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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/608/10282/AMcDonaldEA150918.2.mp3
0f2d6ecf3f91adbe56622e816552729a
Dublin Core
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Title
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McDonald, Edward Allan
E A McDonald
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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McDonald, EA
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. Two oral history interviews with Edward Allan McDonald (1922 - 2020, 1076170, Royal Air Force), a memoir, his log book, documents and photographs. He flew 28 operations as a rear gunner with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Edward Allan McDonald and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2015-07-13
2015-09-18
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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DE: Right. This is an interview with Edward Alan McDonald or Alan McDonald, by Dan Ellin. We’re in Riseholme Hall. It is the 18th of September 2015. So, Mr McDonald could you tell me a little bit about your early life, your childhood and how you came about to be in the RAF?
AM: Yes. I think I can. I was, unfortunately it’s a bit of a miserable story this. My father was killed when I was four and so of course my mother had to bring us up. But anyway after that misfortune my mother looked after us very well as best she could. And I always fancied —my uncle he used to take me to Hedon Aerodrome which was just outside of Hull. And it was a landing field. It wasn’t, no runways on it. And it was where Sir Alan Cobham used to visit and give his displays. And I used to go there on my uncles crossbar and we used to come on the outside of Hedon Aerodrome and watch the various displays that Sir Alan Cobham went through which fascinated me. And from there onwards I wanted to be a pilot. And it’s a long story this because with me wanting to be a pilot I went to the recruiting office at what I thought was the right age. The war was on now. And they sa said ys, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘I want to be a pilot.’ ‘Have you got a secondary education?’ ‘No.’ ‘No. You haven’t. Well you can’t be a pilot so forget about aircrew. You can’t be aircrew. You’ll have to be ground staff.’ So I said, ‘Is there any way I can get —?. ‘No. There’s no way around it. You either have or haven’t passed in to a secondary education. You’ve not. You can’t be aircrew.’ So, anyroads I went on now to a place in Ireland to a place called Nutts Corner which was a Coastal Command station. And it was Fortresses and Liberators flown by the RAF and I enjoyed being there. I enjoyed being connected with the aircraft and getting trips home in any aircraft which was empty. And I worked on flying control at the station and I was putting the angle of glide out. What they called the glims out. Which were small three legged lights down the runway and down the perimeter tracks. Sorry, I’ll correct myself there. It wasn’t on the runway we put them in. It was on the perimeter track.
DE: Right.
AM: Back to the dispersals with these small lights that were battery driven. And then down the runways we had like the old type watering can.
DE: Yes.
AM: Full of paraffin and a very thick wick down the spout and we put them one every hundred yards at each side of the runway. And then we had, at the beginning of the runway, a chance light which could be used. And we also had an angle of glide which was for the oncoming pilot to see if he was in the right position for descending on the runway. Anyway, that episode passed very nicely but the next thing was they asked me to work with control. In control. So I did. I worked in there and I was in there one day and they said to me, ‘You’re going on leave on Monday aren’t you Mac?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. Why?’ They says, ‘Well there’s an aircraft going somewhere near. Near Hull. Do you know, have you ever heard of Leconfield?’ I said, ‘Oh yes. That is. That’s just outside Hull. It’s near Beverley. Oh if I can get a lift there I’m as good as home.’ So the next day we had to be there for 9 o’clock. And I’d taken three of my mates with me and they also were included in the load for this Wellington which was coming there. But anyroads as the day arrived and the time arrived it was cancelled. And so they monitored all the around aerodromes and at Aldergrove, sorry at Langford Lodge there was an American Lockheed Hudson going to the mainland that day and they would take us if we could get there. So we hitchhikes from Nutts Corner to Langford Lodge which was on the banks of Loch Neagh. And having got to Langford lodge the American guard outside with a rifle and a bayonet on said, ‘What do you guys want?’ So, ‘We’ve come to get a lift on a Lockheed Hudson through to the mainland.’ ‘You aint going from here bud.’ So we said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Well there’s been an accident and the two pilots have been killed and they’re in the runway.’ And anyway I don’t want to relate the story which I do know about but anyway they said, ‘We’ll ask around the different ‘dromes if anybody’s got aircraft going to the mainland.’ Yes. The station we’d come from — they had. Another Wellington was coming in. So they put a jeep on. And I’m sure the jeep passed any aircraft. He certainly got this clog down did that American. They’re a grand lot to me. I think that we owe a great deal to the Americans. In my opinion they were the best people in the world. Some of the best people in the world. They really helped us a lot. That’s my opinion. But, anyway, regardless of that we got through to Nutts Corner and there was a Wellington just ticking over at the end of the runway. We get on to the Wellington and off we goes. Now, he, the driver of this jeep that brought us, he stopped I’m sure two inches from the side of the Wellington and I mean two, I’m serious when I say two inches. That’s the distance he stopped. But anyroads, we got in to the Wellington. Off we goes and we flies out over Bangor and we goes across the Irish Sea across to Scotland and across the Scotch coast. We head south and we goes along the Scotch coast. Then we go along the English coast. Then we go along the Welsh coast and then we eventually comes to Lands End. And we’re out at sea all the time. Not over land at any time. And now we’re going out in to the South Atlantic as far as Britain is concerned. And then we turns to the east towards France. And going along the coast or to that particular position we had glorious sunshine all the way, and I was stood in the astrodome. The other three were sat on the floor of the Wellington. I should have mentioned this but I’ll mention it now. And I had a good view from the — where I was stood. Anyway, we’re now going along the south coast past Southampton and those places until I estimated, we were in and out of cloud all the way along the south coast, and as we were going along past Southampton I thought well we must be getting somewhere near to the coast — Dover now. And if we are near Dover I should be able to see France with a bit of luck. I’d never ever seen France before then and I was looking forward to seeing it. Anyroads, we gets, comes out of the cloud and lo and behold at the side us, and within about fifteen yards of us, no more, that was the maximum, was an ME109. So I had no means of communicating with the pilot. So I ran to the front of the aircraft, tapped the pilot on the shoulder and this is what I did.
DE: [laughs] the Nazi salute and a Hitler moustache. Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. I went through all the motions to let the pilot know that there was a fighter there.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And so he stood up and looked through a panel at the back of the Wellington which I didn’t know he could see through, above the top of the fuselage but he could. There was about ten inches or so where he could look through the canopy for anything behind him. I saw his face change and then he dashed back to the controls, put us straight into a dive and we went into a cloud. And then we headed for Dover. And then when we got to Dover we headed then inland and went to a place called Nuneaton and landed. Now, we get out of the aircraft and we’re walking along to exit the ‘drome. Nuneaton drome. And somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Thanks lad.’ [laughs] with a smile on his face. So —
DE: I’ll bet.
AM: It was, it was nice to hear him say that. But anyroads, it worked. So we got away from Fritz there. Very –
DE: Yeah. That was lucky.
AM: Very fortunate. Why I turned around there on that particular second to look at France I don’t know. I don’t think we were anywhere near France. But anyroad I had done.
DE: Yeah.
AM: It was a mistake which turned out to be our advantage.
DE: Yeah. Very lucky.
AM: So that was that little story. But anyroads, from there on I had my leave. I went back. I went down to Dublin and I got chased in Dublin. We arrived in Dublin, my girlfriend and I, and I says, ‘Oh,’ we’d just got off the station and there was a big meeting not far from the station. Maybe hundreds of yards or so. And I says, ‘I bet that’s the IRA.’ She says, ‘It will be the IRA. Don’t go near it.’ I says, ‘Well I want to know what they’re saying about us.’ I says, ‘All we get is the newspaper reports about the IRA but I want to hear what they say myself.’ So she says, ‘Don’t go to the meeting. You’ll wish you hadn’t.’ So, anyroads, I says, ‘Are you staying there or are you coming with me?’ She says, I’ll come with you.’ Well when I was at school I used to run in the school sports each year. I liked running. I liked it but I never put my back into it and I should have done. But anyway that’s beside the point now. But anyroads, what happened was [pause] I’ve lost my place now.
DE: The IRA meeting.
AM: IRA meeting. That’s right. Yes. What happened with that was that as I was walking towards the meeting there was several hundred there. The man in the middle pointed straight at me and I couldn’t understand why. Why he’d done it. And the crowd turned around and then they surged. Actually surged. ‘Come on. Run.’ So we ran. She was from Ireland and she says, ‘Run.’ She says, ‘It’s the IRA.’ Anyroads, we did run. I held her hand and we both ran down O’Connell Street in Dublin and I won’t say where we got but we got somewhere where they didn’t find us. And anyroads we evaded them and now it was dusk. And we went along the street, O’Connell Street and there was a cinema at the end of this street. I went into the cinema and, ‘How many seats?’ She says, ‘There’s only two left. They’re on the front row.’ I says, ‘They’ll do.’ So we got the two seats on the front row. And the young lady that I was with was called Myrtle and the picture was an American picture. And there was a man sat in the chair as I’m sat here and a door there and a man comes in, ‘Now then Joe,’ he says, ‘How’s that gal of yours?’ He says, ‘Do you mean Myrtle?’ ‘Myrtle,’ he says, ‘I didn’t know they called her Myrtle,’ he says, ‘If I’d a gun I’d have shot her.’ She’d got a name called Myrtle and there was Myrtle at the side of me. But I thought that was funny that. They were going to shoot her if they called her Myrtle. But that was just one little thing, little episode in Ireland.
DE: Yes.
AM: But there was many others of a similar nature. I was on a bicycle going from a place called [Sleaven Lecloy?] Now [Sleaven Lecloy?] was a dummy aerodrome and I was on that dummy aerodrome. And what happened on that dummy aerodrome was that when we used to come away from the place you had two ways to go. We could either go, come up a long lane which led from the dummy ‘drome to the road, which was only a narrow road in any case and when they got to this road they could turn left and go to the station and then to Belfast. Or you could go to the right towards Lisburn and then go down towards the Falls Road. Well in Belfast there’s two roads. There’s the Falls Road this side and the Shanklin Road that side and they’re both parallel with each other. The Falls Road is a Catholic road. This road here, the —
DE: Shanklin.
AM: Shanklin Road. That there is a Protestant road. And of course the dagger’s drawn. They never should be. They should be good friends.
DN: Yeah.
AM: But unfortunately they’re not and if you were seen in the Falls Road by people in the Falls Road you was liable to be stripped naked of your uniform and everything, tied to lamppost and they’d pour tar over you. A bucket of pitch. And then they would give you a good lashing. And then they’d leave you there for the —that was the Catholics. They would leave you there to be dealt with by the police. They would come along. Well I was going the Falls Road which, from where I was at [Sleaven Lecloy, Sleaven Lecloy] is up here in the mountain and you come down all the way to Falls Road. All the way down in to the centre of the town. It’s all downhill. Every inch of it. Now, I’m going down the Falls Road on a pushbike and on the right hand side I noticed a chap stood outside a cinema with a sten gun. I thought well that would be the IRA. As I got near to him he set the Sten gun on to me. Fortunately for me a tram car came between him and me. And of course I kept pace with this tram car. I didn’t lose the tram car for quite a way. I got full steam up and went downhill with the tram car on the bike. So I escaped from that but this is just some of the little hitches in your stay in Northern Ireland. And in Southern Ireland for that matter. And it’s all silly nonsense to my way of thinking.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Nobody’s doing anything for any good. It’s all a lot of nonsense that they’re encouraging. To kill people that they don’t know. Anyway, I won’t go on that tack but anyway, fortunately I got out of it and fortunately I made many friends there. And I had a great time in Ireland. In Northern Ireland and I did in Southern Ireland. But there was this here, what shall I say? Shadow hanging over all the events. And anyway that was just one of the things that happened. And then whilst I was in Ireland I decided I would have another try at being aircrew.
DE: Yes.
AM: I’d had a lot of dealings with aircraft there. With Fortresses and Liberators at dispersals. Anyway, the warrant officer says to me, ‘Mac,’ he says to me, ‘Don’t you understand what I’m saying?’ ‘Yes,’ I says, ‘I do,’ I says, ‘And I still want to be aircrew.’ So he says, ‘Can’t you think of any other words but you want to be aircrew?’ So I says, ‘Well that’s what I want to be I says. I’ll stop pestering you when I become air crew.’ So he says, ‘Is that a threat?’ You know. I can’t remember his exact words but he implied that I was threatening him by saying this which I probably was. But anyroads, he says, ‘I’ll see what I can do for you.’ Because I’d been so many times he says his hair was falling out. But anyway, a tannoy went, ‘Would E A McDonald report to the station education officer.” So I went and, ‘Anybody know where he is?’ So somebody gave me directions and I found him. And he says, ‘You’ve been plaguing the life out of the station warrant officer. You want to be aircrew. Well,’ he says, ‘If you’re sincere and mean what you say and put your back in to what you’re going to get you’ll become air crew. But otherwise you won’t.’ So, he says, ‘To start with — do you want to be aircrew or don’t you? Let’s get that straight because,’ he says, ‘I don’t want to waste my time with you if you’re not going to put your back into it.’ Words to that effect. Maybe they were not the exact words but they implied that to me. So I says, ‘Well, I do want to be aircrew,’ and I says, ‘And I will put my back into it.’ So anyroads he says, ‘Right.’ He gave me a programme which I had to abide by and I spent quite a bit of time being schooled there. So the day of reckoning came. Well I was trembling. I thought, I bet I’ve failed. I feel sure I’ve failed. And I was saying it over and over to myself and getting worked up. Anyroads, when I went to see him he says, ‘Congratulations.’ So I says, ‘What for?’ So he says, ‘You are McDonald aren’t you?’ I says, ‘Yeah. I am.’ ‘ So he says, ‘Well you’ve matriculated.’ Well the word matriculated. To me I’d never heard the word before and I thought what’s he on about. Matriculated. What does that mean? He said, ‘You’ve matriculated.’ So anyroad when you get back to the billet there was a man in our billet called Fred Hillman and this Fred Hillman you could ask him anything and he’d always — he was like King Solomon. He knew every answer to every question. And he says to me, ‘How have you gone on Mac?’ So I says, ‘I don’t know really. I don’t. Honest. I don’t know.’ He says, ‘Are you meaning that you haven’t passed?’ I says, ‘No. I’m not meaning that at all.’ I said, ‘I hope I have,’ I says, ‘Because he shook hands with me and I thought was a good indication but he also said I’ve matriculated, and I’ve never heard that word before.’ So he says, ‘Well I’ll tell you what it means. It means you’ve qualified to enter a university.’ So I says, Are you joking?’ He said, ‘No. I’m not Mac. That’s what it means.’ So I says, ‘Thank you very much,’ I said, ‘Then I’ve passed.’ He says, ‘Yes. You’ve passed.’ So I went back. What happened was I was there for a fortnight and there’s a part of this story I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you why and it’s not something I’ve done wrong. It’s something that happened to me and I don’t know how it came about. But anyroads it happened and I’ll leave the matter at that. But what it was when I arrived there, at the station at RAF headquarters there was a WVS van outside. And this place was I would say as big as Buckingham palace where I went to RAF headquarters. And the young lady in the WVS van said to me, ‘You’re McDonald aren’t you?’ So I says, ‘How do you know my name?’ She says, ‘Oh I know a little bit about you.’ I says, ‘You know a little bit about me?’ I says, ‘I’ve never been here before,’ I said, ‘You can’t know anything about me.’ ‘Oh but I do,’ she says, ‘And they know about you in there.’ So I says, ‘In where?’ She said, ‘You see those two doors? You go in the right hand door. Don’t go in the left hand door. Go in the right hand door and when you go into that room you’ll be there with seventeen WAAFs and three airmen, and you’re one of the three airmen.’ So I says, ‘What about that then?’ She says, ‘Well you’ll find out when you get in.’ She said, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’ So I says, ‘I don’t get this,’ I says, ‘I’ve never been here before.’ So she says, ‘Well maybe you haven’t but,’ she says, ‘I know about you. And you’ll find out why when you get inside.’ So I says, ‘This is funny this is. I can’t make head nor tail of what’s going on.’ So anyroads I went into the room and nothing was said. Not a word except, ‘Hello.’ That’s all. Anyroad, I thought well this is funny, what’s she on about. They haven’t says anything. So this — I had to for an interview with an officer there and he says, ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘You’ve come here for some exams haven’t you?’ So I said, ‘I understand so.’ So he said, ‘Right, well we’ll deal with that while you’re here but we’ll explain to you that while you’re here what we want you to do maybe wont occupy all your time. So your time that you have surplus to our requirements — it’ll be yours and you’ll not be expected to do anything in that time, but otherwise you’ll be taking documents from office A to office B. And you’ll — I want a signature from office B to take back to office A and maybe to office C and so on. And these documents want signing for.’ Anyroad, I was doing this and then I got a funny comment. ‘Oh it’s you is it Mac?’ I thought, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Oh it’s you is it Mac?’ And this was a WAAF and I thought, I can’t get this. They seem to know a bit about me. So I says, ‘Have you got the right Mac?’ She says, ‘You’re McDonald aren’t you and you’ve come here for some exams?’ I said, ‘Yes that right.’ I says, ‘How do you know about me? ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘Oh never mind. I do.’ So I thought well this is blooming funny and they made a mystery to me of myself and I didn’t know what was happening. Anyroads, in the end this person came up to me and said, ‘You’re bringing my tea and my cakes and we’ll have a squaring up.’ So I says ok. Thinking that I would I would pay for mine and they would pay for theirs. And this person that I’m talking about, I didn’t know who it was. I hadn’t a clue who she was. And she says, ‘I’ll pay for the tea and the cakes.’ I says, ‘You will not.’ I says, ‘I’m an LAC,’ and I pointed to my arm which was like a little propeller on my arm.
DE: Yes.
AM: I said, ‘I’ll be on a lot more money than you.’ So she says, ‘I’ll pay for you.’ I said, ‘You won’t.’ She says, ‘I will.’ So I said, ‘You’re not paying for my tea and cakes. I’ll pay for yours or we’ll pay for our own. Whichever way you want it but you’re not paying for mine.’ So she says, ‘I’ll pay for yours and don’t argue with me.’ I thought you’re a bit bossy. Who are you? Anyroad, I’ll not go into that. I’ll leave that as a blank, blank cheque as to who she was. Now then, I left there and I started as air crew. Training that is.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And I went to, to St John’s Wood. And whilst I was in St John’s Wood the sergeant came to me. He says, ‘Stores. You.’ I said, ‘Stores? What am I going to the stores for?’ He said ‘you’ll take your uniform off you’ve got with you and you’ll put a brand new uniform on. Brand new shoes, brand new cap. All brand new.’ He said, ‘And then tomorrow you’re going to meet someone.’ So I said, ‘Who?’ So he did tell me who it was. It was the queen. The queen mother. The queen at that time. And we were all lined up and it come to my turn to be introduced to Her Majesty The Queen. And I started speaking and nothing came out. And it had never happened to me ever before but it did then. And I was trying to speak and nothing happened whatsoever. So she passed on to the next one. And so that was a little experience there. And from there I went on to [pause]was it Bridlington or Bridgnorth? Bridgnorth? Bridlington. I think Bridlington we went to. From Bridlington to Bridgnorth. Bridgnorth through to Evaton. They called it, in Scotland Evaton. I called it Evanton. E V A N T O N.
DE: Yes.
AM: But they called it Evaton. I asked on the, the man on the station, the worker there. He says to me,’ Are you lost?’ I says, ‘I think so,’ I says, ‘I don’t know which platform to get on the train for Evanton.’ ‘There’s no such place as that around here.’ So he says, ‘Let’s have a look at your pass. Oh you mean Evaton,’ he says. ‘Oh ok then. Evaton.’ So I went to Evaton and we were flying there with the Polish pilots. Every pilot there as far as I’m aware. I never saw and English pilot there but there may have been one that I hadn’t seen. But any roads I was flying with the Polish pilots. We were machine gunning dummy tanks.
DE: Yes.
AM: And I had quite a good experience there of flying. And on a morning each day as we came out the billets the Polish pilots were coming out their billets which was next to ours or near enough to us and of course the first thing they would say was, ‘Dzien dobry.’
DE: Good Morning. Yes.
AM: And I would say, ‘Dzien dobry,’ And in the afternoon I think it was, ‘dobry wieczor.’ And all because I could say, ‘Dzien dobry,’ only by mimicking them. Could I do it? I didn’t actually — I couldn’t have spelt it.
DE: No.
AM: Or maybe I could but maybe I couldn’t. But anyway they were ever so friendly towards me. And when I went into the aircraft, ‘Oh he’s here.’ You know. You got a nice welcome. And we were doing machine gun practice and all sorts of exercises with them and then we progressed from there and we went to Bridgnorth. And then from Bridgnorth we went to Syertson — not Syerston. Winthorpe. Winthorpe to Syerston. Winthorpe was Stirlings and on the Stirlings we went on leaflet raids over Germany with the bomber stream.
DE: Yes.
AM: Now we could only reach four thousand feet and they were up at ten thousand feet and more sometimes. But with a Stirling it was called the flying coffin. And it was a coffin. It was a coffin. It was a nightmare to fly in.
DE: Yes.
AM: And we came back once with a Stirling and put the undercarriage down. And the starboard wheel went down and the port wheel went up and came out at the top of the wing and it shoved out the dinghy. And as the dinghy floated down to the ground it landed. It just missed a WAAF who was walking across the grass. And it just went, I’m sure, no more than, I doubt if it was six inches from behind her where it landed. And of course it would burst I should think and it would frighten the daylights out of her. I would think anyway. Because there was all the dinghy equipment with it as well. The transmitter and other equipment. So now we had to go to a place called Woodbridge and that was that. But I have missed that the first place we went to when we were flying was a place called a Market Harborough which was an OTU. This was after flying up in Scotland. And when we were flying in the OTU we were on night bombing exercises and we got airborne and I said to the skipper over the intercom, ‘Skipper, there’s a strong smell of petrol in the rear turret.’ So, he says, ‘Well keep me informed.’ So I said, ‘Ok skipper.’ So I rang up a bit later, I says, ‘It’s getting stronger, the smell of petrol.’ So he says, ‘Well it’s still reading ok Mac. I can’t understand what’s going on.’ So I called him a third time. I said, ‘It’s getting even stronger.’ So the fourth time I called him up I was soaked to the skin in petrol. I said, ‘My vest’s soaked in petrol. All my clothes. My flying clothes.’ And I said, ‘The bottom of the turret is full of petrol floating about on the floor.’ So he said, ‘Oh we’d better get back to base.’ This is night time. So we gets back to Market Harborough and coming in, in funnels.
DE: Yes.
AM: And almost about to land when the aircraft did an about turn. The engine cut out. One of the engines caught out. We did an about turn and she skimmed over the top of a building. Anyroad, we come down behind this building and we ran across two or three fields and as we were coming to slowing down I got the turret opened. I thought, well I’m not going to be in this. If it catches fire I don’t want to be about. So I sat on the turret the wrong way around. I’d got my legs dangling outside. And I had my parachute just in case it was needed. But this was before I landed I put it on but I’d still got it on. So anyway as we’re going along it was, it hit some bumps did the aircraft and the turret went up and down and threw me out. And as it threw me out the parachute caught on something. It caught in the wind and I got blown across this here field that I was in. On my back in the field. Anyroads, I managed to, you know just jettison the equipment.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And get up. And I was alright. I hadn’t got damaged in any way. And then I picked up my parachute up and I went to where the crew were congregating and the pilot, the farmer came up and he says — he used a bit of strong language. I won’t repeat that. I’ll leave that unsays. So I can leave that to anybody’s imagination. But what happened was, he says, ‘If you people,’ that’s the skipper he’s referring to, ‘If you people would get on with the war instead of playing about. Look what you’ve done to my corn field.’ He says, ‘You’ve nothing better to do than destroying my cornfield.’ He says, ‘We’re crying out for us to make production.’ And so he went into a blur about how he was being badly done to by aircrew not respecting him as though we’d come down there from choice which we’d not.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyroad, it had got quite flattened quite a bit. I would agree with him. But, and it was the middle of the night. It was dark. It wasn’t daylight. It was dark. Anyroad, we waited for transport to come and we went back to, to our place.
DE: Yes.
AM: We had to report it and give an explanation. Anyway, if we remember that. In a future episode of something this comes up again.
DE: Right. Ok.
AM: But it was on over in France where it occurred. We’d been on a raid in Germany and our route took us over Belgium at night time. And as we got crossing Belgium the anti-aircraft gun opened up on us and it hit the nose of the aircraft and blew a strip of aluminium off which was about fifteen to twenty foot long and about three to four foot wide. That was from behind the front turret right back to the where the pilot was. Not the pilot. The flight engineer who was sat next to the pilot. A great piece about that width stripped from the front turret right back to where he was. It had wiped out his controls on his dashboard. The skipper. It had ripped, the shrapnel had ripped through them. It had cut the navigator’s top of his flying boot, cut a big gash in it but didn’t damage his leg. Didn’t scratch his leg. And a piece of shrapnel went through the mid-upper gunner’s pannier of ammunition which was under his arms. One at each side. Went through it and stopped just below his arm. This big lump of shrapnel. And the aircraft, a piece had jammed in the controls when we were in a dive. And it had jammed the controls in such a way that the more he was pulling it to get us out it was getting tighter in the dive. So it wasn’t getting out the dive. It was getting us worse in to the dive.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
AM: So anyway, cut a long story short the skipper decides, ‘Well our time’s up now. Bale out.’ Well he gives the word bale out but I was, I didn’t find out then but I found out later, my intercom wire had been cut with the shrapnel so I didn’t hear the word bale out and I’m still looking for fighters in the rear turret. Getting my turret going from side to side to side to side. Up and down. Looking for fighters and that. We were in the searchlights. And we were going down. I thought we seemed to be going a long way down [laughs] anyway. Anyway, what happened was he decided after he’d told us to bale out he’d put it into a steeper dive and see if that would do any good. Which he did and the piece of shrapnel fell out. Because afterwards when we landed I went and found the piece of shrapnel that had caused the trouble. And I threw it into a field. I thought, you’ve done enough damage. We’re not keeping you anymore. So I threw it into the field. And anyway it got us out the dive and he cancelled the ‘Jump. Jump.’. But before he cancelled the, ‘Jump. Jump,’ Dougie who was at the front nearly got cut in two with this big piece of shrapnel that ripped the sheet of aluminium from the side.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And it just went above his head somehow. I don’t know how but this is what we were told. And Dougie baled out and landed in a wood. Now, Dougie the bomb aimer was a New Zealander. Also the skipper was a New Zealander. Hughie Skilling, the skipper —
DE: Yes.
