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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/610/8879/AMillerP150601.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Miller, Peter
P Miller
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Miller, P
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Miller (3008496 Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner and gunnery leader with 12 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2015-06-06
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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
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PM: You, you want my name or rank?
MJ: Yeah.
MM: Name and rank. Um I’m Peter, I’m [laughs] I’m nearly as bad as you. I’m recording this for Peter Miller, who is my husband, for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 1st June 20 -
MJ: ‘15.
MM: ‘15. We’re at Wragby in Lincolnshire.
PM: When I was called up. Is that alright?
MM: Ahum.
PM: 25th of the 11th ‘43. Went to Cardington. I was only there for a week getting kitted out and such. Was sent to Skegness, my home town, to do a couple of months foot drill. I was billeted about half a mile from home. So, when in the town I was the person sent by cycle on errands. Afterwards was posted to Halton on a flight mechanics course on which I was made AC1. Leaving Halton on the 29th of the 5th ‘44 I went to Digby, Lincolnshire, 527 squadron. Enjoyed time off, such, it was a Canadian station at the time. Then being posted to Bircham Newton, Norfolk, 695 squadron who were drogue towing. After a short while there I was sent to Blackpool in November classed as a PDC from which we went to Liverpool to get a boat. A Dutch ship called the [oanvan oldabarnevoort?] which after, after a late start we caught the convoy and going down the Med at Christmas Eve sailing past Gib onto Aden, then to Ceylon to drop some, some, some people off and then back up to Bombay to a transit camp. From Bombay we went to a place called Cawnpore [Kanpur]. That was our destination - 322 MU. Spending two and a half years in Cawnpore [Kanpur], returning from Bombay on the SS Somalia landing in Liverpool for being demobbed at a transit camp just outside Blackpool early July ’47. That’s, that’s my service career.
MM: What did you think to India?
PM: It was air, do you want the aircraft I worked on?
MJ: Oh yeah. I mean, well, that’s a, that’s a nice round off way of putting things how they are but yeah where, what, what, what did you do in Bombay because it seems a long way to be having an aircraft. I mean if you -
PM: It seems like a long way to what?
MJ: It seems to be a long way to go and play with aircraft so I just wondered what you had to do there.
PM: We were servicing them.
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Um Liberators.
MM: It was a big camp wasn’t it, Peter?
PM: A very big camp. Worked on Liberators to start with. About -
MM: Did you enjoy India?
PM: About five months.
MM: Did you enjoy India?
PM: Well yes. It was alright.
MJ: I suppose it was a good place to get a suntan.
PM: Yeah. Yeah but mainly. I had almost two and a half years on Dakotas.
MJ: So you mainly worked on Dakotas.
PM: Yeah, air frames.
MJ: Air frame.
PM: Air frame fitter.
MJ: Was it, was it very busy being in India fitting or was it -
PM: We were busy.
MJ: Quiet?
PM: Of course we used to service them from all over South East Asia Command.
MJ: So, so when people think that you were um in India probably having a quieter time than most you probably, you weren’t were you? You ‘cause
PM: Oh no, we weren’t living it up.
MJ: No. I mean that’s what people would think. I mean
PM: Yeah.
MJ: That’s what I’m saying. A lot of people don’t associate India with the RAF do they?
PM: Yeah. We weren’t living it up.
MJ: No. So, so how did you, I imagine it was very hot over there was it? Or -
PM: Very hot.
MJ: So -
MM: And you went up in the hills didn’t you on your leave -
PM: Pardon?
MM: You enjoyed going up into the hills didn’t you? On leave.
PM: We used to get on, we used to get our normal leave but also we had a, we used to go on hill parties, a month, probably fifty or sixty used to go by train to the foothills and then up by wagons to the place we spent the, spent the leave, the holiday. I had my twenty first birthday in Darjeeling.
MJ: That must have been interesting.
PM: Yeah. It was alright [laughs]. But the other places were, were very fair. They used to take us as far as they could by train, Then we had to go on, on wagons further up.
MJ: Did -
PM: We used to go by train to Darjeeling. Pre, pre, pre-war I think the moneyed folks had taken Darjeeling over and they weren’t all that keen on us blokes out there going to Darjeeling but er we made them happy.
MJ: Did um -
PM: But that’s a lovely spot that.
MJ: So even though the work was hard it was quite a nice place to be.
PM: Yeah. But, but regarding, regarding the weather it, it was very hot. During the hot season we used to go to work in the morning. There for seven and we used to work while one and after 1 o’clock the time was our own.
MJ: It was too hot to work?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So, so, so in a way you were working nights really?
PM: [laughs] But we were we’ve had everything done I think. There was, it was a very big camp. There was three villages on the camp.
MJ: Was, was it more than just RAF then?
PM: Pardon?
MJ: Was it more than just RAF?
PM: Just RAF.
MJ: So -
PM: Yeah.
MM: There were locals. The villagers were locals.
PM: Local villagers. They were on, on the side -
MJ: Side.
MM: Doing your washing for you.
PM: Well they used to, they were our bearers and things were alright until the war finished.
MJ: What happened then?
PM: Until the Jap war finished. And then Pakistan and India were having a go at one another.
MJ: So you got stuck in the middle.
PM: Well more or less. We wanted to get home. They held, well, we believed they held our demob up for a while.
MJ: Why because of the conflict between the two -
PM: Well, in case there was going to be. Nothing happened. We got on the boat and came home.
MJ: So that, that was a better deal than you thought.
PM: Yeah. One of the biggest laughs we got was when we got to Liverpool on the way home. We were getting off the boat and a jet went over. Never seen a jet.
MJ: No.
PM: Only heard about them. You should have heard the cheer that went up.
MJ: That must have been, so you were probably one of the first people to see a jet flying.
PM: Yeah. In Liverpool.
MJ: You don’t -
PM: Vampire.
MM: Yeah.
[Tape paused].
PM: The cold season out there -
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Is about like this.
MJ: So it’s like having summer in the winter is it?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So did you, you got warm -
PM: The, the snag is um these blokes that’s been in, in the desert and that, they reckon it goes stone cold at night. Not India. The sun, the sun sets and that’s it. Nothing else. Then the sun comes up and it’s daylight again and you’re getting warmer.
MJ: Yeah. So did you find you had to do more work in the winter per se or, or is it ‘cause, ‘cause the engine, or did you have to sort of -
PM: Yeah, in the, in the cold season we’d probably work another hour a day.
MJ: That, that doesn’t sound a lot but I imagine in those sorts of heats everything buckles including yourself does it?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: I mean, did, did you have to bring in, how did you get everything to where you were ‘cause you were saying you didn’t have any transport as such.
PM: When, when the war finished we, we were, they were sending in um Liberators to our place for scrap. We had a colossal scrapheap there. They were sending these Liberators there because - I don’t want it recorded because -
MJ: No it’s alright.
PM: Yeah well what we heard was that the Yanks wouldn’t take them back as returned lease-lend.
MJ: Well I mean that -
PM: And we just had to get rid of them but we weren’t allowed to sell them. That’s, that’s all we heard. They were wheeling them down to salvage and there was about seventy or eighty Libs there when I got posted home but on other places there was more Libs.
MJ: So I mean -
PM: And they just started destroying them. Took anything that, everything that was any use off the Libs and then, I can’t remember which station it was but there was one station in India was, had started to destroy the Libs. I, I don’t know what, well anybody that was in the RAF on aircraft would say it’s easier to build one then take one to bits. They um they took all instruments that were of any use out.
MJ: Right.
PM: Dinghies, first aid, everything like that. Armoury. All that out and then they took them onto the scrap, down to the scrapyard and drained all the oil out, out the engines and started the engines up and ran them flat out until they went bang.
MJ: So that they couldn’t be used again.
PM: No use whatsoever.
MJ: You know if -
PM: And then they recommended that what you did was have a, have a wagon or tractor fastened to the front of them and drive the tail unit up against a wall or something like that to break them up. Anything that’s riveted you see you can’t get it to bits by, by just undoing it.
MJ: It was built to last so -
PM: But that’s, that’s how it was but there was, there was about seventy at Cawnpore [Kanpur] when I came home that, that hadn’t been touched. Well, I say hadn’t been touched they’d been stripped but hadn’t been damaged.
MJ: I don’t think that was just yourself. I’ve heard things go, you know, because it’s hard to trans. Do you think it was hard to transport the stuff back? I -
MM: Distance.
MJ: You think -
PM: But the –
MJ: I would have thought it would be the pure economics of getting something, it was more expensive to -
PM: If the Yanks had taken them back they could have flown them back.
MJ: Do you think so?
PM: Yeah. I’m sure. They flew them there they could have flown them back.
MJ: Did, did any of the, anything else get left behind? Was it just the planes? Just, everyone leaves everything behind or did you bring most of it back?
PM: Well I don’t know what happened to them at Cawnpore [Kanpur] because they were still there when I left but there was a reunion at Cawnpore [Kanpur]. I was going on it but I got a new [motor?] and I couldn’t go and er the chaps said that the Indian air force wouldn’t let them anywhere near the salvage.
MJ: They wouldn’t let them anywhere near salvage. Well I’m surprised it’s still there.
PM: Yeah. They wouldn’t let them anywhere near salvage.
MM: But you used to go swimming didn’t you? You had a pool.
PM: Oh we’d go swimming. There was a swimming pool on the camp.
MM: A swimming pool and that. You enjoyed that.
MJ:: More than I can do.
MM: I can’t swim.
MJ: Yeah.
MM: So I mean there was some good times wasn’t there?
PM: Oh yes we had some good times.
MM: Good times. Friends. Lots of laughs.
PM: Off the camp mainly, the good times.
MM: Used to go down to one of the places nearby didn’t you? Villages, towns whatever you called it.
PM: Oh we used to go in, in to Cawnpore [Kanpur] itself.
MM: Yeah.
PM: The city
MJ: Well you say it’s a city. Was it sort of like -
MM: How big?
MJ: Was it a big place or –
PM: Oh it was a big place -
MJ: ‘Cause I mean -
PM: The city was. Yeah. The actual RAF camp was called, oh God - Chakeri.
MJ: Oh right. I thought -
PM: It was about four mile out of Cawnpore [Kanpur] but Cawnpore [Kanpur] was a city and we used to call the camp Cawnpore [Kanpur]. It was always Cawnpore [Kanpur].
MJ: Um maybe -
PM: Where were you stationed? Cawnpore [Kanpur].
MM: But you used to have meals didn’t you, in the city, when you went out?
PM: You what?
MM: You used to go for meals didn’t you? In the city went out -
PM: Oh could do. Yeah. Go in to the city. But we were only allowed in one part of the city. They um it was out of bounds to us.
MJ: It’s er so -
PM: It was, it was our military that put it out of bounds to us. They wouldn’t, wouldn’t let us in the -
So it wasn’t inflicted. It wasn’t, you weren’t put out of bounds by the city itself. It was the hierarchy of the military itself.
PM: Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: Saying you couldn’t go to certain parts.
PM: That’s it. Yeah.
MJ: Ah and did you, could you go out of uniform or did you have to be in uniform?
PM: We was, we were out of uniform most of the time. I mean when we used to go to work in a morning, 7 o’clock in the morning, you’d have a, a pair of shorts on, socks and shoes, bush hat and sunglasses and we used to go to work like that and at 1 o’clock when we, when we finished work we used to walk, we didn’t march back or anything. We used to walk back in groups, probably call at the swimming pool on the way back, used to go back and have lunch and then just loaf about.
MJ: Well I imagine it’s, it’s too hot to do anything else at that time. I mean -
PM: It was a funny old time.
MJ: Yeah I can agree with you there. You –
[Tape paused]
MM: Yeah.
PM: About the same height as I am now.
MM: Six foot.
PM: Weighed seven and a half stone.
MM: Rather slim.
PM: I got a demob suit and I kept my best blue. And I came home. The demob suit was slightly too big for me. ‘You’ll grow out of it’, that was that you see, which I did. Within, within a month my blue didn’t fit me. I didn’t care ‘cause I chucked it away and my demob suit was dead tight. I had to collect all the, all the family clothing coupons together and go and get measured for a suit, ‘Make it plenty big enough’ and I stopped growing then [laughs]. So I got one suit big and the other, other two too small.
MJ: So most people stopped growing and you took that many years to grow-
MM: His mother’s cooking that was. Put the weight on you. [laughs] Didn’t it?
PM: Yeah.
MM: Your mum’s cooking -
PM: Yeah.
MM: Yeah. Built you up again.
PM: My mother was in the first war.
MM: First World War.
PM: In the RAF. In Germany.
MJ: [That’s what?]
PM: Yeah. In the Royal Flying Corp.
MM: As it was then. Yeah.
MJ: So you inherited the job did you?
MM: Must have done.
PM: Yeah.
PM: When, when you were on about servicing, servicing aircraft we had to be there, we were in the hangars for 7 o’clock in the morning but if there were any aircraft either stuck outside or in the hangar that were going out you checked the tyre pressures before the sun got on them because you never know what the tire pressure would be after about an hour in the sun out there.
MM: And of course they couldn’t fly them till they’d got your little signature could they?
PM: Hmmn?
MM: You couldn’t fly them till they got your little signature.
PM: Oh no couldn’t. Well I was one of a team. I was the air frame rigger um on a Liberator four engines so there’d be four engine fitters, instruments, wires um guns and turrets all had to be checked and signed for before the pilot could have it.
MJ: How long did that take?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: How long did that take?
PM: Well I mean if the aircraft was, was, was alright, if it had come out of the hangar after, after a major service it would be taken out on a test flight. One of each trade would go up with him if it was a bomber. Go up with him and you’d fly around and everything was alright. Come back. You’d check up again. Then before it flew again tomorrow it had to be serviced because between flights inspections on RAF aircraft if it, if an aircraft came, came up from London and landed on your airport there would be a between flights inspection before it could go again.
MJ: Oh I didn’t know that.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: How often did that happen?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: Did that happen regularly?
PM: That was it. Between flights inspection. And being, being a rigger, that’s what I was, they were the last to sign the 700. The 700 was the aircraft manual and every, everybody that was concerned with anything on the aircraft had to sign and the rigger was the last one to sign because he was responsible for um the petrol cap being loose. Nothing, nothing to do with him normally. The um the blokes driving the petrol bowsers used to tighten them up but it was, it was his aircraft and he had to do something about it. So he used to tighten, tighten it up and any, any little panel that was loose he’d secure the panels and that before he signs and until he signed they couldn’t go anywhere.
MJ: Did you have a team of riggers or was it just you per plane?
PM: What?
MJ: Was it just you on one plane or did you have a few?
PM: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: So -
PM: Didn’t, didn’t do a half a dozen planes. Just, just the one plane.
MJ: Yeah but did you work as a rigger on your own or did you have someone helping you?
PM: Was, was
MM: Was there more than one rigger on each plane?
PM: No. Only one rigger.
MM: Ahum.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So that’s a lot of rivets.
MM: Ahum check them [laughs].
PM: Yeah well the aircraft, the framework of the aircraft and everything in general was alright. It was day to day um events um tyres and things like that. Brakes slipping. All those sort of things.
MJ: Do you think you had more trouble because it was hotter there than most would have?
PM: Of course being a rigger brakes were my job as well. [laughs]
MM: You said when you went to Halton it was a case of half of them for engines half of them for airframes wasn’t it?
PM: Yeah.
MM: So it just depends which side of the room you were on [laughs] you were telling me.
PM: [laughs] Yeah.
MM: You had some fun down there at Halton didn’t you?
PM: You what?
MM: Had some fun at Halton.
PM: Halton. Yeah. It was um water shortage. Halton camp is on a hill. The hill, the hill is that far and high that there’s two parade grounds on the hill.
MJ: Two?
PM: Two parade grounds on the hill. You go through the gates, you go up and, oh from here to the bridge there’s the bottom of the parade ground and it goes back into the hills and you carry, you carry on up the hill there and about, about another twenty, thirty foot up there’s another parade ground. It was a hell of a camp Halton was. It was a, um what’s it -
MM: Training?
PM: Oh God.
MM: Officer’s training do you say?
PM: No.
MM: No.
PM: Weren’t officers. They -
MM: Cadets.
PM: When you join, you join the RAF you -
MM: Cadets?
PM: You was a member. I was a member of the air force but I was only a sort of a temporary member but I, I, I didn’t sign on for ten years or owt like that but all the regulars they, they were right under the thumb. By hell they were.
MJ: So you think it was different for you. Was it ‘cause you -
PM: Yeah.
MJ: Because you were sort of part time if you like.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: For a better word.
PM: I liked Halton. It was a nice camp.
MM: Taught you how to shoot there didn’t there?
PM: Hmmn?
MM: Taught you how to shoot there didn’t they?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: This is um -
MM: One poor chap. Everybody dashed because -
PM: We had two, we had two Jewish lads -
MJ: Yeah.
PM: By God they were dim [laughs] and er they, they, they were on a, on a rigger’s course but everything, everything went wrong with them. On one day we had um rifle training so went up on the, up on the bus up the hill and there was um the targets. Perhaps six or seven targets.
MJ: Right.
PM: And a wall, a wall just below them and behind, behind the wall there was a trench so the blokes, blokes up there looking after, looking after the targets they were, they were safe and you had ten rounds and you just, you had your ten rounds and you got in front of one of, one of the targets and that and you’d been told how to fire them and everything. The corporal would shout, ‘Fire.’ And then down there on the range there used to be a flag on a pole come out and he used to stick on to the target where, where the bullet had gone through, if it had gone through. Well these two Jewish lads they couldn’t even hit the target never mind [laughs] and there was everybody else had to get off and let them pick their own target and everything. Our corporal was on the phone to them down there and, ‘Right. Fire. Take your time.’ Bang. Flag went like that. Bang. Next time it went [beuuuu]. Phone rang. Corporal said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘He hit my mate.’ He’d, he’d hit his tin hat. Hit his tin hat. This bullet and had gone off his tin hat.
MJ: So he was safe though?
PM: Yeah.
MM: Most of them.
PM: And then we had hand grenades. There was, there was this wall. All sandbanks and that and over the other side of the wall about there, there was a, there was a hole and behind this wall there was another wall and everybody used to get behind that wall and the corporal used to bring one bloke around and show him, show him everything, make sure he, he was holding the grenade right, then he used to toss it over to go in the hole. Everybody else was doing alright and this one he dropped the grenade the other side just on the top and it rolled down so the corporal grabbed hold of this bloke, pushed him down and more or less sat on him. Bang. ‘That was close wasn’t it?’ the corporal said. And, and, we, we went up into the, up the hills. Sten guns. They were deadly you know. If you dropped a sten gun it’d bounce about all over the place till it emptied and [laughs] there was two corporals that had never, never met these two. ‘Watch them. We know what we’re doing.’ Corporals, ‘Alright.’ Showed them how to go on and everything. Give these two a sten gun each, got them to load them, ‘Don’t do anything. We’ll have you one at a time so you come with me.’ So he fired. Nowhere near the target or anything like that but he got shot of the, the ammo. The second one went, spun around, he says to the corporal, ‘It won’t fire’ pointing it at the corporal. [laughs] God. He said, ‘Stand still. Let go of the trigger. Put it down.’ If there hadn’t been anybody else around he would have clouted him around the side of the earhole with the sten. Anyway, they got rid of them. I don’t know where they went to but they were no good as, no good on engines or airframes or anything like that. They were completely useless, the pair of them.
MM: They were only young though you see weren’t they? Eighteen and a half.
PM: Yeah they’d only be just over eighteen.
MM: That’s what I mean. Today –
PM: Yeah.
MM: They’re at school aren’t they?
MJ: Yeah. So it’s surprising you’re here.
MM: Yeah.
PM: Yeah.
MM: Then he come back to Digby, Lincolnshire.
PM: Eh?
MM: You enjoyed Digby in Lincolnshire didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: No calamities there?
PM: No. Come back to Digby.
MM: You used to go in to Lincoln didn’t you?
PM: Yeah. Used to go in to Lincoln.
MM: On time off.
PM: It was a Canadian station. Everything underground.
MJ: Underground?
PM: Eh?
MM: Underground.
MJ: Everything underground?
PM: Everything was built underground. It was a radio and radar station. We didn’t, we didn’t know that when we were stationed there but, but they used to work underground.
MJ: That’s -
PM: At Digby. It was good station. It was a Canadian station.
MJ: Was that better than the RAF ones?
PM: Well, they were better supplied than what we were.
MM: Food was good [laughs] Yeah.
PM: Yeah a lot better supplied.
[Tape paused]
PM: We were all, all air frame fitters and one of the station aircraft, we got two Dakotas belonging to the station. One had gone to Lahore.
MJ: Right.
PM: From our place and um next morning they were refuelling it and the chap drove the petrol bowser with the dipstick sticking out and tore the underside of the wing. Well that was it you see. He didn’t just tear the surface of the wing he, he buckled the main spar. So we, we had several Dakotas there that would probably never fly again and using them as spares and got hold of, got hold of my mate we did and get a, get a mainplane from, from salvage. Give him, give him all the gen on this one aircraft, ‘Go and, go and check if it’s alright.’ So he come back he said, ‘Yeah it’s alright.’ He said ‘Right. The three of you,’ he says, ‘You Miller’ and what his name, ‘Go and fetch it off.’ And we took, we took the crane down with us and we got the, got the trestles and everything and the jacks underneath it’s wing and we disconnected the wing and took it away completely from the engines you see. You’ve got the two engines there and a centre section between them and the fuselage but beyond the engines that’s the outer so we got that and we got a Queen Mary. You know the Queen Mary’s, we used? The um -
MJ: Ahum?
PM: The long, the long low loaders. Very wide, ten foot wide, that the RAF used to drive around you’ve seen them there their low loaders haven’t you? They’re called the Queen Mary’s. They’re ten, ten foot wide and during the war if, if you had to take anything with, with a Queen Mary through, through a town you had a police escort and they’d take you the best way through the town because of, because of the width of the vehicle. And we loaded this, loaded this mainplane and all the gear we wanted and everything and we cleared off to Lahore. The three of us. It took us three days to get there. Close on four hundred mile.
MJ: What were the -
PM: Well the roads in India were just like the roads down to the villages here and we got there and this Warrant Officer [Pryor?] said, ‘Goodness I’m pleased to see you lot.’ He said, ‘Get on with it.’ So we took, took this mainplane off and they carted it off to salvage there and um they got all the gear there, got all the gear and everything but they wouldn’t let them touch it.
MJ: Why was that?
PM: So we, we had to do it you see. The plane belonged to us so we, we, we got the mainplane off and everything, put the other one up got it all, all bolted in. Everything. Control cables, electrics, everything and got hold of Taf Bevan, ‘Right. Fly it.’
MJ: How long did that take you?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: How long did that take you?
PM: Well three days overall. ‘Fly it.’ He says, ‘Alright. Sign.’ So we signed for it and everything. The warrant officer, the err engineering officer at whatsit, he said, ‘You’ve done a very good job you blokes have.’ The CO was there as well. At Lahore. He was, he was there as well. He said, ‘It looks very, very nice,’ he says. He said, ‘I’ll get on to,’ Oh I don’t know the name of our CO. He said, ‘I’ll get on to him and tell him what a good job you’ve done.’ And we went up with Taf and he, he said, ‘Nothing wrong with this. It’s alright.’ Taf Bevan, he was a bloody Welshman. We never did find out his name. His first name. Never. And he was a warrant officer. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t take a commission. He just wanted to stay non-commissioned.
MJ: Did he say why?
PM: Warrant officer.
MJ: Yeah. Did he say why he didn’t want to take a commission?
PM: He said, ‘I don’t want to be with that crowd stuck in the officer’s mess and that. Better off in the sergeant’s mess.’ He said, ‘I’m away next morning.’ We said, ‘You’re bloody well not without us mate’ and we transferred the um the Queen Mary to Lahore and climbed in the Dak with him and flew home. Thirty minutes. [laughs]
[Tape paused]
PM: Now can’t you? Between you?
MJ: I think so. You should be able to.
PM: You just, you know, well why not do that?
MJ: Did you -
PM: What about that? [Oh bought]
MJ: Yeah. People don’t think that so that’s why your lifestyle is different to todays because people don’t realise what you did. I mean so -
MM: Things have changed so much haven’t they? So much.
PM: I know we were on a test flight one day with Taf and um Taf used to let us take control for a while. He used to sit there but he knew what was happening and everything and one of the blokes he said, ‘Do you want it Taf?’ Taf says, ‘No.’ He says, ‘Just carry on.’ He got it lined up. It was about three mile out from the end of the runway. ‘Go on. You’re alright.’ He said, ‘Shall I land it?’ ‘No you bloody well won’t land it’ [laughs] He said, ‘I’d be the laughing stock of the bloody sergeant’s mess. Come out.’
MJ: Yeah.
PM: We used to, on a Dakota there’s a cockpit and there’s a cabin and it’s the full length of the aircraft near enough. You go in, you go in the double doors.
MJ: Right.
PM: And you go up to the, to another door and that that’s the control. There’s navigator, radio operator, two pilots and we used to, about three, four of us used to get up near the door and Taf would be sat there you know, nodding away there to himself and that. ‘Right. Now.’ And we’d run to the other end to the tail end [laughs]. ‘Come up here you lot.’
MM: He knew what you was doing?
PM: We, we’d run to the tail end.
MM: Yeah and made it, realised.
PM: [Climb?]
MM: Yeah.
MM: Realised what you were. You had a laugh at East Kirkby didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: They were doing a Dakota up at East Kirkby.
PM: Yeah. They were.
MM: You went out to, to have look and you said to the lads there, ‘Can I have a look inside it.’ I think you managed to get in it didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: And anyway you said to them.
PM: ‘Do you know anything about them?’ I said, ‘Yeah a little bit. I used to be on them in the air force way back.’ ‘Bloody hell. When?’ I said, ‘Oh I came out in ‘47.’ ‘God, I weren’t even bloody well born then.’
MM: Made you feel very, very old didn’t it duck [laughs] yeah.
PM: They were a lovely aircraft to work on. Dakota is. No trouble whatsoever.
MJ: Didn’t bite back.
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: Didn’t bite back.
MM: No. [laughs]
PM: They were no trouble at all. Used to fly around with the doors off.
MJ: Why?
PM: You see there’s, there was a passenger door and a cargo door on them.
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Take one or the other or both doors off. It didn’t half whistle and that inside the aircraft.
MM: Was there any reason to take the doors off though?
PM: No. No.
MM: No.
PM: You either take it off before you fly or when you land. You don’t take it off while you’re flying.
MM: No, presume not.
MJ: Was there any reason why you took them off when you flew? Or was it just because they were in the way?
PM: The doors come inwards. Not outwards.
MJ: So -
MM: What reasons did you take them off for?
PM: Eh?
MM: What reason did you take them off for?
PM: Well.
MM: Can you remember?
PM: No particular reason.
MM: Oh. Good job it wasn’t raining.
PM: During the war, on the Dakotas, along the top of the fuselage there was little windows about that size, along. So that when they were carrying troops they could open one of those windows and fire at any aircraft that was attacking them.
MM: Ahum.
PM: If they were carrying troops.
MJ: Really?
PM: Yeah. Yeah, I’m not kidding.
MM: Never heard of it.
MJ: I wouldn’t have thought of that one.
PM: I’m not kidding. Liberators, you know, you used to get in and out through the bomb, bomb bay. Get in and out through the bomb bay. The bomb doors, the bottom of the Lib is only about that far off the ground and the bomb doors go up like that and there’s a cat walk right through. The cat walk goes to, to the rear where there’s a mid-upper gunner and two, two [waist] gunners. One each side. And a rear gunner.
MJ: So you always had -
PM: And if, if you go forward up a couple of steps you get on to the flight deck where the crew, the air crew go. You, if they’re flying around and they opened the bomb doors there isn’t a bloody soul would dare go across that cat walk. From the back to the front or the front to the back. There’s not a soul would dare go. It’s, it’s perfectly safe, there’s no, no danger whatsoever and there’s plenty to hold on to. Hold on to all the bomb racks.
MJ: But no one would do it.
PM: Nobody would go in. No one would do it.
[Tape paused]
MJ: So what was this about Fred then?
PM: He, he used to go out first thing in a morning, he’d go to bed at night about nine, but first thing in the morning, probably 5 o’clock he’d cross to the cookhouse to get his porridge before they put sugar in it. Yeah. He wanted salt in his you see. Yeah. Well he was always messing about with, with animals and that and he went out one morning for a walk and there was a narrow path, trees at each side and that. He was approaching this corner when around the corner there come this panther. He says, ‘It stopped and I stopped, of course.’ He said, and its tail was going like that. He said, ‘And we stood there for about three quarters of an hour. Seemed like it.’ He said, ‘And I thought if that bloody thing comes at me there’s a tree just behind me. I can leap behind hopefully.’ He said, ‘I daren’t look around.’ He said, ‘I was weighing all this up’ he said and all of a sudden the panther put the foot down on the ground, spun around and shot off back the way it came,’ he said, ‘ And I shot off the way I came.’ He said, ‘We were about twenty five miles apart in ten minutes.’ He, he was, he was always doing something like that. Always messing about with, with animals. There was an empty cookhouse and he went and there was a wild cat in the bloody cookhouse. ‘I’ll have that.’ He went in there. This wildcat was flying around the walls. He said it was going that fast it was on the walls. He said, ‘I didn’t know what to do with it,’ he said, but the windows, the windows were all shut except one. He said it took a flying leap at that and crashed straight through the glass and everything and away it went. He said it went out, missed, missed the veranda and everything and landed out in the middle of the road. [laughs] He said, ‘I wasn’t frightened of it.’ [laughs]
MM: And who slept on a snake? One of you lads found a snake under his mattress.
PM: Yeah. Yeah. Rum lad that.
MM: Who was that? Who found a snake under his mattress?
PM: Oh er who was it? One of the other lads. Fred said, ‘I’ll get that out for you.’ He outed it. ‘Cause you see if you found a snake out there you had to find the other bugger. Nearly always travelled in pairs.
MJ: Do they?
PM: Ahum we had a, we had a snake in our billet one night. We got it and finished it off and we were looking around for its mate. Couldn’t find its mate anywhere so that was it. Wasn’t going under the mossie nets. Next morning this bloke got up and er there was this snake laid, laid in there. It had been crushed. He’d crushed it. You see the beds out there were wood. They were just a wooden frame and then there was like string across and then what they called a dhurry. It was like, just like an [asbestos] sheet the size of your bed. When you went anywhere you know on guard at night or something like that you took whatever you wanted in your dhurry. Got it all wrapped up in the dhurry. Then you had your mossie net and your mossie net was you had four, four bamboo canes that used to go inside the legs across the back of the bed like that and your mossie net went on the top and your mossie net was shaped, was shaped just like, just like a box. The box was down, the box was that way up and the things, the sides of the net came down you see and these, these four bamboo canes they went up behind, behind the leg and up the inside of the nets so it was all sprung out. That was how your mossie nets went. There were times when we’ve taken the mossie nets down and inverted them and then put the bed inside, inside it.
MM: But this snake that you was talking about.
PM: It was an open top.
MM: This snake you was talking about was underneath this here mattress thing wasn’t it?
PM: Underneath the dhurry.
MM: Yeah.
PM: Yeah.
MM: I didn’t realise he’d been sleeping on it all night.
PM: No. No.
MM: No. Oh horrible things.
PM: Well it was dead anyway. Fred says, ‘Poor little bugger. You’ve been laid on it all night.’
MJ: I’d like to thank Mr Miller on behalf of the International Bomber Command project on the 1st of January no oh June 2015 for his interview and, and for myself I’d like to thank him. My name’s Michael Jeffery and this is the end of the interview.
MM: My name is Mavis Miller, recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 1st of June 2015. We live at Horncastle Road, Wragby, Lincolnshire. Yeah. I was at Minting, school at Minting, during the war. We lived about four miles from Bardney aerodrome so we saw a lot of the RAF lads and the WAAFs who used to come to the Sebastopol at Minting. My father also worked at the Bardney aerodrome so we were involved quite a bit. He always used to come home very distressed when, at times, the bombers would come back with the air force lad’s uniforms having to be burned because they were blood stained. Another small happening during the war was I was with my friends down Hungerham Lane about a half a mile from my home when we saw two of our fighters firing at this German fighter and it was brought down at Baumber, again only about three or four fields away from where we were. Unfortunately, no one got out the plane. We were told that it went up in flames. The farm workers couldn’t get anywhere near it but I was pleased to get home that night safe and sound. I think that’s about the end of my experiences.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Historical Unit I’d like to thank Mrs Miller for her stories of when she was a child and on the June the 1st 2015 I’d like to end the interview.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Peter Miller
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-01
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMillerP150601
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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01:02:55 audio recording
Description
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Peter was called up in November 1943 and after basic training was sent to RAF Halton to be trained as a flight mechanic. Whilst there he had several dangerous incidents during small arms training.
Initially posted to 527 Squadron, which was Canadian, at RAF Digby and then to 695 squadron at RAF Bircham Newton working on drogue towing aircraft.
Posted overseas, he arrived at RAF Chakeri near Kampur where he worked on servicing B-24 and C-47 aircraft for South East Asia Command. He recalls that as an airframe mechanic he had to sign the Form 700 certifying that all the other trades had carried out their servicing correctly.
The local town was largely off-limits and only certain parts were allowed to be visited. The weather was very hot and in the summer hill parties were sent to the hills to escape the heat. Peter spent his 21st birthday at Darjeeling. When hostilities ceased the spent its time dismantling and scrapping B-24s aircraft. Whilst India was partitioned, Peter's demobilisation was postponed in case of tensions between India and Pakistan.
After two and a half years he was sent home via Liverpool, where he saw his first jet, and was demobilised in July 1947.
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1947-07
1943-11
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
India
India--Kānpur
India--Darjeeling
Pakistan
Contributor
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Terry Holmes
B-24
C-47
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
fuelling
ground crew
petrol bowser
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Chakeri
RAF Digby
RAF Halton
service vehicle
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8814/PLancasterJ1501.1.jpg
794d475655253509adf90821a41de268
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8814/ALancasterJO150406.2.mp3
5eafd09ebb3a1d2459a7b55f8591b8a7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Lancaster, Jo
John Oliver Lancaster
J O Lancaster
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Lancaster, JO
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Oliver 'Jo' Lancaster DFC (1919 - 2019, 948392, 103509 Royal Air Force), photographs and six of his log books. Jo Lancaster completed 54 operations as a pilot with in Wellingtons with 40 Squadron, and after a period of instructing, in Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He became test pilot after the war and was the first person to use a Martin-Baker ejection seat in an emergency.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jo Lancaster and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
2017-03-08
Rights
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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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AP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Andrew Panton. The interviewee is Jo Lancaster. Mr Lancaster was a pilot in various aircraft during World War Two and the interview is taking place at xxxx on April the 6th 2015. Apologies for the poor sound quality during various sections of this interview due to static on a tie clip microphone. Talk a little bit about that raid July the 24th 1941.
JL: Well at the time the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were in the harbour at Brest. On that day the Scharnhorst made a run for it down the coast to La Pallice but the Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were still in Brest and a number of Wellingtons, I think of 3 Group were ordered to carry out a daylight bombing raid on the harbour there. We were at Alcon, operating from Alconbury at the time. Near Huntingdon. And we were routed right down to the Scilly Isles. Then doubled back towards Brest and you could see a black cloud of flak smoke from quite a distance away. It was a beautiful, a beautiful clear day and we just had to barge straight in. There was, we only saw two ME109s, one of which went right through the middle and got severely shot up by everybody and the pilots baled out. Everybody claimed it of course but nobody knows who did it. But, anyway, we were in two vics of three. We [weren’t in company?] but our trio sailed through without too much damage. A piece of flak came through the windscreen alongside me and dropped on the floor which I still have and we’d used up a lot of fuel trying to keep formation with constantly altering the engine settings. And so, having, as I say, got away again out over back over the channel we and several others headed for St Eval in Cornwall and quite a number landed there. Many of them in various stages of damage. We’d had our hydraulic system knocked out but apart from flak holes we were intact.
AP: Did the searchlights sort of —?
JL: Well when that happened you were singled out for particular attention by the flak which happened to me several times. On one occasion it was right over the middle of Essen and did some violent evasive action and lost a lot of height and gained a lot of speed and finally outflew the searchlights.
AP: What was the evasive action? Did you corkscrew or did you dive?
JL: Well just various. Mainly sort of spiral diving but keep trying to keep a heading away from the searchlights all the time.
AP: And flying through the flak and the anti-aircraft again.
JL: Well there was nothing we could about that. We heard it and smelled it and when you got back you found lots of holes.
AP: Right. One of the things she was asking about was what it was like when you’re coming in on the final approach to your bomb run. You as the pilot. What are you doing? What’s the crew doing?
JL: I think you made yourself as small as possible. I just used to [unclear] and went in.
AP: So you were just taking orders from the bomb aimer. He was in control. Not the pilot.
JL: Yes. He would take over and he’d say. ‘Steady. Left. Left’ or ‘Right,’ and we would keep laterally level and try and make these small adjustments in heading until he was satisfied and then eventually he would say, ‘Bombs gone.’
AP: And then what?
JL: You felt the thud as they left and usually we had a camera aboard so they had to hold, hold the heading for a few, well about thirty seconds or more. I forget now. Until a camera had, the camera had flashed, had gone off, and then we were free to leave. On the Lancaster we had, usually had cookies and incendiaries. With the Wellingtons the target was usually the Ruhr. That was standard nine, five hundred pounders.
AP: Right. And what was the age? How old were you when you were flying? Can you say a little bit about how old you were? And your crew?
JL: In 1941 I was twenty two.
AP: And your crew. Could you say?
JL: Well, all much the same. I had a Canadian navigator, a Welsh wireless operator, a Canadian front gunner and a New Zealand rear gunner. The navigator, in the Wellingtons the navigator went forward to do the bomb aiming. Later on of course we had the bomb aimers on this, on the way back from Berlin. In a Wellington. And we were rather taken by surprise because you come down with the change in the wind over ten tenths cloud and we adjusted north and we came, we were flying back over Wihelmshaven and Emden and were getting shot at all the way through the clouds and then eventually there was a gap in the clouds and I could see, see through the clouds, the clouds across the causeway across the mouth of the Zuiderzee. And I think we were probably all looking at that and then an ME110 shot overhead and circled around and went into them and I went into a deep spiral dive and he tried to collar us and showed us a bit of [unclear] and I think he should have [unclear] went into the cloud and we never saw each other again so we don’t know what happened to him. In 1941, on a Wellington squadron such as 40 Squadron, each Wellington had its own ground crew. There was a fitter for each engine. That was his engine. And then there were two airframe fitters. And they were more or less permanently with the aircraft so we became very friendly with them. And on operational days they would do what they called an NFT — Night Flying Test and some of the guys would always come with us on that. They were very industrious and proud of their aeroplane.
AP: And other? Other people that you had to rely on? Was there? Can you say, talk about, some other people?
JL: The only people I can think of were the [lovely ladies?] in the parachute section which, on 40 Squadron our parachutes went to [unclear] RAF Alconbury had virtually no buildings at all. A couple of wooden huts and that was about all so all the things like parachutes and things were at Wyton which was our base station. I never went to the parachute section there but at Wickenby on 12 Squadron we had a parachute section there and it was always WAAFs who looked after the parachutes.
AP: OK. Any, any —?
JL: And we had WAAF drivers of course.
AP: Yeah. Ok. Any thoughts about the aeroplanes that you flew like the Wellington or Lancaster? A favourite or, you used to fly? Or —
JL: The Wellington is a well-designed aeroplane but it is grossly underpowered. When they finally put in decent engines in her. The Hercules instead of the Pegasus. It was a very good operational aeroplane.
AP: Right.
JL: But I think everybody loved a Lancaster.
AP: What was so special about it?
JL: I don’t know. It was viceless. It was doing, carried a big load, doing a good job and with the Wellingtons I had two complete engine failures and by the grace of God we were within easy distance of an airfield. On one occasion we took off on operations and the port engine started — oil started pouring out of it and eventually it stopped and we were able to, it was still fairly light and we just lobbed down into nearby Wyton. And the other one I was on in the, actually in the circuit at Wymeswold when I was an instructor at OTU and we were just able to go straight in from there because on the —
[Recording paused]
JL: Oh well. Yes. Well. I was, before the war I’d served an apprenticeship in Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft at Coventry and after the war I went to join Saunders Roe at Cowes but they didn’t have very much going on and I got a bit fed up with that and re-joined Armstrong Whitworth as a test pilot. There were three of us there Eric Frenton was a test pilot and another one — Bill Else, and they had, there was a lot of work going on. Amongst other things we had the AW52G which was a glider, a tail-less glider. Two thirds scale of the bigger versions of the AW52. There was two of those. One with Nene engines. One with Derwent engines. The Nene were more powerful. And the Nene engine one, when I went there, was out of action having the structure stiffened. And then it came out and had the limited speed increased by quite an amount and I was only on my third flight with it and the job was to explore the higher ranges, speed ranges and it’s rather difficult to explain technically but the controls were called elevons. They were combined elevators and ailerons. And in order to get them light enough for the pilot to control them manually they had what they called spring tabs which meant that the connection from the pilot’s control was actually, to the flying control was actually through a spring. And what happened was that while I was doing something like three hundred and twenty miles an hour, we didn’t use knots in those days and a flutter, what they called flutter set in and it became very very violent. Very very noisy. I anxiously estimated the frequency as one and a half cycles per second. The amplitude we don’t know. You could only guess at. It was probably six or eight feet as I was going up and down at that rate and I was rapidly disorientated and I thought the thing was going to break up anyway. But if it didn’t break up I was going to be unconscious so I decided to eject. A thing I’d never even anticipated before and I wasn’t in a very good state by then so I didn’t do the drill properly. I managed to jettison the canopy and I pulled the overhead blind down over my face which fired the seat. I should have put my heels on the, on the rest on the front of the seat which I didn’t do. I just was very lucky I did that because the aircraft had sort of spectacle controls and I think, as an afterthought, they realised that wasn’t very good combined with an ejection seat so they put in another system which jettisoned the hood and fired some cutters which, which disconnected the controls from the stick and I think you was just supposed to push the stick forward too. It was a bit of Heath Robinson system but I couldn’t do that because it was wired off anyway. Anyway, I got away with it with a lot of bruises on my shoulders and on my knees. I landed very badly. I thought I was going to land in a canal and tried to remember the drill we’d been given in the RAF but I only succeeded in making the descent worse by swinging. And when I landed I broke a chip off my shoulder bone and they took me away and x-rayed me and they said that I’d sustained a compression fracture of the first and second along the vertebrae and they said, ‘Not only have you done that but it’s been done before.’ And I have to say that it was in, I don’t remember the date. The 1st of January 1947. We had the SRA1 — that was at Saunders Roe — which has an ejection seat and we went up to Martin-Baker’s and went up on the test rig and after that I had a rather sore tail for a while. That must have been what it was. 30th of May 1949. And after all the kafuffle had died down on it I wrote to Sir James Martin. He wasn’t Sir James then. He was just James Martin to thank him and got a very nice letter in reply and also a custom made little wooden box which came through the post marked, “Explosives — danger” [laughs] which was delivered to Armstrong Whitworth. To me at Armstrong Whitworth. It contained a very nicely inscribed Rolex gold watch and [pause] I’m sorry am I —?
AP: That’s alright. No. That’s alright. Got to watch the microphone. Yeah. The watch. Yes.
JL: [unclear] In 1975 when I was living in the South. In West Sussex. I had a little bungalow with casement windows and some, one of the local villains I think, got in and took that watch and another one and several other small valuables and I presume that both watches had gone straight down to The Lanes in Brighton and by now would probably be melted down but — and just two years ago I was invited to go up to Martin-Baker’s and they showed me around, gave me lunch and I wondered what it was all about. Then they started asking me about my ejection and finally got on to the watch and eventually Andrew Martin produced from his pocket my watch. And the story is that they’d had an email from somebody in New York who had read the — it had my name on it and James Martin and somehow or other they put it together and connected it with Martin-Baker. Whatever company, I don’t know who it was in New York who went over or whoever it was contacted this chap who they said was a very shifty character and they bought the watch back. I don’t know for how much and they gave it back to me.
AP: That’s an amazing story.
JL: What happened then was that I didn’t really want the watch so I asked them to auction it but then they said instead of auctioning it we’ll put it in our company museum and we’ll put five thousand pounds in to the Bomber Command Memorial Trust. It applies to almost everybody. We usually crewed up completely at random and almost always within twenty four hours we were as thick as thieves.
AP: You relied on each other didn’t you?
JL: Loyalty all down the way.
AP: Strong teamwork and trust.
JL: Yes. I was with these two Canadians and a New Zealander. Yes. The two Canadians. I’d never met a Canadian before and I was mildly surprised that they sounded like the Americans I’d seen on the films. And I hardly knew where New Zealand was. But —
AP: I think it’s good to mention that it was an international crew wasn’t it? That they were from all over the Commonwealth.
JL: Yes.
AP: You had Canadians, British.
JL: Yes. And later on on the Lancaster squadron I had an Australian navigator.
[Recording paused]
JL: In the Wellington was to Stettin. That was a nine hours something. And the longest in the Lancaster was to La Spezia which is about sixty miles south of Genoa. A sea port. And that was, that was about nine and a half hours I think.
AP: You were the only pilot. Right?
JL: Yes. We did, we did carry a second pilot but he was just supernumerary. Usually he just stayed back in the astrodome helping to keep the, keep a lookout.
AP: Can you talk a bit about what it was like to fly so long? I mean did you eat anything? Drink. How did you survive on those hours?
JL: I don’t think I ever ate or drank anything until back in, back in safe area. In a safe area. I think most of us were the same. In those days everybody smoked and we sometimes smoked when we were below oxygen level which was ten thousand feet but we probably weren’t supposed to. We didn’t on operations anyway. Once again that would be when we were safe and nearly home.
[Recording paused]
JL: One long drag over France. And we had a thing called Mandrel which was a microphone in one of the engines to the wireless operator and he had, the wireless operators were given a recording of German night fighter RT traffic and they didn’t understand it but they could recognise it and I had a Canadian wireless op, Jordan Fisher, at that time and he was listening out on Mandrel and he was highly excited. He was apparently getting very good results. He could, he could tune in to one of these frequencies where the night fighters were operating and he was doing his Mandrel trick and they get very annoyed [laughs] Shouting.
AP: How did he use it? Did he block their signal? Or reduce it.
JL: Yes. Yes having identified the frequency he transferred the engine noise on that frequency.
AP: I see. So he could block their frequency.
JL: He was having the time of his life apparently [laughs]. Mandrel was a microphone mounted in to, actually in the port inner engine, the [strength of it?] the wireless operator, the wireless operators had been given some training to identify but not necessarily understand German night fighter RT traffic and they would listen out, looking for this RT traffic and when they found it they would tune in the transmitters to that frequency and then transfer the engine noise which blotted out everything and frequently made the night fighter pilots very cross.
[Recording paused]
Having completed a tour you then became a screened aircrew and you went to an OTU where you became an instructor in your particular aircrew job. As a pilot I went to Wellesbourne Mountford OTU and my job was conversion on to Wellingtons which are just circuits and landings, circuits and landings and not only in daytime but at night. And in the winter when I was there the night flying programme was divided into four three hours stints 6-9, 9 to12, 12 to 3 and 3 to 6 and you can imagine what it was like having to get up or be prepared to go down and be ready to start doing circuits and bumps at 3 o’clock in the morning.
AP: Yeah.
JL: It was bad enough at 12 o’clock. So I hated it. I wasn’t a very good instructor anyway. And then they started with these two one thousand bomber raids I was on. They started doing quite regular operations with screened, so-called screened aircrew at OTUs and I thought it was far better to be on a squadron if I had to do all that.
AP: Were you on, did you say a two thousand bomber raid?
JL: I was on the first two.
AP: Two thousand bombers in one raid? Or one thousand bombers?
JL: There were two one thousand bomber raids.
AP: Two one thousand bomber raids.
JL: May the, May the 30th and June the, June the 2nd I think.
AP: Could you say a little bit about what happened? I mean, was that Cologne?
JL: The first one was Cologne. The second one was Essen.
AP: Essen. And so you were flying Wellingtons.
JL: Yes. Wellesbourne Mountford OTU put up about twenty aircraft that night and we lost four. My aircraft still had the dual control in which made it very very difficult to get in and out because the entry was via a hatch under the nose. So in a hurry it would have been very awkward. And the aircraft were generally fairly clapped out. And on the way back I had a screened navigator and a screened wireless operator. And on the way back, when we got back over England the wireless operator came. Came up front and sat beside me. I think together we saw the oil pressure on the port engine just drop off to nothing and fortunately the wireless operator, he was familiar with Wellingtons, knew what had happened. It had run out of oil. We had a reserve oil tank down in the fuselage with a hand pump and he knew what to do immediately. He went scuttling back down. Started hand-pumping oil back in to the engine.
AP: That’s before you got to it.
JL: No. This was on the way back.
AP: On the way back.
JL: What I didn’t say — over Cologne we were quite high and I had two Canadian gunners. You know, they were students and they got very excited and wanted to spray their guns around [laughs]. I told them to sit quiet and keep a good lookout.
AP: What was the weather like on that night?
JL: Clear.
AP: So you had a good shot at them.
JL: Oh yes we could. We were late. Late on target and we could see it from miles away.
AP: It was already lit up.
JL: We were, we were more or less unmolested I think.
AP: A thousand bombers. Did you see the other ones around you?
JL: Oh yes.
AP: Can you say a little bit about what it was like?
JL: Yes. I saw them. Quite a lot. Yes.
AP: There were Lancasters, Halifaxes. Stirlings.
JL: Everything. Most of the ones I saw were Wellingtons.
AP: But you’re not in formation.
JL: No. No.
AP: Loose formation.
JL: Completely random.
AP: But you’re on your course and you’ve got aeroplanes.
JL: Yes. Had to try and keep an eye open. Very occasionally you’d hit the slipstream of one of them [laughs]. There’s one not very far away in front.
AP: So you had to keep a constant picture of that.
JL: Oh yes. There must have been hundreds of collisions we never heard about. Fatal ones.
AP: So when you arrived it was well and truly lit up. .
JL: Yes.
AP: Yeah.
JL: I don’t, I don’t remember actually being shot at.
AP: No? And then the other one was Essen.
JL: Yes. And that was a complete disaster because there was thick haze over the whole area and we just couldn’t see anything so I think we just let them go and came home.
AP: Right. Yes.
JL: Stood down for six weeks to convert. We were operational again on Lancasters on the 1st of January 1943.
AP: The operations that you did then. Can you say a bit about what you did?
JL: I think I did three mining operations. My first operation on a Lancaster was to Norway, to Haugesundfjord, and dropped, I think it was four, fifteen hundred pound mines in the fjord there. When we got caught out by searchlights and the gunners were able to reply and they, they won. Off Emden and the islands. We put a stick of mines there. And another one was at the entrance to St Nazaire harbour.
AP: Oh yeah. That was in France.
JL: Yes. That’s where we did, there’s an island, I think it’s called Belle ile and we had to do a timed run from Belle Ile. Went right up the estuary and let them go. I think the load was four, fifteen hundred pound mines. Parachute mines.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Jo Lancaster. One
Creator
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Andrew Panton
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-04-06
Type
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Sound
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ALancasterJO150406
PLancasterJO1501
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
After leaving school, Jo Lancaster was an aircraft apprentice with Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company in Coventry. After volunteering for the Air Force, he trained as a pilot and completed a tour on Wellingtons with 40 Squadron from RAF Alconbury. Following a period as an instructor at an operational training unit, he flew another tour of operations. After the war Jo became a test pilot and was the first man to eject from an aircraft in danger using a Martin-Baker ejection seat.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Italy--La Spezia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1943
Format
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00:30:15 audio recording
12 Squadron
3 Group
40 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fitter airframe
fitter engine
Gneisenau
ground crew
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 110
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Alconbury
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wyton
Scharnhorst
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/286/8788/PKirbyH1511.2.jpg
f2f26de792cac70f6b6c69e353b3a563
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/286/8788/AKirbyH150710.1.mp3
415d0a343bc572167309ea13248509d0
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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Kirby, Harold
Harold V A Kirby
H V A Kirby
Harold Kirby
H Kirby
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. Two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Harold Kirby (1923 - 2022, 1637087 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and documents. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 467, 97 and 156 Squadrons.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-10
2015-09-21
2016-06-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Kirby, H
Requires
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Warrant Officer Harold Kirby 1637087 was born in Kilbourne, Loncon in 1923, his job after leaving school was in the accounting department at London Electric Supplies. He initially tried to volunteer for the RAF but failed the medical, at that time. He was subsequently drafted in 1942. Skill training started with training as a Flight Mechanic, but during this was asked to volunteer to rain as a Flight Engineer. His first posting was as an Aircraft Fitter at No.460 Squadron, RAF Binbrook, although only for 6 months.
After Flight Engineer training at St Athan and then training on the Short Stirling and then the Lancaster with 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Winthorpe, the first solo flight for the crew, the port landing gear would not lock, during the landing the gear collapsed, although there were no injuries.
First operational unit was No.467 Squadron at RAF Waddington a mainly Australian Squadron, the crew were here for July and August 1944, One operation 3/4th August 1944, to the V1 storage site at Trossy Saint Maximin had another bomber flying above their aircraft and dropping their bombs, one going through the wing, narrowly missing vital structures, this resulted in a gear up landing, due to hydraulic loss, but again there were no injuries resulting.
He was then posted along with the crew to No 97 Squadron, based at RAF Coningsby a pathfinder squadron, tasked to mark the targets for other aircraft,
In total two tours were completed before the end of the European war, after finishing as a Flight Engineer, Harold trained as a RADAR mechanic, before leaving the RAF.
Andy St.Denis
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NM: So, this is a recording from Harold Kirby in Pinner, my name is Nigel Moore doing the interview, and this interview is taking place on July the 10th at Mr Kirby’s home in Pinner. So, Mr Kirby, thanks for doing this, and can you tell me something about your life growing up and life before the RAF?
HK: Yes, I’m, I was born in Kilburn, and my parents moved out to Kingsbury when I was eight years old, and I went to Kingsbury County School there. At the time we moved, 1931, it was all countrified there and we had to walk across fields to Burnt Oak to, for shopping, but soon got built up. So that was my early days, and then I got married after the war and lived in Kingsbury for a while until we moved out to Pinner in 1960, that’s right.
NM: So, what about your upbringing and childhood and pre-service life as a youth?
HK: I was not very outgoing at the time, but I had a special friend, Tony, who was more outgoing and he involved me in lots of activities, but I can’t say that I did very much exciting at those days, although we did used to cycle ‘round quite a lot, both of us. So, that was, up to the war, really. [Pause] and, certainly –
NM: Okay. How did you come to join the RAF?
HK: Ah, well, I, my two school friends and myself wanted to fly with the RAF, they were accepted but I was turned down on medical grounds, they became navigators and went off, and then I was called up in, ah, August 1942, and was first, after the initial square-bashing, went to, was posted to Halton, to train as a flight mechanic, one of the first inputs of conscripts to be trained at Halton, yeah. Well, after I’d passed out as a flight mechanic, I had sufficient marks to go straight on to do a fitter’s airframe course, also at Halton, and during the time there, I, we were asked if we would volunteer to become flight engineers, they were getting a bit short, which I did, passed the medical that time, and, but initially, I was posted as a fitter to 460 Squadron, which was at Binbrook, although initially, we and three others went to place called Brayton and found that the 460 Squadron had moved to Binbrook two weeks earlier [slight laugh] but eventually, we were taken there over, stayed there overnight and then taken to Binbrook, and I was there for a bit, six months, mainly repairing aircraft, until I got a call to go to the Saint Athan to train as a flight engineer. I, after I’d passed out from there, I was posted to heavy conversion unit at [pause] Winthorpe and I was, I crewed up with an otherwise all-Australian crew, and one thing that happened there was – this was on Stirlings – on the first pilot’s [pause] flight by himself without an instructor, we couldn’t get the wheels down, and it was my job to wind them down, which I did successfully, but the port undercarriage wouldn’t lock, so we were asked to fly to Woodbridge, you heard of it? It was placed where they had especially long, long runways and also facilities for dealing with crashed aircraft. Well, we duly got, would crashed, Woodbridge, crashed, ah, landed, but the port undercarriage gave way and we spun ‘round, no-one was hurt, and the instructor came down immediately and made my pilot fly back. Other than that, that, everything was okay, and we went to the Lancaster flying school, and eventually landed up at 467 Squadron, which was then at Wadd – Waddington. The, ah, yes, on the first operation, we were coming back, and the rear gunner suddenly shouted ‘Corkscrew!’, and the pilot immediately took action, dived, and a twin-engined aircraft overtook us and flew off in the distance, we didn’t see it again, but he initially, he shot at us, and a bullet went through the rear gunner’s turret and his clothing and cut off his heating supply and he was very aggrieved about that because it got a bit cold! [slight laugh] Anyway, we got back safely. Then, on the [pause] yes, the eleventh operation, it was a daylight one at Trossy Saint Maximin, the, it was a storage site for V1s, and we had done the bombing round and the mid upper shouted, ‘There’s a Lanc above us just opened his bomb doors!’ Before we could do anything, we heard two thumps, one was louder than the other, and a bomb went through the port wing, took away the undercarriage and the – shut off the engine, so I, well, I, I had to keep a look-out because the, I’m sure the wing was mov – waving more than it should do, anyway, we, with three engines, we got left behind. At one stage, this was over France, the rear gunner said ‘There’s two single-engined aircraft approaching from the starboard quarter,’ he said to the upper gunner, ‘I’ll take the first, you take the second,’ but seconds later, which seemed hours, he said, ‘It’s alright, they’re Spitfires,’ [slight laugh] and one of them escorted us back to the coast and we decided, or at least the pilot decided, to land at Wittering, which, at that time, had a grass runway, and we’d landed there and he got told off for making a big groove in their run – runway. So, but that was the, really, the main thing that happened there. Then, on the sixteenth operation, or after the sixteenth operation, we were posted to 97 Squadron, the Pathfinder Squadron. After the war, I had some correspondence from a pilot’s son, this was well after the war, and in it was a cutting from a newspaper which a pilot had a long [?] talk with a reporter, and he said then, whether it was true or not, that he actually volunteered to become Pathfinders because of the increase in pay, but I don’t know if that’s true or not, but all the crew joined him and we went on to the 97 Squadron, but nothing really much happened there, we were quite successful in getting back what with [?] the time, and in the end we managed forty-four operations altogether. [Pause] Well, after the war finished, we were sent on end-of-tour leave because we’d practically finished the second tour, and, but the rest of the crew were all recalled before I was, to go off back to Australia, so I never really had a chance to say a proper goodbye, but after that [unclear], they were, we were given opportunities to choose what we wanted to do; I chose a radar mechanic’s course because it was a nice long one and sounded interesting, that was at Yatesbury, and I eventually completed the course, was posted to West Ruislip, where I was put in an office and didn’t any, do any radar mechanicking! [laughs] And, but I was fortunate that I was able to live out, live at home, ‘cause my parents at Kingsbury, and commuted until I got my demob, which was six weeks or so later, I’m not sure of the actual date, and so, that is my war service.
NM: Okay, can I take you back to your days in Halton?
HK: Yes.
NM: Tell me a little bit about your days training as a fitter.
HK: Well, we were lost in [?], up the hill on one side of the main road, and every morning, we walked down, or marched down, to the, the workshops on the other side of the main road. That, that was about all, except that there was one amusing instance; because there, there were no youngsters there at the time, they had some drums which they thought could be used, and they asked for volunteers to train as, as drummers to help us down the march. It, they got instructions, that went off quite reasonably until the instructor thought, the, the bandmaster or whoever it was, thought we could practise by ourselves. Now, one of the chaps was actually a drummer in a small group, and he decided to invent a, a rhythm, which wasn’t the one that we were taught, and it went – oh, how did it go? Anyway, it was the first time that we did it, we, it was a conga rhythm [laughs], I think it’s the first and only time that a squad’s been conga’d down to the workshops! [laughs] But, apart from that, Halton was quite reasonably enjoyable.
NM: And was it while you were at Halton, or was it while you were at Binbrook on 460 Squadron, that you volunteered to become a flight engineer?
HK: It was while we were at Halton we were asked if we would volunteer, yes.
NM: So you first of all went off to Binbrook on 460 Squadron?
HK: Hmm?
NM: You first of all went to 460 Squadron?
HK: 460 Squadron, yeah.
NM: At Binbrook. Tell me a little bit about, about Binbrook.
HK: Well, then again, it was for, fortunately a, a peacetime station, so we were quite comfortably billeted. Well, that, that, of course, was an Australian squadron as well, so I, I did quite well in knowing the Australians. Each morning, went to the hangars and carried out any repairs and inspections that were necessary, quite enjoyed that, really. Yes, there was a sergeant there, Australian sergeant, apparently he was colour blind, and he, he was telling me that initially, he, he was asked to put camouflage on an aircraft, and when his instructor saw it, he said ‘If you could see that as I could see it, you’d have a fit!’ [Laughs] Yeah, but that, that, sorry, he was quite, quite a good chap [unclear], but –
NM: So, you went from Binbrook to Saint Athans to train -
HK: That’s right, yes.
NM: As a flight engineer.
HK: That’s right.
NM: Describe your training.
HK: I, actually, initially, there are few of us, instead of given instructions on a Lancaster, we were started to give us instructions on a York aircraft, but I think it was decided that that sort of job would be given to people who’d already been flying, so we then transferred and did the rest of the course on, on Lancasters. It was [pause] well, was quite enjoyable, I can’t say that there were any real troubles there. [Pause] I’m sorry, I –
NM: That’s fine, that’s okay.
HK: Unless there’s something specific, it’s difficult to remember.
NM: Right, okay, no, that’s absolutely fine, that’s fine. And you, how long did you spend in Saint Athan training, and what type of year was it, and time of year?
HK: It was in December, it would have been ’43, and we were there ‘til about May, I think, in ’44, and then we went to, as I said, to train, initially on Stirlings, before going onto Lancasters and then the squadron.
NM: So you crewed up at the OCU at Winthorpe, did you say?
HK: Yes.
NM: How did the crewing up process go? How did you end up with the crew that you ended up with?
HK: Well, it was just the usual way, and, in the RAF, from, we were in a large hall, and Bill Ryan, the, came up to me and said, would I like to join his crew? And he came, well, then, he introduced, introduced me to the rest, and we got on quite well.
NM: So you were the last to join the crew, were you?
HK: Yes.
NM: And were they an all-Australian crew?
HK: All-Australian, yeah.
NM: And you were the only Englishman there?
HK: That’s right, yes.
NM: So, why do you think he asked you? Why do you think he asked you?
HK: I have no idea! [laughs] Perhaps I was the last one, I don’t know, but we got on quite well, actually. I was the youngest, Bill Ryan was twenty-eight, I think. [Pause] The [pause] bomb aimer came from Queensland, he was about thirty-three, wireless operator was not much older than I was, I, I did have pictures of them [sound of leafing through pages].
NM: We can come onto that afterwards, if you want.
HK: Afterwards, yeah. [leafing sounds continue] Give some names.
NM: Let’s go through their names on the record and we can look at the photographs after the interview.
HK: Yeah, right.
NM: So, you go through the names.
HK: Hmm, yes.
NM: Talk, go through the names and describe the names.
HK: Yes, well, there was Bill Ryan, Les Sabine, the navigator, he came from New South Wales, as did Johnny Nichols, the wireless operator, and Jim McPhee was bomb aimer, Norm Johnstone, the mid upper gunner, and myself, and then there was Jim Newing, but we always called him Bert so we didn’t get mixed up with Jim McPhee, the bomb aimer, he was the rear gunner, he came from Perth in western Australia, and, although I lost touch with the crew after the war, some fifty years later, I and my wife went to Perth, and I looked up the telephone directory, there was H.W. Newing, which was his name, and the telephone, and I rang up on the off chance and said ‘Have you ever been to England?’ and he said ‘Yes, who’s speaking?’ I said ‘Harold Kirby’ and he immediately said ‘Oh, our flight engineer!’ [Slight laugh] And he was able to come to the hotel and we had quite a long chat, unfortunately, we had to go off the following day, but by then, I had his address and telephone number, and we went back to Perth all summer, few years later, and he came and took us to meet his wife and have lunch, and so, that, that was very nice. Unfortunately, he’s passed away.
NM: Okay, sad to hear that. So, you went to Lancaster flying school, you say, after you, your?
HK: Yes, at Syerston, that was.
NM: That was, okay, at Syerston. And how long were you there for?
HK: Oh, just a matter of a week or so, I think. I don’t, I can’t remember that.
NM: So, you then joined 467 Squadron at Waddington?
HK: That’s right.
NM: Tell me about squadron life in 467, what was that like?
HK: What was that like? I think I was glad I’d been to 460 Squadron and got used to a lot of the Australians, so it didn’t come as a bit of a shock, but [pause] apart from those two instances that I mentioned, I think we were quite fortunate, getting away unscathed.
NM: So, can you describe general operations, then, on 467 at Waddington?
HK: Well, I, the pilot and navigator, this before an operation, they had a, an initial briefing, and then after that, the rest of the crew joined them to have a general briefing. We were – then we all had to get ready for going off, we had a, a meal beforehand. Coming back, we were debriefed, and contrary to, contrary to what other, I’ve read about other squadrons, we never got rum or anything like that, we just got coffee, and then we went to bed and waited for the next operation. I do remember that, on one occasion, I slept for about eighteen hours non-stop, virtually, that was after two or three night operations on the trot.
NM: So, when you found you were being posted to Pathfinders at –
HK: Yes.
NM: - Coningsby, at 97 Squadron, what was your feeling?
HK: Really, nothing much, we, I didn’t know much about them, and I just wanted to keep with the rest of the crew, suppose.
NM: So, was – how did Coningsby and the Pathfinders differ from a main force station at Waddington and 467?
HK: I can’t say that it was terribly different, different. We were quite fortunate in, again, that, as Waddington was, and Binbrook beforehand and then Coningsby, they were all peacetime stations and we were very comfortably housed, not like some squadrons who had to cope with a lot of mud [slight laugh]! Oh, yes, at Coningsby, we had to be capable of taking over some of the other tasks, such as, I was asked to keep the aircraft on the straight and level for a while, presumably in case the pilot couldn’t hold it, which, that was what I did, although the rear gunner said it was more like a switchback than straight and level [slight laugh]! Then I had to learn the Morse code and do some gunnery practice, and also bomb aiming, so that, that was quite a change. In fact, towards the end of the war, the normal bomb aimer went and helped the navigator with the screens that they had then, and I did the bomb aiming, so it, that was a change. [Pause] Can’t say that there’s much more to add.
NM: So the extra training that you had, then, for, for flying training for straight and level flying and for gunnery and Morse code and bomb aiming, what, how did those extra training comes about?
HK: I remember the bomb, bomb aiming, there was a sort of a, a map that sort of moved on the floor and we were practising sort of with the bomb sights, and then also, in, there was a bombing range at Wainfleet in the Wash, I think I did a, a few goes at that, and then as far as gunnery, we dropped a flare in the water and I was in the nose turret and had a go and see if I could shoot that, and so [pause] I do remember once, I think this was at, at Waddington, for some reason, the brakes failed as we were taxiing ‘round, and the pilot was able to steer by controlling the engines. The normal practice when you start off is to keep the brakes on and push the throttle forward to get maximum speed, power, and then suddenly take the brakes off and shoot off. Well, this time, we had no time to do that, we got slowly to the take-off point and got the green lights and pushed the throttles forward and, fortunately [laughs], took off okay! And then, again, we thought we’d go back to Woodbridge, which we did, and I repaired the brakes and we got back to base. [Pause]
NM: What did you feel about the different roles that you were asked to play, then, between flight engineer and gunnery and bomb aiming?
HK: Well, I quite enjoyed it, the change, yes.
NM: So your crew, altogether, did forty-four operations?
HK: Yes.
NM: And you all stayed together for the whole time?
HK: No, all except the mid upper gunner and the wireless operator, they decided they wouldn’t go on to the second tour, and so we had spare chaps to do that, but I can’t really remember much about them.
NM: How did the crew feel about losing two stalwarts and getting two replacements?
HK: Well, don’t think we were terribly happy, but that was, you know, if they didn’t want to go on, well, that was it. I preferred to carry on rather than go to a training squadron because that could be a bit dicey sometimes.
NM: What would you say about life in Bomber Command overall?
HK: Overall, I had quite a good time, really. [Pause] No, I don’t think I would have chosen anything else, I was quite happy with what I was doing. Bit dicey at times, but that was it.
NM: Do you keep, keep in touch at all with, or – you’ve spoken about the rear gunner you’ve met in Australia, do you keep in touch with squadron associations, reunions?
HK: Oh, I, I kept up with the squadron association, and Path – not, yes, Pathfinder Association, while it was still in force, and then I belonged to the Aircrew Association, we had monthly meetings, and –
NM: Were they locally here?
HK: That was at, that’s at Hemel Hempstead, but there’s another ex-Pathfinder who flew in Mosquitos who lived in Hatch End, and we take it in turns to drive to Hemel, but we were quite fortunate, really, because a lot of the branches had to close because lack of members, but as it’s open to post-war fliers as well, we’ve got quite a few in, in our association, and they help to keep the thing going, in fact, I think all the, apart from one, are post-war fliers, or the, I’m trying to say, the people that control, the – sorry, I, I get mixed up with words sometimes [laughs]! Yeah, but anyway, we keep going.
NM: Okay, that’s fair [?]. How do you think Bomber Command has been treated since the war?
HK: Not very well; in fact, I think in the end, we were quite happy to get the memorial. [Pause] Lot of work has been done to get it organised.
NM: Okay, shall we call it a day there?
HK: Hmm?
NM: Shall we finish the interview there? Are you happy with that, or was there anything else you’d like to talk about with your time in Bomber Command?
HK: I think I’ve covered most things. [Pause] I was telling you about my two friends that joined up before I did, both got shot down, one unfortunately on the Nuremburg raid, and the other one, who was on Stirlings, got shot down over France but parachuted to safety and was looked after by the French until he was – the Americans came. But, so, I was quite fortunate, really.
NM: So, did you find out about your friend’s loss during the war, or was it after the, only after the war, did you find?
HK: It was during the war, yes, I kept in touch with my particular school friend’s mother or parents and heard when he’d got shot down; they didn’t know what had happened to him at the time, of course, yes. [Pause] So I did keep up with that school friend after he’d come back from – to England. One peculiar thing happened was, at the time before he got shot down, he, he’d sent me a picture of him and a bomb aimer, his bomb aimer, and I was showing this to my crew, and my bomb aimer said ‘I know that chap, we’ve been doing training together in Canada!’ But he stayed on to do some training others and so he, he didn’t come, get to this country until well after my school friend’s bomb aimer had come here, but both the bomb aimer and my friend were the only two that managed to get out of the aircraft when it was shot.
NM: And you finished up doing a radar mechanic’s course?
HK: Yes.
NM: After the war.
HK: Ah, yes.
NM: Tell me a little bit about that.
HK: Well, that was quite enjoyable, learning how the radar worked, and after the war, instead of going back – well, I did go back for a while to my original job, which was in an accounts department, in an accounts department in an electric supplier, I decided I wanted to do something a bit more technical, and the GEC at the time were advertising for people for their laboratories, and I went along and got a job in their patents department, and trained – well, I did evening classes, got BSc, then went on to do the patent agent’s exams and stayed there until I retired, retired in ’83 but went on and did five more years part-time, until they moved the whole place to Chelmsford, I decided that was enough [slight laugh].
NM: And you’ve been retired ever since?
HK: Hmm?
NM: You’ve been retired ever since?
HK: Yes.
NM: Okay, I think that’s probably a very good note to finish on.
HK: [Laughs] Yes!
[Recording beeps: interview paused and restarted]
NM: Just continuing the interview with Mr Kirby.
HK: Yes, there were a couple of instances which I remember now, not actually connected with the enemy, but we were due to fly to Munich to bomb something at Munich, and we had to, we were rooted over the Alps in moonlight, which was a beautiful sight to see, and then another occasion, we flew to one of the eastern countries, oh, I could tell you exactly where it is [sound of leafing through pages], and we had to fly over Sweden at the time, and, yes. No, I can’t [pause as HK continues leafing through pages] Ah, Politz. Yes, I had to fly over Sweden, which was quite exciting ‘cause it was all lit up, they did shoot, but we were told that not to worry, they weren’t going to shoot at us. [Laughs] But those are just two instances I happen to remember.
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 Harold Kirby. One
Creator
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Nigel Moore
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-10
Format
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00:42:44 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AKirbyH150710, PKirbyH1511
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Kirby joined up the Royal Air Force encouraged by two friends, but ended up training as a flight mechanic at RAF Halton on medical grounds. Harold became them airframe fitter, volunteered as a flight engineer, passed the physical but was then posted as a fitter at RAF Binbrook for six months with 460 Squadron. He was then at RAF Saint Athan to train as a flight engineer, then to RAF Winthorpe Heavy Conversion Unit with an all-Australian aircrew. Harold recollects a crash landing at RAF Woodbridge, followed by attending Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Syerston. He was then posted to 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Discusses bombing operations over France V-1 weapons sites, a bomb falling through a wing, and crash landing at RAF Wittering. Harold was eventually posted to 97 Pathfinder Squadron at RAF Coningsby, owing to his array of skills and multiple qualifications. Discusses post war training as radar mechanic, employment at the General Electric Company and reunions with his Australian aircrew.
Spatial Coverage
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France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
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1942
Language
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eng
460 Squadron
467 Squadron
8 Group
97 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
bombing
crash
crewing up
fitter airframe
flight engineer
flight mechanic
forced landing
ground crew
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mechanics airframe
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Binbrook
RAF Coningsby
RAF Halton
RAF St Athan
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wainfleet
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Wittering
RAF Woodbridge
recruitment
Stirling
training
V-1
V-weapon
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/542/8782/AHardingV150520.2.mp3
73090ff7946ff4451cdd82def306eea2
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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Harding, Victor
Victor Thomas Harding
V T Harding
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Harding, V
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Leading Aircraftsman Victor Harding (1234463, Royal Air Force). He served as an airframe fitter.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Claire Bennett; the interviewee is Mr Victor Harding. The interview is taking place at Mr Harding’s home in Queen’s Court, Retford, on the 20th of May 2015. Well Vic, would you like to tell us the date and place of your birth?
VH: Er, 05-03-22. We was in Middlesex.
CB: And can you remember your early childhood?
VH: Yes because I was born outta wedlock, and my mother sent me down to a home in Kent, to, to join the forces.
CB: And you stayed in a – you were in a –
VH: I stayed in a home – what you call a home for little [unclear], my daughter knows it ‘cause she took me there. And I was there ‘till I was nineteen ‘till I volunteered, joined the Air Force.
CB: And do you remember much about it? What are your memories of it?
VH: What the home?
CB: Yes.
VH: It was marvellous. It was run by ex-military people and they’re very very good to you. Plenty of discipline and everything, oh yeah. And when I was eighteen, that’s when I volunteered to join the Air Force then.
CB: What –
Other: You learnt, you learnt a trade in the home, didn’t you?
VH: Pardon?
Other: You learnt a trade in the home.
VH: Oh yes, in the – they, after you finish your schooling age, they had different trades there. They had the printing department, a cobblers, carpentry, tailoring department, trades to learn when you’ve finished doing your schooling.
CB: And you went in for –
VH: Tailoring. Because the war broke out, and then I volunteered for the Air Force.
CB: What made you choose the Air Force in particular?
VH: I don’t know really [laughs]. I just fancied it, you know. And they asked me if I wanted to be aircrew or ground staff, so I thought ‘I haven’t got the brains to be aircrew’ so I volunteered to be in the ground staff to maintain the air craft.
CB: You were mechanically minded?
VH: I was flying mechanic air frame lot of the time. Everything by the engines, yeah,
CB: Would you have liked to have flown?
VH: I would have done if I had brains, yeah. [Both laugh]
CB: But nobody said you didn’t have any brains, this is what you perceived. [VH laughing]
VH: Well, I didn’t think I would be qualified for it enough sort of thing.
CB: So where did you start your training? Where did you join up?
VH: I went to Blackpool, and I done my – I can’t remember whether it was six months training at Kirkham for a flight mechanics course. When I passed out, I was sent to Cottesmore to Operational Training Unit.
CB: And what was your training, you know, like? Did you enjoy it?
VH: I did, really enjoyed it.
CB: How did you get to the, the training place? Was it on the train?
VH: No the Air Force took me there, you know. I went to Cottesmore –
CB: Yes.
VH: And I was on old Southampton’s [?]. All the old stuff sort of thing ‘till I was qualified, and then when I was paid, I was put onto Bomber Command then.
CB: But, you would get your posting wouldn’t you, and then you’d have to get to your posting destination –
VH: That’s it, yeah they –
CB: Did you, did you go on the trains during the war?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Did you go the trains during the war?
VH: Trains?
CB: Mm.
VH: No.
CB: No?
VH: No, never went on trains.
CB: So how did you get around? Did the –
VH: The Air Force took me around, you know.
CB: Right.
VH: To different stations, yes.
CB: Right. So, so you’d, a group of you would go perhaps and they’d take you to the stations?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And what was your, you know, your time training? You know, what kind of accommodation did you have?
VH: Well, sometimes I was in Nissan huts, sometimes I was in buildings, you know. All depends where you were stationed sort of thing.
CB: Where was, where do you think your best station was? You enjoyed the most?
VH: Oh, best place was at Lakenheath. It was a brick building, but when the Yanks came and saw it they took it over. So we were putting Nissan huts [laughs].
CB: Well the Nissan huts I think were pretty sparse weren’t they?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And cold, is that your –
VH: That’s it, yeah.
CB: Is that how you remember them, or?
VH: Yeah.
CB: Am I wrong?
VH: That’s it [laughs].
CB: So you went – so your first main posting –
VH: My first posting was at Cottesmore.
CB: Right, and what planes would you be on?
VH: I was on the Anton’s, Oxfords, and just the, all the things to tinkle about with, you know. ‘Till I was posted on Bomber Command.
CB: And the planes, were they easy to maintain, or?
VH: Yeah, they were quite easy really.
CB: You learnt quickly?
VH: Yeah I did, yeah.
CB: Was it good training?
VH: Oh yes, I had six months training at Kirkham.
CB: And what were you –
VH: I was flight mechanic air frames on everything bar the engines.
CB: Right, so you would main – so what would that entail? So, tell me about, you know, all the details of it.
VH: Well, you looked after the runners and the balance and everything, you know.
CB: Right. And then you entered Bomber Command.
VH: That’s it, yeah.
CB: So your first, first job would be, or your first posting rather, would be –
VH: Ah [pause]. Cottesmore was the first one I went to with Operational Training Unit.
CB: Yes.
VH: Yeah.
CB: On OTU?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And, where did you go to after that?
VH: I went to quite a few stations. I went to Bardney for a while, Woodhall Spa, er, Lakenheath, Marham, all different stations you know. With all different squadrons that I went with.
CB: Yes, and what was your work there? Same sort of thing?
VH: Flight mechanic airframe. I done that everything bar the engines.
CB: What planes were you working on?
VH: I worked on Wellingtons, Mosquitos, Lancasters, Hamdy Hamptons [?].
CB: Did you ever go for a flight in these, any of these?
VH: Oh yes. So when they used to do something to the airframe or engines, you used to, we used to go up with them for an air test [emphasis]. Yeah.
CB: So you did you go for any long [emphasis] trips in them?
VH: Not really long trips, no. First I went I think was Peterhead, when we went up there to refuel them.
CB: And did you enjoy the flight? Do you think – did you –
VH: Well I love flying.
CB: Did you regret not going for aircrew?
VH: I don’t, no [laughs]. I think I would have enjoyed it, you know, but I might not be here today [both laugh].
CB: So where was your accommodation, say at Bardney? Where was – were you still in the Nissan huts?
VH: No, I think I was in buildings there, I think, I’m sure it was.
CB: Was it, were you, did you have accommodation with a family. Were you –
VH: No didn’t have it with no family.
CB: It was in an Air Force –
VH: Air Force quarters, yeah.
CB: Air Force quarters.
VH: Yeah.
CB: And what did you do, where did you go for relaxation in Bardney? Do you remember?
VH: Not really. Used to go out with the lads, you know, and have a drink and a smoke [laughs].
CB: Pubs? [VH laughs]. Dare I suggest? Do you remember Bardney at all?
VH: Not a lot, no.
CB: So your, was your life mainly in the, on the camp basically?
VH: It was on the camp, yes.
CB: So, the planes – explain to me how it works. So what would be your typical day?
VH: Well you go out on the dispersal plane [?]. The aircraft was there and you had to test the rudders, the elevators, the wings and everything. Then you had to test your hydraulics, make sure they are working and everything.
CB: And then you’d –
VH: Then you had to sign a form, Form 700, detailing what you had done and everything, and the pilot used to say ‘okay, I know that you’ve checked it.’
CB: And what planes would these be? Would these be –
VH: I used to be on Lancasters, Mosquitos, Hamdy Hamptons [?], Wellingtons –
CB: And what – but what about Bardney? Was it – what was it at Bardney?
VH: Bardney?
CB: Mm.
VH: I think I was on Lancasters there.
CB: Mm.
VH: Yeah.
CB: What did you think about the Lancaster as a plane?
VH: Marvellous aircraft, lovely.
CB: Did you think, you know , when you first saw it, overwhelming really? Like the size of it.
VH: Well, the size of it yeah [emphasis]. I mean, the wheels were bigger than me [both laugh].
CB: But was it a case of just, you know, getting on with the job as it were?
VH: Well it – true, yeah. I enjoyed the job, I did really.
CB: What was the food like that you had there?
VH: Very good there.
CB: And can you remember –
VH: And I met some very nice people, you know. Ground staff and aircrew and everybody and, I got on well with everybody.
CB: So you enjoyed your time there?
VH: I did [emphasis]. If I hadn’t got married I think I would have kept in the Air Force [both laugh].
CB: When did you meet your wife?
VH: In forty, forty-six, yeah.
CB: So after the war?
VH: No, just before I finished the war, yeah.
CB: Oh right. So you – I mean, good food in Bardney –
VH: Oh I had good food all the time I was in the Air Force, I can’t complain.
CB: Well, ‘cause there was rationing on wasn’t there?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Rationing on.
VH: Oh yeah, but we weren’t rationed [laughs].
CB: No?
VH: No.
CB: So you just had your normal food then?
VH: Yes, well, our food was lovely. Very good.
CB: Did you have a bike to go around on, or?
VH: I used to have a bike yeah, ‘cause when I was at Woodhall Spa I used to bike to Boston most nights, you know, if I wasn’t on duty and things.
CB: Right. So, ‘cause these, these airfields were spread out, weren’t they?
VH: Yeah.
CB: A lot of them. And you needed a bike.
VH: Oh yeah.
CB: So you were dealing with Lancasters, and where did you go after Bardney? Can you remember?
VH: No I went to that many. I went to Theddlethorpe [?], Bardney, Lakenheath, quite a few all local. All round Lincolnshire way, you know, most of them.
CB: Mm.
VH: The first I went away was at Marham in Norfolk.
CB: Yes?
VH: Mm.
CB: And what did you make of that? Did you –
VH: Marham?
CB: Mm.
VH: Quite a nice place. That’s where I had my first squadron of Mosquitos there.
CB: Right.
VH: Mm.
CB: So you worked on the Mosquitos there?
VH: Oh yes. I liked them I did [both laugh].
CB: The wooden wonder. [?]
VH: We had the first squadron of Mosquitos and first day we got there at Marham the Germans came along and dropped flares. I thought ‘oh there we’ve had it.’ But we got away with it [laughs].
CB: Is that the first time you’d had any –
VH: We had Mosquitos, yeah.
CB: Is this the first time you’d seen enemy action as it were, dropping bombs?
VH: Well it was, dropping flares over the place yeah. We thought ‘we’re in for it’ that night but we got away with it [both laugh].
CB: Oh dear. And do you remember anybody in particular, you know, friends?
VH: In the Air Force?
CB: Yeah, friends.
VH: Oh yes. Guy Gibson.
CB: If we’re – erm yes, that was at Woodhall Spa.
VH: Yeah.
CB: Did you work with him, or on – well, you were on 627 Squadron.
VH: Yeah. I was with Guy Gibson, I worked with Richard Attenborough, Group Captain Cheshire.
CB: Yes.
VH: Mm.
CB: So at Woodhall Spa, which is – did you finish at Woodhall Spa? Was that your last one before the end of the war?
VH: I think it was. I’m sure it was, yeah.
CB: And you were on 627 Squadron there –
VH: Yeah.
CB: Is that right? Were you, you were with other squadrons. 149 did you say?
VH: Yes, I was, yeah 149 Royal Canadian Air Force –
CB: You worked with the Canadians?
VH: Yeah, and [pause] a Jamaican squadron, I don’t know whether it was 139, I can’t remember what that was but whatever squadron it was I got on well with all of them. Canadian and the Jamaica squadron.
CB: Excellent. So at Woodhall Spa, how did you get there? Did you, did the Air Force take you there?
VH: Air Force. Wherever it was the Air Force took you.
CB: ‘Cause I think –
VH: Transport, you know.
CB: Right, ‘cause I think most people arrived at the station didn’t they?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And then they’d be picked up.
VH: Well I did. One time I was posted to, er, where was it, Oakington was it? Yeah, and I got a transport ticket to Oakham, yeah, I got the wrong place [both laugh]. I don’t think, I made a blunder [?].
CB: Well it can’t have been easy travelling around in the war.
VH: Oh yeah.
CB: You know, on the trains or whatever.
VH: Well it’s true.
CB: So you arrived at Woodhall Spa, and, on Mosqutios?
VH: Yeah.
CB: Did, where did you live at Woodhall Spa? Were you on –
VH: In billets.
CB: Again, what is –
VH: Woodhall Spa.
CB: - what is now Thorpe Camp? Was that where you were?
VH: Where?
Other: Thorpe Camp. You know where they’ve got the museum and that.
VH: Oh yeah.
CB: That’s where you were?
VH: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
CB: What did you make of it, or what did you –
VH: Of Woodhall Spa?
CB: Yes.
VH: I loved it. Nice place.
CB: Did you go into the town very often?
VH: Yeah, I used to walk to Tatteshall and places like that which was nearby.
CB: Did you, you know, how did you relax there at Woodhall Spa? Would the, would the ground crew ever, you know, mix with the aircrew?
VH: Oh yes, quite often, yeah. I had a good mate there, Canadian chap, and I can always remember one night in the – he sat awake, the crew generally get together chatting before they go on a raid, and he was a rear gunner, and he was chatting [?] that night and I went over to him and I says ‘what’s wrong George?’ And he says ‘we’re not coming back tonight,’ I says ‘well don’t talk stupid.’ They didn’t.
CB: Wow.
VH: He had that premonition they weren’t coming back.
CB: Did you ever –
VH: That did upset me, you know, that did.
CB: Did you get that a lot, or was that just one you remember? Do you, you know –
VH: Ooh no, I remember quite a few who didn’t get back.
CB: Mm. But then, did they –
VH: Waited for them, but they never returned.
CB: Did they had the premonition though before they went?
VH: Yeah, one or two did.
CB: And how did you feel about that? It –
CB: Well I felt awful really. When you’re waiting for them and they don’t return, you know, really hits you.
CB: Mm. What was the atmosphere at, in the, on the airfield?
VH: Oh, it was very good really, yeah we all got on well together. The ground staff and the aircrew, you know.
CB: And you would, as you say, you would relax together, and –
VH: Oh yes, I mean, if you had no raids on and everything you’d go out and have a drink with the lads and the aircrew, you know.
CB: Do you remember the, where you would go in Woodhall Spa?
VH: No, I can’t remember, you’re going back –
CB: I think, I think it was the Mucky Duck, wasn’t it?
VH: Oh that, I was gonna say the Mucky Duck! [Other speaks in background but is unclear what is said. VH replies but this is also unclear.]
CB: Yeah, I think that was quite popular there wasn’t it?
VH: It was, yeah [both laugh]. Then I used to cycle sometimes into Boston.
CB: Yes. So you’d cycle into Boston did you say?
VH: Yeah, cycle into Boston, yeah.
CB: Right, that’s a fair way.
VH: Well, it was really, but –
CB: And, on your own, or with your friends?
VH: Yes, with a girl from there.
CB: Oh right [both laugh]. And what would you do in Boston? What did you think of Boston?
VH: I liked Boston I did. Boston Stump and all that. It’s quite changed from what it used to be, but it, I thought it was a lovely place at the time.
CB: And what did you do, where did you go?
VH: Go for a drink [laughs].
CB: Did you go to the glider drome? I think that was a popular place. No? Perhaps for the aircrew.
VH: Was it Withamgate [?]?
CB: Yeah.
VH: We used to go round there, and the Boston Stump and all round that way, hmm.
CB: So you enjoyed that?
VH: I did [laughs].
CB: And what would, ‘cause – there was some famous station commanders, well not, commanding officers at Woodhall Spa. Do you remember Cheshire?
VH: Group Captain Cheshire, yeah.
CB: What do you make –
VH: Guy Gibson.
CB: What did you make of Cheshire? What did you think of him?
VH: I got on well with all of them, yeah.
CB: Can you remember –
VH: They were quite good to us, they were really good to all the ground staff really, you know, ‘cause they relied on us sort of thing to look after them, didn’t they? [Unclear, both laugh].
CB: Indeed they did [VH laughs]. Especially I think, erm, Leonard Cheshire, he was particularly fond of his –
VH: Yeah. Cheshire [unclear] at one time didn’t they?
CB: Yes. And he would come and talk to you at, you know, when you were mending the aircraft?
VH: Yes, I mean, when there was no raids on or anything and things were easier, we used to go out and have a drink with them sort of thing, you know, they were just like talking to anybody. Except when you’re on the parade ground it had to be ‘sir’ sort of thing, you know.
CB: Did you do much parade ground?
VH: Pardon dear?
CB: Were you on the parade ground very much? Did it, was that part of your life?
VH: Playground?
CB: The parade ground.
VH: Oh, we didn’t do a lot on the parade ground, no, because it was mostly time on the, looking after the aircraft, you know.
CB: So you missed some of that out?
VH: Yes, oh yeah, we didn’t have a lot to do on the parade ground really.
CB: What was the discipline like?
VH: Pardon?
CB: What was the –
VH: Discipline? Discipline was quite good, strict, you know. See, see, discipline didn’t really bother me because being in a home was run by all ex-army people, I was disciplined there. I had to march to school and everything, you know. So going in the Air Force, it didn’t really hit me.
CB: So your time in the, the children’s home –
VH: Made me more or less fit for the Air Force really.
CB: So you look back on those as happy days, and –
VH: They were, yeah. That home was very good. ‘Cause my daughter took me up there few years back didn’t you, and it’s not the same place now, it’s been taken over by retirement people, and when they knew I was one of the boys who had been there, ooh they shook my hand didn’t they [CB laughs] made quite a fuss of me.
CB: Were there girls there as well or was it just boys?
VH: No, just boys, yeah.
CB: And you made some good friends there?
