I think the first one -
CB: I wonder, I wonder what you expected because if the Germans hadn’t given the ok at that point what was the crew’s reaction to the lack of authority to do it?
LJG: Well, they were, I think most of them were concerned because as I say never trust a German anyway but I think one or two did shoot at us but it never affected us. No. But we were only at about five hundred feet I think or probably a bit lower. It was quite low and I know the Lanc is quite good but it wasn’t designed for low level bombing. I mean, I know they done the Dambusters but that was exceptional. You couldn’t do that all the time.
CB: No.
LJG: I don’t think. They were really a high level bombing aircraft. Yeah.
CB: Now. What sort of height were you dropping?
LJG: Where?
CB: When you were dropping the food.
LJG: Manna. Manna.
CB: Manna. What sort of height were you flying?
LJG: Anything under five hundred feet.
CB: And do you know what speed you were flying at?
LJG: Speed?
CB: Ahum.
LJG: Just above stalling speed. About a hundred miles an hour.
CB: Oh really.
LJG: Yeah. Well we weren’t sure whether, what damage we could do ‘cause most of it was loose stuff you know. Flour and things like that. Potatoes. I think there was some canned stuff but they were concerned about it. Yeah. That was my first one. May the, April 29th I’m sure it was.
CB: So you did three of those? To different places were they or -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: The same place?
LJG: Yeah well I have got them down here somewhere. Here we are. Two to The Hague and one to Rotterdam. The first one was Rotterdam. It’s only just over three hours there and back.
CB: Ok. Now you then talked about Exodus which was the repatriation of prisoners of war.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where did you pick those prisoners up?
LJG: Juvincourt.
CB: Where’s that?
LJG: In France.
CB: Right.
LJG: That’s the only airport or aerodrome capable of taking the Lanc.
CB: Whereabouts is that in France?
LJG: I’ve no idea. No idea.
CB: No.
LJG: But I’m sure it was Juvincourt.
[pause]
CB: I’ll just stop the tape a mo and we can take a look.
[machine paused]
CB: Right.
LJG: Westcott.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Dunsfold.
CB: Yeah. So can we just, go over that? When you were doing the Exodus you you flew each time into Juvincourt.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In France.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And then you flew where? What were the places you flew to?
LJG: That was it.
CB: So -
LJG: Tangmere was the first one.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Ford.
CB: Which was -
LJG: On the south coast.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: As well, well they were all on the south coast weren’t they? Ford was the third one. Westcott was the fourth one.
CB: Near Aylesbury.
LJG: Dunsfold.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And Oakley.
CB: Yeah. Ok. North of Oxford. Yes.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And how many, how many prisoners were they and what type of prisoners did you take each time?
LJG: Well they were all in fairly good condition. Well they had to be, you know, fit. Really. Well not really fit but they had to be reasonable to take the flight you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: We didn’t have oxygen masks for everybody so we had to keep under eight thousand feet anyway so we used to come back at about three or four thousand feet.
CB: Would there be several aircraft together doing that or –
LJG: Pardon?
CB: Would you be with several other aircraft?
LJG: Oh yeah.
CB: At the same time.
LJG: Yeah there would be -
CB: So you’d fly a stream would you?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: Quiet a stream of them actually. You had to be careful though because they were so keen, these POWs, to get home which was understandable and they used to wander about a bit and you know you can wander about too far in a Lancaster because we didn’t stop the engines.
CB: Right.
LJG: They were just ticking over but you could walk in to the prop and not know it you know and because it was my responsibility as, because I was the last one in you know.
CB: So what was your responsibility in that case?
LJG: Well, yeah.
CB: Was it, you’re responsible for loading up?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Ok. How many in the aircraft?
LJG: Twenty four.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Two rows of twelve
CB: Yeah. Just sitting on what?
LJG: They sat on the floor, legs apart so they got two rows together. Yeah.
CB: And how long were the flights?
LJG: Well -
CB: Roughly.
LJG: An hour and a half.
CB: Right. Ok.
LJG: Two hours.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Nothing much. That was getting there and coming back was that much.
CB: So when you got in did you get up in to your turret or where did you go?
LJG: I was stood by the door.
CB: Right.
LJG: You know, to stop them, to stop them well walking about really. Had to be there. An aeroplane can be dangerous.
CB: LJG: Yeah.
So, yeah Ford and Tangmere. Tangmere was four hours there and back. Well from base to Juvincourt
CB: So the engines were running and you just, they climbed in while you were stationery.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: With the engines running.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: I was the only one that got out.
CB: Were there any cases of accidents in that?
LJG: Not to my knowledge. No. No.
CB: Right.
LJG: As I say all the rest of the crew just stayed where they were you know. The marshall who was organising it used to bring them over in twenty fours and hand them over to me, you know.
CB: Right. Ok. We’ll stop there for a bit.
[machine pause]
CB: Right my witness today is Vic Truesdale and I’m just going to ask him whether he has any questions to put to Joe. Vic -
VT: I was just wondering what it was like, what difference there might have been for you between the daylight raids and the night time raids? I mean was it very routine and just the same more or less or -
LJG: Well I think we just took it in our stride you know. We looked on it mostly as a job. Yeah. A job that we wanted to do but I mean we were all volunteers and I didn’t mind daylights actually although we done as many nights as we did daylights although it was a daylight squadron. It was formed for that reason really. Well moved down to Suffolk because it had been all over the place hadn’t it? I think Woolford Lodge was a place it went to.
CB: Woolfox Lodge.
LJG: And -
CB: In Rutland.
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: Woolfox Lodge.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In Rutland. Yeah.
LJG: Downham Market. They found Methwold a bit small I think.
CB: Did they?
LJG: Well even Chedburgh, I mean one of the runway was quite short really and it, you had to get really get back on the fence at the end of the runway to make sure you got off alright.
CB: Did you?
LJG: Yeah. There’s a lot weight. Especially if you’re going to the Ruhr. Happy Valley everybody called it. I mean probably have fourteen thousand pounds of bombs. A cookie. Four thousand pounder and ten one thousand pounders. I mean you couldn’t bring them back. You had to drop them somewhere. But I didn’t mind daylights actually.
VT: Forgive my ignorance but did you have an escort on the daylight raids?
LJG: No.
VT: No.
LJG: No. No. Only had each other.
VT: Yeah. And how much time you were actually up in the mid gun position when you were on a typical trip shall we say?
LJG: Well er-
VT: When did you go up and come down and things like that?
LJG: When did I get in?
VT: Yeah.
LJG: I was always the last one in the aeroplane. You got in an aeroplane in order. The bomb aimer went in first because his position was right in the front. Then the skipper. Then the flight engineer. Navigator. And wireless operator and he closed the bulkhead doors. That’s why they could wear their uniforms. That was the bit that was heated.
VT: Right.
LJG: Then George got in. Then I got in and then they would shut the door and take the ladder away but I always had to make sure the door was shut. Well I did anyway.
VT: The last one in.
LJG: And then you’d be sat in there and as I say well you’d be in there before the doors shut, the flight sergeant in charge of the aeroplane, to make sure it was alright had to sign the 600.
CB: Form 600.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: To say that everything was ok and the skipper was pleased with it and then, then you had to wait for permission to taxi although the engine was still going but they weren’t revving they were just ticking over. You were told to taxi around and the same coming back. I was always the first out then [laughs], it was, yeah.
CB: So when you were taxiing there would normally be a plane in front and another behind would there?
LJG: Oh yeah.
CB: And how long would it take to get from your dispersal to the end of the runway?
LJG: Well depends which runway you were using.
CB: Right, but on balance -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Did you always park at the same place?
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah.
CB: So -
LJG: Each aircraft had its own dispersal.
CB: Right.
LJG: You might not fly in the same aircraft as you can see by that it is R-Roger was our favourite but you had others as well and you took them back where you got them from. Then you’d wait then for the crew bus to take you back to debriefing.
CB: Afterwards.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Just quickly. That’s an interesting point. Why would one plane be more popular, your favourite, R-Roger than the others?
LJG: It was just one of those things I think. You know. You just felt, just felt good with it. I mean nobody like flying Q-Queenie and I don’t think it ever done a full op. There was always trouble with it but nobody could find out why. It was weird you know. You get used to an aeroplane. Plus we had it quite new anyway which was a blessing. R-Roger was very good. So -
VT: And would you like to say a bit more about the, I think you mentioned two targets including the mercy missions. Three or four targets. I just thought you might like to mention a few more.
LJG: I’m sorry I’ve got a problem with my hearing.
CB: Ok. Ok.
VT: Chris will relay -
CB: You did, when went on raids you went to different places so what were the targets that you hit? What are, what are the ones you’ve got there?
LJG: Oh yes.
[pause]
CB: Just looking in the logbook.
LJG: Yes.
[pause]
CB: That’s it.
LJG: As I said Munchen Gladbach was the first one.
CB: Yes.
LJG: That was a daylight. Then operation two was at Wiesbaden, a night drop. Operation three was Dortmund. That was a night drop. Then we done Dresden. Oh no we done one before. It was a daylight. [?]. Then we done Dresden which was nine and a half hours and the following night we done Chemnitz.
CB: Oh did you. Along the road.
LJG: That was nine hours.
CB: Nine hours as well.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Right. They were the two -
LJG: And then we done Dortmund. Another night one. Then we done Geilenkirchen. The next op we didn’t do because we got halfway there and we had engine trouble so we came back. Then the next one was a daylight to Dortmund on the sixth, in February. Datteln was another daylight raid. Geilenkirchen again. Dortmund again. Datteln again. Geilenkirchen again. [?] and that was the end of my bombing career. Oh no. Kirsburg and Kiel. Kiel was our last one. That was a day er a night trip.
CB: Kiel. Kiel was a major one at the end wasn’t it?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah that’s when they sunk the Gneisenau.
CB: Yeah. You mentioned Chemnitz. So that’s the same distance as going to -
LJG: Dresden.
CB: Dresden and they’re relatively close.
LJG: Well it’s in the same area.
CB: Exactly.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So what was that one, how different was that from going to Dresden? Was it any different? Or -
LJG: No actually I think it was a better raid. We didn’t have any problems at all. Quite a nice raid actually. If you can call a bombing raid great.
CB: Well there were some experiences easier than others weren’t they?
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Why were some of the operations in daylight?
LJG: Well I think that’s what the war command wanted you know. I mean the Ruhr was very popular wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah. I mean which was the -
CB: Major place.
LJG: Major -
CB: Of military production.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah. We stopped that.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Kiel was a nice one.
CB: Yeah. But when you were in your daylight raids were there many fighters around?
LJG: We never ever saw one.
CB: No.
LJG: No. It wasn’t until almost at the end of the war we did, we saw a 262.
CB: Jet yes.
LJG: That was, I think that was in April.
CB: That was in daylight.
LJG: In daylight.
CB: LJG: Yeah.
LJG: But he was going the other way.
CB: Oh.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And did he, did you see him shoot at anybody?
LJG: No. No. He was, he was above us actually but he was quite a long way away. As a matter of fact I wasn’t sure what it was and then George said, ‘Well that’s a, funny,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know they had a twin engine,’ he said, ‘But they got no propellers on it.’ He said, ‘It’s weird.’ And when we got back we reported it, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘That’s a jet engine.’ But no.
CB: What were the levels of losses like in your time? What was the rate of loss of aircraft in your time?
LJG: Very good. Very good. In my, as I say we got there, we got there on January 1st actually but we didn’t start bombing until February the 1st and our last raid was in April. We had three losses I think. That was all.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah. Unfortunately, it was one that we’d done towards the end of the war experienced pilots and experienced crews which we were considered to be after we’d done a dozen ops or so if a new crew came onto the squadron we’d often take the pilot with us and we took this new pilot –
CB: Just the pilot.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Just to give them some experience you know and the following day we was on a daylight and we lost him.
CB: Oh.
LJG: That was his only op but we don’t know what happened to him ‘cause one minute he’s there, the next minute, ‘cause once you’re on the bombing run you’re interested in yourself, not anyone else and as I say my job is to scan the sky above us.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Or in front of us and when we got back he was reported missing. And we had one which was lucky in one respect. He had an engine cut out, port inner, course he veered over and he landed in a field between the WAAF quarters and the airmen’s mess. Well he crashed in a field but only the rear gunner got out.
CB: Oh.
LJG: When it blew up it shattered off the rear turret and he was found a few yards away. He had a lot of broken bones but he was still alive and I think he was still alive when I left the squadron but that’s the only two I can remember.
CB: Right.
[machine pause]
CB: Now we haven’t talked much about your wife so where did you meet your wife? Under what circumstances and when?
LJG: I walked her home from the pictures when I was on leave one day. But I didn’t see her then until after the war.
CB: Oh.
LJG: No. I had, well I don’t know, I had lots of girlfriends but I didn’t think it was wise, being in the job I was on, you know, survival rate was very bad wasn’t it? So I didn’t want to put her through -. It was after the war, one of the jobs I tried to do I worked for the War Graves Commission and she worked there in the office and we met from then, you know. That was in 1947 ‘48. I didn’t stay there long because although it was civil service it had lots of perks but didn’t have a very high salary.
CB: Now you mentioned very briefly about the police so when you left school then you worked in the daytime but you also did another job for the police. What was that?
LJG: Yeah. We was, well sort of couriers they were in case the phones broke down and they wanted to contact other people in the area we would cycle along with the messages.
CB: Right.
LJG: So we stayed in the police station two nights a week. There was quite a few of us.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And we stayed there overnight in case. This was, well, the beginning of the war of course. Yeah. It was alright. Yeah.
CB: It gave you something to do that was useful.
LJG: Slept in the cells.
CB: I was just going to ask you that. Yeah.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Good. Just tell us about please about air gunnery. So when you were learning air gunnery how did that work? So from the beginning of being at Bishop’s Court what did you do. When you arrived, then what did you do?
LJG: Well our first training was with a twelve bore shotgun and -
CB: Yeah.
LJG: What do they call them?
VT: Clay -
CB: Clay pigeon.
LJG: Yeah. We had a few days of that and we had, I was very good at this, I could strip a Browning machine gun with my eyes shut and put it back together. Not everybody could do that and it was, I’d been there oh two or three weeks before we started flying you know and they flew, we had all Ansons to fly in, you know with a mid upper turret.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And another aircraft would fly a drogue and there was usually four of us in there with, and we’d have a couple of hundred bullets all painted different colours so if you hit the drogue your colour would show up. Blue, yellow, greens and clear you’d all fire a couple of hundred rounds and come back, come back down again.
CB: Ok.
LJG: And they had, we also had cinecameras with, for fighter affiliation. Instead of -
CB: Ok.
LJG: Bullets you had a cinecamera.
CB: How did the fighter affiliation work? Who did what?
LJG: Well you had, you went into the turret with this special gun with adapted, with a film in it and it was usually an old Hurricane they had at Bishop’s Court attack you and you’d film it as if you were shooting it, you know.
CB: How did you get on with that?
LJG: Reasonable. It wasn’t until Peplow I think that I really got used to guns ‘cause we had Wellingtons there and George and I, the other gunner would take turns to be in the turret and then we had fighter affiliation, fighter affiliation there and I got better as the day went on, you know.
CB: In the fighter affiliation what exactly did the fighter do?
LJG: Well he would try and shoot you down. He would attack you as if he was going to shoot you down and you had to -
CB: So what angles would he come in at?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: At what angles would he come in at?
LJG: All angles. All angles. Usually he’d try and get you in the sun but if you had a good skipper it didn’t matter but of course that was the most dangerous place isn’t it? In the sun.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: You don’t see them. Although we had sun, sun goggles you could put down it wasn’t the same.
CB: Did you have sun glasses or just sun goggles?
LJG: Well they were tinted goggles.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Ok. Now when you’re flying as a gunner then you talked earlier about corkscrew which was getting the aircraft out of a jam, who would be calling the corkscrew normally?
LJG: Well, whichever gunner saw, saw something, you know.
CB: You said everybody was caught unawares by the rear gunner would they, would normally there would there be some kind of warning would they when it was far away?
LJG: Well -
CB: How would that work?
LJG: Well, it all depends on what you saw and when you saw it, you know. As I say we didn’t go looking for trouble. We tried to avoid it -
CB: Yeah.
LJG: If we could you know. I think that’s what George. I think he saw something and he wasn’t sure what it was and although he seemed to be going towards you from, but at an angle he decided he would corkscrew.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And how did the corkscrew work?
LJG: Well you turned in, you dived in to the direction that he was coming.
CB: Oh did you?
LJG: So if he was coming from the port quarter you would corkscrew port, roll, corkscrew starboard roll climb port climb starboard.
CB: Back on to where you were.
LJG: Back on to there. Hopefully you get back on the same course you know but we were fortunate we had a good navigator. He always got us there on time, always got us back on time.
VT: Did the Germans know that the corkscrew was a manoeuvre? A standard manoeuvre.
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah. It was for a Lancaster. Yeah. I don’t know whether it would apply to a Halifax ‘cause they’re so different to fly. In fact my skipper reckoned the Lanc acted like a fighter pilot it was that easy to fly. Had lovely lines didn’t it?
CB: Brilliant. What was the combination of crew? Were they all British or –
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where? Did you have a mixture?
LJG: Alfie Kemp was the skipper. He came from Bradford. Vic [Giles?] was the bomb aimer. He was an East Ender. Don Pryor was the flight engineer. He came from Peterborough. Dicky Ball, navigator. He came from Newton Abbott. Len Garnett, the wireless operator, he came from Leeds. I came from Marlow and George came from Clare. George Green, the rear gunner, came from Clare. As I say the six of us got on well. Well we got on alright with Don but he just –
CB: George Green did you say?
LJG: George Green. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: No relation [laughs].
CB: No. What was the engineer’s name?
LJG: Engineer?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Donald Pryor.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Donald Pryor.
CB: Yeah. Ok. On the social side Joe the crew all gelled together very well professionally.
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And on the social side but one of the crew was an officer so -
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: How did he fit in with all the sergeants?
LJG: Yeah. He fitted in quite well. Yeah. Well I think he realised he had to rough it like the rest of us if he wanted to get on. And he did. He was great. Dickie. Yeah.
CB: Were you all sergeants or flight sergeants or what were you?
LJG: We were all sergeants, the six of us, when we joined 218. Now Alfie got his flight sergeant [pause] Yes. When we joined Sandtoft Heavy Conversion Unit.
CB: Yeah he became -
LJG: He became a flight sergeant.
CB: A flight sergeant. That’s the pilot.
LJG: And he got his commission -
CB: Yeah. Oh.
LJG: Towards the end of the war. April I think or March. March I think.
CB: Ok. Now after the war Joe how did, did they crew keep in contact or what happened?
LJG: Richard, or Dickie as we always called him, we kept in touch for a few years. He was the best man at my wedding actually.
CB: Was he?
LJG: But in the end they all married and gone to different places. George moved to Lincoln, Vic moved to Ipswich. I don’t know what happened to the skipper. I think I’m the only one alive. It’s, it’s only Dickie, the navigator.
CB: Navigator.
LJG: I’m not sure of -
CB: Yeah. Ok.
LJG: But the skipper is gone.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: The bomb aimer is gone. The bomb aimer went quite young. The wireless op’s gone. Don’s gone, Don Pryor went when he was in his forties. George died last year.
CB: Right. Ok. What was the greatest achievement do you think when you were in the RAF? What made you feel really proud?
LJG: Just thinking that we won. Yeah. And being part of it. Yeah. I enjoyed it. I think I went in with the right attitude that it’s a job I wanted to do. I wanted to fly and I think that that was my achievement you know.
CB: How do you feel about the, not having the opportunity of shooting down anything?
LJG: Well, not really. No. I didn’t think it mattered. As long as we’d done what we had to do.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Which was get there, drop the bombs, come home again ready for the next lot. I don’t think it mattered. Chasing after them wouldn’t have made any difference. The risks were too great. I mean that was their job wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: We had, we had an aeroplane full of bombs and we were told to take it somewhere drop them.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And that’s what we done.
CB: Your job was to defend the aircraft. Not to shoot down other -
LJG: Well yeah.
CB: Planes. Yeah.
LJG: Avoid it if possible. I mean if you shoot down a Messerschmitt you’ve only killed one man in an aeroplane. If a Messerschmitt shoots down a Lancaster he’s killed seven people. You know. I think the odds were too great to go looking after trouble.
CB: Yeah.
VT: Did some crew go and look for trouble?
LJG: Yeah.
VT: Yeah.
LJG: Oh yeah.
VT: Can you tell us a bit about that?
LJG: Well I mean it’s only hearsay.
VT: Alright. What’s the hearsay then?
LJG: That they would look for trouble.
VT: So what would they do?
LJG: If they saw an aeroplane which they thought was a German they’d go after it or fly in that direction but I mean it was too dangerous for the rest of the crew because we went in a stream. I mean we weren’t like the Yanks. The Yanks made a formed a squadron pattern here in England and they all went out together. We would form a stream on the way out -
VT: Right.
LJG: You wouldn’t catch up in an aeroplane until you got to Brighton. So we didn’t look for trouble. If you stayed where you were supposed to be -
VT: Yeah.
LJG: You would bomb at the height you were supposed to be and there was always the risk that if you were on the lower tier someone up above would drop one on you but that’s the risk you had to take and that was my job you know. If there was one above me, dead above me, I would tell the skipper, you know. ‘There’s a Lanc above us skipper.’ ‘Which way do you want to go?’ He’d decide. I would tell him where it was and he was the skipper. He was the governor. You done what you were told. You tell him what’s happening and he, he’d solve the problem. Either move port or move starboard you know. It depends on where the stream was and what position you were in the stream. I mean we weren’t wing tip to wing tip. I mean we could be a mile wide and gradually move in to the target as we got closer to it. I mean it was, you were an individual really although you were part of a stream.
VT: Yeah.
CB: How much of the time could you see other bombers?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: How much of the time could you see other bombers?
LJG: At night. Never see one at all.
CB: Right.
LJG: Very very rare unless it was a good moon but of course in daylight you would see them quite a lot.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Because you could be, depends on where you are in the stream they could be all around you.
CB: So just as a, why was it that Bomber Command flew in a stream and not in formation?
LJG: I’ve no idea.
CB: I would suggest it’s because it’s impossible to fly and it’s dangerous to try and fly in formation.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In the dark.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So the bomber stream is simply everybody’s going the same way.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: But the danger is as you just said ‘cause you can’t see anybody else -
LJG: The secret of that was you had to be at the right place at the right time.
CB: Right.
LJG: I mean if we went to the Ruhr from Chedburgh it would be base, Reading, Brighton and across the channel from there and then the course would be variable depending on hot spots.
CB: Why did, why did, why did the bomber stream not go straight out across from Chedburgh across Holland?
LJG: Well -
CB: In to Germany.
LJG: There were hot spots that were heavily defended. Very heavily defended. Others not so heavily defended.
CB: With anti-aircraft guns.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: So we, they tried to pick the safest route for us and the same the way back so you if you all went the same way and turned at the same time everything would be in the right place and you, the chance of having a collision were remote but you had to do what you were told to do.
CB: Yeah. Now on the bombing run the aircraft has to be stabilised.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah. Two minutes.
CB: So how, two minutes before was it?
LJG: Two minutes yeah.
CB: And then how many minutes after bombs gone did you keep straight and level?
LJG: As soon as you could. Get back in to the stream.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: ‘Cause you had, you to had to hold on for a while to do the photoflash.
LJG: Do the photograph.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah. It was only a few seconds really. About fifteen, twenty seconds. As soon as the skipper said, ‘Bomb doors closed,’ that was the sign to get moving.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: You mentioned earlier about H2S radar system. Was that used very much?
LJG: Well, it was, it was used more at night than it was at daylight. You only used it at daylight I think if the weather was bad but we did use it once or twice yeah and got quite good results apparently. I mean I don’t know. I’m not a technician. The briefers, debriefers would sort that out, you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Another question. You carried a bomb load of how much normally? What sort of weight of bombs?
LJG: Depends where you went. I mean the aircraft was only safe with a certain weight in it so the more petrol you had the less bombs you had. At Dresden I don’t think was only six or seven thousand. I don’t, I don’t really know about the bomb load but it was a long way.
CB: Right.
LJG: So you had, I think you had twenty two, fifty gallons of petrol so that means the bomb load is displaced but Happy Valley say, you’d have fourteen thousand, fifteen thousand pounds of bombs and less tanks.
CB: So you talked about the cookie so could you describe what was the cookie?
LJG: Pardon?
CB: CB: What was -
LJG: Cookie.
CB: A cookie. Can you describe it?
LJG: A four thousand pounder.
CB: Yeah well what was in it?
LJG: Well that would depend on what the target was and what they wanted to do. There were devising one that exploded a thousand feet above the ground full of incendiaries and you only dropped high explosives, splatter it all over and a cookie would set fire to it. It was like an oil drum really.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: It was. Not a very attractive looking bomb but there again it mattered it was only going down. It wasn’t going anywhere else.
CB: It didn’t have any fins on it did it?
LJG: No. No. No.
CB: It was just like a big barrel.
LJG: Just like a forty gallon oil drum or a bit longer than that actually. Yeah.
CB: Ok.
[machine pause]
LJG: I think it was about four pound a week on the squadron.
CB: So the pay was in two parts was it? There was a basic pay and then a flying pay.
LJG: No. They just -
CB: Or just a basic -
LJG: Just a single pay.
CB: Ok and how much was that?
LJG: I think it was about four pound a week.
CB: And what was that in relation to what other people were getting?
LJG: Well I think we were reasonably well paid considering. I don’t know what other people were getting. No idea.
CB: In civilian life I mean. In civilian life -
LJG: Well –
CB: Was it better than or worse?
LJG: Well I don’t think there was much in it really. I know my elder brother he was an apprentice cabinet maker and he finished his apprenticeship as the war started but you see he was a lot older than me and I remember him coming home he had four pound and sixpence and he gave me the sixpence. Yeah.
CB: Because it bought a lot in those days.
LJG: Well yeah I mean three pounds was a good wage.
CB: Yeah that’s what I meant you see.
LJG: But then again things were that cheap anyway weren’t they you know. I mean I remember Tesco opening in Wycombe when it was a small shop then and my wife and I were both working at [minimum wage?] and if she spent three pounds on groceries in a week she’d had a bad week [laughs] but now -
CB: This is a company called [Broomway] making compressors.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: We were just talking about when we, when you in the latter days you were in Singapore.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And then you were ready for demob so what happened?
LJG: They just told us to pack up our clothes and they put us on a boat. Actually I was on the boat the day before because I was mess deck sergeant on the way home and when we got to Southampton unfortunately, well fortunately we were the first ones off because we had the farthest to go. We had to go from Southampton to Blackpool and we got in to Southampton quite early in the morning. Seven or 8 o’clock. Got on the train, got to Blackpool and we got out civvy kit. I got home at midnight that night. Yeah.
CB: All day travelling.
LJG: All day travelling yeah. I’d been travelling for three weeks.
CB: Amazing.
LJG: Well we, at that particular time they were, India was getting independence and we were evacuating in troops and we had a load of band boys we had to divert from Singapore to Bombay to pick up these band boys and they stuck them right down at the front. The lowest deck of all. And as we come out of Bombay a day out hit a typhoon and we had to heave to for a day and the boat was doing this.
VT: Yeah.
CB: Frightening.
LJG: They was, they was sick and sick and sick terrible but as I say we got out of it.
CB: How many people on the boat?
LJG: A couple of hundred I suppose.
CB: And what was the liner called?
LJG: HMS Otranto. Otranto yeah. I think it rocked when it was in port, in dock. Not very exciting.
CB: So then you had your demob. What was the most, you said it was difficult to settle. What was the thing that made it so difficult -
LJG: Well it’s such a change -
CB: To settle?
LJG: Wasn’t it? Such a change you know. I mean in Singapore it was the lap of luxury. I mean, fortunately I didn’t do any work. It was in ‘45 when the Singapore RAF were on strike.
CB: Oh.
LJG: All junior ranks it was. Senior ranks weren’t allowed to go on strike. And although I had a double rank you see I was flight sergeant AC2.
CB: Yeah
LJG: Anyway the -
CB: Because you were reserve?
LJG: Yeah
CB: Volunteer reserve.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And well Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park was in charge and Singapore was a pre-war station. We had lovely barrack blocks. Of course the Japs had used them so they were using.
CB: Right.
LJG: The swimming pool they used as an oil dump and everybody else, well [they had been?] on strike and this Mr Park he went to Australia I think and Group Captain Beamish became CO and he was sport mad. If you could play sport you were alright so I decided that I would play sport.
CB: What was your specialty then?
LJG: I was goalkeeper. I played for 389 MU. I played for the station once but if you were on guard duty and you were playing for the station you came off guard duty and went and played football.
CB: Oh right. Yeah.
LJG: And he got things going you know. He had football pitches marked out, he had a cinema cleaned out and working order. It was great.
CB: Right.
218 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
briefing
crewing up
demobilisation
Halifax
Lancaster
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Sandtoft
training
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/348/3517/AWaughmanR150803.1.mp3
4b20ad44c8f089eeec0544eae42cc539
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Title
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Waughman, Rusty
Russell Reay Waughman
Russell R Waughman
Russell Waughman
R R Waughman
R Waughman
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Russell Reay "Rusty" Waughman (1923 - 2023, 1499239 and 171904 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 101 Squadron.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-04-01
2015-08-03
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Waughman, R
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Transcription
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RW: All wrote a little letter and signed it and sent it to the station commander who interviewed us and said, ‘This constitutes mutiny.’ So, with all our explanations of what went on he accepted that the fact that we’d been left off the draft and the corporal [?] corporal from West Kirby was actually charged for taking bribes to take, put people on, take people off drafts and put friends on. So, there we are. There we are. We’ve got no records, no kit, no nothing so we had to start again. So we didn’t do the, so we went and did our IT, initial training, again at Stratford on Avon which was rather nice, very fine. Nice place Stratford. I think I had my first girlfriend at Stratford. She was a very, she was a nice little girl. I often whatever happened to all these creatures looking back on all these times but there we are. We did our initial training again and from there of course we had to learn to start playing with aeroplanes and to start with we had to make sure that we were alright and worth sending overseas. We had to go to Codsall at Wolverhampton and er on a Tiger Moth just go solo. As soon as you got, went solo that was it finished until you were posted overseas and we went, went over to Canada on the Empire Training Scheme on the little ship called The Battery a converted Polish ship which was very comfortable, very nice. Very congested of course. And we landed at St John’s in Canada, down to Moncton which was the holding unit and then we travelled all across Canada on a public train to Calgary and the little aerodrome there was called Dewinton, which was just south of Calgary. We’d been there, back there since and Dewinton is now a suburb of Calgary which is incredible when you think of it. And that was nice and we were learning to fly on Tiger Moths and the Stearman. The Americans, the Boeing people had sent up sixty Stearman to the air force for people to learn to fly on. So we trained on both the Stearman and Tiger Moths and of course having finished the course I was a bit slow learning so I was, I think they were a little concerned about what the state of flying was. I was, I’ve always been a slow learner and I had a wash out check with the CGI on the station who very kindly allowed me to carry on and really from that time I never really looked back. It was really quite remarkable. And for some reason, I don’t know why, looking back I don’t know why they ever asked it but they said, ‘What do you want to become? What do you want to join? Fighter Command or Bomber Command?’ And you can imagine about ninety nine percent of us said Fighter Command so I was sent to Bomber Command which meant going down, back down on to the prairies to Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw learning to fly on the Airspeed Oxford and we had great times there. One thing we learned there which helped us later on in flying experience was the fact that we used to go off on a cross country with two pilots, no navigator, just one acting as pilot and one acting as navigator and switched over halfway through and we saw on a lake, which looked rather nice, we said, ‘Let’s low fly over this lake,’ which we weren’t allowed to do of course, which we did. Little did we know that there were ducks on the lake which rose up and we clattered through these ducks. I ended up with a duck wrapped around my face. We had six duck in the aircraft. Fortunately, they ended up in the engines nacelles, they didn’t damage the engines and of course when we got back we had a right old rocket from the, from the boss but the fact that we got the aircraft back between us and landed they allowed us to carry on. But I had to go to the dentist the next day on camp and the dentist said, ‘Oh you were the bloke who flew that aeroplane.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘We had duck for dinner.’ And then I sat back. And of course that was sort of an experience which helped us much, much later in life, in flying life, which was quite remarkable. And so of course having finished that course you took the little white flash out of your cap which was indicated that you were UT aircrew and took that out and you sewed on your wings in and then, oh, you were a pilot which was quite, which was quite remarkable. And of course you had to get back home so we forgot all about aeroplanes for quite a little while, travelled right back across Canada down to New York where we joined the Queen, Queen Elizabeth to come back home on the Queen Elizabeth and that was, wasn’t in convoy. We just pointed east and set off. It was quite, so new to us. We were so naïve and that was just a wonderful experience except on the Queen Elizabeth there were seventeen thousand others and we had a first class cabin along with eight other people which, you were sleeping in bunks with a chappie’s bottom above you rubbing on your nose, you know. But it was a wonderful experience. Two meals a day and it was wonderful. We lost two people overboard er but the boat didn’t stop they just threw life belts over and, poor souls. But there were Americans, nurses, Americans, Canadians, all coming back, back to the UK. Got back to Gourock up on the Clyde and then of course we had to find somewhere to go and be rehabilitated. We went first of all to Harrogate and then down to Whitley Bay and then back down to Oxford where we had a little rehab course on Oxfords just to get your hand back in again on Oxfords. That was at Kidlington, at Croughton, just outside Oxford. And the course, then of course you had to go to OTU Operational Training Unit and that was an amazing experience when we were flying the Vickers Wellington, the old Wimpy. When we got there of course you had to get a crew. You had a get a five man crew for the Wimpy and the system as I’m sure everybody knows was the fact that they got all the pilots, all the navigators, all the wireless operators a gunner and no engineer at the time and but the, and the navigator and put everybody into this big room and said, ‘Sort yourselves out into crews.’ And they used to go around and say, ‘I haven’t got a navigator. Are you a navigator? Can you fly? Do you want to fly with me?’ and this sort of system is amazing and the system worked. It really was incredible. And my crew had, you had no idea of the background of these people and my crew turned out to be the most wonderful collection of blokes and we flew really as a crew and not just a skipper and bods behind we just, and it worked out wonderfully well. Just to give an idea what they were my bomb aimer up front he was, had a little gypsy existence over in Manchester, a dapper little man, he used to come on operations with a crease in his trousers which was unheard of. My engineer, we had two engineers, I’ll relay about that a little bit when we come to flying. Les, my, I shan’t give his name because it so happened that he couldn’t cope on operations. He was just more or less a young lad working in an office. My navigator Alec, Alec Cowan, he was a real, he was a wonderful navigator, wonderful navigator. He lied about his age to join up. He joined up when he was sixteen and he was operational flying with us at eighteen. We didn’t know at the time. We didn’t find this out until sixty years later which was just as well. We were sitting in the pub at, at Lincoln at our reunion and we were saying, we had just had our eightieth birthdays and we said. ‘Oh we just had our, when’s your eightieth birthday Alec?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s not for another two years yet.’ So that was the first time we, we found out what he was and he was just really more or less straight from school but he really was a most wonderful navigator. Taffy, a little wireless operator, he was a character. Oh, he was a mad little nut he was. We tried to find out where he was after the war and we discovered that his background was in Aberdare and his uncle had a pub and I think he was helping out in his uncle’s pub and I think he took that up for the rest of his life and I wouldn’t say he was a rebel, he was a wonderful character. His mischief, terribly mischievous bloke and we still keep in touch now. He’s a very, very close friend. A lovely little friend, Taffy. My engineer, I eventually had another engineer. A chap called Curly, Curly Ormerod and he was on the situation where he didn’t fly with his skipper who was shot down and killed and he didn’t fly that night he, because I had to get rid of my first engineer Curly was a spare engineer and he joined us and he was a, worked for the council in Oldham I think it was where he was a trainee engineer and just, only a young lad, he was twenty and my special duty operator because of the special duties he was my special duty operator, he was an Austin apprentice and he wanted to join the air force as a pilot but the waiting list for the pilot training then was quite long and he couldn’t wait that long so he volunteered to join as a gunner. We’ll explain a little more about Ted when we come to what they did in the aeroplane. Tommy, my mid upper gunner, he was a council worker in Rotherham and he was the old man of the crew. He was twenty six. The next one down was twenty. I was twenty at the time which was incredible when you think of our kids at twenty. You know, I’m sure if the same thing happened again now I’m sure the responses from the children, the young youth, would be the same but he was, he was married and he had a bit of leave on the station because his wife produced a baby. So, poor old Tommy, he had rather a tragic death after the war but still that Tommy. And my rear gunner, he was a Canadian. His father, an Englishman who had a funeral service, funeral service which he developed in Vancouver in America and Harry through his father’s English experience although he joined the RCAF he came over and joined the RAF as a Canadian. Again, these lads, you know although these vast different backgrounds we all gelled and we all worked together wonderfully well and what they did with us they kept us alive, you know and it really was wonderful. And I, myself, I couldn’t, I didn’t have any education at all. I went to school but because of my illnesses I went to school to start with at the age of five in Newcastle and then I became desperately ill and I was in bed for six months as a young teenager with TB so I couldn’t take place in sport or anything like that so when they came to doing exams when they did the scholarship in those days I went to school just before I was due to take the scholarship and of course I didn’t pass. So there I was. I was, I couldn’t go to a secondary school so I was sent to what they called a training school for the shipyards and it was a sort of engineering training school where at the age sixteen I started to learn about art and drawing, machine drawing and this sort of thing. It was, I enjoyed the school. It was nice but I had no exam, no exams at the end of it so when I, when I joined up I had no matric, no school cert, no exams at all. So how on earth I was ever passed. The only thing that helped I think when they were testing for the attestation was the fact that I became, I started off on the stage at the Newcastle Rep Theatre for a, for a year a bit while I got a position as a pupil surveyor at an architect surveyors office in Newcastle and there I used to do a lot of surveying work using angles and trade vectors and things which helped in the navigation exams and I think that helped me to pass the attestation exams in London. So there we are. There, you’ve got a crew. But we mentioned Ted, the special duty chap, Ted Manners, but he didn’t join the crew at OTU at all because we only had the five man crew and we didn’t know about, anything about special squadrons then of course and of course having finished at Operational Training Unit on Wimpies we were posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit which was at 1662 Conversion Unit at Blyton and of course with the demand for Lancaster aircraft and operational aircraft they had very few Lancasters available. The ones they had available were really the ones that weren’t fit for operational flying so we started to learn to fly four engine aircraft on Halifaxes, on ‘Halibags.’ A nice aeroplane to fly but not quite as amenable as the Lancaster from our experience later on but that was, that was nice, that was fine and of course on the station, on the same station they had what they called an LFS a Lancaster Finishing School so when we’d gone solo on the Halibag we went on to join this LFS, the Lancaster Finishing School and this was on Lancasters and they were a different aeroplane all together. It was a wonderful experience and experience we never expected to have in my life. But I had a little problem. Although my height was right I’ve got little short legs and when you’ve got twelve, four engines of twelve eighty horsepower all taking off with each engine, each propeller going around with three thousand revs you get a lot of torque, a lot of swing on take-off and with my little short legs I was having a hell of a job keeping these bloody black things straight down the runway on take-off so I was a little bit later finishing my training conversion than my friend Paul [Zaggy] who I’d trained with, been in parallel with for many, many months. And when we finished, when he’d finished his course he was posted to 101 squadron and when my turn came about two or three days later I asked the flight commander, ‘Can I go and join my friend Paul on 101 squadron because we’d been friends for a long, long time?’ And his response was, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s a special duty squadron and we only send the best ones there.’ And I said Oh God that was a bit of a comedown. Anyway, a couple of days later he said, ‘Right, Waughman, 101 squadron. Off you go.’ And I said, ‘Well what’s this special duties thing?’ He said, ‘Oh you’ll find out when you get there.’ He didn’t know actually from what we found out later. And when we got to the squadron the day we arrived on the squadron my friend Paul had been killed the night before. And that, you suddenly begin to realise this is serious stuff, you know and you didn’t really think about it beforehand but then it became realistic. You did a couple of cross countries to get your hand in on the squadron experience and then we were given a special duty operator. An eighth member of the crew who spoke German, a German speaker operator and he was flying, was using this equipment called ABC. This ABC equipment started down on the south of England where there were fifteen stations with very fluent German speaking operators who could talk to the German night fighter controllers and jam their signals to their fighters, instructions to their fighters but it only had a range of a hundred and forty miles so that didn’t cover the deep penetration raids in to eastern Europe. So, Sydney Bufton, one of the air ministry boffins said well let’s put it in an aeroplane so they put, started putting them in. It took about three thousand hours to fit this equipment in to an aeroplane and quite an expense and this was allocated to 100 squadron. Now, 100 squadron were also having H2S which was a ground scanning radar and the power unit on the Lancaster mean you couldn’t cope with the ABC and the H2S so they chose the next squadron down which was 101 squadron. So 101 squadron became the special duty squadron flying this ABC and what they called the stuff on the ground station was called Jostle and it had a code name of Corona. Hence it became the Cigar and it was known as ground Cigar and of course when they got it stuck into an aeroplane it became ABC which was Airborne Cigar and Bufton wrote to the air ministry saying that in future correspondence all reference to Airborne Cigar aircraft will be known as ABC in future correspondence so hence 101 squadron became the ABC of the RAF which is remarkable. What Ted had, he had a little three inch cathode ray tube where he could pick up the frequency of the night fighter controllers and lock a little strobe on these, on these, on his screen, cover that with the aircraft’s, aircraft strobe, lock that on and he’d locked on to the frequency of the German night fighter controller’s instructions to the fighters. Having decided that on another little switch where there was German speaking because there were Poles, Czechs and things, once he’d decided that he pressed another little button which blasted engine noise out on that frequency and jammed the signals. And it was a wigwog noise woooooo oooo oooo and the Germans called that, they had a name for this and it was called dudelsack and I think it’s quite an appropriate little description ‘cause dudelsack means bagpipes. And so we had this ABC equipment which is wonderful stuff and this started operating in September, in ‘43. We didn’t join the squadron until November ‘43 and on the first raid the first, one of the first instructions that the special duty operator received from the German signals was, ‘Achtung. Achtung. English bastards coming.’ And that was one of the first instructions they had but sadly, one of our aircraft on that first raid was shot down and the Germans had the system right from the beginning but even the [telephones] people knew of the system but they couldn’t really work out all the technology of it at all so that was quite the thing. That was one of the things that added to the attrition rate on our squadron, the fact that the German night fighters could home on to our transmissions ‘cause we were using their frequencies so they could home on to us and the ABC aircraft were used on every major bombing raid that went out and the idea was that our aircraft were staggered every ten miles through the whole bomber stream. We acted as a normal bomber aircraft with a reduced bomb load, only slightly, well I suppose so I don’t think it ever happened actually but the equipment weighed something like [six or seven hundred pounds] plus another operator so it knocked our bomb load down a little bit and we had three enormous aerials transmitters on the aircraft. Two on the top and one under the nose and these were nearly seven foot long. It didn’t affect the aerodynamics of the aircraft whatsoever. We didn’t, we wouldn’t have realised they were there and we just there we were and our first raid, when we went off on our first raid my little engineer, there was something strange about him he didn’t seem really with it at all. Anyway, so we found we were getting in a bit of a mess and got in the way so, with experience I think we could have carried on but being so inexperienced we came back, we aborted the trip. So, we were, this was just at the very start in November of the Battle of Berlin and this was a trip to Berlin and the WingCo wasn’t too happy about it, WingCo Alexander. And our next operation a couple of nights later again was to Berlin and Les, my little engineer, nineteen year old, we had an engine on fire, a starboard outer went on fire and he just couldn’t do anything he just sat on the floor and just shiver and shake he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t do any of his work at all and I had to, the graviner button on the Lancaster is down on the right hand side of the instrument panel and I had to half get out of the seat to cover all this lot. He couldn’t do any of the fuel control systems at all. So, anyway when we got back I reported this to the wing commander who said, ‘Well you know I suppose you’ve done the right thing,’ and Les, this, my little engineer left the squadron that day, that afternoon. Whether he was made LMF which they usually do in those days we never did find out but he never should have been because he never refused to fly and this is what happened to a lot of Bomber Command aircrew who were literally shit scared. They really were and that was really a physical thing as well and these lads who knew what the conditions was never, they’d rather face the guns of Germany rather than have the stigma of LMF stamped on their documents and this LMF stamped on their documents followed them wherever they went afterwards and this information is kept by the record office and isn’t being released until 2035 so by that time none of the people will be alive to get any slur on their character. So we lost our little Les and this is when we got Curly who didn’t fly with Les the night he was shot down so we acquired Curly as an engineer. Wonderful character. Again, another great tease at the, he was a nice man though but we gelled as a crew and really in those days you did become slightly insular because you worked as a crew and trained as a crew and you played as a crew and I must admit we, we drank a lot. Eight pints a night wasn’t out of the way you know and this was part of the relaxation system for the, for the air force. Because of this Harris wrote to all station commanders, again we found out this much, much later, only fairly recently, the fact that a directive had been sent to the station commanders saying that no Bomber Command aircrew must be used on station duties unless it affected the running of the station and intimated that the relaxation activities must be condoned. Which, as far as that was concerned, was young lads full of testosterone was beer and women and it sounds a bit crude but the girls and boys on the station were really wonderful. They were really good companions. They knew what the system was and they complied and they were really lovely. We had one little girl who used to look after us in our little hut, in our little nissen hut which was, which was just a corrugated iron nissen hut and she was a little Welsh girl with a little doggie and she was known as the camp bicycle ‘cause everybody rode it, you know and these are the sort of the things that went but it wasn’t pornography it was just an accepted way of release of stress and one of my friends who I knew very well he used to say, ‘Well, thank God for sex. It’s kept me sane.’ And this was just a means of release of stress on the aircraft. And a lot of it did happen in Bomber Command sadly and it caused people to lose their lives which is rather a shame but you know those lads who flew and knowing their condition like that they were really the bravest of the brave, you know. They really were. Wonderful. And it kept Bomber Command going. But LMF, they didn’t have so many LMF. I think there weren’t a huge number cases of LMF but it was a rotten stigma and of course then having been on the on the, on the squadron with our ABC equipment we were involved very much with the German night fighter system and this was organised by a chap called, oh I’ve forgotten what they called him now, I’ll think of it in minute but he organised that the, all of eastern Europe, western Europe would be split in to five boxes. The Kammhuber. Kammhuber, the Kammhuber Line and this in each box each controller had control of their fighter system and they had a couple of systems there where they had, called Wilde Sau and Zahme Sau which is Wild Boar and Tame Boar and with the Wurzburg radar they could direct a fighter in to the bomber stream and nearly always ME109s and they were the Wild Boar who could go and find their own aircraft to attack and the Tame Boar was with Wurzburg and Freya aircraft systems whereby they could direct an aircraft almost on to an individual aircraft which was quite alarming as it turned out. We had experience of that and they developed a system called Lichtenstein whereby you see these aircraft with German aircraft they nearly all the ME109s with an array of aerials around the nose and they could actually home onto an individual aircraft and because of our ABC equipment we were very, very vulnerable. They could home on to the ABC equipment and the H2S and they developed the system called Naxos and SN2 which was very, very effective indeed and they could home directly on to aircraft and counter, counter measures for our broadcast so we had, they had a system where they could home on to our aircraft. We had a system where we would counter measure their counter measures, counter measure their receptions and they developed a [Frensburg] which counter measured our counter measures and we developed counter measures that would counter measured their counter measures and so on and the electronic wall we learned afterwards really was quite terrific but the German night fighter system was, really was very good. And they had with their, with their Wurzburg searchlights, radar controlled searchlights, radar controlled guns they had what they called predicted flak and predicted searchlights and when you were flying along you’d see this characteristic big blue searchlight appear which would wave backwards and forwards and as soon as it picked you up on the radar it flicked on to you and you were flying in their searchlights and all the searchlights roundabout would come on. You’d have perhaps forty, fifty, sixty searchlights flying with you and you were flying in daylight and of course the night fighters used to get in amongst you then but we had systems of flying. We flew the corkscrew pattern which flying a corkscrew pattern more or less like a horizontal corkscrew. It was bloody hard work when you’ve got a fully loaded aircraft. You lost a little bit of height doing it but it was really effective and the sad thing is when gunners, some gunners saw these things and gave instructions like say, ‘Dive starboard go’ and something like this some of the captains said, well, ‘Why?’ And of course by that time it was far too late but this corkscrew pattern did help enormously to evade the things and on the predicted flak it was quite a characteristic burst of flak. They usually put out a box system of flak where they just covered this area completely with anti-aircraft fire and you had to fly through this box of fire but they had this predicted flak whereby they could send up the shell which would burst in the characteristic sort of development and if you saw this behind you, if you were lucky enough, you knew this was predicted flak so, and you knew it’d take forty five seconds for the Germans to reload their guns, fire their shells and for the shell to burst so you turned off forty five degrees, and flew for about forty seconds then turned back ninety degrees and hope the next one burst behind you. This happened to us once and we nearly ended up in the system for twenty five, twenty minutes just doing this evasion all the time. Similarly with the searchlights, the searchlights I caused a bit of hilarity one night when we got back to debriefing saying that we were attacked by searchlights over Hanover but we were in searchlights for nearly half an hour trying to get out of them which, but with these sort of things happened on raids and so of course there we are we are flying on a squadron and it was daily life of being on the squadron. When you woke up in the morning usually late, after breakfast or early after lunch you went up to flights and on the wall you saw a battle order and could see your name on the battle order and all the battle order told you was A) you were flying, the crew you were flying with, the aircraft you were flying in, and the time of briefing, and the time of meal and when you saw that the first thing you did was go and change your underwear which is, which is, it really was. To say that you weren’t fearful, you know, it was very, it was very anxious, became very anxious because you had no idea where you were going. It was just you were on the battle order that night. So we used to go up to flights and check the aircraft, the serviceability of the aircraft, meet the ground crew, wonderful ground crew I had, and there you’d ask what the petrol load was and what the bomb load was and if you had lots of petrol, not so many bombs you knew you were going a long way. Vice versa if you had lots of bombs and not so much petrol you weren’t going so far so you had some idea what the thing was going to, what the raid was going to be about and then at briefing of course, on the wall, we were all in nissen huts by the way, little tin huts, on the wall they had a big map of Europe covered by a map, a curtain and when you all sat down and all got collected together they drew the curtain back and there was the red line which was a tape showing the route to and from the target and if it was a long distance target, Berlin, Munich, these groans used to go up right through the briefing and then you were briefed by the various section leaders, the met officer, the armament officer, navigation officer and there of course then you had to get out to the aircraft so we went in to the crew room, got our kit on and the girls in the parachute section, [collect your] parachute section, they were great. One little girl one day said, ‘Let me have your battle dress.’ And she took my battle dress off, took my wings off and sewed a lucky three penny piece under my wing. And these are the sort of things that went on. Wonderful characters. And you had a locker where you kept your kit in the locker and when you were flying the rear gunner had what they called a Sidcot suit which was an electrically heated suit but the rest of the crew you could really manage with just a thick jumper and battle dress. Some wore some form of overall but the costumes were really quite, quite ordinary. You had flying boots. We had, originally we had the brown fur lined flying boots and after that we had the escape boots, black escape boots, whereby they had a little knife concealed in the boot where you could cut the top off and leave a little, like a pair of shoes when you got shot down. There we are. We’ve got our kit, we’ve got our kit we’ve got to get out the aircraft so the crew buses arrived and we had to get out in to the, in to the aircraft but the atmosphere was quite electric, you know. They had sort of two sort or reactions. Some people were verbose and talked and over talked which was out of characteristic and some were just clammed up and just didn’t talk at all. So, when you got to out to the aircraft you just checked and went around and did a normal flight check for the aircraft, waiting for the signal to taxi out and of course once you got there, once you got in the aircraft there was no outside communication whatsoever ‘cause the Germans could pick up. In fact with their radar system they knew that the raid was going to take place and they knew the height you were going to fly at, they knew the course you were going to fly and the speed you were flying at but they didn’t know where you were going. So, we were waiting at the aircraft for the verilight to tell us to go and taxi out and of course the other little superstitions, you know the old tale of just a bit of luck you wee’d on the tail wheel. The lads used to wee on the tail wheel. We never did of course but er [laughs]. My rear gunner Harry, being stuck at the back he didn’t feel a part of this the bombing lark at all so he used to take a couple of empty beer bottles with him and when we were over the target his contribution to the bombing was to throw out a couple of empty beer bottles. This, this on one occasion when we were waiting to get on the aircraft the station commander, Group Captain King used to come around and just say, ‘Hello lads.’ Wished them all best of luck. Thinking of a man like that knowing, sending all these lads you know that a third of them aren’t going to come back, you know. What went through their mind must be, must be awful. Anyway, when the group captain saw Harry without his beer bottles Harry explained. ‘Oh I haven’t got my bloody beer bottles.’ He said, ‘Right. Get in the car.’ Dashed down to the mess, got a couple of beer bottles and drove him back again so Harry had them. Whether he drank them or threw them out full we never did find out but Harry had his beer bottles. I had a little, I wasn’t superstitious, touch wood but my cousin Mary, I’m very fond of Mary I think our parents were getting a little bit worried but Mary she gave me a silk scarf, a little RAF silk scarf which I wore on every operation I went on and I wore long johns, used to wear the long johns on the flying and I thought well if I change my long johns I’ll, you know, I’ll change my luck. We had two pairs. One for wearing and one for washing. I never had mine washed and I wore the same pair of long johns for thirty operations and the lads used to say, ‘Well you took them off and stood them up in your locker’ and you can imagine the odour on the aircraft with all this sort of thing going on must have been pretty awful. You didn’t notice it at the time. But another thing I had was my dad, one of the talismans for naval people was a caul and the caul is a sack a baby is born in and my dad was given one of these when he, when he first joined, when he started operations in the navy in the First World War and I was on leave just before I was joining the squadron. They knew I was going to go on an operational squadron and I was standing, I was standing by the stove in the kitchen and my dad came up and he wasn’t a very effusive man and he said, ‘Here’s this,’ and he gave me his caul in a little tin box which I’ve still got and that’s over a hundred years old and he said, ‘There you are. Good luck. I love you.’ And that was really a three hankie job, you know. A wonderful little man. But there we are I had my caul and I didn’t take it on operations but it kept me alive and these are the sort of superstitions you had but we weren’t on because of the job we were doing we weren’t allowed to take any sort of document, photographs or anything at all because of the very secret nature of our, with the work we doing. It was treated very, we weren’t allowed to take any photographs on the squadron at all. We did. And everything was kept very, we weren’t allowed to discuss it anywhere outside but A) our aircraft was parked at dispersal, we were W which was far end of dispersal just by a fence and the main road was just outside and I don’t know what guarding they had on the aircraft but anyway part of the secrecy thing was not having to take any documentation. When we got our sandwiches they were wrapped up in newspaper so they had a good, they could have had a good idea what was going on. So there we were, off on operations and operational flying became to start with you were so inexperienced that you didn’t really realise what was going on and the casualty rate in the first five operations was something like forty percent which was as high as that and it really was. It became quite an alarming thing. We didn’t realise at the time. We only found out this many years afterwards. So our squadron were very vulnerable and once we got past the five operations squadrons, five operations you really became quite fatalistic. You just, you were doing a job and accepted what you had to do and you expected you were going to die and it was quite a strange relationship that you had and you had a bit, a little bit of sick humour and I’m sure folk know of the grim reaper, the old skeletal figure with his scythe and with his scythe you got the chop and we used to say, when you were talking, standing by somebody, put your hand on his shoulder and you said, ‘Death put his bony hand on your shoulder and [live] chap I’m coming,’ you know and if you were in the mess and one of your comrades has been killed and gone you used to drink his health and you used to say, ‘Here’s to good old,’ so and so, ‘And here’s the next one to die.’ So this sort of atmosphere existed. Some people had premonitions you know and my mother, my mother was an old witch really she used to have dreams and things and she had a dream one night that things weren’t going to go right and she tried to contact the station to see what was going on and of course she couldn’t because the station was completely isolated and that was a night when we had an awful lot of trouble. But she had this idea. And one of the girls on the squadron one of the little WAAF officers, on the Nuremberg raid, said to her fiancé Jimmy [Batten] Smith she said, ‘You’ll be over the target about ten minutes past midnight.’ She said, ‘Right, I’ll set my alarm clock and I’ll think of you when you’re over the target.’ She woke up about 11 o’clock, half past ten, 11 o’clock and knew something wasn’t right and she switched on her light and listened and couldn’t find anything, anything about it at all and Jimmy, over the target, as soon as he left the target, just at the time, he was shot down and killed so he never got back. There’s another, our Flight Commander, Squadron Leader Robinson he was a wonderful, he had very, very rapid promotion because our previous flight commander was killed and he was promoted from flight lieutenant up to, straight up to squadron leader within a matter of weeks and he became our squadron commander er flight commander. Wonderful little man. And he had a rear gunner who was seconded from the American air force and this American chappie still had his brown overalls and American flying kit and they were in the mess and the lads were playing crib and poker and he, this Jones a chap called Jones, won the, won the kitty and I can see it now a little pile of ten shilling notes which he won which he when he picked it up he said, ‘Shan’t be needing this.’ And gave it all away. That night, on the raid, on the twenty ninth raid they were all killed. So whether they had these sort of premonitions, you know, it was quite remarkable and one of the bomb, when I came off leave one occasion we only had a short, a few days leave the bombing, the armament officer, only a young lad, he looked strange and I said, ‘Are you alright, Geoff?’ And he said, ‘Well, funny thing happened,’ an aircraft had crashed on take-off and hit part of the bomb dump and he jumped in his little wagon to go out and see what he could do out there and when he got on the perimeter track near where the bomb dump was there was a chap waiting and saying, ‘Don’t go down in there. They’re all dead.’ This chap was covered in blood and whatever. He said, ‘Don’t go down in there. They’re all dead.’ But he said, ‘I must.’ So when he went down to see the, what was going on he found the body of the man he’d been talking to on the perimeter track dead in the hut. So, and within a few weeks he was white haired. And these sorts of strange things happened you know it’s a, it’s a, you didn’t realise at the time all the significance of all these things but there we are. One of the things that happened, on one of the early raids when we went and poor old Bomber Harris, he didn’t like the idea at all but they developed what they called the transport plan whereby they were bombing railway martialling yards, [tank?] depots, station er station signal boxes and train stations to stop goods going down for the pre-invasion, for the German pre- invasion and so this was the transport plan and Harris didn’t like this but we went off on one raid to a place called Hasselt which was on the Belgian/German border, railway martialling yards and we got within about ten minutes of the target. This was all at night. This was all night flying of course in cloud, mainly in cloud and my engineer who was looking out the window said a very rude word, something about fornicating in hades and the next thing we knew this other aircraft hit us slap on the side and we just crashed into this, the two aircraft just crashed together and we were, he was slightly underneath us and his propellers cut through our bomb aimer’s compartment, just behind Norman’s feet. He was lying down ready to bomb. His mid upper, his canopy, the other aircraft canopy took off our starboard tyre, his turret, which was sticking up at the top of his aeroplane carved through our fuselage at the back, left a big hole in the back. We lost part of the tale plane. Lost all our electrics. Harry, the rear gunner was knocked unconscious, only temporary and we were a bit of a mess and thereby we, we were sitting, I didn’t see all this going on but the crew saw what was going on and when we hit this aircraft we were literally sitting on top of it and his propellers were churning through our little bits and pieces and we were in a bit of a mess and afterwards I was asked to write a little resume of what happened in the collision just for purely records sake and to give it a title of the most significant thing that happened, you remembered, on the trip and the most significant bit was sitting on top of this other aircraft with no control over your aircraft whatsoever. All the controls were just limp and wobbly. So, nothing. So, I called this the title of this thing, ‘It went limp in my hand,’ which was highly censored. I wasn’t allowed to do that. So this report went through and in consequence we had to do, coming back, we had to do a crash landing. We had Fido on the station and the Fido system was a sort of a little triangular system with the fuel pipe on the top and the gaps of about ten metre gaps within each section and unfortunately our dud wheel skidded between the gap and the thing and the other one bounced over the top of the pipes and just put a little dent in the top and there was a casualty that night sadly. We were skidding towards the control tower in the dark and we were getting very close to the control tower and all the staff on the control or most of the staff on the control tower and the little girls, came out to watch this idiot bend his aeroplane and as we were skidding towards it one of these girls jumped back and sprained her ankle and that was the only casualty that night but there were sort of talks of decorations and things but it never happened so I was very kindly given a green endorsement in my logbook and mentioned in despatches. That’s in the logbook now still but if it had been a red one it would have been an adverse report but a green one was a pat on the back sort of thing so that was, that was quite nice but there of course that aircraft was written off. As far as the squadron it was written off it had to be repaired and rebuilt but we discovered that two main longerons going along the back of the aircraft were badly damaged and had we to have taken evasive action no doubt the aircraft would have broken up and we realised that a lot of damage at the back because we had a big hole in the floor and I told Harry, the rear gunner, I said, ‘Harry, pick up your parachute, come up front just in case anything else happens.’ And he said, ‘No. I’ll stay here and keep a look out.’ And these are the characters that they were. Wonderful characters. And that wasn’t the only thing that Harry did. We went on one long trip and his electrically heated Sidcot suit failed. He never said a peep, never said a word and when we got back seven and a half, eight hours later getting out the aircraft they said. ‘Where’s Harry?’ ‘Oh he must still be there.’ So I popped into the aircraft, opened his door and there he was sitting with an icicle from his face mask as thick as my wrist down between his legs. He couldn’t move and he’d never said a peep he just kept on doing his job. He was in sick quarters for nearly three weeks and that affected him for the rest of his life. And this is what these poor lads got up to. It really was wonderful. I was so lucky with the lads I had as a crew. Wonderful and very conscientious lads. So there we are. We got back and of course the aircraft had to be taken away and we had to get a new aircraft. Our first aircraft was W with the squadron letters were SR and we had a W, W ABC all the way through. We had W, so we had W and there was a song of the day called. “Coming in on a wing and a prayer.” So I thought. ‘Oh lets,’ and there’s a P O Prune character so I painted on the front of the aircraft this P O Prune character with wings and “On a wing and a prayer” coming underneath and of course that was the one that we crash landed. That disappeared. That went. And we get a new aircraft almost immediately. Well, they got another aircraft almost immediately straight from MU and, ‘What are we going to put on the nose. What nose art were we going to have?’ And when we got out of dispersal to see the new aircraft Jock Steadman or Willy Steadman, Willy Steadman our Scottish in charge, NCO in charge of the aircraft he’d already painted on the aircraft Oor Wullie and Oor Wullie was the cartoon character from the Glasgow Sunday Post and that was the aircraft which gets all the publicity now and we did more operations in the other one than we did than we did in this one but they were wonderful aeroplanes to fly. Really, really were. So, anyway, there we are. We’ve got a new aeroplane and another operation we went on was to Hasselt which was another transport plant target whereby 5 group and 1 group were involved. A hundred and seventy three aircraft from each group. We were scattered all the way through the raid, just our squadron, so we were going to Hasselt which was French had been French military base which was the biggest military base in Europe at the time right on the edge of the village of Mailly and we were briefed to bomb very, very strictly. We didn’t want to kill anybody in the village so we had to be very precise, we were told to be very precise with our bombing so, and we were to assemble at a point just north of Mailly called Chalon whereby you waited there to get instructions from the master bomber, Cheshire who was the master bomber to go and bomb. He was really being very precise as well and he wasn’t satisfied with the marking so when the first group of a hundred and seventy three aircraft from 5 group arrived at Chalon, encircling the beacon, circling the area, it wasn’t a beacon as such but circling the area and being, the aircraft being delayed and delayed and delayed this second group caught up with the first group so there was something like nearly four hundred aircraft milling around waiting for instructions to go in and there just happened to be three German night fighter stations handy and they got in amongst us and it really was chaotic. There really were all sorts of awful things going on. The result of the raid was a very successful raid but the loss was over eleven percent. They sent just under four hundred aircraft and we lost forty two but there was only one aircraft crashed in the village where a French man were killed so that was compensation in a way. So when we were circling this beacon the RT discipline disappeared. You weren’t supposed to talk outside because the Germans knew where you were going, where you were coming from but the RT discipline just went that night and a voice came over the air to the pathfinders, ‘Pathfinders. For God’s sake pull your fingers out. I’m on fire. I’m being been shot at.’ And a very broad Australian voice came over the air, ‘If you’re going to die, die like a man.’ And this was the sort of thing that went on. The problem was that the American force [AFM?]were broadcasting on a similar frequency and it was the signals weren’t getting through as well as they ought to but anyway of course, when we got the order to go in and bomb it was just like Derby Day. All these aircraft ploughing down on the target. It was successful but we had a problem. We’d just dropped our bombs and we’d had an aircraft, something rattle us about with an updraft coming up and that. It was a bit rough but we’d just dropped our bombs and Norman, the bomb aimer, lying down in the front, he didn’t have time to say anything he just said, ‘Oh Christ’ and an aircraft blew up underneath us and turned us over. We were upside down and I can say I half rolled a Lanc [laughs]. So there we were, upside down at eight thousand feet and coming out you just couldn’t pull it out like that because the high speed stalled the aircraft so it took us a little while to come out and we were down to about a thousand feet by the time we sorted things out. Going very, very fast way beyond the [all up] speed of a Lancaster. We were doing nearly four hundred miles an hour. Four hundred knots as it was in those days and, but the aircraft just had scorch marks and a little bit of creaky stuff but there we are. Once you got sorted out you checked on the crew. ‘Alright, Harry?’ The rear gunner. ‘Yes skip.’ ‘Alright, Tommy?’ ‘Yes.’ Wireless op. ‘Alright, Taffy?’ And the response I got was, ‘Blood. Blood,’ and I thought, ‘Oh Christ, what’s happened?’ So I pulled the curtain back and there’s Taffy wiping his head and that’s all we knew and, ‘Oh God, what’s happened to Taffy,’ and Taffy, what happens when you’re flying at those, those temperatures, those heights, temperatures, the lowest temperature we had was minus forty seven and you had an elsan at the back of the aircraft which if you went and used that if you sat down on the elsan like that and you left a bit of your behind, behind ‘cause it was like you’d have an ice cube sticking on your fingers. You couldn’t do that so what the lads had they had a large [fuel] tin with the top cut off which they passed around the aircraft as a pee can and this pee can was kept down by the wireless operator which was the warmest place ‘cause it didn’t freeze when it was down there. And Taffy said now you can still see this pee can arriving with negative gravity and tipping all over him. When we were falling, coming out, recovering from the dive which we got in to and of course when you got back there was no question of going to get cleaned up. You had to go straight to be debriefed and of course he wasn’t exactly flavour of, flavour of the month which was, which was poor old Taffy. Still gets his leg pulled unmercifuly about that.
CB: I’m going to suggest we have a break.
RW: Yes fine.
CB: For a moment. So thank you very –
[pause]
CB: What it’s doing? We’re now recording again.
RW: Yeah.
CB: I’ve tried to do the playback but that didn’t work so we’re recording again now and I’m just hoping everything’s worked because it’s so good and I’m just looking at the numbers.
[pause]
CB: Right. So we’ve come to the point where you were inverted.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Would you just like to describe before we go on to other things just how did you get the aircraft upright?
RW: Well -
CB: Because you can’t turn, roll it. Can you?
RW: Well we had to, to a certain extent with being upside down. You just imagine an aircraft being upside down you had to get it the right way up and the only thing you can do is turn it around so while we were plummeting, plummeting downwards and getting rather fast we sort of half rolled the thing out. Sort of almost like a very poor barrel roll that we flew. So, we were upside down and you turned over and came out sort of in that direction so you didn’t do a full roll. It was sort of almost like a half roll like almost like a half missing out the last bit of a barrel roll.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Coming out but because of the weight it was hard work but you didn’t think of it as hard, you didn’t think of it as work at the time you just sort of had to get out of it. Get it back.
CB: Yes, of course.
RW: Flying again but, and you just couldn’t pull the stick back and get the aircraft flying again because you could develop what they called a high speed stall cause the wing stalls at fourteen degrees and if you’re mushing down it increases the angle of attack very rapidly and you get what was called a high speed stall so this is where the training came in with these other flying, these little experiences we had in training. So, we just really tried to come, come out as gently as we possibly could. You certainly had to pull back on the stick to get control but trying not to mush it down so you really tried to fly it out which we did in the end, going very, very fast.
CB: You say we. Was the engineer helping you?
RW: Yes, well all he could do was pull the throttles back or push the throttles forward apart from being spread, spread across the floor. You know, the poor navigators instruments are all over the place. In that respect think of the navigators instruments all over the place my little wireless op oh he was a little terror and my navigator and he were chalk and cheese, vastly different characters and one occasion my navigator asked for a QDM from the wireless operator and Taffy said a very rude word telling him to go away and Alec looked back and found there was Taffy with his radio set, the old 1154 55 bits of the set on the floor trying to repair it and he couldn’t give him a QDM but he said [?] [laughs] so that was the atmosphere but they were a great crew, great crew. But there you are. We pulled ourselves out and we got ourselves out and we got back with having done the crash landing as I say. But the raid that I think affected us more than anything was the Nuremberg raid. The raid on Nuremberg. It was the raid that really should never have happened but we just discovered this afterwards reading books and things the fact that the, the uncertainty in Bomber Command headquarters about whether it should go on or shouldn’t go.
CB: It was to do with the fog, wasn’t it?
RW: Pardon?
CB: It was to do with the fog.
RW: Yeah. Yeah, well apparently there was a front coming up over Germany and the idea was that the route was going to be clear and the target was going to be er the route was going to be cloud covered and the target was going to be clear but the movement of the front wasn’t right and of course the, all the route was clear and the cloud over the target and the winds were wrong, all wrong.
CB: Oh.
RW: And all the hundred odd mile winds and this sort of thing were going on and nearly all in the wrong direction. Even the pathfinders, even the wind finders didn’t get the right places for the right system for the wind and so some of the pathfinders were marking Schweinfurt and different targets and Alec, my navigator, who was insistent on being a very precise little man he got us to the target and we actually flew to the target but by the time we were flying out the operation was delayed. Put back, put back and put back twice. So, we were going to bomb about five past twelve sort of thing like this. And we went off, a little bit in daylight taking off and we got, when we got to the French German border we’d seen sixteen aircraft shot down and to do what you used to do you used to report this to the navigator and he’d log it so they could get a record of where the aircraft went down and when he got to sixteen Alec said, ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’ So, we didn’t tell him anymore but we saw no end of stuff and coming across we were supposed to come south of the Ruhr which we did but a lot of people went straight over the top of the Ruhr and the carnage there. And just on the controversial long leg, what they called the long leg which was from the French from France right across to northern, north of the target, north of Nuremberg there was a two hundred and sixty five mile leg which was unusual ‘cause you usually had diversions and that sort of thing and it just so happened that there were two German night fighter beacons on the route Ider and Otto and it just so happened that their night fighters were assembling at the beacons all at the right time for them. So, there we were, we were ploughing along. We were very, very fortunate. We managed to keep out of trouble. We did have trouble but nothing drastic so we carried on and what we saw over the beacons was quite considerable. Lots of aircraft being shot at. We could see the tracers, German tracers going on, and this was a raid where the Germans first used the system called schragemusik whereby instead of having guns firing directly at the rear gunner they knew that there was no ventral armament on the Lancaster at all so this very astute German chap said, ‘Well, let’s have the guns pointing upwards,’ so they had two 20mm cannons pointing up, about sixty degrees. So, they used to fly underneath you and you knew nothing. You didn’t know they were there at all until the shells started to fly past. We, we were lucky. On one occasion we saw the shells coming upwards to us just on our starboard side so we managed to take evasive action but we didn’t know what it was, we didn’t know why they were coming up that way until many years later when we discovered they had this schragemusik and one German shot down forty two aircraft using that equipment. He did five in one night which was amazing so this added to the attrition rate of the raid at all. We were very, very fortunate. Alec, the navigation was spot on and we passed a target which we saw in the distance Schweinfurt which was being bombed which we didn’t know it was Schweinfurt then but we said, Alec said, ‘That can’t be right.’ So we carried on and actually arrived at Nuremberg which was cloud covered and we just, Norman had just happened to see a break in the little clouds so we bombed there. I think we bombed Nuremberg. We were certainly over Nuremberg. Whether we actually bombed Nuremberg you can’t really say because we couldn’t take a photograph because of the photoflood. It wouldn’t show anything on the photo apart from cloud but there was a massive explosion on our, on our left hand side which apparently somebody had hit a munition train just outside Nuremberg and this had this enormous explosion so we knew something had happened. And of course we had to come back when it was a long leg. There was some fighter activity on the way back but it was such and the lads when they used to go on these raids the lads, I didn’t get involved but the lads used to have a kitty. They put some pennies in this kitty and the ones who guessed the most number of aircraft shot down or most accurate number of aircraft shot down got the kitty and Curly my engineer got it that night because he said a hundred. He estimated a hundred and when we got back for debriefing the intelligence people were very sceptical about the thing. Oh it couldn’t have happened no its near going to happen but when our squadron records came in we sent twenty six aircraft that night and we lost seven which was nearly a third of the squadron that night. Sixty people, you know, all gone that night and it left it was really strange. It was. We were like zombies, you know. We just walked around. Not upset. Just mind blown and we went back we couldn’t sleep. We just walked around until daylight and the squadron didn’t operate for a little while after that. But what happened with the, when we got back used to go for a flying meal when we, when we got back and when we got back to the mess there were no waitresses there at all. All the meals were left on the counter and a little notice on the wall saying, ‘Please help yourselves.’ And all these girls had gone into the restroom and they were crying their eyes out ‘cause of the losses on the squadron. You know, they really felt the effect of that. Moreso than we did in many respects. Norman, my bomb aimer, who was always girl mad for the ladies wanted to go and console them but the WAAF officers said. ‘No. Leave them to it.’ And so we had to help ourselves to the meal and this was the atmospheres they had on the squadrons you know. The thoughts of the people working. When you think of a squadron where you’ve got something like anything a hundred and eighty, two hundred aircrew you’ve got something like two thousand, two and a half thousand ground staff who without them we couldn’t have kept flying, you know. So they, and they don’t get the credit that they justly deserve and our ground crew were wonderful. Little Willy [Severn] and Nobby Burke and they were part of the aircraft, they were part of the aircrew and I kept in touch with them for many, many years until he died just a few years ago at the age of ninety seven.