AM: And Dougie Cruikshanks, the bomb aimer, were both from New Zealand and they both knew each other very well. And we had a crowd which was next to none. There was none, none to equal us. The friendship among us was unbelievable. It was absolute paradise to be in with them. They were a great crowd. The others as well as the skipper and the bomb aimer. The bomb aimer had gone now.
DE: Yeah.
AM: He’d landed in a forest at night time. And he says, I got, a lot of things he told me about what he did but they’d take too long to tell. He buried his stuff, his equipment. What he had. And came out of the wood. He didn’t know which way to go. He says, ‘I just picked and came and I came across a road.’ There was no traffic on the road whatsoever. He says, ‘I started walking and I thought am I walking the right way? I think I am.’ Anyroads, he says, ‘I’m walking west. I think. And arguing with himself. ‘Am I going west. Am I going east?’ And he says, ‘I had quite an argument with myself what I was doing.’ He says, ‘Until I come to a bend in the road. When I turned the bend , lo and behold just round the bend was two Germans there with rifles with fixed bayonets.’ He says, ‘Now what do I do? He says, ‘If I turn around and run away they’ll shoot me in the back.’ He said, so he said, ‘I pulled my shoulders back,’ he says, ‘And I marched past them in military fashion and they never says a word to me. They carried on talking.’ He says after marching past the two German sentries he says, ‘I came to — ’ I think he said it was an American sentry but I could be wrong about this. It might be a British sentry but I understood it to be an American sentry. And he took him in at bayonet point. Took him to his commanding officer. And his commanding officer said, ‘Oh, you’ve got another one have you?’ So Dougie pricked his ears up. Another one? Another one what? And he says, ‘We’ve got two of you Germans tied up outside. We’re going to, you’ll be tied up out there with them and the three of you will all be shot together.’ So he says, ‘You’re going to shoot me? What for?’ So they says, ‘Because you’re only pretending to be a New Zealander.’ He told them he was New Zealand. He says, ‘You’ve only told us you’re New Zealand but we don’t believe you. Not the way you’re talking. You speak better language than that in New Zealand.’ So anyroads they got him outside and were about to tie him up and shoot him with the other two that were supposed to be Germans in RAF uniform. So Dougie come out with some language. And the officer said, ‘Let that man go. The Germans couldn’t know such language. And so, Dougie, as I say, everything’s got a purpose. Well bad language had a purpose there.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And it saved Dougie from being shot. Now, they let him go and he went to Brussels from there, and when he got to Brussels he came to a meeting of squaddies and [pause] what do they call the announcer? Richard Dimbleby.
DE: Yes.
AM: Richard Dimbleby was talking and sending messages back. New Year messages back from the front line. And one of the soldiers says to Richard Dimbleby, ‘We’ve got an airman here why don’t you interview him?’ So he says, ‘Where is he? Put your hand up, the airman.’ So Dougie put his hand up. So he invited him to come to him. So he says, ‘How do you come to be where all these soldiers are? Where’s all your crew?’ So he says, ‘I’ve baled out of a Lancaster and I’ve been in a wood and I’ve walked so many miles on the road and I’ve been taken prisoner by,’ whether it was American or whoever it was, and he says, ‘They’ve let me go because I’ve used such bad language with them.’ So he explained this to Richard Dimbleby and Richard Dimbleby says, he says, ‘Where are you from then?’ He says, ‘I’m from New Zealand. From Christchurch.’ Which he was then. But after the war, since the war, I’ve been to New Zealand. The skipper invited me for a fortnight’s holiday at his place at Christchurch. And then when Dougie knew I was there he wasn’t, we were real good mates Dougie and I, and I met Dougie. We had to go to Dougie’s from Hughie Skilling’s place in Christchurch and it was a fair way. I should say it was twenty miles from where the skipper lived. But Dougie wanted to see me.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And when he saw me he put his arm around my shoulder and he says, oh, ‘Thanks for being our rear gunner.’ So that, that was Dougie. Anyway, we had a nice little natter did Dougie and I, and Hughie Skilling. We had a natter about things. And I think I mentioned about what the Germans said to Hughie. They called us Skilling’s Follies.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they’d sent word back that they would soon be having Skilling. So he said, ‘Before you get me you have to get our two gunners first.’ So he said, ‘You’ve got to get through them and then you might get me.’
DE: Was, was your aircraft painted up with the name on the side?
AM: No.
DE: No.
AM: No. We had. We didn’t have our own aircraft. The commanding officer used to let Hughie fly his aircraft which was VNG-George. But we didn’t always get his aircraft because other people were using it as well.
DE: Right.
AM: So we — sometimes we’d get T. T-Tommy. X-Xray. It could have been any aircraft. It’s in the logbook.
DE: Yeah.
AM: What the aircraft we flew in.
DE: How did the Germans know about Skilling’s Follies then do you think?
AM: Well [pause] well on our drome we had a spy. Not if. We did. Definitely. No matter what anybody says, we did. And what happened was one day I was going into the office block where the people — where we used to have briefings. Part of the building. And this officer came to me. He says, ‘Mac.’ So I thought he knows me. I don’t know him. Who he is. I thought who are you? So he says ‘Are you going in to,’ oh I was going to say Scunthorpe, ‘Are you going in to Lincoln? Are you?’ So, I said, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Would you do a little job for me?’ So I said, ‘What’s that?’ He says, ‘Do you know where the taxidermist is in Lincoln?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ So I says, ‘Isn’t it somewhere near the station? Near the railway station isn’t it?’ he said, ‘That’s right. Yes. It is.’ So I says, ‘Oh fair enough.’ I said, ‘I just want to check up.’ He says, ‘Well I want you to take this if your will and leave it at taxidermist.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He says, ‘It’s a bird.’ And it was in a packet. And he said, ‘I want you to take this to have it dealt with by the taxidermist.’ But I did know what a taxidermist was then but it wasn’t long previous to that before when I didn’t know what it meant. But anyroads I’d got to know what it meant and I took this parcel to this taxidermist. And afterwards I thought to myself [pause] I had a lot of thoughts about this encounter but I’ll not say what they were. And since the war it’s come to my notice several other things. And it was, they tried to find out. In fact, we had a do where Wing Commander Flint gave us a warning about something and he looked at me and I thought are you going to tell everybody I’ve taken a parcel there? I don’t want you to say that because it would look as though I’m working in league with the — whoever might be the, might be the ones. Anyroads, it didn’t work out that way. It was maybe my thoughts and maybe thinking too much of myself.
DE: You were worried there was a message inside the bird.
AM: Yeah. I was.
DE: Yeah.
AM: I thought, oh don’t say I’ve collaborated with the, with the enemy. And anyway it seemed that since then I’ve got to know various other bits of information and I wasn’t alone in my thoughts.
DE: Right.
AM: And apparently other people had been asked by this officer to take things in to the taxidermist. Now where would an officer get things from to take to a taxidermist? Only the same as anybody else. I know. And we were in the country yes.
DE: Yes.
AM: But I never saw any livestock there of any kind. At anyroads that’s another story altogether. But I don’t know what happened with that. Whether anything happened or not but I’ve thought to myself I wished I could get on to that roof and just have a look. See what type of aerials, if any, are still up there. And you could find out what frequency they were on then.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyways, that was, it’s just thoughts.
DE: So how did you hear about the message from the Germans about Skilling’s Follies?
AM: Well I’ve met people at meetings. At the reunions. And different people have said about remarks about it. And they said, ‘We know you’ve taken a parcel.’ I said, ‘Yes I have. I can’t deny that.’ I said, ‘But it looked very much, very bad for me,’ I said, ‘Taking this parcel. I don’t know what was in it.’ But they said, ‘Well you shouldn’t have taken it.’ I said, ‘Well I can say that myself now, I says, ‘But at the time it was an officer and it was just a parcel as far as I was concerned and I took it.’ But it maybe wasn’t. I don’t know. But anyroad, that’s the way it went and I heard since that they come to the conclusion that it was that place where the information was being taken to.
DE: Right.
AM: Now whether it was or not I don’t know and I can’t say. I can repeat what I’ve been told but that’s gossip.
DE: Yes. Of course. Yes. So what station was this? Where was this?
AM: Skellingthorpe.
DE: It was Skellingthorpe.
AM: Yeah. And we know when we went on raids they were waiting for us. You don’t wait for somebody on a ‘drome or in a specific area unless you have information to, to confirm what you’re thinking. That they will be coming there and they were literally waiting for us. And this happened several times and you was outnumbered with fighters. So I mean it wasn’t, it wasn’t by accident it was by somebody had got it right. That they were getting information from the station.
DE: Were these daylight operations or at night?
AM: All raids. Night and day. So we certainly got a good clobbering wherever we went. So — they always seemed to be on the ball, the Germans. As though, as though you couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes. But I don’t think that was the truth at all. I think the truth was, as was says on the ‘drome, somebody was passing information back.
DE: I see.
AM: They definitely were. And then when they sent a pilot back. Now, I’ll give you a little example. I was a witness to a crash there. Our site for VNG then was at the long runway which was east to west. At the west end of the runway and on the south side of the runway at the end — say if that’s the runway. Taking off in funnels we were all in a line around here. 61 Squadron around that side. 50 Squadron around this side and we’d be one after the other going. One 50, one 61.
DE: Yeah.
AM: One 50, one 61 ‘til we’d all taken off. And what happened was that [pause] I’m losing myself now. What happened? Oh this memory. Its —
DE: So you’re all taking off and it’s a story of when they were waiting for you.
AM: Yeah. We — oh we were parked here at this end of the runway. That’s it. I’ve got it.
DE: At the dispersal.
AM: We were parked at the exit end of the runway. So by the time they got to where we were parked, just in front of us and that the rear turret was facing the end of the runway and we was getting ready to go on the same raid.
DE: Yes.
AM: And I was doing my drill in the rear turret. Anyway, watching the aircraft take off — one of them, I thought there’s something wrong with him. He kept low. He didn’t climb like the others. The others took off and climbed.
DE: [unclear] Yeah.
AM: Up and up until they got to the height and set on the direction they were going but he didn’t. He went over Skellingthorpe village and I should imagine he very nearly hit some of the chimney tops. But he turned around and came back and when he got over the end of the runway and only just on it he dropped like a stone. And of course it was the whole bomb load went up and he went up and that was the end. There was nothing to be seen after that. And I thought oh they’ve all had that. And unbeknown to me the rear gunner, one of the ground staff saw something gleaming in the — he’d been cycling his bike somewhere. I don’t know where. And he’d seen a light shining in the hedge bottom somewhere. A ditch.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And he’d gone to this and he’d found the rear turret. It had been blasted off the ‘drome in this into this ditch. And when he looked inside the rear gunner was there but he says he was black. He was all black. Which I can understand he would be. Anyroads, I learned a few days ago that he was, he was still alive up to two years ago. And he just died two years ago.
DE: Really.
AM: So, so I’m told. If I’m telling you wrong I’ve been told wrong. But that was unfortunate. The whole event was unfortunate because, and I had to go as a witness to relate what I’d seen and it didn’t end up there. With me things don’t just go from A to B. They go from A to B to C to D to E and it’s like a kangaroo jumping along with information. And what happened was, with me, was this. That when when it was reported everybody knew about it. The man that took off number one was Skillings and I should call him Squadron Leader Skilling.
DE: Yes.
AM: Because that’s what he was and he earned that title. He didn’t get it easy. He got it. He qualified and in my opinion he should have got even higher. He was an absolute wizard. He was out of this world as a pilot. He got us out of many difficulties. And what happened was his pal was the first one off. Now, he’d taken, he was up here when he, this one here was taking off.
DE: Yeah. Yes.
AM: So he hadn’t seen this one at all. And on his way to the target he’d got serious engine trouble and landed in a field in Germany. And they’d landed quite safely and they’d all got out safe.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they were trying to set fire to their aircraft which was the procedure and Fritz come up with machine guns and said, ‘If you go any further with that you’ll all be dead.’ So they had to abandon the setting fire to the, to the aircraft. So they were taken in and they said, ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know that all the crew are not dead on that aircraft that crashed.’ They’d not seen it. They were up there. Well away from the event happening so they didn’t know a thing about what they were on about. And they thought they were making a yarn about this other aircraft. They said, ‘But you’ll be pleased to know the rear gunner is still alive.’ Now, this is before they’d reached the target. They’d got this information. So surely that would verify that someone on the ‘drome was talking to the Germans in some way. Of course radio obviously. But they had this equipment and I mean, the building, if you look at the place where, If I could back to it, to the what do they call them again? Taxidermist is. There’s tall buildings. I think they’re three stories high. Well you’ve got a good height there above all the surrounding buildings. You’ve got a good clear run to get an aerial from up there to Germany. It would be ideal for a, for a sight to broadcast from. And of course you’d get all mixed signals from that area. From the railway. From other equipment. Bus companies. Various other places. There’d be signals of all kinds buzzing about in that area so they had a good cover.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they wouldn’t dither and dather doing. They’d have a code no doubt.
DE: Yes.
AM: And having a code they would condense their messages and make it as brief as possible. So obviously when one of them came back, was released by the Americans and it was this pilot. The Americans captured the ‘drome where he was.
DE: Yes.
AM: Not the ‘drome. The prison. Or the prison camp. Whatever it was where he was detained. And they told him, when he got back to Skellingthorpe would he tell Skilling that they were after him and that they’d soon have him. And they would have Skilling’s Follies as well. That we were the Follies.
DE: Yeah.
AM: The crew and anyway, they didn’t get us. And they nearly did once or twice but we had an event which was rather unusual. I never heard of it happening to anybody. Only us. And that was this. We were on a raid where, when the tannoy went it said, ‘Will the following nine aircrews please report to briefing room.’ Now nine aircraft. Not nine squadrons. Now usually there were twenty of 50 Squadron and twenty of 61 Squadron. ‘Would the following crew — 50 Squadron and 61 Squadron, report to the briefing room’. That was it, but with us, ‘Would the following pilots report to the briefing room.’ Skilling was one.
DE: Right.
AM: And when we got to the briefing room we thought what was this going to be about. And they says, Wing Commander Flint says, ‘We’ve a very difficult job on. We can only send nine aircraft to the target. And the target is a barge and this barge is in the Mittelland Canal. And its night time and it will be well guarded. And you’ve got to get in and sink it. It must be sunk or you must bust the banks of the canal. Whichever you do it’ll leave him stranded. Now, if this here barge gets through to where they’re hoping to get it to.’ Where ever that want it to be. I don’t know. They says that, ‘We’ve nothing to stop this tank. It’s so good. It’s the most powerful tank the Germans have ever made and if it gets through we haven’t a gun that’ll touch it and we’ve nothing otherwise will deal with it. So get it sunk and come back and tell us you’ve done it.’ So, anyroads we gets off and we goes to the target. And we, we had to start with of the nine. One malfunctioned on take off so it left eight. Enroute to the target there was a big red glow in the sky. The sky all lit up. And on our port side was two Lancasters. The far Lancaster was on fire and there was one between him and us and there was also one behind our tail. Just behind us. So that was three. Anyway, we’d not been going much further. Number two Lancaster now is on fire. So that was that. So we’d gone a bit further. Now it was our turn. The mid-upper screamed, ‘Corkscrew port. Go.’ And we go straight down and all of a sudden there was such a row above the turret and a rocket passed the top of the turret a few inches and it filled the turret with fumes as it went by. It had missed us with Johnny Meadows, our mid-upper giving the word corkscrew. He saved the day did Johnny. But it was a bad way of having to do it because it was one of those nights that’s absolutely, call it black black. It was absolutely so dark you couldn’t see a thing. We couldn’t see the ground. We couldn’t see another aircraft. And yet this Focke - Wulf 190 came head on and attacked us. And he come just above. Just scraping the top of the aircraft with his belly. And I got the guns and I thought, ‘Oh I can’t.’ You’re going to say why.
DE: Why?
AM: Because there was a Lancaster just behind us and if I’d fired at him I would have hit the Lancaster. It was just behind us. And I thought oh dear and I wondered if they’d crashed but they hadn’t. They hadn’t crashed but anyroads this Focke - Wulf come over at night time. Of all the times. I’ve never known of it before. Maybe other aircraft have had it but we’d never had an head-on attack. We’d had attacks from the side, from below and various places but never, never from in front. So that was that. And anyroads we, we had a good time of it because we was coming back from it and over Belgium the anti-aircraft unit opened up on us and that’s where they took the sheet off the side of the nose of the aircraft.
DE: Oh I see. Yeah.
AM: The full length of the nose of the aircraft was minus a sheet of aluminium about two to three feet wide.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Maybe more. I don’t know the exact measurement. But it was, I think, about the width of the this table.
DE: Did you manage to — Dougie baled out. Did you —
AM: Dougie baled out. Yes.
DE: Did you manage to make it back to England then?
AM: Yes, he did. And he came back and when he came back the skipper says to us all, ‘We’re going out. I’ve got permission. We’re going out tonight to celebrate Doug’s survival. And we were taking Dougie in to Lincoln.’ So I says, ‘Good.’ Now I’m ready and everybody’s ready and Dougie’s ready and Dougie hung back. And somehow I get the feeling he wanted to talk to me. I don’t know how I knew but I did. And Dougie hung back and I hung back and he got hold of me and he says, ‘Mac.’ I says, ‘You’re not.’ So he says, ‘What do you mean?’ I says, ‘You know what I mean. You’re going to tell me that you’re yellow.’ He says, ‘I was. I was yellow.’ He says, ‘I was the only one that bailed out.’ I says, ‘Dougie you wasn’t yellow. You carried out what you was instructed to do and did it as you was told to do it. You was on the ball. That’s the only crime you committed. You was on the ball. You got out the aircraft when you should.’ Well underneath, Dougie, the bomb aimer, is a hatch about this square.
DE: Yes.
AM: And it’s easy for him to just jettison that. I mean I would have to find out how to do it but he knew how to do it. And he zipped it out and he was straight out. Followed the instructions and he landed with his parachute in the forest. Yeah. And from there onwards he ended up as a prisoner of war to be shot for being a German spy. That was Dougie.
DE: Yeah.
AM: The New Zealander. The skipper was a New Zealander as well. Hughie Skilling.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And he was pretty well known. Whatever station we went on, ‘Hiya Skilling. That’s the bloke that taught me to fly.’ And this was, wherever we went somebody did this. Every ‘drome we went to.
DE: Wonderful.
AM: Never missed. He taught ever so many people to fly. That was him. He had a marvellous reputation and he had with us.
DE: Yes.
AM: As his crew we couldn’t have picked a better man.
DE: So what was your job in the crew?
AM: What was —?
DE: Your job. You were a rear gunner. What did, what did that entail?
AM: Well I was just in charge. I had four guns there and all I had to do was to keep the tail clear or the side or wherever my guns would face I had to patrol that area visually. And I did do. And I never stopped. I never wore glasses. I never sat down ever. Every minute of my flying was stood up. If you look at my logbook you’ll see how many hours I’ve been on trips. I’d been to Munich and back and never sat down. It was too risky I thought and so I never sat down for that reason. I thought at times it’s proved to be successful. I’ve seen aircraft and the skipper says, ‘Well keep him under view Mac until he comes into range and then see what you can do.’ We had one that followed us for quite some way. I said, ‘Skipper we’re being followed with a JU88,’ and he was on our starboard side. So I thought well I’ll let him know. I said, ‘And I don’t think he’s coming in to attack.’ He said, ‘What do you think he’s doing then?’ I said, ‘He’s finding out where we’re going to and he’s keeping us in view and if he follows us we’ll take him to the target.’ And I said, ‘He’s out of range of my guns.’ So he says, ‘Well when he comes into range give him something.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry. We’re only waiting for him to do that but he’s not. He’s a wise bod. He knows full well if he comes any nearer he’ll get a congratulation.’ But anyroads he didn’t. He just cleared off. I think he’d had enough of us. He’d followed us for a quarter of an hour at least. We did have occasions when we brushed with them but usually we were fortunate. We managed to keep out of their way so to speak.
DE: I see.
AM: Yeah. So we didn’t get any damage from fighters. We got [laughs] we got some awakenings at times when he suddenly spotted one. We wondered what he was going to do but usually they went for other aircraft. And we was fortunate.
DE: Did you open fire at any?
AM: No. No. I never, never fired one bullet. Not on active service.
DE: But you kept your eye open.
AM: I was never in a position where I could fire at one. They came near us and as soon as they saw that you were taking precautions they cleared off and went for somebody else that maybe hadn’t seen them.
DE: So did you call corkscrew and that was enough?
AM: Well yeah but, oh we did corkscrew a few times. We had to do but when you did that — well I’ll tell you what did happen with the two squadrons. They sent, the newspaper sent an article, I don’t know which newspaper it was, could they send some reporters to find out what it was like on a raid? And the squadron, this was before I was on the squadron. I’m repeating what I was told. And we were told that yes they could send some reporters and we’d fix them up. There’s two squadrons. Twenty in each squadron. There’s forty aircraft. How many are you going to send? They sent five. Well four of them went with 61 Squadron. Two in one aircraft and two in another. And one came in one of 50s aircraft. And the two that went in the 61 aircraft they didn’t come back. The one that came in 50 Squadron he came back and he’d got so many bones broken. He’d corkscrewed and he got thrown about the aircraft and he ended up in hospital. So that was [laughs] I don’t like laughing at it but it was unfortunate for them that they couldn’t have been instructed before they went in what to do in a corkscrew.
DE: So what would you have to do to —?
Well you get a firm grip on somewhere otherwise you are going to get thrown about. And if you get thrown about he’s trying to be as vicious as he can with the aircraft. You’re going to get some rough treatment and there’s only one thing to do and that’s hang on. I mean I was stood up in the turret. When we went in to corkscrew I held on to the two supports and of course I could still stand up. Even in a corkscrew. Well they wouldn’t know this.
DE: No.
AM: But I did. I wasn’t there when they did it so I mean so I couldn’t say do it because I didn’t know. I never seen them. But it was unfortunate for them what had happened. I never did find out whether the others were prisoners of war or what happened to them but certainly the one that was on our squadron I did hear about him. And as I’ve, as I just said he got so many bones broken. What they were exactly I don’t know.
DE: No.
AM: I didn’t enquire.
DE: No.
AM: So —
DE: Oh dear.
AM: But it was a vicious thing was a corkscrew and it got you out of trouble.
DE: Yeah.
AM: So that was some of the things. There was other things but —
DE: What sort of other things?
AM: Well what can I think? I’ve not given it much thought really [pause] Well yes we went to a target where it was terrible weather conditions. Really bad. And it was in a mountainous area. If I looked in the logbook I maybe could find where it was because we landed at Tangmere when we come back. We’d no petrol. We were registering empty in the tanks. But anyroad I’ll tell the story from the off.
DE: We’ve got the logbooks scanned so we can look that up later. Yeah.
AM: Well the place that I’m referring to it was a bad trip because it was ice all the way there. And lumps of ice had fallen off the aircraft. We was having a job to keep our altitude. Anyway, we gets to the target area and we goes in and we makes an orbit of the circuit. And enroute to the target, just before we reach the target, what seemed to me to be in an aircraft a few yards but it maybe was miles. There was, on the mountainside, on the same level as us, the mountain at each side of us and on the port side of us looked, on a ledge on this mountain was an area all lit up. And I says, ‘Oh that’s a listening post.’ There was a good array of aerials and that on it. I thought that’s a listening post that. I’ll bear that in mind and mention it if the opportunity crops up. Anyroads, we gets to the target, we goes in to bomb, comes out the run. ‘How many bombs did you drop Doug?’ ‘Not one. They’ve froze up.’ So, ‘Right we’ll go around again.’ So we goes around again. ‘How many bombs did you drop this time Dougie?’ ‘None. They’re all froze up.’ ‘Why? Did you have the heaters on?’ ‘The heaters have been on all the time, skipper. They’ve never been off. They’re on, and they’ve been on all the time.’ ‘And we haven’t dropped a single bomb?’ He says. ‘No. We’ve got the cookie and the five hundred pounders.’ So we goes around again. The third time. No. We haven’t dropped one. So we goes around for the fourth time and they dropped the, I don’t know how many of the thousand pounders dropped but some of them dropped. But not the cookie. That’s the four thousand pounder. So the skipper says, ‘Dougie—’ Oh I haven’t mentioned this part here — this was Dougie’s thorn. This is the thorn in Dougie’s side. I didn’t tell you this part. At briefing Wing Commander Flint said, ‘We’re getting very short of four thousand pounders. And if for any reason you don’t drop your thousand pounder — four thousand pounder, I want to know the reason why you’ve dropped it, where you’ve dropped it and how you’ve dropped it.’ He said, ‘And I want a good explanation if you’ve dropped it.’ And he said, ‘You’re in for it.’ So anyroads we comes out and the skipper says, ‘Right, Dougie. We’ll have to get rid of it somewhere.’ So Dougie says, ‘You can’t.’ So skipper says, ‘Why can’t we?’ He said, ‘Well you heard what Wing Commander Flint says. If we can’t drop any four thousand pounder we’ve to bring it home or he wants an explanation why not.’ So he said, ‘Well we can give him one.’ So Dougie said, ‘What’s that?’ So he says, ‘We won’t reach base if we carry it. We’ve been around four times Dougie,’ he said, ‘And we’re getting a bit short of petrol. As it is we’ll be lucky if we reach the French coast.’ So he says, ‘Oh we will will we?’ So he said, ‘Well, I don’t care what you say. I say drop it.’ So the skipper says, ‘Well we’ve got to drop it before we get to the coast because we call it galloping petrol down.’ So he says, ‘We’ll have a vote on it, Dougie. Mac —rear gunner. What do you say?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Mid-upper?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Wireless op?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Navigator? Drop it.’ ‘Flight engineer?’ ‘ Drop it.’ ‘Pilot? Drop it.’ But I think he said, ‘I think we’ve won.’