VH: Yes I made some good friends there, yeah.
CB: Did you manage to keep in touch with them afterwards?
VH: One or two of them, but when I went with my daughter last time, and I saw one or two of the names in the church who’d been, passed away, and killed and that during the war. That really upset me.
CB: Hmm. So at Woodhall Spa, another CO was Tate. Did you, did you come across Willy Tate very much?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Willy Tate, he was –
VH: Willy Tate? I can’t remember dear.
CB: No.
VH: No. You meet that many people you know, you can’t remember all their names, sorta thing.
CB: No, no of course not.
VH: No.
CB: So tell me what you remember of Guy Gibson.
VH: I found him very very good. Very good to the ground staff. I think he was a bit trick [?] with the aircrew, but to the ground staff he was magnificent.
CB: Well, that’s wonderful. So, you got, did you have a relationship with him? Did he you know help you, or come and chat?
VH: Not really no. Just ‘how are you sir’ and ‘your aircraft’s ready’ and that sorta thing you know.
CB: When the planes came back from their raids, and they were –
VH: That was lovely seeing them come back [laughs].
CB: Yes.
VH: But when you’re waiting, and yours don’t come back you think ‘oh, has it crash landed somewhere’ or ‘has it landed at another airdrome?’ And eventually you hear it hadn’t come back. It really upset you.
CB: Hmm. And then it would be your job to, to mend them. And get them back right?
VH: Yeah.
CB: Hmm. So were there any events that you can remember at Woodhall Spa? You know, things like, I don’t know, collisions, or, you know –
VH: There been one or two crash landings. I seen crash landings, yeah.
CB: What did you – can you remember how you would –
VH: We didn’t do nothing to it, the air, er, the fire engines and everything used to go out to them.
Other: But you remember the – when they were training for the Dambusters don’t you?
VH: Pardon?
Other: When they training for the Dambusters.
VH Oh yeah, when they training for the Dambusters. We wondering what was happening because they was training for about two or three months before they actually done it, and they come over and did what we called hedge-hopping, just come over the hedge, just miss us, you know, and you think ‘what’s going on?’ [CB laughs]. And they kept it a secret right ‘till the night they went. When they came out that night they said ‘this is it,’ so we said, ‘what,’ ‘what we’ve been training for you know when we come back’ [CB and VH laugh].
CB: So they were –
VH: Very secretive, it was.
CB: Yes.
VH: But when they came back they said ‘we done it’ [laughs].
CB: Right [both laugh]. So was – that was at Scampton, were you at Scampton at all?
VH: No that was at, er, Woodhall Spa [emphasis].
CB: Right.
VH: I never went to Scampton. Only went there for my medals didn’t I? That’s all.
CB: Mm. So you – how do you remember your wartime career?
VH: Yes I can do, yeah.
CB: And you, how do you remember it, with –
VH: Well I think it was quite good really because the – I was disobedient at home so going to the Air Force, that was more or less the same, sorta life, sort of thing.
CB: Mm. So [pause] the – I think some of what the personnel, the aircrew at Woodhall Spa, they were, they were known for their pranks, some of them. And I suppose the low flying would have been one of them.
VH: It was, yeah.
CB: Did you have any, many air raids there?
VH: No not really, no.
CB: So you, the Germans didn’t attack you –
VH: No.
CB: At Woodhall Spa? It was [unclear]
VH: No, no, they came over when we were at Marham, Norfolk, when we had the first squadron of Mosquitos. I thought ‘this is it,’ flares came down but as soon as the gun fire opened up they went [both laugh].
CB: So do you remember any time – the time that Guy Gibson took off on the night he was killed? Do you remember anything about that?
VH: Er, he just came out, and he just said ‘I’m gonna take this aircraft’ and that’s it. Just didn’t come back.
CB: No, he was with Warwick –
VH: Mosquitos.
CB: Yes, because he wasn’t too familiar with them, was he?
VH: No.
CB: So –
VH: It could have been that you see.
CB: Yeah. Was he – do you remember what his manner was like, how he –
VH: He was – I found him quite good myself.
CB: But he wanted to get back flying, didn’t he? Do you remember anything about that particular night, as to how he was?
VH: No, he came out that night and says ‘do you mind if I take the, this Mosquito?’ and I said ‘no sir,’ and he just got in it and went.
CB: And what did you feel when he didn’t come back?
VH: Well I felt awful really, you know. I wondered what, if he really knew in his own heart whether he was going to do anything. You don’t know what’s in their mind, do you really?
CB: No, no you don’t. But you, you just thought it was just another, another plane that hadn’t come back.
VH: Yeah.
CB: You didn’t –
VH: That’s true.
CB: Did you know straight away that – I mean he could have landed somewhere else. When did you find out that –
VH: Ah, we didn’t find out for [pause] two, two, three hours after. They must have rung round to see if he’d landed anywhere else, but, he hadn’t, so.
CB: No.
VH: I think over the hills was it, in Kent I think, where he actually crashed, I think.
CB: He crashed in Holland.
VH: Yeah, oh was it Holland?
CB: Yeah.
VH: I knew it was somewhere –
CB: Yeah, coming back from an operation. So, you, you remember it with fondness, the –
VH: Pardon?
CB: You remember it with fondness, your time in Bomber Command –
Other: Fondness, you enjoyed it.
VH: Oh I, I enjoyed all my life [?], I loved Bomber Command.
CB: So –
VH: And everyone I worked with. We all seemed to be like a family, sort of thing, you know, we worked ever so well together, the ground staff and the air crew did.
CB: And you went to Lakenheath. Were the Americans there at Lakenheath when you were there?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Were the Americans at Lakenheath, when you were there?
VH: Was I –
CB: Was the –
Other: Were the Americans there? Were the Americans there?
VH: Americans? Oh yeah, they took over because it was a nice place, you see [CB laughs]. Better than where they were! It was all big buildings and they took over and we were put in Nissan huts! [Both laugh].
CB: What did you make of them? Did you, did you get on well with them?
VH: Well we, yeah they were alright [both laugh].
CB: Did you have better food when they were around?
VH: Oh yes, definitely yes. They got the best off [both laugh].
CB: And where were you? Were you in billets again at Lakenheath?
VH: Yeah.
CB: So erm, did you ever have to, you know, live in, with a family or anything like that, or were you always in billets?
VH: Er, in billets or Nissan huts, you know.
CB: Yes.
VH: Yeah.
CB: So, you’re coming towards the end of the war. How did you feel, you know, we’ve just had VE day. How did you feel? You know, was it a relief, or were you, how did you feel?
VH: Well, I don’t know really. I don’t know whether I was [unclear] in the Air Force, but I’d just got married before I came out, you see so –
CB: Right, so where did you meet your wife?
VH: In Nottingham.
CB: At a dance, or?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Was it at a dance? A dance?
VH: Dance?
Other: Where did you meet Mum?
VH: Oh, I was having a drink [both laugh].
CB: And you obviously looked, saw her, and, you know, liked each other. So how long was it before you got married?
VH: Only about six months I think. Yeah, wasn’t long [both laugh]. And I got lovely daughters and a lovely son, he’s passed away bless him, about three year ago innit?
Other: Hmm.
CB: And did you –
VH: I had two lovely children, they certainly looked after me, they still do [both laugh], don’t you chick? Somebody does.
CB: Do you remember getting married, and the rationing?
VH: Oh yes. I had a double wedding. That’s my wife up there.
CB: Oh, that’s lovely. Where did you get married?
VH: Hyson Green, yeah.
CB: Well, she looks very nice with her dress on. So, the rationing didn’t bother you very much?
VH: No. Said ‘are you gonna get married the usual?’ and I says ‘no.’ [Both laugh.]
CB: And where did you live after you were married?
VH: Nottingham, yeah.
CB: And when did the war – was the war finished by then?
VH: Oh yeah, it had finished, yeah.
CB: So you, you came out of the Air Force in –
VH: Out of the Air Force in 1946.
Other: You made your suit though didn’t you?
VH: Hmm.
Other: You made your suit.
VH: Yeah I made my suit.
CB: Oh wow! You made your own wedding suit, that’s –
VH: Yeah because, in that home where, that I was telling you about, there was all different trades, and I went in the tailoring department. I done four years at, four years apprenticeship before I joined the Air Force, so I made my wedding suit.
CB: You kept the skills going [both laugh]. So what did you do when you came out of the RAF?
VH: Er [pause], I went to the co-op [?], I was only there one day, and then, I went to Boots then and I was there for thirty year.
CB: Worked in Boots the chemists?
VH: Yeah.
CB: Oh, what did you do there?
VH: Making medicines and everything [unclear from Other].
CB: Oh.
VH: And then when they stopped making their own medicines, I went on security, and stuff like that.
CB: So you were there for a long time. In Nottingham all the time?
VH: Oh yes –
CB: You settled there.
VH: Never left Nottingham did I? I was at Boots thirty year I was at Boots.
CB: Did you keep in touch in your, you know, your friends and your comrades in the Air Force?
VH: No, no, never kept in touch with any of them.
CB: Although you had good relationships with them all? You didn’t feel –
VH: But we didn’t, we didn’t keep in touch with each other no.
CB: So, your thirty years, what did you – [unclear] didn’t work in those days did they, do your wife, your wife, didn’t work?
VH: My wife? Yeah she was working, yeah.
CB: Did she work?
VH: What was mum now?
Other: Machinist.
VH: Oh, machinist, that’s it [both laugh].
CB: And then you had your children.
VH: Yeah, two lovely children. And my grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, they’re all marvellous to me they are.
CB: What did you feel about how Bomber Command was treated after the war?
VH: In which way?
CB: Well, when Churchill made his speech, he didn’t, after the war, he didn’t mention Bomber Command.
VH: I know.
CB: Because of all the bombing, and –
VH: Yeah.
CB: How did you feel about that? And you’ve only just had your clasp that you’re entitled to. How did you feel, after the war, and how you were –
VH: I don’t think they treated them as they should have been treated, myself, because they’d done a marvellous job.
CB: And you – you’ve gone down, have you seen the memorial in London? Have you gone –
VH: No I haven’t, no.
CB: But you – have you gone back to any of your stations that you’ve been at, because –
Other: We’ve been to Conningsby, we’ve been to a few with you, I’ve taken you to a few haven’t I?
VH: Yeah.
Other: Woodhall Spa we’ve been to.
VH: Yeah.
Other: We’ve been to Scampton now but –
VH: Been to Scampton –
Other: [unclear] did you?
VH: Hmm.
CB: So you, you went back to Scampton recently, I think, when was that?
VH: Yes, er, that was when I had my [papers shuffling].
CB: Your medal. Your medal.
VH: In that book there. [Papers shuffling, pause].
CB: I think, er [pause] ah. And what did you [pause], how did you hear about this, did they get in touch with you?
VH: No, when I moved to here, to Retford, I lost my medals, so I wrote up to administrative ends [?] explained who I was, when I started and when I, when I got demobbed, and they dealt and sent them back, er, sent me a new lot.
CB: And how did you get to go to Scampton? Did they write to you?
Other: A gentleman from Scampton in the RAF came to us here, and said could they present them to him.
CB: Oh. So what did you feel about that?
VH: It was great, wasn’t it?
Other: It was lovely.
VH: All the family went, it was lovely.
Other: It was a very special day, yeah.
VH: Yeah.
CB: They made a fuss of you?
VH: Yeah [laughs].
CB: Well that’s a lovely, lovely thing to remember, isn’t it.
VH: It is, yeah.
Other: And they also presented medals to these gentlemen, they’d just come back from Afghanistan.
CB: It’s lovely. [Pause]. Right Vic, so –
VH: I went, I went out to get the aircraft ready, prepared because there was a raid on, when the crew came out, I was just sitting there, and I’d got this terrible pain, you know, they says ‘come on we want to go,’ and I says ‘I can’t get out!’ So they lifted me out, and they rushed me to Kings Lynn hospital, I got my appendix [laughs].
CB: Do you remember the hospital you were in?
VH: Er [slight pause], no, er, it was Kings Lynn, but I can’t think of the name of the hospital.
CB: And how long were you in there?
VH: I was only in there a couple of week, if that.
CB: It’s quite a long time these days [both laugh]. And then it says you were transferred to Addenbrookes.
VH: Yeah, yeah I had something wrong with my thumb –
CB: Right.
VH: And the Air Force made a mess of it, so I ended up in Addenbrookes to have me nail took off.
CB: So what do you remember about being in hospital?
VH: Not a lot really, well, when I came out I got a fortnight’s holiday, er, was a camp.
CB: What was the food like?
VH: Good [emphasis, both laugh].
CB: So you, they sorted out your appendix problem –
VH: Oh yes.
CB: And then you, you went back. So it was, [pause], that’s some sort of home, admitted to Stowe, erm, I can’t quite read that. Was it just some sort of home that just was like a convalescent home was it?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And you were in there for a little while.
VH: Hmm yeah, two weeks I think [chuckles].
CB: So they certainly looked after the –
VH: They certainly looked after you, yeah.
CB: [Pause]. So you’ve lived in Retford for, how long now?
VH: Ten years now, innit chick? My daughter got me over here so she can look after me [laughs], don’t you chick.
CB: Do you get involved in any Bomber Command, you know, reunions, or?
VH: Oh no –
Other: You’ve started to now.
VH: Started going to a bit now, haven’t we, yeah. Scampton. We’ve been to one or two dos there haven’t we?
Other: Mm.
VH: Where was it that we went the other week?
Other: Woodhall Spa.
VH: Oh yeah we went to Woodhall Spa the other week, at a reunion day.
Other: Scampton last week, and a Lancaster came over.
VH: Yeah [laughs]. The Red Arrows were there, giving a display weren’t they. Lovely.
CB: Well I think, think that’s about it Vic, that’s been very, very interesting.
VH: Thank you very much.
CB: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Victor Harding
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Clare Bennett
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-05-20
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Sound
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AHardingV150520
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Leading Aircraftsman Victor Harding.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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00:38:26 audio recording
149 Squadron
627 Squadron
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
ground crew
Lancaster
military living conditions
Mosquito
Nissen hut
RAF Bardney
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Kirkham
RAF Marham
RAF Woodhall Spa
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/540/8780/AGilbertAC161013.2.mp3
d34798a44bdedb497b506541d0fc1232
Dublin Core
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Title
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Gilbert, Alexander Charles
A C Gilbert
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Gilbert, AC
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Alexander Charles Gilbert DFC (b. 1921, 1336682, 186764 Royal Air Force) his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 9, 514 and 159 Squadrons. He was Awarded the Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2020.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Alexander Gilbert and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2016-01-13
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 13th of October 2016 and we’re with Squadron Leader Alexander Gilbert DFC at Cheddington near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, and we’re going to talk about his career in the RAF, which was a long one. What do you remember in the earliest recollections then Alex?
AG: What do you mean? Going way, right back?
CB: Right from when you were really young.
AG: Ah, well, my father was a Hansom cab driver in London.
CB: Oh right.
AG: He joined the Army at the outbreak of World War One and served right through. And because he’d been a Hansom cab driver and knew all about horses they, he was assigned to what they called the Rough Riders, looking after horses, taking them across the Channel to France, and training horses and occasionally going down to Spain to purchase more horses and mules that were brought back for service in France. And at the end of the war, he was at this, this re-mount depot as it was called, at Swaythling in Southampton and he stayed there, and of course, he was married at the time. And from there, what could we say? I started school aged five, and I went to an elementary school and I left at fourteen, and then I was training or trying to become something in the art world, and I attended art school in Southampton. And then in November 1940, I volunteered to join the RAF and was called forward for service on the 7th of April 1941 and despatched to Uxbridge, where I spent three or four days being interviewed and processed, sworn in, all that sort of thing, and then assigned to a trade, and I was told I was to be trained as a Flight Mechanic Air Frames. From there, along with others, I proceeded to Blackpool where I carried out my recruit training on Blackpool sands, accommodated in one of the well-known Blackpool boarding houses. The training, as I remember it, lasted about four, four or five weeks. Recruit training and then we were moved to nearby Kirkham to, to carry out the trade training. The flight mechanics course lasted, as I remember, about eight, eight to ten weeks. At the end of the course, we had a final examination and the top third who passed out were retained to carry on to do a fitter’s course. I was in the top third so I stayed behind and completed the two courses, and at the end of it, I was a Group One Tradesman, Fitter 2A as they called them. I then had my, my first posting which was to what had been Exeter Airport, which was now a station that was occupied by a Spitfire squadron. I was only there about four weeks when the squadron was moved to an airfield near London. The air, the air, the ground crew were not required because the airfield that they’d gone to, already had ground crew, so we were dispersed and posted to various stations and I was posted to Calshot. Calshot was a very dreary place, it hadn’t changed, I don’t think, since World War One. The accommodation was pretty grim, I always remember the beds we had were iron plated, sort of, you know bedsteads. Very, very uncomfortable. The working hours, we worked, weekdays, every day, eight hours a day. We also worked weekends, Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings. We had the afternoons off at weekends, but because Calshot was rather isolated, there wasn’t anywhere to go anyway. So altogether it was a place that I, I really did not like at all. Anyway, apart from the work that we had to do, we also did guard duty at night along the Calshot foreshore, because there was the talk at the time about invasion and all this business, so we, we did these guard duties as well as our normal work. A very cold and uncomfortable place in winter time I can assure you, on the Calshot foreshore, very uncomfortable indeed. In early 1942, it was about March I suppose, a letter was pinned on the notice board. It said that the aircraft industry was expanding and there was a shortage of skilled tradesmen. RAF fitters were invited to volunteer for a short secondment to the aircraft industry. I thought to myself this is a way of getting away from Calshot so I volunteered. I didn’t really know what I was getting into actually. They told me I, yeah, I was to report to an office in Oxford, which I did. When I arrived there they said you will be working at the Cowley Motor Works. It was no longer a motor works of course, they were turning out parts for Lancaster aircraft, and they said, ‘You will work on permanent nightshift’. You start at 8 o’clock in the evening and you worked until 6 o’clock the next morning, with an hour’s break at night, and that was the routine. They gave me an address to go to where I would be accommodated. It was a house in the backstreets of Oxford that was owned by a young couple in their early thirties I suppose, and it was obvious from the start that they resented having a lodger, so there was no welcome at all. The woman took me up to what was to be my room, which had a bed, a table and a chair and that was it. It was a very depressing place altogether. I spent the night there, and the next morning, I had the same reception from this couple, not a friendly attitude at all, so I waited till they’d gone to work, packed my small bag and went back to the office I’d first reported to. The woman I saw, I explained to her about this place and I said, ‘I’m not going to stay there’, I said, ‘I am not going to stay in that place. Can you give me a new address? Another address to go to?’ So she said, ‘Yes, I’ll do that’. She said, ‘Here’s an address in Cowley’. I went there, a very nice street, the house very nice. Nice, nice couple, middle aged couple. The husband worked as a chef at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford. She showed me to my room, very pleasant and comfortable, so that’s where I was whilst I worked at Cowley. The next day I reported to the Cowley Works to start work. The chap I saw said, ‘You will be working with a team of four’, there was already four there, ‘You’ll be, you’ll be number five, working with this team producing spars for the fuselage of Lancaster aircraft’. The four chaps turned out all to be Welshmen, they all came from the same place. They all knew one another well and I was taken into the team and we all got on quite well. That was it for the next five months or so. Then in early September, I received a letter to say that I was to be recalled and to report to Scampton, RAF Scampton, which I duly did, and on arrival at Scampton, I was told I was posted to 49 Bomber Squadron to work on Lancaster aircraft. I worked, I was on, on 49 Squadron through the winter of ’42/43, then in early ’43, I suppose it was about March time, a further letter appeared on a noticeboard to say that more and more four engine bomber squadrons were being formed, and there was a requirement for flight engineers, so I volunteered. At the time, there was no flight engineer training course and they said you would receive your training at the Rolls Royce works at Derby, and you would do a two week course on the Merlin engine and that would be it, which I did. After that, I was promoted to the rank of sergeant, given my flight engineer brevet, and then moved to Morton Hall where I would be crewed up. I got to Morton Hall and found that there were crews already there. There was the pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and the two air gunners and now they wanted a flight engineer. The way we were crewed up was the other engineers and myself were put in to a hut and told to line up along one wall. The pilots then came in and lined themselves up on the opposite wall, and the procedure was that the pilot would look across at the engineers, look at one that he thought would, would be ok and ask him, and I was approached by a chap called Colin Payne who said to me, ‘How would you like to join my crew?’ And I said, ‘Yes please. I would’, because I liked the look of him, and then he took me outside to introduce me to the other crew members and that was it. We were then moved to Winthorpe to do our conversion course on the Lancaster, which we did, and from there, we had our first operational posting and we were posted to 9 Squadron at Bardney. While we were there, we did ten operations, including the three to Hamburg [pause]. At the time the squadrons, the Stirling squadrons in 3 Group were being converted to Lancasters, and new squadrons were starting to be formed. We were told that a new squadron was being formed at Foulsham, and was to be called 514 Squadron. It appears that they wanted two or three experienced crews to start the squadron off and then new crews would be added. So we duly reported to Foulsham where we did four operations with the newly formed 514 Squadron. The last of the four operations was to Berlin and when we were briefed, we were told that when we completed the operation, ‘You will not be returning to Foulsham. You will fly straight to Waterbeach’, which was to be the home of 514 Squadron, which was a rather odd thing to do because we had our belongings and all that sort of thing, and in, somebody wrote up afterwards what this was all about and there’s the letter there. Is that the one? The top one. “Get on your bike” or something, it says.
CB: “Posted via Berlin. Take [take] your bike”.
AG: That’s it. “Take your bike”, yeah. Yeah. I mean, this was the thing which you normally, they would never allow you to take anything.
CB: No.
AG: But we took all our stuff with us to Berlin and then to Waterbeach.
CB: Because you were moving airfield.
AG: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so that was that. So we arrived at Waterbeach, whilst we were at Waterbeach, we did another ten operations. So, so far we’d done ten at Bardney, ten at Waterbeach and I had done, and the four at Foulsham, a total of twenty four. The crew actually had done twenty five, there was one operation that I couldn’t go on because I had developed a nasty quinsy in my throat, and I couldn’t fly for three or four days, so I did one less operation than the rest of the crew. However, when they’d done twenty five and I’d done twenty four, we were then told that you had completed your first tour. Now this was five short of the normal thirty operations. The reason for this, I don’t know, whether it was because of the fourteen operations we’d done with 514 Squadron, ten of them had been to Berlin. Ten. Whether it was because of that, I don’t know but they said, ‘You have completed your first tour’ [pause]. The crew were then dispersed, of course, and posted to various training units. I stayed with Colin and we were posted as instructors to Number 3 LFS at Feltwell [pause], where we were until the, towards the end of the year. Well, we were, this was 1944, Colin said to me, ‘How would you like to go back on operations?’ I said, ‘Well I don’t mind’, so he said, ‘We will be posted to 149 Squadron at Methwold’, he said, ‘And I’ll try and contact some of the old crew members and ask them to join us’. He managed to contact the wireless operator and the rear gunner, and they duly arrived to join us at Methwold. We then picked up a new navigator, a new bomb aimer and a new gunner to replace the Australian. The Australian, by the way, was given a choice, having completed a tour of operations, either to stay in England or to go home to Australia, and he elected to go home. Now, among the operations we did with 149, we did the Dresden operation. We went to Dresden and we also did two Manna operations, dropping food. In our case, we dropped food to people in Rotterdam and The Hague [pause], and that was shortly before the war ended. At the end of the war, we started to get demobbed. I had been offered a four year extension, I didn’t know what I was going to do, by the way. I was married by that time, and my wife Dorothy had been a WAAF MT driver at Waterbeach. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, and as I was offered this four year extension of service, I thought, I’ll take it and then make up my mind later about my future career or whatever. Anyway, I took the four year extension of service, stayed with the squadron until it was disbanded in January 1948, but during that time we did various exercises. We had a three, three, three or four day detachment to Trondheim in Norway, we did a trip to Juvincourt to bring back these chaps who’d been in the Army and been prisoners of war. We had an attachment to Gatow in Berlin, we did a tour of Germany by air, looking at some of the stations that we had bombed, some of the towns that we had bombed to see what it all looked like, and we had this trip to Pomigliano in Italy, and we had this two week detachment in the Canal Zone [pause]. And then, when the squadron was finally disbanded, there was no requirement, of course, for flight engineers, bomb aimers, air gunners or anything like that. The only aircrew they wanted to retain, were pilots and navigators, so I was transferred from the GD branch to the secretarial branch [pause]. I had two short, short postings, one to Watton and one to Bletchley Park which, at that time was the headquarters of Central Signals Area. You weren’t allowed in the house at that time, everything was all locked up and no one ever spoke about what, what was done at Bletchley during the war. No one ever said a word about it. One of the jobs I had to do whilst I was at Bletchley was opening the mail that came in, and one morning I opened the mail, opened this post gram, and found that I was posted to Hong Kong and I was posted to 367 Signals Unit, which was a Y station on Hong Kong Island. I travelled to Hong Kong by way of Singapore, on the troop ship Orbita, which took some five weeks to get to Singapore. I spent three of four days in Singapore and then boarded a Dakota aircraft to get to Hong Kong. We stopped on the way at Saigon to refuel and have something to eat, and the whole trip took eight and a half hours in this Dakota, and then arrived in Hong Kong. At the time, it was at the time that Chairman Mao was winning the war in China and people were flooding in to Hong Kong. Rich Chinese people who could afford anything, and any spare accommodation in Hong Kong was taken up by these people. So in our case, we were, I was occupied in the mess at Kai Tak, and it was a question of applying to get my wife to come and join me, which would take some time, and you just went on the married quarters waiting list, and again there were very few married quarters in Hong Kong, so you just had to wait a long time to get one. Anyway, my wife arrived in September with our newly born young girl, Janet, my daughter, and we were accommodated, like a lot of others, in one room in a hotel. Not, again, not very comfortable, waiting to be allocated a married quarter, but anyway, things in this hotel, it was hot, humid, again terribly uncomfortable, and every day I used to buy the China News, news, newspaper and see if there was any sort of accommodation being advertised. One day I bought the paper, and there was an advert in there which said there was an English family who worked in Hong Kong going home on leave, and their flat would be available. Offers were asked for, so I wrote, I sat down and wrote a letter which brought tears to the eyes of anyone who read it, and posted it off to this man called Alex MacLeod, who owned this flat. A couple of days later, he rang me up at the hotel and he said could I come over and have a chat with him and his wife, so Dorothy and I went across to the island, because our hotel was located in Kowloon on the mainland, and he took me up to the flat, introduced me to Joan, his wife, and after a short conversation they said, ‘We’re going to offer you the flat’. So we moved out of the hotel and into this flat, which we occupied for about two months whilst they were away in England. When they were due back, strangely enough, I rose to the top of the married quarters list and was offered a married quarter, so we moved in to the quarter and there we stayed until I completed my tour in Hong Kong in September 1953 [pause].
CB: We’ll just pause there for a mo.
AG: Do you want to go on there because we were now –?
CB: Yeah. Give you a –
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok.
AG: Right.
CB: So you’re in Hong Kong.
AG: In Hong Kong, completed nearly three years in Hong Kong, and when I came home, I was posted to 3513 FCU, Fighter Control Unit in Devonport as adjutant of the unit. We had an operational outstation at Hope Cove with a small staff at Hope Cove and [pause], I’m trying to get my thoughts right here. I completed a tour at 3513 and was then posted to 24 Group on the P staff. This was in Lincolnshire and –
CB: So what was P staff?
AG: P staff. P2 was Postings –
CB: Right.
AG: Postings of officers [pause]. I’d been there a short time and it was decided that the P staffs at Groups headquarters would be, would be closed down and they were no longer required, and so I was then posted to our headquarters, Technical Training Command at Brampton, again on the P staff [pause]. And whilst I was there my, I was then granted a permanent commission on the general list [pause]. From then I had various postings, I had two and a half years at SHAEF headquarters in Fontainebleau in France.
CB: What did you do there?
AG: I was the adjutant of the RAF support unit. Each of the nationalities at Fontainebleau, there were the British, the Americans, Canadians, French of course, they each had their own support staff and I was the adjutant of the RAF support staff [pause]. After that, my next posting was as recruiting officer at Brighton [pause], from there, I was posted to Headquarters Transport Command at Upavon, where I was the P1 staff officer responsible for courts martial boards of enquiry and all that sort of thing. I was there for only a few months when I was promoted to Squadron Leader and posted to the record office at Barnwood in Gloucester, where I was on the staff of the air commodore, the AOC [pause]. I did just over two years there and then I was posted to Aden on a twelve month unaccompanied tour of Aden. Whilst I was in Aden, they had a peculiar arrangement in Aden at the time. It was nearing the time when we were planning to get out of Aden anyway, to leave it and they had what they called continuity posts, which was a posting of two and a half years where you could be accompanied by your wife and family. A non-continuity post was a twelve month unaccompanied tour post which I, which I was in. Again, Aden, a dreadful place, we should have got out of Aden years ago but it wasn’t until 1967 that we finally left. I completed the twelve month unaccompanied tour, and on arrival back at the UK, was posted to Headquarters Strike Command at High Wycombe where I was on the aug staff [pause]. From there, I was posted to the Air Ministry on the staff of the director of manning. I did three and a half years at Adastral House in Holborn, which was part of the Air Ministry at the time. Nearing the end of my service, I had a final posting to Stanmore Park, where I was the deputy CO of Stanmore Park and that was my final posting, having then completed thirty five years in the service [pause]. Knowing that I was to be, leave the service in the October 1976, I had already started to formulate what I was going to do when I left the service, and I had applied for a job with the University of Buckingham, which I got. They had an offshoot of the University at Chalfont St Giles. By this time, of course, we’d bought this house in Cheddington, and the journey between here and Chalfont St Giles was twenty two miles. Anyway, which I had to do every day but I thought, well I’d got the job, and it seemed quite a good job looking after the admin side of the University of Buckingham at Chalfont. I had been interviewed for the job along with three others. They’d had a large number of applications to get this job, but anyway, there was three others and myself who were interviewed for this job. We spent a day at Chalfont, the morning we spent touring the place, and in the afternoon, the interviews were carried out, and the interview for each one of us lasted about three quarters of an hour or so, and we sat there then waiting to see who’d got the job, and at the end of the afternoon, the Vice Chancellor came in and said, ‘We’ve decided to give the job to Squadron Leader Gilbert’. So I thought, right. That was it. Now, this was before I had left the service. He said, ‘We will keep the job open for you until you leave the service in October’ [pause]. Shortly before I retired, I was in my office at, at Stanmore Park and I had a phone call from the Air Ministry, and they said, ‘We notice that you live near Halton’, they said, ‘Would you be interested in a retired officer job at Halton? The job would be for ten years after you leave the service and’, they said, ‘You’ll have to be interviewed of course, at Headquarters Air Cadets’. And I said, ‘Well, I’ll go there. I’m quite interested to find out what it’s all about’. So I, I went to Headquarters Air Cadets for this interview along, along with a number of others, and again at the end of the afternoon, the group captain, who was in charge of the interview board, came and said, ‘We’ve decided to offer the job to Squadron Leader Gilbert’. So I thought, right, I’ve got two jobs now. I’ve got the offer of a job at Halton and the job at Chalfont St Giles, and I thought, well to be very honest, Halton is quite close here, I would know all the routine of the service. I would still be in uniform as a squadron leader at Halton for ten years secure, secure employment, so I thought, well I will have to try, try and take this job. So I rang the Vice Chancellor at Chalfont and said, ‘Could I come down and see you?’ Which I did. I went down to him and explained what it was all about and I said, ‘To be quite honest, this job at Halton, I really know all about it. I know the routine of the service, it’s quite near my home and I feel that really, I ought to take this job’. He said, ‘I quite understand’, he said, ‘We will find somebody else’, and he said, ‘I wish you the best of luck’. So I started at Halton. I was the wing admin officer of Herts and Bucks Wing, Air Training Corps, and my job was taking care of all the ATC squadrons in Hertfordshire and in Bucks, and I completed that job for ten years. And that, I think, is the end of it.
CB: You decided to retire completely at age sixty five.
AG: At sixty five, I thought I have done enough. I have never been unemployed and I thought I’d, I’d done quite enough and that’s it.
CB: Very good. Let’s have a break.
[Recording paused]
CB: Geoff, thanks, sorry Alex. Thanks very much for all that stuff. What I want to do is run through some individual items. One of the things we touched on was Manna.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Now, this is quite important in a lot of ways, so could you just tell us how did you get involved in that and what, what happened and how did you feel?
AG: Well on the, towards the end of the war, we were told that the people in Holland were starving and a lot were dying. In fact, I was told eventually that twenty thousand Dutch people died of starvation, so we were told that we were to take part in what we was called Operation Manna. The word comes, you probably know –
CB: From heaven.
AG: The word comes from the bible, and when the Israelites and Moses were driven out of Egypt, they were starving and Moses prayed for them to get food, and it appears that a heavy dew descended on the land. This dew was sweet tasting and the Israelites were able to eat this stuff and so survive. And that is where, and Moses said, ‘This is Manna from heaven’, and that’s the way it came about. We did two food drops, one to Rotterdam, one to the Hague, flew to Holland with bomb bay laden with food and as we came in, in to the park at low level and dropped the food the people who’d gathered there all started shouting and cheering and all the rest of it. It was a sight that I will always remember, and it made us feel that we’d done something that was really worthwhile and that is the Manna story as far as I’m concerned.
CB: Then when you got back? So, you then got back and then what?
AG: Well got back and as I say, we did the two, two trips and then we just carried on with normal squadron duties.
CB: Right.
AG: But this happened, people don’t seem to realise that these drops took place while the war was still on. The Germans had agreed that they would not interfere with the Operation Manna.
CB: And what height and speed did you do this?
AG: We came in about five hundred feet, and the food was all in sacks on a wooden sort of arrangement. A pallet as they called it, a wooden pallet, and the food was all in sacks and the pallet was just dropped on to the park.
CB: A moving experience.
AG: Yeah. Very much so. Very much so. Never forget these people.
CB: No.
AG: Who were all so pleased to see us.
CB: And after the war did you ever go to Holland?
AG: No. No. No. Oh I went, when I was at Fontainebleau.
CB: Oh you did?
AG: I used to go, go up there occasionally. Oh yes. Yeah.
CB: Right.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Thank you.
[Recording paused]
CB: Now we’re just going on to your role as a flight engineer, because the flight engineer’s activities were actually quite busy. If we start with take-off, could you describe the take-off process and how the flight engineer gets involved in that, and what he does?
AG: Well at take-off, we go down the runway, the pilot takes the aircraft in to the air, and as he does so, the flight engineer gets the undercarriage up and adjusts the flaps, and that’s, that’s about it until you’re up. And er –
CB: But in fact, you take over the throttles at an early stage, so can you just describe that?
AG: And, and, yes, once you’re airborne at flying height, then you adjust the throttles to whatever speed, you know, the pilot wants, and the bombing height of course was between eighteen and twenty thousand feet each time. And that was it. Most of the trips took about four and a half to five hours, but of course, a trip like Dresden, we were airborne for eight and a half hours, and we went in across Germany but when we came out, we went north and flew over Denmark and came home, home that way.
CB: Right. So when you’re flying as an engineer, what do you do?
AG: Well, you’re doing really the log more than anything and anything else the pilots wants you to do, but normally, I mean, the whole crew would settle down really, and you were just airborne hoping you wouldn’t be attacked by a night fighter.
CB: Yeah. So when you fill in the log, what are you filling in and with what frequency?
AG: The frequency was about every half hour or so and you would put in what you thought was the fuel consumption at the time.
CB: So how –
AG: That sort of thing. Yes.
CB: How do you work out the transfer of fuel and what do you do?
AG: Yes. Well, you know that you’re on, say, a particular tank for a certain time and that it was time to transfer or refill that tank or whatever and you would do. It didn’t happen all that often of course, I forget now how many, how many petrol tanks there were on the Lancaster, I think it was two to three at each wing, something like that. I forget those details now, it’s too long ago and regrettably, all the booklets I had on the Lancaster I kept for many years, but with all my travels, eventually they were all discarded.
CB: I’ve got a pilot –
AG: Regrettably.
CB: I’ve got a –
AG: My daughter always swears at me, she says, ‘you should have kept all that stuff, Dad’.
CB: Yeah.
AG: You should have kept it all. Well I know that is true now but hindsight is all very well, isn’t it?
CB: Well perhaps it wasn’t so important then. I’ve got a –
AG: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: I’ve got a pilot’s notes, I’ll lend it to you.
AG: That’s right. Yeah. Well I had all the notes on the Lancaster, I could tell you all about it.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yes. Yeah.
CB: Now, why are you moving fuel?
AG: Because of weight, weight really, to get an evenly balanced aircraft.
CB: So you –
AG: That’s the only, only reason I can recall.
CB: So you’re moving it from the outer tanks to the inner ones, are you?
AG: That’s right, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So we finish the sortie and you’re coming in to land. What does the, what’s the tasks, the role of the flight engineer?
AG: Well once we’re on the circuit and we were called in, then it was undercarriage down and just standing by the pilot, and that was it really, making any engine adjustment as we came in. That was all. Yeah.
CB: So back on the stage of taking off, at what point and how do you balance the engines? Synchronise the engines.
AG: Once you’d got to a certain height.
CB: Right.
AG: Once you’d got to a certain height, yeah. Yeah.
CB: And the purpose of that is?
AG: Well you stayed on that, on that engine arrangement whilst, you know, whilst you were in flight. You could have been on that for some time.
CB: But –
AG: Some time without any change. You weren’t constantly changing. I mean, let’s be honest about it, with these operations, a lot of the time, a lot of the crew were doing nothing. Nothing. I mean the bomb aimer, he was doing nothing down in the front. The ones who were working the hardest were the pilot and the navigator. The wireless operator wasn’t allowed to transmit whilst you were over Germany, and the two gunners were just sat there, hoping that the aircraft wouldn’t be attacked. So there were long periods of inactivity let’s say, on the part of a lot of the crew.
CB: So you did a complete tour and other sorties as well.
AG: Yeah.
CB: How reliable was the aircraft and what sort of snags did you come up against?
AG: The aircraft was very reliable because your ground crew were the same people. You had the same engine fitter, the same air frame chap and the same armourer who looked after your aircraft. So after an operation, normally, you would go down to the flight lines, and they would say, ‘We’ve checked everything over. Will you give it an air test?’ So just Colin and I would clamber aboard the aircraft, go up for about twenty minutes, make sure that everything was working all right and land, and that was the air test after they’d serviced the aircraft, and that used to happen practically every time. Yeah.
CB: Now going back to the beginning of your career, in volunteering to join the forces, there was basically an option between the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. What prompted you to make the decision you did?
AG: I just didn’t want to join the Army or the Navy, and I thought I want to join, join the Air Force and that was it.
CB: To what extent did the Air Forces activities in the early part of the war, inspire people of your age? So, Battle of Britain, that sort of thing?
AG: Oh well, yes. You see our home was in Southampton, and out of interest, while I was training on that flight mechanics course at Kirkham, I had a phone call from my sister who said, ‘Last night, our house was destroyed’. It was bombed. She said, ‘We’re all alright, Dad and Mum because we were in an air raid shelter nearby, a service shelter and so we’re all alright’. And when I was in, told my flight commander, he said, ‘So you’re family are ok, are they? Nobody’s injured. No?’ I said, ‘No’. He said, ‘Then we can’t spare you any time off to go home’, so that was that. But in Southampton, before I joined the Air Force of course, the Battle of Britain was going on. The first RAF fighter pilot to get the VC got it over Southampton.
CB: Nicholson.
AG: Nicholson. And he was the first one and I saw him come down.
CB: Did you really?
AG: And he landed near where I lived, yeah, and it was all that sort of thing that inspired one. Oh yes, you know, join the RAF. That’s, that’s, that’s the place to join.
CB: Exciting.
AG: Exciting. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, just across the water, the Itchen, was the Supermarine Works.
CB: In the Isle of Wight.
AG: Was the first place to build the Spitfire aircraft, because the Spitfire, when the trials took place before the war, took place at Eastleigh Airport near Southampton.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah. So, and of course, the man who invented the Spitfire, RJ Mitchell, lived in Southampton at the time. In fact, there’s the plaque on the house now where he lived.
CB: What was the reaction of your parents to the destruction of their home?
AG: Ahh well, they, it was just one of the, I mean, this was happening all the time during the war and they rapidly found a place nearby. A house that they rented for the rest of the war.
CB: But they’d owned their own home before.
AG: No, it was a council house.
CB: Oh, was it? Right.
AG: It was a council, yes, it was a council house, and so that was that. So they rented this place whilst the war was on, and after the war, they rebuilt the council house where they’d lived and they went back to the same spot in a new house.
CB: Did they really?
AG: Yeah.
CB: And what about your sister’s reaction?
AG: [laughs] Well, well, you know it was all sorts of things. Strange things happening during the war and you just accepted it and, you see, you know in Southampton, I forget how many people were killed, between four and five hundred in air raids, and well this was what was going on. People, you know, in those days really didn’t complain as much as they complain today.
CB: Your sister is older than you or younger?
AG: Older.
CB: Older.
AG: Older. Yes.
CB: So did she have -?
AG: She, she, she, she, she was married and they lived in rooms in Southampton, because again, this question of accommodation, you know, wasn’t easy. Yes. And they lived in two rooms in Southampton.
CB: Was there a requirement by the government that people should give up space for people to live with them, because of the shortage of housing, or how did it work?
AG: I didn’t ever hear that was actually pressed all that much. No, no I didn’t, I didn’t. The only other thing I, I remember about the house being destroyed, was some of my belongings in it of course, and there was a compensation scheme and I got sixteen pounds compensation for the loss of my belongings in that.
CB: Right.
AG: When, when that happened.
CB: How did you feel about that?
AG: Sixteen. Well I thought, this isn’t much but in those days, again, sixteen pounds wasn’t bad.
CB: No.
AG: Wasn’t bad, no, so that was it.
CB: Changing now to when you joined the RAF and started your technical training.
AG: Yeah.
CB: How did that go? How was it set out, mapped out as a course and what did you do in the course?
AG: Well it, for each subject that you were taught, they had corporals as instructors, and you just attended this classroom and on a particular day or week they, you were, well they would talk about air frames or, or whatever. Yeah. I can’t, to be honest, I can’t remember a great deal about that.
CB: No.
AG: It was just that you attended class every day and that was it. Yes. Yeah.
CB: And then you went on to the more advanced operate, as a mechanics course.
AG: Yes. The –
CB: So how different was that?
AG: The fitter’s course was more advanced.
CB: Right.
AG: Yes, and again the detail, after seventy five years, I cannot remember.
CB: No.
AG: But we did this advanced fitter’s course and that lasted another six weeks or so, so altogether I was at Kirkham –
CB: Yeah.
AG: You know, for quite some time, doing the two courses.
CB: Yeah. Now when you were at Calshot then, on the board, a notice appeared saying they were looking for aircrew, what prompted you to –?
AG: No. At Calshot, they were looking for people to volunteer to work in the aircraft industry.
CB: Ah, that was the aircraft industry.
AG: That was the aircraft industry.
CB: Right. Ok.
AG: That’s right. Yes.
CB: So what prompted you to do that?
AG: Well I saw it as a way of getting out of Calshot.
CB: Yes.
AG: To be quite honest, I thought I’ll get away from this dreary place but I didn’t realise what I was getting in to, because the work in the aircraft industry was jolly hard. And long hours, long hours. I mean, 8 o’clock in the evening till 6 o’clock the next morning with an hour’s break in the middle of the night, and that was –
[phone ringing]
AG: Ah –
CB: Stop for a mo.
[Recording paused]
AG: Is that yours?
CB: No, it’s yours.
AG: That was, that was, that was as I said, I didn’t –
CB: This was at Cowley.
AG: I didn’t know what I‘d let myself in for.
CB: No.
AG: But if I’d, if I’d have known, I probably wouldn’t have volunteered.
CB: Yes.
AG: But however yeah, well it was because it was long hours.
CB: Yeah.
AG: And it was every night of the week except one. We had one night off at the end of the week.
CB: So, so what exactly were you making that was part of the Lancaster?
AG: These spars for the fuselage.
CB: Right.
AG: Yeah.
CB: So they’re effectively the circles of structure that hold the –
AG: That’s right.
CB: Skin together.
AG: Yeah. That hold the skin together. That’s it.
CB: Right.
AG: That was, yeah, yeah, along with these four Welshmen.
CB: But you got on well together so that was good.
AG: Oh we got along well together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So then you mentioned that you were recalled by the RAF to go back to a, to the front line as it were.
AG: Yeah.
CB: And you went to 49 Squadron. What did you do?
AG: Well I went to Scampton first.
CB: Scampton. What did you do there?
AG: Which was the base station.
CB: Yeah.
AG: As they called it.
CB: Ok.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Scampton so –
AG: One of the satellites was 49 Bomber Squadron.
CB: Right.
AG: And that’s where I went and –
CB: Doing what?
AG: Working on Lancasters.
CB: Right. What sort of things were you doing on the Lancaster?
AG: Well anything that needed doing to the fuselage or whatever, yeah, anything.
CB: How did the ground crews on the front line squadrons react to damage to the aircraft from flak and so on?
AG: Well, again, people just got on with it, you know. If there was damage, you just repaired it and that was it. Yeah.
CB: How did, how did you put patches on?
AG: Oh well with, with rivets or whatever, but again, getting into the detail of all this now, Chris, I’m afraid I can’t –
CB: That’s ok.
AG: I can’t remember it all.
CB: It’s ok. It’s simply that on some planes that had fabric.
AG: Oh yes, yeah, but certainly –
CB: So that I’m drawing a –
AG: But certainly not the –
CB: Differentiation.
AG: Lancaster.
CB: No.
AG: No.
CB: No.
AG: No.
CB: Ok. So there you are, working on the ground as a rigger.
AG: As a fitter.
CB: Fitter –
AG: Fitter.
CB: I should say.
AG: Fitter. Fitter Group 1 tradesman. Yes.
CB: Group 1 tradesman, and at that point, another letter appears inviting you to –
AG: At that point, another letter appears calling for volunteers.
CB: Yeah.
AG: To become flight engineers.
CB: What attracted you to that prospect?
AG: Well, I thought, well that sounds alright. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give that a go. So I volunteered and as I say, after a very short interview, they said, ‘Right. There is no training course at the moment, at the present time for flight engineers, but you will do a two week training course at the Rolls Royce Works at Derby’, and that’s where I went.
CB: And that’s where you did your engine training.
AG: And I did on the Merlin engine. Price. Predominantly they talked about the Merlin engine.
CB: Yeah.
AG: And the engine handling characteristics and all this sort of thing. Yeah. That was quite good there, Derby, I mean two weeks wasn’t a long time really. It wasn’t a long training course, was it?
CB: No.
AG: But at the end of it, they said, ‘You’re now a sergeant, here’s your brevet’, and that’s it and, ‘You will be assigned to a crew’.
CB: So this officer selects you at the Heavy Conversion Unit did he?
AG: At, at the squadron.
CB: Yeah.
AG: At the squadron.
CB: At the squadron.
AG: You were just, you had this short interview.
CB: Straight to the squadron.
AG: A very short interview.
CB: ‘Cause they didn’t have a –
AG: Yes.
CB: Heavy Conversion Unit then.
AG: No. No.
CB: No.
AG: A short interview.
CB: Right.
AG: Whilst you were on the squadron
CB: Yeah.
AG: And then they said, ‘Right. You’re, yeah, we’ll take you as a flight engineer, and you’ll do your training at Derby’.
CB: Yeah.
AG: And that was it.
CB: So you join the squadron, you get in the aircraft. Now how do you feel about your situation?
AG: Once we’d started operations you mean?
CB: Yes.
AG: Ah. I think if you speak to anyone who’s done operations during the war, the first operation, you weren’t worried at all about it because you didn’t know anything about it, and off you went and you quickly, you quickly found out what it was all about, and it was thereafter that you felt a bit twingy at times. Yes. But not on the first operation because you didn’t know anything about it, about operations but thereafter, well. And of course, the whole thing about operations was luck. It was nothing to do with skill or anything else, it was pure luck if you got through a tour of operations. On 514, we were the first crew to complete a tour of operations. The first one.
CB: Right. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
AG: We were very lucky as I say.
CB: So, on, on operations then, these can last anything up to eight hours.
AG: Yeah.
CB: You did a whole tour and more.
AG: Yeah.
CB: So how would you describe the sort, the operations you went on? Were they eventful or quiet or what were they?
AG: No. The, to start with, the operations on Hamburg if you remember, there were three operations over a period of four days and we did three of the, we did all three of the four.
CB: Right.
AG: And after the first one, then a couple of days later, or perhaps it was the next night we went out again, but according to the logbook, you can see by the logbook, when you were a hundred miles away, you saw the light in the air, and that was Hamburg burning, and then you got near and you did your sortie and you did it. And then, as I say, we did three to Hamburg, three, three trips to Hamburg. Certainly you remember that well enough and –
CB: What was the reaction of the crew to that?
AG: Well, you know, they [laughs], we just thought, well there you are. In fact, in the logbook too, there’s the piece of paper which is a “News of the World” report who interviewed us. In the logbook.
CB: Yes.
AG: In the back there.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Somewhere. And that was after one of the Berlin trips, and I said to them, I said to this reporter at the time, ‘After the war, I’d like to go to Berlin and tour around to see what it looks like’, and it’s in the newspaper report.
CB: Right. So was it just a curiosity or –?
AG: Curiosity.
CB: Yeah.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
CB: To know how it had worked.
AG: That’s right.
CB: This, this article says, “Blood red pall –
AG: Yeah.
CB: Over the heart of Nazi Germany”. Right.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
AG: Yeah.
CB: And did you get attacked on any occasions or how did that work?
AG: No. No. Never, never got attacked. Never. No.
CB: So the gunners were keeping an eye out.
AG: The gunner was keeping an eye out, yeah, poor old Twinny in the, in the, the rear gunner, he often used to get off the aircraft with frost on his moustache. He was the only one who had a moustache and he had the frost on the moustache. It must have been pretty, pretty grim for him.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah. Especially when the flight was eight, eight, we, as I say, the longest flight was the Dresden one. That was eight and a half hours, but then there was the Nuremberg one which was quite a long flight, and the Munich one was a very long flight. So there were quite, quite a few long flights where poor old Twinny was freezing in the back.
CB: The Nurem –
AG: There was supposed to be some sort of heating but it’s quite often it wasn’t working. It didn’t work anyway. There you are.
CB: The Nuremberg one was clear weather and the loss rate was very high. What do you remember particularly about that?
AG: I remember that very, a great deal, the loss rate of aircraft was nearly a hundred. Nearly a hundred aircraft and so you’ll, you know, well there again, I thought, good God, you know. What are we doing, doing this? But there you are, but that was, that was the worst night of the war for the, for Bomber Command. Yeah.
CB: In what way did you feel –?
AG: Well because of the, the loss rate.
CB: Did you see bombers go down? Other bombers.
AG: At times, at times, at times you did, ‘cause over the target, you were sort of going in there about eighteen, eighteen to twenty thousand feet, but the German night fighters would fly above you and drop what they called candle flares, and these things slowly floated down and lit up the whole area.
CB: With a view to enabling them to see.
AG: With a view, with a view to them picking out the aircraft to attack.
CB: Right.
AG: And you were lucky that you weren’t attacked. Yeah. And again, the bombing run was the hair raising bit, because you came in and you had to go straight and level over the target so the bomb aimer could put his sights right and drop the bombs, but that again, was the hair raising bit, that bit where you had to go the same height for about three or four minutes.
CB: And then –
AG: Over the target.
CB: After the bomb release you still had to go straight and level.
AG: After the –
CB: To take the picture.
AG: Yeah. That’s right and then of course you got out as quickly as you could. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Always one way? Predictably always left or always right or what was it?
AG: Not always one way. Normally straight out and away, but I know the thought at the time was let’s get the hell out of here but again, you had to do your job.
CB: Yeah.
AG: And do that bombing run correctly.
CB: Yes. So you talked about Munich, what was partic, apart from the distance, what was particularly memorable about that.
AG: Again, I can’t, well, well no, I don’t. We just went to Munich, did the operation and that was it. Yeah.
CB: And then you mentioned Dresden. What’s memorable about Dresden?
AG: Dresden, I remember Dresden quite well because there was a lot of cloud over Dresden. A lot of cloud.
CB: At your height.
AG: At, at, at yes, well and below us, cloud below us. Yes, cloud below us. I do remember that quite, quite well, but again, we did the bombing run and of course, as you say, as you know with the bombing run, you were aiming your bombs at the Pathfinder markers.
CB: Yes.
AG: Yes. You know.
CB: Were they clearly visible?
AG: Yes. The red or the green markers and you were told at the briefing which ones to go for.
CB: Ah, right.
AG: To aim the bombs at.
CB: And on occasions did the, depending on where you were in the bombing stream, did the markers become obliterated by the fires and the smoke?
AG: Oh yes, yes, well they, yeah, that could happen quite easily. Yes, oh yes. The Pathfinders could drop the markers but then the fires would overcome them. Yes. That –
CB: And did they re-mark?
AG: No. Well, you heard of tales that they remarked, you know. You heard of Guy Gibson and how brave he was at doing this, and they used to hover around the target for some time but there you are. Yeah.
CB: So thinking of the war in total, what was the most memorable point in your perspective?
AG: Memorable points about the war. To start with getting away from Calshot was quite memorable I must say, working at the Cowley works was quite memorable. The Manna operation was, I suppose, one of the most memorable because to see the way that those people reacted when you dropped the food. I guess that was one of the most memorable.
CB: Their appreciation.
AG: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the way, the way they all responded when the thing hit the ground, you could tell. There was cheering and shouting and all waving their arms and all this business. Yeah.
CB: And –
AG: I remember that very well.
CB: Yes.
AG: Yeah.
CB: So when you got back from a sortie, there was always a de-brief. What was the de-brief after Manna flights?
AG: Well nothing very much, they just wanted to know whether the thing had gone, you know, because there wasn’t any hindrance as there would have been on an operation, a proper bombing operation. I mean, everything was there, quiet and you just came in to the park quietly and you did your drop. There was no interference from anybody. As I say the Germans had agreed that they would not interfere with Manna.
CB: And did you make the drop of the food at a reduced speed or the normal speed?
AG: No. At reduced speed, reduced speed. Yeah.
CB: To what?
AG: Yeah. Well I forget, but we reduced it so we were above stalling height, you know. To make the drop. If you were flying in too fast, you might, you might not drop it on the park, you might drop it on somebody’s house, so you reduced the speed coming in. Definitely, yes. Above stalling height.
CB: Good. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
AG: I forget where we’d been.
CB: Now one of the challenges in the bombing war was getting back to the airfield.
AG: That’s it.
CB: And the British weather with fog.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Was a pain.
AG: Yeah.
CB: So how did you deal with that?
AG: Yeah. Yeah. Well as I say, we were, we were, we were quite fortunate really but there was one time when we came back and there was this fog, and it was a question of, this fog was going to hang around for some time so FIDO came into operation each side of the runway, you know, these flames and things, so we landed that way. It only happened once.
CB: So it was a popular airfield that day.
AG: Yes [laughs]. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Because not many airfields had Fido, did they?
AG: No. No. No. No. FIDO.
CB: Right.
AG: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: I forgot to ask you Alex, whether you had any links and what they were with the American Air Force or Army Air Force as it was.
AG: No.
CB: In those days.
AG: Nothing. Never. No.
CB: But their aircraft –
AG: No links whatsoever.
CB: No.
AG: No.
CB: But their aircraft, the Flying Fortress. What did you do there?
AG: What? Well he just took us up.
CB: So, so you went somewhere where you, what did you do? You flew somewhere.
AG: We flew to this base.
CB: Yeah.
AG: This American Flying Fortress base, met Colonel Jumper, the commanding officer and he, he gave us a flight in the Flying Fortress.
CB: So what was that like?
AG: Oh that, that was alright. Of course, he didn’t do anything drastic, we just went up and just flew, flew around for a while.
CB: Yes.
AG: Yeah. But we walked through, through the aircraft. Examined it, you know. Those, at the rear of the flying fortress each side, they had these machine guns, didn’t they?
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yes. Looked at all that and it was just a day out really.
CB: In terms of its sophistication and crew comfort compared with the RAF aircraft, what was that like?
AG: Oh I think that, I think we were slightly more comfortable than the flying fortress and the flying fortress crew, I forget how many there were, but I think –
CB: Eleven.
AG: There were about eight or nine of them.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah. In this what was regarded, compared to a Lancaster, was a smallish aircraft.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah but they had all these gunners on –
CB: Yeah.
AG: On the Fortress didn’t they?
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah.
CB: That’s why the bomb load wasn’t very big.
AG: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As I say, there we are.
CB: Right.
AG: I’m trying to think of any other highlights.
CB: Well.
[Recording paused]
CB: That’s it.
AG: In about April 1945, the rear gunner and I were called in and we were told that we had also been awarded the DFC because of the number of operations. The ten trips to Berlin and all this business.
CB: Yeah.
AG: So that’s the way we got it. It was regrettable I thought, that the wireless operator didn’t get it for some reason. I don’t know why.
CB: No.
AG: But it was just the rear gunner and myself.
CB: So the pilot and the navigator already had –
AG: The pilot –
CB: The DFC.
AG: They already had it, yeah. At the end of the tour.
CB: Yeah.
AG: They had got the DFC.
CB: Right.
AG: The pilot and the navigator only. But in the April ’45, the rear gunner and myself also got it.
CB: Right. Ok. And bomb aimer, nothing either.
AG: The bomb aimer. Well, the bomb aimer, at the end of the first tour, as I say, was regarded as the old man of the tour.
CB: Yeah.
AG: He was aged thirty two. Once he went off to this training unit, having completed the tour, we never heard of him again.
CB: No.
AG: Stan Young, his name was.
CB: Right.
AG: Stan Young. The pilot was called Colin Payne.
CB: Yeah.
AG: The navigator was Ken Armstrong. Now that’s another strange story about Ken Armstrong. At the end of our first tour of operations, Ken went off to a training unit, but then I don’t know if you know this, they started training people to work on British Airways after the war, but they already started recruiting them whilst the war was still on. And he, he applied for this and was recruited to go on the staff of British Airways before the war ended, and after the war, he ended up at Hurn Airport near Bournemouth where he operated from with British Airways. Ken then rose up in British Airways, and British Airways eventually did away with navigators and just kept pilots and, strangely enough, flight engineers. They were the only two crew members. And Ken, they kept two navigators back at British Airways headquarters at Heathrow, and he became quite a star navigator with British Airways, and whenever there was a royal flight, even though they had all the navigation aids, they always took a navigator with them, and he went on a number of royal flights and he ended up with the MVO, Member of the Victorian Order. And he became quite well known in British, they all knew Ken Armstrong because he was one of the two navigators left in British Airways, because they didn’t want navigators anymore with all, with all the navigation aids on board. But he, he did become quite well known. Yes. I mean my wife’s husband, Clive, ‘Oh yes’, he said, ‘Ken Armstrong. We all knew Ken Armstrong’.
CB: Your daughter’s husband.
AG: Yes.
CB: Ok.
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 Alexander Charles Gilbert
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGilbertAC161013
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:22:03 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Alexander Gilbert, DFC, joined the Royal Air Force in November 1940, and was called forward for service on the 7th April 1941, rising to the rank of Squadron Leader. Alex had a very long and varied career for the Royal Air Force.
Upon his call up, he was trained as a Flight Engineer Air Frames where he passed in the top third of his class. He became a Group One Tradesman, Fitter 2A. He was posted to Calshot and then spent time working at Cowley Motor Works, manufacturing spars for the fuselage of Lancasters before being recalled and sent to Scampton.
He served with 49 Bomber Squadron before taking a Flight Engineers course and working on Merlin engines at Rolls Royce Works in Derby.
Alex was transferred to 9 Squadron at Bardney where he completed 10 operations, including 3 to Hamburg, then helped form 514 Squadron where he flew on missions to Berlin, and completed 14 operations. He became an instructor at No. 31 LFS at Feltwell, before returning to Operations at 149 Squadron in Methwold.
149 Squadron were involved in the Dresden operation and did 2 trips in Operation Manna, dropping supplies to Rotterdam and The Hague.
Alex had various other postings and completed 35 years’ service in the Royal Air Force, retiring at the age of 65.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
149 Squadron
49 Squadron
514 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
B-17
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
fitter airframe
flight engineer
ground crew
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Bardney
RAF Calshot
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Halton
RAF Kirkham
RAF Methwold
RAF Morton Hall
RAF Scampton
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Winthorpe
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/535/8770/AWarrenH160325.2.mp3
c0949f59001de6d690534559594a5b34
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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Warren, Harold James
H J Warren
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Warren, HJ
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. Two oral history interviews with Harold James Warren (1921 - 2017, 619608 Royal Air Force) service material, a note book, diary and photographs. He Joined the RAF in 1938, and after training as ground crew but remustered and after training in Canada, became a flight engineer.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Harold Warren and catalogued by Peter Adams.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-22
2015-10-30
2016-07-12
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
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: So, my name is Chris Brockbank. Today is the 25th of March 2016 and I’m xxxxx with Harold Warren who was an RAF rigger in the war and before and he’s going to talk to us about his experiences of life and particularly in the RAF. So, Harold what’s the first thing you remember about life.
HW: Yes. I have to jog my memory quite a bit I’m afraid. [laughs] Well, my father was a blacksmith and a farmer as well as my grandfather. They had to go in to farming because they were full time blacksmiths and it affected their [shifts?] so they had to pack it up. But they kept it on part time for themself. [To work on.] And they bought a farm and they kept the blacksmiths going for their own use and I remember that well because when I come home from school had to blow the, keep the fire going in the blacksmiths shop. [Pumping the old fire all day.] Yeah. Yes, they wanted me to take over the farm when I left school but I didn’t want to have any of that. So I thought I’d join the air force and I did as soon as soon as I left school. Yeah. That’s right. That’s it. And er let me see. I have to think a bit.
CB: So where was it you were living then?
HW: Eh?
CB: Where did your parents live?
HW: My parents lived at, they lived at [pause] near [?] Yeah. Near Exeter [?] and all that sort of thing
CB: Right.
HW: So as soon as I was old enough I joined the air force. I was quite young then.
CB: So you joined straight from school.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go to join the RAF?
HW: Debden, I think.
CB: Right
HW: I think it was.
CB: And what happened there?
HW: That’s where I done my basic training. [Foot slogging] and all that sort of thing. And then I went to technical school in the air force and I was, I forget where I was now. Mildenhall I think. Spent quite some time there.
CB: So what did you learn there?
HW: Eh?
CB: What did you learn at Mildenhall?
HW: I was on engines and airframes.
CB: Ahum.
HW: Yeah.
CB: And which year are we talking about now?
HW: Pardon?
CB: Which year are we talking about?
HW: Well, it was just before the war started because I remember they shortened the course so that, you know, you could go on to active service sort of thing. ‘Cause the first day of the war I was in France.
CB: Oh were you?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Right.
HW: 218 squadron. Fairey Battles we had. Which was a waste of time.
CB: Because -
HW: No nothing at all. No armaments of any good. The Germans could do what they liked with us. So anyway we carried on doing that sort of thing and then we got evacuated via Dunkirk.
CB: Did you have to queue to get on to a boat at Dunkirk or did you get straight on to a boat?
HW: Eh?
CB: When you came out from Dunkirk -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you have to queue to get on or did you get straight onto a boat.
HW: Well I queued. A lot of people trying to get on boats and everything. Yeah. We eventually made it and we landed, where did we land? Dover I think. And then I was moved to Bicester doing maintenance there on aircraft. And er let me see -
CB: So Bicester was an Operation Conversion Unit at that time.
HW: Eh?
CB: Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Was an Operation Conversion Unit.
HW: An OTU.
CB: At that time.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Number 13.
HW: 13 OTU.
CB: That’s it. Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So what were you doing there?
HW: Same thing.
CB: Which aircraft?
HW: Engine airframes.
CB: Ok.
HW: Yeah.
CB: On what aeroplane?
HW: Eh?
CB: What was the aeroplane?
HW: Bristol Blenheim’s then. Still had Fairey Battles as well of course. They sent various aircraft into us because we were classed as a maintenance unit and we were supposed to be able to sort everything out. All sorts of aircraft which we had to do then. That was alright. Quite interesting.
CB: What sort of things did you have to sort out? Was it mechanical or battle damage or what was it?
HW: Both. Both, yeah. Both. Yeah.
CB: And er did you stay? How long did you stay at Bicester?
HW: Quite some time I think.
CB: And then up the road -
HW: Eh?
CB: Up the road is Hinton in the Hedges.
HW: Yeah.
CB: You were there as well so how did you divide the time?
HW: I don’t know. We had to [set it out I think?]. Some of the time was at Bicester and some at Hinton and Hinton carried on as an OTU and I forget where I went then.
CB: So what was the accommodation like at Bicester?
HW: Very good, Bicester. Yeah. It was a peacetime place you see.
CB: Right.
HW: It was very, well very good for, what do you expect. You don’t expect [Hilton?] but it was alright. Alright.
CB: So there were barrack blocks.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. They’re still there now.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So what was your working day? What would you do on a working day?
HW: Oh 8 o’clock start usually.
CB: Ahum.
HW: It depends on what work came in to be done. If you had to put extra time in you had to put extra time in. And that was it. You didn’t, you didn’t get much free time. There was always a hell of a lot to do.
CB: Was there? Yeah.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And most of the work you were doing was on the air frames or on the engines. Which?
HW: Oh both.
CB: Right.
HW: Both.
CB: So when you had to deal with an engine what was the main task on an engine.
HW: Well it depends on what was wrong with the engine. Sometimes it, it warranted a complete engine change. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes you could do it with the engine still in the aircraft and you could still do it. Such as running repair like a car. Ignition trouble or something like that.
CB: Right.
HW: Carburettor or something like that. Yeah, that was that.
CB: So if you had to take the engine out -
HW: Yeah.
CB: What happened then?
HW: Well we had a replacement engine if possible. Sometimes you couldn’t. Sometimes there was one ready to put straight back in but that would depend on supply and wherever they come from. Sometimes they come from the maker, sometimes they come from a maintenance unit which was over all the engines to start with but depends on supplies really.
CB: And that’s the engine. What about the airframe. What sorts of things did you have to do with airframes?
HW: Well there again sometime it was enemy action damaged flying controls and that sort of thing. You could do that alright when it was all metal fabric. Yeah.
CB: So the aircraft had a basic metal structure covered -
HW: Yeah.
CB: With fabric.
HW: Yeah.
CB: When you put on new fabric what did you have to do to it?
HW: The fabric replacement. We never did fabric work. There was a special ganger does fabric work and there was a special process to do to carry on fabric work so we never did much of that. Well I didn’t. But er it was a, it was an all metal thing. That’s where we came in you see. There was hardly any fabric attached to that. The only fabric attached to that was the control surfaces. The ailerons and the rudder and that sort of thing. Sometimes you could just get a complete unit like an aileron or something and change that completely if you could get hold of the thing. That was usually the trouble. Hadn’t got it. Wasn’t about. So made do as best we could with it.
CB: And what was the covering on the fuselage and the wings?
HW: Ah. Yeah. Some. Well depends on the aircraft. Some were metal covers which is, they were mainly metal come as the aircraft become modern and that sort of thing and we used to get a lot of American aircraft you see, we were equipped with that sort of thing and they were metal covers and you had to patch them if it were broken and you know, could have been a crash damage or gunfire damage. Whatever. You had to do your best you could with it and that was it. Get them in the air again quick as possible.
CB: And when you put on a metal patch.
HW: Yeah.
CB: How did you secure that?
HW: Eh?
CB: How did you secure the patch?
HW: Metal patch.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. They were riveted on. Yeah. They were riveted on. Yeah, you had a riveting gun to put them on and er yeah. That was alright. That was alright.
CB: What about Perspex?
HW: Eh?
CB: How did you deal with the Perspex?
HW: Perspex, yeah. There again Perspex was a difficult job because you had to replace the whole thing. The windscreen and that sort of thing and the gun turrets and that sort of thing. You had to replace the whole thing. There again if you could get it. It was very often you couldn’t. Short supply.
CB: Ahum.
HW: So there we are. Nothing you could do with that.
CB: What were the American, what were the American aeroplanes that were being fixed?
HW: Oh the first of all we had, I forget what we had first. We had um what the hell was it?
CB: They were bombers were they?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Four engine bombers.
CB: Oh, the American ones were four engine bombers -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Were they?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
HW: Yeah. Our four engine ones didn’t come along until after. Well made the same time as the American four engine ones. Yeah.
CB: So how many hangars were set aside for repair? ‘Cause there were four hangars at Bicester.
HW: Bicester had quite a few hangars Yeah. Yeah. It depended what sort of jobs was needed. They got lifting equipment and that sort of thing. You had to have them to lift the engines in and out and all depended what the demand was to do.
CB: So you had busy times and on your time off what did you do?
HW: You never had no time off, poor devil. No. You’d always find something to do.
CB: So where did you meet your wife?
HW: Oh, Hinton I suppose. Or Bicester. Brackley. Somewhere like that.
CB: Was she in the RAF at the time?
HW: No. I was. She wasn’t.
CB: No.
HW: No. She worked in the local hospital. Yeah.
CB: In Banbury or in Bicester?
HW: Brackley.
CB: Oh in Brackley.
HW: Yeah. It was only a small hospital.
CB: Right. What did she do there?
HW: I forget now what she did. She was, um, I think she was a nurse. General sort of nurse. Yeah.
CB: So, how did you manage to see her regularly? Did you cycle over or what did you do?
HW: Well you couldn’t see that regular. There were jobs always come first. Anything else had to wait. Whatever. Yeah.
CB: And how long after you met her did you marry her?
HW: I don’t, not long, I don’t think. Not long, I don’t think.
CB: So we talked about Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: At Hinton, you weren’t, were you repairing aircraft there or was that just the OCU?
HW: Still the same because Hinton came under Bicester. Bicester was a bigger place and it was adapted to that sort of thing. Yeah. Bicester was quite a big place then. It had no runways of course. Level grass which was no good for heavy bombers.
CB: Right.
HW: They used to get stuck and I don’t know what. Caused more damage.
CB: Well they’d sink in.
HW: Eh?
CB: They sank in to the earth -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Would they?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause when they were loaded they were heavy and that was it. Yeah.
CB: So, did they fly them to Hinton instead?
HW: Eh?
CB: Did they send them to Hinton instead?
HW: Well they started building runways at Hinton. I don’t think Bicester never had runways always had Bicester on grass just the same. It was just an OTU you see. They were never loaded, the aircraft. Not heavy enough to sink in so they didn’t use it for that.
CB: Now before you went to Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: You were at St Athan.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What happened there?
HW: Well that was a training school. A technical school. Yeah.
CB: And what did you study particularly?
HW: Engines there. I think it was. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So after Bicester and Hinton you went somewhere completely different.
HW: Yeah. 218 squadron then.
CB: Ahum.
HW: At Boscombe Down.
CB: Oh, right.
HW: And we went to France then, of course.
CB: That’s before the war er the early part of the war.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So that was, that was before Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Right. So you left Bicester.
HW: Left Bicester.
CB: And you went to Canada.
HW: No. That was later than that.
CB: Oh, was it?
HW: Yeah.
CB: So after Bicester where did you go?
HW: Oh various places I think. I can’t remember all of them. We had to have a course on these American engines you see.
CB: Oh right.
HW: I don’t know where we had to go for them. Not America [laughs] worse luck, at the time.
CB: Yeah.
HW: I didn’t go to Canada till after that. A long time after. After I came back from the war well, not quite but nearly. Went to Canada on the Queen Mary.
CB: Did you? Right.
HW: From Scotland.
CB: Right.
HW: Greenock. And we docked in New York ‘cause they hadn’t got anywhere big enough to dock it in Canada so we docked in New York and we had to go from New York up to Saskatchewan, Canada by train. Yeah. That was alright. Very good place Canada. Nice people. Would do anything for you. They were very good. I nearly went back to Canada after the war.
CB: Did you?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. But circumstances didn’t allow it so that was that.
CB: So when you were in Canada, where did they send you in Canada?
HW: Yeah.
CB: You’ve got Saskatchewan and then what?
HW: Moose Jaw.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Moose Jaw and I forget where the other one was.
CB: These, these were the Service Flying Training Schools.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So the ones I’ve got a note of here are Moose Jaw, La Prairie -
HW: Eh?
CB: La Prairie. Did you go there?
HW: Yeah.
CB: And Bagotville.
HW: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. That brings back a memory now. Yeah.
CB: So when you were there what were you doing?
HW: Same work I was doing.
CB: What aircraft?
HW: Same work.
CB: What aircraft were you on?
HW: Um training aircraft. They were American aircraft. Some were single engine some were double engine, twin engine. I forget what sort they were now. They were American built ones I know that.
CB: Including the Harvard.
HW: Yeah. Harvard. Yeah. Harvard. Oh yeah. Harvard. Yeah. A lot of Harvards sent over to this country.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So that’s single and then the PT17 was it? What about twin engine? What planes were they?
HW: Um I forget now what they were.
CB: Ok.
HW: I can’t remember. Yeah. I can’t remember.
CB: So did they have Ansons also out there?
HW: Eh?
CB: Did they have Avro Ansons where you were operating?
HW: I think there was a few but not many. They were used for training you see. I mean they were used for training in this country at the start soon as the war, well before the war, Ansons. They were at Bicester at one time. Ansons. Yeah. And they were at Hinton as well.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So you were out in Canada -
HW: Eh?
CB: You were out in Canada. What were the conditions like?
HW: Very good.
CB: So take us through a day.
HW: Oh well.
CB: In Canada.
HW: Usual day.
CB: Ahum.
HW: Usual day. Yeah.
CB: What was the food like, compared with being in Britain?
HW: Very good. Very good. In fact, I even sent some food home Yeah. There was plenty of food there and I got in touch with a farming family in Canada and it so happened that their son was in the air force and he was at Croughton.
CB: At Croughton.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. But he had an accident in the road, on the road in Canada, er in Croughton and he was invalided home. I met him and you know you got together and they used to take us out for weekends and that sort of thing. They were very good, the Canadian people. Yeah, and I tried to get back. I’d have liked to got back there to a job ‘cause I’d got two or three jobs lined up on the assumption that I could do it. In those days I couldn’t do it. I could do it that was nothing to do with it. It all depended on, you know, family and that sort of thing. My wife’s father was [head of the house] so that knocked that on the head. Yeah. Yes, I would have like to have went to Canada.
CB: What sort of jobs would you have done in Canada?
HW: Pardon?
CB: What sort of jobs would you have done in Canada?
HW: Oh yeah I’d have gone on to agricultural machinery. That sort of thing. Like they had, some of the farmers had an aircraft for getting about it was that big. Yeah. So, I was going to look after that one I think. It was only a twin engine. Two seater and used it for getting from one part of the farm to another. You wouldn’t think it possible would you. Aircraft to get somewhere on the farm [laughs], ‘Oh I’ll catch an aircraft.’ Yeah. And there were combines going around the fields. Well they weren’t fields they were just as far as you could see. Big areas growing grain and about half a dozen combines following one after the other so quite a job. It didn’t come to nothing but I’d have liked that but it didn’t come to anything so that was it.
CB: So when you came back to the UK -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go after returning from Canada?
HW: Back to Bicester again I think.
CB: And were they always training units that you went to?
HW: Eh?
CB: Were they always training units -
HW: Yeah.
CB: That you went to or
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you go to any –
HW: Oh I went to, well of course when I came back, I mean the war was finished more or less so they didn’t need any heavy bombers then. I went back to, to Lancasters for a little while and American heavy bombers. Yeah.
CB: Where were those? Where were those? Where?
HW: East coast somewhere. Forget where it was now. Mildenhall. Might have been Mildenhall. [?]
CB: Did you deal with Stirlings as well?
HW: Pardon?
CB: Were there Stirlings as well as Lancasters?
HW: Lancasters.
CB: Stirlings?
HW: Went on to Sunderlands for a while.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Where was that?
HW: We were based in Scotland and we used to patrol the North Atlantic looking for submarines.
CB: Right.
HW: We used to patrol from Newfoundland to Scotland. And a Sunderland would stay in the air for twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours you see so it could do that journey alright. No problem. Yeah. I remember we, because we couldn’t take any prisoners off the U-boats we had to, to call up the navy to. I remember calling up, we sent one, well we forced it to the surface the U-boat and [?] on board and we had a good look around and there was a nice big box of onions. [laughs] Yeah. Germans and German U- boats used to look after, I always wanted to go on U-boats so we collared them.
CB: So how did you get those?
HW: Eh?
CB: How did they get hold of them?
HW: oh no, well they got them when they, rations I suppose.
CB: No. No, what I meant was, the U-boat was forced to the surface.
HW: Yeah.
CB: How did the aeroplane get, the Sunderland, how did it get hold of the onions?
HW: Oh they got them easy enough. We could land alongside and we were the first ones on board, the aircrew, we were the first ones board so we got the first pick. Yeah. Then we had to call up the navy ‘cause we couldn’t take any more people on, on the Sunderland. There wasn’t room.
CB: How long did it take for the navy to come?
HW: Not long. They were, they’d been warned beforehand that, you know, we were on the track of a submarine so we told them where we were, roughly and we read the report to the navy that there’s, we’d forced one up to the surface and then they come along and took the prisoners. Took them. That was it.
CB: You said we -
HW: Ahum.
CB: So, you mean the crew or were you there?
HW: Yeah
CB: Did you get on that flight?
HW: Yeah. Oh yeah.
CB: Why were you on that flight?
HW: It was my job.
CB: Right.
HW: Flight engineer.
CB: Right, on the, so where did you become a flight engineer?
HW: Scotland.
CB: In Scotland.
HW: Greenock.
CB: When you joined the Sunderlands.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So how did that happen? ‘Cause you were previously servicing aircraft on the ground.
HW: Yeah.
CB: How did you then become a flight engineer?
HW: Well there was very little difference in the job. You’re doing the same job.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yet you were flying. Yeah.
CB: How did you do it? Did they ask for volunteers?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Or did they say you must do it?
HW: Sometimes they did. They couldn’t get enough volunteers so they said, ‘You, you and you.’ [laughs] As usual.
CB: Yeah. So a forced volunteer.
HW: Eh?
CB: A compulsory volunteer.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t mind that.
CB: So what did that do for you? So you were converted on to the Sunderland were you?
HW: Yeah.
CB: At Greenock.
HW: Ahum.
CB: Or somewhere else?
HW: Used to go from Greenock, across the north of England and across to North America. Turned around and come back again.
CB: Right.
HW: That was that. All the time we were searching for submarines. Keeping a look out for submarines all the time and the depth charges there if we could and get them one sided.
CB: So as a flight engineer on a Sunderland what were you doing most of the time?
HW: Making sure the engine kept going. Had to check them ‘cause I mean they were they’d done a lot of hours a day you see. That was more than the manufacturers recommended so you had to be very careful with them, look after them, nurse them if you could. Which you couldn’t.
CB: How many times did you have situations where the engine stopped?
HW: Eh?
CB: How many times did the engines stop?
HW: Not very often. Not very often. They were well maintained while they were in operation and while they were on base and they were given good care. I don’t think I ever had one stop.
CB: Now the Sunderland is a big aeroplane. So -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Where was your station -
HW: Yeah.
CB: On the Sunderland?
HW: Oh I had to go from one and keep an eye on the airframe instruments and that sort of thing. The instruments would tell you a lot of stories then of what this one’s doing, that one’s doing, this is not working and that sort of thing. You could check on the fuel and oil and that sort of thing.
CB: How many fuel tanks were there?
HW: I forget now.
CB: But your job was to do what with the fuel?
HW: Just make sure we got, we were refuelled every time we got room for some. I forget how many tanks there were. Quite a lot.
CB: Did you transfer, was it your job to transfer fuel?
HW: No. It wasn’t -
CB: From one tank -
HW: My job, no -
CB: To another?
HW: No.
CB: Or did they not get transferred?
HW: That was to do with the ones who refuelled them. The tankers
CB: But in the air -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you need to change fuel supply from one tank to another?
HW: Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. Not very often. They were, they used to be pretty even consumption so you never had a lot of trouble with that. We had to do a lot of manoeuvring about. That used more fuel so had to be careful. Yeah.
CB: So on take-off and landing what would your job be?
HW: Well it had floats. Didn’t have to worry about the undercarriage or anything like that. So that was that. That was to do with the flying crew. The pilot. Yeah.
CB: Were there one or two pilots on?
HW: Two pilots.
CB: Right.
HW: First and second pilot but sometimes they’d do without the second pilot and that was where the flight engineer come in. Yeah.
CB: And in that circumstance what happened?
HW: Eh?
CB: So when, when there was no second pilot what did the flight engineer do?
HW: Well he had to, well keep an eye on the first pilot and make sure he was doing everything he was supposed to do. And he did, else he wouldn’t be there.
CB: And who controlled the throttles on take-off?
HW: Throttles? Pilot. First pilot. Yeah. And the flaps and everything like that.
CB: Because on the Lancasters and Halifaxes -
HW: Yeah.
CB: The flight engineer operated the throttles. That’s why I asked the question. On take-off.
HW: The pilot used to do the throttle just the same.
CB: Right.
HW: On any four engine job.
CB: So what was the point that made the decision about whether there were two pilots or just one?
HW: I don’t know.
CB: Was it the length of the flight?
HW: Something do with that I should think. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: ‘Cause thirteen hours is a long time for a single pilot.
HW: Certainly is.
CB: But did they do that?
HW: Yes.
CB: They did. But how many crew were there on a Sunderland?
HW: Well there used to be first pilot, sometimes second pilot, flight engineer, navigator and the bomb, gun turrets were manned, front, mid turret and the front turret they were manned all the time.
CB: And the rear turret.
HW: Yeah. Rear turret, mid turret and then the front turret. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And there was a signaller and a bomb aimer.
HW: Radio operator.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. Bomb aimer.
CB: Any more?
HW: No. That was about it I think. As far as I can remember.
CB: Right. So how long were you based with that squadron? What was the squadron? What squadron was the Sunderland squadron?
HW: [?] I think.
CB: Right.
HW: I’m not sure about that.
CB: And how long did you stay with them?
HW: Not all that long. Not all that long. That was about it then.
CB: Was that, had the war finished when you left?
HW: Just about. Just about. Yeah.
CB: So did you, when you left the Sunderlands -
HW: Yeah.
CB: What did you do?
HW: Went back to Bicester again.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah.
CB: And what were you doing then?
HW: Well there weren’t so much to do then.
CB: No.
HW: Not so much aircraft damaged. Not by enemy action. Generally run down.
CB: What, when you became a flight engineer what happened to your rank?
HW: You what?-
CB: What happened to your rank when you became a flight engineer?
HW: I don’t know. Stayed the same I suppose. Got no use for us then anyway then when we’d finished.
CB: No. No. What I meant was that during the previous postings -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Your rank was LAC.
HW: Leading Aircraft that was.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. That’s right.
CB: So as soon as you -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you keep that rank all the time?
HW: Oh Yeah.
CB: What happened when you went on to Sunderlands?
HW: Still a leading Aircraft man.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah. But um, yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
CB: Was it an official or an unofficial arrangement because did you get a, a brevvy?
HW: Yeah.
CB: To show that you were a -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Flight engineer or not?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. You got the cross on your sleeve.
CB: Yeah.
HW: To indicate a leading aircraft man.
CB: Yeah.
HW: [Coughing]
CB: Hang on. I’m going to stop for a minute.
[pause]
HW: You were made up to a sergeant.
CB: Yeah.
HW: When you were flying.
CB: Right.
HW: To prevent, so as you get better treatment supposedly if you were taken prisoner.
CB: Yeah.
HW: That didn’t always work.
CB: Which didn’t work? Getting promotion or -
HW: Eh?
CB: Yeah. But you did get promoted when you became -
HW: Yeah.
CB: When you went on to Sunderlands.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. You automatically made up to sergeant -
CB: Right.
HW: When you were [flying.]
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So as soon as you stopped flying -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you remain a sergeant?
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah.
CB: And so you came back as a sergeant to Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What were you doing? Because you were a sergeant now.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What were you doing in your role at Bicester?
HW: More, more sort of keeping a check on what people were doing and that sort of thing. Testing and that sort of thing. Yeah.
CB: So now from an accommodation point of view you moved to the sergeant’s mess.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: What was that like?
HW: That was, that was alright. I had a house. I was living at Hinton then.
CB: Ah Hinton, right. And where was your wife at this time.
HW: She was at Hinton.
CB: But she wasn’t on the airfield.
HW: No. She was doing her job in the hospital just the same.
CB: What did she do? Live with her parents or did she live in rented accommodation?
HW: Living with her parents all the time.
CB: Where were they?
HW: Hinton.
CB: Oh they were in Hinton.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Right.
HW: And I lived with them.
CB: Right. Rather than in the officer’s er the sergeant’s mess.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. I used to cycle from Hinton to Bicester every day.
CB: Right.
HW: Which wasn’t far really.
CB: No.
HW: No.
CB: So then how, what happened after that?
HW: Then the old demob come along I suppose.
CB: From Bicester.
HW: Aye.
CB: Were you demobbed from Bicester or did you have to go somewhere else?
HW: Oh yeah. You went to er not far from here. Forget where it was now. Wasn’t far from here. I know that.
CB: When you were demobbed what they do? Did they give you clothes or what did they do?
HW: Oh yeah. You had to go civilian suit and all that sort of thing. Get all, everything sorted out and that was that.
CB: So now you’re a civilian.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What did, what did you do then?
HW: Well, two or three of us started a garage. Three of us. No, two of us and me started a garage in Brackley. Yeah.
CB: And how long did you run the garage?
HW: For a while I think um I forget how long. Not all that long I don’t think. But er – [?]
CB: So who were the other two people?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Who started the garage with you?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Who were they?
HW: They come out the air force. One was a flight lieutenant, an engineer. Flight Lieutenant [Capping] and the other was a, a driver. Forget what he did in the air force. Well, he was a driver in the air force.
CB: What was his name?
HW: Jefford. Jefford. J E F F O R D, yeah. Yeah, we started this garage together you see.
CB: In Brackley.
HW: Eh?
CB: In Brackley.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Did you sell new cars as well as old cars or did you not sell any cars?
HW: No. There weren’t many cars around then.
CB: Right.
HW: Had to make new cars out of old ones.
CB: How long did the garage continue to work?
HW: Well, I don’t know. I think I, we’d split up I think for family reasons and one reason or another. I forget now what happened after that.
CB: How well did it operate when you started because you had a flight lieutenant, a sergeant and a driver.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So, we’re now in civilian life. How did the balance of power operate?
HW: Well you had to put that behind you.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So who was the senior -
HW: And we did.
CB: Right.
HW: We did very well in that respect. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Who was the senior person in the partnership?
HW: Well, I would say the flight lieutenant.
CB: No. No. In practical terms.
HW: Eh?
CB: In civilian life who was the senior person?
HW: Just get on with it it was the obvious thing to do.
CB: Yeah.
HW: And well you never sort of threw your weight about.
CB: No.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Where abouts in Brackley was that?
HW: Out by the old fish shop. Behind the fish shop. On the High Street.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So was it difficult or was it successful?
HW: Difficult to start with trying to start a business from nothing really. Yeah.
CB: And then did you eventually do something on your own or what did you do?
HW: Yes I think I did. Forget what. Oh yeah, I went looking after agricultural machinery at Twyford Seed. Looking after that. That was a very big plant and we had a lot of tractors and combines and that sort of thing there. Nothing like Canada of course.
CB: And you did that till you retired or what did you do?
HW: Yeah. I think so. Stayed with them for quite some time. Yeah.
CB: Did the garage keep running in the meantime or had that -
HW: No. It folded up.
CB: What caused it to fold up?
HW: I think everybody got fed up I think. Didn’t make money and people were not paying you for the work you’d done and that sort of thing.
CB: Ok. What do you think was the most memorable experience that you had in the RAF?
HW: I had a lot of them. Some I’d rather forget. Well, I suppose Dunkirk. I should think was one of the worst.
CB: In what way?
HW: Well trying to get on board boats and getting shot at by the Germans and bombed and Christ knows what, which was not a very nice thing to happen.
CB: What else?
HW: Hmmn?
CB: What else? What else was memorable, do you think?
HW: Oh [pause] I don’t know. I can’t think of anything else much.
CB: At Dunkirk -
HW: Yes.
CB: Did you all, as a squadron, arrive together?
HW: No. No, we got together after we’d come back and landed in England ‘cause we, we got there on all shapes and sizes of boats you see. I mean you couldn’t get everybody on one boat. You just had to get on the boat that you could and that was it but we got together afterwards of course.
CB: Was everybody there or had some people been killed on the way?
HW: No. As far as I remember everybody survived it.
Other: Can I just collect the cups?
HW: Hello there. Yeah. [pause] thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
CB: So you all got together in the end.
HW: Pardon?
CB: Did you say everybody survived?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. Some were wounded of course.
CB: Were they?
HW: Yeah.
CB: What, some seriously or just -
HW: Eh?
CB: How serious was that?
HW: Under supervision as far as I know. I don’t think anybody was seriously hurt.
CB: You said that some of the memories you’d rather forget.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What else would you rather forget?
HW: [?] I’d rather forget the lot.
CB: Well, it’s been really interesting to talk to you again, Harold.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Thank you very much indeed.
HW: Alright. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Harold James Warren. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-25
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWarrenH160325
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Interview in which he describes joining the RAF in 1938 and worked as ground crew. After training in Canada, he became a flight engineer and worked on Sunderlands flying from RAF Greenock.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
Scotland--Greenock
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Saskatchewan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
Format
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00:58:23 audio recording
13 OTU
218 Squadron
aircrew
Battle
Blenheim
fitter airframe
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
Harvard
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bicester
RAF Greenock
RAF Hinton
RAF St Athan
Sunderland
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/530/8764/PShawSR1604 copy.2.1.jpg
6ef757ed0517a8dee79afa1e17d1d6e6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/530/8764/AShawS160114.2.mp3
dcd6df4d27938dea630da3984b0221a7
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
Shaw, Stanley R
S R Shaw
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Shaw, SR
Description
An account of the resource
37 items. An oral history interview with Stanley Shaw (3002545 Royal Air Force) Photographs, documents and his log book. He served with a Repair and Salvage Unit and attended many crashes. He later served in North Africa and the Middle East.
The collection also contains two photograph albums; one of his RAF service and one of his time in a cycle club.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Stanley Shaw and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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Date
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2016-01-14
2016-02-11
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SC: Now that should be recording so we’ll put that just there.
SS: Lovely.
SC: I’ll stand it up if it will stay up. Yeah. So, we’re doing the interview today with Mr Stanley Shaw at your home address — XXXXXX, Derby.
SS: Yes.
SC: I’m Steve Cooke, I’m doing the interview today. Thank you very much for inviting me into your house as well Stanley, to do the interview, I really appreciate it.
SS: Oh, it’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure. [Peter]
SC: What I wanted to do was start in the early years, and just ask you, were you born and bred in Derby? And, why you wanted to join the RAF and the ATC?