CB: Really.
RW: Lived up in Glasgow and Perth, near Perth and when I visited him and his lovely wife Annie he used to sit in his room all by himself just looking out the window and saying, ‘Aye. Och aye. Aye. Och aye,’ and remembering all the things that were going on. We were very, very fortunate on the squadron he was on the squadron for many, many months. He joined the squadron up at Holme on Spalding Moor and he only ever lost two aircraft so we so lucky to be with him. Mind you, we lost an aircraft for him which was, didn’t go down very well. So, but again, again these characters you’d come back with holes and bits missing and they’d be waiting for you when you got back and they’d get these things sorted out and repaired more or less for the, for the next night so, in all sorts of weathers. The, being a dispersed camp we didn’t have any hangars to work in. All the aircraft were stacked outside and, you know, in February ‘44 we had something like three foot of snow and sixteen foot snowdrifts and the station was cut off completely and these lads were working on the aircraft changing plugs, doing servicing on the aircraft. They worked, Willy said they worked in pairs. When one was working and his hands got frozen he went and warmed up. Another chap took over so they were working outside in all these sorts of conditions.
CB: There were hangars but they couldn’t put the aircraft in was it?
RW: Well, there were hangars when they had major things to do. Engine changes -
CB: Right.
RW: And these sort of things. They would take them in for major servicing. [Eight star] servicing, for a major servicing but apart from that they were just kept outside in the cold and the wet and in the war it could be anything.
CB: I’m going to stop there again because we are going to have a cup of tea.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Thank you.
RW: Oh lovely.
[pause]
CB: Right, so we’re back on again now.
RW: Yeah.
CB: And we’re just doing the -
RW: You finished the -
CB: Rerun of the Mailly but I think it’s useful because I’ve heard this, somebody mentioned before.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Of the attrition -
RW: Yeah.
CB: And because of the milling around -
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So why was it that the marking was so delayed causing the traffic jam?
RW: Well the again Cheshire was a brilliant pilot and a brilliant pathfinder and he was a perfectionist and again, forgive me if I’ve mentioned but the briefing that we had as the ordinary aircrew main force was to be very precise with the bombing because we didn’t want to hit any of the village. The village next door to the target. And he was being the same and he wasn’t satisfied with the markers that were going down and he said, ‘Well, don’t come in. We’re remarking.’ So he was re-marking the target to get in to the correct position for, for the [Mailly] raid and because of this it was delaying. It was, saying delayed you’re only talking about minutes. You’re not talking about hours, you know, but five minutes, ten minutes. An awful lot can happen in five, ten minutes and he was waiting until the markers got, really got them organised because there were two marking spots. One east and one west. One on the railway. One on the barracks because it was timed for midnight because this was the time when the people were coming back to their billets and were getting their, and they [wanted to kill the] troops.
CB: Yeah, of course.
RW: Troop concentrations so he was being as perfect as he possibly could and in consequence with the markers not being as accurate as he liked he stopped it and said we’ll remark again.
CB: Because it’s a French target?
RW: Because, well, not so much a French target. The target which was right next door to the French village.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And he didn’t want to kill -
CB: That’s what I meant. Yes.
RW: Didn’t want to kill, bomb the village. So, we were briefed and presumably they must have been briefed as well to be as perfect as they possibly could on their marking so as not to kill French people.
CB: Course.
RW: So this, and this came to light too, many, many years later here, by a little girl who was doing her degree at the Sorbonne in Paris relating to British and American efforts during the war and she came here and interviewed me here and stopped here for quite a little while and had a little chat about the Mailly raid and this sort of thing and she was quite concerned, you know. She was only what twenty, twenty one year old but she was only concerned about the fact that that attitude was taken to stop people, French people being killed. She got a first degree anyway which was rather nice.
CB: You obviously briefed her well.
RW: Yes, we still send Christmas cards to each other. I haven’t seen her for years and years and years. I wonder what she is doing now, whether she is married or what. But she was a nice little girl and I’ve got some pictures of her somewhere in there.
CB: Yeah.
RW: So, yes, so the, that was the result of the Mailly raid and the Nuremberg of course, raid, as well of course had although we’d had a lot of damage on other raids and quite traumatic things on other raids the Nuremberg raid left the biggest scar than any, mental scars was far, far greater than the physical scar and that really got sunk home when you realise what the attrition rates was. And the reports I think say there was ninety six, ninety seven aircraft shot down over the target but there were over a hundred wrecked completed so there must have been about a hundred and sixteen, a hundred and twenty aircraft written off altogether with all those, not all those aircrew but I think there was something like five hundred and sixty five, five hundred and five hundred and fifty aircrew killed that night, one night. The Nuremberg raid. And there were more aircrew killed on that one night then there was in the whole of the month of the Battle of Britain, which, you can’t compare the sort of flying that we were doing but the figures are quite remarkable when you think of what was going on. But being thickies as we were we knew it went on and we didn’t realise the implications of what was going on. We just got on with and had to do a job. But again, we had the trip, we had a little experience which was a trip to Munich. We were briefed for nine hours twenty five minutes petrol and we were given nine hours forty odd minutes petrol to fly on with instructions to land in the south of England if we had problems with getting back with the fuel consumption and it was again the weather wasn’t as forecast so we chugged off to Munich. Rather a long haul. A very long haul. Beautiful scenery over the Alps. We cross the Alps three times it was wonderful. Twice because it was twice the target and coming back we had problems. We lost part of a port wing, part of the leading edge of the port wing, we lost instruments, lost the pitot heads so that caused us little problems. Not exactly flying by the seat of our pants but -
CB: But you had no air speed indicator.
RW: So we were chugging back and as we say the leading edge of the port wing had disappeared somewhere and we’d had icing on the props. That was the amazing, we used to get icing on the propellers. And these were flying, the icing used to fly off and rattle against the side of the aircraft. It was just like flak for hitting the side of the aircraft and I’ve still got a bit of flak that came into my aeroplane. It’s on the table over there. Yes, so coming back it took a lot, lot longer than we anticipated and we were rather slow coming back to the extent that we were coming back over France in daylight and we were getting halfway across France and we saw these two little specks appearing flashing towards us and, ‘Oh Christ, what’s this going on?’ A couple of spitfires. They had been sent out to escort us back. So we were escorted back but with the engineers and navigation and fuel conservation we got back to Ludford having flown for ten and a quarter hours.
CB: Wow.
RW: But again the ground crew had that aircraft ready again for the next night which is, which is, what they get up to is wonderful. So they’re the sort of things that happened on raids. Another story, we came over Stettin one night. We lost two engines, two starboard engines. We managed to get one going half again so we came back from Stettin on two and a half engines.
CB: Was that flak damage?
RW: Yeah. Yeah. That was flak damage yes and when we got back Curly, he was a dreadful tease, he used to tease the WAAFs dreadfully and this poor little girl he teased her so much that when he was having his meal, operational meal she said, ‘I’m not going to serve you with your meal, cheeky bugger. I’m not going to serve your meal.’ He did get his meal of course but she wouldn’t serve him. And coming back off this trip we were so late we were, everybody, the committee of adjustment had been in and started to take our kit away. They didn’t think we were coming back but when we got back we got to the mess and this poor little kid was in tears, ‘Oh I shall never do that again.’ This was the atmosphere of these kids and girls. Wonderful. They were the sorts of things that happened. My last, very last operation was to again a transport plant target which was the original D-Day which was on the 4th 5th of June and like on the briefing we knew we were on the battle order but we had no idea where we were going and when we got out to the dispersal and asked what we were, what the petrol load and bomb load was Willy said, ‘Eeh,’ he said, ‘You’ve got full tanks and overloads and no bombs.’ And you were thinking, ‘Oh God. What’s going on? Are we going to Italy, Russia, whatever.’ No. What was happening we were flying a square circle around the invasion beaches giving false instructions to some of the shipping people imitate a convoy and also reporting on the fighter activity, German fighter activity to report back to help with the invasion and of course the invasion was put back twenty four hours because of the weather. So they took our overload tanks on, put a few bombs on board and we went off and we bombed Sangatte. Didn’t do a very good job obviously. So, that was our very last trip, Sangatte, and when we got back, because of the weather, very adverse weather we were diverted to Faldingworth which is only about thirty odd miles from Ludford, our base and we slept on a chair in the mess for the rest of the night and when we got up in the morning and having breakfast the station commander, Group Captain King arrived and he said, ‘Come on. I’m taking you back.’ I said, ‘Well I’ve got an aeroplane outside you know.’ And he said ‘You’re not touching another aircraft on the squadron. That was your last operation.’ So we just left the aircraft. How they got it back I don’t know but he took us back in his little hut, little, his little van. We went back and that was my last operation and mentioning our attrition rate on the squadron, in early 1944 our attrition rate was something like sixty two percent.
CB: Gee.
RW: Which was, you know, it’s unbelievable when you look.
CB: This is because they were targeted specifically.
RW: Yeah. Targeted. Very vulnerable. A) Because they could home onto our frequencies and B) Because we were on every bombing raid that went out. So there we are. The next morning I had to go and have a little interview with the station commander to give a pat on the back. He was a lovely chap Group Captain King. Curly, my engineer had finished because he’d done an operation with his previous crew he was finished the night before and he’d been out on the booze. Went down in to Ludford on the booze and when I had the interview with Group Captain King the following morning he said, ‘Your bloody crew.’ And, ‘Oh God. What’s going on?’ And he said, ‘Your engineer was down in the pub last night spouting about what he got up to and whatever and there just happened to be an intelligence officer there.’ And he just, no he was just pulling my leg really in a way but he said yes thank you very much for what you’ve done and I was given my green endorsement for the Mailly, for the raid where we had the mid-air collision and he had a curtain covering a chart on the wall which gave the crew statistics on the wall and he pulled the curtain back and he said, ‘There you are. You are the first crew that has finished as a crew for over six months’. Yeah.
CB: Amazing.
RW: And you didn’t even realise then. Appreciate what you -
CB: Yeah.
RW: What the attitude was but it really was remarkable and then of course I wasn’t allowed to touch a Lancaster again ever. Until 1977. Until the 101 squadron had a 60th anniversary of the formation of the squadron and they tried to get, I was asked. Martin Middlebrook was involved and he wrote a book and he was, he used to live not far away and then he was trying to get all of our crew together again and did I know where they were. And I had a few addresses so we managed to find 5 of us and we couldn’t find Taffy, could never find Taffy and we tried to find Taffy and we got in to contact with the people of his uncle who ran a pub and he wouldn’t tell us where he was and we assumed he was either in jail or in hospital but there, he’s still about but he never knew anything about it. But anyway, we had this meeting with five of my crew were there in 1977 in Waddington at 101. The Lancaster was there and at the dinner the previous night the PMC stood up and gave a little chat and said, ‘You’ve got the Lancaster here. It’s had an oil leak it needs an air test in the morning. We’ve got a crew here.’ So we flew in the Battle of Britain Lanc and did about a twenty, twenty five minute air test.
CB: Fantastic.
RW: In the Battle of Britain Lanc which was quite a thrill, quite a thrill.
CB: Amazing.
RW: And it’s wonderful that they’ve kept the thing going.
CB: Yes.
RW: It’s great. So after the war, I stayed in the air force after the war.
CB: Yes excuse me for interrupting but after the ops what did you do then because we’re not at the end of the war?
RW: Oh no. Yes. Yes.
CB: We’re still a year away.
RW: Yes. After the operations, yes normally you were, your crew tended to try and keep as much of the crew together and were posted away and most of the crew were posted to 28 OTU. And I was sent to 82 OTU. I never knew why or found out why. Typing error? Whatever. Anyway, I arrived at 82 OTU which was all Australian station and I was one of the very few Englishmen there as aircrew. One of the only aircrew there as an examiner, screen pilot, and they didn’t think much of this pommie bastard arrived in their midst and it wasn’t exactly a comfortable place to be but I’d only been there a couple of weeks when I had a bit of a problem, a symptom from the flying in the war. I had a perforated ulcer. Again, attributed to stress, whatever. So anyway, I had this haemorrhaging and I went sick, reported to the Australian doc, went sick and he didn’t think much of this whinging pommie bastard so medicine on duty. That was, that was, that was it. We just, and very shortly after that I was posted to Gamston where, which was a Wimpy OTU so I was flying in Wimpies there. Met my first fiancé there which was a lovely little WAAF in the camp. Audrey, Audrey Simms. Again, my luck held out, a lot of luck was involved on the squadron, tremendous lot of luck on the squadron and again my luck held out. My friend, Tommy Thompson, who’d been on operations, same as myself, screened and I was also the sports officer on the squadron and I had to do an air test as well and Tommy said, ‘Well you go and get the sports kit.’ On Wednesday afternoon the whole place shut down in those days for sport so I went to get the sports equipment and Tommy did my air test in a Wimpy and the Wimpy blew up and he was killed. Poor chap. Poor Tommy. And the only way we could recognise him when we found him was his ring on his finger. And he was a Geordie like myself and I was given the task of organising his funeral, went up to his funeral and because he didn’t get married during the war he got married very shortly after the end of his tour. He didn’t get married until after he’d finished his tour and his wife was expecting a baby, lived at Wallsend near Newcastle and of course I had to go to the funeral and there was this poor lass and it was rather sad. Yeah. So, these are the sort of things that happened and the luck you can achieve on these sort of things. So, anyway, because of my sins and flying I was due to go back on a second tour, supposedly on Mosquitoes, in early ‘45 but the attrition rate had dropped considerably at that time and there was a glut of aircrew coming though so they said, ‘Don’t come back on operations.’ So I was sent down to Lulsgate Bottom which was an instructor’s school. So I went down to the instructor’s school at Lulsgate Bottom which is now Bristol airport and I had a nice time down there learning to drink scrumpy which was, which was great. Lovely. Lovely. Lovely place down there. I enjoyed it very much. Again had little problems with the instructing. Flying with the instructor one night and the radial engine, the pot burst and the pistons were coming out through the through the canopy around the engine. So we had a little single engine landing there but that was fine. I ended up there and became an instructor. So the instructing I was sent to be a place called Desborough. I had the choice of going to Carlisle or Northampton so I chose Desborough and I was stationed there as a screen pilot and flying instructor, Wimpies. This story extends a little bit. A very good friend of mine who became my first fiancé her friend she was stationed, became stationed at Wyton, Cambridge and my friend and I used to go and visit her and he, Jock Murray, he was a married man. He had a girlfriend as well, a WAAF at Wyton so we used to go and stay at the George hotel at Huntingdon when she was there but sadly we were sitting on the banks of the river at Earith. I’d already bought the engagement ring and whatever and she said, ‘I’m sorry but that’s it’ and she went off with a married pilot on Wyton, pilot and that was it. I came back to Desborough rather tail, my tail between my legs sort of thing and my squadron commander, he knew what the situation, we were very good friends and he knew what was going on and one of the pilots who had been at Wyton on big stuff he was converting on to Dakotas and that’s what we were doing in Desborough and he came to Desborough to be converted on to Dakotas. He didn’t, I knew him but he didn’t know me and my flight commander, Lofty [Loader] he said, ‘You have him as a pupil.’ So I had this poor soul as a pupil. All the first details in the morning and all the last details at night. He complained to the boss and he said, ‘Nothing to do with me. Get on with it.’ But he was brilliant. He was a good pilot but he didn’t know anything about that at all. And again strange things happened at Desborough. When I was there another crew came through at, which er, yes this other crew came through whereby the pilot had a wireless operator who eventually joined the company I joined after, after the war as a wireless operator and I had to screen the crew on a cross country out over Wales. A claggy night. Not a very nice night at all and his skipper didn’t say, ‘I don’t think we ought to go. The weather.’ ‘Oh it’s all right,’ Well the weather we flew in the war we flew in all sorts of weather. They said, ‘Oh no it’s alright Alfie,’ So, off we went and coming back they asked to get a QDM and he couldn’t on his little set. He couldn’t get a QDM and fortunately I had been to the Empire Radio School and, and, and knew a little about electrics so I went back, got this bearing, give it to the skipper and when we let down there was Desborough the identification lights DE flashing, I said, ‘There you are. That’s how it’s done.’ And I had to give this wireless operator an adverse, not exactly an adverse report but not a very favourable one. He eventually became a director of the company I was working for and he didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t like me very much at all because I was one of the lower minions in the works and he was a director of purchasing. Not a nice, not a very nice chap. Anyway, there we are so that was, that was little situation but Desborough from there I went and was posted to Transport Command, had to go into Transport Command and there I was flying Dakotas and doing mainly conversion work flying Dakotas. I had some very nice jobs to do and stationed at Oakington. This was in 1947 when I first went to work in Oakington and I was the flying wing training officer for four squadrons 10, 27, 30 and 46 squadrons and this was early ‘48 when the thought of the airlift came into being and this was quite an amazing situation because the squadron as I say had this four, the unit had the four squadrons on board and I was working with all the four squadrons. Then when you are going on the airlift all the aircrew had to be completely categorised and had to have a current incident rating so I was kept very, very busy. One night well one month one day I did something like ten and a half hours flying testing just to get them ready to go on the airlift. So, there we went and when we got them all, got them all off we, the WingCo said, ‘Right have a few days left, go on the airlift for a month and have a rest.’ So that was fine so I thought now do I go home and see my mum and dad or do I go and see my fiancé. I was getting married in October. And I said, ‘Hmmn I’ll go and see my fiancé,’ which I obviously did. Went back on the airlift and when I got to [Rumsdorf] which we were then I went to see the flight commander chappie in charge of the flying and I said, ‘Where do I go for briefing?’ And he said, ‘You don’t.’ He gave me a piece of, a sheet of A4, ten sheets of A4 with all the instructions on and said, ‘Go away and read those, inwardly digest. You’re flying in the morning.’ And that was it. That was it. And it was strange how the flying did, is it alright talking about the airlift?
CB: Absolutely. Yes. Yes.
RW: Yeah, because this is forty, a long time after the war but there we are. How the airlift came about was the fact that the Russians had taken over Berlin and they wouldn’t allow any people into Berlin for about eight weeks. So nobody was going in and they really split Berlin in half. They took over the east sector but they had to keep the airlift going, had to keep the situation going because the embassies of the French, British and American embassies there so they had to keep flying going in. They couldn’t stop the flying but they could affect the roads. There were originally six corridors going in but the Russians said you don’t need six. So they cut out, cut the north one out and the south one out and the east one out so they only had three corridors going in. The Americans were doing the, the southern one and we were doing the north one and we all came out on the centre one. But when they started the airlift all this happened in a very, very short period of time. The Americans, a chap called Lucius Clay was in charge of the system flying then in Berlin and he called every possible aircraft back from the states, even from Alaska, to come down to [?] which was the southern part of Germany and, to organise the thing properly he asked a chap called [Tupper, Tupper?] who was in charge of the Burma hump flying over the hump in Burma and he was asked to organise that. The first trip he went on, this was the very, very beginning all, all the Americans were there first and they’d gone off he went off on one of these very first trips and when he got to, got to Berlin there they were going to land at Tempelhof. He found there were aircraft stacked from five hundred feet to five thousand feet and everybody, all the Americans, were clamouring like mad to get permission to land and there was very little organisation at all. Two aircraft, two of the American aircraft had crashed on the runway. One crashed on the runway and was being repaired, and went on the fire and the other crashed and gone over the end of the runway. Nobody was killed but [Tupper Tupper] realised what was going on. He sent all the aircraft back to base even with their loads and got landed himself at Gatow at er [Wunsdorf] and at Tempelhof, landed at Tempelhof and he wrote out orders and all regulations for all flying on the Berlin airlift. Each aircraft had a different speed, different height to fly and all, all went, all went off and when we were at [Wunsdorf] at the time and when you went off you flew to a beacon north of Ber, we flew to a beacon at [?] just north of Berlin where you, when you arrive there you gave instructions, or you were given instructions of how to land and what your load off and we flew in everything. Literally everything in to Berlin because when the Russians took over they closed their frontier and they closed the, all the rail, road and water transport into Berlin and there was something like two million two hundred thousand West Berliners with twenty seven days rations of everything they’d left and they’d taken the generators from the power stations away, they’d taken the gas and that was all rationed and these poor Berliners were left with twenty seven days of nothing. I was very fortunate. I gave a little talk to some aircrew at Leamington and one of the chaps brought along a German lady who had been a little girl, a young little at the time the Russians took over and she was, she spoke English quite well but a very, very strong German accent and she of course she was quite an elderly lady then and she said she and her elder sister, she was young teenager and her sister was seventeen, eighteen and they were walking through Berlin and the Russians came along, a group of Russians came along and they herded all the girls and women they could possibly find into this building. The older sister knew what was going to happen and she hid this young lady, was a young lady, hid her and all the rest were gang raped for the rest of the day and she said, she was telling me that her sister never ever spoke of that again. She couldn’t talk about it. There was something like two million women raped. Two thousand committed suicide. You know, and these figures you know and the Berliners were so appreciative of what we did. We literally flew in everything. Naughty story. When we were on taking a few coal fuel and flour everything in and when you got to the beacon as I say you had to call to get landing instructions and declare what your load was so you could be directed to the correct unloading bay when you landed and the Germans were doing this and they could turn an aircraft around in eight minutes you know. Incredible. So there we were we were going towards this beacon and I said to the wireless op cause I didn’t have a crew I had the nav leader and the signals and I said to Jacko, ‘Call up and get us instructions.’ So he gave instructions and they said, ‘What is your load?’ And he said, ‘Medical supplies. Mainly manhole covers,’ and they were all sanitary towels. It didn’t end there because when we landed we were directed to the heavy unloading bay and we weren’t exactly flavour of the month. We didn’t half get a rocket but there again when you were flying in there was no question of doing an overshoot and going around again. If you couldn’t land you just had to go back to base and start again.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And when you were there they had all your aircraft lined up. Your day was split into three eight hour shifts and you were doing as many raids, as many sorties as you could in eight hours and then you had the next 8 hours off and then you flew in the next 8 hours and this went on seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Day and night. There was only one day it never happened and that was through extensive fog. So, and when the aircraft were lined up the ground crew had to do a pre-flight test on every aircraft and part of their equipment the wireless operators, wireless, ground wireless operators were a pair of bellows and when they got on the aircraft they used the bellows to blow this, the flour and coal dust off the instruments so they could check them. So this was the sort of thing that was going on. When we were at [Rumsdorf] they also had the York there and the payload of the York was something like what fifteen thousand pounds and the Dakota’s about seven and a half and one of our skippers said, Flight Lieutenant Sheehan, he went off in the Dakota and he said, ‘It’s like a brick. It’s like flying a brick.’ And he had an awful job getting it off the ground, an awful job getting it there, an awful job landing it and when they landed it they found they’d put a York load on the Dakota so he was flying at double his all up weight.
CB: Gee.
RW: And it says a lot for the skipper and the aircraft you know.
CB: Absolutely.
RW: You know, these sort of things went on. Amazing. But that was a long time after, after the squadron. And on the squadron looking back and talking to people on the squadron about the squadron about the air force in general they said, ‘Well you know in our group, in one group we were losing seventy aircraft a month.’ Every Bomber Command station lost nine hundred aircrew. You know, it’s amazing the figures that went on like that and a gentleman did some statistics working out how it affected a hundred air crew and of the hundred aircrew fifty one were killed. Twelve were shot down and badly injured, five were badly injured so they couldn’t fly again, three were, so three were killed on landings back at base, twelve became prisoners of war and one escaped to come back and of the remaining of that hundred aircrew only twenty four remained. Nearly all with some medical problem afterwards which, is you know, is -, I had my share. The sort of things that happened they said personally the sort of things that happened to me afterwards apart from this ulcer which affected me for most of my life until I was here at Desborough, at er Kenilworth when I moved in here and one night I had a massive haemorrhage. I couldn’t get upstairs and the doc came and it was a peculiar system he had. I was not allowed food, I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed, I wasn’t allowed to do anything with work and I lived on an ounce of milk and water for six weeks. Couldn’t do anything and I remember sitting down where we are now sitting now watching the television, watching the cricket with the doctor, chatting about what was going on and it was amazing. In consequence I can eat anything, anything at all doesn’t bother me but alcohol doesn’t like me. I can drink it but I can enjoy it for about a week afterwards so you know I don’t drink very much now. I’ve had my share. But this is the sort of thing that happened and what still happens now. One operation we were on going on to the Ruhr and the Ruhr, the old Happy Valley and we were approaching the Ruhr and it really it looked deadly and the flak, there was an old saying, the flak was so thick you could get out and walk on it and it was like that searchlights, fighters going on and the first time I ever experienced terror and it was most peculiar. I’d heard about it but I’d never experienced it and I literally was shaking and really I couldn’t do what I was supposed to do so I dropped my seat so I couldn’t see outside and funnily enough I said a little prayer that I hadn’t said since I was about six years old. Mum and dad used to sit by the side of my bed and say this little prayer which ended up, ‘If I die before I wake I pray the lord my soul will take.’ Why I said it I don’t know, no idea but I said this little prayer and the terror disappeared and I raised my seat and I could just carry on. You’re still frightened of course but all the terror disappeared. And we had similar situations again afterwards but no terror so whether the power of prayer you know whether this happens or not. Some of the lads we used to take the mickey a bit ‘cause they used to kneel down by their beds and say their prayers or kneel down by the aircraft before they got on and said their prayers and thought they were a bit sissy until you had this sort of experience yourself and then you realise there’s something in it. It’s all, I’m sure it was all mental you know. Some of these sort of things happened. When I laid my head down on the pillow even now, not every, if I’ve been reading a books like some of the air force books and service books that come out now, if I’ve been reading these books about aeroplanes and I put my head down on the pillow I can see flak bursting and little sparks flying about. It doesn’t affect me. I’m fine. No problem at all and this sort of thing, you know, just reminds you of the old days and now talking about it so much now it’s almost like a myth, you know. As if you’re telling fairy stories. Did I really do it, you know but yes it does once you’ve experienced those sorts of things you never forget them. They’re always there. And some, some fixed more than others. We had one navigator who, they were badly shot up and some of the, a lot of the crew were injured. The aircraft was on fire and he got out of his seat to walk back to the, the aircraft was still flying, he walked to the back of the aircraft to jump out the back. No parachute. Some of the crew stopped him and said, ‘No. Don’t.’ He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t speak. He was just a zombie completely. Couldn’t speak and when he got back, they got back alright he never spoke. Never spoke at all. Went to the sick quarters for a couple of weeks. Never spoke, could understand a thing and he was sent to the service hospital at Matlock, the psychological hospital at Matlock and he was there for several, a couple of weeks and he never spoke until one of the nurses dropped an instruments in a tin tray and he woke up. He said, ‘Oh Christ, they’re on fire. They’re on fire.’ And he got his speech back again. He was invalided out of the service as you know unfit for flying. He was alright but that experience he had of these weeks of not talking you know and this is the sort of thing that happened to these sort of folks and, you know, when you think of the experiences you had and how bloody lucky you’d been all these whiles. And, your luck. Yes, I think you bought yourself your own luck to a certain extent. In my crew, were such that although vastly different characters, we were all great comrades and great friends. Great friends. And you know this helped enormously the operational flying, in my instructing and examining after the war when Oakington was closed down and all the four squadrons dispersed 30 squadron was posted to Abingdon and having, me being flying wing training, I thought I was out of a job. 30 squadron had taken over a VIP element from 24 squadron and for my sins I was posted to 30 squadron at Abingdon to become the training officer on 30 squadron and to get our qualifications, to get my, I had to go to Central Flying School to be examined and that was quite the thing. The fact that I had an instrument rating and the fact that I had done something like fifteen hundred hours instrument flying I was allocated a master green instrument rating and I became examiner and when I went down to the Central Flying School to become an examiner and a tester, an instructor, the instructor there, Flight Lieutenant Walker, a lovely man, when we finished the [CGI], said ‘There is a book. Take it away. Read the chapters about training and it’s all about what you learn about.’ And it was a book called the “Psychological Disorders of Flying Personnel” and the chapter on training illustrated the fact that you know even experienced people when being examined had a little bit of panic. It’s a bit of the white coat syndrome of the doctor with his stethoscope and things and you couldn’t really operate as you normally could and this was a chapter about that sort of thing. And this psychological business he gave me this book to take back home. And when I got back of course I used to examine all the crews but each crew had to be examined completely once a month. They had to do certain training exercises. One per month and the VIP pilots had to do the same as well but the VIP pilots were like a class apart. They wouldn’t have a, they insisted on having a separate crew room from us roughies and strange things happened with them. One occasion one of the pilots a chap called Van Reinfeld had to do a VIP trip the following day and he hadn’t done a little night, night flying exercise and I said, ‘Well it’s alright. I’ve got a spare navigator. You can do your little trip tonight. I’ll put you on early, you’ll be alright for tomorrow.’ And he said, ‘Well I can’t do it.’ He says, ‘My navigator has gone in to Abingdon and I don’t know where he is.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a spare navigator. It’s alright. It’s only a training trip. It’s not a VIP trip.’ And this chap, the replacement, a chap called Baxter who was a coloured boy wouldn’t fly with him. Refused to fly with him and I said, ‘Well you don’t, if you don’t fly with him you don’t get your trip tomorrow.’ He went to see Squadron Leader Reese the squadron commander and he said, ‘It’s nothing to do with me it’s to do with the training.’ And he went back and I said, ‘Well if you don’t do it. You don’t fly.’ And he went into Abingdon and scoured all the clubs and pubs, found his navigator, came back, flew late in the morning, early in the morning the next day and went off to do his trip the next day and that’s the sort of atmosphere they were. And the principal job of the Transport Command at 30 squadron were again, like all transport was glider towing and paratrooping and there was a big operation called Operation Longstop which was going on at Old Sarum and all the crews had to go down and join in the exercise and of course every pilot had to have an aeroplane. There wasn’t enough aeroplanes to go around and I was given an aeroplane and a pilot to fly with me who was a VIP pilot called [Ria.] He said, ‘I’m a VIP pilot. I don’t fly second dicky.’ And he wouldn’t fly. Refused to fly with me. Again, he saw the flight commander down at Old Sarum and the boss said. ‘Well if you don’t fly you don’t fly at all. Go back to base. Get back to base.’ He sent him back to base and these sort of characters they were an elite apart, you know. Brilliant fliers no doubt about it brilliant fliers and as I say we had to go down to Central Flying School to be examined and when you’re examined if anything went wrong and you didn’t fail any one part of the exercise two of the exams you had to write, reply a hundred percent. Safety and regulations, these sort of things and when you were, one of the exercises you had it do you were given all the met readings from various stations and you had to plot a synoptic chart and give a forecast for the next day, until midnight the next day, which I did and I said possibly get some rain by lunchtime tomorrow and whatever down the south of England and he called a Met man in and he said, ‘Oh that’s not going to happen. That’ll never happen.’ So I didn’t pass that exam so I had to go back, wait another month before I was going to be examined again. Blow me, the next day it started to rain so I rang up old Walker at Central Flying School and said, ‘Have you looked out the window?’ And he said, ‘You jammy bugger,’ he said, ‘I’ll put it in the post.’ So it was a great atmosphere. A wonderful atmosphere and 30 squadron had a wonderful atmosphere. Still has now. Still does wonderful work now. But the flying it left a great character in my life but I was married by then of course and we had a wonderful life with my wife in peacetime air force. Sadly, she became terribly ill when we were at Oakington and she started having terrible haemorrhages and this sort of thing and the, our local doc said, ‘You’d better take her home’ so we took her to her home in Desborough near Kettering and my mother who was a state certified midwife, she’d nursed all her life said, ‘You know the prognosis of this isn’t very great,’ you know and discovered that she had what they called a [? deformed] mole which is a pregnancy like a bunch of grapes and indicative of cancer. And they did scrapes they didn’t do scrapes in those days but they couldn’t find it and it was the cancer was deep seated in the womb and my mum said, you know ‘She can’t live very long.’ She was only about six months, nine months perhaps at the most so I resigned my commission to come out to look after her. Haven’t been, my last posting just about this the time this happened found was AOC far east to go VIP pilot, the AOC in the far east which I had to keep delaying, delaying, delaying because of Pat’s illness and eventually that was cancelled completely so I didn’t go. So, I resigned to come out on the condition that I renewed my qualifications every year and stayed on the reserve until I was, 1960 um and came out and poor old Pat died about ten months afterwards and with my lack of education I couldn’t get a grant to do any, I was hoping for a grant to go teaching but I couldn’t get a grant because I had no certificates or educational certificates. Fortunately, Pat, my wife’s father owned a factory. A packaging factory. So he said, ‘Come and work for me.’ So I went and worked in his factory on the marketing and sales. I can say for twenty seven years I travelled in cardboard boxes which was very kind of him. I got along very well with the old man. He was quite an eminent military man himself. Thinking of that sort of thing when I was at Abingdon, Oakington, I was going to get married and I was told I had to get permission to get married otherwise I wouldn’t get my marriage allowance ‘cause I was a little bit too young. So I was told I had to have an interview with the station commander which a chap called group captain [Byte Seagal] so I went and had an interview with him and my dad because of his health couldn’t do any serious work and he used to work for the Coop looking after the horses for the Coop stables so when we went for the interview with group captain [Byte Seagall], a peacetime group captain trying to get everything back to a peacetime protocol he said, ‘Who are you marrying?’ I said, ‘Well, Pat.’ ‘What does she do?’ And I said, ‘Well she does typing and bit of filing in an office.’ ‘Oh that’s interesting.’ ‘What does your father do?’ And I said, ‘He looks after horses.’ He said, ‘Newmarket?’ I said, ‘No. Coop.’ And this didn’t go down very well at all. And he said, ‘What about your father in law then?’ And I said, ‘Well he was colonel in chief of the Northamptonshire regiment. He got the MC in Gallipoli.’ ‘Ah now isn’t that interesting.’ I said. ‘My mother, my dad was in the navy. He got the DSM in the navy. My mother got the Royal Red Cross.’ ‘Now isn’t that interesting.’ Yes, I can get married. So I got permission to get married. And they were trying to get things back to peacetime protocol but after the war people like myself were asked to go up to Cranwell which was a training, a major training school then for aircrew and just to meet the people, not to meet, just to chat to the students and pupils and met one young man called, oh dear [pause] His dad was the president of the Nuremberg raids. Oh, what did they call him? Anyway, he was, he was his dad was this very eminent gentleman. Martin, [pause] oh dear, old age and memory don’t go very well together. Anyway, this gentleman he was on the Nuremberg trials. He organised the Nuremberg trials for the post war Germans and his son was on the Cranwell course and he eventually came down to 30 squadron and I said to him, you know, ‘What’s the last thing they taught you at Cranwell then?’ And they said, he said, ‘Don’t get associated with wartime commissioned officers.’ Because, in February ‘44 the directive came about saying all captains of heavy bombers had to be commissioned and my commissioning interview was with the accountant who gave me a cheque for ninety quid to go and buy a uniform with. Yeah. What do they call the chappie on the Nuremberg trials? Very eminent man. Very eminent barrister.
CB: Yeah. I can’t remember.
RW: Pardon?
CB: I can’t remember.
RW: No. Can’t remember. Anyway Martin didn’t like this system in the air force at all so he resigned and came out. But that was the sort of thing that was going on in those days and I was very, very fortunate to be able to have a job to work. I stayed and played with cardboard boxes. For two years I had to go to Marshals and be re-examined for, just to keep your hand in that all it was part of the condition for resigning. I did that for two years and the first time I went the instructor there said. ‘Well go on and do the exams and, what did you do?’ I told him what I did. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Bugger it. Go on. Take a little chipmunk and take off. So I used to fly over Desborough and around the school where I was teaching and [laughs] no that, and I started learning, I taught myself aerobatics because the transport flying which is dead straight and level sort of stuff and I’d never flown aerobatics at all apart from slow rolling the Lancaster. It was great fun. Great fun. But they only did that for two years because they said it’s getting expensive and we’ve got squirty things now and so -
CB: Yeah.
RW: Just keep on the register.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And I was in the reserve until 1960 so really I had a wonderful career.
CB: Yeah, brilliant.
RW: Wonderful -
CB: Can I -
RW: Experiences I’ll never be forgetting and played an awful lot of luck and met some wonderful people and wonderful friends and with my crew when the squadron formed the association from flying together in 1977 the squadron chappie called Goodliffe formed the squadron association and from then on we found all eight of my crew and all eight of us used to meet every year.
CB: Fantastic.
RW: Until 1990 when we all met at Ludford in 1990 and the Coningsby, the Battle of Britain Flight said, ‘Would you come down and do a little exercise down here with a full crew.’ And Tommy, my mid upper gunner, wouldn’t go so we never went and a couple of months later he died so whether he had some sort of premonition, you know.
CB: Extraordinary.
RW: But anyway nevertheless all 7 of used to meet until, and then the rear gunner dies and all eight of us, all six of us used to meet and a couple of years ago my special duty operator died so all five of us -
CB: All five.
RW: Are still round about and very, very different states of health and all creaking a bit. I was being very lucky. I had open heart surgery.
CB: Oh, did you really?
RW: It was only three years ago and got a zip fastener up the front but if it hadn’t have been for again like the services, like with family if it hadn’t have been for family and my mum looking after me with diphtheria when I was a little boy and my daughters and family looking after me afterwards when, when I had when I had the operation for the heart I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat and my daughter Catherine who is, she is now the ward manager sister at the coronary care unit at Warwick Hospital she took me into hospital on her day off and did an ECG and a blood test and the cardiologist just happened to be walking past and he said, ‘What are you doing here?’ You know, and he took the blood away and came back and he said your bloods alright but it’s not, you’re not going anywhere. Don’t go home. So within just over a week I’d had open heart surgery.
CB: Gee.
RW: And I was back home again.
CB: Amazing.
RW: Yeah, it’s amazing.
CB: I’m going to stop you there.
RW: Yes, that’s about it I think, Ok.
CB: Because we both need a – [pause] right we’re restarting again after a brief comfort break and the bits I just want to ask you about, Rusty is first of all the ranking system. So you went in as an aircraftsman second class.
RW: I went in as an AC2.
CB: And how did the promotion system work until you were –
RW: Yeah. Well, usually after about six months you were promoted an AC1 and then after another short period of time you became an LAC, leading aircraftman. And I was a leading aircraftman when I went and did my flying in Canada and it was from then after you’d finished and completed your training successfully that was when you were ordered your flying brevvy and you became whatever grant, whatever grade you were going in to. Fortunately, and with a lot of luck involved I became a pilot. And having, became a sergeant pilot. Some, about three or four of the course that we were on we lost about forty percent of the course on washouts. You know, it was incredible because the training was very, very precise. I must say it was very, very good. Looking back it was remarkable. So there I was a sergeant pilot and promotion as an NCO was roughly six months and you got an increase and promotions so by the time I was, got on the squadron I was a sergeant pilot and then I very soon became a flight sergeant pilot and that was in ’43. End of ’43. And in early ‘44 the directive came from the air ministry that all captains of heavy bombers had to be commissioned so I was given the cheque for ninety quid by the accountant and told to go and buy a uniform so there was no formal interview at all. It was just a thing that happened. In consequence, the social class, in a sense, disappeared because there were people commissioned from training and they tended to be a little bit elitist and some of the crews had done previous tours and tended to be all commissioned and usually flight lieutenants and all this sort of thing so they were nearly all a little bit aloof but we were just the roughs. Not like the pathfinders. Gibson and the pathfinder force really didn’t socialise with the NCOs at all. Didn’t speak to them, didn’t talk to them but it wasn’t like that on the squadron. Really, apart from doing your job you were all the same. And the, the, our WingCo was a wonderful man in that respect. He knew everybody’s name on the squadron. Ground crew and air crew. Wonderful man. Old Alexander. Wingco Alexander.
CB: What sort of age was he?
RW: He, he’d be getting on about. He’d be early 30s I think [laughs] so. He died not such a long time ago. A little story about Wingco Alexander which, of course, a little bit about the war. His batman, Ward, a little chap called Ward turned out to be a homosexual and he was sacked from the service because in those days homosexuality was virtually a crime and he was sacked from the service and when I used to go home on leave and my brother was being in the army my mum was nursing a very eminent north country barrister called Lambert, Pop Lambert. Mum used to, got the job to nurse him because she could swear as much to him as he swore at her when she put him to bed and he used to love my, my brother and I and my mum to go down and have dinner with him and it was finger bowls and butlers and things like this so it really was quite out of our class altogether and when we were sitting down having dinner this night and the butler came in with the finger bowls and he looked at me and said, ‘Hello Waughman.’ And I said, ‘My God. Ward. What are you doing here? You were Alexander’s batman.’ And that went on, he went out and Pop said, ‘How the hell do you know him?’ And I said, ‘He was our WingCo’s batman. He was sacked because he was homosexual.’ And the poor soul. Pop gave him the sack a week later. He just wouldn’t have him around and this was the attitude about homosexuality -
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
RW: In those days. The lads used to go out queer bashing. You know.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Yeah. There was no gay business in those days at all, sort of thing. But that’s the sort of thing that happened. So, anyway, I was flying, became pilot officer and on the squadron I became towards the end of my tour I got promotion to flying officer and ended my tour as a flying officer and subsequently with the jobs I got as the training officer, again it was timed promotion really in a way. I became a flight lieutenant and most of the screening and examining and training I did then was as a flight lieutenant until I was posted to Singapore and never got there, flying as a VIP pilot AOC Far East. I never got there. Had I, had I gone I would have been promoted to squadron leader. No. I would have got the rank of squadron leader. Which would be temporary acting unpaid. So when I left that job I reverted to my previous rank again so that would be a rank mainly because you were socialising with VIPs but that never came about. So whether I don’t think I would have advanced very far in the air force at that time because I was a Geordie like, you know from up north, a very uneducated man, and I don’t think I would have advanced too far in the service.
CB: Ok.
RW: Although I got on very, very well with the people.
CB: Yeah.
RW: It was great but I think the social side, the social class system would have meant that I’d perhaps have made wing commander but I don’t think I would have got any great senior rank. Again, partly that’s my thought. Whether it would have happened or not. My navigator, he was an educated lad and very good lad you see he lied about his age to join up, operational at eighteen. He stayed in the air force after the war, did very, very well indeed did all sorts of very important flying. He ended up as a squadron leader and stayed in the air force after the war and he was very well thought of in the service. Most of the other lads left the service. Except Taffy. He stayed in the service. He became, he stayed as a sergeant I think all his life and I think he drank his way through the service but er -
CB: And he was always on the ground.
RW: Always on the ground, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yes he did, he did fly a second tour. Some of the crews did second tours. He was on the second tour and he was on the last bombing raid that went to the Nuremberg and the Buchenwald raids. And Manna, Operation Manna. Norman, my bomb aimer, he stayed in the air force. He stayed although he had some elevating jobs he never rose above the rank of flight lieutenant because he was out in Burma and he was on the squadron in Burma. This was very shortly after the end of the war and the war was still going on in Burma and he was duty officer one weekend and the Scotch troop was getting knocked about in the jungle so he laid on a strike which was successful and got back. I think they only lost a couple of blokes which was really remarkable. Got everything back and he had to see the CO the next day who said, ‘You don’t, you didn’t have the authority to lay that on’ and he was court martialled and in the, in the court martialling that was it you know but he went on and he eventually when he got back to the UK, got sent back to the UK and he didn’t have a job and he had a friend who knew somebody who knew somebody and he went to work down at, down in Halfpenny Green down Pershore way working on TSR2 and he did some work on TSR2 and then did an awful lot of flying in Buccaneers, err Buccaneers um Canberra’s flying all over America doing line over mapping and this sort of thing. Got himself an MBE. So Norman who now lives in the tax haven Andorra is MBE DFC AFC, yeah. But lovely guy.
CB: Ok so that’s a good intro thank you -
RW: Yeah.
CB: To the awards.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So how did that come about for you and for him as well? How many of the crew were decorated?
RW: Well the sad thing is I’ve still got it but thinking about the decorations for crews and that sort of thing I’ve still got a got a bit of a conscience about the DFC because at the end of the tour of operations nearly every skipper got a decoration and I got a DFC but the crew didn’t get anything and the crew were doing half the work. They kept me alive, they kept us all alive they were doing exactly the same job as I was doing, under the same circumstances. Same risks. The same with all the Bomber Command crew but none of them got a decoration. My engineer Curly did eventually get a DFM.
CB: On the second tour -
RW: But none of the -
CB: Was it?
RW: None of the crew got any recognition whatsoever I think what Harry did was the rear turret and think what rear gunners did sitting watching shells flying at you having a little 303 gun to fire back at a 20 millimetre shell you know um and the casualty rate for rear gunners was, really was something and there was a lot of decorations which should have been. We had one crew which were very, very badly knocked about and from what I gather afterwards the station commander recommended the skipper for a VC which, and the crew did all sorts of wonderful things the skipper was hit three times and all sorts of things went wrong and got the aircraft back but this was turned down and we gather that the reason was that he wasn’t just getting the crew and the aircraft back he was getting himself back as well. So five of the crew got CGMs that night so the decorations system I’m sure it’s the same in all the wars that a lot of people who deserved them didn’t get them because it was unknown. One, one situation whereby unless an action was seen by an officer it didn’t count.
CB: Right.
RW: So -
CB: So the Queens Gallantry Medal.
RW: Yeah.
CB: The CGM.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Was a pretty good award.
RW: Well it’s the next one down from the VC.
CB: Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. The whole crew got it.
RW: Yeah. Yeah. Five of the crew got it.
CB: Yeah.
RW: So you know the awards system obviously they have to have some rules and regulations, you know. I was told by, the by people afterwards after my crash landing getting the aircraft back the thought was the immediate award of the DFC but that didn’t come about.
CB: So when did it happen?
RW: That was in May, March
CB: When you came to the end of your tour.
RW: Oh, it was the end of the tour.
CB: Was it?
RW: Not at the time. Not immediately at the time. It wasn’t until anyway there we are. My DFC was given to me by the postman and there’s a nice little letter in there from King George saying I’m sorry, implying that he’s too busy too busy to see I’m sending it through the post but thank you very much. So, so that was given to me by the postman.
CB: Extraordinary.
RW: Subsequently, when I got I was very fortunate after the war I was awarded the MBE and -
CB: But you got the AFC. So what was that -
RW: I got the AFC.
CB: So what -
RW: I didn’t get the MBE I got the AFC.
CB: The AFC, yes.
RW: Yes, the AFC.
CB: So what was the circumstance of that?
RW: I’ve no idea. I’ve tried to find out but the only thing I’ve ever, people have been able to say meritorious service but I’ve no idea why. I think it was a brown nose job really you know, being in the right place at the right time. I can just imagine from what I’ve seen afterwards the air ministry would be issued so many medals to be issued to the command. Got down to group. Group allocated the medals out. Group was passed out to stations, stations allocated medals out, passed down to the squadrons and what was left for the squadron they had to find someone to give them to and I think I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. So, no reason why I -
CB: No specific event that you can -
RW: No specific event. Nothing -
CB: No.
RW: At all. No. So, it was again poor luck.
CB: What about this other man you talked about who’d been in your crew before who got DFC, AFC?
RW: Oh, Norman. The bomb aimer.
CB: Yes how did he get those?
RW: Well.
CB: Did he get the DFC at the end of the tour?
RW: Afterwards he, he -
CB: Was he commissioned by then?
RW: He eventually ended up on pathfinders.
CB: Oh right.
RW: Yeah, he did a second tour.
CB: Ahh.
RW: Didn’t do a full second tour but he did a lot of second tour on pathfinders and he got his DFC for that and he got his AFC for what he was doing in research down at Pershore down there and his MBE was for the work he did on TSR2 and the, and the work he was doing with the, with the Canberras.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Yeah and Curly my engineer he eventually got the DFM just after -
CB: On his second tour.
RW: After he left us he got the DFM and he from a very lowly back, we’re all from very lowly backgrounds, working class backgrounds his son Paul was at grammar school and there was a thing, a big trip they were going to do, which he could do which would have affected his career quite considerably from the school and Curly couldn’t afford it so he sold his medal.
CB: Right.
RW: To pay for his son to go through school. His son ended up as a very eminent statistician broadcasting, writing articles, touring the world doing this sort of thing and he still brings Curly to the reunions.
CB: Oh does he? So he feels that’s good value.
RW: Yeah. Yes, Yeah but poor old Curly he missed his medal a lot and a chappie called [?] it’s in there he bought Curlys medal.
CB: Oh.
RW: And there you are. He bought Curly’s medal. He was a medal collector and he also involved with [?] he’s a Frenchman working, working with the [6th airborne div] on the invasion things and he bought Curly’s medal and through the squadron he found out that Curly was on the squadron cause he got in touch trying to find out who’s it was and he invited Curly over for several years, every year to get his medal. Well the first year well he couldn’t get his medals back, well he didn’t, he was allowed to wear it but he very kindly let him wear his medal and showed him where his medal was and that’s the sort of thing, the sort of the lads they were. But -
CB: Can I go back to a particular experience -
RW: Yes.
CB: You describe -
RW: Yes, certainly.
CB: And that was the collision.
RW: Yes.
CB: So you’re on top of another Lancaster.
RW: Yeah. Yes.
CB: What happened to that aircraft?
RW: Well I didn’t see it at all. ‘Cause I was -
CB: No.
RW: A little busy keeping flying but apparently his propellers, as I said, chopped through our, just behind the bomb aimer’s feet and the bombing compartment up front. His mid upper, his canopy over the cockpit carved through our wheels and tore the canopy off.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And his mid upper gunner, his mid-upper turret was torn off as well and the boys said they saw Taffy who was looking out of his little window saw the aircraft falling away with the canopy falling off and the aircraft falling to bits so you can’t imagine what happened to the crew in the cockpit and the mid upper gunner sitting on top of the aircraft and they saw the aircraft falling away with no parachutes coming out. Of course it disappeared in cloud.
CB: Ah.
RW: And we were two thousand feet and then they saw the explosion on the ground.
CB: Oh.
RW: They found out afterwards that it was another Lancaster.
CB: Right.
RW: And they were able to identify what Lancaster it was and they were all killed of course. Unfortunately. How lucky can you be?
CB: Yeah and none of your boys saw it coming because you hadn’t got any view of it of underneath.
RW: No. Well the engineer was standing at his little window on the starboard side said he just saw it as it appeared and he didn’t see it at all.
CB: So you were flying straight and level.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And this came up from underneath you.
RW: Yeah. Hit sort of sideways.
CB: Oh sideways.
RW: Sideways underneath.
CB: Which is why you can’t -
RW: Yeah and that’s why he cut across us and we sat on top of him. And that was, and you never thought about it you never thought about disaster at the time you were thinking preservation.
CB: No.
RW: And keeping the aircraft flying. We’ve got to fly. Yeah. Which fortunately it did.
CB: And a different question each of the crew has a different recollection of what was going on because they had different jobs.
RW: Yeah.
CB: You’ve already mentioned the danger of being the rear gunner.
RW: Yeah.
CB: How many times did your gunners shoot at other aircraft? Attacking aircraft in other words.
RW: In a way not as many as the attacks that we had because the idea was you didn’t use your guns unless you had to because it gave away your position so about what a half a dozen times, perhaps.
CB: Yeah.
RW: On one occasion we in the going over Germany we had [five] fighter attacks almost one after the other and if it hadn’t been for the diligence of the gunners we wouldn’t have escaped out of it, you know.
CB: You did corkscrews to get away from it.
RW: Corkscrewed out of it. And once you’ve started corkscrewing it’s no good, no point flying firing your guns.
CB: No.
RW: What did happen I was very fortunate I flew in both the, two of the aircraft who did the, the ton up aircraft who did over a hundred operations. One was in H How which was one of our squadron aircraft and the reason why I flew it was because our squadron was allocated the first two Rolls Royce turrets with the 2.5 guns in the back instead of the four 303s mainly we were the first one of the earliest ones to get it because of the attrition rate on the squadron we were given this the 2.5 and we were, WingCo asked us, well he didn’t ask us he told us to go on this operation and get into a position where the special duty operator could attract the fighter to us.
CB: Right.
RW: So we could try the guns out so we’re stooging along and there we are and Harry called up, he said, ‘Attack starboard quarter coming up.’ So we waited there and he got, when he got in the position where he pressed the guns, pressed the tits to fire the gun it didn’t operate. It didn’t go and we saw sparks flying past but fortunately there were lots of contrails around about so we nipped into the contrails and got rid, got corkscrewing and got rid of the fighter but when we got back the old boss was a bit concerned.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And he said, ‘We’ve got to have to find out what’s going on here,’ he said. And they discovered that they’d changed the anti-freeze grease on the guns and because of that we were told to go out the next night and try them out the next night. Which we did and unfortunately there were ten tenths cloud all over the place but we fired the guns and they worked alright. So that we flew and that was one of the reasons why we had the .5 guns. Because of the attrition rate on the squadron.
CB: Were they also on the mid upper?
RW: No. No, just the 2.5s in the mid upper gunner.
CB: Yeah.
RW: But again you don’t hear much about the mid upper gunners.
CB: No.
RW: But they were just as vulnerable as the others really. They were attacked from behind.
CB: They were an important lookout.
RW: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We were so lucky the diligence of my crew and we were good pals. It wasn’t the skipper sitting up front dictating things. They were telling you what to do.
CB: Yeah.
RW: You had to make the final decision obviously but you were just a crew.
CB: What was the, what was the signaller doing?
RW: [laughs] As little as possible [laughs] he was a wonderful character, very mischievous and he always swore he was going to come on operations drunk and towards one of our last operations we were in the crew room and we were talking and he crept up behind me and patted me on the shoulder [drunken talk imitation] and I turned around. He disappeared and I turned around and I said, ‘You bugger.’ And he’d left a couple of WAAFs standing behind me. [laughs] This is the sort of character he was.
CB: This is an eighteen year old lad was he?
RW: Nineteen.
CB: Nineteen.
RW: He was nineteen. No. He was twenty.
CB: Oh was he?
RW: Around then yeah and this was the sort of character he was and he used to get bearings when nobody else could and he when the skipper wanted a bearing, a particular bearing, he’d get one and there’s an emergency frequency which you had to keep off and he used to get right on the edge of this frequency and pick up bearings that you weren’t supposed to have.
CB: So in practical terms.
RW: Yes.
CB: He was giving bearings all the time.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Was he?
RW: Yeah and again very different from, very different from the navigator and mischievous little devil and I always remember one of the occasions which we remember very vividly was at Waddington after the war when we had our squadron reunion and we’d all had quite a lot to drink and we were getting back into our taxi and we were going to drop him off at his pub, the Wheatsheaf in Lincoln and on the way back he was relating in his very drunken manner how Norman, my bomb aimer lost his virginity to Luscious Lill in Grimsby and there was a policeman walking past the car and wanted to know why. This was the sort of character he was. He drank like a fish and on one occasion we went into Louth to have drink and they used to run a crew bus to run us into Louth and pick us up at half past eleven when the pubs closed and we were coming back and Taffy disappeared. He didn’t know where it was until we had a call from the police station saying we have a wireless operator from your station. A chap called Arndale. He’s in prison. And what he did, he had a skinful, gone down a lane to have a wee and there just happened to be a policeman there and half wee’d on the policeman so they took him in. We were on operations that, had to be on operations that night so I had to into Louth and pay ten shillings to bail him out from the police station to get him back. This was the sort of, wonderful characters and we used to go down the pub and drink enormously playing Moriarty and again, it was a form of relaxation.
CB: Yes sure.
RW: Getting rid of stress.
CB: Just a couple of things about the flying, excuse me.
RW: Yes that’s -
CB: What were you doing when you weren’t on operations?
RW: Well occasionally you did an air test. And perhaps did a little bit fighter affiliation practice being attacked by a fighter but generally your, you were completely relaxed to do whatever you wanted. There was no, no station duties whatsoever. You’d perhaps go up to flight and see what was going on with the others. Down the pub.
CB: But were you doing bombing practice in The Wash?
RW: Yes, there were -
CB: Were you doing circuits and bumps?
RW: I think, I think it was a place called Wainfleet.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Somewhere about The Wash where we used to do practice bombing little eleven and half pound practice bombs you know, practice bombs. Used to drop those.
CB: What height would you be flying when you dropped those?
RW: Oh about eight, ten thousand feet. You weren’t flying at twenty odd thousand feet.
CB: No.
RW: In those days and yes we used to do little air tests and things.
CB: Cross countries?
RW: Pardon?
CB: Cross country for navigation practice.
RW: Err not so much. You did those when you first got on the squadron and you, when you got the feel of the squadron you did a couple of cross countries then but after that no we didn’t have to do any cross countries at all and your relaxation was really resting and down the boozer, down the pub and I used to get into trouble. When we used to live in a nissen hut, little corrugated iron nissen hut and when the condensation, used to get the condensation inside used to run down the ridges and in the winter used to form icicles.
CB: Cause there’s no insulation.
RW: Yeah. No.
CB: No insulation.
RW: No insulation. No.
CB: No.
RW: And all we had was a pot stove in the middle of the room a little cylindrical pot stove which we used to go and try and rob people of their ration of fuel and burn furniture and all sorts of silly things and of course there were no ablutions or watering inside. The ablutions were outside in another hut with a concrete bench with taps on and that was all you had. It wasn’t a, Wimpy built the station in eighty days completely and there were a main roads. There was a main road into the station, a main road with flights, a perimeter track and a runway and that’s about it. And all the rest we were walking around on grass and mud as a matter of fact being called Ludford Magna they nicknamed the place as Mudford which is a -
CB: It was that bad was it?
RW: It was that bad.
CB: Right.
RW: But it was, basically apart from the stress of what was going on it was a happy station and this was reflected on the senior staff. The group captain and the WingCos in that place.
CB: But with the high attrition rate -
RW: Yeah.
CB: How, the senior officers would get shot down as well.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So how did the replacements work? Would it be somebody from the squadron already or would they post in a squadron leader or wing commander?
RW: I think it depended on who was available. Perhaps one of the flight commanders would be promoted or could be promoted and our flight commander, Squadron Leader Robinson he was a fortnight before he was a flight lieutenant but the flight commander was killed and with rapid promotion he is made squadron leader. So he became a squadron leader and it has happened that when a station commander who’d gone on operations, well WingCo Alexander a wonderful man, he used to come and take on a crew that had just arrive on the squadron. Take them on operations. So if there were lost they’d perhaps try and promote somebody on the squadron, from the flight to become station commander or bring somebody in with experience.
CB: Squadron commander you mean.
RW: Yes, squadron leader.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Bring in one of the senior officers to take over the station which didn’t happen on our lot. I know it did, it has happened but then rapid promotion for whoever is on the flight.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Which Robinson was. He became from the -
CB: Yeah. So -
RW: Yeah so this rapid promotion business was well deserved but Robinson became the, the flight commander when he was twenty five, twenty six. Yeah. Well, look at Gibson. He was twenty six, he was a group captain and the group -
CB: Yeah.
RW: Group captain in the service, yeah.
CB: Well did sometimes the station commanders fly on raids?
RW: Not the station commander. I know some of them did. Ours didn’t. Old Group Captain King. As far as we know he didn’t because we didn’t know everything that was going on but the Wing Commander Alexander who was in charge of all the flying as I say a new crew would come on the squadron and he’d take that squadron, take that crew that night. Normally, he did a second dicky trip which was an experienced to get experience on flying but when we started at the end, end of of ‘43 started the Battle of Berlin when the operations were called Gomorrah which was maximum effort err old Squadron Leader Robinson flight commander called me in and said. ‘Right you’re flying tonight.’ I didn’t get a second dicky trip but thinking of that sort of thing we used to have jinx. People in the squadron. Used to have WAAFs, you know, somebody little transport driver if they’d been out with this particular WAAF nearly everybody who’d been out with her got killed so she became a jinx, you know.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
RW: And we became a jinxed crew.
CB: Yeah.
RW: We took three different pilots on experience operations and all of them were killed.
CB: Were they?
RW: So they wouldn’t send any more people with us.
CB: No.
RW: Yes. Which is remarkable. So these jinx things did happen.
CB: How many hours did you fly in your thirty by the time you’d finished your tour of thirty ops?
RW: Something like a hundred and eighty three. Something like that.
CB: On, on ops.
RW: On ops.
CB: Ok.
RW: Do you want to see my logbook?
CB: I do. Please.
RW: Yes. When –
CB: We’ll do that in a minute but overall how many by the time you left the RAF how many hours had you flown?
RW: Oh that’s getting on a bit. I did something like two and half thousand hours.
CB: Did you really?
RW: Which, when you compare people flying now are talking about thousands of hours. Thirty, forty, fifty thousand hours. No, two and a half thousand hours I ended up with which was quite a long bit for, for the -
CB: When the Canadian Lancaster came over last year -
RW: Yeah.
CB: The senior pilot there, he’s on airlines, had done twenty seven thousand five hundred -
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Hours.
RW: Yeah. Amazing, yeah.
CB: I’m going to stop there for a moment. Thank you.
[Pause]
CB: Right we’re starting again.
RW: Right from the beginning.
CB: And what I’d like to do is to ask Rusty just to talk about the time from his birth really to a point at West Kirby.
RW: Yeah thank you. Gosh. That’s, well at ninety two it’s a long story. No, it’s not really but I was very fortunate in my bringing up. I was born in a place called Shotley Bridge in County Durham and my dad worked as a handyman on a colliery owner’s estate and there I don’t know whether it was because of the situation or what was going on we lived in a tied cottage and I got diphtheria. I was, I had mucous diphtheria quite a chronic illness in those days and my mum who’d been a nurse in a military hospital nursed me at home with that and mum and dad had quite different careers. My dad was in the navy. He was orphaned as a boy, a two year old boy and brought up by an elder sister who when he got a bit older didn’t want them so he was put in the navy in 1905 as a boy entry and he went through and became a naval diver. And my mum who was a nurse in the, a sister, a matron, assistant matron at a military hospital in Darlington. Went through the war and got herself a Royal Red Cross, Associated Red Cross which was one down from the nursing VC which was a considerable award. She was a wonderful lady. And dad with his naval experience on the Q ships got himself a DFM and he is a leading seaman which was rather unusual in those days ‘cause not very many lower rank NCOs, he wasn’t even an NCO, got a decoration. He got a DFM.
CB: A DSM.
RW: Yes a DSM. DSM, yes.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Distinguished Service Medal and he, having been orphaned, he didn’t have a home to go to and my uncle Stanley was in the navy as well and he brought dad home on leave up north to Newcastle and there he met my mum and my auntie and he married my mum which is, which is lovely but because of his health he couldn’t do any really serious work and he used to do handyman work on the colliery owner’s estate and eventually when he moved in to Newcastle he used to do shift work looking after the stable and the horses for the Coop and in those day they had something like four hundred and sixty horses in the stables. And the nostalgic smell of all that leather was, when I used to go to night schools to try and get some education his stables were just a bit up the road and I used to go and meet him at, class would finish at 9 o’clock, the stables used to finish at half nine. I used to go and meet him at the stables and have a cup of tea by the big stove in the kit room. Smelled wonderfully. Wonderful. And then we had to walk home two and a half miles. No question of buses. Walk home. And dad was, really was a very quiet, unassuming man. Mum was a nurse all her life stayed nursing as her career all her life and she really saved my life on more than one occasion. Nursing me at home with diphtheria and typhoid and then the consequence because we, because we lived in, had no inside toilet, it was only a cold tap and no electricity, gas, paraffin lamps. We had communal toilets outside on The Green at the back I obviously picked up the typhoid from there so my mum went out and set them on fire and burned them down. So there we are. I came back to Newcastle and lived in the city for a wee while and then as a young teenager then I got TB, I had a TB [?] and that kept me down very much so and I was in a wheelchair when I was twelve so my mum nursed me at home with the TB and in consequence my health suffered to the extent that I wasn’t allowed to play sport, I wasn’t allowed to go swimming, couldn’t do all the exercises that my brother used to do and because of the family teeth which weren’t very good and because of the medication I was taking my teeth were in a very poor state so I had all my teeth out when I was sixteen and in those days they didn’t put teeth straight back in away again they waited until your gums got hard and then they put some china teeth in in those days. China porcelain things and that ruined my early love life that did. Mind you I didn’t know what girls were anyway. As far as I was concerned they were the ones that danced backwards, you know, so my upbringing in that respect was very, very sheltered. In consequence I started to go to school when I was about four and a half in Newcastle on the City Road but soon becoming ill I had to stop school and when I did go back to school I was just, just under eleven when you took the scholarship exam at twelve and of course I didn’t pass the scholarship and I didn’t, my brother went to a grammar school. I couldn’t go to a grammar school. I went to a school where you learnt ship working and work on the, work with the prospect of going perhaps in to the drawing offices of the shipyard. All the local stuff. But there again I wasn’t allowed to join the scouts or play sports and yet and yet my dad used to love watching football and we used to go to Newcastle United and watch the football there from an early age, from about eight, so I got quite a bit of fondness for Newcastle United. So, there we are I was a very sickly child with very little education and of course in those days to join the services at the age of eighteen you were called up and you were directed into any of the services that they needed. Even go down the mines and become a Bevan boy which I didn’t relish so I told mum and dad my friend he was going to join up at seventeen and have some sort of choice of services you went into and dad having been in the navy I said to mum and dad I said, ‘I’m going to volunteer and I’m going to join the navy. Volunteer to join the navy’ And they said, ‘Yeah. With your health record you’ll never get in.’ So off I went down to the recruiting centre which was a school and in the navy classroom there was the navy recruiting officer and my own doctor, Doctor Wright and I thought. ‘If I go in there I’ll never get in.’ So, I went next door and joined the air force. And really they were very hard up. This poor chap with no teeth and a heart murmur and varicose veins and covered in psoriasis and I think the air force must have been very, very hard up and much to my amazement after going to West Kirby to sign on where you were attested and signed on and joined the air force at seventeen. And poor old mum wept buckets her poor little lad, her poor little innocent lad going to play soldiers um and of course from then you had to go down to London to ACRC, St Johns Wood to be attestation and see what air crew you were going to be. When you were first signed up and joined up I was told I could train as air crew which was amazing ‘cause, in view of my health. Anyway after being signed on and got the kings shilling, not that I got a shilling but had to swear on the bible down to ACRC where you had attestation where you had medicals and exams. The medicals we used to have were in the Lords Cricket Ground and used to line up just with your underpants on and arms akimbo with your hands on your hips and they were at the side with the hypodermic syringe and pumping this stuff into you and the doc used to come and do what they called an FFI, free from infection, whereby you walked down the front, dropped your trousers and they used to go down and examine you with a little stick and the back, they went around the back, they went around the back and said bend over and made me wonder what on earth was going to happen but there you are if anyone collapsed when you were there or fainted there they just produced all the work on the ground. They just gave the injections on the ground. So we being, being at the Lords Cricket Ground you know and of course the result of that, much to my amazement, I was told I could train as a pilot because when you first went there you were trained as aircrew UT aircrew with a little white flash in your cap to show you were aircrew, trainee aircrew. So there we are I was told I could train as a pilot. And of course from there you had to start learning about the air force so I was posted to Newquay down in Cornwall at the ITW Initial Training Wing where you learned about the air force, square bashing, how to salute and all these sort of things. The admin side of the air force. So having completed that we were posted to, I was posted to South Africa and issued with the tropical kit and off to East Kirby, West, West Kirby at Manchester er at Liverpool to catch the boat to go out to South Africa. And in the billets there when the time came all the people left except eleven of us who were left in the room all Ws. All Walls, Walkers all the Ws left behind and we were left there and the camp disappeared. They took all the men off the camp, all the operating men off the camp and there were just the eleven, we lived off the NAAFI for a week and not knowing what on earth was going on until the next posting that came in and they were all WAAFs. All the WAAFs came in and seeing eleven blokes in their billet you know wondering what on earth was going on. So did we. Then the WAAF officer said, you know, ‘What are you doing?’ Well. ‘We were posted to South Africa and we didn’t go.’ Ah draft dodging. So we were posted down to the B course at Brighton. The bad boys course at Brighton because of the because we were accused of draft dodging and down there we were up very early in the morning and booking in at half past eight at night which we didn’t take very much enjoyment out of this sort of thing and the parades were very, very strict and doubling and running everywhere and we complained to the orderly officer one day at a mealtime telling him, you know we shouldn’t be here. We haven’t done anything wrong and he didn’t believe it and he said, ‘Oh you carry on.’ So the eleven of us, we wrote a letter and we all signed it and sent it to the station commander who had us in his office and he said. ‘This constitutes mutiny,’ which is a court martial offence and when we’d explained to him what had happened he did a bit of an investigation, he said, ‘Oh that’s alright he said, ‘Alright just book in in the morning and come in at night time.’ So we had a few days, four or five day holidaying in Brighton just walking about and spending all our time in [Sherry’s] Bar I think it was and of course then we had to start again. And when we were posted we were posted to another ITW at Stratford on Avon but all our kit and all our records had been sent out to South Africa so nobody knew anything about us so we had to start again so we did all our ITW again at Stratford on Avon and that was very pleasant. We took over most of the hotels for lectures and bedding and I can say I was on the stage in Stratford on Avon which is quite a, quite a thrill mainly as we used the theatre as aircraft recognition. We had to go on stage to point out aeroplanes but that was quite an experience and of course having completed the course successfully there you had to go and prove that we could fly and go overseas so we were posted to a place called Codsall, just north of Wolverhampton where there was a civilian aerodrome where we were, had to go flying Tiger Moths and once we’d gone solo that was it, forgot about aeroplanes. Some of the poor souls couldn’t go solo and they were re-posted. So, fortunately, I managed it and on the Empire Training Scheme where they used to send trainees to South Africa, some to Australia even, some to Arnold Scheme in America. I was posted to Canada on the Empire Training Scheme and this was at a place called Dewinton which is just south of Calgary.
CB: So this is, what date are we talking about here?
RW: This, this was in early ’42.
CB: Right.
RW: Early ’42.
CB: Can I just go back to what you said earlier?
RW: Yeah.
CB: You were selected for aircrew.
RW: Yeah.
CB: But you must have gone through some kind of process that suggested you were suitable for aircrew rather than -
RW: Yeah.
CB: A ground crew job.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So what was that?
RW: Yes. When you were first signed on, volunteered as air crew, when you went to Padgate to be officially sworn in to the service you did some testing there. You did some examinations there and with, fortunately with my experience as a pupil surveyor doing vectors and things on the ground is a similar sort of thing they did in the air with wind resistance and this sort of thing and that helped me enormously to pass the ground exams and having done that minor exams there you were then told you could train as UT aircrew.
CB: Right.
RW: Becoming UT aircrew PNB.
CB: Yeah.
RW: If you couldn’t succeed as a pilot you could perhaps become a navigator or a bomb aimer PNB.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And I was fortunate to say I could train as a pilot. So we -
CB: Just, just to put that into context. Earlier you talked about your experience of then getting to leave school.
RW: Yeah.
CB: How did you get in to bring the surveyor?
RW: Ah the well I -
CB: Which was the basis for your selection.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: For aircrew.
RW: I had, the school I went to was a training establishment more than a school. Learning about draughtsmanship and this sort of thing -
CB: Yeah.
RW: To go on the shipyards and you had to leave there when you were fifteen, sixteen. So I left school, no idea of what sort of job I could get whatsoever. So my brother who was, he was a grammar school boy and very highly educated, a very clever lad, he used to work in his spare time at the Newcastle repertory theatre and this Christmas they were putting on a play called “The Circus Girl” and they were short of somebody to take the part of the monkey in the play and my brother said I’ve got a brother who is doing nothing maybe he’d be it so I became a monkey in the Christmas pantomime at the Newcastle rep which was great fun. The devils, they wore a uniform, skin monkey skin with not much else really. The devils used to put itching powder inside that actually. Not very nice. And of course then when the pantomime was finished they said, ‘What are you doing now?’ and I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ve got to look for a job.’ They said, ‘Would you like to stop on?’ So I stayed on the Newcastle rep for nearly a year as an assistant assistant assistant stage manager and with the girls doing quick changes at the side of the theatre you learned an awful lot about life but my aunt who had a very good friend who was, worked, had another friend who owned and ran an architect’s surveyors office said would I like to go and work for them. So I went and worked at the architect surveyor’s office and became a pupil surveyor. I was doing the exams for the Institute of Surveying, ISF, and I passed their preliminary exams but they didn’t count because I didn’t have a matriculation or school cert so I was going to night school four nights a week learning about mathematics and history and I wasn’t getting on terribly well. I don’t think I would have ever qualified completely but very fortunately the war came along and having volunteered to join up I left surveying and became, and joined the air force.