DE: Yeah.
AM: So he said, ‘Will that do Dougie?’ So he says, ‘Well I’m voting against it.’ So he said, ‘Dougie if we do,’ he says, ‘I’ll guarantee we won’t reach the French coast if we take it back.’ ‘We won’t?’ He said, ‘We’ll be lucky now if we reach the French coast.’ And as it turned out we, he dropped it on this here, this here sight which I said was the listening post and he got a bullseye on it. And they forgot one thing. They forgot to take the difference in altitude of that from dropping a bomb. It was so many thousand feet up, this.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And that should, that should have been added to the distance between us and the height they dropped the bomb from. But they didn’t do that. They forgot about it. Well the aircraft got such a smack. The skipper says, ‘Mac, are you alright in the tail?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Thank goodness for that.’ He says, ‘Has any damage been done?’ I says, ‘Not that I know of.’ So he said, ‘Are you sure? Wireless op go and have a look down the fuselage. See if there’s any damage. I’m sure we’ve got some damage somewhere.’ But we hadn’t. We’d got no damage. So we heads for the French coast now. And I heard them talking as we were crossing The Channel there, ‘We’ll be lucky if we make the coast. We might have to ditch.’ Anyroad, we landed at Tangmere. And we got, we stayed there the night and got petrolled up and back to base but we wouldn’t have done with a cookie.
DE: No.
AM: It was a good job we got rid of it. So in the report they put down that we’d hit this here listening post. Which they did. They got a bullseye. Because they hadn’t, there wasn’t much difference, there wasn’t much difference in the height between them and us. But these are little side kicks to what made flying interesting. You did get little kicks now and again that boosted you up when you saw it happening to them and not to us.
DE: Yes.
AM: But, but then when you sat down seriously thinking oh aren’t we stupid. We’re bombing their lovely buildings that they’ve taken centuries to build. The pride and joy of Germany. We’re knocking them down.
DE: Yeah.
AM: They’re doing the same here. They’ve come to Coventry. They’ve knocked beautiful buildings down there that’s been up for centuries. And this is the thoughts that go through your mind. We must be mad to instigate such things as killing each other like we do as though it’s the right thing to do. But it’s not. It’s the wrong thing to do. But anyroad that was, that was it. There was other occasions when things happened but you can’t — I couldn’t bring them all to mind at the moment. Maybe when I’m in bed and thinking what I’ve said today. Maybe these things will come to my mind which they do when you’re not in a position to relate them.
DE: That’s always the way. Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. The memory does strange things.
AM: Yeah. We had some close dos. But we could rely on the skipper. He was, he was A1. Absolutely A1. And he invited us to their home in New Zealand for a fortnight’s holiday and the wife and I went and we had a marvellous time there. And as I’ve said we went to Dougie’s.
DE: Yes.
AM: Yeah. He says, ‘I’m pleased you was our rear gunner.’ [laughs] I don’t know why but that’s what he says.
DE: That’s good.
AM: So anyroads.
DE: How many operations did you do?
AM: I don’t know. I’ve not counted. It would be about twenty eight I think. Something like that.
DE: So what happened at the end of the war in Europe?
AM: Well what happened to me was we got a direct hit at the tail end of the aircraft and I was stood, in front of me it was open and I was stood there. The next thing I knew I was laid on the floor. And I come to and I could hear on my earphones Hughie shouting through the earphones. Oh I says, ‘Was you shouting me Hughie?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ he says ‘What happened?’ ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘You know that shell that hit us?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘It pulled my intercom out.’ I said, ‘It come unplugged.’ And he didn’t believe me but I thought I’m not going to tell him I’m laid on the floor. So anyroad, I got up off the floor and felt myself and I thought I’m alright. I says, ‘Everything’s alright at the back end here Hughie, I said, ‘It was just a bit near. That’s all.’ So anyroad, when we landed he says, ‘I want to see you.’ He says, ‘I don’t believe you.’ So I says, ‘Why? What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.’ I said, ‘What about?’ He said, ‘You know what about. You told me you were alright, didn’t you? On the intercom.’ I said, ‘Well I am.’ So he said, ‘You’re not.’ He says, ‘If you could see your eyes you would know why.’ So I says, ‘Well what’s wrong with my eyes? He said, ‘They’re all bloodshot. Both of them. They’re in a hell of state,’ He said, ‘You’re going to the medical centre.’ ‘ No,’ I said, ‘I aren’t. I’m alright Hughie.’ He says, ‘Mac we rely too much on you to for you to go up like that. You couldn’t see properly.’ I said, ‘I can see alright.’ And I thought I could. Apparently I was in hospital for a fortnight. But anyroad they kept me in. They wouldn’t let me out.
DE: Which hospital was that?
AM: It wasn’t. It was the army hospital — Air Force hospital. So, and I says, ‘Can I go back to flying?’ And they says, ‘Oh not again.’ I says, ‘Well I don’t want to be here.’ I says, ‘I appreciate what you’re doing but I don’t want to be here. I want to be back with my crew.’ I said, ‘I’ve only two more ops to do. Or one to do. I don’t know how many,’ I says, ‘And then we’ve finished the tour.’
DE: Yes.
AM: He says —
DE: Yes. Did they not fly without you then?
AM: No. They got another gunner.
DE: Right.
AM: I don’t know who he was. But anyroad they got another gunner and he took my place for the last two or the last one. I don’t know if there was one or two we had to do. So —
DE: So were you in hospital at the end of the war in Europe then?
AM: Near enough.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Anyway, they doctored me up in there and I think I could have managed without. I think I could anyway. I think they were taking precautions but they’d no need to. I was alright.
DE: Sure.
AM: I thought I was anyway.
DE: Yeah.
They said, ‘No, you’re not. Not again.’ I said, ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Just let me go and,’ I says, ‘I’ll get back with my crew and then that’s it. You’re finished. You’ll not put up with me.’ So they wouldn’t. They said, ‘No. You’re stopping here a bit longer.’ I was there for a fortnight. Anyroad, that was that. So that was the only incident I had. And it wasn’t too bad either. I mean I didn’t know much about it [laughs] I was just laid on the floor. And, oh a young lady in there in one of those photographs. Is she, oh she’s in here. This young lady — we meet her at the meetings. In our reunions.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Where is she? That’s — have you seen them?
DE: I’ve seen those ones. Yeah.
AM: You’ve seen them. And that young lady there in the middle. Yeah. That young lady there her husband was on the same raid as us and he got killed. He got shot down and he was killed. She enquired until she got to us and ever since then she’s, she’s clung to us. She’s from Wales somewhere. And when we go to the meetings she makes a beeline for us on account of us being on the same raid as her husband.
DE: I see.
AM: I don’t know what the connection is except her husband unfortunately, he come unstuck there. We were lucky. We got through.
DE: Yeah. Do you go to a lot of reunions then?
AM: I’ve been to quite a few.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. When I can go I go.
DE: I see. And what did you do after the RAF?
AM: I went back. I was an electrician. And I were working in Hull. I were working on mine sweepers. And I worked on — I think it was called the Virago. I don’t battleships. I don’t know whether it was a destroyer or a cruiser. It was a fairly big ship. Plenty of guns on it and plenty of anti-submarine equipment. And with ASDIC and sonar on it. And I was lucky with that because I struck with a note with a man that was piped on board ship. And the man that was the captain of this ship was called Crumpelow. A navy ship this is I’m referring to.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they piped this officer aboard on ship and he says, ‘I want you all to hide out the way while we’re bringing him on board ship. We don’t want him to see any of you.’ So we says, ‘Ok fair enough.’ So I was a charge hand then and I says, ‘We’ve got to keep out of sight while this officer’s coming aboard ship.’ So they says, ‘Ok. We can manage that alright.’ So we goes down below. Down in the bilges.
DE: Yes.
AM: Gets out the way. And he came and he went. And then we were working on the ASDICs and when a few days later on I had a “Practical Wireless” in my back pocket. And I was working down below in the ASDICs with the rest of the squad and I felt someone lift this book out of my back pocket. I thought who’s taken that? And I turned around. He says, ‘It’s alright. I’m not pinching it. I’m only looking at it.’ And it was this officer that they’d piped on board the ship. So he says, ‘What are you going to make out of this?’ So I says, ‘Well I’m thinking of making that condenser analyser.’ So he says, ‘Well do you know,’ he says, ‘I don’t know if my qualifications are good enough,’ he says, ‘But what I use for doing that, nothing as complicated as what you’re going to make.’ He says, ‘This is what I use. A pair of earphones and a resistor. And I calibrate the variable resistance with the earphones across the condenser,’ he says, ‘And I have a set of condensers that I have that are calibrated and are precision ones,’ and he says, ‘I use them to work out what the ones are that I’m putting in. He says, now then, only me can use this now because my hearing and your hearing and anybody else’s is not the same. The earphones are calibrated to my hearing. Not to yours.’ He says, ‘If you make this you’ve got one of the best condenser analysers there is in the market. He says, ‘And that’s what I use on this here ASDICs and Sonar’
DE: I see. Yeah.
AM: So he says, ‘Send this for this CPO, chief petty officer will you?’ — to this bloke that was with him. So he went and he came back with this chief petty officer. He says, ‘If this man wants any gear out of the radio room —’ the pantry he called it. I think he called it a pantry, he says, ‘Give him it. But he will return it. He’s not getting given it for good he’s being loaned it. And I’m giving him, sanctioning that he can have anything he wants out of that radio stockroom and he can have the use of it providing he brings it back.’ So I thought well how good of him and he didn’t know me from Adam. And from there onwards we were the best of pals. We really got on, you know, really well. He was a smashing fellow. Really nice. I thought he was anyway. I could have made a life-long friend of him.
DE: Marvellous.
AM: So that was, that was a little bit there about that. I think they called it the Virago.
DE: Right.
AM: I might have got the name wrong because it was a long time since now.
DE: Sure.
AM: That’s what I was doing. Working on ships.
DE: Can I just take you back? A couple of things you started to talk about and then, and then we’ll press on with it.
AM: Yeah.
DE: You had a crash landing at Woodbridge.
AM: We had. We had four crash landings at Woodbridge.
DE: Did you?
AM: Yeah. We had a Lancaster got a burst tyre, with shrapnel that was. And the undercarriage was damaged and we landed with one wheel down and we didn’t know whether it would stay up or not because it had come down of its own accord. Not selected down. We landed with a Lancaster. We landed with a Stirling. And we crash landed at Juvincourt in France and we landed in a field there on New Year’s Eve after we’d been to Mittelland Canal. Yeah. I think it was the Mitteland Canal we went to and we got clobbered there but we got the two engines — the port engines on fire and the port wing on fire. We got the controls damaged. They got the intercom to the rear turret damaged. There was quite a lot of damage done and got the bits stripped off the front which was twenty foot long.
DE: Oh this was when Dougie baled out.
AM: Yeah.
DE: Right.
AM: And it was all —
DE: So you crash landed in France after that.
AM: At a place called Juvincourt. Which is just about approximately three miles. I’m estimating this as approximately three miles north of Reims. And we landed there and I had a marvellous time there myself for several reasons. First of all when we landed there an officer came up with a sten gun. It was night time and we was in the middle of a field. We said, ‘What have you brought that for?’ He said, ‘Well yesterday,’ or last night, ‘An aircraft landed and a man come out the darkness and stabbed the pilot to death.’ So he says, ‘I didn’t want him to be setting about you people so I brought the sten gun. And if he comes tonight he’ll get his, what he’s earned because,’ he said, ‘I won’t mix my words. If he comes up I’ll not give him the chance to use the knife. He’ll have had it.’ But nobody came. So that was that. Now then, I mentioned early on when I was talking about Market Harborough and about the parachute packer.
DE: Yeah.
AM: That I would probably come back to that.
DE: Oh yes.
AM: Now, when we handed our parachutes in, ‘Oh its McDonald is it?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘I suppose you want something do you?’ He said, ‘Yes I do. I want my seven and six pence.’ So I said, ‘What did I tell you I did?’ He said, ‘You told me that when you flew over Germany you emptied your pockets, left it in the billet and when the airmen there knew you wasn’t coming back they was to spend it.’ I said, ‘That’s right. Well,’ I said, ‘That’s what’s happened tonight. My money’s still back in the billet. I haven’t got a penny piece on me.’ I said, ‘I’m not giving my money to the Germans. Not as a prisoner.’ I said, ‘So I’m sorry you’re out of luck again. ’So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what,’ I says, ‘When I can and if I see you again I’ll have the seven and sixpence and you’ll get it.’ And I have. I’ve three half crowns in a cupboard at home waiting for the day that I ever meet him again. And if I do or if I can contact him he’ll get his seven and sixpence. So that was it. We had a good natter him and I. You know. A sort of friendship builds up don’t it?
DE: Yeah.
AM: You can tell whether anybody’s friendly with you or whether they’re aggravated at what you say. And at first with him an immediate friendship. We struck it off together.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyway that was that. Now, after meeting him I went to the cookhouse and he says, ‘I wonder if any of you likes turkey?’ So I said, ‘I do.’ So he said, ‘How much did you want?’ So I said, ‘How much can we have?’ So he says, ‘You can have as much as you want,’ he said, ‘We’re on American rations here,’ he said, ‘And we’ve got that much turkey it’s going to have to be thrown away.’ And he says, ‘I don’t like throwing food away.’ So I said, ‘Well you’ve no need to do that.’ I says, ‘Can I have just turkey on my plate? No potatoes. Nothing at all but just turkey.’ ‘You can, he said, ‘With pleasure. And I’ll pile it up.’ So he did. So when the other, the rest of the crew says, ‘What’s up with you? Haven’t they got any vegetables?’ I said, ‘Yeah. If you want them.’ So they says, ‘What do you mean if you want them? Well you get vegetable normally with your turkey.’ I says, ‘Well, he asked me did I want turkey? I says yes. He says how much do you want? I says can I just have turkey? He says yes you’ll be very welcome to have turkey. And he says and he’s filled my plate up.’ And I says, ‘I think if you people asked for the same as me he’d be very pleased because he doesn’t want to throw it away.’ So they went up and they says, ‘Is he speaking the truth? And he says, ‘Why? What did he say?’ He says we could have turkey and no vegetables.’ He says, ‘Yeah you can if you want.’ ‘Oh. We’ll have just turkey then.’ So the rest of the crew had turkey. But I haven’t mentioned this so far. That when we were in our orbit we were in a dreadful state at that time. The aircraft that is. Not us. We were alright. And the tannoy, the intercom was going and this aircraft had obviously heard us talking to ground control. Heard our pilot talking to ground control. And he says. ‘I hear that there’s another aircraft in the orbit the same as us. His two port engines on fire and the wing on fire. And we’re very short on petrol.’ He says, ‘I’m afraid I daren’t go around and make a proper landing the right way around. I’m going to have to land the wrong way around.’ Well that meant we were landing and we were going up to that end here and he was coming in this way. And we ran off the runway. We’d no brakes. Off the runway, across the perimeter track, across the grass verge into a field and in the middle of the field we came to a stop. Now it was right in line with the runway where we were right underneath the funnels. He came in low down and he made an excellent landing. He actually touched down on the perimeter track with three wheels. Now, I think that’s a marvellous landing. Because usually you’re a little way down the runway and then you touch your wheels down. Not him. He made sure they were down because they were the same as us. They’d got knocked to blazes with this anti-aircraft unit in, in — not France. In Belgium. And we were to find out after it had all happened and we were discussing it. Somebody says, ‘Well we’ve captured Belgium.’ And then it suddenly dawned on us it was our own anti-aircraft fire that had clobbered us. And it wasn’t our British anti-aircraft. It was our allies anti-aircraft that had shot us down. That had shot him down and then following him as he landed another one came in that had got the same again. And apparently this anti-aircraft unit of the Americans they only used anti-aircraft shells with proximity fuses in. So instead of passing your aircraft by missing it if it was at the side of your aircraft the proximity fuse would detonate the shell and you’d get an explosion at the side of you, which for them was a good thing. It was ideal. It brought the aircraft down. Which it did. So it brought three Lancasters down within a few minutes that were passing over the unit. So we were one.
DE: Right.
AM: And this other aircraft was the next one and then of course one followed him. He got clobbered the same.
DE: Oh dear.
AM: So three Lancasters were lost there. But nobody fortunately was injured on any three of them. So that was even better still.
DE: Yeah. That’s good.
AM: So Dougie, he was going to get shot.
DE: Yeah.
AM: He was the only casualty. But anyroad, he didn’t get shot. And anyroads things, things turned out for the better.
DE: Yes.
AM: Nobody was injured and Dougie got away scot free. Thank goodness.
DE: Wonderful.
AM: He got a good frightening I suppose. Tied up and they were going to shoot him.
DE: Yeah. Your tea’s probably cold now.
AM: Oh well. Not to worry.
DE: There’s a couple of points that you made and I sort of, I let them go because you didn’t seem to want to tell me but I’d like to just ask you again.
AM: Yeah. Don’t you.
DE: That the WAAF that you met at headquarters. I’d like to know who she was.
AM: Who she was?
DE: Yeah.
AM: Well to be quite honest with you I know very little about her except that she used to come with a young lady much younger than herself. And I took it for granted it was her daughter. So I was talking to her one day and I says, ‘You know your daughter?’ ‘Well, you don’t, you’ve not seen my daughter.’ I says, ‘Well I’m not blind. You come with her every time.’ ‘That’s not my daughter.’ I said, ‘Whose daughter is it then?’ She said, ‘Well what happened was I got put out my house.’ for some reason. She didn’t say what. ‘And that lady owns property in Grantham, and she accommodated me and I’m living with her. And that’s how I know her and that’s why she comes with me to these meetings. She likes coming to these Association meetings.’ And to be quite honest with you she was very friendly with me and I says, ‘Well, your mam,’ this — ‘My mam? You’ve not met my mam.’ So I says, ‘I have. That’s your mam isn’t it?’ ‘No. She’s not my mam.’ She says, ‘I’ve taken her in because she got put out of her house.’
DE: I see.
AM: So that’s, that’s how I know. Well I don’t know her from that really. I know from the fact that her husband was on the same raid as me and he got killed.
DE: Right. I see.
AM: So that was on a raid to Munich. I went twice to Munich. And apparently on one of the raids he was on it and he got killed. And she goes to see him. It’s somewhere in France where he’s buried. And they invite her over there and she goes each year and she says they make a right fuss of her. They’re ever so good to her. So that’s her. I don’t know her name. I couldn’t tell. I’ve never known her name.
DE: I see. Ok.
AM: I usually just go up to her and talk to her like maybe you from now on. Like maybe if I see you in the town, ‘Oh now then how are you?’
DE: Yeah.
AM: But I won’t say John, Charlie, Harry, Joe or Ken or whatever. I wouldn’t because I mean I don’t know. I would say, ‘Hello.’
DE: Right. I see. Ok.
AM: So that maybe explains that one.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Now what’s the second one?
DE: It was you were sort of alluding to some secrets at RAF headquarters.
AM: Yes I was. And I shall have to be very careful that I don’t mention it.
DE: Ok.
AM: It’s very very high.
DE: I can’t, I can’t persuade you to tell me the story.
AM: No. No. But I’m in a difficult position. I could tell you as easy as wink. I thought I’d given you a clue when I said to you, when I was in London at St John’s Wood I was presented to the Queen Mother.
DE: Yes. I think I’m with you. Say no more.
[pause]
DE: I think that’s been an absolutely wonderful interview. You’ve nearly been talking for two hours.
AM: Have I?
DE: Yeah. Your son’s about right. Yeah.
AM: And I’ve only told you a fraction of what happened.
DE: Well we can do all this all again if you’d be up for it another time. Just while the tape’s still going, what do you think, what’s your opinion on the way that Bomber Command has been remembered over the last seventy years?
AM: Well they’ve not, they’ve not given us any publicity whatsoever. I mean I heard the news during the war and to me our aircraft went to Hamburg. That’s it. No mention of losses or anything. And the Germans were so efficient that I was jealous of them. I was literally jealous because the Germans were so efficient with their aircraft with how they attacked. They didn’t, they didn’t make one false move and they were always on the ball. You could never take it for granted that they wouldn’t be waiting for you because they would. They were there all the time and they come in. They never hesitated. They’re straight in. We were more than fortunate. We really were fortunate. But a lot of people, I saw a lot of people go down as you can imagine. And I felt sorry for them that went down but you couldn’t do anything about it. You couldn’t reach them. If my guns would have reached that fighter I would have given him a burst. For example one night there was a Lanc behind us. We’d bombed the target and was coming away from it. And coming away from the target this here JU88 was just behind a Lancaster going that way. And this JU88 was here and he stopped, I should say no more than thirty foot from the rear turret. And I thought what’s going on. Why doesn’t he fire? Why doesn’t the Lanc fire? And neither of them fired at each other for minutes. I thought good grief if I could persuade my skipper to drop behind I’d give him a burst and he’d be down easy. And he didn’t fire at the German. And the German didn’t fire at him. And then all of a sudden the rear gunner, I don’t know that he’d got trouble with his guns. Something had been switched off or suddenly wasn’t working. That I don’t know but then he did open up and of course the JU88 went down. But it was ages before he did.
DE: Crikey.
AM: And I couldn’t understand that at all. It seemed to me to be ridiculous.
DE: It is strange.
AM: Anyroad, if I’d, if I’d had the courage to ask my skipper let us drop back I could have easily, we was a little bit above him. Not far. He wouldn’t be a hundred foot below us. Less than that but behind us.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And just a little bit below us. Anyroads, he got him. Oh did I give a cheer when I saw him fire. And I couldn’t understand it. I’ve never seen it before or since. I’ve seen plenty of ours go down. Not many, not many of theirs. There were some went down. Yes. But not many. They weren’t, they weren’t like our Battle of Britain where the Jerries were going down most of the time. So we’re told.
DE: How did that make you feel?
AM: It was war and I accepted it as such. You got to accept all sorts of boss-eyed things in the war haven’t you? Things are not normal by any means.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And I just accepted them for what they were. Sometimes I felt sorry. Sometimes I says whoopee. Depended which side it was.
DE: I know you says you used to leave all your money behind.
AM: Leave?
DE: You used to leave your money behind.
AM: Yes I did.
DE: Were you, were you frightened? Were you reconciled to not coming back some times?
AM: Well the possibility was very strong. That you wouldn’t. And I knew this. And I thought well they’re not going to have my money. I don’t care what happens. They’re certainly not having that. And so I left it behind and left it with the blokes in the billet. They knew where it was. They never touched it. So yeah that was just one of the things. There’s a lot of funny things in a war. Many funny things. You meet people you never dreamed that you would rub shoulders with and you get things happen to you you’d never think would happen but they do. War is a funny thing. It’s a mixture of all mix and manders. Absolutely. It really is. I’ve been on a ship and I was on a ship between Ireland and Stranraer and there was a raging storm in the Irish Sea. And I was violently sick. And I went up on the deck and a wave — I got stuck between one of those —I think they call them air funnels. They’re not letting gasses out. They’re taking the air in down to the boiler room. And I got wedged between that. And it was the only thing that stopped me getting washed overboard. The wave came over the side and over me. And my great coat [laughs] and everything on me was wet through. And I thought well I don’t care if I get washed overboard. I was that fed up of being ill. I don’t care. I don’t care if I get drowned. That was it and that was the way it was. At night time by the way. Not day time. And then to end it a destroyer or a cruiser, or some, some navy ship shone his searchlight on us and then he put it off and they’d see me on the deck. Whether that put them off or not I don’t know but they put the searchlight off and we just progressed getting back to Stranraer. So, but I didn’t mention another little thing. Whilst we were at Juvincourt I went to our Lanc when we got up in the morning. I didn’t get any sleep. But the night time — oh I didn’t tell you that part. We got into bed. That’s the yarn.
DE: Right.
AM: Now I got into the bed and the bed tilted. If that’s the bed it’s there. I got in to the bed at this side.
DE: Yes.
AM: And this is what happened.
DE: It went through ninety degrees. Yeah.
AM: I’d never heard of this before but anyroad I ended up on the floor. So I got my tunic and I wedged one side of it and I thought well I’ll sleep at that side, but then my tunic crumpled up or whatever you call it and of course that side went that way [laughs] where the tunic was. So I thought I’m not messing about any more. I didn’t get any sleep at all that night. They were all having a good laugh at me being on the floor and under the bed twice. Anyway, to cut a long story short the next morning we gets up, we goes to breakfast and I says to Johnny, the mid-upper, I says, ‘Are you coming to have a look at VNG-George?’ He says, ‘Is that where you’re going?’ I says, ‘Yeah are you coming with me?’ So he said, ‘Yeah. I’ll come with you.’ We’ll have a look. See what damage has been done.’ So we went to, got on to VNG-George and we went up and oh what a mess it was inside. You’d have thought they had a gun inside the aircraft. There was holes all over the place. It was like a colander. And we went up front to where the skipper was. The dashboard was all smashed. And the seat where Hughie was there was a piece of shrapnel. Now, let’s get this right now. I’m going to say the wrong thing if I’m not careful. I know. I’ve got it. At the back of him was a sheet of armour plate like that.
