2
25
780
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1473/43021/SCookeJRA1336866v10006.1.jpg
e6266188022605bfe29c87b709b0b0c9
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
Cooke, Bob
James Robert Alfred Cooke
J R A 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
2015-12-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cooke, JRA
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. The collection concerns Flight Sergeant John Robert Alfred "Bob" Cooke (1336866 Royal Air Force) and contains research about his crew. He flew operations as a pilot with 51 Squadron and was killed 30 June 1944. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by James Seymour and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on John Robert Alfred Cooke is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/205728/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
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
Charles Martin Allen by Mrs Anne Phillips
Description
An account of the resource
A brief biography of Charlie written by his niece, Anne. Charlie was an air gunner on Bob's crew.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anne Phillips
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-30
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
France--Normandy
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Text. Personal research
Format
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One printed sheet
Identifier
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SCookeJRA1336866v10006
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
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription
1652 HCU
4 Group
51 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Andreas
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Pocklington
RAF Snaith
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/450/7970/AHarrisonR151116.1.mp3
78c4628fae306c070946abd90f7380e4
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
Harrison, Richard
Richard Harrison
Dick Harrison
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Richard Harrison (b. 1924, 1833947 Royal Air Force) a page from his log book and documents about gunnery training. Richard Harrison flew operations as a B-24 air gunner with70 Squadron, 231 Wing, 2015 Group in Italy.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Harrison and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Harrison, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay then so, this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command centre and Lincoln University, and today I’m with Dick Harrison in York, and what I’d like you to tell me is, first of all, is just date of birth and just a little bit about your family and your, your upbringing, what your parents did, that sort of thing.
RH: Yeah, I was born of the 5th of February 1924, I was born in Köln en Rhine, Deutschland, Cologne, Germany and er yeah, Dad English, Mother German, we came back to England in I think it was 1926, I was two years old.
AM: How did your Dad meet your Mum then if she was German?
RH: He was in the army of occupation.
AM: In? In Cologne or?
RH: In Germany.
AM: In Germany, yeah.
RH: Yeah, because he’d been on the Western Front from 1915 to 18, he was a regular soldier when he was in Cologne and various other places in the Rhineland, but he met my Mother in Cologne.
AM: Right.
RH: I think they were married there in 1922, something like that.
AM: So, what did he do when you came back to England? What did your parents do?
RH: Well he was a regular soldier and he carried on being a soldier.
AM: Right. Right through, yeah?
RH: Yeah until 19, yeah 1936.
AM: Oh blimey, right.
RH: He left the army and became a civil servant.
AM: Ah, me too, well that’s another story.
[laughter]
RH: And me too.
[laughter]
AM: So, tell me a bit about your school years then.
RH: School years, well Dad’s camp was near Salisbury, Winterbourne, so I went to a primary school in Winterbourne, and although people say today, you know, how good the schools were back then, this was a truly appalling school [laughs] well, and from there, I can’t remember what it was called, you sat the exam when you were eleven. And from there I went to Bishops school in Salisbury which was a local grammar school, then unfortunately my Dad left the army, the civil service post was in Gloucestershire, so we had to move to Gloucestershire, and I went to and I had to transfer schools, from a very [emphasis] good and excellent school in Salisbury to certainly a below par one in Gloucester.
AM: Right.
RH: Near Gloucester.
AM: What age were you when you left?
RH: When I left what?
AM: When you left school.
RH: Sixteen.
AM: Did you do schools certificate and everything?
RH: No, I didn’t.
AM: No.
RH: No, I had enough of that school.
AM: Right. [laughs] So what did you do when you left school?
RH: Worked in an office.
AM: Yeah, doing?
RH: Pardon?
AM: Doing just normal administrative?
RH: Yes.
AM: Office work.
RH: Yes, just clerical work, that’s all.
AM: Yeah.
RH: It was a company that, it was a [unclear]company so I was dealing with invoices and things like that.
AM: Right. So what year are we up to now? Sixteen, nineteen, I’m just trying to work my own arithmetic out, if you were sixteen?
RH: I left school in 1940.
AM: Right, so the war had started.
RH: Yeah and I was already involved.
[background noise]
AM: Right, and I’m looking now at the County and City of Gloucester air raid precautions, and this is to certify that mister Richard Harrison completed his course in anti-gas training, under the auspices of County and City of Gloucester air raid precautions central authority and has acquired sufficient knowledge of anti-gas measures to act as a member of the public ARP service. Tell me about that then, what was that like?
RH: Erm, and that’s what I—
AM: Oh, I’ve missed a bit, nature of the course attended was—
RH: Was a cycle messenger.
AM: Right, what did that mean?
RH: We were about ten miles north of Bristol, so when they were attacking Bristol, you know I was very interested, the first time I saw flak [laughs] but—
AM: What was that like then?
RH: Well, I mean as a kid it’s all very interesting, isn’t it? I mean we, the village hall was our local ARP post, and every Friday night that was my job, even when I was at school, every Friday night, get there for six or seven o’clock, I think it was, until six, seven o’clock the next morning, with my bike ready to go anywhere. And all over Bristol, it was a fantastic sight really was, searchlights, flak, German bombers coming over lit up, one crashed about a mile away from us here, but no it was quite a, quite a sight, and when they attacked Avonmouth and the oil tanks were set on fire, the whole of the horizon was red, yeah amazing sight.
AM: So, where were you sent off cycling? Taking what sort of messages?
RH: [sighs] Well we was just, I can’t remember the details. I remember one, one regular one was to cycle down to the pub and bring them back a pint of cider or something, and that was a regular run.
[laughter]
AM: Right, so the message was, how many drinks?
RH: Yeah.
AM: So, so when, so that was it, you did your cycling in your messenger training.
RH: Yes.
AM: And then what?
RH: What?
AM: What made you join the RAF? Oh, what came next should I say with regards to?
RH: The Home Guard.
AM: Right.
RH: I joined that when, yeah before I was seventeen I joined that and despite what people say and that, because there’s that film—
AM: Dad’s Army
RH: Dad’s Army. I mean, it was one of the most useful things ever because I was in a platoon where the officer commanding was World War one soldier, my Father was a platoon sergeant, World War one soldier, there were several of them, I mean when I went into the RAF, foot drill, arms drill, using a rifle, shooting on the range, using a machine gun.
AM: You’d already done it.
RH: It was easy, yeah, it was easy. I also joined the Air Training Corps about the same time.
AM: Right.
RH: So, at one time I had three balls in the air [laughs] ARP, Home Guard, Air Training Corps.
AM: And [unclear]
RH: And in addition to that, I took a St John’s, St John ambulance first aid course and got a certificate for that, so—
AM: Right.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Blimey. So, when you joined the RAF, but I think Gary said RAF regiment?
RH: Pardon?
AM: I think Gary said you joined the RAF regiment?
[phone rings]
RH: Excuse me.
[interview paused]
RH: Where were we?
AM: So, where were we?
GR: You were juggling three balls, ATC.
AM: We were juggling all those balls with your ATC, and your Home Guard.
RH: In the end I packed up the, one of them became civil defence from ARP, so I packed, I packed that up, I couldn’t get—
AM: Right.
RH: Otherwise I was chasing round four nights a week [laughs] and weekends with the Home Guard.
AM: And working in your office.
RH: And working as well.
AM: And working as well.
RH: Yeah.
AM: So, you’re coming up to eighteen, why the RAF? Where did you join? What was, what was you’re, what was it like?
RH: For a young lad I mean it’s, it’s just the glamour of the thing. King and country had nothing at all to do with it [laughs] don’t say that—
[laughter]
AM: We’ll cut that out.
RH: All I wanted, well I mean, one saw a war films didn’t you, ‘target for the night’ and all the rest of it. But unfortunately, I had a heart condition and my, on my medical records which I saw, because I wanted to go into aircrew, I wanted to be a wireless operator.
AM: Right.
RH: Wireless operator [unclear] because I’d been, Father had taught my brother and I morse code, and in the house, he’d rigged up two keys and we used to use that, even when we were ten or eleven years old we knew the morse code, and in the Air Training Corps, when the CO discovered I already knew morse, I became the morse code instructor for the squadron.
[laughter]
RH: And, but when I went for the medical, I think I was, temporarily unfit for aircrew duties, they said that would right itself eventually, and I remember being interviewed by the, this officer, he said, ‘well, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘ that you’re fit for ground crew duties but you’re not fit for aircrew duties,’ I said, ‘right, in that case I don’t want to join the RAF, I’m going to join the army,’ [laughs] because I was fit enough for the army, and I had a mate, a school friend who was up at Catterick driving a tank, saying how great it was and I could picture myself in that, so I said, ‘I’m going to join the army, the Armour Corps,’ ‘no you’re not,’ he said, ‘no you’re not,’ he said, ‘we’re not going to waste, what was it twelve months or more Air Training Corps and then you go in the army,’ he said, ‘you’ll be called up,’ and that’s what happened. I got, yeah, before Christmas it was, 1942.
AM: Right.
RH: And I got my call up papers and went to Penarth in South Wales where they sorted you out, and because I’d been a clerk in civvy street, I went through trade tests, maths, English, I could type, type writing, book keeping, and that took all morning, and then at the end of it they said, ‘alright you’re now a trade group for clerk general duties,’ but it did mean that whereas a lad going in without any trade at all was getting three shillings a day, I got four shillings and threepence a day because I was a trade [laughs] and of course guys like one of the guys I sort of chummed up with, he had been a metal worker, and I can’t remember what trade he went into, but I know he was getting sort of, six shillings and something a day because he was a group one trade as against group four. Right, so what do you want next then?
AM: Ooh, well, what happened next? Tell me about it. What were you actually doing then? So, you got three a day—
RH: I can think, in my eight weeks I think it was, square bashing and then I was posted to RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire.
AM: Right.
RH: And, that was the base for the special duties squadrons, 161 and 138, and they were dropping supplies and people for the resistance.
AM: Right, okay.
RH: And it was all top secret, I mean I suppose I didn’t know what they were doing.
GR: There was Maurice Buckmaster and Vera Atkins.
RH: Well, maybe so, Wing Commander Pickard, DSO, a couple of bars and all the rest of it, he was, he was the C.O. and, but I knew something about aircraft, and so what struck me was these Halifax’s, they had no mid upper turret, and I thought well that’s strange, and bomb trolleys were parked alongside the hangar with grass growing through them, so they weren’t being used [laughs] but no one told you anything. Eventually one of the guys in the office said, ‘Dick, do you know what we are doing?’ and this was after a month or so, I said, ‘yeah, I reckon you’re dropping agents into, into France,’ I said, because I had to do a what, a sort of duty every now and again, overnight, man the phone and so forth, and during that time, you would see a couple of black saloon cars going, going by, and they were going over to, what I discovered later, was a farm, an old farm where they were kitted up before they did their jumps. And, yeah, very secret, so I remember a guy crashed on take-off and they were all killed, and that night or the next night the father was calling and I answered the phone, and I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything,’ you know, ‘was he on the raid to Berlin?’ I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ [laughs] I knew what had happened to him but wasn’t allowed to say. And another little story, no need to record, as I say it was all top secret, this Halifax was missing, so that was seven guys as well, so into the HQ, came their, the NCOs, their pay books and in the pay book was a next of kin listed. Now the wireless operator in that crew had listed his next of kin as a girl in Sandy village, which was four or five miles—
AM: Yeah, I know where you mean.
RH: Away, you know?
AM: Yeah, I know exactly where you mean.
RH: You know where I mean? So, the Padre and another officer went down to give her the bad news, sort of thing he was missing, but I mean I wasn’t witness to this, I only heard about it afterwards, and apparently when they gave her the bad news, she said, ‘well he’ll be alright wont he?’ they said, ‘what do you mean?’ ‘well I mean, they are dropping supplies to the French resistance and they’ll —
AM: Oh God.
RH: Get him back. Which they didn’t. While I was there, not him, but while I was there a guy came back, but the only thing I saw was her arriving with an RAF police escort in a car, and she was wheeled in to see Wing Commander Pickard, and I suppose he read the riot act to her, keep your mouth shut.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And some years ago when I was caravanning down there, I went back to see if I could get onto Tempsford, but it was all wired off, but you could see the huts in the background, and I met, a local woman came out of her house, and as a wee child she remembered this place and she said, ‘you see that hedge there?’ she said, ‘we lived up on the hill and we weren’t allowed to come below that hedge, no civilians were allowed below that hedge line,’ it was so, so secret.
AM: It’s amazing isn’t it.
RH: On one occasion Wing Commander Pickard, flying a Hudson, that’s that one up there, that was—
AM: I’m looking at, I’m looking at models here.
RH: Yeah, that was his aircraft, and he’d taken people down to the south of France to a landing ground down there, and when it came to take off, he’d bogged down, because it was just a field, and so they had to turn out local farm horses and so forth and pull him onto hard ground so he could take off. I remember next morning in the HQ, one of the guys said to me, ‘have you seen the CO’s Hudson take off?’ I said, ‘no,’ he said, ‘well go and look at hangar so and so,’ and there it was parked up outside, still with mud up into the engines themselves, and he got a, I think he had three DSO’s, was it, Wing Commander Pickard? He was shot down in the end on another raid, yeah. So, there we are, what’s next then?
AM: So that’s that, well you tell me. What came next?
RH: I must have been the worst clerk general duties that the RAF ever had, because I wasn’t a bit interested in what I was doing [laughs] and I was always on the—
AM: Wanting to be up there.
RH: Back in front of the adjutant flight sergeant being given a lecture about something I’d done wrong. Then one day two guys came into the office and I knew they’d been in north Africa, and they said, ‘can we have a form to volunteer to go overseas,’ I said, ‘but you’ve only just come back.’ [emphasis]
AM: Two aircrew this?
RH: Pardon?
AM: Two aircrew you talking about?
RH: No, they weren’t aircrew.
AM: Oh right, okay still—
RH: They were two groundcrew. Said, ‘we’ve only just come back,’ and I said, ‘you want to go back out there again?’ ‘well, [emphasis] England, terrible place isn’t it, full of Yanks and all the rest, no, the sooner we get out of here the better,’ so I thought, what a good idea.
[laughter]
GR: Get me one of these forms.
[laughter]
RH: Get me one of those forms, yeah. And then I had a medical and this medical officer said, you know, as I said to you on the phone yesterday, he said, ‘right, condition no longer, so I’ll put you forward shall I, for the aircrew medical?’ I said, ‘no, no thanks I want to go overseas.’
[laughter]
RH: Did you read that letter?
GR: This one?
RH: Yeah, the one, the regiment one?
GR: Yes, I’m reading it, yeah.
AM: I’ll take a copy afterwards. So, you went overseas rather than aircrew?
RH: Yes, I volunteered to go overseas, it was all very quick, in fact I was sent on what they called, embarkation leave.
AM: Hmm, hmm.
GR: Yeah.
RH: And I think that was one week or two, and while I was at home in Gloucestershire, a telegram came telling me to report back to Tempsford, and I’d only been home two or three days, and so I went back and there was my posting notice, and I think, I thought the RAF were taking their revenge on me for not carrying on with aircrew because they posted me to an RAF Regiment squadron. And believe me in 1943, to be in the RAF Regiment, you know, I mean today, yes, they’ve got a good reputation, but that was really the backend of everything. And there were about a dozen of us, tradesmen, clerks, cooks, vehicle mechanics, armourers, wireless guys and so forth, and all resentful [laughs] at being posted to the regiment.
AM: Where was that though? Where were you posted to?
RH: Oh yeah, that was near Peterborough, near Peterborough. And, when I arrived there, there was a corporal clerk in the, what do you call it? Orderly room, in the orderly room. And as soon as I arrived, he sent off a signal under the adjutant’s signature, under who was away at the time, to the airman’s records at Innsworth in Gloucestershire saying, that Corporal so and so, can’t remember his name, was unfit for overseas duty. And so about, a couple of days later a signal came posting him out, didn’t get off kindly. [laughs]
AM: So where, where from, where did you go from Peterborough?
RH: Overseas.
AM: Yeah, but where though? Whereabouts?
RH: Sicily.
AM: Sicily.
RH: We went to, yeah it was a, it took a month altogether, although I think it was three weeks to Algiers on a troop ship as a convoy—
AM: I was going to say—
RH: As it was, but— Yeah, although in my letter I said, not eventful, in fact it was interesting at times because a U-boat got in amongst the convoy, and there were destroyers dashing up and down dropping depth charges. [laughs]
AM: It’s probably quite exciting when you are eighteen, nineteen.
RH: It was, when you are a kid, when you are a kid.
AM: You’re still a teenager, really aren’t you?
RH: Yeah, I remember saying to one of the seamen on our, on our troop ship, you know, ‘why is that, why are they flying a black pennant?’ he said, ‘that’s because they’ve detected a boat,’ he said, ‘they’ve detected a U, U-boat.’ Then we went to Algiers, and then we left Algiers, still didn’t know where we were going at that time. And then, I was in what was called the headquarters flight, which all the tradesmen were in that flight and we were called up for a briefing by the adjutant, and then we knew we were going to Sicily, and there were maps passed round for us to look at, and we were going to takeover, it was a light anti-aircraft squadron by the way, it had a twenty-millimetre cannon.
AM: Okay.
RH: We were going to take over defence of the Gerbini airfield near Cantania in Sicily, and that was the plan. But unfortunately, the Germans, you know, didn’t know what our plan was—
[laughter]
RH: And so, when we got to Sicily they were still there. [laughs] And er, yeah, we landed, we went to Malta first, I think we stayed there overnight or a couple of nights, and then we went to Sicily, and it was over the, over the side, down scrambling nets onto the landing craft and then onto a little [old?] pier sort of thing. And then we formed up and marched up into an olive grove and we were there for about a week. We were waiting for our trucks to arrive and the cannon, but they’d all been sunk. It was funny when we were en route from Algiers to Malta, there was a, ‘boom,’ bang and a great column of smoke over in the distance, that was the ship going down, and we heard later that was our ship [laughs] with all the trucks on.
AM: Blimey.
RH: So when we got to, then we were posted and moved to Lentini and that was a new, new landing ground, and we were sent there for anti-parachute troop duties. The Germans had dropped paratroopers into Sicily, not, not straight into combat, they dropped them as reinforcements to the guys who were already there.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And, but some of them were dropped too far south, and when the 8th Army had pushed up and they were left behind.
AM: I’m just looking, thinking about the geography, so you’re in the south of Sicily?
RH: Pardon?
AM: I’m just thinking about the geography of Sicily, so the Germans were on the island?
RH: Oh yeah, and eventually, eventually they had four divisions there. They had three to, three to begin with and then, then they dropped in two regiments from the 1st Parachute Division, and they were dropped in as reinforcements, behind their own lines. But they were the guys who eventually who stopped the 8th Army, you know, getting any further. But, and so when we got to Lentini, they were forming patrols of about a dozen guys and an NCO, and they [unclear] [laughs] searched the local olive groves and go through, and as I said in, in the letter, you know, God help them if they come across any German para’s because I’m sure we would have been sending out the first missing in action signals.
[laughter]
RH: Because they wouldn’t have stood a chance, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against those guys. So, that was that.
AM: So, how long were you there for, on Sicily?
RH: Pardon?
AM: How long were you on Sicily for? Ish?
RH: Yeah, we landed there a week after the invasion began, July, August, and then, when did we go into Italy? September the 3rd? So, we went into Italy on September the 10th, something like that.
AM: Right, so, so the Germans had been pushed back?
RH: They evacuated.
AM: They evacuated.
RH: Yeah, they got everything away, they got everything away, they had a defensive line sort of thing, and they just took it step by step back, and meanwhile they, I think forty thousand men all their guns and tanks, everything they managed to get across the Straits of Messina. And, [pause] the regiment squadron, we were on, we moved from Lentini to the Scordia landing ground, again it’s only a rough strip through, through the fields and that was the American 57th Fighter Group. They were equipped with P-40 Warhawks and they used to go out day after day trying to stop the Germans evacuating the—
AM: Getting across the Straits.
RH: Their, their stuff. And that was the first time I’d come across American, Americans and they were great guys, [emphasis] they really were. And later on, we were on the same airfield, when I was in aircrew and again, you know, they really are first, first class blokes, I thought.
AM: So, you’re on, we’re on the push now, what, what month did we say we were? August? What, what—
GR: No, September into Italy.
AM: And September into Italy.
RH: September into Italy.
AM: So you—
RH: I’ll just tell this little story while we—
AM: Go on, yes.
RH: At Scordia, I mean they were suffering losses because I mean they were having to make quite low level attacks with their fighter bombers. And we were watching these guys coming back, and, and one of them he came in rather high, banged [emphasis] down onto the ground, up in the air, bang [emphasis] and then turned over onto his, onto his back, so the pilot was trapped under, underneath. But I mean, they were very, very quick, in no time there was a, the er, a fire tender, an ambulance, and a mobile crane. And the mobile crane lifted the aircraft up, turned it over—
AM: [inaudible]
RH: And they forced the canopy open and out [laughs] got this young lieutenant, stepped on the wing, walked away a few paces, reached into his overalls, pulled out a cigar—
AM: [gasps] Oh no.
RH: Lit it and went on walking.
[laughter]
RH: And I thought, well there’s, there’s a nerve for you, [laughs] there’s a nerve for you. But on the other side of the coin, I remember, I used to like going out into their dispersal and watch them come in. And, they’d taken off—
[background noise]
RH: And then one of them left the formation, came round, landed and then taxied up to where we were, we were, sort of thing, switched off the engine, pilot got out and he walked over to the, the er. There was a sergeant who was a sort of an engineer mechanic, whatever, and I can’t remember the words after all these years what the pilot said, but he was complaining that there was a fault in the, in the engine, there was something, something wrong, and then he walked away. And I said the sergeant, I said, ‘what do you thinks wrong with that then?’ Now, you’ll have to excuse the language.
AM: It’s alright. [laughs]
RH: He said, ‘nothing he’s just shit scared,’ he said.
[laughter]
AM: Fair enough.
RH: So then we went into Italy, [pause] now tell you, this was a regiment [laughs] with a squadron, and so I knew [emphasis] very well, being, being in the HQ, the squadron had been told they had to go to Crotone landing ground which was sort of under the, that part of the—
AM: The heel.
RH: Italian boot.
AM: The heel.
RH: And of course, and we were following a Canadian division along the coast. They were way, way, way ahead, we never ever saw them. When we got to Crotone landing ground, nothing there at all because it had already been evacuated. Now the same time as the 8th Army landed on the toe and moved up on the north coast, the Canadians were moving along the south coast and the British 1st Airborne Division came in by sea to land at Taranto to push up on the Adriatic coast. And when we were somewhere west of, of Taranto we came across the Airborne guys, and, and they were stopping our convoy. Now in our convoy would be about a dozen three tonne four by four Bedfords, three or four jeeps, two Italian trucks that we had pinched, stolen and, and motorcycles and so forth. Yeah, we spotted these Italian trucks in a little town called Catanzaro down on the toe and the C.O. had seen them, two big Fiat trucks, and so he said to our corporal fitter, engine fitter, ‘do you reckon you can get those going?’ he said, ‘yeah right.’ So sometime around midnight he and another mechanic went out and started them and drove them up the road a bit and then we found them [unclear]
AM: Appropriated them. [laughs]
RH: And then painted them in RAF camouflage and off we went. And then so, yeah, we met the guys with the, with the red berets and from what they were saying is, ‘go careful, keep your heads down because there are German para snipers in the area,’ [laughs] and I thought to myself, we shouldn’t be here, we had no business to be there with just our, just the C.O. You know, woo, let’s just going, you know so think you can imagine we were some kind of Panzer unit or something. And then we drove into Bari, you know that?
AM: Yeah.
RH: Well as we went to Bari, there were people on the pavements, waving and cheering and then passing out bottles of wine.
[laughter]
RH: And I thought, well this can’t be right, and, and where are our guys? I didn’t see any British soldiers at all, and we drove through Bari, and I can’t remember the name of the town now, but about ten miles north of Bari on the main coast road, we came into this little township, and again, [emphasis] people came out and they were waving and saying oh—
AM: Italian civilians you mean?
RH: Yeah, [emphasis] Italian civilians, I thought it’s got to be something, it’s got to be wrong you know, and then the word quickly came down the, the line, the Germans left here this morning.
[laughter]
RH: Well that decided the C.O., all the trucks were turned round. [laughs]
GR: You were the spear guard you were, you were out in front.
[laughter]
RH: We go back to, we went back to Bari, and he looked at his map. Bari airport which was an Italian air force base then, we’ll go there, and we’ll the, we’ll take over the airfield, we had no business—
AM: Is this just you the RAF Regiment, you’re talking here?
RH: Yeah.
AM: Right.
RH: No business at all to be, to be there. And we drove up to the entrance and there were gates and as we drove up, there were armed Italians carrying their funny little carbine rifles, they shut the gate. Now I wasn’t there I didn’t hear what, what was said but they refused to let us in. So, then the order came down the line, ‘get your rifles out men and load them, and stand by the trucks.’ And of course, in our headquarters truck, where are the rifles?
[laughter]
AM: We’re laughing now, but I bet you weren’t laughing at the time.
RH: Scrambling, put ten rounds in the magazine, get out the truck. Meanwhile the Italians, a lot of them, had crossed the road and were in the olive grove in that side, so I thought, God, we are going to be between two lots here, but I think that fact that they saw a hundred guys or more getting out the trucks with their rifles ready, and that decided the Italians to open the gate and let us in.
[laughter]
RH: Yeah, so.
AM: Blimey.
GR: So you’re fighting your way up Italy?
AM: And your C.O. wanted you to be fighting your way up.
RH: Pardon?
AM: And your C.O. wanted you to be fighting your way up.
RH: And the, what do you call it? SWO, he was, he was another sort of, you know, let’s get up there and we’ll, all the rest of it. But, yeah then we went up to Foggia and there were several airfields there which the Germans had used, and yeah, we were, I think on two different airfields there, if I remember rightly, well airfields, landing grounds it was just a single strip. But I can’t remember anything worth reporting there. And by that time, we were subordinate to Desert Air Force, and so you’d get the daily orders from Desert Air Force. And on one they were appealing for air gunners, air gunners, now I thought right—
AM: This is it.
RH: We’ll have a go at this, and so I, you know, I applied and went to Desert Air Force headquarters to get the preliminary medical as such. And, it was, it was quite interesting, because they had my records there and the first officer to examine me, flight lieutenant or squadron leader, doctor or whatever he was, he said, ‘I can’t understand why you were failed in, a year ago,’ he said. He said, ‘there’s nothing wrong,’ and I said, ‘well it says temporarily unfit,’ ‘I can’t see nothing wrong, well, we’ll get a second opinion,’ and he called in the chief, the group captain, and he came in and checked me over, ‘yeah,’ he said, ‘no,’ he said, ‘I can’t think,’ he said, ‘why you were failed a year ago,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with your, with your heart.’ I used to think afterwards, they failed me because when they looked at my background, they realised in fact, that Mum was a German.
[laughter]
RH: I’ve thought that might be a—
GR: That’s possible.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah, yeah, possible.
RH: Yeah. Because when it came to the aircrew selection board, that was the next thing.
AM: Are you still in Italy at this point?
RH: Yeah, oh yes.
AM: Yeah.
RH: The, the aircrew selection board, and they asked, they asked that question, ‘what if you were ordered to?’ I mean there was no possibility for me to fly from Italy all the way to Cologne, but still, [laughs] They said, ‘what if you were ordered to bomb Germany, bomb something in Germany, you know, you were born there and your Mothers German, what, what if you were ordered to do that?’ [laughs] And I said, ‘I would obey orders.’ [laughs]
[laughter]
RH: Yes, so then there was, I was still with the Regiment Squadron, but I mean they hadn’t, they hadn’t fired a shot in anger and they were anti-aircraft, there was no need for them, so they found a new job for the RAF Regiment. That was to go up to the, our artillery gun line which would be a three, or four miles behind the front line, and by day if our guys were flying and bombing, they would put out smoke indicators to show where our front line was, so that our guys didn’t bomb in it. And by night they would put out flares and I was only there less than, less than, less than a week and but apparently, they did have some casualties later, later on. But, so that was it, now I went to Desert Air Force headquarters, and I had three or four weeks there, and then before I went back to the Middle East. Desert Air Force headquarters was the best posting ever I had in the RAF of a, really good guys to work with, we had an Australian flight lieutenant who was our, the C.O. of what’s called the organisation section where I worked. And he used to share his food parcels with us and he knew I was sort of going through them and I was going on for air, aircrew training and he called me in one day and he said, ‘Harrison,’ now I know this sounds like a line shoot, but he said, ‘Harrison, you’ve done a really good job here,’ he said, ‘we’re very pleased at the way you’re, you’re working.’ That’s because I had a gen, I wasn’t responsible to anyone even though I was only an airman I was doing my own, my own job, sort of thing, which was location of units.