CB: So that’s how you effectively qualified for being air crew.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Ok. Yeah.
RW: So the fact that I qualified for air crew, the fact that, not so much my health record although the medicals I had were very comprehensive medicals the fact that the mathematics I was doing for the surveying helped me enormously with the navigation exercises we were doing in the thing so that, I think, helped towards the fact that I was allowed to train as air crew apart from the fact that they must have been very short of aircrew and they wanted somebody [to fill the boots]. Yeah, so -
CB: Just a quick question about your initial training.
RW: Yeah.
CB: How many hours did you fly before you went solo?
RW: When we first went solo at Codsall in Wolverhampton it was about eight or ten.
CB: Right.
RW: Something like that. When we got out to Canada you really had to start again and you were doing sort of fifteen, twenty hours before you really were allowed to go solo.
CB: So I’m just interrupting now because this goes into the early part of the interview because it got missed.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AWaughmanR150803
PWaughmanR1501
Title
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Interview with Rusty Waughman. Two
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:55:47 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2015-08-03
Description
An account of the resource
Russell (Rusty) Waughman was born in Shotley Bridge, County Durham. Due to serious poor health as a child his education was interrupted. He describes his training with the Empire Training School in Canada. He was posted to 101 Squadron which was a special squadron with the ABC system. He describes some of the unusual aspects of squadron life such as premonitions and the close connections between everyone on the station. He had many close calls including having to right the aircraft which was flying upside down due to being blown of course by a nearby explosion. On one occasion he managed to keep his Lancaster flying despite a collision with another aircraft. On another occasion the aircraft was again damaged during an attack on Munich. However, as they made their slow progress back they found themselves flying over France in daylight and were amazed to see from the distance two Spitfires which had been sent to escort them home. He also took part in the Berlin airlift.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Canada
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
101 Squadron
1662 HCU
82 OTU
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
briefing
C-47
control tower
coping mechanism
crewing up
dispersal
entertainment
faith
fear
FIDO
forced landing
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
heirloom
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
Me 109
mid-air collision
military living conditions
military service conditions
nose art
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
perimeter track
pilot
promotion
RAF Abingdon
RAF Blyton
RAF Desborough
RAF hospital Matlock
RAF Ludford Magna
recruitment
sanitation
searchlight
Stearman
superstition
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/365/5764/WardM [Pesaro].jpg
d9a2d9c693790af82307dda6f15eb90a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/365/5764/AWardM151214.2.mp3
7d77d7598db6b62a6f0d3db383dffb89
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
Ward, Mary
Mary Ward
Elsie Mary Ward
E M Ward
Mary Brown
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Three oral history interviews with Elizabeth Mary Ward (893293, Women's Auxiliary Air Force), her dog tags, an aeroplane broach and a photograph album. Mary Ward was a cook but re-mustered and was promoted becoming a map officer. She served with Bomber Command at RAF Driffield between 1940 and 1944 before being posted to Coastal Command.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Mary ward and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-24
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Ward, EM
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Monday the 14th of December. We’re talking with Mary Ward about her experiences and we’re in Crowthorne. So, Mary could you start off with your earliest recollections please and then just keep going from there.
MW: Earliest recollections would be in Bloxham and possibly five or six years old. I lived with my mother’s sister, her husband and her brother in a thatched cottage in Bloxham. I went to school at the C of E school in Bloxham until I was eleven and then to Banbury. I left school at fourteen and a half and worked in various jobs to do with lady’s maid for Lady Burnham, Hockley Heath and then decided to become a nursery governess. I went to the nursing home in Sutton Coldfield on recommendation and was at the time was looking after a dyslexic, what they called, a dyslexic child, a two year-old who was unable to speak, as part of my training. I moved out of the nursing home to live with that family to take care of that child and stayed there for a few years, a couple of years possibly and, and then moved on to another similar post with an older child. This was in Sutton Coldfield. On September the 3rd war broke out, 1939. And later on that year we, my friend and I decided that we would join the forces. We wrote to the RAF and were refused on the grounds that they didn’t have any particular job for someone who’d been a nursery maid really and, but we applied again in the early in January that year in 1940 and we were both accepted but unfortunately my friend decided, her parents decided, that it wasn’t for her so I went on my own to, I can’t tell you the date I just don’t remember the date but it was, it would be March 1940. I went for training at Uxbridge, three weeks training. I’ve very little recollection of that but then I was posted. My first posting was to Driffield in North Yorkshire which we didn’t have a complete uniform, there wasn’t enough to go around so we, we had to wait to be, to have a complete uniform but we did have the stockings and the shoes but we didn’t have battle dress until much later. We were, the RAF at that time had moved the civilians from their quarters and we occupied the civilian quarters RAF housing on the periphery of the air force really and we shared a house with oh perhaps four or five of us in a house. I was then general duties and was given a job in the RAF officers’ mess looking after the officers’ needs. Really, the post and anything else that they needed to know to get to, to get from one officer to another or to the group captain or whatever. It was quiet, fairly quiet. Five miles from Bridlington and very little activity until the 15th of August when we had a daylight raid. Fifteen aircraft came over at half past one in the afternoon. I was, I was just at the time helping with the lunch and helping, doing, manning the phone of course and flying control wanted to speak to the group captain immediately. I had seen the group captain not a couple of minutes before but I couldn’t see him just at that moment and I was running about trying to find him. At that particular time in the RAF you didn’t, flying control didn’t sound the siren unless the group captain had given permission and we, they desperately needed to sound the siren. These aircraft were approaching from Bridlington, five minutes flying time away possibly. To sound the siren. I ran around trying but in the end, without his permission, they did sound the siren. By that time it was too late for the officers’ mess. We were completely bombarded. Absolutely flattened. I was pushed in to the shelter by a couple of officers. Finally, we came out and I was helped out by the young Group Captain Cheshire, Pilot Officer Cheshire who had just arrived at the station a couple of days before me. And we were all very shaken. It was, it the dust and the mess that was so difficult to take in. I don’t know how much of this you want but I feel -
CB: Keep going.
MW: That it’s, it’s possibly important that you know that. Leonard Cheshire said to me, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m going, I’m on duty to go to the sick quarters.’ We had a roster for duties, sick quarters and he said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘Do you think they’ll need me up there? And he said, he looked at me and said, ‘No. I don’t think they’ll need you really. I think they’ll manage without you.’ So, we did, we split up and went, I went back to the billet and my friend who was an accountant, I said, ‘I don’t like living on the periphery here now,’ I said, ‘It’s too far out. I’ll come in to your, into the quarters with you.’ So I moved in that night. But we tended to recover quite quickly because we all went to see Bob Hope in “Riding Down to Rio” or something during the evening but the station was a complete washout. The ammunition had been all gone. The aircraft hangars had been hit, Cheshire’s aircraft had been, was not, we couldn’t, we couldn’t fly from there so the following day we moved to Pocklington. This was 102 and 78 squadron I think and 58. We moved to Pocklington and did a little flying from there but the one thing I haven’t said about, about Driffield is most of the flying at that time we were dropping leaflets in France and Germany. There were hardly any bombing being used at all. We didn’t have any did we? But during my little while at Pocklington I was asked to consider re-mustering and they were very, very short of cooks. Would I take on a cook’s course? So, reluctantly I did. I went to Melksham and that would be in the September straight into the Battle of Britain and I can’t tell you, I have to say this but I was there for four weeks, five weeks. I passed the course but I have no recollection whatsoever. Absolutely nothing. I can’t tell anyone because I don’t know anything. It was the sheer volume of aircraft, the noise night and day in the shelter in the Battle of Britain. We couldn’t, we couldn’t cope. How I passed the course I don’t know but we did. And then I was posted back to Linton on Ouse. At Linton -
Other: Mary, sorry but the nurses have come.
CB: We’re just pausing for a bit because the health visitor has come.
[Pause]
CB: We’re just talking about early stages of living in Bloxham and the lack of facilities as we know them today. So what was the house like and what were the facilities?
MW: The house was a fourteenth century thatched cottage with a stream running at the bottom with a loo situation, situated down at the bottom of the garden with two seats. The water we got from the spring in order to flush it, try and flush it down. From the, actually from the river. From the stream. Yes, we had, we had a spring in the garden from which we obtained our drinking water, always had the drinking water. You had to be, you had to go and fetch it from the, from the spring and bring it up. We had no gas, no electricity until just before the war and we had oil lamps and candles for lighting in Bloxham. Gas has never been, never come to Bloxham at all. We were too far out for that but, and, but we did keep our own hens and during the war we actually had pigs, a couple of pigs for food. The garden, we were always almost self-contained because we had so much vegetables which we, which we preserved during, during the summer for the, to carry us through the winter. Beans, potatoes, carrots, everything that could be preserved we did and we kept. So, it was really there, wasn’t, when the war came we didn’t have a great deal of difficulty in, in, in maintaining our own food. I have to say when I went on leave during, during the war we, we didn’t really go I had everything I needed really. Really good bacon, eggs and fried bread and things for breakfast which was good after the RAF food [laughs]. How much else do you want me to say?
CB: Well that was just to get an understanding of what it was like. Yes.
MW: Of what it was like.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes.
CB: Right. So we’re now talking, we’ve talked about your training as a cook.
MW: Oh yes.
CB: At Melksham.
MW: Yes.
CB: And so you returned to Pocklington.
MW: No. I returned to Linton on Ouse.
CB: Oh Linton on Ouse.
MW: Yes.
CB: Okay.
MW: Into the sergeants’ mess.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. In the sergeants’ mess. That would be possibly about well, August 15th. End of August, September. I was still in the sergeants’ mess for my birthday in November. So that was, but cooking in the RAF was, it, you might be interested to know that it is, it’s quite different from cooking at home or possibly in a hotel. You did, the shifts were from six until two. Eight hour shifts. And when you arrived you were, you were allocated one or the other dishes in which you were in charge of. At that time we had a civilian chef. The RAF provided, were, had quite a few civilians. I worked with two. The chef in the sergeants’ mess and later on, much later on in the map office at Shawbury, they were both civilians. The chef would say, ‘You’re allocated to do the eggs.’ If it was the morning shift do the eggs and that’s all you did. That was you were in charge of the eggs. And in order to get enough eggs for hundreds of people, of RAF, fried they would have large, very large containers and you just drop the eggs in. At least two dozen at a time in to these very large containers and you looked after those, looked after the eggs. Sometimes you were asked to make sandwiches but on the whole that was all you did. That was your job for that, for the shift, doing that. And the afternoon shift from two you were doing a meal for the evening or for tea. You would often get put on puddings. I didn’t like doing the, doing the meats so I asked used to ask the chef if I could do the puddings. So, I learnt to make pastry there and I’m quite good at pastry even now [laughs]. Yes, it was quite different. And this is the most important part of my RAF story what I’m going to tell you now so if you, if you don’t hear what I say do ask me again because this is very important but I’d been in the R --, in the sergeants’ mess a couple of months and I was used to being, being, putting up the rations for the flying aircrew. The officers’ mess and the sergeants’ mess provided rations for the flying, for flying that evening alternatively and on one occasion the chef said, ‘Will you take the, the rations for flying tonight over to the intelligence office.’ I said, ‘Yes I will go over with the, to the,’ so, I went in the afternoon to the intelligence office with the rations for that night’s flying and I went into the intelligence office and I was introduced to the squadron leader and he said, ‘Where have you come from?’ And I said, ‘From the sergeants’ mess. I’ve brought your rations for flying this evening, for the crew this evening.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Well, what do you do in the sergeants’ mess?’ I said, ‘I cook’ or, ‘try to cook and, and do make sandwiches and do things like that.’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘Now, you don’t wish to do that all your RAF time do you?’ He said, ‘Will you come and work for me?’ I said, ‘I can’t do that. I’d have to re-muster.’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘What do you know about maps?’ I said, ‘Very little.’ He said, ‘Well you’ve been to school haven’t you?’ ‘Yes. Yes.’ He said, ‘Where is the mouth of the Danube?’ So, I thought and I said, ‘Well is it in the Black Sea?’ He said, ‘That’ll do.’ And he said, ‘Go and tell your WAAF officer I want you to report here tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.’ I protested. He said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘Please. You, I want you here tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.’ Now, you know about the establishment. You know what you have to do to re-muster. My chef made a fuss because I was being, being, being told by Ivor Jones to go to the intelligence office. He said, ‘He can’t take my staff.’ I said, ‘Well that’s what I have to do.’ The WAAF officer made a fuss because I hadn’t re-mustered but Ivor Jones was an ex-army colonel, lieutenant colonel in the Indian army retired and he was head of intelligence at Linton and his word just went really. And so I went to Gloucester on a two, a course for two days. I came back with two stripes and that was it. He said to me at the time the establishment in the intelligence office is for one map corporal. You won’t be able to get any further unless I recommend you for a commission which he did and which I refused but that is a later stage but that, and I knew from then that I would never be able to get anything further than a corporal. That didn’t worry me. And so we settled down and it’s maps. Geography was really I would say my, my best subject at school and I did get along with maps but they were hard, hard to deal with because they were all rolled up. The maps and the charts. The target maps were quite small and we didn’t have very many because we hadn’t, we hadn’t produced them like they had in Germany. I mean they were prepared and we weren’t.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Erm my duties were really, at that time, nine in the morning until five or six in the evening except for when they were flying. The flying, I had to be available for briefing in case they hadn’t, they needed extra maps and certainly for interrogation which was in the middle of the night of course. On returning. Shall I go on about that?
CB: Please go. Yes.
MW: Yes. Well it was a very emotional job. Very emotional. It meant writing up names on the blackboard and having to rub them out the next day because they hadn’t returned. This went on night after night except when it was really bad weather. The boys, the young boys came to the office for maps or for a chat. Many of them didn’t wish to go to Berlin or didn’t wish to go anywhere. Then I would make them a cup of tea, give them a cigarette and say, ‘I’ll be here when you come back’ knowing perfectly well possibly that they weren’t coming back. But on other occasions when they weren’t flying we had very happy times in York. In Betty’s Bar in York. They, they, but I have to say it was a very emotional time for me. Everybody smoked. The air was full of smoke always and –
[pause]
The other thing that we had to contend with was the bombing of the airfield. Bombing of the airfield kept continually in 1940, the end of ’42 and ‘43. Cheshire came back one night and said, ‘It’s worse here than it was in, than we’ve done, we’ve seen in Germany,’ because we’d had such bad raids. At that stage the RAF moved the WAAF off the station at night. We moved, I moved to a house at Newton on Ouse. A country house. And I had to cycle up in the middle of the night for interrogation and the other place that was requisitioned was the Beningbrough Hall, 35 Squadron took Beningbrough Hall and -
CB: Keep going.
MW: That was quite nice because we had little parties down there with the squadron and we, there’s a small village across the Ouse called Nun Monkton and we had to go across in a sort of canoe thing, a very small boat. Get someone to row you across and we had a really nice meal of egg and chips over in that, if you could find someone to pay for it for you [laughs]. Um -
CB: Just on that topic then. How much did you get paid?
MW: Um.
CB: Roughly.
MW: Not a lot.
CB: No.
MW: I’ve got a book that tells me that but I don’t remember it very well um but a corporal, I was a special duties, a map clerk special duties you see. I probably missed that and so I did get a little bit more than, than if um -
CB: Ok. So could you tell us what the role of the map clerk special duties was?
MW: The role?
CB: Ahum.
MW: Well just to look after the maps really and to help out in the intelligence office if I was needed. We did, we did have special duty men but I was the only WAAF involved in the intelligence at that time. We did have map WAAF officers and I’ll come to that at a later stage. I was, Ivor Jones recommended me for commission which I refused on the grounds that I preferred to stay where I was and I didn’t really want to be an administrative. I don’t know, I don’t, I can’t cope with admin at all really but he thought I would be able and on two occasions he did recommend me for commission but I refused on both occasions as I wanted to be able to stay there. Would you like to know a bit about what we did when we were off duty?
CB: Absolutely.
MW: The, the, we had an inspection, a kit inspection, once a month at which everything had to be laid out. I don’t know if you know about the beds but the beds we called biscuits. We had three erm like squares. I think they contained straw or something like that or that kind of thing and there was an iron frame of the bed and there were three biscuits that you, and then your sheets and your blankets and every morning before you left the hut, in my case with being shift working I didn’t, I could get away with it but every morning you had to stack those biscuits into three. Fold your blankets, fold your sheets and everything and put on that every morning. The WAAF officer went around and if they found you hadn’t done that you were in for trouble and um well we had kit inspection once a month but a lot of the time we lost something or forgotten it so while the WAAF officer was down this end we would, somebody would go around and replace it some, what was missing but those evenings turned out to be quite good really because we sat around the fire. We had these, these slow burning stoves, black stoves, this was in the Nissen hut. This, because this was later, after, you know when I was still in the, well I was at Linton for three and a half years you see but most of that time I was in a modern, in RAF quarters or in wooden huts which were a little bit better than the, than the Nissen huts but at a later stage I was in Nissen huts and they were, were not easy to, to heat you know. There was no heat.
CB: Ahum.
MW: We had to go down the road almost to go to the loo or to get a bath. We were allowed four inches of bath. There was a line all the way around the bath, four inches of water and you could, if you were lucky to get a bath. It wasn’t always easy because there wasn’t enough water to go around. But on the whole life was, it, it, I have to say it was very happy. The RAF did take on you as a person, a young person who had left their parents and they did look after you. You certainly got cautioned if you did things wrong and you certainly got, you were confined to barracks if you didn’t, if you did anything really bad. But on the whole you could get away with being a few minutes late on your pass at the guard house, in the guard room. Christmas was good. We always looked forward to Christmas because the officers’ mess always turned out and they waited on us always with the, with the food. They tried to do as much as one could with the lack of resources in those days but you usually had a fairly reasonable Christmas dinner and as I say it was good fun with the officers waiting on us. Dances. We had sergeants’ mess dances, officers’ mess dances which unless you were non-commissioned officers you weren’t allowed to go to those unless you were invited specially. And always the pictures. Always had the pictures. We were issued at Uxbridge with a mug and a knife and a fork and a spoon which we all christened our irons. You’re smiling. You know about irons don’t you?
CB: Absolutely.
MW: And if you got to the mess without your irons well you had to go back for them because they didn’t supply them. On thinking about this and I thought well it’s really quite hygienic because you’ve got, you were responsible for cleaning and looking after your irons, your mug and your irons but you weren’t expected to lose those.
CB: What was the mug made from?
MW: Hmmn?
CB: What was the mug made of?
MW: Oh is it -
CB: Was it metal?
MW: Enamel.
CB: It was enamel.
MW: Enamel. Yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes, yes. White enamel.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And they did provide pyjamas, shoes. Shoes were dreadful, absolutely ruined my feet because they were so hard and everybody complained. Stockings, knickers, vests, everything. We had everything provided that you needed and in a way now one thing I hate getting dressed in the morning now because you don’t know what to put on. In the RAF you always knew what to put on because it was always that’s what you wore, you see. The washing was difficult cause we couldn’t, but we did manage to find women in the village who would do a bit of washing for us but we always took our collars to the Chinese. The Chinese had various laundries in, in York and we took, because they came back nice and stiff you see.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But what people don’t realise, I think how difficult it was then because we had two studs. One for the back. The collar was separate from the shirt you see and you had to put this collar stud in the back of your shirt and pull it around and then there’s another stud there at the front to put your, to do it up and then get your tie on after that. It wasn’t easy [laughs] but we, you get, you did get used to it. I think we enjoyed it mainly because we were young. We couldn’t, we couldn’t have done it over thirty.
CB: Ahum.
MW: No. But none of us were over thirty anyway so that didn’t really - Now, where do I go from there?
CB: Ok, so we touched briefly on the social side.
MW: Yes.
CB: So on the station -
MW: Yes, well I think-
CB: There was a cinema on the station was there?
MW: Things like when Gee came in. Yes -
CB: The navigation aid -
MW: At Linton we were the first to have Gee and I had special maps which were an absolute nightmare to look up because it was so secret at the time. We had to look after that. We were the first Halifaxes at Linton to have cameras available.
CB: This is the bombing camera.
MW: Yes. Bombing cameras. Not that easy to begin with and I did do a bit of, of the research on the photographs that came back. I have to tell you that there were very, very many that never went anywhere near the target.
CB: Absolutely, but one of the reasons for having the camera was to identify -
MW: Absolutely. Yes.
CB: That the target had actually been hit.
MW: Yes but then of course it all got better. It really did and then by ‘43 things really did hot up.
CB: Right.
MW: And we began to get control of things then. The, we had the thousand bomber raid from Linton. Every available aircraft they could pull out of anywhere went that night. Yes. Leonard Cheshire was there all the time. Most of the time actually. He, he was always good fun.
CB: Which squadron was he?
MW: Always danced with the wall flowers [laughs]. And he, yeah and very unassuming and a really charming person. I’ll tell you about when they went to, Cheshire and another went, they won, they tossed up. They wanted some pilots to go up to Canada to bring back Liberators for us to use. Cheshire won the toss up with another pilot. They went off. Quite not quite what they expected it was quite a poor boat that they went out on but they, they managed to go and get there. When they got there to Canada they hadn’t, they hadn’t the Liberators ready because they had to do, have a little bit of training so they were given some leave and he went off, they went off to New York for some leave and Cheshire met an ex-film star and they were having a really good time and this was a lady called Constance Binney and she was twenty years older than Leonard but on the spur of the moment in the few days that they were there they got married. Everybody was really, really sad when, but it obviously wasn’t going to work. It did work for a while and he, he rented, they rented a cottage in Marston Moor and then I think they had a railway carriage in Marston Moor and this was really funny because she was very glamourous and she was a lovely pianist in the mess. She used to play the piano beautifully. And very sociable of course. She, she didn’t get on too well in the, in the cottage and I had a friend who was in charge of the telephones. Telephone is downstairs from my office upstairs and we, as telephonists, could, we could always plug into a conversation. You had to pull the plug back and leave it open and you could hear what the conversation was. Now, we did. When Constance was on the phone we often used listen in to what Cheshire and Constance was, one day she was in a real state because she’d, Cheshire had shot a pheasant because he had somebody coming for supper and she said, she said she had put this thing in the oven and it was making a terrible smell. She couldn’t understand why it was making a terrible smell. Do you know? She left the innards in. But no we were very naughty. Not all the time but occasionally my friend, she would pull the plug back and listen in to the conversation. So we just um -
CB: In your office, was in the control tower was it? Or where?
MW: Yes. In, in -
CB: On the first floor?
MW: Yes, downstairs to begin with. I was in, I was always in headquarters and I was next door to the group captain to begin with. That was a small office. And then one day they moved me upstairs. The intelligence, I could take you blindfold in there now. The intelligence office was on the right-hand side, upstairs adjutant here and briefing room there. All right across the front of the building and my office was the middle one and the intelligence office was on the right-hand side so we were all together really and that made it easy for us to, for me to work when they came back.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Because they were interrogated in the briefing room and then came in to me to, I had to issue aids to escape and things like that. And get all those things back from them.
CB: So were you briefing aircrew before they left as well as debriefing them -
MW: Were they?
CB: Were you briefing aircrew before they left as well as debriefing them?
MW: No.
CB: When they returned. Or just the debrief?
MW: We, they were, the briefing was always on its own you know and then but they all went out together you know in varying, in two or three-minute intervals so that what were coming back did come back. They were, we were, they were debriefed in, in or interrogated in the briefing room. Yes.
CB: And did you sit in on all the debriefing?
MW: No I was making tea but I did do. Yes I did go in if Ivor Jones asked me go in and -
CB: Okay.
MW: And sort out anything like that.
CB: Yes.
MW: But I wasn’t always in on the interrogation.
CB: Right. So -
MW: I know I was in on the briefing because the boys used to all come up together. I went up with the maps, with the target maps one day, one evening, and I got in there, they were in there and there was a man in civilian clothing in there and I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ No civilians. It was very, very secret and hush hush and I said, ‘What are you?’ He said, ‘I’m the met officer.’ ’Cause they were still in civilian clothes in those days you see until quite late on in the war. They -
CB: Oh right.
MW: They weren’t given status to wear uniform but seeing a civilian in the briefing room when we were just about to do, to do a briefing that, and that really threw me a bit.
CB: Ok -
MW: I’ll tell you about Douglas.
CB: Douglas Bader.
MW: Douglas. June the 12th 1942. We’d been seeing each other for about two months and we had been out to York to the pictures the night before. He took-off the following day to an advance base to reconnaissance on the Bay of Biscay looking for minesweepers of course and we’d been out the night before and we’d got engaged. I didn’t have a ring then but, and I said I wouldn’t, we wouldn’t even think about marrying until the war was over. That wasn’t. Plenty of girls did but it wasn’t, it wasn’t really the right thing because they, we lost so many. Well you can say how many -
CB: Yes.
MW: We lost, it really wasn’t the right thing because he often left you with a baby or you know, as a young, a very young widow but we, we, we agreed on this and of course the following day, following evening I was on duty waiting for them to come back and he didn’t and there was that period between, which was the worse really, between when they should have been back and the waiting for them to come back. The wait. A couple of hours and they didn’t come back.
CB: Ahum.
MW: So what I did or what most of us did if we’d been on night duty we, you were just too tensed up to sleep. It was no good. You were supposed to go to sleep but you couldn’t do that. It was, we were just so tensed up with everything that we used to go into York and I quite liked riding at the time so used to go out and have a ride or get, try and get a meal or something just to try and get relaxed because I would be on duty again the next night you see possibly and -
CB: Where was he stationed?
MW: Pardon?
CB: Where was he stationed?
MW: At Linton.
CB: He was.
MW: Yes. But, at 58 squadron.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes [pause]. That was a Wellington.
CB: And what was he doing mainly?
MW: He was a navigator.
CB: Right.
MW: Observer. Yes.
CB: Right. And what happened?
MW: Well I think possibly they ran, they mistook the cloud base and ran into the cliff.
CB: Oh.
MW: And that is why, no one knew, his mother didn’t know, we didn’t know until, I didn’t know until fairly recently, eight years ago when I asked. This is, this is digressing really –
CB: That’s ok.
MW: But I, until my cousin was here and I said would you like to have a look on your internet and see if you can see this young man’s name and I gave him the number and the rank and everything and he came back to me the next morning and said, ‘That was easy.’ He said, ‘There’s only one of that name in the whole of the records.’ He said, ‘Is it Douglas Harsum and I said, ‘Yes.’ And he told me and he told me where, where, where he was and I said, ‘Well, would you like to come? Shall we go to Bilbao and look,’ and we did and we went to the cemetery. It’s wonderful. I’ve got the pictures and I’ll find them for you for the next time you come.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But it’s a beautiful cemetery and -
CB: Good.
MW: It’s, they’re all in one communal grave.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. But it’s beautifully kept and it was being looked after by an English lady married to a Spanish, yes, Spanish man, yes. She’d been there a number of years. There’s a Book of Remembrance, there’s a small church, small C of E church and a small Catholic church. The Catholic one was very, very rarely or hardly used at all. The C of E one they always have a service on Remembrance Day and on various other days but I’ve got all the info there. It’s all written down and I did write to the WAAF magazine and they printed it actually.
CB: Excellent.
MW: What I wrote and told them about it, about that but I became, after many months of losing Douglas I kept getting letters from his mother. Would I go and see her. I couldn’t do that at that time. I was, partly I was busy and I, emotionally I wasn’t fit to see anybody but eventually I did go and she lived at Richmond and he was an only son and the last in the line of the Harsum and we became very good friends. In fact, she had lost her husband and you see, I did, I kept in touch for many years after that but it didn’t turn out quite as I expected because she got very fond of me and she wanted me to go and live with her but I was young. I wanted to get married or to have children and, and that’s, that’s what happened and I did get married.
CB: This cemetery, the cemetery, is it, because a lot of aircrew were lost in the Bay of Biscay. Does it-
MW: Yes it was mainly, mainly aircrew.
CB: Yeah.
MW: There are one or two others but as I say I’ve got that written down and I can let you -
CB: I was wondering if it’s a War Graves Commission -
MW: Yes, it is.
CB: Cemetery. It is.
MW: Yes, it is.
CB: Right.
MW: In Maidenhead.
CB: Oh I thought you meant the one in Bilbao.
MW: No. The one I got in touch with.
CB: Yes.
MW: To be able to tell me all the info.
CB: Yes.
MW: How to get there and what, you know, what to expect. And that was in -
CB: Was Maidenhead.
MW: Maidenhead, yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: They gave me all the, Douglas’s crew which I didn’t really know that well and they were, I got all their names and everything all written down from, from, from the Maidenhead people.
CB: How long had you known him?
MW: Three months.
CB: Ahum
MW: Two months. Not long.
CB: And he -
MW: He would have been twenty one on, he was, he was killed in the June. He would have been twenty one in the August, on the 17th of August that year but that was the average age for, for aircrew.
CB: Yeah. And did you -
MW: And then of course you got these, the conscientious objectors.
CB: Yes. Tell me more about those.
MW: Tell me?
CB: More about them.
MW: Well, I don’t know very much except that they would come into my office. You see it cost quite a lot for the RAF to train a pilot or a navigator and then they would, they would go through that training and then find that, that God was, was stronger than what they could do. They couldn’t do it because of their religion but why? I would say, ‘Well, why, if you’re, why didn’t you realise that before you did the training.’ You see it was absolutely out for a, for a conscientious objector. There was no question about anything. You just went out of the RAF just like that with no, no, no reference, no pension, no nothing. It really was a very nasty, a very bad thing to happen to anybody really but they did, they would er -
CB: Who were these people? Were they any types of the crew or just particular members who had this -
MW: Were they?
CB: Were they all sorts of different crew members or -
MW: Oh yes.
CB: Or were they only pilots?
MW: Yes, no
CB: Or -
MW: They were, no they were all different kinds.
CB: Right.
MW: Different ones yeah. Rear gunners were, were it was very rare that pilots I think that would do it but the rear gunners and I don’t know if there was an occasional navigator that, that were conscientious objectors -
CB: There’s a key question here I think that emerges from the point about conscientious objectors who they called conshies.
MW: Yes.
CB: What about LMF?
MW: Hmmn?
CB: Lack of moral fibre.
MW: Absolutely. You’ve got it.
CB: So how do you differentiate between those and the conscientious objectors?
MW: You don’t.
CB: Right.
MW: No. That, that’s an awful phrase really. Isn’t it? Lack of moral conscience -
CB: Moral fibre yeah.
MW: Fibre, Yeah.
CB: What did they do to them? What did they do with them?
MW: What did they do?
CB: When they were identified as falling into this category?
MW: Well they just got in they just had interviews with senior officers and they were just chucked out of the RAF. No, you couldn’t, they couldn’t re-muster. They couldn’t do anything. But that’s what that, they went, just had to go.
CB: This is at Linton on Ouse.
MW: Yes.
CB: Did they run parades and have these people um identified on parades?
MW: On -?
CB: On parades. Did they call together airmen -
MW: Not that I know of.
CB: Ground crew.
MW: No. I don’t think so.
CB: Right.
MW: No. I think they were just turned out you see if they, I felt so very sorry for them really because if you can’t, it was really lack of moral fibre. They just could not do it, you see. They hadn’t got the nerve, you see.
CB: Was, was - sorry.
MW: You, you, you take somebody like Cheshire who did over a hundred operations, sorties including Nagasaki which happened later but that, and you and he said was he ever frightened, nervous about going on any? But of course he was as he said after doing sixty operations you were still nervous about the thing but you had to do it. You had to go in and do it and what I didn’t quite understand about people like Cheshire was that they had no compunction about whatsoever about bombing the Germans, killing the Germans. He knew he was going to kill people but you know on one occasion at a later stage when he went to France, you know that, and he went, he circled the factory that he was meant to bomb, it was when he was on 617 and he circled the factory there three times in order for the girls to get out because he was low level bombing then in the Mosquito.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And, and they did. They got out. And one of those French girls came back to England, came to Linton to thank him. Didn’t want to know. No, didn’t want to know. But after Nagasaki he was a different person. That was the crunch. He wouldn’t, that really turned that man into something completely different.
CB: Interesting.
MW: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: That you, he said you’ve got to find a better way of making peace in this country without that sort of bombing. You’ve got to find a better peace finally. But have we?
CB: Can we just go back to your debriefings? What was the information you were looking for specifically?
MW: Oh I didn’t do debriefing.
CB: At the end of a raid.
MW: Ivor Jones did all the -
CB: Yes, but you were there listening -
MW: We had three -
CB: Some of the time.
MW: We had three squadron er two flight lieutenants, one pilot officer and Squadron Leader Ivor Jones in the intelligence. That was the establishment and I say you, you understand about establishment don’t you? That, that’s what you were allowed and that’s what you had. And one was the managing director of Brylcreem [laughs]. I can’t remember his name just at the minute but he was. I can’t remember his name at the moment.
CB: But he was one of the intelligence officers?
MW: No, they did all the debriefing. They did. Ivor Jones would say. ‘Did you,’ you know did you, did you, ‘Did you see the target? Did you bomb the target?’ And they would make all the notes. Oh no, I didn’t do any of that. No. No I just looked after them morally I suppose, you know with their cups of tea and -
CB: So the maps you were providing did they have before a raid? What was on the map? Was it a plain map or did it have anything drawn on it?
MW: Oh, no it’s Mercator, projector.
CB: Right.
MW: The 48-4 was the main one that they used for Europe you see.
CB: Ahum
MW: And then they had a small target map if, if they were available and these all came from High Wycombe and then they had an ordinary, not always they took a map but they had a silk map provided in their aids to escape which was double sided. I had one when I came out of the RAF but my cousin persuaded me to give it to him which I did and he had it made into a double-sided picture so he has it hanging on the wall.
CB: Okay.
MW: [Which you can] And they had a compass.
CB: These are the escape equipment.
MW: In, in their shoes yeah.
CB: Yeah.
MW: Or in the, underneath the -
CB: In the heel.
MW: You know about these things anyway don’t you?
CB: Well we need to -
MW: But they, and I had to issue things like that and make sure they all came back.
CB: So, how many other WAAFs were there in the intelligence section?
MW: Oh, we had two special duty, two men, young, young, they weren’t corporals. No, I was the only corporal.
CB: Ok.
MW: And I’d say Ivor Jones, Brylcreem and this other one and sometimes a pilot officer.
CB: Were they people who were new to the RAF or were some of them pilots already?
MW: Were they?
CB: Were they people -
MW: No they were, they were admin. No they weren’t -
CB: There weren’t any flying people -
MW: They weren’t flying at all.
CB: In that.
MW: No. I don’t know what Ivor Jones did in the army but I should think he would do, he would do an administrative job because he was so good at it.
CB: Ahum.
MW: As I say we didn’t have any WAAF officers. I think we only had one when I, you see it was 1940 when I went in. My number is quite low. It’s 893293.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes.
[pause]
CB: So obviously you kept that number all the time.
MW: You can’t get it out of your head, you know.
CB: No. Of course not.
MW: It stays there.
CB: Absolutely.
MW: Absolutely.
CB: I think everybody in the forces knows that -
MW: I know. They do. Yes.
CB: Remembers their number.
MW: Then of course I’m going out of Bomber Command now but I went to er, in the end of ‘43 I went to -
CB: That’s when you went to Shawbury was it?
MW: No. I went to Melksham. No, I went to um Newmarket first.
CB: Oh.
MW: Just for a few weeks.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And then I didn’t do much there. There’s not really any interest at all and then I went to Silverstone.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Silverstone was good because it was very near my home.
CB: Yes.
MW: And we were always, the done thing that we would go down to the bottom of the road and thumb a lift. It was nothing. You just did that.
CB: Yeah.
MW: You wouldn’t do it today. But that’s what you, and that was fine.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Shawbury -
CB: What did you do at Silverstone? That was an OTU.
MW: That’s right yes OTU. I just looked after the maps there and they had a lot of navigational equipment that needed a bit of attention from time to time. Sextants and things like that you know and, and not a great deal, I wasn’t there that long. But then I went to Shawbury that was the air, Empire Air Navigation School and they, the map office was in quite a mess there and needed a lot of attention but they were also working on Aries.
CB: What was Aries?
MW: That aircraft that went, that went to Canada. It was a special, special aircraft. I did help the squadron leader there. Squadron Leader Proctor who, who was handling that project.
CB: What were you helping him with?
MW: With the maps.
CB: Right.
MW: With the map reading. The reading out the numbers and positions on the map where they needed to be.
CB: But you didn’t go over to Canada with him?
MW: Oh no. I didn’t do any of that. No.
CB: Ok.
MW: I did do a bit of flying at Silverstone because they used to come backwards and forwards and around to Oxford in training you see. A few times I went up in an Anson. You know, the little aircraft, the Anson and, and Silverstone um Shawbury was, they were training an Australian squadron. What was, what was their number? 101, yes. All Australians. Very interesting young men. Full of life.
CB: Okay.
MW: Yes. We had, where are we there? Oh yes we were back in married quarters again then. Yes ‘cause I was in charge of a house there.
CB: This is in Shawbury?
MW: In Shawbury, yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: Yeah ‘cause they tended to use the houses but of course not you see, at Linton and Driffield, they were permanent stations.
CB: Yes.
MW: Pre-war station and all built roughly the same aren’t they?
CB: Yeah and Shawbury. Yeah.
MW: Yes. Yes. Have you been to Linton?
CB: Yes and Shawbury.
MW: And Shawbury oh.
CB: They’re expansions period airfields. Yes. So then after Shawbury, well at Shawbury you were there for a little while.
MW: Yes. I was. And, and then at Shawbury, after Shawbury I went down to Brawdy in South Wales and that’s Coastal Command of course.
CB: Right.
MW: There, they were still, they were still flying of course by then, much later on.
CB: This was 1946.
MW: mmm’ And Shawbury.
CB: Brawdy.
MW: Brawdy was where I met my husband.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. The map office was in a terrible mess. The navigation officer for whom I worked was absolutely wonderful to work for but I did get through the mess in the end because nobody had done anything for months. And they had just brought maps in, threw them down and it took me ages to get that clear. To, to get some sort of order there but um and then we moved to to Chivenor. The squadron moved to Chivenor and that’s near Barnstable.
CB: Also Coastal Command.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: Also Coastal Command.
MW: Also Coastal, yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: All Coastal then.
CB: So you were issuing a lot of charts for the sea.
MW: Absolutely. Quite different of course. There wasn’t the anxiety that there was with Bomber Command.
CB: So, how long were you at Chivenor?
MW: Not that long. I’m just trying to think. Yes I, and then I went to Northwood. Northwood was -
CB: The navy.
MW: And it and from there, Northwood, I was demobbed.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes.
CB: How far ahead did you know that you were going to be demobbed? Was it, did you volunteer for it or -?
MW: Ah yes well I because I’d been in so long because I was early, joined very early I could have come out much, but I offered to do another year, an extra year because really and truly there was nothing to do for me. I didn’t have a job to come back to and I certainly didn’t want to be back to be back to being a nursery governess again.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And I had met, met up with Roy and we were, I was toying with the idea of either going to live with Douglas’s mother, or going to Australia or marrying Roy and in the end I decided I would get married.
CB: It was a better offer.
MW: A better offer [laughs] but er so then that’s what we did.
CB: So Roy was still at Brawdy.
MW: He was moved to Waddington.
CB: Right. Oh.
MW: Yes. So, I came to live in Lincoln then.
CB: Ahum
MW: After that.
CB: Before you married him.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: Before you married him you were where?
MW: Oh yes. I lived in Lincoln.
CB: Yes.
MW: I got a job in Lincoln with the telephone manager’s officer. And that’s a different story. When you take, when you consider what they do today and what we did then in the telephone manager’s office it’s just archaic. You just don’t believe what, what goes on now. But yes I was, I was there. You wouldn’t want to know about that but -
CB: Well it’s just intriguing because what did people do when they left the RAF?
MW: This is it. I walked the streets to find accommodation for a start. There was nowhere to live. My family were down in Bloxham and I wanted to be near, be with Roy. There was no work in Bloxham, in the Banbury area and there um. There was no work and there was no accommodation but I think accommodation was the worst of my worries when I came out of the RAF. I did have a very good report from the officer at Northolt. Very, very good. He said, it should be in the roof somewhere but quite where, I don’t know and I managed to get a job purely on that, on that reference. You had to have a reference for everything in those days.
CB: Yeah.
MW: On that reference that he gave me I got this job in the telephone manager’s office. And then I managed to get some, some digs in Lincoln. Just one room. And then finally after we got married we got some, shared a house at Navenby. Do you know Navenby?
CB: No.
MW: Yes. Just up the road from -
CB: Yes.
MW: Lovely little village it was. Until Roy went , and we hadn’t been married long and he was posted to Aden.
CB: Oh.
MW: And he went by air. Flying by air was very limited in those days. You couldn’t. It wasn’t like it is now. It was very few and far between but he went out by air to take charge of the station at Aden. Khormaksar that is.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And I could go when he found me some suitable accommodation which [laughs] which again was a nightmare. Him trying to find me, but we did get in the end he decided that I would go to the Crescent Hotel which was the only reasonable place to live in it. So I went out by sea on the Toledo and arrived in Aden on Christmas Day, pouring with rain which he told me it never rained in Aden. And we had two years in Aden. Do you know Aden?
CB: Never been.
MW: No. Well you know where it is of course.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
MW: Yes. Yes. But not many, I say to people, no idea where it is.
CB: We interviewed somebody operating from there.
MW: Yeah.
CB: Ahum.
MW: It’s, I mean you’d think, they don’t know the map these days.
CB: No. No.
MW: They get in the aircraft and fly off somewhere but they’ve no idea where they’re going I don’t think.
CB: So, then, when you, you were there for two years.
MW: Yes.
CB: Then where did you go? Well Roy was posted where?
MW: We came back. He was posted to Upper Heyford and then to Abingdon.
CB: And you got quarters.
MW: No.
CB: Did you get a quarter in both cases?
MW: We didn’t get quarters because he was back as a civilian by then.
CB: Oh, of course. Yes.
MW: Yes. He was a senior met officer in Aden.
CB: Ahum.
MW: In civilian but officer status you see.
CB: Ahum.
MW: So he could have lived in, well he did live in the officers’ mess in Aden but I couldn’t you see. Yes. It was officers’ mess only and so then we stayed in, we managed to buy a house or bungalow in Kennington which is not far from Oxford.
CB: Yeah.
MW: Oh, first of all we went, we had we shared a house in a place called Longworth.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And then we managed to buy this bungalow in Kennington and by that time we had our first son, Richard. Kennington is quite near Radley. Radley College.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Richard went to Radley College. Things were settling down there and then we had to move to Aylesbury.
CB: Roy went to Halton did he?
MW: Hmmn?
CB: Why did you go to Aylesbury?
MW: The Met Office just move you.
CB: Yeah.
MW: It’s like being in the RAF. The same.
CB: But stationed at Halton?
MW: He was stationed at, when we moved to Aylesbury he was stationed at Dunstable.
CB: Oh right.
MW: Dunstable was the main. So we bought a house in Aylesbury and for the five or six years that he was, he was at Dunstable we lived at Aylesbury and I had my second son at Aylesbury.
CB: What’s his name?
MW: Nicholas. And then we moved to Bracknell. The Met Office moved in 1961. It probably was here in 1960 when it was officially opened but the official Met Office where all the forecasting was done.
CB: But you came in ’61.
MW: Yes. They had a huge computer which was as big as this bungalow but it was all valves.
CB: Oh.
MW: All valves there and Roy was in charge of that. They used to get him up in the middle of the night because it had gone wrong and there were only three of those computers in the country and one was owned by Joe Lyons. Why he wanted one I don’t know and the other was down in something to do with the army. I can’t remember but -
CB: Yeah
MW: Roy used to go down there sometimes when the Met Office had broken down and he, well we’ve been in, in Crowthorne for fifty three years now.
CB: Have you really?
MW: Since we were in, but in that time Roy has been to Gan and the Indian Ocean but we weren’t -
CB: Yeah.
MW: I wasn’t allowed to go because they don’t have women on Gan at all.
CB: No. It’s such a small island.
MW: That’s right. Yes.
CB: No.
MW: And I had my third son here.
CB: His name is -?
MW: He’s Edward.
CB: Oh right. Did any of the three go into the Met Office like their father?
MW: No. No. One, Richard is an optician.
CB: Oh right.
MW: He’s got a practice in Hampton Court.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And Nicholas, the middle one is an engineer but he works in Wales and Edward, unfortunately, Edward has a business building children’s playgrounds.
CB: Ah.
MW: He had a very, very successful business doing all the children’s playgrounds around up and down the country but he had a severe stroke.
CB: Oh.
MW: Four years ago.
CB: Right.
MW: I saw him yesterday and he is very disabled. But we do, he’s only down at Halton so we -
CB: Ahum.
MW: Do meet up for lunch but unfortunately it was a very bad stroke.
CB: Oh dear.
MW: It was life and death really.
CB: Awful.
MW: Very bad. But he’s cheerful and I took my friend see him, to have lunch with him yesterday and he said, ‘You know, Mary, he does, he’s with it.’ It’s just the problem is with the speech. He can’t communicate -
CB: Right.
MW: It’s all up here.
CB: Yeah. Frustrating.
MW: And Peter said, ‘Oh he knows what he wants to say Mary. He can’t, just can’t’ -
CB: Ahum.
MW: He’s, he’s living at home now. And he, I don’t think he’s resentful, you know, about what’s happened to him. He seems quite cheerful and my friend said, he hadn’t met him before, and he said that he thought he was, he was really quite good obviously you know with his ability to talk. He says a lot of bloody hells unfortunately.
CB: Does he?
MW: And my friend’s a priest so [laughs]. I said to Peter, ‘Look,’ I said –‘, ‘I don’t really want - ’ He said, ‘Look Mary it’s no difference at all.’ But he’s like that. I mean a lot of priests wouldn’t have -
CB: No.
MW: Gone along with that but he’s very nice and -
CB: How many grandchildren have you got?
MW: Six. They’ve each got two.
CB: Two, two and two are they?
MW: They’ve each have two yeah and one came yesterday with us, Abigail. She’s lovely and she’s finished at Sheffield. She’s got, she’s got a law and criminology.
CB: Oh.
MW: And she’s the prettiest thing you ever saw.
CB: Going back to your, your major role in the RAF was in intelligence.
MW: Ahum.
CB: What was the key item that sticks in your mind about your job there?
MW: About my?
CB: The job you did. What was the most important part of it would you say?
MW: Looking after the boys. Yes. Being, the maps things were easy, I ordered the maps. I knew where they were going and knew how to calculate the targets and that but it was looking after the boys that was the most important.
CB: And what was looking after the boys? What did they really need?
MW: They needed a little bit of comfort. I think Ivor Jones saw that in me when he asked me because that was a very unusual thing to do. Chris, you don’t get away with that sort of thing in the RAF.
CB: No.
MW: I don’t think anybody else would tell you that story.
CB: Ahum.
MW: That, to be, to be told by a squadron leader to report to him the following morning without being re-mustered.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Without being, the WAAF officers being told. It was very unusual. That was the key point in my, it was one of the best jobs in the RAF really.
CB: Ahum.
MW: When I think about it. I mean all these girls that did, the friends of mine that did, that did work on balloons and, and, and television, the er um telephone operators and that but they, mine was, I was right in the midst of it. Right in the midst of the bombing. I knew, I knew the target. I knew what was going on and, and I mean Ivor Jones knew where the flak was coming from, what to tell them what to avoid and that but um and all that and, and it was just I was just in the thick of it really.
CB: So these, these young men are aged nineteen, twenty.
MW: Oh average age yes.
CB: Twenty one.
MW: Yes. Yes.
CB: And what are they really wanting to talk about?
MW: What did they want to talk about? Their home life. They’d just come out of university some of them. Not all of them. Just tell them what was going on at home. I don’t think they really wanted to be there. I’m sure they didn’t, a lot of them but, but they were going to do it. They wanted to be aircrew.
CB: Yeah.
MW: That was the absolutely the aim of every young man in the RAF was to be aircrew. Nobody wanted a groundcrew job at all.
CB: They were just getting things off their chests.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: They were trying to get things off their chest.
MW: Oh yes. Yes. Yeah.
CB: Any ground crew talk to you the same way?
MW: Did the ground crew -?
CB: Any ground people because they would have learned from air crew that you were somebody who was sympathetic to concerns did you get -
MW: No. I never really got to know the [air] crew I was really involved so involved with the maps I didn’t really get to know the ground crew at all.
CB: No.
MW: No.
CB: What was the worst experience you had, would you say?
MW: I think it was at Driffield.
CB: The bombing.
MW: The bombing. Yes.
CB: What was the casualty level then?
MW: We had –
MW: We had one WAAF killed on the station and about seven airmen. Seven others. That’s all in Cheshire’s book.
CB: Is it? Right.
MW: Yes, and even I am mentioned in “Cheshire VC” and he said about this WAAF who he had to put in to, in to the shelter. That was a very near thing for me. Well, for the three of us. There were two officers who weren’t when we went into this small room when, when everything started collapsing and you couldn’t see your way out and as I say then it was, it was Cheshire who pushed us in to the shelter. But I think possibly, we did have some very bad raids at Linton at night. We got, we were bombed one night. We were in the shelter and we got, I got thrown from one end of the shelter to the other end of the shelter. Ended up at the other end of the shelter and I had a piece of shrapnel in my toe, in my foot. But I would have said that because Linton, Driffield was the first experience of that sort of bombing in daylight that we, that it was quite horrendous.
CB: So -
MW: I, I [pause]
CB: Do you want to pause for a bit?
MW: Ahum
CB: This is an emotional -
MW: Ahum
CB: Issue isn’t it. Let’s stop for a bit.
[pause]
Other: Yeah. Look at those two there. That could be Scarlet and James.
CB: Mary’s done so well that we’re just stopping for a cup of tea which of course is what they did in the war as a way of reducing the difficulties of the time.
MW: What we haven’t discussed of course is whether you wanted to know and I thought you did is what I did after the war.
CB: That’s it.
MW: When I came back.
CB: I did. Yes.
MW: And that is quite interesting really.
CB: Is it? Yes.
MW: Yes because after the boys were out of school.
CB: Ahum.
MW: I, I took up flower arranging.
CB: Did you?
MW: Yeah. And I did a City and Guilds. Have you done? Have you?
Other: Yes.
MW: I can’t believe it.
Other: Yes.
MW: Goodness.
Other: I’ve done the floristry as well.
MW: I’ve done floristry as -
Other: And got the City and Guilds, yes.
MW: You’ve done City and Guilds?
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: Goodness me.
CB: Every Wednesday she does flower arranging classes.
MW: Yes. Yeah, well I’ve done the cathedrals.
Other: Lovely.
MW: Oxford twice.
Other: Lovely.
MW: Christchurch, Westminster Abbey, Guildford.
Other: Super.
MW: And I’ve been chairman of the club. Well I -
Other: Have you?
MW: For my sins. But yes, if you want to know about that well -
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: It’s so nice to meet somebody -
Other: It’s a lovely thing to do isn’t it?
MW: You take, whilst you’re flower arranging you can’t think of anything else.
Other: No. That’s right.
MW: [?] And I say to all the classes that I have, that I’ve had in the past, not so much now but in the past I’ve said look if you take up flower arranging if you’ve got a problem and everybody seems to have problems-
Other: Oh yes.
MW: These days. That you can’t think about anything else.
Other: No. No, that’s true.
MW: You just concentrate.
Other: That’s right.
MW: On your flowers. And your foliage of course.
Other: Yes your foliage.
MW: Your foliage.
Other: Is very important. I’ve got a lot of foliage in the garden actually.
MW: So have I. [laughs] Myrtle is the thing isn’t it?
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: Yes, I’ve got -
Other: The only thing I haven’t got which is very useful is Ruscus.
MW: Oh I haven’t got Ruscus either.
Other: That’s a super thing isn’t it?
MW: It is, isn’t it? Yes.
Other: Both the hard and the soft Ruscus.
Other 2: Is that one yours?
CB: Yes.
Other 2: I’ll just empty the tea.
Other: Yes but I must -
MW: Well I did that you see. That was from -
CB: That’s lovely isn’t it?
Other: Beautiful.
MW: That’s somebody brought me some flowers the other day.
Other: Lovely.
MW: But this is what you see -
Other: Yeah. That’s lovely.
MW: You don’t -
CB: I’m glad we didn’t try to be too ambitious with what we brought you. [laughs]
Other: [laughs] I know.
MW: [Laughs] Well if you have to do this random. Have you been to the shows or anything this year?
Other: I’ve been up to new Covent Garden to demonstrations there and, you know. Various church -
CB: Thank you.
Other: Church festivals. Flower festivals and what have you.
MW: Do you do them for church?
Other: I do. Yes. I do. Yes. Not regularly. Only when they have a special occasion. We’ve just had one, we’ve just had a flower festival so I’ve done something -
MW: Oh have you?
Other: For that. Yes. Yes.
MW: I do. I’m on the church roster here.
Other: Yes.
MW: ‘Cause I go to church anyway.
Other: Yes, so do I.
MW: I’m a church going person but I’m on the church roster.
CB: That’s quite a commitment to do that.
Other: I used to. I used to be. I used to do it regularly.
MW: Yes.
Other: But I don’t now.
MW: We have a roster every year -
Other: Yes -
MW: For the year and you -
Other: Which is good.
MW: Put down what you think you can, you are able to do.
Other: That’s it.
MW: Oh, thanks Abigail, lovely.
Other: Yes.
MW: Then if you have another -
CB: Yes.
MW: Go on.
CB: These are very good.
Other: Not for me thank you. No.
CB: Are you on sugar?
MW: No thanks.
Other: We have a problem in our village that there aren’t that many people being willing to do it so I think one of the wardens who was responsible for doing the roster had to give up in the end so if we’re having any special occasion she’ll ask the few of us -
MW: Yes. Yes.
Other: That will do something. To do you know to do something.
MW: Well you know we decide before Easter what we can do during the year you see.
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: And then when we, we get to, if you can’t do that, if something comes up you find amongst yourselves. You -
Other: Somebody else will, yeah.
MW: You do that. But we have a problem with the altar. They won’t do the altar.
Other: Oh really.
CB: Really?
MW: And it always lands in my lap.
Other: Oh right.
MW: But I haven’t got the altar for Christmas. I’ve got the Remembrance table.
Other: Right. Right.
MW: I’m very good at pedestals.
Other: Lovely, yes.
MW: That’s really my strength. The pedestals.
Other: Lovely, lovely and it’s getting the weight right isn’t it?
MW: Yeah. But the, we, I mean I’m going back a long way to Dora Buckingham and that but City and Guilds isn’t an easy exam is it?
Other: No. No.
MW: No. People think you know it is. In fact, I went into it, I was just doing club things and my friend said, ‘Oh let’s go to Bracknell,’ she said, ‘They’ve got a course there going on.’ And so I said, ‘Ok we’ll do the course.’ We did. And then the tutor started talking about exams and I said, ‘What exam? I wasn’t, I wasn’t expecting any exam,’ She said, ‘Oh yes,’ She said, ‘It’s part one.’
Other: Ahum.
MW: And I got through that because I’d never done any, any exam work really in my life but they had what they called a multi, multi questions.
Other: Oh yes.
MW: There were four -
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
MW: And I think -
CB: Oh multiple choice.
MW: There’s only one right one you see.
Other: Yes.
MW: And I managed to do that.
Other: Good.
MW: And I got very good marks for that.
Other: Good.
MW: So then I went on to part two. Part two is very interesting isn’t it?
Other: Ahum.
MW: Did you watch Monty Don last night?
Other: No. I didn’t, no.
MW: Oh ‘cause he went through Capability Brown, Repton -
Other: Oh really.
MW: And Sackville West and all those -
Other: Oh I wish I’d seen that.
MW: People we know about. Yes
Other: Yeah.
MW: And if you’ve got it on your tape or if it comes up again. Do -
Other: I will. I’ll have a look.
MW: Yes.
Other: I will. Yes. Yes.
CB: Well at ninety six I’m amazed what you do.
MW: Oh go on it’s only a number.
CB: Yes but I mean you know the energy you put in to all these things is extraordinary.
MW: Yeah, but -
CB: Thank you very much.
MW: You see, once you’re a flower arranger -
CB: Yeah.
MW: You’re always a flower. You won’t give it up.
Other: No. Oh no. No.
MW: No. You won’t. No.
Other: I mean I go every week. I don’t learn anything but I just go for social -
MW: So do I, you see.
Other: Reasons.
MW: I go every month, you see.
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: Now I’m, I’m -
CB: You instruct though.
MW: Honorary president now.
Other: Right.
MW: Of the club ‘cause I was -
Other: Do you belong to NAFAS?
MW: Yes.
Other: You do. Yes. Which do. I haven’t done that.
MW: Oh.
Other: I haven’t. I’ve only done the floristry.
MW: Oh you’ve done the floristry. Yes.
Other: I’ve done the City and Guilds floristry.
MW: Yes I’ve done the City and Guilds.
Other: And really the floristry that I learned they don’t really use so much now because it was all the wiring of the bouquets.
MW: The wiring and the stuff.
Other: They don’t -
MW: Oh yes.
Other: Do that anymore.
MW: They don’t do that now.
Other: No.
MW: No all those hyacinths that you wire.
Other: Oh don’t. Taking all the, I know, I know.
MW: Yes.
Other: But that’s not done now is it? I mean -
MW: No they are glued on aren’t they?
Other: It’s all that hand tied bouquets. Yeah.
MW: My friend that brought me -
Other: Yes.
MW: Those the other day, she’s a florist -
Other: Right.
MW: From, in Bracknell and she but she’s also a flower arranger.
Other: Ah huh.
MW: And she did a competition at Aldershot last week and she had those flowers over you see so she says, ‘Oh Mary can have those.’
Other: Lovely, no that’s lovely, that’s really lovely yes. It’s one of my favourite arrangements actually. I think that’s a lovely arrangement.
MW: The triangle? Yes.
Other: Yes, yes but on a little pedestal is -
MW: Yes I like that.
Other: Lovely. Yes.
MW: I mean, I, because I judge as well.
Other: Yes.
MW: I do the judging for the horticultural and everything.
Other: Yes.
MW: Yes. You, the, what was I saying?
Other: You do the judging for the Horticultural Society.
MW: Yes. Yeah.
Other: Yes.
MW: And for the various other shows around here now but they I mean some it’s very difficult to judge.
Other: I know.
MW: Because they use all this wire and stuff and -
Other: Exactly. Yes.
MW: And glitter and all that stuff.
Other: I know.
MW: We didn’t do that did we?
Other: No. I had what could have been a very embarrassing moment because I was asked to judge the local Horticultural Society flower arrangements and unbeknown to me, my tutor, the lady that had taught me for years, was putting in an entry and I was judging it and I bumped into her in Tesco and I hadn’t got a list of who was taking part and she was avoiding me you see. She knew that I was going to be the judge but she was avoiding me and I thought that’s funny she’s behaving in a most peculiar way. Anyway, when it came to the judging thank God I gave her first place.
MW: Oh.
Other: But I mean that could have been a disaster couldn’t it?
MW: Oh, yeah and you see, you see people say to me, friends of mine say oh well we didn’t realise about the judging. About the judging that they -
Other: No. I know it’s quite a responsibility isn’t it?
MW: It’s frightening.
Other: And you’ve also got to, you know, give comments as well.
MW: Oh yes you have to give comments.
Other: So you know.
MW: Yes.
Other: You know, it could have been, it could have been absolutely disastrous for me.
MW: Disastrous.
Other: If I’d, if I, you know had not given her -
MW: The judging isn’t easy.
Other: No, it isn’t.
MW: These days anyway.
Other: No. No.
MW: Because they use, and NAFAS have brought out these, you have to judge by NAFAS rules of course don’t you?
Other: Yes. Well I got a book.
MW: You got the-
Other: Actually, I wrote to them and I got a book and I read it because I thought I must, you know, I was asked to do this judging.
MW: Yes.
Other: And I thought I must know a bit more about it.
MW: Of course.
Other: And so of course it all has to -
MW: But as I say nowadays they don’t -
Other: Be certain
MW: If they don’t read the schedule -
Other: That’s right.
MW: If they don’t relate to the, to the, to the schedule that you can’t, you’ve got, you’ve got to down point them really.
Other: Yes.
MW: Last year -
Other: Absolutely.
MW: At Wellington, Wellington College I got a girl, it was a beautiful basket. Absolutely. Sunflowers, which I don’t like anyway -
Other: I don’t. Isn’t that funny?
MW: I hate them actually. [laughs]
Other: I can’t stand them.
MW: And she and she said and she got this beautiful basket and the title was “Let’s Have a Picnic.”
Other: Oh right.
MW: You see, and this basket was there and it was sunny and shining and really, really said a nice sunny day to you but it didn’t say anything about a picnic.
Other: No.
MW: If she’d just put a cake or a couple of -
Other: That’s right. Something yeah.
MW: That would have said, it would have told. I couldn’t -
CB: No story.
MW: I just had to down point it you see but it was certainly, it was certainly the best arrangement there.
Other: Right. Yes.
MW: But you can’t. You can’t do that, like you say. Who have you got at Aylesbury, you live in Buckingham -
Other: I’m at Wilmslow.
MW: You’re at -
Other: So I’ve learnt in Wilmslow at the Education -
MW: Oh.
Other: Centre in Wilmslow actually.
MW: Ahh.
Other: Yeah.
MW: So you belong to the flower club there.
Other: Yes. Yes. Yes.
MW: And, and you do you have all the shows and things like that do you?
Other: Well you can go to various, yes you can go to the various shows but it’s mainly a learning centre so -
MW: A learning centre.
Other: Yes. Yes, educational centre.
MW: See I hadn’t started when we lived at Aylesbury but I still had my -
Other: Well Aylesbury is much better. I mean my floristry course which was one day a week took three years. That’s because in in Wilmslow -
MW: Well the City and Guilds.
Other: It was only a daily, a daily course you see and just a couple of hours.
MW: Yes.
Other: Whereas in Wilmslow they had, sorry, in Aylesbury they had much more, you know, concentrated courses.
MW: Yes.
Other: So it would have been a lot shorter but I was working at the time anyway and it suited me and I thought well I’ve always worked in offices. I wanted to do something different.
MW: Yeah. And you had a garden as well you say.
Other: Yes I’ve got a nice garden. Yes.
MW: Yes I have. At the back.
Other: it’s getting a bit much now because my husband used to do -
MW: Well I’ve got a gardener in now.
Other: Well I’m having to.
MW: That’s why it looks neat and tidy.
Other: I can see. I said to Chris when we got here, ‘The garden’s lovely.’
MW: Yes.
Other: I have a problem with gardeners in as much as they seem to flip from one person to another and they’re not reliable.
MW: Oh mine are actually. They’re costly.
Other: Yes I know.
MW: But I said, ‘Don’t worry about the house.’ I don’t worry about the carpets or anything as long as the garden looks right that’s alright.
CB: So how big is the garden at the back?
MW: Quite big, yes. Yes it’s
CB: And what, what, what sort of layout is it?
MW: Shrubs. I love shrubs.
Other: So do I. Not flowers. Isn’t it funny?
MW: No. You can do without flowers.
Other: People say you’re a flower arranger -
MW: Daphnes out here -
Other: But you don’t like flowers.
MW: My Daphnes are about to flower and all my shrubs at the back there.
Other: CB: What’s your favourite flower?
MW: Flower?
CB: Yes.
MW: Oh I suppose it would have to be the Lily. The Lily of the Valley
Other: Yes, they’re beautiful.
CB: And what about shrub? What’s your favourite shrub?
MW: The Daphne, which is about to flower any minute but we’ve got Azaleas. We’ve got -
Other: So have I.
MW: Magnolias. This estate is wonderful in the -
Other: I can imagine.
MW: We’ve got all this -
Other: The soil looks, the soil looks good.
MW: Yes, It is.
Other: Our soil isn’t good -
MW: No. Well when we lived at Aylesbury -
Other: You see.
MW: We had different soil there but -
Other: Yes, ours is very clayey.
MW: And this friend of mine the priest this is all we talk about when we go out you see. The plants. He is so interested in, in the plant life and he’s very clever but he’s more interested in leaf form.
Other: Yes.
MW: The form that –
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: He’s got a thing about Viburnums.
Other: Oh right.
MW: He’d like to have the national collection of Vibernums if you please.
Other: Oh does he?
MW: Now there aren’t many Vibernums that I like particularly. They’re not, they don’t last long do they?
Other: No. No.
MW: You know, the Tinus, and what’s that one that’s very scented?
Other: Oh I um no, I can’t think.
MW: This one -
Other: Mine isn’t actually. Mine isn’t scented at all.
MW: But anyway, he, he’s got quite a few but I mean if you looked at his garden it’s, belongs to the church of course because he’s the priest and I would, I looked, took one look at it and I thought there’s no way I could do anything with that. It’s got, its Bagshot sand. He’s got about three or four pines in there. They drop needles all over -
Other: Oh yeah.
MW: The place.
Other: Yeah.
MW: Its dark and I thought, ‘Peter you can’t do anything with that.’
Other: No.
MW: But he does you see, He’s a tryer he’s a real tryer and he said a few months ago. ‘Will you come and have a look at the garden again?’ I said, ‘You’ve got far too much.’
Other: Get rid of something.
MW: He just keeps putting stuff in.
Other: Oh.
MW: I said move this stuff here around in to where you’ve got a bit sun and have this as a woodland garden so we’re in the process of doing that at the moment. Oh I couldn’t live without my garden. Could you?
Other: No. Do you like Hellebores?
MW: Hellebores? I said Daphne for my -
Other: Yeah.
MW: But Hellebores are my favourite flowers.
Other: They’re beautiful aren’t they? But I went to, we’ve got a very large garden centre at Woburn called Frosts and one of the, I can’t remember what his name was but we was one of the gardeners that was always on tele, a florists that was always on television and he’d done this flower arrangement with Hellebores and it was about sixty, sixty five pounds this, this arrangement and I thought I shall be interested to see what that’s like in a couple of days’ time if that doesn’t sell and of course they had, they’d used this you can’t -
MW: Absolutely useless.
Other: Arrange Hellebores and he should have known that.
MW: In fact I had a few in that little glass vase -
Other: Yeah.
MW: Before you came and I thought I’d better turn these out. I’d only had them in a couple of days.
Other: Oh really.
MW: It would not, I chucked them out.
Other: You shouldn’t cut them.
MW: Just before you came I thought I must chuck them out.
Other: Yeah.
MW: But my Christmas Rose, the Hellebore -
Other: Yes.
MW: Niger.
Other: Yes.
MW: Has just started to flower and we only bought that last year.
Other: They are beautiful and they’re so -
MW: They are my favourite. Yes.
Other: Many varieties aren’t there?
MW: Do you cut your leaves back?
Other: Yes.
MW: Yes. I must get the gardener to -
Other: Well I say do I, I mean I haven’t done a lot in the garden since my husband has died. It’s just been one thing after another going.
MW: Really.
Other: With the house with fencing coming down and tiles off the roof you wouldn’t believe it and I’ve had to always -
MW: I would believe it. I would believe it because everything, everything’s happened here.
Other: Yeah.
MW: This house is fifty years old you want to get out of it and get a new one.
Other: But at least it’s lovely though.
MW: Everything happens. The boiler goes and -
Other: That’s right.
MW: Everything wants replacing if you have had three boys that have been -
CB: Kept you on your toes. Mary, thank you so much for all of that and -
MW: Pleasure.
CB: And I’d just like to look at some pictures quickly.
MW: Yes.
Other: It’s these in the book Chris?
MW: Yeah.
CB: So, you couldn’t take pictures. You weren’t allowed to keep a diary.
MW: No.
CB: But the war ended. Is that when you started doing your diary?
MW: ‘45 I got one. Yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: I’ve got the whole, every day I wrote in it. I’m looking for it now but I can’t see it.
CB: Oh right. Ok.
MW: I put it down somewhere.
CB: Am I sitting on it do you think?
MW: It’s not under your -
CB: It’s not here. No.
MW: Is it, not underneath your -
CB: No.
Other: What about –
CB: Well we can have a look for it in a minute can’t we?
MW: But that is all about, about Shawbury?
CB: What prompted you to start taking a diary, making a diary?
MW: Well I don’t think I did much before the war but I did, I thought well somebody gave me this diary and because I hadn’t, I hadn’t been -
CB: Keeping one.
MW: Allowed to do one, I thought well, this is good.
CB: Ok.
MW: Anyway, I will find it.
CB: Yes.
MW: I say I only brought it through this morning, so -
CB: Yes.
MW: And I will find the, I think you will be interested in the album that we did on Bilbao.
CB: Yes.
MW: Because that -
CB: Absolutely.
MW: David took some beautiful pictures.
CB: Did he? Yes.
MW: Of the war graves and -
CB: And which squadron was Douglas in? 58.
MW: Yes, 58.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: And that was Wellingtons of course. Yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: ‘Cause we didn’t get Halifaxes at Linton until later on and then we still had Whitleys and we still had Wellingtons. We had, at Driffield we had Whitleys you see.
CB: How many squadrons were there on the airfield at any one time?
MW: Linton? There were three.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Yes 102, 76 and 78 ‘cause Cheshire well from Middleton St George he came back on -
CB: Right. Ok.
MW: Well I hope that’s been -
CB: That was the interview with Mrs Mary Ward nee Brown who was getting a bit tired and some emotional issues towards the end anyway. Outstanding points to pick up later are details about her fiancé who died aged twenty one. A 58 squadron man. The emotions surrounding other WAAFs and also the interaction with air crew. So we’ll pick up on those with another tape.
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 Mary Ward. One
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Ward grew up in Bloxham. She joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in 1940 and was posted to RAF Driffield, on general duties in the officers’ mess. She describes a German daylight attack on RAF Driffield on the 15 August 1940 and the extensive damage it caused. Group Captain Leonard Cheshire had recently arrived and assisted her out of a shelter. The station relocated briefly to RAF Pocklington, during which time she was sent on a cookery course at RAF Melksham. She was then posted to RAF Linton-on-Ouse in late 1940. She describes a cook’s shift. While delivering rations she was invited by Squadron Leader Ivor Jones to re-muster as a map clerk special duties. She ordered maps and calculated targets and was sometimes present at debriefings. She describes her living conditions and uniform; the emotional stress of the work; those who were ‘conscientious objectors’ or lacking moral fibre; and Cheshire’s first wife, Constance Binney. In 1942 she met Douglas Harsum and they were engaged. He was killed on 12 June 1942. At the end of 1943, Mary Ward moved to RAF Shawbury, still working on maps, then to RAF Brawdy, where she met her husband Roy Ward. After the war she lived in the Lincoln area while he served at RAF Waddington. They also lived briefly in Aden. In civilian life her husband worked for the Met Office and she describes the various places they lived in England. She also talks about her family and at length about her passion for flower arranging.
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
2015-12-14
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Mal Prissick
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:51:51 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWardM151214
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
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
Spain
Spain--Bilbao
Yemen (Republic)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-08-15
1942-06-12
1943
aircrew
bombing
briefing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
control tower
coping mechanism
debriefing
fear
final resting place
Gee
ground personnel
killed in action
lack of moral fibre
love and romance
mess
military living conditions
operations room
RAF Driffield
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Melksham
RAF Pocklington
RAF Shawbury
RAF Silverstone
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/365/5765/WardM [Pesaro].jpg
d9a2d9c693790af82307dda6f15eb90a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/365/5765/AWardEM160217.1.mp3
0e6cbd95c57a49ef84a82479d97093ed
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
Ward, Mary
Mary Ward
Elsie Mary Ward
E M Ward
Mary Brown
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Three oral history interviews with Elizabeth Mary Ward (893293, Women's Auxiliary Air Force), her dog tags, an aeroplane broach and a photograph album. Mary Ward was a cook but re-mustered and was promoted becoming a map officer. She served with Bomber Command at RAF Driffield between 1940 and 1944 before being posted to Coastal Command.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Mary ward and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-24
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. 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
Ward, EM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Let me just introduce you. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 17th of February 2016. We’re back with Mary Ward in Crowthorne and we’re picking up on some of the points that needed elaborating upon and the first point is really, Mary, to do with your fiancé Douglas and what happened with that. How did you come to meet him in the first place and what went on after that?
MW: Well, I can’t remember the exact dates of when we met but it was ‘42 and he came with the rest of his crew to my map office to collect some maps. They needed new charts and they, they came to me to pick up the maps and the charts and he stayed behind when the rest of the crew left the office and asked me if I could go out with, if I would like to go to York with him. So, yes. I went to York with him and which followed, several dates followed and then he was diverted and was away for a few, a few days. I can’t remember exactly where the diversion was at this moment and then he came back and a few nights later he, they were, they went to an advance base and, to do reconnaissance over the Bay of Biscay.
CB: And this is flying in Wellingtons.