SS: Yes, I was born at a very early age. 1926, not a very good year. There was a general strike on.
SC: Oh yeah.
SS: Churchill sent the troops to kill the miners but we lived in a slum in Derby. Two, two room, two up, two down as we used to call it. No hot, no hot water, no gas. Copper, the dolly pegs and all that caper. And, well there was no fat kids running about in them days I can assure you.
SC: Yes.
SS: Because we lived practically on a diet of bread and, bread and jam, or bread and dripping, whatever was handy. But I was a sickly child and the doctor said, ‘If you can raise him till he’s seven, he might pull through’.
SC: Gosh.
SS: But I was a regular attender at the Temple House Clinic for sunray treatment, instead of going to the seaside. My dad said Skegness was Russian propaganda, no such place. So, I had that and I wore teen glasses for a bit, and an operational twitch, and I succumbed. I was alright at school, loved history, loved history. And as I went on, about, I think I’d be about five or six, Alan Cobham and his Flying Circus came to Derby, and my dad had a bike in them days with a basket on the front, and he used to take me everywhere. And I can remember, well and truly, going to this place, called it Sentry Meadows in Derby, and lo and behold, these ex-1914/18 aircraft — patched up, fabric jobs, Biplanes. The stunts they performed and you could have a trip up for five shillings.
SC: Wow.
SS: The problem was five shillings was a lot of money in those days.
SC: Yeah.
SS: So, there wasn’t much chance of that, and as I went on through the years, I was very interested, very interested in aircraft. Always. That was the days of the Frog Models, you could buy a little one for five shilling in a box, and you used to stick the wings on and increase the revs on the handle, and it didn’t fly very well, but at five bob, good value for five bob. And took the Modern Wonder, that was another magazine at that time. Very, very descriptive on aircraft — the Modern Wonder. And I had an uncle, now, not many people had cars in those days. You were either a doctor or some exquisite person, a businessman, if you had a car and he had a, the old Flying Standard. And I think it was 1937, he took me and my father up to Hucknall, which was the home of the Nottingham, the Nottingham Air Squadron Defence. And they flew, I just forget - Hawker Hinds, Hawker Hind biplanes, all silver and polished. They were beautiful they were. And then, that was in 1937, that’s, that’s when I saw the first Wellington. This black fabric covered job in the corner. A bit secret at that time. And then in 1938, he took me again and, lo and behold, we’d got Battles, and they were the be all and end all. They could beat any fighter and all that, which were a load of twaddle really, but very, very interesting that was. And I said then, in 1938/’39, and I left school, I left school in Easter 1940 because my birthday is on January the 10th, and in those days, if you was born in the new year, you didn’t qualify to leave at Christmas, so I had to go till Easter.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That was a body blow that was. And I left school on the Friday, and I started work on the Monday. No — plenty of jobs around in them days because the war was on, and I worked at a garage. One interesting point, in the garage, when Dunkirk happened, we had a complete battalion of squaddies got straight off the boat from Dunkirk, shipped them up to Spondon village, and they hadn’t got a rifle between them.
SC: Right.
SS: They’d got absolutely nothing. They’d come up here by train I should imagine, and they had their headquarters in Spondon village, and they kept their petrol supply at our garage, and it was brown. No chance of nicking any because it was brown in colour [laughs], and I can remember in those days, the military could acquire any vehicle. Civilian. They just walked up and say, ‘Thank you very much, that’s ours’. And this battalion, the despatch rider was only about five foot tall and he’d got this twin, twin cylinder Matchless 1000.
SC: Right.
SS: Well, he used to bring it down to the garage and we used to fill his tank for him, and then somebody had to kick it started for him because he wasn’t strong enough to kick it. But I remember one morning, I was filling a customer’s car and it was a bit misty, and I heard this roar, and we got, we got an anti-aircraft battery up in the village by this time up, on the rise there, and they’d got a Bofors gun, and I heard this bang, bang, bang. I looked up and there was this German aircraft which is well known, this German aircraft flying, which bombed Royce’s that morning.
SC: Gosh.
SS: He flew all the way down from, came in from Hull, came down here and he bombed. He bombed Royce’s.
SC: Royce’s.
SS: And people say, ‘You didn’t see that did you?’ Well, just one of them things.
SC: Yeah.
SS: You saw it but I know one thing. The traverse of the gun was that low, it was nearly knocking the chimney pots off because as it flew —
SC: Gosh.
SS: It was that low.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That they followed it and of course, the lower it got, the worse the firing got. I saw that, and then also, while I worked at the garage, one day I looked up and there was an aeroplane with black crosses on it. I think it was a Junkers 88 reconnaissance flying, flying over and that was shot down at Lincoln on it’s, on its way back. A Spitfire shot that down. That was, and then Saturday lunchtime. I can remember it was a Saturday lunchtime, when I was fourteen and a half and listening, listening to the — well you did listen to the news, because it was all war, and this chap from the Air Ministry got on and said, ‘We’re going to form a new arm of Air Force’. Pre-training for the Air Force because we’ve lost that many, you know, to Dunkirk and in France, the Battle of France, that we’re short. We need recruits urgently and we want them partially trained.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Which was a good deal for the RAF, it took a lot of weight off them. And I thought, right, and it said apply at your local councillor. Well, a councillor, I knew about councillors in them days but didn’t used to bother. Somebody said, ‘Mr Fred West at Borrowash’, which is where we are, so I jumped on my old Vindec bike, scooters up there, hammers on his door. ‘What do you want?’ I said, ‘I’d like to join the Air Training Corps’. He said, ‘I’ve not had the papers through yet’. I was a bit pre you see, and then I went to the first, I went to the first, well it wasn’t a parade, it was just the lads that were interested and I can remember it as plain as day. We went up to the Wilmot Arms at Borrowash and there was four of us. There was a chap called Austin Shaw that lived in Spondon, he became a pilot later on. There was a lad called George Wood and the lad called Bancroft and myself. We were the first four to get there and out of our four, George Wood was shot down in 1944 on a Lanc, a Lancaster rear gunner, and he was shot down and he’s buried in Bergen Op Zoom, Holland. I’ve never had occasion to go, I’ve been to Holland a couple times, I’d love to go and see because he got married and he had a baby and he never saw the baby. He never saw it. Very tragic. And from the four we blossomed, we blossomed. Everybody in Spondon and surrounding wanted to fly. Oh, they all wanted to fly. And we formed 1117 Squadron, and we got that big, we got that big, we formed four flights — A, B, C and D.
SC: Wow.
SS: Which were Spondon, Territory Hill — Chaddesden, the racecourse and Chester Green. All the four flights. In all, we were well over two hundred cadets.
SC: Gosh.
SS: Well over. And we had a civilian, he was an engineer at the Celanese at the time, and he’d got a big house in Spondon with a big loft. And we had a ground staff, we had aircrew. They were studying navigation and everything appertaining, Morse code and everything, and we were, well I was already an apprentice fitter so they made me a corporal, because I’d got a bit more knowledge than they had. And, yeah, and then came the days of visits to aerodromes. I think I’ve already mentioned about Burnaston, managed to get a flip. We went to Burnaston for a week, week’s camp. Roughed it a little bit as we thought, and they’d got Tiger Moths and Magisters, Miles Magisters, and they were 16 AFTS Flight Training School. And from there we went to better things, we went to Ashbourne Aerodrome for a week, which flew Whitleys and Ansons and Blenheims.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Well we had one officer, Mr Rigby, a rather nice chap, they took him up for a flight. They didn’t tell him where they were going, and when he came back, he told about these little black puffs of smoke behind the aeroplane. ‘Yes. That was flak, sir. We’ve been across to northern France, having a shufty around and come back again’. Didn’t tell him where he was going, joy trip it was. Well, Ansons were the name of the game, because you trained the pilot, navigator, wireless operator, bombardier all in the same aeroplane. So, we used to fly down to North Wales on the Brecon Beacons dropping these white, little white twenty five pounder bombs.
SC: Yeah.
SS: If you hit anything — I don’t think so, not very often. And as I say, then the last camp I went to was a bomber, it was a proper bomber station, at Hixon near Staffordshire. And Wellingtons, that was my first encounter with a Wellington and well, I mean, the ATC were smart. I kid you not they were very smart, and I was the right marker. So, I mean, this is an operational, this is an operational ‘drome with the erks wandering around, with their knives and forks dangling on their belt. Dead scruffy because they’d probably been working all night, caps on at fitter 2 angle, and we were there and we just paraded on the ground [unclear], all these lads used to stand there laughing. Smirking as well. ‘Bloody different when you get in mate’, and we managed to get a trip there. But you see, OTUs are a bit different. Every OTU operation is a little bit different, so the — our officer, he was the last, he was a World War One, First World War pilot and he, he was in charge of us, and he said, ‘I’ve got you a trip’. I thought, well I’m not really bothered really, ‘cause I’m not into flying. ‘I’ve managed to get you a trip’, you see, and it was this Wellington and we went down to the flight. They give you a mask and, you know oxygen bag, helmet and whatnot, parachute, and we got on the truck that was taking the crew out on this test flight. Just come out the hangar. Apparently it had had a new wing fitted, and there was us sitting there, our lads. Two lads sitting there, these hardened types sitting there, they said, ‘Have you got a date tonight?’ I don’t know what — ‘Have you got a date tonight?’ I said, ‘Yeah’. He said, ‘You can scrub around that’, he said, ‘I expect the flaming wings are gonna fall off’. This is just as we were starting trying. I was sitting there, I don’t want nothing to do with this sort of thing, and we went and sat in it, and the lad that I was with, he’d never been up before. We went up and he started throwing it about and we looked out, and there was a Mark I Mustang, and we were on a little bit of aircraft fighter affiliation in which case you were, you know, you were swinging it about a bit. And we came, we finished that, came away from there and then, as I say, I volunteered. I did volunteer, I always meant going in and I was still working at Celanese, Apprentice fitter, which meant I had to break my, I had to break my apprenticeship, and well that was it. I mean I told them, I said, ‘I’ve been in the Air Training Corps all this time’.
SC: Yeah.
SS: ‘I don’t want to miss out’, And — yes, I went from there, and at that time, we’d moved to Spondon. We lived in Spondon and we had six soldiers billeted with us. If you’d got a three-bedroom house —
SC: Right.
SS: And you got one room to spare, you got, you got six squaddies because the British Celanese was a huge depot for armaments, lorries and anything. So all these lads were in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Working down there in civvy billets you see, and how my mum used to feed them six, I do not know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: ‘Cause they used to come in, you know, barely enough to keep them.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And you’d got to find food and rationing and whatnot, queuing, and they were from all over the country. You know, different places they came from, different accents and of course, I was about seventeen, yeah, seventeen and a half, seventeen and three quarter. And I got my, I got my papers on the day before Christmas day, and they were all, you know, ‘You’ll be alright’, kind of thing. And yes, I was eighteen. I was eighteen on the one day and I went in the next.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Went in the next. Dad took me down to the station and well, I was, you see, it wasn’t as if you had just been plucked out of civvy street like a lot of, a lot of lads were.
SC: Yeah.
SS: I mean these lads that were conscripted, they didn’t have the, they didn’t have the luxury of being pre-trained.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Now, when you, when you, as soon as you got on to Cardington, which was a recruiting centre which did all the training and everything, you was half qualified you know.
SC: Yeah
SS: I mean, the RAF, you know. Thank God somebody knows what they’re doing.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But the Air Training Corps were prefixed with the numbers 300, so they just looked at your number and, 3002545, they knew straight away you were ex, ex-Training Corps and I was pretty fit, I was pretty fit in them days. And on the second day, no, the second week we were there, we got this contingent, a contingent of West Indians come, the black lads from West Indies, and January was cold.
SC: Right.
SS: I can assure you, it was cold and they had a cross-country run. A cross country run. Starting out, I think there was a hundred and forty four altogether, we were all in flights, sections, you know. I think there was about nine flights altogether with about, what? Thirty lads in each. And you’d got an drill instructor, corporal and a sergeant, and they had this cross country. Everybody had got to be in it, it didn’t matter if you could run or not. And there were, there’s two big hangars at Cardington where they used to store the airships, R101, two big hangars, and there was a narrow gap, like a road, down there. Well it was a cross country, so I set off amongst the pack. Saw these big athletic West Indian lads, I don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance here, and I was running along and saw this chap with “Polytechnic Harriers” written on it. I thought that looks a bit interesting, he’ll be the right lad to follow.
SC: Yeah.
SS: So I get behind and as we ran through these hangars, there was a bit of a wind blowing, so luckily I was, I’ve tucked in behind and then when we got outside — about two hundred yards — that was the finishing line. So he’d had it when he got to the end of the road and I chuffed in and managed to get first. And this officer type came across — he give me, what was it? He gave me a thirty-shilling postal order.
SC: Wow.
SS: And gave me a leave, a leave pass for the weekend. Never been done before, you see because I mean until you could march and look decent, they didn’t let you out of Cardington.
SC: Yeah.
SS: You know, and I went home. And these soldiers, ‘What are you doing home then? Have they kicked you out already?’ I said, ‘No’.
SC: For coming first
SS: And when I got back again of course, it was steam trains then, you know, and always full.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Always. Derby station. And always this smoke used to hang about, acrid smoke there was. If you went through a tunnel, made sure all the windows were shut.
SC: Yeah.
SS: It used to puther in, and you’re like a —
SC: Yeah.
SS: And you come out the other side. And when I got back, they were all lying in their bunks moaning and whatnot, and I said, ‘What’s up?’ ‘We’ve had the inoculations today. Oh you know, we’ve had jabs and this, that and the other’, and I thought, well I’ve not had it. They said, ‘No, but you’ll get it tomorrow though’. Yeah, I enjoyed that cross country running, twenty two mile march with half pack and rifle, and the chap that was in charge, a warrant officer, he was sixty-five odd and he marched at the front.
SC: Wow.
SS: He marched at the front and we went out. Had soup, hot soup out of the kitchen, and the jam butty sandwich and we marched eleven miles back. We got just outside Bedford, and he said, ‘Now, you buggers, lift your eyes up. Don’t tell these civilians you’re sagging. Get yourself’, and we did. Looked as if we’d just come up and started the march. But very, very good. Did grenade throwing, rifle, firing the sten, the — what was it? The Browning machine gun. We fired that.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And very, very, very interesting that was. It was to get you fit.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Now the food was rough, I would say, the food was adequate. You got the calories and after six weeks training, if they’d have said, ‘Stanley, run through that brick wall’, I would have done. You’re like, you’re like butcher’s dogs you know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And then that was all finished you see, and then we got posted for training, so they got me down, they got me down as air frames so, at Halton this was, a beautiful place. It was on the Rothschild estate.
SC: Gosh.
SS: Near Halton.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Buckinghamshire. Nearest village was Wendover which had a Church Army little tea place where you could have a shine and a wad, and we did six, tem weeks intensive, intensive, riggers course.
SC: Yeah.
SS: We did the basic, basic fitting. Now, I’d already been fitting and all this caper.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And they threw a great big piece of steel at you and said, ‘We want you to make something that is square and file it so that fits in there’. Well, I thought, this is going to take weeks this is, so I looked — I had a look around. It was a big workshop and all the machinery was belt driven in them days, a great big grindstone, so I thought — right. So, I sneaks down there with this and of course, if you press down hard enough, you get a great big shower of sparks.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And have you ever had that notice, feeling, that somebody is standing behind watching you? So, I thought, and it was a sergeant. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘Hello. What are you doing then?’ I said, ‘I’m fetching, I’m fetching some of this metal’, I said, ‘There’s a heck of a lot to file off’. He said, ‘That’s the idea’, he said, ‘You’ll use a hacksaw and then you’ll file it into shape. No — no grinding mate. Here’s another piece of metal’. Bigger than that one [laughs], but we did rigging. Very interesting that was, rigging, but you see, we didn’t rig the Tiger Moth, which is a biplane, which we spent two days with the dihedral boards, angles — this kind of — all the measurements and we couldn’t — it was a degree out. Couldn’t possibly get it, couldn’t possibly get the dihedral on the wings and we told the instructor, ‘We’ve tried everything’. ‘Well’, he said, ‘You won’t’, he said. ‘That’s why Brooklands Flying Club threw it out. It was no good’. They didn’t tell you that before you started. And we went out on the grass airfield, we swung the propeller, that was an art. That was a Tiger Moth and you had to swing a propeller, and then they got a clapped-out Spitfire, and the idea was that the engine people, we were divided, airframes and engines, the engine people used to sit in the cockpit and the airframe bods used to lean across the tail plane at the back. Of course when you revved the Spitfire, the natural tendency was to tip up on its nose.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Or belt across the airfield — so — off the brake. So, we all lodged, lodged on the, on the, across the tail to hold the tail down, so if your cap blew off, which it did mostly, about three fields away before you found it. But that was very interesting. And one incident, it was midsummer and we’re talking 1944 now, and no water on the camp, run out of water so they sent us home, sent us home for a week but just before we went, the Americans were here by this time.
SC: Right.
SS: And the air was full of Forts and Liberators, and this Fort come steaming around, of course, we’d only got a grass airfield at Halton, come steaming around and lowered his undercarriage. By the way, already on the camp was two hundred WAAFs. By this name of the game, the girls were coming in and taking, and taking the place of the blokes, doing the same job, mechanics.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And of course, they trained in one part, we trained in the other. And this Fort landed and the doors opened and these lads fell out, with all their fur lined clobber and the you know, Mae Wests, yellow Mae Wests and smoking cigars. Of course, these girls descended on them [laughs], I think they survived to go, to take off again. They said they’d lost their way, they’d lost their way. And yeah, we came back off leave, and then it was posting time then. Then you were fully trained, or thought you were, and then life began in earnest then, life really began. And we formed up outside for the postings and, ‘You go there’. ‘You go there’. ‘You go there’. Oh, by the way does anyone, anyone here like to volunteer for flight engineers. Well, at this time the chop rate was very, very high, in some cases you were probably losing two out of four, you know, which was bad really. So, air crew, they was at a premium. They weren’t training them fast enough but they got these lads overseas in Canada and south, so they were beginning to filter through, but until then the flight engineer’s course, it was different of course. When they took the four engine bombers over, they did away with the second pilot. They had to look after the four engines, they had the flight engineer who used to look after a;; the fuel and the revs and all that caper, and the workings of the aircraft, and they were the second, more or less the second dickie.
SC: Yeah.
SS: I think they were trained how to fly straight and level, not to land it.
SC: No.
SS: Not to land the thing, but, ‘Any volunteers?’ And if there was, you got a white flash on your cap, you know, that was for going on to aircrew, and this chap came up and he said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘Salvage’. I said, ‘Eh?’ He said, ‘Salvage’. I said, ‘Have I spent flaming all this time training in all this and I’m going on salvage?’ He said, ‘Not the salvage you mean’, he said, ‘You’ll be posted to 54 Maintenance, Repair And Salvage Unit, at Cambridge’, he said, ‘On Trumpington Road’. He said, ‘That is where all the stuff is kept. The slings and the cranes and the low loaders. All the tools appertaining’, he says, ‘and you will all be part of a salvage party’, which, there was nine, there was nine salvage parties and it were your job that if any aircraft crashes, whether it American, Free French, RAF, anything — you will go out and you will bring it back. If it’s a CatE1, that’ll be a sweep up, you’ll just take your dustpan out and your brush and that’ll be it. It’s completely scrap.
SC: Gosh.
SS: Or you catch a CatB. Now a CatB has belly flopped or he’s had a slight landing accident, and it was stripped down carefully, quickly but carefully. And that, in the case of the Lancaster, which was seven low loaders, Queen Mary’s, which was stripped it off in to different parts. All the engines came out on one loader, the wings, the tail, the fins and everything. And then the wings, they took the wings off and they were leant on sideways. So, and some were wide loads, you know, I mean there was no danger of [laughs], they just went through a town and demolished everything that was on the sides. And yes it was quite, quite an interesting job and we got, we were billeted in Jesus College, Cambridge.
SC: Gosh.
SS: Among the graduates you see.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And the pokey hole. I don’t know, no wonder them graduates used to hang themselves, you know. You used to go up these little winding stairs, all the paintwork was dark green wood or dark brown and we got four metal beds and three biscuits and a couple of blankets, and of course, next door to the camp, and if you hadn’t got a bicycle, everybody got a bicycle but if you hadn’t got a mortar board and a gown, they didn’t take much different but we used to dine in the great dining hall.
SC: Wow.
SS: And we had three long tables and then one across the top. The one on the top, the professors and top people sat, and just here, we had the officers and the warrant officers for our lot, and then we had the bods in the middle. And then on this one we had the undergrads. And we had our own, own mess, cookery, the WAAFs. We had some lovely meals. The other lads going to theirs, coming back with a half a tomato and a lettuce and you know, we were fed pretty well, and we were there for quite a time and then we went to Newmarket. Now, Newmarket was a grass ‘drome and it was on the, on the racecourse itself.
SC: Right.
SS: And — but whilst we were at Cambridge, I’ll start there, while we was at Cambridge, I think nearly every week we had a crash, every week. It didn’t matter where they landed, where they landed. If they landed in water, trees, open land — and just give you a couple of incidents, I can’t give you them all because I can remember them all, but you’ll be here ‘til [laughs]. The first one we went to was a Lancaster at a place called Mepal. Now, that was a Bomber Command station, and we went up there and that was the first one I’d been on, and there was a little lad — he was called an ACHGD. That means Aircraft Hand General Duties. So, they put him with us to keep him out the road I think, and this sergeant, a Sergeant Donovan, he was brilliant on the makeup, the weight-up of the human body to counterbalance, he was very good sticking bods up to balance the thing up, if we hadn’t got the right tackle. And this Lanc was in the hangar, so we were fetching the nose section off and we got the slings, what we thought were the proper ones, and when we lifted it, it was slightly nose heavy, which means we couldn’t lower it down on to the low loader in the right position. So, we said to this little lad, ‘Climb up there and sit in the end there to balance it’. Well, the next thing, it dipped and this lad fell out, bust his arm, and the sergeant said, very sympathetic, he said, ‘Get off up to the sick station, sick quarters’, and this little lad went up and he said he just nose-dived in a Halifax, and they said, ‘Well where was this?’ He said, ‘Well, in the hangar —‘ and of course it wasn’t a Halifax, it was a Lancaster.
SC: A Lancaster.
SS: But he didn’t go out with us again because he’d broken his arm, but that was one of the easy ones, but then you started on the really bad ones. We went to a place called Chedburgh, which is quite near Newmarket. That was a, that was a Heavy Conversion Unit using the four engine Stirling bomber which the pilot was twenty two foot of the ground before you, before you took off or anything. Of course, the angle and the wing, it had a huge undercarriage and what they’d done to get it in the hangar which was, the wingspan was too long to get it in the hangar, they’d taken some off the wings which made it. If you got up to seventeen thousand foot in a Stirling, you was very lucky. Very, very lucky, they’d no altitude at all, and we went, we went on this one and he said, ‘There’s a Stirling. It’s still on the runway with a canopy missing, and then there’s another one just to the side that’s crashed.. So, we went, we went up to this place, Chedburgh, and there was the Stirling, sitting on the end of runway, still on its legs and the canopy had gone. What had happened, it was standing on the runway waiting to take off, the other Stirling — it was night — the other Stirling was coming on and I don’t know what happened, but one of his undercarriage wheels, which was huge, huge tyre, had struck the top of the canopy, knocked it off. And the pilot who was sitting up there he was, he was on the dashboard. He was a goner. He was on the board, what was left of him.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And it were hot, It was quite warm and of course, the first thing they did was climbed up in to the cockpit. You got that for a start. I was only eighteen at the time so, you know, it was just a little bit unnerving, and we got that and then we had to strip the other Stirling down, but they towed that one into a hangar, stuck a new canopy on it and that was ready for off again.
SC: Gosh.
SS: The worst one we did was a Liberator, this was in 1945, a Liberator. In those days, in 1945, Norfolk, Suffolk and all the eastern counties, the ground and the air throbbed because you’d got a thousand American four engine bombers climbing out, because they’d got to get altitude and they had these special planes called Judas. They called them Judas because they went back to the ‘drome, the other ones didn’t. It had all coloured in stripes and balls and flash colours and they used to fly alongside the other aircraft, firing verey cartridges like a shepherd and his sheep, getting them all into form because they’d all got to be stacked in the correct formation, which was better to defend their selves before they set out. And you could just imagine these going around and around, the air was alive.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And we got this message. We went to Ely, just outside Ely. We took a road from Ely to Downham Market, the main road, a place called Black Horse Fen. Well in the fen district, the soil, you could thrust your arm and up to your elbow — it was black, beautiful black soil, right for agriculture, and we went to pick up a Liberator and the first thing — when we got there, it was still smoking. Still smoke coming out of it and dogs running about, that was a bad sign. And here was the back end, the fin and rudder and the rear turret and the two waist gunners.
SC: Yeah.
SS: It had gone like that. It had blown up at sixteen thousand foot with the one — I don’t, they don’t know what happened, but I think American crews tended to get, have a fag you know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And the Liberator, as soon as you climbed, you could smell hundred octane petrol and this thing, this thing had blown up with a full bomb load on board.
SC: Gosh.
SS: And it had spread about three miles. You’d got this tail end here with the two waist gunners in, you’d got like a depression in the ground, that was where one of them had got blown out and his chute hadn’t opened so that was how he landed. The nose section — there was five in there, that had really gone in. That’s what was burning and nothing smells worse than a burning aircraft. The wing was missing. The four engines — they might, you might have placed them like that, in four, and the bombs were underneath the engines.
SC: Wow.
SS: So, they called the bomb disposal squad, they came out, they said, ‘Well we couldn’t actually get the bombs until you get the engines out’. So, oh. Well in them days, you didn’t have the, we had cranes, the Coles crane, and then there was one with a long, long gib what — didn’t use, didn’t use that so very often. But if the ground was soft, you was bogged down pretty well and had to use the steel mattings, and of course, you had to get the engines up first. ‘Don’t touch that’ [laughs] ‘Be careful lad’, [laughs]. And we didn’t get the nose out at all, we just filled it back in because I mean, it was sitting there and what looked like a flying suit, pulled this arm, arm you see, so we just covered it in. But the farmers were, and the Air Ministry were very, very careful about the ammunition, because Americans used a .5 which is rather bigger than a 303.
SC: Yeah.
SS: I mean the 303s were like peashooters, and these .5s, they’d huge belts with them. I mean some of the Fortresses carried thirteen guns, thirteen .5s. That is a lot of ammunition. Well, I don’t think the Liberator carried quite as much as that, but you see, when an aircraft crashed, everything went all ways and it was nothing for a farmer with his tractor —
SC: Yeah.
SS: To run over a belt of .5s and frighten himself to death.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Of course, there used to, used to be explosive. What’s them? Tracer bullets and all the lot. So, you made sure that it was pretty clear and for some reason, there’s a farmer. He said, ‘There’s a wing’, there’s a wing gone in his farmyard, so, we thought, well it must be this one. Well the Liberator’s a Davis wing, which is about a hundred and four wing span I think, very, very thin camber, not as good as a Fortress in formation because they tend to wander around a little bit. But we went there and he said, ‘Since this thing crashed’, he says, ‘My fowls have stopped laying’, he said, ‘No eggs and they’ve stopped laying’. So, we thought, ‘Oh it must have been the shock so’, and he said, ‘I’ve got a wireless set as well’. So, we thought — wireless set, good, we’ve got one for the truck. We haven’t got one for the truck and he brings it out and it’s a big yellow box like that, with a handle on it and he said, ‘And you might as well have this as well’. It was like a big cardboard tube, and it was a emergency transmitter. When they landed in a dinghy, they used to crank the handle and they needed a kite with the aerial on in this to — there was a great big aluminium and silk kite. Six foot.
SC: Wow.
SS: So, moi had that, I had that - a trophy. And of course, this thing was no good, it could only send out a signal. That’s all.
SC: Ah.
SS: And anyway, with the [unclear] crane with the big jib, we got to, we managed to get it out into the yard and the wing, unless you’ve got the correct lifting tackle it balanced, but if there’s some knocked off the end, it unbalanced it. Well, as we lifted this wing, the flaps lowered and we was knee deep in eggs. These fowls had got inside the flaps laying their eggs, they’d not gone under the hedge, and it was caps and what’s the name, jackets at the ready. I think we lived on eggs for a month after that. But you see that, that was one of the lighter sides and one of the dead sides. Went to a place just outside Cambridge called Bourn, Bourn, that was a PFF station, Pathfinder unit, Mosquitoes, and they called us out to this one. They said, ‘It’s crashed in a field adjacent to the airfield’. So, we buggered off there, on the way up there, we gazed at the side of the road and there was a Catalina. Now a Catalina, in anybody’s language, is a flying boat.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Well I don’t know what had had happened to this thing, but it was perched up on the grass there, on a bit of a hill, so of course we had to stop and have a look at it, see what was happening. And then we went on to Bourn and went into this field, and there was two big gouges right up the field, right up the field, like two big [unclear], and as you walked up —one engine, half a wing, another engine, well, bits practically until we got to the end, and there was the cockpit and there was the cockpit floor. No canopy. The control column. That was it. You wouldn’t stand a dog’s chance in that. No way. And of course, partial amount of balsawood, the Mosquito. All the bomb bay — it was balsa planks. Ideal if you were an aero modeller, beautiful, but the rest were plywood, you see, and spruce, and we thought, right. Well we started work and looked down the field, and this couple, one holding on to the other’s shoulders come crawling up and jeez, that was the crew, that was the crew, and they’d belly flopped it and ran it. And the reason the navigator had jiggered his ankle - couldn’t get out what was left of the cockpit fast enough and he’d jiggered his ankle up. But —
SC: But they’d survived.
SS: That was them, that was them. Oh dear. You know, some, some were lucky, some were not. We went, we were called out to Tempsford. Now Tempsford is near Duxford, and it was a squadron for special duties, dropping spies and arms to the, you know, the Maquis and whatnot. They had numerous kind of aircraft. They’d Hudsons, Stirlings, they operated Halifaxes and — a real special job. Nobody said anything about Tempsford. And one of their aircraft had crashed. The tail had broke off and the tail, the fin and the rudder — where the entrance door was, looked as if the ring of rivets around there had sheared off, so the tail and the turret had fallen into a school playground.
SC: Oh gosh.
SS: With the, of course, the rear gunner was still in it, and then the other thing was a right mess, it was a right mess, and it crashed into somebody’s garden and the family that lived there, they’d lost their son over Germany a couple of weeks before, so they, they got it on their doorstep. But that were, some, but I want to finish up on a lighter note, a lighter note. New Year’s Day. I can remember it, the day before New Year’s Day 1944/45, we were sitting and it was cold, and it had snowed, the weather was a bit naughty, and they came in. We were squatting around the stove and they said, ‘There’s a Mitchell at Swanton Morley they want stripped for spares’. Lovely. So off we go, pile all the stuff in the wagon, off to Swanton Morley. Not a long run from Newmarket and we gets there, signed in at the station. We’ve come for so and so — that’s the number of the aircraft. It’s over there. Anyway, we gets over there and it’s on the airfield, and this thing — it glinted. It was sun, it was bright snow, piled high on either side and this aircraft glinting in the sun. You needed sunglasses to get near it. Is it? Is it? That’s the number.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That’s the number. ‘Right lads. Axes out, shear the brake line’. Out of the blue, this little jeep come howling around the peri track at four thousand mile an hour, like this. ‘Whoa. Whoa’, and this officer got out. He said, ‘This aircraft is flying on operations in thirty minutes time’, and our sergeant looked at him. He said, ‘This aircraft will never fly again’ [laughs]. So, they’d got the wrong number. Their fault, not ours.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And they said, our sergeant said, ‘Well where’s ours then?’ He said, ‘Well down this slope, in to the hangar’, and in the early days, the Americans used to paint their aircraft olive green, and this one had got a 75 millimetre canon stuffed up the nose and the big rack to put the shells in, because they used to go ship busting from there, used to fly low level and these 75 mill — the shell would go straight through a ship.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And that was its job. And there it was, all forlorn, battle weary, like this. And, well, we had to get this thing off the airfield, down this slope, into the hangar. Well, there was about three foot of snow on either side and the slope down was like a ski run.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Just like [unclear] like this, ice, so, we thought how are we going to do this. Well of course the brakes had gone, we’d had to chop the brake lines, so, how are we going to do? Well, it was a three wheeler, no steering job. Well there was a hole through the wheel, I thought, well if we get a crowbar and stick through that hole, we should be able to steer it and get the party truck with two ropes around, and they said, ‘We’ll do it that way’. We tried towing it down first and that didn’t work very well, so they said, right, we’ll put the truck behind and we’ll go slowly and let it go, and it didn’t work, and I was on the front, on the crowbar and I thought, and I looked and this wheel, and we’d lost all control and it just swung around and lodged itself on the top of the snowdrift. But I mean it was a laugh that was, a sheer laugh, but I’ll never forget that officer’s face when he said, ‘It’ll never fly again’. And well that was, and then the war came to pretty near the end and they said, ‘Right. What we’re going to do— we’re going up to Brize Norton. All the German aircraft are up there that we captured — and they’re going to take them down to Hyde Park, London. There’s also a Lancaster at Kemble near Gloucester and this Lancaster has got to be stripped down. You use the low loaders and you’re going to take it to Hyde Park and assemble it. Take it from Hyde park to Chelmsford. Colchester’. Army, a hundred percent Army. ‘And put it up in a kid’s playground and then you’re going to take it to Chelmsford’. This is to show the public —
SC: Yeah.
SS: What did the damage. Now, the aircraft were complete, what they were at Kemble, I’ve got a picture. They lined up, they’d flown from Manchester. Built, built on contract, finished off, short hop to Kemble.
SC: Yeah.
SS: For scrap.
SC: Yeah.
SS: All that much money. So, they selected this aircraft, I’ve got a picture of it there, and took it down to Hyde Park, and we stayed at the Grand Central Hotel. It was a transit camp, bare boards, four steel beds and three biscuits and a blanket. That was it. And we put this aircraft up along with the Messerschmitt 109. I’ve actually sat in a Heinkel 163 rocket plane.
SC: Gosh.
SS: The Arado. Tell my lads, I tell my lads and, ‘You were a lucky bugger you are’, and I said, ‘Well you were just there at the time’.
SC: Yeah
SS: And we were assembling this Lancaster, and this chap came up and he said, ‘Are you alright lads?’ We said, ‘Yes’, and he said, ‘What do you do for entertainment?’ ‘Course, RAF weren’t paid, ground crew, they weren’t paid. I mean two pound , what was it? Two pound a fortnight, you know, you couldn’t make headway with that and he said, he said, ‘Would you — would you care for two tickets?’ He said, ‘The Marble Arch Pavilion’, he said, ‘Showing Henry V. The premier of Henry V’. He said, ‘Would you like to go along this afternoon. Free ice cream when you got there’, and that was nice.
SC: That’s —
SS: He just came and said, ‘Would you like to go?’
SC: Yeah.
SS: So we saw Henry V.
SC: Wow.
SS: And that — that was smashing. Now, we took it to Colchester, Army, and we had our meals at the Army barracks. We were the only, they left two of us behind to look, and of course, being keen on aircraft, we showed hundreds of visitors through, you know. Letting them, letting the kids sit in the gun turrets and explained everything to them, and we used to go for meals and the cooks used to sit, you know, in the morning.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Used to go for breakfast, and we had these great big trays of bacon that had been soaking for about an hour, you know. ‘Help yourself lads’. Oh, it was Shangri La that was.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Shangri La. And then we took it to — from Colchester, this kiddies playground. It had got about a twelve foot fence all the way around, and this little old lady came up, she said, ‘He must have been a very clever pilot’. We said, ‘Well, why’s that?’ ‘To land it in here’. We were just putting it together, and then we went to Chelmsford and we were putting it up on some waste ground outside a pub. Ideal. Ideal. We’d just got it there a couple of days and this low loader pulled in from Newmarket, he said, ‘What’s your last three’. I said, ‘545’. ‘Right’, he said, ‘They want you back at Newmarket. You’ve been posted’. Oh very nice indeed. So, I went back and give me leave, and I went to Heaton Park, Manchester. Cold again, freezing, January. December this one, it was freezing. Everywhere was froze up, there was no water, this was on the camp, no water, and we lived in Nissen huts. There was no thermal, nothing, just got a, just got a stove in the middle with a pipe up and we couldn’t burn coal because there was no coal to burn. The coal was outside behind a barbed wire fence and we were guarding it, guarding the coal, couldn’t use it. To stop the civilians from pinching it. And came home on leave and went back again and we were posted Medlock, the Medlock route to Egypt, Medlock. That means across France by locomotive.
SC: Ah.
SS: Yes, so, 4 o’clock in the morning, we caught a train from Manchester down to Newhaven, we spent the night at Newhaven. We caught the tide the next morning, early tide, on the Empire Daffodil which was a paddle steamer which had taken part in the Dunkirk evacuation.
SC: Wow.
SS: Across to Dunkirk — Dieppe. Dieppe had had a rough time and we went to this transit camp that had got duck boards over the mud to stop you from dropping off and disappearing. Got these French ladies with the fur coats and whatnot dishing out the food, another bloke giving you French currency and you were going across France in thirty six hours from Dieppe, from Dieppe via Paris. On the outskirts, French rolling stock. The RAF had used it as a target for nearly four years.
SC: Yeah.
SS: There was holes in it. I think it was air conditioned, they call it air conditioning. Steam engine locomotive and we went from Dieppe, Bram, Neuvy-Pailloux, Limoges, and the scenery. I mean it was early morning, it was January, early morning, beautiful, and I remember there was no corridor on the train, no corridor. They were all departments, eight bods in a compartment, wooden seats, and the only place to sleep — you know the racks you used to have with the nets.
SC: Oh yeah. I know. Yeah.
SS: We took it in turns to have a kip in there, couldn’t sleep on wooden seats. And they said, ‘You’ll have a hot meal at Bram’. Oh, we thought, well so, we got off. I think we had a jam buttie. Got back on the train, didn’t get no hot meal, unless well, how are they going to do it or are they going to go along the roof and tip it through the top. Never got a hot meal. Landed at Toulon. Southern France. Thirty six hours it took, right the way through France, and the first thing we saw in the harbour was the French pride — The Richelieu battleship with the two guns poked out the water. Scuttled.
SC: Gosh.
SS: That was it. Two ladies in bikinis, ‘cause it was on the Riviera, you see. Two ladies from the Salvation Army with buns and a cuppa. Salvation Army, I always give to them, they’re the — anywhere — they’re there. Then we thought — right, a bit of a rest now. No, ‘Your ship is out there.’ The SS Orbita, the SS Orbita, so, we went across there and they give you a ticket. You got your kit bag and all your belongings and you started going down and down and down. EC two deck. EC two deck. Where’s that? Two decks lower than the rats [laughs]. Three days across to, across to Portshead through Corsica, Sardinia and then through the straits between Sicily and Italy. The Palermo. Well the Luftwaffe had bombed the hell out of us from that base.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Down to the happy land of egg white. Egypt.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Transit camp for fourteen days at Kasfareet. We travelled from Portshead down to Kasfareet on the Canal Zone by Egyptian State Railway with wooden shutters, no glass, wooden shutters, and we said, ‘Well, what have you got wooden shutters for?’ Well, you’ll see. Well the first native village we passed we were bombarded with brick ends stands. They didn’t like us then you know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Welcome back filthy British and we stayed at the transit camp at Kasfareet and then back up to Portshead, and caught the SS Cape Town Castle. Oh luxury, luxury. They had a band on board. They’d got all these blokes going back to India, they’d been to Blighty on leave and they were going back. All brown, all nut brown. There was us, Khaki drill. Just left you two inches white to get a tan. Red eagles. And we got on there. And on the Orbita we’d had hammocks, forty four to a mess deck and they were that close, when you turned over everybody like sardines. Like that.
SC: Yeah.
SS: The trouble was if you didn’t know how to tie a knot during the night, many a crash where the bloody hammock had collapsed and bods was on the floor. This was lowered down, you know, lowered down. Very nice, but we was only on it for three days down the Red Sea and I think they must have taken wind that, ‘Where are you going lad?’ ‘Aden’. They took great pity on us, great pity, and we landed at Aden and it was about a hundred, over a hundred degrees. The humidity, shocking, and we all piled there on the quayside with our bags and it was amazing. The water. They used to bring fresh water up you know, and these Arabs would sell you anything.
SC: Yeah.
SS: They would sell you anything, and one came up and they also have a good shufty around, to see if anybody of any importance, ‘Would you like to buy a diamond?’ And they’d bring this diamond out. You’ve never seen anything like it, stolen from Farouk’s palace last night. And you’d say, ‘Does it cut glass?’ and it had a porthole, it had a porthole [unclear], It hadn’t cut anything like this, but they’d sell you anything. The finest, the finest salesmen in the world, Arabs. We got on the quayside, boiling, sweltering, this chap came out, a warrant officer. Oh dear, he looked as if he’d just fell out of a [unclear] window. The creases in his trousers, beautiful. Nut brown, bright blue eyes. Been in Aden about two years. Dark, he was mahogany, got desert boots on. They weren’t issued, you know, they weren’t, desert boots were never issued but I think you could wear, if you were officers, you could wear them. He said, ‘Right, chaps. You’re now in Aden. British protectorate of the colony’, he said, ‘And as you know. Ladies.’ He said, ‘Well Khormaksar’, he said, ‘Is the RAF’s camp’, he said, ‘Just outside — a couple of miles’, he said, ‘There’s a native village and’, he said, ‘And there are girls in there’, he said, ‘Well, it’s completely out of bounds’. He said, ‘That place has been shut since Lady Astor, Lady Astor’s daughter had problems with somebody and she shut it’. Oh. He said , ‘And in any case’, he said, ‘The girls here’, he says, ‘They’ve all got disease’, he said, ‘There’s eighty percent, eighty percent got gonorrhoea’. Oh. He said, ‘And there’s fifteen percent got syphilis’. The lad’s said five percent, that’s five percent, and he said, ‘The other five percent have got both’, [laughs] so that was it.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That was it as regards and if you wanted a monk’s existence that was, that was the place but from there we settled in.
[Phone ringing]
SS: There’s your phone.
SC: Oh sorry. Let me just turn that off.
[Recording paused]
SC: Yeah, that’s going again.
SS: Oh yes. After a week settling in, now, Aden had got barrack blocks, beautiful, lemon tiles [unclear]. That was the air conditioning and they said, ‘Right. You’ll be attached to the communication flight’. I thought very jolly that. They’d got Wellingtons, they’d been converted from bombers into passenger carrying aircraft, that’s a, that’s a tale that is, and we’ve also got two Albacore’s with the wings. Airborne. I think the Navy dropped them off because they didn’t want them, they stand very high, and so we reported, reported to the communication flight. He said, ‘Right. Rigger’. Well the Wellington is a rigger’s nightmare because it’s covered in fabric, and fabric in a hot climate comes off regularly, regularly, and we’d got six Wellingtons and another one was the AOCs aircraft, Air Officer Commanding. Very posh. MF455 and mine was HC968. Well, I think the lads that we took over from had been there two years, and they actually had a march in Aden. Never been done before in the Air Force. It wasn’t a riot, it was a march past the governor’s office because they’d been there two years. Now, two years in a climate like that is a bit naughty.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Used to lie on the bed staring into space, they’d got the ten mile stare. You know, like this. You could tell how long they’d been there the way they looked. Of course, they thought the world of us, you know, where we could go down and take them and they took us down and just gave us a quick look around. ‘Right. It’s yours’, and they said, ‘Well, yeah’, they said, ‘But it’s your aeroplane. You’ll look after that. Where that goes you go’. I said, ‘Yeah well’, I said, ‘I’m not aircrew actually’. ‘Well if you look in your paperwork, you agree to sign on any of His Majesty’s aircraft or boat’. So they’d got you by the short and curlies you see, and that was it. So, they said, ‘Right. Well, yours is going pilot familiarisation. There’s a warrant officer coming up in charge of it, Pilot Officer Parrott. He’s instructor and you’ll go up and get a bit of familiarisation what it’s like’. So, right, got there, got the KD on, sitting there. I thought, sniff, sniff, sniff — smell of smoke. That’s funny. I looked out and pft, pft, pft, — the propeller had feathered. I thought, oh it looks like we’ve got a fire in the engine. Well that would be the first flight and the last flight then because when these things hit, you’ve got a forty gallon tank, a hundred octane tank, above the nacelle, which they start on and switch off and go on to mains and they land on them. And if a Wimpy touches that like, that they erupt straight over. So then the cockpit filled with smoke, I thought, ‘Deary me’. We’d got parachutes on but I didn’t want to use them. And this Pilot Parrott, he got the warrant officer out of the seat who was flying it and flew an asymmetric — made a perfect landing, perfect, on one engine. So that’s a good start, I thought, that’s a good start. And then I got quite, we went all over the place. Different flights. Went u/s mainly but the trouble was where we went to it was an RAF station. You got [unclear] in East Africa, down to Mogadishu, Nairobi, Djibouti, REAN, Solala, Misera, Eritrea and we used to go u/s a lot. Of course, the aircraft were old, you see, so you had to look after them and all these RAF stations, they called them stations, it was just like an airstrip with an officer and six bods showing the flag of the Union Jack.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Showing the flag. And they’d all got well stocked with beer, and for us it was a night stop. For them it was a bit of company, so all the aircrew and ground crew we all got absolutely —
SC: Yeah.
SS: We’d got to get up next morning. Well, the Wellington isn’t pressurised, you can open the windows in flight, so, the pilot said, ‘We’ll be alright because if you lead me up the ladder and put my hands on the column and when we get to — ’ and we never flew over six thousand feet — got no oxygen. Yeah. ‘We’ll get up there and open the windows and a bit of fresh air around. Soon blow away’. Now these things, they’d got eighteen passenger seats in, eighteen passengers seats, and the one on car seats, car seat, whicker seats, any seat, screwed into the floor. It was a plywood floor. Screwed into the floor. Every passenger had got a Mae West and a parachute, they’d have never got out that door, they’d never have got out that door. Never in a million years. And they didn’t tell them that, we didn’t think about that. The dinghy in the back — they’d taken the turret out, left the doors on and there was a ten man dinghy in there. Well if you count six crew and eighteen passengers, that don’t go into a ten man dinghy. But you didn’t —
SC: Yeah.
SS: And we used to fly across the shark infested Indian ocean, you know, it was all by the board. But I didn’t like flying but I never got accustomed. Never got paid, you know.
SC: No.
SS: I think the RAF owe me. If it was a shilling a day, they owe me a bit of money.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But I never enquired into it but we — and we did a year there, did a year there. I started cycling there. I formed the — the Cycling Club was already there but it was a bit of a shed, so the word in the RAF is scrounging stuff. Very good at scrounging and we built an old, an English replica bar with a black and white ceiling and built the bar, and the seats went round and got a, we got an arrangement with the NAAFI manager to get stuff a bit cheaper. So, whisky was twelve and six a bottle, gin was eight and six a bottle, and all the beer was Canadian. Dows. And we acquired a big fridge, an American fridge. It was broke but we’d also got an arrangement with the chiefy in the cookhouse for the ice.
SC: Yeah.
SS: So we kept it and we had our own bar, and unfortunately, well, fortunately the prices was much cheaper than the officer’s mess. Well, we had, the cycling, we had eight bicycles and thirty eight members which means periodically you got a ride out.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But a large amount of officers joined us because the drinks were only half the price of what they were paying in the mess, until groupie cottoned on to it. Of course, Friday night is dressing night, you know, and they’d hardly got anybody in the mess. But, yeah, I got a certificate of service which, I’d never seen one before. I’ve asked my lad. He said, ‘No. Not a certificate’, signed by the Air Commanding Officer Middle East thanking me for my devotion to duty. But on one occasion we were flying to Djibouti with six Army blokes on board and Djibouti was a French place just across the sea there, and just sitting back enjoying the flip there and bang. A bit ominous. And on the Wellington, you’ve got an astrodome like that, which you can stand on the lid like that and have a look around, and looked up and I this chap’s head and shoulder through the front cockpit. I thought, ‘Oh, dear that’s rather strange’, and the hatch, the hatch had blown open at the front.
SC: Right.
SS: You can’t land a Wimpy without a hatch because as soon as you put the nose down, the airflow fills the aircraft and won’t balance. So this chap was mucking about, so it was my job to close the hatches, but it was that hot in Aden, we left them open to let a bit of air, cool air in otherwise —
SC: Yeah.
SS: You burned yourself, and it’s the pilot’s job to lock it. Well I hadn’t closed them and he hadn’t locked it so they were open like that, and one closes like that, the other closes like that. Lip there and then a handle. Well he wasn’t doing very well — this second dicky. I said, ‘I’ll have a go’. So I wrapped the parachute harness behind me, I said, ‘You hold on to this because if I get blown out I want someone at the end of it’, and I climbed up there, and after about three attempts, you get this shut, and when it come to do that, you trap your fingers, ‘cause you’ve got to get them on the [unclear]. They blew open a couple of times and all the rivets was coming out. I thought, if they come off, that’s it. But I managed to close them, locked it and got all black nails, you know, getting them trapped. But as I say just, little glimpse. Flying down to Nairobi, made a very bad landing at Mogadishu, ‘cause Mogadishu, you might have heard of that on the news. Mogadishu. As you’re flying, there’s only one single runway because the Italians captured it when they captured East Africa and it was one of the main Italian airbases. Regia Aeronautica. And it had got two Minarets on one end. This side was sea, and here was the edge of the cliffs.
SC: Gosh.
SS: So, you’d only got one chance. If it was a crosswind, well it was a bit dickie but we’d got full of passengers. The brigadier was taking the family and the kids down to Nairobi, where it was a bit cooler, and we came in we got this crosswind. So Mr Parrott, our saviour on the first trip, was flying it with a Flight Lieutenant Mac Williams, an excellent pilot. But Mr Parrott was flying it and we came in and got it slightly wrong. Really it was a controlled crash, and when you hear women and kids screaming in the back end there and we came in and they had to swing it around like that and try and get it like that. It didn’t happen like that. We landed on one wheel and then we went down a bit more and a bit more. Well after about the sixth time, you lose airspeed and it’s a complete — come to a shuddering halt. Well, I don’t think, I don’t think the passengers were very happy about it but there again —
SC: Yeah.
SS: They’re not flying it. Mr Mac Williams took Mr Parrott around the back end of the machine and said. ‘You’ll never land another, not with me mate. Where did you do your flying?’ [unclear]. I was doing my checks and the elevator, the operator, the elevator spar which operates the elevator — it’s controlled by a series of little wheels which are made out of cast iron. Three wheels. The bar’s there and the three wheels accuate it and you couldn’t put oil on. We used to put [pause] oh you used to put it on bike chains as well, like black.
SC: Graphite
SS: Graphite.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That’s the stuff. The problem was, you see, Khormaksar and all these airfields, they were sand and salt, they weren’t, they weren’t proper concrete, so when you, when you opened up the throttles up, you opened the throttles, you held your stick back which brought the elevators up, which caught the dust.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Which dropped it down into the rollers, which wore flat you see. Well you could adjust these rollers, you used to unscrew and just ratchet it around a little bit, but there comes a point when you can’t adjust any more, and I was doing my checks, and I said to Mac, I said, ‘We’ve got a problem here Mac’. He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘Well you should only have a maximum — at maximum a sixty fourth of an inch plate. At maximum’. I said, ‘We’ve got a little bit more than that’. He said, ‘How much more?’ He said, ‘Well;. ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘Well there’s no accommodation here for these women and kids and whatnot’, and I said, ‘I’ll adjust as best I can’, I said, ‘But that’s it. I’ll sign for it if you’ll fly it’. So it was a — what’s the name? A Catch 22. So, anyway I adjusted them and got them all back on again next morning. On the way down to Nairobi, Mount Kenya with the snow on the top, we were there with our shorts on and bloody khaki drill and we couldn’t get up any higher. Six thousand, six thousand foot, ‘cause we’d got no oxygen you see. I think Mount Kenya is about eleven thousand or something like that and — vibration back end. It was down there. This torsionbar goes straight through with the elevators on. That was bouncing up and down, so I went to the control column, the control column was going like this. I said, I didn’t say, ‘Houston we’ve got a problem’, because there was no Houston then, I said, ‘I think we’ve got a little problem down the back end. I know what I’ll do, I’ll sit, I’ll sit on the spar’. So, the elsan bucket, it hadn’t got a proper toilet, it was just a chemical hole and a little plywood door. That was to stop prying eyes you see. So there was the elsan, there was the bar, so, I sat on the bar like this [laughs], and Mac rings Nairobi. Fire engines and ambulances and the station warrant officer. Engineering. So, we comes in and made a nice approach, nice landing, and as we come in, saw this line of ambulances and line of fire engines, waiting for it. Oh dear. I stayed behind locking things and whatnot and I heard this voice, ‘Where’s the rigger?’ Poked my head around the door, Station warrant officer. He said, ‘Did you know this aircraft was like this?’ I said, ‘Have you asked the pilot yet? Have you spoken to him?’ I said, ‘It was a [pause] it was a choice between stopping there and waiting for spares, which might have taken days or taking the risk’. ‘Oh’, he said, and they wheeled it straight into the hangar. Didn’t see it for seven days. They had to use their own lathes and whatnot to turn because they’d got not spares and they were cast iron, they weren’t, they weren’t steel. And we had a little trip, Nairobi, If you hadn’t got a lot of money — very upper class, and then came the magic day. It’s fit so they rolls it out. Air test. And on a RAF ‘drome, you had what you called a duty crew. They serviced any aircraft that comes in, it was their job to service it and get it out and they were all sitting around. And he asked, ‘Would you like a pleasure flip?’ Pleasure flip. Well, I think we had six of them on board, plenty of room, and just outside Nairobi, there’s this game park. I’ve since been talking to a lady, a coloured lady from Nairobi and I was telling her about this episode. I said, ‘’We flew across to Ngong Hills’. She said, ‘No. Not Ngong’. She said, ‘No N. No N. Pronounced Ngong but no N’. Like magic K in [unclear] isn’t it?
SC: Yeah.
SS: And down on the deck, chasing the game and then, looking out, the ground staff had re-fuelled it and the cover which covers the petrol tank, it’s got a metal clip on it. Well they forgot to do that, and this flap is on line with the lift line on the wing, and it was coming up. Lifting and spoiling the airflow, so we had to land just a little bit quicker than normal, you know, to stop the wing from stalling then, you know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And little incidences. And then the last flip of all before we came away. We’d been to Mogadishu to pick this spare aircraft up, we’d repaired it and we were coming back in formation and we were coming back about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and selected undercarriage down. No lights, no lights — you don’t know whether it’s down or not. Now if it’s, if it’s not down, you’ve got problems, if one wheel’s down, you’ve got problems still, but we’d got thirteen on board and we’d got — thirteen on board — we’d got six parachutes. I got one ‘cause I was part of the and oh, we’d got a problem so he rung up, rung up the tower and said, ‘We’ve got no undercarriage lights. Warning lights’. Oh. Groupie, got groupie down, Group Captain Snaith. He said, ‘Right’, he said, told the skipper, ‘Fly past slowly as if you’re landing and drop your flaps. Drop your wheels and I’ll have a shufty if they’re down’. So, he throttled right back, put the flap down, dropped the wheels. Well we thought they were alright [unclear], and he said, ‘Well everything seems to be ok’, he said, ‘But of course, I’m in the control tower and you’re out there’. So, he said, ‘Well try flying over, [unclear] and get up to six thousand’, he said, ‘And come down in a steep dive and pull up sharply and you’ll lock them down’.
SC: Lock.
SS: Very nice. And anyway, we did that, but the chap that had done the daily inspection and should have checked all this, he was on board.
SC: Right.
SS: So, we said, ‘What are you going to do about this?’ He said it might be a ball cock, it could be. Anyway, we come in, perfect landing, so that was the last trip. So the first trip in it and the last trip — they were a bit naughty, but just before we came away Number 8 Squadron was stationed permanently at Aden. Khormaksar. Don’t know why. Since 1926 they were stationed there permanently, something had gone wrong. They put up a black I think and they were there permanently. Now, they’d got Mosquitoes, silver, lovely jobs. Did a lot of reconnaissance work and one officer, the boat was in, he’d got his boat packed, he’d got his bag packed and everything and there was a young lad that used to drive, I think only about nineteen, used to drive the towing tractor. Virgil his name was. And there was a lot, there was more killed on last flights, you know, ‘We’ll just go up and have go’, more killed. Cobber Kain in, during the French — he killed himself in a Hurricane, inverted flight, and he said, ‘I’m just taking the kite up for a trip’, but this lad hadn’t flown before. So he packed him in, puts him in, put a ‘chute on him and whatnot and took off, and they’d got a bombing range just outside the airfield, and they did a couple of, a couple of runs. Third run, big bang, cloud of smoke. Gone in. That was about 10 o’clock in the morning. We buried him at two.
SC: Gosh.
SS: ‘Cause you had to do out there, it was that hot. So that was I mean ready for boating and everything but there was more on these last, last trips. But, yeah, and then we came home, and my group number had come up. Fifty eight, my demob number. And I should have stopped in. Oh I wish now I would have stopped in and made a career of it, but came the shiny jobs and the buttons and the painting of the white lines, and the white belts and [unclear], I didn’t care for that. And the Air Force had really — well it had to do because it was no longer a fighting force. And back to Heaton Park.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Not Heaton Park, just outside, just outside Preston, Warton. Kitted out, beautiful suit, pinstripe suit, trilby, mac. I’ve never been so well dressed in my life. There were lads, the spivs outside on the station giving you five pounds. Shoes, socks, suit, shirt, underwear. Giving the lads five quid to take it off your hands, I mean five quid in them days.
SC: A lot of money.
SS: Was more than a week’s wage wasn’t it? But then I did that and I went back to Celanese, finished my apprenticeship off and on to Royces. Ten years building jet engines. Chilwell — working on Rolls Royce engines for the Comet tank, went on engine test and then back to Royce’s. I went to Royce’s then building the oil engine. I went on experimental fuel injection which was a lovely job ‘till they bought Sentinals at Shrewsbury and I was down to go and then they didn’t take me. They said, ‘We’ll give you a good job on Aero’. I thought, beautiful, and I went from fuel injection pump that big to a Comet engine. An Avon.
SC: Wow.
SS: One for the Lightning and went right through Avon, Nene, the one that the Viscount used. The nice little one, just forget the name of that. On to the RCO 42, Conway. The Spey and the dreaded Tyne, the dreaded Tyne. Then the money wasn’t — I’d got a family of three then and the money wasn’t awfully good.
SC: Right.
SS: Not for the job you were doing, and only two of you built an engine in them days.
SC: Gosh.
SS: None of these you can walk around and have a look, none of that, and of course, they were all built by hand. And I went back. My dad said Celanese — or Courtaulds — they’re were building a new nylon plant and they want fitters desperately, so there weren’t much doing at the time and engine build at Royce’s you was built, the more you did you built on a bonus. Well if there’s no parts to put on the engine.
SC: Yeah.
SS: So I asked the foreman. I said, ‘There’s not much doing here. I’m going to slip up to Courtaulds’, which I did and I went up. I was thirty eight at the time and I went in, and the engineer was a racing cyclist from the Derby Mercury. He said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’ve come for a job’. So, he said, ‘I desperately need fitters’. He said, ‘Can you work overtime?’ I said, ‘I can do as much as you want’. He said, ‘Right. What can I —?’ I said, ‘I’ll hand my notice in when I get back’, I said ‘And then I’ll join you on Monday’. ‘Right’. So, I went back, handed my notice in and they brought it back. They said, ‘You can’t leave’. I said, ‘You’re joking’. He said, ‘No. You can’t leave’, he said, ‘Oh no’, he said, ‘You’re contracted here’. I said, ‘I don’t think so’. So, I had to go and see the superintendent, so he said, ‘Well, what’s the exact trouble’. I said, ‘Well put it like this Walter’. Walter Hampton this is. I said, ‘Have you got your own house?’ He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Have you got a car?’ He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Do you go on foreign holidays?’ ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Well I don’t. I’ve got none of them things’. I said, ‘I’m on rather what you call a job that is very valuable’. I mean, jet engines. You couldn’t make any mistakes on them you know, and he said, ‘Well you’re getting seven and six an hour’. I said, ‘Of course I am’, I said, ‘An inspector’s getting twelve and six an hour and he’s only looking at it. I’m doing the work, he’s looking at it. And if it’s wrong, it’s me, not him’. I said, I said, ‘He’s a wicket keeper’, I said, ‘And he lets stuff through and all’. And he kicked me out, and then a couple of days later, this chap arrived from main works with his bowler hat and his briefcase. He said, ‘Right. You want to leave’. I said, ‘Yeah’. ‘Right’,‘ he said, ‘Six weeks. You’ll work six weeks’ notice’. I thought oh dearie me. Jumped on the little Bantam, went flying back up to Courtaulds. I said, and I saw Ted, he said, ‘You’re having a spot of trouble’. I said, ‘Yes’, I said, ‘Yes, I am’. He said, ‘Well, right, how long have you got to work?’ I said, ‘Six weeks’. ‘Right’, he said, ‘May the 8th which is Whit Monday’, he said, ‘You start on May the 8th, Whit Monday’, he said, ‘You’ll get treble time and a day off in lieu’. He said, ‘How much overtime can you work?’ He said, ‘You can work till 10 o’clock every night if you want’, he said, ‘We want all these machines in. You know. Installing’. And he said every Saturday and Sunday’, [laughs] every Saturday and Sunday. Well, in a month, I got my first car. The Ford Pop, sixty five pound, ten pound down and the rest when you get it from [unclear] garage.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And as I said I worked there and I finished. I worked a little bit extra because I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t feel like leaving. And I did a lot of experimental work and a lot of — made, made Courtaulds a lot of money, because on this nylon, you had to do what you could with it. Twist it, stretch it and all that caper, and it was purely development work and I enjoyed that. And then they shut, they shut the plant down, seven hundred and eighty, bang, just like that. So, I stayed on a little bit to sort the machines out and sell stuff and they promised me a job. So, when, when we finished finally, I went up to the office, the labour bloke said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘I’ve got all your redundancy papers ready’. I said, ‘Well you know what you can do with them’, I said, ‘They promised us a job’. ‘Oh’. he said, ‘Well’, he said, ‘Things have altered’, he said, ‘The two chaps that you were going to replace’, he said,’ they have gone up to the worst plant on the firm. CA Department, where all the chemicals is and acids’, he said, ‘They left spinning’, he said, ‘Now if you contact them and ask them if they want to go back to spinning, or do they want to stop on CA. They’ll stop on CA because it’s thruppence an hour more, because it’s dirt money. Danger money more or less’, and he said, ‘And you’ll go back on to spinning’. I said, ‘That’s alright’, I said, ‘I were building, when I came back out the RAF, I was building spinning machines on that where you’re going to send me. So, roll back the years’.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And he said, ‘Can you fit a spinning pump?’ I said, ‘Well put it this way, we put these machines in in 1947, so I think I’m a bit qualified’. And then I did — I worked longer there and I went to the twenty five years dinner, and I sat next to one of the directors. He said, ‘How old are you?’ I said. He said, ‘You never are’. I said, ‘I am’. He says, ‘Well do you feel like, do you feel like packing up?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t feel like packing up’. He said, ‘Do you think you could still —?’ ‘Of course I could still do the job’. He said, ‘Well you needn’t leave, you know’. Well, when I went back, my foreman was doing his nut. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you’. So, when I went back, they were queuing up for my job, the lads, so, I went back and I said, ‘Well I’m staying’. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t stay’. I said, ‘Well go and ask Mr White, the director, I’ve had a word with him’. And I saw the engineer, he said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘It’s like this’, he said, ‘Things aren’t very well at the moment, things aren’t doing well’, he said, ‘What we’ll do is — a three monthly basis’, he said. ‘After three months, if you want to pack up, you pack up. After three months, if things run into a —?’ I said, ‘That’s fair enough, that’s fair enough’. And they give me a marvellous party coming away, they said, how many, how many, well by now the firm was, you know, they lost big. They said, ‘How many people do you know on the firm?’ I said, ‘About all of them’. He said, ‘You’re not having that lot, he said, ‘You can have a hundred’. I said, ‘That fair enough’. So the wife picked us up in a taxi, and — a marvellous meal, and the engineer, he said ‘I don’t know what to say about this lad’, he said, he said, ‘He’s had rather — he’s had rather an interesting —' so he gets like a toilet, have you seen these things. Paper that goes like that’. So, he picks it up, he said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘You started here’. I said, ‘I didn’t’, He said, I said, ‘No. I didn’t. I started at [unclear]’ ‘Oh, and then you moved on’, I said, ‘No, I didn’t move on to there’. So, he let this paper go and it went like this, and he said, ‘Well I’m not going to say anymore’, he said, ‘Because what I’m going to tell you will be wrong in any case’. But, and never once in my life, never once have I got up in the morning and said, ‘I don’t want to go today’, because work is your life really. I mean that is it, and if and the problem is if a person’s not happy in the job he’s doing, it does more damage.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Because he goes, knowing very well that he’s not going to have a very good day, and that in itself and, and it rubs off, because when he gets home from a day’s work, his wife, he makes his wife have it because — it’s not her fault.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And the kids, it’s not the kids fault.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And that’s why, when I lost, I nursed the wife for about seven years from here. So we did eighteen years up at the aero park every Sunday.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Fetching the aircraft in, because there was only moi who knew how to go about it. Hunter from Alconbury, the Lightning from Warton, a Saudi Lightning from Warton, the Canberra from Cosford. All these different places.
SC: Yeah.
SS: I thoroughly enjoyed it. I helped to build it, helped to move it across, and then of course, when Jan used to go up every Sunday, you know, make stuff. A buffet, and really get involved there. I was the vice chairman.
SC: And just, just for the recording.
SS: Yeah.
SC: That’s the aero park at East Midlands Airport.
SS: Yeah.
SC: Yes.
SS: It started in 1984.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And we’d only got one aircraft. Graham Vale’s Varsity, which is still there, and he’s still the chairman, because if he goes, the Varsity goes. But we used to run the Varsity because the Varsity is a tin Wellington.
SC: Right.
SS: It’s exactly the same as a Wellington but its metal, exactly the same. Apart from the turrets, which don’t [unclear]. And yeah. The flying club used to give us eighty quids worth of hundred octane petrol, it wouldn’t run on eighty, a hundred octane. So the old bowsers used to come round and squeeze in and we had a twenty minute run. Used to run port starboard in the cockpit. [unclear] for the public.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Run it for the public, and for us, and it would have flown, that thing. I would, it would have flown because we’d got the revs and everything on it. And yes, I did eighteen years there. British Legion. All by the side is we ran a discotheque club 1969 ‘til ’83, up at the Celanese club here. Every Sunday night, teenagers disco, we had the finest disco light display stereo in Derby. All done free. Did it all for the firm, you know because it was for the firm, and then we did ballroom dancing. Strictly tempo, sequence dancing. Then I became a — I’d always been in the British Legion at Spondon, and I became entertainments officer, and I used to do — I did the VE dance, the VJ dance. Did numerous charities for Gurkha regiments, FIPO, all these different. Every farthing went to charity, did a lot of charity work and of course, when Jannie was really poorly, we couldn’t do it anymore. And I hope I’m a Christian, I hope I’m a Christian, and I used to go to chapel and of course the last few days, I couldn’t go because she was poorly, and finally, after three trips to the hospital they’d been treating her for [pause], what’s the name — shingles, and it was aggressive leukaemia. And so, I nursed her all through that, and they had her in for two days and decided — for you, it’s the Liverpool pathway. So, you get no choice, you don’t get any choice at all. Just withdraw medication, food, liquid.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Everything. And that was nearly six years ago which was, when you’ve been married fifty eight years.
SC: Gosh
SS: Where I’m working now, I met her at the Angler’s Arms. Used to call it the Stranglers Arms. And when I was cycling, I had one or two crashes, and I remember one August had a right crash and busted my collar bone, and we used to go there to the little dances that used to be on a Friday night and that’s where I met her. It wasn’t love at first sight. No, I had my twenty four inch bottoms, yellow socks, brothel creepers, suit shoulders out here, draped shape. Looked more like a gangster when I put it on. And she was a clippy on the Derby Corporation. She’d been a nurse but she caught everything that was going and was advised to get an outdoor job. There’s nothing more outdoor than an open double decker.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And then yeah, we got three. Three. I’ve got two sons. One’s — what is he now? I’ve got a daughter fifty nine, the son is fifty seven and then the younger one is fifty this year. Numerous grandchildren, and I think to myself sheer luck, sheer luck. If I walk — I had bronchial pneumonia a couple of years ago and that knocked me for six, if I walk about fifty yards now, I’m jiggered, absolutely jiggered. Can’t get my —. Considering, I smoked for over twenty years. Seventy years, sorry. Smoked for seventy years. I started with a clay pipe and a packet of tuppeny sage with no onion, and the old pipe used to glow, the bowl used to glow red hot. And then of course, when you’re fourteen, you automatically become a man and you start on the old Park Drive Woodbine. You graduate to the full Capstan, and overseas, they used to throw them at you by the hundred, you know. They used to throw them by the hundred, but they never said anything.
SC: No. No.
SS: And I worked in blue Asbestos at Courtaulds for over thirty years.
SC: Gosh.
SS: And as I say — this dance. I tried to get in touch with them I worked with. There’s only two, the rest I worked with in engineering have gone.
SC: Yeah. Yeah.
SS: Just —
SC: Yeah.
SS: But there again — pure luck. Pure luck. And they say, ‘Oh you do look well. Oh, you do look well’, but you do.
SC: And you do.
SS: I get up in the morning sometimes, you know, and I think, no, but I used to work five days a week, sometimes six.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Looking after these, a lot of them younger myself, and I found out I could sit and talk to them.
SC: Yeah.
SS: We were on the same wavelength.
SC: Yeah.
SS: If you’re ninety, and they’re around about that age, you can talk about the old times, the bad old days and you can work your way through the wireless set, the television.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And you can have — always wind up laughing.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And I loved music. I can go, I’ve got three hundred LPs, singles. I love music. I play music like a therapy. But when we’re not playing music and you’re sitting in the lounge, and one of them suddenly starts singing and they all join in and they’re the old music hall songs that Florrie Forde used to sing and it is. I’ve worked in a lot of places, and this is the most happiest place I’ve ever worked because there’s somebody worse than you.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But the only trouble Is, you make friends with them, you sit and talk for hours and then one morning you go in, and they say [unclear] passed away in the night.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And I’ve been there getting on for five years and we’ve lost forty.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Which is about, you know, it’s about par for the course.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But I don’t grieve. I don’t grieve for them because in fact, they’re going to a better place because half of them they can’t see, they can’t walk. They can’t. And really you wouldn’t treat a dog like that.
SC: Yeah.
SS: You wouldn’t treat a dog like that.
SC: I’m going to switch this off now.
SS: Lovely.
SC: ‘Cause I think —
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 Stanley Shaw
Creator
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Steve Cooke
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
2016-01-14
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AShawS160114, PShawSR1604
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Format
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01:45:54 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Stanley Shaw was born in 1926 in Derby and left school at Easter 1940 where he worked in a garage looking after fuel for the nearby camp at Spondon. He saw some soldiers who had returned from Dunkirk, who were reporting to their headquarters.
Stanley joined the Air Training Corp after hearing a broadcast from the Air Ministry asking for volunteers. He tells the stories of the other 3 who joined up with him. He was an apprentice fitter with Celanese and had to break that apprenticeship to sign up for the Royal Air Force at the age of 18.
On joining up, he helped form 1117 Squadron, before moving to Burnaston where they had Tiger Moths and Miles Magisters and then moving on to 16 AFTS Flight Training School. He also flew Whitleys, Avro Ansons and Bristol Blenheims from Ashbourne Aerodrome. He also tells of his experiences with the Vickers Wellingtons and the Avro Lancasters.
Stanley was posted to 54 Maintenance, Repair and Salvage unit at Cambridge and was tasked with salvaging aircraft that crash, no matter whose aircraft they were. He tells of his experiences in his line of work, some good and some bad.
After the war, Stanley returned to Celanese and finished his apprenticeship before moving to Royces, where he spent 10 years building jet engines, before working at Chilwell, working on the Rolls Royce engines for the Comet tank. He returned to work at Celanese until he retired.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
B-24
B-25
Catalina
final resting place
fitter airframe
ground crew
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 163
military living conditions
Mosquito
Nissen hut
Stirling
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/521/8754/PMabeyBC1605.1.jpg
f01941cf3417c6042787116b14d105cc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/521/8754/AMabeyBC161128.2.mp3
30e7facd2dcd1fe4a70a1e84b92b8a42
Dublin Core
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Title
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Mabey, Bernard Charles
B C Mabey
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Mabey, BC
Description
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Nine items. An oral history interview with Leading Aircraftsman Bernard Mabey (b. 1925, 3008464 Royal Air Force), his dog tags, some service material, and two photographs. He served as an air frame mechanic at the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Marston Moor.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bernard Charles Mabey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2016-11-28
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Monday the 28th of November 2016 and we’re in Southend talking to Bernard Mabey and he operated in the engineering activities in the RAF. What are your earliest recollections of life Bernard?
BM: I was born in Canning Town in a small terraced house. My father was an electrician and I went to primary school in Canning Town until the age of, from the age of five until eleven and then I won a scholarship to a Central School in Forest Gate at the age of eleven and then that was 1936. And of course when war was declared my school, that Central School had been evacuated to Ipswich, just outside Ipswich. I went with them for, I was only with them a couple of months at Ipswich. In fact I was at Ipswich when war was declared so obviously we were evacuated before war started. And I had a sister who was also evacuated to Oxford so, and I had a brother. I was in a family of three. My brother who was working in London. The government decided that then all the evacuees our parents had to pay a contribution towards their keep. So my father, and all I was doing, I wasn’t being educated all I was doing was digging up the grass areas around this primary school in Nacton which is just outside Ipswich and my father said, ‘You’re no point in digging, or staying up there digging. You can come home and get a job.’ So on my fourteenth birthday I went up to London [coughs] up to London, to Snow Hill at Holborn which was a big like unemployment centre and I got a job in a small commercial artists’ as an office boy. I didn’t like it so then I got the job myself with a firm of estate agents and surveyors in Plaistow. This would be in the new year. That would be 1940, early 1940 at, I think, fifteen shillings a week and I stayed with them ‘til I got called up at the age of eighteen. The firm already had one person called up and what they were doing they were paying all the time they were in the forces, half wage. Well my salary when I got called up was about two pounds a week. So I was on a pound a week from the firm. It was a guarantee that you had a job to come back to. I went to Cardington to get uniform and that photograph up there of all the crowd is when we were got our uniform. And from there after about what four or five days we were shipped up to Skegness to do our square bashing for eight weeks and we were parked in all the empty hotels along the seafront and we used to use the old canteen that was at Butlins empire down the far corner for our food. And that was not a very pleasant time. It was in the winter. There was no heating on in these hotels. There was nothing on the floor. It was just bare floorboards and you used to wake up in the morning, my bed was along the bay window and you wake up in the morning your blankets were damp from the dew coming off from the sea ‘cause, you know, you could see it just out the window. And, but after eight weeks I was extremely fit because I used to, when I was at school, going back to that time I did box for the school. I became a member of West Ham Boxing Club and I boxed in the Great Britain Schoolboy Championships.
Other: Oh.
BM: But I was only what, about, oh under six stone. I was a very small lad. But apparently they thought I was good because I was fast and West Ham were a very good boxing club. One of the best in the country. Anyway, after passing out at Skegness I had, I was posted then to training down at Locking for air frame mechanic. If you were going on engines you would go to Cosford. If you were going on air frames you would go to Locking and that’s where we went and that was, but going back to what you were saying earlier the reason I chose to go in to the air force was because A) I had joined the Air Training Corps in 1941 because we’d moved out of London then down to Laindon because of the bombing. I mean people don’t realised I don’t think that when they started the Blitz it went on for about, oh, certainly longer than a month. Every night. You used to come home from work and my mother would have tea ready. We would eat that and by eight o’clock we were down in the shelter because by five past eight the sirens would certainly go and it was, you could more or less bank on it coming like that and it wouldn’t go all clear ‘til 3 o’clock in the morning.
CB: Fifty seven days continuous.
BM: Oh yes. And that went on, as I say, for well over a month. I think it went on for more like two months. And I was reading in an article since then that West Ham which, that was in the borough of West Ham lost twenty five percent of their housing stock during the blitz and when you consider that most of their housing stock were terraced houses, and small terraced houses it was quite a lot of damage done and, well during my time working there before I got called up. I worked for this firm of estate agents and there were people getting called up as well and so the rent collectors was not a reserved occupation and so they said, ‘Right. As part of your training Mabey you will do two days a week rent collecting. Which you look after the property and you collect the rents.’ So consequently you’re cycling around on a push bike around the East End of London and, with a satchel and you finish a day with about a hundred pounds in rents but all that few years up to the age of eighteen I never got troubled once, you know. Honesty then was quite prominent. But you saw the tragedy of a lot of women that were left alone with kids ‘cause their husbands had been called up and it was pretty gruesome because a lot of them couldn’t pay their rent and they just vanished overnight. And some of the properties vanished overnight as well because you would go around there the next morning you’d find a big hole. That was just part of my education I suppose because my schooling had finished at the age of fourteen and so when I go into the air force my brother already was in the air force. He was nearly, what, two years older than me. He wanted to be air crew but he was turned down because he was colour blind but I still followed him and I also went for air crew but I was similarly colour blind as well [laughs]. So he finished up a flight mechanic on engines and I finished up, it was not my choice, they just tell you, I finished up flight mechanic on air frames and that was it. And they taught me that down at Locking as I say. I think it was about an eighteen week course. It was after that you’d, then you could look upon the possibility of getting seven days leave. So you’d gone six months plus with no leave at all. And my posting was to Marston Moor, Yorkshire which was very enlightening because bearing in mind that at Skegness discipline was very very strict. To stand in front of a corporal you had to stand to attention. You didn’t speak until you were spoken to. And if you stood in front of a sergeant you felt you were seeing God and that carried on to some degree when you were doing your training at Locking because they were all corporals and sergeants, the instructors. So then you get your kit bag and all your gear and you go up to a squadron in, on Marston Moor which was a wartime ‘drome constructed with nothing of the niceties that you saw at say, ultimately I saw at Waddington anyway. But I remember there you got up to York Station and on York Station there was a shed that you report to and they would say, ‘Where are you were posted to?’ And they would have transport available for you to ship you up to Marston Moor. Go to Marston Moor, go in to the orderly room, hand over the papers, ‘Oh yes, you’ll be, you want to see Sergeant Edie.’ Oh yeah. So I walked over to the hangar and I see a chap there and I say, ‘Can you tell me where Sergeant Edie is?’ ‘Yeah he’s up there on the trestle working on that Halifax.’ So he then just turned around to him, ‘Harry. Someone to see you.’ So he got down from the trestle and I walked up to him. Of course immediately stood to attention and, ‘Sergeant. My name is Mabey.’ And he looked at me. He said, ‘What are you standing like that for? Cut that out.’ He said. ‘That doesn’t happen,’ he said, ‘And my name is not sergeant. It’s Harry.’ And that was suddenly from as I say living in a disciplined atmosphere to get to that and of course when you go to work they give you a bike in, at Marston Moor because the runway was built, a few office buildings, a control tower and things around it and a couple of hangars but accommodation was in nissen huts scattered around and I was in one of four nissen huts on the Wetherby to York Road. Side of the road. Public road. People going by. And there was, you were all and that was accommodated something over a hundred people and no toilets. No washing facilities. You got a stand by tap outside if you wanted water and you’ve got a bike. So you worked out that if you want to go to the toilet there’s the block over there but if you also want to go and have breakfast there’s a block over there and if you’ve got to go to the hangar there’s a block over there so you’ve got the bike and if you got up a bit late in the morning you’d got a choice. What do you want to do most of all? Then you finished up you wouldn’t have breakfast because you knew the NAAFI van would come around about half past nine, 10 o’clock and you’d get a cup of tea and a cake. And that’s what it was like. But you’re going to the canteen of a night time and you’d pull out a couple of slices of bread and a mug of tea which you would put on the stove and toast the bread and warm the tea. So you would ‘cause there were no other comforts. I mean I can say that I never ever had sheets until the last three months of my four years in the air force. All we had was blankets. No pillow cases. Just a bare straw field biscuit. You had three of those and three blankets and you’d sleep on one blanket and have two wrapped around you together with your great coat when it got cold. And on top of that clothes rationing had been going on in the country for a couple of years so pyjamas were a no-no. You couldn’t afford to use clothing coupons to buy pyjamas when you were at home and so consequently when you get in to the air force you ain’t got pyjamas so you just go to bed in your pants and freeze and it was, but the question of wearing a collar and tie never existed. You wore your battle dress with a sweater which you got from the Red Cross. A white sweater and you got white socks from the Red Cross. You know, thick socks which you wore with your wellington boots with the tops turned down and this is where you worked with overalls because the aircraft were always parked out on the dispersal points which were like circles of concrete sprung off the perimeter track. The only time they were in the hangars was when they were going through a minor inspection or a major inspection. Daily inspections, they would be done out in the open. And the daily inspections were the chap on the engines would just run the engines. If the crew had made any complaints about that was not right, that was not right all you did was a daily inspection on the air frame which consist of you’d check the tyres and there used to be a few splits in the tyres. You’d go and get a gun with a rubber handle you know to insert a patch into the tyre but then the next day you’d look at that. It’s been up and it’s landed and that’s gone, come out again. It was very, I wouldn’t say it was poor but the patches didn’t work and it was just like a liquid rubber that you pressed into it. And of course all the controls on those aircraft are in cables. They’re not like electronics now. And all along the fuselage inside you’d got all the cables. Like cables going from the cockpit to the rudder or the elevators and you’d just get hold of the turn buckles and you’d just have to check all those and tighten them all up and then it was ready to go again as far as the, as far as the air frame was concerned unless there was any dents or holes in them. Then you’d have to put a patch on them and that was it. And I lasted there right through ‘til D-Day. VE day because I remember on VE day we had some new chaps had come in from Chittagong. India. They’d been out there servicing aircraft that were dealing with Burma and places like that and they’d been out in the sun too long because they were potty. They’d just announced, you know, VE day. We weren’t allowed to come home and these were just running around the huts banging out the windows with a broom and things like that you know. But there was no celebration on camp really. We just carried on. Some of them said, ‘We’re going home,’ but we weren’t really allowed to. Whether they ever did I don’t know, but and then after that I was sent to, on a fitter’s course, a short fitter’s course to turn me into what they called a Group 1 Trade, Mechanics Group 2. You can get to LAC and you get no higher. That’s you finished. But if you go on to a fitter’s course that’s a higher grade, more money and you can go up to, oh, warrant officer if necessary. And the reason being that when they assembled the Tiger Force in Waddington, this is where they were going to be based, they wanted highly trained mechanics and fitters. They had more training and more competence so, and that’s when I was shipped after that down to Waddington and the Yellow Fever inoculation. But we didn’t have much work to do because it was the people who was doing all the work were the pilots doing training, landing, cross country runs you know and that sort of thing and so we got, I think oh, seven days embarkation leave. I got that about three times. In fact people at home were saying, ‘What the hell are you doing home again?’ And we were there as I say right until VJ Day and so they then asked for volunteers and they didn’t get any to take part in a Victory Parade so the group captain said, ‘Well just take two hundred men out of that lot.’ They had nothing else for us to do and so we were shipped down to Kensington Gardens. And then after that, yes they, my posting came through and I went to [Witney] which was just outside Cambridge and it was Group Headquarters. Lovely ‘drome, you know. Very modern like Waddington was but I was posted to work in the station workshop standing at a bench making modifications for Lancasters and so on. You know, small brackets that had to be modified and so on. Doing that from nine ‘til five with collar and tie on, looking very smart. I remember one day I came out of there and I started walking and someone then shouted at me and I stopped. He said, ‘Airman, you didn’t salute me.’ I said, ‘No. I didn’t see you Sir.’ ‘Oh. He said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I work in the station workshop.’ ‘I see. Well you get a haircut. You need, badly need a haircut. You get a haircut and report to my office tomorrow morning.’ And I thought to myself well if that’s the sort of life so I put in a request and I think they thought they were doing me a favour because living in Laindon a posting to Cambridge is, you know, fairly easy. You could hitch hike home. So they said right if he doesn’t like it there we’ll send him somewhere and they sent me down to Somerset. And I was then servicing, it was a servicing echelon that I was on repairing or servicing Avro Yorks because after the war Avro Yorks were used by Montgomery, Field Marshal Smuts, his was there and they come in for a service and they were lovely aircraft to work on because you would walk all over them. Outside and inside. No problem. Very big. And there I was being a fitter on air frames and I was in charge of a small group of chaps. So one day a new Avro York arrived from the makers, Lancasters and so we had to do what they called an acceptance inspection and, ok. I looked over it inside and outside and the only thing I could find wrong with it was the fact that the undercarriage when it was parked you had what they called a jury strut. That is a metal pole that is framed between the spar of the main plane and also the leg of the undercart and there wasn’t one there. So, so I put it on my report and then the chap who was responsible for the engines he started running them up and well the chocks were there. Everything was all alright. He was running the engines over well they’d also done another modification inside the cockpit. There’s a blower switch. Don’t ask me what. It’s really hot air and cold blower for the engines. Now what that does I do not know but it was not my, more or less part of my employment so that was the engine bloke and there was the undercarriage lever. They’d switched them around for some unknown reason. So this bloke was running the engines and when he thought to select the hot and cold air he pulled the lever but unfortunately that was the undercarriage and so consequently you’ve got a lovely new Avro York. No camouflage on it, you know. It had come straight from out of the manufacturers. It slowly as we stood and watched it slowly go forward. The chocks held it back, the undercart had folded and then the props were going around. They started churning up the tarmac and then it stopped. Well you know where you get, I think the best way to describe it is a cottage loaf which has a bit with the crease in the middle like that whereas the fuselage was like that. Like that. That’s just simply how it went. Collapsed through the middle from the weight and then the circus began. The sergeant came out of the shed, did his nut, went running off to someone. And then a warrant officer came out. He did his nut. Went off to someone. Engineering officer, the flight lieutenant, ‘Oh that was terrible.’ And then the squadron leader came and of course then it finished up with the group captain came out and the person responsible for the engines who was, he was put under close arrest poor so and so. And we had very little work to do then so that’s when I got posted down to Membury which had a lodging, to join a lodging squadron. Still a squadron of Bomber Command but they were lodging on Transport Command territory and that was at Membury which is just outside Newbury. Now that was a terrible hole. In fact after a few weeks it was examined by the Air Ministry and they condemned it. Unfit. And so we were then transferred away from Membury which was a good thing because on the last couple of nights we were at Membury, I remember this quite clearly there were a few what I call rebels in the, in the camp as it were and we went in to Lambourn. The racing area you know to see what was in the nightlife. Having a night of drinks before we moved off. There wasn’t much doing except we came across a hall where they had a do going on and a couple of them went up to the door, knocked on the, ‘Could we come in?’ It was the local hunt ball. Now, you know [laughs] they don’t look kindly on yobs and they still, these ones persisted. I wasn’t looking for trouble so I came away but apparently, and I only learned this the next morning when we were getting ready to go off to our new station, they were allowed in but they were whisked straight through the hall into the back room where they were calmly knocked about in no uncertain way and they looked rough the next day. Bruised and cut because they had dared to, you know more or less visit the local hunt ball. But and then we went up to Netheravon and Netheravon that was a squadron there of Dakotas. The same squadron we had from Membury. We moved them across. And that was rather amusing. I mean bearing in mind I’d got back in to the squadron habit of being, not wearing a collar and tie, just wearing your sweater again and battle dress. So we flew in our aircraft, air crew were, carried us obviously you know. We went as passengers with our personal belongings and all our equipment went by road on truck and that’s how we moved out of Membury and arrived at Netheravon. Now, Netheravon had a complete boundary to it so in other words you had a gate, had a sentry and what have you but when we got there bearing in mind it was also headquarters for Transport Command. One of the units there. So we went straight in to the NAAFI to have a drink and you could see all the way around the NAAFI that the office staff there, the WAAFs all looking smart and elegant and drinking their nice cups of tea and suddenly about thirty or forty yobs come in looking not very smart, not very tidy and all they did was go to the beer tent and start supping beer. Then we had someone who could play the piano and that was it. We transformed the place but, and I was there for what, about nine months, twelve months, and I finished up there. I got demobbed from there. They sent me up but it was the best years of my life in the air force because I was an LAC then, fitter trade and I used to play a bit of cricket and I played for the local, our own squadron and ok they could do with more members so the station picked me to play as well and then part of the Group they picked me to play so I used to go in to the hangar on a Monday morning during the cricket season and the flight lieutenant engineering officer turned around to me and he said, ‘We’ll do the jobs rota. Well now, maybe. How many days cricket are you playing this week?’ I said, ‘Well sir, I’ve got a match on Wednesday, another one on Friday and I’m playing on Sunday.’ ‘Oh. So do you mind if we can fit you into work in between those days?’ [laughs] But that was the only time when I really enjoyed the company because you know the captain of the cricket team in most stations is invariably one squadron leader or a wing commander. Someone you never, you’d rarely get a chance to speak to and all the other are flight lieutenants, flying officers, several sergeants and that’s it. If you get a couple of airmen in it you’re lucky and so they make a lot of fuss of you and I got on extremely well with them, you know. We got to the Group final at cricket and we played at Abingdon in the Group final and it was drizzling with rain and we went out to field in the first innings and we had a, in our team we had a fast bowler who was a Middlesex colt. So a pretty good player and he started bowling with a new ball on a wet wicket, a damp wicket and it finished and I was filled in the slips. And of course this, this batsman he just clipped it slightly, came straight at me. Went right through my hands and hit me there, split it open. I went down on a bit of a muddy, you know, damp pitch in my whites, blood all over the place and then the rain came and so the match was abandoned. But we finished up, we re-played it at Kodak. You know Kodak the camera ground? They had a factory at Harrow just outside London and a big sports ground which large companies did and we played on that, the replay. I know it must have been around about the August time because that was the last match I played and they looked upon it as my demobilisation party. We stopped off in a pub just outside Harrow from the coach. All of us went in there and got really sloshed [laughs]. Now, I think most probably that is my, well the only other thing I can remember then is going up to Preston to get my demobilisation pack. And what I remember clearly then is getting on a bus outside the depot at Preston to go to the station wearing my uniform as usual but with a Trilby hat [laughs]. And that’s where, and of course I got eight weeks demobilisation which meant I was being paid up till almost the end of October which rounded off just about the four years. But my firm had been paying me a pound a week so I then went back to them and renewed my working life with them. But I was fortunate in some respects because at Netheravon they had a forces preliminary exam and I took, well I attended to classes of an evening and I passed it and in fact it’s on the book there. I passed that which enabled me to bypass my professional examination which I later took after I went back into civilian life. The preliminary examination. It was like the equivalent to what you used to call matriculation. So when I later started studying after I got back in to civilian life as a surveyor I didn’t have to go through the preliminary exam. I went straight in for my intermediate exam and then final. So I put it to good use and of course I was lucky enough to qualify and that would be in ’48/49. ’49. And I wanted to earn more money ‘cause there was the only way I got to qualify really was by working, oh what, four nights a week. Evening classes every night and then I got qualified. Bearing in mind my education had finished at the age of fourteen you know that was an achievement to get something but I couldn’t have got anything else otherwise and so, but the firm was still old fashioned and I said, ‘Well I was thinking about getting married,’ you know and he said, ‘Well maybe, you know when you’re married come and see me and we’ll increase your wage.’ I said, ‘Well I’ll never get married on that basis.’ So I joined, I did the horrendous thing, I joined a Ford Motor Company in their property department. In other words I broke out from being in practice but I became their property manager after a few years and from there my career rocketed, you know. I became in demand. I was head hunted twice and I finished up as a managing director of, well the share capital of the company was a million pounds fully paid up share capital and we were making, and I started that company for them. That’s what I was head hunted for. So I had a very very good life then but of course my wife became rather ill and so in the, what, in the early eighties I had a decision to make. Should I give up my job and take care of my wife or just carry on and let me wife, no. So I gave up my job and I was very gratified because my wife then lived for another twenty years. So, you know, that was the right thing to do. That’s, I never regretted it. It would most probably have killed me if I’d have carried on myself. So, you know, it was a very fast life ‘cause I was building, I became a specialist in development of industrial estates. Because, when you bear in mind that before the war factories were put up where the families of the owners decided it would be convenient. The planning laws were very limited. So consequently then war came and every factory in this country was expanded but in a what, a ship shape ad hoc situation and they were not very well designed and a lot of them got knocked out and consequently when war finished this country needed a base to prosper and that base was the development of industrial estates where you’d got a large industrial area where you put factories on it. They did it out to a little point where you could build warehouses on industrial estates but you could not put factories without permission from the Board of Trade and the Board of Trade wanted you to go where they thought unemployment was. In other word up north, Scotland, Liverpool, those sorts of places. So consequently we started persevering with buying large existing factories and modifying them to units. We worked on this principal that if you’d gone with a large factory, I mean I’m talking about factories of three hundred, four hundred thousand square feet and there were factories of that kind scattered around the country. If you’d have gone to the planners with a scheme to, you know, segregate them all in to smaller units say ten thousand feet, something like that, you’d never have got permission. They would never have granted it. So what we did, in other words we designed how we were going to cut that large building up into units and show what modifications had to be done to the elevations but not disclose the fact that the internal layout was going to be reduced to many units. So consequently then we could offer factories to people where they wanted them and that’s where, because you know in those days you couldn’t finance. Most factories that were built before the war they were built out of a loan from the bank and things like that. Whereas really they finished up under the scheme I had going with institutions, hedging funds and insurance groups and it worked very profitably. In fact I would say that I’ve been involved in building factories in most of the major towns in this country. I mean I’ve travelled a lot around this country. But it was a good life. You know. Anyway, I may have left out a lot.