AM: Right.
RH: And briefing people who came in asking questions about you, he said, ‘now why don’t you forget this aircrew thing,’ he said, ‘and I can guarantee,’ he said, in a few months you’ll have your first stripes,’ he said, ‘and I can see you going on from there,’ and I said, ‘no thank you, very much.’ [laughs] And so that was it, now I went back to Egypt
AM: Right. Where did you do your training, your aircrew training then?
RH: Air gunner training.
AM: Air gunner training, where did you do that?
RH: Yeah, a place called El Ballah.
AM: In, in Egypt?
RH: On the canal zone.
AM: Right. And how long, so how long were you training for?
RH: Right. [pause]
[paper rustling]
RH: You can take these away.
AM: Okay.
RH: Later. There were three six-week courses.
AM: Right.
RH: The first one was at 51 Air Gunner Initial Training School, and they’re all the subjects.
AM: Yeah.
RH: Then you had a forty-eight-hour pass into Cairo and then you came for another six weeks—
AM: Okay.
RH: At 12 Elementary Air Gunner School.
AM: Yeah.
RH: From there are all the subjects again.
AM: So, I’m looking at, I’ll, I’ll copy this, and but I’m looking at things like, different gun turrets, the Frazer Nash, the Boulton Paul, the Bristol.
RH: Yeah that’s right.
AM: Pyrotechnics, the Very pistol, the flares, forty flashes. Smoke floats?
RH: Yeah, smoke floats, yeah.
AM: Yeah, what’s a smoke float?
RH: Well it was, about, about that big and the idea was that, that in daylight, over the sea, over, over water, the navigator would ask someone to drop a smoke float, okay? And then the tail gunner, the rear gunner—
AM: Yeah, yeah.
RH: Himself. You see that smoke float and you take a bearing on it with your sight, and there’s sort of a compass ring—
AM: Right.
RH: And you say,’ okay, it’s at so many degrees,’ and then the navigator would count off so many seconds and say, ‘okay take another reading,’ so you take another reading and it shows you your drift.
AM: Right.
RH: The difference between the two readings.
AM: Yep.
RH: Yeah, smoke float by day, yeah.
AM: Oh.
RH: And that’s 13 Air Gunner school where you finally get to fly.
AM: I’m looking at this one because I was, I was going to ask you, what were, what did you actually train in? And we’ve got Avro Anson’s?
RH: Yes, it’s up there, somewhere.
AM: One of those up there? Dinghy drill. Did you all have individual dinghies at that point?
RH: No, seven-man dinghies.
AM: Because—It was a seven-man dinghy. Right.
RH: Then we trained in, in the Suez Canal, and the canal was only a couple of miles away from the, from the air field, so the instructor would tow an inflated dinghy out into the middle of the canal. And that was another, another thing and I’ve never come across it before and I’ve mentioned it to other aircrew types and they’ve never heard of this before. You had to swim fifty yards [emphasis] and if you did not swim, if you couldn’t swim that fifty yards you failed.
AM: That was it, you were out.
RH: You failed the course. So, I mean you had a life jacket on which was a damn nuisance believe me if you’ve got a Mae West and you try swim. [laughs] So you went out, two of you at a time, went out to a dinghy and righted it.
AM: Oops.
RH: Sorry. Righted it, then got into it, and then when the instructor was satisfied, when you got out you pulled the dinghy over you so it was upside down for the next pair.
AM: Right, and swam out from under it.
RH: To go out, yeah.
AM: I can’t imagine what the canal was full of?
RH: Oh yeah, [emphasis] yeah. Now and then whistles are blowing and everyone would have to get out if a ship came by. [laughs]
AM: Theres, there’s crocodiles isn’t there?
RH: No, no.
AM: Is there not? No. Alright then.
RH: There’s far more—
AM: I was thinking about horrible [unclear]
RH: Theres worse stuff floating in the canal, believe me.
AM: I can imagine.
[laughter]
AM: So, you’ve done your training.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Then what?
RH: Then we’ve went to [paper rustling] from Egypt—
AM: Hmm, hmm.
RH: To Palestine.
AM: Right.
RH: For the O T U.
AM: Right. [pause] So, I’m looking now at the, it was the 76 Operational Training Unit.
RH: That’s right.
AM: And you were on Wellington medium bombers at this point?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: Tail gunner you said you were, weren’t you?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: Tail end Charlie.
RH: Yes, we formed up of, as you may know, you know, the people weren’t detailed, we all assembled in a hangar.
AM: You did the crewing up.
RH: And we sort of—
AM: No other end.
RH: Pardon?
AM: No other end, is an expression—
RH: Is it?
AM: An expression, I’ve heard.
RH: Yeah well. And Joe, the other gunner, he, he eventually found a pilot who wanted two gunners, and so we met this Eddy who came from the Midlands, and he said to us, ‘who’s best at aircraft recognition?’ and Joe said, ‘he is,’ pointing to me.
[laughter]
RH: ‘So, right you are the rear gunner then.’
AM: So that was it? That was how that was decided. But then, so when was heavy Conversion Unit, were you still in Palestine at that point?
RH: No. We went back to Egypt for it.
AM: Back to Egypt for that, right.
RH: That was only four weeks I think at that point.
AM: So this is the 1675 Heavy Conversion Unit, into B-24 Liberators.
RH: B-24 Liberator, yeah. At least we got into a decent aircraft.
AM: Yeah. What, how many crew were on that? Was there seven or more? Seven.
RH: Well, seven. We trained as a crew of seven but operationally on the squadron, you carried an extra gunner, who manned the two waist guns.
AM: Right, so there was waist guns on there?
RH: There was also these, yeah, I did two or three [unclear] trips as a beam gunner, but you were the odd job. I’ll come to that when we get to the squadron then.
AM: Alright, okay. So, carry on—
RH: Well, [unclear, interviewer speaks over]
AM: Tell me about that and what happened and any stories about the conversion unit course or on to what happened after that?
RH: I can only think of a funny story on that. Sometimes, the nose wheel of the Liberator wouldn’t come down. And so, someone would go from the flight deck, for landing on the flight deck was a pilot, the engineer, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and top gunner, six of them all on the flight deck in that area. If the nose wheel didn’t come down, there was a, a drill for it. One of them would go back into the nose and help to pull the thing down. Well, we’d been on a night exercise, and Joe our top gunner, a Lancashire lad, he always had intercom trouble. He was an electrician by trade, but he was a real jinx [emphasis] when it came to in, in, intercom. And the nose wheel hadn’t come down, so I mean I’m hearing everything on intercom, so the skipper said to, I think it was the bomb aimer Ron, ‘Ron go on down into the nose right and see if you can do it,’ and so Ron goes down there. Then the next thing I here, Ron’s on the intercom, ’no, I can’t do it and I need some help,’ ‘ah yeah, okay,’ and so the navigator is sent down. So, now there’s two of them in the nose trying to pull it—
AM: Yank the thing, yeah.
RH: And get the wheel down, and then they come back on the intercom, ‘no I can’t do it,’ so skipper, Eddy turns to Taffy our engineer and says, ‘Taff, go down and sort it, will you?’ So, Taff gets out of his seat and goes down. Theres a hatch in the flight deck that goes down into the nose. Now, Joe the top gunner, knows that the nose wheel hasn’t come down, and then his intercom goes dead. And one after another he sees the bomb aimer—
AM: Oh God.
RH: The navigator and the engineer all disappearing through that hatch down below, and what does he think? He thinks they’re all baling out. So, his seat release is a wire handle and he pulls that, drops out of his turret, goes straight through the hatch into the end of the bomb bay.
AM: Oh no.
GR: [unclear] [laughs]
RH: He just had a few bruises that was all.
AM: I was going to say, I thought you were going to say he went right through and had to pull his parachute. [laughs]
GR: Well, the thing is to anybody listening, obviously Lancaster, Halifax, B-17 all land, and land tail down, but the B-24 was one that landed, and landed with its nose up.
RH: Nose wheel
GR: The same, yeah. So, it landed, straight—
RH: Yes.
GR: As opposed to sitting back on the tail, so when you were on about the nose wheel coming down that’s—
AM: That’s why it’s important.
GR: Yeah
RH: Well, I— [unclear, interviewer speaks over]
GR: In fact that was the only bomber that, that—
RH: Yeah.
GR: The only, only four engine bomber that, that happened.
RH: If I remember rightly in HCU and I mean, I knew guys who were ahead of me and so forth, and Norman, and he came back and he came up to the truck as we were getting off it, and he said, ‘have you heard Mick Berry’s gone?’ Now, Mick Berry had been a corporal armourer and he was in our tent at gunnery school—
AM: Right.
RH: And he taught us more about the machine guns than the instructors. After all, that was his, his trade, he was a, I can still remember, he was a great [emphasis] man, he really was a good lad. And there they had, had crash landed and burst into flames, and Mick was in the mid er, top turret. Now that was held by, I think it was four bolts and it was a common fault that bang [emphasis] on, on the deck and that turret would drop out, and he was trapped and he couldn’t get out, yeah.
GR: Oh God.
RH: Mick Berry, he’s buried in the cemetery near Cairo.
AM: Oh, right. How big is it? I’m looking at a model of the Liberator here. How big is it in comparison then to the Halifax and the, and the Lancaster?
RH: [unclear] it’s a hundred and ten foot wingspan, the Liberator and the Hal, well Lanc, well it’s just over a hundred feet, in total.
AM: I was going to say, it looks a bit bigger to me.
RH: Yeah.
AM: On the, on the model, I know [unclear]
GR: Well at the same scales, they’re actually, the Liberators on a par with the Lancaster, probably slightly bigger.
AM: I’m showing my ignorance now, is it American?
GR: The B-24 was originally was an American bomber.
RH: Oh yeah.
AM: Oh.
RH: Yeah, consolidated to the aircraft company, yeah. [pause] Nice aeroplane to fly because after flying in the Wellingtons as the rear or tail, tail gunner, the heating system, well, didn’t really exist. And, in O.T.U. going out on a flight at night, and we’d six hours, six and a half hour flights sort of thing in freezing [emphasis] weather and you’d have long johns and, and then your shirt and your pants, and so forth. And your wool, pullover, woolly, the battle dress, then over the battle dress, the, an inner flying suit—
AM: Right.
RH: Which was sort of kapok something or other, brown silky, you put that on. Then over that, the outer flying suit which wasn’t padded at all, then over that your life jacket, then over that your parachute harness. Now, some of the gunners at O.T.U. there was only one entry hatch and that was in the nose, so the guys used to take their kit with them and get dressed when they got down into the fuselage. But I had an arrangement with the navigator, and the bomb aimer, and the armourer who would turn the turret of our aircraft to a hundred and eighty degrees, so I could get in from the outside. And they would lift [emphasis] me up into the turret, and then when we got back I would turn the turret a hundred and eighty degrees, open the doors, fall out—
AM: We’re talking about the rear turret then?
GR: Yeah.
RH: Pardon?
AM: Yeah.
RH: Yeah. And they would—
GR: Tumble out.
RH: And they would get me out.
GR: [unclear]
RH: The advantage of the Wimpy of course, and the rear, and with the Lanc and the British aircraft wasn’t it, you opened the doors as a tail gunner and you just bale out and go backwards—
AM: You just flipped out.
RH: Couldn’t do that on the Liberator.
AM: So, we’ve done Heavy Conversion Unit, you’ve got your crew, you’ve done your training with your crew, when was—
RH: I can’t think of any incidents.
AM: When was your first operation then?
RH: In February 45.
AM: Right, and where, where was it too?
RH: That’s a very good question, I think—
AM: Germany somewhere?
RH: No, I, no we were in Italy.
AM: Oh, oh.
RH: Yep, I think that’s just March, isn’t it?
GR: That’s just March, yeah.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Can you remember what it was like going up? Right because now you’re doing it for real instead of training? Did it make a difference?
RH: It was just a job. I think, you know guys of our age at that stage of the war, nine, you know, coming up to the end of the war, and you, I can’t think of the term really, indoctrinated or whatever, and you are used to it, you are used to it.
AM: So, were you scared?
RH: No I wasn’t, no.
AM: No.
RH: Because I didn’t have enough up there to be scared.
[laughter]
GR: Am I right in assuming that the, the bomber force in Italy at the time, was doing things like marshalling yards—
RH: Yeah.
GR: In northern Italy.
RH: Yeah.
GR: Austria.
RH: Yeah.
GR: Southern Germany? I think that there was a couple of trips.
AM: I think, yeah, I thought, I thought you went to southern Germany?
RH: No, we there were, I never went on a trip into Bavaria.
GR: But that was some of their, their area of operations.
RH: Yeah.
GR: There was the northern Italy marshalling yards, the Turin’s, that sort of thing, Verona, to try and stop—
RH: It was mainly the railway lines coming down through Bremen.
GR: Yes.
RH: And also down to Trieste and so forth.
GR: Which was the main supplier [unclear]
RH: And also, we, yeah, we bombed, what was it? Monfalcone, a little port, Ancona and Assa [?] yeah, they were, they were where the Germans had ships and used to supply their troops by night by running these boats along the coast, sort of thing.
GR: Did you normally fly with an escort? With a—
RH: On daylight, yeah.
GR: Daylights, yeah.
RH: Yeah, yeah. We had the Americans.
GR: Yeah.
RH: American B-51’s.
GR: Tuskegee, Tuskegee airmen?
RH: I don’t know who they were.
GR: They, they were the black—
AM: Yeah.
RH: I remember on one, on a trip to Monfalcone in the daylight, I mean we didn’t fly in formation, I mean our guys didn’t know how to fly in formation I never, not on heavies. And it just the usual stream, and so there were, sort of sixty, eighty aircraft in a stream. And we picked up the American escort, this was at the top end of the Adriatic, Trieste.
AM: Yep, yep.
RH: Right, it was the port next to Trieste.
AM: Yep.
RH: And, we picked up the escort and it was coming up, and our wireless op was listening out on their frequency, there had to be some sort of contact for, for, I didn’t hear this. But I remember we’d said, said afterwards, he said, ‘when they saw us coming,’ he said, and they were [laughs] saying about look at those sort of God damned limeys they’re not in formation, you know, all that how do we protect this lot and all the rest of it. [laughs]
AM: It’s like herding sheep.
[laughter]
RH: Yeah.
AM: Or herding—
GR: Are the Luftwaffe putting in much of an appearance?
RH: No.
GR: Towards that stage of the war?
RH: No, no.
AM: Were they not?
RH: No, they had, they were 109’s on the Italian, northern Italian airfields, but I think most of those were in what was called the Italian Republican Airforce.
GR: Yeah.
RH: You know, Mussolini’s lot, so you did see them, you did see them. Right and I remember seeing a strange sight one night as we were coming away from wherever it was in northern Italy. It was all a tremendous glare of course and, and looking out I saw these three Lib’s flying in and they were in [laughs] formation more or less and then at the back end of the [unclear] was a Bf 109. [laughs]
GR: Oh.
[laughter]
AM: Following you.
RH: Following the—
AM: Did you ever get shot at?
RH: With flak.
AM: With flak, but not, not as Gary said, not from a fighter?
RH: No, no, I saw, yeah there was a, we were 70 Squadron, 37 Squadron operated from the same airfield. I mean I didn’t know who they were, were at the time but and coming back at night from somewhere, Austria I think it might, might have been, the, and then suddenly seeing green tracer which I knew it was German. And then red tracer [laughs] sort of thing, and then ‘woof’ [emphasis] up went the Lib and down he went, yeah and that was 37 Squadron. Liberator, all lost.
AM: All gone. Did you ever shoot your guns at anything?
RH: No.
AM: Never?
RH: No, no you even if, and we were tailed one night by a fighter coming back from Trento I think it was, Trento, Trento marshalling yards you know, and I just reported it to the, to the crew, it was a 109. And he was sitting out and sort of, sort of four hundred yards or so away, you’d just see them occasionally with the glare in the background but he didn’t close and I certainly wouldn’t fire at him because it would show where we were.
GR: Were you were.
AM: Other people have said that, why would you fire—
RH: Yeah. Quite.
AM: And you know, mark yourself out to them.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Effectively.
RH: Yeah. Yeah, no you never, never fire unless you’re fired at. Okay?
AM: Yeah. I think, have you got any more questions?
GR: No, no.
AM: How many operations did you do in the end?
RH: Bombing, eighteen.
AM: Eighteen.
RH: And then we converted to supply, as the war was coming to an end—
AM: Okay.
RH: And the bombing stopped, and then they put some sort of racking inside the bomb bay so we could carry four-gallon cans of petrol and things like that.
AM: Right. So, what did you do between the war ending and demob?
RH: Er, yeah, we carried, you see although the war ended we’d already converted to transport.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And so, yeah for two or three weeks after VE Day we were flying, we were talking up supplies up to the north of Italy. And then after that they converted the bomb bay so you could carry bodies, troops, we could carry twenty-two.
AM: Live bodies?
RH: Yeah.
AM: Live ones.
RH: Twenty-two in the bomb, bomb bay. Poor blokes, [emphasis] I mean they just had to go down into the, down onto the catwalk and then climb over the back of these seats and then sit down. And there was the aircraft fuselage wall, just there sort of thing, and they had to sit there and on flights back to the UK, it took six and a half hours.
AM: You can’t imagine, can you?
GR: No.
AM: Were these troops or did you take any prisoner of war back?
RH: No, no—
AM: It was troops.
RH: These were troops. The ones we were flying back were due to be retrained and reformed to go out to Burma. These were the, I remember, you see they didn’t need the air gunners as such, so you became an odd bod sort of looking after these soldiers and so forth. And I remember on one occasion we were flying back with some guardsmen from a guard’s regiment, and the truck arrived and this lieutenant got out with his twenty odd bods. And they piled around and he said to our skipper, ‘we were all NCO’s, we were all senior NCO’s, he said, ‘have you anything to say?’ to the men sort of thing, and he said, ‘no.’ Since I was Harrison, generally I was called Harry, and so Ken said, ‘now Harry will look after you,’ well that wasn’t good enough for the, for the lieutenant. He turned around and he said, ‘when you are in the aircraft I don’t want you putting your hands out and grabbing any wires or anything.’
[laughter]
RH: So I saw them on board and we were flying up to Peterborough, Croughton, just south, it was an American base at that time and I used to bring them out one at a time and with the beam hatches open they could have a smoke—
AM: Right.
RH: Sitting there. And I think it was one of the last guys, came out and he sat on the other beam gunners seat, and he didn’t have intercom of course, we could only talk to each other by shout, shouting really, and he shouted, he said, ‘do we go through customs?’ he said, I said, ‘well I don’t.’ Crewmen didn’t, you just went straight through, [laughs] I said, ‘you, yes you will have to go through customs,’ and I said, ‘why?’ and he pulled back the sleeve of his battle dress and [laughs] there were watches—
[laughter]
RH: On, on there. And I said, oh, how did you get those?’ and they disarmed an SS unit or something and so, and relieved them of all, of all their odds and ends. And er, and then he reached into his blouse, fiddled about and pulled out a pistol, and I said to him, I said, ‘I don’t think you’ll get through with that,’ he said, ‘I’ve got another one in my kit bag.’
[laughter]
AM: I thought you were going to say you took them through for him.
RH: No, no, no.
AM: If you didn’t have to go through customs.
GR: They’re here.
AM: [laughs]
RH: No, after, after we’d landed and I got my travel warrant, and had a forty-eight-hour pass to get back to Bristol.
AM: Right.
RH: Or near Bristol. And so, it was late evening when I caught a train from Peterborough to Kings Cross, and Kings Cross to Paddington, and Paddington to Temple Meads, then Bristol. Which, I arrived about seven o’clock in the morning, then I had to walk over to the bus station and get a bus, and I arrived at my parents’ house I think, yeah it must have been about nine o’clock in the morning. Knocked them up, then I had, since it was a Saturday, I had to leave next day, just after lunch—
AM: To get back.
RH: To get back, yeah, so my forty-eight-hour pass in fact was about thirty.
AM: In the middle.
RH: Oh, so, anything else I can help with?
AM: Yes, this is, just out of interest this question. So, your Mum was German, how was she treated during the war?
RH: Yeah, okay.
AM: Were people okay with her?
RH: Yeah, you see we were, when I say Dad went in, into the civil service, he did, he and a lot of other guys including the major commanding who is based and so forth. Some of them were sort of even if they hadn’t given their time were said, okay you’re finished, because now you’re going to an establishment in Gloucestershire where you’ll be training police, fire, in what today are called civil defence duties. And so, you know, my environment from a child and all the way through to the time I left home was, was semi military because all the other guys were like Dad, they all ex-army.
AM: Right.
RH: They were all ex-army and some of them I remember when we lived at Salisbury, I remember a couple of German women coming there to visit Mum and they were again were wives of soldiers and so forth. But, no and of course we had relatives in Cologne and at the time of the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, we had a telegram which came through the Swiss Red Cross, from Mums sister Gerda, in Cologne, asking if we were all okay. [laughs]
AM: Were they all okay, did they ask to—
RH: No.
AM: Did your relatives not survive?
RH: No, no they were, they lived, well as most Germans do in the cities, they live in an apartment block and the block was, was—
AM: Blown up.
RH: Hit, and Uncle Johan as he was, he died of phosphorus burns. And my aunt and my two cousins, saw one cousin, they were evacuated into, into central Germany. The other one, my, he was about a year or so younger than me and had been like you know like all the rest of them in the Hitler movement and so forth. And then when he was sixteen I think, he volunteered for part time duty on a flak battery, and then when he was seventeen he became a full-time member of the Luftwaffe [emphasis] on a flak battery. When I met him, you know after, we used to have a joke about it.
[laughter]
GR: That’s a, well at least you had the opportunity.
AM: At least you never shot at me.
RH: Never fired at me because you were in, on the Rhineland and in the Ruhr, yeah
AM: Yeah, Happy Valley, the Ruhr.
RH: Pardon?
AM: Happy Valley, I’ve heard the Ruhr described as.
RH: Yeah, yeah. But they’re all, my cousins and my aunt are not, they are all dead now so, no contact.
GR: What I’ve just found amazing is, you’ve saying like yeah, during the Battle of Britain, and Bristol was being blitzed and all that, and a family in Germany sends a telegram [laughs] to a family in England saying are you okay?
AM: Are you okay?
RH: Yeah.
GR: And that’s just like, that’s incredible.
AM: Ordinary people in the war.
GR: Yeah.
AM: As opposed to the Nazis and all the rest of it.
GR: But the fact is, so you are in Germany, and you’ve got Hitler, yeah, we’re going to invade Britain and do this, do that, but you can send a telegram. So, it goes from Germany oh yes, certainly a lot of it went through Switzerland through the Red Cross.
AM: [inaudible as speaking at same time]
RH: Yeah.
GR: But you got the telegram in England, are you okay? Is everything alright?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: What did you do then after the war then, after you’d been demobbed?
RH: I became a civil servant.
AM: Which bit? Which, which department?
RH: The Home, Home office—
AM: Oh.
RH: Was the governing training department but again [coughs] it was, it was, it civil defence training I sort of followed on, I and my brother we were lucky having a father in it. [laughs]
AM: Not what you know, but who you know.
RH: Yeah, well yeah, well you had to go through selection board.
AM: There was always full fair and open competition and all that, allegedly weren’t it. I’m just looking at this, the warrant on the wall here, which is?
RH: The what?
AM: I’m looking for the year, 1962.
RH: That was commission—
AM: You became a, well you tell me what it is?
RH: Yeah, I was commissioned in the volunteer reserve training branch here.
AM: Ah ha.
RH: The Air Training Corps.
AM: As a pilot officer.
RH: Yeah. Eventually I was a flight lieutenant.
AM: Yeah, crikey. Well I think on that note we’ll switch off.
RH: Have you been recording all—
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 Richard Harrison
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-16
Format
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01:07:06 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHarrisonR151116
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Civilian
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
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Egypt
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Italy--Sicily
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1965
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Harrison was born in Cologne in 1924 to a German mother and English father. His desire to be aircrew was thwarted initially by a failed medical, something he later surmises could be on account of his mother’s nationality. A member of the Air Raid Precautions, Home Guard and Air Training Corps, he was called up in 1942. He was posted to RAF Tempsford, base for Special Duty Squadrons 161 and 138, who dropped supplies and people for the resistance. In 1943 he was posted to Sicily in the RAF Regiment Squadron for anti-parachute troop duties and then to Italy. He successfully applied to join the Desert Air Force and had air gunner training at El Ballah in Egypt. He went to Palestine as a rear gunner on a Wellington for the Operational Training Unit, followed by the 1675 Heavy Conversion Unit in Egypt with B-24 . His first operation was in Italy. After VE Day, they transported supplies and troops. After the war, he worked as a civil servant in the Home Office. In 1962, he was commissioned as a pilot officer in the Air Training Corps and eventually became a flight lieutenant
Creator
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Annie Moody
Gary Rushbrooke
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
Sally Coulter
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
138 Squadron
161 Squadron
70 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-24
bombing
civil defence
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Operational Training Unit
RAF Tempsford
Resistance
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/557/8824/PSpenceWD1601.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/557/8824/ASpenceWD160315.2.mp3
8d662bd3160f26b9e16cc2c021985d2f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/557/8824/PSpenceWD1604.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/557/8824/PSpenceWD1603.1.jpg
de1547eb5b4832cf11aa39802921c132
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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Spence, Bill
William John Duncan Spence
W J D Spence
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Spence, WD
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Bill Spence (b. 1923, 153645 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 44 Squadron. After the war he wrote of his experiences of the bombing war as Duncan Spence, Westerns as Jim Bowden, and Romantic Fiction under the name of Jessica Blair.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok. So today is Tuesday the 15th of March 2016 and this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command Centre and today, I’m in Ampleforth with Bill Spence. And Bill’s daughter is also here so if an extra voice appears on the recording, that’s who it is. So thanks for taking part Bill, that’s really good of you, and to start with, can you, can I just have a little bit of background about, about you? So date of birth, where you were born, what your parents did, that sort of thing.
WS: Yes, I was born in 1923 in Middlesbrough. My father was a teacher there, he had originated in Ampleforth, where I’m living now, so my education took place there, and the war broke out. And I was seventeen and about to go to teacher training college down in London, and that was still going through, and I went to the training college at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham and everything was going through fine but we had, the course was only going to be two years.
AM: Right. Can I just ask what made you go to Twickenham if you were from Middlesbrough?
WS: Well I applied to go on a teacher training course and I can’t really remember how it came to be Twickenham except that, in all probability, it was maybe done through the parish in Middlesbrough, because it was a Roman Catholic teaching college.
AM: Right.
WS: So I went there, and the course, which should have been three years, if not four, was clipped to two years in order to fit in with our military training.
AM: Ok.
WS: Right. Well then, I did the first year, started on the second year, when we were told that we would only be able to complete it if we did military training of some kind or another, whilst we were still at college for our last year. So the college started an Army Corps and Air Force training and we could have a pick which we wanted to do [laughs], so I picked to do aircrew training, knowing nothing whatever about it. And so we started to do what would have been the ITW course, which was the first course for aircrew if you went straight into the Air Force and we did that course alongside our teacher training.
AM: Right. Who were the, who were the teachers who did it then? Did you do it at the college or did you go somewhere else to do it?
WS: No, we did it at the college but the course had been drafted in through the RAF and so we got RAF personnel.
AM: Right.
WS: Coming over and giving us lectures on various aspects of the, that particular course and at the end of our, end of our term at the training college, we had to sit an RAF, RAF exam along with our teacher training exams. Now if we passed the RAF training that we’d done there, we’d obviously done the ITW course that we would have done if we’d gone straight in to the RAF. So I did, I did pass it, so that when I went home on leave from college, within, what would it be? Maybe a month certainly, certainly no more than a month, I got the papers to report to RAF in London on such and such a date, so I went down there and then I was shuffled around by the RAF until very soon afterwards, I was on my way to Canada for aircrew training.
AM: Right.
WS: Right.
AM: So tell me about Canada then. How did you get there, first of all, because what year would we be now? Nineteen forty —
WS: Well I was at the teacher training college from ‘40 to ’42.