MW: That was flying in yes and he, he didn’t return that night. Well, several of the crews were lost that night but we, we, I was on duty. Most nights I was on duty when we were operating and we, I stayed until 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning trying to see if there was going to be any news but no there wasn’t any news and several days went by and I said to Squadron Leader Ivor Jones, ‘Do you think there’s any hope?’ And I actually said to him at that stage, ‘I can’t go on with this job. It’s too, too much to take. Losing all these boys.’ And his reply was that ‘I’m old enough to be your father. You’ve got to stop being, you mustn’t relate to this incident. You must put it aside because I need you here.’ So, right, well several months went by and worked very hard. That was a very busy time. And then I got a letter from Douglas’s mother who lived at Richmond. She had been, had been sent the, the um Douglas’s um kit and everything from, from the station. The adjutant had organised, always, always organised these things and, and she said, ‘I would like to meet you. Would you come and stay with me for the weekend?’ She said, ‘I’ve, I’d had a letter from Douglas just before, before he, he went missing and he said he’d met the girl he wanted to marry, he was going to marry.’ But I couldn’t do it then. I’m afraid, Chris, that it was too much for me. I had work. We were in Yorkshire, at Linton and they were in, she was in London so I kept putting it off and she kept phoning me. In the end, several months later, I did go. Very, very emotional. I’ll never forget the time she, when I went to meet her and I stayed the weekend, a lovely house. But she sobbed and sobbed. It really was her only son. The last one in their family and do you want to know what she was a sister, theatre sister in the South Middlesex Hospital and she said she’d married late and all she wanted was a little, a boy which she got and at twenty years old he was killed. Well, we did become very friendly. If you want me to go on with this do you? Ahum. And I went there quite a lot and then the time came for me. It was coming towards the end of ‘45 it would be and she said. ‘What are you going to do? Will you come and live with me after the, when the war’s over?’ I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘You can have the house. You can have everything I’ve got’. But it was too much. I was too young to tie myself down at that stage and I knew Doug wouldn’t really have wanted me to do, to tie myself down so. And I met Roy and I had, well you probably saw from that diary I had loads of young men from the RAF from, from Australia who really wanted me to, to go back to Australia with them but in the end I decided, no. I would get a job and, and stay here. So we, we parted company really. I did write to her a few times afterwards but she was very disappointed that I wouldn’t go and live and live with her. And then I met Roy and um but that was after when I went back to, to South Wales to um to Brawdy. That’s Coastal Command, Brawdy. That’s where they were actually operating. They were still doing met, met work from there and I was there for a while until they, they closed Brawdy. I think the navy took it on then and then we went, we went to Chivenor, near Barnstable and from there I went to Northwood. That was headquarters at Coastal Command and from there I was demobbed. So, up until that time I think, I can’t remember, but I can, I can find out when I went to Bilbao. Up until that time I really, I mean I don’t, I can honestly say that there isn’t really a day that goes by when I don’t think of Douglas in some way or other and his christening cup is there on the mantelpiece. And his engagement ring. You will be very interested in this because she gave me her engagement ring which is a lovely three diamonds ring which I wore a lot and my granddaughter was looking at my, and she said she liked my rings and I said, ‘Right, well you can have this one when you get engaged.’ So recently, only last Christmas I had Douglas’s engagement ring put right. You know, cleaned up and made, made to fit and everything, you see. It is an old fashioned one of course. It’s quite old. And I gave it to her when she got engaged earlier this year. Well, I gave, I gave it to her boyfriend before then but Abigail now has it and she said, ‘Grandma,’ she said, ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said, ‘I have to keep putting it in the box,’ back in the box looking at it. So that has been passed, as something that’s been passed on to her, on to her. Through her.
CB: So, you were thinking of Douglas all this time.
MW: Ahum.
CB: Was that -
MW: I only knew him -
CB: How long did you know him?
MW: Three months at the most.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. But three months, three days, almost, almost you could say three minutes is long enough to know. You know you’ve got, there’s an attraction there isn’t there? You see, you’ve -
CB: Right. So, after how long did he propose?
MW: How much?
CB: After how many weeks or months did he propose to you? How long did you know him before he proposed?
MW: Oh only a few, they were all a bit like only, oh it must have been less than a month but he, and he used to make a joke of it because he used to send the boys, the other boys, the rest of the crew were there. They would say, ‘Oh when are you going to marry Mary then?’ And he said, ‘No.’ No. Oh some date in the far distance he would say but I didn’t, I wouldn’t have married anyone until after the war was over. In my, my, it wasn’t, in my book it wasn’t fair really, to get married, not to, but I had a feeling with the boys, with the bomber boys that they really, they wanted to leave something behind and, and if they could marry you and get you pregnant well they would. You know, there was something being, they knew, I mean all the boys knew that they weren’t, they weren’t likely to come back and of course most of them didn’t. It was only the few that um like Cheshire. Leonard was there at that time and his office was next door to mine until I moved upstairs. I was going to say to you, and I’m digressing, is there a possibility that I could get up to Linton?
CB: Absolutely. Yes. We can arrange that.
MW: I did read somewhere in the magazine that they had, they had funding that they, not that money would make any difference but I would just need the authority and perhaps a driver or something to, to go up for a couple of nights.
CB: Well, we do have a link with Linton on Ouse. There’s a wing commander who is responsible for the history of the place.
MW: Ahum.
CB: So I know we can get that sorted.
MW: You have that.
CB: Ahum
MW: Oh.
CB: Peter Jones who’s the, one of the -
MW: Who?
CB: Peter Jones.
MW: Peter Jones. Oh yes.
CB: Jones. He sent you the album back and he deals with all the, I send stuff to him.
MW: Oh really? Oh.
CB: So we can send that -
MW: He sent a very nice letter.
CB: Did he? Good.
MW: And Heather sent one as well.
CB: Good.
MW: Yes.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Well I would appreciate that because I think now as I say I’m just hoping that I’ll get Roy into a nursing home. Then I can have some free time.
CB: Of course.
MW: And do it because I do feel that this is, this is the last straw.
CB: Yeah.
MW: This is, you know, I really must do it -
CB: Ahum.
MW: Now. Otherwise I might do something disastrous because it is at that pitch at the moment, you know.
CB: Well, we, just keep us posted and we can sort it out. I know that because of a conversation separately that I’ve had with -
MW: Yes. I’m sure.
CB: With Peter.
MW: It would, it’s so nostalgic.
CB: Of course.
MW: But in my mind I can take you to the, to the, in to the headquarters, up the stairs into the adjutant’s room, to the intelligence office, the operations room and, and all those places. They’re all in my head you see.
CB: Of course. Of course.
MW: And it would be lovely just to have. I think it would be lovely -
CB: Ahum.
MW: Just to have a, have a look around again.
CB: So you met Doug when he was twenty two.
MW: He was twenty.
CB: Twenty.
MW: Yes.
CB: And you were twenty two.
MW: Yes.
CB: And um -
MW: He would have been, June the, June the um is it -
CB: ‘Cause the 12th was when he was lost. June ‘42.
MW: When he went down.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes. And then in the August, on the 17th of August he would have been twenty one.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes.
CB: So what was the, you had a lot of choice of aircrew on the station.
MW: Had a lot of -?
CB: Choice of aircrew ‘cause there was so many.
MW: Oh.
CB: What was special about Doug?
MW: I don’t know really. He was just, we just seemed to hit it off. He was a very good dancer and I wasn’t and he was a very good skater. He skated at the ice rink at Richmond. And, and all that but I don’t know I don’t even know whether I knew him well enough to know how much he appreciated music but I’ve always been fanatic about classical music and I still am but whether or not he was I wouldn’t really know. He had quite a nice twinkle in his eye you know. He was, sort of a nice smile. Other than that -
CB: And was he a navigator? What was he?
MW: Was he - ?
CB: Was he a navigator or - ?
MW: He was observer plus navigator.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. That was a bit more than a navigator.
CB: So he’d been trained in South Africa had he?
MW: No.
CB: Oh he hadn’t. Okay.
MW: No. Here.
CB: Right.
MW: He was a biochemist and he worked for [Joe Lyons] and he’d only just started. Well I mean, obviously, because of his age. He was only twenty, you see when he was killed.
CB: Yeah. And on the airfield, just going a bit broader than this now, you mentioned last time about you were issuing the charts for the raids but the lads would come and talk to you.
MW: Oh, yes they did.
CB: So what was the basis of that?
MW: The basis of that?
CB: Yeah. Their conversations.
MW: Oh their conversations. Well -
CB: Apart from the fact that you were a pretty girl that they came because also they had concerns. Did they?
MW: They would tell you about their personal life. Tell me anyway. And they would say how a lot of them didn’t want to go to the Ruhr and they didn’t, they didn’t, they didn’t know the target at that time when they came in until we went into the briefing room and everybody else was assembled. The met officer and the intelligence officer and briefing and everything and then once they, we had a large board on the wall, blackboard, and they, and then the route and everything was, was up on that board for them and the squadron navigation officer and the intelligence officer would point out various routes to go which were, which had, heavy, heavy flak and or searchlights and things like that but a lot of the time I know that a lot of them didn’t take any notice of what, where and they went their own way. Cheshire did that an awful lot.
CB: Oh did he?
MW: And they would change course and go over the routes that they thought might be more -
CB: From experience.
MW: Yes.
CB: Because what we’re talking about is a big map on the wall isn’t it?
MW: This -
CB: And it shows the route on this huge map -
MW: Yes. But we had -
CB: On the wall at the end of the -
MW: A big blackboard -
CB: Yeah.
MW: As well on the night when we, a big, like at school.
CB: Yeah.
MW: You know, a big blackboard it was and that’s what we had in the intelligence office to write the names of the, we wrote all the names down on the board that were going and who they were and the number of the aircraft and everything.
CB: Right.
MW: On that board so that when, when you came back in the morning, so when they first started coming back, you would be able to, to, you cross off the ones who’d arrived and what time they’d arrived back and then of course the ones that didn’t come back were still there on the board.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But when they came back of course they came straight up to the briefing office, to the interrogation office and the intelligence officer there and I was there and I took the aids to escape from them and made some more, made the tea for them.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But when, when they were talking to me before they took off, not all of them came in but a lot of them came in, it was mainly about they didn’t really like certain targets. Well, that was obvious really that they were heavily, they were going to be heavily bombed, er shot at. The Ruhr was very, very well protected and Hamburg and places, that was a bit further up. Hamburg is a bit further up but um and of course Berlin was almost, at that time, Berlin, you could only carry the Whitleys and the Wellingtons could only just get to Berlin on the fuel they had. And so there was no, no point in trying to go around twice or anything because they hadn’t got the fuel to get there. It was just, just enough fuel to get them in to, in to Berlin and back but, until the Halifax and the Lancasters came in and then they could of course.
CB: So, we’re talking the early part of the war before the heavy bombers -
MW: Yes.
CB: Came in.
MW: Yes.
CB: Right.
MW: And I mean for a lot of the, for a long time when I went to Driffield, at Driffield all they were doing was dropping leaflets from there but um -
CB: How did they feel about that?
MW: Not very good. But we didn’t have it, Chris.
CB: No.
MW: We didn’t have anything. It’s alright for Churchill to stand up there and say that we’ll do this, we’ll do that but we hadn’t anything to do it with until once the factories got going in this country and we made, well we made wonderful progress of course.
CB: So this added to the apprehension of the crews?
MW: Yes. Yes.
CB: Is what you’re saying?
MW: Yes they wanted to go, those boys. Yes they, but of course a lot of them weren’t so keen on the, on the target. Going in the Halifaxes, they were very so slow but I mean they used to christen the Whitley as a flying coffin.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Oh you know that do you?
CB: I do. Yes. So when the bigger planes came, so we’re talking about the Halifax and Lancasters, but Halifax in Yorkshire, how did the attitude of the crews change?
MW: It did change quite a bit really because they, for one thing we had, at Linton we would have the first Halifaxes to have cameras so you had a camera in there.
CB: For the target.
MW: But it did show a lot. It showed an awful lot in the first, in the beginning that they were, some of them were nowhere near the target.
CB: Right
MW: I shouldn’t say that should I?
CB: No, you should because these are important points and the review that was carried out proved that they were sometimes fifty miles away -
MW: Absolutely.
CB: From the target. And you -
MW: I had a job then –
CB: You were seeing that
MW: In the beginning. I didn’t do a lot of it mind you.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But I did do it because my eyesight is very short-sighted well not very short but good enough to read a very tiny, and I did a lot of looking at the maps when they came back from the cameras and you could see that, you know, then but the boys seemed to appreciate that. And then we had the other. What was it called? H2O I think.
CB: H2S.
MW: H2S.
CB: Yes.
MW: That’s right. Yes.
CB: The radar.
MW: That was fitted and I think that was we were one of the first stations to get that, you see.
CB: Right.
MW: And those maps were very, very secret and we made sure that they signed for them.
CB: Right.
MW: But of course that soon went by the board and everybody got them and that but Linton was very upmarket in that -
CB: Was it?
MW: Respect but it was -
CB: Right.
MW: We were. I don’t know why but, whether we of course later on with Cheshire there and Chesh was there for a long time and it’s – [pause]
CB: So when, when they came back from a raid they came upstairs.
MW: In to the briefing -
CB: Brought the charts back.
MW: In to the interrogation office, yes.
CB: What happened then? How did it then progress with Ivor?
MW: Oh. Well we, they had they had a cup of tea and a biscuit and they, they had a one to one talk with an intelligence officer. We had Ivor Jones and Brylcreem and what was the other ones called? About four of them there.
CB: Right.
MW: One was the manager from Brylcreem. The hair thing.
CB: Right.
MW: We always called him Brylcreem but Ivor Jones was the senior man.
CB: Right.
MW: And, but they all got an interview. A one to one interview with them and asked where they, what they’d done, how, what, what the opposition was like, what the flak was like and, and that and obviously a lot of the time they had been, been, come back with, with a few bomb holes in their, in the aircraft but what height did they bomb from and how many times did they circle around the target and just general things like that and then they were free to go and sometimes they would come back in to my office and have another cup of tea and sit down and talk a bit but other times they went off to the mess and had bacon and eggs and, and you know it was dawn by then you see.
CB: So, what -
MW: But I stayed till about eight in the morning because some nights I was on again you see but I did tell you about the, the, my role in, was, - the establishment in the RAF you know about that. If they allocated, they allocated at that time one map clerk, special duties map clerk for each station and I was that one for Linton but if, if you wanted leave you had to have liaison with one of the corporals or the sergeants in the intelligence office that didn’t deal with maps but would take over from me but I didn’t have a colleague who I could just say, ‘I want leave.’ And that, and that happened on all the stations because we were only needed on bomber stations really because the rest of the, Fighter Command and Coastal and that, they didn’t need a lot of maps there but it was critical for us to have enough maps available for -
CB: Of Germany.
MW: Yes. If, I mean most of it was covered on a 48-4 and the Mercator’s projection map but - [laughs] Yes.
CB: Big.
MW: All came
CB: Rolled up
MW: Rolled up. My poor fingers. They’re very, very harsh. The edges of maps and charts and charts especially. And you’d try to roll them back to get them into these big chests that we had to put them in and they, and you -
CB: Difficult.
MW: Nip your fingers off with the, if you weren’t careful.
CB: So, some of the crew used to return for another cup of tea.
MW: Yes. They did.
CB: It wasn’t the fact it was another cup of tea was it? They came to talk to you.
MW: Probably.
CB: So what would they be talking about in that case?
MW: Oh, what they were going to do, you know, if they, when they got their leave and where they were going to. It’s just, didn’t talk about what they had done so much as what they, their personal life. And I had one or two conscientious objectors and that was very difficult, very difficult because the RAF had paid a lot of money to train a pilot or a navigator and then after eight to ten weeks of training they decided they couldn’t do it and they became conscientious and the RAF is very cruel to those young men.
CB: Ahum.
MW: You know.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Yes.
CB: I’d like to know more though.
MW: Absolutely. Yes.
CB: So what did they do to them?
MW: Well, they, they were just thrown out of the RAF. No two ways about it. There were no references or anything like that given. They weren’t allowed to re-muster to do another job. It was a very cruel and harsh end but a couple of them got out on religious grounds. They couldn’t come to terms with that fact that God didn’t want them to, to kill other people whereas I will say most of the boys I spoke to and Cheshire was certainly had no regrets whatsoever about going over to Germany and bombing. He didn’t. They started this, we’ve got to, we’ve got to, that was Cheshire’s attitude about it but when he, I don’t know what year when he was flying in 617 on the, and he had a Mosquito and he went low level flying and what they call that and he went to a factory to [drop leaflets] to bomb in France.
CB: In France. Yes
MW: You know this do you?
CB: Yes. Go on.
MW: And he circled around three times I think to warn those girls to get out and they did and then he went in and bombed it you see but one of those girls came back to Linton.
Other: Oh really.
MW: To thank him. Yes. And he said, ‘Oh no. Go away’ he said, ‘We don’t, we’re glad you all got out.’ So, that was his attitude but his attitude changed and he was a different character after Hiroshima. And that is what, he was a different character after that.
CB: Because he was on the bomber -
MW: He was on the -
CB: One of the bombers.
MW: Not on the one that dropped the bomb but -
CB: The second one.
MW: The one that was observing. Yes. Yes. I don’t know much about that because it was, it all took place.
CB: Yeah.
MW: You know, there, but it was -
CB: And then he became a Roman Catholic and then he started his Cheshire Homes.
MW: You have to speak up.
CB: He became a Roman Catholic and he -
MW: Oh he was a Roman Catholic.
CB: Also started -
MW: Yes he did.
CB: Started the Cheshire Homes.
MW: The Cheshire Homes with Sue Ryder yes. But I told you about him being married before didn’t -
CB: No. Go on.
MW: Oh didn’t I? Poor old Binney.
CB: Take that for me.
MW: Are you alright for tea?
Other: Yes.
CB: Do you want to stop for a mo?
MW: Yeah okay. Do you want another bit of cake?
[pause]
CB: So, we’ve just taken a brief break and we’ve been talking about conscientious objectors but what about the other people who came under the title LMF. How did you come up against that?
MW: Um I didn’t see a great deal of that apart in, well I suppose in a way it was about three or four of them actually came through aircrew who, who decided that they couldn’t cope and they were known as conscientious objectors. A lot of them did offer the, the reason for not wanting to continue with flying, with, with bombing was that religion and whether or not they’d been religious people before or whether they’d just taken up with religion I really don’t know but it, they were obviously lacking in some moral fibre yes because it takes a lot of nerve to be a bomber pilot at whatever age. They were young men. This must be an awfully hard for you to go out night after night knowing that you’re not, you probably won’t come back and I think these young men probably couldn’t take that. But on the other hand the RAF had, had paid a lot of money to get them trained to be crew, to be aircrew which was all the air crew, as you know Chris were all voluntary reserves. Nobody was conscripted to aircrew and therefore if you felt fit enough and this was what you wanted to do for the country you should have been able to carry it out after that training but um all I did was offer them tea and sympathy but I couldn’t really do much else except listen and, and that’s what I did. To listen to them. They had various problems. They had this and they had that in their personal life which was, which they felt was more important than being, being, being shot down over Germany.
CB: And in many cases they felt a lot better for talking with you.
MW: Well, I wouldn’t know but I think they came so possibly that they did. Yes. Yes, I had a lot of spare time during the day when I was just tidying maps. I had a large office and when I was just tidying maps and checking on numbers of charts and things. Well, one of the charts which was used practically every night was Europe 48-4 on those were I had to order and perhaps if I’d had a delivery well that took a lot of time putting them all away, putting everything away and that but I did have quite a lot of time, spare time, during the day until we got the target and everything and then I needed to get those ready and the aids to escape which all had to be signed for. So, really and truly they, they, they knew that they could probably pop up to see me or pop up for, to have a chat and come in my office.
CB: Could you just explain what the aids to escape were?
MW: Well um they had a lot, the ones that I was involved with were, were things that they put in their boots and there was maps, there’s a silk map. Now one of them, one of these silk maps I had, of France. They’re back to back on both sides. Silk they are. And I, I did have one and I gave it to my cousin and he’s had it framed so you that can have one side one, one side and other as a picture like on the wall and he’s agreed with me that when he dies that he’ll send it to the museum for you. You’ll have it so you can have it.
CB: Thank you.
MW: There -
CB: Yeah.
MW: But um -
CB: What else did they have?
MW: There’s a compass.
CB: Yeah. That’s a small compass.
MW: Small compass.
CB: Pin head type.
MW: Yes. Yes.
CB: Button size.
MW: That’s right. Yes. And what else were they? I don’t remember too much about, about those.
CB: And then they had made their own arrangements for rations.
MW: Ahum. They, one of, one of the group captains at Linton used to wear a civilian suit underneath his, his uniform.
CB: His battle dress, yes.
MW: But he didn’t fly very often. That was Whitley wasn’t it, was it who did that?
CB: So he could immediately go into civilian clothes.
MW: Exactly. Yes. Yes, yeah, strip off everything if they were shot down and they had a chance of getting away.
CB: Now you moved on from Linton to other places. The Halifax had arrived before you moved. The operations were different because of the camera amongst other things.
MW: Before I moved?
CB: But you moved on from, from Linton. Where did you go to next?
MW: Oh but I was at Linton for three and a half years.
CB: Right.
MW: No. It was Driffield. We were bombed out of that.
CB: Of course.
MW: We did that last time didn’t we?
CB: Yes. Yes.
MW: August the 15th we had a daylight raid.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And we were wiped out of Lint –
CB: Yeah
MW: Er Driffield. Ammunition went up, we’d got people killed and that was a day I shall never forget.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Because it was a daylight raid and it was very early on, you see, in 1940 but, and then I was, then I went, we were moved to Pocklington with 102 and 76 and then we went from, I went on a course and, have I not told you this?
CB: What was the course for?
MW: Well they were very short of cooks.
CB: Oh yes.
MW: They sent me to Melksham.
CB: Oh yes.
MW: To do this course and this was, this was a day when the Battle of Britain was on and I can honestly sit here and tell you that I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened there. Where I was. It is as if there’s a complete blank.
CB: Really.
MW: I know I went to Melksham. I know I passed the course and I know that I came back to Linton but I’ve no other recollection at all and that was because, the only recollection I have of being there is that we were scared out of our wits because they were bombing day and night, daylight bombing and it just went on and on. You couldn’t, but I have a good memory as you know.
CB: This was Germans bombing you?
MW: But I can’t tell you a thing about that.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Nothing.
CB: You’re talking about the Germans bombing you?
MW: Yes. Oh yes. That was the battle yes, the Battle of Britain. That was on then. And then I came back to Linton and that’s where I stayed but I went back to Linton in to the officers’, to the sergeants’ mess to do, to do cooking and I, there was a civilian cook there ‘cause they did have a lot of civilians still working on the stations from the remains from before the war, you see. And the civilian chef and he, he used to give the orders and I took the rations across to the intelligence office. He said to me, ‘Will you take the rations across for the flying,’ for that night. The, the sergeant’s mess and the officers’ mess provided the rations. The tea and the sugar and the biscuits to make tea for them when they came back, you see and I took them across there and Ivor Jones, the intelligence officer, looked up from his desk when I went in and he said, ‘Where are you from?’ And I said, ‘I’m from the sergeants’ mess. I’ve brought the rations for tonight.’ And he said, ‘Oh would you come downstairs with me?’ He said, ‘Would you like, do you know anything about maps?’ I said, ‘No. Not a lot.’ And he said, he said ‘Where is the mouth of the Danube? Do you know that?’ I remember this as plain as anything. I said, is it in the Red, in the, er where was it now? It’s in the, can’t get it, it’ll come back and he said oh and what about so and so and so and so and I seemed to provide him with the answers but I said, ‘What’s all this about sir?’ And he said, ‘I want you to come and work for me.’ I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ I said, ‘I’m already in the, in the -’ you know what it was like in the RAF you had to have a re-muster put you to all the re-mustering, do all that and send it away and they would put it through to the officers in charge. I know this was very early on in the war, in 1940 but it’s he seemed to take command. He was an ex-military man and he, we always called him the colonel and he said, ‘Report to me tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.’ I went back to the civilian chef and he said, ‘He can’t do that. He can’t take my staff.’ I said, ‘Well what I do?’ And so anyway I thought I’d better do what he says. He’s a squadron leader. So I went back and he said, ‘One of these lads, these corporals in the intelligence office, will show you what to do and you can go on a course in about a week’s time to Gloucester and, and then you’ll come back and when you come back you’ll be a corporal. And this, all this happened, you see. It was most, I mean you, you might think I’m telling you a really big story but I’m not. I assure you that is exactly what happened.
CB: And this was all when you were aged nineteen.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: This was when you were aged nineteen.
MW: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: Twenty actually.
CB: Twenty.
MW: Yeah. This is what happened and it was so out of character for anybody to do. I don’t think you’d find anyone else in the RAF who had been promoted like that by, by a squadron leader. Just, just said, ‘Look, you come and you - ,’ and I thought about it afterwards and I thought well I really didn’t know very much. I hadn’t, I had, I wasn’t very good at school really but I was good at geography funnily enough but I wasn’t all that bright at school because I wanted to be outside. I spent most of the time looking out of the window you know instead of paying attention to the board but I think it was perhaps not, it’s not charisma but it’s attraction. People want to talk to me.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And I think he knew that. And of course -
CB: He could sense it.
MW: And this is what worked for him. These boys needed someone. Not motherly love at nineteen or twenty years old but that sort of, so that was where I was and that was where I stayed for the rest of the um until later on. He, he then, Ivor Jones said, ‘I’ve put a recommendation in for you for a commission’. He said, ‘You’ve got an interview,’ on so and so and so and so and I thought about and I said, ‘I don’t want it sir.’ He said, ‘You don’t want it?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want it.’ And he said, ‘Well,’ Anyway I went and I got accepted but I still didn’t want it.
CB: Ahum.
MW: So I refused and he said, ‘Why don’t you want it?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be an admin officer for a start.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be and I don’t want to be, to go away from these boys. I don’t want to leave this job. This job is what I like doing.’ I didn’t like it in that sense but I did, I felt I was needed then, you know. Sort of needed there with looking -
CB: Ahum.
MW: And then a bit later on, another year later he said, ‘Are you, would you, would you consider doing, having a commission now?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want it.’ It just didn’t appeal to me.
CB: No.
MW: To be sitting at a desk or -
CB: Quite.
MW: Or doing these things so then I moved. I’d say I moved on then a bit. I think we’ve done all this -
CB: I think we have. I need to ask you a couple of other things if I may. One is, you were a number of several hundred WAAFs. Two hundred perhaps.
MW: Oh on the station.
CB: On the station.
MW: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: So what was the general link between the association between the WAAFs and the flying people?
MW: The flying?
CB: The aircrew.
MW: The aircrew.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Oh we all, all the girls loved them of course. I mean if you wanted a date you didn’t have, it wasn’t much if you didn’t have a date with, with, with aircrew or with an officer or something like that you, you, you were aiming a bit high but with aircrew yes they all liked the aircrew boys ‘cause they were fun you see. They were great, they were really, and er but I didn’t have much to do with the other WAAFs really because I was on shift work, you see. I mean my, my duties weren’t nine to five although I was usually there about 9 o’clock but because I would then have to be, be back in the evening, in the middle of the night and that was a bit traumatic when we, we had a very bad raid one night. We were always having, we were always being bombed at that time. They seemed to target the RAF stations up, up in the north and Cheshire came back and said, ‘It looks worse than we’ve left, what we’ve done in Germany.’ This RAF at Linton but um after then they decided that the WAAF couldn’t sleep on the camp so we were billeted out to various large houses in the vicinity and my, I went to Newton on Ouse which is just down the road from Linton. If you’ve been to Linton you probably know it’s just down the road and um but that wasn’t very good because I had to be, go on my bike in the middle of the night to get back to the office to, for interrogation you see and they used to be droning overhead and me on my bike trying to get back because you weren’t allowed lights or anything. But -
CB: It was dangerous on the road was it?
MW: On the road? At -
CB: Yes.
MW: Not in the middle of the night it wasn’t. No. No, it was, it’s very countrified, you know um but you couldn’t see where you were going in the middle of the night with no lights on.
CB: No.
MW: And there’s aircraft droning overhead but, the ones that were coming back because as I say I stayed until, until we cleared everybody and then it was about 8 o’clock or 9 o’clock and then you were so tensed up you couldn’t go to bed really so we used to hop off into York and have a play around, you know, in York for a bit, come back in the afternoon and have a bit of sleep because you might, I might be, be back on again in the evening you see. If the weather was good then I, you would be back on duty again but if the weather was bad you would have a few days off if it wasn’t fit for flying.
CB: Finally, fast forward to 1945.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: 1945.
MW: Yes.
CB: Fast forward to 1945. You, in your diary you’ve got a very brief statement on the 8th of May, VE day. About the end of the hostilities in Europe. The end of the war.
MW: Yes.
CB: Was the 8th of May. How did you feel at that time?
MW: Where, where the 8th of May, where was?
CB: So you’ve put in here, I’m going to have to do, you’ve put in here, “Down to the beach with Pam and Ray. Peace declared with Germany. Had tea at the Met Office.” So -
MW: Oh is it -?
CB: What happened really that day? Did everybody celebrate?
MW: Oh yes.
CB: Did it just go over their heads?
MW: Went mad. Everyone -
CB: Or what happened?
MW: Oh went mad down at the beach and you let all the dogs out. You know, some of the crews and we, we, had their dogs with them but they couldn’t have on the station. They had them boarded out you see and we went and got all the dogs and took them for a walk down on the beach. It was quite a nice day actually then wasn’t it. That, that year.
CB: And then on VJ day the end of the war in the Far East.
MW: Yes.
CB: Then -
MW: Oh I went to down to Plymouth didn’t I, because we were dancing in the Hoe in the middle of the night. Yes. That’s right.
CB: So, there really was a lot of celebration was there?
MW: Oh dear yes.
CB: With these things.
MW: Yes
MW: Yes. So it sounded as though there was plenty going on then.
MW: Yes. Yes.
CB: Yeah. Right.
MW: Well I wasn’t tied up with anybody at all of course. I didn’t get tied up with anybody after Douglas was killed until -
CB: No.
MW: Until I got, got to know Roy. I did know plenty of boys. I mean there was no shortage of friends to go out and that but I wasn’t over serious about anybody.
CB: No.
MW: Until as I say and that was sometimes think it probably wasn’t a good thing but on the other hand I should, should have probably given it a bit more time but it seemed to me that he was very keen to get married and, and at that time he was a very different person you see.
CB: Of course.
MW: A completely different person but this is what people as you say about the young marriages you, about Douglas, there’s nothing to say that that couldn’t have gone completely wrong because you don’t know the future do you?
Other: No.
CB: No.
MW: Although you think at the time that it’s all going to go -
CB: Yes.
MW: Alright but er -
CB: Yes. There’s another entry where there’s a chap who takes you on a flight after the war is finished over France.
MW: Yes. Oh yes.
CB: How on earth did you manage that?
MW: Well, yes. I was a bit privileged in those days and we yes we went over to France. That was, that wasn’t Roy’s crew. That was another crew. That was from Brawdy wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
MW: Yes and oh my goodness me how those, I really got to know what it was like being, being on board a Halifax with going over there oh it was awful. So little space in those things. You couldn’t, and of course you had to wear oxygen masks in those things. Nowadays, it’s completely different and yes that was quite exciting. I’d been wanting a flight but when I got to, I was at Shawbury, not Shawbury, Silverstone. You know the race course that was RAF and I was there for a short time. It was training and they wanted somebody to, to clear the map office ‘cause they hadn’t they’d had they hadn’t had anybody but they had a lot of instruments hanging about, navigational instruments so I went there for a short while and while I was there the nav officer said to me, he said, ‘Now if you don’t behave yourself you’re going up to Lossiemouth tomorrow’[laughs]. He would, he would threaten me you see and I kept saying, ‘Now when you’re going to Oxford again can I come for the trip?’ And he promised me. ‘Yes, he would. We would go.’ So, this particular day it was a really lovely sunny day and I said. ‘Now, look, can I come to Oxford with you if you’re going? And, ‘Oh alright but you won’t like it.’ I said, ‘But look it’s a lovely sunny day.’ Of course it was. There was all this, all this cloud about you see and oh God it was a terrible trip. This was in one these twin light aircraft. What was it? Anson?
CB: Anson.
MW: Anson. Yes.
CB: Avro Anson.
MW: Anson Avro Anson. It was the most awful trip. I’ve never felt so sick.
CB: Did you sit up at the front?
MW: Hmmn? Yeah I went up to the -
CB: Did you sit up at the front?
MW: Yes of course but of course it’s the cloud -
CB: Twin engine. Yes.
MW: But you have to run into cloud and then it went whoohoo! all over the place in those light aircraft in those days.
CB: I must just go to the loo.
MW: Ahum.
CB: Thank you.
MW: I hope it’s clean and tidy. Anyway how are the flowers?
Other: Oh doing well. Thank you very much.
MW: Are you still going?
Other: I’m still going.
MW: Oh good.
Other: Only, only really it’s more of a social thing I suppose because I’ve been doing it -
MW: Don’t, don’t give it up.
Other: No I won’t.
MW: It’s so therapeutic.
Other: It’s my, it’s one of my pastimes.
MW: Isn’t it?
Other: Yes. That’s right.
MW: The next time you come I’ve got a really lovely Daphne out here.
Other: Oh have you?
MW: Yes Daphne, not Miseria um Daphne Odora
Other: Ah huh.
MW: Marginata. And the scent is gorgeous.
Other: ‘Cause not many, not many flowers have a scent now do they?
MW: Not at this time of the year. No.
Other: No.
MW: No. And my, at the back I’ve got so many Hellebores out this year.
Other: Have you? Its’ been a good year for Hellebores.
MW: Have you got Hellebores?
Other: I have. They’re down at the bottom of the garden.
MW: Oh right.
Other: I can just see them.
MW: Yeah.
Other: I’m being very lazy actually because I need a gardener to come again and sort me out.
MW: Right.
Other: The lawns are all fine. They’re all being treated
MW: Yes.
Other: And airyated and God knows what but um -
MW: Well I have the gardener once a fortnight and I’m not giving up that.
Other: No, your garden’s lovely. Your garden’s lovely but you’ve got good soil.
MW: Ahum.
Other: My soil is clay based.
MW: Oh yes.
Other: And it’s a nightmare.
MW: Well I say good. This is sand really it’s -
Other: Yeah.
MW: Sandy.
Other: But it’s looks lovely rich, dark soil.
MW: The water runs through that you need in the summer. It goes very dry.
Other: Yeah.
MW: But I mean the Camelia’s on this wall I brought some the other day. Out already, you see.
Other: Well it doesn’t know what season it is.
MW: Look at the Daffs.
Other: I know. It’s all the same. I know. They’ve all come through haven’t they? It’s incredible.
MW: Yes. What it’s going to be like in a couple of months because everything will be gone.
Other: Well that’s right.
MW: They’re forecasting snow for the weekend aren’t they?
Other: Yes. Yes they are.
MW: The Daphne’s done very well this year and Peter, my friend brought me another one. What’s that one called? That’s over the side there but I don’t, hopefully it’s going to go, go, right in the corner when, as you go out. The Sarcococca, have you got that?
Other: No. I haven’t.
MW: Oh that’s, when you go, when you go out it’s right on the drive.
Other: Ok.
MW: It’s got little white flowers on it.
Other: Lovely.
MW: And the scent is fantastic.
Other: Beautiful. Oh I’ll have to look.
MW: Just pick a bit and take it off with you.
Other: I’ll just have a little look.
MW: Smell it in the car going out.
CB: Sounds super. Thank you.
Other: Yes.
MW: It’s really gorgeous.
Other: Yes. Yes
MW: Yes. Everything seems to be -
Other: Well as I say nothing knows what season it is.
MW: What it is, no.
Other: That’s the trouble.
MW: No.
Other: Isn’t it? Everything’s coming through far too early.
CB: Well the trees are blossoming where I am.
Other: Yeah it’s crazy isn’t it?
CB: Well we were just talking about the Daphne’s and things but I say my garden comes first. I mean I could really go to town on this house and have it all decorated but I’m not going to.
Other: Why bother? No. It’s, it’s
MW: Why spend the, I’d rather spend the money on the garden, you see.
Other: Exactly. Exactly ahum.
CB: You need to get going in a minute I know but final point blossoming is interesting comment in a way, a word because you have all these young girls who are WAAFs on an airfield and you have these young men and they were young men become real men very quickly in the terror of the war. How did the WAAFs react? They blossomed quickly? What was the sort of way things went with WAAFs?
MW: What was the -
CB: How did they react to being in the air force in these circumstances?
MW: In - ?
CB: How did the WAAFs react to being in front line station like Linton?
MW: I don’t think we thought anything about it. I didn’t think, I don’t think we even gave it a thought that we were in, no, I’m sure we didn’t.
CB: But they grew up quickly as well.
MW: We grew up quickly and oh yes, my goodness.
Other: Had to.
MW: You had to. We, it wasn’t, we were there to do a job and at the RAF as you know they, don’t suffer fools gladly. You have to do that job. I’m very concentrated and if I but I go in the straight line, I can’t sit on the, everything goes this way but of course I’m very much a perfectionist as well and I think that gives you, in the RAF that’s, they don’t want, they can’t have people who can’t take orders. If you’re given an order you that’s it, isn’t it?
CB: Let’s get on with it.
Other: Yeah.
MW: No, I don’t honestly think that any of the WAAFs that I knew I knew mostly met office girls in the later stages because sharing a hut and being, being, being an NCO you had, you were given charge of a hut or a house. In the early days at Linton and at Driffield I lived in the married quarters that belonged, that the RAF people had vacated when, you know, the wives, when the war started.
CB: Ahum.
MW: We had their bedding and everything because that was all supplied by the RAF as it is today of course. They, you, you go in naked and you come out naked really don’t you? Because they provide everything -
CB: Yes.
MW: For you but, and it is a very good life if you, if you can stand the discipline.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes.
CB: So here we are in a barrack hut with all these young girls. How difficult were they, as their corporal, to manage their activities?
MW: It wasn’t very difficult really. I know there are a lot of stories. I’ve heard a lot of stories about the WAAF went off with airmen and got pregnant and so on and so forth but it was few and far between in my experience. I mean, you had to be in at five to midnight or whatever it was and you did it. I mean, If the circumstances where you didn’t catch the bus well you just had to pay the price for it. It was there were no excuse in the RAF.
CB: Ahum
Other: No.
MW: No. You just and I think, in my opinion the RAF is rather maligned really in as much what we did during that war hasn’t been, had enough said about it. We did, Bomber Command didn’t win the war as people have said but my goodness what we’d have done without them I’m afraid is, I dread to think. We couldn’t, with Hiroshima coming forward that much if we hadn’t done Hiroshima we would still have been fighting now wouldn’t we? They wouldn’t have given in would they?
CB: No.
MW: No. No.
CB: Well on that note I think we’d better let you get on. Thank you very much indeed and we’ll arrange another meeting. Thank you -
MW: Well I don’t think we have done very much today.
Other: Let’s get all this into -
CB: We’re just talking about Mary’s dog tags and the plane. What was the origins of those.
MW: The dog -?
CB: Those that everybody wore.
MW: Oh yes one is fireproof and the other’s waterproof. Yes.
CB: Right.
MW: And I don’t know which is which mind you but if you were in a bombing raid over here or anywhere if you’d been, if there was very little left that would still be there to recognise, say that that was you.
CB: Ahum.
MW: You had been there and equally if you’d been drowned this one of them would be.
CB: Right.
MW: We were issued with these on the first day and you wore them around your neck.
CB: Right. And it’s got your service number on it.
MW: Yes, your, its um and your religion.
CB: Yes.
MW: I think. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: I say that. They need a bit of a clean-up.
CB: Okay.
CB: And this is little bits of silverware when they were making the Mosquito. They had to use a certain amount of silver in it and there were little bits left over and the boys would make little things like, and this is -
CB: A brooch.
MW: It’s a little brooch from, it’s pure silver and it is from a Mosquito.
CB: Fantastic yeah.
MW: A Mosquito? Yes, it would be, I think. Yes.
CB: Ok. Thank you.
MW: And you’re very welcome to those.
CB: So what we’re looking at now is the detail.
MW: Yes these are -
CB: Where the grave -
MW: Are all the correspondence from you?
CB: Yes. Thank you. And in your binder here we’ve got details of the grave of
MW: Yes.
CB: Douglas Arthur Harsum, your fiancé.
MW: Yes. That’s 58 Squadron. That’s his number and reserve -
CB: And he died on the 12th of June 1942.
MW: Yes. And I think that’s the rest of the crew and that’s his headstone -
CB: Right.
MW: In Bilbao. And these are on board the boat.
CB: How many years was it before you found where he was buried?
MW: This is only about eight or nine years ago.
CB: Right. So it -
MW: Going back.
CB: So it took sixty years -
MW: Yes.
CB: To find out -
MW: To find out.
CB: Where he was.
MW: Ahum.
MW: And I stood there and I mean it’s probably been on the internet. My cousin came for the day and I’d had this well not because of that but I said to him, ‘When you’re playing about on your computer would you like to have a look and see if you can find where this young man was buried?’ And he came back with it. Hello.
Other2: Hello. Hello. Hello.
Other: Hello.
MW: I said um and he came back the next morning. He said, ‘Well that was easy there was only one Harsum in the RAF.’ Because it’s a very unusual name.
CB: Yeah, indeed yeah.
MW: And he said he’s in so and so and so and so and I said to Roy, ‘Would you like to come?’ And he said, ‘No I wouldn’t,’ he said, ‘But why don’t you ask David if he would.’ So we, I rang David and I said, ‘How do you think about it?’ I said, ‘If I pay everything because I’d got this legacy you see from -
CB: Oh did you? Yes.
MW: And I said the three of us will go. And we went and I stood in front of that headstone and it was, I could almost hear Douglas say. ‘You’ve come at last.’
CB: Really?
MW: It was -
CB: It’s very touching.
MW: Strange. It really is. But it’s such a beautiful place.
CB: Is it?
MW: And do you know when we went in the lady that keeps it going she’s English married to um whether he’s Italian I think he’s probably Italian and she took us to the little, the book where you can, and I wrote in it.
CB: A Book of Remembrance
MW: And there’s a little church, a catholic church and, and a protestant church. Catholic one’s not used very often but she said the protestant one they always use it on Remembrance Day and it is open on some occasions but it’s so well kept.
CB: Is it?
MW: And this is a communal grave of course.
CB: Yes. Right -
MW: But that’s on board the, the Bilbao and -
CB: That is the
MW: That’s the -
CB: Commonwealth War Graves. Yes.
MW: And there are the war graves. Can you see [?]
Other: Yes, I can see. Yes. Yes.
MW: You can see and these are, [pause] oh that’s Lorna and me.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And that’s the lady who looks after it and I say there was a cockerel running around.
CB: Oh was there?
MW: I think that’s him there. And when we went back a couple of days later there was a rabbit
CB: Oh was there?
MW: Running around.
CB: Really?
Other: Wow
MW: Beautifully kept.
CB: Yes.
MW: And these are all the ones that, is this of any interest?
CB: Yes. Thank you.
MW: Would you like to take it?
CB: We’d like to borrow that as well.
MW: Would you?
CB: Yes. And let you have that back.
MW: Ok. Oh well you can have a look -
CB: Yeah.
MW: At it when you get back.
CB: Thank you.
MW: I mean you, as I say there’s only us three on it.
CB: Yes.
MW: And you’ll recognise me -
CB: But it’s an important link in what you’ve been talking about.
MW: Right. Well you take that.
CB: Thank you.
MW: And I’ll keep all your correspondence.
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 Mary Ward. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Ward joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in 1940. She served briefly at RAF Driffield but mostly at RAF Linton on Ouse. She trained as a cook before being moved to duties as a map officer. She prepared maps for briefings and debriefings. She was engaged to a flying officer, Douglas Arthur Harsum, who was killed in action on 12 June 1942. She offered a listening ear to aircrew who would visit her for tea and a chat. She describes their fears and the dilemmas of those whom she calls ‘conscientious objectors’. For a time she worked in the office next to Leonard Cheshire’s. She describes the VE and VJ Day celebrations, as well as a flight she took in a Halifax over France. She transferred to RAF Coastal Command towards the end of the war, serving at RAF Brawdy, where she met her husband Roy Ward. She also describes visiting Harsum’s grave in Bilbao some sixty years after his death.
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
2016-02-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Mal Prissick
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:11:12 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWardEM160217
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Spain
Spain--Bilbao
Yemen (Republic)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942-06-12
1945
aircrew
animal
briefing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Cook’s tour
coping mechanism
debriefing
fear
final resting place
grief
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
heirloom
killed in action
lack of moral fibre
love and romance
military service conditions
operations room
RAF Driffield
RAF Linton on Ouse
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/524/8758/AAn00202-150907.2.mp3
3a51154e9d6d6fcbea96557bce0d714b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Navigator from 101 Squadron
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An00202
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An oral history interview with a leader navigator from 101 Squadron.
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CB: So it’s rolling now and my name is Chris Brockbank and I’m conducting an interview with [name redacted] and he wishes to remain anonymous when the recording is lodged, and we are at his home which is near Scunthorpe and we’re going to talk about his career in general but specifically the wartime activities and today is the 7th of September 2015. [redacted] could you start by saying where you come from and what your early life was and how you came to join the RAF, and then your history from there please?
AN: I was born in London and after education I spent a time in the city of London as a clerk cum secretary initially to a Lloyds underwriter, and after that to a shipping company and from there I volunteered for the RAF. Didn’t like the idea of the army or the navy but as a Londoner I wanted to get into the war having experienced the Blitz. I was taken on, on the PNB scheme and went first of all to America for pilot training with the United States Air Force, which I failed as many people did, and I was given the option to re-muster to navigator. I went to Portage La Prairie west of Winnipeg and when we started there we were told the important thing for a navigator was to remain on track and we were also told that one important aim, rather one important aid, was astro-navigation using a sextant. I did the course at Portage La Prairie which I passed, came back to England having done a little astro-navigation in the air but on the ground we were required to take hundreds of shots and plot them out for the instructors to check to make sure we hadn’t cooked them and then after that I came back to England, went to RAF Melham? where I did more flying once again no astro-navigation because as newcomers to this aid we had to be precise and this took time, and if you’re flying around the UK it’s short legs, it’s short legs and you haven’t got time to do astro-navigation and so I had my course at Melham? and then with a lot of other newly qualified aircrew I went to Wymeswold where one important thing we were told was that a good aircrew was a good team and we then went into a big room where we were told ‘crew up’ and so we stood around whilst the pilots picked us out and Rusty picked me and then together we picked our bomb aimer, our wireless operator and a gunner. We did our flying from Wymeswold and Castle Donington and then after that we [loud crackling noise].
CB: Just dropped it, we’re okay.
AN: After this we proceeded to Blyton where we converted from the Wellington which we’d trained on at Wymeswold to the Lancaster, at the same time we also picked up an engineer and a second gunner so we were now a crew of seven. Having done our course, once again including night flying but very little navigation we were then posted to 101 Squadron. We knew nothing about the squadron and we arrived to find that instead of getting H2S, a map reading radar to help with the navigation, instead we’d picked up an eighth crew member who spoke German and so was able to jam the German instructions to their night fighters. Also, once again it was stressed to us about staying on track, there being safety in numbers, also the question of timing. Bomber Harris didn’t want aids to be, the bombing to be in bits he wanted a complete termination of the target if you like and so we had to keep to timing that we were given and at the same time this meant that we had, we were spaced throughout the attack and this gave coverage to every, the whole Bomber Force against the night fighters or so it was thought. The other thing we found was that while we were at Wymeswold and Blyton we were introduced to a lovely aid called Gee, where you counted blips on a screen and converted this on special charts to latitude and longitude, but when we got to 101 Squadron we found the Germans had found Gee equipment on crashed aircraft and they were jamming the signals so our last Gee signal, our last reliable fix, was going to be round about the French coast, so we needed to get to height as soon as possible so we got a chance of getting a reliable wind because when we went to briefing, the navigation briefing for an operation we were given the forecast weather, the forecast winds, but bear in mind the forecast winds were based on what the meteorologists knew about the weather in the UK plus information sent back by Coastal Command from the North Atlantic patrols which [laughs] didn’t give you much. So it meant that once we got flying and got past the Gee stage where we had long legs we had time to practise, to use astro- navigation. If there was cloud cover and we couldn’t use astro then the next fix we were going to get would be when the bomb aimer said ‘Bombs gone’ so we needed if possible to get a fix in between to get some idea most importantly of whether we were on track and secondly that things were, we were also on time. So it meant that when we got into the bombing area and the bomb aimer said ‘Bombs gone’ I had to work quick to reset my equipment to get an accurate wind to use on the way back. Now there is a funny story goes with this. As I say I was kept busy but on our first trip the skipper asked me to come up front to have a look at the target to see, and so I saw all these bomb flashes and the flak and everything and my comment was ‘Bloody hell’ and I went back into my office and I never came out to look at a bombing, as a target, until my last trip. The other job I also had to do was that the captain would report to me when he saw an aircraft being shot down which I recorded, and I think that all these reports were combined after the war to ascertain as far as possible where aircraft were lost. I’ll have to stop and think for a minute, yes, I’ve already said to you I don’t look upon myself as a hero, I was doing a job. These are my thoughts, also why did we survive a tour when other crews didn’t? Well I like to think my navigation helped but in all honesty we got through because of luck. We had an in-flight collision, we survived the other crew didn’t. Also we lost an engine on one occasion and Rusty had to decide whether or not we should go on. This is where we had a bit of a hiccup, at Blyton we picked up an engineer. When we flew round the UK he seemed okay, but he couldn’t cope with operational flying and on the occasion when we lost an engine instead of being able to give Rusty advice on whether we could carry on to the target or not he was lying on the floor and it was a case we had to get rid of him, and in his place we got a very good engineer which also helped. In the same way we survived fighter attacks, we had good gunners, the thing is we were a crew but we were a team. We relied on each other and we trusted each other. In the year that I flew with Rusty never once did he ever query a heading I gave him or a change of speed I gave him, he trusted me implicitly and this is how our crew operated, we relied on each other and this plus luck is why we were able to finish a tour. Right, after I finished my tour I went instructing back at Wymeswold and whilst I was there Wymeswold was taken over by Transport Command and I spent a lot of my years until I retired in Transport Command. I became an A category navigator which meant that I was qualified for up to royalty. I carried, in my capacity as a navigator, various persons like Field Marshal Montgomery, I was part of a back-up crew when the Duke of Edinburgh visited Borneo, this was it, I enjoyed Transport Command, it was hard work you did a lot of flying but you saw a lot of the world in bits. I say in bits because if you went somewhere you were allowed twelve hours on the ground which included sleeping, eating, briefing. Didn’t have time to see anywhere but when on Britannias we slipped crews so therefore you had about a twenty-four hour gap between legs so then if you wanted to you could go into the local area. Apart from my transport work I obviously had ground appointments like adjutants and things like that and also I finished up at Scampton where I was involved in the training of radar navigators for the Vulcan and also for, oh dear, the coastal fighter. Anyway can’t think what it was but we were training radar navigators and that’s where I finished my RAF career.
CB: Did you fly in the Nimrod?
AN: No, no, no it was the Buccaneer.
CB: The Buccaneer yes right, okay, we’ll pause for a moment.
AN: After the air force I spent six months playing golf then I got bored then I became a civil servant for ten years.
CB: Doing what?
AN: Clerical work and then I retired again. I think I’ve covered everything in a nutshell.
CB: You’ve covered it really well thank you. So shall we cover one or two other bits?
AN: Yes certainly.
CB: This business of LMF.
AN: Um hum.
CB: And the navigator, what happened to people, well first of all in the case of the navigator, what happened to him? I didn’t mean the navigator, I meant the flight engineer, your flight engineer what happened to him as a result of that?
AN: We never saw him again. He was off the station very quickly. I mean we don’t think he was LMF we think it was medical.
CB: Right.
AN: Now because if he’d been LMF, now I was, it was after I left the squadron, my wife told me about it the LMF parade where the person concerned is, marches on and his stripes are torn off his uniform and then he’s off the station. LMF, were they LMF? Who can tell? I mean that in all honesty I don’t think I ever worried about what would happen to us until I started going out with my wife. Then I had a reason for wanting to survive but until then, I can’t, I can’t speak for other crew members because that’s something you keep to yourself. We all, well I say all, we had little mascots, I had a little doll I had in my inside pocket of my battledress, you got, you got very, very, very how can I explain it, you, you, you things had to happen, people might fly in a silk scarf, these things went on. Now our Canadian rear gunner he always took two beer bottles with him so he could bomb the target himself. Now one night, the station commander used to come round and wish us all luck and the Canadian rear gunner told him he hadn’t got his beer bottles so the station commander went back to the mess and brought him two beer bottles so he went on the raid happy that he could bomb Germany.
CB: These little snippets are classic aren’t they but people were handling stress in different ways?
AN: Um.
CB: I think that the LMF bit one doesn’t want to overstate at the same time it is important to understand it and some people as you say perhaps had, weren’t feeling very well, and would react in a particular way and it wasn’t actually lacking moral fibre.
AN: Yes. You see, I mean in my case as a navigator, I was busy, I was busy all the time. I mean if I was in the middle of taking, I mean it was three astro sights to a fix. If I was in the middle of that and we hit bumpy weather or we were attacked by a fighter that was wasted time, had to start all over again so I was kept pretty busy, then had, I mean I hoped that when I took my three shots it would meet exactly in the middle, never happened you got a cocked hat. Provided this cocked hat wasn’t too large you could say ‘Right I’ll go for the middle of that cocked hat and I can trust that’ but I mean you had to take each case on its merits.
CB: But occasionally there would be a very high cloud top cover so what did you do then?
AN: Oh yes true, then all you could do was just hope.
CB: Um.
AN: You couldn’t do anything, and because I had no aids.
CB: But you were clearly skilled at using the equipment.
AN: Dead reckoning.
CB: Yes.
AN: But that was based on the winds the met office, the met can’t forecast weather now so. And of course one other thing when we talk about luck we were on the Nuremberg raid, the ninety-three aircraft.
CB: Yes.
AN: Well we lost a quarter of the squadron on that and amongst us the quarter of the squadron we lost was our most senior crew on their twenty-ninth or thirtieth trip. And how were they lost? They were shot down by a gunner in a Halifax aircraft who mistook the Lancaster for a night fighter.
CB: Crikey.
AN: Now the thing is.
CB: Savage irony.
AN: We were taught, right from the word go, that if the night fighter, if you saw a night fighter, if he wasn’t attacking you, ignore him, because if you fire on him you’re giving away your position.
CB: Yes.
AN: This is another bit of luck.
CB: Um, um. What happened to the crew in that case?
AN: They were all, one escaped, one evaded but the rest were killed.
CB: Um. Okay, now as I understand it from Rusty you had a curious experience of an explosion beneath the aircraft?
AN: Oh this was at Mailly-le-Camp.
CB: Yes. So that put you inverted?
AN: Well, I think Rusty is a little bit incorrect there.
CB: Right.
AN: Because if we had been upside down, or doing a slow roll I think he terms it, he tells everybody this, and I keep quiet. If we had inverted my sextant in its box would have been at the side of me. If he’d inverted the box would have gone up in the air and come down and clobbered me. I don’t recall a sextant clobbering me.
CB: Okay.
AN: That’s all I can say.
CB: Yes, okay. Now fighters chase you and the rear gunner says ‘Corkscrew’.
AN: Yes.
CB: How did you manage that situation as a navigator?
AN: Well as navigator I mean i just sat there and waited for all clear. I mean the thing is we had a, we had a number of attacks but only one where it persisted and we felt that the normal night fighter pilot he could have been new and if we took the correct action he’d go and find somebody else who was asleep. This particular one continued the attack and our gunner shot him down. [Chuckling] luck.
CB: Um. So you’re a special ops squadron, what was going on with your German speaker crew member?
AN: In what way?
CB: Well he sitting in the back?
AN: Yes.
CB: What was he actually doing and did you link in with it?
AN: Well the, as I say, our operators, who were ABC operators were spaced throughout the attack and I think they were given certain frequencies each to monitor. We didn’t know much about this because we only saw our special at briefing, he didn’t live with the rest of us, they were kept away from us in case they said if they talked in their sleep.
CB: Yes.
AN: And gave away secrets.
CB: Yes.
AN: So we knew nothing really of what he did, but he like me was lucky when we talk about being afraid. He, like me, was kept busy. The wireless operator was kept busy but all the rest were spending all their time looking out for fighters and seeing people shot down. I didn’t experience that, our special didn’t, the wireless operator didn’t ‘cause we were all kept busy doing our jobs and we were fortunate in that respect.
CB: And what was the wireless operator doing linking in with you?
AN: Well that he couldn’t help me as such but he was, he was listening out for, there were broadcasts at certain times, we had a classic case where it was, well Rusty was in London getting his uniform and we went to Berlin with the squadron commander, and this particular one we were going, we were coming in to Berlin from the north, from Denmark. The forecast wind was something like sixty-five miles an hour. They’d started then, certain aircraft were given the job of giving broadcast winds, which they were giving to us and so we were given something like eighty-five when I got a pinpoint on the Danish coast I reckoned it was a hundred and thirty, and we were coming into Berlin with the wind right behind us, and I had to say to the wing commander, ‘Do an orbit’, he did an orbit, I said ‘Flaps down, undercarriage down’, now normally speaking we had a system, when the bomber aimer said ‘Bombs gone’ the bomb doors were closed, Rusty put the nose down and we got the hell out of there. I had planned, I planned that, I loved that because it was a short run out of the target before you turned west. Too far, too short and you’re off track. In this instance the wing commander he was sitting down in his cockpit on instruments and we’re going through with nothing on the clock and I said to people afterwards, ‘How do I say to a wing commander for Pete’s sake let’s get the hell out of here?’ A bit of, looking back on it funny.
CB: Yes.
AN: But not at the time.
CB: No quite, because there’s a strict hierarchy?
AN: Um.
CB: So bombs have gone, then there’s the delay while you wait for the picture to be taken?
AN: For the picture to be taken yes.
CB: What was that like?
AN: It seemed a lot longer than it was but the thing is we had this short distance to run which took that into account, as I say and then we turned and by then hopefully I would have worked out a wind and the first thing I do, no sooner turned on a course, I’d give Rusty a new one to allow for where we were and what the wind was, or what I thought it was.
CB: So you’re over the target, you’ve dropped the bombs, the flash has gone and you’ve taken the picture. There are lots of planes around you so how do you take a new heading when there are so many, so close, how long before you change heading?
AN: Well, we wouldn’t change, we’d change heading when we got to the end of that particular leg out of the target.
CB: Right.
AN: It was a case in the same way we had our collision, it happened. Who’s to say how many aircraft collided with each other, and why did they? I mean the thing is this, that at night you can’t see much, this is what we relied on for our safety, the fact we were in the dark.
CB: Sure. Now you went on ops to do your thirty?
AN: Um.
CB: But you didn’t fly every night, so what did you do on the nights when you weren’t on operations?
AN: Well.
CB: And in the days?
AN: Well, the thing is first of all I mean we’d flown by night and we’ve come back at dawn, we’re ready for sleeping. It would all depend, I mean it might well be we were down for fighter affiliation or an air test or something, it could vary in the same way we might get back and they’d say ‘You’re on ops again tonight’ because being the special squadron we sometimes flew not with, we were 1 Group, but we might be flying with 5 Group, covering 5 Group from the fighters.
CB: So the attrition rate on your squadron was higher than the average of others?
AN: Yes, because I mean the thing is that we did our first op in November and finished our last op 4th June and in that we did thirty trips.
CB: Um. So in then extending, so when you were flying with the others then you’re doing a higher rate of ops?
AN: Yes.
CB: How did that go down with the aircrew?
AN: I don’t think we ever, we ever talked about it really. I mean we had a spell where the Bomber Command in its wisdom said ‘Oh, getting ready for the invasion we’re doing the French targets’ and because they’re French targets they’ll be a third of an op which would have taken us longer, but after Mailly-le-Camp where we lost a lot of aircraft they changed their minds. So all of a sudden we suddenly found we’d done more ops than we thought.
CB: [Laughter] Right.
AN: But once again my attitude changed when I started going out with my wife. Before then, before then it was the case that if there were no ops then right it was down to the village pub with our ground crew. We were very fortunate with our ground crew, we had a corporal in charge of our aircraft, he’s dead now unfortunately, but he lived in Scotland just near Perth, and if any of us were up in Perth area we’d always pop and see him and his wife, and he was a corporal he stayed a corporal he wouldn’t take promotion ‘cause he would be going away from his aircraft. He had a radio at dispersal and he heard us coming back, he was ready for us, and if we were going on an op I’d get in the aircraft and I’d unpack my stuff ready, my chart, and if one of the ground crew was coming up front he’d say ‘I’m coming up front cover your chart up’. Never asked us until we got back then they’d ask us where we’d been. In the same way that after we’d had our collision and the aircraft was a write off we came in the next day, not only did we have a new aircraft we had a new insignia, the insignia that’s on that picture there, ‘Our Willy’.
CB: So there was, in your case there was a very close liaison with the ground crew, what about other aircrew when their?
AN: Well this is the thing that the loss rate was so high you didn’t get to know people. I mean you knew the odd people for different reasons, I mean I didn’t even know all the navigators because I mean you go into briefing, you see we had a nav briefing then there was the crew briefing when we could see peoples’ faces when they saw what the target was, we’d already had that shock we’d got over it but it was the briefing and then after I’d finished, I’d finished doing my calculations I’m back as a crew member again, I’ve ceased to be an individual.
CB: Yeah.
AN: And so you did, I mean I’ve had people say to me ‘Did you remember so-and-so?’ I’d say ‘No, never heard of him’ whereas on the other, yesterday I was able to say to Rusty ‘Yes the aircraft next to us was x squared and the captain was McKenna’ why I don’t know I remember that but it’s, people change so much.
CB: When you took off you had to form up?
AN: Well.
CB: How place?
AN: Well not, no not necessarily, what we had, we had a beam and we would fly up and down the beam climbing and then once we reached a certain height we would then set off bearing in mind I wanted us to get to operating height so I had time to calculate a wind.
CB: Was the beam radio or was it a searchlight?
AN: No it was a radio.
CB: Right, and anyway you were interspersed in the stream?
AN: Oh yes, yes.
CB: So actually you didn’t go as a squadron?
AN: The ones going, the ones in our area would be from Knutford?
CB: Yeah.
AN: Wickenby would have their own system I assume.
CB: Right, okay. Now in the day time and you’re not sleeping after an op what are you doing?
AN: Well, it might be fighter affiliation.
CB: Could you just describe what fighter affiliation involved?
AN: Well fighter affiliation.
CB: How it works?
AN: It would be arranged that we would go to a certain point somewhere and a fighter would suddenly arrive and our job was to take evasive action the way we would have done if it were a German night fighter. It was just to make sure that the two gunners were on the ball and the reaction by the pilot was okay.
CB: Okay. Going back to crew and operations, the air bomber is up front doing in the run-in, how did you link with him?
AN: Well, the link with him is as we were getting near the coast I’d say to him ‘Can you give me a pin point?’ and I got the same answer every time, ‘I can’t give you a pin point but we’re dead on track.’ That was my link with him. His job before we got to the target was throwing out Window strips but you see the thing is that, as I said to you, we were told ‘A crew is a team.’ Now think of the composition of our crew. Pilot a Geordie, engineer Lancashire, bomb aimer Birmingham, I’m from London, wireless operator from Wales, mid upper gunner from Lancashire, special operator from Norfolk, rear gunner from Canada, there’s a mixture for you, but we clicked as a team in the same way that if we go back that when the squadron association was formed in 1977 for about two or three years we were unique we had eight crew members at the reunion, as time went on some of them didn’t make it but at the moment we still have five out of eight.
CB: Um. Your special ops man was Ted Manners?
AN: Ted Manners yes.
CB: After the war he could meet with you could he and tell you what he was doing? Or did you not get into that conversation?
AN: I met Ted in northern Italy when he was an intelligence officer.
CB: Still in the RAF, he was?
AN: Still in the RAF, yes.
CB: Right.
AN: I met Rusty at Cranwell in 1951 when he had taken some Canadian cadets to the graduation at Cranwell when Princess Elizabeth was the, the⸻
CB: Reviewing?
AN: Reviewing officer.
CB: Yes.
AN: Talking of that incidentally who is coming on the 2nd of October to bless the?
CB: Can I come back to that in a mo?
AN: Yeah.
CB: Yes, thank you, thank you. Now on the, there are some things that are less palatable to discuss but they were, they were the reality of life and it still is today in a different way but with aircrew there was a contentious different approach perhaps and that’s the sexually transmitted diseases challenge, how did you see that?
AN: I, I would say it would depend on the individual. I mean on the book about our crew they talk about Norman Westby, our bomb aimer, being taken to Grimsby by some of our crew where he met Luscious Lil [chuckling]. But, but, but we, apart from the nights when we went drinking to a degree we went our own ways. I mean if you weren’t going to the pub it was the case you got the bus into Louth you could go to the pictures, come out of the pictures, get your fish ‘n’ chips and get the bus back.
CB: Um. I was thinking of other crews and just in the RAF in general because you, it’s the sort of thing that isn’t a secret so.
AN: Well see once again we didn’t mix with other crews.
CB: No?
AN: We were our own little environment.
CB: Right, and I think that’s the point, yeah.
AN: But you see I mean the thing is that, that we have got this, I have got this connection with the rest of the crew. I, after the war I flew with many crews.
CB: Yeah.
AN: With many units but I never went to the associations, to other squadron’s associations meetings, it’s only 101. I spent the least time on 101 but it was the time when we were fighting for our lives.
CB: Um.
AN: And I think it’s a different attitude in the same way as I say that Rusty never once queried a heading. Now I had a case where I was flying with a flight sergeant and I was what’s known as the wing navigator, I was an examiner, and I was flying in the Middle East and I gave him an alteration of heading and he queried it. When eventually the beacon came up and we were dead ahead. Did he apologise? Not bloody likely, and that’s the difference. I mean I don’t know what was going through Rusty’s mind, he may have told you when I gave him an alteration, we had the joke in that I would tell him off for being one degree off, because if you’re going at sixty miles an hour every sixty miles you’re one mile off for a degree, but I mean this was it, it was a joke. Certain things we treated as a joke.
CB: Just going to pause there for a moment.
AN: Yes sure.
CB: Thank you.
AN: Now can I offer you⸻
CB: We’re on again now and just going to recap on one point which was the raid in France on the tank training school so what was the background to that then Jumbo?
AN: Well, the school was in two parts, the accommodation and the technical side. I can’t remember which was which but 5 Group went in first and we were told to orbit until we got permission to bomb and while this was going on aircraft were being shot down while they were orbiting, and Rusty said ‘Oh we’re not having any more of this’ and he moved away from the orbiting until we got permission to bomb, then we went in. But we had this flash and the tail went up in the air, the nose went down, what it was I don’t know but it put us into a steep dive and as far as I recall it was Rusty and the engineer were pulling at the control column to get the aircraft back on an even keel.
CB: Um.
AN: As far as I can recall.
CB: Um.
AN: Because the thing is things were going on but you see the great thing with our crew, Rusty maintained that only people who needed to talk on the intercom talked, and if for example we were being attacked then anybody else talking shuts up. On the bombing run Norman’s in charge.
CB: Um.
AN: And this seemed to work very well, I mean most of the time our intercom was quiet, now compare that with the intercom on the American aircraft.
CB: Um, V17?
AN: Yeah, on the film.
CB: Memphis Belle?
AN: Memphis Belle. The noise on that intercom, the yakking going on.
CB: Um.
AN: I mean you can only listen to one person and that didn’t happen in the Memphis Belle at all.
CB: Um. Now part of the challenge with the raid you’ve just talked about was interference, radio interference so what was that?
AN: Well it was an American forces network, dance music, which seemed to be on the same frequency. I don’t know the technicalities of it at all, how it happened, why it happened, but this was the case that er, and it’s responsible. I mean we lost four or five crews on that which is a lot.
CB: Um.
AN: Not as bad as Nuremberg but still enough.
CB: Um. Was the high attrition rate due to the fact that the Germans were able to lock onto your special ops operator?
AN: Well, well, all I know is what I’ve read is the fact that the Germans developed a new system in that they had pockets where the fighters would patrol and they covered certain areas and that way they cut down the amount of fuel that was being used and so I think to a large degree the ABC became superfluous.
CB: Okay.
AN: Only an opinion.
CB: Yeah. Now what about Scarecrow?
AN: Scarecrow, well you see once again, Scarecrow was a form of flak. I mean in fact on the Mailly one I put in my logbook ‘a scarecrow up the flare shoot.’ I don’t know.
CB: Because the notion is, or was, that Scarecrow was actually a spoof to overcome the fact that the RAF could do nothing about the upward firing guns in the night fighters.
AN: Well do you know?
CB: Causing blow-up.
AN: We never knew about the upward firing guns.
CB: Oh really.
AN: And I mean I read about it somewhere and I said to Rusty ‘Did you know about it?’ and he said ‘No’. So we were flying in blissful ignorance.
CB: Um, ‘cause the notion was that the explosion wasn’t a special type of shell called Scarecrow but was the explosion as a result of the Schrage Musik.
AN: You wouldn’t be able to tell unless you were close to the explosion.
CB: Quite.
AN: Because I mean, the thing is that it was, the flak was going on all around you.
CB: Yeah.
AN: I mean, the thing is that, I remember on one trip we did we went to Aachen two nights running. The first night we did at normal altitude, the second night we descended and dropped the bombs in the descent as I recall and our special said afterwards that he heard the Germans giving our height just as we passed it, so the stuff was going off above us not below us. But that’s only what I was told at the time.
CB: Yeah sure. Now after the war, the war comes, you finish your tour, you then go to instruction. What were you instructing on then?
AN: Well it was navigating, either self-navigation equipment or DR, dead reckoning navigation or flying as a screen with them.
CB: In what type of aeroplane?
AN: Well it was a Wellington.
CB: So this is OTU?
AN: At the OTU at Wymeswold. I went back to Wymeswold.
CB: Um.
AN: And as I say Wymeswold was taken over by Transport Command and I suddenly found myself navigating Dakotas.
CB: Oh right. So when did that start?
AN: Well that would be have been at the end of, at the end of, probably about the end of ’44.
CB: Right.
AN: Then at the end of the war I went overseas on ground appointments and then I came back and eventually I came back onto Transport Command again.
CB: What did you do overseas?
AN: I was a briefing officer or an adjutant. I was an adjutant at Treviso, unit adjutant Treviso, station adjutant at Udine and a wing adjutant at [indistinct]. Then I came home and did the staff navigation course.
CB: Right. What was the OTU number that you were at when you were training at Wymeswold?
AN: I think it was either 93 or 108.
CB: And then when you went back again same people were there were they?
AN: It had a different number then I think. That may be why I’m thinking of two numbers. Well I mean actually what happened was I was there at Wymeswold some people were posted out, new people posted in and I had to do the course that a trainee would do, because it was my first time I learnt about trigonometry.
CB: Which was important for Dakotas?
AN: [Laughter] Well it’s like the same thing that people say you’ve got to be a mathematician to be a navigator, that’s a load of rubbish. As long as you can get two and two makes four.
CB: What was the ACU number at Blyton?
AN: Dear me, now you’re asking something.
CB: Doesn’t matter. Okay so then after the war and you’ve finished your adjt job, what happened then as a sequence until when you gave up flying?
AN: Oh no, I didn’t give up. No, I came back from Austria and then I then went onto a reserve centre, teaching reservists’ navigation and then I went onto Hastings and did a few years at Hastings, then I spent a spell as an examiner of navigators, and then, that included tour in Singapore, then I came home from Singapore, um let me think, oh I did more examining and then after that I went to training command for a spell and then I went out to Borneo with the army, I was at the brigade headquarters. And I came home from that and I was on Britannia’s. After Britannia’s I was station navigation officer at Manby and then I went onto training radar navigators at Lindholme and then at Scampton.
CB: And those two were Vulcans or did you do Victors as well?
AN: No, no I did Vulcans because we were at a Vulcan station. But before then I did the navy, the navy, the Buccaneers.
CB: And why nav radar rather than the navigator?
AN: Well because the, the navigators used nav radar and it was a case that, it’s difficult to explain, if you can imagine that you’re flying along and you’ve got a hill coming towards you, you can get the, you can see that as a hill, but as you get closer to it the picture changes, and I don’t know what instruction they had because what happened was that we would take off in the Hastings with the radar navigator at the back with an instructor and they, the trainee, he would do the navigating but we were the safety crew, and I mean it was very interesting flying at five hundred feet.
CB: In a Hastings?
AN: In a Hastings. [Laughs]. And of course while we were doing that we also had a spell where we used to go round the, fly round the, oil-rigs to make sure they were okay. We then relieved the Nimrods periodically to do the Cold War patrols, so it was very interesting one way and another.
CB: Yeah. In the V Bombers there are three people at the back, so one’s the navigator, the other’s the nav radar and the third one’s the AEO?
AN: Yes.
CB: So how was the division of labour organised?
AN: I don’t know because I never flew in, I never flew in the Vulcan. The Vulcan chap flew with us because we had the equipment.
CB: So it’s purely dealing with the radar aspects of navigation?
AN: Yes, yes.
CB: Because he was also the air bomber?
AN: Yes.
CB: So then you give up doing that, then what?
AN: Well that was when I retired from the RAF in 1977.
CB: Aged 55? Close? Then what did you do? You did your time off?
AN: I played golf for six months.
CB: And how did you then get into a new career?