DE: Yes.
AM: A half an inch armour plate behind the skipper. A half inch thick and the full width of his seat.
DE: Yeah.
AM: So he was protected from the back and just there on the seat was a piece of shrapnel. It had gone through the armour plating and were just sticking out at this side. But it hadn’t got enough force to go any further. It had finished there. And I tried to get it out and I’d not anything heavy to hit it with. I thought I’ll get that out and give it to the skipper because that’s the nearest he’s ever been to having a bit of shrapnel in him. And it would have got him at this, behind his shoulder because that’s where it was.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Where his shoulder would have been. Anyroad, we come out the aircraft and we saw the damage that was done and we saw the piece missing off the side of the starboard side of the aircraft. From the turret right back to the, where the flight engineer sits. You could see inside the aircraft all the way along. Anyroads we goes from there. I says, ‘Let’s look all the way around John. Let’s look at the ‘drome.’ Well there were debris all over the place. There was ammunition. There was guns. There was spades. There was uniforms. There was helmets. You name it, it was there. Where they’d been fighting on the ‘drome. Apparently according to our information we were told that they had only captured the ‘drome the day before we came. Before we landed there. And that there had been fighting on the ‘drome which they had. And so I said, ‘Come on let’s look around John.’ And we were walking along the perimeter track and it took several bends. And one of the bends we went around, ‘Look at that.’ ‘Well what about it? It’s only a Focke-Wulf 190.’ I says, I says, ‘I’m going on to that. I’m going to start if up if I can.’ He said, ‘Do you think you can?’ I says, ‘I don’t know. I’ll find out.’ So I climbs on to the wing. Climbs up to where the canopy was and it was perfect. There was no damage to the aircraft anywhere that I could see. I thought they’ve abandoned this in their escape from the place. I bet it’ll start up. And there’s me trying to get the canopy undone and I couldn’t find out how to get it undone. I struggled and struggled. Pulling and writhing and I couldn’t get the canopy undone. And all of a sudden, ‘Will you come down from there.’ [laughs] This officer come up, ‘That aircraft is probably booby trapped and if you’d got in it you and the aircraft would have gone up. Not just the aircraft but you and it. Come down and don’t come up again.’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ So I came down again very obediently. I thought this is where you play very gentlemanly. You don’t, you don’t say what you’re thinking because it gets you deeper water. I come away. So I said, ‘Come on John.’ We didn’t go the way he went. He went that way so we went this way. I thought the bigger the distance between us if anything else comes up he’ll be going that way and he won’t, he won’t see me. So anyroads we turns one or two corners. ‘Oh look at that.’ And it was a Heinkel 111, I said, ‘I’m definitely getting in John.’ I said, ‘Keep a look out for me, and if he comes give me a shout and I’ll lay down and keep out of sight.’ So anyroads, he didn’t see anybody coming and here’s me struggling to get this canopy open. But I couldn’t get it open and I was going to try and start that one up. But could he? No damage. No visual external damage. I thought well that might start up. Anyroad I thought good I’ll have a go at this at least if I got it started up before he comes back. I can’t hear him if he shouts up. I was dying to get this aircraft started up. But anyroads he came and oh. ‘Will you get down from there? Now. And I’m going to follow you. You’re not coming around this area any more. Off this site.’ So we had to back track to the main perimeter track area. So we goes back to the perimeter track. ‘If I catch you again you’re for it.’ He says, ‘I’ve told you twice. I’m not telling you anymore.’ So I said, ‘Ok. Come on John.’ So we went walking along the perimeter track. Well we went to look in one of the trenches and there was guns. There was ammunition. There was tins with food in. There was allsorts there. If we’d had a lorry we could have filled it and another one as well with this equipment that was laid about. I said, ‘Oh come on we’ve had enough down here wading around in the mud.’ So we come out of this here trench and we were walking along. ‘Hey. Look there, John. Can you see what it is?’ He says, ‘Yeah. It’s a tank.’ ‘No it isn’t.’ He says, ‘It’s a tank.’ I said, ‘It isn’t. I says where’s it’s guns?’ He says, ‘He hasn’t got any guns has he?’ I says, ‘Well it’s not a tank then is it?’ So he says, ‘Well what is it?’ I said, ‘It’s a radio controlled tank.’ So he says, ‘Is that what it is?’ I says, ‘That’s what it is John.’ I says, ‘I feel sure it is. Come on we’ll go and have a look.’ So we walked across this field and we got as far as that chimney from here.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. From it. From the tank. And what, I was going to climb on board it and have a look around and see what there was. And all of a sudden there was a load of blokes shouting and calling. They reckoned that we hadn’t got parents [laughs]. You silly —
DE: Yeah.
AM: ‘Do you know where you are?’ I said, ‘Yeah. We’re near this tank. Why?’ So he says, ‘It’s a radio controlled tank.’ I said, ‘We know that.’ So he says, ‘Do you know where you are?’ I says, ‘Why? We’re in a field. Why?’ They said, ‘Do you know what’s in the field?’ I says, ‘No, what?’ He says, ‘You’re in the middle of a minefield. That’s what we’re calling out.’
DE: Oh dear.
AM: So he said, ‘When you come back look to see if the ground’s been dug. With every step you take.’ So we didn’t bother to look down. We just walked off the doing. And we got on to the perimeter track and that was it.
DE: And that was alright.
AM: We didn’t get damaged in any way.
DE: Yeah. Oh dear.
AM: But that we finished there and we were walking back and they said, ‘Oh we wondered where you were. There’s a Lanc come and he’s taking us back and we couldn’t make out where you two were.’ So we had to go straight in to the Lanc and back home. So we landed at that place. What do they call it now? Near to [pause] near to [pause] near to Brigg. It’s not far from Brigg. It was where the spies used to land. I do know the name when I hear it. A double-barrelled name.
DE: Near Brigg. Elsham Wolds.
AM: No. I don’t know about that.
DE: Killingholme.
AM: It was a ‘drome where the spies used to be taken from and they took supplies from there. And nobody. The guards —
DE: Tempsford..
AM: Eh?
DE: Tempsford. .
AM: No.
DE: No. I don’t know then.
AM: Each aircraft there had a guard outside. All the Lancasters there had a guard outside.
DE: Ludford Magna.
AM: That might be it. That could be it. I’m not sure. But I think that might be it. But that’s where we landed. And the guard was outside a Lancaster and the aircraft had twenty one of us in. You know.
DE: Yeah.
AM: From three Lancs. And there were officers and they says to the guard, ‘You’re going to let us in aren’t you?’ He says, ‘No.’ He said, ‘If I let you in,’ he says I’ll get court martialled.’ We says, ‘We’re not going to tell anybody but we’re going in.’ So he says, ‘You can’t.’ ‘Well we’re going in.’ And we all went in. All the lot of us went in. And it was a bit different to ours. A little bit different. It had a bench at each side and chairs down each side. So they had transmitters at both sides and seats so that people could sit in the seats and operate the equipment. That was then. So I mean now it’ll have gone to the scrap yard by now I should think. But it was interesting. Oh there’s all different things will well up in my mind that I maybe should have told you. But there’s so much happens to you. You can’t sort of remember it all at once. And it was good. You was always being entertained so to speak. Something was always happening that was of interest. And well that’s the way it went, and I don’t know whether that’s on the tape or not but —
DE: It is.
AM: Is it?
DE: And its two hours ten minutes now we’ve been chatting. So I think I shall, I shall wind it up. Thank you very much.
AM: Ok.
DE: That’s a wonderful interview. Thank you.
AM: You want me to sign that do you?
DE: I will do. I’ll just press stop on here.
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 Edward Allan McDonald. Two
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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AMcDonaldEA150918
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.
Date
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2015-09-18
Contributor
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Julie Williams
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
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Mittelland Canal
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Allan McDonald was born in Hull and watched Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus as a child. He worked as an apprentice electrician before joining the Air Force. He served as ground personnel in Northern Ireland until he passed the exams to become aircrew and trained as an air gunner. He recalls seeing a Me 109 and during training, his aircraft crash landed and he was soaked in petrol. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe and recalls seeing aircraft exploding in the air, a dinghy deploying by accident and nearly hitting a WAAF, and making an emergency landing at Juvincourt after being attacked by a Fw 190 and being hit by anti-aircraft fire.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:10:44 audio recording
50 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
bombing
crash
decoy site
forced landing
Fw 190
ground personnel
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
perimeter track
RAF Evanton
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Skellingthorpe
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/314/3471/PParsonsCER1601.2.jpg
f30942c1b075659474b5aa7629b82c74
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/314/3471/AParsonsCER160817.2.mp3
8cf12b67c2a559ad9b550a29e665f2d3
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
Parsons, Cecil
Cecil Edgar Robertson Parsons
Cecil E R Parsons
Cecil Parsons
C E R Parsons
C Parsons
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Cecil Edgar Robertson Parsons DFC (b. 1918, 400419 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-17
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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Parsons, CER
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: Ok. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Doreen Burge. The interviewee is Cecil Parsons. The interview is taking place at Mr Parson’s home in Ocean Grove, Victoria, Australia on August the 17th, 2016. Now, is it alright if I call you Boz?
CP: Certainly.
DB: Ok. Can you tell me what your birth date is?
CP: 12th of September 1918.
DB: Right. So you’re soon to turn ninety eight.
CP: That’s right.
DB: And where were you born?
CP: In Colac, Victoria.
DB: So not too far from here.
CP: No. No.
DB: And you grew up on a farm or —
CP: Yes. My father had a property near Beeac. Between Beeac and [Kirk?], and that’s where I was born, the youngest of a family of six.
DB: Right. So did you have a cattle farm or sheep?
CP: It was a mixed farm, yes, and we all had horses.
DB: Yes.
CP: All the kids had horses. Dad was a very great cattle man and all the children grew up on horses. I was the youngest of six.
DB: So I bet you could ride well.
CP: Yes. I could. I could ride. I remember riding behind dad in the buggy and I’d always been told that if I looked around I’d fall off. And I did [laughs]
DB: Proved the point to you.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And so can you tell me any more about your family background?
CP: Yes. My mother came from a property near Colac. She was born in the country. My father was born in Gippsland and was on a farm from a very early age, and became a farmer and a very good stock man. And he died when I was only seven so — but I was the youngest of a family of six. So we were very much a country family.
DB: Yes. So your father came from Gippsland.
CP: Came from Gippsland. Yeah.
DB: And moved to Colac.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
DB: When he married.
CP: He came to Colac because my mother’s family had property at Colac.
DB: Right.
CP: And he bought into that family. Into that family’s properties. Yeah.
DB: And so when he died did you all still stay on the farm?
CP: No. We moved in to Geelong.
DB: Right.
CP: Because I was, when he died, he died when I was about seven and I was the youngest of the family of six, and we moved into Colac and then to Geelong.
DB: Yes.
CP: As a family.
DB: So the farm, the farm was sold.
CP: Yes. Sold off.
DB: Yes. And so what — you did your schooling in Geelong.
CP: In Geelong. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: And your brothers and sisters were all there too.
CP: All educated in, in Geelong. Yeah.
DB: So you haven’t moved too far away.
CP: [laughs] No.
DB: That’s right. And so after your schooling what did you do?
CP: I went to, I went to school in Geelong and after schooling I went to university in Melbourne, and into residential college. Trinity College. And —
DB: So that’s at Melbourne University.
CP: Melbourne University.
DB: Yes.
CP: And at the end of those three years it was 1939 and the war came. And I went to the war.
DB: And so what made you decide to go, go to the war?
CP: It became almost automatic I think at that time. I thought of nothing else but going to the war when I finished my university degree in ’39 and went straight in to the air force.
DB: So you were twenty one then or about twenty one.
CP: Twenty one.
DB: Yes. And what made you go for the air force rather than the army or the navy?
CP: Family. Cousins. Friends. And also I was very much attached to flying. My cousins had been flying, and there wasn’t any other thought of doing anything else.
DB: So you really wanted to be a pilot.
CP: Yes.
DB: Right from the start.
CP: Yes.
DB: Yes. Now I’m just going to stop this for a minute to make sure we can hear you alright.
[recording paused]
DB: So Boz do you recall where you signed up? Was it in Melbourne or —?
CP: Indeed in Melbourne. I was, I was at university at the time.
DB: Yes.
CP: And so that was — signed up in 1940 I think.
DB: And so where was your training, most of your training held? Do you remember?
CP: Yes. Indeed. I went almost straight to Narromine and started flying on Tiger Moths.
DB: So is that in New South Wales?
CP: Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes. In central New South Wales. Near Forbes.
DB: Ah yes.
CP: Yeah. And that was the main training. This was early on in the war because it would have been in November of 1940.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And so what did your training while you were at Narromine — what did that involve?
CP: It was just an introduction to flying. We flew Tiger Moths.
DB: That would have been fun.
CP: Yeah. It was. It was something I had wanted to do and hadn’t been able to afford to do, and so I lapped it up, it was great fun.
DB: Yes.
CP: And great. I was the fourth course going through so it was early days and they were a wonderful batch of recruits at that time. You know, they had the pick of the, pick of the bunch really.
DB: So how, how had they selected the people to become pilots? Did you have to sit a test?
CP: Yeah. Quite a, quite an interesting interview, and people who were interested in flying particularly so I got first preference. And you needed to have a reasonably good background in education. Well, I’d been to university so I was well up in the education area.
DB: So what had you studied at university?
CP: I was studying science.
DB: So that would have helped.
CP: Oh yes, yes. Very much so.
DB: Yes. Yes. And so after you did the interview that was when you were selected to be trained as a —
CP: And interestingly enough at that time there wasn’t much of a wait.
DB: Oh right, yes.
CP: They were looking for people. And so we went straight into training.
DB: Right.
CP: It was marvellous. And I think I had to wait for about two or three months, that was all, before I was called up.
DB: Yes. And how did your, the rest of your family feel about what you were doing?
CP: Well I only had a mother. I was the youngest of a family of six and, dad had died when I was only about six.
DB: Yes.
CP: And so it was all up to mum really but —
DB: And how did she feel —?
CP: Well —
DB: About you becoming a pilot?
CP: I don’t know.
DB: She didn’t try and stop you.
CP: No. Certainly not.
DB: And did you have, did any of your —
CP: I’d been to university.
DB: Yes.
CP: And, you know I was pretty well on the —
DB: You were pretty independent.
CP: I was independent.
DB: Yes. And did any of your, did you have brothers who -
CP: Yes. I had an elder brother, five years older than me, he was a medico.
DB: Right.
CP: He did medicine and he went straight into the army.
DB: Yes.
CP: At that time. In 1940.
DB: So it was just the two of you who served then or did some of your other siblings —?
CP: No. I had four sisters, and they all went into something or other. Jan, the eldest was a secretary in Geelong and that’s where she stayed. She was a [Frank Guthrie?] secretary. And my brother was a doctor and he went into the services.
DB: Yes.
CP: He finished his medical degree. He was five years older than me.
DB: So did quite a few of your friends from that, from university sign up as well?
CP: Yeah, practically all of them.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. At that time in 1940 it was, everyone was joining the services.
DB: Yes. Yeah. So how long was your training at Narromine?
CP: Five months and then we went on to more advanced aircraft at another place.
DB: So do you remember where that — where you went after Narromine?
CP: I went to [pause] gee whizz I just can’t quite remember now.
DB: Was it in New South Wales as well?
CP: In New South Wales. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: And then did you then head overseas or?
CP: No [pause] Yes I did, I did. In November of 1940 I got on a ship and sailed to England. Yes. I did indeed.
DB: Do you remember which ship you went on?
CP: No. I couldn’t tell you.
DB: That would have been —
CP: The [unclear] sounds, you know, sounds familiar but I couldn’t tell you for sure.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And there were a lot of you I guess.
CP: A lot. A lot. Yeah. 1940 it was.
DB: And what —
CP: We got to England, you know, at the height of the Battle of Britain. Yeah. A very interesting time really.
DB: I bet.
CP: To be in London.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: Yeah. A different world.
DB: So what sort of experiences did you have when you arrived in London?
CP: Well we pitched in to the very height of the war really. The Battle of Britain had been and London was blacked out. It was an exciting time. It really was.
DB: Very different to being in Melbourne.
CP: [laughs] Absolutely. Yeah. It really was. England was, you know, really fighting a war.
DB: Yes. Yes. And so where, where were you sent to? When you —
CP: We went — I was sent up to Yorkshire and did my training up in Yorkshire. And it was interesting, an exciting to be, to be in England.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: Yeah. Very exciting time. And it was new to me. I’d never been overseas before.
DB: No. Very exciting.
CP: You know. A very exciting time. Yeah.
DB: And what, so which base in Yorkshire were you sent to when you first arrived?
CP: Went to Linton on Ouse.
DB: Right.
CP: Which was a wartime station. Very famous station actually, Linton, and expanding like mad. We had bases all around us you know and Linton itself was a, had been a permanent air force station before the war and had permanent buildings.
DB: Right.
CP: But they were the only permanent buildings we were ever in. We were in Nissen huts most of the time.
DB: And it would have been cold.
CP: Yeah. Cold [laughs] yes.
DB: So you continued training when you got to Linton.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And what, what aircraft?
CP: And then we went on old Whitleys.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Early on. And I went from Whitleys, very temporarily onto Halifaxes while I was a second pilot, and then I went back to Whitleys as a, as a captain in, at Linton. So I got to know that area very well. But flying during a winter in England in RAF Bomber Command on Whitleys, a very early, early aeroplane.
DB: And what, how did you find flying a Whitley compared to —?
CP: Oh it was, I thought it was marvellous. You know. First time in a big aeroplane. You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: Big twin engine aeroplane.
DB: So what crew did you have with you?
CP: A crew of five.
DB: Right. Yes. Yeah. And were they, were they all English? The crew you were with on the Whitleys?
CP: Mixed. Mixed. But mostly English. Yeah. Just, I had an Australian navigator.
DB: Yes.
CP: And the Australians were just sort of coming in.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: But it was an exciting time, 1940.
DB: Yes.
CP: And ’41.
DB: And how were your crews formed at that time? Were you told who you were going to fly with or did you get to form your own crews?
CP: Well very limited amount. We went to a sort of a base and we were really just thrown together. You know, you didn’t have much choice.
DB: Right.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. So did you stay with that crew then for quite a long time?
CP: Over a year.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So you, do you remember when it was you started your operations?
CP: Yes. About September/October 1940.
DB: Ok. Yeah.
CP: Early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Really early on.
DB: So you did some training though for a while.
CP: Oh yes.
DB: And then —
CP: Yeah. I couldn’t tell you exactly but I would have thought probably my first operations were the beginning of ’41. We would be training up until that time.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. But they were, you know they were early operations in Bomber Command. 1941.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So your first operations were on the Whitleys.
CP: Yes.
DB: Or did you do all your ops on —
CP: I did some as a second pilot on Halifaxes, because they were on the same squadron. On the same airfield. And Halifaxes were — I think somehow or other they must have been short of, short of second pilots I think and they tossed us in there to get air experience really. And then we went back to fly as captains on the Whitley.
DB: Right. Yes. So do you remember how many operations you did on each, each aircraft?
CP: Well I did five as a second pilot on Halifaxes to start with. And then I went back to Whitleys, and I did twenty eight operations over Europe in the Whitley.
DB: Right.
CP: Which is a tour.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Anything between twenty five and thirty.
DB: Yeah.
CP: And then you got taken off.
DB: And did you have the same crew?
CP: Crew.
DB: Through most of that time?
CP: All the time.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So tell me, tell me what it was like doing your first few operations.
CP: Well the first few operations I did were on Halifaxes as a second pilot. And in fact I didn’t even know where the controls were on the Halifax, you know. You just learned what to do for, you know, raise the undercarriage for the captain, you know. It was, you were really there for experience.
DB: Yes.
CP: To get operational experience.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah. And it was, it was an exciting time. It really was. We were up in Yorkshire then. Lissett.
DB: And do you remember where you flew? Which? What the targets were?
CP: We did everything over Europe. It was a sort of acme of things was to be able to go to the big city. To go to bomb Berlin, you know. And I did that quite early on actually as a second pilot on the Halifax. That was the first trip.
DB: And what did you think?
CP: Oh it was just unbelievable. You wondered what was happening really, you know. You’re so [emphasis] inexperienced and it was such an extraordinary experience, you know. You can’t describe it really.
DB: No. And was the pilot you were flying with quite experienced at that time?
CP: Well I suppose they were very inexperienced. But they were experienced in our view at the time you know. They were a captain of a Halifax, you know. It was just unbelievable.
DB: Yes.
CP: You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: Wonderful aeroplanes.
DB: And did you have any difficult, particularly difficult operations? Or ones that stand out?
CP: I thought they all were [laughs]
DB: I bet they were.
CP: We, very early on I remember we landed at a base back in England that turned out to be what was known as a Q site. It was actually, it was a dummy airfield. We shouldn’t have landed there [laughs] I mean the war was very early on. It was really quite amazing that you survived. But —
DB: And so on —
CP: We landed on I was only the second pilot. I didn’t know, you know, what was happening but he landed on this and we only [pause] we hadn’t even touched down. We were just in the approach and all the lights went out. He had to land, he was, you know he’d committed to land you see.
DB: Yes.
CP: And it wasn’t on an airfield at all.
DB: So what did he —
CP: It was a dummy airfield, you know, but fortunately it was, it was serviceable you know.
DB: So you did managed to land there?
CP: We landed. Yeah. You know. The aircraft stopped you know. No lights. Nothing. Pitch dark. And the tail gunner called out, ‘Christ skipper. We’re in a cornfield.’ [laughs] We’d landed on this dummy airfield. We’d gone through a hedge and stopped and then I mean fortunately there was, it was open country.
DB: Yes.
CP: And we were — no damage done. Flew out to an airfield. At least taxied out to an airfield the next morning.
DB: So you were able to —
CP: Yes. Take off next morning. Yeah.
DB: There was an airfield nearby that you could get to —
CP: Yeah.
DB: And just take off again.
CP: Yeah.
DB: I wonder what the farmer thought who owned the cornfield? [laughs]
CP: [laughs] Yeah. Extraordinary.
DB: So that was, that was one of your early?
CP: That was very early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. I then became an experienced captain after that.
DB: And tell me about some of the ops that you did when you were a captain.
CP: Oh we did, we did everything I think. From flying to the big city. Which was going to Berlin. To going to places like on the French coast to St Nazaire. To the aircraft [pause] submarine pens.
DB: Yes.
CP: Used to do a lot of bombing of that area. Oh, you know. We had a very interesting time, you know, quite exciting.
DB: Yes. And did you, did you get to know many of the other people in the, on the squadron?
CP: Oh yes. Did. Yeah. You were living with them.
DB: Yes and what were the losses?
CP: At that time not too many Australians.
DB: No.
CP: And we had an Australian crew but mostly Englishmen. Mostly English people.
DB: And did you have any Canadians or New Zealanders?
CP: Yes. Yes. A lot.
DB: And which, which squadron were you with?
CP: I was with first of all I was with 35 Squadron which was an RAF Halifax squadron. But then I went back to Whitleys and went into 58 Squadron.
DB: Right.
CP: Again, it was again an English squadron. They were all English squadrons.
DB: Yeah.
CP: We were just Australians crews in English squadrons.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. It was early times. It was 1940, ‘41.
DB: So if you started your operations in ’41 do you remember when it was that you finished your twenty eight or thirty? What —
CP: I did them in a year. In about a year. Went through a winter. You were on standby often in the winter time. You can’t, can’t always fly, I mean the weather’s so bad.
DB: So you’d be all briefed and ready to go.
CP: That’s right. Yeah. Get cancelled. A lot of cancelled.
DB: And how did you find that when you’d be all ready to go and —
CP: Oh it’s, you get all keyed up to go you know, it’s a nuisance really. It’s a bit of a mind.
DB: You’d rather just get going.
CP: Get going. Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: You would be all keyed up to go and [pause] oh it’s a long time ago.
DB: And are there any other of your particular operations that stand out in your mind?
[pause]
CP: Oh yeah. Any, any operation which was going to take you to Berlin was something that stood out.
DB: Yes.
CP: Because it was the, it was the furthest to go in most cases and not the best place to go.
DB: No. Well defended.
CP: It was well defended.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: Yeah. You weren’t terribly keen about going to Berlin. [laughs]
DB: And what —
CP: I went to Berlin as a second pilot on a Halifax but then I went about three times when I was captain of a Whitley.
DB: So you had a few trips there.
CP: I had. Yeah. I’d have to have a look at my logbook.
DB: And were they flying as far as Milan and going to Italy at that time?
CP: Oh yes. Yeah. Interestingly enough I never went to Italy. I got briefed to go to Italy on a couple of occasions, and we always wanted to go to Italy because it wasn’t heavily defended.
DB: No. No.
CP: And you know it was much more fun to go there where there weren’t too many guns. To go to the Ruhr was like going to the bloody home of arsenal.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: That was the most heavily defended area in Germany of course.
DB: Yes.
CP: The Ruhr valley and then Berlin was not nasty [unclear] but it was much further. And you had a lot of flying over the north part of Germany to get to, and then you’d go. We used to fly almost on the coast, on the north coast of Germany. And then you’d fly almost as far as Stettin and then turn down to the right to go down to Berlin and it was a bloody long way.
DB: And defended all the way I guess?
CP: Well, no not too bad really because you could fly over the North Sea for a long time which was a great help. And that was alright, flying over the North Sea, unless you came across a gun boat, and you never knew where they were. And you’d get a bloody burst from that [laughs] yeah.