AM: Right.
WS: So it would be July ‘42 I would think.
AM: Right.
WS: When I actually went into the RAF proper.
AM: Can I just ask you something before we go onto that? So in, in ‘40, ‘41, ’42, you’re in London, doing your training.
WS: Yes.
AM: What was that like as a civilian while the war was going on around you?
WS: Oh, the bombing. Oh, the bombing. Well the first, our first contact with that was the fact that when we went to Strawberry Hill College, part of it had been hit by German bombs and so that part of the college was not in use, and so we were all a bit more crowded together and actually made a lot of bunk beds. They were in the basement of the college for us to sleep in and of course, being in London, you were aware of the bombing going on in other parts of London, but I don’t know, we just coped with it.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Got on with it. This was life as it was then.
AM: Never got a near miss or anything?
WS: No, not really.
AM: Because you’re out, you’re about twelve miles outside —
WS: Yeah.
AM: The centre of London.
WS: Yeah. Yes.
AM: In Twickenham.
WS: Yes. But I mean, we were aware of the destruction there because we used to go in to London, and go to the London Palladium and this, that and the other, and so you were aware of it, yes.
AM: Yeah.
WS: You saw evidence of the bombing.
AM: Right. So the training. You’ve gone back down to London.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And I think you said they shuffled you around a bit.
WS: Yeah. Yes. From there we went to Brighton for a short stay of about, certainly no more than a month, and then we were paraded and said the postings are as follows, and we were shuffled off to Heaton Park in Manchester.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Which was a very big Air Force depot and there were a number of sites, so that we went on to one particular site, but the interesting thing about it was that, I mean, I don’t know how many Air Force people would be there, but it would be a lot, because there were so many different sites, but we all ate in one place, which was on a slight hill in the middle of Heaton Park and ate some of the best food I had in the RAF.
AM: Really.
WS: Yeah, and there was no waiting, it was all sort of organised. Ok, there was a queue to get your food, but you went in a queue and it was divided like that. Some went that way, some went that way and got the plates and food was put on it and off you went, and as I say it was some of the best food I had in the RAF. Well, then I got messed about a bit because they paraded one day and my name was called out. One or two others, who I didn’t know, and you see I’d gone to, I’d gone with the lads that were at training college with me, who had passed like I had done. And my name was called out and I had to report to somewhere in Shropshire, I’ve forgotten the name now, and went down there and feeling pretty miserable because I’d lost all my pals. And then one day, my name was called out again and they said, ‘Get yourself back to Heaton Park.’ So [laughs] I went back to Heaton Park, reported in to whereever I’d been told to report in to, and I was shuffled off to a billet and that was it.
AM: What had you been doing in Shropshire? What did you do while you were there?
WS: Painting stones.
AM: Oh right.
WS: Right.
AM: Because?
WS: Mark the paths out.
AM: Right.
WS: In the dark you see. Crazy. Doing something for, something for us to do, that’s what it really was, because I got the impression they really don’t know what to do with us [laughs]
AM: In between the bits of training.
WS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.
AM: ‘Cause up to now its general training that you’ve done.
WS: Yes.
AM: So, except we’d done Air Force training up to ITW standard.
WS: Right. Yes.
AM: We’d passed that of course.
WS: But general. It’s not about your individual training, Navigator, Bomb aimer, whatever, that’s to come.
AM: Not yet. Not yet. That’s to come, that’s to come.
WS: So I was back in Manchester, to Heaton Park, virtually knowing nobody amongst all these people that were there, you see, and then I was enquiring from the corporal that was in charge of our little lot, ‘What’s going to happen to us? What am I going to do? Where am I going?’ and he hadn’t an answer. And then an officer paraded us one day and there was, there would be about twenty of us, and he went through, but he had a list of long personnel, and when he finished there was about twenty of us not on the list. I could have walked out of Heaton Park then and nobody would have known where I was.
AM: But you didn’t.
WS: I didn’t. I pestered them then.
AM: So they just lost a little cohort from the records.
WS: Yeah. Virtually. Virtually. Yes. There, I shouldn’t be saying this should I? But then I went for, I think it was lunch one day, and as I said, I had to go to this centre place, and when I got up there, here’s all me pals from Shropshire come up. I said, ‘Hey, what are you lot doing here?’, ‘Oh, we’re posted overseas, on aircrew training’. I said, ‘What?’ So I then, I went then and made a real nuisance of myself until they said, ‘Righto, we’ll put you back on that course’, so I got back on the course with them. And within, what would it be? Certainly within a fortnight, we were heading up to the Clyde and a ship.
AM: So up to Scotland.
WS: Ye, up to Scotland, on to board ship.
AM: What was the ship like?
WS: It was —
AM: Big one. Little one. How many of you?
WS: Oh [laughs] I don’t know how many there were, but it was crowded because there were, there were postings to various parts. Well, we were all going to Moncton in Canada, before we were diverted off elsewhere but there were, there were some civilians on board that were going back to America, and it was on the RMS Andes, which had just been built as a, well, I presume it would be a cruise ship, but it was a holiday vessel but it never got on to that. We had bunks in the, somewhere or other, one of the halls or somewhere. Of course, we were given various jobs to do and I was lucky again, because I’d palled up with a lad by this time and we got, we got allocated to sweep out the hospital on the ship, and of course, there was nobody in it. [laughs] So until we heard, and then we saw him, that when we were still anchored in the Clyde, this chappie, one night, had been walking around the ship and he’d gone straight out of a door - psst.
AM: In to the water.
WS: Fortunately he was spotted and they pulled him out but they put him into the hospital, on board the ship and he was the only [laughs], he was the only occupation that was there when we were sweeping up. So we swept up and then we, my pal and I were finished. We spent all that voyage sat on the deck huddled together because it was January.
AM: Cold.
WS: And he and I huddled each other to keep each other warm, because if we went down below decks, you just felt sick.
AM: So it’s January. It’s cold and rough seas and everything.
WS: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was rough as well. January, yes, it was cold. And as I say we used to sit, every morning we got up, swept up, came out on deck and then, ‘It’s your turn to go to the canteen. Get some tins of pears and biscuits’. And that’s what we lived on for, we couldn’t, we could not stick going down to have a proper meal, so sickly, there we are. Still it was a good voyage. Rough, but —
AM: How long was it?
WS: Hmmn?
AM: How long was it? How long did it take?
WS: I think it took us ten days.
AM: Right.
WS: I think it was ten days, because it was so rough for one thing. In fact, we lost a couple of life boats and we lost because they turned the ships into armed as well, and so we lost a couple of guns as well. It was so rough, but we made it. So we were then taken to a depot at Moncton in New Brunswick, awaiting posting, and I kept my fingers crossed because I wanted to go as far West in Canada as possible, and they started to make the postings to various training places across Canada, and they started in the East with the surname, beginning with A. And they worked through the alphabet so that I was watching, I’m going further West, further West being Spence, and I finished up in Alberta, within sight of the Rockies. Just what I wanted.
AM: Is that why you wanted to be West?
WS: Yeah.
AM: For the Rockies and the scenery and all the rest of it.
WS: Yeah. Yes. I think it was a five days journey on the train then, and then I finished up, then being posted to a little place called Bowden, about eighty miles north of Calgary and did me, because I was training to be a pilot, you see, but I crashed a Tiger Moth, so they took me off the pilot’s course.
AM: When you say you were training to be a pilot.
WS: Yeah.
AM: At what point did they decide that they wanted you to be a pilot, in the beginning? In the first place. Was that while you were still in England or when you got to Canada?
WS: I suppose they, I can’t honestly remember, but I suppose that they’d assessed me on my earlier training, when I was at college with the ITW course, and probably they were wanting pilots as well. I don’t know.
AM: So you came, you came out top of, top of the cream because everybody wanted to be a pilot.
WS: Oh yeah. Yeah. We did. We did you see, I mean, we all imagined ourselves flying Spitfires.
AM: Yeah. Biggles.
WS: But in actual fact, I mean, it’s ok but being wise after the event and being lucky enough to have survived, in actual fact, I always look back and think that that was my best stroke of luck, was being taken off the pilot’s course and sent to be a bomb aimer because if I’m going to be a bomb aimer, apart from one or two training posts, where you would be an instructor, I was more likely to finish up on a bomber squadron. And as I found out, that was the only life worth living in —
AM: Right.
WS: In the RAF.
AM: Ok.
WS: To be on a squadron. On a squadron.
AM: Right. On the pilot thing though, you said you’d in a, I’ve forgotten what you said now, a Gypsy Moth.
WS: Tiger Moth.
AM: Tiger Moth, I beg your pardon.
WS: Yeah.
AM: So what happened in the Tiger Moth then?
WS: Well I don’t think I were, I don’t think I was all that good as a pilot, but no, I mean I flew solo and did a few acrobatics on my own and so on and so forth, and I did a cross country flight on my own. Had to fly the eighty miles down to Calgary, land there and get turned around and fly back, and so on and so forth. Yeah, I got, got on quite well but I landed one day and made a blooming mistake and ground looped and the Tiger Moth finished up on its nose and I suppose that, coupled with maybe I didn’t have the zip to be a pilot. But it didn’t bother me actually.
AM: Did it not? You weren’t bothered when they said —
WS: No. No, I wasn’t bothered and all. I knew then that I was going to be posted to be a bomb aimer.
AM: Right. How did they decide you were going to be a bomb aimer? Do you know? Or is —
WS: No.
AM: No.
WS: No idea, because there were one or two other lads that were taken off the pilot’s course, but then we got split up, so I don’t really know what happened to them.
AM: Right.
WS: So from Bowden, I was sent to a holding unit, if I remember this rightly, in Edmonton. We were paraded, quite a few of us who had come from various places, and we paraded one day and they said, ‘You’re all going to be issued with passes for three weeks leave [laughs], and you’ve got to get out of here by tomorrow night’. So all these documents were given to us, and that was it. We were thrown on our own resolve, you see [laughs], and I’d palled up with a chappie called Cyril Taylor. I said, ‘What are we going to do, Cyril?’ He said, ‘Well. Three weeks’. He said, ‘Whilst we’ve been at Bowden’, ‘cause he was off the course like me, he said, ‘While we’ve been at Bowden’, he said, ‘I got friendly with a farming family near Innisfail’, which was just down the road from where we were. He said, ‘We’ll, we’ll head back there and we can do a bit of a job on the farm for them, you see.’ Got three weeks to fill in, may as well, but I said, ‘Look, first I’d like to go and see the Rockies close at hand’. So he said, ‘Righto. We’ll hitch-hike to Vancouver’. [laughs] So we set off hitch-hiking and we got to Banff and we thought, oh this is quite a nice place, we’ll stay a few days here, you see. Of course there were always places for like, what do they call them? I’ve forgotten the name of them. Where you could get a bed for the night and so on. YMCA’s.
AM: Yes.
WS: And things like this.
AM: Were you in uniform as well?
WS: Oh yes. Yes.
AM: Right. So —
WS: So we stayed in Banff two or three nights, maybe a bit longer, about four nights because we then explored around about Banff and so on, and then we said, ‘Right. If we’re going to Vancouver, we’d better get going again.’ So we were hitch hiking, and we went outside of Banff, on the Vancouver highway, after breakfast one morning, and by the time it was lunchtime, we’d had nothing stopping for us and we were just outside of Banff, on the main road to where we were going, to Vancouver as we thought. But a pickup truck did stop once and he said, ‘Where are you two lads wanting to be?’ And we said, ‘We’re trying to get to Vancouver’. He said, ‘You won’t get’, he said, ‘You won’t get to Vancouver. There’s been a landslide up in the mountains and the road’s all blocked. You won’t get through’, so we went back into Banff to get some lunch. And I can see it now. We’d had our lunch, we’d come out, the main street was down there. There was a side street coming to join it and we were stood on that corner, deciding what we were going to do and we had decided that we would hitch back to Calgary and go to this farm I mentioned, where my pal had been working. We were stood on that corner and the next thing I remember was he was digging me in the elbow. He said, ‘Back here in half an hour’, and ‘To Calgary’, and I was aware that there was a car had pulled up, and it had to pull up for a car going down the main road, and the lady in the car had turned down the window and said to her husband, who was driving, she said, ‘These two lads look as though they want to be going somewhere’, and she said, ‘Where are you two wanting to go?’ And me pal said, ‘Calgary’. That’s when he dug me, because she said to him, ‘Back here in half an hour and we’ll take you’. Right. So we were back in half an hour, no doubt, we got in the car and off we set to go to Calgary, you see. Well, inevitably, on the way you get, ‘Where are you from? Where are you from?’ [laughs] So when Mr Atkinson said to me. ‘Where are you from?’ I said, ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You won’t know it’, I said, ‘A little place called Ampleforth, in the middle of Yorkshire’. And he sort of, he was driving but he half turned, and he said, ‘I was born in Thirsk’. Right. You made that —
AM: Small world.
WS: And apparently he’d emigrated earlier in his life and had got settled there, and when we met him, he was actually on leave, he was a major in the Canadian Army, and they lived on the outskirts of Calgary and they had a small, small range farm up in the foothills of the Rockies. So on the way back, Mrs Atkinson turned to us and she said, ‘We have two beds made up for any servicemen that we pick up’, she said, ‘You can come, you can stay one night, you can stay two nights, you can stay the rest of your leave’, which was a fortnight. We stayed the fortnight, didn’t we? [laughs] Yeah. So, then, ok, our leave was over. We had to report back to Edmonton, Edmonton sent us to Lethbridge, where we started our bomb aimers training.
AM: Right.
WS: And we finished at Lethbridge, I forget how long that was, then we were sent back to Edmonton, and then we were posted.
AM: Right.
WS: Back to England.
AM: So what was the bomb aimer’s training? How did they train you to be a bomb aimer?
WS: Drop bombs.
AM: So you’re up. You’re flying.
WS: We’re flying.
AM: You say drop bombs.
WS: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: But targeted areas. You’re not dropping bombs are you?
WS: Oh yeah. Yeah. They had set areas. There was far more than one airfield training bomb aimers, but we were, as I say, near Edmonton, which I was quite pleased, because it meant we’d gone further north, so that we were flying over desolate country, but it was quite interesting. And apart from training to drop bombs, we were trained as air gunners.
AM: Right.
WS: Because as a bomb aimer, you were going to man one of the turrets and you had to do a bit of navigation in case the navigator got —
AM: Right. What were you training in? What planes were you training in?
WS: It was Avro, Avro [pause]
AM: Manchester.
WS: No. No. No.
AM: No.
WS: Smaller than that.
AM: Smaller.
WS: Two, two engines.
AM: No.
WS: I’ll look it up for you in a minute.
AM: It’ll come.
WS: I’ll look it up now if you want it on there.
AM: Oh.
[Recording paused]
WS: An Anson. Yes, that’s right.
AM: The Avro Hanson. The Avro Hanson.
WS: No. A N S O N.
AM: Anson, sorry.
WS: Anson.
AM: Anson.
WS: It was, it was a really good plane, a very nice safety plane, good visibility.
AM: Were you training with people who would later become your crew, or was this before crewing up?
WS: No. No. No. No. Nothing to do with the crew. They were training for —
AM: Ok. So this was just bomb aimer’s training.
WS: This was bomb aimer’s training.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yes, and I mean, there would be navigators training somewhere else.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And so on.
AM: Yeah.
WS: I don’t think any gunners were trained abroad.
AM: No.
WS: I think they were all trained over here, but I’m not sure on that.
AM: What were you actually dropping? Things like smoke bombs?
WS: Yeah.
AM: With the dye in and stuff like that.
WS: Yeah.
AM: So you could see whether you’d —
WS: Or smoke.
AM: How close you got to your target.
WS: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Yes. And it was, we’d all be measured because you’d be dropping them on a range. And you see, even when you got to squadron stage, you still did practice bombing and from Lincolnshire, we were down at Wainfleet, Wainfleet was our target there. And there again, they were sort of small smoke bombs. So yeah. So then, where am I? I’ve gone to Lethbridge, gone to, gone back to Edmonton, have I? [pause]. Yeah. I went, I finished my training then in Edmonton, I think that was mostly navigation. I think we maybe did drop a few bombs there but most of the bombs were dropped when we were at Lethbridge. And then we all passed out, and got our wings but, no. No. No. No. No. No. [laughs] I got my wings, there’s your passes, back to Moncton, ready to go back to England. You’ve got, I think we had about four, five days to get to Moncton and a few of us worked it out that we would have time to go to the Niagara Falls, so we did that. That were great. We went on the Maid of the [unclear] and you were right close to the waterfall. Yes. I mean you can still do it, but there’s a but. You see I was a sergeant, having passed out the course.
AM: Right.
WS: And we had, as I say, we had to get back to Moncton. Got to Moncton, found my bunk, and the next day, I was called out and they said, ‘Why are you in that billet?’ I said, ‘Because I want to sleep there’, you see. They said, ‘Didn’t they tell you at Edmonton that you’d been given a commission?’ I said, ‘No. Nobody breathed a word about it’. I said, ‘Look.’ I said, I’ve got sergeant’s stripes on’, ‘Well get yourself off to’, oh what do they call it? Anyway, the offices and tell them and book in there. So I went in to the office and came out ready to put my rings up. Yeah, I got a commission at the end of the course. Came back and —
AM: Was that usual?
WS: No.
AH: What people won’t realise these days, nowadays, is that while dad was in Canada in this day, day and age of communications, his mother died.
AM: Right.
AH: And it was three weeks before he knew that she’d died. In three weeks, she’d been dead and buried before he even knew about it. And nowadays, with mobile phones and communications, I think people don’t realise that. The time it took to get anything anywhere.
AM: And how far away you are.
AH: You are. Yes.
AM: As a young man.
AH: Yes. Yes.
WS: Yes. I mean there was no hope of getting back, even if you could have organised a flight. You know?
AM: So you just found out by letter or —?
WS: Yes.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a letter from my dad. That’s right.
AM: What a shock.
WS: That’s right. But what I should also have said, that when I was sent on to the bomb aimer’s course, there were only probably five or six of us going on to that particular course, because when we got there, it was a Australian course. A lot of Australians came in, so I was put into a course with the Australians and I think, I’ve always thought, that the Australians that were there when I joined them, were probably the Australians that were coming from Australia when we were told to get out of our billets for three weeks. I don’t know, I might be wrong, but it seems feasible to me. Yeah. They were a good lot, were the Aussies, you know. I got along with them very well. Particularly one called Jackie Tong who, fortunately, survived. I’ll tell you a bit more about that afterwards [laughs]. So, yeah, so I finished up with the Australian course and when they went to a different depot in Canada to be shipped to England, as we did, we were going to Moncton, and then we were going to the ship at Halifax, and when I got on to the ship at Halifax, there’s these Australians on board, so met up again. Then later on, I’ll finish that off, later on, when I was on a squadron outside of Lincoln, myself and the crew went in to Lincoln one day, and we went to get something to eat at the ABC Cinema Café. And as it happened, we got into a table in the window, and there we were quietly having our tea, when suddenly, I just leapt out of my chair and shouted, ‘There’s Jackie Tong’. And I’d seen one of these Australians who I’d got very, very friendly with, walking up the main street in Lincoln and I just shot off and down the stairs because I didn’t know where he was. I didn’t know anything about him or what had happened to him, and I caught him up, fortunately up the main street. And he was stationed at Waddington, just outside Lincoln, and I was at Dunholme Lodge on the other side of Lincoln. So we met up again, and then after the war, I thought, I wonder what happened to Jackie Tong? I saw him once or twice in Lincoln but after that, after that we were moved from Dunholme, down to Spilsby. And after the war, I thought, I’ll write to Australia House in London, so I did and asked them and almost straight away, they sent me back details. Said that Jackie Tong, so and so, and lived at so and so in Australia, and he’d survived the war and I got in touch with him again.
AM: Right.
WS: And we remained in touch, yes. So where was I, in the middle — [laughs]
AM: Right. Let’s wheel back again then.
AH: You’d finished your training and you were coming back to England.
AM: So you’ve finished your, you’ve finished your training, you’re coming back.
WS: Coming back. Yes. Now, we came back into the Clyde and then we, as officers, were shipped down to Harrogate, just up the road.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So we were to get our uniforms at [pause], I’ve forgotten the name of the tailors now, it was in Harrogate. We were told to go there so I went there and got my uniform and so on, and then got on the bus and came home on leave. Walked out of the, walked out on [laughs], Joan was working down at the college at the time.
AM: Had you met Joan by this point?
WS: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. We met when we were still seventeen.
AM: So you, you’d met Joan.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Before ever you went to Canada.
WS: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. So I walked down to the college, knowing where she was working and, of course, she [unclear] when she saw me.
AM: ‘Cause there’s no texting to say, ‘Joan. I’m on my way.’
AH: No.
WS: No, so that was it. There I’m back in England, trained as a bomb aimer and then after that leave, I was then posted,. I had one or two postings actually. I went, went back to Harrogate and then I went to Sidmouth, to join a course at Sidmouth, and it was a sort of officer’s training course but it was chiefly survival.
AM: Right.
WS: And from there —
AM: Can I just ask, survival as in, if you got shot down, if you ditched.
WS: Well, that would help. Yes, I mean, it was just finding your way there, finding your way in the dark and through country and this, that and the other, that sort of thing. Apart from a bit of [pause], I can’t remember what it was now, whatever officer’s needed to know [laughs]
AH: You smoked a pipe, didn’t you? And they gave you a pipe with a little tiny compass in, that we used to love seeing as children.
WS: Which was for escape.
AH: For survival.
WS: Until you knew, you know.
.AM: Yeah. And I can’t remember at this point in the war, whether they had the raft, for if you had to ditch in the sea, and maybe that sort of thing.
WS: We had inflatable. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I think they were in the wings, I can’t remember. Didn’t have to use one fortunately. So I had been at Sidmouth, but I can’t remember if we went back to Harrogate again. No, I don’t think we did. I think I were posted directly from Sidmouth to 5 Group and started my training for a squadron.
AM: So we’re in Lincolnshire now.
WS: We’re in Lincolnshire.
AM: So, I’m just trying to remember. So, at this point, have you actually got a squadron?
WS: No.
AM: No.
WS: No.
AM: So you’ve not crewed up yet and you’ve not got your squadron yet.
WS: No. We went to, we went to OTU, Operational Training Unit.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
WS: Ah, no. I missed a bit out. I first of all went to Mona. You don’t know where Mona is, do you? It’s on the Isle of Anglesey.
AM: Oh right.
WS: Right. And we went for some more training there, again dropping bombs.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Little bombs, doing navigation. It was prolonging the final course we did in Canada, sort of a refresher course really, and I went there on January the 1st 1944, when we’d done all the other training. And there I was stood —
AM: New Year’s Day.
WS: In the dark, on Bangor Station, not knowing where I was really going, waiting for a train that would take me to Mona. And through the gloom of the night and the day, because it wasn’t a very nice day, I saw a figure down the platform, and I saw he was in officer’s uniform. So I wandered down to him and I said, ‘Excuse me’, I said, ‘Are you going’, ‘cause I saw he was the same rank as me, I said to him, ‘Are you going to Mona?’, ‘Yeah’, he said, ‘Yes I am’. He said, ‘I’m waiting for the train’. I said, ‘Yes. So am I’. We became pals because it so happened, that we finished up on the same squadron.
AM: Right.
WS: In fact, we wangled one posting, the pair of us, so that’s how I met, met him. So I was there on January the 1st, and I was there until February the, well just after the 20th. February 20th would be our last flight from Mona. And then I went to, on March the 16th, I did my first flight in a Wellington. We’re moving up now, and I was there until April, well, April the 12th was my last flight from Bitteswell.
AM: Right.
WS: And I then flew from Bruntingthorpe, 29 OTU which was the same as, it was a substation of Bitteswell. There was some more training to do, and I was there until May the, May the 11th
AM: It just always seems such a long drawn out time.
AH: Yes. I’m thinking, when he’s saying these dates, I’m thinking, the war’s going to be over before he gets there [laughs]
AM: Well yeah.
WS: Right. So then I went, did my first flight, I can’t tell you exactly when I went. June the 25th 1944, I was sent to Heavy Conversion Unit at Swinderby.
AM: Right.
WS: That’s when we went on to four engine bombers.
AM: Right. So in the meanwhile, we’ve had D-day, and everything’s happened.
WS: Yeah. Yeah. I’m going to slip back in a minute or two.
AM: Ok.
WS: And I was there until July the 17th, when I did my last flight from Swinderby, and from Swinderby, I went to 5 Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston. I did my first flight from there on August the 10th. That was the first time I flew in a Lancaster.
AM: Did you like it? What was the Lancaster like then after the others? A big boy.
WS: Well to begin with, I did not like the Stirling, which I’d been on. It was too big, too cumbersome. Apart from something else that happened. So we were going, the pilot, I said how I joined up with my aircrew, haven’t I yet?
AM: Right. No, no, you haven’t told me about crewing up. When —
WS: I’ll tell you about that in a minute.
AM: Right. Ok.
WS: I’ll just finish this bit.
AM: Alright.
WS: Because we’re talking about the Lancaster. This pilot told us that he was going to fly the Lancaster on a training flight, because he hadn’t flown a Lancaster before. On a training flight, he said, ‘If you want to come, you can come, if you don’t, it doesn’t matter, because it’s just for me’. The pilot. ‘It’s just for me to get used to flying a Lancaster’. I said, ‘Oh no’, I said, ‘I’m going to come’. See [laughs], I found out that the mid-upper gunner wasn’t going to go. He’d already done a tour of operations and he knew the Lancaster, so I said, ‘Right. I’m going to fly in the mid-upper turret and get a nice good view’, you see. So I get up there, and off we go. We’re flying along and the instructor’s telling Mike what to do, etcetera, etcetera, you see and then, suddenly, he says, I might not get these in the right order, but he said, ‘Switch off the starboard outer’. Mike said, ‘There you are’. Flying on three engines, go on a bit further. ‘Switch off the port outer’, switched that off, there you are. Two engines. I, I’m sat up in the mid-upper gunner, seeing these propellers stopping.
AM: Can you hear the instructions? You’re on the intercom?
WS: Oh yes. Yeah. Because I’m on the intercom.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And then he told Mike to switch off one of the other engines. So I thought, where’s my parachute? I might need this, you see. Well, it flew like a bird on one engine and I thought, oh, this is the aeroplane for me, I’m glad I’m on one. Great. Great. So that was my first flight in a Lancaster, and I was there from August the 10th until August the 14th, so I was only there four days. And then posted to a squadron.
AM: Right. Wheel, just wheel back to crewing up then. How did that happen?
WS: Crewing up. Well that happened at, that happened at OUT, Operational Training Unit, which I was at Bitteswell, I think, yeah, I was at Bitteswell. [pause] And from arriving there, and I can’t tell you exactly when I arrived there, but February the 20th, I was at [pause], I was at [pause], I was at Mona. No, we’d moved from Mona. No, we hadn’t [pages turning]. Yeah. I went to Bitteswell and we paraded one day, and there was a mass of men. We were told, ‘Those are all aircrew. Go and get yourself crewed up’. It was just a stroke of luck, and I don’t know how long I, I didn’t get crewed up that day, I know that. It might have been two or three days afterwards, I was in my billet, and it was a Nissen hut with rows of beds on either side [pause], and I thought, really and truly, I’d better be getting crewed up. Because I’d asked one pilot, an Australian, and he said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got an air bomber’, so I tried a New Zealander, and he said ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got a bomb aimer’, you see. So I was sat in my, I was sat on my bed thinking who do I, who am I going to ask for next, you see, and then this six foot four fellow walked in, and as he walked past the bottom of my bed I said, ‘Hey’, I said, ‘Excuse me. Have you got a bomb aimer yet?’ And, of course, he was a pilot, you see, I could see that. ‘Have you got a bomb aimer yet?’ He said, ‘No’, he said. So I said, ‘Well, what about you and I crewing up then?’ He said, ‘Well, let me have a look at your logbook’, so he had a look at my logbook, see what I’d done, and he said, ‘Yeah. Righto’. So that’s how I got, that’s how I got a pilot. ‘So I said have you got any, any other crew?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah’, he said. I don’t know whether it was there and then, but if it wasn’t there and then, it was the next day and he introduced me to two gunners and the navigator and a wireless operator. He’d got his crew except for me, I think. Is that right? Yeah, I think it was.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So I’d got a crew then, you see, and they were a great set.
AM: I counted.
WS: Unfortunately,
AM: Oh we’re missing the flight engineer as well.