AN: Well I saw, well when before I retired from the RAF I went on a course and became associate member of the Institute of Administrative Management. I also took the Civil Service entrance exam and after six months of playing golf and getting bored I saw an advertisement in the paper that they were looking for people, civil servants. So I applied and I spent ten years, most of it at Kirton Lindsay.
CB: Oh right. On things we can’t talk about?
AN: Oh no, no. This was the Environment Ministry but we looked after military and public buildings and married quarters. And then after that when that, they then moved me from Kirton Lindsay to Scampton back where I used to be.
CB: And then you retired?
AN: I retired yes completely.
CB: Okay good, thank you very much. [Pause]. So how did, you were shut away in your office as you said how did you feel about the effect of what you were doing with your bombing, the effect on the ground?
AN: Well I mean we were told, no we were given bits of information about trips we’d done, about whether it was a success or not, um but to me bombing in Germany we were bombing the enemy. I was a Londoner, I lost relatives, not close relatives but I lost relatives. As far as I was concerned I, I had no feelings really about the poor Germans, to me at that time the Germans were our enemy. Now as far as I’m concerned that I could meet someone today and he’s a German, so what the war’s over. I mean the price has been paid and this is the way I think it should be but I mean I didn’t have any feelings about poor Germans at all because it’s no different, we were doing the same as two armies fighting each other. This was, we were one army and the civilians were the other army. Unfortunately reading books since the war a lot of the people who got lost achieved nothing, their lives were wasted.
CB: Um, um.
AN: In case of, as in the Nuremberg raid, I mean as Rusty would say ‘On the Nuremberg raid, we lost more people than the whole of the Battle of Britain’.
CB: We did, yeah.
AN: And I’m afraid I for one, I mean they did a wonderful job in the Battle of Britain, but I for one feel it’s about time we had our turn. I mean every time an aircraft was lost it was seven or eight people.
CB: Yeah, absolutely.
AN: But then that’s life.
CB: You’d given up operations by the, towards the end of the war so did the Dresden raid, were you aware of that?
AN: Well as far as I’m concerned the result of the Dresden raid made me have second thoughts about Winston Churchill because I feel that he did the dirty on us, that on what I’ve read about the Dresden raid it was asked for by the Russians because the troops were passing through Dresden. That is what I have read other people say it’s a lie but to me it was spite in particular that Bomber Harris didn’t get the decoration that the other service chiefs got, and that was small minded I feel.
CB: Um.
AN: But once again Dresden was in the war area. It was unfortunate.
CB: As was Chemnitz down the road? Okay thank you very much.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with a navigator from 101 Squadron
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-07
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AAn00202-150907
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Format
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01:00:24 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
He was born in London and worked for some time as a clerk until joined up the Royal Air Force. He did not like the idea of serving in the Army or in the Navy but - as a Londoner - he was keen to take part in the war having experienced the Blitz. He trained in America as pilot, but failed and re-mustered as a navigator at Portage la Prairie, west of Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada) where he learned astro navigation. Back in England, he crewed up RAF Wymeswold, then trained on Lancasters at RAF Blyton before being posted to 101 Squadron. They were joined by an additional crew member who spoke German and could disrupt night fighters radio communication. During his first operation he saw the target with all bomb flashes and exclaimed: 'bloody hell' - he never left his post to see the effects of a bombing until his last trip. One of his tasks was to note every aircraft shot down, as communicated by the pilot: these pieces of intelligence were then combined as to ascertain where the aircraft were lost. He remembered how they survived a mid-air collision, but the other crew did not; and another incident in which they lost an engine and his pilot, had to decide whether or not they should go on. Retells how the Germans salvaged Gee equipment from crashed aircraft and were able to jam it; the last reliable Gee signal was picked up near the French coast. He recollects that a flight engineer couldn’t cope with pressure when they lost the engine: he panicked and laid on the floor for the whole time. They had to replace him with another one. He ascribed survival to both camaraderie and sheer luck, which includes mascots. He had a little doll inside his battledress, and their Canadian rear gunner used to bring two beer bottles so that he could ‘bomb’ the target himself. One time, since he did not have the beer bottles, the station commander himself went back to the mess so that he could have his beer bottles with him, and he was happy that he could bomb Germany. He said that some reacted in different ways to operations: even if the opertions took a heavy toll on them, this did not automatically equate to lack of moral fibre. Their flight engineer wasn’t a case of that, if he was, he would have had his stripes torn off his uniform while being marched away. He himself, the German speaker special operator, and the wireless operator felt less stressed, being busy all the time inside the aircraft. On the contrary, the rest of the crew could see the operation unfold in front of their eyes. He mentioned an operation to Nuremberg in which they lost a quarter of the squadron. They lost the most experienced crews, who were at their twenty-ninth or thirtieth trip, because of friendly fire. He recollects a corporal serving as ground crew: he was very close to him and to the rest of the crew. He never wanted to be promoted as this would have meant being separated from ‘his’ aircraft. Losses were so high that he could not afford the luxury of befriending other crews. He stressed that he was ‘an individual only when he was attending briefings’, then he became part of his crew. While not on operational flights he took part in fighter affiliation exercises in which they simulate combat situations. He points out the sense of belonging despite individual differences: the pilot a ‘Geordie’, the engineer from Lancashire, the bomb aimer from Birmingham, he himself from London, the wireless operator from Wales, the mid upper gunner from Lancashire, the special operator from Norfolk and the rear gunner from Canada. He did not consider himself a hero, but merely did his job in an impersonal way - bombing Germany was bombing the enemy. Despite having lost relatives during the Blitz, he did not have hatred: that was war. In a total war, the distinction between civilians and combatants fades. After the war, he realised how many people achieved nothing and wasted their lives.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Scotland--Perth and Kinross
England--London
Canada
Manitoba
Manitoba--Portage la Prairie
Germany
Germany--Nuremberg
France
France--Mailly-le-Camp
Contributor
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Adalberto Di Corato
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
101 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
briefing
C-47
coping mechanism
flight engineer
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
mid-air collision
military ethos
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Blyton
RAF Wymeswold
Scarecrow
shot down
superstition
training
Wellington
wireless operator
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5db8e5ab7f504e33ee8fdd28593061a7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/259/3519/AWhittleG150626.2.mp3
101772ee338ddf0cb41c285d70c6cb1c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Whittle, Geoffrey
G G Whittle
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-26
2016-08-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Whittle, G
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Geoffrey Gordon Whittle DFM (1923 – 2016, 1397166 Royal Air Force), as well as his log books, photographs and memoirs.
Geoffrey Whittle flew operations as a navigator with 101 Squadron from RAF Ludford Magna.
There is a sub-collection of 25 Air Charts, mostly of Great Britain.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Denise Field and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive with Squadron Leader Geoffrey Whittle, it’s the 26th of June and we are in Ruskington. So if you could tell me a little bit about your life and your experiences please?
GW: I was born in London, the outskirts of London, southern side and, I came from a family, printing background. My grandfather at one time had his own business; my father was in the national press. So I was destined with my brother to become printers as such, em. I was pulled away from school at the age of fourteen to take up an apprenticeship, which were not easily obtained unless you had an insight into the business. So I started off my career path as a trainee printer. The war came along, ‘39 and we were nicely placed when things hotted up in 1940 to be on the path to central London for the bombers. So at that time I was working in London, going in every day and was subjected to the bombing then my firm pulled out to one of its subsidiary operations in Hertfordshire in Letchworth. So I sort of missed that and I missed a further lot of the bombing. I used to get it or see it when I went home for the weekend or a little bit longer. Anyway coming up to the age of eighteen I felt that I was going to be called up. In the meantime my brother who was seven years older than me joined up immediately after the war started and was due to come home for commissioning selection on the day that Hitler started his push. That went by the board and he then became a prisoner of war at St Valerie. He was attached to the Fifty First Highland Division, that leads on to another story of my life. So I decided I was going to be called up, there was no way about it, but so ah, in 1941, so I had no desire to go into the army, no desire to go into the navy, so a sure fire way of getting into the air force and interesting of course, was to volunteer for aircrew duties. So I duly went off in October ‘41 for selection process and I was invited, I think that is the right word to use. Invited at the time to consider training as an observer, this was a precursor to the special navigation, bomber, gunnery thing that took place before the four-engined bomber came in. I was eventually called up in March of 1942 and went through the sausage machine at Regent’s Park and three weeks, what do you call it now boot camp, I suppose at Brighton and then down to Paignton for OTU, for, ITS Paignton in the summer months, it was rather an idyllic time the weather was superb, swimming every day and we had taken over the various hotels and things on the front at Paignton that was just across the beach. Oh, incidentally we were told while we were at St John’s Wood, Regent’s Park that we would not be going overseas for training. That was a little disappointing though as one had thoughts of going to South Africa or Canada but it didn’t in fact materialise. With hindsight one can see why when they were building up the ‘43 force, ‘43 and they wanted more people to go through the machine. Anyway it was from Paignton we went to Eastbourne for elementary air navigation school where we were doing all the ground work. We were eventually moved out of Eastbourne because of the nights we spent standing around the streets when the air raid warning had taken, been given and we moved up to Bridgnorth, I was only at Bridgnorth for two or three weeks and from there I went to West Freugh in Scotland, south of Stranraer on the Mull of Galloway. We arrived there the end of October the beginning of November and we had the joys of Scottish winter, in the winter time at a place called Stranraer. I have no idea what it looks like now, but it was pretty grotty, to use such a word in 1942. We did our flying and I vividly recall we had a great passing out parade there were sixty on the course. Em, great passing out parade at about four o’clock in the afternoon on the 1st of March 1943 and that same night we entrained for various OTUs that we were going to, no leave, nothing like that. So overnight travel from Scotland down to 27 OTU which was at Lichfield where one crewed up pilot and wireless operator, I think that was really the three of us and converted onto the Wellington. That is where I was fortunate enough to be picked and it was absolutely true that one has read we were put into a room, all the various categories and out of that crews appeared. I had a chap he was an old man, I was then twenty, no nineteen he must have been all of thirty four. Bill Walker, he had a lot of experience he must have had three or four hundred hours of flying because when he finished his pilot’s training he went off as a staff pilot at an air gunner’s school, great chap, chartered surveyor and we crewed up and flew the Wellington. Converted onto that on various exercises and trips until we were eventually considered competent enough to move onto the Heavy Conversion Unit which 1656 at Lindholme.
DE: The crewing up procedure, who chose who?
GW: The pilot basically, he went round, would you like to fly? I don’t know what the attraction was other than we were both over six foot tall. It made some difference, anyway that’s how it worked.
DE: Did you feel more confident with a pilot who had got more hours and was older?
GW: I don’t think we even thought about it, it was just nice that you had it. He came along, would you like to fly with me and off we went. I think at nineteen we didn’t question life so much as nineteen year- old as youngsters do nowadays. That was the form and we were going through it. So we moved to Lindholme and converted onto the Lancaster and there we met up with the rest of the crew, the flight engineer, the two gunners, and, no the bomb aimer must have been at Lichfield as well, not sure, can’t remember.
DE: Was that a similar process to get the gunners and engineer?
GW: I think so, they happened, it was a long time ago, a long time ago. We just appeared and we converted onto the Lancaster and did some day flying and did some night flying and I think it was the 21st, 25th of July, no correction 25th of June 1943 we were posted to 101 Squadron. Then they had just moved to Ludford Magna from Holme on Spalding Moor and we arrived as I have said on the 25th of June from Lindholme where we did our first operation two nights later. That was a conversion to squadron life, It was a gardening trip, you know Lavashell, minelaying so one was into the thing. And then we carried on, did various trips. The next major trip was on Cologne and then we were in the very last wave. So one saw the fires burning over Cologne a long, long before we got there but it was good initiation. Then after that it was a variety of trips to the Ruhr, Berlin, Nuremberg, Peenemunde, things like that. I can talk more about [unclear] in a minute. Then on our fifteenth operation that was on Hanover, as we were getting close to the target we were first of all coned by a searchlight and within seconds hit by anti-aircraft fire and by a night fighter which was not funny [laugh]. The port inner engine caught fire, the distance reading compass in fuselage in the back, it took one of the night fighter bullets, we had holes in the aircraft and we also had a small fire in-house in the fuselage. Anyway the flight engineer put out the fire we did a steep dive to port, when I say put out, he feathered the engine and deep dive to port and that fortunately put the fire out in the engine and also shook off the night fighter. Then he went back and started trying to put the fire out in the fuselage with a few bullets going off around him because it was affecting the ammunition trays. We were warned to stand by to bail out, Bill pulled the aircraft up back to about fifteen thousand feet and dropped the bombs and proceeded on. The fire broke out again, the rear gunner had a little problem, the flight engineer and the mid upper gunner pulled him out. We were very restricted with navigation equipment, I lost all my stuff in the dive to port, it just slid off the table. I managed to save my computer, Dalton computer and a pair of compasses, a few pencils and that was it. Anyway we stood by to bail out and being good aircrew we had a little discussion and decided, let’s try to get home, and we did. According to the reports after at the first debriefing the weather was not all that good. We got back, diverted to Lindholme, landed did a ground loop [laugh] finished up somewhere in the nether regions of Lindholme. Scrambled out of the aircraft and had to wait to be picked up. The port wheel had been punctured that was the trouble as we hit the ground we went round.
DE: Obviously the port engine had been hit.
GE: The aircraft was a write off. Anyway that was on the 25th of September, 27th of September, the 27th, the 27th. Three weeks after that the pilot and the flight engineer both received Gallantry Medals, immediate awards. Two weeks after that the wireless operator and myself each received immediate awards of a Distinguished Flying Medal and the other guys, the bomb aimer who was an officer, got the DFC and the two gunners got DFMs so we were all decorated with the immediate awards. The interesting thing about that was that the beginning of November a little later in November I was gazetted as a pilot officer with effect from the 27th of September so in fact I flew as a sergeant but was a pilot officer as indeed was Bill Walker and, so we both received medals as opposed to the officer awards. The interesting thing on that of course was the recipient of the DFC received forty pounds gratuity which went immediately to the RAF Benevolent Fund. As a sergeant we received twenty pounds which we keep and twenty pounds went a long way [laugh]. Anyway that was that and that was a memorable day.
DE: You mentioned the rear gunner had a problem, what was that?
GE: Oxygen mainly and I think and obviously overcome by fumes with the stuff burning was going down into his turret and that probably affected him some, he was recovered they pulled him out and gave him some more oxygen and then he went back into his turret. The pilot lost his controls, they had been severed. So it was all in all an interesting evening but we got back. Anyway we did not do very much flying in October. We were due to go on leave and nothing happened anyway on the next trip that I mentioned earlier I perforated my eardrum in flight and I was whipped off to hospital. Whilst I was there unfortunately my crew were shot down on the third sortie without me near Liege in Belgium on their way to Stuttgart. By that time we had acquired an extra member of the crew, the ABC operator, and so they were shot down and the pilot, the wireless operator and the navigator who replaced me did get out em, the pilot and the wireless operator became prisoners of war and the navigator in fact got back to England. All three of them have since died so I am now the sole survivor of that original crew. And that is why for very good reasons I am so interested in this Bomber Memorial because the names of the crews will go up on the walls and I think that is something they deserve. The wireless operator had a young son he was six months when he was killed and I tied up with his son twenty odd years ago and I normally see him once a year and that is very interesting and I think he likes it as well, it is a connection to his youth and a father he really did not really know. On the trips the interesting ones, Peenemunde which was quite out of the ordinary, it was done on a full moon when of course we never flew. So to be called suddenly to ops in the middle of August or July, I will have to look up my facts, was quite surprising and then usually as a navigator we didn’t get a pre main briefing, nav briefing, when so often we [unclear] our routes and basic stuff, although it was the final stuff before the main briefing the final met forecast so we could produce our flight plan. And when we arrived in the crew room, who should be sitting at the top table, one Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris [laugh]. The briefing took place and there it was when the curtains went back and this red line right across the North Sea a straight route virtually to some obscure place on the northern coast of Germany. And the bombing was at six thousand feet which was unusual. So all of these sort of things were quite intriguing but nobody would tell why we were going there, and so Arthur Harris finished up by saying ‘well I can’t tell you about the target all I will tell you, that it is vital that it is knocked out and if you don’t knock it out tonight you will go back tomorrow night and the night after and the night after until you have knocked it out’. We had the master bomber technique, first time on the main course raid, I must admit he didn’t sound over encouraging the way the markers were going down, the bombs were going down. I did really think on the way back, it was an eight hour trip, something like that em, full moon, saw a couple of aircraft shot down, I was looking out the astrodome. I really thought we would be back the next night and I must admit it was a great relief to get up somewhere around eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock next day to find out the raid had been a success. Great relief, and of course it was a great success from the point of view of slowing down the flying bombs. The impact that would have had on D-Day, let alone the civilian population. But I did experience when I went home on leave the odd V1 and V2 [laugh] not funny especially the V2, you did not hear anything but the bang. The interesting thing about the master bomber technique, they trialled it two or three weeks beforehand with a small force of one hundred and fifty Lancs from 1 Group another hundred and fifty from 5 Group and we were split up onto three targets, Genoa, Milan and Turin. 1 Group had fifty on Turin, the 5 Group had fifty on Milan if I remember correctly and twenty five each went to Genoa. The time of attack was one o’clock, ‘oh one hundred’ on Sunday morning. We were doing quite well, it was a nice night to fly, saw the Alps for the first time in one’s life and I was three or four minutes ahead of my actual time for my ETA so I would do a traditional dog leg sixty degrees one way one hundred and eighty the other, that saved three minutes. Sixty, one twenty and then we were back on track. We arrived at the target, virtually 1 am and the interesting thing was, God bless the Italians that as we were approaching the target it was quite lit up with anti-aircraft fire. Guns going off everywhere, since the first bombs went down they completely stopped [laugh]. We had quite a free run, but it was a long flight back to there and back all over France but that was interesting. As I say we trialled the master bomber technique before it was actually first used. The Berlin trip, well I was asked to do it and on that particular occasion I flew with the squadron commander and, we arrived back about five o’clock in the morning, debriefed and went straight on leave that was our scheduled leave. So I arrived back in London that evening and went out, in civilian clothes. I always changed when I went home and went to our local pub. It was quite intriguing I had a chum there that I met up with who was in uniform, the barman said to him ‘were you over Berlin last night?’ ‘No but he was’, turning to me [laugh]. The barman almost dropped dead to see somebody in civilian clothes, but that was how life was. So what happened after that, I went to hospital, the crew were shot down, came out of hospital. I was grounded for six months and started doing a bit of some instructional work around various places in Lincolnshire. All wartime airfields no longer exist, doing a little bit of navigation and things like that. Then I got my flying category back to eight thousand feet and was sent off for reselection. I went to Eastchurch and I was there on D-Day. I was playing cricket on D-Day, officers versus sergeants watching all these aeroplanes going over wondering what the hell was going on, of course we had no idea. I, asked to go onto Mosquitoes but was told my height restriction would not allow it because the minimum height restriction was twelve thousand feet so I went to Air Sea Rescue, I went down to Cornwall and the aircraft we were flying was the Warwick which was the airborne lifeboat version of the Wellington really and we had a few Sea Otters as well. When the fun moved away from, that part of France, the Cherbourg area the light aircraft moved over to Kirkeville but we were still based in Cornwall. That went on for five or six months and then we were disbanded.
DE: So what did the work entail there, was it patrols?
GW: Standing by more than anything else, I never dropped a lifeboat in my life. We never had to for the main concentration was more to the east than we were. But I say, we were disbanded eventually. So it was back again into the sausage machine and, back for training, I went to [Millom?], did a bit of flying there, then went to Half Penny Green just outside Wolverhampton. And that was then I knew I was going to go into what they called the Tiger Force on Halifaxes and probably glider towing. Then the war finished.
DE: You were on Halifaxes and glider towing because you still had the height restriction?
GW: Yes, as I say I would have done but it never happened, say the war in Europe finished and two or three months of waiting and the war in Japan finished so that was it and like so many aircrew who were non-operational at the time we were invited, what would we like to do? I was still young I was twenty two at the time I thought why would I want to work in an office or that sort of lifestyle? So I opted for the RAF Regiment and I went into the RAF Regiment, went to Germany and trained on armoured cars. I did my basic training, footslogging around here at Belton where the RAF Regiment depot was at that time. I then moved down to Oxford, Boarshill where the armoured car school was and converted onto the Humber armoured car and all the tactics attached to it and then went to Germany as the two I/C of an armoured car squadron. That was interesting, as I say I was a flight lieutenant then and went off. Anyway I was still an apprentice and I was expected to go back to it.
DE: Onto the printing?
GW: Yes back to printing. So I had to take my demob which I did. Went back, decided it was not the life for me so I went round to the RAF Regiment people in London and said, ‘what are the chances of coming back?’ and they said ‘yes we’ll have you extended service commission for four years’. So without consulting my father I gave up my apprenticeship, I cancelled my indentures and rejoined into the RAF Regiment and whilst I was there did a spell at Upavon and then I went out. Yes I did some time at the depot and went out to Upavon and from there I went out to Aden and commanded 4001 Armoured Car Flight. The obvious the Humber car flight and it still exists today in the RAF as a unit. Whilst I was in Aden the wanted, sent out requests for volunteer pilots and navigators to rejoin as aircrew, go back to aircrew, volunteer for aircrew and I did volunteer for that and I did go back. So January 1950 I em, went back into flying duties, finished up in the all-weather world, and funnily enough by that time I got my full flying category back. So that was acceptable and I went into the all-weather world flying Mosquitoes then Meteors. In between times I did the odd ground tour. From the Mosquito I went out to Egypt [unclear]. The pilot I was em, due to join up with, I incidentally when I done my conversion into Mosquitoes I flew with the chap who was taking command of the newly-formed 219 Squadron and then he was going to fly with the nav Leader when got out there, and my chap never appeared so I became station navigation officer. Still did a bit of flying with them then converted to the Meteor and did a bit there. Came home, had a ground tour then went back to flying, went again into Germany as the nav leader of 85 Squadron flying the Meteor and then the Javelin. Whilst I was there my ear blew up again and I perforated it again. So that was the end of my flying. I went to take up my staff college qualifying exam. I then went to staff college in 1959 and whilst we were there were told quite happily by the air member for personnel that the majority of us did not have a full career left in the air force because they were all coming, the younger people were coming out from Cranwell and they had to have first preferences. That was a nice thing to hear, there were about seventy or eighty of us. One or two did get to the top obviously that will always happen. So I went to Fighter Command Headquarters on staff and em, and there I decided to retire, I then had two children and there was eleven years between them and I decided that I would get out and take early retirement. So I retired from the air force in December 1961. Having had such a hatred of working in an office what did I do? I went into banking [laugh]. I saw a friend of mine from air force days who went into it and seemed to enjoy it. It was industrial banking mainly not high street stuff, it was more flowing but it wasn’t my forte. I never objected to the year I spent at it. It made me realise that there was a difference from being an officer in the Royal Air Force with people telling you or you telling people what to do and the discipline attached to it, to mixing with the great British public. It was a very good leveller, I have never objected to that, yeah, although it wasn’t my forte. So whilst I was doing that I thought this is not my scene, let’s look around, see what’s coming up. I saw one or two things and eventually I saw an advert in the paper for management officials in NAAFI the Navy Army and Air Force Institute to train. There was an age limit of thirty I was then thirty five or thirty six so I thought let’s have a go at it and see what happens. My service career will offset the age difference, which it did. So I joined NAAFI as a trainee district manager and retired from it twenty six years later as a departmental manager. In between times I spent em, I finished my training rather quickly as I was sent out to Cyprus on the emergency when the Turks invaded northern Cyprus. Stayed there for four months then I went over to Libya went home then to Libya and I spent eighteen years overseas with NAAFI of my twenty six years with them. Climbing up the promotional tree, started off as a district manager then I became a senior district manager. Then I spent a year on the island of Gan and then onto Singapore from Singapore back of all places to Cyprus [laugh] and went there as a number two to Cyprus. Then back home for a short period and then I had London region, then I went to Singapore. I think I got the sequence right, anyway I went to Singapore twice. First of all, oh, from Gan I went to Singapore on special duties and I was a useful [unclear] for them as I knew the services a lot better than many others and I was doing a lot of liaison work and exercise planning and that sort of thing. Then I went back to Singapore a second time. That’s it from Singapore I had London, interesting working with the Brigade of Guards and all that sort of thing around London. And I then went back to Singapore running the Far East show as the command supervisor. From there I went to Germany as the number two for the whole of Germany and from there into London as a departmental manager. And I retired from there, I stayed on, they were going to retire me at sixty one which was the normal age but I said, I was not ready to go, I was very friendly with the em, I was very friendly with the MD and I stayed on until just before I was sixty five. That’s a long time ago.
DE: When was that?
GW: 1988. When I retired I spent a few months not doing a great deal except getting used to being retired and that sort of thing. We bought a new house in Hampshire, I already had a house in Aldershot which we sold and I bought another one just outside of Hindhead in Hampshire. I always had an interest in local politics but something I could never indulge in because of my in and out of the country all the time. Fortunately I got tied up with the local Conservative Party and became the secretary and things like that. In 1989, one of the two district councillors from my village had to pack up for business reasons. I said I would be quite happy to stand if it was for them, I did and I got elected and that was the next phase of my life. I carried on doing that up until the end of January 19 – no not 19, the end of January 2007 when we moved here, because my daughter and son had both moved to Ruskington. My daughter moved into the army and when her husband retired, a lieutenant colonel he was working in Scotland and then they eventually went back to the house in Hampshire. Decided they knew nobody but had friends here, one day approached us in ’89, ‘we are thinking of moving to Lincolnshire will you come?’ So what do you say? And we said we would, this is what happened. Then my son came up and spent some time with his sister and also bought a house in Ruskington, so we are all living in the village. And we came here in 2007, January 2007, I resigned from my role as district councillor in Hampshire and saw the local Conservatives here and said, ‘can I be of any use to you?’ That’s another story so I have now finished eight years as a district councillor in North Kesteven. And have started my next four years as I have been elected again. So I have had eight elections and got through all of them, and here I am. Really not for the tape I suppose this bit.
DE: Would you like me to pause it?
GW: If you can for a second.
[Recording paused]
DE: Okay so we are recording again. So earlier on you said you didn’t want to join the navy or the army but you wanted to join the RAF. Why not the navy or the army?
GW: I had no desire to live in slit trenches [laugh] I had a pretty good upbringing, you know life was very nice with my family and things. I didn’t really want to go and rough it in the trenches, perhaps I was too fastidious. The thought of going to sea for weeks on end and being perhaps seasick or anything like that I don’t know. I had no interest in them and perhaps I should go back and finish the story of my brother who was a captain, he was a prisoner of war, he contracted pulmonary TB whilst he was a prisoner of war and was due to be exchanged, in 1944, before the war finished. The first exchange they had of prisoners and he had a big haemorrhage and did not come home. But he came back in February 1945 and eh, he was in hospital and he came home he died, in September ‘46. So that was the saga. My brother was as big a chap as I was, an excellent swimmer and he just contracted the disease and I saw him waste away.
DE: Yes, a terrible killer.
GW: I think he attended my wedding, a picture, and that was it, two months later he was dead. So to answer your question there, I had no desire. Don’t forget there was a certain amount of glamour about flying in those days and aircrew were considered to be cuts above some of the others perhaps and nobody knew the scale of losses that Bomber Command suffered. I could never have guaranteed that I would have survived if I had gone on beyond my sixteenth trip, no way.
DE: You wanted to fly then?
GW: Oh yes I was keen on doing it and more so when I got into it, em, I enjoyed the navigation side, I really did.
DE: That was another question em, how did you end up being a navigator rather than any of the other trades?
GW: Well this was the selection process, we had to do one or two tests. I suppose my maths was a little bit better than other people, or what they were looking for at the time. After all the personnel people in London knew what was going to happen in the future and they were planning accordingly. Perhaps there was a shortage of navigators. Remember I started off as an observer and I had to wear the “O” badge and not the “N” badge because we had done a little bit of gunnery, a little bit of bombing, a little bit of photography. Just to get the feel of it, em, when one was flying in Scotland I remember flying past the Blackpool Tower and having to take a photograph and getting that settled and that sort of thing, so we dabbled in the whole lot. It was that before the four-engine bomber coming in, okay the Stirling came in, in ‘42 wasn’t it? The build-up of the Lancaster they compartmentalised, or whatever the word is, we more or less specialised in the particular role. So navigation being the big thing. The bomb aimer up the front dropped bombs, he was also the front gunner and that was it, we had to go through a selection process and took various tests, including a maths test. That was it I was invited to train as an observer, and then actually flew operationally as a navigator.
DE: I see, thank you. You went through in great detail of the times and places where your training was. What was the experience like, leaving home and joining the RAF and the training?
GW: Remember I had left home before and I was living in lodgings in Hertfordshire. So I did use the word remember after the three weeks at Regent’s Park we went and I called it boot camp. Brighton that knocked out any thoughts that you were important at all [laugh]. The drill instructors they were moronic [laugh] without a doubt. I lived in the Grand Hotel in Brighton. We used to parade on the front and of course the AOC of the Training Group 54, that was it 54 Training Group, I can’t remember, was Air Commodore Critchley the great greyhound man and racing man. Nearly all his officers were jockeys, little shorties. We used to parade and these characters would be wandering around making sure we were standing to attention [laugh] then we used to go on drill and the sergeants we had were absolute morons. Lived in the Grand Hotel with none of its splendour. We had our folding beds with three mattresses and I think we had four blankets and two sheets. Every morning we had to make our own beds, and the sheets’ width when we folded them had to be the same thickness as the blankets. So you had blanket, sheet, blanket, sheet, blanket and one blanket round it. You realised within about twenty four hours of getting there that you were never going to sleep in the sheets, because if the bed wasn’t made up the way it was supposed to be. You got back to your hotel, back to your room and there would be the bed all over the place, knocked down by the sergeants, the DIs. Lots of drill, that was boot camp. We lived like that, had to get on with it, the weakest would not survive. Paignton was glorious, I must admit, the West Country was great, the weather was great and life was great. Eastbourne, no problems really except we had many a disturbed night’s sleep, hence the move of the unit to Bridgnorth where we were transferred. Then Stranraer in winter, I can think of better places. Although we were supposed to be the darlings of the world, aircrew cadets, we slept in Nissen huts in double bunks and half the course after we got into the flying side, half the course would be flying at night the others in the morning and there were sixty of us in the hut. It wasn’t exactly glamorous living, the food was awful and then from there it was to Lichfield, don’t remember much about it, I think we got on with more of the job of flying and things. Then Hemswell of course, we were okay, no not Hemswell, Lindholme, the Heavy Conversion Unit, it was mainly flying, we were NCOs, remember up in Scotland and up until graduation we were LACs, Leading Aircraftmen. Then on graduation became sergeants.
DE: Was there a great difference to how you were treated after you became sergeants?
GW: We used the sergeants’ mess, we weren’t restricted as much as when we were airmen. Again [unclear] after the flying, we did not have many administrative duties to do as aircrew. When one was on the Squadron was flying of virtually nothing.
DE: What did you do in your time off when you weren’t flying?
GW: We enjoyed ourselves [laugh] we were young enough to do that. It was on reflection later on in life when one was a little more mature, I had the greatest admiration for my pilot who had a very young son, was married and people like that who were in their thirties and things. We had nothing to lose quite frankly. I can never recall, standing on the peri-track waiting to go out to the aircraft thinking that we wouldn’t come back. There were some that did of course, some just had their problems. But no we really didn’t think that way we didn’t have that responsibility. Okay I had parents but parents are parents aren’t. No we just got on with the job, certainly from my point of view.
DE: Do you think it was different for your pilot having a young son?
GW: I don’t know quite frankly one didn’t talk in that sort of way. We were there as a crew, we lived together except for the pilot, for the, eh bomb aimer, who was an officer he lived in the mess the rest of us lived in a Nissen hut that’s the crew. My pilot was a great smoker, first thing in the morning he would put his hand out of the bed and get a cigarette then light it and then cough and wait for the wake-up call. He em, he’d never smoke in the air, he saw, when he was on his staff job he had a Polish pilot friend who used to get into the Blenheim or whatever they were flying and light up. One day he lit up and going down the runway opening up, the aircraft just went up. Bill’s view was had the aircraft been cleared for smoking then they would have allowed it, because everybody smoked in those days, or virtually everybody. Although he was a great smoker from the first light from waking up in the morning to going to bed, he never smoked in the air. And it used to be great fun because we’d get back, we did the odd nine hours sortie, we would all as we were taxying around to dispersal we would all get back to the rear door to get out to give him the clear run as soon as he had switched off his engines and done what he had to do. He was down that fuselage like a bull in a china shop, out of the aeroplane, over to the edge of the dispersal the great cigarette on [laugh].
DE: So did you not smoke then?
GW: I used to smoke a pipe. My dear father said to me if you are going to smoke, make sure you smoke a pipe. The first time I wore uniform, St John’s Wood, Regent’s Park, we got our uniforms that afternoon, three of us came out of the flats to go the cinema at Swiss Cottage and as we were just leaving the flats up came our young course officer. We threw him up a salute we thought, great stuff this is what you have to do, gave him a salute. He called me back and said ‘young man we don’t normally salute with a pipe in our mouth’ [laugh].
DE: The problems you had with your ears, what were the RAF medical services like, the medical officers in the hospital?
GW: Oh great no troubles at all.
DE: So what was the procedure for?
GW: Well in those days it was powder basically, the second time it was an injection [laugh].
DE: What in your ears?
GW: No it was a sort of type of penicillin we used if I remember. Certainly when I blew it the second time I finished up in hospital in Wegberg. I, used to get an injection for a few days, it was mainly playing it down. I had no trouble with them.
DE: So when the problem first occurred did you first have to report to the Medical Officer?
GW: Oh yes, landed you know I reported, told them what had happened in sick quarters. I can’t remember the time scale but a couple of days later I was off to hospital. I think Northallerton the RAF hospital there. I was there for a few weeks, it was there I was commissioned; I had to be let out of hospital to go down to, to go and buy my uniform and all that sort of stuff.
DE: So apart from when you had trouble with your ears you did not have any contact with the Medical Officer for any other reasons?
GW: No, nothing else wrong with me.
DE: You mentioned one point, I think when D-Day was on, you were actually at the aircrew reselection place at Eastchurch, I have read that this was a rather infamous place?
GW: In what way?
DE: I’ve read that was where people were sent who were LMF.
GW: Could be, wouldn’t know.
DE: Did you ever know or hear of anybody?
GW: Never met anybody, no.
DE: Any rumours?
GW: Possibly, yes possibly one heard about this sort of thing. There might have been some going through and of course they would have been shunted away. No chaps that sort of teamed up with they all went off to other flying duties.
DE: I’m also quite intrigued you – after the war you also got to flying Mosquitoes and Meteors and other aircraft. Which do you think was your favourite aircraft?
GW: Of those three? Oh the Lancaster without a doubt. I wasn’t a happy bunny in the all-weather world, I thought it was a blip chasing job and not a navigation job, but we did the odd navigation exercise and cross countries, n the main chasing another aeroplane, just as a blip on the screen was not my idea of navigation.
DE: Why did you want to get into Mosquitoes towards the end of the war?
GW: Well it was something new, one didn’t realise at the time. The second time I went back I had no choice I wasn’t meant to be back to it.
DE: So why in particular the Lancaster?
GW: Well of course it was the operational time of life. Remember my time on Mosquitoes and the jets was post-war it was only training all the time. Em, the Lancaster was just such a lovely aeroplane, it was reliable, it was fast for its time, mustn’t forget that. And one was doing the job for which one was trained. I was intrigued by navigation. I did do the staff and navigation course later on in life and part of that waiting to go on the course I spent a few hours on Canberras at Basingbourne before that closed down. Filling in time and then I went to Shawbury and did the staff N course. No navigation was intriguing and doing these long flights over to Germany in those days where you did not have all the facilities you have nowadays it was [laugh] it was a challenge.
DE: I suppose it was your job to see that your way should be in the bomber stream and arrived at the right time?
GW: Yeah absolutely. Yes you had it there and you had winds forecast and it was a forecast there was no met coming back from Germany [unclear]. I think the thing was, the only radar the Lancaster had was the Gee box and that used to get swamped by the time we got over Holland, about four degrees east you might get the odd circle afterwards. The big thing was to get as many wind fixes or fixes to take wind strength and things as you were flying over there from UK to Holland and then applying your own thoughts to the met forecast that you received and working on that and then, getting down to N=navigation and time keeping.
DE: Can you describe for me the process of getting a fix for the wind?
GW: Well take it from the radar, you knew the track you were flying, remember you had your map in front of you, your chart, get a fix on the Gee box and it was not analogue, you had to read it on the screen. So speed was of the essence, you get your fix, you plot it on the chart the Gee chart, transfer it onto the other chart. You knew what time you took it, you could work out where you should have been on your course, connect it up to your fix, which incidentally would tell you where you were relative to track and that would give you your wind speed and direction. Now speed is the essence, when you first started training you thought if you could do one, all this within ten minutes it was good going. After a little while on Lancasters and little experience you could do it in a couple of minutes. That was interesting when the war finished I told you I was going onto selection stage again. That we were flying Ansons and we were filling in time, this was at Half Penny Green and flying back on the Anson I could get a fix and read a book [laugh]. Peacetime flying and filling in time, I think I did a three hour cross country and only used one side of a log so completely happy. It is like everything else you become more experienced and more skilful. We weren’t too complicated with em, navigation aids or they could be. So really all we had was the Gee box and astro, we didn’t get any of the other things I think H2S came in and stuff like that. We never got that on 101 Squadron because we were carrying the extra body and extra equipment so the weight factor ruled it out.
DE: You mentioned Harris being at the briefing for the Peenemunde raid, what did you and your crew think to Harris?
GW: [laugh] what a man they called him Butch Harris. As a nineteen year-old two things that stood out at the briefing. First of all when we were all settled in the briefing room, we used to get officers not connected with operations coming in for briefings. I suppose the equipment officer or something like that. First thing he did was to order out anybody not directly connected with the raid. When that happened the curtains went back. He wasn’t gruff, no, another thing intriguing with him, sitting on the stage he had all these aircrew in front of him, what if we had twenty aeroplanes if we had that number, probably a little less, you were thinking in terms of a hundred and forty aircrew plus the various specialists who were also involved. So you had this whole room there, the Commander in Chief Bomber Command. Took a cigarette out of his case got his lighter to light it, it wouldn’t go, perfectly happy he kept flicking it until he did get a light. I thought that to some extent showed the calibre of the man, he wasn’t embarrassed, just got on with it and then at the end you know when he had the final word, his comment you know, ‘good luck chaps, but if you don’t get it tonight, you are going back tomorrow night and the night after’. I don’t suppose really it was until after the war, I read the Max Hastings book on the bomber offensive that one realised how lucky one was to survive sixteen trips. One might have thought then, God if I had known [laugh], who knows but, that’s how it was. It was a phase of life and I have often said it to people, I said it to a lady on Monday with two young children who was flag raising things who was asking me questions. I had to say to her, that 1939 onwards, we were all involved and there was a totally different approach to life from the recent, wars that we have had and God forbid I would have hated to be in any of these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where you could not identify your enemy from anybody else, but it only impacted on a small percentage of the population, i.e., those that were involved and their immediate families and circle and so people like myself and other. My son never served, my son in law he was in Northern Ireland but he didn’t do Iraq he was out before that. It had no direct impact on us and unless you’ve lived in the ’39 –‘45 bubble and the build up to it before and possibly as it started, it is difficult to envisage how people felt. You can possibly see that as a historian.
DE: Oh most definitely, yes. Which kind of leads me to another question. What are your feelings and thoughts about how the war and in particular how Bomber Command and Harris have been remembered?
GW: Badly, Harris was the only major commander who did not become a viscount. He was fobbed off with a Knight of Garter or something I’m not sure. Never got it anywhere [pause] and a lot of that was connected I think with Dresden and people tend to look on Dresden in a romantic light of the city as it was and not what it actually was. It was a major stumbling block for the Russians to move westwards, it was a railhead, it had armaments there and God knows and therefore it was a prime target at that time. It should have been bombed, the fact that it was destroyed, part of the game. People do not talk about Hanover sorry Hamburg and that suffered just as badly as Dresden did. I can recall when I was in Germany in ‘46 having come out of Hamburg in an armoured car, standing on it on the autobahn outside, looking back and its sheer desolation. But we do not talk about Hamburg because it was an industrial port and things like that. So, Bomber Command were badly done by, I’m never certain that we deserved a Bomber Command medal per se. I think what they have done by giving us the bar is on par with what they did for Fighter Command, Battle of Britain. So they didn’t strike any particular gong for the Battle of Britain which after all was the saving grace of the country at the time. They got us through that period when we were most vulnerable to build on things to get to where they got to in the end. They got their bars, I am perfectly happy with the bar I have got on my aircrew Europe. That did differentiate anyway Bomber Command the people who flew up to D-Day. D-Day got the aircrew Europe Star. People after D-Day got the France and Germany. So yes but I do think that Harris got the bum’s rush so to say and I think he deserved more.
DE: Thinking back to the start of your interview you did mention that you witnessed being on the wrong end of some Luftwaffe bombs in London and again V1s and V2s and then you also talked about was it Cologne and looking down seeing the fires burning because you were in the third wave.
GW: On the last wave, yes. As we approached. I didn’t mention it but this is a real thought a real target somewhere about one o’clock, or later. As we were going along before we got to the target I was thinking had I been on leave, I would have been out or thinking about going home em, at about the time we were bombing. So a little wave and I emphasise the word, a little wave of sympathy went through about doing it and then then it disappeared completely. I had no compunction after that at all. There was a war we were doing it, these targets had to be bombed. I do know some people did suffer, I met a chap at a reunion of 101 Squadron two or three years ago. He lives out at Wragby if he’s still there and he was still having nightmares and hated the Germans. I didn’t, I haven’t had nightmares I must admit. I don’t hate the Germans in fact I lived in Germany after the war as a NAAFI official and I had a Berlin operation, I was in charge of Berlin at one stage completely divorced from the Berlin budget and what went on in the zone. I remember I had a lovely secretary Frau [unclear] whose husband was a real German officer from the Prussian side and one day she was going on about being bombed out, he was in Berlin at the time, he lived in the forest, Charlottenberg area and she talked about being bombed out in 1943. I said ‘what date was that?’ and she told me, ‘I went home because I’d been to Berlin’. Next I said ‘I wasn’t over here that night’ [laugh]. That’s how we got on and we kept in touch for many years after I left Berlin. She died several years ago, no I never had any problem. It’s a phase in life and I said to somebody the other day to me the war was very good because it got me out of printing [laugh] which I did not enjoy one little bit. In those days you know young chaps didn’t have a choice in careers, it was virtually sorted out by the parents. You didn’t have the freedom that they have nowadays. To become a printer was way up on top of the working ladder. Not so sure it is nowadays with unions and who knows what, but no, for me it was a release. Also taking the chance that I did because when I packed it up I was only on a four year commission to start with and I got my permanent commission when I was there.
DE: And then got to see a bit of the world a bit?
GW: And see a lot of the world, so very privileged.
DE: Smashing, I think I have ticked all the little notes I have made. Right at the end if you could tell me your thoughts on the memorial itself that we are building.
GW: I think it is a wonderful idea. I first met the Lord Lieutenant when I, shortly after I became a district councillor and we had our annual civic service and I remember going to that. I was a very new boy, this was in 2007 and the leader of the council, Mayor Marion Brighton introduced me to him, because I had been in Bomber Command and we chatted. I remember him saying to me, I think that this was before the London memorial was built, ‘I think it should be here in Lincolnshire, not in London’. So many of the boys took their last steps in Lincolnshire, you know the twenty two thousand, too their last steps in this county. I remember saying to him, “I quite see where you are coming from sir, I called him sir, but at the end of the day London is the capital of the country and a memorial of that sort should be in London’. I admire him because he did not take any action or overt actions until that was up and then he started. I think he has done a wonderful job and he has an RAF background through his father and his grandfather ha, ha. And I think he is still doing it and I look forward to still being here on the 2nd of October. Who is going to do it or is that still hush, hush.
DE: It is still hush hush.
GW: I don’t care, just want to be here.
DE: Thanks very much.
GW: Pleasure, nice to talk to you.
DE: Oh no pressed record. This is Geoffrey Whittle again, same day same place.
GW: The daily routine on the squadron assuming you hadn’t flown the previous night. Usual thing, get up in the morning, breakfast, go down to the flight or the squadron and Ludford Magna, we lived on one side of the Louth Market Rasen road and the airfield was on the other side. So you go down to the, squadron, might be something going on locally, or not very much. But the main focus was on what was going to happen that night, so you’d be waiting for the battle order to come out. Soon as that was out and pinned up you looked to see if you were on. If you were on the op then your day was conditioned. As a navigator, we would more often than not have pre-nav briefings before the main briefing, that would be a fixed time. Go out to the aircraft and meet the ground crew, not necessary the same aeroplane every time eh, check it over, your own little bit. The gunners would go do what they wanted to do. Then back of to lunch. If I had a nav briefing in the afternoon then you would go down and do your pre-flight planning, then back to the billet. Then off course main briefing, meals main briefing that sort of things, off you go. We were flying in the summer time so all our trips were pretty late at night. Take off, your take off time was fixed then off you go and then ninety percent of the time you would be climbing over base to an operational height and the skies over Lincolnshire used to be pretty full of aeroplanes I can tell you. We developed a system of getting out of it. Saw no point in hanging around, circling with all these people doing the same thing, so we, so we used to shoot off west and climbing steadily and my job then as a navigator to get them back at height over base at the right time, then we would set course. Do the op, get back, land, debrief, breakfast, bed. Sometimes bed would not be until five of six o’clock in the morning. I told you earlier on after our Berlin trip there was no bed it was into Louth, getting the train off on leave. That was it and that went on day in and day out. Then of course we did not fly during the moon period, then you were free, you could do what you liked. There was no booking in or booking out at the guardroom, as senior NCOs and officers you could do as you liked.
DE: So where did you go?
GW: Used to go into Louth.
DE: What were the attractions in Louth?
GW: I couldn’t possibly tell you [laugh]. I could actually it was quite innocent I met a very nice young lady whose parents owned the, was it the Kings Head in Louth? It’s deteriorated, it was quite a nice hotel in these days and they also owned one in Boston. She ran the one in Louth and the parents ran the one in Boston and I would go into Louth and stay the night. Separate rooms I hasten to add. There was none of that nonsense going on in these days. Well it did go on but it didn’t go on in my life. So I would go into Louth or might stay in for the evening and go to the mess, whatever was going on, but, we were not restricted, we were free.
DE: Did you ever go to the NAAFI?
GW: Not as a sergeant. We lived on NAAFI food in Scotland I can tell you the mess food was dire, it was so appalling we had to use it. Yes as an airman I would go into the NAAFI but once one graduated if that was the right word, it was sergeants’ mess, you didn’t go to the NAAFI.
DE: Okay.
GW: They were nothing like they are today I can tell you or they were. They don’t operate in this country now.
DE: Yes quite. Okay thank you very much, I shall press stop again.
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AWhittleG150626
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Interview with Geoffrey Whittle
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:18:13 audio recording
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Squadron Leader Geoffrey Whittle was born in London. After leaving school at fourteen he became an apprentice printer in the family business. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force on the outbreak of the Second World War and trained as a navigator. He served with 101 Squadron at RAF Ludford Magna. For his fifteenth operation to Hanover, he was awarded the DFM. Having suffered a perforated eardrum on his sixteenth operation, he was grounded for six months. He then flew briefly with Air Sea Rescue. At end of the war, he joined the RAF Regiment on a short-term commission but continued to serve on both ground and flying duties until retirement in 1961. He then worked with the NAAFI (Navy Army and Air Force Institutes), becoming a senior manager, until 1988. He subsequently became a councillor in Hampshire and Lincolnshire.
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Date
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2015-06-26
Contributor
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Hugh Donnelly
Mal Prissick
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Peenemünde
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1943-06-25
1943-09-27
1944
1945
101 Squadron
1656 HCU
27 OTU
air sea rescue
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
briefing
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Medal
Gee
H2S
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Master Bomber
Meteor
mine laying
Mosquito
navigator
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Operational Training Unit
RAF Lindholme
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF West Freugh
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/544/8785/AHookerFJ160525.2.mp3
03e38dd3495780227f67637e5adb86f4
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Title
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Hooker, Fred
Fred J Hooker
F J Hooker
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hooker, FJ
Description
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31 items. Two oral history interviews with Sergeant Fred Hooker (b. 1924, 1850487 Royal Air Force) and his scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 102 Squadron and became a prisoner of war on 12 September 1944.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2016-05-25
2017-08-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Fred Hooker. The interview is taking place at Mr Hooker’s home in -
FH: Church Crookham.
DM: And the date today is the twenty -
FH: 25th
DM: Fifth of May 2016. Ok Fred. Well if you could perhaps start off by telling me a little bit about your childhood, growing up and your family.
FH: I was born in a little hamlet called Dipley under the control of Hartley Wintney Rural District Council in 1924 which makes me ninety two now and I’m one of nine children born to my parents Minnie and William Hooker. I’m the last one living now. The rest have all passed on. My elder brother was a prisoner in Japan when Hong, captured when Hong Kong fell in 1941. Unfortunately, he died on the same day as I was released from the German prisoner of war camp. I done all my schooling in Hartley Wintney walking about three and a half mile each day to school. I only had a secondary education and joined the Boy Scouts at the age of eleven and then in 1941 when the Air Training Corps was first formed we heard, a friend of mine and myself heard of a squadron being formed in Basingstoke which we made, we found out where the squadron was meeting and we visited each week to their meetings until the flight of the same squadron four four, 444 squadron was developed in Hartley Wintney.
FH: So, when, when were, when were you old enough to be called up? I mean did you get called up or did you volunteer first?
DM: Yeah. I was just coming to that one.
FH: Right.
DM: In 1941 I made an application to the air ministry to volunteer for air crew duties in which I went to Oxford for an assessment test which unfortunately I failed on the first attempt but the following December, 1942 I once again applied and was successful in passing out and was put on the waiting list to be called up to train as a wireless operator/air gunner. In March 1943 I received my calling up papers and I had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London along with a load of other chaps the same day and there we were, had our usual injections, issued with our full RAF uniform which I was very proud to, to receive and from there I was in London about a fortnight and then posted to Shropshire. A place called Bridgnorth where I done my ITW training which consisted of a lot of square bashing as we called it and school classroom work. From there we were sent on leave and had instructions while on leave to report to Yatesbury in Wiltshire for the wireless training which was all new to me although I had done Morse, a certain amount of Morse sending and receiving while in the Air Training Corps. Unfortunately, when we got on to technical side of the wireless I’m afraid I come unstuck and I had to leave the course and then sent to Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, re-mustered and became, was put on the list to train as a straight air gunner. Once again I had to go through the, an ITW which was at Bridlington and we done all our square bashing and PT exercises along the front on the promenade which was rather draughty being that it was in the January February time. Having passed out there we were sent on leave once again and on the 28th of December 1943 I left home and travelled overnight to [Carn?] in, sorry it wasn’t [Carn?]. It was Stormy Down in South Wales. Number 7 AGS. Air Gunner School. From there, very disappointingly we’d done nothing for three days until the 1st of January when we was all called on parade and was instructed that we would be training as straight gunners. I was in a section of chaps who was posted to the satellite station at Rhoose which is now Cardiff Airport. Greatly changed these days. There we was in, put in classes of about ten or twelve chaps. My instructor was a Sergeant Walmsley who I, we had a photograph taken of the group in our little classroom. When we finally passed out as air gunners which was somewhere about April the same year, 1944.
[Recording paused]
I passed out as a sergeant air gunner in April if I remember right and from there we were sent on leave not knowing what initial training wing we were going to which turned out to be Moreton in the Marsh, Gloucestershire where we met up, or where I met up with some old pals I had been training with right throughout the, my service life and while waiting on Reading Station to travel to Moreton in the Marsh I spoke with a warrant officer who was going to the same station and apparently he was a pilot who had been flying high service ranking officer’s about the country and wanted a change and fly something much larger. So when we were at Moreton in the Marsh we were instructed to mix amongst all the other lads that had arrived there at the same time. Navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, pilots and Phil, this chap from Devonshire, the warrant officer, we palled up together straight away and I introduced Leslie, a lad I’d been with since leaving Sheerness to go, to start my training as a straight air gunner and introduced him to Phillip who eventually introduced us to a bomb aimer by the name of Yon Davies from Wales and Jock Munroe from Aberdeen who was a navigator. We had a nice long chat together and decided that we would form a crew together but we was minus a wireless operator which on the following day we had to parade again and while we was in the assembly hall Phillip notified the officer in charge that we, he was short of a wireless operator who then introduced us to Dougie, a chap from Yorkshire who was looking for a crew and we all shook hands and we were then classed as a crew which was the only all British crew on the course at the time. The remainders had New Zealand, Australian and South African pilots. From there we done a lot of landing, circuits and bumps. That’s the word. Circuits and bumps. Giving the pilot a chance to get used to the twin engine aircraft which was a Wellington and we done quite a lot of cross country running while we was there to keep fit and of course cross country flying where we done our, the gunners done their firing, air to air firing over the Irish Sea. We, we then moved on, having passed out as a crew from the Moreton in the Marsh we were posted to a place called Dishforth in Yorkshire near the city of Ripon. There we converted to four engine Halifax bombers which was rather exciting in a way because there was the first time I had my own turret. During our training at Stormy Down Les and myself used to take it in turns firing from the tail turret as there was only the one turret on the Wellington air craft. The turret was a Boulton Paul manufactured and being in the mid-upper I could see all the way around which was a marvellous experience for the first few times seeing that I could look in all directions, scanning the skies for other aircraft that were sent up for training purposes to help us identify various aircraft which was, we’d done a lot of of course at Stormy Down but it increased as we got into Moreton in the Marsh where we crewed. From there we finally passed out but not before we lost our wireless operator. Unfortunately, Dougie got into trouble while visiting Harrogate one night and we, before we left we contacted or we was introduced to a Canadian wireless operator/air gunner and we all agreed that we’d welcome him in to the crew which we did but in the conversation that took place while we was being introduced he told us that he’d operated on Marauders from Blackbushe Airport and I looked, I said nothing and after a while he enquired where we’d all come from so when he got around to me asking where I lived I asked him if he knew much about the area that he’d been stationed at at Blackpool er Blackbushe Airport and he mentioned that he’d used to go to the village of Hartley Wintney and drink in the Lamb Hotel and the Swan Hotel which made me smile and from then on he realised that I knew something about Hartley Wintney.
[Recording paused]
Our new member. His name, we called him Pacqi, Pacqie Pacquette but he was known as Pacqi. I can’t pronounce his proper name but not to worry. He turned out a good pal of all of us and he was very good at his job. And at times we, during training we changed positions and done each other’s jobs just for a few short while, time. Sometimes you’d, I’d go in the bomb aimer’s position just to get used to using the sight just in case of an accident while we was on operations and at one stage I actually took the controls of the Halifax which was a dual aircraft at the time and of course the skipper was there in readiness in case of rather sharp dives or anything but we, as a crew we melled together and it was quite a, good companions. Les, the gunner that I trained with right throughout and myself were, became very good pals and one weekend when we had a weekend pass we travelled down to Hartley Wintney together and Les met my parents and the family that was home at the time and we had quite a nice weekend together there but finally of course we was posted, had a posting come through for South Africa after we passed out as a full crew on conversion unit which was a Canadian unit at Dishforth. We were in, actually in line at the headquarters to get our passes to go to South, leave in Africa and we heard the voice on the tannoy to say that Pilot Officer Groves’ crew and two others that were there. I can’t remember the pilot’s names, to report back to the flight office as leave had been cancelled. Very disappointingly we walked back to the flight office and we were informed that we, that our posting had been changed and we were going to 102 squadron at a place called Pocklington, twelve miles from York, that same day. We would be replacing three crews that had experience that were being posted to South Africa where we were originally going to be posted to. Well, no leave so off we went. We got everything packed ready to go and the three crews were instructed to be ready to leave the squadron at 2 o’clock, if I remember right, on that same afternoon which was the 18th of August 1944 and on our journey by coach to Pocklington we arrived along the road, I can’t tell you the actual number of the road but as we were about to turn into the ‘drome we saw a Halifax bomber that had crashed in the field right opposite the ‘drome and we learned later that it had failed to take off but they were lucky nothing exploded and the bombs were still in the aircraft as we landed on, arrived at the aerodrome which wasn’t a very good sight for us. We weren’t very pleased about it. But I did fail to say that when we got to the, when we first got to the squadron my pilot, Warrant Officer Groves was, got his commission, was then Pilot Officer Groves who, for the first time had to go to his quarters and the, us NCOs to our quarters and the first time we’d been parted from that angle but everything turned out right and we settled into out billets taking over the beds of a crew that had failed to return the previous day.
[Recording paused]
DM: Ok.
FH: On the, as I said we arrived at the squadron on the 18th of August. Unfortunately our stay wasn’t too long but we’d done a few flights from there. I think we started on the 16th of August, just local flights landing and taking off and we done, was called, or we noticed our name on standing orders on the 3rd of September to go on our first bombing operation which turned out to be an airfield in Holland named Venlo. Venlo Airfield. Of course everything was new to us with regards the information we gained from the camp commander, the bomber, bomb aimer officer, navigation officer, the gunnery officer giving us instructions where the different gun emplacements were on our route but fortunately for us they were few and far between and our flight was quite straightforward although there was just a few puffs of flak exploding as we got near to the airfield but the bombing went straight and good. The pilot, not the pilot, the bomb aimer I should say, took photographs of the bombs exploding and on our return journey our wireless operator called up to get permission to land and we were diverted to an aerodrome in the Midlands, just close to Cambridge if I remember right. The name I’m afraid I forgot there, the actual aerodrome but it turned out to be an American ‘drome and when we arrived there the weather was as bad as it was at Pocklington but after three attempts the pilot said, ‘Well I must go in this time,’ he says, ‘We’re very short of fuel,’ and the Americans switched on the ground lights to give us assistance but unfortunately the weather was so bad we only got glimpses of the flare path and as the pilot went in so we realised there was a hangar coming towards us. I was sitting in the top turret and I could see this hangar coming towards us but fortunately the engines were cut and the aircraft came to a standstill rather abruptly but lucky enough everybody was safe and wasn’t hurt in anyway but once we got out of the aircraft and taken to the debriefing room of the American forces that were stationed there we were swore at by the Americans for making such a bad landing but it turned out they hadn’t given us any warning of the ground wind and as Phil went in so he was blown off the runway on to the grass and the Americans weren’t very happy and neither were we actually. Anyhow, we had a debrief, a short debriefing and then shown to our billets and from there we were taken to the dining room. We were all starving hungry by this time. Unfortunately for myself I didn’t enjoy the meal so much as the others. It was a whole partridge and vegetables. Having been instructed not to fly with dentures by the medical officer at 102 squadron I’d taken my dentures out and which gummed me and of course where the other lads were gnawing the bones I had a job to gnaw them. I cut some of the meat off and was able to eat that but with regards gnawing the bones which I could see my pals really enjoying I was absent from that part. But our stay there was, lasted a week which we were rather surprised about but one of the reasons why we weren’t allowed to land at Pocklington there was a hill, I understand, about eight hundred feet high, where we had to fly in over to make our approach and it just wasn’t safe to do so and apparently the weather was bad for a whole week there. We finally got back and again we had a severe debriefing, wanting to know exactly everything that happened from the time we took off ‘til we landed. We mentioned at the time during the debriefing of witnessing an American aircraft while we was at the American unit being flown by an officer, a Lightning aircraft, a twin boom one and he was doing a shoot up of the ‘drome as he’d finished his tour of duties apparently and was going to be posted home the following day but unfortunately he went too low, hit some cables and shot up in the air, ejected his seat and out he come but the plane crashed and we understand that he would have been promoted to a major on his return and would have to pay for the aircraft. How true that was we don’t know but knowing the Americans we took it along with us like you know. Anyhow, the following day, the, that was the 10th of September we returned to Pocklington. On the 11th of September our names were again on the list to go on the bombing trip that was scheduled to take place the following evening. When we arrived at the briefing rooms we sat down waiting for the senior officers to arrive and of course with one movement everybody stood up as the CO come in and we were told of our target and shown it on the map which had been covered by a sheet until the officers arrived, turned about, turned out to be Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr and there was a load of, ‘Ahh’ because a number of the lads apparently had been there before and were very lucky to return. Anyhow, we each had our listen to the briefing and then we had our own section officer, like with Leslie and myself we had the chief gunnery officer of the squadron talking and warning us to be on lookout from the time we took off until we returned to the aerodrome as a lot of fighters used to return following the aircraft back to the stations especially if there was one crippled and as it goes in to land so they would attack and fly off again. Well the experience I had on that 11th of, on the 12th I should say, no, I beg your pardon, on the 11th of September was one I shall never never forget. We was miles away from the target and we could see this smoke in the, in the distance and as we got closer so the shells were bursting all around us and of course we was in formation going in to the target and it was just, the sky was full of black specks where the shells were exploding. The way I often explain it to people the sight was, visualising the modern day fireworks that’s, explodes with coloured lights and flares imagine that as being shells exploding all around you and that’s exactly how it was and while we was on the bombing run, the actual bombing run in the Pathfinders were telling, or giving instructions what to bomb. The red targets or the red flares and then a voice came over. ‘Number two take over. Number two take over. I’m going in. I’m going in.’ And everything went silent on the wireless and at the same time there’s planes at the side of us exploding, mass of flames. Oh it was horrible. We eventually got on course to come home which was a very pleasing one and the journey home was reasonable. We got rid of the flak and on our landing we taxied around to where our parking area was. The ground staff was there waiting for us and as we climbed out the aircraft they greeted us and we, as a crew, wandered around the aircraft and was amazed at the amount of holes we had in our fuselage. We, we wondered how lucky we’d been and as we got, looked up under the nose of the aircraft right where Taffy had been laying, his legs spread out, there was a hole in the bottom of the, where he’d been laying right up through the top and had gone right through between his two legs and out the top and he fell to the ground, Taffy did, and hands together and we all did the same and it was very quiet for a few minutes. We was all in prayer I assumed and we continued with looking around the aircraft with the ground staff and saying how lucky we’d been to return. And -
[Recording paused]
DM: Ok.
FH: We finally arrived at the tail of the aircraft and the transport was waiting for us to take us back for debriefing which, as a crew as we arrived we received our little tot of rum which went down really well. Apparently it’s a thing that happened each time a crew came back from a bombing raid, was given a tot of rum and debriefed which lasted quite a while and we explained to them as a, as a crew that we’d inspected our aircraft and it had quite a few holes and that in it and thought we were very lucky to arrive back on English soil. Anyhow, after that we had a nice evening meal and went to bed. I think we slept but it was a while before we went off if I remember right. Now, the next morning arrived and had our breakfast, had a look at the standing orders and there we were again down for the next bombing raid, which was our third. Two within two days and we all prayed, hoped and prayed that we wouldn’t be going back to the Ruhr which it turned out our target was a town called Munster in Germany and we were due to bomb the marshalling yards and if my memory is correct there was two hundred aircraft every half hour on the target, on numerous targets as well throughout Germany that day. Well our flight over Germany, the North Sea and Germany was quite usual with aircraft either side of us and we flew on and got close to the target when we got a few shells exploding quite close but, all these raids incidentally were done in daylight which I hadn’t mentioned before. So we could see what was happening in the skies to other aircraft but this particular day we didn’t see any damage to any aircraft. This was the 12th of September when all of a sudden I realised I was sitting in mid-air. There was no Perspex around me and I could just see my guns hanging over the tail turret and the ammunition across the, from the turret across to the tail of the aircraft. I guess I shook my head. I don’t know. And I realised that I was sitting in fresh air and had no guns to fire if I had to so I decided best to go up to, along with the pilot and sit with him which I got out of the aircraft seeing a big hole on the port side of the aircraft and the whole plane was full of flames and I saw one chap diving through the hole in the front so I picked up my ‘chute which was burning all across one corner of it. So by this time I guess I was losing oxygen and didn’t realise what I was doing and I can remember throwing it back on the floor, just standing there wondering what to do. With that, my saviour, Charlie the engineer, flight engineer saw me. He came running back, pulled me forward, picked up my ‘chute, I remember seeing his arm going across the ‘chute like this. He clipped it on and pushed me out but as I was going out I could see the pilot, white, his face was absolutely white and he was holding the stick back into his stomach trying to keep the plane on course I guess but that was the last I saw of him. As I went down in the parachute I don’t remember pulling the cord and I guess it was because the parachute was blown, blown to bits, or blown, the small auxiliary ‘chute was blown out and pulled out the main ‘chute which I think I went down rather quickly. I can’t honestly say how long it took me to come down but it didn’t appear to be in the air long but I do remember seeing a Spitfire circling around us who had been escorting, we had the Spitfire escort that day and that was the first I’d seen of them in actual fact but it must have come down within three hundred feet of the ground, flipped his wings and flew off again and I guess he was, he’d been circling to see how many parachutes had jumped out. I also witnessed this aircraft which I assume was ours make a belly landing in just one mass of flames. Make a belly, belly landing on the ground as though he was, he was just making a normal landing but it was just one mass of flames. With that I hit the ground and witnessed that there was a whole load of civilians and troops emerging on the area where I was about to land which turned out to be a field of sugar beet and away from buildings it was but there was a load of civilians but seeing a couple of soldiers I had no chance of escape I merely put up my hands and just stood there. With, with that they came and stripped off my parachute harness and was searched. Can you -
[Recording paused]
These Germans brushed their arms all over me. Made sure I didn’t have a pistol or anything with me and indicated that I had to pick up my parachute and being the size it was it was rather a armful to carry and I indicated to walk across the field and these two chaps was following me. Well we come to a barbed wire fence so one of the Germans put his foot on the barbed wire and held it down, indicated for me to crawl under and believe me that was quite a task with the silk parachute all rolled up and trying to get through which actually brought a smile to my face for just a moment. Being an English gentleman as I thought I stopped the other side to give them a chance to get through but that was the last time I stopped until I had to climb aboard a coach out on the road because one of the guards put his jackboot right where it hurts and believe me that did hurt and it lasted for several days. I just kept walking. Put into this coach which was parked alongside the side of the road and there I had a strip search, naked, everything, put on and then I was told to dress or indicated to put my clothes back on but of course my flying suit and all that kind of thing was pushed to the back of the coach somewhere. I didn’t see that again. It was only a few minutes before I saw Charlie, the one that had pushed me out the aircraft coming towards us and he was come in to the coach and we went, went -
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
Yeah Charlie went to get on the coach we went to shake hands with each other but that didn’t last and we didn’t really shake hands because my guard, one of my guards hit me across the wrist with his, with the butt of his rifle and Charlie just looked at me. He had scratches on his face which were bleeding a bit. Nothing too severe and he had the same treatment as I did. A strip search and we weren’t allowed to talk to each other. He sat in the middle of the bus and we was about to move off when Taffy turned up, the bomb aimer, with his two, couple of guards. We didn’t shake hands knowing that we’d get another hit across the wrist and he was searched and put in the back of the bus and we were then driven to some army quarters which we assumed was a local barracks. There we were put into a big dining hall or assembly hall and facing a door. Charlie was on the left hand side of Taffy, Taffy in the middle and I was on his right and we stood there for a number of minutes. We couldn’t talk because being warned that microphones or things might have ears, and they’d listen to what we were saying. All of a sudden the door opened and a big tall German officer stood in the doorway. Taffy started falling, falling forwards and we grabbed him, both of us so that he wouldn’t fall and the voice said, ‘It’s alright Taffy,’ and he raised his hand. He said, ‘It’s alright Taffy. The war for you is over.’ And nobody said anything and Taffy was by this time standing upright again and the chap disappeared and we never saw him again. We were eventually marched out from the building all along the canal bank or at least it was a towpath. I assumed it was the canal or a river and to our left the houses were all burning and people shouting and screaming. We were being hit with pitchforks and broom handles all across the backs and the two guards were trying to protect us from them which they did and we were very grateful actually to them for that and we finally got to these, some more barracks. We assumed they were barracks and -
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
FH: Yeah. We eventually arrived in some army barracks and were put in to a cell, the three of us together and there was only one bench along one wall which we sat on looking at each other and not saying anything, the fear of perhaps a microphone being placed and we just sat there. We eventually had a cup of very black coffee brought in to us and the following morning, oh we spent the night sitting on this bench trying to sleep but I don’t think we got much. Anyhow, the following morning we were brought in a slice of black bread which was horrible but later on we got used to eating it and it wasn’t bad but the first bite was ugh we didn’t like it at all.
DM: I have to just ask did you have your teeth with you? Did you have your -?
FH: No.
DM: You didn’t. No.
FH: No. No teeth and during that day or later in the day we had another cup of coffee brought in and one of the guards, the chap that came in spoke English and we had a conversation and he said, ‘We, we shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be fighting the Russians together.’ Anyhow, we didn’t see any more of him and the following day, the following morning we were, we started our journey to Dulag Luft which is the main interrogation centre for air crew. It was quite a long train journey. I can’t remember the exact days it took us but it was, as we got on the way one guard that Taffy was sitting with went to sleep and the other one soon nodded off and Charlie was close to the guard, saying nothing to anybody just fiddled about and took the revolver or Luger out from the holster of the German’s strap he had around his waist, looked at the Luger and there was no bullets in it. A little relief but nothing, no words were spoken and we, I don’t know to this day what made Charlie do it or why. He, nothing was ever said about it afterwards. Anyhow, we arrived at Dulag Luft and that was the first time that we’d been separated and we were actually on our own. How close we were to each other in the cells I don’t know but it was a very strange feeling being alone in a foreign country not knowing anybody or be able to speak to anybody. After a while a Yankee voice was, I heard as though he was coming from the next building, next room and he said he had a gangrene foot and was calling the Germans all names but I didn’t answer because it could have been a stooge you know. We’d been warned so many times about these things that took place but anyhow finally after, I don’t know, I think I was in Dulag Luft about a fortnight but most of the time spent on my own in this cell being tortured as I put it because right next door was the loos and if one wanted to use them they had to drop an arm, pull a little cord and the arm would drop down outside and warn the guards that was up and down the passageway that they, they were needed. Now arriving in the loo the tap was dripping and I went to get a drink and wash my hands, sent away. You weren’t allowed to wash your hands after using the toilets or have a drink and believe me that was real torture that tap dripping day and night, day and night. It was horrible. Anyhow, eventually I was called out and taken outside of the building along what I call a, it was a pathway along the edge of a parade ground and then they took me down, down some stairs and in this room which was quite a large one underground and it had doors all the way along which I assumed was individual cells and I had to stand in the doorway of one of these that was open and in front of me there was a clock and two German officers come through, stood in front of me, one with a Luger and the other started asking questions and asking where, what happened on the squadron before I left and about the briefing and how many aircraft was taking off. All that kind of thing. I didn’t answer. Just my rank and name which annoyed them and they kept pressing this lever on the Luger, the chap did, which I assumed was the safety, safety lever and I was three quarters of an hour I was standing there thinking, ‘Well, why don’t you pull it?’ At the same time thinking in my own mind nobody knows whether you’re alive or dead. So what. And I remember that even now I can see, see myself in that room. But eventually they said, ‘You’re too young to die now Sergeant Hooker. Go back to your cell.’ And it was quite a relief actually to walk back in to a cell and be on my own. Funny thing to say and think no doubt but that’s what it was. Anyhow, the following morning the door opened and I was marched out again. This time to an office a few doors along. ‘Oh good morning Sergeant Hooker. Have a cigarette.’ ‘No thank you.’ ‘Take a seat.’ ‘No thank you. I’ll stand.’ ‘Please yourself.’ We had been warned that this kind of thing again took place and he started asking questions again eventually ringing a bell and another chap came in with a book and he started flicking through the pages of this book and in the end he’d flicked through the pages and named every place I’d been to from the squadron backwards to when I joined up. Even naming Dipley as the place I was born which I was absolutely flabbergasted with and I thought well none of my crew knew I was born in Dipley. They knew I’d lived in Hartley Wintney but didn’t actually know I was born in the hamlet of Dipley so I thought well they can’t have spoken and told the Germans. Anyhow, he said, ‘You see sergeant we know all about you so what’s the point in killing you? You’d better go back to your cell and we’ll send you with others to a main prison camp.’ Can you for a minute.
[Recording paused]
FH: Yeah. We was, I was sent back to my cell a little relieved. Still not knowing how long I was going to be in this cell on my own. Was brought in some food. Another slice of this dark bread and coffee. The following morning the door opened, ‘Come out. You’re moving.’ And as I walked down the passageway so I could see the rest of my crew and several other chaps.
DM: When you say the rest of your crew -
FH: Well when I, yeah -
DM: How many survived? How many?