CB: Where, where did you meet your wife?
BM: I met my wife in, very simply, my mum bless her. She used to be a dress maker and when we moved down to Laindon, when we came out of London and moved down to Laindon because our house had been in London had got badly damaged she used to make dresses and my late wife came to her through a friend of hers and my mum used to make dresses for her. Then when I got demobbed she was very friendly with my mother and she often used to come around there and I’d be sent out the room while these ladies started measuring herself and so on and so forth. I said I wanted to stay but they wouldn’t let me [laughs] and we got friendly and that was it.
CB: She was from, she was from the local area.
BM: Oh yes. She lived in Laindon. She’d lived in Laindon since before the war.
CB: What did she know about the RAF?
BM: She wouldn’t know. In fact she felt rather bitter about the RAF because she’d lost her husband and it took me quite a time, I mean we got married in ‘52 and if I tell you that the, although we went abroad on holidays we didn’t go by plane until the 70s. She didn’t like, didn’t want to fly. She had an aversion against flying and the way I got around it was we went for a weekend over to the Channel Islands. I said we’d do a short trip like that. We flew from Southend to Jersey and gradually weened her off it. But she wasn’t, she wasn’t very keen on the air force because she wasn’t treated very badly but she wasn’t treated very well I don’t think.
CB: So what happened to her husband?
BM: Well, he, he was buried in Belgium and –
CB: What was he flying?
BM: A Lanc. He was coming back from a trip, an operation over the Ruhr Valley and he was flying over Belgium back and they got shot down and all the crew were destroyed. But other than just the odd letter, the initial letter of, from the commanding officer she never had any conversation with RAF after that. You know, she went out there once I think before, this would be the ‘40s and saw the grave but she was, I suppose, in some respects, to put it very crudely she was almost abandoned you know, because in those times, I don’t know whether you’ve heard this before, it’s quite possible that there were squadrons that were used to take the brunt. Do what you’d call the bread and butter jobs and you know all the new, new boys coming out of qualifying as pilots would most probably be shipped down to those stations. They become almost like cannon fodder and if they were any good they would be shipped then across to 9 squadron or 617 squadron or a couple of other top squadrons.
CB: So what squadron was he?
BM: He was in 100 squadron.
CB: And how many operations had he done?
BM: Ten. He was on his tenth one when he got shot down.
CB: And when was that?
BM: That would be 1943.
CB: What was your wife’s name?
BM: His name?
CB: Your wife’s name.
BM: Armon. Her maiden name was Jee. J double E. But her married was Armon. A R M O N.
CB: Now you were in London during the war when the bombing was taking place.
BM: Yes.
CB: So, what was your first experience of bombing?
BM: First experience. It was on the Saturday that the Blitz really started and that Saturday I was going from, I’d taken a bus from Canning Town up to Stepney going to a cinema. I think it’s still up there on Commercial Road at Stepney, the Roxy, to see a film. I got as far as Poplar and the bus stopped because the siren had gone up and we were all offloaded off the bus and this was by a pub at Bedet Road in Bow and they had a surface air shelter there and we all herded in to that and first time then you looked up and the sky was full of black spots which were the aircraft all flying in formation and then they started dropping their bombs. There were a bit of hysterics coming from some of the females in this shelter and we were stuck there I know until about oh five, five, 6 o’clock. Eventually the all clear was given and we were allowed back out and I can remember walking down because the main road through Canning Town, we lived in a road that was right off the main road and I remember walking down that road about oh 6 o’clock and I could see my mother stood at the gate looking to see whether I was coming or not. And that’s what I, that’s the first memory I have of –
CB: And how close were the bombs dropping to where you were?
BM: Well they were dropping all around the place, you know. Not, not close enough to cause any damage to anyone around them but Stepney was just around the back of Limehouse where all the East India Docks were which is where they were attacking all the time. And it was quite, I suppose, continuous was about the best way to describe it. There was, you know, quite a lot of noise and so on and so forth.
CB: So the raids started at what sort of time?
BM: That would have been round about oh 2 o’clock I would think.
CB: In the, in the daytime.
BM: In the afternoon. Yeah.
CB: In the afternoon. Right. Ok.
BM: Yeah.
CB: And then on future days?
BM: On what?
CB: On the days after that?
BM: On the days after that never, not much during the day. It was always then around about 8 o’clock at night till 3 o’clock in the morning and that was continuous and of course then and when I moved to Laindon I still had to stay on duty because even, although I was only in my teens we were all on the rota to do fire watching. Although there was an air raid warden in that area our offices were in a parade of shops either side the road and so consequently we, they all had to provide two or three people every night to do fire watching.
CB: So would you explain what is fire watching and how did that work?
BM: Well fire watching was merely that you would, if they were dropping any incendiary bombs.
CB: Where would you be situated?
BM: You’d be situated in the office but when the warning went up you would then go to the front door and you would stand in the front porch and if there was any incidents take place then you would be, have to deal with them and get the fire brigade if necessary if it became too big or deal with it yourself.
CB: So your job was partly to summon help.
BM: Yeah.
CB: To deal with the fires.
BM: Yes. You were only there to be the eyes. To bring in the air raid wardens ‘cause there was always wardens about.
CB: So in the raids then, how much damage did you see and –
BM: You wouldn’t see, see much in the area I was at to be honest. I saw more of it when I went out during the day working.
CB: Yeah.
BM: But fortunately the parade of shops either side the road didn’t get damaged at all.
CB: So when you were out working your job was to collect the rents.
BM: Yeah.
CB: And just how did you do that and what were the reactions of the people?
BM: Well, when you say how did you do it? You’re just knocking on doors and each house knew which day they would be paying the rent. Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, something like that and they knew the time you were going to be there and consequently if you were going down one particular road you would hit the first door. Knock that and they would come to the door and within a few minutes you would see them all appearing all the way along and you just go through them, you know. But I never ever came up against people that were afraid of the future. They were quite, you know, loyal and quite brilliant in their attitude you know. They didn’t fear the bombing. They just thought it part of life. It’s quite amazing really.
CB: Families were quite close to each other in those day so –
[Phone ringing]
CB: Oh we’ll just stop for a mo.
[Recording paused]
BM: Yeah. Well their reaction was quite superb. You didn’t, they didn’t walk around in fear. They didn’t. They felt that as far as they were concerned you know, they, they couldn’t lose. It was quite amazing their attitude and these were all in poor, what you would call poor living accommodation. They were terraced houses. I think the rents used to be something like around about eight, nine shillings a week. So no cheap money. And they led a poor life. Most of their husbands were all called up.
CB: So the fact that husbands had been called up and were in the forces had what sort of effect on their ability to pay?
BM: It had a tremendous effect because a lot of them were really on the bone of their whatsits, you know. They just couldn’t afford to pay and some didn’t pay.
CB: What did you do when they didn’t pay?
BM: Well if you could find them. We always used to say they’d emigrated to Canvey Island. That’s where. Because they used to. I mean I can recall many cases that people who were owing the landlord. Some of them about thirty or forty pounds which in those days was a lot of money.
CB: Huge.
BM: And they just couldn’t afford to pay it and so what they did they just vanished overnight and you could never find them. It gets wroted off. Because I think they used to get an allowance from the military but that was poor compared to what they really needed. They had hard times and that was why, what used to amaze me, they were having a hard time but they still had a smile on their face. You know they were quite jolly.
CB: So you were living in Laindon which was slightly out of town but in their situation a number of them were finding that their houses had been demolished.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: What was happening then?
BM: Well they, [pause] I suppose, I don’t know, they really, they could always get repairs because during the war there was a government department, War Damage Commission which we used to have to apply to for repairing costs and ok you would get an immediate payment to cover for tarpaulins to go over the roof and also to put up windows. Cover windows. And then you would have to put forward a request for further monies when you had to do the permanent repairs which you didn’t rush to do because no sooner you’d done any further repairs they’d all be damaged again. So you know it was, in fact, that was there was more work. The collecting of the rents was limited to, say, what three hours a week. The work was getting the temporary repairs done to the property in that week. You’d have to sit down and work out with a contractor. You had a local builder that you’d employ to do these temporary repairs and so in other words you know it was all part of one’s training that you were looking after not only the collection of the rents but the management of the actual property. Because all those properties were most probably privately owned by family trusts and people like that or local businessmen.
CB: Now when you joined the RAF you came across a number of people from completely different parts of the country. How did your relationships develop?
BM: In Yorkshire, I found the people around Yorkshire were wonderful people. You know you would go out of a night time to a pub in a little village, villages like Spofforth. Used to go to Harrogate, Spofforth, Knaresborough and Boroughbridge and they would make a fuss of you. ‘You don’t want to go back to camp yet. Come back with us and ham and eggs. Have supper.’ Now, I’m saying this, I don’t want to upset you but you never had the same conviviality in Lincolnshire. You used to walk into a pub in Lincoln, they wouldn’t take no notice of you. You know. Used to call them a miserable lot of so and so’s. [laughs]. Now don’t get upset.
CB: I’m devastated.
BM: Are you from Lincolnshire?
CB: Rutland.
BM: Pardon?
CB: Rutland.
BM: Rutland. Oh well.
CB: Better place.
BM: Better. Yes. No Lincolnshire was recognised. We all used to say this and yet it’s strange because last year my eldest son on his computer he saw that a large hotel in Lincoln was offering a good deal. Luxurious hotel. Took up his lady friend. They went up there for three or four days and he said they had a wonderful time. I said, ‘Well that’s not my experience of Lincolnshire. Of Lincoln.’
CB: Lincoln town or other places?
BM: Lincoln town.
CB: Why did you think that was?
BM: I don’t know. I don’t know. I didn’t go into Lincoln town very much because Waddington was such a well built and organised station as it were and you know you could get all the comforts you want in their NAAFI and so on and so forth and rarely did we go out.
CB: No.
BM: And certainly when I was at Skegness we never did go out. Well I say we never. I did on one occasion because on the seafront in Skegness there was a little sort of Esplanade café come dance floor and we were allowed out ‘til about 9 o’clock at night so I thought well I’d go over there. I used to do a lot of dancing before I got called up so, but I didn’t realise that there you had hobnailed boots didn’t you? During your training.
CB: Sure.
BM: And of course I went in to that place and asked a young lady to dance in hobnailed boots and I was very popular.
CB: Particularly when you trod on her toe.
BM: Precisely. So that was the only time I went out in Skegness. Yeah.
CB: And did you ever, did you get relationships with people that lasted throughout the war?
BM: No. No.
CB: You didn’t have a best friend of any kind who started with you?
BM: No. No.
CB: You played the, played the market.
BM: No, I didn’t, [pause] I got friendly with some of the females during my stint in Yorkshire but it didn’t develop into anything that really, no. Not of any consequence.
CB: Right.
BM: Never continued writing to them after I left or anything like that. When I left I left. You know.
CB: All the stations had WAAFs.
BM: Yeah.
CB: In their own area so how did the, how did you link together there in the NAAFI and –
BM: Well.
CB: In the messes?
BM: In the NAAFI they used to, you know we used to be friendly but if you had a dance they always used to go to the air crew. They were the air crew following you know. They wouldn’t dance with the likes of an LAC.
CB: Of the erks. Yes.
BM: I’m afraid to say that was a fact.
CB: Yeah.
BM: But no. The air crew used to come in. I was at a dance, on New Year’s Eve we’d have a dance and they’d take up all the birds. But er –
CB: Quite upsetting really.
BM: Yeah. [Laughs] although some of them used to work with me.
CB: Yes.
BM: You know they were –
CB: Did they?
BM: Some of them used to be flight mechanics. Certainly a lot of them on the electrical side of the trade. Wireless and so on. The cleaner jobs. But not on the dirty jobs.
CB: So out on the flight line what were you doing there?
BM: Pardon?
CB: Out on the flight line on dispersal what was your task and how did the, a day go?
BM: Well. The day. You used to [pause] you’d be always doing, check your aircraft and when it was all very clear, ok. You would be just tidying around your dispersal point. Make sure that the concrete area was clearly defined so that when they, they would go and fly into it, not fly but they would motor into it.
CB: Taxi into it.
BM: Yeah. Taxi into it. And then they would of course turn.
CB: Yeah.
BM: And you would guide them on that turn and so you would make sure that area was clear and ok. You would then go up to the dispersal hut and stay in there until they came back.
CB: So how many planes did you have a responsibility for?
BM: Well you’d only have responsibility for about two.
CB: Right.
BM: There was enough to go around from that point where we were.
CB: And you were in a section responsible for the two aircraft so what were the component parts of the people? You were dealing with what aspect specifically?
BM: What? Of the aircraft?
CB: Yes.
BM: Well I’d be responsible for the hydraulics like on the undercarriage. The oleo legs that used to, well the ones that go up and down inside the casing. The tyres. The wheels and the tail plane mechanics and also the ailerons and all the controls and that would be it.
CB: And the hydraulics were fed from one of the engines. Which was that?
BM: Well the brakes were operated pneumatically but the hydraulics were operated as you say from the engines.
CB: So there was a power take off from one of the engines on the starboard side was it? The starboard inner.
BM: I can’t remember. I can’t remember on that one.
CB: What other trades were there operating at the dispersal?
BM: There would be engines. And there would be wireless and there would be electrics but the, the munitions people they always used to load up. They’d come out with their trolley and put what armaments they had to put on in the guns and so on and the bombs. And that was it. That’s [pause] there was nothing else from that point of view and then as I say you would just sit and wait.
CB: So the aircraft would be prepared for use. Who was the senior person in your section?
BM: It would be a corporal. He would be, he would be the one that would sign up the air worthiness and so on.
CB: And he would provide that documentation to whom?
BM: He would see, he would show that to the pilot when he came out. In other words the pilots used to. People used to say did you have much contact? As an AC2, AC1 no. No contact at all. Even as a LAC no contact because the aircrew used to get there, go to their briefing.
CB: Yeah.
BM: And they’d come out to the dispersal point in their car, in their coach and they would just get out. You’d be standing there not far away but as far as they was concerned the coach would come up close to the entrance of the aircraft. They’d get out, into the aircraft and off. And ok the only people they would see would be the corporal or the sergeant. Whoever it was responsible that everything was all alright.
CB: Yeah. Did the flight engineer get involved in the signing off of the aircraft?
BM: The flight engineers I don’t believe really started operating until about 1945.
CB: No. They were there with the big aircraft. So there was a flight engineer in all the four engined aircraft. So your Lancaster, Lancasters had flight engineers and I was just curious to know whether they liaised with the ground crew.
BM: Well I was on Halifaxes.
CB: Halifaxes first.
BM: And I can’t remember ever seeing a flight engineer on a Halifax.
CB: They were always there. Yeah.
BM: In what year?
CB: Well from ’43. So the twin engined planes didn’t have flight engineers but –
BM: No. I accept that.
CB: Every four engine aircraft had a flight engineer.
BM: No but it was a concept that didn’t come out to till later.
CB: Yeah. So when –
BM: I’ve got a feeling they didn’t come out ‘til about ’44.
CB: When the, when the aircraft landed –
BM: Yeah.
CB: Then what happened? Were you all there to receive it as soon as it arrived?
BM: Well we we were in the flight hut.
CB: Flight office. Yeah.
BM: Which was up by the, and we would just go over to the dispersal point and then we would soon pick it up on the perimeter track and flag it in.
CB: Right.
BM: And that was it.
CB: Yeah.
BM: The crew would get out in to the coach and off and we would just then close it all up. Put the chocks down and so on and so forth.
CB: So the aircraft would always have the potential for developing faults.
BM: Oh yeah.
CB: So who would do the communication of that and to whom?
BM: Well the pilot used to if there was any faults on it the pilot would give that in his report.
CB: Right.
BM: To the sergeant.
CB: Ok.
BM: And ok they would decide whether then it was a major or a minor.
CB: Yeah.
BM: If it was a minor ok we would deal with it around on the dispersal point.
CB: Sure.
BM: If it was a major one it could go in to the hangar.
CB: Yeah. And what about damage? How often were your aircraft damaged?
BM: They got damaged but not very much. Not to that degree.
CB: What sort of damage did they come back with?
BM: Some of them came back with ammunition holes in it which you would do a little patch on it and things like that.
CB: How was the patch administered? Was it a fabric or was it a metal?
BM: No. Metal.
CB: So how was it attached?
BM: Attached with rivets. Used to use the pop rivet gun. Cut a piece of metal. It was very, I wouldn’t say shambolic but it was just to do it very quickly. You would cut a piece of metal to cover the area and then you would drill the four corners, pop rivet it and then go around later all the way through. You know, get rivets.
CB: Yeah.
BM: Quite.
CB: So you’d secure it first.
BM: Oh yeah.
CB: And then you put the extra rivets.
BM: Extra rivets in in between.
CB: Now what about painting afterwards? How did you do that?
BM: Well be able to just put a bit of a drop of paint on it but they didn’t worry too much about that. Some of those aircraft they looked horrible with the, with the paint job. I mean, you know, you just had some paint and you just brushed it, brushed it on.
CB: But it always had paint would it?
BM: Oh yeah.
CB: Because aluminium’s shiny.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: What would you say was your most abiding memory of your time in the RAF?
BM: I suppose that when I was at Netheravon the aircraft then had to be, they were all camouflaged, had to be stripped back to their bare metal again. What you would call peacetime and that was a so and so of a job because you had to put paint stripper. And getting it all off by hand it was not very pleasant.
CB: How long did that take?
BM: Pardon?
CB: How long did that take?
BM: Oh we had, what, a squadron of about twelve aircraft and it took quite a time.
CB: What were the planes?
BM: Dakotas.
CB: Right. So this is at the end of the war.
BM: Yeah.
CB: So they were taking the, because they war had ended they were taking the camouflage off were they?
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And then what were they applying?
BM: Nothing.
CB: Right. So just aluminium.
BM: Just the bare aluminium and also at the same time we were fitting seats in to them. Like tubular seats. There was one other job that when I was at Marston Moor I had a petrol leak on one of the Halifaxes and I had to take out the petrol tank which was located in the wings and you’ve got to get up on a trestle to more or less get them and they are all, they were not rivets. There’s a sort of a square panel that is screwed into the main plane, main wing and they’re like cheese headed screws and then every, about oh half an inch apart all the way around and in those days you didn’t have [rapid?] screwdrivers and so me being an AC2 at the bottom of the ladder that was your job Mabey. Get that all off. So you’d spend ages getting every screw off, dropped the flap and then disconnect the tank and before you completely disconnected there was always some aircraft fuel still inside. You’d have to load that into a fifty gallon drum, the surplus and then you could drop the tank and when you dropped the tank you put a new one in and then go back again all good. The only advantage was that you knew then you had some cleaning material to clean your uniform because we used to clean our uniforms in aircraft fuel and then lay them out in the wings to dry and –
Other: Goodness.
CB: So you had a particular aroma that not everybody appreciated.
BM: I agree. Yes. That was most probably.
CB: They smelled you coming,
BM: [Laughs] That was most probably one of the worst periods of my life. Yeah.
CB: Now the fuel tank. That’s because it had had battle damage in it was it?
BM: Some were. Some were not but it was for one I particularly remember. It had, it hadn’t had battle damage it was just, it had become worn.
CB: Oh.
BM: And it had to be replaced.
CB: Now dealing with that was very dangerous so how, because of the potential for a spark so how was that handled with the screwdrivers and everything?
BM: Well it was, you just didn’t, you know I agree on reflection most probably it was a fire hazard but you didn’t consider it. You know, you just had to get that tank out because it needed, it needed to be replaced.
CB: I wondered if there were special procedures.
BM: No.
CB: For safety. Because the plane could be lost.
BM: Yeah.
CB: Never mind the AC plonk.
BM: Yeah. I don’t think there, most probably could have been but I can’t recall them quite frankly.
CB: Oh. After the war did you consider joining any associations? Squadron or RAFA. British Legion.
BM: Well. I joined RAFA when I was still in the air force at Netheravon. They came to you and this would be in 1947 because I used to wear the RAFA badge on my battle dress although that was not legal but I did join them. But when I ultimately got demobbed belonging to an Association regarding the air force was not foremost in my mind you know. I mean the point is that I had other things to think about then. In fact the strange thing is I only started, I had to go into hospital about, oh this would be about four years ago and in the next bed next to me was the chairman of the local branch of the RAFA Southend. And we started talking and spoke about the air force and he said to me, you know, ‘Why aren’t you a member?’ I said, ‘Haven’t had time. I’ve been busy.’ You know. I had a hectic life. ‘Well,’ he said, you know, ‘You should join. We could do with more members.’ And I did join and then my wife passed away and I became rather active but then the committee decided rather, in my book, foolishly that some of them were going to resign and meant that then the branch had to be closed. And the branch was closed.
CB: What sort of people were there? What backgrounds in the RAF were the people who were -?
BM: I could never find out. I could never find out because they were rather stand-offish a little. I could never really get to know them quite well. Not to that degree in those few years and they were, I don’t know. Most of them came from what we called Leigh area and they, I always talk about them that they were people who have curtains around their dustbins. You most probably get them in many towns and they and so consequently they seemed to prefer abandoning the concept of an RAF association and turning it in to a luncheon club and I didn’t. I said no. And I’ve been proved right because the silly fools, my membership was transferred to Basildon, right. Basildon now I know are doing exactly what Southend have done. They’ve got about five members that are active. That’s all. So really what should have happened is that, and there’s another branch that’s going to go exactly the same at Thurrock so you’ve got three branches there because the membership is falling, you know, we’re getting older. And so consequently what they should have done is said well look we’ve got when we still had about twenty five members attending meetings on a monthly basis. Keep Southend. Transfer Thurrock and Basildon into Southend. You’ve got your younger committee members and you’ll keep going and now they are going to finish off without any branch in this area at all. Rather foolish. But because some of them felt that well they didn’t want to carry on in their capacity as chairman because their wives were not in good health or something like that. I can understand it up to a point but don’t take the drastic action.
CB: No.
BM: And they did and so now they’ve got nothing.
CB: Did you get the impression that some of, that more of them were air crew or ground crew or what?
BM: Oh well with the RAF Association especially in Southend there was an aircrew branch of it.
CB: Oh.
BM: And they, they used to have their own little meetings.
CB: Oh [laughs]. Right.
BM: And you know, one particular chap I used to talk to who was in the Aircrew Association and the strange thing is, of my age, when he finished his training as a pilot they liked him as an instructor so they sent him out to Canada to finish his career in Canada teaching. So as far as he was concerned he’d been across the pond. He hadn’t seen any of the war at all.
CB: No.
BM: And to me it seemed a tragedy that they even split them because the aircrew in total should have still mixed with the others and that was confirmed at where we went the other day. I can’t think of its name now.
CB: What? At Aces High in Wendover.
BM: Yeah. At Wendover. I mean on that table there were two squadron leaders, one wing commander and a warrant officer.
CB: Yes.
BM: And also me.
CB: Yeah.
BM: A leading aircraft man. And they just treated me handsomely.
CB: They did.
BM: Oh yes. They had no side of it at all and this is the way it should have been.
CB: Yes.
BM: Ok. When you get in front of them in uniform you stand to attention.
CB: Of course.
BM: You recog, but you’re not doing that for the individual. You are doing that for the uniform and that was a little thing but they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t cause any segregation at all because –
CB: Right.
BM: It’s strange because I went to one particular meeting and there was a chap there. He came up to me and he started talking. He was an ex-major in the army and he said this, it was the, oh [pause] it was a special club that they’d formed that did the Normandy landings and he said, ‘You should join.’ I said, ‘Join? I didn’t take part in the Normandy landings.’ ‘What do you mean you didn’t take part? You said you were in uniform didn’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I had a couple of cookhouse blokes working for me. You could say they didn’t take part in the Normandy landings. No. I know they didn’t but we couldn’t have done it without their, them cooking our meals and we wouldn’t have done the Normandy landings without the air force as a back-up. Everyone in the forces at that particular time must have made some form of contribution towards that Normandy invasion.’ And this is was it’s all about isn’t it? They try and segregate it and well they always looked upon you, some of those air crew, a few in civilian life look upon you with an air of superior quality which is wrong. But –
CB: Hurtful.
BM: Well in business ok. As far as I was concerned you know I was top of the list so they, they didn’t worry me.
CB: No.
BM: Simple as that.
CB: I think we’d better take a pause. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
CB: So after the war you returned to civilian life in 1947.
BM: Yeah.
CB: From then onwards what was your perception of the general public’s attitude towards people who’d been in the RAF?
BM: They didn’t, on reflection of what I’ve seen lately I realise now that their reception was not as good as it should have been. We all just carried on and as far as I was concerned I don’t think I ever was approached from the time I got demobbed at ’47 you know because there was still a certain creeping in, an air of resentment that there had been a few people that had dodged their responsibilities either through religious grounds or other things and, or reserved occupation and I saw that particularly when I went to Ford Motor Company because I used to be in a specialised department so consequently I had access to a lot of places because I used to have to go to them. And I can remember on occasions when you would meet superintendents who were responsible for the production of cars in quite a large area and they would be an ignorant pig. And you’d think to yourself, well mister, I’m sorry I wouldn’t even employ you to stick stamps on an envelope but because they’d been in a reserved occupation they had a clear field to be promoted. Not because they’d earned it but there was no one else to fill the position and so consequently you had a a backlog like that there and they didn’t want to talk to you about what you’d done in the air force because they hadn’t done it themselves. So they didn’t. They had nothing to discuss. And that was the same in a lot of cases so I mean I can remember in fact the first when I got back the couple of conscientious objectors they’d risen within that small private company quite well because they used to read the bible every lunchtime. They’ sit in the office reading the bible whereas you would go and eat a sandwich they would read the bible but they couldn’t be touched. But they certainly took promotion when it was offered to them and I know, I know of one particular case where people when they went for their medical they pleaded on certain occasions. They got away with it. One particular prominent chap who lives in Southend he did anyway. He was in the medical when I went for the medical because I came to Southend to get my medical and he told me, he said, ‘I had a motor bike accident six months ago. I’m going to tell them I keep on getting headaches,’ and this is what he did and he was classified grade 3. Yeah. And so all the time I used to see him in Laindon when I used to come home on leave there was he you know running around in a flash car and everything else. I know. So the air force and the same with the army, same with the navy those who served they didn’t get the treatment that they should have got I don’t think.
CB: The recognition.
BM: Yeah. And [pause] but now and the strange thing is the recognition you get now is overwhelming. I mean, you know, I’ve only done two book signings and it’s opened my eyes. I didn’t realise the sincerity that goes in it. I mean people just don’t want you to sign their book. All they want to do is say hello, thank you and shake your hand. That’s more important to them than your signature which astonishes me. I didn’t, because that sort of feeling didn’t exist when you first got demobbed. Anyway. [laughs].
CB: Thanks.
[Recording paused]
CB: Victory Parade.
BM: Pardon?
CB: For the Victory Parade.
BM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
BM: And we had Lee Enfield 303 you know. We were carrying that around. And it’s a twenty mile area, route that we’d taken. We’d got up to Tottenham Court Road and we’d just turned into Oxford Street and we had the air force band in front of us and they played the Dambusters March and that was set alight all the people almost and the cheers and the applause was absolutely overwhelming. I’ll remember that till I pop off you know. It was really, it put a lump in your throat and especially in Oxford Street. It’s all these buildings with windows above them and there were people at the windows and they were throwing coins.
CB: Were they?
BM: And bars and chocolate. The bloke next to me got hit by a bar of chocolate of all things you know. And this, this was happening there. You couldn’t stop to pick the stuff up.
CB: No.
BM: You had to just had to carry on walking.
CB: Amazing.
BM: And then of course with all processions they do stop for a little while to more or less they get a bit of a backlog don’t they?
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And then you’re amongst it all and you’re more or less really –
CB: Yeah.
BM: Visibly making a fuss of you.
CB: Yes. The unleashed appreciation.
BM: Yeah. But –
CB: Extraordinary. Very touching actually.
BM: That was touching and but that is soon forgotten you know.
CB: Right. We’re stopping now.
[Recording paused]
CB: Raids. We’ve talked about civilians Bernard but what about RAF and military people’s reactions to the raids?
[Pause]
Other: Do you mean the raids that took place over Germany?
CB: No. The British. The German raids on Britain I meant to say. So where you were stationed.
BM: Well er as I say some of them it was –
CB: So at Locking for instance. At Locking.
BM: At Locking it was a novelty to them. Others who had experienced it in their own town I mean like they’d had, you’d had Coventry, you had Liverpool, you had Southampton and Plymouth. They’d all had a going over.
Other: The Midlands. The Black Country.
BM: Yeah.
Other: Where I came from.
BM: Yeah. They had some. Well they were attacking there. In some respects they were attacking the, I mean in the Midlands it was where a lot of the machinery.
Other: Where all the manufacturing took place.
BM: All the manufacturers. So therefore it was in some respects a legitimate target.
Other: Yes.
BM: But London wasn’t.
Other: No. That was aimed at the population.
BM: Yeah.
Other: To break the will of the population.
BM: So, and Plymouth I suppose it had naval history but not to that degree. And Southampton also but they were really docks areas. That’s what they seemed to want to go for.
CB: Yeah.
BM: And it didn’t –
CB: But particularly in your experience actually in the RAF you mentioned Locking so –
BM: Yeah.
CB: What? When there were raids in in the Bristol area.
BM: Well they, yeah. Well they didn’t –
CB: What was the reaction of the people in Locking?
BM: Well they were a bit afraid that the war was coming too close to them to some degree whereas others just seemed to think well it was a novelty idea because it wasn’t a consistent attack. It was just a spasmodic attack here and there. I mean the major towns where they hit in this, like you say, Liverpool, Coventry, the Midlands area, London they were continuous attacks for a period of time and they were solely, I don’t think they were other than to destroy the population.
CB: The will of the people.
BM: Yeah. They weren’t after the, ok that was their excuse they were going for targets but it didn’t bother them you know but –
CB: You mentioned other some of your fellow RAF people’s reaction at Locking.
BM: Yeah. Well they just became hysterical because it was something they’d never experienced and they were frightened and they were spoken very sharply by some of the non-commissioned officers in the, in the whats-the-name. In the shelters. As they said you know, ‘You’re a disgrace. Control yourself.’
CB: Oh you’re talking about actually in the shelter?
BM: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: The air raid shelter.
BM: Some of them like I say were hysterical and in tears. They were frightened. Simple as that. Because they had not experienced it but others you know who had experienced it it didn’t bother them. In fact they looked at it logically and said you know they’re not going to attack us they’re attacking over there. But this is life isn’t it?
CB: Yeah. Now you got leave every six months but you would get forty eight hour passes.
BM: Yeah.
CB: How far were you able to go and what happened to you then?
BM: Well in forty eight hour passes I came home. Mainly because I knew I would get warmly welcomed by my parents because my brother was overseas. I think he was over there for about oh three or four years.
CB: Where was he stationed?
BM: He was stationed in Egypt then Sicily, Italy, Yugoslavia, Palestine. You know, he had a pretty rough time of it but of course he was on Fighter Command so therefore that was where the fighters were operating.
CB: Yeah.
BM: I mean bombers could operate from this country to go places.
CB: So you were shift work effectively. Was, did you work on a seven day or a five day week?
BM: We worked normally on a five day week but there was an occasion when they suddenly decided that they would work on a shift principal. In other words you worked something like around about ten days on right the way through and this was some clown from the air ministry had come down and set this up when I was at Marston Moor. And so in other words we then, you worked say for about ten days and you would have about three days off. And ok some of those time is spent catching up on the sleep you’ve lost and I’ll always remember on this particular occasion when this system was brought in I had not slept during the period I should have been off. So I went on duty and we were sat in the dispersal hut. The aircraft had gone off. This was about oh about 9 o’clock at night and I was tired. It was a cold night and there was a nice big fire in the centre of this you know and I just nodded off to sleep didn’t I? And they tried to wake me when the aircraft came back and I wasn’t having any [laughs] and the sergeant was not very pleased. Yeah. By the time I did eventually come round the aircraft had landed, been parked up and that was it and I’d done nothing. But the only good thing about that scheme it was, it was a way to keep the aircraft, giving them more flying time but it didn’t work and really the only good thing about it was that you could in other words once you’d seen the aircraft off say at about 8 o’clock at night 12 o’clock you’d go into the canteen and you could get your meal.
CB: Yeah.
BM: And invariably it used to be steak and chips.
CB: Did it?
BM: Yeah. Oh they’d give you a good meal for that. That time in the morning. And that was the only good thing about it but on that particular occasion I even missed my meal as well. Yeah. But it wasn’t very successful because during the day you were expected to catch up sleep. Well in a nissen hut with about thirty blokes a few of you still trying to get some sleep was hopeless.
CB: Now technically you were part of a squadron were you?
BM: Yeah.
CB: What was that squadron number?
BM: It was a conversion unit, Heavy Conversion Unit.
CB: Ok. Sixteen –
BM: 1652 HCU
CB: Right. Heavy Conversion Unit.
BM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
BM: And they used to do, during the day, cross country, circuits and bumps, circuits and landings and then when they were needed they used to go on operations as well to make up the numbers. That’s the way it worked. This was just their training with heavy aircraft. In other words they’d done all their, they’d got their pilot’s licence wings working on twin engined aircraft but before they let them loose on a Lanc or a Halifaxe they had to do a couple of weeks.
CB: Yeah. So these were all Halifaxes.
BM: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause the Halifaxes were not looked upon as superior as the Lanc because the Lanc could fly faster. The Lanc could fly higher. Halifaxes used to fly at around about a hundred and eighty at around about oh ten thousand feet whereas a Lanc would go a bit faster than that and they could fly at twelve, fifteen thousand feet. Higher if necessary.
CB: How reliable were the aircraft?
BM: I would say I never had much experience, if any at all, where the aircraft reliability was put to question. You know, they say that the Stirling was crap. That was a bad aircraft. But I didn’t work on a Stirling. I nearly did. I got posted down to Stoney Cross at Southampton when I was, when I finished at Waddington. And I went all the way down there, kit bag all my gear and they said, ‘Well you’re about three weeks too late. Your squadron moved out to Italy three weeks ago.’ And that was a squadron of Stirlings. And so I was stuck at Stoney Cross in the middle of the New Forest whilst the Air Ministry sorted out where they would then put me. [laughs]. But that was –
CB: When did you go to Waddington and how long were you there?
BM: I went to Waddington it was most probably, VE day. A couple of weeks after VE day I should imagine. And Waddington I left soon after the Victory Parade in London.
CB: Because you were part of the Tiger Force.
BM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Good. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
CB: So at the end of the war Ron, you’d think, a number of people thought that at the end of hostilities then everybody could leave.
BM: Yeah.
CB: But actually it was spread out. Why was that?
BM: It was spread out I think for economic reasons because they didn’t want to flood the market with labour so much and secondly they devised a scheme which gave you a demob number which was calculated on the age, your age and your years of service. So if like me you were called up at the age of eighteen and you’d only done, what, about four years my demob number was 57. I always remember that as Heinz [laughs].
CB: Yeah.
BM: And that was, and when 57, in other words you were all given a number, what your demob number and that would then give an indication when you were going to be demobbed and you used to watch. Ok they’re working on 45 at the moment so it’s weeks before you got yours and I think it was just a question off pushing too many people on to the job market too soon. That’s the only reason I could see for it.
Other: But weren’t people tempted to desert when the war ended and just get home as quickly as they could?
CB: Good point.
BM: It’s strange you should say that because it never occurred to me. In fact when I was at Waddington we were under instructions that when VJ day was declared, you know, you do not go out of camp and we were still on duty but some of the chaps and I can recall at least three or four possibly said, ‘To hell with them’. You know. The war’s over now. And they simply went home that weekend.
Other: Yeah.
BM: Now whether they ever got caught at it I don’t know but they certainly went off and they hitchhiked because I remember one particular chap, he wanted to get to London. You know, ‘I’m getting there. That’s it.’ So there was that attitude among some but to me it never occurred because as far as I was concerned you know it was the wrong thing to do. You’re still under orders. You know.
CB: Yeah.
BM: It’s the same after the war was finished you would wonder why anyone would still, especially I had a job ready to go back to. Why can’t you let me go? Well I’m going to go myself then. What are you going to do? Well they had the power to court martial you and they had the power to punish you. So it never really entered my head you know.
Other: I suppose you’d got in to a frame of mind.
BM: Yeah.
Other: Where you accepted orders.
BM: Yeah.
Other: You know, you’d been in the forces for four years.
BM: This is it.
Other: And what you do is accept orders.
BM: That’s right. Yeah.
Others: Yeah. It’s interesting isn’t it?
BM: It is. Because the way, the way especially nowadays I mean the younger element today are much more belligerent and I can imagine them saying, ‘Well, you know, I’m off. That’s me. The war’s finished. I’m done. I’ve done my bit.’ But it’s not like that is it? Really.
Other: No.
BM: It er –
Other: But these days’ people don’t have a sense of duty like they used to. The population at large seventy year ago, eighty years ago.
BM: Yeah.
Other: Generally people had a sense of duty and a sense of public responsibility.
BM: Yeah.
Other: These days’ people don’t have that.
BM: No. No.
Other: They don’t have a sense of duty. It’s, it’s an old fashioned concept unfortunately.
BM: Well I was brought up by a rather Victorian father. You know. He was strict. It didn’t do me any harm though. But er –
CB: But that was only thirty years after the end of the Victorian era.
BM: Yeah.
CB: So it’s not surprising that that was the attitude is it?
BM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
[Recording paused]
BM: The night before there was a dance on again tonight and –
CB: This is the Knaresborough Caravan Park.
BM: A few birds around.
CB: Yeah.
BM: Yeah.
CB: Keep going.
BM: And anyway we went around on our bikes and we picked up these birds in this dance and of course two of us took these two birds back. They’d come from Leeds. Their parents owned a caravan and that was there and we went back to the caravan with these girls. Left our bikes parked outside, inside the caravan. I was a bit backward in those sort of activities because I’d led rather a sheltered life in London with Victorian parents so I didn’t really do anything I should be ashamed of. I put it to you as carefully as that but anyway we fell asleep. Woke up around about 5 o’clock and of course we were on duty at 8 o’clock. At Marston Moor. And so we just said, ‘We’re off,’ you know and we got out this caravan to walk across the fields with these [unclear] there was a bloody farmer who owned the caravan park. ‘Hey,’ he said, [unclear?]. ‘Cheerio.’ On the bike, down the hill out of Knaresborough fast got back to camp in time. Yeah. Quite a narrow squeak that was but –
CB: If he’d have had a pitchfork it would have been uncomfortable.
BM: But then the other thing is that I got friendly with a family in Spofforth in Yorkshire and the daughter’s twenty first birthday. So of course in the village of Spofforth they had the village hall for this twenty first birthday party and we went over there and we knew the parents but I’d been, you know, going casually around with the daughter, the other daughter who happened to be a married woman incidentally but it was all good and clean. So anyway they said, ‘Well, will you look after the bar in the hall? Would you do that?’ ‘Yes. That’s alright.’ So I got behind this bar in this village hall and there were people coming in and, ‘Yes. I’ll have one with you.’ And of course as they had a drink I was having one was well. So by midnight we were well and truly sloshed and of course the villagers use the hall with their own accoutrements as it were so therefore they had to clear the village hall after all the festivities had taken place and I can remember pushing a wheelbarrow up the main street in Spofforth with all these glasses and food and leftovers on and it was as we were pushing it along well and well and truly sloshed it was dropping off as we went. Tinkling away there. Yeah. They were happy days though really.
Other: Well you remember the good bits.
BM: Oh yeah. Yeah we were.
Other: You remember the good bits.
BM: As I say we had some. When I finished in the air force and I started having to come down to reality that you know I had had very little education. I had to think about what I was going to do with my life and I started studying and I started working. As I say evening classes four nights a week. I could still find time to play cricket and play football in the season and I used to think, I don’t know, we moaned all the time. I was four years in the air force but on reflection I’d had four good years and you miss it. In other words, you know, it occurred to me why didn’t I sign on? I would have been immediately made a corporal and a corporal fitter then you’re on the ranks of promotion and what have you so you do reflect. I mean people moan about it but you do reflect. When you look at it in reality you didn’t do so bad.
Other: Well the thing that you did was you went in and you made the most of it and ended up with a proper trade.
BM: Yeah.
Other: A lot of people did National Service and did nothing.
BM: Yeah.
Other: They wasted two years of their lives.
BM: Yeah.
Other: Did nothing at all but at least you actually learned a trade and got a lot of valuable knowledge and experience and enjoyed yourself more as a consequence really.
BM: Yeah.
CB: The, you mentioned married women.
BM: Yeah.
CB: Now the reality of course is that there were plenty of people who were married whose husband, the women’s husbands were at the war.
BM: Yeah.
CB: So how did this work? It was quite innocuous sort of thing but were they at the dances? And how did this work?
BM: Oh it used to. I’m talking about this lady at Spofforth. Her husband was in the Middle East and as far as I was concerned we used to go dancing. We used to drink and we used to play, they had that, in this pub where we used to go to they had the, the skittles.
Other: Oh I know.
BM: In other words, you know, ok, as far as I was concerned the only intimacy, if you like that took place was I kissed her and that was it. Didn’t go any further. And that’s that may have been I don’t know a bit naïve of me but I was most probably a bit naïve at that sort of thing and you know I was never a womaniser to that degree. In fact to be very, extremely personal is the fact that my late wife was the only woman I’ve ever slept with. So it’s as simple as that. I used to have a fling with these ladies but it only was kissing and that was it. So I didn’t do any harm.
CB: All honour was satisfied.
BM: Pardon?
CB: All honour was satisfied.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
BM: I mean I remember going, and this would be at, at Locking, there was a corporal WAAF there and went to a dance and she was a good dancer and I danced with her. So therefore all the time I was there when there was a dance on she was there. She was available to be a partner on the dance floor but directly I got her outside, ‘Hey. I’m a married woman. Off you go.’ It was as simple as that. And ok nowadays this attitude is completely different but in those days it wasn’t.
Other: Yeah the worlds a changed place.
BM: Well, you know, you could, ok you were told even by your chief medical officer when you were first called up they showed you various pictures of the problems if you get any sort of disease and so on through sexual activity and so therefore you just kept clear of it and in those days you didn’t have the protection that these youngsters have today and that is a problem.
CB: Right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Bernard Charles Mabey
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-28
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMabeyBC161128
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Bernard Mabey was born in London and experienced the Blitz at first hand. He was a member of the Air Training Corps in 1941 before volunteering for the RAF. He trained as an air frame mechanic at RAF Locking. His first posting was RAF Marston Moor which was a Heavy Conversion Unit. He was surprised by the change in approach to discipline between training and his first posting. He describes aspects of repairing aircraft. He enjoyed playing cricket for the station. After the war he became an industrial property developer.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Wiltshire
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1945
1947
Format
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02:05:19 audio recording
bombing
C-47
civil defence
demobilisation
dispersal
entertainment
faith
firefighting
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
military discipline
military living conditions
military service conditions
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
perimeter track
RAF Locking
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Netheravon
RAF Waddington
sanitation
sport
Tiger force
training
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/519/8751/PLockeBrownK1505.2.jpg
371e73c856271f2648200e3f62e57423
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/519/8751/ALockeBrownKL150706.1.mp3
9c4fb6df19644d66f71d27e692bf46c2
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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Locke Brown, Kenneth
Kenneth Locke Brown MBE
K Locke Brown
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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LockeBrown
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Kenneth Locke Brown (1699916 Royal Air Force). He served with 97 and 635 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
KB: [Unclear]
MJ: It's all right
KB: My name is Kenneth Locke Brown, I had been involved with the RAF since I was a child, a long, long, way back, because my father was a pilot in the First World War, and so when I was born in 1923, which is only a few years after the First World War, he was still full of stories about the First World War and his flying experiences. He was a fighter pilot, er and, er, served only as a fighter pilot towards the back end of the First World War, prior to that he was in the trenches, and was promoted out the trenches. But my earliest recollections of the RAF is him trying on his helmet on me, his leather helmet, his gauntlet gloves with a funny mitt to them, and that sort of thing, and so I was enthused with the knowledge about the RAF very early on in my life, and I think he would very much have liked me to have gone straight into the RAF as soon as I left school, but I'm afraid my standard of education, and my intelligence level was not good enough to get me into somewhere like Cranwell or so on, and so I, I didn't get a chance. I had an opportunity to fly, er, at Barton airport in Manchester, which was arranged by my father, but that was my earliest experience, but I always wanted to go in the RAF, and of course you weren't able to volunteer for the services until you were eighteen years of age, so I had a spell between leaving school and going in the RAF when I was a bank clerk. But then I joined up. Now the story about me joining up is interesting in the sense that I wanted to fly, I desperately wanted to fly, and so I volunteered at the age of eighteen for aircrew, and I went and I had all the examinations, medically, intelligence wise, and so on, and I passed them all, er, perfectly okay, and, and I was told that I was accepted as a candidate for aircrew, er, but unfortunately I wouldn't be able to go on a pilots side of it because they were absolutely chock a block with volunteers and so on, 'cause the Battle of Britain had just finished and there was lots of enthusiasm for the RAF and so on. So I went into the RAF just as an ordinary erk, with the, er, knowledge that I was accepted as aircrew, and I wore a white flash in my hat, and I went and did all my basic square bashing and such like, which incidentally, at that particular time of the war, was quite amusing because we all got dragged into the services, and there wasn't the equipment for us. We, we hadn't got necessarily, we hadn't all got trousers, we hadn't all got jackets, we hadn't all got hats, we, looked a right rag bag altogether, but we went out to Redcar and we did our square bashing there, and then we went from there to 3S of TT at Blackpool to do ground, er, engineering. And we were, at that stage, divided into two categories, and I didn't realise at the time, I was, incidentally, all this time, you must realise I was very young, and, erm, hadn't been away from home very much, and so on, so quite innocent, but I was desperate to get to fly and they, we went onto this engineers course, which was divided just by saying those on the left move over that way, and those on the right go over that side, those on the left will go into engineering side, the others will go airframe side. I didn't realise at the time, but those on the left who went into engine side, had the opportunity to become flight engineers, the ones who went on the airframe side didn't have much opportunity to do that, but there was, I was still sporting the fact that I had been accepted for aircrew, so very disappointed, and quite honestly, I was extremely lucky, because those people that went on the engineering side then eventually became flight engineers, and not many of them survived the war. They went straight from there into Bomber Command into, er, warfare over Germany, and so on, because at that age group, and not many survived, quite honestly. So I was incredibly lucky in getting an airframe side. So, although bitterly disappointed as a young person, who didn't really realise what the hell was going on, it is, it is very important to impress upon people just how young people were in those days. There were an awful lot of people were controlled by their family, my mother basically controlled me, I had a, as you know, a mother and father, as I've told you about my father, I was an only son, incidentally, but my mother controlled me, and when I went in the forces, she arranged for me to have half of my pay deducted and given to her, and I mean the pay was negligible, and so I, er, we were managing on seventeen and sixpence a fortnight I think it was, that was all as we had. Anyway, that's another story, er, so I went to 3S of TT, Blackpool and I trained as a airframe mechanic, but the training that they put us through was quite ridiculous, because it was all based on the First World War. We learned how to put patches on aircraft, and sew up the holes that had been done in the fabric of the body, and how to trim the planes, and how to trim the aerials, and oh, all sorts of fancy ailerons and all that sort of jazz, which were all totally useless when eventually I got to go onto a proper fighting unit. Before I went onto the fighting unit, though, I, from this rigger thing which I qualified at, I was sent to Morecombe on an overseas draft, and we were dished out with all the equipment, snake boots, and fancy hats, and all the rest of the things, and we were parading there, hearing about when we were going to go on the boat, was going to go in a matter of a couple of days, and so on, and lo and behold, suddenly my name was called out and I was drawn out of the ranks and said, 'you're not going abroad, because you are aircrew chosen', and I [chuckles] said I hadn't got the qualifications, but that's what they decided, I shouldn't be going to do that. So there I was, still with this white flash in my hat, all I was, was a L, er, I got to be a rank of LAC by this time, stage, er, rigger, or whatever we want to call them, you know, ground crew, ground crew airframes. So, I was dragged off that, I hung around in Morecombe for a little while and it was the summer and it was wonderful, and I am a great swimmer, I was quite a good swimmer, I swam for the RAF at one stage in my career, but that's another story, but, er, I had a lovely time, I had I think four or five weeks, best part of the war really that I ever had, when I spent my time in Morecombe baths. What happened was, we paraded every morning, and they detailed everybody off to go to various duties, and they detailed you off to go to the cookhouse, or so on, you see, and I soon learned that they'd no idea where you were, really. They detailed you to go to the cookhouse, but nobody at the cookhouse was expecting you anyway, so I used to go on parade, as soon as they dismissed us, I used to beetle off to the baths, and had a lovely time. But eventually they caught up with me and 'where were you?' I said, 'ooh, I was here on parade yesterday morning'. 'Well, we've been looking for you, you've been posted, and you've been posted to 97 Squadron, Bourn, on Lancasters.' Well, I thought, that's bloody funny because I haven't learnt anything about, don't know a thing about Lancasters or anything, I, all I know is how to, how to repair a patch in a bi-plane like my father was flying in the First World War. Anyway, subsequently I arrived at 97 Squadron, Bourn, and that would be in the year 1943, and I served as ground crew there, and that was my initial, er, involvement with Bomber Command and the Pathfinders, 'cause that was a Pathfinder squadron. We had many interesting things, but the most important and most dramatic day we had whilst I was there, was Black Thursday. I was on duty in Black Thursday as ground crew and we had a terrible time. We lost so many aircraft, I mean, there's even whole books have been written about the episode and so on, it was horrendous, and the thing that was so horrendous is that they'd been all the way out to Berlin, they'd bombed in Berlin, they'd fought their way back again, and of course, the weather came in on them, and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and the only aerodrome around with FIDO, which is the one that they illuminated the runways, erm, was at Downham Market. [unclear] I didn't know about Downham Market at the time, I was at Bourn, but that was the only one where they could get down, so what was happening was these poor buggers had been out there, they were getting short of petrol, and they were crashing all the way round, and two of them crashed within half a mile of the 'drome, one just across the road, we were aware of it, and another one just a field or so away, and some were baling out, some went as high as they could and jumped out, and all those that jumped out survived. The a whole lot of those, but it was a dreadful night, and one that, you know, sticks in the memory. The other thing, on a brighter side about Bourn was that there was a concert party, and I was always a bit of a show-off, and so I joined the concert party, and the historian for 97 Squadron is absolutely fascinated with this, 'cause he's never heard of it, and he's promised me that when he writes his review of his next book, he'll include it. But we had a concert party which used to perform to the aircrew and to the ground people and so on, and it was very, very loose, they used to boo us and jeer at us and tell us to get off, and all sorts of things, but it was great fun, and we, we went round to other aerodromes around, performing and so on. I, I wasn't a professional performer, and I wasn't able to sing very well, but there were professionals in the concert party, and I used to do Stanley Holloway monologues, which everybody knows “Albert the Lion”, and, you know, “Sam Pick Up Your Musket”, but there were some really good ones that not very many people know. I used to do those in my natural Lancashire accent, and I also appeared as a female impersonator, there was a woman called Carmen Miranda at the time who, er, used to perform with a lot of fruit on her head and sing 'I,I,I,I', and I used to do that as well with a backup from a lot of other people. So we had, there were both sides of the thing, but it's a, we all, the thing about the ground crew there that I remember distinctly, is that you never ever heard the ground crew complain about anything. We had appalling bloody conditions to live in, Nissan huts with a stove pipe in the middle, and if your bed happened to be by the stove pipe, well god help you, because everybody sat on your bed to get as near to the fire as they could. It was a long way from the accommodation to get to the dispersal points, which is where the aircraft were kept, all the way round the 'drome, and of course most of us had got our bikes sent from home, and we used to pedal out there day and night, and, er, quite a long distance, I suppose, from where you were billeted to the, well my, my aircraft was billeted on the far side, it'd be two miles, something like that, and of course there were no lights, the, er, 'drome was completely in darkness, and so we, we pedalled around there, and, but nobody ever moaned about it. I think the only thing they moaned was, a bit about the RAF itself not giving us decent equipment to wear, because it was very cold, and particularly if you were sat up on the wing of a Lancaster filling it with petrol, which takes three hours, and not just one person doing, but a number of you. It's bloody cold. It's cold to sit on it, you're elevated, and the weather in that particular year, 1943, ‘44, the winter was very severe indeed, and so it wasn't very good, so there was a lot of moaning about, you know, that all we had was a leather jerkin and a naval type roll neck sweater, big [unclear] sweater. Other than that, just overalls over our ordinary uniform, so it wasn't very good, and gum boots were the order of the day. Anyway, towards the back end of 1943, they were forming a new squadron called 635 Squadron, which was going to be the elite, er, squadron of Bomber Command, it was going to be the elite Pathfinder squadron. Leonard Cheshire had been there at one time, Bennett had been there as well, and don't forget, some of the things I'm telling you are what I've learned afterwards. At the time I was a young lad more interested in trying to get down to Cambridge to go to the dance, or, you know, we, well, it was a very peculiar attitude we adopted, it wasn't very serious I'm afraid, even though we were surrounded by people who were not returning, we'd be servicing an aircraft, and it wouldn't return, and we'd lose the crew, but we [slight pause], the crews were very rarely on the same aircraft. I don't know how many times you've been told this, but very often, they moved from one aircraft to another, sometimes they did four or five flights on their aircraft and so on, and if they got attached to it, I suppose perhaps they got allocated, but in the early days they were flipped around, so you didn't really get to know your crew very well. You know, er, to speak to the officer, you know, and salute him and all that sort of business, but you didn't know them very well, and you didn't relate, you didn't relate to what they were doing. Honestly it sounds terrible, a terrible admission. Anyway, what happened, when they decided to start 635 Squadron, in March 1944, erm, was that they took, I think it was, eleven Lancasters and their crews [background noise], switch it off. Well as I was saying, we were part of the squadron, 97 Squadron, was taken, the leading pilots and so on, were taken to form this elite squadron, 635, at a place called Downham Market in Norfolk, er, and I was fortunate I suppose, I didn't realise, but I was fortunate to be one of the ground crew that had perhaps got a little bit of service in, 'cause service in those days, a matter of months, and you became a, you know, a seasoned person because there were people coming into the services all the time. Anyway, so we were shifted over to Downham Market, and of course, as far as I'm concerned, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. For two reasons, one is that I enjoyed Downham Market in a sense that the airfield and 'drome had all been built especially for Bomber Command in this remote little Norfolk town, er, where my present wife lived, and the town was within walking distance from the 'drome, so we had a communal thing with the town, we went down to the pictures, we went down to the local dance on a Saturday night, and we went down town to the pubs and so on. Not every night by any manner of means, because many a night we were on duty and we were on duty all night, but we were closely associated with, with the town and that [slight pause]. My wife's, now, her, her friend was, er, married to a navigator who got the DFC and that sort of thing, you know they, we, we were integrated with, with the town. So that was the period when we were building up to the D-Day landings, we were doing bombing out as far as [slight pause], well, Berlin was the one that kept on being, coming up, and Nuremburg, Munich, well you, you name them, we did them, and again, we didn't really get attached to any particular crew. We did know one or two, but you couldn't say 'that was my crew and I knew all of them', that wasn't the case. These were the, the aerodromes were again, very far flung, and we would be at Downham Market from where the accommodation was and the catering and so on, it would all of four miles to some of the dispersal points, it really was a long way [pause]. Big event there? Well of course, all the main bombing that went on, the thousand bomber raid that went on, we were part of, the losses were staggering because we were right, sorry I shouldn't say 'we', they [emphasis] were right up front, er, one night we were all watching them go off because, you know, the ground crew would prepare the aircraft and then we would always [emphasis] be there to see them off, and make sure everything was okay, and of course you got the signed certificate from the pilot to say that he was satisfied with the state of the aircraft, and so on. But this particular night they went off, on line past you, and you see them go to the end of the runway, and then they’d rev up and off they'd go, and so on, and this particular night one of them didn't make it, he, he didn't get enough revs, didn't get the height, and he hit the top of one of the hangars, and there was an almighty explosion. It was tremendous, and, it's the first time I really had experienced an explosion, and the hangars, which were pretty big buildings because they had to house sometimes as many as six aircraft, having engine repairs and so on, they, for, for engine work we always went in the hangars and so on, er, it hit the hangar, I mustn't do that [aside], it just collapsed like a pack of cards, the sides came in, the ends went in, the top, and, dreadful, and next day people were detailed to go out and salvage what they could. I'm afraid I didn't go, I, I wasn’t, didn't have the guts to do that, but it was a very nasty experience, and that again brought it home a little bit more to us, and I suppose by this time, I was getting a little bit more mature, you know, I wasn't quite the, er, the child that I was when I first went in. But anyway, I was still sporting this white flash in my hat, and people would say to me, 'what the hell's that for?' and I'd say, 'well I'm, I'm been chosen to be aircrew, I'm still waiting for the bloody call!' Anyway, it came. It came and I was told to report to London, and to report to the Home Off-, not the Home Office, the RAF office in London, and I went through the examinations again, intelligence examinations and the physical examinations, and they said, 'there's a new service being opened up called the Meteorological Air Observers, and we're trying to recruit a small number, and train them, to enable them to go out over the Atlantic and bring in the weather.' This was all, I think, pushed ahead because of D-Day, er, if you recall the situation on D-Day, the weather played an enormous part, in fact D-Day wasn't supposed to be on the sixth, it was supposed to be on the fifth and they had to postpone it a day. And [slight pause] they realised that they were not getting any weather in from the, the Atlantic. When the war first started of course, the Germans seized upon the opportunity on the weather ships, they were just sitting targets, and they saw those off within the first week or two, 'cause what they were, weather ships sat out in the Atlantic, manned by weather men who did recordings of the weather conditions, passed them back by wireless to the mainland and so you had an idea what the weather was that was coming in, but that was, that stopped, and so somebody had this bright idea, 'what we'll do is we'll train a number of airmen to go out over the Atlantic, and there'll be a format of coding, and they'll take readings at, er, two thousand feet and then climb to twenty thousand feet and do readings, and then come back, on an eight hour trip’. And we were eventually, after a lot of training, we, we, I was part of that and went to [cough] Aldergrove in [cough], sorry, in, er [cough] okay, okay, it's alright, Aldergrove in Northern Ireland, and I flew from there, and I, that's what I did for the remaining part of the war. I was promoted to flight sergeant within weeks of the end of the war, not the end of the war, the end of my service. Oh, what I didn't tell you in this association with Downham Market of course, that I met this girl at the dance, and we got off together, and we liked each other, so we decided to get married, and that is sixty nine years ago, and I'm still putting up with her now. So, at that point, I think I've run out of stories about Bomber Command. [Microphone noises]. Well, what I was saying to you is that they wanted to get the weather from the Atlantic, and prior to the war, they'd had weather ships out in the Atlantic, but when D-Day came along, they suddenly realised what a small amount of weather information they had, and they were managing with, managing without definite information, working on guess work. So somebody had the bright idea that they'd train a number of people who would go out, in Halifaxes, we went out in, incidentally, a met observer, a trained met observer of which I was going to be one, would sit up in the nose and take readings all the way through these trips, which were long trips, very long trips indeed, and a bit cold because we went out at two thousand feet, went up to twenty thousand feet, did a leg at twenty thousand feet, came down to sea level, did a reading at sea level and then came back at two thousand feet, and got lost half the time 'cause we were half way across the Atlantic! Anyway, we [slight pause], during this period, I got awarded a brevet, and to this day a lot of people don't believe what it says on my brevet, it says it's an 'M' brevet, not an 'N', but an 'M', and I've had to save this one because lots of people have never heard of it.
MJ: I think we're there. Brilliant. So, you didn't have protection?
KB: We had, we had no protection, we were a crew of [slight pause] six, I think, er, pilot, flight engineer, wireless operator, navigator, meteorological air observer - how many's that?
MJ: Six.
KB: Six. Yeah. We had no gunners on board at all.
MJ: Sounds as though it was a bit more risky than you say really, 'cause -
KB: Well no, the biggest risk, if you want to start talking that way, which I keep on trying to impress upon you, I was very young, very innocent, and totally unaware of the danger, I'm just excited to be going flying, never thought for one minute we might have any problems, er, and the only aircraft we lost from Aldergrove was ones that we believed came down in the sea. We had to do this – we went out two thousand feet, we went up to twenty thousand feet, we went on a leg like that, and then we had to come down to do sea level reading, and we had to come from twenty odd, and we had to set the altimeter, the met observer had to give the pilot the altimeter reading at base for him to come down, and we were, I mean it's at night and all sorts of things, pitch bloody black, you couldn't see a thing. We'd come down with our landing lights on, that would, you know, give us some indication, and we did lose, er, well one we believe went that way, and another one crashed in, in Northern Ireland on the, on the return. Our navigators were a little raw, and of course they were in a very difficult navigating situation, because they'd got no landmarks, I mean, they're going out over Atlantic, there was nothing, you know, they were just over sea, they went out with sea, sea, sea, all the way back. So, er, one notable occasion when I was doing it, was when we came back one time, we missed Ireland altogether [laughs]. Completely. We were looking out for, you know, weather, and the first thing we knew was, hit Scotland [chuckles], and when we hit Scotland, there wasn't an, there wasn't an air, there was an aerodrome at Wigtown, but it wouldn't take us, a Halifax, it was only Ansons and things like that, and we had to go right the way across to the other side and land at Lossiemouth, and landed with sort of, hardly any petrol at all left. We had a similar incident when we were, we were operating from Chivenor in Devon one time, we came back there and our navigator made a cock up and we were coming up the er, the Channel, and, er, not the Channel, the estuary and we missed land again, and we were going on, and on, and looking at estimated time of arrival, there was no sign of any land, and looking at the petrol consumption, and everything else like that, and he, he'd missed his bight [?] and we were going straight on for Bristol [laughs]. I'm going to go and have a quick loo, um [microphone noises].
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archives, I'd like to thank Kenneth Locke Brown MBE for his interview on the 6th July 2015, at his home in Monmouth. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Kenneth Locke Brown
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-06
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALockeBrownKL150706
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
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00:32:23 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth Locke was born in 1923 and wanted to join the Royal Air Force, following in the footsteps of his father, who was a First World War Pilot.
Between leaving school and joining the Royal Air Force, Kenneth worked as a bank clerk, before signing up as aircrew when he was 18 years of age.
Kenneth tells of his time as a Leading Aircraftsman in Morecambe, training as an aircraft mechanic, before being posted to 97 Squadron in Bourn in 1943, and his first involvement with the Lancasters of the Pathfinder Squadron.
He tells of Black Thursday, a day of heavy losses for Bomber Command and how it affected him and his fellow ground crew.
Kenneth was then posted to 635 Squadron in March 1944, which was based at Downham Market in Norfolk where they conducted operations to assist the D-Day landings, and then was interviewed to become part of a Meteorological Air Corp team, to gather information about the weather over the Atlantic.
Kenneth was promoted to Flight Sergeant at the end of his service with the Royal Air Force
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
635 Squadron
97 Squadron
dispersal
entertainment
fitter airframe
fuelling
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
meteorological officer
military living conditions
military service conditions
Nissen hut
RAF Bourn
RAF Downham Market
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/504/8401/ADavisR150929.1.mp3
7d5803a12157733afcdf4a0477cfe4f4
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
Davis, Ronald
Ronald Samuel Davis
R S Davis
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Davis, R
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Collection concerns with Ronald Davis (1922 - 2017, 1231181 Royal Air Force). He served as ground crew with 49 and 617 Squadrons. Collection contains three oral history interviews as well as photographs of people and aircraft.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AS: Okay, I think we’re in business.
RD: Right.
AS: I think everything’s switched on. Yep. So, this is Andrew Sadler interviewing Ronald Davis on Tuesday the 29th of September 2015 for the Bomber Command Archive. Thank you for letting us interview you, Ronald. I’d like to start by asking you about your family and where you were born and when.
RD: Yeah. I was born in the city of London on the 2nd of March 1922 which makes me ninety-three years and six months, and almost seven months, and my family lived in the East, East End of London. After their marriage my parents first moved into a couple of rooms in New North Road, London, N1, but after my birth they moved into a flat in Bancroft Road, London, E1. I think it was number twenty-three, no, number thirty-one, and my grandmother, who was widowed at forty years of age with eight children, lived in number twenty-three. And they were very, very difficult times. Things progressed, and at 1940 because of conditions – before that in 1929, my parents moved from Bancroft Road to Clarkson Street which is in Bethnal Green. It was a bit downmarket to where we were, but it was a whole house and there were four children and my parents who lived there. My mother and father had been born in England. My father was a, he called himself a machiner [emphasis on ‘er’] but they call themselves machinists [emphasis on ‘ists’] these days, in the, in the ladies fashions. My mother, had been a secretary to the chairman manager of the Palladium Theatre in London, and saw every show that was ever on from 1918 to when I was born, and she knew most of the theatrical people, or entertainment people. But she was very well educated, these days she would have been good enough to go on to university, but her parents who were foreign didn’t, didn’t know of any such things. I left school age fourteen and went to work as a solicitors clark in the city, Great Winchester Street, where my pay was fifteen shillings per week. And after nine months I was told that I’d better start looking for another job, not because I wasn’t any good but because they would have to give me a rise in three months, but they could get another little boy in for fifteen shillings to do my job. So I transferred to a junior clark, by that time I knew [laughs] my way around the office about all, but I became a junior clark in a solicitors office in Chancery Lane, London WC2, which was the centre of the legal world, very close to the law courts. And there I learnt a lot in a very short time because at the beginning of war business was so bad my boss had to take a job in the high court as some sort of assistant – I never knew what he did because he never told me that he took the job, I just found out by chance. He, I think he was ashamed to tell me that he – so basically he left me running this office aged eighteen or seventeen to eighteen years and I learnt a lot in that time. In nineteen, the end of 1940 when I was eighteen, I told my dad that wanted to go into the Air Force, I had no wish to go into the army, I’d great interest in aeroplanes at that time, and whilst my dad told me I was an idiot for volunteering for anything, he understood exactly what I wanted to do and I had his blessing. And at eighteen I went up to Whitehall, and, recruiting office, and was eventually sent to Carding, Cardington for assessment.
AS: Can I ask, was your father involved in the first war?
RD: My father was [emphasis] involved in the first war. He, he was the son of immigrants and as a result there was a doubt about the loyalty at the time, so he wasn’t allowed to go into any of the services, but he volunteered to go in as a steward at an officers mess in RAF, sorry, RFC, Royal Flying Core Netheravon in Somerset, I think it’s Somerset, but down, that part of the world –
AS: And your father had come from Russia?
RD: No, no, my father was born in England.
AS: Sorry.
RD: My father was born in England, he might have been two when he came, but so he was obviously a foreign national –
AS: Oh, I see.
RD: And for that reason couldn’t, couldn’t join any of the services.
AS: It was his father that had –
RD: Emigrated –
AS: Emigrated from Russia?
RD: From Russia, yes.
AS: Yes, right.
RD: But I think my father might have been two years old when he came. But basically he was educated in England. He never had any accent whatsoever, he was as good as British born. But I think because of that, he couldn’t enrol in the services, so when he was twenty he went in as a steward at the officers mess at R, RFC Netheravon. And I have a photograph which you’ve seen of him at that time.
AS: Why did you choose to go for the RAF?
RD: When, when I was fifteen, or sixteen, working as a solicitors clark, I had two weeks holiday. Couldn’t afford to go away at that time, so my grandmother, who lived in Golders Green said I could go and stay with her for two weeks. So I got on my bike and rode from the East End to Golders Green where I stayed. And on my first day riding around from Golders Green I came across Hendon Airfield [emphasis], on the, what was called the Watford Way [?] at Hendon, which was just a couple of miles from Golders Green, and there I used to go in the morning with my sandwiches and drink and sit on a stile all day long watching these little tiny aeroplanes taking off and landing and, great excitement. And that interest, first interest, I got first interested in aeroplanes and after that I used to make models and things like that. So I was, I was always minded that this is great. And at eighteen I decided that I wanted to be sure to go into the Air Force, I didn’t want to wait for, erm, I forgotten what they call it now, when they call you up, erm – well I didn’t want to wait to be called [emphasis] up and possibly go into the army, was interest was the Air Force. So I decided to volunteer, I told my mum and dad, and they both thought I was crazy but in the end they agreed and understood that I would have to be enrolled and I would then be doing what I wanted and they agreed. So I went off to the RAF recruitment office in Whitehall, where a few weeks later I was called for assessment, and then sent off to RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire to be kitted out, and taught what the RAF was about. From there, where I only spent a couple of weeks, two weeks I think, we were transferred to training, sort of what we called square bashing, that’s drilling and firearm drills and things of that sort to Bournemouth. And at Bournemouth I was put into an old boarding house, Mrs Pepper, I will never forget, and for the first time in my life [laughs] aged eighteen I had a bedroom to myself [emphasis]. Previously I always had to share with my brothers, my brother and sisters. And there, in Bournemouth we did our square bashing on the front promenade near the pier, until one day German aeroplane came in and wiped out a complete troop just by, just because they were standing on the front basically. After that they changed things so that we did our training around the backstreets around Meyrick Park at Bournemouth. That took six weeks as far as I remember, and from there I was posted direct to a squadron at Scampton in Lincolnshire, which was 49 Squadron, flying Handley Page Hampdens, which was a twin boom, twin engine aircraft. As far as I know it was built in Quickwood High Road at the Handley Page factory there, and I’m not sure how they got it to an airfield from there [laughs] but they must have taken the parts and assembled them and then they flew off. And there were two squadrons at Scampton; 49 Squadrons which I joined, and also 83 Squadron, who shared the field. It was an airfield without runways, so that whenever it rained the aircraft coming back would very often sink their up to their axel, axels in mud, and then we used to have to go out with our equipment and lift them up and get them off on, on, in various ways. Work was not difficult because we were overmanned with men at that time; there were, the Air Force was growing but the equipment wasn’t growing and, so consequently you had about eight men per aeroplane to look after it when basically two could have done it very easily. But I learnt a lot there, about my job. Flights, bombing flights were always at night. We rarely bombed during the day. Later on in the war when the Americans came in, they did the daylight bombing, and they did their bombing in formation lead by one navigator, whereas every RAF plane had its own navigator and made its way to the target. The bombing raids used to leave, depending on where they were going, early evening and be back at, because flights were about eight hours [emphasis]to if they went to the far parts of Germany, about six hours if they went to the nearer parts of Germany. And we used to have to do a twenty-four hour duty every three nights. So you worked for three days, on the fourth day you worked twenty-four hours and the fifth day off, other than that there was no time off at all. It was a very strange feeling when you prepared your aeroplane to go off on a bombing raid, knowing the risks and just hoping in every way that they would come back safe and sound. And if they didn’t come back then you certainly felt a family loss. You know, we were all so close to one another, the aircrew and the ground crew knew each other, and it was like losing a member of one’s family, which was a horrible feeling. The worst raid I can remember was the night we – it was soon after Christmas, it might have been the day after Boxing Day or something. We stood down for two days over Christmas, there was no flying, and either forty-two or, it must have been forty-two, Christmas forty-two, when we went after the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau that was sailing through the British Channel to get to the Baltic, and we’d been expecting it for some time and we were bombed up with armour piercing bombs for days on end, and then on the day they actually moved to, during that Christmas period, we had the wrong bombs on and for a, we had to change the bombs and get them off which took some time, and on that day, as far as I can remember, the squadron was twelve aeroplanes, six of our aeroplanes didn’t come back, including my crew where the pilot was a guy called, I never knew his Christian name, he was just called Aussie Holt, he was an Australian pilot, Sergeant Aussie Holt, and he and his crew never came back, and that was a terrible loss for me, my P for Peter aeroplane. Although I was young I was very sensitive about this sort of thing. This went on until 1940, end of forty-two, beginning of forty-three, when the new four engine aeroplanes were coming in, and they could not land at Scampton because they didn’t have any runways. So we were transferred from Scampton to Coddington Hall Airdrome near Newark. One part was called Thrumpton Hall and the other one was called Winthorpe, which was just outside Newark, not very far, probably what eighteen miles from Lincoln. And there were equipped with initially Manchester aircraft which was a, the same body as a Lancaster but with two engines, two large radial engines that flew this thing but it was a bit slow, and eventually the Manchester was converted into the Lancaster with four Merlin engines which made it an absolute super aircraft which carried a very, very large bomb load and could go, fly a very long distance. And from there, the 49 Squadron, having been scrapped with the Hampdens, all the crews from 49 Squadron came with us to the conversion unit at Coddington Hall, and there they were, we were converted to maintaining the four engine aircraft and they were converted to flying the four. I would always when possible try and go up on tests. We had a thing where if you touched an aeroplane to service it, it was a good idea to let you fly in it to make sure that there was no shortcuts, and I used to fly quite a lot. We also used to have to tow [emphasis] the aircraft all over the shop for compass swinging and various maintenance things that went on in the hangers because we were out in the open around the airfield. How much more?
AS: How did you decide, how did you decide that you were going to be part of the ground crew?
RD: I, no, I didn’t. I was initially I was recruited for aircrew, but very soon after I joined I was told I was not fit for aircrew because of my eyes. I only functioned on one eye, as I still do, I got one good eye and one bad eye. My left eye is basically useless even today, so I was not fit to be aircrew because of my eyesight. And as a result I just remained in the Air Force as ground crew. I did my, you know, I admitted that didn’t I, I did my – when I left Bournemouth where I did my square bashing for six weeks, I was posted to RAF Cardington near Ailesbury in Buck, Buckinghamshire. No that was where [pause], I’ve forgotten. I was transferred near Buckinghamshire, near Ailesbury, a permanent RAF station which was number one school of technical training. I’ll think of it in a moment. Number one school of technical training. There I did a six month course as air fitter A-frame [?], and after six months I was passed out, qualified, and then sent to Scampton as an engineer, but I did six months training at erm, I can’t even remember now, Holton [emphasis], Holton in Bedfordshire, near Ailesbury, and that was a wonderful technical training school where we had excellent instructors who were RAF men. Some were [unclear] actually, but we got our training and – which included maintenance of the aircraft. An air frame, air frame fitter [emphasis] looked after the whole aeroplane except the engine. The engine was dealt with by an engine fitter, but other than that the air frame fitter did the rest of the air frame, except for electricians, electrical, which electricians did, and armourers who dealt with the bombing, bombing up and the equipment for dropping the bombs and things like that. But the rest of aircraft, and of course, a Lancaster was quite a big aeroplane so there was quite a lot of work to do, although thinking back, not a lot went wrong, it was just maintenance of checking this and checking that. [Pause] erm, what else?
AS: How, how long – I mean when an aircraft flew, how long did it take to prepare it?
RD: It would depend. First of all, depending on where it was going, whether its tanks were to be, its fuel tank were to be full or three-quarters or seven-eighths, it made a lot of difference to the weight of the aircraft as to how many bombs it could carry. And, so it would take most of the afternoon to get it ready to fly off in the evening. It would just stand there during the, during the rest of the day. Now, apart from refuelling, we had to do our daily routine checks, and then the bombs came along, and as far as I remember, the Hampden carried two one-thousand pound bombs in the bomb chamber and two or four two-hundred-and-fifty pound bombs under the wings, depending how far they were going. On one occasion we were going to bomb Milan [emphasis], which seemed to be a hell of a long way to go, and the nearest spot in England to Milan to my amazement, and I still can’t see how it is but that’s what was said, we had to – the ground crews – the aircrews flew their aeroplanes to Cornwall, an aeroplane, an airdrome in Cornwall, and we crew, ground crew, flew in a Handley Page Harrow, which was a very large aircraft with fabric sides and the sides would flap as you were [laughs], as you were flying, and it carried about twelve, fourteen people, perhaps more. And we flew down to Cornwall and they took off from Cornwall to fly to Milan. They were away ten hours for that trip. Very, very long trip, must have been so uncomfortable for the crew, particularly the lower rear gunner who sat in his capella [?] with his legs up in the air like this for ten, absolutely frozen stiff for ten hours. Then they got back to Cornwall, can’t remember any losses on that trip, got back to Cornwall, and they landed, and we put some fuel in and then we all flew back to Scampton. That was a particularly long trip, but generally trips to Cologne would take about six hours. But further western Germany would probably take eight or nine hours. They were away for an awfully long time. You have to remember these aeroplanes were very slow, they didn’t do more than about two hundred miles an hour downwind, you know, and when they were loaded up they were probably only at one-hundred-and-eighty miles an hour. So there was a long time, but later on with the Lancasters obviously they flew very much quicker. Erm, what else?
AS: How often do the, did the planes go out? Did they go out every night, or –
RD: Well, sometimes it would be every night. It would depend on the weather. It would depend on whether it was clear for takeoff, and weather forecasts, the weather forecasts in those days was pretty poor, but they did have weather forecasts to be sure they could get back in clear weather. But I would say on average I think the squadron did four, four or five bombing trips a week.
AS: So pretty busy.
RD: Oh yes, oh yes. Oh yes, when the weather was good it could be every night. But not all crews went every night. Ground crews were there all the time but the aircrews, there were more aircrews than aeroplanes.
AS: And the chaps in the aircrews, I mean you must have got to know them well?
RD: Of course.
AS: And what about, as the war went on, weren’t there a lot of losses?
RD: Tremendous losses. As I said before, it used to affect me emotionally, all these great guys, you know, this was the cream of Bristish youth basically, because they were all young, some under twenty. Oh yes, we knew them all. One funny story that I remember to this day was Aussie Holt’s crew, who were a mixture of Australian and English guys, might have been Canadian I don’t know, had a ritual before they took off on a bombing raid. They used to all pee up against the tail wheel just for, for luck, and within three days of this happening there was a note on the DROs, which is Daily Routine Orders, which is orders to everybody about what to do on the squadron. The Daily Routine Orders said ‘promiscuous urination against tail or other wheels is to cease forthwith’ [laughs]. ‘Promiscuous urination’ [laughs] I remember the words to this day. I thought that was very funny. Erm, that was that.
AS: So you had, so really you were, you were working sort of four days on and one day off.
RD: Three days on.
AS: Three days on.
RD: Three days on [emphasis] –
AS: Yes.
RD: And one day. No, no, the fourth day you worked twenty-four hours –
AS: Yes –
RD: And the fifth day you had off.
AS: Yes.
RD: Yep.
AS: So what did you do when you had your day off?
RD: When I had my day off, when I was at Lincoln, we used to get – bearing in mind our money at that time was two shillings per day, which is fourteen shillings per week, I used to send ten shillings home to my mother who by that time was widowed ‘cause my father died in 1943. And he, he died of tuberculosis, and if he’d lived another couple of years he would have survived because penicillin came in. But unfortunately he died in forty-three, so my mother was a widow with four children, one in the Air Force, one working and two still at school, and times were hard. So of my fourteen shillings, ten shillings used to go to my mother, and four shillings was my spending money for the week. So we didn’t live [laughs] the life of O’Reilly. So on our day off, we would obviously sleep [emphasis] until, we didn’t really go to bed about four, five in the morning, we slept ‘till about twelve, one, two, and then we got up and had our shower and went into Lincoln, where, which was the nearest town. We used to go in by bus and spend our time in Lincoln. I always had a problem with the food on camp which was not very good. It was wonderful food, spoiled by terrible cooks [laughs] and I was never very keen on food, but obviously I had to eat what I could. So when I went into town I always went into a café, whilst the boys always went to the pub I went into the café and had a meal and then, then, then I would go – the meal would probably consist of egg on toast [laughs], or Welsh rarebit with an egg on top or something, something of that sort, very, there was no question of having a proper meal. A, we couldn’t afford it and B, there was very strict rationing of food. So that, that was, and basically we played darts and tried to chat up the local girls and things of that sort, but there was very little to do anywhere.
AS: Was there any particular pubs you used to go to?
RD: There were but I can’t remember them. I remember we used to come off the bus, I remember we coming in from Scampton, so we coming in from the East, and the bus used to drop us near the high street where the bridge went over the water, and there was a pub round to the left but I can’t, I can’t remember the names.
AS: Yeah, it was near the Stonebow Arch I think –
RD: Yes.
AS: Wasn’t it?
RD: That’s right, that’s right.
AS: Yes. It was a, there was a pub, as I understand it as I wasn’t there, on, in the high street along there –
RD: No, no. We never, it wasn’t in the high street. It was round the back of Stonebow, you remember, I, you maybe recall now. Yes we used to go under the Stonebow, up towards the cathedral [emphasis] more, it was all really quiet near the cathedral but before the cathedral there was a pub there, but for the life of me I couldn’t, I couldn’t remember it now. And that basically was what we did. And then, because busses didn’t run very late, probably five or six o’clock, by the time we were ready to go home at eight, nine we used to have to walk the five miles from Lincoln to Scampton [laughs] which was the end of a fun day.
AS: So that was, so –
RD: So it was about five miles I think.
AS: So you were probably doing that for about, were you about three years in Lincoln?
RD: Yeah.
AS: Something like that.
RD: Yeah, yeah.
AS: And did you have any –
RD: No, no, two years.
AS: Two years.
RD: And then we went to Newark where the airdrome was much closer to town. I remember we used to walk down the hill from Coddington Hall, past the Ransome Marles factory there – does that still exist there?
AS: I don’t know –
RD: They were ball bearing manufacturers.
AS: No, I don’t think so.
RD: No, we used to go past the Ransome and Marles factory into Newark, and there we basically did the same thing. Had some fish and chips, couple of beers, and yeah. We also used to sometimes cycle into town, and from Newark we used to go to the smallest city in the UK, Southwell, which was, they used to call it Southwell [pronounced Suthull].
AS: Yes.
RD: But Southwell, there was a pub there, almost opposite the cathedral, where we used to hang out there, play darts there and there were some girls who lived nearby who used to come in and sometimes take us home for a cup of tea and things like that. And then on a special [emphasis] occasion we would get the train from Newark to Nottingham. Now Nottingham was a big city, I liked Nottingham very much. There I was in 1943, when my father died – in the Jewish religion for a year after the death of a parent, you have to say a special prayer and there, and there, and there in Nottingham was the nearest synagogue, so I used to go to Nottingham, I used to go on Friday night, stay in the YMCA in Nottingham overnight for very little, and then go to the synagogue which was just down the road from the YMCA, and, to say these special prayers, and there I would be invited by various families to lunch on Saturday, which is as you know the Jewish Sabbath. And after lunch I would have a walk round with them then I would go back to the station, back to camp, because I’d only have twenty-four hours off. But Nottingham was a very happy place to me, I met a lot of people there, civilians, girls, and – the prettiest girls in Britain come from Nottingham, you know that do you? [Laughs], they say.
AS: My wife did.
RD: Well there you are [laughs], you’ve proved it [laughs]. But Nottingham was a great place for me, and by a strange coincidence, one of my closest friends, post war, became manager of a very large factory there, and we were involved in business and what have you, and I used to travel up to Nottingham for a long time, so I became, I knew Nottingham well. And then in 1945 the war ended, and VE Day, it was rumoured that a large number of Bomber Command squadrons would be going out to the Far East, ‘cause prior to that there had been no heavy bombers outside of Britain because there was obviously nowhere for them to land [emphasis]. So we were going out to the Far East, but before one aeroplane took off to go, VJ Day came so that was hit on the head. And I, the squadron was disbanded and I went, was posted to Number One Signals Depot at West Drayton at West London, which was very handy for home, and by that time we were getting weekends off and things that, so I used to go home at weekends. But I was deferred demobilisation for a long time because, although I’d served five and a half years, you, your demobilisation depended on the length of service and your age [emphasis]. Well I started at eighteen whereas most of them started at twenty-one, which meant that I was way down the list for discharge when it came to numbers, even though I did, I’d served for five and a half years, and I wasn’t demobilised until July forty-six. So it was a year after the end of the war. And then I – I’d had this open air life for five and a half years and I hadn’t the faintest idea what I wanted to do. I certainly didn’t want to go back to the solicitors’ office, I didn’t want to go back anywhere indoors. I thought I must [emphasis] be outside and what could I do, I thought I would become a commercial traveller. What made me think of that I haven’t the faintest idea but it was soon quashed because when I came home on demobilisation leave my mother, God rest her soul, said ‘I’ve found you a job in the solicitors’ office’ [laughs] and when my mother said that you didn’t say no [laughs]. And so I went then to work for my uncle who had a practice in the city of London in Finsbury Square and started all over again training. I never qualified as a solicitor but did, I did become what they now call a chartered legal executive, which is basically – we ran all solicitors’ offices, [laughs] we did the work. And that I did until I retired at seventy-two. I did have quite a bit of success in the business and fixed myself up with investments and pensions and things of that sort and I retired very comfortably at seventy-two.
AS: Did you work in the city of London –
RD: Yes. From Finsbury Square – when my uncle died in 1980, I had problems as to whether I bring in another solicitor to help me run things or amalgamate it. And by an amazing coincidence I met somebody in the tube by chance who said, ‘Ron, we’ve got an advert going in the Times tomorrow for a senior executive that would suit you down to the ground.’ And I said ‘well, thank you very much but I’ve got this practice should keep me going seven days a week.’ And he said ‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow’ and from then they amalgamated, or took me in on an amalgamation and they were a large firm with fourteen, fourteen partners in Fleet Street, and very good commercial legal office. And I realised that by putting my practice into a much larger practice, A, it would cut out my rent, A, it would cut down all my administration costs, and whatever I earned was basically profit because they already had all the – that worked out very, very successfully for them and myself. During my time there, I’d lost my wife very tragically aged forty-seven, and my daughter – I had a son and a daughter, my daughter went off and bought her own flat, and my son and I were living in this four bedroom house just using it as a dormitory, and so I said ‘well I think we’ll move into town,’ and that’s when I bought a flat on, below Blackfriars Bridge, about four-hundred yards east of Festival Hall, and this flat looked over, every room looked over the, overlooked the river. It was a beautiful view from there, and I used to walk to work in Fleet Street in ten minutes –
AS: Very good.
RD: And for London that is unheard of [laughs]. And I lived there until I married Pat in 1990. She had no wish to live there – it was a lovely flat but she had no wish to live there because no community and everybody used to skip off for the weekend. There was just no community there, and that’s when we came to end up [?] –
AS: So you found it quite easy to settle back into civilian life?
RD: No, I didn’t.
AS: You didn’t.
RD: No. I more than once, more than once considered throwing myself under a train because I was so unhappy at the – but after a while it was probably, by the time I was going out with my first wife and my life taken on a bit of a change that I realised ‘don’t be an idiot, just get on with it,’ and I did. And that was all, but initially for the first few weeks I seriously –
AS: You, you missed your colleagues?
RD: I missed everything. I missed the excitement, I missed the tragedy, I missed my colleagues, and I missed the travelling, because in my last year I was travelling all over the country, that sort of thing. I mean, it was probably a bit stupid really, I went in at eighteen, and an eighteen year old in 1940 was not like an eighteen year old in 2015. I had never bought myself a pair of socks [emphasis] at eighteen, my mother did all the buying, I never had enough money to indulge in anything. And so I was very unsophisticated at eighteen, but being from the East End of London I was streetwise. That was my, in my opinion, that was my saving grace, that I was streetwise. Unsophisticated but streetwise. I knew my way around and I knew how to handle myself which was very important at times like that. And, but I have to say, for that short period afterwards I did have this problem of –
AS: And what about your comrades, I mean, have you, did you or have you kept in touch with them?
RD: I have, there is, there were two guys from London, Ron Cawte, C-A-W-T-E, and Ernie Creckendon, Creckendon, C-R-E-C-K-E-N-D-O-N, who were very close buddies of mine. We went on holiday during our demobilisation leave to Jersey and we used to meet up, we used to meet up, not regularly but probably three or four times a year. But then after I got married, when we married in forty-nine, I got tied up with work and marriage, there was no time and I lost touch with them. The other guy I kept in touch with for a long time was from Glasgow, his name was Alec Hall, and he used to come down for the England Scotland soccer games, well which took place at that time, and I always used to meet him, we used to go to Wembley together and I met him, in fact I used to stay with him in Glasgow when I was stationed up in Leuchars with Number One Signals unit at the beginning of forty-six. We used to stay – he was demobbed by then and working and he used to invite me down to Glasgow for weekends. I kept in touch with him for a long time but I’m not in touch with any of them now, unfortunately.