WS: Yeah, we didn’t get him yet.
AM: Oh right. I thought I’d only got to six.
WS: Yes. They were, they were a good lot but we, whether this was the cause or not, I have no idea, but we landed one night in the Wellington, we’d been on a night cross country and we landed. I was sat up next to Mike, and I was looking out of that window, and Mike was there, and I thought to myself, I thought, those landing lights are going by rather quickly. And just at that point, Mike shouted out, he said, ‘The brake’s aren’t working’. So I thought, I hope he doesn’t try to turn at the end of the runway, because if he turned at the other road, he’d have gone over, you see. However, he didn’t, he went straight on, off the end of the runway, bounced across the field, through a hedge, banked across another field, finished up in a ditch, nose first. So we, we were scrambling to get out and the navigator was putting his maps back into his bag. I said, ‘Hey’, I said, ‘Get out. Quick’, he said, ‘Mike’s had a heavy landing tonight’. I said, ‘We’ve crashed. Get out’, out he goes, the rear gunner had turned his turret and tumbled out the back, you see.
AM: Right. Yeah.
WS: That’s the way they had to get out. And he was stood outside our plane, I was saying, ‘You silly buggers. Get out. Get out. It’ll be on fire. There’s petrol all over the place. Get out’. Fortunately, it didn’t go on fire, but the control on the aerodrome, didn’t know that we’d crashed. Don’t put that in.
AM: [unclear] these are the interesting bits.
WS: And, of course, as soon as they knew, they whipped the ambulance out for us and ferried us back in, and we had to go and see the MO, and he checked us over. Nobody was hurt, but the aircraft was a complete write off.
AM: Yeah.
WS: It broke its back, so that was our adventure on OTU. I was sorry about the Wellington, it was a nice aircraft. So, where have we got to now?
AM: Right, so we’ve crewed up. We’ve not got our flight engineer yet.
WS: Ah right. Yes, well —
AM: And we’ve not got our squadron yet.
WS: Yes. We got our flight engineer, I think it was the next, let me see. I don’t know whether I’ll have it down here. Yeah, there we are. We got him at Swinderby.
AM: Right.
WS: Which was the next one, after that previous one. We got him on June the 25th. He was from, and we also got a new air gunner. Now why did we get a new air gunner? Because our rear gunner decided he did not want to be aircrew anymore. Now, don’t ask me why, because I never knew. Whether, a little bit of a rumour went around, that his girlfriend had used pressure on him, but I don’t know whether that was right or not, or whether the fact that we’d crashed made him change his mind.
AM: Spooked him. Had he, was he a new one or had he already done a tour?
WS: No. No. He was a new one.
AM: He was new.
WS: Yeah, he was a new one.
AM: So he hadn’t actually been up there in anger yet.
WS: No. No, he hadn’t.
AM: In an operation.
WS: No. No. You see, I don’t know the full story, because you never got to know. You never really got to know.
AM: Were you allowed to just decide that?
WS: You never really got to know. They kept it quiet because they didn’t want it to affect the rest of the crew, which it could have done.
AM: Well, yeah. And was he just allowed to revert to ground crew or —
WS: I don’t know what happened to him.
AM: No.
WS: I’ve no idea what happened to him.
AM: Because sometimes —
WS: He just disappeared.
AM: Right.
WS: He just completely disappeared. Now, as I understood it, I thought they whipped, as I say, the aircrew, if anybody did that [pause] LMF. Lack of moral fibre.
AM: Yeah.
WS: They whipped them out of the way.
AM: Right.
WS: Because they didn’t want them contaminating aircrew.
AM: Yeah.
WS: In the squadron or anything like that, and he just disappeared. And I never, ever heard what happened to him.
AM: Yeah. I wondered about the lack of moral fibre thing, because you’ve done all that training, all the, and then you just decide you don’t want to do it.
WS: Yeah. As I say I’ve no idea. I mean, he showed no sign to us that he wanted, he never mentioned it. I mean he obviously, he must obviously have mentioned it to the pilot, because he was in charge of the crew. He may not have done, of course, he may have gone to the adjutant or he may have gone to some other officer in charge of ground crew, of aircrew, and said he wanted to pack it in, you know. Just have no idea. Never enquired because we got a new air gunner, a warrant, he was a warrant officer, Cole, who had done a tour.
AM: Right.
WS: So that we knew that when he joined us, he would only have to do twenty for a second tour. So he came to the squadron with us, obviously, but when he’d done his twenty, he was finished, and then we flew with just odd bods really.
AM: Yeah.
WS: In the mid-upper turret. Yeah. Where are we?
AM: Right. Squadron. We’ve not got a squadron yet.
WS: Haven’t got a squadron yet. Well, because my pilot was Rhodesian, he was sent to 44 Squadron, which was 44 Rhodesia Squadron, because the Rhodesian government financed the squadron, but they weren’t all Rhodesians, obviously, but he was. He was a Rhodesian and that’s why we finished up on 44 Squadron.
AM: Right. Based at — ?
WS: Well, we were at Dunholme Lodge then.
AM: Dunholme Lodge.
WS: And we were at Dunholme Lodge [pages turning]. Well, we just slip back to, because this is another thing that people won’t realise. Where are we? We were at Swinderby, right, and on the 16th of July [pause], we had finished our course, it was only a short course at Swinderby, because it was really getting the pilot familiarised with the Lancaster. Nevertheless, we had to train as a crew as well, so we finished there on July the 16th, having arrived there on June the 25th, so it was shortish. And as soon as we finished the course, you could go on leave. And we, knowing it was a short course, Mike and I —
AH: The pilot.
WS: Mike and I had sort of palled up a bit with another pilot and a bomb aimer, who were officers, and decided that we knew we weren’t going to be there very long. We couldn’t be bothered to go out, down to Newark or in to Lincoln, night after night sort of thing, so we sat playing cards in one of our billets, and just for a bit of money, pass the time. And so, when we finished the course, we could go on leave. Those two hadn’t finished, so they were still finishing off, but we knew, when we got back, they’d probably be there. So I went on leave then, went back [pause], the two that we’d been playing cards with, had been killed. Been taking off one night, and it was in a Stirling, which I didn’t like.
AM: On operations?
WS: No. No.
AM: No. Because you’re not on a squadron yet, are you?
WS: On training.
AM: On training.
WS: Yeah, and they would have been finishing like we had, you see, but as soon as you’d finished your training, you didn’t really bother. You weren’t on a course really, you could go off on leave. Then we got back and found that they’d both been killed.
AM: And what had happened? Do you know?
WS: The crew, the whole crew had been killed. Now the Stirling was under-powered and they didn’t clear the trees at the end of the runway.
AM: Taking off.
WS: Yeah. You see that’s another aspect people won’t realise.
AM: Well, yeah, because they’re young men, they’ve done all the training, they haven’t even got to a squadron.
WS: So, we joined the squadron on August the 21st. No, sorry, we didn’t. That is when we did our first flight on a squadron, and that was on August the 21st so we would, between [pages turning]. Where are we? Between the August the 14th and August the 21st, I can’t really tell you what we’d been doing, must have had a bit of leave. I know that because, as I say, we came back and found that the other two poor fellas had been killed. But the first flight, was a training flight on August the 21st 1944 from Dunholme Lodge.
AM: Right.
WS: And I was at Dunholme Lodge then, until [pages turning], that’s right, until September the 30th, when we flew from Dunholme Lodge to Spilsby.
AM: To Spilsby.
WS: Yeah.
AM: I’m going to press pause.
WS: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
AM: So, where are we? We’re in 44 Squadron.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And at the moment, we’re at Dunholme Lodge.
WS: Are we —
AM: But we haven’t done our first, you haven’t done your first operation yet.
WS: Right.
AM: So tell me about the first operation. Where to? What did it feel like?
WS: Twenty eight. That occurred. [pause] Eight days.
[pause]
AM: Where was, where was your first operation to?
WS: I was wondering whether Anne was coming back. Our first operation. We joined the squadron, and had our first flight on the squadron on August the 21st 1944, and our first operation was on August the 29th 1944. Now there was a bit of a, oh, I think people still think today that, and I’ve seen it in writing actually, that aircrew were generally sent on a fairly, what they called, easy target for their first op. There was no easy target, you could be shot down if you’d just crossed the channel, as well as going thousands of miles. But our first operation, we were airborne for eleven and three quarter hours.
AM: So, right, right over to Germany then. The other side of Germany.
WS: Yeah. We were going to Konigsberg in East Prussia.
AM: Right.
WS: And we flew out over the North Sea, over to Sweden, and we went over friendly territory. At least not —
AM: Yeah.
WS: It weren’t a war country, and flew south. We were warned that if you went over into Sweden, you would probably get shot at, but they probably wouldn’t be aiming at you. Just warning you to keep away [laughs]. And then we went to Konigsberg, and we had to, as it turned out, we had to fly around and around for about a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, while they got the target mapped accurately. Did that, we were called in and did the bombing. We came back and we were diverted to Fiskerton because there was fog over.
AM: What was it like? Actually like. How many? Was it a big bomber stream? Because this would be the first time that you’d actually been in a full stream of aircraft.
WS: Yeah, but you see, it was night. It was at night, so we didn’t really.
AM: So you couldn’t really see. You couldn’t see.
WS: No. You might occasionally, if you got a bit near, see just a faint outline of a Lancaster, but otherwise you weren’t, and it was a bit strange, because we did go on, well, we went on one or two daylight raids, but we went on a daylight raid later on. It was to bomb the Germans in Boulogne, and to see all those Lancasters and other aircraft flying down south over England, you just thought. And at night, they would be there as well and you can’t see them. Made you aware of the danger that there was.
AM: Oh absolutely.
WS: In the dark.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And yet the darkness was a cover for you. But there we are.
AM: That first operation. Can you remember, were you scared? Were you exhilarated? Did you —
WS: I always say, that when people say, weren’t you frightened or were you afraid or whatever, I say, yes you were, but you didn’t show it, you kept it in. And I’ve always reckoned, it was the only way to survive really. But yes, you had to be aware of it, otherwise, if you weren’t aware of the danger from other aircraft that were flying nearby, or you didn’t keep a look out for German fighters or whatever, then you probably wouldn’t survive. But I think it all stemmed from being afraid. But as I say you didn’t, you were young, you didn’t bother with it.
AM: Yeah.
WS: I don’t know whether that answers your question.
AM: No. It just interests me the different ways that people felt about it.
AH: Yeah.
AM: Some people really excited to go. Some people definitely were not.
WS: Yeah. I also think, as well, that you knew if you were flying with a good crew, you knew that they were all on top of their job, you knew that they would always be alert and so on, and if a gunner fell asleep, or anything like that, he’s not alert, is he? And he’s endangering your life. So if you have trust in your crew, you were more likely to survive.
AM: And different ones have said, in the bomber streams the, your trust was actually in the navigator.
WS: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
AM: To keep you safe.
WS: Yes. Yeah.
AM: And away from everything else, and on track for where you were going.
WS: Yes. You were, you had certain courses to fly and he directed you onto there. You see, your gunners, where you expected them to be awake, and keep their eye out.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And identify enemy aircraft, or even your own aircraft, and warn you that you might be crashing, so.
AH: What I think I never realised. You talk about the bomb aimer, the pilot, the gunners but you’re down there in the front.
AM: Yeah.
AH: And if you see something, you’re telling the navigator. You’re looking out for the navigator.
AM: Yeah.
AH: You’ve got a gun as well.
AM: Yeah.
AH: If needs be. So everybody’s helping everybody else, aren’t they? It’s not just bomb aimer.
WS: No.
AM: You’re the eyes at the front, the bomb aimer.
WS: Oh yes. If necessary, you would fire the guns in defence and if the, if the navigator got hurt, you would go back and help him, and this, that and the other.
AM: On all the operations that you did, did they, the gunners, ever actually fire the guns?
WS: I can’t remember them actually firing the guns, but on the other hand, I’ve spoken to our rear gunner about this, and he’s quoted one particular time when our radar equipment, which was a big bulge under, under the fuselage of the Lancaster, we came back and when I got out, I saw it was all gone. It had obviously, I automatically thought that it had been anti-aircraft fire, but the, our rear gunner said, ‘No. It wasn’t. It was a fighter attack’. Now I can’t remember the fighter attack, but, but I have no doubt that he was right, because there were fighters that particular night. You knew there were more fighters around.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
WS: You see Konigsberg, if you read the accounts of Konigsberg raid, you’ll find, I think it’s on that one, that there were a lot of fighters around, but I can’t remember them. I don’t think we saw one.
AM: Because you were concentrating on what you were doing.
WS: Well. Yes. Partially and also, partially, the fighter could have been a few miles away.
AM: And actually dropping your bombs, that very first time. So it’s been marked, the Pathfinders have been out, you’ve got your target, you know where it’s going. Did you hit the target? ‘Cause then all the photographs are taken of, of —
WS: Yes. I hope so. I mean, of course, you’re crew would look out as well and see, but there again, you’ve got to be careful, because they wouldn’t want to divide their attention between keeping a look out for fighters coming in, say. But, yes, you could be aware of your bombs, depending on your target, and what sort of visibility was, and whether the aircraft was sort of, going to break away after the attack. You may not see it, but there was, the best example I can give you of that, was that we went, it was one of the canal raids we went on, the Mittenval Canal or the other one. Dortmund Dams canal or —
AM: Dortmund Dams. Yeah.
WS: Yeah. One of those raids we went on, two or three, attacking the canals. Now, when we got to the target area, just before we got to it actually, the master bomber was assessing the aiming point, and there was some confusion arose, because I will swear, to this day, and so would Mike, the pilot, and so would some of the other crew, that we were told to come down to five thousand feet to bomb. From, I think, probably about twelve or fifteen thousand, which was quite a way away down.
AM: That’s quite low. Yeah.
WS: On the other hand, there were reports came in that that, that that was altered to back to the normal level, but we never heard that, and a lot of other crew didn’t either. But Mike said, ‘Right we’re going down’, five thousand feet. Well by the time we got down to five thousand feet, we were below the markers, that the marker force were dropping, so we were lit up like daylight, you see. Well you could see the canal as plain as anything, and Mike said, ‘Right, we’re going in’. So I will swear to this day, that I got a very good sighting on the canal, but on that occasion, I was able to see the bombs actually fall and they did, they fell right alongside the canal bank. So that probably, I can’t swear to this, but probably, from where they fell I would have thought that it breached the canal side.
AM: Breached. Yeah.
WS: And therefore, the water, which we were trying to get rid of, the water we were trying to get of, would have all flooded out. I don’t know. There you are.
AM: I just have this picture of, you, the markers and then the ones that were still at twelve thousand feet, dropping bombs.
WS: Yeah.
AH: And the danger was the other bombs hitting you.
WS: Yeah, I mean, ok, we went in and did the bombing and I thought afterwards, sometime afterwards, I thought, well, every time we go out on a bombing raid, it would be like that. Not that you were dropping below a certain height. No. No.
AM: But you’re all at different heights.
WS: But you are at different heights, yes, but not as marked, as that was because we, the master bomber had assessed it, that if we come down to a lower level, which was a big drop, seven thousand feet or thereabouts, that we would have a better chance of hitting the target. I don’t know.
AM: Did any of your crew get DFM’s or DFC’s or — ?
WS: No.
AM: No.
WS: No.
AM: You weren’t fool hardy enough to get in those situations. What was the story about Hamburg that your daughter was talking about?
WS: She shouldn’t have told you that one.
AM: Go on.
WS: Well we were, we were attacking, we weren’t attacking Hamburg actually, we were attacking Harburg, which was on the other side of the river, the other side of the estuary. And it was a lovely night, and it was dark and flying along, no sign of anything happening, and then, suddenly, there was anti-aircraft fire absolutely pounding around us. Mike immediately took evasive action, which was [unclear], you see, and I’m down in the front with him going up and down, like this. The gunners were wondering what was happening, and so on and so forth, you see, and I suddenly realised we’d overshot the target, and we hadn’t seen any markers, so unfortunately, the navigator got us to the target area too soon. I think there had been a following wind, which he hadn’t calculated for, and we just, we just kept on flying like that, and eventually, of course, we passed, and then we realised that the amount of aircraft fire that was coming up, we’d flown over Hamburg which, of course, was a big target. How on earth we didn’t get shot down, I do not know, but we suddenly, the anti-aircraft fire lessened and lessened, and so we must have passed over, passed right over Hamburg. Passed.
AM: Did you manage to drop your bombs?
WS: Well then, we flew around to the proper target.
AM: Right.
WS: Which was Harburg, not Hamburg. Yeah. And we dropped our bombs and then came home.
AM: Right.
WS: So. Right, we got home. When you get home, you’re out the aircraft, we go to the mess for our bacon and egg.
AM: Yeah. Bacon and egg. Everybody remembers their bacon and egg.
WS: When we got back, we went in to the mess, and there were crews sat there, but one particular crew, he was a Rhodesian, like Mike was, and they’d trained together. The bomb aimer and I had trained together, so we were sort of very pally together, you see. Mike and I sat down, then one of them said, ‘Did you see that silly bugger that was over Hamburg?’ And we, Mike and I, looked at each other, and just said, ‘Yeah it was us’. ‘Well you daft buggers, what were you over there for?’ But I just couldn’t believe that we hadn’t —
AM: That you escaped it.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Got out in one piece.
WS: The damage that you would have thought that we would have. I mean we —
AM: What was the flak damage to it? To the plane?
WS: Well no, there was a few holes, but it wasn’t.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Nothing drastic or anything like that.
AM: You could bodge them up.
WS: No. Talking about that, you go back to our first raid over Konigsberg, which I’ve already mentioned. As we came away from the target, I always had to check in the bomb bay by opening a little door.
AM: Yeah.
WS: To see if the bombs had all gone. Well on that occasion, I opened the little hatch, the bombs had gone, but I saw drip, drip, drip and it was red. And, you see, I was on an eye level with the pilot’s feet and the engineer’s feet, so those two bodies were there and I thought, has somebody been hit? ‘Cause we’d had quite a lot of firing up there. And I ran my hand on the, because I was on, my eye level, I had to go a step up into the fuselage, my eye was on a level with that, so I saw this quite clearly dripping through, and I put my hand on it, and I thought, it’s a bit red is this, so I said, I called them up on the, and I said, ‘Is everybody alright up there?’ And Mike said, ‘Yes. Yeah. What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Well, there’s some dripping, coming through out of the bomb bay’. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it was our hydraulics had got hit. Now, we did not really know whether we would get the undercarriage down.
AM: All the way home.
WS: All the way home.
AM: First operation.
WS: First operation.
AM: I thought you were going to say it was blood.
WS: No, it wasn’t as it happened you see, because it was the same colour, but there we are, and what we didn’t know, whether we would get the undercarriage down, and we thought we’d got it down, but we weren’t, didn’t know whether it was locked or not, ‘cause when they come down, they was locked, you see. We had no indication on the dash board in front of the pilot that it was locked down. And then we found we were going to have to land in fog at Fiskerton.
AM: So, was that the one that you were diverted to Fiskerton?
WS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
WS: But everything was alright, as it happened.
AM: But you got down ok.
WS: We got down ok.
AM: And lived to tell the tale.
WS: Lived to tell the tale. But there you are, you see.
AM: Did you ever have to land in the fog? You know, that they had all the flares.
WS: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: I can’t remember what they were called, all the fire things along the runway.
WS: The Fido.
AM: That’s it.
WS: Fido.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Yes. It’s a very strange sensation that, because you were, you were sort of, lighting fog, and you were going down and down, and you thought we were going to go straight into the ground, you see. You were still in fog. You could see the glows, but they weren’t doing anything really. You could see flames coming up, and then you’d come out of that fog, complete clearance. And by that time the pilot was landing.
AM: You were down.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So the pilot had to be on the ball really. He didn’t want to fly into the deck. Had to know what he was doing.
AM: How many operations did you do?
WS: Thirty six.
AM: Thirty.
WS: Thirty six.
AM: Thirty six. And was that a full operation? That was, no, that was more than a full operation.
WS: No. Thirty. Thirty was a full operation.
AM: Thirty was the full op.
WS: Yeah.
AM: ‘Cause the numbers changed a bit towards the end of the war, didn’t they, but that, so thirty was still a full operation. A full tour.
WS: Thirty was a full tour and also the pilot did what we called a dickie run. He went with another crew just for the experience of a first raid.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So Mike had done that, and including that, in that total, a tour was thirty but during our tour, I certainly spent, through 5 Group, that they suddenly put it up to thirty six, so we had six more to do. I tell you what, you could tell that there was bit of demoralisation, because more aircraft got shot down than generally.
AM: On the final six.
WS: Yeah. So I don’t know.
AM: Where else did you go? Were they mainly over Germany? The ones that you did? Any other interesting stories? I’m sure there are. About some of these operations.
WS: Bremerhaven, Monchengladbach.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Munster, Karlsruhe. That Monchengladbach one, I think that was the one, the 19th of September, we can check it up of course, was the raid that Guy Gibson got the chop on.
AM: Oh right.
WS: He got shot down over Holland on the way back, but I can, I can hear him now telling us, ‘Home chaps. Good prang’. And so on, words to that effect. Bremen, Brunswick, Bergen. Oh, we had to land away there. Dusseldorf, Gravenhorst. No, that wasn’t the one. Harburg, there we are, the one I’ve just been telling you about
AM: Yeah.
WS: Where we flew [laughs], when we flew over Hamburg. That was on the 11th of November and that then, yeah, then the next one was on the 21st, 10 days later. That was the one that I told you about, us having to drop below five thousand feet to bomb, down in here, bombed from four thousand. Did a few mining operations.
AM: And this says on the ground moving up through Europe after D-day.
AH: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Yes.
AM: Yeah.
WS: There was one, I can’t remember which one when we were supporting the advancing troops. Did quite a lot of oil targets, and our last trip was a daylight trip on April the 4th 1945 to a place called Nordhausen, yeah.
AM: What was? I was going to say, what was the difference between the daylight ones and the night ones apart from the obvious, It was daylight.
WS: You could see things.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yeah, I don’t know. You couldn’t see at night but there we are. You might, you’d more easily crash, I suppose, at night.
AM: Did it feel more dangerous? The fact that you could see more things, but of course, more people could see you as well.
WS: Yeah.
AM: If there were any fighters around.
WS: I don’t know we just had to take it as another raid and get on with it. And I’m going to say unconsciously, that’s the wrong word, consciously you would —
AM: Yeah.
WS: Adapt to the change night and day.
AM: To what, way it was. And you were with the whole crew for the whole thirty six.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Ops.
WS: That was good.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Well when I’m saying yes, the same crew. No, because our mid-upper gunner only had to do twenty.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Mid upper gunners were sort of odd bods. We got one that we had five or six times. I did go to Dresden if you — Dresden.
AM: You did?
WS: Yeah. In fact, we were one of the first aircraft to drop bombs on Dresden on that raid.
AM: And you did it because you were told to and —
WS: Yeah. And not —
AM: People have said different things about Dresden
WS: Yeah. Well they’re all wrong.
AM: Yeah. Oh, all sorts of different. Absolutely. All sorts of different things.
WS: Yes.
AM: But as young men.
WS: What was, what was a pity is, that these people who wrote about Dresden, the majority of them had not been there. They’d not been on the raid. And apart from that, they knew little about what, and they jumped to the conclusion that, because it had nice buildings and so on that it shouldn’t have been attacked. They don’t look at the fact that it was still producing war weapons.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And I think the reason for that is because it wasn’t heavy industry, but who was making all the instruments and so on? You never hear that mentioned by some of them. And the majority of people that criticise Dresden, I think you will find are only surmising on facts from the war, in the way they want to interpret them. To me, it was a genuine target and, but we were actually told that they had this light industry. We were also told that it was a big railway centre and that we were bombing it to help the Russians. Disrupting transport. And I think if you look in to the facts, Churchill instigated the raid along with, I mean he was the Commander in Chief. It’s alright talking about Harris, but Harris was obeying orders from above, wasn’t he?
AM: Oh yeah.
WS: I’ve forgotten what I was going to say now. [laughs] The only thing I criticise Churchill about, you know. I think he was the right man at the right time, but he let the bomber boys down at the end of the war.
AH: He was a politician.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Politics, wasn’t it?
WS: Yes. Yeah.
AH: It was all politics after the war.
WS: I mean, ok, they’ll quote that he did say, I don’t know the exact quotation, but he sort of praised the bomber. He said, ‘The bombers will win the war’. That was early on in the war.
AM: Yeah.
WS: But he never said we had done at the end of the war.
AM: That you’d actually done it. Yeah.
WS: But, I say, that even that attitude was wrong because you needed, you needed the bombers, you needed the fighters, you needed the soldiers, you need the Navy. The lot.
AM: The whole allied, the whole allied effort.
WS: To win a war.
AM: To actually do it.
Yeah. You can’t single out any one of us that won the war. Nobody did.
AM: I suppose what you think is what would have happened if you’d taken one of the groups away.
WS: Yes.
AM: If you’d have had no bombers.
WS: Yes.
AM: But yeah. It was an allied effort, wasn’t it? By name.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And that was what it was.
WS: There we are.
AM: Did you, on your last operation did you actually know that was your last one, then?
WS: Yes.
AM: ‘Cause that was your thirty sixth.
WS: Yes. Yes. Yes.
AM: And pretty much, you’re not going to go on another tour after that, are you. Where are we now? April ’45.
WS: Yeah. They asked us if we’d like to go to the Middle East. Not Middle East, the Far East.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And I think Mike was all for it actually. The rest of us said no. We’d managed to come through alright. We were not going to risk going out there.
AM: So what did you do? What happened then, after the last operation?
WS: Well I came on leave [laughs]
AM: And you were married by now. You got, you were married part of the way through the war, weren’t you?
WS: Yeah. I’d only done about five aircraft operations.
AM: When you, when you married.
WS: So I knew I had about another twenty five to do, you see.
AM: Yeah.
WS: But we, Joan and I decided that we would, we would get married, but it would be at the end of the war. We hadn’t really sort of gone into it to that extent but we, I think, without saying a lot about it we had, in a way, decided we would wait till the end of the war. Right. So I come on leave when I’d done about five operations and we went for a day in York, and Joan said to me, she said, ‘Will you come and see Geraldine Kelly with me?’ Now Geraldine Kelly was at the convent with Joan in York and she said Geraldine had got married shortly before that. Her husband was a Canadian and they were flying out of one of the aerodromes around York and he’d been shot down and she didn’t know what had happened to him. And so I said, ‘Yeah. I’ll come and see her’. So, we went to see her. Joan knew which offices she was in, in Coney Street, so I went to see her and had a chat and so on and so forth, and she still hadn’t heard anything about her husband. And we were coming away and Geraldine said, ‘When are you two getting married?’ And we said, ‘Well, we’re probably going to wait until after the war’. And Geraldine said, ‘Don’t’. She said, ‘Don’t wait. I had seven days with John. They were the happiest of my life’. So we came home and got married.
AM: Of course, you didn’t, didn’t know how long the war was going to last at that point.
WS: No. So we came home, we decided that yes, we would get married. We put it all in operation and so it was my next leave was going to be that when we got married. Well, of course, you never knew when your next leave was because you were on a roster. So if somebody ahead of you got killed, you moved up the roster. And then one day, Mike came away from, probably the adjutant’s office and he came over. Fortunately our aircraft was parked near the offices and we always used to gather there, and Mike came over one day and said, ‘You can go on leave tomorrow’. I got to the phone, rang Joan up said, ‘I’m coming home tomorrow. Can we marry on Friday?’ But she had everything in place for a wedding to take place, you see, so she said, ‘Yeah, righto’. [laughs] So I told the crew, ‘You’re coming to a wedding on Friday’, so they, they arranged to come. They were going to stay in York overnight.
AM: Right.
WS: And then come out by Reliance bus to the wedding in the college church, and so that’s it.
AM: So you did.
WS: We got married. And to go back to Geraldine, she heard that he had survived.
AM: He had survived.
WS: He had bailed out and he, I think, I think he must have been taken prisoner of war but it was only a short war, of course. And so they were married and they settled in Canada ‘cause he was Canadian and I think she had six children.
AM: Right. On the, when you’d actually finished your operations, then you came home on leave.
WS: Yeah.
AM: But then, then what happened? How long before demob, because people went all sorts of strange places.
AH: Africa.
AM: You went to Africa.
WS: Well first of all when I went back after the leave, I was then sent to Winthorpe as an instructor.
AM: Right.