FH: I say and the rest of my crew that survived the aircraft. Unfortunately my pilot and my very good friend Leslie, the tail gunner didn’t survive the aircraft when it crashed but it was a pleasure to see then the rest of the crew and these two strangers who seemed to be on their own. They palled up together and stood together and Charlie and myself spoke with them. One was a flight engineer and the other one was a sergeant and we was all put on a train to go to a camp called Bankau in Poland which at the time we didn’t realise was in Poland. We was told we was going to Luft 7 and, which took several days train journey with no food but Charlie and myself spoke with Frank Meade the engineer and the tail gunner Tommy Beech and we stayed pals right throughout our prison life actually and when we finally arrived at Bankau we were walked from the station to the camp and there was this barbed wire fence right the way around. We could see, it seemed to be for miles but inside all we could see at first was a load of garden sheds. Rows and rows of them. And after being photographed and I think we had a couple of photographs taken which was, turned out to be for identity cards we were informed afterwards and then waiting outside for I’d say about a half hour we were eventually allowed into these, amongst these huts which held about six or eight people and no, no windows in the huts if I remember right but we was, had to sleep on the floor in these huts or sheds as we called them, garden sheds but fortunately Charlie and myself managed to stay together and Frank and Tommy they were in the same shed which, we didn’t get much sleep at night because first one wanted to use the loo which was the old drop of the arm again. Sometimes the guards would take notice of it and sometimes they’d make you wait and anyhow eventually a number of weeks after we were put in to proper billets as we called them. They were huts similar to the English military huts with, divided in to rooms and each room catered for eight, eight chaps. We lost touch, Charlie and I lost touch with our bomb aimer, navigator and wireless operator in this time and, but Frank and Tommy stayed with us and we had two tiered bunks so Charlie and I was on one bunk and the rest of them, there was a New Zealand pilot, two Canadians. What was the other one? Two Canadians, a New Zealand pilot, I forget who the, what the other one was and the four of us but anyway we, we got on very very well together and after a day or so we decided to, that whatever rations we got from the Germans we’d put, would pool into one bowl ‘cause we each had a, been given a small bowl and a knife and fork, or fork and spoon I think it was so that we could eat our soup which was rather a mixture. Sometimes it would be what we called whispering grass. It looked like grass been boiled up. Another time it was cheese which tasted of fish and as you bit it it was like chewing gum as you pulled it out your mouth to break it along with a slice of their dark bread but anyway we decided share it and the Red Cross parcels which we had very few of but sometimes we had a whole parcel for oneself which was very rare. Normally one parcel between four and it was all pooled and shared out evenly and we made quite decent little meals from the tins of meat and mashed potato but had we had our own parcel we felt that we’d open a tin of meat, everybody would open a tin of meat and just eat that whereas if we shared it we’d have a slice or two of meat, a bit of potato or dried egg mixed up. We thought it would work out better, the rations. Which in our opinion it did and we was quite pleased and we, the eight of us got on very well together. The times, day time there was a mass of people marching or walking all the way around the perimeter track for exercise. It was quite a sight. Some in clothing that had been issued, I forgot to say that we went to a transit camp first before going on to the main camp where we were, had a good shower and a good meal and issue of a Red Cross case which contained clothes. Fresh new underwear, pullovers, socks etcetera cigarettes and we shared this food all together when we was in Bankau but the, pardon me. During the daytime we used to walk all the way around the perimeter track for exercise and perhaps meet up with strangers and have a chat and because we were free to speak there although there were guards patrolling around the inside of the camp but you kept your eye open you could talk freely and it was during this time that we discovered from Charlie, no, not Charlie, from Taffy our bomb aimer how he knew this chap that stood in the doorway and spoke and apparently in 1938 he was working with, in a factory in South Wales with Taffy and they got on well together apparently and not knowing that he was a German, in early part of ‘39 he left to take up a job in Cambridge which they thought nothing more about you know. One moved on in their life. He had no idea he was a German until he saw him standing in that doorway which you know absolutely shocked him and he couldn’t explain any more about it, you know. But that was one big shock to all three of us actually that day. Walking around as I say for entertainment and exercise was something we done each day besides perhaps playing a game of cards which we did manage to get hold of a packet of cards, playing cards, when we was in the room but failing that life was quite boring until in the early part of, well until the Christmas time, I suppose, 1944 being our first Christmas in the camp we all thought of Christmas at home, Christmas puddings etcetera so we decided to have our own Christmas pudding which what we done we saved the crusts off the bread each day for several days so we just ate the bread. We saved the stones from the prunes that was in the Red Cross parcels. We cracked them open and cut up the kernels, we cut up the dried fruit that was in the parcel as well and the prunes, a few prunes, mixed it with the dried milk powder and margarine. A little bit of cheese was put in to it and margarine and it was all mixed up together and we had a what we called a blower stove which was made up out of empty tins and another tin with a little bit of fuel in which, wood shavings or whatever we could find and we turned the handle and turned a fan, make a fan, blow the flames and we cooked this concoction up for quite a while and it turned out to be very solid so when it was emptied out the tin it was just a solid lump of mixture but the taste was beautiful. We each had a couple of slices, each of the eight of us and we had a cream which we made out of the klim, klim milk, dried milk, mixed it all up and it was delicious and we celebrated our first Christmas away from home as you might say, with this pudding. It was delicious. It really was.
[Recording paused]
FH: After that of course or during that time we could hear gunfire in the distance which we assumed was the Russians advancing on the German line because we, there was a radio in the camp unbeknown to Germans of course and we were kept up to date with what was going on with the war and a chap used to come around and everybody was on guard, you know, different schemes each day to, so the Germans didn’t know anything about it you know and little messages were read out to groups of people of what was happening in the war but eventually we were informed that we were being moved out from the camp so the Russians wouldn’t, wouldn’t kills us and the Germans would look after us, with a smile from everybody. But the first time we was ordered out on parade I think it was, I’m not sure if it was the 17th or 18th of January but we stood on the parade from 3 o’clock in the morning for several hours in the snow and blizzard just with the, we had two blankets which we had in the hut which were wrapped around us trying to keep us warm and we had our little Red Cross cases with a little bit of food in that we’d shared out when we knew we were on the move and the clothing we, we had on, you know. A couple of pullovers and a couple of pairs of socks and that kind of thing. But anyhow on the 19th of January we were called out again early in the morning and I think it was about 8 o’clock, I’m not too sure, we were started out on this forced march. The Germans not even knowing where they were taking us. Just told to march in a certain direction. Then of course the march didn’t last long. It was just an amble of walking both by the German guards and ourselves and we was put in to an old brickyard to have a rest later in the day and we managed to find somewhere to sleep, the four of us, that’s Charlie, myself, Frank and Tommy and we covered ourselves with the blankets to keep warm. 8 o’clock in the evening we were ordered to get up, go on a night march which wasn’t very pleasing and we sort of hung about in the brickyard and most of the chaps had gone by this time out on the road and something made one of us move some pallets that were stacked up. We don’t know why. Nobody said anything but we all crept in behind these pallets and pulled them back in position thinking we wouldn’t be found but unfortunately a sniffer dog with a guard just saw the pallets move, apparently. We learned this afterwards and so the guard pulled them out and out we had to go. Fortunately the dog was kept away from us and we were just ordered out whereas he could have shot us there and then but at that time the hundred and, what was there, twelve hundred chaps that had left the previous camp were out, all lined up and we were marched to the front of the queue or almost to the front of the queue where the leaders of the Germans and the leaders of the camp were all standing ready to move off which was, turned out to be a very terrible night for us. We marched and marched and the snow seemed to get deeper and deeper. Eventually we were actually up to our waist in snow trying to get through it and of course the marching had ceased by that time, we, it was just an amble and people was passing and others were trying to get in, you know in to the walkway that the leaders were making. Had a photograph been taken I would have loved to have had one of it but no and during the night we were informed through the, and seemed to go right through the whole column of men that if we didn’t get over the river Oder by 8 o’clock in the morning we’d be left to the mercy of the Russians and how this came about I don’t know but we, we got the message and by this time loads of people were in front of us and we, all of a sudden the four of us woke up sitting on our cases. Nobody else in sight. What happened I don’t know but we must have sat down for a rest and everybody else had passed by and of course by this time the snow was flat as a pancake where twelve hundred people had gone over it, you know and who came around first or who moved first I don’t know. I don’t think either of us did but we eventually I remember all four of us standing there. I can see them now or see us now there. Standing. Looking. And we just took over, we, while we was in the brickyard we’d broken up a ladder and made a little sledge several, which several other chaps had a part of and put our cases on and we was pulling it along which helped us as we all linked arms, the four of us walking along you might say like kids linking arms and we had this sledge pulling our four cases on. Anyway, eventually, how many hours after I don’t know but eventually we caught up with the tail end of the -
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Fred Hooker. One
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-25
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHookerFJ160525
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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02:18:06 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Oberursel
Poland
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1945-01-19
Description
An account of the resource
The interview begins with some details of Fred’s life before being called up for service, including that his brother became a prisoner of the Japanese captured Hong Kong. Fred joined the Boy Scouts aged 11 years, and then the Air Training Corp when it was formed in 1941.
He volunteered as aircrew, in 1941 but failed the assessment test on his first attempt. He passed on his second try and went to Bridgenorth for his Initial Wing Training. After progressing through Yatesbury, Sheerness, and Bridlington he was posted to No. 7 Air Gunnery School and was successful at becoming an air gunner.
After ‘crewing up’, and further training which took them to various bases in the UK, they took part in operations to bomb Holland, were diverted to an American Airbase in extremely bad weather, bombed the Ruhr valley, and on 11 September 1944 they were hit by flak.
Fred goes on to describe having to bale out of his aircraft. He was picked up by the Germans and made to board a coach together with his flight engineer and bomb aimer. Fred was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Poland and describes life there together with the value of Red Cross food and clothing parcels. A hidden radio kept the prisoners current with the progress of the war.
The Germans moved the POWs out of the camp before the Russians could advance too close and they were marched through heavy snow and sometimes at night. Fred’s small group of friends tried to escape but were caught and made to continue the march.
Contributor
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Claire Campbell
102 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
briefing
crewing up
debriefing
Dulag Luft
faith
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
perimeter track
prisoner of war
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Dishforth
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Pocklington
RAF Stormy Down
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/887/11125/AHughesJ171102.1.mp3
f3de320ee01bc0b2759aeccd5626621c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hughes, Janet
J Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Janet Hughes (b. 1958) about her father Reginald Charles Wilson (b. 1923). He served in Bomber Command.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-23
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hughes, J
Transcribed audio recording
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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 Janet Hughes. The interview is taking place at Mrs Hughes home in Farnham, Surrey, on the 2nd of November 2017. So, Jan could you say your father's name and then say a bit about his early life and growing up?
JH: Yeah sure. My father- My late father’s name is, was Reginald Charles Wilson. He was born in 1923, on the 20th of- 26th of January, 1923 in, Hackney in East London. He was the third of five children, and when he was about ten the family moved to Ilford, or the outskirts of Ilford in Essex, where he lived until going off to war basically, in, in 1940.
DM: Right, do you know why he joined the RAF as opposed to anything else?
JH: Yes, I, I have a very clear recollection of what he said there. Basically, when war broke out he had only just left his grammar school, and probably I think he left prematurely because of the war, and he did a couple of admin jobs. First with the railways I think and then with Unilever, and he experienced first-hand the seventy-eight consecutive nights of the Blitz, when East London was particularly badly affected and when they missed the docks, you know, the bombs and the incendiary devices would quite often fall on the roads surrounding where my father lived. So it was, it was something that he- It was a daily thing, and one day when he went into Blackfriars to, his job, it was the 30th of December 1940, the night after the notorious second great fire of London, as it has become known, when the city of London was bombed very heavily, and the firefighting operation was limited by the low level of water in the Thames. It’s said that the Luftwaffe had known this and chosen that night to do the bombing because they knew that the low level of the Thames would hamper the attempts to quench the flames, and London- The City of London was extremely badly affected, and there’s an iconic photograph of St Paul‘s standing defiant amidst the surrounding devastation, saying ‘You’re not going to get me’, and when my father referred to this photograph, which he often did, he said that’s- That photograph it captures exactly what he saw, that the surrounding area was still smouldering but St Paul‘s was still rising, you know, like the phoenix out of the ashes, and he said at that moment he, he decided that he had got to do something, that he had got to fight back, and he, you know, like lots of young men at the time had a dream of being a Spitfire pilot, and indulging in dogfights and basically shooting them down before they got as far as London. So that was his plan, and you know, he knew that eventually, when he got to the age of eighteen, he would be called up anyway, and I think he decided that by joining the RAF volunteer reserve he would be more likely to end up doing something that he wanted to do rather than something that he’d been forced to do.
DM: Okay, so, he joined the RAF, the reserve, he got called up, what happened about his training?
JH: Right, well the training was quite long and convoluted. It’s described very well in his own diary, and, and in the book which I co-wrote with him in recent years. The early part of the training was sort of square bashing and general fitness for the armed forces, and he subsequently went to the United States on a troop ship for the early part of his training. So, it says in his notes here that he joined the RAF volunteer reserve in August 1941, by which time he would’ve been eighteen and a half. I’m not quite sure why there was a delay, perhaps you know, took that long to do the paperwork. He joined the aircrew, and they- The first part of the training was in, at St John‘s Wood in North London, and then in Torquay in Devon, and that was the basics of- The bit in Devon he learnt meteorology, air navigation, aircraft recognition, wireless telegraphy, and then the usual square bashing and clay pigeon shooting, and then he was promoted from AC2 to LAC, and this is the critical bit I think, he was posted to Marshalls airfield in Cambridge for a flying test, and this was in a Tiger Moth [chuckles], and after about eight hours he convinced them that he had the necessary skills to join the Arnold training scheme in the USA. So then, he joined the troop ship Montcalm, at Gourock on the Clyde, and this took them to Halifax in Canada. He commented that it was quite funny that he went to Halifax for the first part of his training ‘cause he ended up flying a Halifax, and, the crossing was quite eventful, bad weather because, you know, January seas and the ships weren’t very stabilised in those days, and half a dozen other- They weren’t torpedoed or anything, but half a dozen other ships that were in the same area were sunk, and at that time, about sixty ships a week were being destroyed by the German U-Boats in the North Atlantic. So, when he got to Halifax, they- Which was a sort of mustering area I think, they went to the USA and they travelled in uniform, and this is significant, they were the first aircrew trainees to be travelling in uniform, because America had only just become an ally, following the bombing- The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour on the 7th of December 1941, so basically that brought the Americans into the war, and that kind of was a game changer in terms of the way everything was organised. So then, they went to Albany in Georgia, a place called Turner Field, and that was an acclimatisation month. During that month dad celebrated his nineteenth birthday. Turner Field was run on the lines of the American army, so it was an American army air corps training centre, so they wore their [emphasis] uniforms, American air corps clothing, and they were treated like cadets. So that meant drilling and physical training, calisthenics at six o’ clock in the morning, apparently, they were given literature that told them how to behave and how they were expected- You know behaviour and etiquette, how they were expected to conduct themselves, and the bit that I think dad found the most memorable was marching behind a brass band, which was playing American air corps music, this was on the way to all meals and also before retreats, which was the lowering of the American flag in the evening. Now these young men had come from Britain, where rations had been in place for quite a long time, and when- America was the promised land, you know, they were waited on hand and foot by, and these are my father’s own words, ‘coloured waiters’, and that was something again that was quite strange to British people because, this was, this was the south of America, and at that time coloured people were not considered equal to whites and there was a kind of apartheid, like in, later in South Africa, they had to sit at the backs of busses and, in different parts of the cinema and they were generally treated as second class citizens, so this business of having them, you know, at their beck and call was something I think, quite a lot of the British people found quite difficult, because they just weren’t used to- Although, Britain was more racist then than it is now, they, you know, you still treated everybody with, with dignity. So, I think he found that, you know, quite, quite a shock, and also you know, in Britain they had to queue up for their meals, get all their meals on one plate, take your own cutlery in your gas mask case, and wash it up afterwards in a tank of greasy water, so to be waited on hand and foot, you know, and be served amazing food, was, was, was quite nice given what they’d been used to, you know, up to a month beforehand. So, after this month of acclimatisation, he went to Lakeland, Florida. This was a civilian flying school, which presumably had been commandeered because they needed the capacity, and it was for primary flying training, and that, this was a great experience. Dad went solo in a Stearman biplane, and before that the instructor had had to buzz off a herd of cows from the landing field by diving at them, and here dad completed forty hours of solo flying, including acrobatics, stalls, spins, loops and so on, and underneath them were the lakes and orange groves of Florida in beautiful sunshine, so what a change from Britain, and, they had a lot of hospitality with local American families and lots of contact with their daughters, so I think really this, this felt like a very long way from war. There’s some lovely pictures of dad during that period, you know, carefree existence, and then, at the end, the end of the course they had a few days leave and so, you know, not wanting to waste this amazing opportunity, dad and a colleague hitched off to West Palm Beach, and they booked into a hotel but while they were there they were invited to stay with an American lady called Mrs Hubbard, who turned out to be the daughter of Rockefeller, and she had an English woman staying with her who had a son in the RAF, and so they were spoilt by these two ladies who were trying to sort of do for them what they wish they could do for this lady’s son. And they were looked after for the next couple of days as if they were long lost sons, the house had an amazing swimming pool with an Italian style garden and an arcaded drinks bar, and they were, they were - I think they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. He- During this time dad met and was photographed with one of the few surviving Fleet Air Arm pilots, who had- Was one of the people who, the previous year had torpedoed the Bismarck, and enabled the British fleet to sink, sink it, and he was touring America as a hero, and he had also been invited to, to this lady's home, so they, they met him, and somewhere in dad's album there’s a picture of these, him with this chap, and my dad looks very diminutive in that although he was quite a tall man, ‘cause the other guy was much taller. So anyway, after this period they went to another- No, this, this was an American army air corps flying school, so not a civilian one this time, and that was in Georgia, again, for intermediate training, so he’d done the basics, this was the immediate training, and he started a course of flying on a basic trainer which would have been a more sophisticated plane than the Stearman biplane, but this is where dad’s fortunes changed because- And he was quite bitter about this, actually in later life, ‘cause he said after a lon- A number of flying lessons he was unable to convince the instructor that he was safe to go solo, so that was the end of his pilot training, and he, he, he did say that in his opinion had he been trained in an RAF flying school in the States, he might have passed. Anyway, he was disheartened at the time but he tried to make the best of it. One of his friends had been killed in Georgia on a, on a simple training exercise, so you know, it might’ve given him a stay of execution, and he said at least if he eventually died in combat, which he didn’t, it would be for a just cause. So then, by this time we’re in June 1942, so he’s been in the RAF for nearly a year, so he took the train back to Canada and this time it was to the Royal Canadian Air Force camp at Trenton, in Ontario. He did some interviews and took an exam, and was remustered to navigator, and the transfer gave him a chance to see some more of Canada. He visited Lake Ontario, Toronto, and Niagara Falls, so lots of travelling that a man of his age would not of had the opportunity to do had he not joined the RAF and left civilian life behind him. So, there’s - Then in his notes there’s quite a lot of very colourful description of, of the geography of various parts of Canada. So, then he was posted to the Winnipeg air navigation school, by which time it was August ‘42. The school's services were run by civilians but the teaching of the subjects was carried out by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Winnipeg’s in the grain growing area of Mani- Manitoba, which is flat as a pancake, so the relevance of this for flight training is that when you're flying at a few thousand feet you’ve got an unrestricted view as far as the horizon, and you can pick, everything out very easily because there’s no hills, or, or forests or anything to obscure your view, and the towns were marked by grain elevators and water towers that have the town’s name printed on the sides, so you couldn’t get lost. And they were spaced along the railway line so, you know, it’s like having a Google map underneath you. And these, these water towers were visible from any cross-country route so you just couldn’t get lost, because even at night there was no back- blackout in Canada ‘cause they had no need for it. So, they were there for three months, half of the time in classrooms and half on air exercises. There they flew Anson aircrafts, with civilian pilots. These were great big cumbersome things that had to be manually wound up, the wheels had to be wound up on take-off on a winch, and down again on landing. But one thing that marked him, during this period was the crash of a light aircraft only a few yards away, and the raging fire that ensued which made it impossible to rescue the pilot. So, he actually saw somebody fry, even at that stage, and the nights were very cold. They used to practise astro-sextant shots, one of the applications of a navigator, at night-time, but the leisure time was- As in America, eating Christmas-like turkey dinners every Sunday, and going to dances, socialising, probably a bit of womanising as well although he hasn’t been too explicit about that. He got his navigator’s wing on the 20th of November 1942, and at that point he was promoted to the rank of flight sergeant, just a few marks, a few short marks, again something he was a bit bitter about, off getting a commission. Although, that happened later as I will say later on, and then they travelled by train to Monckton in Halifax, stopping on the way in Montreal, and they returned to England on the Queen Elizabeth. Fantastic experience. It had been converted into a troop ship, so they had two meals a day on board, seventeen bunks to a state cabin, they travelled without escort and it took them only four days to cross the North Atlantic which was amazing, given the technology of the time, and they were on home- At home on leave for Christmas, and basically, by this time he had done, he’d been in the RAF for just under eighteen months, and was now back in the UK.
DM: So once your dad got back to Britain what, what happened next with his training?
JH: Right, well this was the beginning of 1943. So dad would’ve been just coming up for twenty that month, and there was- At that point there was a glut of trained aircrew coming back from the North American and Commonwealth training schools, so lots of them were held in holding centres in Harrogate and Bournemouth to await postings, and to fill the time, dad and a few others were transferred to a regiment training course, an RAF regiment training course at Whitley Bay, near Newcastle, and that was the February 1943 when it was pretty damn cold up there. So, it wasn’t until 19- April ‘43, so that’s three months later that they took up flying again. So I suspect they were a bit rusty by this time, and a party of them was posted to the RAF navigation school at Jurby, which is on the Isle of Man, still flying Ansons, and during this time my dad brushed up on his navigation skills because he hadn’t flown for five months, and this was achieved by means of day and night cross-country exercises around the Irish Sea, the East Coast of Northern Ireland, and the West Coast of Britain, and the weather was quite cold. He remembers using the toast rack railway on his days off, which ran from Jurby to Douglas, and he remembers all the hotels along the sea front which were wired off because they accommodated many of the so-called aliens, who’d been interned there for the duration of the war, in case they engaged in espionage I suppose. Anyway, so when this course was finished, he got some more leave, and then he went to the RAF Operational Training Unit at Kinloss, in Scotland, on the Moray Firth. So it’s sort of late spring early summer by this time, and he was now set for crewing up in Bomber Command and getting nearer and nearer to operational flying. This I think was a, was a, was a very, satisfying period. He said he arrived at Kinloss in the first week in June and the weather was fantastic, and stayed like that for the whole six weeks that they were there, (early summer in Scotland is often lovely), and for part of the time, they were housed in a mansion like property, where- Just for sleeping, and they were each given a bike to get to and from the airfield. So, they were cycling through the beautiful countryside with the lovely weather and the birds singing in the hedgerows, and he said the war, the war seemed very far away at that point, they couldn’t actually believe what they were training for because it all seemed so remote from what they were experiencing. Kinloss had Whitley bombers, these had been withdrawn from operational flying in ‘42 and they were known colloquially as flying coffins because they were very sluggish, in responding to the flying controls, that’s a major defect, as they were to discover when flying in formation over Elgin, to celebrate a special occasion. He doesn’t say what it was but I suspect it was someone's twenty-first. So after a few days they were crewed up, now, in his notes he hasn't actually said how this achieved, but somebody else told me that they just put them all together and let them pick their own, their own teams because I think it was thought that if they, effectively chose their own crew members they would, they would, they would gel better, as a crew. They would have more in common, and they would, they would be more likely to work well as a team if they, if they hadn’t been imposed on each other so they were basically told, you know, find you, find your - I don’t whether the pilot went round and said ‘right I need a navigator and a bomb aimer,’ and so on, I’m not quite sure, but this- And I’ve heard this from more than one source, that they, that, that somebody decided, very sensibly actually, that that was a better psychology then just teaming them up arbitrarily. So dad’s crew at this point was Flying Officer Vivian, S. R. Vivian, known as Viv, he was the pilot, my father himself, Flight Sergeant R. C. Wilson, as he was then, navigator, known as Reg, Flight Officer L. A. Underwood, that’s Laurie, whose the bomb aimer, Sergeant Ross who was the wireless operator and air gunner, he had two, two roles, ‘cause different planes had different requirements in terms of crew, some of, some of the roles were- In some other aircraft I think the bomb aimer and the navigator was combined. Anyway, Sergeant Ross was a wireless operator/ air gunner, known as Bill, and Sergeant John Bushell, Johnny, the rear gunner. So, for six weeks, they flew day and night, in this crew, just five people, carrying out exercises such as cross-country and formation flying, air firing, fighter affiliation and bombing practice, and they had to do some ground work. At this point dad was introduced to something called the distant reading compass, this was located near the tail of the aircraft away from magnetic influences, which otherwise would have corrupted it. It was a gyro-controlled compass, it was very stable and it could be adjusted by the navigator for the earth's magnetic variation, to give true north readings, and this thing had electric repeaters for the pilot, the navigator and the bomb aimer, so they could actually access the readings from the front of the plane, although the actual gadget was at the back. He can remember flying at night, trying to practise astronavigation, and this was difficult because they sky was barely dark. You’ve got to remember this was around the time of the summer solstice, mid-summer, in the north of Scotland and at ten thousand feet the sun’s glow was present on the horizon for most of the night so it never got completely dark, but the Grampians and the Highlands below looked gaunt and forbidding in what was basically a kind of twilight, I suppose. So, as was the case with many crews by the end of the training, the crew had become great friends, they’d spent time together at Findhorn Bay, on the Moray Firth, and on some afternoons, in the pub in Forres town on some Saturdays, and he recalled that he- They’d spent one entire weekend confined to the mess. They’d been confined there by the CO because they’d landed in error at RAF Lossiemouth which was an adjacent airfield, instead of Kinloss, and they drank a lot of beer, not surprisingly. They left Kinloss for some leave, but they never saw Viv, the pilot again because he had been borrowed to, to fly with another crew, this happened quite a lot, and he was killed three weeks later, tragically just a few days after he’d got married, while, whilst on leave, and again a lot of people did that, got married perhaps prematurely because they thought they might, you know, might not get another opportunity. So, this was before they even reached RAF Rufforth in north- In Yorkshire, which was the conversion unit for Halifax heavy bombers. So they got to Rufforth in the middle of August, discovered that Viv had been reported missing, on the 10th of August, whilst flying as a second pilot, second dickie pilot, which they had to do to gain operational experience before they could take their own crew out on operation. Anyway, so Viv had disappeared on the 10th of August while flying as a second dickie on a raid to Nuremburg, and dad subsequently found out that his pilots' aircraft had crashed near Ramsen Bolanden in Germany, and six were killed including Viv, and two became POW’s. So, Viv, dad’s pilot actually never got to head up his own crew and that left the rest of them a headless crew. So they then had to wait the appointment of another pilot, and this is when, you know, the party was over at this point, they’d had all these wonderful experiences in Canada and the USA, and Scotland, lots of travelling, lots of leisure time, lots of laughs, but at this point it became- It began to look, look very serious, it became a lottery. There’s no way they could tell from day to day, even in the conversion unit, before operations started whether they would live or die, because during their short stay at Rufforth, sixty air crew were killed due to mechanical failure of aircraft or accidents, and dad recalls an incident of the collision of two aircraft in mid-air, and another aircraft crashing when its propeller fell off into the fuselage, and another one came down at night on a practice bombing raid. So after a few days they got a new pilot, so flylan- Flight Lieutenant P. G. A. Harvey was appointed, and Sergeant A. McCarrol as the mid-upper gunner, they hadn’t had a mid-upper gunner before by the look of it. So, Sergeant McCarrol had been a drummer previously in murricks[?]- morris wennix [?] dance band and was well known on BBC radio in the pre-war period. The flight engineer was Sergeant J. McCardle, and that completed the crew for the Halifax bomber, which normally had seven members unless they had a second dickie pilot on board, in which case there would be eight of them. Now, the new pilot, Flight Lieutenant Harvey was a very experienced pilot, he’d survived two operational tours but these had been in the Middle East in 1941 and on Wellingtons, and they couldn’t really understand why this man would want to take on another tour. But anyway, he did, maybe he was after a, an award of some kind, but anyway he’d volunteered, but, dad points out that flying on operations deep inside Germany in ‘43 was a different dimension, it was a different ball game, and this is because cities in Germany were heavily defended by ack-ack, and night fighters armed with cannon, and equip with radar homing devices were everywhere. So, this was very different to flying in the Middle East in 1941, where a lot of the missions, although in a warzone weren’t actually bombing missions, they might’ve been deliveries and, you know, service flights. Now because Harvey was a seasoned pilot, they decided that they could fast track the process. So the minimum time was taken to crew up, to get familiar with the Halifax and to take on the new disciplines, which they needed in the Halifax, of a flight engineer and a mid-upper gunner, and dad had to learn how to use Gee, that’s spelt G-double-E. This was a radar device, for measuring pulses from two transmitting stations, and these were displayed on a cathode-ray tube which you then plotted on a special gridded map, and this gave pin point accuracy of the ground position, and this was a new gadget as far as dad was concerned. So, they had air exercises for bombing, air firing, fighter affiliation, and the latter exercise, so that’s fighter affiliation, was one to remember. This was the 2nd of September ‘43, they flew at ten thousand feet and a fighter would attack, that’s in inverted commas because it’s a mock up, obviously, training exercise, from behind and the two gunners would then co-operate with the pilot so that he could take evasive action. So, they would depart from the plotted route to dive or, or, or change course suddenly in order to get out of the way. Now in taking evasive action, Flight Lieutenant Harvey, managed to turn the aircraft on its back, and it was seve- several thousand feet later before he succeeded in righting the aircraft. Dad, the navigator had spun round in the nose of the plane, there were broken rivets rattling round everywhere, and the chemical Elsan toilet at the back of the aircraft had emptied its contents all over the rear of the plane. Not pleasant experience, and they were all shaken up by this, especially because, you know, Flight Harvey- Flight Lieutenant Harvey already had nearly four hundred operational flying hours to his credit and they didn’t expect him to lose control, they thought he knew what he was doing. But the good thing that came out of it was that John, the rear gunner, Johnny, Johnny Bushell, he decided from then that he wouldn’t- Then on that he would store his parachute in his gun turret [emphasis], rather than in the fuselage which was required by regulations. So, a maverick, and this action would later save his life, and dad decided as well that he would try and minimise the risk to himself, so he, he kind of devised this routine to cover baling out. So, point one, this is like bullet points, point one, helmet off, and the reason for this was you could break your neck if you had the helmet still attached to the oxygen supply and the intercom, so the first thing he did was take it off. Parachute on, for the obvious reason that it’s not a good idea to jump out without it, and then, this is one special to dad, handle on the left hand-side. Dad was left-handed, and aircraft was sometimes due- killed due to an unopened parachute with the d-ring, the handle, on the ‘wrong’ that’s inverted commas side. So, if you were right-handed, obviously the right side would be the right-hand side, and for dad it was gonna be the left-hand side. So dad had also decided that, as he had a minute or so to spare while over the target, he would fold back his seat, lift up the navigation table clear of the escape hatch and be ready to bale out immediately, if necessary because this was the point at which they were obviously at their most vulnerable over the target, and because the navigator’s job was very cerebral and was, he was constantly occupied throughout the whole flight, unlike some of the other crew members, this was his only opportunity really, to take a break. So he basically got ready to bale out on every single operational flight, just in case, and he said that he believed that these plans, together with the action taken by Johnny the rear gunner, gave them and Laurie, or gave dad and Laurie, the bomb aimer, additional vital seconds when the three of them were to save their lives nearly five months later. So Laurie and dad were saved by dad having folded up the, the table, and Johnny by having his parachute more accessible than it would otherwise have been. So, a week or so after this, this last training flight, they were posted to 102 Squadron in Pocklington to commence their operational service, so quite a long haul from joining at the beginning, quite a long process. So, Pocklington, is twelve miles south-east of York, it has eight-hundred foot hills, three and a half miles north-east of the aircraft- airfield. So while dad was there, two Halifax bombers complete with bomb loads, crashed into the hills after take-off, so the result of that was that they didn’t use that particular runway afterwards, because of the, the, the risk of running into the mountains. Pocklington was a wartime airfield, some of the others had been in use before the war, and the ones that were basically, got ready just for the wartime, only had temporary accommodation so they were all billeted in Nissen huts. These had semi-circular corrugated iron roofs, roofs and walls and concrete ends, not very comfortable, dispersed in fields, near the aircraft- Sorry, in fields near the, near the airfield, and they were pretty dreary, inhospitable places. The heating was only a central coal burning stove, so whenever they weren’t on duty they went for refuge and relaxation in the relative comfort of the sergeant's mess, or the pubs. Or famous places like Betty’s Bar, in York, or the dance halls like The De Grey Rooms in York. Pocklington had three affiliated airfields, Elvington, where there’s now an air museum complete with a, model of a Halifax which has been made from parts of Halifax bombers welded together, because none of the Halifax bombers were saved after the war, unlike the Lancasters, something else he was- Dad was quite miffed about. So anyway, there was Elvington, Full Sutton and Melbourne, and they were all sort of in a group, and they were commanded by Air Commodore Gus Walker, who was the youngest air commodore in the RAF at the time, only thirty-one years old. He’d lost his right arm when a Lancaster had exploded on the ground at Syerston, the airfield which he’d commanded in 1942. So mid-September, Pocklington, 1943. Flight Lieutenant Harvey, was promoted to acting squadron leader in charge of A flights, so this meant that his crew would not fly as frequently on operations as other, other crews. That was a mixed blessing, because it meant a tour of thirty operations would take longer if they were under his command. So, over the next two weeks they completed a number of cross-country exercises, mostly for dad’s benefit to practise his navigation skills with the new equipment. So he learnt how to use Gee at Rufforth, but in the meantime the Germans had learnt how to jam Gee. So as the aircraft approached the coastline of continental Europe, the radar pulses were obliterated. So the navigator then had a race against time to obtain as much data as he could before they crossed the Dutch, or Danish coast, and at Pocklington they had a, what was then, state of the art, new piece of radar equipment called H2S, height to surface. It was located in the aircraft itself and it sent out pulses to the ground, around the aircraft for ranges of fifteen to twenty miles, and the reflections that were received back were shown as bright specks on a cathode-ray tube, and the density of the reflections depended on whether the aircraft was flying over sea, land, hills, rivers, cities or lakes. So from this, a rough typographical map of the ground was, was translated, the quality of the picture varied but it was much better than what they’d had previously, and the map, was displayed on the cathode-ray screen. The best results were produced between land and sea, but if the navigator factored in his, his awareness of the ground position he could recognise coastlines, large rivers, lakes, sizeable towns, and other prominent features, both on the way to and back from the target. So he could use this information to plot the bearing and distance from these landmarks, and he could recalculate wind velocities, required tracks, ground speeds, and the ti- Critically the time that it would take to reach the target. So, with the help of H2S some more experienced navigators would have the ability to blind bomb, which- Blind bombing meant that you could reach your target without the need to use the markers dropped by the Pathfinders, and the Pathfinders incidentally also used the H2S equipment. H2S couldn’t be jammed, but the night fighters could home in on the H2S frequency if it was on continuously, and unfortunately this is something they didn’t know at the time, and some aircraft were shot down because of it and probably that accounts for the, the demise of dad’s aircraft later on. Another new piece of equipment was the air plot indicator, and this was available to the navigator by this time. That linked the gyrocompass and the airspeed indicator, gave a continuous read out of the air position in latitude and longitude, used for navigators, a navigation device but, you couldn’t rely on it entirely. So basically, the navigator had to use a combination of all the things that were available to him, and you know, his common sense and sometimes just basic geometry, when everything else failed. They had a handheld Ican that’s I-C-A-N computer, computer used in the original sense of the word there, something that calculated. It was a manually operating vectoring device, so they used that to plot a course, geometry really, calculate airspeed, make good their desired track and ground speed, and then they added that information into the main chart, and they also had radio bearings that were taken by the wireless operator and astro-sight shots[?], and they were converted into position lines by the use of almanacs, so basically, using the stars. But neither of the, these methods were practical when off- operating over enemy territory, because operational aircraft were growing faster, and the need to take evasion action at any moment because of flak or night fighters would mean that you, you didn’t have time to use these devices. And when no navigational aids were available, for some reason or some technical mishap, and map reading over cloud or at night, especially at high altitude, they’d have to resort to something called dead reckoning, and that required accurate plotting of air position, the use of wind velocities which had been supplied by the MET office officer, at the briefing before they left, and sometimes these were updated on route by radio, or the use of those calculated by the navigator en route. So they need to be modified all the time for changes to the forecast weather, to take account of wind velocity changes and any alterations in altitude, which might be caused for reasons that couldn’t be predicted. So, how did they prepare for a bombing mission? Well, it, it was a lengthy procedure, it occupied a good part of the day prior to the night's operation. So, the first thing that would happen would be mid-morning, ‘ops on’ would be announced, if there was to be a raid that night. So the ground crew would be busy checking each aircraft radar, guns, engines, filling the wing tanks with over two-thousand gallons of fuel. Armourers would load the guns with ammunition, and bring up and mount a mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs ‘cause there were two types in the bay, in the bomb bays for that night's target. So these bombs were stored in a remote part of the airfield for safety obviously, behind blast walls, and they had to be fused for the target and towed along on long low trolleys you see that a lot in the old films, and towed by tractor to the des- The aircraft dispersal points, and although the target wasn’t disclosed at this point, because of the strict security rules, you know, walls have ears and all of that, ground crews would have a good idea from the amount of fuel loaded and the type of bomb load where the target would be. So more fuel meant further east, further north, further away. So about the same time as the ground crew were doing all these things, the aircrew would be briefed, so I will try- I can’t remember where it was, I think it, I think it might have been at, at Elvington we, we went to a re-enactment of one of these briefings and dad said it was very good, so I’ve actually experienced this as well because, you know, you have the sort of flip chart with a map on it and then, you know, they lift up the blanket and you see Berlin and everybody gasps and, you know, Dad said it was, it was just like that. Although it is actually done quite well in some of the films as well. So, there’d be a leader for each discipline, so the pilots would have a speaker, the navigators, the bomb aimers and so on, and the navigators would be the busiest, they’d be issued with flight plans, meteorological information. They’d be the first to know the target, because they’d have to plot the route on their chart and smaller topographical maps, and then they would highlight towns, lakes, rivers so that they, you know, could, could recognise them when they were flying over them, familiarise themselves with the territory. Initial courses and airspeeds would be calculated from the wind velocities supplied, and these would be modified as more information was gained from Gee and H2S during the flight. So, the navigators- It was essential that they kept, were kept to their prescribed altitudes, tracks and timetables. This was to maintain the concentration of the bomber stream, in order to keep to their time slot over the target, which was no more than three minutes long so, it was really important that people, you know, did exactly what, what they’d been told to do and didn’t deviate from it. So, the aircrew would then go to the mess, have their operational meal of eggs and bacon, which was a treat because civilians were lucky to get one egg a month, they’d fill their thermos flask with coffee, draw their flying rations of chocolate and orange juice to sustain them, during the long night, and they’d also have available caffeine tablets to keep them alert. Then they’d get the briefing, so everybody due to be on operational duty that night, about a hundred-and-fifty personnel, were assembled in front of a large war map of Europe showing the route and the target. If it was to be the big city, Berlin, a gasp would go round the hut. This was considered to be the most dangerous target of all. The briefing was carried out by the squadron commander, the intelligence officer, the MET officer, and any other specialist whose views were pertinent to that night's raid, so that could depend on what the target was and what the purpose was. So the briefing would cover the size of the bombing force, the objective, of any diversionary raids taking place, ‘cause sometimes they’d have a decoy to put the Germans off the scent, the weather expected en route, and when returning to base, the forecast wind changes, the extent of cloud cover en route and over the target, and icing risks at various altitudes and obviously that would depend on the time of year as well, how the Pathfinders would be marking the route and the target, and any hot spots, danger spots for flak and night fighters, and then all personnel, especially navigators were asked to synchronise their watches to the second, to GMT. Then they would draw their parachutes and their Mae Wests, their life jackets, they left any personal items in a bag to be picked up if and when they returned, and departed by truck to the dispersal points and there they had time to smoke a cigarette outside, not frowned upon in those days, and then to check their equipment thoroughly before they took off. The air gunners would check their guns over the North Sea, and there’s a, there’s a nice little line drawing somewhere of the, the crew all having a pee against the side of the aircraft which was partly ‘cause it was more difficult to have a pee once you were inside the aircraft, but also, I think it was a kind of macho good luck, you know, boys' game. There’s a great little line drawing of it somewhere, I can’t remember where I saw it. Sometimes they’d get to this point and they’d have to wait for clearance of fog, the MET officer would’ve guaranteed that it would clear otherwise they wouldn’t have gone through the whole process, but sometimes it didn’t, and if it didn’t the whole operation would have to be aborted, and I think that must’ve been one of the most frustration things because they’ve all- The adrenaline’s flowing and then you’ve got to come down and you haven’t actually got anything to show for it. So, assuming it wasn’t aborted, at last it was time to take off, the crews were directed by the airfield controller to the runway. Many of the ground crew would then wave them off into the darkness, I think they felt a sense of ownership of, whatever plane they’d been working on, so they’re very much part of the team although they weren’t in front line. Then for the people in the air commenced the long ordeal, five to eight hours of freezing cold, heavy vibration, incessant roar of the four Rolls Royce Merlin engines in the case of the Halifax, in an unpressurised aircraft until they returned, hopefully unscathed, in the early hours of the following morning. When they got back they were debriefed, they were given hot coffee, a tot of rum by the padre, and again, this, you see this in some of the better films, and the- They had to be debriefed by an intelligence officer, who took notes about the bombing run, any details of flak and night fighters, information that could all be used to improve safety on subsequent flights, and then they had egg, bacon breakfast and trekked back to the huts, crawled into bed and tried to get some sleep and wait for the next one. Okay, so, they- Their first operation was a mine laying trip, called- Also known as gardening and planting vegetables, that’s the kind of code for it. This, that, that, this was supposed to be an easy, an easy option ‘cause it was not as dangerous obviously as bombing raid over a major city. So this was the 2nd of October 1943, and they- When they got about half way across the North Sea, towards Denmark, the flight- The, the pilot, Harvey, asked Laurie, the bomb aimer to take over the controls while he went to the toilet, and Laurie had never, he would’ve had some training to assist the pilot but not in flying the plane, and Laurie had never sat in the pilot seat of a Halifax before, and there he was on his first ever mission at the controls while the pilot went to the toilet. So, as they, as they approached the enemy coast, Laurie, the bomb aimer is at the controls never having- I don’t even know if he could drive a car, and Harvey had this urgent call of nature, and- Anyway, so, you, at this point there were no events, dad said if they’d actually thought about the magnitude of what was going on, you know, they’d of all jumped out, but anyway, when they passed over the cloa-, the coast there was a loud bang, which lifted up the aircraft, and at this point the Gee and the H2S went out of action, so they got to Denmark without these navigational aids, and they opened the bomb doors and they made their, their dropping run at eight thousand feet, tried to release the mines but they wouldn’t drop. So they tried to liberate them manually, but they couldn’t get them out, and Harvey the pilot, at this point decided to return to base with the mines on board, and he tried to close the bomb doors but they wouldn’t shut, so it was obvious that their hydraulic system had been damaged, as well as the radar equipment probably by flak. So they went down to two thousand feet to get under the cloud base, and got caught up in some nasty electric storms. But without technical navigational aids, dad had to pick out land fall as soon as possible, it was down to dead reckoning, and this was his first flight [chuckles], operational flight. So they didn’t need oxygen at this height, so dad decided he’d got to the loo as well. So he went to visit the Elsan at the rear of the aircraft, and he took a torch and he groped his way to the back, and he was just stepping over the main spar when he noticed a gaping hole beneath him, and had he completed the step he would’ve fallen two thousand feet into the North Sea without a parachute. So at this point he decided to wee through the hole, rather than complete the journey to the Elsan, and he returned to the nose to confirm to Harvey that there was no doubt that they had been hit by flak. So he had a drink of coffee to restore his nerves, but the damage was quite considerable. So, when the flaps and the wheels were lowered for landing, the bomb doors, flaps and wheels could not be raised again, which meant that if they were to overshoot the runway on landing, they would crash with two mines still on board. So they knew, you know, that, that, they were in great danger, and so they crossed Flamborough head on the north, North Yorkshire coast, and dad’s dead reckoning brought them back on course and they landed safely. But on landing one of the mines fell out onto the runway, and at the dispersal point the ground staff were amazed that in these circumstances they’d survived without a scratch. They thought the aircraft would be scrapped because the damage was very considerable, there was a lot of shrapnel holes and so on, but it was repaired and it went off to be used in other missions, and eventually was shot down with the loss of all crew, but that’s not dad’s crew, that was, this was another crew. So the upshot of this was that dad- After the war dad read flight- The pilot’s statement on that, this mission and he found it to be totally inaccurate, there’s no mention of the flak damage, or having to bring the mines back, although it is in the Pocklington station records, and dad believed that Harvey wanted to have an unblemished tour of operations on his record, you know, so dad, dad was very much a man of honesty and everything was meticulous and he was- That’s why he made such a good navigator, but he lived his whole life like that and he didn’t like- It disturbed him to think that other people could, could bend the rules for their own purposes which is what this amounted to. Having had a near miss, the mid-upper gunner reported sick before the next operation, never flew again, and sadly was labelled LMF, lack of moral fibre, reduced to AC2 and posted to Elvington for general duties. So, he said that because the losses were so high at the time this was at the peak really of the dangerous period, one crew hardly got to know each other before- One crew hardly ever got to know another crew at the base before one of the two crews went missing, you know, you’d notice, you get back to the base there’d be a number of empty beds and you’d learn that they’d not come back, and you wouldn’t ever necessarily know what had happened to them. Every mission to Germany, especially to Berlin was like going over the top, in the First World War, according to Dad, that risky. A success- A succession of these raids could bring on exhaustion, nerves, to anybody however strong they were mentally, and the threat of being branded LMF was made to avoid the eventuality where aircrew would just refuse collectively to, to fly. He said only 0.4% of all aircrew were branded LMF but it’s surprising actually, and he, he thought it was a huge injustice when you considered there were many civilians of military age in reserved occupations, who’d never have been exposed to such risks. Anyway, after this, first operation, the squadron navigation officer decided to check my dad’s log and chart, and he found both completely accurate, commended dad on the results, which he knew had been made under testing conditions and subsequently informed dad that he was recommending him for a commission, so it looked like he was going to get his commission after the war. So it made up for having missed it before by a few marks. So, the next operation was supposed to be to Frankfurt but the pilot decided to turn back, less than a hundred miles from target. It, it was frustrating for everybody else, being so near the target, because the raid turned out to be the first serious blow to Frankfurt and, later the flight engineer went sick and did not fly again. The next flight was to Hannover, this one preceded without mishap, and then they thought, okay things are looking up, we’ll- Looks like we’re gonna be successful crew, but then they didn’t fly on any more operations in October, remember that the position of Harvey as a, as a, as a- His promoted position meant that they didn’t fly perhaps as frequently as other crews, and they, in fact they never flew again with him, because he, although officially he did remain the A flight commander until the end of November. So dad got his commission, Gus Walker confirmed that dad was being recommended for it and he was interviewed for it, and during that meeting my father learnt that the pilot Harvey was being withdrawn from operational flying because he’d had enough. But he did get his DFC, and that was described as long overdue for his tours in the Middle East, but dad had a different view. So, now they’ve lost their second pilot and they’re a headless crew again, so during that period they all flew as spares. Dad hated this. Flying as a spare meant you replaced a crew member in another crew who as sick or otherwise unable to fly. It was very demoralising because you didn’t have any of the team spirit and trust in each other that you had when you were flying with a regular crew. You were just a floating part, you had little or no faith in the crew that you were joining for that night and they probably didn’t have any faith in you either, ‘cause they didn’t know you, and it was bad for morale of everybody. So, Laurie, the bomb aimer, John the rear gunner, and Dad, the original three, flew as spares for the next five or so operations and the wireless operator had disappeared. So-
Dublin Core
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Interview with Janet Hughes, One
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-02
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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AHughesJ171102
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01:06:41 audio recording
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eng
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Civilian
Second generation
Description
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Janet Hughes’ father, Reginald Charles Wilson, volunteered for the RAF in August 1941. In January 1942, he was posted to America under the Arnold training scheme and was later remustered to train as a navigator in Canada. After forming a crew at RAF Kinloss in 1943, the pilot was killed in action, so they located another pilot while converting to Halifaxes at RAF Rufforth before joining 102 Squadron. Hughes describes Wilson’s use of Gee and H2S, and how anti-aircraft fire damaged his navigational instruments during his first operation, forcing them to land with mines on board.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Moray Firth
United States
Georgia--Albany
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
102 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
briefing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Kinloss
RAF Pocklington
RAF Rufforth
sanitation
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/571/10320/BFraserDKFraserDKv1.2.pdf
7f9c985222c9f4a3d6bbf63c19e5c8d7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Fraser, Donald Keith
D K Fraser
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Fraser, DK
Description
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12 items. Two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Donald Keith Fraser DFM (1924 - 2022, 1566621 Royal Air Force), a memoir, his log book, photographs and service material. The collection also contains an interview with Sylvia Fraser, his wife. He flew a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 101 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Donald Keith Fraser and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-04
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. 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.
Transcribed document
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WO DONALD KEITH FRASER
DFM 1566621
101 SQUADRON
JULY 1943 – MARCH 1944
CREW NAME: WL EVANS
[photograph of Donald Fraser]
[page break]
[photograph of Bomber Command Memorial]
[page break]
Contents
Page
Chapter A Introduction. 1
Chapter B Prior to World War II. 3
Chapter C Joined RAF 23rd July 1942. 7
Chapter D 101 Squadron Base Ludford Magna. 11
Chapter E 101 Squadron Operation Dates and Targets. 15
Chapter F 101 Squadron Notes on Various Operations. 17
Log Book and Battle Orders. 34
Chapter G Christmas 1943 and Christmas Dinner Menu. 41
Chapter H After Operations posted to Heavy Conversion Units. 45
Lindholme. 45
Bottesford. 47
Cottesmore. 51
North Luffenham. 52
Chapter I Advances in Technology. 55
What if? . 57
Chapter J Aircrew Bomber Command. 59
Wartime Bomber Squadrons. 60
Bombing of Berlin. 60
A Day in the Life of a Squadron. 61
Clothing Worn on Operations by our Crew. 62
Contact made with Two Crew Members plus information on others. 63
Chapter K The Lancaster Story. 67
Further notes relating to Black Thursday including information given by Len Brooks our Rear Gunner. 73
[page break]
[four photographs of author and Avro Lancaster]
[page break]
INTRODUCTION
Over the past 50 to 60 years I have enjoyed reading many books about bomber crews who flew with Bomber Command during World War II especially during the period from mid July 1943 until the end of the war. These books contained many accounts of true grit and heroism carried out by crew members. There are, however, a few experiences recalled which appear doubtful, a number of reported instances which are far-fetched or quite ridiculous to have suggested could have occurred.
Crews of the heavy bombers normally consisted of seven crew members all of whom were well trained to carry out specific tasks and as a team made up a competent crew capable of carrying out the various operations asked of them.
Operations were normally carried out over Europe (mainly to Germany) targets being the main industrial areas, factories, railway junctions and yards and eventually towns and cities, such as Berlin, Hanover, Hamburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt to name a few, all of which by 1943 the inhabitants were heavily involved in production for the German war effort.
The Bomber crews objectives were to carry out the operations they flew on to reach the target, drop their bombs and return home safely with their aircraft undamaged. Remember all these young men were volunteers, highly trained with the Pilot usually the “Skipper” and Captain, this was not to say that he gave all the orders and that no crew member acted until he gave that order. The Flight Engineer and Wireless Operator were the most mobile within the aircraft, therefore, if a situation occurred within the fuselage either or both could intervene by giving a quick call to the “Skipper”, or should a fault occur with the engine, the Flight Engineer would usually be the first to notice and carry out the essential remedy while informing the Pilot of the situation with procedure carried out. For a crew to be efficient and confident they had to be alert at all times, watching, listening and acting immediately. Survival required a highly trained crew team with loads of confidence in one’s self and in the other crew members and in the aircraft, so giving them a very strong attitude to press on.
A dedicated, loyal and skilful ground crew, a strong reliance in the Almighty (or what faith one had) and with very importantly more than normal, good luck, having lady luck on your side.
I have therefore put on paper a few experiences which happened to our crew while flying over Germany during mid 1943 to mid 1944. The following are not from diaries – they are what I recall after a long time. The experiences are genuine, the timing may be a little out, but to the reader it will still show the excitement, the pressure, sometimes fear, but above all the confidence and determination the crew had to carry out the task involved and return back to base with a full crew still intact.
A question I have been asked many times “why did you enjoy flying and with such odds against staying alive?” My answer, I loved flying, I enjoyed the excitement and I volunteered. I also liked the thought of coming back to base to a good meal and I felt safe and secure in my sometimes cold bed with its nice white sheets, compared to the Army personnel who
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worked under much more difficult conditions not knowing when they would eat or sleep and under conditions just as dangerous as ours, in fact, in many, more so.
By the end of writing I hope that I provide you with some idea of what these then young crew members of Bomber Command endured when flying over Germany for 6 to 7 1/2 hours at a time in a Lancaster bomber with around 2,000 gallons of fuel stored in tanks in the wings and with up to five tons of bombs slung under their feet along the fuselage, travelling at 250 miles an hour in the dark at 20-21,000 feet in height with temperatures of from -10 to 20oC below zero and with German fighters trying to shoot them down and with anti-aircraft guns (which could be very accurate) also trying to blow them up, just to make our journey a little more scary at times to find that on returning when we reached the English coastline that it was covered in thick cloud and dense fog making it almost impossible to find somewhere to land. Some of the words most suited to express the emotions of the crew in certain situations could be excited, interesting, scary, fear, relief, apprehensive and difficult.
I think, however, that the Brylcream boys done a very good job all these years ago.
Happy days!
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CHAPTER B
PRIOR TO WORLD WAR II
1919-1939
The First World War ended in 1919 after four years of fighting and with a very heavy loss of life on both sides. Those who were lucky enough to survive and return home found it extremely difficult to find employment.
The Government had created some opportunities by forming the Forestry Commission with the role to establish over the coming fifty years a supply of timber sufficient to make the UK self sufficient in wood requirements. This was to be created by the purchase of large areas of land, mainly in Scotland and North England (cheap less productive land) then cultivating and planting this land with conifer species. To achieve this management had to be trained and forestry workers had to be recruited.
Forestry schools were established throughout England and Scotland to educate and train management staff. One such school was opened at Dunkeld in Central Scotland where a Mr Simpson received his training and he afterwards took up the post of Nursery Manager at Tulliallan Nursery, Kincardine on the Forth.
During the war the larger estates had suffered from the lack of gamekeepers and staff to carry out the maintenance and control of vermin etc, therefore there were many vacancies for people interested to fill these posts. My father and two of his brothers did just that, they became keepers on some of the very large estates in Scotland.
My father and mother were married shortly after the war and he took up an appointment as a game keeper on a large estate near Stirling, where my sister Jean and elder brother Sandy were born. In 1923 he moved to take up Keepering on Tulliallan Estate near Kincardine. The family lived in the East Lodge which was situated adjacent to the main road from Kincardine to Dunfermline and next to the land belonging to the Forestry Commission nursery. This is where I was born on 24th August 1923. Two years later the family again moved, this time to take on the position of head keeper on Donibristle Estate and lived in the small village of Auchtertool, Fifeshire where my two younger sisters, Betty and Mary were born. These were from what little I can recall, were happy times, the family did not have much spare cash but had sufficient to satisfy the family needs.
Mr Simpson lost part of his right arm during the first War and had an artificial part fitted. In 1949 I joined the Forestry Commission Research Branch and guess where I was stationed, at Tulliallan Nursery and Mr Simpson was still there. He told me that when my father left the East Lodge in 1925 he bought his hens and chickens from him. In 1950 the Forestry Commission built around 20 houses for its staff some 400 yards west of the East Lodge and Sylvia and myself were lucky enough to have one of them. Mr Simpson played an important role in our lives over the next 30 years, however this is another story.
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Moray estate during the winter months arranged a number of pheasant shoots to which a number of friends and associates of the Lairds (The Earl of Moray) were invited to attend.
The 29th January 1929 was one of those days and the shoot covered the area which my father was responsible for. The morning started with rain, however the shoot commenced and the guns and beaters started with good success. A good number of birds were raised and shot, as the day continued the weather became worse and by lunchtime, thunder and lightning had started so it was decided to call the shoot off. During the morning a few birds had been shot, but had not been collected by the dogs so my father with his two spaniels decided he would retrace the morning route and see if he could collect lost birds. The weather continued to deteriorate, while he was crossing a fence he was hit by lightning. As the day went on and he had not returned the other two keepers decided they would go and look for him. They found him where he lay by the fence with his two dogs nearby. This was a terrible and tragic day for all concerned, my mother with five children all under the age of 11, no house and little money coming in to support the family. My mother did have two sisters who stayed in Edinburgh and who visited fairly regularly and helped all they could with the family. The estate owner, the Earl of Moray and the Estate Factor were very helpful and within a week or two, arranged for the family to move to Aberdour where they gave us a house with a fairly large garden (this became quite a good asset especially when the War came).
I was told when I was much older that at the time there was much talk about what should happen to the family the suggestion being that the family should be split up with the three girls staying with mum and the two boys (Sandy and myself) being placed with other people possibly with a relative or with other people. Our mother strongly disagreed and said none of the family would leave they would stay together. I believe that my mother made the right decision, had the family been split up, our lives would have been totally different and not for the better in my opinion.
These were hard times for our mother (in those days there was not the same support or financial assistance available to call on as there is today) however somehow our mum managed to sort things out and keep all the family together. Unfortunately we as children were too young to contribute in the way of bringing in money to the home, our mum was a very likeable person and soon made friends and was extremely capable of working to earn money, she turned her hand to doing housework and helping people in their homes and for two days each week helping in Donibristle Estate house, which meant a fairly long walk to get there (one mile each way).
She and her sisters were always very happy smiling people always ready for a joke, this helped to make life much better for everyone. She still had friends on the estate and the whole family occasionally in an evening would take a walk of around three miles to visit Mr and Mrs Linton, he also was a gamekeeper on the estate.
Our mum was also a good Christian and attended church fairly regularly and also enjoyed attending some of the concerts and meetings held in the village hall, she also was a member of the WI.
The estate was very good to the family we received twice a year a load of fire wood, which myself and Sandy would chop up into suitable sizes to use on the fire. In the Spring the estate workers would come to dig over the garden and planted potatoes which helped greatly, this meant that all we (Sandy and I) had to do was keep the garden free from weeds and hill up the potatoes and plant some vegetables.
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As time moved on and we the children grew older all by the age of eight or nine years managed to find jobs. Sandy and myself delivering milk before going to school and then delivering groceries after school and at weekends Jean our oldest sister assisted in the Cooperative grocery shop. This of course all helped to bring in some money.
The school leaving age at that time was 15. We all attended Aberdour school initially. At the age of 11 the choice was either moving to Burtisland school which was a technical college or go to Dunfermline high school, both schools were a distance away from Aberdour and required travelling by bus. All the girls, Jean, Betty and Mary enjoyed Dunfermline High, while Sandy and myself went to the technical school. We all got excellent grades in the exams. I left school in 1938 at a time when the job situation was very limited with little choice. I had two interests, first to be a forester, my dream being to see all the high elevation land covered with trees as it was during much earlier times and take part in that operation. Secondly to become an Engineer.
I applied for two jobs, one on the Moray Estates to become a trainee forester, the other to become an apprentice mechanic with a garage company in Kirkcaldy.
Both replied and I decided to take up the forestry appointment. This proved very enjoyable and I loved the variety of jobs and gained volumes of experience working with two brothers, Bob and Will Ewan. Will Ewan was foreman and took a liking to me and gave me all the encouragement and opportunities to carry out everything which was available. The Second World War commenced on the 3rd September 1939 and when I was 17 1/2 years old I volunteered to join the RAF on flying duties and became a flight engineer. So in the end I got both my dreams to come true. After the war being demobbed in 1946, I took up an appointment to become a probationer at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. In 1948 I joined the Forestry Commission Research Branch.
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CHAPTER C
JOINED RAF 23RD JULY 1942
The Second World War started on 3rd September 1939. I’m not going into details regarding the reasons why Britain thought it necessary to do so as I believe most people know the reasons.
Prior to the war during the summers of 1937 and 1938 the Territorial Army held their camps on the outskirts of Aberdour on grass fields owned by Mill Farm, which was situated adjacent to the Sheriff Road. To us as youngsters it was exciting and interesting to see double rows of horses tethered along a single rope and the troops living under canvas in large tents. To see the different tartans depending on which regiment was resident in camp at the time, such as The Black Watch, The Camerons or The Gordons.
They were the first troops to be called up for service followed by people from certain professions and the general public of different age classes, one had to be 18 years old before being recruited.
All three services required recruits and there was a certain agreement of allowing people to join the service of their choice, however, if one service was short of personnel then recruits had no choice but to go where sent.
I was sixteen years old when the war started and when my time came to be called up I wished to join the RAF and, if possible, to fly on reaching my 17th birthday. I decided I would volunteer for the RAF on flying duties. Volunteers usually were given the opportunity to serve in the service of their choice.
I recall discussing the war with a few of my colleagues and suggesting that this war would change the face of Europe, and would also change all our lives completely if we survived.
I was called up on 23rd July 1942; my orders were to report to Warrington Recruitment Centre. My stay there was for two days where I, along with many more of my own age were fitted out with uniform and all other necessities. We then travelled to Blackpool to commence our training and embark on a flight mechanics course.
Blackpool like many other seaside resorts had many private residences available (usually used as holiday accommodation or bed and breakfast), these were now being used to accommodate RAF recruits.
I with others was billeted in Montague Street, South Shore near to the South Shore beach. This turned out to be excellent, the landlady treated us extremely well, and we each had our own bedroom and facilities. She had to supply us with breakfast and evening meal, and normal washing facilities. In fact for all the time I was in Blackpool, which was just under a year I stayed there, the RAF supplied our towels etc. In fact two evenings a week we had what was called ‘shower parades’. In total there was near 10,000 RAF personnel billeted in
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the town, so through the town certain buildings such as baths or swimming pool areas were converted into showers, rows and rows of showers with dressing accommodation alongside.
The recruits such as ourselves were divided into groups of between 40 and 50 and each group had a corporal in charge, he was in charge of all our activities such as the shower parade. We had to assemble at a point near to our billet on certain evenings each week. The corporal would march us to the showers then afterwards march us back, he was also responsible for us on all other activities.
The course of flight mechanic was a very intensive course covering both theory and practical work. This was carried out at Squires Gate near St Anne’s, three miles east of Blackpool and was originally a small airport. The hangers were converted to workshops for training purposes.
We were transported in bus convoys daily, morning and evening to and from the base with our same corporal, Lofty Clark, in charge. We also carried out the usual training and skills necessary to be a good soldier including physical training, assault course, rifle drill and route marches. Most of these were carried out on the area around the South Shore pleasure ground. The mechanics course lasted for five months. At the end of each fortnight we had verbal exams and after six weeks written exams, each exam had to be passed before one could move on. If I remember all our group passed their exams.
After the mechanics course we were given two weeks leave and on return commenced on a fitters course, which lasted a further five months, the same routine as previously. What I forgot to say, we had a break in the morning and afternoon when the NAAFI vans arrived serving a bun and a cup of tea.
By the end of the further course we were capable of dismantling an aircraft engine and reassembling it with success. We also had a basic knowledge of the aircraft workings at this stage before moving onto the next stage of our training, the flight engineer course.
We were divided into those who would be flying on Halifaxs [sic] and those who would fly on Lancasters, fortunately I was selected to fly on Lancasters.
Blackpool was a fairly good place to be stationed at, as with its many parks there was always plenty of opportunity to play sport, which was very much encouraged by the RAF. I spent most weekends playing either football or rugby; in fact for the 1942‑3 season I played rugby for Blackpool’s third team. There was little time in evenings for anything, as I said two nights were taken up with shower parade, then most weeks a further two nights for other activities. Every Sunday there was a church parade, one had to attend the parade but not the service if it was not your religion. Most places in Blackpool were closed, however, the lower levels of the tower were still open and I remember the organ was still being played and the ballroom was open at certain times.
For the flight engineers course those of us that were to fly on Lancasters were transferred to St Athans, South Wales. The course was originally intended to last eight weeks however, on arrival we were told that flight engineers were in such short supply that the course was being crammed into two weeks. To enable this to happen we worked a 12‑hour day, seven days each week, however, the course was a success and we all knew the basics about the Lancaster workings, although we still had not flown in a Lancaster.
At the end of the course we were split up into groups of six and told to report to a certain Air Training Unit. I had to report to Lindholme near Doncaster, where other members of crew which included pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, mid upper gunner and rear gunner were already
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at Lindholme operating as a crew for a period of four weeks awaiting for flight engineers to become available.
On arrival we were introduced to our crews and the following day we were flying as a complete crew, however, not on Lancasters (Lancasters were too scarce to be used on training duties). We flew on Halifax, this was a heavy bomber and gave the pilot the opportunity and experience of flying heavy aircraft. We continued training and flying at Lindholme for a further week.
As a complete crew and along with one other crew from the same course at Lindholme we were posted to 101 Squadron which was based at Ludford Magna seven miles west of Louth Lincolnshire. This was a recently built airfield; the runways and perimeter roads were complete along with the aircraft stand pods. Accommodation was nissen huts as were the messes. Roads and paths around the areas were still not laid; Wellington boots were the order of the day.
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CHAPTER D
LUDFORD 101 SQUADRON
Ludford Magna
Ludford Magna, a small village situated on the main road between Louth and Market Rasen, was to change dramatically as the area was chosen to be the site for one of the new warfare RAF bomber airfields. Work commenced in spring 1943 and by May the airfield was ready for occupation however, as with many other war built sites, many buildings were far from being useable.
The airfield had three runways with the main runway, which was two thousand yards long from north to south. The other two runways were 14 hundred yards, one of which ran east to west. They were all connected by a narrow perimeter track of which there were 36 standing pods. All personnel accommodation was nissen hut type buildings and erected on the north side of the main road running through the village, some distance from the main airfield.
101 Squadron took over occupation of the airfield in late June but even then there were no hardcore paths leading to the billets or the ablution blocks. This meant that travelling to and from billets or airfield, the only serviceable footwear was rubber boots. We as a crew arrived in late July and I remember squelching in the mud around the base and when it rained circumstances were even worse, and it did rain quite a bit during the autumn and winter hence the airfield got the nickname of Mudford (instead of Ludford) and was well deserved.
On days when operations were planned the routine was briefing which was held at a certain time when all crew members met in the briefing room where the CO (Comanding [sic] Officer) addressed the crews stating which crews were flying and which if any were on standby in case any crew members were unable to fly.
The CO would then open the curtains on the wall covering the maps and the target, after which the various heads of section gave details of weather expected on route over target and on return, also bomb load, fuel load and any other relative information such as height levels expected to be flown at by the different aircraft. Lancasters usually flew at one or two thousand feet higher than the Halifax, which would be flying at around 19,000 feet.
It was most important for 101 Squadron to keep strictly to the timing and height levels as with ABC (Airborne Cigar equipment) on board, 101 Squadron crews task was to cover the rest of the bombers flying on the operation, along the route to the target, through the target and on the return route. Example, if the target time was 20 minutes for all aircraft to pass through the target and if 101 Squadron had 22 aircraft flying, each aircraft would be allocated a time through the target of one minute apart.
This put considerable pressure on the navigator and pilot, the route was always discussed among the crew members such as pilot, bomb aimer and engineer in order to help and assist the navigator to stay on course such as any landmarks, heavy barrage of ack ack or search
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lights, as these would usually mean certain industrial areas, towns or cities. Also if weather conditions were good possibly a certain bend on a river or railway, or road crosses, these markers were always very helpful to the navigator to keep him on course and on time.
All crew members had different personalities we all, however, accepted that we were professionals and some of the best in our trades, and that belief and the fact that we worked extremely well as a crew. We trusted each other’s judgement and carried out the requirements without question.
The crew (our crew) was organised similar to a football team we had a captain in our pilot Wally and with a few key team players who had the ability to carry out other members’ duties. They were Navigator, Jimmy, could act as bomb aimer, Eric our bomb aimer had sufficient knowledge of navigation to bring the aircraft home, and myself as engineer could in an emergency takeover and fly and land the aircraft. The gunners were the crewmembers most out of touch with the others. In my position I could watch their turrets for movement and could keep in touch with them, and if for any reason their turrets were not moving I could give them a call. I could easily see the mid upper gunner Bill and see the rear gunner guns Len when they turned to port.
Eric our bomb aimer lounged in the front compartment of the aircraft on lookout for other aircraft and to aid the navigator, his map reading was spot on, and he liked to give a commentary of what was happening leading up to the target – such sayings as men it’s bloody marvellous, we are bang on time over the target, then this was his time he was in control, he was very precise with his left slightly, right a little, hold it there, left a little. I would be watching for other aircraft and for fighters, and as he said on this occasion that it was over Berlin I said hold it Eric another Lanc is just passing immediately beneath us. He said: “I have missed the target we will have to go round again”. In this situation Eric was in control and Wally our pilot even with a few strong words said to Jimmy our navigator “give us a new course to bring us round again”. There were the occasional shouts from the gunners such as “fighter on port, eleven o’clock” or “watch that searchlight” or “collision between Lanc and Halifax – no parachutes, poor bastards”. The wireless operator Norman (Nobby) was good at his job he never panicked. Nobby could obtain bearings when others couldn’t. I think he did naughty things on the frequencies to get priority. He had the warmest place on the aircraft.
Jimmy our navigator was superb, conscientious, every course had to be accurate and everything he did he gave a reason for his decision. Wally our pilot would discuss with him the situation for the change of course and automatically changed course. Wally was an excellent pilot, steady and a good captain and we worked well together, we the crew called him our taxi driver. Taking off with a full bomb load and possibly two thousand gallons of fuel was the most nervous part of the trip, after receiving the green light he would taxi onto the runway, line up, test the engines remembering we had probably some waiting for five to ten minutes, with slow engine revolutions which could overheat the engines. We together would open up the four throttles when the engines were screaming he would release the brakes and the aircraft would start rolling along the runway. When we reached the 90+ speed he would require both his hands on the controls and I would push the throttle controls fully forward, keeping the port engines throttles slightly ahead of the starboard engines throttles, as I found that the Lancaster tended to veer to the port on take off or nearing the end of the runway. If we were still on the ground I would push all four throttles through the barrier, this gave the extra power we only used this in extreme cases, as it was hard on the engines and used extra fuel. Once in the air Wally would say “undercarriage up” then “flaps up” and we would start climbing on a spiral course until we reached the height of around ten thousand
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feet before setting course on our operation. I would adjust engines to obtain speed required with minimum revs.
As I previously said 101 Squadron operated ABC, which meant we carried an eighth member of crew. A specialist, his job was to jam German radio transmissions to the night fighters’ ground based controllers, his operating place was just behind the main part of the port side about 6 ft square with no external vision. It was said that these members had no one crew to fly with and were allocated a crew on an operation base, this maybe true however we were a very organised crew and this arrangement did not apply. We therefore were allocated Ken as a crewmember and he flew with us during the remainder of our tour.
101 Squadron radio call was for aircraft ‘Bookworm’, control tower ‘Bookshop’.
Returning to after briefing was completed we returned to the mess where a meal was always arranged which consisted of a main course of egg, bacon and chips. We then dressed into our flying kit, collected our parachute and made our way to the crew room where we collected our flying rations, these consisted of sandwiches, Horlicks tablets chewing gum and a flask of coffee or tea. If you wished wakey wakey pills to help keep you awake while flying (none of our crew ever indulged in these) we also collected a package containing money and maps of the countries over which we would be flying on the chance that we may be shot down.
After a few operations, the crew was allocated our own aircraft, for us X² the dispersal point was quite a way round the perimeter track and close to the road. The aircraft was parked facing away from the road and perimeter fence so when Mac our ground crew sergeant in charge of X² and his colleagues required to clean their dirty, oily boilersuits they would wash them in a can of fuel and hang them on the fence behind the aircraft, then when the engines were tested the slipstream would blow dry their clothes.
There was usually four or five technicians allocated to each aircraft with either a corporal or sergeant in charge. They were a grand bunch of lads, dedicated and had to work in the open under all various weather conditions from high summer temperatures to severe cold and winter weather conditions. They also had a remarkable collection of spare parts hidden away in their crew hut, which they built up over time from broken Lancasters. This enabled them to carry out repairs and patch up any enemy damage that had been inflicted on the aircraft. This meant that the aircraft could be kept serviceable and ready for action without delay and not having to ground the aircraft while waiting for spares from the stores.
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CHAPTER E
OPERATION DATES AND TARGETS
[photograph of author]
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Operations 101 Squadron 1943-44
Operation – Date - Place
1 - 20th August 1943 - Leverkusen.
2 - 30th-31st August 1943 - Munchen Gladbach.
0 - 31st Aug-1st Sept 1943 - (Abortive) Berlin. Starboard outer feathered, landed on three engines.
3 - 3rd-4th September 1943 - Berlin. Held in searchlights for five minutes.
4 - 23rd-24th September 1943 - Mannheim.
5 - 29th-30th September 1943 - Bochum.
6 - 2nd-3rd October 1943 - Munich. Shot up over Amiens landed Tangmere.
7 - 5th-6th October 1943 - Hanover.
8 - 20th-21st October 1943 - Leipzig. Electrical problems.
9 - 3rd-4th November 1943 - Düsseldorf.