AS: When you, when you were in Lincolnshire, at Scampton and Newark, what was the, what sort of living conditions did you have? Where were you billeted?
RD: Ah. Now, at Scampton we were very well – Scampton was a permanent, what we called a permanent station, so they had brick built blocks where we lived in dormitories of about twenty-four or twenty-six with washing facilities. When we – and the cookhouse where we ate was a brick built buildings with proper kitchens and things of that sort when I, when I was, when I was at in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Holton. They also had brick built because that was a permanent station. They had brick built buildings, but when we were doing our training out on the airfield the cooking was done on campfires out on the airfield which was horrible, horrible food. Then when I went to Winthorpe, again they were Nissan Huts with twelve or fourteen airmen in them, no washing facilities – when you got up you had to walk across the field to the ablutions and showers to get a wash, and that was not very comfortable. You had to basically dress to get there [laughs] and dress to come back again. They were pretty primitive, but we got used [emphasis] to them. And occasionally we would have one of the guys who wasn’t keen on washing so we used to drag him down to the shower [laughs] and put the, put the shower on him just to clean him up because it was a disincentive to look after yourself with, you know, in those conditions.
AS: And were there separate facilities for the officers and other ranks?
RD: Oh yes. Oh yes, oh yes. Officers lived in a separate part of camp, I mean, and aircrew, they were non-commissioned in most of the, in the old days, most of the aircrew were non-commissioned, but they had separate quarters, and then officers had further separate quarters. At the time there were very few women, but they obviously had their quarters well away from where we were. Most of the women were mainly employed in the cookhouse or in control, you know, from the control tower, you know, radio, control, and things of that sort. But later on, when we got the Lancasters there were some women engineers, airframe engineers and engine, engine, flight engine engineers, and they also would be in separate, of course no men and women near each other. There were no problems as far as I can remember at that time [pause]. Girls, the women in the, women, WEFs [?] they were called, women in the Air Force, were not terribly interested in the men because it was much more exciting to be with the officers [emphasis], the flying crews, but it never affected us in that way, we just [pause] found our girls outside, it wasn’t difficult.
AS: And after the war, I mean the fact that the Bombers didn’t have their own medal or memorial, was that an issue?
RD: It was an issue, I’m not sure if it was an issue for everybody but it was certainly an issue for me, because I felt that they had, and this was common knowledge at the time, that Churchill let us down [emphasis]. You know, he was a wonderful war leader but he let us down. You see, when the war ended, particular after the bombing of that German university city in the south west –
AS: Dresden.
RD: Dresden. It is alleged that the RAF bombed Dresden, which only had a civilian occupation, only civilian people. We knew and we were told that there was a great deal of rocket research and manufacturing going on in the area, and Churchill told Bomber Harris, who was in charge of Bomber Command, to bomb Dresden, which he did and destroyed a very large part of it. And for some reason shortly after the war, Churchill didn’t acknowledge that it was his instructions that we bombed Dresden, and it was a big, big letdown. And it was because of that, that we didn’t get A, a medal for flying against the enemy, and B, there were no memorials for the fifty-thousand plus cream of British youth who were killed as aircrew until the RAF memorial at the Hyde Park corner there which was unveiled in 2010, no 2012, yeah 2012.
AS: I mean, presumably nobody knew when Dresden was bombed that it was the final weeks of the war.
RD: No, of course not.
AS: That couldn’t have been predicted at that time.
RD: I mean, we knew for nine months, you know, once we’d made the bridge head [?]at, in Northern France there, once we’d started moving and the Russians were coming in, we knew that the end of the war was in sight but we had no idea it was necessarily coming as quick as it was. Because the last couple of weeks was, was just unbelievable, you couldn’t keep up with the news of the progress they were making. You have to remember all these concentration camps were found long before the war, the war ended. You know, the Russians and the British and the American troops came across these concentration camps when the war was still on [emphasis], it hadn’t ended then, but it was shortly after that the end came. We [pause] as far as I remember, I don’t think we young men got involved much in the politics of the time.
AS: You just did as you were told.
RD: Yeah, yeah. And I’m not sure my CO [emphasis] would have known much about the politics of the time, and my CO was a group captain, I don’t think he would know much about the politics at that level.
AS: What about your reminiscences of Bomber Harris, and his legacy. What’s your opinion of that?
RD: To me, to me he was the greatest leader of the lot [emphasis]. Far more than Montgomery or Alexander or Eisenhower. You know, he was our boss [emphasis] and we knew what we were doing [emphasis]. We knew that we were destroying the enemies’ access to armaments [emphasis] and vehicles and things of that sort and that was the only way we were going to win. And I mean obviously men on the ground had to go through but we had to do our job to enable them to go through [emphasis]. That was my, my view – I mean I can’t remember talking about it to anybody at the time but that would have been my view. Oh no, no, Bomber Harris was the greatest of them all.
AS: And do you think he was let down by Churchill?
RD: Badly, very badly let down by Churchill. If Churchill had stood up for him about Dresden then it would have been another story entirely. You know, he was made the villain of the piece. P-I-E-C-E [laughs].
AS: And he should have been a hero.
RD: That’s right, yeah. And he, I think, felt it.
AS: Did you, as sort of a, did you ever see him or meet him?
RD: No.
AS: No.
RD: No, I can’t recall ever meeting him or seeing him. I can recall, I can recall King George coming to Scampton on a visit on one occasion. I can’t remember why he came but I can remember the King coming because we were on parade. There was another point that I didn’t bring up during what I was saying. The fact that, in the services there was very strict discipline, very strict discipline, but on squadron this was not possible, so the discipline was relaxed. There were certain limits but discipline was relaxed on an operational squadron, because, you know, the ground crews and the aircrews and the officers were very closely mixed up, I mean they would call me Ron and I would call them, you know, whatever their name was. I remember [laughs] the only time we had discipline was when we were walking around near the headquarters, which it was near the gate at Scampton, and on one occasion I was walking through there with my hand in my pocket. Well, servicemen don’t have hands in their pockets [emphasis], so the station warrant officer, ‘young man [?], get your hands out of your pockets immediately’ [laughs], ‘sorry sir.’ He said ‘you’ve got a funny smirk on your face, I think I’m going to put you on a charge, I’ll make up my mind later. Come back this afternoon with your pockets sewn up.’ ‘Yes sir, five o’clock.’ So I go back to my billet and I stitch up my pocket and I go back at five o’clock, and he said ‘have you obeyed my orders?’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘Show me.’ I turned round then and he said ‘what about the other one?’ I said ‘I only had one hand in my pocket’ [laughs] so he said ‘that’s impertinent and you’ll have five days jankers,’ which is after, after you’re working in the cookhouse cleaning up all the dirty dishes and things of that sort, not a pleasant job. I mean, I had five days there, but fortunately, being streetwise, I chatted up the lady cook and she used to feed me [laughs] rather than me do the washing up, whilst we were chatting [laughs]. But as I say, the discipline out on the airfield itself was not like that at all. It was very, very informal. We were all in the same position, and that I think was very important at that point, to bring out that discipline, although we always knew our place [emphasis], discipline was not enforced as it was in the administration part of the airfield.
AS: Well thank you very much indeed –
RD: Well I don’t know, is that enough?
AS: Yeah, I think that’s excellent –
RD: More than enough.
AS: I’ll erm –
RD: But if you have any other questions, you know, that hasn’t occurred to me – I’ve probably given you much too much there. Particularly as some of it will be on the –
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Ronald Davis
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Adam Sadler
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2015-09-29
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Sound
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ADavisR150929
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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.
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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01:01:29 audio recording
Description
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Ronald Davis grew up in the East End and worked in London as a solicitor’s office boy. He joined the RAF and served as a fitter airframe.
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
49 Squadron
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
demobilisation
faith
fitter airframe
ground crew
ground personnel
Hampden
Lancaster
military living conditions
RAF Scampton
superstition
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/476/8358/PBrettDT1501.2.jpg
118e663bc5324bf07e5a67487e6467b1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/476/8358/ABrettD150522.2.mp3
81384cf913618625f74e822cf9a8f9c1
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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Brett, Dennis
Dennis T Brett
D T Brett
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Brett, DT
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Dennis Brett (b. 1924) and four photographs. He served as an air frame mechanic at RAF Carnaby.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Dennis Brett and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2015-05-22
2015-07-20
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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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MJ: It’s on.
DTB: Dennis T Brett. Born 4 9 24. RAF service 12 11 42 to 5 3 47. Tested and found to have mechanical ability and so trained as a flight mechanic airframe at RAF Locking. Served mainly in Yorkshire at Driffield on Martinets. Leconfield, Lissett, Holme on Spalding Moor and Carnaby. Carnaby -
[machine pause]
MJ: Go on.
DTB: Carnaby was used for emergency landings along with two others, Woodbridge and Manston. They were known colloquially as crash ‘dromes. A wide variety of English and American aircraft was seen at Carnaby and on very foggy nights FIDO was in operation. Soon after the war ended I was taken on a low level flight in a Halifax to see the extent of damage inflicted on German cities by aircraft of Bomber Command. My last six months of service was spent in Italy, Egypt and Palestine with a Dakota squadron of Transport Command. Right. In wartime Britain there were three emergency landing grounds a little inland from the east coast. They were Manson, Woodbridge and, in the north, Carnaby, about three miles from Bridlington in Yorkshire. Their purpose was to allow damaged aircraft, sometimes with injured crew, to land if necessary without warning. To facilitate this the runways were large. Carnaby’s being three miles long and three runways wide. The soft bituminous surface was to minimise friction caused by a rough landing. When I arrived [pause] we saw and serviced a variety of aircraft. English and American. Can you put that off?
[machine pause]
We saw and serviced a variety of aircraft. English and American. The US crews were not noted for their navigational skills. I recall seeing the three twin-engined Whirlwinds the crew of which seemed to be lost. One pilot remarked, ‘We thought we were in North Devon.’ When a damaged aircraft landed our fire crews rushed to extinguish any flames. The armourers checked for bombs and guns. And the riggers took, looked for any physical damage to the aircraft and then towed the aircraft away to dispersal. We were puzzled one night when after landing safely the crew got out of the aircraft and ran. They soon told us that there was a long delay fused bomb on board likely to explode at any moment. It was the armourers of course who had to be there to defuse the bomb before other workers were allowed near the aircraft. Can we?
[machine paused]
Sometimes I was on special night duty all alone in a small hut at one end of the runway. This was more than a mile away from the control tower. My bed was two or three feet away from an electrical installation which bore the warning, “Danger 11000 volts.” We were always ready to receive aircraft but on bombing nights we were especially alert. I’m sorry.
[machine paused]
My job was then to operate the lighting system. On receiving an order from the control tower I would pull a switch to turn on the sodium funnel lights. These were spaced in a narrowing V shape embedded near the foot of the runway and were a guide for aircraft approaching to land. The lights were arranged in the shape of a funnel. In bad weather and when many aircraft were expected the order would be given to ‘strike arc’ and I then had to pull a switch to activate the searchlight system. Searchlights were positioned, one each side of the runway, at its entrance. They were angled towards each other to form a cross so that incoming aircraft could enter through the triangular shape below the cross. Bad weather was a great danger to airmen returning tired and cold from a raid lasting eight or more hours. Fog was a major problem. As a counter measure a system of pipework called FIDO, Fog Instantaneous Dispersal Operation had been installed along each side of the runway. In operation, petrol was pumped through the holes in the pipework, then ignited to produce flames several feet high. This was meant to clear the fog and it probably did so but at the time I thought its great value was that the flames could be seen by pilots trying to land. In such circumstances a successful landing was a tremendous relief for the aircrew. This might seem far-fetched but I was a personal witness to a memorable incident when a Lancaster had come in to a halt the crew got out and some of them actually kissed the ground. Reminders of the darker side of war were frequent. Crash landings were a common sight. A faulty undercarriage was usually the cause and the result was what we called a belly landing. Some aircraft burst into flames when landing. Others were already on fire as they approached. The sight of a red gun turret is one that I cannot forget. Even our medical officer was seen to turn pale sometimes. But there was also a lighter side to life at Carnaby. Sometimes a bad landing would cause an aircraft to bounce not just once but in a continuing series from which the pilot could not escape until the laws of physics allowed. We called this a kangaroo landing. The Yorkshire winter was harsh. One night the wind caused my eyes to water and the intense cold froze my tears so that I could not open my eyes. This was only momentary and a good rub was all that was needed to solve the problem. The snow lay thick everywhere and this emboldened the local rats to come rather too close to our hut. We shot at them with our sten guns but I doubt whether we hit any.
[machine paused]
Our commanding officer was a very experienced pilot who was known to have seen much action in the war. His free and easy manner was in direct contrast to the usual strictly authoritarian attitude of the administrators. He would sometimes sit outside the control tower with his legs dangling through the railings swinging them to and fro. In this way he was exhibiting his persona for all to see. I happened to be on duty when he decided to take a Sunday afternoon trip with his young son. After I’d pulled away the chocks and motioned him out he asked me if I would like to come too and I gladly agreed. One fine day I noticed a large number of, to me, unidentified aircraft all flying eastwards. They were not in any kind of formation. They were towing gliders. These gliders were at a certain angle to my vision so that only one wing was visible. A strange sight. It soon became obvious to us that the invasion of Normandy had begun. The gliders were, I believe, Horsas and the planes were DC3, better known as Dakotas. I was soon to become much more familiar with them when I was transferred to a Dakota squadron. At the end of the war I was invited to go up in a Halifax to retrace some of the routes our bombers had taken and to witness the devastation. We flew low over a number of cities including Rotterdam which had been bombed by the Germans and battle areas such as Arnhem and Aachen. Our pilot was on a high, in high spirits after the ending of hostilities. He would approach a city from a certain height and dive bomb it at an angle of about forty five degrees. Then over the city he would pull up sharply out of the dive. This continuing sensation was too much for me and I was physically sick for most of the flight home and my muscles ached for a week afterwards. I still have a reluctance to fly though I had to do so in 1981 when I was seconded to the City University of New York. To my regret the airline did not provide a parachute. Large four-engined, large four-engined aircraft such as the Stirling, Halifax, Lancaster and Fortress were designed for level flight not aerobatics and for a Halifax to be flown in such a vigorous way says much for the strength and construction of this, this aircraft. My experience at Carnaby remained long in my memory. Forty years later I would sometimes wake up in the night. In my dream a large four-engined bomber coming in towards me to crash land.
[machine paused]
Well my elder brother was in Coastal Command and used to fly as the wireless operator rear gunner in a Beaufort and I think it was in 1942 when the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau German battleships made a dash through the channel. He was engaged in torpedoing the Scharnhorst but in the process he was badly wounded and received shrapnel in various parts of the body and face and managed to survive. The gun turret was badly damaged and for this service he was awarded the mention in dispatches. I think that’s all that can be said there.
MJ: What was your actual job in the RAF?
DTB: Well I was what was known as a flight mechanic airframe otherwise known as a rigger and we were responsible for the whole of the aircraft physically other than the engine and the guns. And we had daily inspections for which we had to sign from the safety point of view. We had to check brakes, hydraulics, the movement of the flaps, rudder, elevators and of course petrol filling and so on and we had to make body work repairs where necessary.
MJ: How did you do that?
DTB: Whether it, well on early aircraft it would be on [pause] covered in, the early aircraft, I think the wimpy as well was covered in cloth. Muslin or, not muslin, no. Irish linen and we learned how to make a repair for that. On most of the aircraft they were metal and we had to make a hole and rivet all around it and patch them in that way but that was it. The whole of the aircraft had to be inspected and many points inspected and then signed for for the safety of the pilot. The Lancaster which was the best. It was the fastest and could carry the heaviest bomb load. The Halifax was next and then the other one. I can’t remember the name of it you know.
MJ: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what one it is but I know which one you mean so, yeah.
DTB: But of course, you know there are other aircraft as well. The Mosquito was the fastest aircraft in that war and it was a bomber and it was a fighter bomber.
MJ: Yeah. Didn’t they take off from the airports with the flame?
DTB: No. It wasn’t a biplane. No.
MJ: No. No. They used to take off in the fog didn’t they?
DTB: There were Swordfish in the early days, I think the Swordfish was in that battle with the Scharnhorst as well as the Beauforts.
MJ: Yeah.
DTB: Well there we are.
MJ: Here’s the end of the interview with Dennis Brett at Ruskington. The International Bomber Command would like to thank him for his recording on the date of the 22nd of May 2015. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Dennis Brett
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-22
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Sound
Identifier
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ABrettD150522, PBrettDT1501
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
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Dennis was born in 1924 and joined the Royal Air Force in November 1942. He trained as a flight mechanic airframe at RAF Locking and was responsible for the whole of the aircraft, apart from the engines and the guns. Dennis explained the emergency landing grounds at RAF Manston, RAF Woodbridge and RAF Carnaby, which were wider to allow damaged aircraft to land safely. His last six months of service were spent in Italy, Egypt and Palestine with a C-47 squadron of Transport Command.
Sometimes Dennis was on special night duty alone in a hut a mile away from the control tower. His job was to operate the lighting system on receiving an order from the control tower. He referred to a memorable incident when a Lancaster landed safely and some of the crew kissed the ground.
When the invasion of Normandy began Dennis was transferred to a C-47 squadron. At the end of the war he went up in a Halifax to retrace some of the routes the bombers had taken and to witness the devastation. He left the RAF in 1947. In 1981 Dennis was seconded to the City University of New York.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
United States
Egypt
Italy
Middle East
England--Kent
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--Somerset
New York (State)--New York
New York (State)
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:18:19 audio recording
bombing
C-47
control tower
Cook’s tour
FIDO
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
ground crew
Halifax
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Carnaby
RAF Locking
RAF Manston
RAF Woodbridge
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/472/8355/PBlandC1501.2.jpg
47607dc4beca689cae653908ef391be8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/472/8355/ABlandC150817.2.mp3
7d011bdc0c7786974101ce4ef3b8516e
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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Bland, Charles
C Bland
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Bland, C
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Charles Bland (538762 Royal Air Force). He served as an engine fitter.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Charles Bland and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Charles Bland and this is my story of what, the Air Force I suppose. I started off in grammar school, Boston and then I did my school certificate and my school certificate results were sufficient that I was able to become, join the Air Force as an aircraft apprentice in February 1942. February 1942. It was the first time you’d left home and we all had to arrive at Marylebone Station and it was February the 18th, I think it was, February the 18th, and so I left Boston, got down to London and, and found on Marylebone Station a great number of boys, all the same age as me. Most of them the first time they’d ever left home and so I consequently got on this train and I happened to, it was a non-corridor train and you had the compartments and I got in the compartment and they were all Geordies. You sort of, I mean, I’d never met Geordies before or anything and the, the chap who -
[machine pause]
Yep ok, we got in the carriage and that was the first time I’d sort of been away, more or less, and mixed with a lot of other boys from different parts of the country. Eventually we got there and we got to Halton and we, the first time we’d ever been in a room, we got to a room and there was twenty two of us in the barrack room and all of us were exactly the same. Most of us had never left home before and the most, I got, my chap in the next bed to me was a Scotsman, a chap named Jock Blythe and, but anyway that’s how we, we eventually got in and then we, then they, we all had to go off and go in the mess and we all sort of got together and then, of course, became the thing of joining the Air Force and the first thing we had was a medical, and the medical I failed. I failed because in this, for some reason or other, the Air Force had decided that you had to have bite, what were known as biting points and I had one biting point short so therefore I was not fit to be in the Air Force and for some reason or other, I was discharged. So I never joined, so they sent me back to Wendover Station and there was another chap who finished up, an armourer and myself who had failed our medicals and we stood on the platform station and waited for the train. Both, well, dispirited I suppose, and the next thing was, the warrant officer who was known as Beefy Paley eventually came on and called out our names. What was his name? Damn, I can’t remember. Anyway, he became an armourer. So he said, Charles Bland, so we all went back, the two of us went back to Halton and for some miraculous reason they found us a biting point, so I was in the, I eventually got in the service. So I -
MJ: What was your favourite biting point?
CB: The biting. I have no idea. This biting point was how your teeth clamped together I think, I don’t know, I never did find out, but I was in the Air Force. I didn’t care much then. And so we, I came, went back and but then of course, because I’d dropped behind, I was at, my number is a hundred behind where I, where the chaps were originally, but anyway that all came, it all came about but so on February the 19th, February the 19th, I joined the Royal Air Force and got sworn in and got this number, 578762, but er, but you see where the people that I was with, I should have been 662 not 762 but anyway, I went back to visit the beginning. All the initial because there were several methods of getting in as an apprentice. There was service candidate in which was all based on the fact that you had a father or something in the Air Force. By examination which was then you went on, did the exam and various, how you finished up on the exam, or what was known as a direct entry. I was a direct entry because I had sufficient, I had [unclear], what they were called? Credit standards. I think credit standards in my school certificate in maths, physics and chemistry and that allowed me to go as a direct entry. I was a direct entry with others but all of us, a direct entry were in the beginning, direct entry and service candidate had the first choice and then the others who did the examination, depended on where you came in the examination, what you got, how you got treated, but anyway that was it. We all got uniforms and we all won and we all got our classes, all got our classes, but then you had to be, oh I remember this, in this, my barrack room where these, these, all these people joined in and you all had trades. Now, the trades all, you had the one, was the radio trades, ‘cause they went to Cranwell, they didn’t do at Halton but then the others that were all picked out. You all got selected, if you like to put it, what you were going to be. You’d put down on your exam, on your joining what you’d like to be but it didn’t, yeah, it didn’t necessarily mean you did, because, we, in this barrack room where we were, ‘cause we had all those, I wanted to be an engine fitter. Some wanted to be riggers, armourers and instrument makers. Those were the Halton trades and we, we came back and I always remember, oh God, I can’t even remember his name now. Damn, damn but anyway, anyway this we all went this way selected and we got selected and said, you know, I was going to be an engine fitter. That was all. Then there was Jock Blythe, he fancied airframes so he was, and he was alright, but then we had one chap come back and he come back to the barrack room after being selected, and he was in tears and we didn’t quite understand why he was crying, and we thought maybe something had happened, but he came back and said, you know, I mean we were boys and I mean, we’d only met each other but you know you’d think well, why, you know, some sympathy for why he was crying. And why he was crying was that they’d made him an air frame fitter, and he wanted to be an engine fitter, so that was why he was crying. I met him years afterwards and he always, he always used to say, you know he always used to, he was a crew chief same, crew chief with me [unclear] for years on, but it was this business that he cried when he was at Halton, went years on. Years on ‘cause he knew that he, he wanted a different trade. Oh that was something, yes, he cried because he was made an airframe fitter and not an engine fitter, and there we are, but then we did all the, we did all the training that was necessary. Well boys, when you get boys, boys together, all sixteen year olds and you see you, they, you sort of went, you, I think that you went there, you became a disciplined hooligan I suppose really. It was nothing. Because you all went there like choirboys but after you’d been with all this lot, you became as, you know, apprentices. I don’t know how you sort of became, I don’t know, you’ve got, because funny enough how, because you treated NCOs and everything as they were but you’d, I suppose you’d got a cheekiness and whatnot, I don’t know, but you survived. Well survived. I can’t say that but, but a chap, an ex-apprentice I met years and years later and he had been, he had been a Japanese prisoner of war, and for some reason he didn’t talk much about it, but he, his, he reckoned that his survival as a Japanese prisoner of war because he, he treated the Japanese the same way we treated NCOs and whatnot as apprentices, and he put his survival as a Japanese prisoner of war to the fact that he’d been apprentice, and that was his attitude towards authority. So that was it. But that was a digression from that. Anyway, I left Halton after I managed to get an AC1, oh, and I got thrown out of a class once through laughing, but then of course the, but then days as apprentice were something that, incidents, I’ll mention a couple of incidents. One which, because I mean you all swore, you did all sorts of things and the one was that I always remember we were doing, we had, of course, you had engineering drawing. We did all this business there and engineering drawing. Our instructor was, oh, very studious squadron leader I think. Obviously, he was just like a parson and of course, we all lot we had a, because you had, I mean as boys we buggered about, I mean it was, you know. It was one of the things and I always remember my, one of my colleagues, well I’ll say classmate [unclear], Rickards his name was, and he, he was on there and the he said, oh, and of course there that the thing was we always buggered about and of course, we were doing engineering drawing and his, his statement was, ‘Who’s the thieving sod who’s pinched my rubber?’ And this was part of everyone talked about, but the instructor was a bit like a parson he was, and he stopped the class and he said that, he said that it was getting beyond when one boy called another boy a thieving sod. Well, I mean that was of course, that all went and that, that was being an apprentice and then all sorts of things. You were hooligans really, because you did, you did, you know, filing and all the, all the rest of it. You learned how to file, you learned how to rivet, you learned how to do all sorts of things and the, another thing when you did welding or, welding was one and of course, we had, you always got somebody there who was, would get rather picked on. Picked on in a class and one who was a, who was trouble was a bloke named Bryce, he came from Devon and Trevor Boone was another, he was, Trevor Boone was a, he was a bit of a softie. He was rather, he had a tendency I suppose to be bullied a bit. Yeah, because Bryce was a bugger you see, he was, he, we’d do soldering abrasion, welding, welding and of course all doing, we’re doing, we’re doing that. Not arc welding, it was oxyacetylene and of course, then of course, a pair of pliers that you use and Bryce, of course, played his flame on Boone’s pliers, so that when poor old Boone picked his pliers up, he got his hands burned. Devilish things sort of like that. Oh, and then of course, you, ‘cause we had, there again, McDonald beds. Now, McDonald beds were solid iron beds but they had casters on because you had to, you had to make your bed up in the morning. You had this bed. One, the bottom half slid into the top half and your blankets had to be your biscuits which were the three biscuits. Mattresses, or whatever you like to call them, had to be stacked on one another. Your blankets had to be folded with, we had sheets, so the sheets had to be put between the blankets, and then one blanket wrapped around the whole lot that so it sort of made like a sandwich, if you like and it, that was it. Beds have to made up as laid down. That was the one of the comments that you had to do, yeah. But then we, when we managed and the time came then and of course, we had our drill and had to be marched up and down and of course, we had the pipes and the drums and we were all, and it was, it was you carried your books, you carried your overalls and you had these horrible ground sheets which were meant to be capes, and the trouble was when it rained, and you were marching and whatnot, your legs got soaking wet because the damned ground sheet came to your, it was only came just below your knees, you know, the edge of it, but there we are. What else did we do? We used to march back and forth and, oh aye, that was another thing. We had, because we had various engine, as engine fitters of course, we started off on basics, which was an old Gipsy engine, a four cylinder Gipsy engine we had and then of course, you, you moved off, but then of course, we were in, at Halton we were in, started off in what was known as the old workshops, and then they decided, because we had airmen and wartime fitters there, they decided that they’d move the apprentices to the new workshops which was, if anyone knows Halton, I don’t know if they’re all like that now, but the old workshops, the new workshops were newer buildings and across the other side of the road. I can’t remember our position now but anyway it was across the other side of the road and we all moved. There was er to, going down into the new workshops was a downhill run, if you like to put it, and of course, we happened to be when we, when they changed to the new workshops, we happened to be on the radial engines, which were mercury engines, Bristol Mercury’s, and we were on radials and then we had to move the whole class and our engines from the old workshops to the new workshops, and we had an instructor named Mr Petty. He was the instructor. And so as a class, we moved our engines, but the thing is, when you get a bunch of boys and all of us, they decided to move these engines and of course, these engines were in stands, on castors so we pushed them up to the top of the hill, but then there was a downhill run to the new workshops, so of course they decided then, of course, being boys and whatnot, we decided that the only way to get these down there was to run them down and stand on the stand so that it went down like a trolley. Well of course, this was all, this did very well until we came and there was a curb by the side and of course the next thing was, one of the engines of course, hit the curb and thank goodness there was a bank there. It went into the bank and tipped over but it was not completely over, but of course, it had hit this bank and of course, we came down. We had to heave this engine back on its trolleys and push it back into the workshops, and then of course the thing was, we all got there, and the comment, Mr Petty said that he could not understand why one of his engines had got soil amongst the cooling fins, but nobody enlightened him that it had fell, it had fallen over. But then you had, and I always remember, you know, all, you know, you remember these sorts of things. I remember we had another instructor was a Mr Palmer and Mr Palmer was quite a, he said, ‘If you’re using a hammer, use it’. Don’t, you know, don’t dilly dally with it. Use it. And there was a boy called Hind in our class and, Mr Palmer, I don’t know what happened there, whether it was a hard face or whatnot, but he hit something. The hammer head came off and it finished up in Hind’s stomach so it, it was quite funny really because all it was, was Mr Palmer just extricated this hammer head out of Hind’s stomach and carried on. Hind was a bit breathless but never mind. But there was the other thing we used to do oh, and that was again Butch Hind, was, we did magnetos of course, but then of course, using magnetos of course, you can charge, you know, the thing is, you get a spark and whatnot but they were doing magnetos, and it was found that Hind, by judicious of winding these hand starter magnetos up, that Hind could be charged up and I don’t know if it was, he wore rubber boots or, so he was, you had to gently sort of, Hind would hold the leads and get himself charged up and then someone would go up, put a finger near his ears and he’d get a crick across the ears, you know. It was, oh we did all sorts of things like this, I mean, it was ridiculous really. And we had, we had a lot of civvy instructors and we had one for basic was a Mr Tatum, and Tatum could do anything with a piece of metal that I know, but then you had, he used to be doing because you had to have your, some on the file and some on top. You had to hold the files correctly and if you weren’t holding the files correctly and you were doing something, you suddenly find you had a whack on the finger, because you weren’t correct and he used to come around and give you a whack on the finger. But it was, you know, I suppose, brutal really. I mean you wouldn’t have it now, ‘cause they was being mistreated or something. I don’t know but I mean, you just accepted it. You accepted it. Well he was, but I’m ok. There we are. Then of course, you had your various exams, and that was another one. Petty, another one. He got killed. He went aircrew and he became a pilot, he got killed in a Canberra. Colin Petty. And we had, during exams, there was various means of making bolts and one was what was known as a cold headed bolt, which had all these had different markings in, ‘cause this was all part of the thing of knowing what your markings of all these various equipment and steel and everything were, and one was, a bolt was known as a cold headed bolt and it was a bolt where the head had been pressed in cold. Not, not been turned. It was pressed and this had a ring around the top, but in the exam, it was, ‘How do you recognise a cold headed bolt?’ And of course, Petty didn’t know, and so Petty wrote, ‘Wears a balaclava helmet’. He got seven days for that, seven days jankers for that, for being frivolous on an examination paper. That was how, that’s how things were, you know, you got done for everything. You couldn’t smoke. Oh you got a smoking pass at eighteen, but you weren’t allowed to smoke everywhere and the toilets down in workshops of course. Toilets, yeah, and you could hear because you could have puffs, I mean, you could make a cigarette end last with a pin till the last puff. Oh dear, it was all sorts of things like that. As an apprentice, you did everything, always pushed to the limit, and it, and all your instructors. Oh, and there was another incident, I always remember that we had a named, chap named in our class, Dicky Burke, and Dicky Burke was, he was a oh, he was the same as anyone else, but one time we had a, we had er notes. A corporal, I can’t even remember his name, a corporal was giving, he was an instructor and of course he said we had to, I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, he said take, get your notebook and take these notes, and Dicky Burke said, ‘We’ve already got these notes’, and the corporal said, ‘It doesn’t matter, you’ll still do it’, you know. And under his breath, Dicky Burke said F you, and the corporal heard him and so he was wheeled up to the squadron leader, and in less than two hours, Dicky Burke was, was doing a stretch of twenty eight days in the guardroom, but he still had to come to, well he was doing a stretch but he, he, he was doing his spell in the guardroom but he still had to come to school. He still had to do his doings, so one of the corporal apprentices, a bloke named Ted Atkinson who was a friend of mine, had to go to the guardroom and march him down to school and then march him back up to the guardroom for his, his lunchtime and any off duty, so he did his twenty eight days on off duty, more or less, so he was one of these, one of these incidents that er, but he did the twenty eight days and was shovelling coal from one side to the other and all the rest of it, but as I say, they used to make you do anything. I don’t know, but that was Dicky Burke and his twenty eight days. I’m trying to remember humorous incidents of things and very, it was, of course we were apprentices anyway but then, of course, the other thing was they had Air Training Corps, ‘cause they were the civilian side. I mean, most of them were the same age as us but of course, we were apprentices as opposed to theirs was, well Air Training Corps wasn’t it? People that you join and they had the air training corps come and did a spell well in the camp near Halton, which of course upset those, a bit of an upset, and of course the apprentices raided them as normal, it was normal sort of business. Used to, oh dear oh dear. Apprentices. The other one was, all daft things really. And of course, you had not money, you used to get, we used to get paid a fortnight of three [unclear], nearly new two shilling pieces. That was our pay. Three, three every fortnight, which I mean you had, you could buy chips in the NAAFI and the old rock cakes and whatnot, but, but then of course, there was, generally you used to run out of money or something and they used to do odd, and there was one time, oh, what was his name? He was short of money, and then the thing was that we had, because there was twenty two of us in a room, twenty two of us including a corporal or a snag which was a LAA, a leading aircraft apprentice. He had one stripe on his arm and then you had a corporal apprentice, a corporal he had was probably in the bunk at the end of the room, was the corporal apprentice, but then of course, then they’d get someone short of money and one of the, one of the, one I remember is, I can’t remember his name now, never mind, short of money and then it said was halfpenny around the room. That would give him ten P. A halfpenny around the room and he’d run around the barrack block stark naked which was a, oh God that was brass and of course, he said he’d do it and that so everybody, but then of course, you had to, then had to, everybody, this was immediately transmitted all around the rooms that he was going to run around the block stark naked, and so that meant that everybody was, when he set off, everybody was at the barrack block windows, shouting and cheering him on as he went around. And that was another incident, anything to make money. And then there was, you had jankers, ‘cause that was another one. Your jankers, seven penneth for doing anything. No I managed to avoid that, I wasn’t caught smoking or missing church parade. Anything to scrounge. You get seven penneth and then, but then you were allowed, they decided that you, that the jankers would be separated from the other boys. For what reason I don’t know. And there was a Corporal Croft. He was a corporal in the DI we had and they put him in charge of, ‘cause we had the barrack blocks but then we had wooden huts, and they decided to put the, the jankers in the, or a wooden hut with this corporal in charge which was then, ‘cause he was Corporal Croft, and that was known as Croft’s Cottage, but I think, I think they abandoned that because you got all the ne’er-do-wells who wanted to pinch anything all at, do and that was not, they weren’t distributed cause they used to supposed to do jankers in the cookhouse and they were the ones that always got fed the best, ‘cause they always managed to purloin something. Food or something. It was, it was all part of the game. Part of the game. I mean the best of it was of course, some of the worst offenders became commissioned officers. That was the best of it wasn’t it? I mean years, years on. There was one there, Hammer Mallet, Tom Mallet. He was, he was one but he became a squadron leader engineer. Just shows you ,doesn’t it? How to become commissioned? Become jankers, you know. But then, that was the years. Went through that lot and of course came, I mean we were doing our drill with our rifles and bayonets and all the rest of it as well, and then came the day of passing out and then you had to do, but then you had your exams but then your exams depended on where you were doing, whether if you got, if you got called that you would do your oral exams and boarded, as they used to say, and you’d go for your board to these, you know, either senior NCOs or officers and you were questioned on your trade. I mean, as well as written exams, you had written exams as well which was, you know, like school and whatnot, but your boards were you were all against mostly to gain your trade. They asked you, you know, how you would identify some stainless steel or some question how would you do this or do the other, various things so, but then you, you’d do your board and then if you were you didn’t know how you were doing, you sort of go back again and then, and sit down and go back where you came from and then someone would say, ‘They want to speak to you again’. And you’d think, now that meant either one of two things. That A) you hadn’t got enough marks to pass out or B) you got sufficient marks that they were doing, that they were doing you that instead of AC2 pass out or AC1, you got an LAC. That, that was the thing but I mean, you had to know whether you’d done well enough or poorly or not because if they asked you back again and you’d done very poorly and you were only getting to re-boarded, you again to become an AC2 and I got, I had to go back again because I didn’t get an LAC. Anyway, I did, I finished up AC1, that was how I passed out. I passed out then from Halton, that was then and they said, right then, we are posted. Where were your choices to be posted? Well I come from Lincolnshire so I suppose you put Lincolnshire. I mean, ten to one you never got what you put down for. I put Lincolnshire and I finished up, posted to Kirton Lindsey. That was, and of course the thing was, in those days, and you used to get trains and you didn’t know where you were and blackouts, and you get on a train. There was several of us posted to Kirton Lindsey, I think about four, four of us posted to Kirton Lindsey, and of course, on these trains, you didn’t know where the hell you were going. You got a train, you had to get a train to so and so, and then of course, the only time you ever knew where you were, was if some porter called out, you know, the name of the platform or stop where it was, and we got out at Kirton Lindsey. There was four of us and some airmen as well, and so we got out there and some of the airmen were worldly, more worldly wise, get transport, and they eventually came, got transport and of course, it’s a blackout, you didn’t know where the hell you were. Got to, went to this, got to the station and eventually the guardroom and we were then sent to transit block. Transit block. And the transit room, you went in there and you, you were, I can’t even remember now whether you had, whether there was bedding in there or you had to go to the bedding store and get your blankets, I think. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Got there and eventually we got dished out to the general office, and then we were given wherever we were going, so it’s, you were sent down to the tech side and then they decided where you were going, ‘cause I mean, they were riggers or fitters. I finished up in R&I. R&I. We were doing majors on Spitfires there. Got R&I, some of them got others. And there was another place called Hibaldstow, which was a satellite of Kirton Lindsey. Two of them got sent to Hibaldstow. As I say I was sent to, to R&I. I don’t know, I think I was the only one out of our group who went to R&I, which is Repair and Inspection, which was the major. We were doing majors, majors on Spitfires but, so we used to have the flights when the flights board there, I mean, I mean, oh, and the other thing was, I must have mentioned this, the other thing they had now, so that we, we had, ‘cause we had WAAF fitters as wel,l and we had, I was put into, put into a gang with Corporal, Corporal Shear was in charge and I was put in this gang and of course, I was an, I was an AC1 apprentice fitter. Apprentice, ‘cause the others in the gang were all wartime blokes. One was a bank clerk, one had been, one was, one had been a waiter, I think, but they were a good lot anyway.
[pause for phone]
So we, now, we got to Kirton Lindsey now so that we got to the WAAF fitters, and I was put in a gang, and I can remember Corporal Shear was the corporal in charge, and all the others were wartime. Well one was a fitter, two mechanics I think, we were doing majors on Spitfires and Sadie was the WAAF, and Sadie was, I mean I was only, what, eighteen and whatnot, but I didn’t fancy her really, but I think she rather well she, I don’t think she fancied me. All she did was bugger me about really, ‘cause she would, if you were doing on the engine and whatnot on there and she was sitting on the main plane she’d, and you were doing something, she’d suddenly put her legs out and wrap them around you, you know. But she wasn’t really my type at all, so I didn’t really fancy her and she, the trouble with WAAFs. they either overtightened things or didn’t tighten things up enough. Couldn’t, plugs. they never put the plugs in tight enough and they’d bloody shear off a bloody two by eight or something like that. but anyway that was, that was the WAAFs. But incidents. Incidents, oh the other thing of course, they were Mark II Spitfires and they had Merlin 12s, and they had Coffman starters and cartridge so that you had a cartridge, and one of the things was the flight sergeants, ‘cause we had, oh all part and parcel, you had to, you had your sort of annual booze up and whatnot, and of course, then money had to be put in and the flight sergeant used to fine you for A) for being late if you were late for work or whatnot you’d, he’d fine you sixpence or something, which all went into the fund, and they used to do cartridge starters. I mean, you had to be starting a Merlin on, with a cartridge. You could do it with one cartridge or two but if you had more than two, he used to fine you sixpence a cartridge. So, so the thing was, you had to make sure it was primed and everything before you could, he’d be there, but he’d listen to you, and you would fire up on one and you’re all right. Fire up on two and if it didn’t fire you think, God there’s another sixpence gone you know. So that was the fine, I mean that was a fine for using too many cartridges, but that that was one of the things. Another incident here I always remember, we changed over from Mark II’s to Mark Vs and the Mark Vs were coming in, and this was during the summer of 1944. The warm weather. And we came, we were in, we were in R&I and of course, we were duty crew, if you like, and of course we were at, they were bringing in these Mark Vs and we were, all of us nice summer evening it was, sitting outside and we were all thinking of going down the boozer, and he said, ‘Righto we’ve got, we’ve got four, four spitfires coming in.’ And they were all sitting there in the sun, at the wall of the hangar and the first one came in and of course, then you were all sitting there. Who was going to see the first one in, and I said, ‘Oh bugger it, I’ll see the first one in’, and off I went in to see the first one in. Taxied in and, lo and behold, it was when, when the pilot of course, took her helmet off, it was an ATA pilot. A blonde. She had blonde hair, and who she was I don’t know, and of course, I saw this one in and of course immediately the others saw this girl taxiing this one in, they all rushed out to see the others in, but anyway I don’t know who she was, I’ve no idea. But I often think of the ATA pilots because, oh she was older than me but, and she had blonde hair and I often wonder, having seen ATA pilots, you know, years gone on and wondered who it was. But that was, we got Mark Vs then instead of, but then of course, the time came and then the incident I mentioned of the only time we got involved in Bomber Command In those days was, we had a Spitfire lab down at North Creake, which had Stirlings on and we had to do an engine change, and doing this engine change underneath the belly of a Stirling. That was quite interesting but then that was, then I’ve, then of course, my posting overseas came so then I went up to Blackpool and met all, a lot of the chaps who were at Halton with me. So that was, so we were at Blackpool there, getting kitted out. Marks and Spencers of Blackpool, well then because they had all the, which was Marks and Spencer, had all the kit in there so you, and when the tower, well anyway, that was September ‘44. We went, went to Gourock. Gourock and then we boarded this, I can’t remember even, can’t remember what my, my draft number was. Anyway, but anyway we were boarded on the Orion and the thing was, was this a battleship, no, it was a cattle ship, because there were five thousand, troops, troops in it. That was an incident. There was Army at the bottom, Air Force in the middle and the Navy at the top ‘cause they were the best. Anyway, so we, we went out on that, through the Suez ‘cause then, I think they’d cleared the Med of subs. We went to India via, via the Suez Canal and not around, around the end of South Africa. That was it, no incidents. We had some ex Australian prisoners of war on board and they were well fed, and they used to give us a bit of grub now and again, but and then eventually we got, got to India, but of course, the other thing of course, I’d better mention it that was the, the beginning of my marriage I suppose, ‘cause this friend of mine, who had had the, this corporal apprentice, had to go back to my brother in law who was, he was also at Halton but he was two entries after me, and my friend was a corporal apprentice, was in charge of his room and my brother in law, Bill, he, he gave my, he had a twin sister who became my wife, but he’s, this corporal apprentice started writing to Margaret, but then, I don’t know, it all petered out or something, and then of course, we came on, came on the boat going to India and of course, was one of the things, anyone got any girls to write to? And he gave me Margaret’s address and said, ‘Don’t tell her I gave it to you’. So I came out of the top of my head was a load of rubbish that I found her address floating on the deck of a bloody troop ship’ you know’ but anyway that was that. I wrote to her and of course that was, we got out to India and I was then posted from [unclear], I went to a place, I was posted down to Ceylon to a repair and salvage unit ,121 RS, oh R&SU I suppose. We just used to call it just RSU. So we went down by seven days on the rail, down to India, down all the way down in from Bombay, down all the way down India. Took us a week. Then to Ceylon and we eventually ended, finished up in a place called Vavuniya in Ceylon, and we formed, well I think we formed this R&SU there, We serviced Beaufighters. We had two Beaufighter squadrons and a Spitfire squadron. I can’t remember the Spitfires, but the Beaufighter squadrons were 22 and 217, and we did engine changes and then I got, I got detached to 22 Squadron because they were short of fitters, and I got detached there for a, for a spell. So, I was doing, working with 22 Squadron but then of course, everything changed and they decided that we were going on a, we got, we got sent, we got notification we had to pack up, what was it? Operation Marbrisca I think it was, and get everything, gear and of course it never came about and we then, we moved the whole lot, the unit moved up into India. And Marbris, that was an interesting thing because it was years, years later after I came back home and the I went to, went to school and there was a master at school who had also been out there, but he was in, in SEAF or SEAC operations and I mentioned about this, oh years about this Operation Marbrisc, and he told me what it was. It was in actual fact, they were going to take the island of Phuket. I mean we called it something else as you can imagine which is, I mean, is a holiday island now, and the idea was, they were going to build an airfield on Phuket and operate from there against the Japanese, but then he said that the casualty situation would be, was exorbitant and they cancelled it. So that was where we were going. This Marbrisc. Anyway, that was cancelled and we moved up into South India, basically to, I think it was preparation for the Malayan invasion, ‘cause we moved about. God, as an RSU, we sort of did anything. We did some servicing on Thunderbolts of all things. Then, then we sort of petered out and did nothing really. We sort of, all we did was, oh and then of course the next thing was, they said, oh we got issued with jungle green, so we all got issued with jungle green and we had, then we got to have equipment to do this invasion or whatnot, back up so we got a lot of new waggons and cranes and all sorts of things, all ready to do this repair and salvage, because we were supposed to, I think, we were supposed to service two Beaufighter squadrons and a Spitfire squadron. I don’t know whether they were the same ones that we had before but, but then of course, they dropped the atom bomb and that was, that was the end, that was the end of our sortie to Malaya, but, but then of course, the whole thing wound up. What was the next troubles? ‘Cause it became, the whole thing then, the war had ended and all the blokes that were in the war in Europe were getting demobbed, and people with the, on the unit with the same demob number were not being demobbed, because they were in the Far East, and then of course, we came, these problems what do they call them? What do they call them? Riots I suppose. I think they termed them as riots when they were bloody you know, I don’t know, you were nearly court martialled but anyway, but then of course that all, this came, the whole of India was like that but of course, we were regulars so we, we weren’t involved. They, we, we just didn’t get involved in all that, any of these struggles at all, but then of course, our lot folded up and we were posted to, and then they said, oh we’re going on occupation force Japan. {Unclear] and we went to a place in India called Tamberam, to get to move out but then they cancelled the whole lot so we were less than with all this gear and whatnot, in this Tamberam, and then they decided that we were going to be disbanded, we were. So all the equipment had to go back. All these new lorries and cranes and whatnot, so they were all moved and taken to a place called Visakhapatnam, I think it was. Viso we called it, and they took all this and there were hundreds and hundreds of vehicles. All just, all lease lend stuff. And that was, and they shifted us to a place called Redhills Lake, which had been a flying boat station, to disband. Well, and of course the thing was, and it had a lake there so we did a bit of swimming. That was for a while and apart from that, we did nothing, just sort out equipment, half of it got dumped in the lake and then the day came when I was posted. We were posted, we were distributed and I was posted to 353 Squadron at Palam, and that was Delhi, and that was right up north, and so the next thing was of course, to get the train from, was it Madras, I suppose. I think, I can’t remember where, so, to Delhi and oh, it was a troop train. It was marvellous, marvellous train because it had been a casualty train for, for carrying wounded, not a trooper and oh, it was most comfortable. Had a real good trip ‘cause against all the others we had a, ‘cause normally the trains in there you had same as the doings. You had the hard wooden benches and the ones that slap down on chains for sleeping on, but anyway that was, but anyway we got to Palam and that was 353 Squadron was a Dakota squadron, but then of course, they’d centralised servicing really so that it didn’t matter what squadron you were on, you were, you were put in workshops. I was in engine repair and in engine repair was you did anything really. A Pratt and Whitneys, it didn’t matter what came in and you said, because Palam was a, was a main, well it’s now Delhi airport isn’t it? I think, yeah, and Dakotas, but we used to get all the mail stuff come through. That was the Yorks. And we had also the, was it British Air? No, BOAC was it? BOAC in those days. And it had BOAC Yorks came because the airport was at, was at Palam. Well it was Delhi Airport, but part of Palam, but just around the peritrack and so I did, I did a spell with Dakotas and Yorks. I had engine changes on Yorks. We actually did minor a inspection on Lancasters that flew in. Oh, I did a couple of jobs on BOAC Yorks, but they had landing trouble and they had no fitters, and they used to get sort of co-opted on the engineer, BOAC engineers. They had no, no people at all, so I did a couple of jobs on BOAC Yorks while I was there and then of course, came a time that I didn’t get mid tour leave although I’d put my name down, I wasn’t lucky enough to get any. And then of course in April, oh, then of course the Partition was on. India was, and things were not, things were not very good then. You, you didn’t, if you wanted to go out you made sure that at least there was two or three of you together, ‘cause things, I don’t know why, they didn’t like us really. And then in April, I got a raise and I came home in April. I came home. I went out on the Orion and came back on the Chetril and then we arrived back. It was quite, they say about you know seeing England when you come back, it was, go on, anyway we landed at Southampton and we had to be shipped up to Burtonwood near, oh where is it near? Oh God, Burtonwood. Warrington isn’t it? I think it’s at Warrington. Anyway, when it comes to the point there, we got back to there and everybody was, of course all they wanted to do was get home, and they would have flown us and said this, that and the other, until everyone was chuntering and whatnot the bloke at Burtonwood said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘Get on the lorries and you can go to the bloody station’, you know, it’s up to you where, you know, you go. We’d got our warrants and I think there was, I think a train going south and a train going north and it cleared the station. Didn’t care, you really didn’t care where you went as long as you left there and on the way home. So, I sort of, I got from Warrington to Manchester, and Manchester and of course, while I’d been, while I’d been overseas, my parents had moved from Lincolnshire. They’d moved to Yorkshire, and so I didn’t know where I was going home so the er, got to, I got to Manchester and got to Leeds, and I thought what and I got my parent’s telephone number so I thought, oh I’d better, I’d better ring them and let them know, and so I phoned up and my mother answered and of course she said, ‘Oh your father’s in, in the Isle of Man at the moment’, ‘cause I said, ‘well can you, can you pick me up at the station?’ And so anyway the incidents, isn’t it? So, so I said, ‘Well I’ll go to Harrogate’. I had to go to Harrogate, from Leeds to Harrogate and the, get in the train and the, ‘cause I had two kit bags and your webbing and everything and you know you were sort of carrying these down, and of course I’d asked where the train, the -
[phone ringing]
Train was there and of course I’d got my kit bag on, and you know you’ve got a kit on, a kit bag on your arm, your webbing and a kit bag on the top, and of course there was an airman in a carriage doorway, and I says, I said, oh you know , ‘Open the door’, and I bend over and let the kit bag drop on the floor, and my father was on the, on the train and he picked it up, so and that’s how I met my dad. He came and then my sister, mother at the station. So, incidents, you know, that, ‘cause I came back and of course my father was on the train with the gear, and so my mother and sister at the station. The incident I’m trying to think of. Not that is, ‘cause I didn’t, oh dear, I didn’t stop by. OK now then, we’ve got to, we’ve got to Knaresborough, that was where my parents lived, so and the next thing I had to do, as I’d been writing to Margaret for, oh, since, when was it? 1945. I wanted to get down to Hereford, so I went down to, went down to, go down to Hereford but it’s quite strange really that I’d been writing to her there, but it was, I’d got down to, got down from Manchester, get down to Hereford and the, the last stop before Hereford is Shrewsbury, and I debated whether to get off the train. Why I don’t know but there we are, but anyway it all worked out. We met on Hereford station and that was, that was it, so the beginning of our relationship. Yeah. Anyway, then that all finished and the next thing was of course, we got posted and then, oh God, that was it. Posted, posted to Wheaton, Wheaton, what the hell was at Wheaton? I thought what on earth’s there? Blackpool, near Blackpool. So off I goes to, to Blackpool. Get back on the train, get off at Wheaton and what’s Wheaton? Trainings. Bloody training station, nothing to do with aeroplanes. Bloody drivers, fitters, blacksmiths, welders, everything bar anything to do with aeroplanes, and I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ So, anyway, of course, I arrived on the station and this is in, and I thought, you know, and I went and they said, you’re going to, you’ll be on one wing, I think it was. MTMs, Motor Transport Mechanics. So what the hell am I doing here? And anyway of course, I went in to the general office, off I went, report to squadron leader so and so, so I went to him and immediately I went in there and of course, there was a few, there was an MT fitter and whatnot, and me. So, anyway, I immediately said, complained, ‘What am I doing here?’ you know, and MT and all the rest of it, and this officer, whoever he was, said I was posted as an instructor. I said, ‘I don’t know anything about MT at all’. And this, I remember this officer, who he was, he said, ‘You’re an ex apprentice, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes sir’. ‘Well’, he says, ‘In that case’, he said, ‘You can do any bloody thing’. So that was that. That was me teaching motor mechanics, MT mechanics, and I knew nothing about bloody brakes or anything like that. Well, I think, anyway so I went down to this, where was it? Where I was supposed to be? The phase office, that was it, the phase, the phase office, and there was a sergeant MT fitter there, and I said, ‘Well I know bugger all about motor transport’. He said, ‘Well I’ll tell you what’, he said, ‘I’ll put’, he said, ‘you’ll be on’, I’ve forgotten what it was, but he said, ‘I’ll put you with, there’s a civilian instructor’, he says. ‘You can have a spell with him’, he said, ‘you’ll pick it up from there’. Oh God love us all. So, anyway, I was with this, oh I can’t remember his name, and he was an ancient civvy and so I was picking up brakes and steering, and I never knew there was a blinking theory on brakes and how line up and all this business at all, and of course I was doing this and that, was the, I was on the first week. There was a fortnightly course for this MT mechanics. A fortnight course so I was in there for a fortnight. I’d done one week and there was a fracas in there, and one of the corporal instructors had clobbered a, or hurled a coupling at one of the trainees, and he was then immediately taken off instructing, and the only person to take, put on, was me, and he was on the second week and I’d only done the first week, and the second week was completely, was ridiculous. But anyway, so I had to do it. Have you ever taught, taught people about something you know nothing about? Well, that was what it was with me, instructing people. I had to try to gain a, oh dear, it was ridiculous, but anyway. Then, of course, funnily enough, then they started to er, a phase on diesel engines. Well funnily enough I’d been very interested in diesels, even in India, and I had had my father send me books on diesels, high speed compression ignition engines and whatnot, and so therefore I knew quite a bit, and when they started this phase on diesels, I said well I, you know, I’d done diesels. Oh, they were quite, and shoved me on diesels straightaway, so that was, that was the way it went. I finished up doing diesels and did various other things and then of course I, I, I, I wanted to get away from Wheaton. I’d liked to get down south somewhere ‘cause I mean I was courting then, I mean, and it’s a long way from, from Wheaton, Blackpool down to Hereford, which I used to do on a blinking short weekend. It was bloody fast because I used to have to, I’d travel all night back and have, get my breakfast and kit bag and sort of virtually go straight to the classroom, you know, and get straight, but anyway, but then of course I, I got, I got a what was it a payform 36 posting, because for some reason, I don’t know how I managed it, but anyway down to Hereford. At Hereford. And I was still instructing but when I got down there, I found out there was nothing there, it was equipment assistant. Stores bashers. I thought what the hell am I doing here? But then of course, I got there and the next thing that I’d got there was another, in fact an apprentice, ex-apprentice was a bloke named Don Rigby, and he was posted there as an instructor. He was, he’d managed to get fitter one scores in his career and so the two of us there. What the hell were we doing here? But then of course, we went down to the general office who sent us to this. He said, ‘Yes, you’re definitely posted here’. I thought someone had made a mistake, you know, but then we went to, the pair of us went down to see this squadron leader, and I said, ‘Well what are we doing here?’ I mean. ‘Well you’ve got to tell them all about’, you know, ‘it’s yours to sort of give them an interest in the mechanical things of aeroplanes and engines’. And I thought what am I doing, and we had no syllabus, we had nothing, so we had to, between the pair of us, we sort of worked it out, but God what a, talk about a working week. I think we, our working week was about two or three hours, all week, working week was two or three hours, so we were there so I mean, but we got on ‘cause all the equipment, all the store bashers, instructors, were senior NCOs. We were the only corporals there in the doing but er, we got on very well with them because if they wanted to go off shopping, we’d take their class on, you know. It was, it was or if, you know, something they were getting short of time and they’d, they’d use our time and it was doing but anyway, that all went on and then that collapsed but then of course, at that period of time, I’d been courting. This was 1949 I get, I got married, we get married. So, I got married in 1949, got back off the honeymoon, to the bunk was a piece of paper slipped under the door and it says, ‘Go to the general office ‘cause you’re posted to MCOS’. MCOS. What the hell was that? MCOS. Never heard of it. Nobody doing and this was at Wythall, which is just outside Birmingham. So, Wythall. Wythall. I’d never heard of a Wythall. No airfield that I knew of at Wythall, but anyway MCOS. We’d no idea. So anyway gets to MC, gets to, my, my colleague who was the other corporal there, he got posted, he got posted to, he got his posting to Suez Canal, so he was, he was gone anyway and there was MCOS, so got down to Wythall and doing I found out that this was what was known as the Mobile Classroom Operating Section. So I was back on instructing only in a mobile classroom. I was, as I’d done diesels and they put me on wheels and tyres for starters because I’d been, I’d been steering and whatnot, but then that, that, I can’t remember but I think the instructor on diesels, he was posted and they knew I’d had, done diesels instructing experience and they put me on to the diesels.
So that was that, but that was out on the road for six weeks and back at Wythall for a fortnight, so we roamed the countryside teaching. You went to any station that wanted you and you’d instruct on whatever’s going there, but there’s that was the biggest lot of rogues. The drivers, mostly the drivers, ‘cause you had a driver and instructor with each wagon and the drivers, I think they were the biggest bunch of rogues I’ve ever come across. Pinch anything. And oh, and then the other thing of course we, we were at Wythall which was, had been a balloon base, but Austin’s had taken half of it over to store, you know, their manufactured equipment and whatnot. Gearboxes and whatever you could think of and of course, it was, this was all partitioned by wire netting from the mobile classrooms and of course, knowing the drivers and whatnot and the people that were in Austin’s store place and whatnot, people got, stuff got passed over the wire which as the drivers were traversing the country, you’d get to a transport café and you could sell anything so, you know, parts of cars got sold but then they got wise with it, because the police, Air Force police and whatnot, got wise to it and you got, they, they stopped the wagons at the guard room and got searched and so you couldn’t have any, any Austin components in there, but they used to be fiddling the thing. They used to, somebody, one bloke even moved a whole family because, I mean, the classrooms were big and so they use it as a pantechnic and one chap moved somebody there. I mean they used to, these corporals would do, do anything really. That, but of course the thing was, you see, once you got to the station where you were instructing course they had nothing to do. You were doing the instructing. So they sort of you know did anything really. It was quite. They were a bunch, a really, especially one -
[Pause]
Right. So having, Wythall finished these mobile classrooms and then I got posted to the Middle East. The canal zone so, and the canal zone, went on a, oh what was it, oh I can’t remember the boat, but that was another one, anyway we got to, got to Abihad and Abihad was 109 Maintenance Unit, and that was the repair of Merlin engines, and they were set up, sort of posted on, to start up a repair service on Hercules but that never came about, and I finished up on the overhaul of the propellers. That was, that was a standard sort of a job but it was er, the mid, then of course we had the problems, in fact when my wife came out, the problems of the riots and all the rest of it which that we were, we lived in Ismailia, we had a flat in Ismailia but then all the problems came and we got, if you got enough points, my wife, we got a hiring on the Canal Road, which is not far off the Great Bitter Lakes, you know, where the canal goes through and we, we got this hiring which was a bungalow, it was sort of quite a complex of bungalows. It was typical Egyptian, oh, and of course, I must have mentioned that our bungalow was the only one with a bath, all the rest had showers. We had a bath and this bath must have been built by the Egyptian who made the tombs and whatnot, ‘cause it was like a big concrete but we were the only one with a bath, but then we had no hot running water so the only way we had a, the only way you could have a bath, in fact the ladies, my wife’s friends and whatnot, well, service people that lived there, they had a bath, you could have a bath and by having two primer stoves and put the zinc bath on top of the two primer stoves, get the water heated up enough, tipped in to this massive bath and put some cold with it and then you could have a decent bath. But the ladies, all the wives, there were quite a number of us there and of course my wife would ask the ladies if they wanted to have a bath, so they come and we’d heat, well my wife organised it and they’d have a bath then. Anyway, that was so that was it, but at that point in time was, was the, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and the point was then, then there was this big expansion programme of, I suppose with the V bomber pilots and whatnot and they wanted fitters and riggers back, back home and I was premature re-patted, but then there was a major problem of my wife was pregnant and of course, she had to come back and they, they, it depended on if they couldn’t come back, I’d have to go out, but then it depended whether the aircrew on the aircraft would bring her back. Would they have her and that and it was a Hastings flight and they said yes. So my wife who was, oh was she near, I wonder if, ‘cause that was, oh she’d be at least eight months. She must have been eight months so it was really, you know, it was touch and go, but anyway she came. They decided to take her so we, she came back in this Hastings or we came back in this Hastings and of course, the bloody thing went u/s in Malta, so we all had to get off and of course, she was the only woman on board the aeroplane. The rest was all, all men. She was the only woman and of course, then, of course in those days, there was no family accommodation. There was only women’s and men and so my wife finished up in this nissen hut all by herself and me in the, with the, ‘cause I was a corporal, with the rest of the men and because I was doing and then I remember in a morning, some chap out there says, ‘Is there a Corporal Bland in the hut?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I am’. He said, ‘Your wife wants you’. I thought, Oh God, you know, we’re not going to have the happening in Malta, you know, but no well when I went out she said, ‘When are you getting up?’ So that was it but eventually we, they got the aeroplane serviceable and we came back, and then of course, they wanted to put us in transit, and my wife said no I’m not going in transit, I want to go home and I’d bought a camera out there and then I had trouble with the customs. I said, ‘You can keep the bloody camera’. But they didn’t like that much, but anyway, we finished up at, where was it? Swindon Station. God knows what. Coming back in the milk train ‘cause we were going back to South Wales to her home in Newport or [unclear] and so we had there. So we, we finished up on this, and oh, Swindon I’ll always remember that. She was wanting to lay down and I said, ‘Alright’. and then of course, it was a bit chilly or something. Was it? I don’t know, but I know a porter came in and lit a fire in this waiting room, ‘cause there was only the two of us, and so eventually we, she kipped down on me, but anyway we got the milk train, we got back to, got to Newport and got a taxi from there and of course, the thing, because she was pregnant, my wife wouldn’t, wouldn’t tell her parents that she was on her way home. So, so we arrived completely unannounced, caused consternation as you can well imagine, but anyway that was it. I got posted to Worksop and she had the baby in Pontypool, and I think she’d have been better off in a military hospital then she was in a national health. I didn’t, she didn’t get treated very well there at all, anyway, that’s by the by, so we got to Worksop and I was on Meteors. So, posted to Worksop. Worksop which was an old wartime airfield which had been renovated, and we got Meteors there. So of course, I was, I was then a corporal still and then I got, I passed my senior technician’s exams, so I was a corporal, but I wasn’t really due for my senior, ‘cause at the time, wasn’t due for my senior and then I got my third. My sergeant came through, so I was a sergeant senior tech qualified. So that was the way it went on for the time being. I hadn’t, the time was it, wasn’t to go for the chief so that was the way it was. So I was on Meteors there in R&I, in Meteors so that was, that was my spell there. Then that went on till was it 19, I think it went on until 1955, and then a friend of mine who was also at Worksop, and he was a great reader of AMOs and he said, he said there’s an AMO about this new V bombers and their looking for aircraft servicing chiefs. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘that’s a good idea’. ‘Oh’, but he says, ‘they’ve got to be aircraft fitters’. Well I‘m only an engine fitter, I wasn’t an aircraft fitter. He was an aircraft fitter. Anyway, he volunteered for it and because he was an aircraft fitter, he finished up with it. Anyway, he was waiting and then, then they changed it and he came to me. He said, ‘Ay’, he said, ‘They’ve done, they’ve done a change on the AMO’. He said, ‘They’re taking on airframe and engine fitters’. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘Right’. So I went straight into the office and volunteered, and saying that was in 1955 and, yes and that was at the beginning of ’55. Must have been because then I had to go and they said alright, and I got this and I had to go to Brampton for an interview for this aircraft servicing chief. So I went there for this interview and a panel of officers, wing commanders and educators and electrical officers and so I had to, you know. What the hell for I don’t know. They ask you all sorts of questions. So that was it. You didn’t know anything about it at all until, when was it? It would have been, when would this be? July, August something like that, and it came through and told me that I’d got to, now I’d got to, where did I have to go first. I had to go Wheaton first, to get, to go on an airframe course. So I went on this airframe course, which was quite a small one. I don’t think I learned much more than I knew in the first place, but anyway I went on this airframe course and then from then on, I sort of moved on to, we had to then, had to go down to Melksham to go on the instrument and electrical course, so having done that, we went to Melksham, and then they allocated you from Melksham. It depended on how well you did, what you, what aircraft you went on, ‘cause the Valiant was in progress ‘cause there were Valiant crew chiefs, had been trained and I can’t remember how many crew chiefs there was. Twenty of us on the course? Was it? I can’t remember now how many, but anyway, then it worked out the Victor came in and the Vulcan and, and the Valiant but some Vulcan crew chiefs had been trained before, but out of my course there was four Victors that went on the Victor. There was eight, eight, was it eight? Yeah, eight Vulcans and the rest were Valiants. So that’s how I was, and they did you, on the, you were allowed to volunteer which aircraft you want, went, went on but it depended on your position in the final exam which aircraft you got. Unfortunately, I came top so I was able, I had my pick of Vulcan, I didn’t want the Victor. All the others were interested in was the Victor, I wasn’t interested in the Victor at all so I went and got on the Vulcan. So then from Melksham, we went on to Avro’s. Was it Avro’s? No Avro’s weren’t first. Where did we go? Boulton Pauls power fliers I think. Boulton Paul. Was there Avro’s then? I don’t know. A V Roe’s. And then you had to, Bristols was the engines you had to do that so that was the end of, I mean, this was taking you up from, so that was, what are we saying? Was it May? May or June? I don’t know, ’55? So this was 1956 and we were all posted to Waddington, all of us, and all the crew chiefs, the Vulcan crew chiefs, were at Waddington. Half of us had nothing to do. In fact, what did we do, because I’d been in, here it is you see, you come back, you’ve been MT, so you’ve been working on MT and you’ve got an MT driving licence and whatnot, so I finished up driving a bloody lorry, making a car park. That just shows you. Crew chiefs. We were doing sweated labour if you like. And then the first Vulcan arrived in, was it June? July? Anyway, whatever it was and that was it and of course, the only one that was Geordie Colley, who was the number one, and so it did a while and then he had to go down to Boscombe Down on intensified flying trials. And then during this space of time, they’d allocated crew chiefs for the OCU. The first squadron which was 83, which became 44, and then the second squadron was 101, which was going to be at Coningsby and of course, we’d all been buggering about this long, so four of us, we decided we’d try to jack up the system a bit and we get posted to Coningsby. We were all ready for the Vulcan when it came, what a doing that do? Anyway, I got nominated by the engineering officer to go as number two to Geordie Colley, so I finished up going down to Boscombe Down on the intensified flying trials with this XA 895. That was the first Vulcan. The other one of course, the one that crashed, was Broadhurst was 897 and I was 89, with 895, so I went down there with Geordie Colley and then Geordie Colley’s wife had a baby, so I was left on number 1 with this bloody aeroplane that I knew, well I say you knew nothing about. You were one of the one’s that knew anything and everybody, before they did a bloody job, came and asked you was it right, and you had no bloody idea either so it was, and that was the way it went. So I did my spell at Boscombe Down, fell out with the engineering officer, and so he sent me back, which was very nice. So I came back to Coningsby. I get back to Coningsby. No aeroplanes at Coningsby so what, what do we do? You’ve got a crew chief here with no aeroplanes in the wrong airfield because they’d decided the Vulcan wasn’t going to Coningsby, it was going to Finningley, so we got four, four crew chiefs all trained up in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong everything, you know. So I went in to the squadron leader, Coningsby was on C&M I think at the time, ‘cause they were, they were, they got some Canberras there I think, but then I went in to see, ‘cause I went there, went in to see the engineering officer, was a squadron leader OCUEng, and so anyway ‘cause then he says, oh, do airframe and whatnot. ‘What have you done, Chief?’ I said, ‘Oh, just instructing MT’. ‘Just the man’, he says. ‘You’re in charge of MTSS’. So here am I, a fully trained Vulcan crew chief, in charge of MT servicing, so that was, that was it and I thought, well crikey I’m a, you know, I’ve got sergeants here, MT fitters. I’m not, you know, qualified but anyway it didn’t matter, and then there was another chief tech there doing, so anyway and then the flight sergeant came so I was able to hand over to him without any trouble at all. And they put me then, the MTO said, ‘Oh you’d better come on the MT operating section’’ and that was, I went on the MT operating section and that was when, I suppose, I achieved an ambition as a small boy. As a very small boy, all I wanted to do was drive a big lorry, and so anyway, ‘cause I had the MT operating section and whatnot, the MT, I had a 658 to cover me on everything and I managed to drive one of these damned great snow ploughs. So I thought I’d achieved a very ambition of long ago when I was a little boy, so that was it, but then, then of course things all changed and then the next thing that happened they, where was I? Was I still at Coningsby? Yeah. Or was I oh, no we got posted to, did we get posted to Finningley? Got posted to Finn, oh the, we managed to get ourselves, four of us, back to Finningley, and of course at Finningley, of course there were new quarters. No equipment barrack equipment in them. We were posted, so the barrack warden, you know, he said, ‘I can’t’, you know, ‘I haven’t got the men. I haven’t got transport’, I haven’t got do this, that and the other to furnish these quarters, which need doing, so what we did, I got the 658 and I could drive the truck, so we furnished the quarters. The four of us furnished our own quarters out of the stores and all the rest of it, so we furnished our quarters so we could move the families in. So that was, that was Finningley, and then of course all this was done, and then the next thing, they despatched me back to Waddington, ‘cause they, they were taking the Vulcan to America on a bombing competition. So they detached me back to Waddington so that I could go on this, the SAC bombing competition with these, with the Vulcans and because you weren’t allowed to, you were only allowed, you weren’t allowed to have two crew chiefs per aeroplane, the thing was you’d got to have, in your crew, you’d got to have a crew chief standby in case the original crew chief went sick, so I was, this was the best of it was, I was an engine fitter and basically an engine fitter, so I went as an airframe, an airframe mechanic. I went as an airframe mechanic to Florida on the bombing comp, so that was it, but then of course that all went. Came back home and then of course the second squadron, ‘cause the first squadron, the ones that were at Waddington had all got, been crew chiefs and got their aeroplanes, and my friend who got killed, Taf Everson, he got 908, XA908 but, and anyway they, they, he went and everyone got their aeroplane and because I’d been in America, course I was way down the list, so I eventually, eventually when was it? Would have been ’57, would it, then? Yeah, ’57 aye, yeah. Came up and I went to, I had to go to Woodford and I picked up XH475 that was, that was my aeroplane, so anyway I went up there and got that and became part of the squadron, you know. That was the crew chief. Didn’t matter what you were. And of course, got this aeroplane and took it all over the place. Got stuck all over the place. Lost an engine in Goose. Pump failure. So that was on. Got hydraulic failure, the hydraulic system in, where was that? Oh God. It was, oh dear. Where was that? And that was in America. I can’t remember. That was somewhere and then of course we got, come back and you did the ranges. Then they had the, what was it, oh I can’t remember. The exercises you had to go to. Butterworth. Was it profiteer? I don’t know what it was, I can’t remember now. So I took 475 there. I was flying, I was flying with the wing commander’s squadron. Flew out there and got out there flying and whatnot. I had a day off and of course they wanted to do something, and they, my aeroplane, I had a day off and I came, went back and found that some daft bugger had closed the bomb doors on the safety razor and broken one of the bomb door links. Oh God. And that was, I said, ‘That’s a brilliant one isn’t it?’ So, anyway, only had to be, how am I, there we were, how were we going to get back and there’s all the gear we got there and of course, you opened the bomb doors and we could open them and put all the stuff in and then you had to, we’d close the bomb doors. The only way then was we had, got local blacksmiths to make a turn buckle, and with turn buckle, so you could close the bomb doors and once you’d closed them, we wound them up so that you couldn’t open them. Anyway, took the fuses out and everything, so I had a bomb door, bomb bay full of US equipment, all my tyres had been burnt and worn, so I said to the wing commander, I said, I said, ‘I’ve got no I’ve got no gear in as I can use’. I said, ‘If we get left behind, we’re stuck’. He said, ‘We won’t get left behind’. But then of course, the next thing that happened was, I don’t know how, CRACK. My bomb aimer’s window was cracked. Oh dear. So I said to the wing commander, I said, ‘We’ve got a cracked bomb aimers window’. I said, I said, I said ‘I don’t know, we’ll have to fly back with it’. I said ‘I’ll do a pressurization and see’, you know, ‘if it’s alright’. He said ‘we’ll do the pressurisation on the way home’. That was it. So I flew home with a bomb bay full of rubbish, a bomb er, cracked bomb aimer’s window and came home that way. Landed and that was it. We managed without any trouble. I can’t remember, did we have any troubles? I normally get all sorts of troubles and that but, but I didn’t. I think we got back home without, and then of course, that was it. And then of course the next one was the CnC and whatnot, wanted to go on a lecture tour of America or something but he, he didn’t go in mine. He went on, I forget, was it 909? I think it was, with his own crew chief, Bill Neane I think, but then that got, flew via the Azores to Bermuda. Got to Bermuda and the inverter failed and his brakes, the brakes failed. The CnC wanted another aeroplane to go in so that was it. God knows what time of night I got knocked up in my night quarter, and they said, ‘Chief, we’re going, we’ve got to take, get an aeroplane to Bermuda. His inverter’s gone, brake units so we’ve got to take all the spares’. So there’s me, middle of the night with a pannier, getting bits and pieces and loading it all up, and then off we get to go to Bermuda via the Azores. The Azores. Always remember the, the, was he, is it Portuguese? I think he was, this officer looked as though he’d come out of what’s the name? I can’t think of the place. He had tassels on his uniform and all sorts of things, and did I want compression. I said, ‘Did I want compression?’ I couldn’t figure out what he was on about. Eventually I worked out that he, ‘did I want compressed air?’ Oh yeah, I wanted compressed air, yeah, so, but anyway that was left there without any trouble at all. Got to Bermuda and then of course met the crew chief and the crew of this 909. Landed there, got off the aeroplane and I got, got met by two Canadian Navy petty officers with a big bottle of whisky. ‘Come and have a drink mate’, you know. We’ve got, you know. I said, ‘I can’t drink and do’ and anyway my other crew chief there I said, ‘Alright we’ll have a drink’. So managed to have a couple of whiskies, but we got to change everything on these two aeroplanes because of all the gear from his aeroplane had to be transferred from mine to his and all the rest of it, so we did a pannier change and wheel change with the only support we had, ‘cause it should take four men to winch a pannier down off a Vulcan, was two crew chiefs and two drunken Canadian naval petty officers. So, but we managed and that, that was that. We had a bit of a problem. They had an electrical problem on start-up. It was robbed of, robbed a component off the aeroplane and that was my aeroplane cause I’d been, I’d changed, I’d made, well I’d thought I was going to go through with, with 476 but then, I don’t know whether the CnC wanted Bill Neane. I don’t know what it was but I finished up with this heap of rubbish in Bermuda instead of going onwards. And then, oh dear that, where did we get to? Yeah. Two drunken petty officers winching the pannier. It was amazing we got it down but anyway, we got it down. We got the gear changed over and everything, and Bill Neane wouldn’t drink anymore so as I was stopping, I was stuck. These two petty officers and whatnot decided we should finish this bottle of whisky. Oh God. What a thing isn’t it? So that was it. Then they changed over, then of course, they all got in. The bloody aeroplane went u/s again. That was the one I’d brought in so the CnC had to go, he had a date in America, the CN not the CnC was he? Not the CnC. Whatever he was. Whoever he was he had to go on by, by American transport and how humiliating really. So then of course, I had to rob, I robbed the aeroplane, robbed the u/s aeroplane to get this one serviceable. Then of course, had to get to America, and of course the CnC was acting as co-pilot, so of course there was one pilot missing, so the only way was the co-pilot that came up, came over with me, had to go on to America with this, with this, this other aeroplane. I don’t know how they finished up but anyway the co-pilot came back, but then, then of course the problem came, of course, I had this, left with this aeroplane in Bermuda with brakes troubles and inverter troubles. They’d sent an inverter, they’d sent an electrician out via BOAC to give me assistance on this electrical stuff, but then of course, he came out and I said, righto we’ll, we’ve changed the inverter. We’re alright. We’ll change, do the brake change. We can do the brake change and of course he was an electrician, and of course all he had to do to help me was to jack up and whatnot, and of course then, there was, then came a sorry tale. I got the jack underneath to, to change the brake units on this and I found that the bogie beam had a crack in it, a crack right along the end. Oh, at the end. I thought, what the devil do we, so anyway, all I got, I said to the captain, I said, ‘We’re in trouble here’. I said, ‘We’ve got a cracked bogie beam’. ‘Oh dear’, he said. So anyway, I’ve signals going back and forth, this cracked bogie beam. I said ‘well could drill a hole at the termination of the crack, but then the bogie beam takes all the stress of landing’. So I thought, oh well, but anyways I left it up to the UK air to decide, so they sent out a Doughty draughtsman, techno, oh, stress man or something, to see whether there was any possibility of doing this and he came out, and of course, no. Obviously he wouldn’t say it was even, if it probably was, because if it had cracked and the aircraft had crashed, it would have been him, so that was, that was it, so I was left there with this bloody aeroplane, with the rain pouring down, wind blowing, with this, with this aeroplane. Salt air was making things go a bit rusty but anyway they decided, well they had to change the bogie beam, the bogie beam. I don’t know [unclear]. The bogie beam carries the whole aeroplane of four wheels on one side, you know so, and the weight of the aeroplane so that had to be jacked up. The thing was, was all the equipment, was getting the equipment out to me in Bermuda and of course, the Air Force in those days, hadn’t got any bloody transport aeroplanes at all I don’t think, so they had, they had to hire, hire a DC6 to carry this. So I’d got four jacks, one hydraulic rig ‘cause retractions had to be done, so I had four jacks and a hydraulic rig, and of course they sent it out in this DC6, but fortunately they sent two, a chief tech out of their hydraulic bay and another rigger who was, he was, he was ex Halton boy, the same as me. So we had a chief tech, me a crew chief, a chief tech rigger, a sergeant rigger and a sergeant electrician and the aircrew, and these jacks all had to be built up ‘cause they couldn’t fly them in the aircraft whole so they were all in bits, so I had to build all these jacks up, fill them with hydraulic oil and do everything there to get these jacks up before we could jack the aeroplane up. And the other thing was a negotiation with the, the master sergeant of the hangar, ‘cause there was only one hangar on Bermuda and that was, had the doors welded open so that the wind could blow through it ‘cause otherwise it would have blown off and this, as I say, this master sergeant looked like Geronimo. I’m sure he was Indian anyway and we got on but he was not, he was a hard looking man and of course then he said, I said, well you know trying to negotiate use of this hangar for jacking up. He said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘You can have the hangar but’, he said, ‘for twelve hours only and that’s all’. Twelve hours. I thought, bloody hell and all that, you know we’ve got to change and do hydraulic tests and everything on this, but anyway we managed it. And then a dry, to drive these axles out of the, of the bogie beam was, was the only way we could use - the Americans had solid chocs like sleepers and the way we drove these axles out of there was by one of these chocs and heaving it like a battering ram, but anyway we got the axles out. We got it all done anyway, and all the rest of it and retractions and the wind was blowing through the hangar, but we managed it. We did, we did it all. Much to, well we had to do it in the time, we hadn’t got much option and anyway, we got it out and on the, then of course all trouble started ‘cause then of course, I got water in the pitot system. That was ‘cause of all this terrible rain and the pitothead covers were bloody ridiculous so that was another job I had to do. Clean out, get all the water out of the pitot system. So that was it. ‘Righto’, he says. ‘That’s it. We’ve still got to do an air test’. So we got down to do, I forgot to mention that the only power, the only power source ‘cause the Vulcan bombers was a hundred and twelve volt DC and the only power source they’d got, ‘cause the Americans don’t use it, they use twenty eight volt but the, and only one we could do was borrow. They had a hundred and twelve volt for the, was it the Britannia on the, BOAC, BOAC side or British, yeah, British Airways side of Bermuda, so I had to borrow their diesel generator when they weren’t using it, so that was another thing. So I had to borrow this and then I had to tow it across the airfield to me. So anyway, that was, that was that was another thing, borrowing it and negotiating and all the rest of it. So we got that, got that done and eventually got it, got it started and, ‘Righto, we’re off’, you know and, oh that’s right. When I found that it goes boring off again and, that’s right and of course, they shut down and came back. I said, ‘What’s, what’s the trouble?’ ‘We’ve got no ASI’, no Air Speed Reading. This was when I found out that these pitothead covers were no good ‘cause I got water in the pitot system, so that all had to be drained, all that drained, done, everything else. ‘Have another go’. So we had another go, air test. Off they went and they flew around. I thought, ‘Oh we’re in business here’, they landed and I said, ‘Any?’ ‘Yes. Compass’. Oh dear God. Compass. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ They said, ‘Our readings are wrong’, you know, somewhere along. I said well you know, so after much investigating, I thought, well it’s near impossible, the two pilot’s repeaters were duff. I thought it’s either that or the master indicator. The master. And I thought, if it’s the master, we’re in trouble ‘cause we’d got to do a compass sweep and all the rest of it for that. So anyway, back goes signals and the next thing comes out an instrument maker who happened to be an instrument maker off my entry of course, so I knew him personally. A chief tech. Instrument came back BOAC. I mean his, his, his excess weight baggage was off because he’d bought a compass, a master indicator, the blinkin’ whole bloody bag of shoots with him, and what state to do a compass sweep if he had to. Anyway, it turned out it was the two, as I thought it was, the two pilot’s repeaters were both u/s. Most unusual. So, anyway, that was, that was changed. I mean, mind you in this, [unclear] I know all this stuff had to be packed up and whatnot and landed on this DC6, to be flown back home and so that was another job. And where had we got to? Oh aye, the compass, that was it. Oh, that was it. Then the other things was, the thing that was before the compass, I can’t remember. Number 3 tank on the portside had developed a bloody leak and the Mark I tanks were not what I’d call brilliant. Anyway, the only way I could do it was, I thought, well I don’t know what I can do with this leak, and the Americans had some, had some peculiar sealant that they had, ‘cause they used a similar sort of thing that I used, and after much, as I say, I got to know this, my master sergeant quite well and I had a long chat with him, and I said, ‘Well have you got some stuff I can maybe cure this leak?’ ‘Cause I knew where it was. The tank where the pump housing and everything was, prone to split. The bolt holes tend to split so I, after much talk with this man I dropped the, I dropped the pump on number 3 tank and lathered this sealant in place, hoping it would do it because I mean, the tank change was beyond and so I had a go. It wasn’t, it wasn’t much good at all but then of course, we’d had the air test. We’d had everything done. We were all ready to go home, but with this tank and I said ‘well’, I said, ‘we’ve got the pilot who was’, Beavis, his name was. Who was he? He finished up a, was he master of the Royal Air Force or something? Mike Beavis, and I said to, and John Ward was the co-pilot, I said, ‘Well look. I can, I can put fuel it for you to go home’, because by this time, we were, we were, this was the only thing that was stopping us. I said, ‘To go home’, I said, ‘Look, we either if you can work it out with number 3 tank empty, we can make it’. I said, ‘Otherwise’, I said, ‘I’ll fill number 3 tank’, and this was number 3 tank port, I said, ‘And then you use all that fuel off that tank for everything to empty it’. And then I said, ‘What’s left we’ll just have to let it leak out’. And so John Ward did his calculations, that we could fly back with that number 3 tank empty, so I then sort of took all the fuses out, took the pump off it and everything. Well, the pump was there but I took the fuses out and everything so that the pump couldn’t overheat or anything, and that was, so we flew back from Bermuda to the Azores. So we land back to the Azores and so I said we were alright from the Azores back home with still number 3 tank empty, and then, of course, oh damn. The Azores, we started off on my pack that I’d got, with the battery pack that I’d got in the bomb, in the pannier, started up and was doing and then they said, Number 3 inverted, was the one that I’d changed, we’d changed in Bermuda. Number 3 inverter had gone down. I said, ‘Oh God’, you know, I said, I said, ‘Well we’re sunk’. I said, ‘I’ve no spare inverters that I can change’. I said we, we, I said, ‘Look. It’s, it’s number 3. We can go on’. Number 3 was the sort of standby. I said, ‘We can either’, to the captain, I said, ‘Look. We either wait here and I get an inverter to change it or we fly home on everything we’ve got with no spare’. So, after a bit of a discussion they said, ‘We’ll, we’ll, go home’. So we started up and flew home. Got, ‘cause we came from Finningley really. Course we landed at Waddington and of course, we had to there for customs clearance of all things. So we landed at Waddington and the wing commander was there to greet us, and my captain who was not the, not the first pilot, he was the navigator, ‘Oh’, he said, we could, he said ‘If you put a brake chute in, we could fly home couldn’t we?’ I said, ‘Look’, I said, ‘I’ll put you a brake chute in but’, I said, I said, ‘I’ll walk home’. I said, ‘That’s a bloody heap of rubbish this is’. A heap of rubbish. So anyway, the wing commander was there and so I said, ‘Well that’s it’. And, and that aeroplane at Waddington, took them a fortnight to get it serviced to fly it to Finningley. So that was, that was me. I came home after months in Bermuda and the wing commander said, ‘You’d better have a couple of days off’. But that was a bloody aeroplane. Bloody aeroplane. 909. XA909. It wasn’t mine, it was Fred Harrison’s. It wasn’t one I fetched, and then oh, after that, we went to, we went on a, to Butterworth. Went to Butterworth and then we, because this was when they shut my damned, did I tell you about that. I haven’t put that on there have I? No. I can’t remember, I’ve told that much. They shook my, they shook my aircraft [unclear], broken the bomb doors. I had to take 9, I had to take, the aircrew wanted to go, were minded to take an aircraft to Manila in the Philippines from Butterworth, and mine was u/s with the bomb doors, and the only one I could take was 909. The engineer said, ‘Do you mind taking 909?’ ‘Cause that was the one that was stuck in Bermuda, Bermuda with. I said, ‘I’ll take anything as long as its serviceable’, so, and that was the only, the only range I ever did where I had a serviceable aircraft from start to finish. I flew there no troubles. No troubles there and flew back and that was the only, only trip I ever did in a Vulcan where I didn’t have any problems.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archive I’d like to thank Warrant Officer Charles Bland at his home in Lincolnshire on the 17th of August 2015. Thank you for the recording.
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Title
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Interview with Charles Bland
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Mick Jeffery
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-08-17
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Sound
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ABlandC150817, PBlandC1501
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
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Vivienne Tincombe
Description
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Charles Bland joined the Royal Air Force in February 1942 and went to RAF Halton as an Aircraft Apprentice.
He tells of his training at Halton, and describes the different trades and his exams to become an Leading Aircraftsman 1st Class, where he was then transferred to a Repair and Inspection Unit (R&I) working on Spitfire engines.
Charles then went to India via the Suez Canal and then on to Ceylon to 121 Repair and Salvage Unit, looking after 2 squadrons of Beaufighters and 1 squadron of Spitfires, but he says that because he was an apprentice, he could turn his hand to anything.
He was posted to instruct at a Motor Transport Unit, and spent time learning about the maintenance of other equipment including diesel engines.
Charles was posted to 109 Maintenance Unit, repairing Merlin engines, however at this time the V Bombers were coming into service. He trained as a Crew Chief and after passing these exams he was assigned to the Avro Vulcan XA908, at RAF Waddington.
Charles related the stories of the work he did when the Vulcan had hydraulic failure at Goose Green, the bombing competition in Florida where the aircraft suffered broken bomb bay doors and a cracked bomb aimers window, and the trip home from Bermuda with no fuel in one tank and a broken bogie beam.
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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02:21:37 audio recording
Beaufighter
C-47
fitter airframe
fitter engine
ground crew
ground personnel
Meteor
military discipline
military service conditions
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Coningsby
RAF Finningley
RAF Halton
RAF Kirton in Lindsey
RAF Waddington
RAF Worksop
service vehicle
Spitfire
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/463/8345/AAllenG150917.2.mp3
2746351851156e8d9988d59fc6e382b8
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Title
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Allen, Graham
G Allen
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Allen, G
Description
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One oral history interview with Graham Allen.
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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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2015-09-17
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MY: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Malcolm Young, the interviewer [sic] is Graham Allen, and the interview is taking place at Mr Allen’s home in West Hallam, near Ilkeston in Derbyshire. The date is 17th of October 2015. Well thank you very much for agreeing to be part of this oral history and the simple opening question is how did you come to be in the Royal Air Force?
GA: Yes, well I was 19 at the time, and I didn’t want to be called up, I’d rather join up and I preferred the air force to any of the other services, so I went down to the Assembly rooms, as it were in Derby, and fixed a date and they had a word with me and when I went with actual joining up part, it was of course a question of what, what are you going to do? So they asked me a few questions as usual, [inaudible] and they didn’t think my education was up to pilot, navigator, radio operator or anything like that, which I agree with them it wasn’t, I only went to a primary school not secondary school or anything like that, and I realise now that is was very necessary to have that, further education,especially in maths and things like that. So they said well you might [inaudible] flight mechanic, I said well that sounds all right, I asked what was involved, so they told me roughly what it was going to be, and I agreed that, that was probably the best way of getting in the air force. Right, well I was called, it was quite a long time before I was called up 7 months it would be about 19 [hesitation] 1940, the end of 1940 I think, 41 perhaps,
MY: Yes
GA: It was nearly the end of the year, and they eventually called me up for my, it was up to Morecombe which was a training place where we did square bashing and anything that followed up, it was Morecombe, they’d got two big bus garages where the local buses operated from and they turned those into workshops, and all down the side of the workshops were these fighter force bi-planes string bags [?] as we used to call them, so those were the things we had to train on. But before that I had to do the square bashing on the prom at Morecombe, where we were put into civilian digs, and oh parade on the promenade there, and parades in the morning and all that sort of thing, and the prom provided a good parade ground for square bashing, so we had some funny weather while we were doing it.