DB: Yes. That would —
CP: A ship.
DB: A bit of a shock coming out of the blackness wouldn’t it?
CP: That’s right.
DB: Yes. So the furthest target you went to would have been Berlin.
CP: It would. Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And the closer ones were the French. The submarine pens.
CP: Oh going the other way yeah. Yeah, yeah.
DB: Yes. So you did a few of those as well.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. So you had the same crew with you for that, for all your ops.
CP: Well except when I went as a second pilot and I was going with a totally different crew but when I started flying as a captain I had the same crew.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And did they all survive the war too?
CP: Yes.
DB: They did.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. We were lucky.
DB: Yes. And so you completed your tour at thirty. Thirty operations?
CP: I only did twenty eight.
DB: Right. Yes.
CP: You were meant to do thirty.
DB: But they were happy for you to finish at that point.
CP: That’s right. It worked out that way.
DB: Yes. And what did you do then?
CP: I went instructing.
DB: So —
CP: That was the normal thing.
DB: Yes.
CP: But I must have come back to Australia, you see. When did I come back? I came back. We were all itching to get back as soon as the Japanese came in you see, my first lot of flying was well before the end of 1941. You see I was flying in 1940.
DB: Yes.
CP: In England.
DB: Yes.
CP: And, you see, the Japs didn’t come in until December ’41. So, and none of us came back to Australia until ’42.
DB: And you were pretty keen.
CP: I’d been very early. Very early on. I was the fourth course to go through.
DB: Yes. That’s early. And [pause] now what was I going to ask about? Oh where did you do your instructing?
CP: In England?
DB: Yes. When you went on to instructing after your ops.
CP: The Garden of Eden. The Vale of Evesham. Down south of Birmingham.
DB: Right.
CP: Oh what a beautiful country. The Cotswolds.
DB: Oh beautiful.
CP: I hadn’t realised what a beautiful part of England.
DB: Yes.
CP: I was there for a year instructing. Oh glorious Berkshire there to Somerset.
DB: So you enjoyed your leave time when you were there.
CP: Lovely.
DB: Yes.
CP: England is a most beautiful place.
DB: It is very beautiful. And getting to see, see it from the air must be very special.
CP: Oh it’s lovely, it’s a beautiful country.
DB: And how did you find instructing after having been flying for so long?
CP: Oh I enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah.
DB: So you were instructing different nationalities. Were there Australians and —?
CP: New Zealanders.
DB: New Zealanders. Canadians. Yeah. Lovely. A lovely life. Beautiful. You know. Interesting people. Interesting. So they were pretty well educated you see. That’s what the beauty of it was.
CP: So they were pretty well trained by the time they got to you.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good.
CP: So at that time had the because I know my dad was trained in the Empire Air Training Scheme in Canada.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
CP: Of course I did that.
DB: Oh you did that too?
CP: Yep.
DB: So did you go from Australia to Canada did you? Before you went to England?
CP: Yeah.
DB: Right.
CP: Glorious. I hadn’t realised what a wonderful time we had. We went to [pause] I was in Calgary for the whole of one winter.
DB: It would have been cold.
CP: Cold. But skiing up in the mountains. What a beautiful country.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: So you did a lot of your initial pilot training in Canada.
CP: I did.
DB: As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme.
CP: Went from Tiger Moths in Narromine to Ansons in Calgary.
DB: Right. Yes.
CP: You know. What a wonderful life you know. It was a wonderful time.
DB: So you —
CP: And you know, great companions.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Doing something different, you know. Flying. You couldn’t get anything better for a young man. I’d just finished university, you know, so I was more mature than most of them and you know and just, it was wonderful.
DB: And so you —
CP: The beginning of the war.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: 1940.
DB: And you were with a big — big group in Canada training.
CP: Yes, yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: But I think we were the third, third lot to go through.
DB: Right.
CP: You know. So it was all new. And the courses were pretty well picked, you know. The cream of the lot we were really. We were marvellous, had a marvellous time.
DB: And did you have did you feel the instructing was good there?
CP: Excellent, excellent. Some of them were almost professional instructors, you know. Some of them were American. There were senior Canadian pilots, you know. We got the best of the lot.
DB: Yes.
CP: A wonderful time. And ah, [pause] for a young Australian. I was just, I’d just finished university really.
DB: But you were ready for some adventure.
CP: Yeah. Absolutely. You know.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: You know. I wasn’t young. I was twenty one, twenty two, twenty three.
DB: Yes. There were some younger than that weren’t there?
CP: Oh yes. A lot.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. So did you, did some of the people you trained with in Canada go on to the same squadron as you? Did you keep some?
CP: Yeah. Not a lot but you know, quite a few went through the procedure, you know. I think I had one or two that were on [pause] in my crew that had come right through. Yeah.
DB: So did most of the people you trained with survive the war?
CP: I couldn’t tell you.
DB: No. Did you —
CP: I don’t know. You see, because wars sort of go on don’t they? I came back and went into the war in the Pacific.
DB: Right.
CP: You see.
DB: Yes.
CP: I went through a tour of operations in Europe, and then I came back to Australia just after the Japs came in at the end of ’41. And started all over again.
DB: So where were you based then? Were you based somewhere in Australia or — ?
CP: Came down to Darwin.
DB: Right. Yes. That would have been very different flying.
CP: [laughs] quite a difference.
DB: Yes.
CP: Quite a difference.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So just getting back to England and Bomber Command your son, Bill mentioned that you were awarded the DFC.
CP: Yes.
DB: Can you tell me how? How that came about?
CP: No. Well [pause] If you stayed long enough you you were bound to get a DFC [laughs]
DB: Oh I’m sure that’s not quite the case.
CP: It almost is but you know. Right you see, I suppose I’d done a tour in England and I had done a bit of flying when I came back to Australia, and so it wasn’t a unique thing for me to be given an award. I became a quite senior pilot very early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: On Australia.
DB: So your DFC was awarded when you were in the Pacific.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah. So you’d done quite a bit of flying by that time.
CP: I’d done a tour of operations in Europe.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And so what, what was the actual flight that resulted in the DFC?
CP: No. In the course of time really. Nothing particular. Just having stayed the distance.
DB: Right. Yes. And you were mentioned in dispatches a couple of times too.
CP: I was. That was pretty automatic too. Provided you stayed alive. [laughs]
DB: So that was during the Pacific flying time or was that in Bomber Command?
CP: No, that was England.
DB: Right. So do you remember?
CP: No.
DB: What that, what that flight was?
CP: I honestly don’t know.
DB: No.
CP: No.
DB: So that was one of your trips over Europe though.
CP: Well, probably not a particular one. Probably having survived several I think.
DB: Yes. So were you commissioned? You were commissioned when you were still in Canada at the end of your —?
CP: No.
DB: No.
CP: I wasn’t commissioned until I’d finished a tour in England.
DB: Right.
CP: I did my first tour as a sergeant.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And then you became a flight lieutenant, is that right? At the, at the end?
CP: I was commissioned when I was in the RAF.
DB: Yeah.
CP: And I just progressed to it through the stages.
DB: Yes. So tell me the things that really stand out in your mind from your time in England. What are the sort of important memories for you of that time?
CP: I think my important memories first of all was when I was seconded to [pause] as a second pilot to 35 Squadron which was a RAF Halifax squadron as a second pilot. And I was flying with some very — I was flying with the squadron commander. Quite a senior RAF wing commander, and it was, he was in command of 35 Squadron in Yorkshire and I was sent up there as a second pilot. He was the first really professional RAF man I flew with. He was just a marvellous man. He, he was a squadron commander and he did more flying, I think, than any one else in the squadron.
DB: Do you remember his name?
CP: Yes. Robinson.
DB: Right. Robinson, yeah. And so you did your —
CP: I, you know, I worshipped him. I thought he was a marvellous bloke.
DB: So you must have been very privileged. Felt very privileged to fly with him.
CP: Well I was very privileged to fly with him as second pilot.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. And he would have —
CP: Wonderful man.
DB: Taught you a lot I guess.
CP: Great bloke.
DB: So do you recall where you went on that flight with him?
CP: Yes. We went to Berlin. My first flight as a second pilot was with Wing Commander Robinson. He was the most unflappable bloke I’ve seen. Wonderful example.
DB: Yes. And that would have given you a great sense of security to go with him.
CP: Marvellous. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. I was very privileged. Yeah, lovely man.
DB: So that’s probably one of your most special memories.
CP: Ah, you know. Stands out in my mind.
DB: Yes.
CP: Great.
DB: Yes. And are there any others that stand out of your operations?
CP: I met some very good Australians. I came back to Australia you see. I did a tour of operations in Europe because I was over there, I was very early on. I was the third or fourth course to go through the Empire Air Training Scheme.
DB: Yes.
CP: So I was in England very early, and I came back to Australia you see, because the Japs didn’t come in ‘till, you know, we thought the war was nearly over, end of ’41, beginning of ‘42 and I’d been over there since 1940.
DB: And you’d done a year of instructing then after your ops.
CP: I did. That’s it. And then came back. To Australia.
DB: And then you were able to come back. Yes. So you came back by ship then. Yes. And there was quite a group of you coming back to continue on.
CP: Yes. Yes. Yeah. In Australia. Yes.
DB: And were —
CP: The war didn’t start out here until the end of ‘41 beginning of ‘42 and I’d been in since 1940.
DB: Yes. So you were ready to come back.
CP: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Yes. And did you keep in contact with any of the people you flew with in England?
CP: No. Not really.
DB: No. So not any of your crew, your own crew.
CP: Yes. I left them behind. Because they hadn’t, they hadn’t done. My navigator I finished up with in England was a bloke called Wilf Stone, an old Scotch College boy, but he stayed behind. I got sent back to Australia you see.
DB: So he was still flying.
CP: He was still flying in England. Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And did he survive the war?
CP: I think so. I think so. Yeah. Wilf Stones. Funny how I forget what happened to him. He went flying with somebody else, I know. A good navigator.
DB: And what about the rest of your crew that you flew with. Were they —
CP: In England?
DB: Yes.
CP: They were all Englishmen.
DB: Right.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. They were all Englishman.
DB: And did they go on and continue with other —?
CP: Yeah. You lose track.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And they —
CP: I came back to Australia you see. When did I come back? End of ’42. Yeah.
DB: And how was it coming home?
CP: Oh it was different world. You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: There hadn’t been a war out here when I left but there was very much a war when I came back.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And did you come back to Melbourne before you were sent to Darwin?
CP: Yeah.
DB: So —
CP: Well, I had a month’s leave I think.
DB: Yes. I bet your mother —
CP: I’d been away for a long time.
DB: Yes. Your mother would have been pleased to see you.
CP: Yeah [laughs] yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. All the family were in the services then. My brother was a doctor. He was five years older than me but he was up in New Guinea.
DB: Yeah. And so how much longer were you in the RAAF then when you went and fought from, flew from Darwin? And so how long —
CP: I stayed in the RAAF after the war.
DB: So you were a career pilot for a while then, yes. So is that what you continued doing for very long?
CP: Well I thought I was going to stay there forever. But I then went. Left and I went flying commercially.
DB: Oh did you? Yes.
CP: I went flying up in Alice Springs. Bush airline. Some of the best flying I ever had I think. That was after the war.
DB: So how long did —
CP: I would have, I would have stayed on flying I think but I was getting married then. The family didn’t want a kid when flying. Yeah.
DB: Did you miss it?
CP: Yeah. I did.
DB: Yes. So —
CP: I went farming, it nearly killed me. I loved flying.
DB: So that nearly — that nearly killed you more than flying in the war did.
CP: I think so [laughs]
DB: Where were you farming then? Were you down this way again?
CP: On York Peninsula.
DB: Oh. In South Australia.
CP: That’s where my wife came from.
DB: Right. Yes. So was that cropping farming?
CP: Yes. Yes.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah. I did that for two years. Then I went school teaching.
DB: And was that in South Australia as well?
CP: No.
DB: No. You came back here.
CP: Came back and I bought a farm out here. Just sort of got or had [unclear] my son’s.
DB: Yes. So that’s close by here is it? Yes. Yeah.
CP: That’s where I came from you see. We came from Geelong originally.
DB: Yes. And —
CP: I went school lteaching.. That became my profession.
DB: So did you teach primary school or secondary?
CP: Secondary.
DB: School. So what subjects did you teach?
CP: Fundamentally agg science but I taught physics and chemistry up to leaving level. Up to you know matric level. And I’d done a university degree before the war.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And so did your, do you think your experiences in the war contributed to your teaching later?
CP: Oh certainly, certainly. Certainly contributed to my, my positions as a house master and what not. Senior positions. Because they were better for you. Very much. Understanding people better I think.
DB: Yes. And you would have —
CP: I was quite mature really when I was teaching. I’d been through the war.
DB: And got, got to know many, many different people I think.
CP: Absolutely. Yeah.
DB: Which would be very helpful with teaching wouldn’t it? Yes. And did you do any more flying?
CP: I continued to fly. I continued to fly. See I went flying professionally after the war for a while. I would have gone on flying forever I think but family didn’t want to.
DB: So did you keep it up as a hobby at all?
CP: Yeah. I still fly.
DB: I saw something on YouTube that your son Bill sent me where you went flying. Was it for your ninetieth birthday?
CP: [laughs] [unclear]
DB: And there’s a film of you climbing up into just a two seater plane.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And looping the loop and all sorts of things.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: That was recent. Victor Harbour.
DB: Right. Yes. And what —
CP: I still love flying.
DB: Yes.
CP: It gets in your blood. But I had some marvellous flying in Alice Springs. That was some of the best flying I ever did I think. In old aeroplanes and carrying the mail all over the territory. That was wonderful fun.
DB: That would have been very different to flying over England and —
CP: That’s right.
DB: Over Europe.
CP: Totally different.
DB: That huge expanse of country.
CP: Old planes too.
DB: So what sort of planes did you fly in Alice Springs?
CP: Flew a Dragon, DH Dragon twin engine. Two light twins. Great aeroplane. A dragon and a dragonfly. A Dragonfly was a more modern one. Had self-starters.
DB: You didn’t have to get out.
CP: [laughs] No.
DB: Crank the engine.
CP: No.
DB: And did you have crew with you at all on those?
CP: Mail plane?
DB: Yes.
CP: No. No. No. But we often had passengers.
DB: Yes.
CP: But no you were on your own. Lovely.
DB: So what would you say your main memories are of your time flying in England with, with Bomber Command?
CP: In England? In England.
DB: Yes.
CP: [pause] It was two very different sorts of flying because some of the flying was just in England either instructing or in just flying in England. Was nothing to worry about. Or flying from England over Europe which was very tense. Yeah. So some of the flying over England was beautiful.
DB: Yes.
CP: Lovely. Glorious.
DB: Yes. And how did you feel of that tension that you referred to in flying over Europe? How do you think that affected you?
CP: I think I’m, I think I’m a very fortunate person that I don’t get very tight. I’m able to relax pretty well. And I’ve been in some very difficult situations but I’m very fortunate not to get too uptight about it.
DB: Yes.
CP: But some of the flying over England — England is the most beautiful country. It really is the most beautiful place. But when you divorce it from the flying at, from war flying it’s a lovely place.
DB: Yes. And did you enjoy your, your leave times when you were in England?
CP: I did. I did. I did. It was all new to me but I, you know I had good friends to visit.
DB: Yes.
CP: And relations to visit, you know. And it felt like home, you know.
DB: Yes.
CP: England is the most beautiful place.
DB: Yes.
CP: Absolutely beautiful.
DB: So did one or either of your parents have family in England?
CP: Both did [pause] but my mother’s family more so I think although they were fundamentally Australian. Mum was born in Australia and was brought up in the country. Near Colac. And dad was brought up in Australia, a country man from Gippsland. And — but both with strong English connections.
DB: Yes.
CP: So we had a lots of relatives over there. England is such a beautiful country.
DB: It certainly is.
CP: Compared to the vastness of Australia. But I’ve been fortunate to know Australia. Because I’ve been based as an airline pilot in Alice Springs. You’d hardly call it an airline pilot. A bush pilot. [laughs]
DB: Well that would have been great flying experience to do that.
CP: Wonderful. Real. I’ve had a wonderful flying career.
DB: Yes.
CP: You know. Lovely.
DB: Yes. So you’ve had very contrasting flying experience haven’t you?
CP: Absolutely. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Because it would be very hard to compare flying over outback Australia with flying over Europe during the war.
CP: Yeah. England particularly. England. What a beautiful country.
DB: And have you been back there?
CP: Yes I have. Yeah. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. We’ve been back quite recently.
DB: And did you go back and visit your old squadron when you went back. Was it still there?
CP: No.
DB: No.
CP: I went back to Stratford. I was training in Stratford in the Vale of Evesham. What a glorious country.
DB: Beautiful.
CP: Absolutely beautiful. Yeah.
DB: Yes. And so you’ve not had much contact with your, your compatriots from that time since the war.
CP: No. No.
DB: No.
CP: Not at all. No. Not at all. England. England is just the most. It’s a garden.
DB: Yes it is.
CP: Do you know it well?
DB: I’ve been a few times. Yes. Yeah. I went with my father and he took me to his old squadron in — he was in Elsham Wolds.
CP: Oh yes.
DB: And there were a few old buildings left in 1995 when I went there with him. So —
CP: Elsham Wolds.
DB: Yes. He thought it was a beautiful place too. He loved it. He had a lot of visits back there as well. Yes.
CP: Beautiful country.
DB: Yes.
CP: Glorious country.
DB: So before we finish I suppose I should just ask if there is sort of one most important or special memory that you have of Bomber Command. Or your [pause] what’s your overall feeling of what Bomber Command was like for you?
CP: Well, I was, I was there very early on compared to what most of them went through later on. It was much more sort of an individualistic sort of operation when I was there. And I was young. I was young. I was enjoying flying. It was a new adventure for me and I just had the most glorious time in England. Glorious time. I met some lovely people and lovely families. And the war was really on then in 1940/41 and London was so different, you know. It was really a city under siege in 1941.
DB: Yes.
CP: So I feel very fortunate to have had the experience.
DB: Yes.
CP: Lovely.
DB: I’ll turn this off now.
Dublin Core
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AParsonsCER160817, PParsonsCER1601
Title
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Interview with Cecil Parsons
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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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01:02:15 audio recording
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Doreen Burge
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2016-08-17
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Cecil Parsons was born in 1918 in Victoria, Australia. He volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force in 1939 and trained as a pilot in New South Wales and Canada as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme before being posted to England in 1940. He was stationed at RAF Linton on Ouse, flying Whitleys with 58 Squadron and as second pilot on Halifaxes with 35 Squadron. He completed a tour of operations and describes flying operations over Europe, including Berlin and recalls an early occasion when his plane accidentally landed at a dummy airfield. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross before he returned to Australia in 1942 and served as an instructor with the RAAF. He later worked as a commercial pilot and then a schoolteacher.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
New South Wales--Orana Region
Victoria--Geelong
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1941
1942
Contributor
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Carolyn Emery
35 Squadron
58 Squadron
Anson
decoy site
Distinguished Flying Cross
Halifax
Nissen hut
RAF Linton on Ouse
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/608/8877/AMcDonaldEA150713.2.mp3
691ba5094bf362ae14e81e637e868c57
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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McDonald, Edward Allan
E A McDonald
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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McDonald, EA
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. Two oral history interviews with Edward Allan McDonald (1922 - 2020, 1076170, Royal Air Force), a memoir, his log book, documents and photographs. He flew 28 operations as a rear gunner with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Edward Allan McDonald and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2015-07-13
2015-09-18
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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MC: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Mike Connock. The interviewee is Alan McDonald and the interview is taking place at Skellingthorpe on the 13th of July 2015. Right, Alan just tell me a bit about where you were born like where you were born. When and where.
AM: Yeah. I’ll give you that information.
MC: Yeah if you will. Yeah. Go ahead. Please.
AM: I were born in Hull.
MC: Yeah. When was that?
AM: That would be the 27th of the 9th 1922.
MC: Tell us a bit about your early days at school and, you know —
AM: Well my early days at school were, I liked the teacher that I was under, one of the teachers anyway. And he says, Come out,’ what had happened was the old thing that was very common was to have an elastic band and blotting paper and double a piece of blotting paper about that width, double it over and you’d aim it at, so you’d hold it in your teeth, aim it at somebody from behind aim it at somebody you wanted to clobber and someone had done this and they’d missed the person they’d aimed at and hit the teacher with it. He was facing the blackboard. Mr Upton. And he says, ‘Come out McDonald.’ because I had done it a few times but on that particular occasion I hadn’t. So he says, I said, ‘It wasn’t me sir.’ So he said, ‘I said come out McDonald.’ So I went out. He said, ‘Hold your hand out.’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to get punished for something I haven’t done.’ So he said, ‘I said hold your hand out.’ He’d got the cane in his hand. So he grabbed, grabbed my hand so I thought well there’s only one thing to do and I kicked him on the shin and he let go because I’d kicked him on the shin and I ran out the room then and I ran home. Anyroad, I went the next morning. He says, ‘Come on. We’re friends.’ He said, ‘I’ve an apology to make to you.’ He said, ‘I don’t know what you’re going to say.’ I says ‘No,’ I says, ‘Well it wasn’t me sir.’ He said, ‘I know. I found out who it was and I’m sorry for putting you to the — ’ Well ‘I’m sorry then for kicking you.’ Now I know that so I got sat down and I was in good books with Mr Upton and after the war I went to do the electrical work on a brand new school they were building at a place called Longcroft which is just north of Beverley and we worked on that place from start to finish and each day when we got off the bus from Hull, well at that time I was living at Sutton, Hull which is part of Hull like you have — where are we here? We’re —
MC: Skellingthorpe from Lincoln.
AM: We’re Skellingthorpe and Lincoln. They’re more or less joined together the same. So was Sutton to Hull. It was part of Hull. A stranger wouldn’t know they were out of Hull if they went to Sutton. And anyway I used to each day go to work at this place at the other side of Beverley, catch a bus and where I got off the bus we had quite a way to walk and each day I saw him. And each day when I saw him he’s be like this — he’d get his hand on it and rub his shin in passing [laughs].
MC: So how old were you when you left? Left that school?
AM: Well I as I left on the day I was fourteen. I didn’t do very well at school but that, that was a bad thing really because I wanted to be aircrew and when I went to the recruiting office he says, ‘What do you want to do? What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘I’d like to be a pilot.’ So he says, ‘Just a minute,’ and he looked, ‘You haven’t a chance,’ So I says, ‘Why is that?’ He said, ‘You’ve not done very well at school,’ he said, ‘And if you haven’t got a secondary education you’re no good for air crew.’ So I said, ‘Oh well I shall have to do something about it if I can.’ So I’d joined up now and I went, I went to the electrical school. I failed. I went from there to a place called Nutts Corner in Ireland which was a Coastal Command station.
MC: Can I just go back a little bit? When you left school at fourteen what did you do between then and becoming —
AM: When I left school at fourteen —
MC: Becoming old enough to join the air force?
AM: I went, I went around the town looking to see if anybody wanted an apprentice and I went to a place called Booker and Tarran’s. Booker and Tarran, the name Tarran in Hull was as common a name as what Churchill is to the average person. Tarran’s were a well-known firm. There was, I think, I’m not sure about this but I’m going to think I’m right when I say there were seven sons of Tarrans — RG Tarran, SG Tarran, Martin Tarran, Ken Tarran and I don’t know the others, but Ken Tarran and Martin Tarran were the boss of the firm I went to. They were, they owned the firm and he says, ‘What did you want?’ He came to the office to see what I, as I was a boy, I was fourteen and I was in short trouFsers. What did you want? So he says, ‘And you want to be an electrician?’ So I said, ‘Yes I do.’ So he said, ‘Well how old are you and when do you leave school?’ I said, ‘I’ve left school.’ So he says, ‘Oh when did you leave school?’ I said, ‘Today. I’m fourteen today.’ So I’d not said anything at school. I just simply went to this firm Booker and Tarrans and Ken Tarran says to me, ‘Well why didn’t you ask your dad to come with you or get you fixed up with a job?’ I says, ‘My dad was dead when I was four.’ So he said, ‘Why what happened to your dad?’ I said, ‘Oh,’ I said, he was a blacksmith. He came down from Wallsend, Newcastle area through to Hull and he was supposed to be playing for Hull City as a footballer. And he was driving his motorbike and side car which was a Harley Davidson motorbike sidecar to his work at what they called Springhead in Hull which is a railway siding. It’s a big one too. And enroute to going to work with his motorbike and side car a crane swung a railway line across the road and it fell off the crane and fell on my father and his motorbike. And he ended up in hospital in the Hull Royal Infirmary which is no longer there now, it was pulled down. But my mother had been to see him like say maybe tonight and they said, ‘Would you bring his clothes in the morning? He’s coming out.’ So my mother the next morning took his clothes for him to come out the hospital and the nurse says to my mother, ‘What have you brought his clothes for?’ So she said, ‘He’s coming out this morning.’ She said, ‘He isn’t. He died during the night.’ So, apparently he’d got hypostatic pneumonia. I think I’ve got that word right. I’ve tried to anyway. I may be wrong with it but anyroad it was something of the description that I’ve given. And from there onwards my mother had to go to the coroner’s court, and at the coroner’s court my mother was questioned could she do this, could she do that, could she do the other. Yes. The answer was yes to all the questions he asked. He said, ‘Well in that case you don’t need compensation. You can work for a living. So if you get yourself a job you won’t need compensation.’ So she didn’t get any. And she had to go to work and went to work at Reckitts in Hull which was a well-known firm then. I don’t know if they still are but it was a well-known firm and that’s where my mother went to work packing starch.
MC: You, so you worked, you worked at this firm until you joined the air force?