WS: To crews going through the process. There is a funny little story, yes, I was instructor at Winthorpe. Then of course, the war finished and they don’t want to be training bomb aimers, would they? And I then got sent on to an equipment officer course at [pause] Bicester. Just outside of Oxford, Bicester, yes.
AM: Bicester.
WS: Yes, just outside Oxford. So I did the officer’s training course and then I was posted to Stafford, where there was a very big, and had been there most of the war, if not all the war, maintenance unit which had several sites. And I was sent to one of those sites as second to the officer in charge of that particular site, but I knew that the next overseas posting that came through to the maintenance unit, I would be on the bike, because they were all ground, ground crew wallahs who had been nicely cosy through the war and didn’t want disturbing, sort of thing, you see. So that was it. Posting didn’t come through, posting didn’t come through, you see. And then was called to the adjutant’s office. ‘Posting’s in for you. You’re going to Cairo’. So I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not going to Cairo’, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Because you can’t send me there’. He said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Because I am under the medical officer’, and I said, ‘You can’t post me as long as I’m under the medical officer’. ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, ‘I’m waiting for an eye test’. Two days later, no three days later, I was at an optician. Right. So the next day I’m called into the adjutant’s office and he said, ‘You’ve had your eye test’, he said, ‘You’re going to Cairo’. I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘You’ve already filled the post’, he said, ‘Yes I have’, he said, ‘But I can get it switched’, and he said, ‘But’, he said, ‘I have to have your permission’. So, I said, ‘No’, I said, ‘I’m not going to Cairo’, I said. He said, ‘Well the next posting that comes in, you will have to go’. I said, ‘I’ll take my luck. I’ll take a chance where it is’. He said, ‘You might be going to somewhere like Singapore out in the Far East’, so I said it didn’t matter, I’d take my chance. The posting came through the next day and it was to Rhodesia. So, so the adjutant said, ‘You’re going to Rhodesia’. He said, ‘You can switch, if you like, with one of the others’. I said, ‘I’m not switching if I’m going to Rhodesia’. ‘Cause my pilot was a Rhodesian.
AM: Well yeah.
WS: He’d been demobbed and gone home you see, for one thing. I said I’d rather go to Rhodesia, so he couldn’t do anything about it. He had to send me to Rhodesia.
AM: And what did you actually do in Rhodesia?
WS: Well I —
AH: He had to get there first.
WS: I had to get to Rhodesia.
AM: Well, ok. How did you get to Rhodesia then?
WS: By ship.
AM: For how long?
WS: You couldn’t fly.
AM: No.
WS: You couldn’t fly, you see, there was no flying. That isn’t strictly true actually but I couldn’t have gone.
AM: Yeah.
WS: On a flight. They were only very official flights, so I had to go by ship. So I came home on leave.
AM: I’m just trying to think of the journey then.
AH: Yeah.
WS: Oh yes. Yeah. Because you had to go through the Med.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Down the Suez Canal.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And you see calling at various places on the way and we did have quite a number of South African troops going home on board as well, so it was really a troop ship in a way, but there were quite a number of civilians on board. And we just jogged along really, I don’t know how long it took us, took us quite a while because we stopped here and there and everywhere. And then having got to Durban where there was an RAF Headquarters they said well we, ‘You are going to Rhodesia, so you will have to get the train from here up to Rhodesia,’ which I think in those days was five days, I think.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So, right, fair enough, off we go. There were four of us, five, four, four I think. One of them, when we got, when we got to Rhodesia, we had to report in to the headquarters in Salisbury. I was a senior officer so he started with the others. He had postings for them. One went to Gwelo, somewhere in Rhodesia, so that was one out the way. Another one went to one of them, in the Middle East. That left two and he hadn’t any postings through for them, and then he sent for me and he said, ‘Will you volunteer to stay on in the Air Force?’ I said, ‘Why are you asking me that?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s ridiculous. They’ve sent you all the way from England’, he said, ‘You’ve only got a month to do before you’re demobbed’. He said, ‘It’ll take you a month to learn the job that you’ve been sent to do’, he said, ‘You would be coming here to be responsible for all the equipment that is coming in to Rhodesia, because we’re going to resurrect the Empire Air Training Scheme again, you see’, because it had been like the one that went to Canada.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So I said, ‘No, I don’t want to volunteer’, so, ‘You’ll be getting promotion almost immediately’. He said, ‘You’d be up to squadron leader very soon.’
AM: So you’re a flight lieutenant at this point.
WS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah
WS: I was flight lieutenant. So I said, ‘No. I don’t. No’. I didn’t go into reasons with him and I didn’t go into, I just said I don’t want to go, and I won’t go into reasons again. There were family reasons, really that I didn’t want to do it. I had come to realise that the only life in the RAF was on a squadron.
AM: Yeah.
WS: I wasn’t going to be on a squadron. I was going to go to a maintenance unit, and I didn’t particularly want that sort of life, out in the colonies. So I said, ‘No, I’m going. I’m going to go home. I’ve got to go home’. So he said, ‘Oh’, he said, ‘This is causing me a problem’. I said, ‘Well I might be able to solve it for you’, I said, ‘There’s one chappie outside that’s come out with me from England’, which of course he knew, because he had the list there and he was going to have to post him. I said, ‘He wants to be out here, because he’s been out here earlier in the war.’ So he must have done his aircrew training out in Rhodesia.
AM: Yeah.
WS: He’d been out there. He’d got on with a girl, and he’d been trying to get back to that part of the world since. I said, ‘Well, look’, I said, ‘I don’t want to change places with him because he’s going to go to Cairo if he is, but’, I said, ‘I will do because of him’. And he said, ‘But I can’t’, he said, ‘I haven’t the authority to change the postings’. I said, ‘Well, what we can we do?’ So he said, ‘Well’, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll suspend all postings’. That’s mine and this other lad and one other who was going to have to go to the Middle East. He said, ‘I’ll suspend those postings until I get word from London’. I said, ‘Right. Ok. But’, I said, ‘Can you tell me how long that will be before you will get permission to do this?’ ‘Oh’, he said, ‘It’ll be about three days. That’s all’.
AM: Three days.
WS: ‘Three days’, he said. That’s all. I thought, ‘Oh blast’. He said ‘report in here, to headquarters, every morning, and then the postings will have come through one of the mornings, and then you can be on your way’, you see. It was three weeks before the postings came through, so we were kicking our heels in Salisbury. Well I didn’t mind, because Mike was at home and I could see him. But the thing I’ve regretted ever since, that I never got to the Victoria Falls.
AM: That you never -?
WS: Got to the Victoria Falls. I could so easily have done with that time off.
AM: Yeah. You’ve seen Niagara.
WS: Yeah. I’ve seen Niagara, I wanted to see the other one. Probably my own fault, I didn’t, sort of, push the matter, could I go off for a few days.
AM: So what did they do then? Just send you back?
WS: They sent me up to, they allowed him to change the postings.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So that I don’t, I don’t know what happened to the other lad at all. Whether he met the girl again.
AM: And lived happily after.
WS: Yeah.
AM: I feel a book coming on.
AH: Yes.
WS: But then I was, then of course, sent up to Cairo ‘cause I’d swapped places with him, you see. So we got up to, where did we get to?
AH: Cairo.
WS: No. No. No. On the way. We had to go to Pretoria.
AM: Oh right. Yeah.
WS: Right.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Because they couldn’t send us from where we were. That was down in South Africa wasn’t it? They couldn’t send us direct from there. We had to go to Pretoria. We get to Pretoria, they said, ‘What are you three doing here?’ We said, ‘Well you’ve got a posting for us’. He said, ‘We have, yes but’, he said, ‘You won’t be wanted for another ten days’. So, right, what are we going to do for ten days, lads? There was only three of us. Well, let’s go down into Pretoria and see what it’s like. See if it’s worth our spending our time here.
AM: That was the capital city at the time, wasn’t it?
WS: Pretoria was, yes, it was, I think it was then, yes. But it was very Boer country.
AM: Afrikaaners.
WS: Yeah. So we took a walk down, we didn’t know anything about Pretoria, we took a walk down into Pretoria, you see. I can see it now. We were walking down this side of the street and we were aware of a big bellied chap come from the other pavement, walked steadily across so that when he got across to where we were, he was in step with us. And he just said, ‘What are you buggers doing here?’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘If you stay here, you’ll get a knife in your back.’ Didn’t like us, you see. The Boers.
AM: Is this from, from the Boer war?
WS: And we were in uniform you see.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And then he went away. So we just looked at each other, we thought, we’re not going to stop here, so we hitch- hiked back down to Durban, because Durban was much friendlier and we knew that. And also one of the chappy’s had some very distant relations living in, and he said, ‘We’ll go and look them up’, which we did. We went and spent some time down there and then we had to hitch-hike back up to Pretoria to get to Cairo.
AM: So how long were you in Cairo?
WS: In Cairo.
AM: And what were you doing in Cairo?
WS: Well these other two had postings, so they’d gone.
AM: Yeah.
WS: Poor little me, all on my own, knowing nobody whatsoever. It was a huge camp and was only a holding camp, and it was hardly used, there was hardly anybody about. And it was under a tent as well, and the days went by, I thought, well there’s a posting coming through for me, so then eventually when, well after a few days, I went to the orderly room and said, ‘What about a posting for me?’ ‘Who are you?’
AM: Oh no, you’ve not dropped off, dropped off the list again.
WS: So I told him. He said, ‘Oh, we’ve got your name but’, he said, ‘We haven’t got any posting for you’. I said, ‘Well flipping heck, get me one’. I said, ‘I’m not, I’m fed up sitting in my tent reading, reading Agatha Christie’, then I pestered them for a couple of days and they got me a posting. They said, ‘You can go to a job in Cairo. You can go into the Junior Officer’s Club as your billet’. So that was ok. The job was nothing, I mean it was just sending little, I don’t know supplies of goods into one or two of the units that were out in Cairo, I was only just filling time in really.
AM: That’s, that’s —
WS: So I had nine months in the RAF.
AM: Nine months.
WS: From leaving, from leaving, when I was training operations [pause], until I was demobbed. Nine months sitting around Africa doing nothing.
AM: And that’s more or less what everyone says. Most.
WS: Amazing.
AM: Most people were waiting for demob —
WS: Yeah.
AM: Sent all sort of places to do nothing very much.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And just waiting.
WS: Yes.
AM: Waiting for demob.
WS: Yes. I mean, I reckon I was sort of lucky really because I was sort of on the move, more or less. And seen places I’d read about and -
AM: Yeah.
WS: Sort of thing, and also saw my pilot again. So I was pretty lucky really, I mean I think if you asked me to sum up my war, I would say it was a lucky one [laughs]
AM: Well yeah you got through it one piece
WS: Yeah.
AM: And saw Niagara Falls and the pyramids into the bargain.
AH: Yeah.
WS: Yeah. Saw the pyramids.
AH: Yeah. The Rockies. Yes.
WS: The Rockies. Yes. I wanted to see, yes.
AM: And then you came back. You never went into teaching, did you?
WS: No.
AM: No.
WS: No. No. Got a job.
AM: And then eventually, you’re going to have to tell me on the end of the tape, just a little bit about Jessica and how Jessica came. What did you actually do? You came back. So you didn’t go into teaching.
WS: No. I got a, you see, I’d had experience of controlling stores.
AM: Yeah.
WS: As an equipment officer.
AM: Yeah.
WS: It just so happened the college was looking for somebody. They had no system.
AM: Ampleforth College.
WS: Yes.
AM: Yeah.
WS: They had no system of controlling, particularly on the catering side, and one of the priests knew that I’d done this course in the RAF, so they offered me a job to go there.
AH: ‘Cause there wasn’t any central.
AM: That’s what you did.
WS: There wasn’t any central.
AH: The boys lived in school houses, and ate in school houses, so somebody’s got to order the stock and see that it gets to the houses.
WS: In the right quantities.
AH: In the right quantities, and they hadn’t had anybody doing that.
AM: Right, and they got a RAF man organising them.
WS: Yeah. Yeah. A tall point I suppose and, then you see, Joan was in the post office.
AM: Yes. So Joan was there anyway.
WS: I mean, that was one reason why I chose not to stay in the Air Force.
AM: Yeah.
WS: I knew that Joan wouldn’t have liked Air Force life, nor would I really, in peace time, so when they offered me this job at the college, I thought well, fine.
AM: And then you were telling me last week about how you got into writing.
WS: Yeah.
AM: And what have you.
WS: I always, I don’t know, I think I must have always felt like writing. I always loved reading, loved storytelling and I love facts, so I love non-fiction, and I thought I would like to write a non-fiction book about my time in the RAF, but then I would like to do a story so why not combine the pair of them. Then I could have some fictitious character based on the crew, and based on other people I knew in the Air Force, and knew the situation and knew about going down to Skeggy every night when we weren’t flying and all this sort of thing. And I just started to write this, just for my own satisfaction and it included quite a bit of what we’ve been talking about. I finished it and that was it, I mean, I knew nothing whatsoever about the publishing world, not a thing, and I put it in the drawer and that was it. But I still had this gnawing at me to do a bit more writing, you see, then it just so happened that one night we got the evening paper out of York, and I’m a poor newspaper reader, and I probably was then as well, but for some reason this particular night I, something must have moved me and I looked at it. There was a little piece in it, about this much, saying that there was a paperback company looking for war novels. I thought I’ve got one of them [laughs], so I sent it off. It was, they were running a competition actually, so I sent it off and whilst it didn’t win, they said they would like to publish it. And, hey, I’ve got a book published. Yeah, I can get this published, sit it up on the shelf next to Dickens and next to Shakespeare, you see.
AM: And Agatha Christie.
WS: But then I thought, I liked writing that book, what do I write about now? And for some reason, I thought I’d write a Western, because I’d read a lot of Westerns and I knew a lot about the West, and so I wrote a book. Again, what do I do with it? I don’t know what to do with it. What do I tell anybody that ask me that question now? I say go and look at who publishes them, but I never thought of that. I was about twenty miles out of York, and it wasn’t that easy to get in to York in those days, so I thought well there’s a thing called the Writers and Artists Yearbook and I think that lists publishers in it, and I had a look at that and it does, and it tells you what they publish. But it always said — fiction. Fiction. Fiction. Fiction - among the other books they published. Well that didn’t tell me what sort of fiction, so I thought, oh well, I’ll make a list of about six of them and send it out to them. Then it came back, ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, you see. And I thought well this is a bit of a dead loss isn’t it? Well, I thought I may as well send it again, a couple of times. ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, and then one came back, because they’re always, you can always tell they’re typed out by the secretary and then someone scribbles on it and signs it. ‘Sorry. We don’t publish Westerns’, and he’d taken his pen and signed it, and then that dear man had taken the trouble to write with his pen, ‘Try Hale’. I thought, hello, he will know the publishing world and he said, ‘Try Hale’. I knew that Robert Hale’s were a publisher. The man that had taken the trouble to write, “Try Hales was Alan Boon, of Mills and Boon fame.
AM: Yeah.
WS: So I thought I’d send it to Hale, so I sent it to Hales, and Hales said, ‘We like this. Go on writing Westerns for us’. So somehow or other, I’d got the right length and the right sort type of thing and so I wrote thirty six of them before I finished.
AH: He became Jim Bowden from his place where he was in Canada.
AM: I’ve seen the books in the bookshelf.
WS: Bowden was the first place I was —
AH: Posted.
WS: Posted in Canada.
AH: In Canada.
WS: So that’s how I got more and more into writing, and whilst I was doing these Westerns, I got interested in whaling. The history of whaling through going to Whitby.
AM: Yeah.
WS: And eventually, I only did it out of interest really, but eventually, I realised I was getting sufficient information together to do a history of whaling, and I put the idea out and so on and so I was said yeah —
AM: Yeah.
WS: Somebody was interested in the history of whaling so I completed this book. What did I do then?
AH: Well that was “Harpooned”.
WS: That was “Harpooned” yeah.
AH: And that was published.
WS: That was published in 1980.
AH: And you’d got all the information.
WS: Yeah.
AH: About whaling and decided to put it into a novel, so you wrote a novel based on whaling.
AM: And that was, and that was “The Red Shawl”, and that was, “The Red Shawl.”
WS: That’s right.
AH: But it wasn’t initially, but they sent it off to one or two publishers, didn’t you, to start with?
WS: Well then it went to —
AH: Piatkus.
WS: Piatkus.
AH: And Piatkus said they would like to publish it.
AM: However —
WS: Sorry. Sorry Anne, no, it wasn’t Piatkus that published it, it was Conway Maritime Press.
AH: No, that was “Harpooned”. We’re on to, that was “Harpooned.” Yeah.
WS: “Harpooned”. Yes. That was “Harpooned” yes but that led to the —
AH: The novel.
AM: On to the novel.
AH: Yes.
AM: So the novel is going to be published, but we don’t want it to be by Bill Spence. We would like you to be called —
WS: Jessica Blair. That’s right.
AM: Jessica Blair. And how many novels later? How many Jessica Blair novels later?
WS: Twenty six. I’m finishing twenty six.
AH: Yeah, you’ve just finished twenty six, you’ve just finished the twenty sixth. The twenty fifth has just been published.
AM: Yeah. And on that note.
WS: I don’t know.
AM: It just shows you though doesn’t it? That, you know, bomb aimer, RAF, Bomber Command, Jessica Blair. The twists and turns that life takes.
AH: Yes.
WS: If you want to be my publicity —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bill Spence
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-15
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASpenceWD160315, PSpenceWD1601, PSpenceWD1603, PSpenceWD1604,
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:58:58 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Spence was born in Middlesborough. He abandoned his teacher training and joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 becoming a bomb aimer. He completed 36 operations during his time in Bomber Command. Bill tells of his experiences while training in Canada, how he hoped that he would be posted near the Canadian Rockies, and reminisces the people he met. He tells of being taken off a pilot training course because of an incident with a Tiger Moth where he ground looped it and it ended up on its nose. He flew in Ansons and Wellingtons, and was then posted to 29 Operational Training Unit; then, in 1944, to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Swinderby. He eventually went to 5 Lancaster Finishing School at RAF RAF Syerston, where he flew on his first Lancaster.
Bill was transferred to 44 Squadron based at RAF Dunholme Lodge. He tells of his operation to Harburg, which was their intended target, but they ended up over Hamburg in the middle of a bombing operation because wind had not been accounted for. Bills also recounts how his aircraft was one of the first to drop their bombs on Dresden; he contends that the city was a legitimate target and distrusts the judgement of those who did not take part to the operation. After the war, he spent time in Rhodesia and also in Pretoria, where he tells of his encounter with an Afrikaner who threatened him because of his ethnicity. After the war, Bill worked at Ampleforth College controlling stores for the catering side. After writing a war novel which he had published in a local newspaper, he then tried his hand at writing westerns with Hales Publishing. His pen name was Jim Bowden, after the place he was stationed in Canada. He also writes under the pen name of Jessica Blair, and is now on his 26th book.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Hamburg
South Africa
South Africa--Pretoria
Zimbabwe
Canada
Alberta
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
44 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
coping mechanism
crash
crewing up
fear
FIDO
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RCAF Bowden
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/565/8833/PEvansDC1602.2.jpg
86b05a1f1363b47b738718b23de31580
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/565/8833/AEvansDC160714.2.mp3
c2f2de6871b83db8ca8bdb70d47cefb5
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
Evans, Derek Carrington
D C Evans
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Evans, DC
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Derek Carrington Evans (1924 - 2017, 2207080 Royal Air Force) and his log book. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 625 Squadron. Also contains photographs of model Lancaster and people.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Derek Carrington Evans and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM. Ok so this is Annie Moody and I am with Derek Evans today. Derek was born in Doncaster he’s living in York at the moment and I am undertaking this interview at the Offices of Worans in Doncaster.
DE. He was born on the 20th of June 1924.
AM. 20th of June ’24, erm and todays date is the 14th of July 2016. So, Derek.
DE. I am 92.
AM. You’re 92, getting on a bit, but still.
DE. I am getting on a bit, yes.
AM. Derek tell me, you have told me when you were born, tell me a little bit about where were you born and tell me a little bit about your parents?
DE. I was born in the village of Doncaster, that’s Edlington, I was born [laugh] about twenty past nine one Friday morning and, eh my sister went to school and she came back and she got a new brother, and eh I don’t know what her reactions were but I heard plenty about it at the time [laugh], yeah eh, yes there was two of us. I had a brother as well who died em but em, there was Doris and me who lived and she died just a few years ago with rotten cancer and she was as good as, as healthy as me, which seemed anyway.
AM. What did you, what did your parents do Derek?
DE. What did?
AM. What did your parents do, what work did your dad do?
DE. My father, my mother was a housewife, my father was an electronic, electric engineer and em pneumatic. That’s em, he worked in the collieries installing the machinery.
AM. Right
DE. And em, and he served in the first war and em he got some medals for that, ‘cause he, one day he heard somebody crying in no mans land, he went over the top.
AM. So he was in the Army?
DE. Yes, he was in, first of all he was in eh [pause] thousands in the Middle East, what do you call it, the Dardanelles and he got away with that. In fact, he brought a shell back that had burst near him [laugh] and I have still got it somewhere.
AM. Still got it.
DE. And eh, eh, then he was, oh he was quite an authority in the eh Scout Movement, and eh if, if they haven’t been destroyed, I’ve got letters from Baden Powell to him and from Lady Baden Powell to him yeah, he helped in the formation of that.
AM. So were you in the Scouts?
DE. Oh I was.
AM. Tell me a bit about your childhood?
DE. Well, I went to school as an infant and, eh it was at Edlington, and eh I think my father must have had a bit better job than a miner because we lived in the top village and it was new, it was all new that, but I had to go down to the old village to school. And eh I used to go dressed, I had a little suit and a tie and did I get some hammer from the scrubbing sods down there, and eh the only thing I remember about that is I got hold of one of these lads and I pulled him up to me, and me hand went up like this, somebody got hold of it. It was me father.
AM. This was at school?
DE. Coming home from school em, yes, and I had waited for that devil because he had taunted me quite a bit. And eh I, I cured him.
AM. Your Dad stopped you thumping him?
DE. Yeah, I would really have done something [unclear], knocked him about I would.
AM. So that was the village school, what about when you were older and in your teens?
DE. That’s eh, one day my father came home from a colliery, I learnt after it was Bentley and there had been an explosion there and he was filthy, his clothes were in rags. And em, I heard him say to my mother, ’that’s the last time I go down the colliery’, and eh he gave his notice in and eh he had no job. And then he managed to get a supply of electrical goods, he was an electrician he knew all about that job and he was selling those, he used to go round the streets selling them and he built a good business up and then the war came. He lost all his contacts and we had to come out of our nice house and get a cooperation house, council house, and eh I went to, I then joined Doncaster Council.
AM. Let me just ask you, so what age were you when you left school then, ‘cause you would be fifteen when the war started, you left at fourteen.
DE. Em.
AM. So what was your first job?
DE. I got a job taking papers around and eh I gave my mother my first wage packet of five shillings, yeah. And eh and then I got eh, and then I left school at fourteen and I was on the streets.
AM. On the streets looking for a job you mean?
DE. Well walking about looking for a job and somebody said to me, “oh, you know Taylor of Colbridge’, do you remember them? ‘looking for an errand boy’ so I went in there and said, ‘I have come for that job’ and they gave it me.
AM. So what did you do, what did you have to do, what did that consist of?
DE. Well first of all it was delivering orders of books round Doncaster, eh and inside three months there were three other errand boys in there, and inside three months I was in charge [laugh], bighead [laugh]. And em, I er carried on there and eh the boss said, ‘would you like an apprenticeship?’ I said, ‘Yeah I would’, so I took an apprenticeship with them at ten and sixpence a week. Ten and six a week, which was a good wage in those days.
AM. A good wage indeed.
DE. And eh I carried on there and er and at six er at sixteen em, I was a junior there and at sixteen I was senior. All the folks had been pulled out in to the War and they left me in charge of that ruddy shop, d’know, at sixteen.
AM. So we are 1940at the beginning of the war, the first year of the war.
DE. Oh yes it would be, wouldn’t it?
AM. Yeah.
DE. And eh I run that all right, eh there was a lot of turnover I maintained it, eh I think it was, about thirty thousand a year, which was a lot of money.
AM. A considerable amount.
DE. I was in charge of about six women [laugh] old women, they were all twenties and thirties and they were all old to me of course, but I ran it, I carried on with it and eh part of there was printing you know, and of course I learned the printing job. I was a stationer, printer and bookseller officially when I came out of there. Well, I was eighteen, at seventeen, I heard they wouldn’t take aircrew unless you volunteered.
AM. Why did you want to be aircrew particularly rather than Army, Navy.
DE. Well, I thought it was a bit cleaner than being shot in trenches [laugh].
AM. True.
DE. Well, me father told me about his, he did fourteen to eighteen in the Army and he was in France, he was in Passchendaele. He used to tell me all about them actually and somewhere in that house of mine, I have got a recording of him telling the tale of the Red Baron being shot down over the trenches yeah.
AM. Baron Von Reichthoven.
DE. I’ve got that somewhere.
AM. So you are getting to seventeen, they wouldn’t take aircrew unless you volunteer.
DE. And I volunteered at seventeen, I went down to the Royal Air Force Recruitment Centre and got signed on.
AM. Right, where was that in Doncaster?
DE. In Doncaster, yeah, well my interest [unclear] out the place. My interest in aircraft started, oh, in the thirties because I was only a kid and my father used to take me to see the aircraft at Finningley, and in those days, you could walk on and walk up to the aircraft you know and I used to talk to the aircrews that were hanging about them, and eh I got really interested in, and they were, now then, Vickers Vimmies, em oh I can remember them over, I will tell you what they were later on, Vickers Vimmies.
AM. It’ll come.
DE. Aye?
AM. It’ll come
DE. Oh, it’s there yes and the Handley Page, eh the Handley Page, it had the gunner on the, in the front nose and the two engines were at the side of course. And eh, I had a look round and I was dragged into one, one day just to show, show me and I remember they had thirteen there and they went off on a [unclear], what did you call it eh, eh countryside eh, travels so. And eh thirteen took off and they got two back they crashed the rest of them.
AM. This was before the war?
DE. This was in the thirties, when the Vickers Vimmies and Handley Page Heyfords, Heyfords, em yeah and from then I have been interested in aircraft.
AM. So, you are interested in aircraft and you want something cleaner than the trenches, so off to the RAF Recruiting Officer.
DE. Yeah
AM. So they signed you up, but then what?
DE. Well eventually of course, my eighteenth birthday turned and they called me up into the Air Force and em I got, I got into the Aircrew Receiving Centre, Aircrew Receiving Selection Centre and it was in the Zoo in Regents Park [laugh].
AM. Had they, at that point, done any testing or anything to decide whether you were going to be aircrew or Ground Crew.
DE. Wait a minute.
AM. Sorry, going too fast.
DE. Typical woman rushing away [laugh].
AM. I apologise.
DE. And eh we was in the eh, the melee of being selected and, and, and I passed the exams for Pilot and they, after a week or two, we were square bashing at that, we were feeding amongst the monkeys [laugh], the zoo and eh one day some sort of Air Force bloke, I didn’t notice what his rank was in those days eh, ‘does anybody know morse code?’ I said, ‘yes I do’, ‘why?’ I said, ‘because I have got a radio station meself and with another bloke, we rented an office, an office we were using in the middle of Doncaster for half a crown a week’ [laugh], and we got all the gear in there. And eh this bloke said, ‘we are short of recruits for radio officers, do you think you could, like to transfer?’ ‘Yeah, I don’t mind, it’s flying, I’ll come’, and I then went down into the radio school and eh I spent twelve months there, came out, it tells you in the book there, came out and qualified a radio operator.
AM. So it was twelve months?
DE. I am sure it was twelve months yeah.
AM. Don’t matter, so what was that like, tell me a bit of what the training was like, easy, hard?
DE. It was hard yeah, it was not particularly hard for me actually em, they could fire morse at me all the days of the year and I could take it then, it’s a good job ‘cause when I was flying on operations, I had, it was all the time morse was coming in from headquarters em, eh Bomber Command headquarters. Go on, you tell me?
AM. No I can’t remember.
DE. And eh it all came in code and you had to be taking it down, writing it out and I could take twenty words a minute then [laugh], and I used to say to the Pilot, ‘oh there is diversion on, we are diverted when you get to such and such a place’, and that is how a radio operator used to perform and weather reports used to come through.
AM. So you finished your training as a wireless operator, what happens next after that.