MY: Yes
GA: But we were alright, I quite enjoyed it. Marching round and rifle and bayonets, all that sort of business,but, then they, because I wanted to be flight engineer, not flight engineer sorry, flight mechanic, I went to one of these bus garages, to the training lot there, and they had some excellent civilian instructors and fitters, and they took us through all the basics of, [slight laugh] what I think of now as quite useless information, when you were taught to do all the rigging of the [?] airframe, by the way, [inaudible] airframe, and when they took us to do all the rigging and tightening all the wires up against templates to get the angle of incidence right, and all that sort of thing, it proved to be quite useless in the end, for us because those sort of aeroplanes had rapidly gone out of business, so anyway, we had quite useful stuff as well as that, and general mechanical details, apart from that we had exams occasionally I forget how many weeks it was now, but we were there for quite a while. [inaudible] did quite well, and they said would you like to go on a fitters course straight away, rather than go on this course as a flight engineer [?] so I took the opportunity went on and followed up with the fitters course, which we had to do more detailed work and more practical work [inaudible] After leaving there, I think that took nearly six months altogether, at the bus garages, I was posted to 152 Squadron, at Swanton Morley in Norfolk, and over there I think the first job was, chief mechanic, there was a pile of , there was a pile of Spitfire wheels in one corner of the hanger, all with tyres on, he says there’s a couple of tyre levers there I want you to get those tyres off before you, my friend and I were joined up together, we actually stayed together, there, there pair of us, worked on these wheels at the start getting all the tyres off [inaudible] So that’s, i remember the first job I had, after that we joined in with the squadron activities more and learned how to rescue the aircraft that had crashed and things like that, in fact the Spitfire was very weak on the undercarriage, and we hadn’t come across that before [?] but they easily broke, you get a bit of bad ground or something like that, because, as you know the Spitfire, they were very close together, and retracted outwards, the Hurricane was wider went inwards so the Spitfires were very, it was a vulnerable part of them, otherwise a pretty good aircraft, so my work there was inspection, partly, various parts and what we were looking for was loose controls and things like that, metal fatigue and various things like that, inspection at various times, as they did the same theses days, so most of my work was that, and dealing with these crashed aircraft that came in, that were heavily shot up and damaged and things like that. I remember one way of getting around when an undercarriage had gone, at the time we had an old costermongers cart two wheels and a flat deck like that and two handles that you could get hold of we used to rush out with this costermongers barrow and shout two six and anybody that was available to get hold of the wing tip heaved it onto this, one wing onto this costermongers barrow, we used to wheel it in like that it was quite a regular occurrence in fact. They were still operating it was well after the battle of Britain of course that they were still operating sweeps over the enemy territory and they used to come back, full of beams if they’d shot something up, rolled over the airfield, slow rolls, missing the watch office by [laughter] inches so it was quite exciting at times like that. Now let me think, I was at [inaudible] I stayed with them until, several months we were at Swanton Morley and then we moved to Coltishall which was a bigger place as you probably know, there were two squadrons there 152 and I’m not sure what the other one was, anyway [inaudible] it was going to be equipped with more modern spitfires ours were fairly basic [inaudible] all guns no cannons so they shipped us over to Northern Ireland to Londonderry Eglinton[?] in Londonderry shipped us over there [inaudible] shipped, it was very rough on the way over I remember, and when we got there [inaudible] Belfast I think the route and we spent some time in Northern Ireland at Eglington not doing very much until these new planes came in and the ferry pilots brought them in, and the first time I ever flew was, we hitched a ride back with these ferry pilots, well I’d got a 48 hour pass, it was a bit more than 48 pass, it would be about a 4 day pass and we hitched a ride in a [pause] an old biplane that took passengers [pause]it took about four or five passengers, so then the pilots came over we got talking to them, I was on duty crew that day, that’s why we met them, we were topping the tanks up and that sort of thing and they came in, they brought several new spitfires in. We cadged a lift the next day, we got permission to put our passes forward, two of us hitched a lift on the trip to England, we spent two days in England [slight laugh] back again, that was over by boat then, the Ben-My-Chree was the boat we used to sail in, it was an ex-passenger trip on the Belfast run, in fact it was still battered about because it had been at Dunkirk, there was quite a few holes in the side and things like that. [laughter]I shall always remember it having a look round and things. Anyway we got in on time, back and after about 2 or 3 days leave and we had to hitch hike the rest of the way of course the landings were up north near Ailsa Craig, I remember we passed Ailsa Craig before we landed, as I say they left us there to hitch hike down to our, Derby, and then train back, managed to get back alright without getting jankers or anything like that [laughter] so I did the rest of my life in Northern Ireland on the new Spits that came over. And then while I was there there was a message came through on the routine orders about flight engineers training you could volunteer as a flight engineer if you were a fitter or flight mechanic and it was all to do with the introduction of the four engine bombers. So I [inaudible] and volunteered [laughter] as I’ve often thought and quite soon, we were brought together we had to have an interview in Belfast, with the top brass there asking us why we wanted to be flight engineers and things like that [inaudible] applicants and that, I remember we had to stay the night there in Belfast and there were no proper beds they were sheets of plywood between two posts, in Belfast town hall they made it up for us to stay the night while we were interviewed, so that was my interview for aircrew [slight laugh] Anyway the next thing was I was posted to Aire, now if I get this right [inaudible] posting came through to [long pause] oh I know it was to go to 106 squadron when we’d finished the fitters course, posted to 106 squadron and they have a training wing there or something, it wasn’t a proper training place, they introduced these conversion units, 1654 conversion unit I think it was Swinderby, so first of all we were posted to 106 squadron who were supposed to be at Conningsby anyway we ended up at Conningsby, they said oh they left a fortnight ago, they are at Syerston now so they duly, instead of sending us to Syerston, these conversion units had just started properly and I think it was 1654 at Swinderby, I might have the number wrong, anyway we did Swinderby, posted to Swinderby and there we were crewed up as you know, they practised crewing up [?] chuck you all in a big hanger and sort it out for yourselves, and we did, eventually we arrived at the right crew, they were quite keen on people who had been flight mechanics and things like that fitters. The aircrew had been flying Whitley’s, my crew had, to get two more members a gunner and an engineer they were quite keen on people that had, had a bit of experience on aeroplanes at least,
MY: Yes
very little flying experience on a Spitfire squadron [laughter] in fact the only time I ever flew was that time when we hitched a ride. We did the course at the, forget how long it was now, it wasn’t a terrible long time six or seven weeks or something like that after we’d crewed up, we did quite a few short cross country and things like that and having never been in a war plane before I had to learn it as I went along [slight laugh] and they helped me quite a lot, they knew I knew the stuff on engines
MY: Yes
and things like that so I was able to guide them through that part of it, the rest of the crew we got on very well. My pilot was, we were all sergeants or flight sergeants, he was ex-public schoolboy and he came from London but I got on very well, he taught me a lot and I taught him a lot, and we eventually got posted to 106, and false alarm there in the first place we were able to choose the same squadron, we were originally posted so that was 106, we were interviewed by Wing Commander Gibson as you probably know [laughter]
MY: Yes
and it was quite an interview believe me, they had us in all standing to attention, he was very , very abrupt [inaudible] an arrogant man really and anyway, we got through the interview and I always remember him saying “now you wont get any leave just yet you’ve come here to fight and you either die or finish your tour and get a gong”
MY: [laughter]
and that was part of the interview with Wing Commander Gibson. Anyway we were posted to our usual [inaudible] 106 and first time I flew on operations there we had just done a few to get to know it, flights and [inaudible] the local countryside and things like that, and the new crew, as I say we taught each other a lot, anyway, while we was there I hadn’t done any, we hadn’t been on op’s and one night in January, the 17th of January they put the squadron on op’s, but we weren’t mentioned, but they called me up to the office, [inaudible] and said well we will get you together and brief you and that, right, there’s a chap gone, there’s an engineer gone sick you are in his crew now as flight engineer, just for tonight [?] and of course it was Berlin, [laughter] first time they bombed Berlin for a long time, January 1943 so I went and found my crew, my other crew quite strangers to me, their crew, I think, I don’t think he’s gone sick but from knowing the history of the crew later on I rather think he had gone LMF [lack of moral fibre]
MY: Yes
so they had to find another engineer quick. So I got my first trip as Berlin so all went well for most of the time although it was a bit of a shambles nobody could find the pathfinders flares and everybody seemed to be mixed up and when we eventually, our bomb aimer said right I think I can recognise something, there’s an airfield there its got a peculiar watch office in a horseshoe shape which I know to be Tempelhof airfield and so we dropped the bomb on there, we couldn’t find anything else to drop it on, so we started back no trouble [inaudible] but nothing to write home about and so we started back on the way back and we’d been about oh I should think it’d been about, nearly three quarters of an hour something like that on the way back after, and the shout went up fighter fighter and the usual thing and it was a JU88 coming up behind us, started firing he caught us quite unawares and all I saw was flashing lights flashing passed the cockpit and this JU88 was pumping shells at us our guns did very well though and they shot him down [pause] he came up a bit too close, and they said they claimed him as, then later on they both got immediate DFM’s when they came back. Anyway they shot this JU88 down and I seen it where it was claimed and ratified we came back, except one of the engines was on fire one of our engines was on fire some of the stuff had hit it and it was flaming a bit so I went through the process of feathering and directioning and all that [?] which didn’t work, we kept going for a bit and the pilot eventually said, well get ready to bail out because I don’t think that fire is going to stop, I think its going to spread and anyway we got parachutes ready and things like that, but it did start to go out and something had taken effect and he’d dived quite a long dive to try and get some sort of reaction from that and it seemed to work, I know that sounds like an American film but it did work in that case and the fire went out, and so we were three engines, we set back, set a course back and got back alright but we radioed one of the Manson, Woodbridge or Carnaby, which were the three emergency airfields, I think it was Woodbridge, that we went to and landed there on three, no trouble, it doesn’t matter about one engine gone on the bank, and stayed the night there, we got picked up by, someone fetched us in another Lancaster in the morning took us back, so that was my first op [laughter].
MY: Quite a baptism of fire [laughter]
GA: Really yes, actually it was but [inaudible] were really easy after that, a lot of them anyway, so eventually I went back to my usual crew, then this other crew lasted three weeks after that, they were missing, if fact I’ve got the details where they were shot down [inaudible] on the internet if you wanted to get it [?] all the details where they are buried. [pause] So my crew got pretty good and we got to know most things we were attacked together once or twice, in fact we were a bit naughty sometimes but we didn’t get badly damaged or anything like that. Ah, what’s next in my story? [laughter] I had quite an uneventful, comparatively uneventful, we had our up and downs of course, didn’t get badly damaged or anything like that, until I was near to the end of the tour I think I was about two, think I was thirty, two, two off thirty, but some of the crew had made the thirty, because they had been on these submarine spotting on Whitley’s before, they said well you might as well, you’re with them so I was put off ops at twenty eight instead of thirty and they posted me to another, one of the con units to instruct there,
MY: Which conversion unit, can you recall?
GA: Yes, let me think on, I was at one or two places, Wigsley [?] which is now called Pigsley [?] in the books, it was such a rough place, [inaudible] in the books it was that rough they called it Pigsley, it was pretty rough, Wigsley, Skellingthorpe [long pause] let me think about this, I would say look in the log book but we didn’t put the stations in the log book, I think I ought to show you the log book to start with, I’ll show it you before we’ve finished,
MY: Fine I shall look forward to that,
GA: Anyway, I was transferred to several of these conversion units probably one of them but not, and round about the end of one of the con units I was sent back apparently on ops to do a second tour on ops to 463 Australians, now they were at Waddington, which was very much of a change from Wigsley, [laughter]
MY: Yep
GA: And at Waddington they posted my old Skipper McGregor with me, we made a pair for a new scheme they’d got checking crews at so many ops I think it was five ops, ten ops, fifteen, that was it about fifteen we assumed they knew their stuff by then, they’d either be missing or they knew their stuff by fifteen ops, anyway we spent I suppose, we were both on this quite a long time we were officially on ops but we were only a pair, we were without the rest of the crew, McGregor and myself, were on this job of checking the crews at various stages they said it saved a lot of trouble, it kept them up to scratch in other words
MY: Yes
GA: And try telling Aussies they were doing something wrong wasn’t easy, it some cases [laughter] but we got on very well with them actually in the end, and we were quite respected members of the squadron, I remember they, they made me a, at one of the mess parties they made me an honorary Australian gave me a Kangaroo badge to wear, it was on the ground floor by the way, opened the window at Waddington and we got slung out onto the flower bed outside [laughter] so they called me a, honorary Australian after that. Anyway we got on very well with them in the end until they were posted back to Australia and they had to find me a crew. Before then though I’d, my skipper left me he’d gone on one of these other crews then, he went to Metheringham at 106 back at Metheringham, they moved from Syerston to Metheringham, and they posted him back to Metheringham, and he was on these Lincolns, in fact he wrote to me asking if I’d like to go back with him, but then before I’d got chance to reply they made Metheringham on the Lincolns they didn’t want flight engineers unless they’d done pilot training, well I’d never done pilot training, except on the squadrons, I flew Lancaster’s on my own quite a bit on the squadrons, when I was with an Aussie pilot which I got in the end, we were back flying prisoners of war back from France and Belgium and places like that, and it was this Aussie pilot and his crew, and he used to walk around in the fuselage [inaudible] and leave me to fly it [laughter] so I’ve flown Lancaster’s quite a lot but not taken off, or not landing, but I’ve got quite a few hours on flying the Lancaster on my own
MY: Good
GA: So, anyway that was part of the training and I was with them until they actually all of them went back to Australia, then they posted me as assistant adjunct administration Squadron something like that,
MY: Yes
GA: Which from then on I was demobbed,
MY: This story that’s in the Bomber Command Association magazine that being attacked by a 262 could you say something about that?
GA: Sorry, that was when I was with the Australian squadron, at Waddington, I did actually go back on ops real ops, and that was one of them.
MY: Yes
GA: Well we went, now my pilot was, my old pilot in that case he hadn’t left the 106, so he was, he got me as engineer because I was his engineer all the time, I hadn’t acted as one on ops until then, so they put us both back on ops the picture, the crew out of oddments that were left odd Australians that were left hadn’t gone back and some of them English, some Australian. Anyway I hardly knew the crew except the pilot, anyway we went in daylight, we had been practising two days before, formation flying, formation flying with the Lancaster squadron, its was a gaggle, they used to call it a gaggle, roughly behind each other and that sort of thing, and we were in this gaggle, and we got about I think it was about ten thousand feet something like that, it was, we had got to go quite a long way and we got over the channel or the North Sea, North Sea, we were at Hamburg, and we were, how did it happen? We were going along nicely on the way to Hamburg, and suddenly, red flares went up, that was the signal for being attacked, and we looked round and saw these, oh sorry, I am over running my story a little, I don’t know if you can do anything about that on there.
MY: Don’t worry
GA: On the way out, on the way out, we were still in England we had an engine failure, starboard outer, and it was the shaft that drives the magnetos, there is one shaft that drives two magnetos and it snapped, broke, it’d got a weak spot in it that actually sheared, so both magnetos were out, so literally it just windmilled, so I had to feather that, we decided to , skipper decided to try and keep up with them and keep up with the gaggle, but we were in a losing battle, we couldn’t keep up with the other Lancs. we were well behind by the time we got over there and on the way to Hamburg, so, this is when we were, got to Hamburg, there was 617 with us, they had got Tallboys, and they’d certain things that they had got to do there, and we were back up with 617 and made up about sixty aircraft [inaudible] we were on the tanks and things like that the rest of us, anyway we kept on to Hamburg, well behind by the time we got anywhere near it, the formation had left us, and we were on our own and we suddenly saw these red lights go up, red flares go up, ahead of us where the [inaudible] squadron was then we saw these 262’s diving down straight through the formation, and [pause] we were well behind and said well if their getting that treatment were going to be in trouble soon, anyway, one of the ones, they shot two Lancs. down well ahead of us and one of them they shot the tail straight off, they’d got cannons in these things, they’d gotfour cannons, four thirty millimetre cannons, in the nose of the 262, it must have just hit it [smacking sound] like that, about middle [?] of the door, and I should think it would be about a mile in front of us or something like that by that time, we were well behind the main squadron, and we saw this tail plane and the top bit of the door floating down like that with the gunner still in it, and the rest of the Lanc straight down without the tail, so there were two missing that day, that was one of them. So we eventually said well they haven’t seen us yet, but we went a little bit further and saw one coming towards us so we started pumping red lights out of the out of the very pistol, the wireless op had that, they had a signal, they screwed into the top by the wireless operator, and he got hold of the cartridge, anyway he used up all his red ones [laughter] and used most of the others as well, trying to attract attention , we got a supposedly an escort of mustangs, but we hadn’t seen them until then, and suddenly, way after we saw this shot coming at us and he hit us, knocked another engine out on the same side, but it didn’t set on fire fortunately, just knocked it out and he was coming round for another do, and these mustangs appeared, two mustangs, that was in my picture [?] and this 262 cleared off as soon as he saw the mustangs coming before he had another go at us I was very lucky.
MY: So did you finish your operational flying on 463?
GA: Yes, I only did, I went to Pilsen another one [pause] and err now, Pilsen, it’s in the log book [?] I can show you it, and then we finished operational flying, 463 it’s the last one I did in fact that was the end of the war. While I was still on 463.
MY: How long after that was it you were demobbed?
GA: [pause] We were sent on these postings and assistant adjutant after that, only about six months I should think, six months at the outside, yes. [pause]
MY: What did you do once you had left the RAF at the end of the war?
GA: I went back to my old firm as a rep at first, I did a full bound apprenticeship, at a printing firm and they were still in operation when I came back and they had got a vacancy for a rep that had just left them so I wrote to the manager and asked him if I could apply he said yes and he interviewed me while I was still in the RAF and I got the job as their rep when I actually left which was within about a couple of months, something like that, so the rest of the time, for most of my life i’ve spent as a rep with this printing firm.
MY: And are you local to, in the Derby area?
GA: Yes, yes, it was called Derby printers limited.
MY: Right
GA: It no longer exists but [pause]
MY: Quite a change I should imagine from the hectic life you had lead during the war.
GA: It was, I can’t remember some of it, these days my memory isn’t what it used to be, as you’ve seen me tonight, I have sort of misplaced time haven’t I? Quite a lot of it, [inaudible] by the way I didn’t have a car in those days, I had to use all railways and buses and walking
MY: [laughter]
GA: It ranged between Liverpool, Manchester, London, Northampton, sort of area I covered and eventually they bought me a car after about six months, after about, no not six months more like six years
MY: [laughter]
GA: [pause] And, I eventually became general manager at the same firm after I finished as a rep, at that time the manager was retiring and I got the job as general manager, a bit earlier because he died before he retired.
MY: If you just think back to the time while you were in Bomber Command and the places where you were stationed what sort of relationship did the people on the station have with the local villages and towns?
GA: Well at Syerston where I did most of my ops there was a farmhouse on the perimeter and when we were taxying round to go to the end of the runway there were about fifty people on the top of this farmhouse and the buildings there, never missed they were all waving flags and giving us the go ahead, and then the, of course they weren’t allowed on the actual aerodrome, there were enough people at the caravanners, you know the people who used to gather at the caravan to wave you off. There was only, they were all civilians at this place, at Syerston, and so they all gathered on all sorts of standing up places to look over, waving us off, so that was good. As regards the, we never really met them [inaudible] the local, there was never a local village it wasn’t very near a village, you used to see people in the pubs, but we used to go to Lincoln occasionally, but, as far as I could tell we had good relations, but nothing striking, Lincoln was our main town if we wanted a night out, there again I kept with my old pilot here, we got posted together, [inaudible] right to the end, and met him until he went to Metheringham.
MY: And did he survive the war?
GA: Yes,
MY: Good.
GA: He was an insurance man with the Sun Insurance, and he opted to go to South Africa, to their branch in South Africa, and he stayed there and he wrote to me quite a few years eventually it dropped off a bit [inaudible] I know that he was alive in South Africa, up to, oh, six or seven years ago and my gunner [inaudible] he got in touch with me, I found him, [inaudible] his address in England when he came over on a visit to his daughter who still lives in England and he had a word or two with him.
MY: I notice that in the book the bomber boys, you’re pictured in your flight engineers seat, was that on 106?
GA: Yes [pause] we had a drop down seat, we a drop down seat, no back on it or anything like that, so we could sit there if we wanted, we stood most of the time, take off, take off we stood up took the throttles up to the gate and push them to the gate if necessary, wheels up, flaps, used to do all that, standing up, it wouldn’t have been very good in a crash would it?
MY: And then you’d stay standing for most of the trip?
GA: Quite a lot yes, there’s a bubble on the side window of a Lancaster and if you’re in expected, or position port shall we say, fighters about you used get in there to look underneath,
MY: Amazing
GA: But that seat we used it on cross country’s and that sort of thing, if you wanted a rest, but it wasn’t much of a seat there were no safety belts on it or anything like that [laughter] [pause]
MY: What was the average sort of length of an operational sortie whilst you were flying?
GA: Well we did a lot to the Ruhr which was about, [pause] between five and six hours I should think, according to which end of the Ruhr you took, and then there’s places like [pause] let me get my log book out,
MY: Mmmm, is it in here?
GA: Its in there, much battered, that’s the medals [laughter] which I shall be wearing at the do I think
MY: I should hope so
GA: [inaudible]
MY: Yes
GA: [rustling]Right, I made this myself, [pause, rustling] Oh that’s the crew waiting to go, [pause]my skipper, and Gibson, the rest of the crew is the ones, by the way I forgot to tell you that, they took him the first night as a [inaudible]Berlin was on two nights, the first night I was on, sorry the first night the skipper was on, with that crew, and Richard Ingleman was with them doing the [inaudible] the commentary on it, while they were there [?] [inaudible] I got hold of this [inaudible] this, the bomb aimer was a navel bloke [inaudible]
MY: Oh lord
GA: [pause] I’m finding it, [inaudible, rustling] there’s a bit of damage, [pause] Very interesting pilot I used to fly with, [pause] Bonham Carter, Group Captain Bonham Carter, he was a CO at Wigsley [laughter] and he took me on my commissioning interview, and he used to come into the crew room sometimes and, anybody want a trip to Swinderby, anywhere like that, he’d say I’ve got to go and see an old pal so I want an engineer, so I used to go and fly with him sometimes [laughter] [rustling]
MY: At what stage, [cough] pardon me, at what stage were you commissioned?
GA: When we, after we’d finished ops and when we had been posted to a conversion unit
MY: Right,
GA: [pause, rustling] oh I can’t find, [pause, rustling] Stuttgart six hours, Pilsen eight fifteen, Berlin seven forty five, these are the hours, [pause] this is [pause] typical entry in the log book how many hours, how many trips in a month [pause] got a few Gibson signatures in there, you see [pause] [rustling, pause]
MY: There he is Guy Gibson, OC 106 squadron,
GA: Right
MY: This of course was, its was when he finished this tour that he went to take on 617
GA: Right, that’s right he went from there, you’ll see his signature suddenly ends, some of the flight commanders had to sign it, that was when he went to, six, 617.
MY: Did anybody else from 106 go with him?
GA: Yes, I am trying to think which one it was now, I read the book [laughter] and that sort of thing, there was only one of them, from 106 [pause]
MY: I see you’ve got Halifax as well as Lancaster
GA: Yes they
MY: In here
GA: They wanted to save the Lancaster’s for ops so they got a lot of, they were trying to make them all Lancaster squadrons so as the Halifax squadrons became redundant, they had, we had Stirling’s, Halifax’s as well as Lancs. on the conversion units [pause]
MY: Was there, much difference between them in terms of flying characteristics the Halifax and the Lancaster?
GA: The Halifax was a, it wouldn’t handle like the Lancaster at all, it was prone to getting out of awkward positions when flying, used to drop a wing and that sort of thing on it, the Lanc wouldn’t, so in the Lanc you could bring the throttles right back, pull you stick right back to, till you wait until it stalled it went down perfectly straight like that, [inaudible] gentle. The Halifax would start spinning, the Stirling it just couldn’t get up above 12,000 feet, they’d not carry very much anyway
MY: No
GA: But it was beautiful to fly in the air
MY: The Stirling?
GA: Yes, very steady [?] [inaudible]
MY: So which, presumably you did Stirling’s in your first heavy conversion unit did you?
GA: Yes
MY: Yes there we are
GA: Some of them are in there yes [pause]
MY: And was the, you hear lots of stories about the real affection that people had for the Lancaster, is that correct?
GA: Oh yes, nothing quite like it really, the others that I’d flown in, [inaudible] Stirling’s and the Halifax’s, not on operations though. We got back, by the way on that last one I was telling you about where we attacked by the 262’s
MY: Yes
GA: They shot the other engine out so we came back with two on one side, and it was perfectly alright got a bit warm the engines, but [laughter] there we, we contact the emergency airfield and that was, I think that was Woodbridge, it was one of the three big ones, it had a very wide runway and when they knew you were coming in on two engines on one side, they got a fire engine on one side ambulance on the other [laughter] [inaudible] foam all over the runway like that,
MY: But it was a successful landing was it?
GA: Yes, perfect landing, yes, that was my old pilot as well he was pretty good,
MY: This chap McGregor yes
GA: Yes
MY: Right
GA: Yes, he was a good friend and I am sorry he went to South Africa, so I didn’t see much of him after that,
MY: So would you, its funny question to ask in one sense given that were talking about war time, but did you enjoy your time, in, in Bomber Command?
GA: [pause] Yes, I did enjoy a lot of it yes, enjoyed flying and there were times when I wished I hadn’t but [laughter] but yes I did, I liked flying
MY: I note from your log book that there are a number of occasions when you would do trips on consecutive nights.
GA: Yes
MY: What did it feel like when you’d just come back from what would have been a quite traumatic experience, knowing that in twenty four hours you would be doing it all again?
GA: It was horrible really when they put them too close together like that, yes I didn’t like that part but I suppose it was necessary in those days, [inaudible] no I look back now and think how on earth did we stick it out and
MY: Well of course you were all very young men then weren’t you
GA: We were, we were
MY: Very resilient, the resilience of youth
GA: Exactly, yes, they had a different attitude to life, yes, but it, where they stick that close together it its not [laughter] it doesn’t sound right now does it?
MY: And when you got back from a sortie did you feel really fatigued?
GA: Yes, but not until you got in bed, things going round still, yes, [pause] some of the huts were, the accommodation was quite primitive in some of the [inaudible] some of the huts at Wigsley used to leak and you slept with your ground sheet on top of you, on top of your blankets
MY: [laughter]
GA: [pause, laughter] But places like Waddington and Syerston they were very good, [pause] Aye, have I taken up a lot of your time yet?
MY: I am intrigued by everything you have had to say, seriously,
GA: Are you
MY: Believe it or not we have been at it for nearly an hour and a half,
GA: Have we really
MY: And the time has literally flown
GA: Oh I haven’t dried up have I
MY: No you haven’t, It’s been absolutely marvellous
GA: I am afraid I have made a few mistakes, in timing like I did when I made a mistake in the last daylight we where things happened, and of course id you’d have said six months before that you’ve got to go and bomb Hamburg in daylight, [laughter] don’t be daft, it shows how the war deteriorated, because I mean I’d never seen a 262 before, neither had anybody else that I know
MY: Well they moved pretty fast as well didn’t they
GA: Oh yes, [laughter] but evidently, I don’t know who it was now I don’t think it was one of our squadron that got its tail shot off, makes you realise what fire power they’d got, I mean alright setting someone on fire, with your firepower but to see door I suppose is the weak spot of the fuselage to see it just literally chopped off like that its amazing, mmm.
MY: And presumably you have got your Bomber Command Clasp, at last
GA: [laughter] I have did you see it?
MY: I did yes, but um yes I was delighted when they finally saw sense and you know sort of
GA: Yes
MY: Gave that out, gave in to that and its, its so important it... but [pause] but you have, I mean it’s an amazing record, you’re sort of one and half tours on ops,
GA: Yes
MY: A distinguished flying medal, the Bomber Command Clasp I think its, for somebody who themselves has been a pilot in the Royal Air force its absolutely wonderful to sit and listen to things like this it really is absolutely marvellous
GA: I’m glad you were a pilot because you’ve understood a lot of what I’ve said
MY: Well of course its one of the things that attracted me to the whole project in the first place, because I have my own time, my own time in the service, I’ve always been, had a great interest in military history the air force history and to actually speak to people who were there
GA: Yes, yes
MY: Is, it so is, it’s an honour for me to be able to speak to people like you
GA: Good, I’ve got my grandson in-law is a pilot, so were following on [inaudible]
MY: Is he?
GA: He flies Hercules, and he’s now instructing on choppers,
MY: Oh right
GA: At, where they train all the navy and air force people together now
MY: What at Shorebury, at shorebury?
GA: Shorbury, yes
MY: Shorbury near Shrewsbury, oh right
GA: Yes, he’s instructor there now, and [inaudible] of lot of his flying on Hercules, to Afghanistan and that district
MY: Yes
GA: He was with the SAS team at one time, dropping them off the tail of the Hercules,
MY: I was talking to somebody the other day and we were commenting how, most, about five of the most senior posts in the royal air force, including the chief of the air staff
GA: Yes
MY: Are now helicopter pilots
GA: Are they really
MY: And that is a thing you wouldn’t have been able to say ten years ago,
GA: It is, it is
MY: but they, him his number two, another guy, Basnorth [?] the commandant of the royal air force college at Cranwell is a helicopter pilot and do you know, since the second world war, the only guy to walk round with a DFC with two bars is a helicopter pilot
GA: Really, DFC and two bars,
MY: And he won them in Iraq, and Afghanistan
GA: Oh yes
MY: he‘s now the station commander at Odiham,
GA: Ah
MY: But its quite a, I mean the helicopter fleet is, is so important nowadays, its as important, at least as important as the sharp pointy nose things that I used to fly, so it, its and its lovely to see
GA: Oh aye, aye, [inaudible] I can’t understand helicopters, he’s showed me inside one, I’ve never been in one and never been up in one
MY: Yes
GA: [inaudible]
MY: There we are,
GA: [rustling, inaudible] I was going to show you me grandson, we were together at the opening of the Bomber Command Memorial
MY: Oh right, so you’ve got a, let me take my papers away, and then we’ll be able to see, what you are doing [rustling] [inaudible] is it in there?
GA: No [inaudible]
MY: Was it in your black folder? I think what I’ll do is I’ll switch this off now
GA: Yes yes
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Graham Allen
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Malcolm Young
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-17
Format
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01:12:42 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AAllenG150917
Description
An account of the resource
Graham Allen joined the Royal Air Force aged 19. He trained as a mechanic and worked on inspection and recovery of Spitfire aircraft. He later volunteered to be a flight engineer, and flew a tour of operations with 106 Squadron. His first operation was to Berlin; they were attacked by a Ju 88 and returned on three engines. After the war he returned to work for a printing firm in Derby.
Contributor
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Linda Saunders
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
106 Squadron
463 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
fitter airframe
flight engineer
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 262
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
P-51
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
RAF Woodbridge
runway
Spitfire
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/369/6115/AHicksDK151103.2.mp3
8f3b62f9200c69a23551ea40528cc813
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
Hicks, Ken
Ken Hicks
D K Hicks
Description
An account of the resource
61 items. An oral history interview with Chief Technician David Kennedy Hicks (b. 1922, 0574954 Royal Air force), memories of the Battle of Britain, his Royal Air Force record, and photographs of his Halton entry, his time in Southern Rhodesia and 56 photographs, many of his time in Southern Africa. Ken Hicks joined the Royal Air Force in 1938 as a Halton apprentice. He served with 202 Squadron at RAF Hornchurch during the Battle of Britain as an aircraft rigger. Subsequently he served on training unit in Southern Rhodesia and then in Egypt, staying in the Royal Air Force after the war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ken Hicks and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-03
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Hicks, DK
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CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and I’m here to talk with Ken Hicks on the 3rd of November 2015 about his experiences in World War Two but if you’d like to start please Ken with your earliest recollections and then just go through your life in sequence please.
KH: To start with, my father, a coal miner down in Wales and when I was fifteen he said to me, ‘Lad you’re not going down the pit. I want you to learn a trade. I want you to go to see the headmaster and join the royal aircraft as an aircraft apprentice.’ I went and saw the headmaster and he said, ‘There’s no one been up from this school. The curriculum doesn’t cover it.’ But my old man went down and thumped the table. And he said ok and he sent for the exam paper and I sat in his office in his chair and I had one hour and I answered all the questions and he came in and he said, ‘Put your pen down.’ So I had just I just worked out the last answer so I jotted that down and he went bananas. ‘When I say put the pen down put the pen down.’ So he put it in a big brown envelope and he said, ‘Lick that,’ and I licked it. And he got hold of me by the ear and said, ‘Come on. I want to see you post it.’ So I posted it. I passed. He had me up in front of the school, tapping my head saying, ‘There’s a clever boy. I want all you boys to try this examination now.’ So I learned a lot about humanity [laughs]. So off I went to RAF Halton as a civilian lad of sixteen. Never been out of the Welsh valley even alone Wales on a train up to London. We got, we got to London and all the apprentices were sort of gathering there on the last train to Wendover and we all straggled up to, up to the camp. Not marched. And I was very impressed. I would, became a member of B Squadron. Two Wing Aircraft Apprentice RAF Halton. There was over a thousand boys in our entry and it was quite an eye opener but I adapted very well. My education wasn’t all that clever so I wasn’t one of the brainy blokes. I never became a snag — a corporal apprentice, or a sergeant apprentice [laughs]. I was still an AA. I got a three year training course but the war broke out 1939 and they cut it down to two years. Cut out a lot of sport and concentrated on teaching us. We marched down to schools, we marched down to the workshops and we marched down to the airfield for the aircraft training. We were training on Hawker Harts and Demons drilling, rigging. Stripping them down. Building them up. And an old Hampden there as the bomber side of it. I passed out in June 1940 and posted to 222 Squadron which was based at Kirton Lindsey, Lincoln at the time. And I’d only been there a week and beginning to settle down when we moved down to Hornchurch which moved straight into the Battle of Britain which commenced then and with two Spitfire squadrons at Hornchurch — 222 and I think it’s 603 City of Glasgow Spitfire squadron. I worked with a LAC 1GC who called me a sprog and I soon picked up we were repairing bullet holes in Spitfires. Filing around. If they, if they weren’t too bad we put a fabric patch on them. Anything to keep the aeroplane flying. Or we had to rivet two small riveting patches. I fitted in well with the, with the airman. We worked until the aircraft was serviceable. Sometimes gone midnight. We lost thirty seven pilots in that three months on my squadron and I wasn’t, I didn’t realise what was happening up there in the sky above us. The Germans were bombing our airfields and the Dorniers were coming across at about six thousand feet and mounds of earth — bombs were dropping and they were trying to – the grass airfields and they were trying to obliterate the RAF camps altogether. Bombs on the airfield. We had civilians out there with shovels filling in the bomb holes. They were bombing our hangars. And I was in the bath one night, 10 o’clock, when a bomb landed right outside the building and blew all the glass from the door into the bath with me and plaster. I reached over for my towel and that was covered in bits of glass. So I turned the duckboard upside down and stood on that. It was pitch dark. Half the block had been knocked down so the next night they moved us over to a round nissen hut the other side of the airfield and we were all in bed and about 1 o’clock in the morning a landmine which had come down went off and blew the roof right off our head. This corrugated roof. And we were all shouting at each other in our beds. Everybody. ‘Everybody alright.’ So we said we were alright and nobody hurt so we went back to sleep looking up at the stars. So that was a good opening. [pause] Where were we?
CB: We’re going to have a break for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok. So you’ve lost the roof.
KH: Yeah.
CB: And what happened next day?
KH: The next day I had to go with the corporal. Corporal airframe fitter. I was, I was an airframe fitter. A land rover down, one of our Spitfires had landed down in Kent. In Manston. So we had to go down there and repair it. On the way down through the Kentish fields all the fields that were unharvested at that time of the year and they were all burning. Flames going across the road as we were driving along. I don’t know if that was a ploy to destroy the harvest or what but anyway we got to this Manston. Manston was a place heavily bombed. Anything left, any bombs left, any bombs left going back to Germany they picked Manston out and dropped them there. So there was no one on the station except a skeleton staff but we had a billet and there was, there was an emergency cook laid on for meals and we got to the Spitfire which had bent a prop and a pitot head and the corporal fitter in charge he changed the prop and I had to help him. There was no one on the station so we helped ourselves in the empty yard and anywhere else for equipment and stuff. We worked in the middle of the airfield. There was also a lorry there full of civilian workers. They were shovelling and filling in the bomb holes trying to put the airfield back in to some sort of serviceability state and one of them was binoculars scouring the skies. He was lookout and when he blew the whistle they all dropped their shovels, jumped in the truck and tore off the airfield. So we soon twigged it and when they went off the airfield we went off as well [laughs]. We dropped our tools and went off as well. So we fixed this Spitfire and the pilot came down in an Anson, dropped him off and he took off and flew it back to Hornchurch and then we got home and that was my first introduction to the war as it were. What was happening? Stop.
CB: Ok.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok Ken can we just talk about what was your role as a rigger? What did you actually do in your job?
KH: As an airframe fitter I’d done the basic training and trained on older type of aircraft but now I was on a Spitfire which I’d never seen before in my life and didn’t know. Hadn’t done any training on it but I was given, I was told to work with an LAC 1GC airframe fitter who knew the ropes and he had to sort of teach me. So any riveting he was riveting that side and I held the block on this side sort of thing. So we were doing patches on the skins and things like that. Change undercart. Change the wheels. Tyre bay. How to use, how to use the tyre levers to change those, get those tyres off. Things like that. They were all practical work which I’d never done before and everything we did I learned. I learned more all the time. We had to learn the hydraulic system, the pneumatic system, the electrical system, anti-freeze system and even spraying. We had to spray and paint the camouflage back on the aircraft. And another role came out. We had to paint the underneath of the Spitfires a duck egg, duck egg blue, a light duck egg blue. So there we were lying on the hangar floor with a twelve inch, two inch paint brush painting the underside of a Spitfire. And we had to do the whole squadron. We’d got a mat to lie on on the hard concrete floor. That took us about a week to do the squadron. I can’t remember other things which I did because it was a long time ago.
CB: What about the flying controls which were wire operated?
KH: Well they were alright but I I had to do some splicing and I got a wire out and made a measurement and got a new wire from stores and spliced in the buckle on both ends. That’s seven and a half tucks on the splicing and then, and then fit it, wire, pull it back through with the string and connect it up. Tension the turn buckle to get it all right. And then the aircraft used to go out then on air test. On one occasion I was working in a hangar and apparently a Spitfire had come over from dispersal. They disbursed the Spits instead of having them in one place and be a target for a bomb they disbursed the other side of the airfield all over the place. Well this one came over and stopped in between the hangars and the chaps coming back from lunch, dinnertime thought it was the next Spitfire to be done so they pushed it into the hangar but this one was armed and nobody knew about it. They came back from dinner and I was down just about opening my toolbox underneath the wing of this aircraft when an instrument basher had got into this aircraft he’d shoved in to check his instruments and he pressed the firing button for some reason and all of a sudden four machine guns blasting. Blasting the hangar wall with the armour piercing tracer bullets flying around all over the place. Quite a long burst. And I was crouching down behind my tool box and I thought [laughs] well it’s a bit dodgy this is. [laughs] Lots of things happened when we were working there. Every now and again we had to drop — drop our tools and run for the air raid shelter and get down there fast. I was down the air raid shelter one day and I was about the last one in I think ‘cause I was near the entrance and I heard an aircraft taxiing off so I l had a look out and there was a Hurricane had come in. It was taxiing around. There was nobody about. We were all down the air raid shelter. And the pilot was waving so I ran out, crossed and jumped on to the wing and it was, it was a Polish pilot and he wanted to know what airfield he’d landed on. He had a map on his knee which showed him more or less the east coast so I turned it over and I pointed out where we were. Hornchurch. Hornchurch. And he had a look around and I knew the Poles were over at, over the other side of London so I said to him, ‘Balloon barrage. Fly over the top.’ ‘Oh yah yah,’ he said, you know and off he went. I hope he got back alright. There were quite a few instances but when you’re young and you’re new to the game you learn pretty fast. You make mates but the Air Ministry post you as numbers and you just get a serviceable team going nicely and you’re posted overseas invariably. Never to, never to see each other again. So you don’t make friends too long in the air force. They come and go fast. Some are posted to the desert. Some are posted to Iceland to the snow. Some are posted up the Far East. I was on the boat. Went down to Uxbridge got my KD and [torpee?] Up to Liverpool. Got on a troop ship RMS Scythia. Hammocks. No bunks. Out in a fifty two boat convoy. Left the Clyde, staggered course, escorted by destroyers and one battleship. Out in to the North Atlantic. I heard depth charges going off. The destroyers were chasing the subs which were after the convoy. Apparently, we heard that they did get one. One of our troop ships. We came down towards the equator and on the day we crossed the equator I had my nineteenth birthday. Crossing the equator going down south on a staggered course. Then we headed west, west again to Freetown. Out into the Atlantic and down the South Atlantic to Cape Town. Mostly army bods on board. They were going around, they were going around up to the Suez Canal, Cairo and they were tackling Rommel in North Africa. But the twenty eight names of the RAF were shouted out. ‘Get your kit off the boat. Get on that train.’ The train set off up for a day and a half and we knew there wasn’t a river line going all the way to Cairo which we thought we were going there. And we came to Salisbury Rhodesia and I was posted to mount, RAF Mount Hampden. There were three stations around Salisbury. One was Tiger Moths, one was Harvards for training fighters and one was Oxfords training bombers and I was posted to Mount Hampden — Tiger Moths. We got there. We were advanced party. Twenty eight men in an advanced party. All trades. And we were setting up, setting it up it. Getting it prepared. The entry arrived on a train from the [wool?] station. Corrugated sink, roofs. Billets with mosquito net windows and doors. Storm ditches. And we soon settled down. Guards. Guard duty. I don’t know what we were guarding from. The natives weren’t, we could hear their jungle drums going all night when they’d had some Kafa beer down them from the village and that was about all. We had no problems from the outside but we still had to do guards. We were assembling aircraft out of packing cases. Tiger Moths. And we kept doing that until we got, we got about forty and they were doing circuits and bumps training pilots and one time there were four prangs on the airfield at the same time. One had landed heavy. Busted his undercart. Another one had landed, watching him, landed on top of another one and they both turned over like that. Upside down. And then another one crash landed and we had a big sign on the hangar wall, “You bend them, we mend them.” When we finished in the aircraft I had to go flying with the pilot on a test flight to test the aircraft before they handed over on to flying training. Loops and rolls and spins. So I used to put my parachute on and pull the straps tight and practice grabbing the, grabbing the rip cord to open the ‘chute. I always wanted to bale out. We were up there flying one day doing aerobatics and the aircraft, the engine cut so I thought, ah. So I shouted down the tube, ‘Can I bale out? ’ He said, ‘No. I can see a clearing in the jungle down there. So I thought oh. So we landed in this clearing. It was about four foot high grass stuff and we hit a termite hill which whipped the undercart off, dug our nose in and slammed us over on our back upside down. So I undid slowly on to the back of my neck, wriggled out and it didn’t catch fire. And that was at half past six in the morning. When the sun got up there it gets up to a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty in the shade in the summertime. We had no food. No water. And the pilot said, ‘I can hear, I heard a lion roaring.’ Well there were lions around that area. I thought well we can’t leave the aircraft ‘cause they’ll never find us. So we were lumbered. We were stuck. Mid-day a Moth flew over, spotted us, waggled his wings and flew back and told them where we were. At about five o’clock a three tonner came through the jungle with Chiefy and a couple of bods and brought us food and water. Our Chiefy had a look at the aircraft. It had broken its back, it had broken its spruce bars and the wings had gone. This, that and the other. And I was watching him. He took his pipe out and he put his tobacco in. He struck a match and he took a couple of puffs and he went over and he threw the lit match down where the petrol was and up went the petrol and he said to the pilot, he said, ‘When you landed it burned didn’t it? ’ He said. He said it wasn’t worth taking back so (laughs] we went and left it. Yeah. Crumbs.
CB: Do you want a break?
KH: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: So the plane was a write off and caught fire so you went back but this was the sort of aeroplane you were trained on.
KH: Yes. That was no problem. They used to use me a lot because I was trained on aircraft and I could rig, I could rig the Tiger Moth so that there was no — it wasn’t flying left wing low, right wing low and all this that and the other and I used to do the trimming. I used to do any control work on it and I used to go up on air tests and make sure with the pilots that it was perfectly serviceable to hand over to flying training. That was primarily my job.
CB: What rank were you at this stage?
KH: I started off AC1, AC2, LAC.
CB: Right.
KH: I was stuck out in Rhodesia. No promotion for three years. I was doing an essential job training. Training pilots. I trained them in Rhodesia, South Africa and Canada so they were out of the way of the war. And that meant no promotion otherwise everybody would be flight sergeant [laughs] on the station [laughs]. Well there was no promotion at all for three years. One. One. He was a chippy carpenter. He got corporal stripes. He was the only one on the station that got promoted in that three years. The rest of the war was going on. That was more important. They were fighting out in Burma, they were fighting out in the Middle East and they were fighting out everywhere. They were moving around and getting places and getting promoted. They were on squadrons, my trade and the corporal would get killed and they thought they’d make an LAC up. There was promotion going on but not down there where we were on the training so I was still an LAC when I got home after three years. Six, six months I was only home in the UK six months and then I was posted overseas again. Egypt. A boat across the channel, a train down to [Touronne?] living in tents in the flooded water in the heavy rain until, for three days, until we got on a troop ship. Took us across the Med. Called in at Malta and I got rid of stuff there. And we didn’t know where we were going of course and then we saw the lovely blue Mediterranean Sea turning brown and we couldn’t see any land but that was the, that was the river coming down from North Africa.
CB: So this is the Nile Delta.
KH: The Nile. And that was coming out in to the Mediterranean and running and it was still brown full days sailing out from, you know. We came Alexandra. Dropped a few people off there and then we got on a train up to Cairo and we were nodding off on the train, with my head on the woodwork at the side and I started scratching and it was bugs come out of the woodwork and was biting me. I was lumps coming up [laughs] so I thought that’s our entrance to Egypt, you know. And this was the thing which we had to do. First of all it was a PGC Almaza in tents and before we left to go out in the evening into Cairo we used to put everything in our kit bag and lock it on to the tent pole because we’d heard that thieves used to get into the camp and pinch airmen’s equipment. When we came back, the rows of tents, there was a tent missing. They’d come in with a lorry and they’d picked the whole tent up pegs and all and put it in a lorry and drove out and nobody said anything. But ours was alright. Then we were waiting for our postings and we were posted everywhere. Down to, down the coast of Africa, down further down in to Egypt. They were posted up to Palestine. They were posted everywhere from there. Distribution place. And I got, I got Almaza Flying Station itself on Dakotas. So I soon picked that up then. We all had to move out of Egypt then so we all moved out of the Canal Zone. Two hundred mile across the desert to the Canal Zone. There was a great bit of lake half way down. It was Deversoir. Kibrit. Kibrit. Deversoir and 107MU and I was posted to 107MU repairing aircraft. But it was good in one thing. There was nothing to do. We had three yacht clubs on the station on the canal and I joined 107MU Sailing Club. I had put my name down first in a queue and then I was called up after about three weeks to join a club. The first thing I had to was allocate myself to a skipper who used to take me out and teach me how to use a jib. When I’d logged eight hours on the jib I was then free to be picked up by any skipper to go out on the main sail and give it dual instruction. And I found that I had a natural ability which I didn’t know I had and I could sail it pretty good. I learned. We’d got the rule book and I passed. Passed the B Helmsman Certificate and I became — I could take a boat out myself so I could book a boat out and take someone out. So, and every – we stopped – we finished, we started work at a quarter to six in the morning and we finished at one because it got too hot after that. So it was straight down the sailing club and I spent a lot of hours on the lake.
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
KH: I’ve never done that before. [pause] Yeah. So I genned up on my racing rules and I passed my Helmsman Certificate. I could take a boat out and race. I could race. Compete. And I found I had the natural ability and I was, at the end of the year I was coming in first. I had three. The monthly race I was coming in first.
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
CB: So, we’ve just paused for the phone. We’ve been talking about after the war in Egypt.
KH: Yeah.
CB: But you came back for six months.
KH: Yeah.
CB: What did you do in that six month period because this was at the end of ‘44?
KH: During that six months I was posted on to a squadron of [pause] of Hunters I think it was and I found out I knew nothing about modern aircraft and I asked and I got, I was away on aircraft instructional courses some lasting a month to various stations. I did three courses altogether and briefed up working on aircraft with the hydraulic systems and pneumatic systems, de-icer systems and all types of operational retraction handling and getting used to modern aircraft.
CB: Were these fighters or bombers or both?
KH: Everything.
CB: Right. And where were you stationed?
KH: Bombers. Transport. I was stationed actually at [paused] at — I don’t —
CB: Well we’ll pick up with it later.
KH: I can’t remember it.
CB: But you were getting up to date on modern aircraft systems.
KH: Yeah. Yeah. I did. You realise that I’d been out in the desert I hadn’t worked on them. But that developed rapidly during the war while I was out there.
CB: So after you finished at 107MU.
KH: Yeah.
CB: What did you do then? So you did sailing in the part time but after you left the MU in Egypt —
KH: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go?
KH: Well let’s see. I was posted to RAF [pause] as an instructor at Cosford. That’s right. RAF Cosford. As an instructor instructing air frames, hydraulic systems on the aircraft. From there the Berlin Airlift started and we were we were taken off to do a three month detachment on to the Berlin airlift so I was out of my first Berlin Airlift and straight into Berlin. Shift work. The aircraft. The Russians had surrounded Berlin and so we had to fly everything in. Food, coal, everything. So one aircraft landing every three minutes right around the clock. Avro Yorks, Hastings. Hastings were carrying fuel. But mainly Dakotas. American Dakotas flying right around the clock in shift work and we had the German labour to offload the aircraft and we had to – I was involved in seeing the aircraft in. Marshalling them, stopping them, putting the chocks there and getting them all in line and when they were emptied the pilot came back from having a cup of tea, got all back in the aircraft and started them up. I had a torch. That’s all. Start one, two, three, four engines or whatever what they were and the same all off. Right around the clock. If there was anything wrong we had to tackle it. We had to check, check the tyres, oil leaks, if there was a cut in the tyre we’d put it serviceable to fly back to base if we thought they wouldn’t make it. We didn’t want them stuck in Berlin. It was tough going and it was January. Snow. Three or four of inches of snow. We kept on flying and I was going from one aircraft to the other in the snow and there was a big pile of snow there. And I give it a kick. I thought, ‘What?’ And there was a dead man underneath it. It was a German labourer unloading the aircraft. He’d walked through a prop which was running under the wing and he didn’t see the prop and chopped him and covered with him snow as it taxied away. It was that bad but we kept it going. It was shift work and we were, we were shattered. The food we were having from the cookhouse was what we were flying in. Dehydrated. Everything was dehydrated potatoes dehydrated. Pomme. Dehydrated peas. Dehydrated powdered stuff and we weren’t getting good food at all. For Christmas Day we had one whole orange each. That was a treat. That was the toughest part I’ve ever been in I think. That Berlin Airlift. And the station commander wasn’t satisfied when he walked around our billets because we were doing shift work. We were piling out of bed and getting to work six o’clock in the morning. Leave our, leave our bed made down and that wasn’t good enough. All beds had to be made up. This that and the other. And everybody was put on a charge and we were all given a reprimand. A block punishment. [laughs] But I used to get time off. I was chatting up, my mate and I chatting up a couple of deutsche bints as we called them. [laughs] Yeah. It was alright. Anyway, we were back, back at Bassingbourn which was our base then. On Avro Yorks. Working on Yorks and they put me, when I got back to Bassingbourn, the warrant officer in charge says, ‘You’re a married man. I want you to go to the R&D section,’ receive and despatch section in charge of ten WAAFs. ‘I want a married man to look after them.’ So I went over to the edge of a hangar there was a section and they were sort of changing the white covers over the back of the seats in the aircraft and the airmen I had were doing the fitting of the seats. Taking them out and stacking them on a tractor and a trailer and we used to, an aircraft, a York used to come in, different rolls. Some had a roller. Some had lashing chains. Some had power seats. Some had VIP seats and all these had to be handled. And strip the aircraft and hand it over for it to do the servicing. Into maintenance and then fit them all back in afterwards so it was quite a busy operation and variation and they were all airmen and WAAFs and I was a corporal put in charge of them [laughs] and the first day I knocked off at 5 o’clock. They all left the section and I locked the hangar. Locked the section up which was a steel door. I was going to lock it and one of the WAAFs had come back, had got hold of me and pinned me against a wall. Grabbed a handful. So I thought, Jones, her name was. Bloody thing. So I talked her out of that one. I thought I’ve got to handle these buggers myself now [laughs]. So it was quite a struggle too because some of the airmen were a bit bolshie. They were, they all had demob numbers. They all wanted to get out, get out of the mob. That happened to start with down when I was down in Egypt. I had a, I had a team, servicing team. I was in charge of two aircraft servicing teams and every now and again a demob number would come up and I’d lose a man, lose another man, and lose a man – no replacements. Getting less and less and we had I was training two natives. Two Egyptian natives to do some of the work. Some of the rigging and fitting work. Just the donkey work stuff. And I thought well this is no good. We had fifteen Dakotas there servicing on the line. And then, and Chiefy says, ‘You’ll have to take that Dakota there he said, get in it, get somebody to start it up, pull the trolley acc away and taxi it yourself out into the desert as far as you can. Switch your engines off, get out and shut the door and walk back here.’ And that’s what I had to do. All these Dakotas. The war had finished. The Yanks didn’t want the Dakotas back. Nobody wanted them so took them out in the desert and left them there. And the third day I was going out, I taxied out and there was another one of them starting up so I went over. There was a truck there. It was Israelis there from Israel. They come down starting up to tax, taxiing to the runway and flying them back to Israel. [laughs]. So all I was doing was helping the bloody Israelis out [laughs] nicking all our Dakotas. Well they were supposed to be but they were perfectly alright. We were working all that time to get them serviceable. Cor flipping heck. But I soon adapted to that.
CB: So that was in your desert time. We were just having a reflection there. So back to Bassingbourn.
KH: Bassingbourn.
CB: Were you losing people to demob there as well?
KH: Yes. All the time.
CB: We’re on National Service now of course.
KH: Yeah.
CB: Because we’re on 1948.
KH: Yeah. Yeah it was. It got difficult then. What did I do? I went on courses. Bassingbourn. [pause] Cosford as instructor. Yeah. Married. Yeah Bassingbourn. Airlift.
CB: So Bassingbourn had Yorks.
KH: Yeah.
CB: And then did you keep on that aircraft or did you go to something quite different somewhere else?
KH: Oh no. I’m trying to think what happened then.
CB: We’ll take a —
KH: Oh yeah
CB: Sorry.
KH: I got quite fed up then and I was – what was it? I was at Abingdon. No. I was in digs in Reading. I was married. Digs in reading. I was on a motorbike back and forth to Abingdon. Working RAF Abingdon on Yorks and I was passing Benson and I was chatting to in bloke in Wallingford, a RAF chap from Benson. He said there’s a Queen’s Flight, Benson, King’s Flight at Benson then and he says, ‘Why don’t you come to Benson, you know, instead of going back and forth to Reading all the time.’ Reading to Abingdon. So I went to the orderly room and I I asked if I could be posted and I filled in a form and then I was posted to a Kings Flight. Well I was sent over there for interview. I arrived at a guardroom and I was escorted down to the hangar and up to the warrant officer in charge and I was interviewed and then he took me through to the flight lieutenant who happened to be in my entry. Thirty eighth entry at Halton. He was one of the brainy ones. He got, he got a technical commission and so he says, he says, ‘Right,’ you know, ‘We’ll have you.’ So I was posted to the Kings Flight. I applied for married quarters and I got it. 11 Spitfire Square and and everything was fine. Then it was the Queen’s Flight. The Queen’s Flight [pause]. Two children born there. Halton Hospital. Yeah. I enjoyed my stay there. I did so well when I left and yeah, I got the Royal Victoria Medal presented to me when I left. I was in Germany and I was sent, I was sent down to Bonn where a group captain was dishing out medals and I was presented with the RVM for being on the Queen’s Flight. For the good work I’d done there. I was working on Swift, Swift aircraft. There was only two squadrons of Swifts made. 2 Squadron down on Aden. I was on 79 Squadron and Chief Tech Airframe and nobody knew anything about these bloody aeroplanes. And I reckon I did some good work on them. The warrant officer relied on me for everything. Any snag that came up he used to come and ask me. There was one Swift sitting there. They couldn’t keep it in a hangar because it was running fuel all the time out of a pipe out of the back. Filled the drip trays so they kept it outside. They kept it out over a drain. The next thing the farmer down the road said his cows were getting ill. It was the fuel was going into the brook and drinking the oily, oily water so he asked me to do something about it. So I’ve got, I never seen Swift before in my life and I got, I went and got the one and only book on it and I took it home that night and read it. It was gone midnight when I finished reading that. And I studied all the circuits and this that and the other to where that fuel could come from. So then I went over and I undid a couple of panels and I got to the bottom of the tank, main front tank behind the pilot of this Swift and there was three pipes there and I traced them in the book and one was going up to a recuperator tank which was inside the main tank. It was pressurised from the engine. There was a rubber sock in the middle of that little tank. Pressure from the engine so that when you went into a G turn you was still getting full pressure from the engine on to his fuel to keep the fuel pressure up for his engine and that was the rubber sock in the middle of the front tank and that that pipe was the only one, I thought well there must be a pinhole in that rubber sock that’s getting through to the outside of that, but the air side of it and then coming out the drain at the back. And I told, I told the warrant officer this and he said, ‘Righto,’ and he took me onto another job then and he put a sergeant and a few riggers to work the tank out and put it on test to make sure what I said was true and it was. It was leaking. I’d pinpointed it alright. Then I was posted wasn’t I? Where was it? What do you call them? I can’t remember.
CB: So you were in Germany.
KH: In Germany.
CB: Where was that? Bruggen?
KH: Gutersloh.
CB: Oh Gutersloh. Right.
KH: Gutersloh [pause] Bassingbourn. Bassingbourn.
CB: Tell you what. We’ll have a break.
KH: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok Ken. So after Gutersloh where did you go? You came back to Benson did you?
KH: Came back to Benson and the flights, flight commander said, ‘All the technical jobs are occupied but I want somebody to sort out a pain in my neck,’ he says, ‘Which is the roll equipment. I want to put you in charge of roll equipment and I want you to sort it out.’ I didn’t know what roll equipment was and I got down there and I had three sergeants. They were store bashers in the office and I had been an LAC I had a few corporals and a lot of men out in the hangar and they had twenty five Avro Yorks on the station that they could drop the ramp down the back and they could fit it out with roller seats or any anything [barrow?] and all that equipment, the roll equipment is stacked up in the back hangar at Benson and it, and it had to be sorted out. So I I had them all, all in the hangar there together in a group and I told them what's got to be done. So first of all we got some, some of the roller equipment which is racks with roller, roller balls on them. You could put things on so you could move, move everything around on them easily and assembled racks in the hangar to store these things and you’ve got to go through a servicing and then a servicing bay. US that side, serviceable that side and get a gang on servicing that lot and when they finished put them back on the serviceable rack and there were racks for holding all the chains for lashing down. All the straps, all the buckles and rings you could screw into the floor. There was all the seating. There was all the para seating. There was, there was all kinds of rolls. Centre poles you could put down from the floor to ceiling and fit seats in. All that sort of thing which was quite complicated really and these aircraft was going down the route and there was trouble down in [Muharraq?] and I was told by the wing commander to go down the route to [Muharraq?] and sort it out. The roll equipment there. And I walked in to roll equipment there and the flight sergeant in charge there and he’d put there from somewhere else. He didn’t know a thing about it and he was overloaded with the stuff. It was building up and he didn’t know what to do with it. It was the AQMs were slinging stuff off. They were getting a job sheet to carry so much and drop it off to there and this that and the other and no one was taking into account what was in the aircraft and what wasn’t and if there was room or not and it was chaos and the stuff was piling up down the end of the route. And so I went back and I told the wing commander and he said well make out, make out, he made out sent a directive down the route that any aircraft coming back with room has got to put roll equipment on it to bring it back to roll equipment Benson. So they brought it all back slowly so we got it all back and we could work it, work better then. Sorted that one out. What happened from there? From Benson.
CB: What year are we talking about now? 1954.
KH: Oh crumbs yeah.
CB: ’54.
KH: Yeah.
[pause]
CB: Ok. We’ll stop there for a bit.
KH: Yeah. Stop.
[Recording paused]
CB: So Ken, you’re posted to Hornchurch which is on Spitfire’s and they’re much more sophisticated than you’d been trained at Halton.
KH: Yeah.
CB: So how did they get you, ‘cause it’s the height of the Battle of Britain. How did they get you in on the act as it were?
KH: Yes well as an airman. Aircraft fitter. Airframe fitter. Trained but with lack of experience I was told to work with a LAC 1GC airframe fitter which – and we went through all his normal work and I was his mate as it were and I picked up a lot about the Spitfire. I was always questioning. I was always trying to get hold of air publication books so that I could, but I couldn’t get hold of any to learn more about the aircraft. The aircraft was developing in such a pace that new things were happening to the Spitfire all the time. They were improving this, improving that, improving the other and I wasn’t in a position to go in the flight sergeants office and have a look at the, have a look at all the APs and things like that. In any case that wasn’t my main interest at all. It was just getting the overtime worked. Usually working until you got the aircraft serviceable even if you were working until the midnight. It’s got to be ready first thing in the morning. If not and you do a shift work on it until it is ready. Most of the air frame work was you could, you could do it within a couple of hours. Undercart checks, this that and the other I could do in a couple of hours and carry on with the next aircraft but as an AC you could be taken off that job and put on another job even if you were halfway through it to work with somebody else but you don’t make the decisions. They do and they tell you what to do and it was that state of affairs but the more I did of that the more experience I got and the more experience you got the more responsibility they gave you to do. If you got three men and one of them has some experience and the other two are not its experienced bloke that gets the job and he’s the chap they rely on. So I found out, you find out the hard way. Sometimes you’re given the dirty jobs all the time and other times you’re not. You’re given the good jobs. So it depends who the next rank above you is and what he decides. So you’re bobbing around your corporals and your sergeants. Your sergeants were up top. They were miles away.
CB: You mentioned having to check documents. The APs are air force publications aren’t they?
KH: Yes. Yeah.
CB: When an aeroplane lands what has to be done to it before it can fly again? There are some basic procedures are there?
KH: Yeah. The pilot, pilot signs the aircraft in and he puts his signature down and puts down anything he finds wrong with it and he puts it down. That goes down in to the technical section and they put a man on to rectify that fault. So the pilot’s signature’s always there and before he takes the aircraft up he has to do the last signature that it is serviceable is down and then he signs over the top before he takes over and flies the aeroplane. He’s not allowed to take it up unless he signs the 700 first ‘cause that is the bible.
CB: In the heat of the battle they didn’t have time to do that so what happened then?
KH: Oh they did. They did.
CB: Oh they did.
KH: Yeah. Chiefy used to stick the 700 and a pen in his hand and he used to sign that and run. He didn’t know what he’d signed. [laughs]
CB: Amazing. So you’re working long hours. You get to finish the task. Where are you living on the airfield?
KH: Well before I was married I was in a block with the airmen.
CB: Right.
KH: And it was a station then at Benson here. As an airman, before I got married, and was quartered we used to march down from the block, across the main road, down to the hangars and march back again in those days. But they packed that in because it got too difficult in the end.
CB: Because the war was on.
KH: Yeah. This that and the other. Yeah. They got rid of that lot.
CB: And in the, so in a barrack block there are a number of rooms on several floors. How many people in a room?
KH: There’s a ten, ten. Twenty in a room.
CB: Yeah.
KH: And a snag in a bunk.
CB: Yeah. That’s the corporal.
KH: Six, six rooms and there’s a, there’s a static order. Everybody takes a turn in doing certain jobs. Domestic jobs that’s got to be done.
CB: What would they be?
KH: Bumpering the floor. Everyone had got his own space to do. In the old days you used to make your kit up into blankets. They had biscuits. Three biscuits stacked and then the blankets and sheets folded and the last sheet folded right around the top. Put on the top there and they had to leave that before they went, left to go to work like that. But they eased off on that situation later on.
CB: So bumpering the floor meant polishing the floor with a big bumper.
KH: Yeah.
CB: What other jobs were there you had to do?
KH: Well the, when it was your turn, what was it? Now everybody had his own window to clean. His own floor space. Bed. Locker.
CB: And the communal areas.
KH: The room orderly. There were certain things he had to do.
CB: Who was the room orderly?
KH: Everybody took it in turns.
CB: For a week or a day?
KH: No. A week.
CB: Right.
KH: There was a drying room down the back and a wash. A shower room. The toilets.
CB: How did they get cleaned?
KH: They were, they were all on a roster. So they were all done, all covered. The corporal in the bunk was usually the man who run it so it was run very smooth.
CB: Yeah.
KH: You was directly in contact with him.
CB: So in each room there’s a corporal and twenty men.
KH: Yeah.
CB: And now about eating. What was the procedure for that?
KH: Oh well. You just – what was it? [pause] You just wander over to the cookhouse with your mug and irons and no problem. Yeah. Certain times there was times when we had to work overtime on this that and the other and go back to the cookhouse and it still, it still, you’d still get fed and all that. There was no problem. IF you were orderly corporal or a orderly sergeant. An orderly sergeant in the guardroom. He’s got his job laid down down down. He’s got to make sure the NAAFI’s shut at 9 o’clock and he’s got to make sure that this and the other is done. He’s got to go around. It’s all automatic and back to the guardroom. I went to the guardroom the other day and there was two sailors there running it [laughs].
CB: A bit different now.
KH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So what were the mealtimes?
KH: Oh normal. Half past seven ‘til eight. Work at half past eight. Nine hours. Or 8 o’clock. Depends what what you’re doing. Some earlier than others. The pen pushers well they were static but the fitters and riggers they have to adapt their work time to suit the job. If there was early start aircraft in the morning they had to be there. They were knocking off early and it was all covered that way.
CB: How often did you sleep next to the aircraft?
KH: Never. No. Never got to that stage.
CB: Not even in the Battle of Britain.
KH: No. Well I don’t know what they did our in the flights but they were, we were the fitters in the hangar.
CB: Right.
KH: Working on the aircraft. There were airframe mechanics, engine mechanics out on the flights dealing with them first hand and they had a different system to cover all eventualities.
KH: And the armourers.
CB: And the same with all. All trades the same. Yeah. The armaments sections. Yeah. Instrument section. This that and the other and they all had their ICs and they were the chaps looking after them. It worked very well.
KH: Yeah. Ok. Stopping there for a mo.
[Recording paused]
JLE: [First days?] I’d find quite interesting to know about.
CB: Apprenticeship days. Right.
KH: Apprenticeship days. Well. You were in a billet. Twenty men and a corporal or the senior man in the bunk. Six rooms to a, six rooms to a block. You’re forming, when I first joined, you’re forming outside with your mug and irons in your hand. Marched to breakfast 8 o’clock. Quarter to eight. Something like that. After breakfast came back and you squared your bed up, rolls your overalls, put them under your arm, fall in outside and you marched on to the square. A Squadron, B Squadron, C Squadron. The man in charge. The band would start up and you’d all march behind the band out the guard room and down the hill. And some would go to workshops, some would go down to the airfield and some would go to the school. About twelve — march back. Dinner. Down again. Marched down again and you’re probably a different, different place the next time and you’d go down the airfield in the morning. You were probably in schools in the afternoon. The schools cover all the theories. Worked everything out there. You’d do practical jobs. You’d dismantle it and assemble it again and various components on the aircraft. Engine fitters would be running the engines and the airframe fitters would be doing this that and the other and instruments were all covered. It was training. We would manage to get a few extra aircraft. I started off with a, with a Hampden bomber and a Hawker Demon and we had all kinds of jobs on that. We had to go over and do fabric work. You know to strip a fabric wing and build it up and repair inside. The type of wood used, the glue used and there are pins and rivets. The balance of the aircraft had to be rigged properly with a, with a straight edge, straight edge and get a bubble right in the middle, on whatever you set it at. Wing incidents. Dihedral tail. The fin slightly offset perhaps. The hinges – no play in the hinges. No play in the aileron hinges. No slack in the controls. Even had to polish the glass in the windows. Make sure everything works properly. Sliding hoods. The tyres of course had to be checked. They’d be taken off. Brakes checked to see that they worked properly. Assembled on again, undercart jacked it up, undercarriage actions. Check the hydraulic pressures. When everything’s been signed up you sign up and the NCO would sign over the lot and that’s it. The aircraft’s serviceable and nothing was allowed out until the last signature was there and it wasn’t even flying unless the pilot signs it as well. So it’s all covered. If anything goes wrong pinpoint who did it, who did what and when and who checked it. So it was a double check. Treble check. The safety of the aircraft must come first.
CB: Ok.
[Recording paused]
KH: There wasn’t much.
CB: Wait. We’re just talking about what Ken and his colleagues did in their time off.
KH: Well we took part in sport. I myself played rugby and so I used to go with the rugby team. I also did, what was it? Had to go for long walks. There was walking gangs. There was PTI down on the, down on the airfield. The PTI instructor would have us all out, arms wide, touch your fingertips all along in a line — two lines, three lines, four lines and as he did the manoeuvre and everybody followed him. Jumping up and down, arms waving, legs doing this, that and the other. Running on the spot and all this sort of thing you know and then always march. March back and, invariably with the band. The band were a pain in the ass. They used to go down in the drying room there practicing and it was din and you’re trying to gen up on a book and there was the bloody noise of these blokes trying to play these instruments. Banging their bloody drums. [laughs]
CB: Nightmare.
KH: But you had to live with it, you know. You learned to live with it. Practicing the bagpipes. They used to go up in the woods with the pipes. That was a good thing.
CB: At Wendover.
KH: In fine weather. Up in Wendover. Yeah. Heard them wailing away out there. They’re terrible things when you can’t play. If you play it properly it sounds good but pipes are terrible when they can’t play.
CB: So when you are then on a squadron we are on the front line effectively. What, how did the time off come and what did you?
KH: Well I was young in those days on the squadron. During the Battle of Britain it was, I can’t remember what I did. I just can’t. Because it was all work. I didn’t have much time off. I never went on holiday that summer. Some blokes used to go because they had a death in the family or something. I felt sorry for them but we took no leave. I couldn’t. I didn’t take any leave to go all the way down to Wales. Took a day and a half to get home some times and down again with the old puffer trains and this that and the other so I never bothered. Just go with the lads down to the village, to a pub and have a game of darts and this that and the other. Whenever possible if there was an organisation or sport I used to put my name down to play rugby and I did very well at that. Although I was small I was scrum half. Put the ball in. Talking about rugby I got in the desert in Egypt and the scrum down and the sand was blowing up the dust and you had the ball to shove in to the scrum and you could hardly see the hole to put the ball in. And the dust would cake around your mouth and you were covered in it and it were — [laughs]. Then again in Berlin I played rugby in the Olympic Stadium, Hitler’s Olympic stadium and snow was on the deck there. On the grass. And we played in three inches of snow. We played rugby there. So there’s a contrast for you. Desert and snow. But mainly it’s a grotty old station camp, station field which had probably got a slope in it and probably a low end where there was a load of mud and a dry end up the top but you adapt yourself to all these conditions and sometimes to your advantage.
CB: Good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Ken Hicks
Identifier
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AHicksDK151103
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-03
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:21:54 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Description
An account of the resource
Ken Hicks grew up in Wales and joined the Royal Air Force as an Apprentice Mechanic at RAF Halton. He worked on Spitfires during the Battle of Britain. He was later posted to Rhodesia and survived a crash in the bush. After the war, He took part in the Berlin Airlift and found a civilian worker who had died and been buried under the snow.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Africa
Egypt
Germany
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Kent
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1948
Contributor
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Julie Williams
222 Squadron
C-47
fitter airframe
ground crew
ground personnel
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Benson
RAF Halton
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Manston
Spitfire
Tiger Moth
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/363/6086/AJossDA151007.2.mp3
e6f59399c580ffcb25c07f1869f9492e
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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Joss, Douglas
Doug Joss
D A Joss
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Douglas Alexander Joss (632261, 56113 Royal Air Force), and two wartime photographs of him and his crew. Douglas Joss completed 32 operations as a rear gunner on 626 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Andrew Joss and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
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2015-10-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Joss, DA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: We’re rolling now. My name is Chris Brockbank and we are in Wendover speaking with Squadron Leader Douglas Joss, and the witnesses today are Brenda Ponton and Janet Ford and we're talking about the background experiences and the wartime experiences of Squadron Leader Joss. So over to you Douglas.
DJ: Oh, where do you want me to start?
CB: So if you start, please, with your earliest days in the family.
DJ: In the family?
CB: Yep.
DJ: I was born in Aberdeen, the eldest of five, and I was born in Aberdeen and then my father at the time, who had been in the First World War, he and his brother came back. He wanted to be a vet but his parents couldn't afford to send him further. The brother, the older one, got the money and he went to Aberdeen University and became a very well-known doctor in Nottingham. Dad wanted to be a vet and he couldn't anyway, but they said you can go out to East Africa as an assistant with the vet's out there doing research on sleeping sickness in cattle [coughs]. I think it's quite amusing that when I was born, he and my mother [coughs] decided what I was, should be called. Charlie after one of her twin brothers. When somebody you know, these people said he got killed in the First World War and somebody told her if you name him after somebody who's dead, your son will be dead within a year and she was daft enough to believe that so she changed my name to Douglas. We turned up eventually to join my father in Uganda and Kampala and he, she called me Douglas, and he said, ‘what's this Douglas business’, so she told him that. He said, ‘bloody madness. We said we’d call him Charlie and I'll call him Charlie’, so for twelve months he called me Charlie and she called me Douglas so you can see why I'm a bit of a mixed-up kid. Oh dear [coughs], anyway, while we were out there my sister Dora was born In Kampala. My son last year, year before, went out with my other son. Two sons went on a tour of Uganda, I said call in to Saint James's Church in Kampala and you’ll find out that I was baptised there by the Reverend Pitz, Pitz, you can never forget a name like that [coughs], I beg your pardon, sorry which he did and they did and they made him very welcome and said to him — well that's by the way. When we came back, he couldn't get back into the veterinary business at all and then he went in for post office and became what they call an SC and T In those times, sorting clerk and telegraphist and we went to Angal, which is not far north and he was postmaster. It's a tiny little post office and I recall visiting him there because I was fascinated how he would sit and receive telegrams with a Morse key which he’d learnt during the war in the Army, you know they'd took the old Morse out and you remember telegrams used to come out on a strip of paper, which they stuck on a telegram when it went out. So that's why we went there and we stayed there until he was offered a better job in Coventry and we moved to Coventry, and he was there. I met one or two lads who were in the Air Force, well [unclear] it might slip off a bit, I was in the Scouts while I was there, there’s a bit that comes up later on that. I remember the two lads, they were in the RAF and they came on leave, I became interested so I said to the family I think I'll go and join the Air Force and seeing mum was having a struggle to pay our fares and everything, we moved from our house at twenty-one shillings a week to a council house at fourteen shillings a week because we were hard up. I can't believe it, I can remember her crying because she hadn’t got tuppence to go to the Women's Institute and get cup of tea. However, err — where was I. I'll just remember there, it's there I decided to go in the Air Force anyway and she didn't want me to go in. Then the war was loomed. Jimmy Wales was my, if you like, Patrol Leader in the Scouts and I — mum didn't want me to go in the Air Force. Anyway this business of war looming in thirty-eight, I says well if I don't go there you know what will happen, I'll go and be called up in the Army and that will be worse. So she signed up to let me go. My father was uninterested, he says you please yourself and that's what I did and I went in Air Force in the [coughs], in the end of thirty-eight [coughs], October thirty-eight. I was tested then but because they were having trouble filling or building all the training schools which were expanding so rapidly at that time, I was sent home and they said we’ll call you back again, so go home. After I'd been tested and I actually went in, in the January of thirty-nine. You can get my number off that 632261, which I remember well. And I was sent from there down to Pembroke Dock just – I was sent as HCH, aircraft hands, labourers if you like. I'll interrupt you there, that's the first place I got a chance to fly in a Short Sunderland. Can I get you off your seat? Come here. My brother found a poster somewhere and he bought it for me. Now look in the right-hand corner. Can you see that poster was painted from the spot I was photographed in 1939? The beginning of thirty-nine and you can tell he stood — the photographer must have been, the painter must have been standing where I stood there from, absolutely [unclear] so that's it. So that's literally the first aircraft I flew in, the Sunderland.
CB: Right. Very interesting. Yes.
DJ: By that time it had been decided I should be a flight rigger. I don’t think there was any choice. I think I was told I would be a flight rigger, chippy, as it had an element of woodwork in it which fascinates me, I wasn't, I guess, I loved it. I became a chippy rigger and went from there to do basic training at Henlow, and then from Henlow down to — what’s the name of it? Weston-super-Mare, Locking, from Locking, down to Locking where I did my twelve months training as a rigger and passed out as a glorious LAC Leading Aircraftman. Whilst I was there I had a bosom pal, Ernie Morton, with whom I remained in close contact till last year. He died last year, didn't he?
BP: A few years ago.
DJ: Ernie.
BP: A few years ago.
DJ: Was it two years ago?
BP: A few years ago.
DJ: We remained close all that time and we were bits of lads, we were a bit naughty and we heard that on King’s Birthday they have a parade and then a day off, and we said we'll try and get out of parade, you know. We hated them but they had big boxes there and the two of us got into this great big box [coughs] to keep away from this parade and after, I don't know how long, everything was so quiet we got out. We were fools, they’d all been given the day off and they'd gone and we stayed in this, this bloody box for hours to get out of this. My memory of Ernie all these days. Anyway from there, when I first passed out as LAC, I was posted to Upavon which is the Central Flying School. Now Central Flying School, I went in as a rigger. You, you, I don't know what you did in the Air Force
CB: I flew.
DJ: Well, well you weren't an airman fitter or rigger then?
CB: No, No.
DJ: No. Well in those days we were given an aircraft, that was your aircraft and you serviced it to give it all its flying. I was allocated to a very famous bird called George Stainforth, the last Schneider trophy pilot who won the Schneider trophy for us and he had the last Fairey Battle, not bigger [unclear], not Fairmount. What's it called? Oh dear. He had the last — left in the Air Force. It will come to me in a minute. Anyway it was his he didn't like anybody flying it. It was a biplane, fighter biplane.
CB: A Gladiator was is it? Was it a Gladiator?
DJ: No, no it was very sharp and almost a forerunner of the Spitfire, if you like.
CB: Hawker Fury?
DJ: I've got a picture.
CB: Well we can pick it up in a minute.
DJ: Doesn’t matter it will come and he was — two things about him. Upavon had its own golf course, it still has I think, or it’s an Army unit. He made me act as his caddy when I was due days off, which hacked me off no end and he also, when he was away (it's a Fury, the Hawker Fury, his aircraft), he would say to me, ‘Joss, put that out of service, I don't want anybody else flying out, make it unserviceable so if anybody else had it, you could in all honesty, say it's unserviceable’. So I made it unserviceable, I’d take something out or I’d do something anything I used to do to make it unserviceable until he came back and there. Another chap came along at the time to get his wings back, a bloke named Bader, Douglas Bader, he came back there to be trained back up to get his wings back because you know he'd lost his wings when he'd lost his legs, and he came back there and I — he was being taught first of all in a Tutor a Hawker a, a –
CB: Avro Tutor?
DJ: Avro Tutor.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: He went in a Tutor and I helped him in and out of the aircraft. I have a memory of him, bearing in mind he was a Flight Lieutenant that day and I was still the LAC, a lady came up in a red sports car, about this high it is, and she said ‘do you know Douglas Bader’ and I said ‘yes ma'am’, she said ‘I'm his mum, can you tell me where I can find him?’ So I found him and introduced him, didn't introduce him and I says ‘come on, your Mum's waiting to see you over there’, which was lovely. And she — one thing that was ridiculous to me at the time was, isn't it lovely two of Douglas’s friends, and as for an LAC and a Flight Lieutenant being friends was just hairy fairy stuff, I laughed. Now if I might go right back to Halton they got Douglas down and told him a, an open day here and I reminded him of this case. I said ‘your mother came up to me’ I said, ‘she had a red MG that was half painted, it was being repainted, it was red and half grey and an MG’, and he said ‘I can't remember that’. I said ‘well she came’, he said ‘I know she came to drop it’. I said ‘I flew with you there’, you know, because if you did a major inspection, you flew with that aircraft if you could just to make sure you've done the job properly and he couldn't remember this at all. Anyway he was very kind. When he went back to the station [unclear], another Battle of Britain pilot a [unclear] at Halton, he came to see me one day and said he'd had a letter from Douglas thanking me for looking after him with his time here and it says if you see Joss you can tell him. I have now checked my log book and he was dead right, we did have a car which was half painted, ‘cause my mother was alive in those days, well his mother and I said ‘well yes she came along with a half painted car’. A fond memory. Well I thought that was touching. I’ve got a cutting of a newspaper cutting of Douglas Bader and I having a chat which was rather nice. Anyway, going right back to Upavon, a notice came up said volunteers required to go abroad in a not too pleasant surroundings. Now this was where my friend Ernie and I split up. I said ‘come on Ernie, let's go to that’, I talked him into everything except that. He wouldn't go, he’d met a girl, fool that he was [laughs], you see [coughs], and he preferred to stay with the girl rather than the excitement of going abroad [coughs]. I was told ‘we're not telling you where you're going but you've got to go up to London Hospital, in London with a bunch of other boys, to have special inoculations against yellow fever’ and I didn't know where that was. Anyway we went to London and we came back and went on a troop ship eventually in [pause], just south of Glasgow, whatever it was. Anyway it was a troop ship we got on and half way out we found out we were all going to the Gold Coast, to a place called Takoradi and what Takoradi was doing there was aircraft. The Maryland Kitty Hawk, Mohawks were coming in pieces and we were then, we were assembling them there. And it was known as the white man's grave in those days. All the expats that lived out there, all had spine pads you wore on your shirt, a big padded cloth which went shoulder to shoulder and down your back so your spine didn't get hurt. Needless to say, the RAF took no notice whatsoever and we worked in shirt sleeves all the time for they could get away with it, and the locals were very hacked off with this as it reduced their income because they got paid for that job. So I was there for a bit and once we hadn’t been there all that long and I got malaria three, four times while I was there. Which wasn't very nice. Again a request came up for volunteers to go up country so, like an idiot, ‘yes please I'd love to go’, and I went there and I went via Nigeria Lagos, to a place called Maiduguri in northern Nigeria and funnily enough it was a place called Jos, which is, which is where, where the locals lived. All the expats would go there because it was higher and it was better climate. But I was there and I went for — there for up to Maiduguri. We were in mud huts. I've got photographs of them here somewhere [coughs] which wasn't very nice, the water was fetched from the river of Lake Chad and boiled. All the water used for cooking, for washing, for everything else was from there and we were invited to the Lake Chad Polo sports club. They do Polo, they do most sports but there was all the expats and Europeans over there and there were two people and I heard two people talking and they said the name Joss, you see, and I said ‘yes’, and the chap turned around and he said ‘yes what?’ I said ‘you mentioned Joss, that's my name’, he said ‘no, I was talking about the town Jos where we go for a break’, he said ‘where do you come from?’ So I told him as much as I’ve told you and he said ‘any other relatives named Joss?’ I said ‘yes, my uncle's a doctor’, he says, ‘I shared a billet with him in Edinburgh would you believe’. He said he's quite honoured really and we became very friendly with him, he was the local civilian white Doctor and he used to [coughs], used to treat all the, the — his favourite story of the West African Winter Force, before the WAFs, before the RAF WAFs they were called, the WAFs, West African Winter Force, he used to have job finding his shoes to see them, because the smallest they would take were tens, they were big but he said ‘they're brutal’. I said ‘what do you mean they're brutal?’ he said ‘well one of them got me to circumcise him and next day he came back and he asked me to put stitches back on him’, you know because he was out with his girlfriend performing, tore his stitches and could he put them back in again. I thought that seemed a silly past time to me [laughs] [coughs] so that was there. And while I was in fortinamy, I went from there to French Patrol Africa, fortinamy on Lake Chad, and while I was there de Gaulle visited us. I got another rollicking there because he came in there called a [unclear] Flying wing. I've got a photograph of it there. There was only three of them ever made. They were given to de Gaulle. One was his private plane. Whatever happened to the other two I don't know. His pilot was a civilian, it was Jim Mollison, Amy Johnson's husband and he flew him about all over the world and over the country. After his visit I had a French Captain say ‘you come here English, English come here, you're very rude, very naughty’ he said, ‘they’re playing the National Anthem and you're walking around taking no notice’. I said ‘I was taking photographs’, which I was. ‘I'm sorry I didn't recognise it’. ‘Didn't recognise our national anthem? Well, that's disgraceful’ he said and the other thing he said ‘that flag of yours is higher than ours, get it down’. We’d got an old pole and put up our RAF Ensign [laughs] [coughs] so we had a Sergeant and a Corporal, Ginger Bunsen and Willie Downie which was four of us. He said ‘well you better fetch it down’, so he fetched it down this homemade flag pole and I fetched our flag down about four inches. I wasn't going to do anymore I thought it was enough but he got a bit stroppy with me about that and made me fetch it down another foot [laughs], so I was there and I got malaria again. Then he had a very, to me, unusual treatment. I had beforehand was being, was — quinine and all sorts but he said ‘no, lie on your stomach’, which I did and on my back he had little oval bottles which he heated and he placed on my back. He says ‘that will take all the fever away’, and I thought he was, he was a Martinique and I thought the man’s a bloody witch doctor. I don't know what he did but it worked beautifully and I mentioned it to doctors since and said that we’ve heard of this but never known anybody, and I says ‘well I had my malaria taken out of me by little bottles which are heated up and put it on’. My back was covered in bruises after they all came off. Anyway, I was in the village one day and we were on the edge of the British, of the Foreign Legion village and I saw a young lad, an Arab lad, come running out and a Legionnaire running after him and kicked him from behind and knocked him flat and started to kick him. I didn't know what he was doing, but I picked up a bit of wood and I hit this Legionnaire on the back of the head and said ‘stop doing that to that boy, he's only a boy’, and what he says, he says ‘I caught him stealing something’ and I said ‘I don't care’. The next thing is I'm picked up by the Legion and put in their billet with some Italian prisoners. Now this was interesting though, because if you wanted to go to the loo, you all had to go or none. If you're all bursting they’d say right outside and march and you’d march to the loo and you stood there and you performed if you did and you were taken back. Anyway, the French Captain at the time was Mercenaire, Captain Mercenaire, he said ‘I don't think you’d better stay here in the in fortinamy’ and he sent me back to Maiduguri and they sent up an Army Captain who took me back to Maiduguri. ‘What the devil did you do?’ I said ‘I only knocked this bloke out with a bit of wood really’ and he thought that was worthwhile.
CB: [laughing]
DJ: They took me back to Maiduguri and I stayed there and the doctor there, (isn't it funny how you remember these things talking), was South African, a Doctor Tatz, T A T Z, and he said ‘well I'm not letting you back on the airfield, you can become my assistant. I'll find you jobs to do in the, in the sick quarters’, which was a sort of a mud Hospital. South African [unclear] which I did until I had a – what do they call it? A rigor, you know, a relapse of the malaria, of the malaria. He said ‘well you're not much use to us out here, you'd better go home’. So I went home and they flew us down to, to Lagos and we got on a French troop ship that brought me back to the UK. And there when I came back my first visit, to would you believe, Lincoln, where I was in Newark. I was posted to Newark, Ossington which is just outside Newark and I was there but I kept getting relapses and they sent me to Cranwell to hospital there for a long time until I was — got rid of it and they came in one day and said ‘we need some volunteers and you people have had malaria’. And I was in a ward with others and they said they're some expert to [pause] examine me, tests going on, on some tests that I was told you’re having these relapses. I’ve got — a moment [unclear], I forget there was, two eights, three eights, twenty-four of us put in this ward and they said ‘any of you willing to go on these examinations’, yes said I and they said ‘we will draw for it, one of you will have a liquid one, one of you will have pills, the other one will have a jab in the bum’. You can guess, of course, which one I got.
CB: [laughing]
DJ: A jab in the bum and that's that but it worked. After that I didn't get a relapse, well I did some years later but a very mild one. It worked and they said and I [unclear] here used to be the centre of tropical medicine for the RAF and they told them about that and they took notes that you're taken and they said we've heard about those tests can you, can you tell us, can and I said yes, and they said can you remember the doctor, but I couldn't but I remember the day and they took notes of this and I've never had any since at all no relapses. Anyway, where are we now?
CB: What year are we in now and month?
DJ: Oh, now I'm at Ossington, Ossington which is B42. Whilst I was there we had — oh, I applied to be a flight engineer and I got back on from a general office saying no your application is turned down, they got so many applicants for flight engineers, every fitter and rigger wants to be a flight engineer and so you've had it. Anyway, you may remember they had an Inspector General, well used to have in the RAF, and he came on inspection that day and I'd been on nights and I was the standing by the bed and he came along the billets and talked to everybody and was very friendly, and he came down our billet and the old station officer said ‘attention!’ And we had to stand there out of bed and we’d been on nights and we were made to get up out of bed, and I was standing there in my pyjama trousers only. Anyway, he came and he was quite amused and said ‘I'm sorry you shouldn't do that. Anybody got any complaints’. [unclear] well what’s your trouble and the old Station Master was glaring at me, I said ‘well, I applied to be a flight officer and I've been turned down, I want to be air crew’, and he turned to his ADC, take this man's name, who turned to the station master and said take this man's name and I thought well that's the end of that. Two weeks later the tannoy went. I was a corporal then. Corporal Joss report to Station Commander immediately, don't stop to take your overalls off. So I went over and he said ‘you're a cheeky bugger Joss, aren't you? You stopping the Inspector General’, he was only an Air Vice Marshal, I said ‘well he asked’ and he said ‘well he's replied, and he says if you're prepared to take a gunner, you can go’. Which section? [unclear] Oh well I said ‘I can go Wednesday, tomorrow’, he said ‘don't be ridiculous, I'll let you know when you go’. He said you've got to go for selection first of all. So it was only about a week later I went down to — what’s that place near the Zoo in London?
CB: Lords, Lords.