AM: I worked from, I got the job at Booker and Tarrans which was down Waltham Street which is in the centre of the town and I was apprenticed with them until I finished my time. So —
MC: How old were you then?
AM: Well I’d come out the air force and I had a certain length of time to do and I had to do this certain length of time at apprentice’s rates.
MC: Oh I see. So you joined the air force part way through your apprenticeship.
AM: Yes I did.
MC: Ah yeah so —
AM: And I joined. I went to Henlow, well I started off at Padgate
Other: Yes.
AM: And that would be 1940, and 1940 I went to Henlow. No. No. No. I didn’t. I went to Morecambe. January 1940 I went to Morecambe to do my square bashing and then from Morecambe I went through to Henlow and I took the electrical course there and I didn’t, I didn’t pass. I failed. And from there I went then to Northern Ireland. I went to Nutts Corner and they put me on duty. On flare path duty there which, I liked that job. That’s working with flying control and I was in the spotter box at the start of the runway. That was a good, good number. And then after that I got another job. I got onto the — now what do they call it now? A dummy, a dummy aerodrome anyway for Jerry to bomb and I used to look after the diesel. What do you call them?
Other: The flares.
AM: Hmmn?
Other: The flare path?
AM: No. No it wasn’t. It was a dummy flare path.
Other: Oh a dummy flare path. Yeah.
AM: It was in bogs.
Other: Yes.
AM: And that was up in a place called [Sleavan Lecloy?] which wasn’t far from between Lisburn and Stonyford. And I liked that job as well. It was good. I did quite well in the air force. Now then, I used to, I plagued the warrant officer, station warrant officer, I wanted to be air crew. He said, ‘I’ve told you you can’t be aircrew because you’ve not, you’ve not got a secondary education and you haven’t done very well at school either.’ So I said, ‘Well I still want to be aircrew.’ So I said, ‘Can’t you fix me up with a job anywhere in the aircraft?’ So, I didn’t realise the qualifications necessary then. Anyway, he said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ So I’d been that many times he said his hair was beginning to fall out. Anyway, I was carrying on from there. The tannoy went. Would I report to the station education officer? So I thought station, what would I want him for? So I went into the station and found the location of the station education officer and went to see him, ‘Oh you’re the one that’s causing all the trouble.’ So I said, ‘What trouble’s that?’ He said, ‘With the station warrant officer. You keep going to him. You want to be aircrew.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well’ he said, ‘If you’re really sincere and you really mean what you say I’ll set you some exams. And if you pass the exams that I set you, if you do, you will do if you want to be air crew and we’ll soon find out whether you do or not.’ So I had to go to him for some tuition first. After the tuition I sat for the exams. He said, ‘You’ve passed.’ No he didn’t, he said, ‘You have matriculated.’ Now, I’d never heard the word in my life before and I didn’t know what the word matriculate meant and I was later on to find out that it was to —
Other: Oh dear Alan.
AM: It was to qualify to go to university from what he’d said. And so he said —
Other: Good.
AM: ‘You’ve one further step to go yet. You’ve to go to RAF headquarters in Belfast and you’ve to pass an exam there and so you’ll go there. It’ll be arranged, you’ll soon be notified. You’ll go there and if you don’t pass there you don’t go to aircrew. If you pass there you’ll go for aircrew.’ So I went there and I was there for a fortnight at RAF headquarters. And during the course of me being there unwittingly I was causing a laugh but I didn’t realise I was at the time, because a certain lady says — when I arrived there there was a WVS van outside the, it’s a place as big as Buckingham Palace nearly, this place where the headquarters were. It was a huge place and I went to the WVS van. She said, ‘Is your name McDonald?’ I said, ‘Why? What do you want?’ I said, ‘I’ve only just arrived. You’re not mistaking me for somebody are you?’ She says, ‘McDonald?’ So I said, ‘Yes. McDonald.’ She says, ‘Oh. Well your tea and your cake’ which was tuppence, a penny for your cake and a penny for your cup of tea, that’s what it was then and I’d got the tuppence out to pay. She said, ‘Don’t waste your money. It’s paid for.’ So I says, ‘No.’ I said, ‘There’s some mistake.’ I said, ‘I’m not the only McDonald in the world. There’s plenty more of us.’ I said, ‘It must be somebody else. Not me.’ She says, ‘You. You’ve come from a Coastal Command station haven’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes I have.’ She said, ‘Well it’s you.’ So, so anyway I carried on and what actually happened was I went into the room. There was two big, two doors at the side of this room and these rooms they had doors which were that thick, nearly six inches thick, the doors. Heavy, huge heavy doors. She says, ‘You want the door on the left and if you go in there there’s seventeen WAAFs and you will make three airmen.’ So I says, ‘Oh is that where we’re having — ‘
Other: That’s a challenge
AM: ‘Having our tea and cakes?’ She said, ‘Yes that’s where you’re having your tea and cake.’ Now this WAAF came to me and she says, ‘Here you are Mac.’ I thought, ‘How do you know me?’ I couldn’t fathom this out. She said, ‘Here’s your tea and your cake.’ So I said, ‘Well they told me I haven’t to buy one because somebody had bought me one.’ I said, ‘Do you know me?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I says, ‘I don’t know you.’ So she says, ‘Oh never mind.’ She says, ‘I’m paying for the tea and the cake.’ ‘Look,’ I said, ‘You’re, I’m an LAC. An LAC denoted I wasn’t AC1. I wasn’t AC2. I was the next one up.
Other: You knew what was what.
AM: Leading Aircraft man.
Other: Yeah.
AM: And I was LAC. I said, ‘You can’t afford to be paying for tea and cakes for me.’ I said, ‘I’m an LAC.’ I said, ‘You’re only an AC1 or an AC2.’
Other: Yeah.
AM: So she says, ‘I’m paying for your tea and your cake.’ I said, ‘You’re not.’ I says, ‘I’m paying for it. You’re not going to.’ I said, ‘What do you think kind of a name I’ll get taking money off a WAAF that’s not even the same rank as me?’ So she says, ‘I’m paying for the tea and the cake.’ So I says, ‘Well I’ll pay for it tomorrow then.’ She said, ‘You won’t.’ I said, ‘I will.’ So anyroad, each day it went on like this until it came to the day before I was due to go back to my station which was the Thursday. I were there for a fortnight. And at the, the, on the Thursday I said, ‘Now look here,’ I says, ‘You’ve been paying for my tea and cakes each day now for a fortnight.’ I said, ‘Let me give you a lump sum for the lot,’ I said, ‘And then I don’t owe you anything.’ I said, ‘You’re going to get me talked about. An LAC taking money off a WAAF that’s a lower rank than he is. What kind of a person am I gonna be?’ So this WAAF stood up. She says, ‘Stop playing green will you.’ So I said, ‘What are you on about stop playing green?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why am I playing green? What does playing green mean?’ She said, ‘You’re after that castle.’ So I said, ‘A castle? What castle are you on about?’ She said, ‘You know what it is and you’re playing green.’ So I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. How am I playing green?’ I says, ‘This WAAF here has been paying for my tea and cakes and then she won’t let me pay.’ I said, ‘And she’s on a lower rank then me.’ I said, ‘I’m an LAC,’ and I said, ‘She’s only an AC1 or AC2. I don’t know which.’ So she says, ‘Oh you are putting it on.’ So I says, ‘Putting what on?’ She said, ‘You’re trying to make out you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ which I didn’t. I hadn’t the foggiest idea. She said, ‘You know that’s the queen’s sister.’ So I says, ‘It never is. What are you giving me that?’ With this this WAAF that had been giving me my tea and that she went out and slammed the door. And that was the end of the connection. God, I was back to camp the next day but that’s that was that little story.
Other: That would have been, so, Margaret Rose. The queen’s sister.
AM: No. This is Queen Elizabeth’s sister.
Other: Yes.
AM: During the war.
Other: Yes, that was Margaret Rose.
AM: Oh I don’t know.
Other: That was her sister.
AM: I couldn’t say.
MC: So you got accepted for aircrew then.
AM: Yes, I got, I passed for air crew there and within a few days I was off to —
Other: With notoriety.
AM: St John’s Wood in London and whilst I was there they bombed, I think it was the Palais de Dance.
Other: Right.
AM: Somewhere there got bombed while we were there. And I enjoyed being there. I was there a fortnight I think it was. And then from there I went to — St John’s Wood we went to Evanton in Scotland.
MC: By that time had you —
Other: Evanton. Sorry.
MC: Can I, by that time, can I ask you had you been selected for air gunner? Was it decided what you were going to do?
AM: Yes I was selected to go as air gunner and I went to Evanton in Scotland. Now it’s this is what, I got off the station at Inverness and the station, whatever he was, says to me, ‘Are you puzzled? Are you lost?’ I said, ‘Well I don’t know which platform to be on.’ So he said, ‘Where do you want to be?’ So I says, ‘Evanton.’ ‘Nowhere here called Evanton. Let’s have a look at your pass.’ So I give him my pass. ‘You mean Everton.’ Well, I said, ‘Where’s the E R in it? There’s no E R in it. It’s E V A N T O N.’ Everton. Evanton. So he says, ‘In here they call it Everton. So you want to be on that platform there.’ So I got on the platform to Evanton. You go through Evanton and you come to where I was. This station. And I was flying on Avro Ansons with Polish pilots and we did gunnery practice from there firing at a wooden tank on the beach. We flew up the mountainside there. There was a statue at the top. What it was about I don’t know. And the Polish pilots used to fly, there was wires across this this mountain and we used to fly beneath the wires going up the mountain side to the top. To the monument. And then he’d just miss the monument, this was in Avro Ansons, and I did my training there for gunnery. I did photo, photo, photo gunning. Oh what do they call it now? It has a name. Anyroad you had a camera in your door and you did photography with that with a camera gun. And I went from there to Market Harborough and at Market, no it wasn’t Market Harborough I don’t think. But it I think it might have been Market Harborough but the name of the place was [pause] its where you crewed up. We didn’t have a crew and Johnny Meadows, he’s on this photograph here this [rustling of papers]. Now this is him. That man there that’s Johnny Meadows. He became our mid-upper and I was the rear gunner. That’s me there. That man there was Britain’s, one of Britain’s top dancers. They called him Taggerty. There he is. That man there was a dancing champion of Britain. Taggerty. That man. Anyway —
MC: So that was. What were you flying then at Market Harborough, you said?
AM: Market Harborough was flying Wellingtons there. We crashed in the Wellington there. What actually happened was we took off and I said to the skipper, ‘There’s a strong smell of petrol in the rear turret.’ So he said, ‘Well, I don’t know where it’s coming from Mac but everything’s registering. Everything’s perfect up front.’ We was on night bombing. Practice bombing. And so the second time I said, ‘It’s getting stronger skipper.’ So the third time I said, ‘It’s getting stronger still.’ And the fourth time I said, ‘I’m soaked to the skin in petrol skipper.’ So he says, ‘Oh well we’ll make it back to base. We’ll cancel the bombing and go back to base.’ So it was night time and we were now in funnels and halfway down in funnels we’d passed over some buildings of the ‘drome which was Market Harborough and all of a sudden the aircraft did an about turn. The engine cut out. One of the engines cut out and of course immediately we turned around and we were now going backwards now, still going down and we landed in a field and we crossed three ditches and the undercarriage stood up to the thumping it got at each ditch that we crossed and we landed up in a cornfield. Now, I now had turned my turret on the beam, opened the turret door at the back of me — two, two doors and opened them and I’m getting my parachute on and the parachute caught on something and it bellowed out and we were still going forward but what happened the parachute went that way. It went starboard to the starboard side, dragged me out the turret and dragged me across this cornfield. Anyroad, I got up and got the parachute and put it all together. The skipper says to me, ‘What have you been doing over there?’ So I said, ‘Well’ I said, ‘We touched down,’ I said, ‘And we were bouncing along and,’ I said, ‘My parachute caught on something, I don’t know what and,’ I said, ‘It bellowed out and I said, ‘I got dragged out the rear turret.’ I was sat right way around for it to happen because I was soaked to the skin with petrol you see and I thought now if we’re going to start catching fire I don’t want to be anywhere near where there’s fire. I’ll be the first one out. Anyroads, I picked up my parachute and I went to where the skipper was stood and they were all congregating there and he says, ‘What happened to you then Mac?’ He said, ‘Well you stink of petrol.’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘They’ll be having me up for pinching aircraft petrol.’ [laughs] He says —
MC: And that was in Wellingtons at —
AM: That was a Wellington. Anyroads they —
Other: That was in England?
AM: Pardon?
Other: That was in England?
MC: Yeah. Market Harborough.
AM: Market Harborough yeah.
MC: Yeah. That would be 14 OTU.
AM: It may be in —
MC: Yeah.
AM: May be marked in there. I don’t know. That was, that was that. And anyroads we were all safe and that was the main thing. Nobody was damaged. Except the farmer came out and started saying to the pilot, which was Hugh Skilling, he says, he used a bit of bad language. He says, and I thought you’d better just watch your tongue because Hughie could, he could use these could Hughie. I thought — you’re going to get the wrong end of Hughie.
MC: What was the outcome of this crewing up?
AM: Pardon?
MC: Crewing up. You never. Where did you crew up?
AM: We crewed, I think, did we crew, I’m just not sure. I can’t remember whether it was Market Harborough or where it was but it maybe tells you on there. I just don’t remember.
MC: Yeah.
AM: But —
MC: But obviously you got together with Hughie and therefore —
AM: But anyway we were flying in from Market Harborough and was swapping between Market Harborough and Husband Bosworth. The two stations. One day we was flying from Market Harborough and another day we was back at Husbands Bosworth and then we were back again and then from Husbands Bosworth we went down to [pause] to Newark.
Other: Winthorpe.
AM: Winthorpe yeah.
MC: The Conversion Unit.
AM: Yeah and it was quite, we nearly killed a WAAF there. What happened there we was coming in to land with a Stirling. We’d been on a cross country and it was daytime and coming in to land we was orbiting the ‘drome and as we orbited the ‘drome it was, ‘Select undercarriage Fred.’ That was Fred Clarke the flight mechanic.
Other: Yeah.
AM: They selected the undercarriage. One wheel went down and one wheel went up. One wheel went up inside the wing, inside the engine nacelle there and the other one went down and what happened was it pushed the dinghy out.
Other: Good lord.
AM: The dinghy inflated and all the gear in it and it went —
Other: Jesus.
AM: In this manner going down, as it went down on to the ’drome. Now, I watched it go down and as I was watching it go down there was a WAAF walking across the ’drome, the grass. And this here, this here dinghy it actually just missed her by a few inches. Not a foot but inches and it must have burst behind her. Well what happened to her after that I don’t know. I don’t know whether she fainted or what happened but anyroads I never did know the outcome of what happened to her but it must have made her jump to say the least.
MC: So you were in Stirlings there?
AM: I was in Stirlings there.
MC: Yeah and then you went into —
AM: And with the Stirling we went up then to Woodbridge. Landed with that —
Other: Oh yes.
AM: And then we had several other. We went on a leaflet raid over Germany with the Stirling and we was with the bomber stream. In front of the bomber stream I would think. It’s in there anyway. And we came back from that raid and what happened. We had another do with a Stirling. We had one or two dos with that thing. Nobody liked them. They used to call them flying coffins, the Stirling. That were the common name they used in the air force by air crew because we was over the Wash one day and we got into a cloud there and we were icing up. And it was summer time. And we was icing up and the skipper says, ‘Get ready to jump.’ So of course I opened my bomb doors not my bomb doors, my turret doors.
Other: Turret.
AM: And I was sat ready for jumping out and I could see water below us. I thought oh I don’t fancy that. But anyway we suddenly came into an area where there was a huge gap in the cloud and the sun was coming through. ‘Don’t jump,’ he says, ‘Don’t anybody jump.’ He says, ‘Stay where you are. Take your, reposition yourself wherever you are,’ and we all got back in to the, well I had just got the doors closed and got back in because the ice was all falling off the aircraft whilst we was in this here big hole in the cloud. So that was one episode and of course you couldn’t, with a Stirling, you were lucky if you could get off the ground with them they were that unreliable. Terrible things. Anyroad, that was it. We had one or two little dos with Stirlings and I have a feeling we went back again with another Stirling for some reason but anyway we didn’t, we went back. We had a full, we were on a Lanc and we had a full bomb load on, a full petrol load and we got to the end of the runway and it’s the first time I’ve heard metal tearing and it’s a name, a sound I’ll never forget. If I ever hear it again I can be in a dark room and I’ll know what it is. But we heard this here tearing sound and we got airborne and we knew what had happened ‘cause the wheel and all the lot were just flopping about. All the undercarriage was just hanging by some, something thin. Whether it was wire or, or some metals, you know, it wasn’t very heavy metal whatever it was and it was hanging down from the undercarriage area. And we were told to circle, orbit the ‘drome until contacted and we did this while the bomber stream was taking off and when they were taking off we were told, ‘Make out for the North Sea, jettison your bombs and then come back.’ So we went out to the North Sea to — there’s an area where we, we dropped bombs and we went out there. And we couldn’t get the bomb doors open because the bomb doors and the undercarriage were on the same hydraulic circuit and the fluid from the, the just a minute what do they call it um it’s a pump, hydraulic pump. Oh it’ll come to me in a minute. I’ll carry on talking and then it’ll maybe come back to me, the name of it. It was just on the starboard side about nine foot inside on the starboard side of the Lanc was this here recuperation cylinder I think they called it.
Other: It went bang when the clack valve worked.
AM: Pardon?
Other: It used to go bang when the clack valve.
AM: Oh I don’t know.
Other: When the pressure was up the top. Yes.
AM: Oh I don’t know about that. But —
Other: Oh dear.
AM: Anyway, to cut a long story short we tried to get this hydraulic cylinder to operate. To empty or to, to function the bomb doors. We couldn’t get them open. And so we tried everything. So the bomb aimer says, ‘Skipper I’ve an idea if you let me do it.’ So he said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘I’ll drop a thousand pounder.’ I think he said a thousand pounder but normally it were five hundred but anyroad whether it was five, I’ll say five hundred to be on the safe side. He says, ‘I’ll drop a five hundred pound bomb on the bomb doors while they’re being operated to open.’ So he dropped the, I’ll say a thousand pounder, dropped it on the bomb doors. No. They didn’t open so he says, ‘Well, what you can do Skipper,’ he says, ‘With that thousand pounder on the, laying on the bomb door it’s got the safety pin in,’ he said, ‘If you do a tight bank and do it a — centrifugal force will force the doors open.’ Didn’t work. So he says, ‘Well can we drop another one at the other end of the bomb bay?’ He said, ‘That’s up at the front,’ He said, ‘If we drop one at the back that’s two bombs in the bomb bay hanging on the doors and if you do banking with them then it should, should work.’ No. It still didn’t work. So, anyroads we tried all sorts of manoeuvres one after the other and we were, it’s in the book there. I don’t know whether it was two or three hours there trying to get the doors, bomb doors open. It’s there somewhere and anyway it wouldn’t work so I, I made a suggestion, I says, ‘Can I butt in Hughie?’ He said, ‘Why? What did you want to say?’ I said, ‘Well we haven’t tried something have we?’ So he said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘We think that the fluid out of the hydro — the —
Other: Accumulator.
AM: Accumulator.
Other: Yeah.
AM: Has — it’s emptied and it’s working trying to open the bomb doors on an empty system’. I said, ‘Might I make a suggestion? Maybe somebody’s not agreeing, going to agree with what I say but I’ll say it.’ I said, ‘If we all use the elsan bucket and Johnny and I,’ that’s the mid-upper gunner and I —
Other: Pee in the hydraulic system [laughs]
AM: If we can pour it in to the recuperation cylinder —
Other: Yeah.
AM: It might work. I said, ‘I know it’s water and it has hydraulic fluid in it but,’ I said, ‘It might work. Can we try it?’ ‘We’ll try anything Mac.’ Because we’d been back to base and we’d had instructions to get rid of the aircraft. Point it out to sea and —
Other: Yeah.
AM: Bale out over land and you’ll be picked up. And we didn’t want to lose G George. Anyroads, what happened was we all used the elsan bucket and we took the elsan bucket to the hydraulic —
Other: Yes.
AM: Unit there. Took the bung off the top, unscrewed it and we gently poured the fluid into it and it filled it. We said, ‘Try the, try the bomb doors.’ Opened. Come open.
Other: You see? Genius.
AM: So anyroad, anyroads that, we got rid of the bombs. Now, we went up to Woodbridge and we left the Lanc there. It was left there with a lot more Lancs and stuff there.
MC: So that story was when, when you was with 50 Squadron?
AM: Yeah.
MC: Yeah prior to that you’d obviously been to Lancaster Finishing School had you?
AM: Yeah, we’d been to Lanc, yeah, we went to Syerston. Syerston. That’s where we went to. I missed that one out. Yeah that’s Syerston. That was on the way from Newark to Leicester. When you leave Newark it’s on, comes out to the Six Hills Road I think they call it.
Other: Yes. I remember it being built.
AM: Yeah. I’d forgotten that.
MC: So your first operations at, on 50 Squadron, what were they like? You know, can you remember your first operation?
AM: Yeah. That’s what when we went to an oil refinery. Homburg. I think that was the name of it. Homburg.
MC: Yeah.
AM: And we went there and it’s the first time I’d ever been up on a raid and I put the turret on the beam and I stood up hanging out of the turret because the sheet was, you know, they took the sheet out in front of you. The side ones were in but not in front of you. Well I could get outside the turret and I leaned out and with the turret being on the beam the wing came up and I could see above the wing now and I could see it. I thought, ‘Are we going to go through that?’ [laughs] I thought we’ll never get through that. Anyroad, we got through without a scratch. I couldn’t believe it but that’s what happened. That was the first one. Homburg. But we did get clobbered eventually and that was in a Lanc and we had a few episodes.
MC: What about Trondheim? You mentioned Trondheim.
AM: Trondheim. Yeah. Trondheim. We were, I should say we were in the first aircraft there and when we got there it was one of those nights where the moon made it like daylight. It was, you could see miles and miles and when we got to Trondheim the Northern Lights were on and we saw the Northern Lights. I heard them talking up front, ‘Come up front and have a look at the Northern Lights,’ and we were approaching Trondheim. And oh, it was lit up lovely. It was a nice sight from up there. I really enjoyed it and I wouldn’t have known but for them to say because I mean I’m sat with my back to where they were looking but anyroads. I put her on the beam and looked out the turret on the port side looking out there and I could see all the coloured colours of the — what do they call it?
Other: Northern Lights.
AM: Northern lights. That’s it.
Other: Yeah.
AM: Now then we’re turning in now to bomb the target. You could see the target easy. We were low as well and we were coming in and all of a sudden we were heading in to bomb and all of a sudden the Germans set off these here smoke —
Other: Yeah.
AM: Smoke flares. And you couldn’t see the target so we had to — we were told to abandon the raid. Return to base. Now, that’s when one of them landed at Skell, at the base where they’d come from, where we’d all come from — Skellingthorpe. And that’s where they made a heavy landing and I heard them talking about this, by that was a rough landing, whoever made that and anyroad we didn’t go back to Skellingthorpe that day we landed at Carnaby. We was getting short of petrol so we had to make a forced landing at Carnaby. And then the next day we’d got topped up and we went on back to base and the same day as we were supposed to be back at Skellingthorpe and we landed at Carnaby that aircraft landed, made a bad landing and when they got to the dispersal, I think it was a 61 Squadron aircraft and what happened was the crew got on board the, on board the aircraft and, the ground crew that is but the air crew went to get their gear put away to the, to the locker room and then they went to the mess. Well whether they were at the mess or the locker room I don’t know where they were when there was a big bang and up went the aircraft with all the ground staff on. They were delayed action bombs you see.
Other: Enough said.
MC: You, you did a couple of trips to Munich.
AM: Yeah I did two trips to Munich. Yeah.
MC: Long trip?
AM: Yeah. They were long trips and the story with that really because what happened was [pause] where are we — I’ve got a picture here somewhere. There were two ladies. When we come to the reunion they were waiting for us, for Ken and I and, where is [pause] oh not there. Oh it must still be in there. Anyway these two ladies, one of them said, ‘I understand you was on Munich raid.’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘What date?’ And I told her. Got the log book and got the date. ‘Oh that’s when my husband was killed. He was on that raid and he got killed.’ Well from there on it made a connection between us and the two ladies [pause] No, no, that’s a Polish squadron that. They invited me to a Polish squadron and that man there is Tom Wislocki. That man there took me there. He —
MC: So the, I mean obviously a couple of times to Munich. No mishaps with those really. Those raids. What about, I mean the other long one you did was Politz.
AM: Yeah. And Gydnia.
MC: Yeah. Gydnia.
AM: They were both in the Baltic.
MC: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
Other: That’s a long step.
AM: Yeah we got some long trips in. But—
MC: You did your first trip to Mittelland Canal.
AM: Mittelland Canal.
MC: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. That was, that was the trip where we came unstuck because the Mittelland Canal — there was only nine aircraft on that raid and we were one of the nine aircraft. We couldn’t believe it. Normally they say, ‘Would the members of 50 Squadron and 61 Squadron report to the briefing room.’
Other: Yeah.