DE. Well, I got, I don’t know, I was selected and I was given a course of radio navigation and it was a month, and I had a what I call them ‘sprog pilots’, they had just qualified and they wouldn’t trust a good pilot with me [laugh], and I used to fly all over the country and tell him where to go and what city he is going to do. I did that for a month, I did it successfully and I was passed out as a radio operator one then, and then I went to gunnery school and I went to, majority of them didn’t but I was selected to go to Gunnery School and I have no idea why.
AM. Not as a trained radio operator, not when you were already a trained wireless operator.
DE. Well in Bomber Command eh, there were more WOP/AG’S because if anything happened to the rear gunner, he was shot, my job was to crawl down there, open the doors, chuck him out into the open space and get in, sit in the guns [laugh] and that was the procedure yeah. I went to gunnery school, I have got the results there, they are good results and eh [looking through papers].
AM. I am just flicking through the log book for the tape to find where we are up to.
DE. Let’s have a look at it please.
AM. So we are looking at, we are looking at the initial trips here and the results of the initial courses.
DE. You are nowhere near the operation here.
AM. No, I know, no, no.
DE. Ah this is it look, extra syllabus.
AM. So we are May, June ‘44 and we are on the gunnery course.
DE. Yes
AM. And the results of the gunnery course are above average a very keen Cadet.
DE. [laugh] and when I were in gunnery, I used to be in the top turret of an aircraft in the mid upper gun turret, and eh they used to fly, now then a master, or an em, they are Masters aren’t they? Single engined training aircraft towing a long drogue and we had to hit it. You had to fire at that thing coming over you.
ME. A bit like clay pigeon shooting, not.
DE. Oh, I have done plenty of pigeon shooting.
ME. Oh later on. So, I’m looking at the fact that you were given extra syllabus training, given in lieu of bad weather, which cancelled flying.
DE. Yes, ah and that’s Dominies, isn’t it? Yeah, Domini that’s it. The De Havilland Domini was a twin engined twin winged aircraft I don’t know whether you -
ME. No.
Unknown. A biplane.
DE A biplane yeah, it was a lovely aeroplane that, lovely.
AM. So you have done your WOP training, you’ve done your gunnery training. What next?
DE. Eh after gunnery, I don’t know what they call it, it was advanced flying school, oh that’s advanced gunnery course.
AM. You moved onto the Operational Training Unit I would guess.
DE. No not yet.
AM. No, was that later?
DE. [unclear] Wigton that is on the West Coast of Scotland and I don’t know what we were supposed to be doing there, have I made notes of it? [pause] It’s just the details of what we were doing, I don’t know. Anyway, that’s Advanced Flying School, and then I went to No. 18 Operational Training Unit. How I got to there was, we were paraded one morning and eh this corporal came out and he said, ‘I am going to read out names and say a place where you are posted to. You will find that some is going to Leuchars in Scotland’. The bloke next to me said, ‘I live at Leuchars’, he said, ‘the others are at Finningley at Doncaster’. I said, ‘and I live at Doncaster, what is your name, I will swap you names’. Well, this Leuchars name came up, put me hand up, join the queue for Leuchars. No, I, t’other way round, yes, and when it was all, come out in the wash, I was going to Bomber Command, so I thought I had dropped a clanger here, and he was going to Coastal Command, so anyway I joined 18 and we were, we were put in a big, we were put in a Hanger with four, and there was a desk in there and there were four candles. The bloke sat there he re [unclear] they got a seventy-two scale Spitfire if you like and he went, and you had to shout out, and I got everyone right.
AM. Right, so what were you looking at?
DE. I was looking at the aircraft.
[Unknown]. Aircraft recognition.
AM. I’ve got you actual recognition of aircraft, I’ve got you.
DE. An eh, Peter Russell, who was and who’d come and he was in this hall, and there was about four hundred of us and eh he came to me and he said, ‘would you like to become my radio operator?’ and he had done a tour.
AM. How did you know he had done a tour.
DE. He told me.
AM. Ok but he had a little brevet as well that shows that they had done a tour I think. He talks about that in his book that maybe at crewing up, people were happy to join him because he had already done a tour, so you are probably going to be safe with him.
DE. Yeah, he was good looking too.
AM. Right, so he decided.
DE. Couldn’t keep the girls off him.
AM. So at crewing up then, there’s you.
DE. So, there is a Pilot, Colin Richardson, Navigator, Derek Evans the Radio Operator and Titch Haldred the Rear Gunner, is that it?
AM. Yeah, I have got them written down.
DE. Where do you get that from?
AM. The book.
DE. Oh, I see and I did quite a fair lot, quite a lot of flying to a lot of places.
AM. And this was on Wellingtons.
DE. Wellingtons, we used to go wandering around the Continent you know and eh and from then -
AM. Sorry to interrupt, so at this point there is five of you, ‘cause you are in a Wellington and you are doing your training on Wellingtons based in, where were you actually?
DE. Finningley.
AM. You stayed at Finningley.
DE. Eh well we used to use the satellite at Worksop.
AM. Yes, I had scribbled down Worksop.
DE. Finningley was the base and em, and then what, what happened then. Oh, went to eh, four engined aircraft and that was Halifaxes.
AM. So this is heavy conversion unit to get you used to big boys.
DE. Yes, and therefore we had two crew, we had an engineer and a mid-upper gunner.
AM. And I think I’ve got the names here. Tim Cordon was your Flight Engineer and Tony Large was your Mid Upper Gunner. So you picked up your extra two and got seven of you.
DE. No, I am telling lies, he was a Dubliner. I said to him, ‘what the hell are you doing here?’ he said, ‘you don’t think you are fighting the war on your own’ [laugh].
AM. So you went to Heavy Conversion Unit I think at em, Blyton.
DE. Blyton yes, it was the base was Lindholme, but the airfield was -
AM. Was at.
DE. Yeah.
AM. And that was initially on Hali, on old Halifaxes.
DE. Yeah.
AM. So what was the wireless operator bit, room, not room, area like in the Halifax?
DE. Ruddy awful, in fact I, I wouldn’t say it terrified me but it frightened me to death.
AM. Why was it ruddy awful?
DE. Well, there was a staircase and em, the Pilot sat on the top of this staircase and I sat directly under him, in trouble and the aircraft spinning, do you think I got down those stairs? No, no, you were pinned in, no, you had no room, I had full radio gear there. I could do all the nice flying, I could do everything you want to but I wouldn’t have like to thought I was getting in operations in it. Anyway, then we went to Lancaster Finishing School at Hemswell, an eh -
AM. So how different, tell me how different was, the Lancaster was to the Halifax.
DE. Well, it is like coming, sitting in this room instead of a back passage somewhere yeah, you could walk about in a Lanc.
AM. And the wireless operator area was better?
DE. Well, there was the pilot, there was the bomb aimer, our front gunner and then there was the pilot and then there was the navigator and the radio operator, we sat together and that was a flight crew. You couldn’t take a four engined aircraft off without having a pilot, navigator and a radio operator yeah, three and eh good job as well, I will tell you later on. I pulled them out of the drink.
AM. Got some stories. So, you done your heavy conversion training, what did that consist of? Just basically up there?
DE. Circuits and bumps.
AM. Circuits and bumps.
DE. And familiarisation with the aircraft of course, but the radio gear was the same so I didn’t need any conversion to that because I knew that backwards.
AM. For your pilot of course, who was moving onto a completely different plane, to fly from what he had been used to on his first tour.
DE. Yeah, oh he used to fly Hudsons, that’s an American twin engined originally a civil aircraft and eh yeah, I’ll come to him in a minute if you like? [laugh].
AM. Sorry, where am I up to, we know where are you, so you have done your circuits and bumps, your heavy conversion training, got your crew.
DE. And then got posted to a Squadron, 625 Squadron.
AM. Yep, at RAF Kelstern.
DE. Kelstern, and the CO met us, because we were two crews posted there to replace two lost last week. So he says, ‘Good evening gentlemen, the only thing we can guarantee here is two weeks life. The crew, the other crew took off with us on the first operation and was lost’. They had one life em I went, well we went as a crew we went on, we went on, we did a tour, we did.
AM. When he said that to you though Derek, you are twenty years old.
DE. Twenty.
AM. You’re twenty. You have not done your first operation yet and he is telling you you’ve got -
DE. A years . .[unclear].. well
AM. I can’t imagine how that felt or what you thought about that?
DE. Em, well we were a little bit bravado, we said, ‘well we will bloody show you’ [laugh] yeah well Peter had done two years operational flying before that and our first operation was to Essen.
AM. Was this the, on your first one, well first of all, you start off, your pilot has to go as second dicky and not all of you went with him.
DE. I don’t know if I went on his second dicky or not, I can’t remember, but he normally took, this is the old, this is the experienced taking the new crew, they actually, they were the, he used to take, the old pilot, used to take the new pilot as second pilot, and he used to take his own navigator and his own rear gunner. So I wouldn’t go on that dicky, second dicky. I did a few of those when we took a new crew on ops.
AM. I’m just looking, so when you did your first one
DE. Was Essen.
AM. Right, let’s find it [pause]. Circuits, here we are. So, the very first one was HLB?
DE. High Level Bombing.
AM. High Level Bombing at Essen. So, tell me right, so this first operation you’re going to Essen, what was that like from the beginning. As in, you know, you are going, you start off, it’s going to be a night, night flight.
DE. Will you close your ears a minute [laugh]. Em the Battle Order, that’s an illustration of the Battle Order in there, it was posted in the mess in the morning and we had to go for breakfast, and eh we thought oh, tonight so what we did as a crew, at ten o’clock we used to go down to the aircraft and we used to go through it like a dose of salts. We used to make sure everything was working and the first thing we did was to say to the ground crew, ‘what’s loaded on here?’ and they used to say, ‘eighteen hundred gallons’ or ‘two thousand gallons’, and of course, if it was two thousand five hundred, we used to say, ‘a long one tonight’. Then we em, went back and had a meal and then we went to kitting out. Put our ‘chutes on and whatever we were going to wear. We used to find out by devious means the temperatures, ‘what are we going to wear?’” So, and then we went into briefing and eh I went into radio briefing, navigator went into navigator briefing and so on, and gunnery and then we had a briefing altogether where you saw the wall, and we used to think ‘bloody hell’ [laugh]. And eh we used to then get in the bus and took out to dispersal, where we climbed in our aircraft. And by ritual all aircrew before an op, had to wee on the wheels.
AM. That is better than doing it up in the air isn’t it?
DE. Yeah, you diverted me a little bit
AM. Sorry.
DE. It’s all right. It was really cold, I mean I’ve flown in minus fifty I, I, actually in conjunction with this, I’ll have to write you a story about Essen, I can tell you.
AM. Tell me what the story is?
DE. I can’t really without thinking about it but eh, Essen, we were up through the flak barrage but we didn’t enquire, we didn’t, we didn’t involve running into a fighter, and we came back on that and eh. That’s where that poor devil lost his life on that first flight of the next crew that we were replacing. So that was Essen done. Come back, you got a cup, a mug of cocoa and half a mug of rum.
AM. A mug?
DE. You could treacle it out the rum you know, if it was naval rum. I didn’t drink, it sort of thawed you out a bit ‘cause you come back from these raids, and I will say it quite bluntly, you were terrified. And em, and then of course you went to your bed and you slept very soundly.
AM. Did you speak with each other about how terrified you were or did you keep that to yourself?
DE. No, no, we, no, no, we talked about it. Because one was saying, ‘did you see that fighter, did you see that, did you see that going down on so and so’. Oh no, you portrayed the whole lot together because the pilot had a different view all together over the rear gunner. I had a different view of them all because I had the radar and I could, I could see every aircraft in, in the Bomber Stream.
AM. Is that the Fishpond?
DE. Fishpond, oh I have saved the, with that I have saved the crew on numerous occasions where I have said to Titch, in the tail, em, ‘aircraft two thousand yards astern, don’t know what it is but it looks quite small and it is going fast’, so we presume -
AM. So it is not a Lancaster then.
DE. It is not a Lancaster, well I can see all the lights around us em, because I used to say to the pilot ‘increase your height by about two hundred feet, ‘cause there is somebody converging on us’, and it would be another one of the stream, ‘cause we had a thousand in the stream you know. And he would raise the aircraft and you would feel the wash of something passing underneath and that was going to be a collision had we not had the knowledge. Mm, so, and then I would say to the, I would say to Titch in the tail, we called him Titch, he was about my size actually, and eh I would say to him ‘seventeen fifty yards, fifteen hundred yards, twelve hundred yards, you are now coming up to a thousand yards’, and he would say ‘I can see him’ and so, and once, I don’t know which. Well I do, I have got it somewhere down eh, I heard him say ‘bloody hell, there’s four of them’. and so they came in and eh the first one actually went up and he set a Lanc on fire above us. We saw them bale out and floating down and it exploded, and all the flaming petrol landed on the ‘chutes and they went, and the next one he decided to have a go at us. He went out to, he went out to starboard and was coming in like this, and I was counting out to Torrey in the top turret, ‘he is just above the horizon, em and is in within oh, he is coming up to about nine hundred yards now from us’, and I said to him, “he will, he’s a fighter and his guns point forward, he’s got to level himself up with us’. and I kept saying to him, “he’s levelling up, he’s levelling up, he’s levelling up’, and I heard Torries’ guns going brrrrr and this thing, so he got him, shot him down [laugh]. And em, the other time, our rear gunner never shot anybody down but he knew where they were, so they didn’t come in his range, but twice Torries came in because once a Junkers 88 came alongside us and he was stalking a Lanc in front of us, and he didn’t see us. Then I heard Torrey, and I heard Peter shout, ‘who’s firing?’ He said, ‘it’s me, oh I have just hosed a Junkers 88 down’. He must have killed the crew ‘cause it went straight down. Aye, I didn’t like to see that just the same, whether it was the enemy or what, but I do know if it hadn’t been the enemy, it would have been us.
AM. Exactly, exactly.
DE. And em, oh this went on night after night.
AM. Can I just ask you about that Cologne trip. So, it is your second one and I believe you, if I have got this one right, is this one where you had to land somewhere else?
DE. Oh, we were going, we were running in on the target and there was Kenny the Bomb Aimer just shouted ‘steady, steady, steady, steady, bombs open, bomb doors open, steady, bombs gone’, and the old Lanc, you know, we used to be at about seven or eight, yes, five hundred foot, it used to rise you know and then eh [pause], well heard, it was a god almighty bang, crash and lit the whole aircraft up and I thought [unclear], and eh we levelled up, Peter caught it again and we got it flying and [pause], no at that time he said, ‘I lost me, I haven’t lost me bombs’, so we went round again like stupid idiots, and we let our bombs go and him at the front said, ‘I haven’t got any bomb sight, the shell has hit it and destroyed our bomb sight’, so some wag in the back shouted, ‘let’s dive bomb them then’ [laugh] and we did, we used Cologne Cathedral as the sighting point and missed it.
AM. Was this the one where the compass and the chart didn’t match and you later found out that the compass had been shot up actually.
DE. Well what happened was that big flash [unclear], a shell had burst next door to us very, very close and had shaken all the navigation equipment that was fixed to the walls, onto the floor and Colin was groping round looking for it, and em we are flying along and em, I suddenly said to him, ‘Colin, you are running on about 230 degrees’, and I said ‘if my memories right, that’s heading for the Atlantic, yeah West’, you see, ‘no I’m not’. I said, ‘you are’, anyhow, I am arguing with him and I knew he was wrong.
AM. How could you tell?
DE. I could see all the bomber stream, I could see the fighters attacking them on the stream.
AM. On the fishpond.
DE. On my Fishpond and eh I saw the bomber stream converging north, and us converging west and eh anyway, Peter the Pilot he said, ‘what are you two arguing about?’ I said, “well we are off course, we should be wanting to swim back shortly because we are heading for the Atlantic’, and eh he talked to Colin for a minute or two and then he said to me, ‘Derek, take us home’, just that, ‘take us home’, and he dismissed Colin as navigator and eh I brought ‘em home, I brought ‘em home, and eh I got, I was given them the courses, I could read the courses off and I thought, thank god I had had some navigation training. We were, we were flying up country and I said I can’t get em, eh a beacon from Binbrook, because that was the local with the em, the pilots thing, that’s right, and if you keep those like that, you will get to where that is being transmitted from and if it collapses, you are on, turned over it. So anyway, I couldn’t raise Binbrook and I couldn’t raise Binbrook and eh we were flying up country, and our rear gunner shouted, ‘there is an aircraft below us, in car headlamps’. Because I had just said to Peter, ‘by god, you are flying low’, he said, ‘I am looking for a field’, he said, ‘we have no juice hardly’. Eh so I said to him, ‘you use your flight control radio’, it’s a little radio in the pilots cockpit and I said, ‘shout Darky on it’, and eh he shouted, “Darky, Darky’, and all the lights came on and he whipped it round like that and banged it down on the runway, and eh a car came and he followed us to dispersal and em it was an American, it was half American and half British, I can’t imagine.
AM. Falkingham.
DE. Falking.
AM. Falkingham.
DE. Falkingham yeah that’s right, she knows more than me about this.
AM. Oh I don’t.
DE. [laugh] I didn’t notice you sat at the side of your mam like.
AM. I am a bit younger than that.
DE. I would have thought, you are alright anyway [laugh]. Anyway em, we parked and we went into the mess, God, the food was beautiful. The Americans used to fly their own food in you know, and eh it was served like pigs. You walked past the table with all this beautiful stuff on it, custard, kippers.
AM. All together?
DE. All together a plate full of [unclear]. The next morning, as usual, we went to look at our aircraft, ten o’clock in the morning, we always used to gather round the aircraft and eh it was like a colander. There were holes in it and eh Peter said to a so called engineer, who was walking about there, ‘how long are you going to get this kite ready, how long is it going to be?’ and he said, ‘that’ll not fly again’. And eh there was an unexploded shell which lodged in the port outer engine, if that had gone bang, um.
AM. And what about the compass, because at this point Colins compass, you brought them home because the compass wasn’t working.
DE. I bought mine, yes, through my radio detection gear.
AM. What happened to the compass.
DE. It was lying on the floor.
AM. So that had been shot as well.
DE. It had shot off, well I don’t know whether the explosion but it was lying on the floor of the aircraft at the back because the, the rear, what do you call it? That compass anyway was lying on the floor and it was giving all sorts of bloody readings to him, ‘cause I couldn’t believe that Colin had lost us because he had run us into targets and kept the forty five second window that we got to bomb.
AM. So Colin was vindicated.
DE. Yes, I he grumbled at me a bit ‘cause I, I told him, ‘You are out of your mind, Colin, you are wrong’, [laugh] and I knew he was.
AM. But it was his equipment rather than him?
DE. It wasn’t Colin, no, no.
AM. So that was only your second operation and you had to get back. Then how did you, you get back from there [unclear].
DE. On a truck.
AM. And what did they say to you when you got back to your own base?
DE. First thing I done, I went into Flying Control and I said, ‘what happened to the comp. The transmitter at Binbrook’, I said, ‘I couldn’t get that for the last, we were half up the country’. And I could have brought Peter with that device over the airfield, and I couldn’t and fortunately, the rear gunner shouts, ‘there is an aircraft in the car headlamps’. Anyway, ah I walked into Flying Control, Peter Russell, Colin Richie and Derek Evans, there was a line through us. They had written us off, dead and they wouldn’t answer my calls, and anyway, we had that out with them with a little bit of fury [laugh] and we were alright with them then, I mean. The aircraft didn’t fly again for some months and we got it again once.
AM. Did you?
DE. Yes, aye, but there was a hole in the floor, hole in the floor between me, and I used to sit with the navigator, close as this and our table was here, and eh there was a hole in the floor, hole in the ceiling something had come through and missed the pair of us. And my father was right, wasn’t he, ‘cause when I started this he said, ‘don’t worry lad’, he says, ‘the Devil looks after his own’ [laugh].
AM. But somebody was.
DE. Yeah, my mother was a spiritualist and, on that night, it was three o’clock when we landed, and she wouldn’t let me father and her go to bed, ‘he’s in trouble’, and at three o’clock she said, ‘he’s alright’.
AM. He’s alright now.
DE. That’s fantastic ‘aint it.
AM. Do you want a rest?
AM. So I am looking at other stuff that I’ve got here. I’ve, I’ve so we have done the Essen, we’ve done the Cologne, then we have Düsseldorf, Bochum.
DE. Bottrop, we were attacked by about four ruddy German fighters there with that. It was a terrible job that, I don’t know whether, I got some, I got some, I got some good notes but I never carry them about with me.
AM. I have got some here where, I think it was on your third one, that was one where I think you saw and aircraft hit. Tell me about, there was one, there was one where you had a near head on crash?
DE. Oh god aye, we were flying, well, we did, no, not quite all night bombing but most of it. That’s the aircraft I got together and the only things I haven’t made are the wheels, I couldn’t do rubber wheels.
AM. We are looking now at a picture of a model of E for Easy, Derek’s second Lancaster that he made and I have got a photograph of that.
DE. Do you know how long it took to make that?
AM. A long time.
DE. Two thousand four hundred hours, because I built it from the plans, and all these engines and all the ribs and everything are all scale fifteen scale. Two thousand four hundred hours and it is a beautiful model and it is made to fly, and I put it on our drive eh, I opened the throttles and it shot forward and I closed them. I thought that’s not going into the air ‘cause [unclear].
AM. You wouldn’t get it back. Tell me about the operation where you had a near head on crash?
DE. Oh well, it’s in the Ruhr, we had done the bombing and suddenly, we were flying like that, suddenly we went down and I looked up and I saw an aircraft pass over the top of us. I thought ‘bloody hell, that was a close one’, and Peter says, ‘I was watching that aircraft come towards us’, he says, ‘and when the wings filled my windscreen, I thought I had better dive’, and that one went up and it was a German fighter.
AM. Right.
DE. So he nearly got his chop as well.
AM. I am looking at, I am looking back at Derek’s log book here, at all the various things. So, in November ‘44 now we are talking about. So, thinking about what is happening generally, we have had D-Day, the Army.
DE. No, not in.
AM. In November ‘44.
DE. Yes, yes, D-Day was, was it June ‘44?
AM. June ‘44.
DE. Oh yes.
AM. So the Army are working their way up towards Germany now and you are still flying over Germany.
DE. We are taking out important points eh Dortmund, Durkheim, [unclear], Dortmund, good gracious.
AM. I think you bombed quite a few railway, railway lines as well, railway yards.
DE. And also, oil refineries.
AM. What did you think, if you did think at all about, about the, the people on the ground.
DE. Nothing, afterwards yeah, I thought oh dear, we got reports back, you had killed so many on that night and eh, we as a crew had killed four hundred and fifty Germans or something, and I was sorry. I don’t like killing eh, we have had to kill ah, while these German fighters were levelling their guns up, we had to kill ‘em quick or it was the man who got in first.
AM. Kill or be killed.
DE. Yeah, but I didn’t like, I didn’t like it particularly. I am not a killing man but you are if you get in the right circumstances em, yeah [laugh] yes. Em just to jump a year or two, I was, I didn’t attend a meeting and I was appointed President of an Air Gunners Association over the north here somewhere, and I thought, ‘flipping heck’, and eh I then said to myself, ‘what did I do. I know, lets go see if there is any German fighter pilots still alive’. I went to Germany, I walked into a Luftwaffe station, I said, ‘does anybody know anything about flying here?’ [laugh].
AM. And they said?
DE. Oh, I got ever so friendly with them, as a matter of fact, it eh, em we got invites to, my wife and I, got invites to stay with them and we invited them and their wives to stay with us. It culminated in, I cleared a couple of fields, ‘cause I still have the farm and em, I got, I asked the, I knew the Army, a Major in the Army, Richard somebody or other, and I said, ‘do you do any manoeuvres?’ and he said, ‘why’, I said, ‘I have quite a few acres of woods and fields’, ‘Oh’, ‘the price is couple of marquees and a field kitchen on Saturday, such and such a date’, ‘yeah that’s easy, yeah I’ll do that’, and they arrived and I issued an invitation to British and German aircrews, a hundred and twenty eight turned up. The wife says how are you going to feed these? Well, we got a few sausage rolls and that, and I said, ‘oh I know something’, and I went into see the CO at Finningley, a David Wilton, he was very friendly with us and eh I said ‘can I borrow a Jetstream for an afternoon?’ He said ‘what do you want one for?’ I said ‘I’ve got a hundred and twenty five British and German aircrew starving in a field of mine and I know that’, what is the German station, closing one down [pause] and eh I will think about it and I had heard on the grapevine that there was chucking food away and stuff, and so to fetch all these bottles of whisky and food into Finningley, it wasn’t changing hands was it? It was RAF in Germany and RAF in England, and eh when we put the, when we put the piles of food down on pallets, my drive was eighty five yards long and it was full, we had tons. I was, I was moved of course, I got a field kitchen cooking and eh I thought, ‘I wonder where they make all the sausages in Germany’. Just as a thought, so I undid a big bundle and got down to a small package, a kilo or something and it said ‘in case of complaint, such and such a company, Burnley’ [laugh]. I held it up and I said you bloody Krauts can’t even make your own sausage.
AM. Can’t make a sausage. I am going to pause while we have some lunch.
AM. So we are back now, we have had lunch, a bit of refreshment and Derek is raring to go, I think.
DE. Raring to carry on.
AM. Raring to carry on. So, we, we have talked about his early life and we have gone through joining up, crewing up, squadron, some of his first operations em. I think just before we paused, Derek was telling us about the near miss when he nearly had a head on crash.
DE. Yeah, I looked up and saw this bloody aeroplane two inches above me, well it seemed like it.
AM. Not long after that em, I think your pilot became a squadron leader, your squadron leader.
DE. Yes, he was.
AM. What difference did that make to rest of you as a crew, did that make a difference?
DE. No, no, no, no he, all the crews were all a family, all the crews were a family.
AM. Right.
DE. The only time I couldn’t get near him was what I used to crudely call ‘Birding’.
AM. Playing out with the ladies.
DE. Yes, and he was very good at that.
AM. You don’t mean, you don’t mean bird watching with binoculars then?
DE. Eh I don’t think he would know one bird from another actually.
AM. Also just before we finished or maybe just after we switched off, you talked about a landing at Sturgate with Fido, tell me about that, what happened?
DE. Well eh, they put some eh pipes and they didn’t quite join them up, there were leaks in them on both sides of the runway and [unclear].
AM. Yes, so as you are coming back from, dropped your bomb load, on your way back and it is not foggy as you are coming back.
DE. And I am saying to Peter, oh I got it through the ‘we can’t land at Kelstern’, ‘Oh?’ ‘We have been diverted to Sturgate’. ‘What’s Sturgate, we don’t have been of there’, ‘it’s Fido, Fog Investigation Dispersal Operation’, and em we arrived over Sturgate, there was just a blazing mass, there’s the air and the fog had been moved up to about five thousand feet I should think, so it was above, above the runway and the runway was just a mass of fire actually and Peter said, ‘god [unclear]’. Anyway, he landed down there and we were frightened, we didn’t want to get a tyre burst or anything, and em we landed there and then we taxied back up the runway, and we picked up a truck with lights flashing and took us into dispersal. That was it, we stayed there for the night. It was em, it was a dangerous job landing on that job, if you got anything went wrong with you and you veered off, you were burnt.
AM. It went down both sides of the runway, didn’t it, all the way down.
DE. Both sides about six thousand gallons of petrol, a minute was burning oh, colossal, colossal amount.
AM. How many times did you have to land on a FIDO? Just the once?
DE. Just the once um [laugh].
AM. Good job.
DE. Yeah, we took off on it, we got, the next day, message came through that Kelstern was clear, so we said ‘right, we might as well take off and get on back’, and so we did.
AM. But it was still foggy where you were?
DE. It was still blazing so we actually took off amongst the blazing petrol and em got up to a reasonable height and cleared off then.
AM. And got back to Kelstern.
DE. Lovely station was Kelstern, it was a -
AM. What was it like, tell me what Kelstern was like?
DE. A field.
AM. But you just said it was a lovely Station, what was lovely about it?
DE. Em, it was a family, there were no rules and regulations, it was just a station carved out of the countryside and all we got round there was just fields and woods, and eh it suited me because I had been used to woods and fields. We spent a nice time there and eh everybody knew everybody, there was no ‘morning Sir’, in fact the boss there was Air Vice Marshall John Baker. I saved his life once and he always called me Derek, never airman.
AM. So how did you save his life. I think I know this story but tell me anyway?