DJ: No it was all blocks of flats. It was near there, anyway they were big blocks of flats just outside London Zoo because we were was [unclear] London Zoo when the selection went on and who turned up there, going right back now to my scouting friend, you'll see his name on there. Wales [coughs], and by this time I've done three years service you see, so I was an old hand, I'd got a GC, you know the one stripe you have for three years behaviour. Well he didn't want to go so I said stick with me, I'll look after you, I'll see you through, we’ll stick together on this.So we went through the things and he said we'll both [unclear] and I went up to the people, the class taking notes of sending and posting or whatever, and I said this chap [unclear], he's got to come with me, his parents asked that I look after him. And they said I've heard some tales but they said alright. So — where was the first place we went? Bridlington. Now I've got a very happy memory of Bridlington. They billeted us in — they emptied the council houses in the town and put us all in the houses, but I don't know where the whole Village went. And then one day we were parading all over the place, down near the Harbour and they said right, back here tonight at, I think they said eight o'clock, at the harbour. So we went back at eight o'clock to the harbour and we were all given a flying suit, just looked like an overall, and a life jacket and the other thing is, we were given a thing which was like a whistle, he said fasten your whistle onto [unclear] you must have seen it [unclear] on the collar, he said ‘what you are going to do in the dark. You are going to jump in the harbour in the dark and you will find a dinghy upside-down. You've got to find it, put it the right way up and as soon as you blow your whistle so they all come together, soon as you fill it with seven people, you can come in and have some supper’. And that's what we did. I remember pitch black, freezing flipping cold and we had a man named — I remember him [pause], Mogford was his name, no it wasn't, it was whatever it will come to me — Shadmaniham. He said ‘I can't swim I'm not going in there’. They said if you don't go in there, you're off the course and you're finished and we all liked him. He was a — I remember, he was a Sheffield steel worker or had been. Anyway we're all lined up, eleven o'clock, it was pitch black and we saw them throw this dingy and move it right out to the middle of the harbour in the dark. There wasn't a light anywhere and, and this man Shadmaniham says ‘well I'm not going in’ so one or two of us nodded like this you see. We just grabbed him and ran with him and jumped and took him with us. He was screaming like mad and he jumped in with us. Anyway we kept hold of him. Jimmy Wales was still with me then, we grabbed him and we started blowing our whistles and he wouldn’t move, you know swam or floated whatever you like until we got near the whistle. And we eventually found the dinghy, got in to it and we managed to turn it upright and dragged this lad in, and he said ‘I would never have done that if you hadn't done that’ but he says ‘I didn't want to lose my place, I didn't want to be thrown out’. So that's my one and only fairly memory of Bridlington. I hated it, it was terrifying, it really was awful. I don't know how many people they did that to but we did that. Anyway from there [pause] Andreas on the Isle of Man, where we did [unclear] re- training. Now then [long pause] my log book. Can I, can I read it out of my logbook because I'm very proud of this. If I can find it. Where is it? Where's the front page?
CB: This is one of the first entries in your log book.
DJ: Yeah. It says here, D Joss, air gunner. With affect from the 21st June forty-three. Squadron Leader Tooth signed it. Qualified air gunner and this is the bit I like, over the page. Theory - above average. Practical - outstanding and I like that, and the reason I got that is, I used to go four or five in the back of an Anson at the time and you had to climb into a turret on the back of the Anson and [unclear] flew with a dinghy trailing way behind and you shot at that. The rounds in the gun were dipped different colours so they’d know who had red or green or blue and they know who had hit the drone. Two of the other lads were terrified they wouldn't, they didn’t get out they didn't want to go in the turret, they didn’t, so I said let me go in there I'll do yours, I'll do yours, you see as a result, of course, I got no end of drogue colours. My, their colours and mine were in there and I got the credit for it. Anyway, above average theory. Outstanding - practical. Results - average. Recommended for commission at a later date after first experience and that was signed by Squadron Leader Tooth, OC Training Wing, Number One Air Gunnery Squad. So that's my proud possession. Exercises [pause] I shot two hundred rounds there and two hundred rounds there and so on. So there, that's that.
CB: That's really good. Do you want to have a break for a bit?
DJ: [Unclear]. The other four of us. My grandparents and her brother said ‘we’ll send two of them up to us in Aberdeen and they can stay with us until you get posted’. So I went and stayed with the grandparents and my sister went with my mother's brother. [Unclear] we were only going to go for a short time until she felt better but both of us stayed, lived up there for a further eighteen months. Really until we were summoned back.
CB: This is when the youngest was born?
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Right
DJ: And when mum had got over all that lot, she said she wanted us back and back we went. And we left Aberdeen and went back there. But I, I've been back once, only once since [unclear] the and memories came flooding back. Yes I have a brother, who is going to stay with us next week, he was also born in Aberdeen. Anyway where had I got to?
CB: Just, just briefly there, you moved, the family moved south and went to Coventry.
DJ: Yes.
CB: So we’re now from the narrative you've reached so far, got to 1942.
DJ: Two.
CB: But what was the experience of the family of being in Coventry during the bombing?
DJ: Ahh. This thing says we moved in the November and I was on a troop ship on the way to West Africa, and on the radio we heard this and I knew nothing about. I didn't hear from them and anyway, when I went at Takoradi [unclear] just, I was getting quite desperate I want to see the padre. One always visited the padre [unclear] and I told him about this and I said can't you do anything for me and he said he’d I’ll do what I can. He apparently had got permission to signal the police in Coventry to find out what had happened to family.
CB: This is Operation Moonlight Sonata so 17th, 18th November forty, yeah. OK.
DJ: And he did and they were very good. They said, police Coventry said to [unclear] the family were alright and well. They were all well and alright. I got a letter eventually from my mother and men used to [unclear] phone the [unclear] and what amazes me they got the pleasure when it used to take three weeks or three months sometimes to get the mail. There's only one amusing bit that I know of at the time. They could hear, where we lived in Radford in the corner of Coventry, they could all hear the bombing going on further in the town and Mum apparently, when she went to have a look to see what was happening, see if there's any flames and she opened the door and a bomb went off not far away. Blew the door and her in the kitchen and she laid on her back with the door handle in her hand. The rest of family thought this was hilarious and they all burst out laughing she says ‘there's me lying there, in pain and didn't know what happened and the kids are all standing there around laughing and I'm still holding the door handle in my hand’ [laughs].
CB: [laughs] what an extraordinary thing.
DJ: So for the rest of the time the letters, I got they referred about the tin can they had in the garden and they baked on for some months before they got power back on in the house. She did that. Dad was, he did, I don't know what he did during the war there, he did something. I think he was a, a warden for the Post Office, he used to go on the roof in the Post Office and do things there, an air raid warden.
CB: Umm.
DJ: That's the only thing, his contribution there. I tried to persuade him to go and join the Army. Now we weren't very friendly, I don't know why, he didn't bother, he didn't like us kids, he, he had nothing to do with us. He never came to school, he never came to anything. We weren't unfriendly but he was never, never friendly. Took no part in us. And I said well you were in the Army experience with the First World War, why don't you go and see if you want to go in the Post Office at Nottingham. Why I said that, his brother was a doctor in Nottingham, had been. He got an MC in the First World War and a Barterat in the second, would you believe. However, I said the Army Post Office is in Nottingham, you can go and stay with Uncle Joss as he was called or something, they'll give you a job in the post office but he wouldn't. He said no he’s staying at home and that was it as far as I was concerned. That was his contribution to the war, it was nothing at all.
CB: Ok, thank you very much. So now picking up on where we were before, you’re at, in the Isle of Man.
DJ: Oh yes.
CB: And you’ve — so we’re talking about 1943.
DJ: Yes.
CB: And the practical outstanding recommended for a commission later.
DJ: Yeah.
CB: So at that stage, what happened next?
DJ: Well, I was the most senior, if you like, cadet or recruit at the time in the thing because I’d done a bit of service in. So when our course had finished they said you're all going back to Loughborough, which I was pleased about because we did our college at Loughborough. You're going to Loughborough to join an aircrew, a bomber crew. It was quite amusing ‘cause the old ferry port of — and there were some RAF police on the side shouting ‘can we have the Senior NCO for this lot’, you see, and we said ‘where is the Senior NCO for this lot’, and all our lot are standing there looking round until one of them reminded me - you're the senior. Oh God I said the first time I've been given a Senior NCO job, you see, so I had to get them off and march them there and we were put on coaches, some of us and we were posted, moved to Loughborough. Now I don't know what the system was to become crewed down there in those Bomber Command days. Do you know what they — well I'll tell you anyway.
CB: They put you in a hanger.
DJ: Well.
CB: To crew up.
DJ: Well what it was, it was a big place anyway and there was enough to make seven, you know there's so many gunners. Two of each and there’s navigators and bomb aimers and flight engineers and pilots. Now I didn't drink, never drank and when we went there, I’m with Jimmy and I, I said stick with me Jimmy we’ll get on the same crew and they, they got us all together and they said now we're going to leave you and we’ll assemble tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock or whatever, and if you haven't formed yourself into a crew of seven or six because we picked up [unclear] late, then we will form you. So we didn't want to be [unclear] Jimmy and I looked round, we didn't know what to do. He didn't drink either and he was very proud of the fact that he was a Kings Scout. He was always on about this being a Kings Scout was Jimmy. We used to get him to do all sorts of jobs because he did that [coughs] and we saw a bloke sitting in the corner, quiet, ‘cause all the others did the obvious thing and said let's go down the pub and sort ourselves out, you see. Jimmy and I didn't want to go and we saw these chap sitting quietly in the corner and we said why do you [unclear] and he said ‘well I don't drink, I don't like bother’. ‘Well’, I said, ‘well Jimmy and I don't drink, shall we join up’, and that's how we got Len the Navigator and we looked around and there was other people about, and we said any of you teetotallers who don't like pub life and we picked up the bomb aimer and that was [unclear], and there was some flight lieutenants there, pilots so, oh no they were pilots, just commissioned or NCO pilots a lot of them. You know, most of them were sergeants in the early days and we said, look at him, he's a flight lieutenant, he must have experience, so we went to him and said ‘have you got a crew’, and he said no, so we said ‘well look, we've got a crew here, there’s him, there’s him, there’s him and him, we’ve got them all, would you like to be our pilot?’ Yes he says, alright I'll be that, which was a mistake.
CB: This was Wood, Chippy Wood this was, was it?
DJ: No this wasn’t.
CB: Oh it wasn't, oh right.
DJ: No this wasn’t Chippy no, this was a pilot whose name I can't remember. It's in here, it doesn't matter
CB: Yes, ok.
DJ: We got him and they said right you as a crew are going to Castle Donington to do some twin engine to enable you to practice, you see on Wellingtons. So we all turned up there and they told us we were going to do service and bombs first of all, you see, which was fair enough. We all did service and bombs, except that our pilot could have — whatever it was we don't know. He took off three times and he landed straight ahead three times in ploughed fields or in the grass. He went helling off like a mortal fire bell, as you know.
CB: I was coming to that, ok, go on.
DJ: They took him off and there so there was us crew as referred to as a headless crew and then they said, well you go to your training in your own various department, gunners, navigators or what, but we didn't, we used to go into Derby and to dances and all the rest, you see, much more fun. Anyway the old [unclear], whatever this chaps name, I must find it, if I can find it, in here.
CB: So he was shipped away?
DJ: Would you believe it, a flight lieutenant, he was made OC Station Bicycle.
CB: Oh right.
DJ: And I couldn't get over that.
CB: Right, nice one [laughs]
DJ: I just couldn't believe it.
CB: Interesting connotation, station bicycles.
DJ: I can't find his flipping name.
CB: Some of them were even metal.
DJ: It doesn't matter. Sleight, s, l, e, i, g, h, t and we all — the tannoy went and the crews were to assemble in OC Flying Wing, Wing Commander. So we all trooped back in there and marched in and stood there, and he said ‘right crew, we've got you a new pilot. There he is’, and there's a chap sitting in the corner. He unfolded himself and he was six foot five. He'd lost his crew, he was the only survivor from a crew that had bailed out somewhere and he was the only one surviving.
CB: Gosh.
DJ: And the first thing that happened he said to us, I thought this was hilarious he, he says ‘come on what will we do, I tell you what let's go down the pub so we get to know each other’ and I said ‘you're going to be upset about this, you’ve just inherited the only all teetotal crew in the RAF’. ‘God Almighty’, he said, he said ‘I'm going to have you stuffed and put in the Imperial War Museum after the war’. He said they can't be, I said yes that's what you've got. Anyway we came good. Chippy and I fixed up particularly and we became very, very good personal friends as well — he was a terrific pilot, he was lovely. Anyway, by the time we did a few ops. I don't have it in there. At, from Castle Donington we were posted to [long pause], I can't remember but this is where I was put on a Halifax.
CB: Yes, this is the HCU now.
DJ: Yes, the HCU. Yes, Heavy Converse Unit, yes [long pause], Wellington, Wellington, Wellington, Wellington. I can't find it [long pause], Wellington, Wellington, Wellington, the Wellington, Wellington HE [pause] and we had instructor pilots. We had different pilots there, one was an Officer Pilot Palmer and one who was [unclear] and one who was a Woodland and one was a Palmer [pause], but we only did five hours on that, on thingme there. There was one interesting incident there.
CB: Are we on Halifaxes now?
DJ: No it was —
CB: Are we on Wellingtons or Halifaxes?
DJ: Halifaxes.
CB: Right, ok
DJ: Three. Where we met, I did three ops in the Halifaxes, I can't see why I haven't written it in here. I suppose it was in my log book, I don't know. Anyway there was an incident there which I thought was interesting, nobody else did, but I did. We were doing service and bombs and we used the Halifax at nights, at night cross country and come back but they told us, the gunners, keep your guns loaded because the Germans have been coming and if they saw lights, go on in a — you maybe know all of this, they would attack aircraft landing. The German fighters would get you so we had to go round and if you're going to land and old Chippy would say are you loaded Doug, and I would say yes I am and loaded up my guns just in case. What happened then is we went in for a very nice landing, the tail goes down with a bit of a bump, my guns, which I hadn't switched security on went - brrrr, brrr - right across the Officer's Mess.
CB: [laughs]
DJ: When we came off the aircraft and back in, he said your crews wanted by the station commander. He said ‘how the hell did that happen?’ I had to put my hand up and I said ‘well I forgot to put on my safety catch when we landed’. He said ‘at least you had the sense to land them loaded’. That's all he said. He says ‘well bugger off, use your loaf in the future’ but that's it. And I said, was it Honington? Is it Honington? There's a place up I think it was Honington. Anyway, I was shown the bullet holes later on, on the side of the Officers Mess. It was just one burst that went, you know, I quickly switched off. So there's a memory. Anyway I thought, I hate this aircraft because you know, we were right down and to get past that big column at the back of the thing into the turret was [unclear], I thought if I have to get out of this it will take me hours. Anyway we were sent for and were told we were going to a place called Wickenby. That's 12 Squadron. They've taken A Flight off 12 Squadron and made it into 626 Squadron and you're going to join 626 Squadron at Wickenby. And I've been in touch with them ever since.
CB: So the Halifax was 12 Squadron?
DJ: No the Halifax —
CB: No, the HCU was the Halifax
DJ: Yes, HCU, and the 12 Squadron was all Lancs.
CB: Yeah, ok. Do you want to stop for a bit?
DJ: It so happens that the only apprentice which got a VC was at 12 Squadron and they’ve got a memorial service to him — 3rd of November?
BP: Yes.
DJ: Yes, 3rd of November this year they're doing that. He was the only bloke that got a VC. He was an apprentice there, but anyway we were there so we started. Now then it's all — you’ve got it all here written down for you in that thing I've given you.
CB: Ok.
DJ: Every operation is in there and we were the first crew to go for three months. Complete a tour in three months, while the others were being [unclear]. The first crew to come back in three months, you know, only with a minor injury or [unclear] and you were hit by flak occasionally but if you look in that you can get every op in that one. So there.
BP: You did an extra, you did an extra one.
CB: Just to, just to recap. So you were on Halifax, you did only three ops on that.
DJ: Yes, and then we were transferred to, to Wickenby.
CB: Yes, to Halifax.
DJ: To help form 626 Squadron.
CB: Yes, yes Lancaster. Ok. Good.
DJ: We did a — it's all there, I won’t go through —
CB: Where, where —
DJ: But they're all in there.
CB: Yes.
DJ: And when we came home, we were hit by flak sometime, quite a peppering we got and the — it burst in the perspex cover of the bomb aimers nose bit.
CB: Yep.
DJ: And old Dom was there and he said ‘no skipper, I've been hit, my face is covered in blood’ and skipper said ‘well come on back up here, we’ll look at you on the bench’ and he said ‘no I'll stay here’. I thought, here we go, here’s a medal going and left him. Anyway, he says when we were coming back, he radioed in, injury aboard, medical standing by and it really is funny, well it was at the time. When they came and the ladder that went in to came out at the front, he’d got a bit of perspex stuck in his oxygen mask in the end of his nose. No wonder he was covered in blood, it was going in there, about as big as a pencil [laughs], we thought all this was absolutely hilarious [laughs]. Anyway, the medics took him off and they said, ‘well bit of shock here, we better put you in bed you know, to see that you're alright’. Anyway, he was alright. He came back to us two days, well three ops later. Towards the end of the tour, because we’d finish the tour, the station commander came down. He used to meet those that had done their tour and he said congratulations, you know, all you can go off now on two weeks leave except you [unclear], you missed a couple of ops, you've got to do a couple or two to pack up. Chippy didn't even hesitate, he said, no he's not, we’ll do another tour because we're not letting him fly with another strange crew. He just felt infinity and we were all such good friends and we knew each other so well, so we did the extra to make a total of thirty-two and make him finish his tour and that was alright [long pause].
CB: Amazing.
DJ: So, and that's me in the Bomber Command.
CB: When you, when he wasn't around, who was the stand in air bomber?
DJ: Oh I couldn't tell you.
CB: No but was it one person who — both times or a different, sorry, the same person both times or how did they select them?
DJ: Where, which bit?
CB: When, when your man was wounded.
DJ: Oh we were just told that there was a spare bomb aimer, you know, come and join our crew. I couldn't tell you his name now. Well I don't think it's even in my log book, I'm pretty sure it's not. We were just given a gash one and he would have been a gash one, you see, for somebody else had he done another tour. Ok [pause]
CB: Ok. So that's fine, thank you. So you did thirty-two ops. What happened after that?
DJ: Oh, well I volunteered for [pause], what do they call, a song about — Dambusters for the, what do they call those that [pause].
BP: Don’t know. Pathfinders?.
DJ: No, no, which lay the markers. What do they call that?
CB: The —
DJ: Always used to lay markers.
CB: The markers, the markers.
DJ: The markers.
CB: Well they were, they were the Pathfinders.
BP: Pathfinders.
DJ: Pathfinders.
CB: Yes.
DJ: Well I volunteered for the Pathfinders.
CB: Right.
DJ: And they said no. I said well alright can I go overseas, they said yes [laughs]. So the next thing is, after a bit of time, I’m on a troop ship on the way to India. I got about three weeks leave I think, and then I — Gourock was it, is it Gourock, yes I was in Gourock, and I sailed from there, again not knowing where I was going at the time until we were well on the way, and then they said we were going to India, first to Bombay and that happened. Went to Bombay. Went ashore. I chummed with a bloke named — for a pilot officer to chum up with a wing commander was just not very friendly, but I chummed up with a dentist who was, who'd been to India and was an old hand and knew it all, and we got on very well. So we went to India and then we went ashore at Bombay, under the gateway to India, opposite that beautiful hotel that got attacked. The Taj, it was named after the famous Taj, it was the Taj hotel. And there, from there I was sent to Delhi which was then the Far East Air Force Headquarters, and they said ‘well we've got no use for you here, we’ll send you down to a place called Chittagong’, which was in Assam. And I said what am I to do there and they said [unclear] and we were hoping we might be able to release or get some prisoners released, in which case you'd be responsible for sorting them out and touring them home. So we went to Chittagong and I got a real rollicking there, because amongst other things I did, was issue a certificate for the amount of alcohol to each unit. Five to airman and NCOs and a bottle, you could have whiskey or scotch, went to officers. Terrible that in the middle of the war, wasn't it, and I, somehow I forget one of the blokes [unclear] he was a group captain, he wrote me a snotty letter because he’d been late in getting this chit to get the stuff from the Indian we had there, not a NAAFI, it was a sort of, I don't know they weren't called NAAFI, I forget what they're called now, but it was, it used to issue the sort of stuff that NAAFIs issued, and I got this stinking letter from this group captain that said he was delayed and nobody had their drink, and don't you realise we’re at the frontier, and all the rest of it. So I was just a flying officer then, I wrote back a stupid letter to him saying that I'm very sorry I couldn't get the Japanese to coincide their retreat with your thirstiness. About sixteen years ago, I phoned him up from [unclear], who was Air Officer Banham who was the OEC. What do they call it? In the air — Middle East Air Force. No it wasn't, it was called — it was, whatever it was.
CB: Far East Air Force.
DJ: They used north just off — what’s the capital? Rangoon. He was, he was a very good AOCH. He sent me for there. He says now come and I’d stand to attention for him. He said, I can see him standing there, he says ‘you don't look like an idiot to me, Joss’ and I said ‘what makes you say that sir?’ He says ‘you write bloody rude letters to [unclear], not even in the third party, you write it in the English party, you don't do service mail like that’ and he says ‘will you go back up to Chittagong, we've got a job for you in a bit’. So I went back up to Chittagong and the next thing is new we’re assembling up all the air, Middle East Air Force. that bit of it anyway, HQ 22 Group or 24 Group. We were going to assemble, going down to Bangalore.
CB: This is all in Burma?
DJ: No, this is —
CB: No the earlier bit?
DJ: No going down to India. He said ‘we're sending, the whole units moving down there. The train had come in, a special train loaded with all our stuff. We're going to fly the others down or they're going to go down eventually. You, Joss, for being an idiot, are going to be in charge of that train down to Bangalore’ and I said ‘who will I have with me’. He said ‘you've got six Indians’, or what do they call them, followers. ‘ You've got six followers’. And I said ‘what about rations and food?’ He said ‘use your initiative boy, you've got six followers, tell them you need to be fed and they’ll sort you out’, and I thought, god this is awful. Would you believe it? It took me over six days to go from Chittagong to Bangalore, we were right down the outside of India. It was a one trick track and if there's trains coming up, we'd park, we parked sometimes overnight, sometimes just for a couple of hours, sometimes for five or six hours and the old [unclear] would come along, ‘hello Sar, we stop here and make you cha?’ ‘Yes’ I says ‘please make me cha’. I said ‘I want some food, any chance?’ They said no money. I said ‘I've got some money’, I give him some, he said ‘I buy chicken, I buy eggs’, and that was my journey and it was fascinating, absolutely. I was the only European, if you like, on the train all the way round to Chittagong to, to, to — what did I say it was?
BP: Bangalore, Bangalore.
DJ: Bangalore, yes. What was the place called outside? Yelahanka, and we were all in Yelahanka, and he said, told us what we're going to do, we’re moving back up to Bombay now, to assemble for re-entry in to Malay in Singapore. And you're joining the Army in Bangalore for landing in Singapore. So l thought lovely [unclear] stuff, you see. So we got — oh, while we were there, they announced that the war in Europe, VE, where you know — the war, peace was there. It went hilarious. We were very stupid really. We had decided, everybody wanted a paddy and we went into Bangalore and we got a little [pause] bola. Oh, what do they call them? You know the two-wheeled carts you pull it, the two wheeled cart. The cha bola? Oh no cha is a tea. Well whatever it was. He was the bloke that used to tow these things and we said to him ‘how many rupees you get if you work all day?’ ‘Oh Sar [unclear] five, six rupees’. So we had a whip round and we took the money and put it in his hand and said no more work today. We will take you home and we put him in the cart. No, no, no, I can't do that. We put him in and made him show us the way home. We towed him to his home and we were told afterwards that we did him a grave disservice. He’d lost face [unclear] towing him, you know and about five Europeans towing a thingme right through the Indian quarter in the back of the [laughs], so we were surprised why he wasn't very grateful. Anyway, from there back up to Bombay. Troop ships again. On our way and we were, we were in the Indian Ocean. We stopped at, what is, what is the place in the South? Sri Lanka, but we weren't allowed ashore, but we carried on sailing and the announcement made then that Japan had packed in and we carried on, and we went to the, the, the pass between Malaya and, and a bit of land, I forget what it is. Anyway, we moved off a place, the stip, Malacca. We moved off the stip and we had ropes on the side of the ship to get down you see, and I might have a photograph of it, and a sailor says to me as I was going down the ship, he says ‘mate’, he says ‘if you had any sense in you, why don't you load that gun of yours’. I’d got a pistol in here but I hadn’t loaded it. He says ‘you're going ashore, you don't know what's going to happen to you there, you want to load that’. Oh yes I thought, I’d better, which I didn’t. But we went into LST, Landing Ship Tanks and we went ashore, not a — no opposition whatsoever and this, a chap I'd got pally with too always seemed [unclear] we decided to walk into Kuala Lumpur as best we could. So we said, they said find your own transport and so we went there and two Japanese came along in a little van sort of thing, which we told to come out and surrender and they came out no bother. And we took the key off them and pinched this car, you see. We went into Kuala Lumpur and this chap and I. I remember he was a Glasgow policeman, he was a big strong chap. He says ‘come on let's get out the way, we don't want to get involved in this’. So we stood and watched the rest of the troops march into Kuala Lumpur, you know, we stood by the side of them. It was, it was fascinating and there again the same air commodore that I met at Bangalore, Paddy Banham , The Air Commodore, the Earl of Banham was known as Paddy Banham. He sent for me. He says ‘Joss, you can use your intelligence, I've got a little job for you’, and I said ‘oh yes, sir’. He says ‘have you got any transport?’ I said ‘yes sir, I've got a very nice thing’. ‘Oh good’ he said. We did — this lad says shall we hand it in now? I said ‘no, no, no if we do hand it in the senior officers will take it off us’. We’ve unclipped our gold bands, which we’d kept. He says ‘if you go down to Singapore, and there's a conference call there by the Army to reallocate accommodation for the Navy, the Air Force and us. Now what you’re to do, you’ll find the instructions down there, you’ll find some [unclear]’ and he produced a list of who or what we needed accommodation for. His own, something and various other officers and the various units. Six health units and he says you're not to take up any new units from the Japanese. It’s only the units only previously [unclear], you know, used by the Japanese. So I thought — so I went down there. I, this lad, who's quite a [unclear] we looked in, we were told, we knew where the Japs had come out of. And you've heard of Raffles Hotel, well next to that used to be Raffles Institute, which is a block of flats overlooking Padang, so we went in there and they were very nice flats, so we said that's ours, his and mine. Paddy then came down and, oh yes, there’s an interesting thing, I was sent for by an Army colonel and he says, I was a flight lieutenant by now, I'd really got on, he says where's the RAF representative on this allocation and accommodation? I said I'm it. He sent a signal up to Paddy Banham saying, you know, we've only got this. I think I was a flight attendant or a flying officer, or whatever I was there. He said, he says we haven't got any proper representative and Paddy said, I don't know what the Army and Navy do, but flying officers here are perfectly capable of sorting out accommodation for their officers. Which the army didn't like that. I did.
CB: [laughs]
DJ: But it didn’t matter we were sent in there. Anyway, Paddy Banham came down about three days, four days later and he says ‘right, could you arrange to meet at the Raffles Hotel’. He says ‘now you're taking me to the accommodation reserved for me’, and we’d found him a rather nice place. And the bugger he says, ‘no before we go there, can you take us to where you're going because we know what’ll happen’. So we said ‘yes sir’. So we took him in this place and he said ‘and I'll have that, I'll have that, you can move that to mine’. He took all the prime bits of furniture and statues and all things that the Japs had collected, removed into his flat. He said ‘right you can keep it now’ Joss’. So I was there. Now then if, I go right back to the beginning, when I joined the Air Force, originally I joined for six years. My six years came up round about that time and I got a message. You are entitled, now the war is over, to be demobilised as you’ve performed your six years and you'll be shipped home, you see, so there's that. I thought — oh, and the job I had there was sending Prisoners of War and families, wives at Siam Road. Very few people have heard of Siam Road which was a women's prison where they kept them interred. I was to sort — I sorted them all that and put them on ships home or flew them where there was aircraft possible, so that was my job while I was there, which I quite enjoyed. Lots of, few people knew about Siam Road but the women had a rough time because it was very difficult. Some of the women started fighting with each other ‘cause of extra rations allegedly. Some of them were given favours, some Japanese in exchange for food which they would give them because they had their kids, and they slept on raffia floors and their child beside them. These huts had about forty or forty-five women and kids all inside Siam Road. Anyway, we got them on troop ships and sent those home. Then the signal come, I was to move and go home on the next suitable troop ship, which I did. Came home, went to Padgate, was signed off, given a civvy suit and, and I think some money, I don't know how much. Went home on two months demob leave. I’d been home forty-eight hours and a telegram came. Please get in touch with me and a number to ring. We’d like you to stay in the Air Force. Would you like to cancel demobilization, if so, you’re to report to a place, you’ll know about, Silverstone. Now, you are to join a squadron leader, god, I can’t remember his name, and close the station down. So here again, I have affected history because I went there with this bloke, he lived in Towcester. He was a farmer and he’d been sent there for his demob but to close this down, you see. He used to go home every night, he’d phone me every morning as a station hand, do you need me? No. Alright I’ll ring you tomorrow. So I was left to close the station down which was just getting trucks, taking stuff and all these instructions came in about where it was all to go and the rest of it was funny. Now going away to my sister and my middle sister was very pally with a girl called Ken Richardson who was a Senior Engineer for Raymond Mays, a [unclear] war. Have you heard the name Raymond Mays, a racing driver before the war? He was his engineer and he was on the, the testing and research for Jag, and Lou sent me a note saying can you get me on the telephone, which I did. She says he’s looking out for an Air Ford, a disused Air Ford to do track runs, round and round the track. So she says can he come to you? I said well I don’t know, I’ll check with Air Ministry, which I did, and they said yes, providing they’ll take out one hundred thousand pounds third party insurance, which I did, they did. The rest is history. They’ve stayed there ever since, so there you are. I opened up Silverstone. Yes I did. Really, I was on old telly. Was it my fiftieth Birthday?
BP: I can’t remember now.
DJ: They came and interviewed me here. And they says, can you show us [unclear] looking at photographs. I said I’m not doing any of that sort of cliché, I said, everybody wants to look at photographs, I haven’t got any, but there you are. I closed Silverstone and that was it. And then I went to [pause] Bridgehill, I was based there, I went to Bridgnorth to close that. RAF Bridgnorth was where all recruits came through at the time. You know of it? And I closed that. And then from there I was posted to [pause] Acklington was it? Acklington, Northumberland. Was it Acklington? Yes it was, close to Acklington. They rebuilt that, I stayed there and I had the only really unhappy days there. I had a CO who was a real bully, a rank bully. He made my life purgatory [coughs], the kind — I was there SAO, Senior Admin Officer. The, I was squadron leader by this time and he. Oh I’m sorry. Oh hold on, I’ve jumped, I’ve jumped because —
CB: From Silverstone?
DJ: Before that. Oh, I was sent back to Upavon. The one place where I’d been as an airman, as command drafting officer with the peace staff, dealing with a post in every rank below officer, and then they said, well we’ll move to the intake shelter recruits. You’re to go to Cardington, you know, the lone hangers.
CB: Yep.
DJ: And I was there, I forget, about six months and then we got a signal coming through, your posted. Upavon, back to Upavon where I’d been as an NAC. I said lovely ‘cause I knew it. You’ll go back there as command [unclear] officer. The night before a phone call said ‘we forgot to tell you, you’re promoted to squadron leader. Get your rank put properly on your dress and report properly dressed to the AOC there CNC’, so that’s when I got squadron leader. Anyway, that was lovely, I enjoyed that. I had a good time RAF [unclear] when I was back up to Acklington now and I had this CO. The kind of silly things he did. If I was duty officer for the day, he’d ring me up and says the horses from a field are loose on the airfield. Get rid of them. I said ‘yes sir’. So I did what any squadron leader would do and rung the orderly sergeant. I said ‘there’re some horses on the airfield, get rid of them’. He said ‘yes sir’ he said, ‘I’ll get the orderly corporal to do that’ which I through was perfectly right and proper.
CB: Yep.
DJ: And anyway, this damned Dennis Sutton his name was, he was called Zebedee by all the troops, Zebedee, he said the next day ‘did you get the horses off the airfield Joss?’ I said ‘yes sir’. He says ‘no’ he says, ‘you didn’t hear me. I said did YOU get the horses off the airfield’. I said ‘no, I told the sergeant, who I believe told the corporal’. He said ‘I told YOU to do it’, and that’s the way he behaved with me. He, he disliked me as much as I disliked him, we didn’t get on. So I then put in an application to get posted. Wing commander admin was Tanner, wing commander, he came to my office and said ‘can you withdraw this?’ I said ‘no, I want to get away from here as soon as possible’. He says ‘well, he says the station officer has had to move, the station medical officer has asked for a move and now you’ve asked for a moved’. I says ‘what about you?’ He says ‘never mind me, will you withdraw it?’ I says ‘no’. Anyway, I had a phone call from Air Ministry. Oh, going back a bit before I closed Padgate, I’d had all the recruits came into Padgate so I had three hundred troops at anytime there, anyway, when the phone call went and said this application of yours to get moved, how soon can you be ready? I says in about two hours, I said ‘where am I going?’ And they said ‘well we thought we’d send you to, to Halton’. ‘Oh’ I said, ‘you couldn’t do better if you’d given me the choice of the Air Force, I’d go back to Halton apprentices’. It would just suit me down to the ground. I like the area and I like working with the youngsters, so I said alright. They said ‘we’ll give you ten days’. I said ‘you can give me 10 minutes. I can be on my way’ and I stayed here until — I don’t know how long I’d been here, nearly four years, and then my son here was saying one day, he says ‘I suppose you will be on the move again sometime, you’ve been here sometime’. I said ‘yes I will’, and it dawned on me. I’d never, all my moves, I’d never consulted my family but anyway, I just excepted I’d come home and say were going to here were going to there and I said [coughs], ‘do you not want to move?’ He says no I’d like to stay here. My wife said the same and my younger son said ‘well if you’re asking me, I’d like to stay here too’. So, I was chatting with somebody that I was thinking of coming out and these lovely coincidence. I had a pal here who was a training officer at Handley Page Aircraft Company. He came round one day, he says you’re talking about leaving, I said yes. He says the training officer, the welfare office, training officer at Handley Page has died, they’re looking for another one and they’re looking for an ex-Air Force chap, you’re just the man says he. He knew me and I said I am so he put me in touch with their [pause] whatever he was, director of personnel, who, would you believe it, was an ex Halton apprentice and he says would you like to go for an interview. I says ‘can I be very rude to you and say would you like to come over here and look round your old alma mater and have lunch in the MESS and that’. I did. He did, he came over and it was lucky, everywhere I went people couldn’t have been nicer to me and very polite, and he said, ‘by god, you get on well, just the lad for the job’. He said ‘how soon can you get out?’ I said ‘I don’t know’ and I waited. I put in my application to get out. They made me wait three months. I came out, stayed here until [coughs] sixty-nine, and then I thought it’s time I came out and be bone idle and there you are. That’s your lot.
CB: Fantastic.
BP: Lovely.
DJ: Sorry.
CB: Right let’s have a break. Thank you.
DJ: I had a nice refreshing cup of tea with a [bleep] bloke named Bob Martin who used to be my boss and he was —
CB: This, this is interrupting a moment. This is when you were posted to Spitalgate?
DJ: Yes.
CB: And the Dutch people?
DJ: Yes the Dutch people there. My boss was Bob Martin who was responsible for flying aspects and I was responsible for the admin of these Dutch recruits, which was lovely. I was there and when they passed out Prince Bernard came across to inspect them and give them their wings and the rest of it. Now Bob and I had been very kind to these Dutch boys, we used to take them into Nottingham for parties and took them home and did all sorts, and Prince Bernard he said to me he said, ‘the lads have been saying you’ve been so kind and very good, I’m going to send you an honorary George the order of the honorary of something or other. It came. The bloody station commander kept one and the, I think his equivalent officer kept the other, we never got it at all, they kept it. It’s a pity, I fancied that ‘cause the thing went round your neck.
CB: What an extraordinary thing.
DJ: The station commander, it’s interesting. I told you I was teetotal, I didn’t have any, the Mess had — what was it a we just mentioned it — at Grantham.
CB: Oh Spitalgate.
DJ: Yes Spitalgate.
CB: Yes.
DJ: Yes, pre war officers didn’t stand in a bar, you gave all your drinks to stewards. Were you pre war?
CB: No, no.
DJ: No, you gave a steward your drink and —
CB: You were served it at the table.
DJ: But they, they — what you call it? They split off the mess main lounge and put a bar one side and a lounge the other, which was fine. Now the lads I was there with were good fun, they really was, and bearing in mind, I wasn’t very old. We decided we’d have a cycle race in the lounge one day, so they moved the settees and the chairs, piled them all up in the middle and we all got the cycles, went round. I hit this wall, went through it, I got off the bike to meet the station commander standing against the bar, and I said ‘good evening sir’. ‘Evening Joss’. He shook his head like this. Anyway, you may remember, they used to fill in a confidential report regularly and in the column, thirteen sixty-nine it was called, and besides when he put in mine, drinks regularly but drinks unwisely, and he says, you can’t put that about Joss, he said he doesn’t drink at all he is teetotal. He says rubbish. He says ‘I’ve seen him as pissed as a fart. He rode through a wall, took his hat off to me and said hello and walked out again as though nothing had happened’. Anyway, that was alright. He sent for me for a bit, he said you’ve been posted again. I shouldn’t have missed this important bit because it’s really important. He says you’re going to Germany to PA to Air Vice Marshall Spackman. That was a lovely job, oh I did enjoy it. He was, he was a bachelor. He was big, about six foot four and he was a joy to work for, AVM Spackman, CBS, Charles Basil Slater and I was his PA and he lived alone in a house just up on the hill, you know. A German had been thrown out and he was there and I, everywhere I went, I went with him. What he didn’t know and I knew now because I’m about five foot six and he was about six foot three, well everywhere we were known, everybody else referred to here’s mutton Geoff coming along, you see, we were and I was there — my little office I had was between his air vice marshal and the CNC was [pause], it will come to me, I can’t remember. His CNC was in a room that side. These had been bedrooms in a hotel at Buckeberg, [unclear] rather, and every time the two of us would meet each other, they’d go through my office, you see, and I was leaping up and down and they both said ‘don’t keep jumping up and down Joss, when we come through, if we want to speak to you we’ll tell you’. Anyway the CNC came through and stood in front of me one day and he says I’ll be, I’m posting you Joss. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘I don’t want to go and leave the air marshal here’. I says ‘I do enjoy it here and I don’t want to be posted thank you. Can’t you stop it?’ and he says and he called Spackers, ‘Spackers, come in here’, he says ‘I can’t get your PA to leave you. He’s crying his eyes out here because you’re moving him’. Of course, Spackers came in and said to him ‘now your being unkind sir, tell him what you’re going to do with him’. He says ‘I want you to be NCO at Scharfoldendorf which is Leave Centre in the Harz Mountains’. I says ‘goodbye sir’. I’d just refused to go and I said goodbye. Now I was there just over a year and Korea started, and they wanted gunnery leaders to go onto Sunderlands and out to Korea, and I was to be posted home, which really hacked me off. Anyway, the post had come through and I couldn’t do anything about it but I can show you something if you can lift this across. When I left the Germans there, I had got on so well with them they, they commandant of whatever the Germans call these camps they had, he’d been very good to them and the, the people —
CB: What the prisoner of war camp?
DJ: He didn’t want him tried at all.
CB: Right.
DJ: This colonel. Anyway he was a good — he made this at my station as a farewell present. That’s Scharfoldendorf [laughs]
CB: Amazing.
DJ: It really is lovely. He knew he had me in tears.
CB: Amazing model complete with swimming pool.
DJ: Yes, yeah. That was the [unclear]
BP: Oh, I say.
DJ: It was a sort of Officers Mess.
BP: Wow.
DJ: And that was my house in this corner, I didn’t even know. No, no that’s the Mess, the red roof’s the Mess. That was my house but I didn’t live in it, I preferred to live in the Mess with the blokes, it was just paradise. In, in the winter you could skate down the hill, we had skating into [unclear] and then [unclear]. It was a gliding school as well and the gliders were launched, you will like this, if you didn’t know of it, they launched them with elastic bands. They would get three either side, six elastic bands and it was a very steep drop and they would run pulling this elastic band and shoot the gliders off the end. We put up barriers to stop them falling over. And then as they were, what upset me there was I was posted home. I had arranged for my brother to come here [coughs] and when I got home, I met another old air gunner that I knew and he said ‘oh you lucky devil, I would love to go there’. By that time I was married, and my wife had had our first. He said ‘I’d love to do that job you know’. I said ‘well I didn’t want to go if I could help it’, so we put in a joint application to swap. I got to stay there and he went to thingme, so he went there and I stayed there, so that was it. What the devil did I do after that? Oh yes, went to Aden [laughs], sorry about this.
BP: [laughs]
CB: It’s alright.
DJ: I forgot about it. Went to Aden, did a good two years in Aden and came back [pause] to Bridgnorth to close it. That was a bit before Bridgestone. So that’s it, I’m sorry I missed that bit. Good job you’re sitting there [pause].
CB: Well we’ll have a break now. Thank you.
DJ: I, I —
CB: Hang on.
DJ: I got a —
CB: So we’re now back at, when you were in Germany and the Berlin airlift.
DJ: I was at the hospital, RAF hospital [coughs] and this little redhead was there and I was, I shared, four of us in a bay, two soldiers and two airmen, and we made a hell of a lot of noise apparently with our radios and that, and the matron said to her go and stop them making that noise or I’ll be in trouble. She came in and said ‘you stop it’, I said ‘if you marry me, I’ll stop making the noise and I’ll stop there’. She died after we’d been married fifty-two years.
CB: Really.
DJ: Yes.
CB: Fantastic.
DJ: Every time she was on duty she’d come there or I’d go and fetch her and there we are, so that was that business. What else have I forgot?
BP: The Berlin airlifts.
DJ: Oh yes. Well that was during the Berlin airlifts, yes. That was, you know we went down to the airlift. I don’t know which one he wanted.
CB: So Spackman was something to do with the Berlin airlift?
DJ: He, he was the senior air staff officer. SASO, Senior Air Staff Officer, in fact, he was acting CNC for a while. Oh yes, there is one interesting bit on that. He couldn’t and he was pally with an American called, he was very popular name down the American staff, oh he was well known. Anyway it didn’t matter. They couldn’t decide whether the first airlifts should be fighter escorted or not because the Russians, and he debated with him and anyway we were there. Anyway he said ‘we’ve got to make our mind up’. He said ‘get me onto the Prime Minister’. So we had a call to the Prime Minister, who was Clem Attlee at the time, and oh yes I’ll tell you about him in a bit. He used to get through to his secretary and he would switch on a recorder and so would I, and I would say the airbus was at the scene and wants to speak to the pilot, and they had a [unclear plane noise in the background] and [unclear] in fact. You as a man on the door must make a decision. Whatever decision you make I promise to back you. Are you recording it? He says yes sir I am. He says alright. I will leave it to you. Let me know. So they rang off and he rang off, this was about, oh, two in the afternoon. He says ‘I don’t want to be disturbed or spoken to’ he says ‘I don’t want to be disturbed’ he says put me through to General [long pause] oh dear, well known American General. Anyway, whatever it was put through to him and they nattered away. I said ‘do you want this recording’, he said ‘yes I do’, so we did and then I had to listen on all the time and they decided no escort, no fighter escort. He says alright. And he came into the office with me and he says put me through to the Prime Minister again, and so I put him through to the Prime Minister again and his, his secretary or whoever it was says, are we recording, and I says yes, we’re recording, I said, do you want to go through there as it was lonely, he says I’m going through and then I’d hear him say message to Mr Prime Minister and I suspect them on to you and I would put them through. And he says ‘we’ve decided sir, no fighter escort’. ‘Very good’ says the Prime Minister, Clem Attlee, ‘I’m glad. That’s a decision I was hoping you would make’. But when I thought of it afterwards, there’s a bloke he could of incited war his rate of pay as an air vice marshal at the time was three thousand a year. Can you believe it? An air vice marshal, a bloke, the future, the country was on his hands. So that was it and that was old Spackers. He and my only collusion with the Prime Minister. He came out later on to visit, he says ‘I’ll come out and visit you’ said the Prime Minister. By this time I was up at [unclear] and old Spackers rang me and he says ‘I’m bringing the Prime Minister, he’s coming out Joss. He says can you lay on a reasonable lunch’, I says ‘yes sir’. He says ‘I’m bringing the Prime Minister, he’s coming out and spending a day, a look round [unclear] and he and I want to chat informally’. So that’s fine. He did — that week, the lass that become my wife was just visiting me at the time, she used to have to get a lift back to her, her thing which was near the same place in Buckeberg and so I said to old Spackers ‘look’ I said, ‘I’ve got a nursing sister here, got to get back tonight. When he’s taking Clem back to Buckeberg to fly home, could you give her a lift back’. He says ‘yes, she can sit in the front with the driver’. Anyway later on, old the Spackers said to me, ‘that nurse, that lovely nurse, are you going to marry he?’ I says ‘quite likely sir’. He says ‘well I would, she spent the whole bloody journey telling me how lucky I was to have you as one of my commanding officers’ [laughs].
BP: [laughs]
CB: [laughs]
DJ: It sounded fairly typical so fancy me forgetting that. There you are.
CB: Thank you. Let’s, let’s have a break now.
DJ: Yes please.
CB: Because you could do with a lemonade of some kind.
DJ: Yes.
CB: Let me start [pause]. So we’re restarting with Douglas talking about the operational experiences after HCU where the squadron was on Halifaxes, and then changed to Lancaster’s and so could you just tell us your experience as in operations, please, including the nice bits and the not so good?
DJ: Well, it’s very different. There were some bits that were less worrying. It would be much easier if I look at this as we chat.
CB: OK.
DJ: Because I remember, I can remember some instances which were, you know, when we were hit by flak and another one you see there’s one op that I remember which after D-Day.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: We did north of Caen and we were bombing when the Germans were still north of Caen on the Tuesday, and we were told to bomb Caen but to miss the church. It had a big red cross on the top, it is being used as a hospital. So as we bombed north where the Germans were, you know, nearer the sea, and they said — now beside me there’s another Lancaster and I knew the squadron because you all had squadron numbers, and it hit by flak and its engine went on fire. Within seconds we saw two jump out, paratroopers. Now the sad thing is, they jumped a bit early because if you’re on German lines, you got taken prisoner, but the pillar, the, the, their pilot was an ace really, you, you could see this hell of a mess, this thing was burning, it got worse and worse and he banked it round, going over the sea and the others all bailed out then. We counted them out so we know they all went out, dropping in the sea. My skipper, he went down as low as he could and he said to the wireless op, signal that there’s all these aircrew in the sea, signal the position, exactly to the wireless op. And the wireless op says to Len, what Len, what position, what position and there, anyway we didn’t bother because we saw the Navy about four or five small aircraft come and pick these up and would you believe they were back on the squadron alright the next day, anyway which was lovely. But their pilot, I think, did a superb job because eventually it, it just burst into flames and went into the sea and he got an immediate DMC when he got back. He did. But that was, that was really quite exciting. It was worrying really.
CB: Did you see any scarecrows?
DJ: Oh yes. Well, the flaming balls they used to shoot up and they’d look like an aircraft had exploded. might be seeing exploded aircraft so you weren’t sure which was which.
CB: Did you, did you know what the scarecrow really was?
DJ: Well, well we were told it was a, a sort of offensive bomb which exploded in the air.
CB: Right, but, but what was the reality?
DJ: Well, we just used to feel sorry for them. Really you didn’t —
CB: OK.
DJ: You didn’t have any sort of — you’d say Christ, and we were — I remember a bomb going down and we said look there’s one going down, come on, get out. It was a shout for them to come on get out of —
CB: Yeah.
DJ: The skipper said ‘never bloody mind them, you look round to see what’s coming to us. Ignore them’.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: You can’t do anything for them.
CB: Yeah, yeah. What, what I meant is did you, the, the official line was that these explosions were from a particular type of German munition. Were you aware of what the reality was and how they were hit?
DJ: We were told.
CB: And what was that?
DJ: Because we couldn’t recognise, well we were told this is what they were called. Were they exploding dustbins or something they called it.
CB: Oh I see right. So the, the reason for the question is because this was a way of concealing to air crew.
DJ: Yeah.
CB: The fact that the German night fighters had upward firing cannon.
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Which shot the plane down from underneath and I just wondered if you were aware of that?
DJ: No.
CB: Right.
DJ: No, no at least if I was I can’t remember.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: Yeah.
CB: And that was called Schrage Musik.
DJ: Was it?
BP: You, you had the incident where it was very cold. Without the electricity, you didn’t have the electricity. Douglas?
DJ: Sorry.
BP: You had your incident —
DJ: Oh well, this is, we’d been, you know mine laying, was dropping mines outside —
CB: Yeah. Gardening.
DJ: Outside the port, gardening.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: The other side of Denmark, you know.
CB: Yes.
DJ: The sea there. On the way back there was a hell of a storm. It was quite bad and the skipper he says ‘I’ll try and get over this’, and he climbed and climbed and said, ‘I can’t get over it so I’ll go down’. As he went down, we were struck by lightning. He said ‘Christ I can’t see, I can’t see. It’s blinded me. Come on’. He called to Jim and Don, ‘hold this prop for me, hold the stick for me, hold the stick for me I can’t see’. And my — four turrets, there’s a stream of flames. What are they called? Whatever lightning calls it. There’s a name for this I gather.
CB: Right.
DJ: And they were just circles of flames and I thought, God, it’s going to set us on fire too. But he couldn’t see, and Don and Mac were, were together flying the plane, that’s the bomb aimer and the flight engineer, they were flying the plane together. They were talking, I was listening to all this which wasn’t very nice at all.
CB: Oh.
DJ: Anyway, and the skipper then says, ‘its coming back, its coming back, I can see a bit, it’s coming back’ and eventually he said ‘yes it’s cleared’, now which was about I suppose ten minutes, quarter of an hour and he says ‘I still can’t get over this thing’ and he says ‘we’ll go under it’. So we went down and he crossed the North Sea at about two hundred feet, which is frightening in itself. He went down and down to get under it and he says ‘well I can’t go down any further, are you holding on’, holding on and climbed back up and as it was, you know the, the storm cleared a bit and he got up to a reasonable height and got us back, but I don’t know if it’s in my log book that a pilot was blinded.
CB: So what about other experiences that were slightly or considerably disturbing? What was the most disturbing situation?
DJ: Well it was — you know, it’s memories.
CB: When was your Le Havre operation?
DJ: September the — I’ll tell you here, because that’s in here [long pause], the 21st of [unclear] bombs brought back, low cloud, in danger of hitting our own troops so the trip was disallowed.
CB: Right.
DJ: We’d been there and were shot at but we weren’t allowed to do it. Then the very next day we went to [unclear] troops and armoured concentration. The last commission that day. So that was handy, that was nice.
CB: What date was that?
DJ: That was the 26th of September forty-four.
CB: When you were commissioned?
DJ: Yeah.
CB: OK.
DJ: And —
CB: So could you just tell me —
DJ: It was 17th Le Havre, it was the 6th of September, 17th Le Havre. To accentuate the surrender of German Garrison, which I found out later was [unclear], there was no German Garrison in Le Havre.
CB: At all?
DJ: No.
CB: Right
DJ: They were out, this as I say, there was this big, very almost mountains behind it, hills all the way round Le Havre.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: They were all up there.
CB: Not in the town?
DJ: They told us they were laughing like a drain at us busy bombing the centre and killing off the froggies.
CB: Yeah. So they didn’t get hit at all?
DJ: Well —
CB: The Germans?
DJ: No not much because we weren’t aiming at them, we were aiming, you know, right in the centre. Even though our aim was good, it was just it shouldn’t have been there.
CB: Did, did you have Pathfinder that day?
DJ: I couldn’t tell you.
CB: Oh.
DJ: It doesn’t mention here so it would mention in there if they were, it would tell you.
CB: Yeah. OK
DJ: In that thing it tells you how many Pathfinders accompanied us.
CB: Yeah. OK. What other experiences were memorable in your —
DJ: It’s difficult to say. Yes, Dijon, I can’t remember the date, we got one engine hit, put it out of commission and the skipper decided we’d come back, we wouldn’t come back straight up, north of France. He turned out towards the Wash to the Bay of Biscay and we went out there and he went as low as he could, and we were going quite low, about four or five hundred feet, something like that and a very brave pilot, a JU88 came up behind us, even lower, and I blasted him and I know I hit him but I never saw him go down, but I thought he had bags of guts to come under there but he disappeared. There but that was —
CB: This is day time is it or night?
DJ: And the next. Sorry?
CB: Is this night time or day time?
DJ: Night time.
CB: Right.
DJ: And so we went out over the North Sea and came in on the Channel and we were sort of over Southampton or somewhere like that, and the next thing, I don’t know why I wasn’t paying attention but, I suddenly looked and there right behind us was a Beaufighter. He’d seen a Lanc come in there and he’d got in behind us and I hadn’t seen him coming. It was disgraceful, but I didn’t tell, I didn’t own up to this until later on, but this Beaufighter was there. He realised it was us and ‘cause, you know, we’d, we had the different colours of the day you could shoot, and then he veered off and left us. But we got back, but we come back on three engines all the way.
CB: How many times did you engage fighters?
DJ: Oh god knows, again I’ll have to look. So let’s say about ten or twelve.
CB: Right.
DJ: But some of them just came and didn’t stay, you know, like I remember when we went to — we were going to the Rhine somewhere and I saw a Messerschmitt come round behind me and I just, I saw him there, he was going to bank in to come round and I blasted him when he went up. I did about four hundred rounds something like that, and when he saw that he cleared off. And then another one. And we saw, but we didn’t realise at the time but, Jimmy and I both thought it was a Jet. It came on and it started blasting in our stream, you know the four hundred, sometimes in the stream, four hundred loads, sometimes —
CB: Yeah.
DJ: You’ll see in that how many each op had. And he started blasting, you could see him blasting and they had a point five cannon at our stupid 303s, which was the worst thing ever they gave us, and he just came through blasting and then cleared off, but we didn’t see him get any Lancs at all.
CB: Right.
DJ: But sometimes you were in the middle of four hundred loads, it could be a bit frightening, you know there was the odd occasion when Jimmy would shout, you know, cooks report, cooks report because a bomber tumbling down from a Lanc, you know. Some of the naughty ones would fly too high and their bombs would come down between our main plane and tier one, two or three times I remember that happening.
CB: So explain, could you explain what you mean by that, I mean why were they bombing from too high?
DJ: Because they, the, the story was they wanted to get away from the flak and leave us to get the flak.
CB: Oh, I see.
DJ: It was a bit naughty to let the lower aircraft have the flak and they would get up above us, but it was one of those things we were told about.
CB: Yeah. So they released their bombs, not on the target, is that right?
DJ: No, mostly on the target.
CB: It was? Right.
DJ: But too high.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: Above other Lancs.
CB: Yeah, yeah.
DJ: I mean it was mentioned about, on many briefings it would be mentioned.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: You know, just remember who you’re flying above.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: Do take care.
CB: Right. So what other times do you think you hit other, hit fighters? On what other occasions?
DJ: I don’t, I don’t, I, I can’t remember. There’s two, the two Messerschmitt. There was Jimmy [unclear] from the BFM.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: I’m not positive on them because I don’t know. This was, these are not very accurate, you just bung in what you think at the time. It’s a reminder.
CB: You’re just looking at the log book at the moment.
DJ: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: I got a few there. Incidentally you know the French Governor decided to give the —
BP: The Légion d'Honneur
DJ: Légion d'Honneur, it was an honour to people that were on the thing. Then they sent one to Len and they sent me a note saying I’d be getting one but I don’t know when it was coming but I haven’t had it.
CB: Right.
DJ: That was some time ago.
CB: So that’s a French Embassy job isn’t it? Are you following that up by any chance?
DJ: It was on my fifth op. Yes. Dijon.
BP: We tried but —
DJ: Come back with query fighters but no damage.
CB: What date was that?
DJ: That was on the 5th of July.
CB: Right. Forty-four?
DJ: And then going on to the 18th of July at Caen. Hit by flak. Starboard fuel tank holed, which was frightening because we were worried that that was on fire.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: And then next week, 20th July, Martin Lars at [unclear], we had two combats. Number one was [unclear] 210. Number two I couldn’t identify what his name was.
CB: Just in general terms, how did you feel about going on these bombing raids?
DJ: Well I never doubted I’d get back alright. I used to get, my mouth used to get a bit dry, as a bloke said that’s when you discover that blood was brown, you know you get a bit [unclear]
CB: This is right. Yes.
DJ: You get a bit excited.
CB: Your underwear changed. Yes. How did the crew in general feel about these operations?
DJ: Well I don’t think we discussed, you know, unless there was an incident we did.
CB: Yeah. Well I think we’ve covered an awful lot and thank you very much for all the time.
DJ: The other bit that might be in your log. On my twelfth op to [unclear]. We were fully escorted by USA Thunderbolts and Mustangs.
CB: Oh. That made you feel better.
DJ: Yes, oh to see any fighters on your side. Yeah.
BP: I think the fact that they concluded all their ops means something.
CB: Thirty-two of them.
BP: I mean were they lucky. I mean, what, how, you know —
CB: I’m going to stop it now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Douglas Joss
Identifier
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AJossDA151007
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:47:00 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
India
Singapore
England--Lincolnshire
India--Bangalore
India--Yelahanka
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas was born in Aberdeen, the eldest of 5 children. He signed up for the Royal Air Force in October 1938 and trained as a Flight Rigger, becoming a Leading Aircraftsman after training.
During his time as a Leading Aircraftsman, he tells of working with George Stainforth, the last Schneider Trophy Pilot for Britain, and his experiences of meeting Douglas Bader whilst he was training to get his Royal Air Force wings back.
Douglas spent time in the Gold Coast, assembling aircraft such as Maryland Kitty Hawks before moving further inland to Nigeria and tells of his run-in with the Foreign Legion, before contracting Malaria and being sent home.
After recovering from Malaria, Douglas then trained as a Flight Engineer before being posted to the Heavy Conversion Unit on Handley Page Halifaxes, and then on to Avro Lancasters with 12 Squadron.
After his time in 12 Squadron, Douglas volunteered for the Pathfinder Force but was sent overseas to India and Singapore instead where he was involved in the sending home of wives and families from Siam Road, who were interred by the Japanese.
Douglas completed 32 operations, doing 2 extra operations to allow his bomb aimer to completed his tour of duty and he left the Royal Air Force with the rank of Squadron Leader.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
626 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
fitter airframe
ground crew
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
RAF Bridlington
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Halton
RAF Honington
RAF Padgate
RAF Silverstone
RAF Upavon
RAF Wickenby
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/369/5795/MHicksDK[Ser -DoB]-151001-05.jpg
b1bf157b72451c734ed8c814bb613535
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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Hicks, Ken
Ken Hicks
D K Hicks
Description
An account of the resource
61 items. An oral history interview with Chief Technician David Kennedy Hicks (b. 1922, 0574954 Royal Air force), memories of the Battle of Britain, his Royal Air Force record, and photographs of his Halton entry, his time in Southern Rhodesia and 56 photographs, many of his time in Southern Africa. Ken Hicks joined the Royal Air Force in 1938 as a Halton apprentice. He served with 202 Squadron at RAF Hornchurch during the Battle of Britain as an aircraft rigger. Subsequently he served on training unit in Southern Rhodesia and then in Egypt, staying in the Royal Air Force after the war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ken Hicks and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-03
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hicks, DK
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Copy of:
CERTIFIED TRUE STATEMENT OF SERVICE
EX CHF. TECH D.S.K. HICKS (0574954)
Enlisted into the Royal Airforce, 6th September 1938
Reason for discharge – Surplus to requirements in trade
Trade on discharge - Aircraft Fitter Airframes
Overall Conduct – Exemplary
Current Engagement
Date of Enlistment – 06-09-1938
Service Commences, Age 18 – 05-02-1940
Enlisted to – 05-02-1952
Re-engaged to 55th Birthday – 05-02-1977
Particulars of Medals
Defence – 1946
End of War – 1946
Coronation – 1953
L.S. & G.C. Medal – 08-09-1956
Royal Victoria Medal (Silver) – 02-12-1960
Promotions
Aircraft Apprentice – 06-09-1938
Substantive Ranks
AC2 – 02-07-1940
AC1 – 01-01 1941
LAC – 01-05-1942
CPL – 01-12-1944
CPL TECH – 01-05-1951
A/SGT/PD – 22-12-1952
SUB SGT – 01-06-1953
CH/TECH – 01-05-1954
Overall Conduct – Exemplary
Punishment – No Entry Recorded
Detentions – No Entry Recorded
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ken Hicks statement of Service
Description
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Personal details with dates, awards, promotions and conduct.
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eng
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MHicksDK[Ser#-DoB]-151001-05
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Royal Air Force
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Text
Text. Personal research
Creator
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Claire Monk
Format
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One-page typewritten document
fitter airframe
ground crew
ground personnel
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/341/3508/PTinningH1601.1.jpg
4d7e45a79160aa79382026fe9410ad61
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/341/3508/ATinningHW160314.1.mp3
00643b1db6bb18f53a1b33afa4d3184e
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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Tinning, Herbert
Herbert William Tinning
Herbert W Tinning
H W Tinning
H Tinning
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Herbert William Tinning DFC, his log book and three photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Herbert Tinning and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-14
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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Tinning, HW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: So, this interview of the International Bomber Command Centre with a Mr. Herbert Tinning, who was a 51 Squadron Halifax navigator during World War Two. The interview is taking place, at Herbert’s place in Preston, in Northern Melbourne. My name is Adam Purcell, it is the 14th of March 2016. So, Herbert, we might start at the beginning, uhm.
HWT: [unclear]
AP: It is a very good place to start, isn’t it? Can you tell me something about your early life, growing up, the education and first job, perhaps?
HWT: Oh yeah, I grew up on the other side of the river, mainly around Prahran and Toorak and Carnegie, I, I went to the, the Fawkner Park State School up until the sixth grade. Then I went to Toorak Central, seventh and eighth grade and then I went to Melbourne High for, to leaving. And then I went, I managed to get, no, I went to work first in a, no, no, I got an apprenticeship with the Victorian Railways as a fitter and turner, which a highly competitive job thing in those days and in waiting to go there I went and worked for a gasket maker called Ferrer, a company, that would be for about six months, and then I spent nearly three years in doing my apprenticeship at Newport during which time the World War Two broke out and I wanted to get into it but I was in a protected industry so I had to [unclear] quite big struggle but I managed to get a release providing I went into a technical trade which I, which I did do, I trained as a, what’s that called, a fitted away, which rear [unclear], I did that, then I was posted to a communication flight as a fitter and I again kept trying to get to [unclear] into aircrew, which I eventually managed and, uhm, and then I trained in Australia at, uhm, at Sale and Nhill and Cootamundra and then I was posted overseas and went to UK and ended up in Bomber Command as, I was trained as a navigator, bomb aimer but I was chosen to be a navigator and I went through the usual initial training et cetera and whilst I was at, what they called pre airview, which is because of the difference in map reading between Europe and Australia we had to get used to the greater quantity of identifiable objects and so we did a pre airview in Tiger Moths, would I tell you the story about that?
AP: Go for it.
HWT: Uhm, whilst we’re training, we used to do three, three day cross countries in flying in groups of three, big formation and I led this formation into Northampton and, as we’re turning over Northampton to, for another aircraft in which my mate was the navigator and the pilot [unclear] slipped under us too closely and wiped it up the main plane off on our undercarriage and we were in about 800 feet and he, they had to get out because the plane just went straight in and fortunately to this shoot [unclear] this happened in time [unclear] could land or crash land this thing so seemed so low, I straightened it and crash-landed it and that was that. Now, I tell you that as a preamble to we went on through training, we did our OTU on Wellingtons and we went to squadron, I went to 51 and he went to a different squadron and anyway I’m about, sometime later I heard that he is missing believed killed and I learned that on their fourteenth trip, I’ll tell you the, he went to 467 Squadron instead and anyway on the 8th of July ’44 he was on a French target, Saint-Leu-d’Esserent and he was shot down, it was night of course and they were on fire the Halifax navigator set out the forward straight patch so he tended to jettison the straight patch and he grabbed his parachute in his hand and he shot the [unclear] up because of his previous experience to just fall out and try to keep it on the way down but he clipped it, apparently he clipped it on a one clip and it held but he was ok and the only, the only one that could help was the bomb aimer, that was that I didn’t know anything about that at the time but he was missing believed killed. So the years went by and I finished my tour and I was appointed radar officer for the squadron and I’d been on leave and I was on my way back to squadron when we stopped at a place called Peterborough and just as the train was pulling out, the back wing doors on the bar, which is on the station, swung open as a fellow went out and I had a quick glance inside and I saw this, sort of head in silhouette, with this peculiar nose cause, in the bailout he’d, of the Tiger Moth he’d hit his nose on the tireplane [?] and it broke and he had mended it in a peculiar way. So anyway I grabbed my bag and I jumped out of the train and went back into the bar and, sure enough, it was Jim Walsh. He’d been picked up by the Free French and he’d spent the remaining years of the war until they were, until that part of France was, ehm, was occupied by the Allies, uhm, and he’d only been repatriated two days and there he was, you see. So, it was quite a good reunion, uhm, you have to believe in these units, I did you know, anyway I went on my way then and he went on his way and I’ve never seen him again. He was a Queenslander and in those days, it was much more expensive and difficult to travel into [unclear] as it is now of course and you get tied up with marriage, family, all the rest of it. So, that was that but I just tell you because of the incident that we had in the Tiger Moth and that [unclear] mine, uhm, we, that sort of saved his life in a way because if we hadn’t had the previous [unclear] he would have hesitated and try and put his shoot on, straight out of the escape hatch, it would have been too late. So anyway, that was that and then, as I say, I went to Waddington on 51 Squadron and there I did a tour with a mixture of French and German targets.
AP: Pretty good. Uhm, so you were working for the railways when you heard that war was declared. How old were you at that time? What were your thoughts? And how did you [unclear]?
HWT: Well, I must have been, I must have been, uhm, eighteen, because it was the age you could enlist and I was only, I always wanted to fly and a fellow who I knew was a pilot in the Air Force, he told me that you gotta get a speciality to, you know up until that, normally in the Air Force is a five year commission and you’re out. But if you had some speciality they would give you a more permanent job, you see, well, this fellow specialised in Photography and he was kept on as a aerial photographer. And because I was interested in engineering mechanical things, I thought, oh well, I’ll get an engineering diploma and then I’ll try for the Air Force. Instead I was on my third, in my third year, or just started my third year. But, it must have been during, it must have been, nearly in towards the end of my first year as an apprentice as the war broke out and I spent, you know, a year or so trying to get out of it, which I ultimately did and that was it.
AP: You, uhm.
HWT: Is that enough?
AP: Yeah, no, no, that’s alright, we’ll, [laughs] we’ll got plenty to cover, uhm, so I guess you’ve already answered the question of why you picked the Air Force.
HWT: I suppose I better finish it off and then, before I got an apprenticeship, I missed out that bit, after I’d finished with leaving, I went to Melbourne High and I was there for three years now, I’ll say it again, after I finished State School which is the eighth grade, then I went to Melbourne High and I finished there in my leaving year and went to the railways.
AP: Ok. Uhm, can you tell me something of the enlistment process for the Air Force? Did you have to do any testing, any interviews, any medicals, things like that?
HWT: Oh yeah, there were [unclear] interviews, there were, uhm, medicals of course, which sight was the main, was one of the principal things and [unclear] fine [laughs]. When I was, I got the notification to go and had my medical for remustering to aircrew, a couple of mates and I went out and had a bit of a party you know and anyway the next morning I had to do this medical test you see and, which I did but my sight must have been caught up to it because one eye was a bit weaker than the other. So, they, uhm, so I didn’t get the choice of a pilot, I was navigator bomb aimer and I always put it down to the fact that I’d perhaps had a bit too much booze that night but the, uhm, cause the thing is, post war when I was sort of older, I passed certainly a less stringent test but the eyesight test was just as stringent I think. Uhm, and I got the ok for a pilot’s license. So I think I’ve had a bit too much to drink at the wrong time.
AP: [laughs] pretty good. Uhm, were you on the reserve at any stage?
HWT: No.
AP: Because you went straight in as the trade of course.
HWT: Went straight in as a, as a trainee 2 A and well actually you didn’t do that as [unclear] but now they, you went in as an AC 2 and that’s we had a little white flash in our forage caps [unclear] to sending into [unclear] trainees and you did a three, four weeks of square-bashing down at Laverton and then you, during which time you, the selections were made and then you went to, in my time, Ascot Vale for engineering training and so, uhm, so I think I must have been about, almost nineteen when the war broke out.
AP: So, the white flash you are telling me about, I always thought that denoted air crew training specifically but it was
HWT:
AP: It was aircrew training specifically. Ok, yeah, that’s what I thought. Uhm, alright, so, you did, once you transferred to air crew, presumably you had to go to initial training school and do all the square-bashing again.
HWT: Yes, that’s right.
AP: Where was that? What happened?
HWT: The square-bashing was down at, uhm, at, oh god I must [unclear],
AP: Somers, perhaps.
HWT: Mh?
AP: Somers?
HWT: Yeah, Somers, yeah, that’s right, [unclear] bad, we did square-bashing then and pre airview at Somers. Incidentally it was, there was a well-known champion bike rider called Hubert Opperman, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of him but anyway he was, I came across him at Laverton first, where he was, a sergeant, no, he wasn’t a sergeant, I think he was DO, and then, when I went to Somers there he was again as an officer and he was doing, taking the PI training, organising and so on, nice bloke, anyway you had to gotta do that to. Anyway that’s where I did my initial training for aircrew. Then I went to Cootamundra and had training as a navigator. And then to Sale, training as a bomb aimer and gunner and then to Nhill, to do astronavigation. And then back to Ascot Vale, yeah, Ascot Vale for posting.
AP: So, I’m particularly interested in Nhill, I’ll tell you why later on, but, uhm, the first time you went into an aeroplane, presumably that was Cootamundra?
HWT: No, I had a passenger flight, you know, in a Tiger Moth, or was that a Gypsy Moth in those days, pre-war and while I was, fitted away, I had two Hawker Demons and a Lockheed Hudson in my charge, you see, and, anyway I used to, uhm, hit the odd flight [?] in a Hawker Demon, which we flew down over [unclear], anyway we flew down over to [unclear] anti-aircraft shooting, training, you know, and we, in a dive bomber [unclear] and so I got a, but then I fit [unclear] to it and I got a little bit of dual time on it, you know unofficially. So, yeah, that was, so I found a bit [unclear].
AP: [laughs] excellent, very good. Did you, when you were doing your training but particularly in Australia, did you see any accidents or anything like that?
HWT: Accidents?
AP: Along the way? Yeah.
AP: Or did you know of any accidents?
HWT: Oh, I knew, when I was at, when I was, just after I had been to Sale, I’m not sure which now, there was a string of accidents of aircraft going in and have a best strike and there were, I think there three of them, before they discovered what it was and what they were doing was torpedo bomb training with a damaged torpedo, see, and they had made the torpedo run which could have been made almost underwater and released the torpedo and [unclear] away you see, but I have been doing dry rounds without torpedoes and then I fitted them with these damaged torpedoes, which is the same weight as number one. And of course the pilots were used to unlighten [?] pulled out but, and because with the heavy weight they squashed a bit to say and that’s what they were doing, they were squashing into the sea and but they lost I think three before they discovered what the problem was. So, there were those and, uhm, [pauses], you know, you’d hear of accidents but they weren’t close to me, you know.
AP: Uhm, so, Nhill, oh my God, was talking about before Nhill also went through Nhill, and I actually went through there just about a year ago, we were coming back from Kangaroo Island and we stopped at Nhill on the way back, and turns out that the airfield, they’re opening up this Nhill aviation heritage centre, and they’ve got an Ansett there restoring very very slowly, which is really good to see. Uhm, can you remember much about Nhill in particular and what you were doing there, I know it was, I believe it was astronavigation at Nhill, uhm, what did that actually involve?
HWT: Oh well, we, we did the theory of it you know and then we did star identification, we just stand out and pointed out [unclear] to learn where they were and then you had to learn the theory side of using them, using sights to develop a fixed position and then of course sometimes that was over your head, you see, because flying over Europe was all dead black, not a speck of light anywhere and until you’ve done that, you don’t know how black the night is, you know. Uhm, and occasionally you’d have some, uhm, some guidance with, you know with the water get the reflection of the river, or a lake, whether you like it or not, although I didn’t experience this with the Gee, five lights around Berlin and they were a wonderful sort of fix for the aircraft, so the Germans were a very cunning enemy, they actually boarded out [unclear] a couple of them so there were only three lights, then they altered the shape of the other lights by boarding round it [?] you know, so none of the people would be certain [unclear] Berlin. Very cunning. But, what was I saying?
AP: We were talking about Nhill.
HWT: Ah, Nhill, yeah, uhm, now what I remember then it was very hot and the meals were good, we had no trouble flying out of there, at night we were flying in Ansons and, uhm, we were only a month there, four weeks, so I haven’t got much of a memory, I know, I’d been married by then and I know I missed my wife because she’d come up to Cootamundra, but Nhill was such a short stay. No, she didn’t come up to Cootamundra, she came up to Sale, where I did two months for bombing and gunnery. But, uhm, I know I got, you know, quite positive memories of Nhill, as a matter of fact I called in there once when I was driving, no, I flew in there once, that’s right, [unclear] to analyse, yeah, I landed there, just [unclear], was the last experience I had.
AP: [laughs] So, yeah, it is really nice to see what they are doing there actually at the moment, but anyway. Alright, so, moving on a little bit, we go up to Ascot Vale and then you embarked and you went to the UK. How did you get there?
HWT: I embarked, we went by a ship called the New Amsterdam, which went via New Zealand, cause it was taking, uhm, some of the New Zealand members of [unclear] back from Africa and were called from Wellington and then from there we went on to San Francisco. And from San Francisco we went by [unclear] car across to Boston. [unclear] car, they are still in pretty [unclear] condition and we had a black porter, made up our beds for the night, put a [unclear] chocolate on our pillow every five nights and anyway then we got to Boston, and we were waiting embarkation for England and we were embarked on a French liner, [unclear] something, wasn’t [unclear] to France but they had, they had several of these [unclear] and they flew, normally in peace time fly between Marseille, France, yeah, to Rio de Janeiro and that was a regular [unclear], you know. Anyway, we went to from Halifax in Canada to Liverpool unescorted so, they took us way up into the Arctic Circle to avoid the subs, which was interesting, and cold, and, anyway, [unclear] arrived at Liverpool and then we went by train to [unclear] out of Bournemouth.
AP: What did you think of wartime England when you first got there, particularly an Australian?
HWT: I liked England, I’ve been there since, I liked it better since but then during wartime it was, everything was severely rationed, there were no lights anywhere, blackout was very, very strict, uhm, and, I went to, I went to several stations, Bournemouth and from there we went to a place called Desford and then to, went to Lichfield and to Marston Moor for conversion and then to Snaith for, uhm, for 51 squadron. [unclear] We were actually posted to an Australian squadron but the day before we left, Bomber Command had raided Nuremberg and they had the heaviest losses of war, they’ve had 96 lost on the one trip and I think another twenty flying into high wind [?] when they got back. Uhm, so they were very short of aircrew so we were, uhm, then diverted to reinforcements to various squadrons and our diversion was to 51 Squadron.
AP: So, what did you have getting to that point where, ok, we’re going to a squadron now and you hear about Nuremberg, what did you think of when you heard about that?
HWT: Oh, well, you really got pretty philosophical about it, you know. As a matter of fact, you didn’t expect to live, you know, that’s probably more [unclear] a bit more than I should. And whatever, but we didn’t think about after the war, really, we just did what we were doing and, and uhm, did as best we could, I guess.
AP: Alright, We’ll back up a bit. Lichfield. I was talking just on Saturday to a WAAF, who served at Lichfield.
HWT: Oh yeah?
AP: Amazing lady, I interviewed this, [unclear] Mary Mccray, we had a wonderful chat. Uhm, the important thing that happened at Lichfield I presume is where you met your crew.
HWT: Yes, uhm, we met part crew,
AP: [unclear] of course, except for your flight engineer.
HWT: Pardon?
AP: Except for the flight engineer, of course.
HWT: We didn’t pick up our gunners, we, it was the, we didn’t pick up an engineer either. It was just the navigator, bomb aimer, pilot and wireless op. And we did our, well, we converted from, what the pilot did, we did to a point [unclear] from the Tiger Moths [unclear] previously flying in Ansett [unclear], no, we hadn’t, no, we hadn’t, we, uhm, [pauses] we must have flown, no, [unclear] I do recall flying in Anson but I don’t think that was in training, anyway we went to Wellingtons and we did the, the, what do we call it? [pauses] The, there was a pre airview I think they call it, anyway we flew the Wellingtons and actually I liked [unclear], I had no complain about any of the stations except, no, none of them, at Lichfield we had [unclear] they sent me to cross countries day and night, [unclear] a bit of a, a bit of a [unclear] there, see where we were, here you go, I went to 27 OTU which was at Church Broughton.
AP: Ah, that was a satellite of Lichfield, I think.
HWT: I think you’re right.
AP: Yeah.
HWT: We were flying Wellingtons there and I was West Freugh in Scotland and that’s where we were flying Ansons. I got it a bit wrong then before.
AP: That’s alright.
HWT: Pre airview at West Freugh
AP: A bit cold up there I imagine?
HWT: It was a bit.
AP: [unclear] at what time of year?
HWT: [unclear] was a bit [unclear], Stranraer was 7 Squadron you know. Yeah.
AP: Very nice. Uhm, when you were in England, what did you do when you weren’t on duty? What did you to relax?
HWT: On the station?
AP: Yeah, any of the stations that you were there.
HWT:
AP: Anything.
HWT: I played a fair bit of squash, most of the men, I know the, stations [unclear], we did a bit, we started [unclear] when we got leave, you know we went and quite often we stayed with people you were good enough to, you know, to sort of entertain, [unclear] your troops and I saw a bit of England that way, quite a bit really, underground and by you know they just we were on leave, we went some place which [unclear] short leave like overnight or a couple of days, you know, you didn’t go far but life on the squadron wasn’t bad, it was, but I initially went as a flight sergeant and there we lived in Quonset huts and that’s a thing I remember about it, the Quonset huts, oh, I suppose it might have been twenty or so, slept in them, and down the set of the bedroom on the side [unclear] down the centre and there were two or three potbellied cast iron heating stoves [unclear] and anyway it was cold alright because we stacked these things up and when we went to bed, the [unclear] of the [unclear] was cast on was red hot and was beautiful, you see, but then by morning there were icicles off the roof, from our hot breath, you know, the heating had gone out and other things, and it was cold, very cold, I remember that, but then I got a commission and we moved into a two bedroom unit in a big, where I was, in a big building at [unclear] which was much better than, I got no sort of unpleasant thought really of any of the stations I was on [unclear] I know the time has [unclear], but.
AP: [laughs]
HWT: But I think I remember something.
AP: Very nice. Alright so, when you are on squadron and you’re not on duty, I presume that you spend a fair bit of time in the mess, at the sergeant’s mess or the officer’s mess.
HWT: Play snooker, billiards, squash, sometimes I put on a cross country run and if you [unclear] you might decide to do it. And I had picture shows, pretty regularly at night and of course there was always drinking, always high drinks [unclear] appreciate. Some of the men [unclear] there and they used to get into the, particularly into the police time quarters where there were long corridors with, they’d get in there, ride round their motorcycle up and down along the corridor, you know, which in confined space was pretty deafening and then another friend I used to get up to was, and I only saw this once though, was they, they’d been drinking, and they got this fellow and they walked him over some soot and then they uphended him and hurled him against ceiling, across the ceiling, made him walk across the ceiling, you see, which looked pretty funny, you see, these black footprints across the ceiling [laughs], I remember that, [unclear] prank I remember, but no there was not, no boredom really, you know, you had, and we had [unclear] and all that sort of stuff, you know, and that was quite good. I’ll tell you a funny thing though, when I, during ops I was doing mechanical engineering and I liked engineering and I still like it and I intended to finish up as, with a diploma and working in like a designer that, you know, but during the war for some reason I changed my mind quite unconsciously and became interested in building, so when I was demobbed, I did a rehab course in building and construction and spent my working days in building administration and some on a building design on a side but yes, so I don’t know whether, whether unconsciously knocking building down through the war, unconsciously directed me towards, rebuilding, [laughs] interesting question.
AP: [unclear] more questions, isn’t it? yeah. Pretty good. Uhm, that sort of leads into the next thing, presumably an operational tour was not the most relaxing thing that you would have ever experienced, how did you cope with the stress of the operations, the stress of flying and [unclear] what you were doing. How did you cope with that on a daily basis?
HWT: Oh I think we had probably a bit more drinks than we should have drunk you know we had regular, you know, organised parties in the mess and they were fairly cunning you know, not that you weren’t aware of it, but, you know, you might go out on a ride one night and you come back and go through debriefing and you go off, have breakfast and go to bed. And when you were up in the morning, you know, you might have lost one aircraft say, [unclear] and you come out and you want to go out and do a, you know [unclear], usually only if you are doing ops really you had to do an air test and any way could be sitting there but you knew it was missing and what they did overnight went to remind you night, they flew an aircraft in from a, you knew, factory area, [unclear] the number, it was on dispersal and the only thing that was missing was the crew, and they sort of tried to make losses less obvious then they really were but I know some people had a lot of trouble, I, I don’t know why but I wasn’t, you know, I was concerned but I didn’t have any sort of shakes or anything like that, the only thing I got really was at the end of the tour I developed an eye tick, you know, you’d feel your eyebrow move but you weren’t sort of, you weren’t doing it, yeah, so yeah, they called it a nervous tic.
AP: And how long did that hang around for?
HWT: I don’t know, a few months.
AP: Alright, we were talking about drinking before. The local pub at Snaith, what was it called? What did it look like?
HWT: The local pub at Snaith was George and the dragon. And we drank, and it was a typical English pub you know, a nice atmosphere and all the rest of it. And of course we had our mess which we patronized, you know, fairly well because they had, you know you had your billiards or your snooker, your darts and the bar, card tables you know to play cards and that, so you had enough to do around the place.
AP: Were there any [unclear]?
HWT: There were concert parties and there were film [unclear] all that sort of stuff you know and they looked after us pretty well.
AP: Were there any, [clears throat] excuse me, superstitions or hoodoos, things like that, within your crew?
HWT: Very much, very much. And I remember some of the crew’s superstition, they are not my words, we always had to sit at the same seat in the way of going out to dispersal [unclear] aircraft. I think that was my only one. Yeah, I had to have that seat [unclear] but I know some that got some, well, the other thing too I suppose was, my wife, when I went [unclear] she gave me a white silk scarf and she’d sown a little, a little, uhm, what do you call, dice, a little dice in one corner of it, see, and I wouldn’t fly without that, I still got it, it’s no longer white, it’s now yellow.
AP: [laughs] it’s done you well then, it’s done you well. I guess we’re getting to the nitty gritty now. Do any of your operations stand out for any particular reason?
HWT: I remember D-Day, it just, you know, just for the amount of traffic on the Channel and we had, you know, on D-Day they locked all the [unclear] down, you know, so nobody went anywhere and there were armed guards with instructions to shoot to kill if anyone wanted to get out. And then when we went into briefing, I noticed, they told us, this was D-Day and our target was on the coast, [unclear], not [unclear], [unclear], something like that and that’s the first we heard of it, oh, no, we knew it was pending because the place was crawling with troops and [unclear] whatever but we didn’t know when and so we, so off we went and I just remember the level of activity and there was no fighter activity on that D-Day target, not where I was, there was quite a bit of flak and that was it but the, there is, thing I remember mainly is a mid-air collision of three pre airview, that’s opened your eyes pretty quick and we got shot up a few times, you know, may have taken out a bit of flak damage one night, we had one fighter attack [unclear] air gunner, I remember that, [unclear], you know, normally they were looking for someone who was asleep, you know, and because they were easy in sight but by the way [unclear] was in the time when they developed a thing they called Music, Schrage Music I think they called it and they equipped the Me101os with an upward firing cannon and they’d come in underneath [unclear] you see and stand in blind spot and [mimics the sound of rapid gun fire] and it’s gone, they aimed for the wing tanks and that was very successful and they did in the end on some of the aircraft, on the Halis or the Lancasters, they did put up a turret, or not a turret, but a gun in the, no, I’m sorry, they didn’t, no, they never did that, the Yanks did that, the Yanks did that with their [unclear], they put a belly gun in and the poor gunner had to sort of crawl in and, you know, he’s in a very uncomfortable position and but that was the Yanks, not us. No, we were, we did, part day and part night trips and by the time we were doing them, they were, by the time D-Day arrived, the Yanks had cut into the [unclear] pretty heavily with attacking their aerodromes and in air fighting, you know, by then they had the Thunderbolts and the Mustangs. And they got [unclear] in the bomber stream a fair way the Yanks [unclear] not us and of course they got into the German fighters a bit. Which is very good.
AP: [laughs] yeah. Cool.
HWT: But, oh, now we had, a couple of times we lost motors [?] and you get one time bomb hanger, but now we, when you’re, [laughs] when you’re being, when there’s a lot of flak, when you’re hit by the flak, it’s, you don’t have to [unclear] quick you’re in it, you know, but the no reason that the shrapnel, sometimes the noise that’s close to you when you caught a bit of shrapnel, it sort of puts you on edge but the thing that I know was my job, I was busy all the time, see, cause the safest way to get over a, uhm, an operation was to stay in the stream, you see, the head streams had five, six, seven hundred aircraft, you know, in a short space of time and if this stayed within the stream band was about ten hundred miles, you mind an individual on the German radar, you’re part of the mess which they couldn’t distinguish you from, but if you were outside that, you appeared on their screens as a [unclear] and they could [unclear] a fighter onto you, you see. So, the thing to do was, stay behind and you had to stay in that channel, then be one of the pack, so you were supposed to take a fix every six minutes, but of course you couldn’t do that with, you know, where the, your radar range weren’t, what do you call it? Interfered with, you know, which I have forgotten the word.
AP: Jamming.
HWT: And [unclear] otherwise you took them as you could [unclear] something on the ground or, a river or something or [unclear] started with the star sight, but they, the best took you about fifteen minutes to work out, [unclear] to work out.
AP: And you, you
HWT: And so you had to stay on it, you know, and if you concentrated on that but you’re not thinking about the threat, instead I was fortunate in that position.
AP: What was the navigator’s compartment like in the Halifax?
HWT: Good,
AP: If you’re sitting at your desk, what are you looking at?
HWT: It was, I haven’t got a photo of it, but it was quite generous, it was, uhm, the pilot was up on a slightly raised area and there was a lower deck but not at full height, you know, and then I was [unclear] accommodate the navigator and the bomb aimer and when the bomb aimer wasn’t up acting as a second pilot, he would be down in his prone position, you know, and when he was there, I had to let him in because I had a collapsible seat that folded back [unclear] and but I had a pretty generous desk probably about that wide I suppose and it was, we had, you know, the usual red light or amber light to light, which wasn’t all that good. But then you had an API in front of you, which was a box about so big on the wall and, you had the, forgotten the name of the thing now. You had this device over the table which carried star maps and that projected star positions down onto this chart, you see. And, in fact, I’ve collected navigation instruments since the war, you see, and might even down in the workshop.
AP: Yeah.
HWT: And not since the war, only since I’ve retired yes and anyway I got an API, I got a GPI and I’ve never been able to get one of these, whatever they were, because I don’t think they were common out here, I think they were common to Bomber Command in England [unclear]. Anyway, this is one thing I forgot but I’ve known now, I’ll look it up.
AP: [laughs] Pretty good.
HWT: But now, my space was pretty generous and the only, I had a fold down seat [unclear] and that’s about it, and we had to wear silk gloves under our gauntlets to give us feel [?], that’s one of the computers we used to use, that was, that’s just, you know, one I bought since you know, but they were between that and doing your chart work and then doing your sextant work, quite busy.
AP: Where in a Halifax, I know in a Lancaster you got that astroline [?] thing behind the cockpit, where in a Halifax did you take star shots from?
HWT: Same thing.
AP: Same spot the Halifax.
HWT: [unclear] position to it.
AP: Oh yeah.
HWT: To [unclear] I’ll show you.
AP: Oh yeah, we have a model here so I prepared earlier.
HWT: It was just alongside, just behind the pilot and I’m beside [?] the radio operator.
AP: Ok. Pretty good. Uhm, you were talking about being attacked by a fighter once or twice, or being chased by a fighter once or twice. Did you encounter the corkscrew or did you have to use the corkscrew at some point?
HWT: Yeah.
AP: And how did that effect your navigation?
HWT: Badly [laughs] it, everything I had on my desk flew up the roof, you know, scattered all over the [unclear], then I had to recover them when I got out of it and but it didn’t affect, like, navigation as far as [unclear] is concerned, they usually corkscrewed around the [unclear] they’re on, it only pictured as a one off anyway, you didn’t [unclear] you know it was [unclear] corkscrew and so it didn’t affect my navigation to any extent because whatever in the [unclear] you were picking up with the continued fixes you were trying to get, you know, so it didn’t grow and I’m frustrated you know, I kept a log and part of the chart of the trip I did to Stuttgart, which I was going to show you but I can’t find the damn thing!
AP: Oh damn!
HWT: I looked everywhere and it gives you a fair idea then of how the, you know, why you kept the record the fixes [unclear] you know.
AP: You have to let me know if you do find it. I’d like to see that. Anyway.
HWT: I’ve gotta find it.
AP: Yeah.
HWT: I don’t know whether it’s down in my workshop, I got stuff down there but I wouldn’t have taken it down, there is no reason for me to take it down there. However.
AP: That’s alright, no worries. Uhm,
HWT: And I’ve got, this is a map, a map case this,
AP: Ah, cool!
HWT: Which I made, when I was collecting maps, well, I still have and I’ve got, you know what a [unclear] is?
AP: What?
HWT: [unclear]?
AP: No.
HWT: [unclear] you hang the file.
AP: Oh, ok, yeah.
HWT: And that’s how I got the maps in here.
AP: Oh, fantastic! Uhm, alright, so, how many trips did you do?
HWT: I did forty.
AP: That’s alright.
HWT: I started off on forty two, but two of them we were recalled on. Went through all the briefing took off, were on our way when we were recalled. Because they got [unclear] information that the targets were, you know, clouded out [or up?] and even then the decisions varied you know because we were recalled on those two occasions but on other occasions, you’d, not very often though, you’d bomb out of a cloud [unclear] and now I bombed once on my H2S,
AP: Ah!
HWT: And the bomb aimer couldn’t see the target and when we were committed to it, so handed over to me and I took it over on H2S which where they landed but [unclear] aircrew there’s a bomb site.
AP: So, Ok, tell me something about H2S. Presumably that’s in your navigator’s compartment as well, it’s around your desk somewhere. What were you looking at and how did it work?
HWT: Well, you had curtains along the side of your compartment. You could find the light [unclear], so most of your time that’s where you were, except when you want to take, you know, star shots and then you turn your light out and go for [unclear] you come back and if you got [unclear] on the chart, that’s why I’m frustrated I couldn’t show to you, you know, you had to get a fix straight at target shot if you could on three stars and that gave you, you reduced your position to a small triangle, and you just took the centre of that then you had to, had a symbol for that which was a circle with a dot in the middle on the chart and then your air position which made you maintain a, what do you call it? An air position chart all the time so because your air position was always the thing you had to apply the wind to, which gives you a [unclear] position and the air position was always the triangle with the dot in the middle, so by the time you’re keeping your chart up to date and you’re writing up your log and you’re having taken the fixes, you’ve taken the shots to make the fix and then on some occasions you’re bitterly cold, you know, your hands are cold, so you don’t work as flexibly as you would normally, I remember one time before we got the Mark III [unclear] my oxygen mask was dripping onto my chart and make a little ice cream, you know, but you had to navigate through but [unclear] you know, so, you couldn’t, you wouldn’t work as quickly as you would if you’re sitting down here [unclear], you know, you had certain discomforts here so you are
AP: Pretty good.