AM: Well this time they didn’t. They says will the following crew, and they gave them the names of the crew. Ours was Skillings crew. Would they report to the ops block. And I thought well that’s nine crew. Now, one of the nine crew took off and this was to the Mittelland Canal with, from Wing Commander Flint he said, ‘If by chance you don’t get the doings don’t come back. I don’t want to see you. You’ve got to sink this barge. It’s most important because you know how,’ this, I’ll quote his actual words as near as I can remember and his actual words to us at briefing the nine crew he says, ‘You know how good the Tiger tank is? We’ve nothing to touch the Tiger tank. Well the Germans have built another one which is far superior to the Tiger tank and they’ll win the war with it if it gets through. You must sink it. If you don’t sink it you’ve got to bust the banks of the canal.’ This is at night time and you know what Jerry would be doing. He’d be waiting for us. Anyroad, we gets there and we goes in and we bombs. So we, we didn’t get, I don’t recall any anti–aircraft fire on that trip but maybe there was. Maybe we weren’t in the right place. I don’t know what the outcome of it was. But the first aircraft to take off he had a malfunction and ran off the runway so that reduced us now to eight aircraft. Enroute to the target we were, it was a dark night. It was a very bad dark night. It was pitch black and all of a sudden the sky was lit up. There was a Lanc on our port beam and he was on fire. Fire was streaming from his port wing. So Fritz had been underneath firing up. So, in the glow of the fire from him I could see another Lanc between him and us so that was three of us in a line. Now, on the starboard side just a few yards behind us and I mean a few yards, maybe thirty or forty yards, there was another Lanc and so anyroads the next thing I knew another flare, the lights had gone out on that one. I don’t know whether he’d got a fire extinguisher and put it out or whether it had gone down I don’t know. And, now then the one that was in between him and us he now was on fire the same as the previous one so that knocks two off the list and one that gone down at, that knocked three off so it left six aircraft to bomb the target. So the next thing I know the mid-upper screams out, ‘Corkscrew. Port. Go.’ And he screamed out and all of a sudden there was a great noise and [laughs] the turret filled with the fumes. He’d fired a rocket at us, this fighter and the fighter did a head on attack at night time in dark and he come just missing the top of the aircraft. It was a wonder he didn’t take the mid upper with him. And he just come above the top of us, filled the aircraft with the fumes from his rocket and also from the fumes from the aircraft coming to the rear turret and I wanted to fire at him but I thought if I fire at him I’ll hit this Lanc that’s following us and I don’t want to shoot one of ours down. I didn’t mind shooting him down but not, not one of ours. Anyroad, I had to let him go. I think that pilot must have been, he must have been a special pilot because it was absolutely pitch black and it was just a row. A lot of noise and a blur. That’s all you could say it was. You couldn’t, you couldn’t identify it because we were both going in different directions. So that was the, we thought it was a Fokke - Wulf 190. It could easily have been but we never did know the outcome of that. And I think we landed at where did we land from that? That was Mitteland Canal, oh coming back from it. I know now. We landed at Juvincourt in France. What happened was we was coming back and part of our route was over Belgium and over Belgium there was anti-aircraft fire taking place and we ran into this anti-aircraft fire and it blew all the starboard side of the nose off from the nose here on the starboard side which way around are we? Let’s get my bearings —
Other: Flight engineers side.
AM: Pardon?
Other: Flight engineers side.
AM: Yeah. Flight engineers side. Yeah. There we are. It was [pause] yeah, that side there. Yeah. Starboard, yeah, there we are. From, from the turret but right back to the wing that whole sheet was off there and that’s where the bomb aimer was laid looking for fighters.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: Through the downward looking piece of Perspex and the shell piece — the, this is common talk amongst those that were involved they said it must have been a piece of shrapnel that size and it had ripped off the whole sheet from that side from the top, from the top of the aircraft to the bottom was ripped off and we were told to bale out. Now, what had happened was the shell that had done that had cut my intercom so I didn’t hear the word, ‘Jump. Jump,’ and I’m still looking. We were in a cloud and we were, when I say in a cloud, in the searchlights and we’re going down and down and down and down and got the controls jammed with a piece of shrapnel. I don’t know if you know what the controls are like inside a Lanc but on the port side of the Lanc there’s a square rod about that square and it runs between two rollers down the port side and that comes from the skipper to the ailerons on the, on the tail and that — a wheel there, then the aileron control and then a wheel there. And this shrapnel had gone in there and the more he was pulling it in to get out the dive the tighter it was getting. So he took the, did the, wasn’t quite so obvious I wouldn’t think but he did, tried it, he put the nose into a steeper dive still. The shrapnel fell out and everybody was bailing out but me and, and the skipper of course. Anyway, we got out. He got her out the dive and what happened after that [pause] a bit a long ago now. Trying to remember what happened.
MC: He obviously managed to put the aircraft down.
AM: Yeah. Oh I know. He put a mayday out. That was it. A mayday. And we got called in to Juvincourt. Well, at Juvincourt we landed there and we were told to be careful because the previous day, I think they’d captured it the previous day, an aircraft had landed. It was a German fighter ‘drome this Juvincourt and a Lancaster had landed there. And it were night time so it would be the night before we were there and a man had come up out of the darkness and stabbed one of the crew to death. And so they sent a man out to us in a jeep or some kind of vehicle. I call it a jeep. Maybe it wasn’t a jeep, maybe, whatever it was and he said that the skipper says to him, ‘What are you carrying that sten gun for?’ He said, ‘Well yesterday,’ he said, ‘We had, last night,’ he said, ‘We had a Lanc land and the crew were stood outside the aircraft and a man come up and stabbed one of the crew to death,’ He said, ‘So I’ve brought the sten gun in case he comes up with you lot. If you, if you, when you lot get out your aircraft you need somebody with you with a gun.’ Well the skipper would have a gun anyway in there but he wouldn’t bring it out with him I don’t suppose but anyroad that’s where we were. So I goes to hand my, I goes to hand my parachute in and, ‘Oh where’s my seven and sixpence?’ So I says, ‘I’ll give you seven and sixpence,’ I said. ‘I told you when I fly over Germany I don’t carry money in my pocket,’ I said. ‘If we get shot down I’m not going to give them my bonus for shooting us down.’ So he says, ‘Well where is your money then?’ I says, ‘It’s back at camp.’ So he said, ‘Well, will it be alright?’ I said, ‘I’ve told the men in the billet if anything happens to me, spend it. Go and,’ and I told them where it is so I said, ‘It’ll be quite safe. They’re a good crowd. Which they were. I said, ‘You go and spend it and have a drink or two on me.’ But anyroads we got back to base and there’s a lot more I could tell you but it would take too long. A lot happened. I could nearly write a book on what happened when we got there at Juvincourt. It was a —
MC: Presumably the aircraft was repaired there was it? And you flew it back?
AM: No. No. It was a write off.
MC: Oh right.
Other: Yeah.
AM: It was scrapped straightaway.
MC: Was that G for George?
AM: And apparently — we went back there again in another Lanc taking prisoners back. Our prisoners. And the first time we landed there they were, we got, I got out the aircraft to see what was going on and a chap, he heard heard me talking. He said, ‘You’re from Hull.’ So I said, ‘Yeah I am.’ So he says, ‘Which is your aircraft?’ I said, ‘This one here’. ‘Can I come in your aircraft?’ So I says, ‘Yeah I think so.’ ‘Skipper? Can this here chap here come, come with us to Hull?’ ‘So he said, he’s from Hull, is he?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘And you are?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ So I says, ‘Could he go in the turret if I put him on safety?’ Well they were on safety anyway. So he says, ‘Yeah. Ok. You don’t mind do you?’ I said, ‘No. Let him come on.’ So I got him fixed up in the rear turret and closed the doors behind him and oh —
Other: Dear me.
AM: When we landed somewhere down the south of the England, I can’t remember where it was but south of England. Oh I was a pal for life. But I never did find out where he lived in Hull. So that was him.
Other: Lovely.
MC: So one of the last ops you did was to Vallo.
AM: Vallo, yeah.
MC: Yeah. You returned early I gather.
AM: Yeah. We, we had a —
MC: Crash landing.
Other: Boomerang.
AM: Yeah, we had. I can’t remember whether it was engine trouble or some mechanical trouble. Well damaged with shrapnel. That shrapnel was pretty accurate with the Germans. It really was. They were, they were good. They had some good equipment.
Other: Yes.
MC: So how many operations did you finish up doing?
AM: Pardon?
MC: How many operations did you finish up doing?
AM: Well I did twenty eight. I had two more to do and if I’d finished the two — I got clobbered on the twenty eighth one and I was laid unconscious on the floor of the turret and I spoke to the skipper when I come to. I thought I’d better get contacting him, he’ll be wondering what’s happening. So he says to me, he says, ‘Mac was you alright with that shell?’ So I had to put two and two together and I found out that a shell had burst while I was looking out the rear turret and it had knocked me down onto the floor of the turret and I was unconscious. I don’t know how long but I was unconscious on the floor and when I come up, you know, got my senses and I stood up in the turret and felt I felt all over around to see if I had any wounds or anything [laughs] and I hadn’t. And anyroads the intercom was still plugged in and I spoke to the skipper and he says, ‘Why was you disconnected?’ ‘Oh’ I said, ‘The plug come out.’ I said, ‘I’ve put it back in the socket.’ The intercom socket. It hadn’t. So, and I could sense that he didn’t believe me. Anyway, when we landed he said, ‘Mac will you come here. I want you.’ So we were in light now so he says, ‘Face me.’ So I faced him. He says, ‘Medical centre.’ So I said, ‘What for?’ He says, ‘You’re going to the medical centre. Your eyes are in a hell of a state.’ So I says, ‘Oh are they?’ He said, ‘Medical centre.’ I said, ‘No. I’ll be alright skip.’ ‘Mac,’ he said, ‘We rely on you.’ He says, ‘Medical centre.’ I says, ‘No. I don’t want to go skipper.’ He says, ‘Look. I don’t like using my rank but what’s that?’ I said, ‘Squadron leader,’ and I knew what was coming. He says ‘Well, I’m telling you medical centre now, while I’m here.’ And he wouldn’t leave me till he’d seen me go in to the medical centre and I was in bed for a fortnight and then I come out of that and by that time they’d done two ops so they’d finished their tour.
Other: Yeah.
AM: So I’d missed two trips. So that’s why I didn’t do the two trips. The last —
Other: Medical centre.
AM: Yeah. Loafing.
MC: So you did some, obviously you mentioned you went back to Juvincourt. That was to repatriate?
AM: Yeah we went, we went there. We did several different things when we finished flying. We went dropping bombs now the dropping the bombs business it’s been suggested that um that American flyer — what did they call him that got lost. They never found out where he was? It was suggested that he’d been they’d looked up his record and he’d been directed to the area. When we’d come back from a raid we had certain areas where we —
Other: Dumping ground.
AM: Dropped our bombs.
Other: Yeah.
AM: And apparently he’d been flying in a fighter. I don’t know what it was, maybe a Mustang, maybe a, whatever, anyway he’d been directed to fly to this area and if he was flying when they were jettisoning the bombs probably the bombs had got him and there was an article in the paper making this suggestion that, he was — was he a dance band leader? Glen Miller.
Other: Ah.
AM: That was it.
Other: Yes. Yes.
AM: And the suggestion being that he’d flown underneath a Lancaster which was getting rid of its —
Other: Dumping.
AM: Surplus bombs because they iced up you see did the bomb racks. Very often they iced up. I could tell you a story about that but I’dlistenin better not. It would take too much time.
MC: What story is that?
AM: Well what happened with that was this — that this Lancaster come back and dropped the bombs and they think it’s hit, hit Glen Miller and put him in to the ditch and that was the end of him and that was that. Now then as regards the what I was —
MC: About the bomb rack freezing up.
AM: Yeah. What happened was we went on a raid somewhere where there was some mountains and I think it was somewhere east of Munich on, I think so — somewhere in that area but anyroad what happened was when we was going to this area, what happened there, let’s get it — oh I know. We went to bomb the target but enroute to the target we went between, I know now, two mountains, one on the starboard side, one on the port side and as we were going through these mountains between the two I looked down and on the side of one of them was what I took to be a listening post. A German listening post. And now we got past them and we went on to the target. I thought oh if skip had given me permission I’d have given them a good squirt but —
Other: Yeah.
AM: He wouldn’t have done. Not to waste ammunition like that. But anyway we gets to the target, we runs over the target, select bombs down, no bombs dropped. So we went around again. Select bombs. No bombs dropped. So we went around again. No bombs dropped. Went around again. No bombs dropped. So now we’re making way home and we’d got rid of some of the five hundred pounders but the cookie was held up. So now a conversation took place now between the pilot and Dougie which I could hear and he says to Dougie, he said, ‘Dougie I know what you’re going to say but I’m telling you we’ve got to get rid of that cookie.’ He said, ‘If we don’t —’ and there was an intermediate conversation going on, he says, ‘If we don’t drop that cookie we’ll not reach the French coast.’ He said, ‘We’ve been around four times, around this target.’
Other: Yeah.
AM: He says, ‘And we’re getting a bit low on petrol.’ He said, ‘We’ll be lucky now if we get to the French coast never mind carrying a four thousand pounder back with us.’ ‘Well you heard what Wing Commander Flint said.’ So he said, ‘Yes, I did hear what Wing Commander Flint said. He said if you can’t get rid of a four thousand pounder I want to know what you’ve done with it. You’ve got to bring it back.’ So Dougie says, ‘Well I’m saying let’s take it back.’ So Hughie says, ‘Dougie I’m sorry.’ He says, ‘We’ll put it to the crew. What do we do? Drop it or do we go on? What are we to do?’ So he come to me, started with me. He says, ‘Mac, what do you think?’ I said, ‘Drop it.’ ‘Mid-upper?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Wireless op?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Navigator?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Flight engineer?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Me?’ That’s the pilot. ‘Drop it.’ So he says, ‘I think you’re outvoted aren’t you Dougie?’ Dougie Cruickshanks they called him. He said, ‘I think you’re outvoted. We’ve got to drop it.’ So he says, ‘Tell, me when you’re ready and you want the bomb doors open and we’ll get rid of that cookie if we can.’ So, we’re going along and Dougie says, ‘Skipper. When we came along here going to the target there’s a listening post here. Can I bomb that? ‘ So he says, ‘Yeah, you can if it gets rid of it.’ So he said, ‘Right.’ So I’m looking out the rear turret to see this here place coming up ‘cause I knew where it was now. I’d seen it going up. So I’m looking for it and it come up and it was lit up. Anyroad, there was such a bang and a crash. The skipper says, ‘Mac,’ he says, ‘Have we been hit? I says, ‘No’ I said, ‘But somebody else has.’ ‘Who?’ I says, ‘Where Dougie dropped the bomb. Where do you think he dropped it?’ So I said, ‘He’s got a bullseye with it.’ So he’d got this here listening post and it wasn’t there now. No lights. Nothing there. So —
Other: Oh dear.
AM: He made a pretty good shot. Mind you it was well up on the mountain side was this here, this here listening post.
Other: Oh dear.
AM: Now then, we gets back but we still had to land. I think we landed at Tangmere somewhere.
Other: Yes.
AM: On the, you’ll see somewhere there where we landed and we had to get petrolled up. When we got back from a raid somewhere. If you know which raid it was we’d come back on you can tell me the name of the target.
MC: When you landed at Tangmere, Mittelland.
AM: Pardon?
MC: Mittelland Canal.
AM: No. That wasn’t the Mittelland Canal. That was another time.
MC: Oh right. It says Tangmere.
AM: The Mittelland Canal was the one, that’s the one where we, where the two aircraft were set on fire at the side of us and where the Jerry come over and fired a rocket at us. That was the Mittelland Canal. North Germany.
MC: So —
AM: We landed somewhere. I think it was at Tangmere or somewhere we landed. Down south of England. Coming back from Munich area somewhere. I don’t think it was on the Munich raid we landed there but it was a raid somewhere up that way.
MC: There was a Munich raid where you landed at Ludford.
AM: Ludford Magna.
Other: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. We landed at several places coming back depending on what sort of a trip we’d had. I mean if you do a lot of corkscrewing and that you’re going to be galloping the petrol down.
MC: I’m sure, yeah. There’s one where you landed at Saffron Underwood.
AM: Grafton Underwood. Yeah.
MC: Grafton Underwood. Yeah.
AM: Yeah. We were fog bound and they had FIDO. We landed there and the Americans, I never let anybody say to me anything bad about them. To my way of thinking the Americans were marvellous and we’ve a lot to thank them for because they treated us like, you’d have thought we were royalty. We landed in the fog on their ‘drome. The food was good and the bloke at the counter says to me, ‘Don’t you like eggs?’ So I said, ‘Yes. Why?’ Well, I said, ‘I’ve got one.’ So he says, ‘You’ve only got one.’ I says, ‘Well can I have two?’ And he said, ‘You can have as many as you want.’ And wherever we landed on an American ‘drome they were absolutely tops. They were a marvellous crowd to me. Wherever we were with the Americans they were good.
MC: So what, so when you finished your tour and you did your, you obviously did Juvincourt, you did some bomb disposal. Where did you go after you’d finished your tour?
AM: Oh we got shifted about. We was at Sturgate. We was at Blyton. We was at Cranwell. And from Cranwell I got — went down to, is it Uxford, Uxbridge the demob centre.
Other: Uxbridge.
AM: Hmmn?
Other: Uxbridge.
AM: Uxbridge yeah. We got debriefed there. Got, not debriefed, got —
MC: Demobbed.
AM: Yeah demobbed from there.
MC: So what did you do after the war then when you —
AM: I went back to me firm that I was with.
MC: Oh you finished your apprenticeship.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: As an electrician.
AM: Yeah. It was a good firm. One of the best firms I worked for.
MC: What are your thoughts about your time in the air force?
AM: What was what?
MC: What are your thoughts about your time? Was it good?
AM: Well I thought it was a good thing for anybody. You see, I’m in a position now, I belong to Jehovah’s Witnesses and they don’t approve of people going into the forces. Not because they’ve anything against the forces but they don’t believe in war. And today I was cross questioned before I come out because one of the ladies from the Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my house and she didn’t realise that I was twigging what she was up to and they don’t want me to come here because they want no connection whatsoever to do with war or people who take part in wars which I did. And so I had to watch my Ps and Qs. So, I didn’t know I was coming here because he didn’t tell me. I didn’t, I knew we was coming somewhere around here but I didn’t know where, what or anything about it and so when I come in here, it was, I thought what are we going in there for? I didn’t know and you’ve opened my eyes to what’s what so —
MC: Well that’s lovely Alan and I thank you very much for being very frank and I’ve enjoyed your talk and it’s been very interesting. Thank you very much.
AM: Well I could have told you a lot more but —
MC: You can do if you wish.
AM: No [laughs].
MC: What else have you got to tell me then?
AM: No, you’ve got, you want to be going home for a meal or something.
MC: Well I do appreciate what you’ve done. Thank you, Alan.
AM: Ok.
MC: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Edward Allan McDonald
Creator
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Mike Connock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMcDonaldEA150713
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Julie Williams
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1944
1945
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Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Mittelland Canal
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Description
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Allan McDonald was born in Hull and worked as an apprentice electrician before joining the Air Force. He passed the exams to become aircrew and trained as an air gunner. During training, his aircraft crash landed and he was soaked in petrol. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe and recalls seeing aircraft exploding in the air, a dinghy deploying by accident and nearly hitting a WAAF, and making an emergency landing at Juvincourt after being attacked by a FW-190 and being hit by anti-aircraft fire.
Format
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01:15:32 audio recording
14 OTU
50 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crash
decoy site
Fw 190
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Winthorpe
sanitation
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1071/11528/APerryJE160115.1.mp3
b6c636650aae4fb0f573af0c56f4d4b1
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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Perry, Jack
John E Perry
J E Perry
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jack Perry (b. 1920, 617795, Royal Air Force). He served as ground crew with 83 Squadron at RAF Scampton but also flew three operations as an air gunner.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-15
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Perry, JE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NM: So this is, this is Nigel Moore. It’s the 15th of January 2016. I’m at the home of Mr John Perry in [deleted ] Welwyn Garden City. So, tell me a little bit about your childhood and growing up before you joined the air force.
JP: Very interesting. Yeah. Well, I was born in Wimbledon 1920 and never saw my father because he died before I was registered. My mother died when I was six years old and I went to live with one of her younger sisters in Poplar. All I remember about that was being dressed in a grey suit with a bag. Going to school at Queen’s Road, Wimbledon and passing the Royal Arsenal Co-op where they had all the carts garaged there. That apparently was where my father worked after he came out of the army. And I got, as I say one morning I went to say goodbye to my mother in bed. She was in bed. I just went back and saw my granny coming and I said, ‘Mummy won’t speak to me.’ I went on my way to school. And she’d died of consumption. Apparently my father had died with it before that. Put his down to a result of first war gas according to my cousin later on. She was a bit older than me. Now, I remember my mother’s funeral. We were, my brother and myself and my cousin Winnie. And my mother’s younger sister, Auntie Mabel had a pram. And we weren’t allowed to go to the burial or the funeral so we were on the kerb outside the house. As I say after that I just know I went to one Auntie, Jessie in Poplar. And my brother, who was three years older than me went to Auntie Ethel in Romford. And that’s Winnie’s mother. My cousin. I can’t remember much about it except that we lived in a bungalow on a newly erected square of bungalows. And my mother or my father were either caretakers there. That’s my auntie I should say. I remember the 1926 strike. All the marchers in their peaked caps and corduroy trousers tied at the knees marching. And then apparently my uncle he worked in the docks. East India Docks. Whatever he was. A caretaker or something or other. But anyway, I just remember doing one of two things with my auntie like giving me a bunch of wooden skewers to go and get some sausages from the butcher. And climbing up the iron railings in the tenement buildings that were there empty. The next thing I knew I was in a Church Home. And I remember the morning there I was standing in the room with all the rest of the children that were there and I know I wet myself and I had to go before the head man there. He was in his surplice and that. And I can’t remember much about it except that he had this board on the desk and he give me a hit with it. A Cribbage board it was as I know now. Now all I remember is that I used to be taken from there to school with a young school teacher. Used to take me on the bus every morning to school. Then after that I remember going to, in hospital for me adenoids and tonsillectomy. They were done and I got scarlet fever develop whilst in the hospital. And they took me across the bridge from the hospital to the workhouse and I was in the workhouse there for two weeks in bed, I remember with scarlet fever. And then a lovely old gentleman, I shall always remember him with his beard and that, came and took me away from there to a place at Fairlight, at Hampton Hill in Middlesex. All I can remember about that is that we used to sit around in the evening and he’d play this big phonograph. He’d got a big, with tubular discs. He used to play that in the evening. I remember then from there I was boarded out to a footballer in Hamptons. I don’t know where it was actually but, and all I know is that he and his wife they’d got two daughters and he used to take me with him to the football every, when he went training and playing. He used to sit me in the stands. I’m not sure now, I know they wore blue jerseys. Whether it was the original Wimbledon or whether it was Chelsea. But after a few times there I was taken back into care because, I don’t know the reason why but I was picked up with this social worker in a big browny red Talbot motor and taken to New Malden in Surrey. Children’s Home. There because I was born in Surrey so I was their responsibility. I remember that. When I apparently showed signs of bad temper or something or other they used to put me in the gas cupboard under the stairs and shut the door until I stamped it out and screamed at them. And then I remember I ran away from there, from this New Malden and I got as far as Teddington I think and I was picked up by the police and returned. I was about nine then, I think so [pause] Then I was boarded out again from there. Oh, when, I was labelled uncontrollable what they used to do, one of them, the masters of the house was as a punishment he used to take me down to the shed in the garden where they had a boxing ring rigged up. Put me in there with an older fella to knock me about a bit. To punish me it was. But as I say I loved it all because I loved fighting. And then I got boarded out again to other people. And I was going to New Malden Council School then. And it was somebody in New Malden. She’d already got two boy boarders. One of them was already working. And there again she used to put me in the cupboard under the stairs. And that was full of quart beer bottles. They were drinkers. Both of them. Her and her husband. I didn’t last long there. They took me back to this Children’s Home in New Malden. And then I remember I just started to go from council school to the newly built central, the first one, secondary modern school. West Malden Central School. I was put in to a 1b because I was only ten and the starting age was eleven. But this 1b was full of children that had qualified through exams. I was still only eleven. And when I passed the certificate for going to grammar school but at that time, going to grammar school everything you had had to be paid for so being a council boy nobody would do it so I, I didn’t go. I remember I picked up again then to go to, oh as I say when I first went to New Malden Children’s Homes and I was there, first day registered my, met my registrar there. When I was asked my name I said, ‘Jack.’ I was called Jackie. He said, ‘No such name. The name is John.’ So from then, that time on I became John all through until I was still in the air force. I was still as John. But I deviate. I was picked up at this Children’s Home in West Malden by a man and woman. They had, at that time a Vauxhall racing car. There was only fourteen of them built. And I was in the dickie seat at the back and I was taken in that car with them up to Shropshire in the West of England School of Handicrafts. I was eleven then. Because I was a little bit more intelligent or advanced then some of the other inmates there because most of them were cripples or parental rejects for fits and all that sort of thing. And they just started taking people from council homes too. And I was one of them there. Because I was a bit more intelligent I was asked or told to be companion to their only son, Tom Parker. And that’s how it stood. He was, had a governess. And I think I was just in there. I remember, as I grow older I did quite a lot of things. I know I was about fourteen I think, one of the masters who was a Territorial Army lieutenant he got me interested in the military. And I passed an exam to go to the Royal Ordnance Corps. Boy entrant. Gosport. And I was on my way there. Had to go to report to the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry Barracks. And I got to the barracks and he wasn’t there with me, this guy. He’d gone or something. But at the [pause] registrar or whatever they call them in there and they said, ‘We want your parent or your guardian to sign this,’ and I’d got nobody. So, they called up Petton Hall and they came and fetched me back again. And I carried on and I remember doing a lot of carpentry work and also helping rebuild a lorry with a, renewing the engine and that. And then, but they were pumping their own electricity there with a big Crossley gas engine. And I got I had to do that in the morning. It was fed by an anthracite boiler with a drip feed to supply the gas. I did that and then they had a, they started building the stables into another home for people and I got put on to help the electrician there. The electrician, plumber and brick layer from outside and each one had an apprentice if you can call them that. And I had to apprentice an electrician then. That’s where I learned my trade. There until I was eighteen. Another one of the masters got me thinking about going and I remember I went and I caught a train and went to Birmingham. To Snow Hill Station. Come out and there was the RAF recruiting office. I went in there and did the entrance exam. And then I joined the air force at the age of eighteen. I went down to West Drayton. At West Drayton I was kitted out and had my hair cut and the king’s shilling and then I went to Uxbridge for the initial training. Three months. That was drills and things like that. I remember I was good at football. We were playing a match between the squadrons. Flights or what there. And then a Fulham scout was there watching me and I think about half time he left because I finished up on the ground most of the time, being small. Then one of the PTI instructors was a RAF boxing guy and he used to take me down to the boxing ring and have, showed us about because I loved it. The boxing. Until one time I was boxing against a Halton apprentice. Seventeen year old apprentice. And he gave me two pokes and I was on the floor. I thought that’s me finished. I went from there to Henlow camp for electrical training and, and that I was there about eight to ten months. I remember seeing on the flying field there the monoplane and I thought that’s new. And it was a Hurricane that was under test. And that’s the first of the Hurricanes then before they started going. Anyway, I, come the July 1939 all my entry were posted. We hadn’t finished the course or anything but to various sections then. As I say, in this entry that apart from people and an AMIE chappy and another one that’s national, national certificate. Another one who had been an electrician in the theatres. So we were all posted to different places. I went up to Scampton. And I remember going there and joining 83 bomber squadron. That [pause] and initially I was put into a bell tent because accommodation wasn’t ready for months. Apparently they were just starting to receive the Hampden aircraft squadron. They already had one electrician there with the squadron and he’d probably been some time with them. They couldn’t find work for me so I was sent over to work in the battery charging room with a civilian operator there they had. And then I remember the day that war broke out then. September the 4th. They had this tannoy message over there. I was just walking in the, between meals and things and they said, ‘The next time you hear this you have to all go down in the shelters.’ I don’t know what happened after that. I know it was a sunny day. And I just remember that they had another electrician posted to them and he was sent to the battery room and I was taken out of the battery room to the maintenance hangar. And I was there for a bit. We had, I made friends with another Southern Irish chappy that had joined up for the war and then he was my friend then. And I remember he’d done a minor service on a, on a Hampden aircraft and he’d gone on leave and he hadn’t signed up for it. So I, I was told have a look and see or sign for it by the NCO in charge. I checked it over and signed it up. They took it out for engine runs and when they went to start it, it caught fire. And then I know one of them came from Farnborough to inspect it and check what may have happened. And the guy that came was an electrician, Jimmy Phillips that had been on the course with me at Henlow. As I say, he’d been a National Certificate holder so he got on all right. And what they found was that when they pressed the button to start the engine up with the ground plugged in that the relay, something like that, had arced between the things and they’d sparked and caught fire. Anyway, of course they had to, Handley Page sort all that out and put rubber sleeves on so that it couldn’t happen again. And I remember that both Paddy and I were sent out. That more aircraft had come and we were designated to flights. About ten or twelve aircraft in each flight. I was in B flight and then service them. Daily servicing, DIs and sign up for the 700s so that they could fly. I remember that on one occasion I, the, the bombsight selector was showing that a fault, amber light, a fault on something. An earth on the system. And I remember it took me about forty eight hours to trace that right back to where it was, and it was a tail wheel microswitch had frozen solid and causing the short. So Handley Page had to send a work crew out to sort that out and they had a gel mixture in all microswitches exposed to the weather. And then I remember being on duty crew which we used to do. And in the first instance the first duty crew I think I had to go out with the flashing beacon to some distant part of Lincoln. And that was an all night job. Brought it back in the day time. Another time, duty crew, we had just had all the runway lit up with glim lamps that were battery operated lamps for the flare path and goose necks with paraffin and the chance lights, one at each end of the flare path. And we’d just got them all lit up for the aircraft returning from a bombing raid when a Junkers 88 joined the circuit and strafed the runway. It was a pretty sight with green and yellow and tracer bullets. A couple of our returning aircraft gave chase. I don’t know what happened to them or him. And then, oh and so one night when we were, Paddy and I were out and we came, we were on the way back to camp and we came back the top of the airfield way with a mini cab. I can’t remember why. But we were just off the aircraft, airfield and this aeroplane, one of ours, crash landed. Out of, out of the aerodrome precincts in the field. I remember Paddy and I stopped the car and ran over to help them out. And we were the first people there. The ambulance came and everybody was alright. I think that there was a burning thing. Then the ambulance brought us back to camp and took us right back to the Red Cross. Their place because they’d take the passengers to be checked over. I don’t remember much else there [unclear]
NM: You, you mentioned you had three, three flights as a —
JP: Oh yeah. I’ll come to that.