DE. Well, we set of to bomb em some German positions that were holding the British Army up.
AM. You say we, so he was with you.
DE. Oh Aye yes, he was with us and em we were flying over the North Sea and I got a message from headquarters, eh position over run, return to base and take your bombs and fuel back. Thirty two of aircraft and bombs and I said to Peter, ‘yeah whip it round, we have a recall’, and he said ‘our position is to fly with the boss’.
AM. So he was in a separate aircraft.
DE. Oh, in a separate aircraft, we were the aircraft escorting him because Peter was high up then in rank, and em we were to fly in Vic formation with him. You have heard of Vic formation, haven’t you?
AM. Yeah, yeah.
DE. And we kept on flying and I said, ‘Peter. aren’t you turning round?’ He said ‘I can’t let him fly over ‘cause we’re getting near the Dutch coast there you see’. So eh he said eh, so I said, ‘go a bit closer to him’, and I got the Aldiss lamp out and I winked out the message, and that stupid radio operator said, ‘Why?’. And I signalled back ‘read your bloody bomber [unclear] broadcasts’, and he disappeared and he did and em just before the Dutch coast and the Dutch defences. There were rockets you know. We used to fly along and a rocket would be fired and we would steer round it [laugh], you can’t believe it can you? And em I saw him then turn and we flew back with him, and em he said to me, he says, ‘thank you for saving my life’.
AM. So neither of you had dropped your bombs, the whole lot had to land.
DE. We were loaded with petrol and bombs, thirty tons, and em Peter came in, came in last ‘cause we, they had all gone, they had all gone to land except for the gaggle, us and Peter said, ‘I will let him land and go back in after’, so we did an orbit or two and eh then he came in. His rate of sink was too much because a hundred mile an hour was the rate of sink of a Lanc you know, coming in to land. He was sinking a lot and he slammed the throttles forward and he came in a hundred, came in to land on full throttles and we [unclear]. I was in the astrodome, I thought, ‘bloody hell, we are not, we are going to be buried automatically in the field here, you know’, and em, he touched down and then, he was like this, wheel to wheel and he banged open the throttles and took off, and we went round and come and did a proper landing then. We got in the crew bus and we were detached, dispatched outside the Flying Control near the parachute section and all that, and there was John Barker, the Boss, he got all the air crew kneeling down on the hard runway and we were all with this.
AM. Bowing.
DE. Yeah, and Peter said to him ‘what’s all this’, and he said, ‘any bugger who can survive a landing like that is a god’ [laugh].
AM. I can’t, I can’t imagine landing with the full bomb load and how scary that must be.
DE. It was scary. A burst tyre would have made things hot.
AM. Very.
DE. Oh you wouldn’t have got away with it if you had burst a tyre.
AM. You know that Vic formation that you said, what does Vic stand for? I know what it is like and arrow head.
DE. Vee
AM. Oh vee, of course, yeah, but I was trying to work out what the I and the C stood for.
DE. Vic
AM. Vee, Vic, so it is the phonetic alphabet, isn’t it?
DE. Three aircraft.
AM. It is the point at the front.
DE. Yes, that the Vic.
AM. The ones that take the flak.
DE. Yeah.
AM. I read in the book that you led a formation of about two hundred at the front of that, and Colin got them all there and got them all back.
DE. Yeah, oh he was a good bloke was Colin, he was a bit shirty with me when I said, ‘you are bloody miles out, Colin’, ‘oh no I’m not, no I’m not’, and Peter says, ‘what are you two arguing about?’
AM. To be relying to, on his instruments. I am looking at, I am still looking at your log book here at some of the others “Gaggle Leader Training.”
DE. Yes, you are talking about Vic, aren’t you.
AM. Is that what, I am just looking at this.
DE. What do they say about a flock of birds?
AM. A gaggle of geese.
DE. Yeah.
AM. But it is got here that you actually did training for it.
DE. Yes that’s right, learned to fly in vics.
AM. Yes, got you.
DE. Because normally we flew alone, didn’t we?
AM. Yes within the stream.
DE. Yeah.
AM. And then you, what else have I got here, I’ve got one, I’ve got a little note about when you were attacked by some fighters near Nuremburg.
DE. Yes, yes.
AM. Can you remember that one, I might be jumping about too much now, and then the other note I’ve got is em that in April 1945 Kelstern closed, and you had to move to Scampton.
DE. Yes.
AM. And then your very last Operation was Heligoland?
DE. Heligoland yes, a submarine base. I remember running in over that and we weren’t leaders, we were in the main stream and eh we were dropping big stuff on there. Eh and I mean the ones with the em, ten tonners, they used to go through thirty eight feet of concrete and very often didn’t explode a few days later they would explode wouldn’t they. It was designed for that, what do you call it, delayed action yeah, ’cause we, we done one or two trips to em the Dortmund Emms Canal and eh we used to let the water out the canal [laugh] bad people.
AM. That’s one way of putting it.
DE. All eh, you see the submarine engines were made by MAN, M.A.N [spelt out name], you have seen the lorries and that was, that was down there anyway, Dortmund or somewhere and eh, they always used to use barges taking these submarine engines to Bremen to be fitted to submarines and they were all stuck there with no water in [laugh].
AM. That was the idea.
DE. Have a good trip, yeah, yeah [laugh].
AM. And that was it so that was April ’45, that last one.
DE. Yeah.
Unknown. When was VE day?
AM. VE Day was in May, early May, wasn’t it?
DE. Something like that, I know where it starts, the last operation and the next was delivering food.
AM. For the Operation Manna. How many of those did you do?
DE. How many?
AM. Did you just do one Operation Manna?
DE. No, we did two or three, did more than one anyway.
AM. ‘Cause you were flying really low level in Operation Manna weren’t you. What was that actually, after all that year of the full tour of dropping bombs and all the rest of it, now you’re dropping food?
DE. Well we was dropping food to this Hospital. I was stood in the astrodome and we were lower than the nurses standing on the roof.
AM. I know it was really low level, I didn’t know it was that low, I knew it was really low level.
DE. And you know, some years later, I take my wife to Buxton, to the theatre there, you know the theatre? I drove into this car park, lined up and got out and a Volvo came in and what a pigs ear he was making of trying to, so I got out and I am saying, ‘come on, come on’, you know, then I notice it’s Dutch number plates. So I said to him ‘are you a Dutchman then?’ and he said, ‘yes, have you been to Holland?’ I said, ‘I have been over it a time or two’, he said, ‘have you?’ I said, ‘yes, the last time I went I was delivering food’. He said ‘I’ve got some photographs’, he said, ‘I had hidden a box brownie camera’, and he’d taken photographs of us. He said, ‘I have got it with me and you can have them’.
AM. That’s brilliant.
DE. That was marvellous that was, wasn’t it?
AM. What was it, I can’t imagine what that must have been like to be flying so low that you could actually see the people waiting and, and for the food, because they were starving weren’t they?
DE. Oh, we would have killed them if we had dropped it on them, Aye, we were dropping six ton, lots and eh, we went along this low, we went Hague, I think we went somewhere else as well, I think it was the Hague.
AM. Yes, we’ve got the Hague here ‘Spam Droppings’.
DE. Spam Droppings, we call it spam yeah [laugh], and eh we used to, we dropped that and then we dropped, we went across low like that, if we could have put our wheels down landed on it, it was that low. Well, eh was perhaps thirteen, thirteen foot diameter [unclear] props they were and as soon as we let the things go, turned it over and went straight up. We was told not to fire at the defences because they had agreed not to fire at us and I remember Titch saying, ‘the buggers were going with us all the time’, their guns you know. He said, ‘and I got ‘em lined up as well’ [laugh].
AM. Just in case.
DE. Yeah, but the only one that was any trouble was an American. They fired at some of the defences and they shot him down. Serves him right, the agreement was made, it should have been kept.
AM. They called it ‘Chow hand’ didn’t they, we called it ‘Operation Manna’ and the Americans called it ‘Chow hand’.
DE. They would do. When we got a, we used to land at different places if there was fog like Sturgate, the Americans used to land with us in case, if their bases were fog bound and I remember once, this young airman, he attached himself to me, this American airman. ‘Will you show us a Lancaster?’ ‘Yes, I will show you a Lancaster’, and then there were the bomb trains starting and he said ‘where are all these going from?’ I said, ‘they are going to’, I said, ‘wait a minute, this is ours, look’. I said, ‘climb on one of those bombs and you will have a ride round’, so we rode round into the, into our dispersal and he lay on that aircraft until the last one was bombed. He couldn’t believe it, ‘cause I don’t know we eh, four thousand pounder, sixteen five hundreds eh about two and a half thousand pounds of incendiaries, that was a usual load you see. He watched every one hung cause he couldn’t have believed that lot would have done the whole lot of and American squadron, ‘cause their bomb load, maximum bomb load is four thousand pounds. Well, ours was twenty two thousand pounds.
Unknown. What on a Flying Fortress?
DE. Pardon?
Unknown. What on a Flying Fortress, American.
DE. And the German, what do you call that, Dornier 17 isn’t it.
AM. Dornier, yeah.
DE. That was four thousand pound load as well, they couldn’t carry anything.
AM. Well the Lancaster basically was a flying bomb factory, machine wasn’t it.
DE. That is what it was.
AM. And when you stand under it and look at when the bomb doors are open.
DE. Thirty three feet long.
AM. Yeah it is, so have I missed any stories about various operations. Can you think of any more that I have missed that you need to tell me about?
Unknown. The one that you were trying to get Derek was the fighter one, that was the one when Pete went into the Corkscrew, you know, the manoeuvres that got the fighters off the tail.
DE. Eh, I think it was Bochum, yes Bochum. It was a [unclear] because I have got a lot of.
AM. I think Bochum is just after the photographs.
DE. I see it, yes.
Unknown. I know you told me before, Derek, about how Peter had to turn, turn the Lancaster into, you know, the Corkscrew turn, upside down.
DE. We used to turn a Lancaster down like that and roll it, somebody says to me, ‘you can’t roll a Lancaster’. I said, ‘you bloody can with a fighter at the back of you’ [laugh]. I don’t know how many, I can’t remember how many fighter attacks I dealt with, because I dealt with them before the gunners saw them. Yeah look, ninety minutes to the target, Titch in the tail shouts, ‘fighter, fighter!!’
AM. Eight o’clock.
DE. ‘Eight o’clock level, corkscrew, left, go!’
AM. So describe that to me what that felt like from where you were sat?
DE. Where I was sat, I was glued to a screen, eh, well I used to do this with the armchair to hold myself there, ‘cause I’d be swung about and eh Its corkscrew left, right wing down, nose down, dive four thousand feet eh, and then eh, change the wing so that wing was down and then up and that’s why the corkscrew was like that you see, yeah. And that’s why we hoped that the fighters wouldn’t follow us em, and we through them off most we had, oh we had about twelve fighter attacks so we got used to it [laugh]. But with two very good gunners, they were, they were, I mean Torrey the Mid Upper Gunner shot two down, and he shot two down because em, ‘cause they got too close and he said ‘I waited’ and I was saying to him, ‘cause I was vectoring him onto this fighter coming in, and eh I said to him, ‘he has gone out to starboard but he is just, I can see him, he is just below the em, horizon’. He then said, ‘I can see him’, I said, ‘well watch him because he has no guns on top, he has got to fire out of his wings ‘cause he was a 110’, an eh we knew the German aircraft, we knew them very well, best thing for him to do was to study them. That, I can see him now, ‘cause I am up on top, looking, then I saw this fighter coming up and I said, ‘he is going to get his guns level on you, Torrey’, and Torrey let him have it, killed him, oh he killed him, killed him and eh that was five seconds to our demise. That coming up like that and he got him just before he got his guns level em, oh yes, em. Sometimes we got a bit of excitement.
AM. Ah, probably excitement you could have done without.
DE. Oh god, aye, yeah.
AM. And then it all just came to an end, VE Day, last operation. Just looking at your log book, after the Operation Manna, you did a couple of photographic em.
DE. Oh eh, yes in there you see, eh about ten of us nicked a Lancaster.
AM. Nicked a Lancaster?
DE. Borrowed one and then we, and what have I done now, called it?
AM. You have called it a Special Bombing Photographic.
DE. No, I didn’t.
AM. Was it later than that?
DE. Yeah.
AM. Let’s have a look.
DE. Oh we did a Cooks Tour as we called it, we borrowed an aircraft, well there were plenty [unclear] and I think it was about ten of us and we went round the Cooks Tour, up over the Ruhr and the targets we done and had a look at them, and we were shattered. We were shocked at the damage we’d done and eh fighter affiliation, that is you meet up with a Spitfire and it is trying, its got cameras and it is trying to shoot us down with cameras, yeah and that is where we learnt to fight night fighters. And then on 69 Reserve Flying School, I was, of all the flight crew, that was navigators, pilots, navigators, radio operators em, were given a five year call up if you like and em, they gave us an aircraft and we had a lovely time, this was after the war.
AM. Just before the after the war bit, so we have had VE day, you’ve nicked your aircraft and had a bit of fun going round looking at the bomb sites. How long, what, what happened to you then between then and demob, because it was usually quite a lengthy time wasn’t it?
DE. I don’t know why but eh I, I was posted to eh em, electronic school and I qualified as an electronic engineer then, and then I got on a fighter squadron, servicing their gear.
AM. In, in England.
DE. Yeah, and then I got posted to ruddy Scotland, Leuchars, do you know Leuchars?
AM. I don’t know it, but you talked about that right at the beginning.
DE. And eh -
AM. It’s Coastal Command isn’t it up there?
DE. Yes, it used to be Bomber Command and then it was Coastal Command. Because I think they took off from there and the adjacent station to bomb the ships in the fjords, that’s the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau and then em, I had been there a little bit and I was just about getting acclimatized I was posted to St. Leonards, the point of Cornwall.
Unknown. Penzance.
AM. About as far away as you could get.
DE. Yeah, and I thought to myself eh and I thought my demob number is number 53 and they are demobbing 45, ‘I’m not working’, I went. I went looking round the beach and I saw a bungalow for to let and I went in there and I didn’t turn up for work. But what I’d done was, I went into the, into the other aircrew that I was friendly with and I said, ‘book me into the mess will you, for each meal and sign Derek Evans’. Eh after a fortnight I thought, I wonder if they have missed me?
AM. So what did you do, just generally played about on the beach and had a rest?
DE. On the beach it was lovely, a bit of surfing and that, I was fit then and em, one morning I thought ‘I wonder if they’ve missed me?’ So I got on me bike and rode to the station, I went through a fence where the radar section was and somebody says, ‘the Adj. is looking for you’. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘Is he?’ I went in front of the Adj. and eh ‘you have been absent without leave’, I said, ‘no I haven’t, go and look at the meals register’. Well he couldn’t get anywhere so he said, ‘you had better go and see their Radar Officer in charge of the radar section’, and eh he said, ‘you have been absent without leave’, I said ‘no I haven’t’. Bit of an argument and I thought ‘bloody bloke, he has been here all the blinking war, telling me off’, and at the end of the argument, I said ‘what you need is a bit of air under your arse’ [laugh] flying.
AM. And he said?
DE. Put me on a charge for insubordination and I went in front of the CO, and he says, he says, ‘you shouldn’t demonstrate discipline like this’. He gave me a right ticking off. My demob came up then about a fortnight after and I went in front of the same Group Captain, and he says ‘will you sign on?’ I said ‘after what you have told me’, he said ‘I have got to talk in front of these buggers’. But he had the same medal ribbons as me and I knew what he’d done [laugh], then eh I went, I, I, left then and he says, ‘I’ll guarantee you promotion to Squadron Leader in five weeks if you sign on’. He says, ‘we are losing’, he said ‘you are experienced ground crew, experienced aircrew’. I said ‘you’ll be right now’, I said. He said ‘Squadron Leader’, and I said ‘no’ I said, ‘I am going back to my own patch where I served an apprenticeship’ and I did.
AM. And that’s what you did. Were you married by then Derek, did you meet your wife in the war, during the war or afterwards?
DE. After the war.
AM. It was after.
DE. I wouldn’t entertain [unclear]
AM. Of course, you are still only twenty two or twenty three at this point, you were still only a baby in relative terms.
DE. Twenty two and em yes, quite a few contacts with WAAFs especially in the, well that’s put it politely, and there was one or two wanted to marry and I says ‘do you know what job I am doing?’ I says ‘tomorrow I might be dead’, I said, ‘if anything happened you became pregnant’ [unclear]. I said ‘no, I won’t attach myself to anybody’ and I think I did right. I eh was posted to Verne, that is near Selby and there’s a Holding Unit. They had bods in there and they were saying ‘I need six so and so, right six out of these’, and eh I was, I was driving up past the racecourse in Doncaster which was, well my mother’s home was there, just near the racecourse and I saw this WAAF working, walking on her own and I pulled up and I says ‘hello, what are you doing here?’ She was one of the Kelstern teleprinter operators. She said ‘I have been posted to Verne’, I said, ‘that’s where I’m going, get in’, so I took her up there, and eh I did marry her actually, eventually. Me dad said to me, when I took her home the first time, ‘she’s no bloody good to you, you know’. My god, was he right, I didn’t last long with her.
AM. So this wasn’t Edna then. That wasn’t Edna then because I know that your wife that you have been married to for a long time, was Edna.
DE. No, I don’t know if it is for publication actually. She was a chemist was Edna and she was in, worked in Boots, just down, and I managed an office equipment shop, just above and we just used to say ‘hello’, you know, nothing and eh, I was living with me father and I was in the pub one night and I used to meet all the builders and business folks, ‘cause I used to collect business, you see. And em, ah, I am trying to think of his name now, Terry it was, anyway I said to him ‘Are you building any houses?’ He said, ‘I have got whole estate going at ‘em’. I said, ‘have you anything cheap?’ He said, ‘Well I have a very nice bungalow, er, next to the field which we are not building on’, I said, “oh, what do you want for it?’ and he said, “two and a half thousand pounds’. I said, ‘I’ll have it’, and I bought it off him in the pub [laugh]. I move in there and I was in there for a bit and eh I kept seeing Edna, I used to chat with her, nothing extraordinary. She said ‘What have you done then?’ I said ‘I have moved from me fathers’ place, I’ve bought a bungalow in [unclear], a brand new one’. ‘Oh’, she said, ‘what’s that address?’ Anyway, bless her, I am having my dinner one day, I used to go, it wasn’t far from where I worked. She knocks at the door, she had all her cases with her. I said ‘what are you doing?’ She said ‘I’ve come to live with you’ [laugh].
Unknown. That’s very forward.
AM. And that was that?
DE. Oh, I took her in and that was it, yeah and I was with her, I have been with her sixty odd years, sixty six years.
AM. How did the, you know, I know you, you talked about what you did after the war, but you know the model building, how did the model building come about?
DE. Well. I used to build models, I have built hundreds, ships, aircraft.
AM. As a hobby, this is a hobby, not as a job.
DE. Yes, and I eh, a friend of mine said, he was one of the officials at the brewery, John Smiths, and I said ‘have you got any property you are getting rid of for nought?’ And he said, “yes, got a nice one in Silver Street, a nice’, but he said ‘but Legards are in it’, but he said, ‘their things coming to an end’. He said, ‘so you had better put in a thing’, so I had a look at it and I thought, ‘this would make a good shop’. I don’t know what, I don’t know what I was thinking of, and then, and then I thought a model shop, yeah, a model shop. Em, the bloke who’s in it, what they call him, I don’t really know him now but, he says ‘Oh, your lease is coming to an end’, ‘cause I rented it from him for a week or two, and he says ‘the lease is, so your rent will have to go up’, so I said to him, ‘why, has your landlord put your rent up?’ ‘No, I am going to see him’. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘you had better come back to me and tell me how much you want more’. He came back to me and said ‘you cheeky bugger, you own the place’.
AM. You are the landlord [laugh] and I think on that note.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Derek Carington Evans
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-14
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AEvansDC160714, PEvansDC1602
Conforms To
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Pending review
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:42:07 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Derek was born on June 20th 1924 in Edlington near Doncaster, volunteering as aircrew at the age of 17.
After leaving school at the age of 14, Derek delivered books in and around Doncaster before going down to the Royal Air Force Recruitment Centre in Doncaster and signing up for service after developing a love of aviation after seeing Vimmies and Heyfords.
Derek passed his exams for a pilot, however trained as a wireless operator because of his knowledge of Morse code. When he was crewed up, his team flew in Wellingtons at RAF Finningley, with 18 Operational Training Unit.
Derek then was transferred to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Blyton, where he worked on Halifaxes, before being posted to 625 Squadron at RAF Kelstern, flying on Lancasters.
He completed operations to Essen, Dortmund, Cologne and also targeted the oil refineries. Derek also took part in Operation Manna, dropping supplies in Holland.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Essen
Netherlands
Germany
18 OTU
625 Squadron
Absent Without Leave
aircrew
Anson
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Dominie
FIDO
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
military discipline
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Blyton
RAF Finningley
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kelstern
superstition
training
Wellington
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/579/8848/PHarrisonJ1501.2.jpg
1a57ff0e3dad9384f62bb7cde4f22cfe
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/579/8848/AHarrisonJ150809.2.mp3
d8bd795575540901698a5de69ed45289
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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Harrison, John
J Harrison
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Harrison, J
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with John Harrison (1924 - 2017), his log book, correspondence, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Harrison and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
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2015-08-09
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: OK, try again. So this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Annie Moody and the interviewee is John Harrison and the interview is taking place at Mr Harrison’s home in Birstall in Yorkshire on the 9th of August 2015. So, to start with if you just tell me a little about where, well tell me where you were born and a little bit about your childhood and school and when you left.
JH: Well I was born at a little village called Collingham in North Yorkshire, it’s just near Wetherby. And I lived there until I went to, eventually I passed an exam and I went to Harrogate Grammar School and I was at Harrogate Grammar School until, I got my school certificate and then I was sixteen and didn’t know what to do. Anyhow I had an auntie who was a big noise in the Civil Service, pardon?
AM: Me too.
JH: Yeah and she said ‘I’ll see if I can fix you up with a temporary job in the Civil Service in Harrogate ‘cause they were in Harrogate at the time. And so I ended up going in the Civil Service in a branch called E20 in the Civil Service in Harrogate at {unclear} Hotel I think it was. And they dealt with all enquiries and everything regarding barrage balloons and everything, must have been supplies you know, supplies and all that. And I stayed there until I was eighteen. And then of course when I was, I knew I was going to get called up at eighteen and I got called up at eighteen and caught the train down to London and I went to the Lords’ Cricket Ground where we all had to go. And I was there for a while and then from there I got shunted all over the place. [Sighs] I forget where I went next, oh, I ended up at Dalcross in Scotland which was an RAF place, it’s now the airport for Inverness.
AM: Right.
JH: And I was there, and I did my gunnery training there, and eventually – {rustling of paper}
AM: We’re just having a look at John’s logbook.
JH: I passed out as an air, sergeant air gunner, on the 17th of July 1943 at No2 Air Gunnery School which was at Dalcross. And then I went to, No2 Air Gunnery School that was it yeah, and then I was, I joined, I picked up a pilot, Flying Officer Clements, and I don’t know what happened to him because we did three, I did three trips with him, the last one was a leaflet raid to Le Mans and after that I never saw him again, so I don’t know what happened to him. But then I picked up, I went to gunnery school at Skellingthorpe and then I came to 1660 Conversion Unit at Swinderby, and there I picked up me pilot, Flying Officer Leggatt.
AM: When you say you picked up your pilot, what was that like then, how did that work?
JH: Well, we as far as I remember, we went into this room and they were milling around, pilots, looking for air gunners, and air gunners –anyhow eventually I got talking to this chap, Flying Officer Leggatt, and I went on his crew. He was a smashing bloke and we got on quite well together and we stayed together. Then we finished 1660 Conversion Unit which was at Halifax, er at Swinderby.
AM: So that was conversion to the four engined bombers?
JH: Yeah, yeah. Then we went onto the serious stuff, reported to 106 Squadron.
AM: 106 Squadron?
JH: Metheringham, and the first operation we did was to Frankfurt am Main and that was on ED593Y and that was the one that I was telling you about.
AM: That later on, what was it like, that first operation can you remember?
JH: Well I don’t know, yes, actually that one was very quiet, it was to Frankfurt and we, it was only five hours thirty-five minutes and we got with no problems, you know we got there, bombed the target, came back, landed.
AM: Were you a rear gunner or a mid-upper?
JH: I started off as a mid-upper gunner.
AM: OK.
JH: But then we um, until we got to, and then the next trip was to Berlin. And this was the one where we had the problems with two engines u/s, flight engineer was killed and the wireless op was injured.
AM: So which operation was this, how many had you done before that one?
JH: Berlin.
AM: Yeah.
JH: That was in this aircraft ED593Y which was on its seventy-third operation, we decided it had had enough. [laughs] We landed at, we decided that, we didn’t know whether we were going to bail out or what by the side door. So, we decided to make a dash for it and we come to Coltishall, and we landed at Coltishall in Norfolk and we were told afterwards, we’d no wireless, no nothing, everything was dead and all we did was fire in, was fire in the colours of the day through the front window and you know they told us there was twelve aircraft in various stages of distress waiting to land and suddenly this Lancaster, no lights, no nothing just fired the colours of the day, wheels down obviously coming in regardless. And we came in and we got half way down, and this is perfectly true, we got half way down the runway and we ran out of fuel. Now how lucky can you get you know? We stayed there the night and the following morning Group Captain McKechnie who was the CO of 106 Squadron, and he had the George Cross by the way, he came down and picked us up and took us back.
AM: Right, just drove down and got you?
JH: Yeah.
AM: Drove down or flew down?
JH: Flew down.
AM: He flew down?
JH: Flew down and then after that we went to Berlin. One, two, three, four, five, six to Berlin and then we hit trouble [laughs].
AM: Did you ever fire your gun?
JH: Yeah.
AM: Did you ever have to fire your gun?
JH: Oh yeah, yeah I’ve got bits and pieces in here [rustling of pages]. ‘One combat, enemy aircraft not identified’, [rustling] ‘Three engagements that were in Berlin. Three engagements, one Junkers 88 claimed as damage’.
AM: What did it actually feel like then firing your guns?
JH: Well [laughs] you know it was just what I was there for really. It was a treat to have a go at somebody [laughs]. It, that was when this aircraft we were flying was on its seventy-third trip.
AM: That was the one where you got shot up?
JH: Where we landed at Coltishall and it was parked up and then the next morning. Pardon?
AM: I’m telling Gary to shush {laughter} with his pages.
JH: And then the next morning we came down to get our stuff out of it and it was parked up there and there was about six or seven Yanks all looking you know, and they’d been brought down. They said ‘Sure you must be very, very sad to lose this old girl?’ you know ‘cause it was there with the seventy-three bombs on it you know? And I said ‘No we’re not really’ [laughter] and they couldn’t understand why we weren’t crying our eyes out because we’d lost it.
AM: Did they give you bacon and eggs, like they do on the British bases?
JH: Yeah, yeah oh aye.
AM: So they got bacon and eggs as well?
JH: Yeah, but Group Captain McKechnie came down and picked us up and took us back. Now then he had the George Cross, Gp Captain Mckechnie. There was an aircraft on fire, he went inside and pulled the pilot out.
AM: Right.
JH: I don’t know a right lot about it but it he did [rustling] and then –
AM: So then you got a new ‘plane?
JH: Yeah, and we were Berlin, Berlin. ‘One combat enemy aircraft identified,’ Berlin, Berlin and that time we had to land at Bardney, at Bardney.
AM: What was the flying time to Berlin?
JH: To Berlin? Eight hours roughly.
AM: About eight hours?
JH: Yeah, it varied, seven hours or eight hours and then the last one.
AM: What were you actually bombing, can you remember in Berlin, what were your targets?
JH: Targets? Berlin [laughs].
AM: Berlin, just Berlin?
JH: No they had a, it’s funny that because they you know, we were approaching the target and the bloody bomber aimer was fiddling about with his stuff you know, I kept thinking to myself ‘For God’s sake get the bloody bombs’ [laughs] but he. I went to Berlin again and then 19th of April it was, I was, we were going to Leipzig and we got shot down and the, we were, we couldn’t get the rear door open to go through you know, and the mid-upper gunner and the rear gunner used to go out through the rear door and we couldn’t get it open. So, he rang the pilot up and he said we were on fire like. And he said ‘I’ll hold it as long as I can’ so he shot up to front and I went out and he was still there and he went like that. And I went out and I landed right on the side of a lake, and I saw in the middle of the lake there was a great bang and a crash and what have you and obviously the aircraft had gone right into the lake and the pilot when he bailed out, this lake was frozen over. Well it was, I landed fortunately on the edge of the lake and so I was able to get my stuff off, but he landed right in the middle of the lake and he went under where the ice was broken and he drowned. And they told us next morning, they said ‘Your pilot was drowned, he couldn’t get back out of the aircraft’. He was a marvellous lad you know? It made me sick to think, but that’s how it ended, and he um –
AM: Did the rest of you manage to bail out OK though?