HWT: That’s how anyway, but the navigator was pretty busy all the time and he looked like [unclear] interesting, I was [unclear] target when we went up to it and if there was, if there was a ten [unclear] black in the sky, if it was a day like one, I just keep the curtain pulled [laughs] not that you use your curtain as you could but that’s what you felt like
AP: Yeah.
HWT: But now, I was, particularly on the night targets as always busy, day targets were better because you had, you could take visual fixes, [unclear] you could have a radar range, you know.
AP: You used Gee a fair bit?
HWT: Pardon?
AP: You would have used Gee a fair bit?
HWT: Yeah, Gee.
AP: How did that work?
HWT: [unclear] I think I got a, no, [unclear] but the [unclear] chart was an [unclear] chart with a number of lines drawn on it, you see, and these lines, they weren’t straight, they were sort of, you know, what they call it, I forget now, anyway they were lines demarking the radiations from three different radar stations and each station had a different colour on the chart and say you’d, when you took your readings of the, of the Gee, you could prop them on against in relation to the station you were working, you know, and that was very good and very simple and then you got the H2S which and of course the [unclear] was able to, oh God there is a word for I can’t think of it, a [unclear] scrambled anyway the Gee transmission over the [unclear] so the H2S then gave you a radar unit that you carry in the aircraft and the Germans couldn’t, uhm, scramble it, ain’t that terrible? Anyway but you had the danger the Gee transmitting and the Germans took out [unclear] they could pick up your transmission and home on you, you see, so you didn’t want to, until that happened, it was great, you know, you could, all the cities had distinctive shapes on H2S screens which were the same on your chart, so it was easy and to maintain where you were but when the Germans tend to home on your transmission, you didn’t transmit all the time, you see, so then it was much harder because you hadn’t been on the thing all the time yet, you had to be, identify where you were, you know, or guess where you were in relation to what you station you were working. Bu they all had their, you know, plus and minuses.
AP: It’s one of the fascinating things I think, if you follow through the whole bomber war, the measures and the countermeasures and then the counter countermeasures and then the way that, you had this brilliant new technology that gave you the advantage for about two weeks and then the other side came up with a counter tour and you had to put the counter to counter and it just kept swinging [unclear]
HWT: [unclear] scientific war
AP: That’s unbelievable, yeah, I [unclear] read a couple of books about that. Uhm, alright, so forty two trips happen, uhm, how did your tour end?
HWT: Oh, it just ended.
AP: Just ended? [laughs]
HWT: It was forty, I did forty two, was the number I was set out on but how did it end? [unclear]there was another operation on Essen, two days before I’d had a day operation on Essen and the one before that which was two days before that again we were recalled by radio. Oh, it ended quite officially peacefully, [unclear] five hour trip, five hours, five minutes.
AP: Were there any, any particular celebrations when you got back or?
HWT: Oh yeah, we [unclear] on celebration, yeah, course, of course it has but in [unclear] long, you see, we were posted [unclear] pretty straight away but [unclear] was our pilot, he went to [unclear], no to [unclear] to conversion, I was, stayed on the squadron, they made me the radar officer which, you know, I had to assess all the bombing performance of the aircraft, you know, as recorded by H2S and I did that some months and then I was posted to a transport squadron 96, which was just forming and I did three cross countries to them [unclear] we were preparing to go on a route I’d established by then was down to Middle East, Cairo across to Bombay, then across to Chongqing I think, some Chinese place to take [unclear] squadron to them. And we were just doing our run up to that, I didn’t know which [unclear] I was gonna be on because, you know, you do the England-Cairo, we did the Cairo-Bombay, Bombay-Chongqing, a trip, be stationed on those but I can get to that, they posted me back here and I went back here and then I had my normal leave and I was posted, I was going to be posted to a squadron in New Guinea when the war was over, so that was it.
AP: That was the end of it. So, how did you find then are you in the Air Force for about five years or something now?
HWT: Yeah.
AP: How did you find readjusting to civilian life?
HWT: No problem.
AP: No problem at all?
HWT: No. I went back to Newport for six or eight months and then my course started at Swinburne and I did that. I did that for three years and then, then I got a job at the council as a building inspector and I was that for a couple of years, then I got, caught as a building [unclear], so I got the building [unclear] job and then that gradually grew to encompass the town planning and won a council work so started as the city architect [unclear] town planner [unclear] regional department for about fifteen [unclear] and couple of secretaries, you know. So it developed and so I had no problem, I got back into a quiet work and then I wanted to fly but my wife didn’t want me to fly until the kids had grown up a bit so I didn’t care for my license until 1968, then I got that and then, well, I still got it but and then during those years I did a lot of flying around Australia. I belonged to a group called the [unclear] aviation group [unclear] and I was the secretary, director for secretary for quite a while and so we had three aircraft and we had a Cessna 182, a Cherokee Piper 180 and a Victor and before we got the 182 we had a Piper Comanche, beautiful aircraft, I was standing in front of the aircraft but one of the [unclear] aviation group crashed the [unclear] and killed the four of them and [unclear] for me, I had to go up there and dispose of the airframe, and [unclear] took the engine and the retractable undercarriage and I had to very carefully dispose of the [unclear] which was the airframe and [unclear] back and forth which, you know, [unclear] terrible end of a lovely aircraft. Anyway and then the last trip I did, I flew clockwise right round Australia, coastal, right round Australia,
AP: Beautiful.
HWT: You know, took us three weeks, a good trip.
AP: Oh boy! [unclear] A country that lends itself to things like that. Very much the easiest way to cover the distance I think. Very nice, so, oh, I guess we’ll come to what is my last question, I ask everyone this. Uhm, what do you think is the legacy of Bomber Command and how to you want to see it remembered?
HWT: Well, I was annoyed and hurt so that affected [unclear] job didn’t but the way that the Command was treated after the war upset me, [unclear] a good two years the Command has carried the war and at the time we started was the time Bomber Harris really started his campaign we didn’t have any [unclear] gear, you know, we had normal just recorded all this stuff but and sextants but then, as a Command I’m talking about and then we got Gee, which helped us through a while and then we got H2S which helped us and then in between the, [unclear] this, they developed pathfinders to find the target and illuminate it, which made the job more accurate so and it was the Bomber Command and the government’s, the English government’s decision that we use carpet bombing because at the time we started, we had no better means to getting to and so, but they always picked an appropriate target which was bombed too but then there was always, you know, the weering skilled and the bomb aimer, all that sort of stuff come to it, so you had a spring but, but anyway Bomber Command was much blamed and the politicians particularly didn’t want to know [unclear] because you see in the bombing civilians were killed but civilians were [unclear] during the war because most people were working in something to do with the war, ammunitions, looking out, people in leave, all this sort of stuff, you see, so there was no real completely neutral person but that’s perhaps a modest justification but the, but anyway the thing I heard most was the fact that the politicians would give Harris a list of targets, see, the scientists worked them out, you know, factories [unclear] whatever, so they had collected the intelligence, then they gave the list of appropriate targets to the Parliament and the politicians nominated [unclear] you see, they normally give him [unclear], you know, the five was his choice, which one of the five his choice, depending on [unclear] and so it was [unclear] because the politicians didn’t want to know it, didn’t want to know about it, you see, because thinking that it was not very good because of people had, you know, the [unclear] of civilians being killed they didn’t know [unclear] and I think members of Bomber Command as a whole felt that way. There is one little last thought, but I don’t know whether you know about it but it was something like so long after the war I [unclear] have forgotten about it, but last year the French government decided to give the survivors of D-Day and Battle of Normandy a Legion of Honour and they presented them to them and which I got one was a nice medal but I think there were twenty five from Victoria and I think six from South Australia and I think there about twenty five from [unclear] I’m not sure but they [unclear] until the numbers were way down, you know, and I just mentioned it because it’s a very frugal [unclear] to
AP: What are your thoughts on the clasp? I see there’s not one hanging on your medal up there. There’s a little Bomber Command clasp.
HWT: OH yeah, good idea, I’ll show you.
AP: One of those as well [laughs].
HWT: [unclear]
AP: Yep.
HWT: This.
AP: A DFC as well I see.
HWT: Yeah, and that’s the
AP: Yeah, lovely.
HWT: [unclear] a nice medal, isn’t it?
AP: That’s a very nice medal, yeah.
HWT: And when you look at it, it’s clipped by the sides.
AP: Ah, wow!
HWT: [unclear] any good one side.
AP: [laughs] Lovely, yeah, there’s the clasp there. Very good.
HWT: That’s our crew, that’s me, that’s the rear gunner, that’s the wireless op, that’s the bomb aimer, that’s the mid upper gunner and that’s our pilot.
AP: [unclear] ground crew and a couple of WAAFs as well.
HWT: And, yeah, that’s the ground crew, that the ones who drive [unclear]
AP: Yeah. Fantastic, fantastic.
HWT: And that’s, that’s the rear gunner [unclear], the pilot and the mid upper gunner [unclear], he was killed on his fifteenth trip.
AP: Wow [unclear] that’s brilliant. Brilliant [laughs]
HWT: [unclear]
AP: Ah, very nice! Well, that’s the interview thing, so I’m gonna turn that off in a minute. So, thank you very much.
HWT: That’s alright.
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ATinningHW160314, PTinningH1601
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Interview with Herbert Tinning
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:19:54 audio recording
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Pending review
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Adam Purcell
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2016-03-14
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Herbert Tinning trained as an aircraft fitter but later remustered and flew operations with 51 Squadron as a navigator. After the war, he build a career as a town planner and later as an architect.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
51 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
coping mechanism
crewing up
fitter airframe
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
perception of bombing war
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Lichfield
RAF Snaith
RAF West Freugh
superstition
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/233/3376/AColensoF170522.1.mp3
62f276f7578995b81676e568202f437e
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Title
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Colenso, Frank
Frank Colenso
F Colenso
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Frank Colenso.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-22
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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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Colenso, F
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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PL: Hello and, and first of all an enormous thank you. My name is Pam Locker I’m in the home of Mr Frank Colenso of [redacted]. Frank it’s wonderful that you have agreed to talk to us today and so a big thank you on behalf of the Bomber Command digital archive.
FC: Thank you for inviting me.
PL: It’s a pleasure.
FC: To do that.
PL: So, I guess what I, where I’d like to start Frank is to ask you a little bit about your family and, you know, a little bit about your childhood.
FC: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I come from a very old Cornish family. There’s a lot of names with ‘o’ on the end but we’re not Italian. My, I was brought up in Falmouth in Cornwall. My dad was a boiler maker in the Falmouth docks. So, I was a young lad at school, in the scouts, a choir boy in the Parish church. A boy scout for many years and then when I started work at fourteen it was as a recovery porter on the Falmouth Packet weekly newspaper. So, the, the reporter there was Alan, doesn’t matter, he was, I, I started the job in February 1939, when I was fourteen and a half and left school. So, on the newspaper, Alan the reporter was showing me the ropes and he was in the territorial associate, the territorial army so as we went through 1939 and the war was imminent in the UK and Alan was off to war so for, for the next two years I was on my own as a, but it was a wartime rationing of paper we had not a lot of space for much news mostly it was funerals and whist drives and things like this, council meetings and such. So, then when the war broke out that year and Dunkirk happened with all the rescue allied forces from the Dunkirk area, scores of ships came into Falmouth Bay and they off loaded and the soldiers, and they were processed and given some clean clothes I guess and put on the train. So constant trains going up country from Falmouth. And my mother was a red cross nurse at the time and she was nursing these survivors from that awful time. Very much a, upset by the soldiers especially those who had swallowed fuel oil in sea water, in a bad way. So, here we are 1940 and Falmouth was bombed. The town was bombed, people killed and because the Germans were on our doorstep almost the reaction the day afterwards for hundreds and hundreds of men to join the local defence volunteers along with us young lads. Not quite sixteen some of us, so but they took us all on into the local defence volunteers and started to give us something to do. In the initial few days we were cycle patrol with an old vicar with his automatic from World War 1 which only had about eight rounds. He was our leader, so we drove, rode around the high ground round Falmouth at night, especially at night. Watching out for people setting up lights to align a bomber with say Falmouth harbour or the town or whatever. But I think the Germans wouldn’t possibly not wrecked Falmouth all the dock and repair facilities so they aimed for the town. Because they wanted a deep-water harbour and that Falmouth is the only one down that way. So that was background. We were well trained. We immediately had the sergeants all had tommy guns. The officers had side arms, the revolvers or automatics. We had American Springfield 300 calibre rifles with fifty rounds of ammunition in, in a cloth round our ear and we were well trained. We were always at the range shooting regularly and when we were kitted out gradually with uniform, boots and everything a soldier has. Well almost everything. We were well trained we was parade nights twice a week. Firing on a range Saturday afternoon. They formed us into platoons and they started at night guards around six different parts around the town from the looking across the bay to the high ground and along the low ground on the little Penryn river. So that was a pattern of my Home Guard thing was every six nights night guard. Along with that we would do with the Army exercises with the Army which got us used to the whole area around Falmouth because we drove to all the little paths and by ways and short cuts and where the high hedges were. So, you could form an ambush then. Throw all the stuff you had on with a few little turnips from the field and then just disappear because that’s the point about you really you don’t stand and fight. You get them worried that wherever they go there’s a shadow that might be us or somebody else. So that was the pattern of it. But we were well armed, we had, we had grenades and [unclear] bombs. We had mortars, spigot mortars that could fire twelve pound or eighteen pound bomb. We had what we called Vickers machine guns. The newest guns which was like an aircraft type gun, 300 calibre. We had something like phosphorus bombs. One of the bombs had five-pound weight of gelignite in it in a glass sphere. There was sticky bombs which you threw and if you threw them hard enough you took the covering off to stick on things and explode. We’d have done ourselves no favours using these things, but this was desperate times. The Germans had come right through across into France, all up as far as Norway and down towards the whole French Coast. And we were next, they were unstoppable except they had to defeat the Air Force before they could think of crossing the Chanel. So that was the pattern of the first bombing of Falmouth started the Battle of Britain, early July 1940. So that was the bombing in Falmouth. We got used to it. You were, took notice of the, the air raid warning the warbly siren and you dressed, undressed very tidily because we only had candles in the bedrooms and of course in air raid you don’t light up candles you’d got to be able to put your clothes on in the dark. So, you took your clothes off and laid them out in the right order and you were the worse and we got dressed. We had a little attaché case with odds and things in case you were blown out of your house and we took shelter next door in Cliff Roberts’ house. We were a terrace house, he’d built a huge air raid shelter in his garden. Being a deep-sea diver from the docks he’d brought a great lorry load of wood home, dug a big hole in the garden, lined it and covered it over with massive beams and that’s — Dad sawed through the fence to make a little gate. So, air raid meant we dressed, took our little attaché cases, went downstairs, through the gate into the shelter and the next-door below us was a tug boat skipper, one of the Falmouth harbour tugs. He dug a big hole, helped by his two sons and cleverly when they got a bit tired, I suppose, Mr White would find a half crown, so that made the boys do a bit more digging. And I realised, I didn’t think about it, I thought that was real treasure they were finding but I think the crafty Dad he wanted to [laughs] keep them shovelling. So, he was — that was the pattern of bombing. We weren’t allowed to write up about things like that in the newspaper but inevitably wrote about the funerals. One occasion which I didn’t put in my diary, if you imagine a stick of bombs, a stick of four bombs, one landing, I think on the boards, boarding house school. Anyway, it wrecked that school. One was in the quarry. The next one was, we were exactly in line, the next one was a hundred yards away which flattened a house and killed the occupants. So that was a narrow escape. In the early bombing as well in Falmouth my pal who was in the scouts with me and at school, Jeff Maynard. He was in Lister Street with, along with two relations who had come down from London to escape the bombing and that particular raid, parts of the town, his house was completely blown apart and collapsed on them. They were under the stairs which was a strong point, recommended to be and the gas main had been fractured. The water system pipes were broken, so they were faced with the water and gas leaking. They were dug out by the rescue, volunteer rescue parties and luckily not requiring hospital treatment. They were found a house in the, in the country about three or four miles away in Constantine and now Jeff was due to start work in — where my brother worked in Burts the electricians which was only three hundred yards from his house, so when this happened, he had to get the bike out. But we were all cyclists. We cycled patrol. Only lasted a few, a few weeks to give us something to do. But we were well trained. We had Army instructors, we had all these weapons that we learnt. We did grenade throwing and mortar usage, using mortar. So then and along with this night exercises perhaps which meant we’d just come off night guard because of six nights, each day was different and there was an exercise that started Saturday afternoon with the Army and ran all through the night until Sunday morning when they hoped to finish it, so we could get home for our Sunday dinner. That was the pattern of it. So, you were very tired at times but that was it, that’s normal to be quite — and you were cold sometimes on guard because, it was before we had greatcoats, we would have a blanket round our shoulders, patrolling along the cliffs. With these little glow worms sometimes but for the first bit of a town boy your night sky is just a few stars here and there but when you are out in the country and there is no other light from anything else that big ball in the sky is something you’ve never seen before. So, this was the pattern. Along with this was all the newspaper work, meetings, council meetings all sorts of evening affairs. I had to write about court cases and I was getting half a crown a week. I, I started as an apprentice you see, and I was bringing myself up really. Well I was on my own. So, this was six pence a day but I was never broke. I think I gave my money, my mother something as well and we were lucky. The Cornish Echo was the paper that operated from Falmouth and I was very friendly with Bill Ward their reporter and of course typically we worked together. We always met at court cases and things. In fact, for court cases, if I sent my copy up to the Western Morning News by putting it on the train I was paid a penny a line and I was often getting more with my, whatever you call it, sending my material up to them than I was [laughing] but then that was [unclear] no [unclear] really. So, with the, with the shooting I became quite expert. I was a sniper, we were snipers in the, in my platoon, and so that when — later on it was time to decide what I wanted to do because conscription was looming and if you could volunteer before then you went where you chose to go. So, my pal Bill had — older than I, he was a grammar school boy, so better suited to be training as a reporter really, than a young lad with me like I was. Now, he was a bomb aimer on 50 Squadron later on. My other pal, Nick, whose father was in the Bristol Aeroplane Company a roaming repair and modifications man, he was down on — working on [unclear]. On a Beaufighter. And he said if you come down to the Lizard Peninsular where the big scanners are now, you come down and I’ll show you round the Beaufighter. And whatever else is there so. These, these places weren’t fenced. So, you just came across and of course it’s a treat for young lads of fifteen or sixteen to get inside an aircraft like the Beaufighter for instance. Anyway, he showed us around the, also Vulcan and Hurricane which was another fleet. So, later on Nick’s dad said I’m going to take you up to London, he said I’ll ensure you get on the train I shall meet you at Exeter where you change, and we’ll go to the Windmill Theatre, there’s something to somebody, somewhere we can stay so that then this happened. We went to the Windmill Theatre which was a, we never close was the motto. And the attraction there was the nude, the nudes on the stage. So [laughs] but they weren’t moving, they weren’t allowed to move just graceful poses. So, you can imagine that with the gauzy screens, I suppose, in front. I can’t remember quite but no doubt a clever way of screening the fine detail of them and then when there was a little interval and people were leaving in the rows of seats. If there was an empty seat in front of you the men would clamber over to get into it because when they had a few intervals they got nearer and nearer the action [laughs] or the inaction [laughs]. So that was one episode and my memory I took away of all things, not about the nudes but about Vic Oliver, who’s the son in law of Churchill who was a comedian and played a violin and he could do most marvellous things with that violin. He could make it laugh [laughs] which had us in hysterics really to hear himself. This was the world of darkness it was then during the war. So back home again it wasn’t long before Mick’s dad said you get a job in the, in the Bristol Aeroplane Company because with all you do your in work, you’re in your workshop all the time making things. Because I made a half scale tommy gun for Nick’s nephew and in fact, because I could copy the detail in, I was obviously capable of making it from scraps of things. I made myself early on a practice rifle. The right weight of ten or eleven pounds to strengthen up my old muscles because I was a little weedy eight and a half stone when the, in 1939. Later on, when I went to join the Air Force I was well over, well about ten stone plus. So, I did volunteer, no I did go to Weston-super-Mare for an interview and of all things to show how nimble and clever I was with my fingers I brought a cigarette lighter that I’d made, not really knowing that this was a joke. Everybody around the country would say all they do is make cigarette lighters in the factories so anyway the, then I had a letter to take me on and then I had another letter. The, all our recruiting has been taken over by the government so that agreement is not valid now. So that’s when I joined, I volunteered to be an air gunner. Went to the normal medical at Plymouth and then later on went to Oxford for an aircrew medical when they discovered that my left eye was below standard and my right ear. So, thinking back all these seventy odd years later really, that, that saved my life, that bad eye saved my life really because as we know half of the Bomber Command people never came back. So that was, so as I was unfit for aircrew and so stamped on my document, I believe, then I could have a choice of what I wanted to do. What trade for instance. And I chose to be airframe. Airframe mechanic to start with because Nick’s dad said if you’re an airframe fitter, it’s a use, such a useful thing to know and after the war you can turn your hand to anything. And, in fact, it proved right really. So that was my time when I was called up go to Padgate up around Manchester way, I believe, as a recruit to be kitted out and do a bit of marching about, I guess and, so that was the first time that I was in a hut with about twenty odd others. But really as I had been in the Home Guard with sleeping in a guard room every six nights with the noise that goes on and the bustle that happens at times, it’s no big deal. Same as being shouted at on the parade ground, that was nothing new. Whereas it was bit of a great culture shock for a lot of chaps first coming into it. So, I took all that in my stride. So, the recruits then, new recruits were off to Blackpool, billeted in the landladies houses, you would first of all when you arrived and got, got into a situation where you marched down these streets. They would halt and right fourteen of you in here. That’s how they set you off in the different houses and the landladies were I’m sure occupied all through the war. Which is why they were after the war able to have so many marvellous changes, I would guess that happened. So that was it, but you see Blackpool was marvellous it was the only place, one of the seaside places that civilians could come to. The aircrew chose Torquay as their initial training and Torquay itself was barred from anybody coming, the beaches were all mined, mined here and there. Well a lot of mines and they had big obstacles to prevent ships landing, landing ships coming in. So, but Blackpool with all its electric trams going up and down the long, long coast sparkling away at night, must have been a great giveaway. But often the Germans didn’t get across that far. So that was a marvellous place, four shillings a day was our pay, I think, but beer was I think, maybe went up to nearly a shilling a pint. Anyway, imagine the tower, Blackpool Tower, now inside the marvellous ballroom and we couldn’t dance but there were nine bars there and they were so busy, if you, when you wanted to get a drink you were, there was two deep in front of you at least and close packed, trying to catch a barmaid’s eye. Anyway,but it was such a friendly place and when Christmas came and New Year this was a great place where a lot of kissing went on and hugging and kissing so good for us young lads it was a real eye opener really ‘cause we weren’t into girls before then, we had boys’ things to do. We had the Home Guard to keep us busy. So, this was an adventure then. So, one of these girls was from Bury in Lancashire, an ATS girl. Yes, we palled up and I saw her a few times. Only kissing and cuddling, nothing beyond that. And then later on, a year later on in Burma when I found this tower, Blackpool Tower beer label and on the back, she’d written her address. So, I started corresponding and we had lovely exchange of letters and she was a great poet. She would write marvellous poetry. And then another girl that I was also friendly with later on, in Wellington, I wrote her, and that was a nice little friendly exchange of letters but that’s digressing really. This early recruit training, stamping of feet around the [unclear] whereas out on the parade ground there was a lot of swearing went on. In Blackpool ‘cause you’d march around the streets and did your square bashing there the, the one in command had to watch his, watch his language. But he often marched us to a particular café for the break time, so that meant he would have his free, free [unclear] and we paid a tuppenny of course. We had to have a bath Fridays, Fridays and Mondays because they would march us to the big communal baths there with a swimming pool of course, that was a great attraction. Derby Baths, I think. So, we did our training there, the assault courses. We were shooting, we were running around, which was making us fit. Basically, it was keeping us fit. And also, when you think, stop to think about it on a parade ground when you respond to every order immediately that sets you up for the pattern of the future when you do, you respond to what your asked to do without question. That’s the point of it I think. And then from there I went to Western-super-Mare where Locking is the training, one of the schools of technical training. So that was in the summer of forty-three I suppose. Yes, it was. And we were in huts there and in the mornings when we woke up and had breakfast we marched to the, where the school was with a band in front of us. So, this was a great place for being a seaside place, a lot of people there. It was in the summer especially but we spent a lot of money on the dodgem cars. It eats up your money really when you don’t get much a day [laughs]. Cuts down your money for beer or cider and then one time coming from a local village, walking back west to Locking I kept wanting to take my greatcoat off, lay it on the white line on the road and lie down on it. So that was, I had to be dissuaded of that was not a good idea. Because all the vehicles headlights were havoc, were completely masked except for a narrow slit which was guarded from going upwards by a, like a peak of a cap.
PL: Um.
FC: So, they didn’t produce much light so that was I’ll explain why it’s there, I would do as I was told. But the cider was a powerful drink [laughs]. So, from there a group of us, we were all airframe mechanics, we went, we were sent up to, to, to Shropshire, to Peplow. An airfield which was half way between Wellington and Market Drayton. Wellington is now Telford. The big city of Telford since we were there. And this was, we were, we went there as part of 83 Operation Training Unit, because Wellington twin engine bombers but we hadn’t got any. So those early weeks we were, I suppose, the advance, in advance of the advanced party, really, ‘cause they were recycling themselves from Wales where they were based to there so we were getting things ready. Did meet my old friend who, when I got, I can see his face now, the morning after I got the worse for wear I can see that disgust on his face now. So that’s a reminder that I shouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t drink too much [laughs]. So that was a, a waiting time, working and waiting. We only had one Wellington there in a hangar with both wings off so and that wasn’t anything to learn from. Anyway, they did come and we settled in to some work then with the flying, daily inspections before flight, before flight the inspections turn round inspections and after flight inspections. Flying night time as well because they were doing navigation and working the crew up to a, to work together as part of it. So, but we only had a few other visiting aircraft come so it was only the Wellingtons and about time when they came back, we had all the engines had to be covered every night with a big, like an aluminium cover, balloon fabric with asbestos patches where it would come over the hot exhaust pipes. So that was a task at night in the wind trying to get these covers on.
PL: What was that for Frank?
FC: The reason for covering them over was to keep the moisture out of the engine otherwise the electrics, I think that was a good reason and they wouldn’t — the oil wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be as cold because turning over, if the oil is thick and cold it takes more effort to turn it over by the starter motor so there’s a reason for it. So really, we didn’t have real contact with the crew. We just helped, just supported the ladder as they climbed in, I guess and normal conversation I expect but no, not much memory of any detail of them. But once starting, once started and the signal for chocks away we pulled the chocks away, waved it off and did our salute as they moved, as they gathered speed, so and this main runway, though I think it was newly, newly made because it was completely tarred with, tarred with a black pitch and then covered with oak chips, oak wood chips which were then rolled in. Now, what that was for, thinking back afterwards, partly it could be to camouflage a new runway ‘cause it sticks out like a sore thumb when its new concrete. Might have been that. But certainly, it proved to be a good thing to save tyre wear. You imagine with our training lots of circuits and bumps around the take-off, circle round and landing, you know scores, scores of landings went on that wouldn’t otherwise have gone on with a flight, a flight of Wellingtons. So then, from there I went to Blackpool again to upgrade to a fitter 2A, fitter 2A airframe, so that was more time at Blackpool and that covered Christmas as well so a bit of a repeat, but in the meantime, we decided we must learn dancing. So, at Blackpool, over one of the shops was Madam somebodies dancing academy, so there we were learning the quickstep and the waltz and the foxtrot whatever and I have wrote, written in my diary that I am getting quite good at the waltz, but I haven’t tried it with a girl yet. So, but you can imagine the tower, the marvellous ballroom there, same as the Winter Gardens, sort of a up market place that had all those facilities and a huge dance floor and stage for the band. The whole place was crowded. The bars were crowded sometimes two or three deep waiting, trying to get a drink and no wonder sometimes we drunk these bars dry. So that was where our money went and then in my diary, I realised that I would occasionally draw ten shillings out of my Post Office account to keep my appetite for the old John Barleycorn [laughs]
PL: So, what were you doing at Blackpool when you returned to Blackpool?
FC: When I returned, we went to Wharpton[?] on buses and there, there was another school of technical training. I think it was Wharpton[?] but since called Warton, and so we were doing benchwork and my diary reminds me that I was nearly top of the class for different things like this because I had always been making and mending things as a boy, even when I was a reporter I spent a lot of time in my workshop making this tommy gun, half size tommy gun and making myself an automatic pistol, but it wouldn’t have been automatic but to fire, point two-two ammunition, but prior to that with my little cap gun, made of a steel castings probably put together for a roll of caps. I modified this pistol by drilling a hole where the hammer struck, just the size of a point two-two blank cartridge and then the hammer I drilled it so that I provided it with a spike which, when you, when you discharged, when you pulled the trigger that set the round off but I made a mistake really. I should have had it in the vice when I first fired it but I was holding it like you would and when I fired it really when you think about it there was no where particular for the, for the, blast to go, all it could do was to throw the side, pivoted side part of it off and crack, crack it off to my finger, so I thought I won’t, I won’t use that again.
PL: So, what were you making at the technical school?
FC: We were doing, we were doing filing. We had to file within a few thousands of an inch or even less. You were drilling, you were making brackets shapes, folding metal, drilling the holes, riveting, getting the, the idea of the rivet clearance hole and so on and riveting up and you were judged on the final product. So that’s where I got top marks again. So, I graduated, if that’s the word, we never used that, came away with a, with the upgrade which I think it gave me six pence a day more which was well worth it. So then back to the, back to Peplow, carrying on with the and then I was in modifications section and the diary reminds me that we’d start picking dual control on a Wellington on one morning we’d work all day, all evening, right through the night until six o’clock or so in the morning when we’d finished the job. We made provisionally an extra seat in that position because normally the pilot sits on the left with easy access for the crew down to the bomb aimers section and up to the front turret, but once the seat was in it was a bit of a squeeze to get by so we fitted an extra control column linked with the first pilots’ and another job we did in the modifications thing was strengthen up the under-carriage attachment structure. Where the under carriage pivoted from to, to be trapped that had to be reinforced. The radius rod which braces the length once it’s locked down, that structure was cracking. There was a, actually there was a heavy landing or any landing that was the, the main attachment pivot point and the radius rod attachment rod were trying to spread themselves. So, we, the modification was to strap a diagonal strut to strap between the two fittings which had I think three quarter bolts on it and my diary records that we did this Wellington in, on one side in eight and a half hours. So typically, with modifications seems to take time to do the first one but once you get the swing of it. And then because, because once we did that the aircraft had to have a test flight which meant all the crew positions had to be occupied, not just the pilot and his engineer. So, I was in the tail turret for this first flight I’d ever done, proudly stroking the, the gun butts, for the, the machine guns in there. So, we took off happily and we circled, climbed, circled and did different manoeuvres and looking over the fields for the first time from above it’s a real eye opener. Then there was an aircraft coming from behind, a single engine aircraft, I can’t remember what on earth it was but it was overhauling us from the star, from our starboard side and I knew, I knew you, you must never point guns unless you really mean, from the Home Guard you never pointed guns but in this case I was the hero with a wicked German and I was following him in the gun sights, I mean there was no ammunition, following him in the gun sights until he came along side by which time the turret was at right angles and there was an enormous bang behind me. And a rush of wind, a terrific rush of wind and what it was I hadn’t latched the doors, two doors together properly, which I mean it must have happened with lots and lots of other people at the time, so I nursed the turret back in line and scrambled, round to try and shut the doors because when it flew open and I looked over my shoulder at the green fields farm, you know, I only had a three or four inch strap around my waist and the chute, parachutes is clipped inside the aircraft in a bracket, so you’re a bit on your own there if you want to jump out. Not a happy place for anyone to be when things are happening for real. So, this is one of those things that the story must, must have been told endlessly if the doors flying open [long pause]. So, the pattern —
PL: So, so the point, what was the, what was the purpose of the test flight?
FC: Well the test flight was to, to operate the controls. We did other —
PL: Dual controls?
FC: We did other things regarding the rigging as well.
PL: Right.
FC: The, now, the undercarriage knock down selection [pause] it pulled the flaps, I think, partly down it was all through the aircraft, with all its trim somehow with its undercarriage dangling down, so it was linked up with the flaps but the, the, the point was if the — yeah, if they were flying and with the, with the trim controls, that was the other edges wasn’t it? Anyway, if you were flying and you operated the tail trimmer and then [emphasis] selected the undercarriage down, if you operated the tail trim too much and the flap and the undercarriage came down it would pull on the cable to do what it thought it had to do and it meant the cable snapping so it finished up with a spring strut being put in the cable somewhere I believe. But the Wellington was very touchy when you jacked it up in the hangar you had to, you had to know what you were doing. The jacking point typically you would think is on the point of balance but then that’s not a happy thing to do. You need weight on the tail when you’re jacking so because of this reason it depends, if you’ve got your engines in, it’s different to when you have got no engines in, but you had to watch jacking that you didn’t let it, let it tip so. It was a case of securing the tail wheel down till you were safely jacked and then the retraction we did, adjustments we had to make, the hydraulics all new to us we were learning how everything worked. We — when you fly the Wellington and if you think of a, perhaps a better with a low light coming across the wings you realise then what, how an aeroplane works, you get reduced pressure on the top side and increased pressure underneath. You realise then that being a fabric covered wing and geometric construction which is like a lattice work you looking across the wing, it’s like looking across a quilt on your bed, it’s all in squares, little square humps and you think it’s, that’s holding the blessed aircraft up that fabric. So, it’s well laced on.
PL: Um, um.
FC: It’s well secured, and the Wimpey could take a lot of damage. We didn’t have any damaged aircraft coming back to our patch because but, the, this design proved itself. If you had a big hole blown in it, it destroyed these, this lattice work then it wasn’t terminal for the aircraft. The strains could be shared up with whatever was there.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: And then they went — the ones that had an engine fire and maybe burnt the fabric off, burnt the fuselage fabric off right into the tail plane they would still get back.
PL: Good gracious. There’s sometimes you’d have aircraft coming back, and it was really a skeleton.
FC: Yes, I know. Maybe just one, one tail plane and a bit of an elevator to control. But they were sort of an all laid back aircraft in the air. They were moving a bit, when you’d, a lot of aircraft when you look back towards the tail, it’s like a, a ship at sea. They describe a little square pattern, repeated pattern, on a ship. I mean later on a troop ship, sleeping on deck the mast and the stars they would be making little squares in the sky. But certainly, as I said the, the, the low sun across the wing made you realise that you been,the aircraft had been supported by it.
PL: Um, um. So, can you take a guess at how many Wellingtons you converted to dual control?
FC: No, I didn’t record it you see I didn’t have room for recording things like that. It was all about the, the drinking and the dancing and the meeting of different ones.
PL: [laughing]
FC: Now one night, I’d forgotten about this. On one diary entry I’d drawn a picture of a brooch with a nice letter ‘M’ with wings. That was for one of the good girls that I was with and then, Marjorie, and then when I’d finished it, I mean in the diary it gives me away what type of chap I am. I, it came up so good, the words are in the diary, but that it’s too good to give to Marjorie. I’ll wait till I find another girl with a letter ‘M’ [laughs]. But in fact, I gave it to my mother.
PL: Oh
FC: Her second name was May but I said this is ‘M’, ‘M’ for mother.
PL: Oh, how lovely.
FC: [laughs]
PL: So how long, how long were you a flight engineer?
FC: I wasn’t a flight engineer, ground engineer.
PL: Ground engineer, sorry.
FC: Well this was once I was a classed as airframe fitter, fitter to airframe then, then I said farewell to my pal I joined up with, Jeff Grinden, of all things had taken his tenor saxophone with him, like musicians do.
PL: Um.
FC: Because he had a marvellous life, like pancake. We had a mountain of spuds to peel, Jeff would be tootling away on his saxophone. He’d go to the bands that were playing music for the, for the Officers’ Mess or whatever and of course abroad he had it all the time he was abroad. When, when we parted company at Bombay he went with others to the Cocos Islands on a Liberator Squadron in fact. But on the, when we were, the draft that I was in to go to Blackpool again, the ready crew, the ship from the Clyde at Gourock I think. That was at Blackpool again. So that’s where I said farewell to Jeff. Who was at the next town up from Blackpool. I went there, I shouldn’t have left the area really, strictly but said my farewells. Then my train to Gourock, or Gradock or whatever, whichever it was. There I was lumbered up with all my webbing packed up with backpack, haversack, kit bag on my shoulder trying to find G deck and A deck, A deck’s the lifeboat deck, a long way down. Coming down this wide, quite wide stairways, there was a chap coming towards me and I moved to the side and he moved to the side and we stopped. And I looked up and it was Jeff, so he was on the same troop ship [laughs]. Oh yes, G deck was a long way down.
PL: So how, just trying to clarify how you moved from working on Wellingtons. So, did that work come to an end?
FC: Oh no, we just —
PL: So, so how did you get to be on a —
FC: Well in my case, I didn’t know it at the time, they needed well over two hundred upgraded fitters 2A.
PL: Right.
FC: Airframe people. They did over two hundred airframe people to put them on a 9613B, now why did I think of that. Well our kit bags had it on. And on the troop ship we had instructions from the CG-4A Waco glider, a small glider.
PL: Right.
FC: Because we going, this was for Burma, for the going into Burma. So, we had all the instruction on it and then we got to Worli, to Bombay, Worli is a huge transit camp for people leaving and coming in. And when the dhobi wallahs came around in the huts asking for our clothes to be washed we innocently, naively gave them all our sweaty old clothing and when we — later on, we saw about four acres of khaki spread out to dry in the sun. So, but they had a clever code, they’d invented their own sort of barcode amongst themselves. Just a pattern of dots inside the collar perhaps and then on the, from the outside troops, I mean it was a four-year tour when I went, a four-year tour. They were, they wanted to raise some sterling, so they were selling things off and one, I bought a topi, a pith helmet, flat, sort of thick with a flattish top with a RAF [unclear] with an RAF flash on it. I don’t know how many — how much that was. Another one was Irish linen, a stone coloured suit in the RAF pattern which is starched. Very smart. So I bought that off him. I can’t just think what else. But I was proud to wear that suit, I’ve got pictures of it. So, in India, that’s right, that’s right, about eight or so of us airframe fitters went up to, to, to 144 repair and salvage unit which was based at the time at Risalpur, North West Frontier Province as we used to know it. Right by Afghan border where the, where the Khyber Pass starts.
PL: Um.
FC: Nowshera is a town across the Kabul river. So that was our first of the Indian town we went in, and I remember the cinemas there with Indian films and then there was a big pre-war army, army station with, with lots of facilities there, marvellous billiards rooms. We had our barrack blocks had a wide veranda, a covered veranda and a big rack to put your rifles in to lock them up and pegs over each bed to put your harness or whatever these cavalry people needed to have with them and we had our own bearer there we paid about six annas a week, of course clubbed together with a dozen of us. We had the young lad guarding our possessions and keeping the, keeping it clean. And then we got used to the Indian char wallah coming around with — on his shoulder was a harness arrangement, he carried an urn with a, with a heated, heated urn to, to serve up hot tea and egg, egg sandwiches [laughs]. So that was a good place and then Christmas came again celebrated with the officers coming round serving up the grub I suppose and 35MU was also based there. The maintenance unit. While we were there on the Frontier we were, we were, our particular party, working on the Hurricane doing a major inspection and completely recovering the fuselage with fabric, that was our task. And that had flown all the way from Burma. What they did, the aircraft in Burma that came to, need repair or whatever stage of air worthiness it was, if they had the, the time left on the major inspection date and could do it, they could fly as far as they could. They wouldn’t want to put all the aircraft into the first repair unit, so that distributed all across India. It went on, there was a three and a half year campaign, so you imagine it was a lot of work for the set up for the, right across India and of course that then was a good start when they started their own airlines later on. They had a lot of, a lot of experience in aircraft. So that was a, a memory that, and that aircraft turned up in Burma later when I was told to, when I was told to do something on this Hurricane when I was in central, lower Burma [pause] yes it, as you approach it you see how it settles, just checking the whole thing you walk around the aircraft checking things and typically you’d give it a slap underneath the fabric areas to check whether there was any water in there. So when I came to this Hurricane which had on its [unclear] a long piece of cord on the trailing edge on top of the trailing edge [unclear] and I said to myself ‘I was right after all, somebody else has done it’ and when I turned round to just look at and realise what number it was, it was the one that where, on the North West Frontier when it flew after we did all of the rigging checks, after the major,it was I think left wing low so having rigged it all with a, a positive droop or something the answer was to put I think eight inches of cord on top of the trailing edge of the rear, of the rear part of it. Bolt that on, which put a slight down pressure on. Just a gentle thing, but left wing low again and that’s why I put this quite long piece of stuff on [laughs]. So, the chaps were glad that it’s doing the, still going strong.
PL: Um, um.
FC: But, but when I first went, three of us got posted to Burma.
PL: Right.
FC: For a few weeks.
PL: So why did that happen? Was there just need in Burma?
FC: Well with, with the Air Force, no with the Army if you were in the regiment and down to a platoon, it’s like keeping an aircrew together in the war. These platoons have got to, have got to train together, whereas and they would, they would keep keeping that platoon together. But the Air Force it was all numbers, it was like if they wanted two hundred airframe fitters by that time, they went through their books and we met up with those we’d been training with as recruits. So, the time comes when they needed three chaps in Burma like they would happen. With the units, I mean they, this was another repair and salvage unit so three of us got our rations and I don’t know how long the railway journey took on these hard old wooden seats, where you had your mess tin and you had your loose tea and you went up on the, when the train stopped, you went up to the locomotive, asked the driver for some boiling water for your tea, he would blast this, you want to get out of the way, blast this super-heated steam which is well above boiling point, you know, it’s a super-heated stuff, down a pipe and then run water through it. By the time it came out it was boiling so that was our provision. And then on different stations the Indian fruit sellers were there and cakes and things you could get. So that was at Delhi. We didn’t get to the Taj Mahal we only had a day or two stop there. By the time we reached Calcutta in a big, in a transit camp there where, that’s where we was ventured in to Calcutta find where Thurpos[?] restaurant is and have a lovely meals there. [pause] So, then the, the journey on to where, whereby new unit 131 repair and salvage unit was. We had to go by train and boat and, and truck, across the Brahmaputra that’s right because the — oh the, with the Burma medal, the Burma star it was, it was for people who served East of the Brahmaputra, that was the line, so by the time we — when we got to Dhoapalong, not far from Cox’s Bazar on the Arakan Coast of Burma, the Bay of Bengal Coast. It was an airfield, we were in a lovely area which had bashas, lots of bashas which are huts made of — thatched huts with bamboo, woven bamboo side panels and things like that with, with beds in there. So that was — and then the airfields were Cox’s Bazar and Chittagong and so on. And we were repair and salvage so our task was to be in that position to, to be covering aircraft perhaps, and if you think of that coast, there’s a long beach, seventy miles long on one stretch of that coast, so a great safe landing for the pilot, not all that good for the airplane though, when you had to get there quickly, before the tide came in [laughs] so that was a — and if it was a belly landing job you had to try and lift it to get the undercarriage down and that was a task really and a half. So, but then they were desperate for any aircraft parts to be sent back to, to the big repair depots, that’s where they got their spare parts from. Now when we moved when Akiabyron[?] was taken, just by the Danba[?] Coast, we had an advanced party go down to get our new camp prepared and — oh and then I was tasked to be an escort for spares, going from Chittagong to Akyab and I wore my lovely stone walking out suit that I’d paid a few pounds for when I first landed at Bombay. I wore that and when I had to find somewhere to sleep I think because I was so well dressed, they said the CO is away you can use his tent and his bed. Clean sheets, imagine, this is, we shouldn’t keep the sheets on in case we made them dirty [laughs] now, so typically in the morning, no, there’s no, there’s no aircraft seat for you to return, they’re all jammed up with the wounded but while you’re here if you roll your sleeve up, to see, the [unclear] I think shows your, I was going to say postcode, your blood group.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, there was me in this MASH type forward hospital, laid alongside this soldier, for the first time giving a donation. Well its quite moving in a way and I remember thinking you could, you’ve got your religion here, I said, I’m C of E I wonder if my blood’s alright for him [laughs] thinking that, it set you up to do blood donation. For fifty or more times while I was at Farnborough later on. So that was my, the time when I —
PL: So, they just asked you if you would do a blood donation?
FC: Yes, anybody, any visitor wanted, any visitor they would —
PL: Right. Any visitor came along, and they would ask.
FC: Well, they were desperate days, weren’t they?
PL: Yes.
FC: And the wounded that were carried away in the daks[?], there were so many that were too, too bad to move.
PL: Um, um.
FC: And yet these forward hospitals had a lot, a lot on their plate.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, the only aircraft to come back was a Tiger Moth, a little biplane, a trainer biplane a very old design. So here I was with my, a, a thunderbolt propeller spanners and kit for a Hamilton propeller with that in the rear seat and sitting on the pilot’s parachute because he only had some blankets to sit on. And we were flying a lovely flight really up, just on, just inland of the coast, a nice area to fly in and this big, this big telescopic spanner with a tommy bar, I thought if any Japs come I should point this other weapon [laughs] like a —
PL: So, they’d think it would look like —
FC: Like a forty millimetre gun.
PL: Excellent.
FC: [laughs] So that was the only time I ever wore that suit once I was in Burma because I just put it away and went with a jungle green. So that was when we moved to Akyab that was, we were quite, it was a camp we were in, a flat area, if you — you only had to dig a hole, I mean, not knee deep and it would fill with water. So, you were alright for washing water and [pause] and Thunderbolts, Squadrons. New Thunderbolt Squadrons had moved in so I think the first day I frightened them, four or six of them were, had come from the airfield up the perimeter track around to, to where the runway was and one had got rather to the side of the, of the good ground and it sunk its wheel right up until the wing tip was on the ground so and that was all armed up you see, so we had to, that was our first salvage job to get that back on its, back on its wheels on its feet again but then nothing was damaged so that’s another Christmas tree to us we could take bits off as spares. I remember one chap there with his — he’d got a, I think it was a hydraulic tank all blanked off with a — he was putting air into it to check for bubbles so the only liquid around at the time was an open top had been cut open off a forty five gallon drum, it was a couple of feet of petrol in it so you submerge the tank in it to check for bubbles and somehow, I don’t know, it was stupid really cause you can blow with your mouth, you can blow a pressure of two pounds a square inch, but goodness knows what pressure he put on the tank because it expanded up almost to a ball and so he’d wrecked the tank but it was great for us it was like, it was like a kettle, once we’d left a few blanks on and a spout that was for boiling up our hot water for Crow the engine pit, the engine mechanic who was the butt of everybody’s humour. He would be grinding, grinding up this K rationed chocolate into little crumbs to make cocoa with, so that was a good use for that little tank. But another time, oh, we moved to a better area on a bit higher ground. And then the, the toilets had to be dug. About three barrels deep, a long way down and set up that for a latrine and the, the, they made beds out of telephone wire, bamboo poles and telephone wire, like a, like a grid, no springs but we were off the ground. So, when we moved — but when we were in Dhoapalong before we moved there to Akyab I’d made myself a camp bed. I went into the jungley bit where there was an old, one of our ground tanks abandoned and I used that to do the metal work for the legs of the, of the camp bed. I found an old tarpaulin off a lorry that I took to the [unclear] he was a tailor in the nearest village where he sewed up the canvas for the camp bed which cost me eight annas I think. So that was all it cost me. So that was good to have my own camp bed. And then I had a bed roll, a bed roll where you made your bed to sleep in and then you left it like that and you rolled it all up so you could easily unroll it and hop into it. Like a modern way of doing it I suppose. So Akyab —
PL: So what sort, what sort of date are we talking at now when you were in Burma? What sort of date was it?
FC: It’s in the diary, it’s in, just into forty-five, just into 1945. I got, it’s all in my diary somewhere. In fact, when I put in a claim for this shoulder that had gone wrong after they took, I had lots of cancer operations, they took a big one away from here which attached itself to my shoulder and neck muscles. So, once they took about three hours operation, anyway once that was radiotherapy on it.
PL: Um.
FC: To kill off the cancer, I describe it as a friendly fire that came. It was a risk with anything but certainly to kill the cancer. The fact that my shoulder dropped. This shoulder, the right shoulder has always been two inches lower than the left. Because the neighbour, who sadly died, he was a tailor, registered tailor, one of the top tailors in that line. Do all the Mess kits with their elaborate frogging and gold braid and he was — and he got me to try on the Sultan of Brunei’s Mess kit and Prince Charles’s Mess kit, in fact Len had made the Queen’s scarlet jacket she wore on early parades in London. Horse Guards Parade. He said your right shoulder is two inches lower. Well I didn’t know it. Didn’t realise it.
PL: Um, um.
FC: But in the bathroom with a mirror which shows the tiles behind you, he was right. But now this shoulder has dropped, now this shoulder is lower than this and you’ve gone out a bit out of kilter. And I have constant pain with it.
PL: Oh dear.
FC: My neck, tilts movement and I only got a sixty degree arc to travel through. So, but I, I tolerate pain really quite happily. I got peripheral myopathy in the legs which, which makes my leg burn. I can’t lay down in the day they just burn.
PL: Oh dear.
FC: But I can stand all day.
PL: Um, um.
FC: In fact, when they, when I’m trying to get to sleep and they burn, I’ve only got to lift the leg up, off the weight of the leg even if it’s soft or hard. Lift it up. Oh, it’s marvellous, I wish I could levitate my legs when I sleep. It’s not much to ask, I suppose. But that’s one of the things I’m , so I’m very stoical about that. But anyway, going back to Akyab.
PL: So how long were you there for?
FC: Well it’s —
PL: How did it all draw to a close? I mean it sounds like you became very clever at making something out of —
FC: Out of scraps.
PL: Out of scraps.
FC: Well this was our motto really, there was no job we can’t do was my corporal’s motto. So, you, there was great improvisation really.
PL: Did you have a workshop there? Did you have all the other kit that you —
FC: Well we didn’t have a workshop as such. I don’t, don’t remember much in the way of workshop situation. There’s a marvellous book called “The Bamboo Workshop” and I knew the bloke, the author of it, because in the early get togethers at, at the Albert Hall in London, this is in the early days, 1947 they had already had got together earlier than that, so each year we went to — for a reunion. Oh, anybody in South East Asia was there, you know Burma or beyond. Getting together because we want, we had [emphasis] to be together. You had all that time like, all unified in that in Burma and with all the, I mean it was a million soldiers in, in the fourteenth army, we were part of the fourteenth army. In fact, in, yeah, in General Slim’s book “Defeat into Victory” which tells the story of the defeat and so on. Just in the last chapter there’s a paragraph that stood out to me talking about 221 Fighter Group that, oh no, 224 Group was bombers, we were Fighter Group and then there’s 221, no we were 221, it was 224 on the [unclear]. Anyway it, he talks about the such close working together with the Air Force that we, we considered 221 Group to be, to be part of the fourteenth army.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: So that’s a good feeling really.
PL: Um.
FC: I’ve got newspapers of, we had a daily newspaper in Burma that came up with the rations when they flew rations, dropped rations, or flew them in anywhere. They tried to make a daily paper available which put you in the background of the what the rest of the world was doing as well.
PL: Um. So how long were you there for Frank?
FC: I had, when I joined, well when I was at Akyab, that’s right, that was maybe a couple of months later. I’ve got the dates, but then about a dozen or more of us were transferred to a number three repair and salvage unit, mobile unit which was formed in the Middle East, worked through the Middle East, come through India and then to the Arakan, to, to actually, took you up to Chapalong[?], this nicely set up with the bashas and things. In the book that was written that he wrote, Ranson, Samson, Reg, and he was always asking people in the Albert Hall ‘tell us about your units’. A lot of history and I regretted I didn’t tell him about 131 or number, well number three in the book was in the early chapter. But there were about twenty or more repair and salvage units that worked all across India.
PL: Right.
FC: And all into Burma. We were the number one —
PL: So, was it a sort of lorry, was all the kit, was it in the back, or how did it work?
FC: We were mobile, we had vehicles, we had three tonner lorries. We had high, high load up RAF trailer.
PL: Um, um.
FC: We had mobile workshops with a lathe, its own, it generated its own power a, lathe, a [unclear] I guess, a, but “The Bamboo Workshop” is a book that’s well worth reading.
PL: So, was that about — so, so did you work on the mobile, on, on the mobile unit?
FC: Yes. That was number three, when I was two years then with that unit.
PL: Right. Right.
FC: With the mobile unit. And so, they, when we joined the unit from the other unit, flew in, flew in across the mountains, the Arakan to Magwe I think, to — before they came down. We landed at Segore[?] it’s a Japanese built airfield just on the Mandalay Road up from Meiktila, only a few miles up there and we landed taxied around and the CO met us. Of course, you’re in a litter of damaged, Japanese aircraft and bodies around but the first thing he did because he was keen, ‘Are any of you footballers?’ And of course a lot, a lot put their hands up like they would because later on he formed — how many of us were there. Must have been a dozen football teams.
PL: Good gracious.
FC: And we played on the dirt runway. Not a happy place to come to grief on.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: But he — and then later on Kendrick, Squadron Leader Kendrick, he organised a, a bullet cart race down the runway. He got the locals to [laughs] bring their bullet carts on and the, the CO, Kendrick, he’d had a grass skirt, he’d got a proper grass skirt, but it wasn’t grass it was nylon towrope, glider towrope about as big as your finger I suppose but so strong, but, so the electricians jeep he had a, this for towing because a chain is a typical thing they issue or a cable but that’s solid whereas using, towing a vehicle out of the dirt, or the mud typically.
PL: Um.
FC: The tow vehicle could go forward and gather its strength up, pull on it without a jerk which could stall the engine.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: So that’s what he kept in the back of his jeep, but that disappeared and reappeared as the grass skirt. [laughs] And then he, he thief proofed his jeep, this electrician, so nobody could steal it. And what he, all he did, clever in my terms but simple. He had a change over switch, so what he did he interrupted the cable running down to the horn, horn, cause that’s just thin cable and then the starter one, button on the floor, that’s a, a small cable to trip in the relay to put the power in from the battery.
PL: Right.
FC: It doesn’t take a vast load but he, he got these side by side to the two-way switch. He could start the engine, nobody could start the engine because he’d cleverly moved the two-way switch. So, starting the engine was pressing the horn button, which nobody would have thought about. A thief especially. And the, the button on the floor, he — I think it you easily found with your foot. He put a little top hat shaped bracket over it with a hole in the middle to guard it, as a guard really.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: But it meant that he could casually go down and press that button to, to plug the hole.
PL: Goodness, gracious me. So, what happened next Frank? So, you —
FC: Well this was, we, we got, the unit, number three had just got there the day before and put up their old tents and all the place, the only place we could sleep was on the, in the cookhouse tent. That big hundred and eighty pounder tent, tent. So, we soon got fixed up with a tent and settled in. What were we up to there? Oh yeah. Meiktila in lower central Burma on top of the plains. There were eight airfields the Japanese had built. Pre-war there was one at Toungoo a bit further on the Rangoon Road, off the Rangoon Road but the one we were on had a marvellous runway, cambered enough to keep the water off.
PL: Um.
FC: And stop any pools developing whereas the perimeter tracks being flat, there were pools that, puddles and pools on that but they, but they’d excavated massive monsoon ditches and big storage ditches. Plus, they’d got the locals doing it all.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, it was, it was operable and they had their control tower up on, on poles on the, the, the trees. Well, well designed that was. And also, where the standing trees were, they got earth embankments to make a huge shaped pen to put the aircraft in.
PL: Right.
FC: So that on one occasion I was working on a Spitfire in this, in this pen. There was standing trees they’d left which was good for shade, you see. I was working on this Spitfire, sometimes if you had to put another tail unit on, you had to crawl down, you would support the aircraft prop, crawl down to uncouple the cables, trim the cables and the rudder and elevator cables and then the transport bolts on the, that took the, the front half, forward half to the rear half, a row of transport bolts to take out. That was rather a hot job. But this particular time I wasn’t there doing that when I was working on something on a little bench, it was a metal one, when, and I’d noticed this Hurricane with its forty-millimetre cannon parked outside and suddenly these cannons were firing right through the trees bringing branches down.
PL: [gasps]
FC: And I ducked under this little tiny bench and it went on and on and on. It seemed to go on forever but in fact I think their magazine holds about fifteen rounds. But if you think of [clapping] going on for — it seemed forever. We went around to see who’d, who’d fired this and standing in the cockpit a bit shame faced was the instrument man. He had put a new film in the cine camera which you matched up to the firing, put a new film in it, put the camera in, he [laughs] the Spitfire control column has a spade, spade shape, well that’s it. Suitable for your right thumb and the gun button has a guard around it.
PL: Right.
FC: So, if you’re working in the cockpit and pull it towards you and if you surround it you won’t set it off. But you’ve got the guard, you move it to a test position and then press it, that’s what he should’ve done, test. What he did was put it on full fire listening for this little whir of the camera and he’d got, fired this lot off and I think he, he was paralysed, he must of thought who’s doing that when it suddenly happened.
PL: Oh dear.
FC: But he kept his thumb on the button obviously.
PL: [gasps]
FC: And luckily, goodness knows where the shells were finishing up, a mile or two or more away. Because it fires about a two pound in effect a bullet.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: And they can be explosive ones as well.
PL: Um, um, um. That’s amazing.
FC: So that was — and we came around and everybody in the unit came round and the cooks as well and the CO come up in his jeep. So that he had to explain by Mr Neal who we called guns, called him guns after that.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: But particularly with the Spitfire, I mean the Hurricanes are totally big high aircraft on the ground a Spitfire is lower down so with the muzzles of the cannons.
PL: So luckily.
FC: You can be like a labourer leans on his spade, you drape your arm over that and it’s happened to people — those have been fired.
PL: [gasps]
FC: Been fired accidentally.
PL: Oh, my goodness.
FC: Maybe twenty millimetres [unclear] there. So, you see tail wheeled aircraft like the Hurricane and aircraft of that day, if they accidentally fire, they’re, they’re set up to about ten or fifteen degrees.
PL: Um.
FC: With a modern aircraft, tricycle undercarriage nose wheel, they’re parallel to the ground and if they fire any of those things of course, it’s just the height.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: To be aware of. So, you wouldn’t walk in front of an aircraft. [laughs]
PL: So, were there many accidents?
FC: I don’t remember many luckily, no, but it’s a warning when there were, to those around and you work safely.
PL: Um, um.
FC: Yeah, I’ve got all my fingers and thumbs. We had to — the one Spitfire that had a damaged wing we got the wing off another of our Christmas tree wrecks and fitted it. Now the pneumatics were connected up, the pneumatic pipes on the route end of the wing. And, now Rolls Royce can put the whole shape into the pipe on a, on a piece of paper but in those days the pipe was just lazily bent to a sort of “S” shape which is kind to the pipe you see but when you’ve got a whole group of them coming up like this from one wing and you take it off and you’ve got to put on another you see, easy to — so when the — right, when I went to test it, right, clutch down, hiss of the flaps. One flap went down and it copped, cropped the cannons in the wing so I thought to myself, that’s a problem with no labelling you see.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, this is a lesson that —
PL: Um, um.
FC: You label everything. But if you got the one wing off another aircraft without thoughts [pause] anyway that’s a lesson.
PL: Um.
FC: And then the — yes, we were detached. They had, typically the unit had the main, main base somewhere and with up to six or eight mobile repair sections, MRS’s and for instance, the one that I was on, number four, we had a crane, a Coles crane, a typical RAF one of the day. We had three tonners, jeeps and [pause] and what else did we have? I don’t know. I forget now. But at one stage — when we moved to Toungoo, that’s it, that was a pre-war airfield, a grass one but it had a big hangar and that hangar the Japs used as a warehouse for rice ‘cause it was — rice was in a huge heap like they pile up road salt nowadays, don’t they. In this hangar, great pile of it, goodness knows how many tons were there, but when we were — I was at Toungoo when the war finished and it was ceasefire and before the ceasefire, I think for eleven in the morning, the noise that morning they were, all these squadrons giving the Japs a good hammering and the, beside the airfield these big guns were firing up into the hills where the Japanese were, but suddenly you were, I don’t know, over awed by the silence because you’d never had, even the little chirpy insects seemed to be stopped. And then you realise the war is over, except the Japs were — they were waiting out Japs for a year after, they kept the West Africans back to, to flush out these Japanese. So, the — luckily the unit had, number three, had followed the, they were at Imphal, on the Imphal Plain with, which has got about eight airfields. The one there was Tollihull[?]. American built, because the American equipment made the road into China across those mountains.
PL: Um.
FC: So, when they were given the length of the runway as, whatever it was, five thousand feet or something, no, five thousand feet, that can’t be right, they must mean yards. Whatever it was it, it was the hugest longest runway but marvellous really because if you had an aircraft come to grief on it there’s plenty more of it.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: Whereas on a shortish run you’d have to clear the wreck off to make room.
PL: Um, um.
FC: For the newcomers.
PL: So, after the end of the war, what was your experience between the war ending and coming back? I mean were you involved with the decommission of aircraft or — ?
FC: Well in Burma we were — my unit was, was chosen to be part of the British Commonwealth occupation force to occupy demilitarising the Japanese.
PL: Right.
FC: So, our unit was chosen, being the top one with experience, but we, we, we will go there, we backed up the three Spitfire squadrons. There was a number four Indian squadron and number four and, no number eleven and seventeen squadrons, well, they operate the top aircraft. Now they have had an almost uninterrupted history from world war one. I mean they stand them down sometimes when they have got to get a new aircraft and when they stand up again the unit with the new aircraft. That’s the way they work. But that was a marvellous unit.
PL: So, you stayed on for a while?
FC: Well we were — yes, you could, you could opt out of going to Japan so in fact we were volunteers and there were two thousand RAF volunteers to go there with us, my unit as support and the Spitfires were rounded up from where ever the war left them and put on an aircraft carrier because we were going off in December forty-five but the, they loaded up this carrier with it, all these aircraft and they were on that carrier for six months. We couldn’t get the shipping we couldn’t get the three ships. We needed three ships with all the squadrons and equipment and stuff of ours.
PL: Um.
FC: Well the small ships of the day, so when we did — while we were there in Burma a hugest hole in the world that I have ever seen was made by the Indian engineers to dump all the aircraft in. A huge trench, if you like, ramping down each, up and down each side. So, we [clears throat] had a like fun which you would think of as fun putting all the Japanese wrecks in there.
PL: Um.
FC: And then our Spitfire useless parts.
PL: Um.
FC: So that occupied our time and they were tidying up Burma in fact when we, and Meiktila is quite near Upping Lake for swimming and typically we had the Spitfire overload tank as an actual raft and then drop tanks and we had the blow up you know plate of all assault dinghies to swim from and that pal of mine who was, er, he was, he was a Geordie but he spent all his time in another part of the country until he came into the air force and he had a camera, as I had, so we took a few pictures between us but when it came to develop and print and the fixer, the, sadly some of the photos have faded away.
PL: Ummm.
FC: Actually, faded away. But I am digressing there. But, that’s right we went to, to Toungoo in the — we were there when, when the war finished. So that was a tidying up time.
PL: Um, um.
FC: Then the, the, the jeeps were modified with rail wheels ‘cause the, it’s the same railway, it’s an old, the old pictures, the old carts of the old days the ruts they make you’ve got to stay in the rut and this is what the blessed trains are. Brunel had the right idea, what’s it, eight foot broad not four foot —
PL: The Western, the Western Railway.
FC: Yes, not the four foot eight and a half inch silly things but then that’s, that’s what’s happened all round the world they kept to that silly measurement.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, we tidied up Burma into this big hole and then we went swimming and then the order came the Burmese want all the scrap metal they can get hold of. Especially aluminium.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, we had to winch and drag and hoick these things out of the trench.
PL: Out of the hole.
FC: Onto tank transporters [laughs] lash them down to take them, go onwards to the scrap yard.
PL: So, having filled the hole you then had to empty the hole [laughs]
FC: That’s why stories go back people have seen the aircraft in the hole they know it’s real.
PL: Um.
FC: As people left, they’d tell the tale
PL: Um, um.
FC: And this business of crates being buried, well [pause], crates weren’t sent to Burma they were sent to India, Bombay maybe and shipped across. The aircraft had to be erected, test flown and, and it, you didn’t have facilities to do that in Burma.
PL: When you said crates?
FC: Crates, big boxes.
PL: What does that mean?
FC: Well big boxes.
PL: Big boxes of parts and things?
FC: The whole thing is in a box.
PL: Right.
FC: For instance, in Japan we had I think six or was it four, Harvards that came all boxed up.
PL: Right.
FC: So —
PL: Like giant Meccano?
FC: Well, no, no, no they were complete aircraft.
PL: Complete aircraft?
FC: No, no well as complete as they could be. Their wings were off.
PL: Right, ok.
FC: And the engines and the tail.
PL: Right, but everything else came in the box?
FC: To get it in the crate, yes.
PL: Good gracious.
FC: Now this, when we were erecting and testing these, test flying these Harvards, they’d been in that packing box for about three years and then Jim, my good friend, the engine fitter he built up the — got the engine on and built, coupled it all up and did everything like that. He wanted to do the engine run, he was desperate to do an engine run you see.
PL: Um.
FC: Now the Aussies had Mustangs, new Mustangs. We had old Spitfires. The Kiwis had their Corsair a big American goal wing thing.
PL: Um.
FC: We had the Spitfires so there was a bit of leg pulling between us and but once we got this Harvard outside, Sergeant Robinson our Sergeant said to Jim I shall run this, you know, pulling rank on him [laughs]. Although Jim had done all the work. Anyway, as we started up, I think Jim was standing, standing just by the cockpit I think, just started up the engine, just started up and there was a, there was a bit of a bang from the cockpit and this instrument glass had blown out and hit him.
PL: [gasps]
FC: And what it was, two pipes had crossed you see. The suction pipe and the pressure pipe, this little pipe across there — the pump should have been, the instrument was driven by suction.
PL: So, was he all right?
FC: And then Sergeant Robinson didn’t want to do any more engine running he let Jim do it [laughs] so Jim’s doing all the others making lots — the Harvards makes a wicked noise the propellers make an awful noise.
PL: Um.
FC: As you know. But —
PL: So how did it all end for you Frank? How did you sort of — what was the beginning of the end and heading home?
FC: Well that was once we were in Japan you see, we —
PL: What was it like being in Japan?
FC: Well it was, thinking back it must have been what Japan was like about twenty years before
PL: Um
FC: ‘Cause the Japanese were, until 1945 when the Japanese surrendered in China, ten years that war was. I mean at one time they had all the South East area right up to the North side but when you think about forty million Chinese was killed, what sort of a cope, what do they all the greater cope prosperity sphere or something, fancy name, they made old friends wherever they went.
PL: Um.
FC: With all the murder, I don’t know, same as Germany when all these countries making no friends at all. What sort of empire were they aiming at? You see it’s the few people at the top having it all done for them. They make decisions but in Japan we had earthquakes we were on, I was on guard on the bomb dump which was an area where there were underground aircraft factories. They were stacked up with materials as well.
PL: Goodness me.
FC: But we had a bomb dump there and we were there on guard one night when in the deepest winter. Bad winter of 1947, which happened here, Europe, but also in Japan, roads completely thick with ice. We were sitting, two of us huddled in this little sentry box when we felt it move, ‘somebody out there, you go that way and I’ll go that way’ so we grabbed our rifles but there was nobody there, ‘now what was that all about?’, but it was the earthquake, just tremors just starting. Now just across the road from us there was a big lagoon but it was thick with ice, you see, because we were trying to break it by finding, throwing big rocks on it but when the earthquake started it made this ice crack up. So, we had our little bit of fun there with an earthquake and then once, once the three tonner came changing the guard taking us back. In the guard room a big demijohn full of rum, but you were only supposed, not to have any before you went on guard, just after you came out so I, my pint mug, I had a couple of fingers of it in there I suppose and of course when you’re on guard room you only take your boots off and get in bed, which doesn’t warm the bed up properly because you were [unclear] anyway I had this rum, finished it off and was then, I was in a dream that I was on a sailing ship because of all the creaking and movement, I was in a sailing ship in my dream and I opened one eye and the, the light was swinging and moving like this, I realised what it was so I — there was a Sikh chap with his turban on just sitting up in bed he said ‘I think it’s an earthquake’ and I don’t think he took his boots, and he slide the window open, they were sliding windows not fitting very well.
PL: Um, um.
FC: And jumped down onto the ice and the snow, well, frozen snow, and a lot of thundering of boots [noise of footsteps] coming down the stairs of the upstairs and it was dangerous too because it was, the lights fused, the lights went out and then there was some scaffolding along inside the building so it restricted the — but they all went out and I thought, I’ve had four, four hours guard out there so I’ll stay here.
PL: [laughs]
FC: But was dangerous really.
PL: Oh goodness.
FC: But the buildings are made, I realised when there was not a lot of damage by the American bombing naturally and not uninhabitable in fact we were in tents when we went to Japan. Now when we had left Burma the big transit camp down in Rangoon was so cold that they found a new area to put the tents up in. The Japanese prisoners put those up, like they would.
PL: Um.
FC: So I had my camp bed, everything else was on a vehicle for loading, so happily in the camp bed when was awoken by the tent having collapsed inward, almost collapsed down inward, because, well it was new tent that, which we’d never seen before, ours were awful old tents, this was a new one but you can imagine new rope and the tent pegs weren’t hammered in very much, very deep because the ground was so hard. But nobody had put tents there before it was in the area that flooded.
PL: Oh.
FC: So, we had a good two inches of water around our feet, so that was — I, when I wrote it up later, I thought, yeah, suppose the boot was on the other foot, think if the British were prisoners, the Japanese were going to their homeland and we put their tents up which had fallen down, it wouldn’t have been any laughing matter. We could laugh with the Japanese in the morning.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: When it came, but not if it had been a different tale wouldn’t it?
PL: Um.
FC: So, our welcome in Japan was to be in tents again. Cherry blossom time I think later on. They were coolie, it was a flying boat station as well as an airfield with a big crane so when the aircraft carriers eventually came with their cargo of Spitfires there was this massive dock side crane. And then they were, we were divided up into working parties. There was some on the aircraft carriers and then some on the lighters, the big barges that they brought in, I don’t know three or four at a time and a big hook of this crane dwarfed, you know, dwarfing everybody and they’re dangling, when I wrote it up being a bit poetic.
PL: Um.
FC: And, about their first landing in Japan from the crane. And we had no tractors, we had no tow bars, don’t know if we had steering arms. They had to be pushed to the airfield about two, two miles away.
PL: Gracious.
FC: One at a time. Now, Bas, my corporal, when there was — jumped down into the lighter that had come in the barge to a hooker, he said ‘we, we got more help here’ and I can’t remember them introducing me to him properly, might have been Peter, but anyway he was stripped off. He was a moon man, you know, one with, with, a pasty chap who’d not been out in the sunshine much, but very willing and we worked together. I was telling him all about the unit, telling him about all the wheezes we could get for a, if you flogged your cigarettes down in the town you had a, each cigarette would more or less buy you a bottle of beer in the canteen you know, things like this.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: Like you would [emphasis] tell a newcomer.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: So, when the, when the last Spitfire got moved off and went back into this little workshop by the hangar where, where tops, and when I reached up from my NAC jacket, when he brought it, he was the new group captain. [laughs]. Telling him all the fiddles we could get up to.
PL: [gasps]
FC: But I mean, he, he and he said something like, it was a marvellous introduction to my new station. When I didn’t realise what he meant new station until that’s what he was.
PL: Oh no.
FC: [laughs] But then —
PL: So, did you get into trouble?
FC: Oh no. No, no. I mean he’d have been flannelled. If, if an officer or any — he’d have had a lot of flannel wouldn’t he. Well, this was honest, he knew we wanted to get the aircraft, wanted to have the aircraft, our aircaft flying again.
PL: Um, um.
FC: Not what I did at the time. He had the right spirit of us.
PL: Um. So, when you had to take these Spitfires for two miles, was it a question of ropes round everything and people pulling, pushing?
FC: People pulling, people pushing.
PL: Literally, so it was manpower? Were the locals sort of drafted in to help?
FC: They had, they had Japanese labourers. I think there was a requirement for the Japanese to work for the occupation force for so many days a month at least. Because when you think about it, we were getting them the idea that it’s a democratic situation.
PL: Um.
FC: Not rule, what they did as well, all the lords, think of our lords of the manor in our country with all the hard workers, like serfs doing their stuff. All the ground divided up between all these [unclear] a similar thing in Japan. They deposed all these characters, I think they went off to Tokyo for a ticket. But I didn’t know at the time but Air Vice Marshall Bouchier who’s a, our overall commanding officer, officer commanding. He took over this manor house to live in, just a few miles up the river where the Kintai bridge is, it’s a five arch wooden bridge with granite piers its often in photographs and pictures. The Kintai bridge. Now before we went there, we were, we had a pocket book telling you the custom of the country and so on and all sorts of helpful things and we were not supposed to fraternise. No fraternisation, so like you would going down by the river and meeting these Japanese girls we were like sitting on a little beach where the, alongside the river. It was, must have been a nice feeling just be sitting with a girl when you’ve got your book trying to say things and then laughing, you imagine they’re laughing and then they’re trying to read English.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: To know what — but it was only bit of harmless fun really but a good job we didn’t get him outdoors up the river seeing us. So, then the jeep, you see, it’s — we all got around with jeeps at the time. Well think of this five arch bridge taking a jeep over it, well it weighed a couple of tons or something and it’s a wooden bridge meant for foot traffic
PL: Um.
FC: I mean its arched like that and you’ve got very shallow steps and then it curves and so, so it’s a bumpy thing for a vehicle so it was pointed out that the Japanese had been complaining that we should take more care of their old things. Beside it only led you to a park. The Japanese are a great one for parks. That’s to their credit. But Japanese we could, we could walk around at night without any fears around Hiroshima. We didn’t have any fears. We were, felt safer there than we did in parts of India.
PL: So, you, you were at Hiroshima?
FC: Well we were based on the Inland Sea where Hiroshima is based about sixty miles west but that was our nearest place to do some shopping in. And of course, we climbed up the —
PL: What was that like?
FC: Well it was — I was just going to say we climbed I think about an eight-storey building but all that was left was the concrete shell of it, you know, everything else was gone but when you got up there about, perhaps eight floors up and you looked across the city the roads had been cleared. Which showed the grid the patterns of the roads, but it wasn’t long before people went back and claimed their patch and put a little shed thing on it and the shops grew then. There was a dance hall and in fact I got tickets, dance tickets for the hostesses, I’ve still got them, so —
PL: Um.
FC: Whether I was hoping to go back and spend them I don’t know.
PL: [laughs] Goodness me. So, what, what, when would that have been? What year would that have been?
FC: That was 1946.
PL: Right.
FC: Yeah. We were due to go December forty-five, that was delayed right till April I think, forty-six when we landed.
PL: Um, um.
FC: But we needed three ships. Now before, while we were tidying up Burma because what was a good trade for the locals, if you wanted chicken or eggs.
PL: Um.
FC: Was some of your canteen things.
PL: Right, right.
FC: So the word went up that the Japanese were desperate for soap of all sorts.
PL: Right, okay.
FC: And you thought well yes, that’s it. That will be a good trade, so our test pilots one took the Harvard across over the mountains to Chittagong bought up all the soaps he could all sorts of soap and then the other test pilot took it to Cox’s Bazar and along that coast, and other places, getting all the soap he could. Thinking that would be good a trade for the impress money from the unit when we get there to build that up so this was loaded on our trucks. Boxed up and loaded on the trucks and though we had about fifty vehicles I think, they had a job to find drivers for them all. Anyway, everything was aboard and that and I travelled down as a passenger in a very comfortable situation laid on top of the bed rolls in the three tonner and I had, we each had a crate of American beer. Little bottles, little lager type things. And of course, in Burma they were always desperate for bottles because they make their, you know their wines and spirits, using, they need bottles. You had a, if you had a bottle to dispose of and you saw some Burmese there by the roadside you could drop the bottle out into the dust ‘cause there was either six inches of dust or six inches of mud.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So that was the way we travelled. When we, we didn’t go half way to Rangoon and stop and spend the night there because the water, the doctor with us said no that water’s all right that water’s all green. When it’s all green like that its healthy water its only growing good water so, but mostly we drunk it as tea. I think we seemed to get by during the day without a lot of water. We never had water bottles, well we had a little enamel one to hook on your webbing belt, but —
PL: So, what happened with the soap in Japan? Did you manage to sell all the soap?
FC: The mistake was after we loaded the vehicles into this particular ship there was no escort for this, for the truck with the spares and all the equipment no escort on the ship and the dacoits who were the bandits and thieves of Burma lifted all the soap. Now when we got to Japan, we found the boxes had been opened and we, we, we deliberately made a shortage of soap around that area and then the robbers had the soap to sell. So, they must have done, done a lot of, done themselves a lot of good.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: Because I said later whether CID or whatever they were, were trying to investigate the thieves showed a clean pair of heels [laughs] with all that soap.
PL: [laughs] I see.
FC: So, we had — this, oh this earthquake that I was saying about when I was on guard. I went back and that upset the runway. The aircraft in the hangars were damaged.
PL: Right.
FC: They were crashing together, moving together.
PL: Right. Oh no.
FC: So briefly I stayed in bed. But when they were repairing these buildings, I thought those joints, those joints are too loose because they were making the uprights a tenon going into it. A great big slot for it, just with a big peg.
PL: Um. That’s what it was for.
FC: Meant for it.
PL: Right, right.
FC: When you pointed it out to the Japanese. And then one morning [clears throat] oh, we found the Japanese labourers with two big shell cases about six inches, a couple of feet long, I think they were off the cruisers, sunken cruisers in our harbour possibly, they were polishing them. So that evening when we went to, to do our drinking decided what mischief we could do, we thought we’ll get those big, big shell cases, we’ll take those and they were a bit of a heavy weight to carry when you’re a bit tiddly but by the time we were approaching barrack block, ‘H’ shaped barrack block, we were upstairs on the first floor. We didn’t know what to do with them, so the New Zealanders were billeted right below us and we crept, we slowly came in, put one each side of their doorway and crept upstairs to bed, like you would and like you would, I think possibly a weekend, well Saturday, I suppose it was Saturday or Sunday, came down, came out to go to breakfast [clears throat] looked over the balcony and down below it was a static water pool that was meant for, you to supply water for a fire, the Japanese were making a little arrangement of the garden in it. But below they were gathered around these Kiwis, gathered around these, these chaps who were, who had got their Brasso and cleaning them up so in my little write up as we went to breakfast, I said to Jim ‘by now all our fingerprints have gone they have only got Kiwi prints’.
PL: [laughs] Oh dear.
FC: So, they got in trouble, like they would. But that was when we got one over on them you see.
PL: [laughs]
FC: So how do you explain it that we found them there?
PL: Um, um.
FC: We found them there sir.
PL: So, were they engineers as well?
FC: Oh yes.
PL: So, you were all engineers together?
FC: Yeah. Well different trades of course.
PL: Yes, yes, yes.
FC: But they had their own Corsair aircraft.
PL: Right, right. So what sort of things—
FC: Patrolling around the, we, we had a Southwest, South side of the island, main island, the main occupation force was the Americans of course. We were under General MacArthur then.
PL: So, were the Spitfires really just for sort of, you know, keeping an eye on things, reconnaissance and things?
FC: Well they were patrolling around.
PL: Right.
FC: They were watching out that nobody was travelling from Korea, to and fro to Korea, I think.
PL: Right.
FC: But it was to show a presence there.
PL: Um, um.
FC: And then four [pause] 4 Squadron put up, well about four aircraft once and then 11 Squadron put up, 11 Squadron, eleven aircraft. Then what about you 17 Squadron blokes, how many have you got serviceable? I got a panoramic view from the control tower at Miho, this is on the North Coast where you count, I don’t know, how many Spitfires, thirty or something. One is taking off, I took it when one was taking off another one had just fired its Coffman starter cartridge to start the engine at, with a great puff of white smoke so that’s obviously in action, two things in action, and then by the time I’d moved around here to overlap the pictures, there was a view of other Spits and a, one was in the, in the flying position, the armourers were aligning the, synchronising the guns, but the Japanese armourer helping them like you would have to do.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, but then Japanese were pushing, like you were saying pushing, pushing behind the trailing edge. Once there’s enough of you, it was a strong enough area to push. But when, a trick was with the Spitfire, the flaps were taken down by the pneumatic rams and then flaps up, all it did was to let the air out because there was a spring recovery, so when people are pushing like this and you are in the cockpit on the brakes, ready to put the brakes on, pneumatic brakes so it traps up and can trap a few thumbs.
PL: [gasps] Ouch.
FC: Well it was, despite this. On the carriers. The Spitfires on the carriers to get lift for taking off on that short thing, they would have the flaps partly down. Well, in no way you could do that, they were either up or down but what they did, they had blocks of wood, put blocks of wood, let the flaps came up by a spring onto a block of wood. They’d be in the best position to get lift for take off and once they were happily airborne, just flick the flap switch down and up again and they could put the wood before that. So, I’ve got this panoramic view, I thought I must —
PL: And that was taking off from aircraft carriers?
FC: No, no that was taken in a time when they did like in Malta.
PL: Right,
FC: They had to do this didn’t they?
PL: Um.
FC: You know, we had a, one time when the squadron was all worked up, back to working pitch at that time. The operation firepower or something like that. They were bombing up and loading up and doing their firing, live firing. So that was good for the pilots to get that, to get together like that. Do your turn round inspections and arm and rearm.
PL: Absolutely.
FC: So, it was this, these underground aircraft factories, they yielded off some metal and things and we made great — and I made a nice cabinet, wardrobe thing and the bottom shelf had a beer, crown beer bottle opener on with a cigarette tin underneath at the bottom, because it just took a crate a beer. I could lazily reach out, knock the top off you see.
PL: Um, um.
FC: And then they decided because we had to have somewhere to put our kit to make a long wardrobe, the full length of the barrack room out of aluminium and things and so of course you had to be about thoughtful and you had to be careful shutting the doors when people were asleep because of the noise.
PL: [laughs] So when did you get sent home?
FC: This was, demobilisation, you were given a number, a group number, so when group forty was ready, was ready to — that batch of people would be demobilised. When it got to fifty which was mine, we were on a long way up in Japan and [unclear] troop ships every Thursday or something and anyway [clears throat] and then ‘cause was when, oh Jim, that’s right. There was a Sir Geoffrey Depretes[?], an MP of the day came out to talk like a politician would have to do. At this big assembly of us [unclear] Kiwis and the Aussies and us and the Indians so afterwards any questions, so Jim next to me, when I’m, I’m, I’ve not got away in my group, my group, in my group I’m in so the top man boy Boucher, he said see me afterwards and I, I can guarantee you’re on, you’re on the next troop ship so we had a little farewell drink with Jim and we waited on and on and on and the troop ship never came until finally Jim went away on the same ship as we did.
PL: Oh my goodness. So, when was that?
FC: That was 1947.
PL: Gosh that’s a long-time getting home.
FC: So, from 1942 they hung onto me. Well if you think of it in April forty-seven the war over in Germany was over a couple of years nearly.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, we did a long stint. We didn’t do a four-year tour because prior to that they brought the four year down to three and a half and then three and then two and a half which was what I did.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, tour expiry came as same as that. On the North West frontier when it was on the cooler times a lot of the old ones still had a dog collar RAF uniform, they didn’t want to part with it. They didn’t want a blessed collar and tie they wanted to show that they were old stages.
PL: Um.
FC: So, my tunic is upstairs. I’m letting out the seams. So, I’m looking forward to wearing it when the centenary of the RAF is in April coming.
PL: Fantastic.
FC: So, I came out you see of Japan back to Blackpool again because we were based, we were in Nissen huts at Kirkham in the tail end of that 1947 winter. When the first thing they did when we got to Kirkham there was a stove in the middle of the Nissen hut you kept burning hopefully. They took our greatcoats away.
PL: Oh.
FC: First thing they did.
PL: Why?
FC: So, we wouldn’t flog them.
PL: Oh, for goodness sake.
FC: But we wouldn’t have flogged them. We wouldn’t have, would we?
PL: You’d have worn them.
FC: Would happily take them back in the summer.
PL: [laughs]
FC: [laughs] That would be a different tale.
PL: Goodness me.
FC: So that was Blackpool again.
PL: Um.
FC: So, we had a, had a fair bit of time at Blackpool in between other things. Yes, sorry, then I had three months leave to take paid leave. Well, you didn’t have to take it. I had three months paid leave. So, I had no leave when I was aboard. I had the old rest camp in Japan at Kobe, above Kobe at the, on the hill was a nice maiko it means Japanese dancer, I think. Where we had Japanese food and when the rice came, I wanted some jam on the rice because I had never had rice at home unless it had -
PL: Oh, jam on, oh, wonderful.
FC: We were squatting on low, I’ve got pictures on the low tables of girls, all nicely made up and dressed. So that was Japan.
PL: So, what, so when you got home what was your career after the war? Just very briefly because you’ve been so generous with your time.
FC: Well I didn’t want to — I had so much time using, working repairing things and making and mending things. I didn’t want to go back to reporting because really quite honestly I mean for a fourteen-year-old boy to come as to be reporting, it would be better for a grammar school boy to start because he’s got, his mind is trained and he’s got a lot of advantages. So, I — there was a job, I took all my three months and hadn’t done anything about — I knew I didn’t want to go back but the RAF newspaper, I was in the RAF Association magazine, advertising for trade engine and airplane, air people for Boscombe Down and Farnborough. So, I came to Boscombe Down when they wanted — and they had just taken on, if you can imagine, like a queue in a way, they had just taken the last one on when I arrived, so I went on to Farnborough to the Royal Aircraft Establishment as it was, who needed sixty, or it needed quite a lot of staff. So that was where I —
PL: So that’s how you ended up here?
FC: Yes, that’s it, that’s what brought me to Farnborough and the experimental flying squadron with all the different aircraft from Lincolns and Yorks, the, the Hudsons. We had the, had the sea fliers the Spitfires. The naval flight was there so it was exciting times when they were launching and arresting. Quite exciting times. Because at the end of the hangar was a big assembly that was the sort fitted on a ship to, to catapult them off and the Spitfire with four big rockets attached like under its armpits. The engine fitter had to go up there and run the engine, all engines had to be run every morning, typical wartime thing, so Farnborough must’ve been a noisy place.
PL: Um.
FC: With the Halifax’s and everything.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: But anyway, the engine man hated having to go up there. It was perched in the middle of the sky it —
PL: Yes, yes.
FC: And then another time a bit later when the Korean war was on, I think, we had a Sea Fury on the, on our radio flight operating that one. That had to be put in the twenty-four-foot wind tunnel. They must have had trouble in Korea with the certain stores they were carrying or something, I don’t know what it was. Then my good friend who joined up the same day as me in Oxford, now, he was the engine man and he didn’t like being in the wind tunnel where they got a full bore and in with, sitting in with the engine going full bore.
PL: Um, um, um, um.
FC: But that was the typical thing they did.
PL: Um. So that must have been a very interesting life. How long, how long did you?
FC: Well I was there forty years.
PL: Wow. Gosh.
FC: Till 1988. And then of course it’s, it’s about a hundred years ago since I retired now because it’s, it will be thirty years next year won’t it? Three and four.
PL: It feels a little like we need to come back and speak to you again Frank about your, your experience testing, in Farnborough.
FC: Oh yeah.
PL: And your career doing that.
FC: Oh yeah. We did fly, did fly the Lincoln up to Valley, RAF Valley and they were, the Window, you know they drop Window these aircraft. Because various sorts, sizes of it. The worst one comes in packs which you daren’t disturb in a, in a dispenser thing on the wing tips of a, of a Canberra and if you drop one the pack all busted open because they were only about ten millimetres long, a little tiny bit of aluminium, ‘V’ shaped that way and then ‘V’ shaped that way.
PL: Was this for the —
FC: They spun.
PL: Right and this was to confuse the —
FC: This was to put something that looked like an aircraft.
PL: Oh right, right.
FC: And in fact, on ‘D’ Day, teams of RAF aircraft were flying in a pattern like this.
PL: Um.
FC: And dropping Window.
PL: Um, dropping them
FC: So that to their screens it looked like there was an armada of things coming. Well they knew how to confuse. But the one that went to, I was dumping this stuff out of the, the chute and there were ack-ack firing behind, firing at us behind. I thought, I hope they keep firing at that — and when we’d circled and landed at Valley the last bundles that must have been hooked up or something littered the airfield because I remember they were black and gold, or black and yellow, long. So, we were there for the weekend. We came on the Saturday, Sunday they had all the RAF out in a long line.
PL: Picking them up.
FC: [laughs] Doing the foot plod, picking them up. Nothing to do with me [laughs]
PL: Oh Frank, thank you so much that has been an absolutely fascinating interview.
FC: I’ve been linked up with FAST Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum to keep the heritage of Farnborough’s flying alive.
PL: Fantastic.
FC: We’ve built a replica of the first aircraft to fly. Fifty-two-foot span. Quite an impressive thing. So that draws a lot of people to see and learn about Cody, Sam Cody.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: So, there’s another story in that.
PL: Um. Well I’d just like to end by saying a huge thank you on behalf of the Bomber Command Digital Archive because it’s been such a valuable, valuable interview. So, thank you very much indeed.
FC: Thank you. Well you’re welcome to my diaries as well.
PL: Thank you very much.
FC: Couple of years there, ok?
PL: I’ll pass that on.
FC: Thank you, yeah.
PL: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AColensoF170522
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frank Colenso
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:36:39 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-22
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Colenso grew up in Cornwall and worked for a local newspaper at the outbreak of the war. He recalls the return of injured survivors from Dunkirk into Falmouth Bay. He joined the local defence volunteers following the bombing of Falmouth and describes training and weaponry within the Home Guard and civil defence precautions. He volunteered to serve with the RAF and trained as an fitter airframe and served with 83 Operational Training Unit. He discusses modifying Wellington aircraft, prior to being posted to Burma to serve with repair and salvage units. He speaks of the living conditions in Burma and of his work there which included repairing Spitfires and Hurricanes. After the war ended he remained in Burma as his unit was part of the Commonwealth occupation force prior to his demobilisation in 1946.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Burma
Great Britain
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Lancashire
England--Blackpool
Burma--Akyab (District)
Burma--Meiktila
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1943
1945
Contributor
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Carolyn Emery
83 OTU
bomb dump
bombing
civil defence
demobilisation
entertainment
fitter airframe
ground crew
ground personnel
home front
Home Guard
Hurricane
love and romance
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
runway
Spitfire
training
Wellington
Window