10 - 10th-11th November 1943 - Modane. Fuel shortage, landed Tangmere.
11 - 18th-19th November 1943 - Berlin.
12 - 22nd-23rd November 1943 - Berlin. Rear turret frozen up.
13 - 26th-27th November 1943 - Berlin.
14 - 16th-17th December 1943 - Berlin. Heavy losses fog on return. Many fighter flares around target area.
15 - 20th-21st December 1943 - Frankfurt.
16 - 24-25th December 1943 - Berlin. Rear turret u/s starboard outer feathered.
17 - 29th-30th December 1943 - Berlin.
18 - 1st-2nd January 1944 - Berlin.
19 - 2nd-3rd January 1944 - Berlin. Mug passed out through lack of oxygen.
20 - 5th-6th January 1944 - Stettin. Best photo in bomber command.
21 - 15th-16th January 1944 - Brunswick.
22 - 27th-28th January 1944 - Berlin.
23 - 28th-29th January 1944 - Berlin.
24 - 15th-16th February 1944 - Berlin.
25 - 19th-20th February 1944 - Leipzig. Heaviest losses in group.
26 - 20th-21st February 1944 - Stuttgart.
27 - 24th-25th February 1944 - Schweinfurt. Best photo in group.
28 - 25th-26th February 1944 - Augsburg.
29 - 1st-2nd March 1944 - Stuttgart.
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CHAPTER F
101 SQUADRON
NOTES ON VARIOUS OPERATIONS
In late July 1943 after completing my flight engineer course and joining the other crew members at conversion unit Lindholme near Doncaster, with two other crews we arrived at 101 Squadron based at Ludford Magna. The crews were always known by the name of the pilot and out of the three crews that arrived, two crews had the name of Evans; W L Evans and A H Evans. I was the flight engineer assigned to W L Evans’s crew and had flown with them at conversion unit, however, the records had been mixed up and showed me as flight engineer to A H Evans’s crew. The simplest method of resolving the problem would have been for me to join A H Evans’s crew and the other flight engineer to join W L Evans’s crew. W L Evans, however, said definitely not, I was his engineer and in no way was I not flying in his crew, the records were therefore corrected.
For the next three weeks we worked as a crew getting to know each other and familiarising
ourselves with the aircraft. When we were told that we were to be on operations we had
flown 33 hours in total, 12 of which was night flying.
Both crews flew, our first operation was on 22nd-23rd August 1943, the target was Leverkusen. There was of course much excitement among us and especially when at briefing the curtains covering the maps on the wall were opened and we saw the target, we were the new bods not knowing what to expect. We listened carefully to what was being said by the various Heads of Section regarding the weather, hot spots to miss along the route, where fighters could be expected and where flak would be very heavy.
Leverkusen was a German town situated in the near proximity of the Ruhr Germany’s main industrial centre, where a high percentage of their heavy equipment was made. The Ruhr had been visited many times and considerable damage carried out which helped delay their war equipment this was an operation to attack specific targets, which would further upset and delay their war effort.
After briefing we returned to the mess for a meal, which usually consisted of egg, bacon and chips. Takeoff was scheduled for around 21:30 hours so before that we had to collect our parachutes rations and packet containing money, maps etc to cover the countries over which we would be flying in case we had to bail out.
We then changed into flying kit before catching the crew bus out to our aircraft. The next task was to carry out the pre-flying checks on the aircraft, then start the engines.
Wally then taxied the aircraft along the perimeter track towards the takeoff runway, waiting in the queue for the aircraft in front to obtain the green light to takeoff. Then our turn, green light given, we turn onto the runway, line up at the end, carry out the formal checks between pilot and engineer. Wally our pilot and skipper then holds on the brake as I open up the four
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throttles, pushing the port two slightly ahead of the starboard two, let brake off and feel the aircraft rush along the runway increasing speed rapidly (this was the most exciting part of the operation as far as I was concerned).
As the throttles are fully opened and as the end of the runway is nearing, the heavy aircraft laden with fuel and bombs leaves the tarmac behind. Relief. Pilot: “undercarriage up” engineer “undercarriage up, brakes on off”. Pilot “flaps up”, engineer “flaps up”. As the undercarriage and flaps are raised you could feel the plane sink a little before starting to climb. Pilot to navigator: “course and speed, and height”. I would then reduce throttle to minimum revs to produce power sufficient to keep climbing at the speed asked for, then as far as possible synchronise the four engines to cut out unnecessary noise. The noise from four Merlin engines was a noise that you never forget.
Taking off and managing to get this large aircraft off the ground safely while possibly carrying two thousand gallons of fuel stored in the wings and a full bomb load under your feet, as I said previous, was always the most exciting part of the operation as far as I was concerned and I always marvelled at Wally’s skills in achieving this without any mishaps. I was always relieved, happy and knew that everything would be all right until we had to do it all again on the next operation.
We had no troubles with our landing at base on return from Leverkusen, taxied to our parking space, caught a crew bus which took us to the debriefing room where we received a nice hot cup of tea or coffee with a spot of rum in if wanted. The debriefing consisted of an Intelligence Officer asking a number of questions about what we saw on route, anything unusual, searchlight positions around built up areas, flak, fighter activity. Did we see any planes being shot down and did we see any parachutes appearing and anything else, which may be of interest.
We were then able to return to the mess for breakfast. While having breakfast, A H Evans and crew arrived, we had a few words regarding the operation and made our way back to our billet for a few hours sleep, luckily it was coming up to high moon period so for the next ten days there were no operations.
The second operation, which both crews were on, was to Munchen Gladbach on 30th and 31st August, we had another fairly quiet trip without any problems and landed safely on time at Base. We heard that two planes were late, one of which was A H Evans, we held on at breakfast hoping to hear some news. News came through that a SR Lancaster had landed further south due to fuel shortage, it turned out not to be A H Evans and crew. The following day we heard the dreaded news that A H Evans’s crew was reported missing and presumably shot down. This was later confirmed.
This was a new experience for us to know that seven young men who we had been friendly with, even for a short time, were no longer around. The engineer had come through the same training as myself – mechanic course fitters course at Blackpool – followed by flight engineers course at St Athans, then crewing up at Lindholme. He was slightly older than myself therefore not in my squad although I did know him on the course to say hello, and as you know both crews joined 101 Squadron on the same day and I almost changed places with him.
The same routine was followed each time we took off and continued to be the most anxious time and possibly the most scary and nervous moments of each operation. We soon realised that each operation was different with its own hazards and that flying over Europe for however short or long a period, it was a very dangerous and frightening place to be.
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The normal procedure for all aircraft after takeoff was to start to gain height, circling the area until reaching a height of around 10,000 ft before setting course for the target. Around the Lincoln area there were at least 20 airfields, each with at least 20 aircraft flying on each operation, that was why the residents living in the area knew when operations were on by the noise of 400 planes all circling to gain height. Once a course was set we tried to reach a height of at least 15,000 ft before crossing the enemy coast.
There were certain things that we had no control over such as the weather, the conditions on route could be quite different from that forecasted. Increased wind speeds, a tail wind instead of a nose wind, these affected the navigator greatly who was trying to stay on route and be at a certain point within the time space of the operation. More so with 101 Squadron, responsible to give protection by using ABC over the full length of the operation. Thunderstorms and heavy clouds could also cause icing up of the engine air intakes and front edge of the wings (remember temperatures could be as low as -20°) and if not dealt with could cause engine failure.
Fog, however, was the most serious problem, thick fog in the UK on return. Blanket fog so thick it was impossible to see anything from the air or the ground, this caused heavy losses of aircraft as returning from flying with low fuel levels, trying to find a landing ground was impossible, for many resulting in heavy losses in aircraft and crews. Conditions improved slightly when FIDO was installed on some runways.
There were hazards from conditions which crews did not expect as the Met weather forecasts had given much more favourable conditions, otherwise we should not have been flying. As soon as we flew over the Dutch coastline we expected to be greeted by flak and if ground conditions were good by enemy fighters, depending on the operations route, flak could be very heavy and accurate especially round the towns and cities. Searchlights then also came into play especially those with the strong blue coloured lights. If caught by one of these it was almost impossible to lose them they were also radar controlled by anti-aircraft guns, which were especially accurate and many aircraft became casualties.
There was also a fair risk of collision bearing in mind that on the route to the target there were possibly between 400 and 600 large aircraft (100 ft wingspan) all travelling in the same direction at the same time, making for the same point and expected to be over the target all within the space of 20 minutes or less (granted there would be a range of heights between some, possibly within a band of 2,000 ft). Think of it as 600 cars travelling along a motorway all doing 70 miles per hour, all expecting to pass point ‘A’ at between 01:00 and 01:20 hours. If congestion occurred the car driver would see and would slow down, there was no way of changing lane or slowing in an aircraft. It was therefore very clear to us as a crew early on that flying over Europe was a very dangerous and frightening place to be and if we were to succeed we had to work as a team, be alert all the time whether for two hours or eight hours. This we managed fairly well, we recognised that the safest place to be was in the middle of the concentration along the route. It was usually those who had strayed off course that were picked off by fighters or became casualties by flak.
Our navigator Jimmy was therefore a very important member of the crew (he was an exceptionally good navigator) the rest of the crew could also help him which we did if conditions were clear telling him of certain markers, such as there is heavy flak ahead to 11 o’clock, or we are just passing over a river with a railway line and road alongside or such like information.
He could then take action if necessary and give a change of course to Wally our pilot, or if we had a strong tail wind ask me to reduce speed slightly. So we had two-way conversation
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between key members such as navigator, bomb aimer, pilot and engineer but only with reference to the operation in hand.
The rear and mid upper gunners role was to continually scour the sky by rotating from side to side in their turrets, with one turning to starboard the other turning to port, the bomb aimer controlled the front myself had the only view to watch the gunners and watch ahead and to the sides, while the bomb aimer carried out his other work such as dropping window or preparing for his bombing run, therefore we were fairly well covered. If another aircraft came close or overhead, or below us on our bombing run a crewmember could give the alarm. If a fighter was seen and showing interest then mostly the gunners gave the alarm “fighter starboard, 2 o’clock, dive now!”. Wally would dive immediately and carry out a corkscrew manoeuvre then return on to normal course, this usually worked. If for any reason I could see the gunner’s turrets not moving I would give them a call, only once was it necessary to take further action (this is recorded later) usually they were just having a short rest or such like.
Fuel was also a concern, petrol was rationed throughout the UK as most of the supplies had to be imported, therefore fuel for aircraft was also closely regulated on Lancasters to 200 gallons per hour flying time. Therefore if the estimated time for an operation was seven hours, fuel allocated was 1,400 gallons plus 200 extra, a total of 1,600 gallons.
The flight engineer therefore did have some control; it was dependent on how efficient he was in regulating the engines (similar to driving, there are good drivers and not so good drivers). The Lancaster had six fuel tanks, three in each wing with the small tank on the outside of the wing which could only be pumped into the middle tank, the other two on each wing could be used in tandem or individually to feed the engines.
It was the engineer’s responsibility to use the fuel distribution the most successful way so that whatever happened the maximum fuel was available to keep the engines running. To such ends I fully used the centre tanks each fuelling the two engines on port and starboard when sufficient was used pump tank fuel into tank two, then using fuel evenly from the other two tanks to supply the port and starboard engines.
If anything unforeseen happened such as a tank being damaged from enemy flak or fighter guns, the minimum fuel loss would occur and I could re-adjust my method of usage by opening and closing valves.
All engines could be run from one of the four tanks, this meant keeping a log and recording every ten or fifteen minutes. It was also necessary to record engine temperatures and oil pressure and with experience listening to the noise of the engines could give a good indication of how efficient they were running. Fuel could be saved by making sure that, when possible, the engine revs could be reduced and that other control on the aircraft such as flaps, etc were being used at optimum levels. This saving in fuel could be the difference between touching down safely or not, on the odd occasion when fuel loss occurred from a leaking tank or when on reaching the base area it was under thick fog and extra flying was necessary to find a suitable landing site.
Life on the base was very mixed, flying on operations was usually carried out during the dark nights of the moon and these two weeks could be hectic, operations could be on two consecutive nights resulting in our crew getting to bed at around 05:00 hours and then having to be ready for pre-briefing and head of section meetings, followed by main briefing at 15:00 to 16:00 hours and once again ready for takeoff by 21:30 hours. Other times operations could be scheduled and then cancelled because of possibly extreme weather
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conditions over the UK or over the target area. The dark nights were therefore a continual case of being ready to fly when called upon.
The period of high moon was more relaxing. Training and practice still had to be carried out such as bombing practice for Eric; this was carried out on targets set in the North Sea a few miles off shore. Gun practice for Len and Bill carried out on a moving target towed behind a small plane off the coastline.
The station had an excellent gym where one could keep fit which was essential and a very good library of general reading material and technical information. I also spent a considerable amount of time on the simulator improving my flying skills and landing procedures, also the period when crews could have some leave. I always travelled home on these occasions.
We were on base during the autumn (harvest time) as a crew we decided to help the local farmer with stocking and collecting his grain crops as our accommodation Nissen huts were situated near to the farmstead, in return he offered us a pile of fire wood to keep our stove lit during the colder nights as the coke ration was rather limited.
Ludford Magna was a small village supporting two pubs, a post office and a small but very nice church during the 11 months, which I spent at the base. I had never been in either of the pubs. I had attended the church service on a number of occasions.
The Women’s Institute also ran a small unit situated on the main street where one could obtain a nice cup of tea and a cake, also within a mile radius there were two small cafes which crew members frequently visited during the day for a tea and a bun.
During off flying periods we as a crew fairly regularly visited the Kings Head Hotel in Louth where we had a meal. Crewmembers also received generous leave, seven days approximately every 6‑8 weeks depending on weather and operation timing. We had extra rations of chocolate, vitamin tablets and cigarettes. On leave from Ludford I always travelled home to Aberdour in Fife, Scotland. It was a long, slow journey, going on leave we usually managed to go by transport from the base then catch a train at Louth to Grantham where we could catch the train on the main line travelling between London and Edinburgh. This was usually an overnight train and usually very packed by other military personnel doing the same. The train usually reached Edinburgh during the night or very early morning then another wait to catch a train to Aberdour. The conditions occurred on the return journey unfortunately the train reached Louth early in the morning when no such transport was
available; it was then a seven mile walk back to base.
Leave was a time to catch up with family and friends and especially to catch up with sleep and to chill out and rest. I said earlier that we did have good rations of sweets, chocolates and cigarettes which I usually was able to take some home.
During the winter 1943/44 we had several days of heavy snow and naturally this added to the mud when it melted, it also meant that to keep operational the runways and perimeter tracks had to be cleared of snow, every available person, air crews and ground crews, armed with spades and shovels turned out to clear the snow. We were treated with the odd drop of rum to keep the cold out and our spirits up, and to keep us digging.
Our billet nissen huts had snowdrifts around them, these Nissen huts were unlined and in bad weather there was considerable condensation inside and this used to run in the corrugations of the sheeting and if the temperature was cold enough, it would freeze. We did have heating in the form of a round pot stove with chimney from top of the stove up through
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the roof. Coal or anthracite was the main fuel, it was of course rationed and in short supply. There were raids between huts to obtain extra supplies. The odd chair went missing along with any spare pieces of wood to help out. If you were lucky and had sufficient supply to completely fill up the stove and get it and part of the chimney extremely hot then it would keep the hut warm until the next morning.
During the summer the problems were different, it was earwigs that would climb up the inside of the huts and occasionally drop into beds. I remember one of our crew members, I can’t remember who, while sleeping an earwig crawled into his ear and he had to pay a visit to the MO to have it removed. Field mice could also cause annoyance.
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NOTES ON VARIOUS OPERATIONS
Operation 3
3rd/4th September 1943
Target: Berlin
We had a reasonably quiet trip keeping clear of the various hot spots on route and staying well on course, searchlights were many on the approach to the target with some very powerful blue lights. As we prepared for our bombing run we got caught by one of these powerful lights and no matter what we did we could not lose it, and if we did a further light caught on to us. We were flying at 22,000 ft; Wally decided the best manoeuvre was to put the aircraft into a power dive and loose [sic] height quickly.
After four minutes we were down to 18,000 ft and still dazzled by its glare just then a Halifax, which was flying at a much lower altitude, drifted across under us and the light caught on to it, then the Halifax completely exploded. It had received the full blast possibly intended for us. These blue searchlights and guns were radar controlled and worked together.
We reached the target and bombed at the lower level then set for home and had a quiet trip back to base. We were a bit shaken up by what had happened to the Halifax and in future made a mental note to keep well clear of blue searchlights. The navigator noted in his log the position of this light so if possible it could be targeted for special attention.
Operation 6 (705 hours)
2nd-3rd October 1943
Target: Munich
Takeoff time for the operation was 18:45 hours. For us as a crew this was a quiet trip, we had no problems with enemy fighters, searchlights were few and by keeping strictly on course found no problems with ack-ack. We reached the target on time, bombed and started on our way home still without any troubles, then as we thought we were doing well without warning we were shot up by anti aircraft guns near the town of Amiens which caught the underside of the body of the aircraft and along the wings. From this we developed a fuel leak. In trying to evade further damage from the anti aircraft guns Wally put the aircraft into a power dive at around 21,000 ft, trying to pull it out took Wally and myself great strength pulling on the control column, we were down to 5,000 ft when we finally levelled out. On inspecting the aircraft at Tangmere we found that many of the rivets on the lower side of the wings had been stripped open owing to the strain on the wings caused by the speed in diving, and counted over 80 holes of various sizes along the body and wings however after refuelling the following day we decided the aircraft was airworthy and safe enough to fly back to base where we could have repairs carried out quickly. Mac was not amused when he saw the Lanc X not X² but was pleased that we had brought it back safely for his team to repair it.
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Operation 8
19th/20th October
Target: Berlin
During the week previously I had been told that more new Lancasters would be arriving at base and the one with X² as its recognition number would be allocated to our crew and from then on for our use on operations. Up until that date we operated on whichever aircraft was available. Mac, a ground engineer (Sergeant) had arrived on the station in July, until now he was a spare engineer, X² became his charge for all servicing and repairs. We struck up a great relationship between us and after each operation, as soon as possible I would contact Mac and tell him of any problems which we had experienced during the flight. I was thrilled to think I would be the only person operating these engines and I could nurse then [sic] whenever possible and be reasonably sure that they had not been misused for no good reason. Mac had warned me that because of the lack of time, the aircraft had been checked and was serviceable, however, he and his team had not yet had the time to check all electrical and hydraulic circuits.
Takeoff was 17:30 hours and all went well until I retracted the undercarriage, it appeared to lift ok but the warning lights indicated that it had not fully locked. We proceeded to circle and climb and as we reached the Dutch coastline Nobby, our wireless operator, was having problems with his equipment, I then had a temperature gauge on one of the engines reading an excessively high temperature. The engine appeared to be working satisfactorily, however, we were still only a short time into our operation. I was concerned what may continue to happen and without radio contact we could have a problem.
We still had a full bomb load on board and high levels of fuel, under these conditions we could not return to base and land without losing our bombs. Wally was in agreement with Jimmy our navigator, they decided that they would set course for Texel and drop our bombs on the installation there. This we did then returned to base. As we had no contact with ground control we landed without permission.
On return before landing, however, we dropped our undercarriage and as the lights were not showing we did do a shallow dive with a quick pull up, this jerked the undercarriage down and all was well. The problems were resolved, the pressure gauge was faulty, meaning the undercarriage was not fully engaging because of limited pressure on the hydraulics.
Operation 10
11th/12th November 1943
Target: Modane
Normally as we have said previously operations were usually carried out during the nights when there was no moon. This was full moon; a beautiful bright night with clear skies which meant that aircraft flying could be seen for great distances. We had no trouble in reaching the target with little or no opposition from enemy fighters, searchlights or flak. Even on the way home it was trouble free and we could see and watch the marvellous sights of the high mountains as we passed over them and then without notice flying over Amiens a blue searchlight ‘coned’ us, immediately followed by heavy and accurate ack-ack fire which burst very close to us, causing some damage to the underside of the aircraft and to one of the fuel tanks, luckily no crew member was injured.
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This was not a great problem it only meant isolating the tank involved, eventually causing a fuel shortage. I said we would not have sufficient fuel to reach base, so Jimmy (our navigator) gave Wally a course for Tangmere in South England where we landed. On checking we found that the aircraft was not too badly damaged around 50 holes of various sizes along the underside of the fuselage and two holes in the side and front window where a piece of shrapnel entered in and out again, as well as cutting a hole in the sleeve of my flying jacket. This I did not know until I was removing my jacket.
The following morning we refuelled and returned to base.
Operation 14 (Black Thursday)
16th-17th December 1943
Target: Berlin
This was supposed to be a very quiet trip as reported at briefing in the late afternoon. The weather was so bad over Europe that no fighters would be able to fly therefore the route would be straight to the capital Berlin, and straight back out – should be a very easy journey, unfortunately things did not turn out this way.
As we crossed over the Dutch coast the weather took a dramatic change and instead of cloud and thick fog, conditions were good for flying and the fighters which were supposed to be sitting on the ground were flying on strength and interrupting the bomber stream, and we noted a few running battles and a number of aircraft being shot down. Within a short time it was clear that this was going to be a night to remember. The attacks continued all the way to the target, fortunately we remained clear of any trouble except for seeing the odd fighter going in the opposite direction.
There was the usual heavy concentration of searchlights and heavy activity of ack ack over the target creating a heavy barrage. We bombed on target and set on our route for home, this proved uneventful for us although we did see a few fighter battles being continued.
The weather by this time was beginning to close in with much more low cloud as a result Wally decided to carry out a gentle decent, reaching the coastline at around 2,000 ft and by this time we knew that there would be trouble with low cloud and fog. We were alerted by base that Ludford was fog-bound and that we should proceed to Driffield, this was when it became very difficult. By now all the crewmembers were active in trying to find any ground markers all with little success, Eric who was still in his front position shouted “pull up Wally – I’ve just seen a barrage balloon”. Jimmy quietly informed us we must be over Hull, I’ll use this as a reference check.
By now we had been in the air for 7 1/2 hours and from my calculations our fuel was becoming in short supply. Nobby (wireless operator): “I’m picking up a signal” RT messages from Dishforth and Catfoss but they could see no lights through the fog.
Then Catfoss offered to put a light on for us, they, however, realised that we were very low and put the beam aimed parallel to the ground.
Presumably, because of the light what Wally and I saw was a farmhouse and buildings, we both acted simultaneously, Wally pulled the control unit full back, I slammed the throttle fully open, luckily I had been flying with the engine booster pumps on so there was no delay in the engines producing full power. As the power emerged we somehow managed to lift the aircraft over the buildings we must have been only feet away from the ground because as the
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aircraft pulled up the tail wheel clipped the farm entrance gate, I think that it must be true to say that the beam of light from Catfoss saved our lives.
Wally: “How much fuel have we left?” My reply, ”Very little, what should we do?” Jimmy: “Take course for base and try to land there”. We decided to return to base and as luck would have it Eric caught a brief glimpse of something he recognised followed by a few sodium lights of the outer ring lights and as we circled round Wally said “I think I will go round again as I will then have a better chance of landing”. “No” I said, “we do not have the fuel for that”. So with some quick manoeuvring he managed to bring the aircraft back on course. Unfortunately, as I have said previously there are so many airfields in Lincolnshire that the outer perimeter lights cross over each other and this is what happened to us because we were flying so low we managed to pick up the occasional light expecting it still to be the lights for Ludford. Unfortunately we had crossed over and unbeknown to us were travelling on the lights for Wickenby. On having a glimpse of the runway lights Wally turned in and asked for permission to land thinking it was Ludford, Ludford control said yes but we can’t see you. We landed safely part way down the runway the fog was still very thick. Wally to control: “We have landed but fog too thick to see”. Control: “You have not landed where are you?”. Wally and I looked at each other “Wally we have haven’t we?” Then a further voice came on, this is control Wickenby we think you have landed here “who are you?” Wally told them and asked them to give directions. Leave the aircraft where it is, we think it is still on the runway, we will send transport to collect you when we find you. After 20 minutes a crew bus collected us and eventually dropped us off at the mess where we had a meal and it was Wickenby.
Wickenby was a wartime base similar to Ludford and with similar living accommodation. We were given a nissen hut where we had a cold bed. As we were extremely tired after our ordeal we had a good sleep.
We woke up to a much better day and there on the runway was Lancaster X² just where we abandoned it. I arranged for fuel and a starter trolley to be delivered, prior to refuelling Wally and I started the engines, carried out the pre-flying checks.
The engines fired up and ran for 2 to 3 minutes then began spluttering and then stopped. We had run out of fuel, the decision not to go round again was the correct decision.
Mac our ground engineer and his staff were there to meet us on our return and gave hand signals in order to park up on our parking point. Mac said: “where have you been” and gave me a big hug. “I think I heard the old girl last night and we came running out hoping to see her, I’m sure it was her she has a noise all of her own, a sweeter, quieter noise”. However, when we checked the time we thought that we must have been mistaken because we were sure that she did not have the fuel to last that time. Then we heard that a Lancaster had crashed on the rising ground hear [sic] Louth so we then went to bed – none of our aircraft landed last night, apparently they are scattered across the east side of England as they are from all the other bases round about.
“Is she ok?” Mac asked. “Yes” I say. “You might however check over the engine booster pumps as they were used a lot last night”. Mac: “What’s happened to the cowlings around the tail wheel?” Me: “Oh, give the tail wheel mounting a good inspection Mac”. Mac “Why, what happened, surely Wally didn’t do this on landing, he usually lands on the main wheel first”. Me “No, we hit a gate”. Mac “You what? You hit a gate, why didn’t you open it first!” Mac: “Yes, will check her over and make her ready for tonight if required”. Fortunately the fog again returned with poor visibility, it was 4 days before we flew again and then the operation was Frankfurt.
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We found out later that out of the 483 Lancasters that flew that night 25 were lost over Europe from a combination of attack from night fighters, flak and collisions. Another 29 Lancasters from crashes, which occurred due to the thick fog conditions experienced around the airfield on returning home and trying to land.
Mac also confessed that he and his engineers were completely fed up with the time they had spent working on the carburetting on the engines, ensuring that the fuel taken up by the engines was the least possible and me insisting that they check the volume over and over again until no more could be done.
He now agreed that all the effort made now paid off as if not there was no way that she could have kept flying for that period of time (8 hours 30 minutes) and he said thank you.
Each aircraft carried seven crewmembers, 101 Squadron aircraft carried eight crewmembers. On the attached page there is a paragraph which Len Brooks, our rear gunner told his recollection of the night’s events due to the fog.
Considering the events of that night in a rational way it is difficult to believe what happened could have happened with a satisfactory ending.
We had travelled across Europe direct to Berlin and back escaping enemy fighters, flash lights and enemy ack ack fire without mishaps, only to arrive back in Lincolnshire to find all the eastern side of the UK that the cloud base had almost reached ground level. Base diverted us to Driffield and we found ourselves over Hull and among barrage balloons. We were flying low to try to find some marker which we could relate to such as outer ring lighting or runway lighting, as there were a number of airfields in that area.
Nobby our wireless operator said I’m picking up RT messages from Driffield, Dishforth and Catfoss but they could not see us because of the fog. Catfoss offered to put a light up for us realising we were so low, their beam was almost parallel to the ground. How was it that the beam came on at that precise moment? How was it that we acted so quickly with the control column and obtained such a quick response from the engines? The aircraft must have climbed at 40‑45% because as the power took over the tail wheel caught the gate leading into the farmhouse, meaning that the aircraft was at most four feet from ground (travelling at 150 miles per hour), this meant covering the ground at 88 ft per second. The time we had to clear the farmhouse and building was less than one second, how could that happen?
We know what Len Brooks said, he felt the power from the engines and looked down and saw the chickens in the farmyard scampering away from their coupes denoting that the aircraft had climbed exceptionally quickly. How did the aircraft pull itself up and over a two storey building in such a short distance? What would the consequences of been had the aircraft not made it? How many people were in the house; farmer’s wife and family? How many children? In fact what was their experience of it, did they sleep through it or were they very scared? We don’t know. How many animals were in the steading, was there a milking herd of 20 to 30 cows? The destruction could have been tremendous, as it was no one was injured as far as we know.
We gained some height; Jimmy gave Wally a course back to base. Why was it just at that precise moment that the fog thinned to allow Eric to recognise an object followed by the sodium lights of the base outer circle? Wally saying that he thought he should go round again, I say no we haven’t the fuel, Wally doing an unconventional manoeuvre to bring the aircraft back on course and immediately picking out further lights of the outer ring. However, by this time we had left Ludford outer ring and crossed over onto Wickenby outer ring. We kept on circling round very low to keep lights in sight and luckily spotted the runway lights
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and landing part way along the runway thinking we had landed at base surprised to find it was Wickenby we had landed at, then being told to abandon the plane where it was on the runway. Had we been directed to taxi off the runway and round the perimeter track to a conventional parking area I think the engines would have cut out on the way giving all the crew a complete shock. As it was it was only myself and Wally who realised the seriousness of the situation when we started the engines the following morning.
As I said earlier this was supposed to be a very uneventful operation, in and out of Europe. The average trip to Berlin was around 7 1/2 hours flying time, fuel 1,750 gallons, this I consider could have been estimated at around 7 hours maximum flying time, 1,700 gallons.
I realise that I was always considered better at conserving fuel than most engineers however, how did our aircraft manage to stay airborne for 8 1/2 hours and give out as soon as we touched down. This turned out to be a very exciting but frightening night, how was it that we managed to avoid the various objects we encountered and still managed to bring X² back safely. This was an episode that as a crew we never talked about.
Operation 16
24th/25th December
Target: Berlin
Takeoff time if I remember correctly was early evening in order that we should reach the target before midnight. On board each aircraft was a mix of various bombs, high explosive, incendiaries and delayed timed bombs triggered to explode on Christmas Day.
It was an uneventful night for us, keeping our place on route, seeing some ack-ack activity
aimed at those aircraft, which strayed off route and seeing the occasional night fighter gun tracers streak across the dark sky.
We reached the target on time and Eric was preparing for his bombing run when I noticed that the oil temperature gauge on the outer starboard engine was reading very high. I had to decide the best action, normally on the bombing run I would be on lookout watching for other aircraft approaching us from above or below us and was all the other spare members of crew, it was critical to have maximum look out because of the concentration of aircraft all making for the same point. Many collisions occurred in these situations; damage could also take place by aircraft flying above by dropping their bombs without watching what was below.
I said “Wally, feathering starboard outer”. Wally to Eric: “Cancel bombing run, engine feathered, have adjusted revs on other engine”. Jimmy: “Wally take course so-and-so and go round again”. This was a very difficult and dangerous decision to take as our aircraft would be on an entirely different direction from all other aircraft and exposed to enemy fighters.
We as a crew had previously discussed what we should do in the event of something like this happening, the conclusion was that after flying all this way to the target our first priority was to put our bombs on the target, so any distraction must be remedied first before the bombing run was made. Hitting the target was the only reason for being there. Eric carried out his bombing and the result was that the bombs scored a direct hit, this was confirmed from a self-operating camera situated in the bomb bay and rolled when the bomb doors were opened.
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Afterwards we set off on our return run on three engines but because of limited power instead of holding our 20,000 ft altitude Wally and I decided to make a gradual descent, passing over the enemy coast at 5,000 ft and making our way direct to base on the instruction given by Jimmy our navigator.
The engine proved to be suffering from a faulty gauge, this, however, we had no way of knowing and had it been an engine seize up and possibly resulted in an engine fire, we could have been in serious problems being an easy target for enemy fighters. Wally made a very professional landing on three engines, of course he always did make a good landing in the dark, it was during daylight that he always had a few Kangaroo jumps before rolling along the runway.
Operation 19
2nd/3rd January 1944
Target: Berlin
I would expect that everyone would experience fear on a number of times during their lifetime being frightened is nothing to be ashamed of. Fear can be brought on instantly by such things as an explosion, a fire or such like, then fear can turn to panic. Controlled fear can be felt when one expects that they are likely to die, on the motorway getting caught up in an accident when cars are travelling at speed.
Our crew experienced such emotions once when on operations over Berlin when our Lancaster was hit by ack-ack fire, which exploded very close to us and caused severe damage to the fuselage from shrapnel, also causing loss of all communication. After checking all engines and fuel supplies, and assessing for any further damage I realised that Bill’s (our mid-upper gunner) turret was stationary with no signs of movement from him. I knew that something must be wrong so I touched Wally gave the thumbs up and pointed towards the rear. I collected a portable oxygen bottle and on the way through the aircraft I touched Nobby on the arm and signalled him to follow me. True enough Bill was not in his turret, with the light from my torch we found him trying to open the fuselage rear door and in his panic he had no parachute with him. He seemed very strong and determined to leave the aircraft. The only way to prevent this happening was to hit him with the oxygen bottle. We were able to man handle him back to the rest bed. When giving him the oxygen bottle he began sucking
it like a baby, we made him comfortable with a blanket then returned to our positions.
This episode had taken over 30 minutes at probably the most dangerous period of any operation over the target with lights being shone from the torch and loss of lookout crewmembers (mid-gunner and myself). Luckily the aircraft was not too badly damaged between 40 to 50 holes along the fuselage.
In early January Bill reported sick, which meant that we required a mid upper gunner, Dave who had lost his crew was looking to join a new crew, so he joined our crew and flew with us until we completed our tour of operations.
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Operation 28
25th-26th February 1944
Target: Augsburg
I have little recognition of what happened on this trip, it however was of great importance because this was the first time on any operation that Lancasters had been fitted with 2 x 0.5 guns in the rear turret instead of the 4 x 0.303 guns. Furthermore it was only 101 Squadron who had them.
These turrets were made by a small local company from Gainsborough and designed in conjunction with 101 Squadron’s technicians; this gave the Lancaster a much greater firepower.
At briefing it was announced that six aircraft, which included our X², were fitted with 0.5 guns and that crews should take the initiative and attack fighters rather than take evasive action.
All I remember of what must have been relatively quiet was that the 101 Lancasters that were carrying the new turrets and firing at the fighters, it was the fighters that were taking evasive action and as the fighters were unaware that only a few aircraft were fitted with these much more effective guns. Over the next few operations there was much less fighter activity which was much less effective.
On a number of operations as well as dropping window we also dropped leaflets, the leaflets were typed in German and gave information as to how the war was progressing (propaganda information).
All operations were usually carried out at twenty thousand feet plus for Lancasters, other types of aircraft would bomb at slightly lower heights because of the thin air at above 10,000 ft. Oxygen had to be taken through masks and also because of the altitude temperatures could drop to as low as -20o, so much so if you touched any metal part of the fuselage with your bare hand it could stick to the metal and because of condensation one had to free the ice from your mask frequently.
Operation 29
1st-2nd March 1944
Target: Stuttgart (8 hours 10 minutes)
During the 1930s and 40s the winters could be very severe with long periods of frost and snow. March 1944 commenced with heavy and prolonged snowfall resulting in Ludford runway being covered in over 8 ft of snow which had to be cleared before flying could continue. At that time there was no heavy snow clearing equipment available, only the normal tractors that were on site, therefore to move the snow every person on the station not on duty was put on snow clearing. The aircraft standing points were cleared first so that ground crews could operate then the task of clearing the main runway commenced spades and shovels were the tools of the day. Generally I think everyone enjoyed it with plenty of high jinks and laughing, many snowmen being made along the runway edges.
Operations were ordered for that night 1st March therefore the runway had to be ready for takeoff by 16:00 hours. It was crucial that 101 Squadron was available because we were the only Squadron operating CIGAR a jamming device which prevented German radar from
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contacting their fighters to give them instructions. Bomber Command refused to fly without 101 Squadron’s aircraft.
It was determined that the runway would not be fully cleared, however, if four hundred yards were ready aircraft could take off with a light fuel load, fly to the neighbouring airfield Wickenby, fully fuel and bomb up there.
Briefing took place mid afternoon; flying was laid on for 16:00 hours. We were the first plane off without trouble, a further two followed, the fourth didn’t make it on the cleared runway part, ploughed into the snow and skidded off the runway closing it. This meant that four of 101 Squadron’s aircraft carrying CIGAR were available. On the operation the aircraft were spread out along the route covering the period of the raid. (ie approximately five minutes apart)
Our aircraft was fuelled and bombed-up at Wickenby and took off among the planes from Wickenby. The operation as far as we were concerned was quiet, with few fighters, no troubles. We bombed on time and returned for home crossing the Dutch coast at around 10,000 ft, then continued to base Wickenby, then de-briefed, had breakfast and then to bed. We stayed at Wickenby for two more days before we could return to Ludford.
On our return our Squadron Commander told us that we had completed our tour of operations and since the squadron moved to Ludford we were the only crew that had achieved that, so he didn’t want to test our luck any further.
The following two days were spent testing the new rear turret with the 2 x .5 guns under various flying conditions, including high level flying at 25,000+ ft and it proved to be equally good under all conditions.
Five days later we all went on leave, this was the break up of the crew after which none of us met again, during the war that’s how things happened.
Before going on leave I went to see Mac to tell him the situation. “Can’t you stay?” he asked “where are you being posted to?”. “I think I may be posted to Lindholme as an instructor”. “Why can’t you stay here then and instruct here? I will miss you, you’ve taught me more about carburettors and how they work. I know I told you you were a pain in the neck to my chaps, you demanding that they check and monitor the engines performance to obtain maximum fuel savings. I will continue to carry out your instructions and to see if I can help save other crew’s lives as we have just recently experienced on X²”.
“If you do a further operation tour, come back here and I will try to look after your aircraft again for you, all the best, good flying”.
Operation Highlights
I have highlighted only a few of our more exciting operations, many of which have been written about and described by other aircrew presumably because these were the operations which for some reason caught the headlines and probably they were the crew members which survived.
It must be remembered, however, that every operation had its dangers. The fact that the aircraft flew over enemy territory was a dangerous place to be, with it being usually in darkness and with anywhere up to 600 aircraft plus on many occasions, all making for the
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same target within a time limit of between 30 to 60 minutes alone had its dangers and problems.
When I say that we had a quiet trip this usually meant that our crew had no major problems and every member carried out his duties as an individual and as a team member. This did not mean that minor problems did not occur such as the rear turret freezing up causing problems for Len (rear gunner) from severe cold and lack of visibility or wireless operator loosing [sic] contact with base or even Wally and myself with ice forming on the wing edges from travelling through cloud. On one occasion the whole crew suffering because of being caught up in a thunderstorm, the aircraft being thrown about like a toy, falling immediately to 1,000 ft and back up again, something that no one had any control over.
Cold was a further concern; the temperature could fall as low as -20 to 30oC below zero. The metal of the aircraft if you touched it with your bare hand, the skin could stick to it therefore gloves had always to be worn. There was warm air circulated throughout the aircraft this was controlled from a duct situated near to the wireless operator’s station and at times should he become very warm would turn it down.
Oxygen masks were also worn as above ten thousand feet oxygen was necessary and it was a continual task to have to remove the ice from your mask, as it built up due to the moisture created from breathing. As you can imagine the gunner being isolated from the main cabin area suffered even more.
The enemy could also cause a few problems on route. Fighters had an advantage over the heavier, slower bombers and the fact that bombers had four engines creating a fair amount of exhaust flame and light made it easy for the fighters to see us. Generally if a fighter was spotted by the gunners in time it was safest to take evasive action.
The action would come say from the rear gunner ‘fighter 3 o’clock approaching’ following ‘dive, dive to port’. The skipper would immediately throw the aircraft into a dive and do a corkscrew manoeuvre, regaining back on his normal course. This generally worked; it was the fighter which was not spotted by the lookouts which caused the problem as they would normally attack from below the rear of the aircraft strafing the fuselage with bullets.
Search lights. The normal searchlight could be a problem for aircraft at lower levels and were situated around most towns, cities and industrial sites, however, there was another much more dangerous blue searchlight, much brighter which could penetrate to much higher altitudes and operated in conjunction with anti aircraft guns. Being caught by one of these was an unfortunate experience and usually resulted in severe damage or the loss of the aircraft. We on one occasion suffered this experience, the blue light locked on to us and no matter whatever we did it was impossible, after about three minutes Wally decided to put the aircraft into a controlled dive to loose [sic] height, as we did so a Halifax aircraft which was operating at a much lower height came across our track. The anti aircraft guns operating in conjunction with the searchlight opened up and the Halifax just blew up. We had a lucky escape.
As I said some anti aircraft guns operated in conjunction with searchlights, however, the bulk of them were situated around towns and cities and created a heavy barrack in order to keep the bombers from bombing at low levels, the result could be seen and occasionally heard, and on one occasion over Amiens felt.
Returning from Modane on a bright moonlit night without warning this small unit of guns opened up and a shell exploded very close to us, fortunately not causing any injuries to the crew. Shrapnel caused damage to the fuel lines causing a leak in the pipe and holes appeared
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in the fuselage, and along the wings and side windscreen of the aircraft. We made an emergency landing at Tangmere in South England and on inspection found over 100 various size holes along the length of the fuselage and wings.
The piece of shrapnel that hit the windscreen had entered through the starboard side unbeknown to me had ripped through my flying jacket sleeve and gone out through the front window, again, lady luck was with us.
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Log Book and
Operations Record Book
(Battle Orders)
Every crew member kept a log book showing every date, time and flying details carried out.
I have copied some pages which correspond to copies of the Squadron’s battle orders, referring to operations 14, 15, 16 and 17 as detailed in my log book.
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[page from authors logbook]
[underlined] TOTAL FLYING HOURS NOVEMBER 101 SDN [/underlined]
[underlined] DAY [/underlined] 3 hrs 30 mins
[underlined] NIGHT [/underlined] 39 hrs 45 mins
[underlined] TOTAL 43 hrs 15 mins [/underlined]
DECEMBER
16 – Lanc III X2 – WO EVANS – FE – 14 OPS – [underlined] BERLIN [/underlined] QUIET TRIP – HEAVY LOSSES – FOG ON RETURN LANDED AT WICKENBY – 8 hrs 30 mins.
20 – Lanc III X2 – WO EVANS – FE– 15 OPS – [underlined] FRANKFURT [/underlined] MANY FIGHTER FLARES AROUND TARGET AREA – 5 hrs 50 mins.
24 – Lanc III X2 – WO EVANS – FE– 16 OPS – [underlined] BERLIN [/underlined] REAR TURRET U/S STRB OUTER FEATHERED – 7 hrs 10 mins.
28 – Lanc III X2 – WO EVANS – FE– 17 OPS – [underlined] BERLIN [/underlined] 6 hrs 40 mins.
[underlined] TOTAL FLYING HOURS [/underlined]
[underlined] DAY [/underlined] 0 hrs 0 mins
[underlined] NIGHT [/underlined] 28 hrs 10 mins
[underlined] TOTAL 28 hrs 10 mins [/underlined]
[underlined] DECEMBER 101 SDN [/underlined]
[signature] OC ‘C’ FLT.
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[indecipherable page]
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[indecipherable page]
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[indecipherable page]
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[indecipherable page]
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CHAPTER G
CHRISTMAS 1943
I always thought of Christmas as a time for giving and receiving, a time of joy and happiness, a time for families to come and meet and join in the happiness of the event. It was of course a time to remember, to consider ones relationship with family, friends and others and how relationships could be improved. Christmas 1943 was different; it was a time of anxiety and many other emotions, anxiety not only for the crewmembers but more so for the folks at home.
Before joining the RAF we lived in a small village where everyone knew each other. There was three of us in the forces, my older sister Jean, my brother Sandy and myself, living at home with my mother our two younger sisters Betty and Mary. So quite often my mother would be stopped in the street and asked how one of us was getting along, furthermore she had received a telegram stating that I had not returned from an operation and that further information would be forwarded when received (one must remember that at that time (1943) telephones were a luxury so the only method of communication was by the Post Office. Christmas 1943 was also the first Christmas that we had not all been at home).
The ground crews also had similar feelings when waiting for their aircraft to return from an operation and then the relief when they saw the aircraft landing and taxiing in.
There was also a period of what today would be known as pressure, then it was just part of the job although some individuals did suffer from depression and for some this ended their flying career. All crew members had to be physically and mentally fit to survive.
It was early morning on Christmas Day 1943, we as a crew had just returned from an operation, the target Berlin. After debriefing we arrived for breakfast at around 6:30 hours, the atmosphere in the dining room was best described as noisy as you would expect from 150 young men aged between 19 and 23 years old, until you really looked around and saw one, two even three empty tables then the atmosphere changed to a more sober one.
Christmas dinner was being served at 13:00 hours, this gave us time for a few hours sleep before arriving back at the mess around 12:50 hours. The meal was good and all seemed in high spirits. We finished eating and were enjoying a cigarette when the duty officer arrived, he slowly walked up to the bar and turned the Toby Jug sitting there towards the wall, this was our first indication that operations may be on, slowly the mess began to empty as the air crew members began to leave.
It was a cold but pleasant afternoon as I hurried along the perimeter road thinking of past Christmases and remembering the simple things, the pink or white sugar mice, an apple and orange possibly a few sweets, we never had many presents, hand knitted socks or gloves, then my thoughts were interrupted by seeing coming towards me a tractor pulling a bomb trolley with a mixed load of bombs on board, and further to my left I could see a fuel bowser topping up a Lancaster. Normally the aircraft were filled with 1,200 to 1,400 gallons of fuel
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sufficient for a five or six hour trip, if the trip was going to be longer then the aircraft were topped up.
On arrival at our Lancaster X² Mac, our ground engineer, was there standing in front looking at the aircraft, I said ‘”what are you doing?” Thinking he answered “isn’t she beautiful, I don’t want her to fly tonight. I am the happiest sergeant on the Squadron. Before I arrived at Ludford I had been with 101 Squadron for 18 months and during that time I had lost seven aircraft under my control. Since being here and in charge of X² and you as the flight engineer after five months I still have the same aircraft. Do you know how many operations you have flown in X²?” “No I don’t “, I replied. “Eleven and six of which was to the big city Berlin and we are still going strong.” “Let’s go and carry out ourground checks”, I said.
We had just finished when Wally our pilot arrived. “I thought I would find you here” he said. “I thought we could carry out a test flight and check out the hydraulics on the undercarriage?” “Yes I have fixed them” said Mac. “Let’s go” said Wally, “coming” I said to Mac. He hesitated then said “I haven’t got a parachute”. “Neither have we” I said.
We fired up the engines, taxied out, got the green light from control and were airborne. I then vacated my seat and let Mac have it. As I checked all the fuel and engine gauges etc we climbed to around 300 hundred feet, flew in a south west direction and as we banked to starboard there standing on the ridge was the magnificent building Lincoln Cathedral with the city spread out below it. We were privileged to see it yet also very humbled and it seemed than that what we were doing was right and that this was a ‘just war’ and had to be won. I touched Mac on the shoulder and pointed down. I’m sure he was brushing a tear away.
Ten minutes later we had landed with everything ok including the hydraulics as we closed the rear door of the Lancaster X² we hugged each other and I’m sure we all said a short prayer, at least I did.
[inserted] [Christmas dinner menu RAF Ludford Magna Sergeants Mess 1943 [/inserted]
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Briefing was scheduled for 19:00 hours. All two hundred of us where [sic] there on time and the Group Captain arrived and slipped up onto the platform, the wing commander brought us all to attention. I noticed that the curtains covering the map on the wall stayed closed “I’ll be brief” said the Group Captain, “all flying has been cancelled for tonight because of severe weather conditions over Europe. I also wish to thank you all for the maximum effort and success, which has been put in during the past five months. Good show and good flying from now on. I will let you go to continue your Christmas celebrations, have a good time, good night and god bless”. Mac got his way and X² did not fly on Christmas night.
Briefing was scheduled for 19.00 hours and as I said all flying was cancelled, this only lasted for 15 minutes, after which all the members of the 25 crews that would have flown, along with all the other necessary ground staff support teams necessary to service such an operation (all in 350‑400 young people) were now free to do as they wished, however as by now it was around 19.30 the choice was limited, retire to the mess or the local pubs.
As we the crew were now making our way back from the briefing room, Norman (our wireless operator) announced that he was visiting the pub to see if they had any beer “Are you coming?” “No” I said “I’ll make my way back to the mess”. Bill (our mid upper gunner) said “I’ll join you for a beer”.
The technical section of the squadron was situated on the south side of the main road which ran from west to east through the village from Market Rasen to Louth. The living accommodation and messes were located on the north of the road.
On reaching the main road instead of crossing and carrying on up the lane to the mess for some reason I turned right and continued along the main road, as it was extremely dark walking in the centre of the road as this was the safest place. As I continued I heard music and singing coming from the pub on the right everyone seemed to be happy and enjoying themselves, further on and on the left was the other pub ‘The Black Bull’. I could hear footsteps coming and going, but could not recognise the people, here also was the sounds of people enjoying themselves.
A little further along the road on the left stood the small church, as I approached I could hear the organ music and the congregation singing carols. I remember thinking if I was thinking of attending church I should have dressed. I was in battle dress and should be in uniform, however to return to the billet and change it would make me too late for the service.
I found myself at the church entrance I looked through the entrance hall, I could see a chink of light coming from under the heavy door. I pushed the door open and heard the creaking noise, on entering I stood for a few seconds to allow my eyes to become accustomed to the light, a few members of the congregation hearing the door turned to see who entered, as I moved across to take a place in the pews an elderly gentlemen from the other side came across squeezed me on the shoulder gave me his hymn book “we are on verse three god bless” and returned to his place. The church was fairly full mostly of elderly people man and female with a few children, all were singing and appeared to be enjoying it, the service was not a format which I knew, however I felt good to be involved and somehow very pleased to be there. All those in church appeared to believe in what they were singing and doing and further more believed that all the service people on the base were doing what was right and that they all had their full support that the war was a righteous war and a war that had to be won.
At the end of the service I quickly left the church and made my way back along the main road. I was somehow excited so much so that I remember running all the way and turning
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right until I reached the mess. There were a number of people sitting around having a drink and/or reading. A colleague was reading the picture post magazine which had an article covering 101 Squadron. When I asked him if I could have a look, he said “I’ll keep it for you”. On the centre two pages was a photo of a Lancaster with staff standing around and on the wings etc, inspecting the photo closely I noticed that it was not a 101 Squadron Lancaster as it did not show the special aerials to work ABC. (The programme had been arranged unfortunately while we (our crew) were on leave and a Lancaster from Wickenby had been used).
I checked to see if the rations had come in and found a good selection of cigarettes were available Woodbine, Captain, Players and Gold Flake and there was also some chocolate.
The dining room was closed, on a trestle table at the end was a collection of bread, cheese and butter. I took a few rounds of bread and a chunk of cheese and made my way back to the billet, on arrival I found Wally, Eric, and Jimmy were there and they had a good fire going, making the chimney almost red hot. They were sitting reading and asked “where did you get to?” “Church” I said “you should have said I would have come with you” said Eric, “I didn’t know, I brought some bread and cheese for toast if you want it”. “Thank you” said Wally “have a mug of tea, the teapot will still be hot on the stove”. “I called in at the mess they have cigarettes and chocolate in. Only a letter for Bill which I have brought back. He and Norman were going to the pub. Where is Len (our rear gunner)?” “Oh, he has gone to try to hitch a lift home to Grimsby, remember if opps are on tomorrow give him a ring to let him know so that he can return, I have his telephone number” said Wally. “Do you want something to read?” asked Eric. “No” I said, “I think I will turn in and catch up with some sleep”.
This 1943 Christmas was at least different from all previous ones and part of my life which I will never forget.
The next time we flew was on 30th December and then again the following night on 31st December both operations were to Berlin. Mac continued to service X² and over the next 3 1/2 months we completed a further 13 operations to complete our first tour.
We didn’t always bring the aircraft home in the same condition as we started, however, we always brought it back and Mac and his crew always managed to repair it and have it serviced ready for the next trip.
We completed our tour in late April 1944 and the crew were all split up and we went our separate ways all as instructors. I joined the staff at Lindholme as a flight engineer instructor. In June D‑Day arrived, we were again temporarily called up as reserved in case the invasion went wrong, fortunately all went well. I was later transferred to Bottesford then Cottesmore and ended up at North Luffenham where by now VE Day had arrived in June 1945. We were again crewed up to join the Tiger Force to operate against Japan. Luckily for us VJ Day came much sooner than expected with the use of the hydrogen bomb being used on Japan, which stopped us from being posted to the Far East.
I stayed at North Luffenham until demobbed. Lincoln Cathedral played an important role in our lives as we used to use it as a landmark when returning early in the morning from operations and provided weather conditions were good, when we saw the cathedral we knew we were safely home again. Sadly Lancaster X² only flew two more operations after we finished and was lost over Mailly le Camp, France on the 3rd/4th May 1944.
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CHAPTER H
HEAVY CONVERSION UNITS INSTRUCTOR
LINDHOLME
BOTTESFORD
COTTESMORE
NORTH LUFFENHAM
After Operations
After completing our tour of operations with 101 Squadron in April 1944 the crew went on leave for around ten days and while on leave I received information informing me to report to Lindholme on such a date.
Lindholme was 1656HCU the conversion unit, which I had reported to prior to being crewed up and joining 101 Squadron. Ludford Magna as I had said previously was an airfield specially constructed as a utility base to carry on the war against Germany. All buildings, temporary constructions accommodation nissen huts were situated in small groups situated around the unit site.
Nissen hut accommodation for up to eight persons situated in the wilds half a mile from mess, flight units ablution block 20 yards away with washing and shower facilities, no heating (as you can imagine it was very cold in winter). The accommodation had a stove in the centre of the hut with a chimney, which went up through the roof, used coal or anthracite as fuel and required lighting daily. These huts were extremely hot in summer with regular visitors such as field mice, ants and earwigs. In winter they were extremely cold and damp with condensation running down interior sides and dripping on beds etc.
Lindholme was a peacetime permanent station which had all the niceties available, good roads comfortable, centrally heated one-person accommodation with all mod cons including dining room with waitress service. This to me was the biggest difference between Ludford and Lindholme.
Lindholme then was a conversion unit where pilots and crews had completed their initial training on smaller aircraft then upgraded to the heavy, four engine bombers such as Halifax and Lancaster. Lindholme trained Lancaster crews; it was here where additional crewmembers such as gunners and flight engineers joined in.
Having completed a successful tour of operations my role now was to introduce flight engineers who had completed their year long course, at possibly Blackpool and St Annes’s as up to this time these trainees had only briefly seen the interior of a Lancaster, far less done any flying.
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Unfortunately because of the shortage of Lancaster bombers arriving to the squadron, the conversion units such as Lindholme were still using Halifaxs [sic], this did not cause too much of a problem for the other six members of the crew (except the engineers) as it was a heavy bomber and the handling regarding flying and landing was similar to the Lancaster giving the pilot the experience of flying a large, heavy plane.
The engineer’s role was the same on all heavy bombers so the experience gained was still valid and it still gave him the necessary confidence. The difference being some of the instruments and dials on the Halifax were in different positions to that of a Lancaster. The crews would have a period of familiarisation on reaching the squadron before finally carrying out operations.
Life was so much more comfortable working on a base with all mod cons as expected for the 1940s.
My role along with others was to aid the trainee engineers to familiarise themselves with the aircraft inside and out, and when flying with their new crew, introduce the engineer to his role such as to the large number of switches and dials on the main panel and also the instruments on the engineer’s panel.
One of the main tasks was how to change flying on the various fuel tanks safely, the other how to feather an engine if required without causing any problems, how they as a person fitted in with the other crew members. Therefore while the pilot was under instruction with a pilot instructor mainly on what we called circuits and bumps, which was taking off, flying around and landing again. I would also fly and show the engineer and make sure he was confident and safe in his execution of his duties.
The time varied depending on how quickly the pilot took to prove himself capable and the instructor pilot was satisfied that he could safely fly and land such a plane, this could take anything from a few hours to many hours.
I used the experience, which I had gained over the past year of flying many hours in different conditions to make sure that these young operators had a better chance of completing a successful tour than I had. I tried to emphasise on them the need to be fully committed to their job of making sure they knew their role and capable of carrying out all the safety checks which should be carried out by themselves even although someone has said that they have done so, that they used the engines efficiently and monitored the fuel available as economically as possible. I had prepared a schedule, which if used in conjunction with the gauges and filled in every fifteen minutes in flight or so gave instant information if any problem had or were occurring to the fuel position, when action could be taken.
Lindholme being a permanent station was well equipped and had space available for each crew members to have their own section huts which proved most usual [sic] and I spent a good part of my time being available to talk with these trainee engineers, discussing any problems or whatever.
In any month I spent on average around 50 hours in actual flying time either day or night flying. This was made up of flying with possibly 10 different pilots on 26 to 30 different flights. The flights were generally around the airfield at fairly low altitude, up to two hundred feet carrying out circuits and landings with pilot, instructor and conversion crews. We therefore did not carry parachutes; this also gave the trainee crews a little more confidence to think that we had confidence in them.
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In June 1944 two days after D-Day I attended an instructors course at St Albans, South Wales lasting for four weeks, which proved most instructive, enjoyable and created confidence with ample time for self expression. After that I took the opportunity to attend any other courses, which became available such as a course on jet engines – something for the future, update course on the improved Merlin engines coming into service and a short course on Stromberg carburettors. The RAF at this time was looking to the future and on the levels and quality of staff they were likely to require once the war ended, but with the peace still to be kept for years on. At present most if not all of their engineers and a station or base engineer were all from senior ground staff, so when I was asked if I would wish to embark on such a course (the course was quite complex covering all aspects of engineering ground and in flight) I said I would.
After quite a lot of time on reading (time which I had) I eventually sat the paper and was very happy with the results 89% success, this was of course only part of the paper an oral examination was also required which up until I was released from the RAF I had not taken, however, these showed on my records.
1668 Heavy Conversion Unit,
Bottesford
After leaving 101 Squadron I spent a short period at Lindholme as a Flight Engineer Instructor before moving to Bottesford. Bottesford was another war time base similar to Ludford Magna and from where Lancasters also flew, however, in early 1944 it had become surplus to requirements.
The living accommodation instead of being Nissen huts were constructed of fabricated wooden framed units. Being available it was used as a holding base for American troops waiting for D Day resulting in the accommodation being left in a dreadful state.
During August 1944 1668 Heavy Conversion Unit took the base over and myself and few others were in the advance party. On arrival we found it difficult to find accommodation suitable to live in however, after a few days of hard work managed to make progress with repairs. Among the early arrivals were two air gunners both of whom had completed their tour of operations. Jock on Wellingtons and Jack on Lancasters. The three of us became really good friends for all the time we were on the base. In fact, Jack is still a good friend, he now lives in North Cirney Nr Cirencester and we have a card from him each Christmas.
The base was situated midway between Newark and Grantham on the left, half a mile off the main A1 road, walking or cycling were the only methods of transport for getting around the base or for travelling further afield.
We had been at Bottesford for just over a week when this night the three of us decided to have a ride around, on reaching the main road instead of turning left for Long Bennington and Newark we turned right towards Grantham. After cycling along the A1 road for about three miles we came across a signpost, which read Marston and Dry Doddington so we decided to go left and see where the lane would take us. After a mile we came upon a nice looking pub on the corner of the crossroads called the Thorold Arms where we decided to call and have a beer this being Friday evening. The pub was open, furthermore this was the first time that I had entered a pub since I joined 101 Squadron, as I had promised myself that so long as I was flying on operations I would not have a drink.
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Training at Bottesford got under way relatively soon and by early September crews for conversion to Lancasters were arriving in number. The routine was very similar to that at Lindholme.
Crews arrived without any experience of the Lancaster and it was our role as instructors to train the flight engineers to a standard where he was competent and safe to act on his own, and to pass on my experience which would make him feel more confident, while other staff members were doing the same for the pilots and the other members of the crew.
Bottesford as I said previously was a base built around 1942 to a standard sufficient to allow Bomber Command to carry the war to the enemy, where heavy bombers such as the Lancaster could operate from. Carrying a bomb load to most destinations necessary and to cause severe damage to their war effort.
From the staff viewpoint it was a complete change from the comfort offered by a peacetime base with all the mod cons, even including waitress service in the dining halls.
Bottesford was however a very happy unit where, so long as the training and flying was carried out on time to a very high standard, all was well.
It was becoming clear that with D Day over with the Allied Troops now moving across Europe as expected and on course, that victory in Europe was only a matter of time with the need for heavy bomber operations becoming limited. This meant that the training for crews could be relaxed and extended, therefore to ensure the trainee flight engineers interest and enthusiasm was kept alive. Two other instructors and myself introduced a short course on engine maintenance, this course lasted three weeks, the purpose of which was to strip down an engine completely, then reassemble it so that it would fire up and run. We had available to us a Lancaster, which had recently run off the runway on landing and was declared not airworthy. The four Merlin engines were still in good condition; this meant that with four engines and four trainees working on each we could entertain sixteen students.
The course proved a great success and it was felt that all those involved had afterwards a better understanding of the engines, which could possibly save their lives in the future.
As the weeks passed three of us, Jock, Jack and myself, had more free time and when on an evening we decided to leave camp we usually ended up at the Thorold Arms. By now we knew many of the locals as well as the family and were being brought into the evening events, such as playing darts. There were a number of really good dart players and eventually we, along with Sylvia, also became an excellent partnership.
Five months on. Christmas 1944 was a completely different Christmas to that of 1943, by now Sylvia and myself were seeing quite a lot of each other and I was still on duty over Christmas, I was asked to spend Christmas day with the family, we had a lovely time. A few days later I was on leave and travelled north to spend New Year with my family in Aberdour.
Our friendship blossomed and we were spending more and more time together and with Sylvia’s family and friends. Sylvia had a brother and three sisters; Roy was the oldest followed by Eileen then Sylvia, with Gert and Brenda the two younger sisters. Roy was also in the RAF on air-sea rescue and spent most of his time overseas.
Eileen was on munitions working in Grantham; Sylvia also worked in Grantham in ladies hosiery. Gert worked in a bakery with Brenda still at school.
In the evenings when the pub was open Sylvia helped serve in the bar with her father and mother Gert usually at weekends. During early 1945 flying at the base continued smoothly
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and generally without incident. We had one scary incident during night flying practise, an enemy light bomber managed to evade the radar controls and came in along the runway following one of the Lancasters and dropped cluster bombs along the length of the runway. This did cause some excitement as these bombs could explode from the vibration of the landing aircraft. Fortunately the runway was cleared without any injuries.
The other excitement was when one of the Lancasters, which we had just received from squadron required an air test to check its airworthiness before being put to use as a training aircraft. One of the staff pilots and myself as engineer was asked to carry out the test which we did, doing all the usual flying and checking the various instruments and controls. We decided to put it in a downward power dive, at first all was fine and the controls responded perfectly then it happened the port outer propeller began speeding up. No matter what we tried it continued to increase then it disappeared, the two on the inner engines seemed all right, the propeller in the starboard reached well above the normal speed but stayed in place. We quickly reduced our speed and dive, and made a quick return to base and landed on two engines, the aircraft did not pass its airworthy test. We found out later that it was a fault with the balance plates on the, then, new four paddle bladed propellers.
I, by now, had spent eight months as an instructor resting from the pressures of flying on operations and I knew that in the near future it may be necessary to do a further thirty operations, either across Europe or possibly against Japan. A few of us were thinking along the same lines and discussing the possibilities with others of forming crews.
There were two staff pilots on the base who were seriously thinking to the future, with whom I would have been happy to fly with and to this end we took every opportunity of carrying out test flights and then engaging in some low flying, which we expected would be necessary for the future especially if the enemy were the Japanese.
I increased my link training and spent considerable amounts of time keeping fit and up-to-date on all aspects of flying which could be beneficial to our survival. There was suggestion floating around that a new Tiger Force was being formed, which was likely to operate against Japan.
The river Trent gave an excellent corridor to practise low flying as there was at that time no obstacles such as power lines, telephone lines or high buildings to restrict flying. The river banks were relatively high with a river width in excess of 130 ft where the Lancaster wingspan was 101 ft and could easily be tucked in below the level of the banks, great flying, great excitement and very satisfying.
The war in Europe was progressing well, the need for heavy bombers was becoming less and with now limited targets. In mid April a few of us were informed that it was almost 12 months since we last flew on operations and it would now be necessary to do a further tour, more information would be available shortly.
On 8th May 1945 the Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, announced the termination of the war in Europe to the whole country and his speech was broadcast over the station Tannoy system at 3pm. The afternoon was then devoted to sports activities and there were parties in all messes during the evening.
I was not on base, this was the date selected on which I was to be presented with my DFM at Buckingham Palace by King George VI. My mum and Aunty Kate travelled down from Edinburgh on the overnight train in the early hours of the morning; I joined the train at Grantham. As usual it was standing room only so I met up with my mum and Aunty on the platform at Kings Cross station. If I remember correctly the investitures commenced at
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11am so we had time for breakfast then made our way to the palace. There were many RAF personnel there as well as family members to watch the ceremony and see their relatives presented with their medals. We were all greeted on arrival and then informed of the procedure.
The King seemed very thin and poorly, dressed in an Admiral’s Naval uniform. After shaking hands with him and him pinning the medal on my uniform he asked me which squadron I flew with. I told him 101 Squadron, he replied “One of the elite I believe, good flying”.
We were out of the palace by 1:30pm, by this time the news that the war in Europe was over was known and London was beginning to fill up with people. Everyone was in party mood, singing and dancing or just walking around. London had been under blackout conditions since the start of the war in September 1939. Today things were different all the dark days were over; the people of London were showing their joy. Every light possible, which could be lit, was lit and the streets looked most inviting, it was an amazing sight. My mother and Aunt Kate were booked to stay the night in London so I saw them to their hotel then I made my way back through the crowds to Kings Cross and caught the train back to Grantham. What a day to be in London, VE Day the 8th May 1945 celebrating the end of the war in Europe. There was a real sense of relief and everyone was there to have a good time and to party.
The train was again packed, mainly with service personnel making their way home on leave. I arrived at Grantham around 5pm and from the station phoned the Thorold Arms expecting to speak to Sylvia. She and Eileen had gone to the church service and not yet returned so it was Sylvia’s dad that answered, he said he would tell Sylvia on their return that I had arrived in Grantham. It was agreed that Sylvia would come and meet me cycling on one bicycle and pushing the second for me to ride back to Marston, however, on her travelling along the A1 road towards Grantham she met a person she knew cycling from Grantham. She stopped and asked him if he had seen an airman walking and he said no. Previously to this an RAF vehicle had passed Sylvia with RAF personnel on board, thinking that I had thumbed a lift and that I would be dropped off at the road end leading to Marston she decided to turn back. As I was not waiting at the road end she then thought that I must have decided to go back to Bottesford, collect my own bicycle and return to Marston later.
Sometime later Gert happened to look out of the window at the Thorold Arms and shouted to Sylvia “Jock is coming down the road”. Sylvia, thinking she was having her on didn’t believe her until she herself looked out the window. My other pals Jock and Jack had already arrived and all including the locals were having a great time. As the evening progressed and the drink continued to flow a game started where the aim was to collect as many possible pieces of other peoples [sic] ties by cutting off the ends, this was all taken in good fun until one person who had just been given a new tie for his birthday, that day, by his wife and she was not amused at seeing it being cut to pieces.
The end of the war in Europe sealed the fate of most of the war time built heavy bomber bases, they had completed their usefulness for which they were built, that in giving Bomber Command the opportunity required to take the war to the enemy, which they had accomplished very successfully.
Food on the stations was very good with a real selection most of the time. Sundays was the time when the menu suffered as most of the catering staff had time off and tea was usually laid out to help yourself, mostly cheese, bread and butter, and possibly a few cakes. This possibly was the reason why on Mondays the sweet was often bread and butter pudding, something I didn’t like then and even now when on a menu I still shy away from.
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This was the time that Petula Clarke was often on the radio, in fact every lunch time she recorded a song especially for RAF Conversion Unit 1668.
Bottesford was no exception for within six weeks the complete Conversion Unit was closed down and I, along with others, moved to new surroundings to the peacetime base of Cottesmore where all the staff enjoyed the luxuries of a permanent built unit. Working conditions within the base were very relaxed, with all enjoying a five day week when most weekends were free unless on duty. Flying hours, however, as far as I was concerned still reached between 33 to 44 hours each month.
During June onwards, now that the war was over in Europe, it was still most important that the peoples of Europe, friends as well as enemy, that Britain controlled the airspace and continued to show this by having continued aircraft flying in the skies around.
Certain trips were carried out in order to show ground staff, who had carried out such an excellent job in sometimes terrible conditions to keep the bases and aircraft serviceable along the last five years the opportunity to see for themselves what conditions across Europe looked like now. These trips were given various names: the Ruhr Express, Cooks Tour, Happy Valley Express, each lasted five to six hours flying time where up to 12 to 15 personnel were on board plus the crew of four.
I, as Flight Engineer, was on a good number of such trips. They were enjoyed by most and showed the devastation which had occurred to many of the towns and cities across Europe, in vast areas which had received attention from bombing by the RAF followed by the destruction caused by the Armies fighting their way to Berlin since D Day.
The destruction was terrible with many large areas just a pile of rubble or shells of buildings still standing. The thing which impressed me most was the number of churches and round towers such as commercial chimneys which still stood.
Such a trip would cover from a base to Ijmunden, Amsterdam, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Wesell Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf then back to base. Or base to Cologne, Bonn, Aachem Rotterdam then home.
Cottesmore
Cottesmore was situated between Grantham and Stamford, four miles west of the A1 road near the village of Ashwell and six miles north west of Oakham, so our move was only a few minutes flying time. There was much movement between stations, which gave the opportunity of visiting different locations which we heard about but not visited, such as Drem in East Lothian, Ternhill and Shawbury in Shropshire, and many others which helped to make life more enjoyable.
Being stationed close to Stamford and the main road north it wasn’t difficult to hitch a ride or at worst catch a bus or train to Grantham.
Our stay at Cottesmore was fairly short lived; we then moved on to North Luffenham another of the pre war built stations with all the usual mod cons. North Luffenham is situated south west of Stamford, one mile off the A6121 road. Before leaving Cottesmore I had confirmation that we were crewed up and to expect instructions shortly regarding a further tour of operations in the Far East but before that certain procedures would have to be carried out, such as doctors reports and certain jabs given. However, six weeks on and we were still waiting.
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The war against Japan was expected to last for some considerable time, however, the introduction of the Atom Bomb by the Americans and the use of them by the American Air Force brought the Japanese war to a very quick end. We had at the time just received our preliminary dates and instructions for flying out to the Far East. This announcement that the Japanese had surrendered cancelled this and we missed the opportunity of joining the Tiger Force. The use of the Atomic Bomb on two Japanese cities seemed, and was, a terrible thing to do and caused terrible casualties among the Japanese citizens in these two cities.
However, if it had been necessary for US troops to land and fight their way through all the various islands the casualty list was estimated that it could have been one million plus service people.
North Luffenham
The war in both Europe and Japan was over which meant that working conditions at North Luffenham changed as from now. There was less requirement for further training of Lancaster crews. There were a large number of service men and women in all three services hoping and wanting to get back to Civvie Street as soon as possible. The government also had a problem in that across the country there were not the organisations or jobs available to employ all those excess to requirements service personnel. Therefore a delaying action was in place to slow down the release. Lancasters were of course used for various operations such as dropping food supplies to the people of Belgium and Germany and for bringing home prisoners of war from Germany and elsewhere and from bringing to the UK survivors from the torture camps.
The top chiefs of all three services were of course now considering the future of the armed forces. The Air Force was no different, we had won the war but not the peace, the peace may be a lot more difficult and to that end the Air Force was trying to assess and ensure whatever happened they had sufficient of high quality personnel to carry out this purpose. Therefore as personnel were being demobbed, if they should have certain qualities they were being given the opportunity to stay on by being offered certain incentives.
While at Luffenham I took the opportunity of attending as many courses as possible, improving my knowledge and information regarding the services and of course continuing to add to my flying hours, something I enjoyed doing.
Our job on the unit was similar to any other staff member, flying still took priority, other duties such as Duty Officer and such like was also now part of our programme.
I recall an interview which I had with the Group Captain Section Leader arrived at the flight office and said “Jock, the Wing Commander wants to see you”. “What have I done?” “Nothing, it’s good news, make your way to his office for 11am.” “I’m flying at 10 o’clock”. “Ok, after that will do”. I arrived at his office next day around 9.55 am, his secretary showed me into his office. I saluted, he said “Good, come and sit down” then the interview went something like this: “I have been looking over your record and I see that you have carried out a lot of flying, almost 2000 hours. There are not many people who can live up to that, you must enjoy flying?” “Yes I do”.
“I also see that you have attained a pass, in fact an extremely high pass on the Chief Ground Engineer course, unusual for aircrew even although you are a Flight Engineer”.
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“Your flight commander also told me you were highly respected and thought of at Cottesmore because of your work with Engine Service course. You would seem to be going back to Civvie Street?” “Yes sir”. “Do you want that?” “Possibly”.
“Even with all your exceptional work the war is over so I can’t recommend you for a medal however, what I can offer you – you know that the Air Force is looking for people like yourself for its future success – therefore the offer I am prepared to put to you is stay on in the Air Force as a Chief Ground Engineer with Flying Officer on entry (permanent) with good promotional opportunities to at least Flight Lieutenant or even Squadron Leader. Think carefully about it, don’t make your mind up now, come and see me in one week’s time.”