NM: As an unofficial gunner. How, how did that —
JP: I’m coming to that. That was at Scampton with the squadron. Just after the war broke out a DRO was posted up for tradesmen to volunteer for air gunners. To sit in. And three of us from the squadron or flight, or anyway in the billet, volunteered and as I say I was very pleased to. We had a week’s training with the armoury sergeant who was the first air force person I’d seen in khaki. He was a sergeant obviously and he showed us how to strip the guns down, rebuild them, oil them. The Vickers K gun. And then took us out for target practice. And I remember it was stupid it was nothing to do with guns, K-guns or anything like that was a Hispano Suiza, a big gun. And firing at a Messerschmitt 109 target board. And then when we’d done that we were, I personally was given a crew place. And we were designated to go to Kiel and it was a paper, just paper delivery. We were told not to fire the guns unless fired upon or the pilot told us to. Otherwise we were just there to make weight. We did one trip there and another trip with the same purpose to Wilhelmshaven. And then a third trip was a camera study of the pens. The submarine pens at Wilhelmshaven. We were, we were told that we’d got to be registered and, but we were going to have a medical test before we went to do the air to air firing at North Coates. And then when I was having the medical, I remember it was in the barrack room then, the guy just said no and, ‘You’ve failed your medical for eyesight.’ Never did tell me what it was. It was just an eyesight test. So I never qualified. I know one of the other people, he did. I was very proud of the squadron because the 83 Squadron was commanded by Wing Commander Snaith of the Schneider Trophy. Renowned I think. And I used to follow that when I was a kid. And the aircraft. That was, that was alright until I got posted away and found myself up at Turnhouse in Scotland and there I was put on the, into an office. K4 area. I was, I had to be interviewed by the group captain of the Turnhouse. And then we, he had us go to him and swear to secrecy. It was the Duke of Hamilton was the group captain I remember. Anyway, I found myself out in the civilian lodgings on the decoy sites just being built up in Edinburgh area. I was there on this decoy site. The first one at east of Kinleith, which was at the foot of the Braids Hill. The decoy site was on Braids Hills just outside Edinburgh. And all I’d do there was check the circuitry of the fires and the diesel machines and everything there. And then I had to train ACHs and I was posted to a site at Millerhill and made area electrician. So I had a dispatch driver with a sidecar to go around the other sites checking the batteries and the, checking out the circuitry. The, the flight lieutenant in charge of the unit K4, all said, everything we had a code word — Starfish. If you were ever approached by anybody, Secret Service police or anything like that you just had to say, ‘Starfish,’ and you’d go on your way. It was a secret code. Anyway, he said that, ‘You’re doing the area electrician. I’m going to get you promoted.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m a Group 2 tradesman. I’m as far as I can go.’ And he, he got in touch with Colonel Butcher, MOD and he applied to the Air Ministry to get me in. The Air Ministry apparently turned back and said, ‘Unfit for NCO material.’ And I could only ever assume that that was because I’d passed my eye test to be aircrew. Because they’d already made then aircrew all had to be NCOs when I was there. In my flights I was just given a sergeant’s stripes during the flight as protection in case you were taken prisoner. And that applied to all the wireless operators. They were only Group 2 tradesmen as well. And then, as I say, but I was so proud of 83 Squadron. I was very disappointed when I left them because already they’d had John Hannah a VC. And to my knowledge they had done the first two bombing raids to Italy which was a two way and they lost a lot of aircraft on that. And then part of the hundred bomber attack on Berlin, I think it was. And of course Handley Page were adapting these aircraft for all sorts of things. 83 Squadron and 49 which was the other squadron at Scampton they had Barry Learoyd as a VC for his antics on a raid on the dams which was unsuccessful but he stayed there and watched everybody drop off their bombs apparently. And he was the leader. But then they had adapted for mine laying and everything what they did. Anyway, I digress again there. When I, when I had this promotion turned down the, my senior officer there said, ‘Well, we’ll send you for Group 1 training,’ which had just started up in electrics. Group 1. And I was sent back to Turnhouse waiting for permission there and he said, ‘We’ll get you there and ask to have you back again.’ Anyway, something happened at Turnhouse. I was in the cubbyhole. I was working on a microswitch again there. That was the first place I saw WAAFs working on Spitfires. Laying on the tail planes while they revved them up. Wonderful. Anyway, a posting came for somebody else there and they were posted and they they didn’t take the posting because they were compassionate posting to Turnhouse for reasons of family or something like that. So I was put on there and I was promised that the posting would follow me through. But that’s how I got on to the glider units. First and foremost I had to go to a place called Lasham to start up a Heavy Glider Maintenance Unit. And I remember I had to pick up some of my belongings from the civilian billet and I missed the 10 o’clock train out of Edinburgh to London in the morning. I had to wait until 10 o’clock at night to get another one and of course consequently I’d missed all my connections. I got down to Hook and I had to go from there to RAF Odiham. I used public transport to get there and the transport arranged to pick me up there had gone back. And I was three days at Odiham. They said, in the cook’s hut, of course it could be anytime and they were people that were early risers and that, the cooks. So, anyway I did get to Lasham and I was there, I think two weeks. I know Christmas time was on there. The aerodrome wasn’t ready. Nowhere near for reception. And all we had were Nissen huts. I remember me and another of my colleagues we took up an option of going to Polk’s Photographic Works Christmas party. And I remember coming out of that to get my transport back from that and being set upon by two Royal Marines. And then a Royal Canadian military policeman come and banged them up and carted me off to their billets. And I was there overnight. And they took me back to Tarrant Rushton in the morning and, not Tarrant Rushton. Lasham. And they immediately sent me to the Red Cross place to be checked over for any broken bones or severe bruising. That’s how I spent my Christmas. Then we were taken by bus to Hurn Airport where we started forming this Heavy Glider Maintenance Unit. We didn’t have much to do with the gliders at the time. All we were doing were wiring up the tow ropes for the intercom with don 8 wires. And then we were, I think it was the [pause] mostly to do with the Army Airborne Div. Training their pilots and that. Anyway, we, we were all bundled off up to West Kirby in Liverpool and kitted out with khaki wear and given a sten gun and ammunition. Put on a boat. And that was in Liverpool and we went from Liverpool up to the Clyde to join a convoy and we were, we were on the Duchess of York, the liner. And I remember my accommodation there was on a table. They did have hammocks but I couldn’t get in them. And we went there. This convoy sailed to North Africa. I remember going there. A two man submarine came up there. It was a Russian two man submarine waving their arms to us. Anyway, we were docked at Algiers. And you’ve never seen a most unruly rabble. Everybody just straggling one after the other. We finished up with all our gear and arms and ammunition at a transit camp there and just asked who you were and they sent you to a portion of the transit camp. And we were there overnight and then we were put on a train. Three day journey to go over to Morocco. Or the borders of Morocco. To a French Foreign Legion base. And we were there. And then we were, five of us were taken in the group captain’s Wellington bomber, it was an unarmed Wellington bomber. And flown from there over to Tunisia. I remember you could see the, going over the Atlas Mountains and the shepherds and that. On top of the hills and that. That low. Anyway, we got to this Kairouan in there. That’s where we formed the unit prior to the invasion of Sicily I think. But that, that was, I don’t know how the gliders got there or anything. Or the Halifaxes that towed them. They must have, they were all unarmed and they must have flown out but anyway there was quite a number of them and a few Wacos. And the Americans had Wacos and Dakotas. And then, then they did the invasion and talk as if some of the Americans even dropped their gliders at Malta. Anyway, and then there was a question there of retrieving a Halifax that was down. We went over with another Halifax. I wasn’t even with the Halifax squadron. I was a glider person. But I think I was senior electrician or something like that. Anyway, we got there. The mafia were guarding it and said give us forty eight hours and then we’d have to burn it. Anyway, but they got it back. Then of course we came back again on the Samaria back after there. And we were finished up at Netheravon in Wiltshire. And from there we went on disembarkation leave. I’d still got my sten gun and bullets. I thought, well I don’t want to take these home so I dumped them outside the armoury door. Everybody else had got rid of theirs somehow or other. Anyway, when we came back to Netheravon we were flown in the gliders there to Tarrant Rushton. That’s [pause] I didn’t like that trip at all. It was horrible. I was boiling hot and sick. I was glad to get out of it. I thought of the poor devils that had to go and fight in this afterwards. Anyway, there we did a lot at Tarrant Rushton training the airborne pilots and we took delivery of the heavier glider, Hamilcars and they took tanks and tank crews. Minor small tanks. And then, and then the night before the invasion of, on D-Day we were all lined up with these gliders and the Hamilcars again. And then they were, didn’t know what they were going to do but I remember seeing the Ox and Bucks Regiment marching on to the parade grounds. And then they all queued up ready and the Halifaxes lined up to take off. And then at [pause] I remember sitting on a Horsa glider. I was doing the intercom connection lot into the glider. Had a bit of trouble with it and I went over to talk to the pilot and asked him to check it out. I looked around and a load of kids with a rifle stuck between their legs. Only seventeen and eighteen. It made me feel absolutely sick. They must be sending these somewhere. Only kids. Anyway, about 11 o’clock at night there was this armada of lit up aircraft flying over and our lot just had to join them. They were apparently going to establish a bridgehead subject to the seaborne landings. Very nice. And then of course later on we had the airborne there. They did Arnhem. That was after but I wasn’t involved in the crossing of the Rhine at all. I was in hospital then. Anyway, that’s where I finished my time. At Tarrant Rushton. All I got as a thank you was thirty six pound I think for pay. Reserve payment and thirty six pound gratuity. And I just recently had a Legion of Honour from the French nation saying thank you for deliverance. Lovely. I’ve got a written notice. Somebody said thank you. Made me so proud. That’s about it. Except that I got married and that and had a family. And then of course —
NM: That’s quite some story. That’s quite some story. So, you stayed at Tarrant Rushton after D-Day.
JP: Yeah. Yeah.
NM: Right through to —
JP: Right through to —
NM: The end of the war.
JP: VE. VE yeah.
NM: And then you were demobbed.
JP: I were demobbed in March 1946. We’ve got it all down here somewhere [unclear] [pause] my service record is a bit haphazard. And that’s 83 Squadron. 1941.
NM: Ok. I’ll look at those in a minute can I?
JP: Yeah.
NM: So, so after the war what happened? Tell me after the war.
JP: Well —
NM: After your demob.
JP: I was very lucky. I, I got [pause] we were in, my wife and I and the eldest son were in digs in Wimborne. I looked for work. I got a job with Asian company in Bournemouth. Electrician. But on an air force recommendation that they wouldn’t take me on as a skilled man. They took me on as a man mate. I got four pound ten a week I think. That was six months. But I was put with a sixty year old man and I became his hands and that. I was with them, I can’t remember, a few years but then I got a local job at [pause] one of the foreman that I was working with. Asian company on a building in Bournemouth. We did renovation of all the hotels that the Canadians and Americans had, ravaged I think it’s called [laughs] The word. And this time we were doing another job repairing a restaurant. And this guy started up a business with a friend in Wimborne. He asked me to go there with him. That’s where I worked for a bit doing council house erections and odd jobs around. I became a washing machine, Bendix engineer. Did all sorts of things. And then I went to an engineering firm. This was after we’d got our house. Council house in Wimborne. My neighbour, an engineering firm wanted an electrician and he said, ‘Come and do it with us.’ So I did. I went there and used to do the servicing of the machines. And then we had a little section where they started up doing cards. Soldering and that. Anyway, they went bust, and I started looking for jobs. I went to Tarrant Rushton where flight refuelling were starting up. Well they were still in operation. And I couldn’t get a job there. [unclear] around the bend. I finished up at de Havillands in Christchurch. I went there and they took me on straight away. And also I met friends of a, worked for Mace and Co were there in an experimental department. As I say we were the experimental. We were doing the 110 Sea Vixen eventually. And they were also doing the production of Venoms. Sea Venoms and that. So, now I did that. As I say I went to Hurn Airport and was working night shift on servicing aircraft. Flight testing. As I say I went from there on loan up to Hatfield when the Sea Vixen’s were transferred from Christchurch up to Hatfield. I was doing experimental there. I’ve got here [pause] We were doing the Nimrod. Servicing the Comet into a Nimrod. That was all on the secret as well. And then of course I went over to the flight test for the [pause] they were still doing the Comet 4s in the flight test there. [pause] I don’t know, I’ve forgotten the name of it now [pause] Before the 146 anyway.
NM: Trident.
JP: Trident. Yeah. I went to China on delivery. Aircraft to China. Couple of times which was very good. And we had a Christmas at the Chinese expense up in Peking. That was quite an experience. We went to see Mao Tse Tung laying in state. And believe it or not we marched right up to the front of the queue. Then of course I was, I transferred under pressure to go into the inspection department. And then I did very well there. As I say I finished up doing the final inspection for flight electrical. I don’t think, there’s nothing else to say.
NM: And that took you to retirement did it?
JP: Well, I took my pass, my retirement pay about a month I think. But I was stuck here at home mowing the lawns and that.
[recording paused]
JP: Alright?
NM: Yeah.
JP: Down south. I went and got a job down at Swallowfield Service Station serving the public with fuel and that. Did that for five years. And then they, actually they closed down because the tanks got, had to be filled up with concrete because they were serving up dirty fuel. But I was seventy then so I had to settle down in retirement. That’s my life.
NM: So when you look back at your time, your service during the Second World War what, what are your reflections?
JP: Well, the biggest and most is the neglect of what 83 Squadron and subsequently 49 and the other people did before the public noted. I mean of the Dambusters they seemed to have taken over and the others are forgotten. They hurt me. I know that Guy Gibson, the big man. He was a pilot officer at Scampton in 83 Squadron in the beginning of the war. I remember him coming back visiting when he was the big Pathfinder. I don’t know why he came back to visit. Whether he came back to visit Barry Learoyd who was then ADC of 83 Squadron, he transferred from 49 or he was just sussing out the place because he was taking it over. I wasn’t there long enough to find out. I did know that while I was there Waddington started taking delivery of the Manchester. And the thing was it was an utter failure. The wheels were too big or something. That was the forerunner of the Lancaster.
NM: So did you volunteer for going to Edinburgh and then the gliders or or were you posted?
JP: No. I was posted there. No. Actually, when I got posted to Edinburgh I was living with my wife in Lincoln. And she went home to give birth to my eldest son and I, I wasn’t able to go. I only had a forty eight hour pass to get married. And when she was giving birth to my son I wasn’t allowed any leave at all. Then I was posted up there. As I say, to the glider squadron. It was because the person that had been delegated to do the transfer, that was a compassionate posting to Turnhouse and as I was there waiting for a posting I was the one that got put on the [pause] I didn’t mind. Because they did say that the, going to Group 1 training, ‘And when you finished we’ll have you back again.’ There was a promise. Once I got to the glider unit I was no longer an electrician. I was a Terry of all means. I used to do the picketing. All we did with gliders was hump batteries backwards and forwards to the charging unit. And then we’d do all the picketing down at the aircraft. And latterly with the Hamilcar gliders I used to drive the track, tractor to tow the Hamilcars off, off the grass into the hardstand. That’s what my job was really. Just preparing them for the runway.
NM: Tell me a little bit more about the three unregistered operations you did to Kiel and Wilhelmshaven.
JP: Oh that.
NM: How did you feel about those raids?
JP: Well, I thought I was at last going to fly. And all the, at the time the, as I say the radio operators were the only air gunners that were there. And the, when the Hampdens, they’d got a seat for air gunners at the back they hadn’t got any trained air gunners. And they asked for volunteers and we had the course there but each time at the briefing we were told not to fire unless fired upon or attacked. Or unless the pilot told you to for any reason or other. We were just make weight. I know that the bomb aimer was the one that dropped the packages of leaflets. And also, I think on the last trip for the photography, I think he did the photographing from his position in the nose. But the only thing about it was that I remember we got caught in a searchlight. I thought when they said my eyesight was defective that it might be because the searchlight had affected it. But subsequently, years later I found out I’d got a lazy eye. So I’ve still got that.
NM: So, apart from the searchlights did the three trips pass without incident or were there —?
JP: No. No incident at all. Just a cold flight because we only had the helmet and the jacket. They would do, they of course used to start off in daylight to do their raids.
NM: So, these were daylight raids were they?
JP: Yeah.
NM: So what did you feel looking down across occupied France and Germany itself?
JP: Well, France wasn’t occupied then of course. I mean we’d only just declared war on them. Apparently the French Ministry had asked the British Ministry not to bomb Germany for fear of reprisals. So I believe. They were, all initially we were doing were bombing marshalling yards and shipping. I think that the biggest was, although I wasn’t involved with it at the time was Dresden. When that chief air vice marshall decided to throw caution to the wind and kill civilians as well. There’s others, that was a thousand bomber raid. But I was very sad to leave 83 Squadron. I was very proud to be a member of it. I do think that they, like the Dambusters were the super squadron.
NM: Have you kept in touch with 83 Squadron at all?
JP: No.
NM: Joining reunions or associations at all?
JP: No. No. Not at all. No. I [pause] my, when I was, I wasn’t even offered an extension because I only signed on for six years and no reserve in the first place. But then I did nearly eight years. As I say when I saw all those kids although they might have been trained I was just disgusted with the air force.
NM: Why?
JP: I just felt that we’d be sending them to die. Took me a long time to get over that. And then of course we heard the next day about the, the seaborne invasion.
NM: So your feelings about D-Day were mixed were they?
JP: Yeah. Very. I was proud to be part of the armada on that. Whatever it was for. We didn’t know. But as I say subsequently it come out it was to establish a bridgehead.
NM: So, how have you recently got involved with the Bomber Command Centre then? How did you hear about that again?
JP: I think my son Paul picked up on it on the computer.
NM: So tell me about your Legion d’Honneur from France. How did that come about?
JP: Oh my daughter. She lives in Sandy in Bedfordshire. She said the, the mayor, the mayor in the local paper put a notice. The French authorities, War Office wanted to contact all those that had taken part in D-Day. Apart from the official landers those that had helped in the behind to notify them because they were offering to reward them. And I, she told me, I wrote to the mayor there they put my name forward to the War Office and they sent it over to France and I thought they’d forgotten all about it because I wasn’t actually part of D-Day. Pre D-Day we were. There’s a lovely letter there. And believe it or not there was eight hundred of us applied. They said they, they would do the awards if we wanted it. That they would arrange it but they’d got so many to do that they couldn’t possibly do. They were very good.
NM: So how do you feel Bomber Command has been treated since the war?
JP: Well, I don’t know much about it really. Obviously they’re doing their stuff all over the place with the Vulcan and things like that and the involvement in the Falklands War.
NM: Do you think the veterans of World War Two have been fully recognised?
JP: Well, now they’re beginning to be. But not before. I mean, I myself, but I feel apart from me it’s a memory, they’re forgotten. [unclear] All those aircrew lost. No recognition. It’s only that somebody wanted to revive D-Day. Not D-Day but Dambusters. Brought them to light. Then after that then people started thinking about Bomber Command as a whole. Because there weren’t only Hampdens. There were Wellingtons, Whitleys. They were the heavy bomber of the day and of course when the initial landings in in France they were still, fighter planes were all mono, all biplanes. The only monoplane they had was the Fairey. Fairey Battle. Light bomber. All they had over in Dunkirk and that. Then of course the Hurricane was a major fighter plane in the Battle of Britain. And then Spitfires of course were the master aeroplane.
NM: Ok. Shall we, shall we leave it there? Or —
JP: Well, I, yeah. As I say the decoy. Always assumed that the Germans were never going to bomb Edinburgh anyway because Hitler decided that was where he was going to be his seat. But some of them down south. They really got wiped out. The decoy sites. It’s all hearsay.
NM: So, so during the interview you said your real name was Jack. Which of the two names do you prefer? Jack or John.
JP: Jack. That’s how I’m known now mostly. Except in official circles. As I say, my wife, how she did it she found my relatives. My brother and my Auntie Ethel and Uncle Edgar who I remembered when I was a boy with mother. I always used to go to the greenhouse with him. And still, when I saw him he’d still got at Aunt Ethel’s a greenhouse with tomatoes.
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 Jack (John) Perry
Creator
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Nigel Moore
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-15
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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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
APerryJE160115
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:26:55 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Dorset
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Description
An account of the resource
Jack (John) Perry was orphaned at the age of six. He lived with family, a Children’s Home and various foster homes. Named Jack by his parents he was forced to be known as John when in children's homes, a name he continued to use during his RAF service. He has since reverted to Jack. He volunteered for the RAF as soon as he was old enough just before the outbreak of war. He trained as an electrician and was posted to RAF Scampton. He flew three operations as a stand in air gunner but failed the medical to become air crew. He was present when a Ju 88 had intruded with the returning squadron and strafed the airfield. He was posted to RAF Turnhouse and then Tarrant Rushton with the glider squadron. After the war he went to work for de Havillands in their experimental section.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
49 Squadron
83 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
decoy site
ground personnel
Halifax
Hamilcar
Hampden
Horsa
Ju 88
Manchester
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
propaganda
RAF Scampton
RAF Tarrant Rushton
RAF Waddington