The unit continued flying and with training. The war being over the RAF was keen to show off their aircraft such as the Spitfire and the Lancaster, which had been so brilliant during the war, to the general public so a number of open days throughout the UK were arranged whereby the public could come along and see over all these war time aircraft. These days proved very popular.
To show off the Lancaster we landed at the base involved, stayed for four to five hours opening the Lancasters up and allowing people to enter by the rear door, make their way up through the fuselage past the pilots positions and exit through the flaps in the bomb aimers compartment, at the front of the aircraft reaching the ground by ladder. Two of the open days I remember going to were Finningly [sic] and Haverford West.
During my time in the RAF I only met up with my sister Jean on one occasion and that was when I was at St Athans in South Wales, she was stationed at Bridge End and we managed to meet for an hour or two, where we met I cannot recall. My brother Sandy was stationed at Swinderby for most of his time in the RAF as a fitter servicing Lancasters, and even although we were relatively closely stationed to each other we never once met up and even when I occasionally landed at Swinderby we never managed to get together. Of course these plans were always last minute arrangements and we might only be there for an hour or so before taking off again.
After two weeks I made a further appointment to meet the Group Captain and told him that after serious consideration that I had decided to leave the RAF and return to Civvie Street. I believe that he was disappointed, he wished me success in whatever I decided to do, we shook hands and I left his office.
I was demobbed on 10th September 1946 at Uxbridge then travelled north to Stamford, Sylvia had earlier moved to Stamford to further her career as a shop buyer, by working in a much larger ladies fashion store, travelling to Stamford on a Sunday evening, returning home in the Saturday evening. This meant that we saw more of each other on my time off.
The other opportunity that was open to me on my demob, as I had over a 1000 flying hours, was to join BOAC. Unfortunately the base was Australia and the airline travelled between Australia and Ceylon. Also available because I had A‑level passes on RAF teaching courses gave me the opportunity to train as a technical course teacher.
Both of which I declined and decided to return to Civvie Street and continue in forestry, which was always my first choice and as my future notes will show.
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CHAPTER I
ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGY
WHAT IF?
Advances in Technology
Most of the technology was designed to combat the increasingly efficient enemy night fighter’s control system, in July 1943 window was used for the first time. Window was made up of thin strips of aluminium foil (approximately 9" long) packed in bundles of approx 100. It was the bomb aimer’s responsibility to drop these down a small chute filled in the front compartment every 15 minutes along route. With all other aircraft doing the same, the concentration played havoc with the enemy’s ground and air radar sets, however, it could not deter the enemy fighter threat for a long period of time, as the Germans managed to overcome this problem.
During D-Day window was used with great success in fooling the Germans that a second landing area further east along the coast was to happen. 101 Squadron completely serviced this operation by dropping window, continually moving across the channel for 48 hours, which meant that German defence forces were stretched along the French coastline rather than being able to concentrate on the D-Day landing site. By the time they realised their mistake the landing had a strong hold.
Other new aids such as RDF (Radar Direction Finding) known as Monica was trialled by 101 Squadron, but was short lived simply because the enemy night fighter crews became efficient at tuning into the signals omitted by Monica.
In July 1943 another new system known as Ground Cigar was operating twenty-four hours a day from a site on the Suffolk coast, jamming the whole of the 38‑42 MHZ band known to be used by the German fighters.
It became obvious to the boffins that to be really efficient the system needed to be airborne, it was envisaged that a single Bomber Command squadron should be allocated the new RLM role and would operate within the main part of the bomber stream. This highly responsible task was given to 101 Squadron, the new system was known as ABC or Airborne Cigar. The ABC required an additional crewmember known as a Special Duties Operator; the area behind the main spar normally occupied by the aircraft emergency couch was converted to accommodate the new equipment. Externally, 7 ft long aerials were fitted to the aircraft, two along the spine and the third under the forward fuselage. The special duty operators were German speaking and became the eighth crewmember in 101 Squadron crews.
The role was to jam the radio transmissions made by the German night fighters ground based controllers. ABC equipment consisted of a panoramic receiver and three transmitters; the receiver could pick up all 24 different frequencies being used by the crystal controlled VHF sets. Its eight crystals each covered three wavebands used by the Germans’ night fighter
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crews to receive the necessary information about the bomber stream location. Once the operators were able to use their German language skills to find the active controller frequency he put down a key connected to one of his transmitters, which broadcast engine noise on that frequency effectively jamming it over a range of around 50 miles. He repeated the process until he had his three transmitters effectively jamming three German frequencies.
In theory, eight of the 101 Squadron Lancasters could cover all 24 frequencies in use during the night.
This equipment was quite weighty therefore so-called unnecessary equipment such as the steel plates behind the pilot’s head and the steel door behind the front compartment were removed to counter the weight increase.
ABC was very effective in jamming the German night fighter’s ability to connect quickly with the main bomber stream. The other downside was when the 101 Lancasters specials were operating their equipment these aircraft could be readily picked up by German night fighters and searchlights. With the squadron suffering much heavier losses than any other squadron in Bomber Command. There was a plaque in the middle of Ludford Magna remembering the 101 sacrifice, it read:
[border] 101 Squadron Lancasters based at Ludford Magna
from June 1943 with highly secret ABC radio and 8 man
crews flew on every major Bomber Command mission
suffering the highest losses of any squadron in World War II [/border]
Ludford Magna was also selected as one of the first airfields in the group to have FIDO fitted. FIDO (Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation) this was justified because of 101 Squadron’s key role within Bomber Command.
The equipment consisted of two pipelines running along the edge of each side of the main runway with perforated holes in the pipes. In extremely foggy conditions when aircraft were due to land petrol was forced along the pipes which was then set alight, this helped clear the fog sufficiently to allow aircraft to land safely. One of the disadvantages being should an aircraft with fuel leaking or swerving off the runway an explosion could occur causing loss of aircraft.
This equipment came into us in January 1944. The standard rear turret fitted to the Lancaster was the Fraser Nash with four 0.303" (rifle calibre) machine guns, which were always thought to be of poor quality in terms of armament. A new turret was built by Rose Brothers of Gainsborough after much discussion with personnel from 101 Squadron. The new turret was easy to control, had more room for the gunner and better vision. Six aircraft from 101 Squadron were the first to receive the new turret. Our aircraft X² was one of the six (2 x 0.5 calibre).
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On 25th/26th February 1944 when we visited Augsburg, operation 28, Len our rear gunner was excited about the possibility of using them against a German fighter and witnessing what effect it would have.
1943‑44 was an excellent period to join 101 Squadron. The squadron had just moved to a new base at Ludford Magna near Louth, Lincolnshire and was well placed to carry the war to the enemy. A highly rated squadron within 1 group, a squadron which was given every opportunity to prove itself as one of the best and we were so lucky to be part of it.
The squadron was involved in all that was happening. New equipment was becoming on stream such as ‘Window’, ABC, upgraded Lancasters, FIDO and the introduction of the more superior rear turret. As days and weeks passed our crew was becoming the most experienced so as a crew were very much involved, we flew on the operation when Window was first used. We were also on the operation ABC was first introduced into Bomber Command and our aircraft X² was one of the six aircraft fitted with the new turrets.
These were exciting times, sometimes frightening, anxious and tiring, however, as a crew we worked as a team. We were loyal to each other, dedicated in what we were doing and hence very satisfied with the results we achieved. On completing our tour of operations we were the only crew that had completed a tour of operations since the squadron moved to Ludford Magna. Statistics showed that if Lancasters lasted more than five operations they were exceptional.
All who served in the forces have memories, some good, some not so good. My memories of being in the RAF are of being good and exciting times not to be missed.
My memories of being part of 101 Squadron are also of exciting times, with plenty of different experiences, most when flying. Some exciting, some frightening, one or two horrific, others best forgotten, however, a part of life which I am proud to have been part of and on the whole really enjoyed.
On 12th June 1944 I received confirmation that I had been awarded the DFM.
What if?
The situation seemed very strange, here was seven or eight young men from various backgrounds and from different areas of the United Kingdom, who had for the best part of a year lived and dined together. Worked as a close team under very difficult and dangerous conditions and after completing a tour of operations went on leave a few days later, moved from base on to other jobs and from then until the end of the war had no further contact with each other. In fact until recent years I still had no contact. It was 2001 when I met up with Norman our wireless operator and then years after that out special operator Ken.
What if when I joined 101 Squadron Wally Evans, our pilot, had not insisted that I was his engineer and I had joined A H Evans’ crew as their engineer? A H Evans’ crew were lost on their third operation.
What if when our Lancaster was caught by the blue searchlights over Germany, if the Halifax which drifted a few thousand feet below us into the path of the searchlight at that split second and received the full impact of the guns had not done so? We would be just another statistic.
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What if when over Amiens we received only comparatively slight damage from exploding shrapnel which passed through the window, just caught my flying jacket sleeve and then went out through the windscreen? Had I been standing three inches to the right the result could have been very different.
What if on returning to base from operations over Berlin on 16th December 1943, when caught up in thick fog and was diverted, if the beam light put up by Catfoss had not been at that precise moment when we were flying at zero feet from the ground we would have ploughed into the farm house. Another aircraft lost on operations. Or when on reaching base Wally had not accepted my advice and decided to go round again on another circuit before landing, we would have crashed due to shortage of fuel.
What if I had decided to accept my commission and stay in the RAF as a Station Engineer probably reaching rank of Squadron Leader or had joined BOAC as a flight engineer possibly based in Sidney Australia, or had taken up the opportunity to become a teacher teaching technical subjects? Life would have been so different, however, I believe I made the correct decision, in fact I know I did. This however is for another time to discuss.
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CHAPTER J
AIRCREW BOMBER COMMAND
WARTIME BOMBER SQUADRONS
BOMBING OF BERLIN
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SQUADRON
CLOTHING WORN ON OPERATIONS BY OUR CREW
CONTACT MADE WITH TWO CREW MEMBERS PLUS INFORMATION ON OTHERS
Aircrew Bomber Command
A typical description of a bomber crew at the time was provided by the ministry publication entitled Bomber Command. The men of Bomber Command are appointed to fulfil a special mission. Their life is not that of other men, not even those in the other branches of the service. It’s very physical conditions are different for them now; a day is much of the night, as much of the day is a time for sleep and repose. Discipline is constant yet flexible. Triumph and disaster are met with and vanquished together.
Air Marshall Arthur Harris, Air Officer Commanding in Chief Bomber Command 20th February 1992. He was known as Butch, the opinion of him varied in accordance with our losses, if they were heavy then his popularity (if that was the right word) suffered. You must remember that most aircrews never saw him when he visited Ludford, I thought he was stone faced, severe and even cynical over our effort. I disagree with those who dubbed him arrogant – he certainly was not. Nevertheless, if his crews did not see enough of him to love him they certainly appreciated what he was doing for them, he gave his command a much-needed sense of purpose. Up to the end of 1941 many people tended to regard strategic bombing as little more than a wasteful sideshow. It was Harris who proclaimed loud and long
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that Bomber Command was vital to the war effort and that his crews should be given the best of everything, because their efforts would be decisive in the final outcome.
After a successful raid the C‑in‑C would send a signal to the squadron saying good show keep it up this meant a great deal to men who knew that they stood a less than even chance of surviving a tour of operations.
Harris was also a great innovator, he called for better navigation and bombing aids, better lit flare paths and increased safety conditions on take offs and landings.
GEC was one of the aids which he had pressured for which enabled the navigator to plot his position relative to a ground station, this turned navigator from an art into a science.
Wartime Bomber Squadrons
People of the younger generation can get the impression that Bomber Command was one big, happy family. This was not so, squadrons were very much individual entities, we didn’t mix much with other squadrons and they assumed the character and charisma of the people who were on the squadron at the time.
As a result, few outsiders will ever appreciate what it was really like to serve on a bomber squadron unit. Not wishing to dwell on the dark side of squadron life I was twenty years old at the time, life was for living, we got on with the job. The higher direction of the war was for the older types – 25 years old and above. They were enjoyable days and of course we always expected to come back, suffice to say therefore that at least 277 aircraft were lost or went missing from 101 Squadron between July 1943 and 1945 and that the squadron lost 1094 crew members killed in action and 178 taken prisoner of war.
This was the highest casualty rate of any RAF squadron in World War 2.
Bombing of Berlin
It is difficult for ordinary citizens to visualise the effect of concentrated aerial bombardment.
Un Sangro front in Italy, often spoken of as the biggest land bombardment of the war, 1400 tons of shells came down in eight hours. Remember the front was many miles in length and mostly open country yet they smashed the German defence and prisoners spoke of the astounding paralysing effect of these heavy bombardments. Now compare the figures of the air assault, take as an instance only one raid in January 1944, 7300 tons of bombs went down on Berlin in 30 minutes. Remember too that the bombs fell into built up areas on a shorter front than a land attack. Remember too that tonnage for tonnage a bomb contains a much higher explosive charge than a shell. No city, no defence system could stand up to such attack for long delivered as Bomber Command was doing.
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War time Bomber Station – a normal day’s work load
The total number of personnel on the stations was around 2,500 including officers, male and
female personnel.
The station was equipped to perform as an individual unit like a small town with runways of sufficient length so that the aircraft could take off and land from where to attack the enemy.
It carried sufficient supplies of food, stocks of all the necessary maintenance supplies such as aircraft parts, tyres, turrets, engines and down to all the other small items like rivets screws everything necessary to keep the aircraft flying.
In every hour of the day people were working and with 2,500 staff on board the station could exist from the rest of the country for weeks. Time meant very little to staff and many would not know which day in the week it was or which date in the month it was. Sundays were just another working day.
The work was continuous, outside interests were possibly intentionally forgotten, all friends and family had to remain outside the airfield boundaries.
The best way of describing a normal working day is by eight am the bomb handling crews would already be hard at work sorting out the various bombs, such as the 4,000 lb (cookies) mounting them onto low engine driven trolleys, others would be packing the incendiaries into special cases, similarly all the other bombs likely to be used on operations. All these would be loaded onto special transports and dispatched around the airfield to the Lancasters which would be flying later that day if operations were on.
This operation would carry on well into the afternoon. Other staff would be doing the same with cartridges, feeding thousands of them into their ammunition belts and distributing them to the guns in the aircraft.
Other airfield staff would be filling the fuel bowsers which held 2,500 gallons of petrol and filling up the Lancaster fuel tanks which held 2,140 gallons. The fill up amount would depend on the time of the operation (Lancaster used an average of 200 gallons per hour). At the dispersal points ground crews would be carrying out their inspections on the aircraft under their control, engine fitters would be carrying checks on engine’s plugs and instruments, turrets and undercarriages and tyres, while others would be doing other pre-checks on the airframe wings, intercom and oxygen bottles etc., should any faults be found then an air test would be necessary to be carried out by the Pilot and Flight Engineer to make sure all was well. If a fault was still found and was connected with the flying ability of the aircraft further work would have to be carried out, a further air test would be required. Occasionally a complete engine may have to be replaced putting great strain on the ground crews.
While all this was happening other special staff would be working against time. The Intelligent Officer checking maps and up to date information regarding the target and route. The weather people checking the last minute weather conditions.
In messes the kitchen staff would have to prepare breakfast, lunch, tea and supper for around 200 people on top of that when operations were on a meal consisting of chips and egg had to be prepared and served approximately two hours before take-off time for the aircrews. In the locker rooms each flying crew had to have a parachute, flying helmet, safety aids, maps and money of the countries over which they would be flying, in case of being
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shot down. Sandwiches, extra rations prepared by the WAAFS and parcelled up to include chocolate, fruit, chewing gum and other items of refreshment.
The Station Officer and Flight Commander would be selecting the crew and working out the technical data for the journey.
Up until now the aircrews who may have been flying the evening before would be, during the morning, catching up on sleep (having got to bed around 4 to 5am), and in the early afternoon catching up with information etc. from their own Flight Officer or be visiting the aircraft to discuss with the ground crew, Sergeant-in-charge, any problems from the previous operation. Then probably the Pilot and Flight Engineer would have to carry out a test flight.
Once it was announced that operations were on, the aircrews had to attend briefing, have their meal then collect all necessary equipment from the locker room ready for being transported to the aircraft, to carry out the pre-flight checks ready for take-off. Only then after this could the ground crew relax, have a meal, a wash and have some time to themselves, if there was any time left, then be ready for the aircraft returning home anytime from five to eight hours later depending on the distance of the target.
Crews on return were interviewed by the Interrogation Officer, then have their meal and then to bed for hopefully a good sleep, to be ready for what were to happen the next day.
The Clothes Normally Worn on Operations by our Crew
In Bomber Command there was no laid down dress code for air crew to wear when flying on operations, every Squadron in fact every person had his own preference, all had to wear the RAF uniform, however what they wore under or over was entirely up to individuals (the RAF uniform had to be worn for safety reasons in case they landed in enemy territory, in uniform they became prisoners of war, in ‘civies’ they were most likely to be called spies and possibly shot).
Most of the operations carried out on Lancasters (in fact from all heavy bombers) were from heights of 20,000 ft or over where temperatures could drop to as low as -35 or -40oC below zero.
There was a certain amount of heating within the aircraft, this was heat which originated from the engines through ducts and entered the fuselage in the wireless operators compartment, therefore while the wireless operator and the navigator were roasting a little of the heat could be felt by the pilot and engineer, the bomb aimer who was in the front and the gunners in their turrets received no benefit, they had to source heat from other means.
As I indicated earlier it was an individual choice what clothing they wore, however I can tell you what our crew would normally wear, starting with the most comfortable.
Wireless operator: Normal RAF battle dress, heavy white jersey up to the neck, Mae West, parachute harness, flying boots and silk gloves.
Navigator: Normal RAF battle dress over silk underwear, heavy jersey, Mae West, parachute harness, flying boots, leather shoe foot with lamb’s wool tops (easily cut off), silk gloves plus leather gloves.
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Pilot and Flight engineer: There was much less heat reached the front of the aircraft therefore we wore silk underwear, long johns under RAF battle dress, heavy white woollen jersey up to neck, leather gloves over silk gloves. No Mae West, parachute harness, flying boots leather shoe base and leather flying jacket.
Bomb aimer: He usually flew in the nose of the aircraft which could be very cold, he wore silk underwear, long johns, RAF battle dress usually two heavy woollen jerseys and heavy over suit, Mae West, parachute harness, silk gloves, woollen gloves and a pair of leather gloves on top plus the normal flying boots.
The two crew members who suffered most from the cold were the gunners.
Mid upper gunner: he was still within the aircraft which gave some comfort. He wore two complete suits of silk underwear, two woollen jerseys, RAF battle dress, unheated over suit, heated over suit, Mae West, parachute harness, woollen scarf, woollen head cover under his helmet, three pairs of gloves, silk, woollen and leather, heated flying boots.
Rear gunner: This was the coldest place in the aircraft in fact he was actually outside the rear of the plane, so if it was expected that the temperatures would be around -20oC he would wear that similar to the mid upper gunner however if the temperatures were expected to drop to say -40oC he would add on extra layers of clothing and wear five pairs of gloves.
The gunners flying suits were electrically heated from a plug-in switch as were their helmet and gloves, their flying boots were also electrically heated, therefore if everything worked properly they were reasonably comfortable, this was however not always the case, a fault in the electrical system, possibly caused by enemy action, then they had problems and could receive severe frost bite, resulting in loss of fingers, toes or even more.
When the gunners were dressed up to ready to fly, it was difficult for them to walk and reach their position in the aircraft. The rear gunners especially looked like the advert for Dunlop tyres!
One of the main reasons for all crew members wearing silk gloves was if you caught the metal part of the aircraft with your bare hand it was so cold that the moisture from your skin would stick to the metal and leave you with severe injuries.
In the aircraft flying at over 10,000 ft oxygen had to be used which meant using masks attached to the helmets, which every few minutes you had to break the ice which had formed around the mask from just breathing.
The oxygen was also distributed through the aircraft from a single supply at each crew position there was a supply tap, there was also emergency bottles at each position, these would last for around 10 minutes.
We all also carried a whistle which was attached to the top left hand buttonhole of our tunic. The sound from a whistle carries much further than the human voice. It could be used to attract attention to one’s self in a dangerous situation or for making contact with others.
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Contact made with Two Crew Members after 60 Years plus information on others
Living in Scotland during the 1950’s and 60’s we had little choice of attending any of the activities which took place such as Airfield Open Days, Squadron reunions, or fly pasts, and it wasn’t until the early 1970s when we moved down to Shropshire that we began attending the occasional ‘open days’ (by this time Brian was old enough to be interested), Sylvia’s mum and sister’s home was in North Hykeham, Lincoln, only a short drive from Waddington RAF station, so this was our first visit of many which proved interesting and a good days entertainment.
We then in 1998 decided to revisit Ludford Magna (101 Squadron airfield) and the small church in the village where a Book of Remembrance was, the Book of Remembrance was of interest to me as it contained all the names of the aircrew that had been lost during the period which 101 Squadron had been there, as I said in my earlier notes that when we arrived at Ludford in July 1943 there was four crews two of which had the name of Evans, WL Evans and AH Evans, at Lindholme Heavy Conversion Unit. I was crewed up with WL Evans’ crew, and carried out my training with them, however when we arrived at Ludford somehow the paperwork was wrong and I was crewed up with AH Evans’ crew. It was suggested that as neither crews had been on operations the obvious thing was just to leave the paperwork as it was and for me to change over to the AH Evans crew, and the other Flight Engineer to take my place, Wally Evans would not agree, I was his Flight Engineer and that was how it had to be. All four crews flew on the same operations, on our first two, all returned, on our third AH Evans crew did not return, and by our fifth operation only our crew WL Evans were still operating. Checking in the Remembrance book sadly, I was able to read and realise how lucky I was that Wally had faith in me all those years ago.
While in the church we met a lady who looked after the church and was in fact decorating it with flowers, as she said this weekend coming was the 101 Squadron Association Reunion, when a service was held in the church followed by the laying of wreaths at the small memorial and afterwards the Women’s Institute laid on in the village hall tea and cakes for all, and if the weather was kind the Lancaster bomber would give a flying display.
In the year 2000 I joined the 101 Squadron Association and have attended the reunion every year since in early September, and in recent years Brian and Pauline have also joined us, joining the Association has proved very good as we have met many veterans who were flying during our time in the Squadron and other very interested people. It was through the Association Newsletter that I made contact with some of our crew members whom I had not heard from for nearly 70 years. They are Norman Ellison, our Wireless Operator and Len Brooks, our rear gunner.
In the summer of 2002 after writing a short article for the 101 Squadron Association Newsletter I was contacted by Chris, the son of our Wireless Operator (Norman Ellison) asking if I was the Donald Fraser who flew with his dad in 1943‑44 with 101 Squadron. After the telephone call Chris arranged for Sylvia and I to go to his home to meet his wife Christine and James his son, he lives in Exeter, his dad’s home was in Dawlish only a few miles apart. Chris then took us to meet his mum and dad, it was great to see him after 63 years and as such was quite emotional for both of us. It was so good to meet his wife Pauline. We stayed for around two hours before travelling on our way to Woolacombe. We met up again over the next two years, unfortunately Norman’s health deteriorated and he passed away on 13th February 2005. We attended his funeral, since then we exchange Christmas cards and the odd telephone call each year with his wife and Chris and his family.
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Norman also kept in touch with Wally Evans (our Pilot). After the war he emigrated to Australia where he lived for a number of years before returning to the UK in the mid eighties when he again contacted Norman, they then tried to contact all the other crew members, unfortunately the only member that made contact was Len Brooks, our rear gunner, Norman understood that Wally died in the late eighties.
Len Brooks, our rear gunner, we all knew that he lived in Grimsby for most of his life. During our time at Ludford whenever there was no flying on, he would take the opportunity to visit home which only took him over an hour to hitch a lift. If there was any change on flying one member of the crew would give him a telephone call and he would return to the Squadron very quickly.
During the 1980s and 90s there was a large number of books written covering the war and Bomber Command, I enjoyed reading many of them, even although as you know I did not believe all that was written, many of the books covered the time we were flying, as a result many of the operations we flew on were mentioned in them. There was a series of books written by Patrick M Otter on Bomber Command One Group, the group which 101 Squadron was in and operated throughout Lincolnshire. On reading one of Otter’s books called “Maximum Effort” I came across a picture of a number of air gunners while they were stationed at Lindholme as Instructors during their rest period. On a closer look I recognised one as Len our rear gunner. On contacting Mr Patrick Otter in 2004, he said it was 16 years since he spoke with Len at his home in Cleethorpes. However he could find no trace of him in the local telephone directories, he said he had left a message at the RAFA club in Cleethorpes to see if anyone knew what became of him, and if he had any response he would drop me a line. We thought that he had passed away around 2001‑2002.
I also made contact with Ken Lewis our Special Operator through the Newsletter, Ken also wasn’t in the best of health, however he arranged for his son in law to drive him from Reading (his home) to Lincoln. We had a great time at the Reunion lunch catching up with the past in September 2006, Ken’s profession was in Insurance which he spent all his working life in. Unfortunately he was unable to attend any more reunion meetings.
At the end of the war Norman had been in touch with Bill Blaynay, our Midupper gunner, who part way through our tour of operations after an unfortunate incident was released from flying. He told Norman that he had been reassessed and had his Sargents [sic] rank reinstated, other than that we have no other information about him.
There was still two more crew members still unaccounted for, Jimmy, our Navigator and Eric, our Bomb Aimer.
Shropshire during the war had a number of Heavy Bomber Airfields, Ternhill, Shawbury and Cosford which are still in service today. Prees, and Sleap, were both wartime bases flying Lancasters, at Prees the hangers are being used as storage units for commercial companies. Sleap is now the home of Shropshire Flying Club using part of the runway, a few buildings and the Control Tower. It is open to the public, where you watch the small aircraft flying and one can enjoy and a good cup of tea and a cake and have a good chat with people who are still interested in flying.
There is also a small Museum covering plane parts from World War II. In the last three years Sylvia, myself and friends occasionally drop in for a cup of tea, by now we know a few of the staff who are all Volunteers and very interested people.
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Jimmy Grant, Navigator
On one of our visits in 2012 I had taken with me the 1943 Christmas Dinner menu for 101 Squadron, all the crew members had signed it in the inside, most people looking at the menu thought that we had had an excellent meal considering there was a war on.
Mike Grant one of the longer serving volunteers at Sleap Museum, who aids in researching the items that are given to the Museum before they go on display to the public.
Meantime he is also tracing the history of the oil pipeline which carried the millions of gallons of oil from the ports, across the UK down to the Channel ports and on to the D Day landing sites and beyond. This will be a very interesting book to read when it is published, soon.
On seeing the menu Mike said “I know this signature, he is one of my family, see how he writes the ‘G’ and the ‘r’ in Grant, we all write our signature the same way, and we were all told off at school for not writing properly”. We worked out that Jimmy our Navigator was his uncle. After the war he said the family had gone their separate ways, as many families did, so he had no idea where Jimmy would be now – it’s a small world.
We still have no idea of what happened to Eric our Bomb aimer.
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CHAPTER K
THE LANCASTER STORY
It became clear reasonably early in the Second World War that if Britain had any chance of winning, Bomber Command had to take the war to Germany, deep into its industrial heart, which was not possible with the short range light Bombers.
It was decided by the War Council that a much larger aircraft which could travel further, with a much heavier bomb load into Germany was needed, hence the introduction of the four engined heavy bomber, the Halifax and the Lancaster.
1942 marked the turning point for Bomber Command, Marshal Travis Harris (later known as Bomber Harris) was appointed Leader of Bomber Command. He believed that Bomber Command given the necessary aircraft and equipment, could play an important role in winning the war by strategic bombing of Germany’s industrial towns and cities.
Harris ordered a 1000 aircraft raid on Cologne be carried out. Fortunately the operation was credited as a success, this persuaded the Government to allocate Bomber Command high priority for aircraft and more importantly navigation aids and radar which were vital for accurate delivery of bombs on targets.
The development of the Lancaster continued with a few prototypes being produced, the production of Lancasters increased slowly at first and gradually stepped up reaching their peak by the end of 1944.
The earlier two engine bomber had a second pilot to aid the captain with a crew number of five, however on the four engined heavies where crew members could move around the fuselage, a change was necessary. The heavies had a mid upper gun fitted requiring a mid upper gunner; because of pilot shortages owing to the increase in numbers of new squadrons coming on stream and the increased complexity of the four engine bomber, this called for a specialist engineer to replace the second pilot, so the flight engineer was created, the standard crew of the Lancaster comprised of seven specialists, Pilot, Navigator, Flight Engineer, Wireless operator, Bomb Aimer, Mid Upper Gunner and Rear Gunner. Each was an expert in his own field and each a vital cog in the overall crew, rank played no part in the airborne life of the crew.
The Lancaster was involved on most of the important operations, such as the Dambuster Raid on 16/17th May 1943, The Battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Berlin, (Overlord, the name given to the Invasion of Europe 6th May 1944) and Operation Thunder Clap, mass raids against supply and communication targets such as road and railyards continued, and against German naval shipping at Le Havre.
In late July a bombing campaign against the V-weapon sites commenced as there was fear that Germany had a new secret weapon, raids were carried out on launching and storage sites, these operations took much of Bomber Commands efforts throughout the autumn of 1944 as did the attacks against the French railway in support of Overland. In September the
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Navy believed that Tirpitz (the German Battleship) which was anchored in the Kaa Fjord in Norway was about to put to sea. Bomber Command was again given the task of destroying her. On the third attempt on 12th November 31 Lancasters attacked the Battleship. This time on arrival the weather was clear over the ship, no smokescreen obscured the target, during the attack several hits were seen by the Lancaster crews, followed by a heavy explosion, one of its magazines blew up, then the mighty Battleship rolled over and capsized.
By the end of 1944 the Allied Armies were approaching the Rhine, come the end of March 1945, they had crossed the river in strength and were advancing on Berlin.
Bomber Command’s role assisted by the United States Eighth Airforce was to support the Allies by bombing Military targets, and in supporting the Russian Army on their advance from the east on Berlin.
The last major attack of the war took place on 25th April 1945 by the bombing of the Bergholf (Hitler’s Eagles nest) and the SS barracks nearby.
The war in Europe ended on 8th May 1945 (VE Day), however just previous to that operation Manna was put into action, which was dropping vital food supplies to the starving civilian population of the Netherlands (the Germans agreed to the dropping areas) a similar operation dropped food parcels to the Dutch population. A large number of Lancasters were involved, these operations stopped on VE Day.
With the war in Europe over, plans were made for the repatriation of British and Commonwealth prisoners of war under the code name Operation Exodus, many Lancasters were converted to carry 25 passengers for this purpose. Flights continued bringing prisoners home from across France and Germany. Receiving camps were set up in the United Kingdom for the thousands of men returning home from Europe.
Although the war was over in Europe, many Lancasters were preparing for war in the Far East, known as the Tiger Force, it was agreed that 10 Squadrons of Lancasters would be used until the New Lincoln Bomber came on stream which had much longer fuel ranges. Fortunately the Japanese war ended sooner than expected (because of the use of the Atom bomb) resulting in Tiger Force not being required. Myself along with many other crew members were very relieved, because flying over Japan would have been very difficult and dangerous.
After the war the Lancaster continued flying carrying out various roles until the new aircraft came into service, of the approximately eight thousand Lancasters that were built only a few are left with only two airworthy aircraft, one in Britain and the other in Canada.
During World War II Lincolnshire was known as Lancaster County, because of the large number of squadrons scattered across the County (28 in total). Today most of the land then used is now returned to agriculture. It is still difficult to travel around without driving past the site of a famous airfield.
The airworthy Lancaster belongs to the Lincolnshire’s Lancaster Association, based at RAF Coningsby and is part of the Battle of Britain memorial Flight. Each year this flight performs at many air-displays entertaining thousands of people and serves as a living memorial to those air crew who gave their lives in the defence of their Country.
There is a second Lancaster which has its home also in Lincolnshire at East Kirby and belongs to two brothers, Fred and Harold Panton, the aircraft is maintained to a very high standard,
68
[page break]
where the public can have a taxi ride in the Lancaster, and enjoy the sound of the four Merlin engines.
The people of Lincolnshire were the first to know when the RAF were on operations, as with 28 squadrons based throughout the county and each squadron with at least 20 aircraft serviceable, the sound made from over 2000 Merlin engines, as they circled and climbed to reach a height of 10,000 ft before setting out across Europe was tremendous. People from the Netherlands told me (after the war) that during the war they lay in bed at night hoping to hear the special sound made by the British bombers, and as they passed over, they wished them success in their operation and prayed that the young men who flew in them returned home safely.
During operations I listened to the four Merlin engines purring away for five or six hours, the sound was magic and something I will never forget.
I am one of the thousands who have been entertained over the years by attending many of the fly pasts and open days, where the Lancaster has been carrying out the flypast, firstly to hear the sound of the Merlin engines which is music to my ears, then to see this superb aircraft flying towards you at around 200 feet nearly always brings a tear to my eyes for memories past.
Date: 30 Aug 1943
This picture was taken from the camera operated in conjunction with the opening of the bomb doors and Bomb Aimer releasing his bombs on our 2nd Operation to Munchen Gladbach. The picture plotted the bombs hitting the target.
[photograph of bombs hitting target]
69
[page break]
Lancaster Bomber
Specification
Length: 69ft 4ins (21.08m)
Wingspan: 102ft 6ins (31.00m)
Height: 20ft 6ins (6.23m)
Maximum Speed: 300+ mph
Range loaded: 2,600 miles app
Ceiling loaded: 24,000 ft
Internal payload: up to 7 tons
Full fuel load: 2,140 gallon
4 Merlin engines 1390 hp
(The latest Lancasters could be better in all specifications)
70
[page break]
[photograph of Avro Lancaster bomber]
[photograph of Avro Lancaster cockpit]
72
[page break]
[inserted] 16th December 1943 14th op. [deleted] Page 3 [/deleted] [/inserted]
Black Thursday
[inserted] Further notes on our 14th operation on 16th December 1943 [/inserted]
[crest]
AT A minute before midnight on the night of December 16. 1943 Lancaster LM395 emerged briefly from low cloud just north of Caistor. There was barely time for the pilot, Sgt Stan Miller of Scarborough to register what was happening before the Lancaster struck high ground near the town. When rescuers arrived they found no survivors among the crew of seven.
Crashes amongst Lancasters returning from ops or on night exercises had become an almost regular occurrence in Lincolnshire by the winter of 1943. But that night something awful was happening as the 1 Group aircraft returned from a round trip of eight hours to Berlin.
The raid that night had been specifically planned to catch the defenders fog bound on their nightfighter bases across Northern Europe. Instead, the mist came down and shrouded many of the airfields in Eastern England as the bombers were returning.
That night 483 Lancasters and 15 Mosquitos raided Berlin. Twenty-five aircraft were lost to a combination of night-fighters, flak and collisions over the German capital. At least another 29 Lancasters were lost in crashes when the bombers returned to airfields blanketed in fog.
1 Group suffered more than most with 13 aircraft being lost and 56 men killed in crashes on or around their bases. 100 Squadron was hit hardest of all, losing four aircraft, including two which collided right over the airfield at Waltham. 460 at Binbrook lost two as did 166 at Kirmington. And single aircraft were lost from 625 Squadron at Kelstern, 101 at Ludford and 12 and 626 lost a Lancaster each at Wickenby.
During briefings that afternoon, crews had been told that Bomber Command had been waiting to mount a raid on Berlin when the weather was so bad that the fighters would be grounded and they would have an easy trip. This was to be it.
The planned route was straight in and out again over Denmark. But the fighters, which were supposed to be sitting on fog-shrouded airfields across Holland, Belgium, Northern France and Germany, were airborne, and the first intercepted the stream of Lancasters over the Dutch coast and there were running battles, until the bomber stream turned for home across Denmark. Twenty one aircraft were shot down and four lost in collisions over Berlin itself.
The weather became progressively worse as the aircraft returned and by the time the 1 Group Lancasters began arriving they found the cloud base had almost reached ground level.
Crashes began to be reported from almost every airfield. Tired crews were unable to pick up the circle of lights which by then had been fitted around most of the dromes. Some came down in open fields, some, like LM395, simply flew into the Wolds. At Waltham, two Lancasters from 100 Squadron, O-Oboe and F-Freddie, collided as they circled looking for the funnel of lights that could guide them to safety.
One man who remembers that night vividly is Wing Commander Jimmy Bennett, who had arrived at Waltham three weeks earlier to form the new 550 Squadron which was due to move to North Killingholme in the new year.
Bennett. with two tours behind him already, chose to fly that with 'Bluey’ Graham and his crew.
"Our take-off was early, about 4.30 in the afternoon, and even then visibility wasn't very good and it was plain we were not going to be in for a very pleasant journey,” he said.
The bombers emerged from the cloud cover which was supposed to protect them over the North Sea. “There was no high cloud and at times we could see dozens of aircraft around us," Bennett recalled. "The clouds below cleared slightly over the city, we dropped our bombs and got away again. There was some fighter activity but we were not bothered.
"Coming back the cloud started to increase again and it was clear that by the time we reached England it would be almost right down to the deck. Bluey decided to come down through the cloud over the North Sea. In conditions like that it was always wise practice. Lincolnshire may have been fairly flat, but other places weren’t and there were always a few of what we called "stuffed clouds" around, clouds which contained something hard, like a hill.
"We dropped down into the mist but Bluey picked up the outer circle of sodium lights at Waltham, stuck his port wing on them and followed them round until he found the funnel and put her down.
“We rolled along the runway to the far hedge and we were already aware that planes were coming down all around us, landing at the first opportunity, so we decided it would be a lot safer to leave the aircraft where it was and walk the rest of the way.”
73
[page break]
Black Thursday
[picture of aircraft]
100 Squadron had suffered terribly that night. So had 97 Squadron at Bourn in Cambridgeshire. It lost no fewer than seven aircraft in crashes.
The 1 Group Summary, which was circulated to all squadrons at the end of December, recorded: “No opportunity for striking at our objectives must be lost. This being the case, it is obvious that, in addition to the enemy on the far side, the elements of this side still have to be mastered.
“As an illustration, after the raid on Berlin on December 16/17, a widespread and unpredicted deterioration in the weather at our home bases occurred.
"No diversion areas were available and many deplorable accidents resulted while our aircraft were endeavouring to break cloud and land."
The Summary continued: "An investigation has now been completed which shows the accidents cannot be attributed to a common factor. Some aircraft broke cloud too quickly, some broke cloud too slowly and continued to sink, whilst others ''slipped in” on a turn while endeavouring to keep the airfield lights in view."
It added: "Conditions were vile and unexpected yet 136 aircraft landed safely. We must continue to strive for better airmanship and more effective ground control.
But no number of investigations and changes to procedure could erase the memory of that wooden hut near Louth for Wing Commander Bennett.
One crew which narrowly escaped joining the casualties that night was one from 101 Squadron at Ludford. [inserted] X2 [/inserted]
Len Brooks, who was the rear gunner in a Lancaster flown by Sgt Walter Evans, remembers that they were diverted to Driffield because of the bad weather. Over East Yorkshire they were picking up RT messages from Driffield, Dishforth and Catfoss but could see no lights through the murk.
Then Catfoss offered to put a light up for them. " They realised we were very low and put the beam almost parallel to the ground right on us. I remember feeling the power go on. the nose lift and suddenly I saw under the turret chicken huts, a garden shed and finally chimney pots flashing by. That Iight had saved us.”
[inserted] This refers to the aircraft being suddenly given full power to lift itself over the farm buildings [/inserted]
Mr Brooks also remembers the first time Ludford's new FIDO fog dispersal system came into use. This consisted of a system of petrol burners the length of the runway, the theory being that the heat generated would drive the fog away. It worked, too, the only problem being that the hot air caused a great deal of turbulence over the runway.
He recalls that two aircraft ahead of them declined to land, despite the exhortations of the station commander, Group Captain Bobby Blucke. When it came to their turn they were so low on fuel they had no option and Evans virtually forced the Lancaster down onto the runway.
[inserted] [symbol] Len Brooks our Rear Gunner He was looking backwards from the aircraft therefore had a completely different view from the others of the crew [/inserted]
[photograph of the rear gunner, Len Brooks]
102. An unknown gunner standing by his turret. 12 Squadron, Wickenby, May 1944.
74
[page break]
Training the Crews
[crest]
BEFORE BOMBER Command could launch its projected expansion in late 1943 and 1944 it had to have a ready supply of crews. And that meant an increase in training establishments.
Changes in the training system meant that each Group became responsible for turning out its own heavy bomber crews. With Lindholme in South Yorkshire as the Base station, Heavy
Conversion Units were set up at Faldingworth, Blyton and Sandtoft with other training units being based at various times at Hemswell, Ingham and Sturgate.
Most of the1I Group crews were to go through these training bases and many felt that flying with operation squadrons was considerably safer than in the HCUs.
Until more Lancasters became available, their conversion to four-engined heavies was largely on Halifaxes, and in particular on the early Mark I and lls. They were underpowered aircraft which had already been discarded by operational squadrons in favour of either Lancasters or the much superior later marques of the Halifax. They also had some nasty habits, particularly when inexperienced crews tried one particular manoeuvre which effectively blocked the airflow over the tail and was responsible for the destruction of a number of these aircraft.
One ex-12 Squadron crew remember starting six cross-country exercises from Sandtoft and failing to complete one of them. There was little wonder that Sandtoft became known throughout 1 Group as Prangtoft.
Sandtoft itself was, like the other training airfields, originally intended as an operational station.
The site. which is alongside what is now the M180 between Scunthorpe and Thorne, was selected by Air Ministry surveyors in January 1942 as suitable for use by heavy aircraft and work started that October on the construction of the airfield. It was intended that it would come into use as a bomber airfield in January 1944 but in the meantime, it was decided to earmark the new station for a Heavy Conversion Unit.
It officially opened in December 1943 (although it was by no means complete, not unusual with newly-opened airfields in 1 Group at the time). The first unit to operate from there was A Flight of 1667 HCU which moved in from Faldingworth, followed by its other two flights. Later in the year a fourth Flight was formed and this became the Flying Instructors’ Flight which in turn provided the training for instructors within 11 Base which also included Lindholme and Blyton.
[photograph of gunnery instructors]
133. Gunnery instructor at Lindholme in 1944. On the extreme left is Bob Dunston, an Australian who had lost a leg while serving with the 8th Army at Tobruk and later volunteered for the RAF as an air gunner. The picture comes from Len Brooks of Cleethorpes, pictured second from the left.
[inserted] Second from left is Len Brooks our Rear Gunner [/inserted]
75
[page break]
[blank page]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
WO Donald Keith Fraser
Donald Keith Fraser's memoir
Description
An account of the resource
Memoir describing his life and service career in the RAF. He also gives a list of 29 operations he participated in with notes on specific operations, and recounts a brief history of the Lancaster.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Donald Fraser
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
80 typewritten pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BFraserDKFraserDKv1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
France--Modane
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Munich
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
David Bloomfield
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1 Group
101 Squadron
1667 HCU
aircrew
bomb trolley
bombing
bombing up
briefing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
dispersal
Distinguished Flying Medal
fear
FIDO
fitter engine
flight engineer
flight mechanic
fuelling
Gee
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground crew
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
memorial
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
perimeter track
petrol bowser
radar
RAF Bottesford
RAF Catfoss
RAF Coningsby
RAF Cottesmore
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Lindholme
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF North Luffenham
RAF St Athan
RAF Waddington
RAF Wickenby
runway
searchlight
service vehicle
Tiger force
Tirpitz
tractor
training
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/408/7081/SChattertonJ159568v10004.1.jpg
136590b9ab8df5d7449b6568489ecb7e
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
Chatterton, John. 44 Squadron operations order book
Description
An account of the resource
Collection consists of 521 items which are mostly Operations orders, aircraft load and weight tables and bomb aimers briefings for 44 Squadron operations between January 1944 and April 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by M J Chatterton and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />This collection also contains items concerning Dewhurst Graaf and his crew, and Donald Neil McKechnie and his crew. Additional information on <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/109020/">Dewhurst Graaf</a> and <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/115642/">Donald Neil McKechnie</a> is available via the IBCC Losses Database.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Chatterton, J
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined]NO. 44 (RHODESIA) SQUADRON 13 TH FEBRUARY 1944.[/underlined]
[underlined]OPERATIONAL AND TRAINING DETAIL FOR 13/14 TH FEBRUARY 1944 SERIAL NO. 12/44[/underlined]
[underlined]OPERATIONAL[/underlined]The following crews and aircraft are hereby detailed for operational flying on 13/14 th February 1944.
[underlined]ND.515.Z. (III).[/underlined]
S/Ldr. Cookbain – F/Sgt. Faraday – F/Lt. Waterkey – W/C. McKenzie – F/Lt. Rademeyer – F/Sgt. Braceguardle – F/Sgt. Dean.
[underlined]HE.634.P. (I).[/underlined]
F/Lt. Mercer. DFC. – Sgt. Capps – P/O Purvis. DFC. – F/Sgt. Barker – P/O Baker – F/Sgt. Pratt – W/O Wilkie.
[underlined]ND566.O. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Oakley – Sgt. Campbell – Sgt. [illegible name] – F/S McCallum – Sgt. Naylor – Lt. Hardlay – F/Sgt. Pratt.
[underlined]ND578.Y. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Chatterton – Sgt. Letts – F/O Reyland – F/Sgt. Scott – Sgt. Michie – Sgt. Champion – Sgt. Davidson – + P/O Charlesworth.
[underlined]ND552.X. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Manning – Sgt. Wren – Sgt. Woodwards – Sgt. Roberts – Sgt. Davison – Sgt. Hedey – Sgt. Murray – + P/O Frost.
[underlined]ND573.S. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Gee – Sgt. Turner – Sgt. Osborne – Sgt. Maxwell – Sgt. Utting – Sgt. Inglis – Sgt. Moore – F/Sgt. Ashton.
[underlined]ND538.T. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Butt – Sgt. Butland – F/O Sparrow – Sgt. Whiter – Sgt. Donald – F/Lt. Gurney – Sgt. Bray.
[underlined]EE158.K. (III)[/underlined]
S/Ldr. Hunter – Sgt. Cooper – F/O Greenwood – F/O Willis – Sgt. Salmon – Sgt. Miles – Sgt. Alexander.
[underlined]ME628.H. (I)[/underlined]
F/Lt. Dovebill. DFC. – Sgt. Turrell – F/Sgt. Wright – F/Sgt. Deacon – F/Sgt. G[illegible letters]rr – Sgt. W[illegible letter]ollard – F/Sgt. Mallet – = Sgt. Hill.
[underlined]ND576.M. (III)[/underlined]
F/O Fynn – F/Sgt. Bristow – Sgt. Adder – Sgt. Clark – Sgt. Johnson – Sgt. Jack – Sgt. Sagar – = F/O Fox.
[underlined]LM434.F. (III)[/underlined]
F/O Bartlett – Sgt. Middleton – F/O Young – Sgt. Head – Sgt. Scott – Sgt. Swingler – Sgt. Cowley.
[underlined]ND574.J. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Higgs – Sgt. Cowan – P/O Black – P/O Would – P/O Williams – F/S Tiller – Sgt. Chalmers – + Sgt. Levy.
[underlined]ND518.D. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Porter – Sgt. Groom – F/S Davies – Sgt. L[illegible letters]der – F/S Barclay – W/O Pass – Sgt. Bowen.
[underlined]ND565.O. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Hayes – Sgt. Ella – Sgt. Dean – F/O Dunn – Sgt. Walker – Sgt. Radcliffe – Sgt. Perrie.
Note: 2nd Pilots +
2nd Nav =
[underlined]DUTY CREW[/underlined]
P.O. Bradburn – F/S Blundell – Sgt. Norman – Sgt. Gillard – Sgt. Woolley – F/S Lloyd – F/O Stephenson – Sgt. Langford – Sgt. Wilson – Sgt. Robinson.
BRIEFING : NAVIGATORS: 13.00 hrs SPEC. : 13.30 hrs MAIN : 13.55 hrs.
1 bus will leave Sgts Mess at 13.05 hrs.
1 bus will leave Officers Mess at 13.05 hrs.
Officer i/c Night Flying : W/Cdr. Thompson. DFC. AFC.
Duty Flight Engineer : Sgt. Langford.
Duty Electricians : AOs Morgan & Roberts.
Duty Photos: Sgt. White & AC Taylor.
Duty Sigs : Cpl. Bullivant.
Duty Armr. NCOs : Sgt. Adam & Cpl. Gibbons.
Duty Flight NCO : Sgts. Parker & Molson.
Duty Clerk : LAC Beard.
Duty Sigs Officer : PO Rober
Duty F/E Officer : F/Lt. Burrows.
Duty A/Bomber : F/Lt. Lowry.
[signature] Flight Lieutenant, for Wing Commander, Commanding
[underlined]No 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron.[/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Operations order 13 February 1944
Operations and training detail 13/14 February 1944 - Serial 12/44
Description
An account of the resource
Crew lists, briefing times and duty staff for operations on night 13/14 February 1944. There are some pencilled calculation in the margins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-02-13
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One page document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Training material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SChattertonJ159568v10004
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.
1944-02-13
1944-02-14
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nicki Brain
David Bloomfield
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E O Collcutt
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
44 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
briefing
flight engineer
pilot
RAF Dunholme Lodge
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/408/7085/SChattertonJ159568v10009.2.jpg
778eb6feacfc952f750b15b67fb1fdce
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
Chatterton, John. 44 Squadron operations order book
Description
An account of the resource
Collection consists of 521 items which are mostly Operations orders, aircraft load and weight tables and bomb aimers briefings for 44 Squadron operations between January 1944 and April 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by M J Chatterton and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />This collection also contains items concerning Dewhurst Graaf and his crew, and Donald Neil McKechnie and his crew. Additional information on <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/109020/">Dewhurst Graaf</a> and <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/115642/">Donald Neil McKechnie</a> is available via the IBCC Losses Database.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Chatterton, J
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined]OPERATIONAL AND TRAINING DETAIL FOR NIGHT OF 30/31 ST MARCH 1944 SERIAL NO. 40/44[/underlined]
[underlined]OPERATIONAL[/underlined] The following crews an[sic] aircraft are hereby detailed for operation flying duties on the night of 30/31st March 1944.
[underlined]ND.515.Z. (III).[/underlined]
W/Cdr. Thompson. DFC. – F/Lt. Burrows. DFC. – F/Lt Waterkeyn – Sgt. Craven – P/O Roberts – F/S Burden – F/S Hall.
[underlined]ND.741.K. (III).[/underlined]
S/Ldr. Hunter – Sgt. Cooper – F/O Greenwood – F/O Willis – Sgt. Salmon – P/O Miles – P/O Alexander.
[underlined]ND.631.B. (III).[/underlined]
P/O Levy – Sgt. Groom – F/O Fox – Sgt. Peck – Sgt. McGuire – Sgt. Prowse – Sgt. Thomas.
[underlined]ND.565.C. (III).[/underlined]
P/O Charleswick – Sgt. Jeffrey – F/S Hill – F/O Dunn – F/S Percival – Sgt. Scott – Sgt. Evans.
[underlined]ME.628.H. (I).[/underlined]
P/O Stratis – Sgt. Haly – F/O Greenfield – F/O Clegg – F/S Knight – Sgt. Page – Sgt. Rae.
[underlined]ME.694.L. (I).[/underlined]
P/O Davey – Sgt. Legge – F/S Forman – Sgt. Jacobs – Sgt. Nutty – Sgt. Kave – Sgt. Carter.
[underlined][illegible]DUTY CREW 1[/underlined]
F/S Binion – F/S Brindle – Sgt. Kennedy – F/S Gebhard – Sgt. Stroud – Sgt. Micalchuk – Sgt. Knox.
[underlined]ME.634.P. (I).[/underlined]
F/O Stephenson – Sgt. Langford – F/S Airey – Sgt. Wilson – Sgt. Robertson – F/S Dooley. DFM. – F/S White. DFM.
[underlined]ND.517.U. (III).[/underlined]
P/O Bradburn – Sgt. Jones – Sgt. Norman – P/O Gillard – Sgt. Woolley – F/S Lloyd – Sgt. Dack.
[underlined]ND.698G.O. (III).[/underlined]
P/O Manning – Sgt. Wren – Sgt. Woodwards – F/S Roberts – Sgt. Davison – Sgt. Hedley – F/S Murray.
[underlined]ND.519.E. (III).[/underlined]
P/O Chatterton – Sgt. Letts – F/O Reyland – F/S Scott – Sgt. Michie – Sgt. Champion – Sgt. Davidson.
[underlined]ND.552.X. (III).[/underlined]
W/O Barton – Sgt. Thompson – F/S Farren – F/S Barnes – P/O Baker – F/S Groves – F/O Mills.
[underlined]ME629.R. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Frost – Sgt. Stanton – F/S Ashton – F/O Devon – Sgt. Johnson – Sgt. Carr – Sgt. Hamlyn.
[underlined]ND573.S. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Skinner – Sgt. Farmer – F/S Freeman – Sgt. Brewer – Sgt. Ward – Sgt. Scott – Sgt. Singfield.
[underlined]ND689G.O. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Hobbs – Sgt. Hall – Sgt. Fenwick – W/O Scott – Sgt. Garnsey – Sgt. Wright – Sgt. Ingram.
[underlined]STANDBY CREW[/underlined]
F/S Young – Sgt. Robins – F/O Wareham – Sgt. Wainwright – Sgt. Jackson – Sgt. Rennie – Sgt. Routledge.
BRIEFING: NAVIGATORS & SPEC: [inserted]18.30[/inserted] CAPTAINS: [inserted]1900[/inserted] MAIN: [inserted]1930[/inserted]
Nav. Bus will leave Officers Mess at [blank] and Sgts. Mess at [blank]
[blank] bus will leave Officers Mess at [blank] and Sgts. Mess at [blank]
Officer i/c Night Flying: S/Ldr Cockbain – Duty F/Engineer: Sgt. Bennett. 755. – Duty Electricians: As detailed by F/S Wallin – Duty Photos: DAC Gerrard – Duty Sigs: LAC McLane – Duty Armr. NCOs: Cpl. Gibbons – Duty Flight NCOs: Sgts. Green & Twells – Duty Clerk: LAC Hudson – Duty Sigs: P/O Williams – Duty Gunnery: F/Lt. McCurdy. DFC. – Duty F/E: F/S Faraday – Duty A/B: F/Lt. Lowry.
DUTY CREW: F/O Dutton – Sgt. Bennett – Sgt. Hussey – F/S Faraday – F/S Bracegirdle – F/S Dean.
[signature] Flight Lieutenant, for Wing Commander, Commanding
[underlined]No 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron.[/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Operation order 30 March 1944
Operation and training detail for night 30/31 March 1944 - serial 40/44
Description
An account of the resource
Crew lists, briefing times and duty personnel for operations 30/31 March 1944
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-03-30
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SChattertonJ159568v10009
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.
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nicki Brain
David Bloomfield
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E O Collcutt
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One-page typewritten document
44 Squadron
briefing
RAF Dunholme Lodge
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/408/7100/SChattertonJ159568v10017.1.jpg
1e428d7b06045ea14dd07b82913cfc29
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
Chatterton, John. 44 Squadron operations order book
Description
An account of the resource
Collection consists of 521 items which are mostly Operations orders, aircraft load and weight tables and bomb aimers briefings for 44 Squadron operations between January 1944 and April 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by M J Chatterton and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />This collection also contains items concerning Dewhurst Graaf and his crew, and Donald Neil McKechnie and his crew. Additional information on <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/109020/">Dewhurst Graaf</a> and <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/115642/">Donald Neil McKechnie</a> is available via the IBCC Losses Database.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Chatterton, J
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined]NO. 44 (RHODESIA) SQUADRON 5 TH JUNE 1944[/underlined]
[underlined]OPERATIONAL AND TRAINING DETAIL FOR NIGHT OF 5/6 TH JUNE 1944 SERIAL NO. 89/44[/underlined]
[underlined]ND578.Y. (III)[/underlined]
W/Cdr. Thompson. DFC. – F/Lt. Burrows. DFC. – F/S Stancer – F/Lt. Lowry – P/O Dicken – F/S Burden – F/S Hall.
[underlined]ME694.L. (I)[/underlined]
F/Lt. Dobson – Sgt. McKenzie – Sgt. Knight – F/S Johnstone – F/S Edge – Sgt. Snape – Sgt. Dry.
[underlined]ND973.A. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Baxter – Sgt. Betterton – W/O Rutherford – W/O Young – F/S Scholes – Sgt. Taylor – Sgt. Whitfield.
[underlined]ME791.K. (I)[/underlined]
F/S Binion – F/S Brindle. DFM. – Sgt. Kennedy – F/S Gebhard – Sgt. Stroud – Sgt. Micalchuk – Sgt. Knox.
[underlined]ME743.G. (I)[/underlined]
F/O Merrick – Sgt. Carling – F/O Poulter – [illegible] Bartlett – Sgt. Dickenson – Sgt. Warll – Sgt. Thomas.
[underlined]ND571.J. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Aiken – Sgt. Lewarne – F/S Riddoch – Sgt. Simmons – Sgt. Rawson – Sgt. Hare – Sgt. Lewis.
[underlined]LL 965.C. (I)[/underlined]
P/O Taylor – Sgt. Aherne – F/S Bushby – Sgt. Craven – Sgt. Stauber – F/S Astle – Sgt. Bray.
[underlined]ND869.M. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Ibbotson – Sgt. Worrall – F/S Greatz – F/S Murray – Sgt. Andrews – Sgt. Whitehand – Sgt. Wells.
[underlined]LM434.F. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Stockwell – Sgt. Kemp – Sgt. Frost – Sgt. Lumsden – Sgt. Ball – Sgt. Boland – Sgt. Stocking.
[underlined]ME699.T. (I)[/underlined]
F/Lt. Stephenson – F/S Bristow – F/S Airey – F/S Wilson – Sgt. Robinson – F/O Mills. DFM. – P/O White. DFM.
[underlined]ND522.X. (III)[/underlined]
F/O Smith – Sgt. Barber – F/O Calder – Sgt. Steele – Sgt. Bozier – Sgt. Blackie – Sgt. Brett.
[underlined]ND138.Z. (III)[/underlined]
F/O Hough – Sgt. Hoar – Sgt. Priestley – Sgt. Singer – Sgt. Nichols – Sgt. Anderson – Sgt. Hanna.
[underlined]NN697.R. (I)[/underlined]
F/O Balsdon – Sgt. De’ath – F/O Clubb – Sgt. Walters – F/S White – Sgt. Burns – Sgt. O’Neill.
[underlined]LL938.S. (I)[/underlined]
P/O Graaff – Sgt. Critchley – F/O Hildrew – Sgt. Gibberson – Sgt. Burke – Sgt. Payne – Sgt. Hore.
[underlined]ME804.O. (I)[/underlined]O
P/O Richards – Sgt. Thompson – Sgt. Fazackerly – Sgt. Buckby – Sgt. Pursglove – Sgt. Spinks – Sgt. Greenfield.
[underlined]ME628.V. (I)[/underlined]
F/S Oswald – Sgt. Hurley – W/O Shoebottom – F/S White – W/O Richardson – Sgt. Hutchinson – Sgt. Sargent.
DUTY CREW: P/O McCallum i/c – Sgt. Moore – Sgt. Davies – Sgt. Brewin – F/S Miller – Sgt. Cole – Sgt. Powell – Sgt. Waters – Sgt. Flaherty.
Officer i/c Night Flying: S/Ldr Cockbain. DFC.
Duty Flight Engineer : Sgt. Bender.
Duty Electricians : LACs Warwick & Ramsden.
Duty Photos: Sgt. White.
Duty Armr. NCOs : Sgt. Leyland & Cpl. Ebedes
Duty Flight NCOs : Sgts. Jordan & Arrowsmith.
Duty Sigs: Cpl. Curtain & AC Wardle.
Duty Clerk : AC Codd.
Duty Sigs Officer : F/Lt. Rademeyer & F/O Hodge.
Duty F/E Officer : F/S Faraday.
Duty Air Bomber : F/O MacKenzie.
Duty Gunnery: To be detailed.
[underlined]BRIEFING:[/underlined] NAVIGATORS: [inserted]2200[/inserted] – SPEC: [inserted]2215[/inserted] – CAPTAINS: [inserted]2245[/inserted] – MAIN: [inserted]2315[/inserted] – [inserted]Ops Meal 2100 – Transport 2140[/inserted]
[signature] Flight Lieutenant, for Wing Commander, Commanding
[underlined]No 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron.[/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Operations order 5 June 1944
Operational and Training programme for night 5/6 June 1944 - Serial Number 89/44
Description
An account of the resource
Lists of crews for operations 5/6 June 1945. Includes duty personnel and briefing times. Handwritten figures between 8000 and 12000 at 500 intervals above each crew.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-06-05
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SChattertonJ159568v10017
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.
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nicki Brain
David Bloomfield
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E O Collcutt
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One-page typewritten document
44 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
briefing
flight engineer
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
pilot
RAF Dunholme Lodge
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/408/7103/SChattertonJ159568v10021.1.jpg
e9b384786b712e1beed851a844ae19ae
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
Chatterton, John. 44 Squadron operations order book
Description
An account of the resource
Collection consists of 521 items which are mostly Operations orders, aircraft load and weight tables and bomb aimers briefings for 44 Squadron operations between January 1944 and April 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by M J Chatterton and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />This collection also contains items concerning Dewhurst Graaf and his crew, and Donald Neil McKechnie and his crew. Additional information on <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/109020/">Dewhurst Graaf</a> and <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/115642/">Donald Neil McKechnie</a> is available via the IBCC Losses Database.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Chatterton, J
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] NO.44 (RHODESIA) SQUADRON. [/underlined]
[underlined] 6TH JUNE 1944. [/underlined]
[underlined] OPERATIONAL & TRAINING DETAIL FOR NIGHT 6/7 JUNE, 1944.
SERIAL NO.90/44. [/underlined]
[underlined] NE.138.Z(III). [/underlined]
S/Ldr. Cockbain. DFC.
F/S. Faraday.
F/Lt. Woodhouse. DFM.
[underlined] F/O. McKenzie. [/underlined] [inserted] [tick] [/inserted]
F/Lt. Rademeyer. DFC.
F/S. Bracegirdle.
P/O. Dean.
[underlined] ME.699.T.(I). [/underlined]
F/Lt. Stephenson.
F/S. Bristow.
F/S Airey.
[underlined] F/S. Wilson. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Robinson.
F/O. Mills. DFM.
P/O. White. DFM.
[underlined] ND.552.X.(III). [/underlined]
F/O. Smith.
Sgt. Barber.
F/O. Calder.
[underlined] Sgt. Steele. [/underlined]
Sgt. Bozier.
Sgt. Blackie.
Sgt. Brett.
[underlined] NN.697.R.(I). [/underlined]
F/O. Balsdon.
Sgt. De’ath.
F/O. Clubb.
[underlined] Sgt. Walters. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
F.S. White.
Sgt. Burns.
Sgt. O’Neill.
[underlined] LL.938.S.(I). [/underlined]
P/O. Graaff.
Sgt. Critchley.
F/O. Hildrew.
[underlined] Sgt. Gibberson. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Burke.
Sgt. Payne.
Sgt. Hore.
[underlined] ME.804.0(i). [/underlined]
P/O. Richards.
Sgt. Thompson.
Sgt. Fazackerly.
[underlined] Sgt. Buckby. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Pursglove.
Sgt. Spinks.
Sgt. Greenfield.
[underlined] ME.628.V.(I). [/underlined]
F/S. Oswald.
Sgt. Hurley.
W/O. Shoebottom.
[underlined] F/S. White. [/underlined]
W/O. Richardson.
Sgt. Hutchingson.
Sgt. Sargent.
[underlined] ND.973.A.(III). [/underlined]
P/O. Baxter.
Sgt. Betterton.
W.O. Rutherford.
[underlined] W/O Young. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
F/S. Scholes.
Sgt. Taylor.
Sgt. Whitfield.
[underlined] ME.791.K.(I). [/underlined]
F/S. Binion.
F/S. Brindle. DFM.
Sgt. Kennedy.
[underlined] F/S. Gebhard. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Stroud.
Sgt. Micalchuk.
Sgt. Knox.
[underlined] ME.743.G.(I). [/underlined]
F/O Merrick.
Sgt. Carling.
F/O Poulter.
[underlined] F/O Bartlett. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Dickenson.
Sgt. Warll.
Sgt. Thomas.
[underlined] ND.751.J.(III). [/underlined]
P/O. Aiken.
Sgt. Lewarne.
F/S. Riddoch.
[underlined] Sgt. Simmons. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Rawson.
Sgt. Hare.
Sgt. Lewis.
[underlined] LL.965.C.(I). [/underlined]
P/O. Taylor.
Sgt. Aherne.
F/S. Bushby.
[underlined] Sgt. Craven. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Stauber.
F/S. Astle.
Sgt. Bray.
[underlined] ME.694.L.(I). [/underlined]
P/O. Ibbotson.
Sgt. Worrall.
F/S. Greatz.
[underlined] F/S. Murray. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Andrews.
Sgt. Whitehand.
Sgt. Wells.
[underlined] STANDBY NO. 1. [/underlined]
S/Ldr. Hildred.
Sgt. Bender.
F/O. Turner.
[underlined] F/S. Treloar. [/underlined]
F/S. Parker.
F/O. Hourigan.
F/O. Bradshaw.
[underlined] STANDBY NO.2. [/underlined]
F/Lt. Stratis. DFC.
Sgt. Haly.
F/O. Greenfield.
[underlined] Sgt. Hawkes. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
F/S. Knight.
Sgt. Page.
Sgt. Roe.
[underlined] STANDBY NO.3. [/underlined]
P/O Stockwell.
Sgt Kemp.
Sgt. Frost.
[underlined] Sgt. Lumsden. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Ball.
Sgt. Boland.
Sgt. Stocking.
[underlined] STANDBY NO.4. [/underlined]
F/O. Hough.
Sgt. Hoar.
Sgt. Priestley.
[underlined] Sgt. Singer. [/underlined] [insert] [tick] [/insert]
Sgt. Nichols.
Sgt. Anderson.
F/O Groves.
[insert] Y w/c Thompson & Crew [/insert]
[underlined] DUTY CREW. [/underlined]
F/O Purvis. i/c.
Sgt. Moore.
Sgt. Davies.
Sgt. Brewin.
F/S. Miller.
Sgt. Cole.
Sgt. Powell.
[underlined] BRIEFING: [/underlined]
NAV.:
SPEC:
CAPTAINS:
MAIN:
Officer i/c Night Flying: To be detailed.
Duty Flight Engineer: Sgt Waters.
Duty Electricians: LACs Coates & Roper.
Duty Photos: Sgt White.
Duty Signs: Sgt. O’Meara & AC. Wardle.
Duty Armr.NCOs.: Sgt. Munro & Cpl. Bower.
Duty Flight. NCOs: Sgt Gibbons & Twells.
Duty Clerk: LAC. Beard.
Duty Sigs. Officers: F/O Hodge & Sgt. Ford.
Duty F/E Officer: Sgt Langford.
[underlined] Duty Air Bomber: [deleted] F/Lt. Lowry [/deleted] [/underlined]
Duty Gunnery: To be detailed.
[signature]
[underlined] Flight Lieutenant, for Wing Commander, Commanding, NO. 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron. [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Operations Order 6 June 1944
Operation and training detail for night 6/7 June 1944 - Serial 90/44
Description
An account of the resource
List of crews with red line under the fourth crew member in each crew, Includes duty personnel and briefing times.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-06-06
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SChattertonJ159568v10021
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.
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E O Collcutt
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Single page typewritten document
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Laura Morgan
Andy Hamilton
44 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
briefing
flight engineer
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
pilot
RAF Dunholme Lodge
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/408/7111/SChattertonJ159568v10026.2.jpg
1bc501f122b295f86f10cb6a5a8804c8
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
Chatterton, John. 44 Squadron operations order book
Description
An account of the resource
Collection consists of 521 items which are mostly Operations orders, aircraft load and weight tables and bomb aimers briefings for 44 Squadron operations between January 1944 and April 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by M J Chatterton and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />This collection also contains items concerning Dewhurst Graaf and his crew, and Donald Neil McKechnie and his crew. Additional information on <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/109020/">Dewhurst Graaf</a> and <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/115642/">Donald Neil McKechnie</a> is available via the IBCC Losses Database.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Chatterton, J
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined]NO. 44 (RHODESIA) SQUADRON 4 TH JUNE 1944[/underlined]
[underlined]OPERATIONAL AND TRAINING DETAIL FOR NIGHT OF 4/5 TH JUNE 1944 SERIAL NO. 88/44[/underlined]
[underlined]ND578.Y. (III)[/underlined]
W/Cdr. Thompson. DFC. – F/Lt. Burrows. DFC. – F/S Stancer – F/Lt. Lowry – F/O Roberts – F/S Burden – F/S Hall.
[underlined]NE138.Z. (III)[/underlined]
S/Ldr. Cockbain – F/S Faraday – F/Lt. Woodhouse. DFM. – F/O McKenzie – F/Lt. Rademeyer. DFC. – F/S Bracegirdle – P/O Dean.
[underlined]ME699.T. (I)[/underlined]
F/Lt. Stephenson – F/S Bristow – F/S Airey – F/S Wilson – Sgt. Robinson – F/O Mills. DFM. – P/O White. DFM.
[underlined]ND552.X. (III)[/underlined]
F/O Smith – Sgt. Barber – F/O Calder – Sgt. Steele – Sgt. Bozier – Sgt. Blackie – Sgt. Brett.
[underlined]NN697.R. (I)[/underlined]
F/O Balsdon – Sgt. De’ath – F/O Clubb – Sgt. Walters – F/S White – Sgt. Burns – Sgt. O’Neill.
[underlined]LL938.S. (I)[/underlined]
P/O Graaff – Sgt. Critchley – F/O Hildrew – Sgt. Gibberson – Sgt. Burke – Sgt. Payne – Sgt. Hore.
[underlined]ME804.O. (I)[/underlined]
P/O Richards – Sgt. Thompson – Sgt. Fazackerley – Sgt. Buckby – Sgt. Pursglove – Sgt. Spinks – Sgt. Greenfield.
[underlined]ME628.V. (I)[/underlined]
F/S Oswald – Sgt. Hurley – F/S Shoebottom – F/S White – W/O Richardson – Sgt. Hutchinson – Sgt. Sargent.
[underlined]ME694.L. (I)[/underlined]
F/Lt. Dobson – Sgt. McKenzie – Sgt. Knight – F/S Johnston – F/S Edge – Sgt. Snape – Sgt. Dry.
[underlined]ND973.A. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Baxter – Sgt. Betterton – W/O Rutherford – W/O Young – F/S Scholes – Sgt. Taylor – Sgt. Whitfield.
[underlined]ME743.G. (I)[/underlined]
F/O Merrick – Sgt. Carling – F/O Poulter – F/O Bartlett – Sgt. Dickenson – Sgt. Warll – Sgt. Thomas.
[underlined]ND751.J. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Aiken – Sgt. Lewarne – F/S Riddoch – Sgt. Simmons – Sgt. Rawson – Sgt. Hare – Sgt. Lewis.
[underlined]LL965.C. (I)[/underlined]
P/O Taylor – Sgt. Aherne – F/S Bushby – Sgt. Craven – Sgt. Stauber – F/S Astle – Sgt. Bray.
[underlined]ND869.M. (III)[/underlined]
P/O Ibbotson – Sgt. Worrall – F/S Greatz – F/S Murray – Sgt. Andrews – Sgt. Whitehand – Sgt. Wells.
[underlined]ME791.K. (I)[/underlined]
P/O Stockwell – Sgt. Kemp – Sgt. Frost – Sgt. Lumsden – Sgt. Ball – Sgt. Boland – Sgt. Stocking.
[underlined]DUTY CREW[/underlined]
F/O Dutton. i/c – Sgt. Moore – Sgt. Davies – Sgt. Brewin – F/S Miller – Sgt. Cole – Sgt. Powell.
BRIEFING: NAVIGATORS: [blank] – SPEC: [inserted]1845[/inserted] – CAPTAINS: [inserted]1915[/inserted] – MAIN: [inserted]1945[/inserted]
Duty Flight Engineer : Sgt. Waters.
Duty Electricians : LACs Roberts & Spittle.
Duty Photos: Sgt. White.
Duty Sigs: Cpl. Cpl.[sic] Wright & AC Evans.
Duty Armr. NCOs : Sgt. Layland & Cpl. Gibbons.
Duty Flight NCOs : Sgts. Venter & Rubenstein.
Duty Clerk : LAC Wyle.
Duty Sigs Officer : F/O Hodge & Sgt. Ford.
Duty Gunnery : F/O Hourigan & W/O Groves.
Duty Air Bomber : P/O McCallum.
Duty F/E Officer: Sgt. Bender.
[signature] Flight Lieutenant, for Wing Commander, Commanding
[underlined]No 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron.[/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Operations Order 4 June 1944
Operations and training detail for night 4/5 June 1944 Serial Number 88/44
Description
An account of the resource
Lists crews for operations as well as duty personnel and briefing times.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-06-04
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One page document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SChattertonJ159568v10026
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.
1944-06-04
1944-06-05
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nicki Brain
David Bloomfield
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E O Collcutt
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
44 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
briefing
flight engineer
pilot
RAF Dunholme Lodge
wireless operator