JH: Yeah, all of us, all of us got out. And I don’t know what happened to them. I was taken the next day, there was about six of us. It was a German air RAF, German bomber station which we’d landed near and they came and took us and shoved us in the cells. And then the next morning, there was six of us, and they put us in a {unclear} and they said ‘We’re taking you to Berlin ‘cause you’ll have to go from Berlin to Frankfurt to Dulag Luft to the interrogation centre’.
AM: OK.
JH: And he said ‘When you get into Berlin keep your heads down’ he said ‘Because it’s in a hell of a state’ and he said ‘You’re the ones that have done it’ and you know we actually saw one poor RAF bloke hanging from a bloody lamp standard. The Germans had got him you know? I suppose you could understand it.
AM: The civilians had got him then and hung him?
JH: Yeah, he was hanging, swinging in the breeze, I mean Berlin was in a hell of a state. It was just, I saw London, but London was nothing compared with Berlin. It was absolutely flattened, I mean we’d been bombing it every night for about seven or eight nights, with four thousand-pound clusters and all the rest of it. So, we were taken to Frankfurt and we were interrogated there and –
AM: What was that like being interrogated?
JH: Well it wasn’t too bad really because we had a, he was quite a civvy bloke he was. He said, he asked us what aircraft we flew. We said ‘You’ll know won’t you?’ And he did of course. He said ‘Well of course we do, you were in a Lancaster weren’t you?’ I said ‘Yes’ and he said it crashed into {unclear}, I said ‘Yes’. And he said ‘Well,’ he said ‘I don’t think there’s a right lot that you can tell us that we don’t know’ and he said ‘Right you’ll be taken, and we were taken by. [sighs] What were we in? Railway truck, and we were taken up to Konigsberg, right on the north coast, Stalag Luft 6.
AM: Right.
JH: And we were there, we were taken there, and then from there we were taken down to Turan in Poland and then from there we were taken across to oh, place in Germany, not while some three or four miles from Belsen it was, because we were frightened to bloody death when we found out.
AM: I’ll bet.
JH: I forget the name of the airfield. Fallingbostel I think it was and from there one morning they came in and they said ‘Right whatever you can get and carry, you’re going, moving’. And we were marched out and we marched northwards towards the, you know back, I thought we were going back to the bloody place we’d been before. Anyhow.
AM: Did you know why they wanted you to start marching?
JH: No they didn’t tell you, they just, but obviously we found out after later that the Americans and the British were coming and they weren’t far away from there. Anyhow we got about half way along there and we, there quite a few hundred of us with an odd German, a guard, and we’re marching on the edge of this wood and four Typhoons, you know British Typhoons came down circled and I thought ‘Those buggers are going to come at us’. They turned around, the first one came in and he opened up on us with bloody cannons. And they killed, I think it was eighty, eighty, I think eighty of us were killed with that. And I, my best pal was killed as well and I had a job. We’d been pals a long time and he came from Leeds and I had the bloody awful job of going to see his wife.
AM: Afterwards?
JH: Afterwards, and telling her what had happened you know?
AM: What did you think when the Typhoon came over then, why did you think it was, it was shooting?
JH: Because there were four of ‘em and they were going past and obviously they circled and wouldn’t land. The leader came down and he had a right good look at us and it was obvious that they were going to have a go at us. You know they thought we must be Germans, I don’t know why. And it’s funny, after the war I ran into, well I joined the Aircrew Association and one of these pilots was in it. I got talking to him and I said ‘Why on earth did you shoot us?’ He said well ‘They were Germans’. I said ‘Aye but there was only an odd German here and there’. I said ‘It was obvious to anybody that we were –’ and they came and the first one came in with his cannons and I dived in a muddy ditch [laughs] and he, the second one came, and then I found out afterwards a brave soul at the back of the column had got out and started waving a white sheet. So, they stopped and obviously the bloke came and had a look at us and went like that and off they went.
AM: Waggled his wings and went?
JH: I think you’ll find sixty or eighty of us were killed.
AM: It was quite a lot, yeah.
JH: As I say because I had to go to see, I’d been with him all the time.
AM: Yeah.
JH: So she ought to know.
AM: After that had happened what did you all do, did you all have to just carry on marching?
JH: No. We were on a farm and suddenly in the morning we woke up and all the bloody Germans had gone. And there was the, forget which unit it was, German, English unit, I think it was the Wiltshire Regiment or something were there and they said ‘Well look we’ve a German unit surrendering here any moment now, they’ll have a staff car’. So, he says ‘Can any of you drive? My mate says ‘Yes I can’ and there was four, he says ‘Right you four’ he says ‘Kick the bloody German out of the car,’ he says you know ‘he’ll be there with his –’. It was a staff car. He said ‘If there’s any trouble’ he said ‘Shoot the buggers’ [laughs].
AM: Did you have anything to shoot them with?
JH: [Laughs] They would have given us one. [laughs] We got this staff car, lovely staff car and we got a white sheet from the farm and put it over the bonnet and put a red cross over it. And they gave us enough petrol and food {gave us all the wine?] to get us into Northern France and off we went, and there was a camp there. And they came one morning and said ‘Right twenty of you’ so I said ‘What’s up?’ They said ‘The British aircraft are coming in and they’re going to take you home’ you know? And I went onto the airfield and I nearly fell over. I saw the registration number which was ZN, which was 106 Squadron, which was my squadron. And they were from Metheringham, and so I said to them, I said ‘You’re from Metheringham aren’t you?’ and they said ‘Yeah how do you know?’ ‘Because I used to be there’. And they said ‘Hang on’ and they got, I think it was twenty they took each aircraft, and they got ‘em in and they took me on the lads upstairs into where the pilot and that was, and they said ‘He used to be one of us’. So, I was sat on the thing there and it was a VE day. I’ll always remember it because I was listening to Churchill doing his speech, sat in my little chair. And we landed at, on the south coast. Forget the name of the place now, I forget the name, on the south coast. And the WAAF’s came and took us two at a time, and they took us into the delousing centre, [laughs] got us deloused. And then they took us to this RAF place where we were issued with new uniforms and everything. And I had shrapnel in this left big toe and I’d had it all the time since I was shot down and when we got tidied up, they took us up to this RAF place near Birmingham somewhere, don’t ask me where it was. The Sister there, I said ‘I’ll have to go and you know report with this’ I said, you know it were really bad. So, my mates were all dressed and I lost them again ‘cause they were off and I had to go into hospital. And the Sister said ‘Well’ she said ‘It’s a bit of a mess is this, you’ll be a few days’ she said. She got chatting to me, she said ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ I said ‘Well I had, I said ‘I hope I still have’. She said ‘Do you have a telephone number for her?’ I said ‘Yes, she works at the, in Leeds’. It was National Savings, Leeds. So, she gave me half a crown, she said ‘There’s a telephone there go and give her a ring’. And I rang her and I said ‘Can I speak to Miss Joan Prince please’ and they said ‘Yes’. And she came on and she said ‘Hello’. I said ‘It’s John’ she said ‘John who?’ I said ‘How do you mean?’ she said ‘John where are you?’ I said ‘I’m in hospital’ I said ‘It’s nowt serious’ but I said ‘Will you let me Mother and Father know?’ ‘cause she knew their telephone number and the {unclear] wanted to know. She said ‘Yeah I’ll let them know’ and then I was there until they said ‘Right you can go’ you know? And they put me on a train from Birmingham to Leeds. When I got to Leeds about seven o’clock at night I went into the station where there was a, what did they call them?
AM: A café?
JH: No. Records things you know? Military police.
AM: Oh yeah, right.
JH: And I walked in and said ‘I suppose it’s too bloody late to catch the bus or train to Collingham or Wetherby?’ And they said ‘Yeah, you’re right there lad’ he said ‘what are you?’ So I said ‘I’ve been a prisoner of war, I’m just coming back’. ‘Oh’ he said ‘I do wish they’d ruddy well tell us’ he said ‘We have people who will come and pick you up’ and he rang round and he said ‘Right’ he said ‘What did you say your name was?’ I said ‘Harrison’ , ‘Oh, this man I’m talking to knows your father, [laughs] so he says he’ll come and pick you up’. And he came to Leeds City station, picked me up and took me back to Collingham. Me Mother came running down steps, nearly fell over ‘em, ‘cause you know I’d been a prisoner two and a half years, and that was the end of it.
AM: And that was that?
JH: Yeah.
AM: Did you marry Joan?
JH: Pardon?
AM: Did you marry her? There she is.
JH: There she is.
AM: Lovely.
JH: She was a twin and her twin brother was on Bomber Command the same time as I was and he was shot down off the Dutch coast about six weeks before I was. And Joan’s Mother got a letter from the squadron about, and she recognised the Typhoon’s letters straight away you know? And she kept it for three or four days before she let Joan have it just to say that you know, I had been shot down.
AM: That you were a prisoner?
JH: So that was it.
AM: That was that. What did you do after the war John?
JH: I became a policeman [laughs].
AM: Oh right, you didn’t go back to the Civil Service then?
JH: No, no, no. I was kicking my heels doing nothing and I saw this advert for Police and I went and I got, joined Yorkshire, West Riding Police Force, and did thirty years in that.
AM: Thirty years?
JH: And I have a medal from them, from the, are you in a hurry?
AM: No you can show me in a minute. I’m going to switch this off now though, that was excellent thank you.
JH: Yeah. The camps made their own radio and they used to, a bloke used to come around every night or whatever it was and he used to read out what had happened in the world that day. If the Germans had ever found it we would have bloody been shot, but they didn’t find it.
AM: So you even knew about Belsen, what was happening?
JH: Oh aye, we got all the news. They used to come around, he used to come, I don’t know, they had a radio. Don’t ask me how it was or anything ‘cause they wouldn’t have told you but they had a radio, they’d made it themselves. And they used to listen to BBC and they used to take all the news down and then they used to go around various camps and that you know? And they used to come in and a bloke used to stand outside the door to make sure if there were any Jerries about, and then he used to read us the news so we knew what was going off. Marvellous organisation [laughs].
AM: What else did you do in the prisoner of war camps, did you do the shows and stuff like that?
JH: Oh aye, there was shows. I didn’t get involved in any of them, I weren’t good enough, I weren’t good enough to be girl. [laughs].
AM: What did you actually do then to occupy your time?
JH: Well I actually did a course on education.
AM: Oh right.
JH: You know like a GCE thing? And that was, you know, you got by.
AM: What about all the people building tunnels and stuff?
JH: Oh yeah we had them. You see they, there was one tunnel built from our camp and it, eventually they got, they caught them. And then the bloody Gestapo, there was about fifty of them, and they brought them into this wood at the side, just at the side of the camp, and they shot ‘em. Just mowed them down like that.
AM: Which camp was that John?
JH: That was Stalag Luft 6 we were in I think at the time.
AM: 6?
JH: No.
AM: Or 3?
JH: Anyhow, no we weren’t three. I forget, we’d been in Poland, they’d brought us back in ruddy trucks. It was right near Belsen it was and Stalag? I don’t know.
Unknown: You were in Stalag Luft 6. Yeah.
JH: 6? Yeah, Stalag Luft 6.
GR: It was the prisoners from Belsen that were machined gunned.
AM: Right.
JH: You didn’t argue with them ‘cause they’d shoot you as soon as look at you.
Unknown: Yeah.
JH: At back end of war.
GR: And by that time during 1944 it was getting so bad and they were treating you as terror fliers and this, that and the other. Even the German civilians would kill.
AM: Yeah, well like the man.
JH: Let’s face it I’ve been to Berlin two or three times since the war. My son went into the RAF, and he was in RAF Intelligence, and he spoke about five languages, still does I suppose. And he was based in Berlin and he used to go into this big tower, and whatever he took into that tower he left. He couldn’t bring anything out with him at all and they used to listen into bloody Germans and Russians and God know what. He’d come back to this country to take another language and his wife had gone with a friend to do some shopping, I forget where it was now, and a lorry turned the wrong way on a corner and it hit the car. I never thought [unclear] his wife would live, she was in a right state. Anyhow she did live and she still walks with a limp and that.
AM: Right.
JH: But that killed him going back to Berlin you know?
AM: Is that the son who lives in Lincoln?
JH: Yeah, he lives at –
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John Harrison
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-09
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHarrisonJ150809
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
John Harrison grew up in Yorkshire and worked in the Civil Service before joining the Royal Air Force at 18. After training, he flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham before being shot down over Leipzig and becoming a prisoner of war. Following a short period of hospitalisation, he married his wartime sweetheart Joan. After the war he served with the Yorkshire police.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dawn Studd
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Lithuania
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Leipzig
Lithuania--Šilutė
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:35:40 audio recording
106 Squadron
1660 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bale out
bombing
Dulag Luft
fear
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
lynching
Operation Exodus (1945)
prisoner of war
RAF Dalcross
RAF Metheringham
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
shot down
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
training
Typhoon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/599/8868/PLoganF1501.1.jpg
9358dca00f3455544c85050d9b894ecf
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/599/8868/ALoganF150827.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Logan, Fred
F Logan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Logan, F
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Fred Logan (1920, 125692 Royal Air Force) and one photograph. He joined the Royal Air Force in December 1940 and trained as an engine fitter. He served at RAF Waterbeach on 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit with Stirlings. Subsequently he served at RAF Stradishall and RAF North Luffenham before qualifying as an aeronautical inspector and being posted to Egypt.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Fred Logan and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay so this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is me, Annie Moodie, and the interviewee is Fred Logan. The interview is taking place at Fred’s home in Wath-on-Dearne, and it’s 27th August 2015. So what I’m going to ask you first Fred if that’s all right is just to tell me a little bit about where you were born, and, and your family, what your parents did, brothers and sisters things like that, where you went to school. So where were you born first of all?
FL: Where I was born, I was born in Firth Road, at, is it in Brampton or Worsbrough?
Other: Brampton
FL: Brampton, yes, Firth Road, yeah, and when I was six months old we moved into a brand new council house at the top of Oak Road in Wath-on-Dearne, it was the second house from the top and beyond that was the racecourse, Swinton Racecourse, yes.
AM: What did your parents do, what did your mum and dad do?
FL: Ah, well me mum was a housewife obviously, but me father he, he worked down the Wath Main Colliery, he was a collier down Wath Main yeah. He served during, he served during the First World War as a captain in the 6th Battalion York Lancaster Regiment, yes.
AM: Crickey. Did you have any brothers and sisters?
FL: Yes, yes I had, er –
Other: Two brothers.
FL: Three brothers and one sister, one of me brothers died when he was nine months old, that was Eric. One died brothers died when he was sixteen years of age, he had appendicitis and peritonitis, he was just sixteen. Me brother died a few years ago he was the eldest in the family, and I had one sister that was all and she died a year ago.
AM: Right.
FL: Yes.
AM: Where did you go to school Fred?
FL: Wath Victoria School, and I am very, very proud to tell you that when I left the school at the age of fourteen, I was the top boy in the top class, so well I would say I was top of the school,.
AM: You were.
FL: Yeah I left school at fourteen and I went to work down at Manvers Main Colliery then, I got a job down there and during the, up to being twenty, almost twenty I was studying engineering at Rotherham Technical College, got, got quite a few certificates of course. And when the war broke out in December 4th, which was mum’s birthday, I joined the Royal Air Force.
AM: Why did you join the Air Force as opposed to the Navy or the Army?
FL: Well I was twenty years of age, and I thought well if I don’t join the Air Force, well at my age I shall be called up and they’ll put me where I don’t want to be it’s either in the Army or the Navy, so I’m going where I wanted to go. And I saw my manager, Mr. Carr, he was a lovely person and I explained it, I said, ‘I’d like to go Mr. Carr with your permission.’ Because I would have been in a reserved occupation. He said, ‘You can go with my blessings.’ He said, ‘Rest assured if you go through the war your jobs open for you when you get back.’ And on the strength of that I joined the Royal Air Force.
AM: Where did you go to join up?
FL: Sheffield, and they asked me what I wanted to be and I told them and I said I’ve got me engineering certificates. They said, ‘Well we’ll give you a little, a few questions about engines.’ You know, ‘What’s this and what’s that?’ It was just like water off a duck’s back to me I knew everything. They said, ‘Well if you want to go in, instead of doing a flight mechanics course and then going back, we’ll accept you as a direct entry fitter.’ Which they did, and I went to, I went to a place called Hednesford, that was a training school there, there was two wings for airman, one wing for WAAFs, and the other wing was for the Fleet Air Arm, and I went there, and then from there I was posted to 7 Squadron.
AM: Tell me a bit more about Hednesford, what did you do there?
FL: It was a training school, and they taught you all, well you taught you all about engines every bit, they took an engine to pieces and they explained every part of every one, and funnily enough I’ve still got me books in there yeah.
AM: Yeah. Was it different, well it must have been different then the engines you’d been working on at the colliery?
FL: Oh yes, yes, well the ones at the colliery were all in line engines, the one’s I was introduced to were radio engines, and they weren’t only what they call poppet valve engines they were sleeve valve engines, Bristol Hercules Sleeve Valve Engines.
AM: You’ll have to tell me a bit more about that, what’s that mean?
FL: It’s very, very technical.
AM: Ooh.
FL: To explain the difference between a poppet valve engine and a sleeve valve.
AM: But they’re different?
FL: Yeah, they are different in a poppet valve engine you have valves like a car with springs and everything the valves open, but in the sleeve valve engine you have a sleeve that, that you works like that.
AM: Yeah.
FL: And there’s, I don’t know how to explain this, pieces cut out you get so far that lines up with the inlet side of it and lets special air come in then as it goes further up it closes and then when it’s fired and it comes back down it lines up with the other one and the exhaust goes like that there, so there’s no valves there’s just what you call a junk head.
AM: Did you find it easy to change from the one to learning about the other?
FL: No problems at all, no problems. And later on I went down to, they sent me down to Bristol and they had a training school there and they taught you about the different radio engines that they manufactured, they taught you all about those, and at the end of a fortnight you had to sit an exam which I did and of course it was no problem.
AM: Easy peasy.
FL: No problem, I got ninety-three per cent. [laughs]
AM: Oh what about the other seven?
FL: Oh I don’t know.
Other: But you don’t you remember —
FL: I missed a few dots and commas there I think.
AM: Ah.
FL: Yeah, but it was, it was at Filton and this place wherever we went, this school it had been a blind school all blind people went there, and when the war broke out it was right next to Filton where they were manufacturing the aircraft, so that if they’d have tried to bomb that place they would have bombed the blind school so they moved all the blind people out and then they made it a training school for, for Air Force engineers.
AM: Right. So how long were you there for’ish?
FL: I think the course itself was I don’t whether it was two or three weeks something like that, yeah.
AM: What sort of people were on the course with you, what had?
FL: They were nearly all fitters from, from different squadrons.
AM: Right.
FL: I enjoyed it there, enjoyed it there yeah, I did.
AM: And then where next after that?
FL: I, what from Wokington, 7 Squadron, that was at just outside Cambridge, and at the other side of Cambridge there’s a place called Waterbeach, it’s on the main road between Cambridge and Ely.
AM: Yes.
FL: And they were flying Stirlings from there with 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit and I was posted there on Stirlings.
AM: Right, so that was 7 Squadron?
FL: Yeah.
AM: Right okay.
FL: They were Stirlings at the time.
AM: Yeah.
FL: Then I went on to Stirlings at Waterbeach.
AM: How long were you at 7 Squadron for?
FL: I can’t remember that love its —
AM: Oh don’t worry.
FL: No times and days.
AM: [laughs].
FL: I almost forgot what they called it. [laughs]
AM: Give over.
FL: And from Waterbeach of course I was on Stirlings for a long, long time.
AM: What was it like at the Heavy Conversion Unit?
FL: What it was, I mean they were massive aircraft these you know, and they were training pilots there, they were bringing them off, bringing them off twin engine aircraft and training them on four engines, which was Stirlings.
AM: Did they come as a crew at that point?
FL: No they came as individuals.
AM: So they were still individuals at that point.
FL: The pilots yeah. It was basically training pilots and us engineers as well, but the main thing was training pilots.
AM: And what was your role in, in all this?
FL: What was what?
AM: What was your role in all this, what were you doing?
FL: I was engines, all just engines alone, yeah.
AM: That’s me phone. Keeping ‘em all going?
FL: Yeah. Used to er, yeah of course the engines were, even in, even in when they were on duty they’ve got to be inspected, have a daily inspection and signed for to say that you’d inspected every part of that engine before it goes, they have a daily inspection, then they had then I think it was forty hours they took it into the hangar and did the inspection, at eighty hours it went in and we did a forty and a few more, and then until one-sixty we did a major operation then you know, took out everything to pieces nearly.
AM: How many of you were there? I mean —
FL: I can’t tell you that.
AM: No, no.
FL: I can’t tell you that really.
AM: I’m just trying to get a picture in my mind of what it was like, ‘cos you’re all there on the Heavy Conversion Unit, you’re doing your job, you’ve got all these pilots coming in —
FL: They were coming in off Welling, Wimpeys we called them, off Wellingtons.
AM: Off the single —
FL: Things like that and being trained, because they were massive aircraft these. They were the only aircraft with electrically operated undercarriage, all the rest were hydraulics every other aircraft hydraulics, but not them and they had sleeve valve engines in [laughs] Bristol, Bristol Engines, sleeve valves.
AM: What was it like on the Heavy Conversion Unit then in terms of, were the ground crew separate from the pilots?
FL: Oh yes, yes, yes. There was, they had their flight mechanics, they had dispersals, special dispersal for each aircraft, and they had a ground crew to look after them. You know like an electrician, an air frame fitter, an engine fitter, they had, they had a full crew there for every one of them the different ones, yeah.
AM: And how long would the pilots spend on them before they converted?
FL: Well the pilots were, the pilots were brought, well I don’t know that I truly don’t know. But they were coming off Wellingtons and aircraft like that out of here, they’re big clumsy aircraft these you know.
AM: That’s a Stirling.
FL: Yeah. If they, if they had a full bomb load they’d twenty-eight bombs on, three, three between the inboard motor and the fuselage on each side, and twenty-two in the bomb bay.
AM: And they had to learn to manoeuvre all that lot?
FL: They had seven fuel tanks in each wing, terrific in’t it.
AM: It’s well, yeah I can’t, I can’t even begin —
FL: You can’t visualise it can you?
AM: No, no, not now.
FL: Oh they were massive.
AM: Did you like ‘em you sound as if —
FL: I’ve always, I’ve always loved working on engines though, right from being a little lad, used to mess about with motorbike engines.
Other: You see them standing underneath.
AM: Oh yeah I’ve seen all the pictures. What was it actually like, what was life like there? There’s a question for you [laughs].
FL: First of all it depended on whether you were suited to the Air Force or not, I was I wanted to be in and I enjoyed the job I were doing. But there were lots of people doing jobs that they didn’t enjoy doing, and of course for them it was a matter of wait till the end and let’s get out quick. But I loved every moment of my service in there, because I was doing what I wanted to do, I wanted to work on engines, I’ve always loved engines.
AM: Did you ever get to go up in one of the Stirlings?
FL: Oh yes, if we fitted a new engine you just said, ‘Any chance.’ ‘Yes, yes.’ And what they used to do test it, if we fitted a new engine in they used to stop it in mid-air and then start it up again [laughs]. I want, I want enamoured with that part of it though I can assure you.
AM: No, I can imagine.
FL: But, oh I loved, I loved every moment of my service career, only thing of course was people getting killed, if they hadn’t of been I would have been highly delighted yeah.
AM: Did you, because you were at the Heavy Conversion Unit, so that there were people that were converting and then going off doing what they did.
FL: Yes, yes. Well they were coming and training on four engine aircraft which was the only ones, we didn’t have Lancasters then or Halifaxes they came in a bit later, and then they carried on, on four engine aircraft, yeah.
AM: How long were you there for? ‘Cos you got there in what 1940-41.
FL: I joined the Air Force on 4th December 1940.
AM: ‘40
FL: And I came out was it five and a half years later, I think I did, I think I came out in the middle of ’46, I’ve got me, I’ve got me book there.
AM: Oh I’ll have a look in a minute. So, so you were on the Heavy Conversion Unit what did you do after that?
FL: ER, from Waterbeach we went down to Stradishall with Stirlings, and then up to North Luffenham, and when I got up to North Luffenham I applied to go in as an aeronautical inspector, that was a very responsible job, and I was granted and I went down to Bristol, and I sat all my exams there for an aeronautical inspector and, and I passed them easily, and the next thing I knew, it was very late, very, very late on in the war then because I do all this service with Stirlings, but I was posted to Egypt. I, I was posted to a place called Tora El-Asmant, that was the name of the place and we were working in caves. Yes, apparently, it was the dry, it was an old, the River Nile changes its course periodically and this was the waddy [?] where it was originally. So obviously if the water level was twenty thirty foot, the caves would have been there, but when there was no water in they were thirty foot up there.
AM: So how did you get up to them?
FL: They built a road from the domestic site up to it and then levelled it off, we worked in there overhauling engines and I went in there obviously as an inspector.
AM: What was, I’m just trying to think what was happening in Egypt at the time, because Rommel had been turfed out of —
FL: Most of it was after the war, but we were doing all sorts of engines even American engines.
AM: How big were these caves?
FL: Massive, massive, you know, we filled them with workshops. There was a photography, the whole of the photography section for the Middle East was worked from through those caves.
AM: Crickey.
FL: Yeah, oh I, you see the beauty of it was the heat of the day you could work all day in the caves and you were quite cool and comfortable, and as I served the rest of my time as an inspector.
AM: So what did that involve?
FL: Every time they do a job you’ve got to inspect it and sign for it you know, if they putting a piston into an engine you’ve got to examine the piston, examine the rings, take the proper measurements and everything, and then stamp it, you had sheets and it said examine one piston, examine number two piston, and my letter was ZUW, and I had a stamp and I just used to put ZUW, now if that broke down in service who was ZUW? Right, shoot him. [laughs].
AM: No not quite, on a charge.
FL: Yes.
AM: So what were they actually working on in the caves, actual on engines?
FL: All engines, my department was all engines. They used to bring them in and strip them down and thoroughly clean every piece, and then they went on the benches and the inspectors inspected every piece separately, and then when it had all been inspected they started the assembly again and everything that we assembled was inspected as it was assembled and signed for until the complete engine was built up. And we used to send them, I don’t know where they went to, but we used to send them where they used to put them on test beds and test them, and if they passed their test they went back into service.
AM: Right.
FL: I loved it.
AM: I’m trying to think what else? What did you do after that? Were you demobbed, at what point were you demobbed?
FL: I was demobbed, ooh I was left out in Egypt a month after the war finished.
AM: How long were you in Egypt altogether?
FL: I don’t know, I can’t recollect, it was very, very late on in the war, when I went there, but I wasn’t enamoured with Egypt.
AM: I don’t know if I dare ask why? [laughs] Hot? Dirty?
FL: Yeah it was hot, but we used to go on parade at seven o’clock in the morning and it were cold and of course we’d got long stockings on and shorts and shirts like this and whilst we were on parade —
AM: He’s shivering by the way.
FL: Whilst we were on the parade the sun used to come up, and before you went up the, up to the caves for working you were sweating.
AM: What were the digs like?
FL: We were under canvas, yeah just that’s all there were, the big tents, the bigger ones you could get about six in.
AM: What about meals and things like that was all that under canvas as well?
FL: We had a canteen, we had a cookhouse, and the canteen and the NAAFI, and we even had The Red Shield Club, Salvation Army, yeah.
AM: Right.
FL: Was an out of the way place for the Salvation Army.
Other: They were working there weren’t there.
AM: Yeah.
FL: Yeah.
AM: So what did you do after the war then?
FL: I came back and I went, I went back to work down there, and they had a fleet of small diesel driven locos, and they had some big dump trucks and things like that, and I was put in charge for all the repairs for the dump trucks and the little locos and the big locos and everything that had got either diesel or petrol in was mine. And I eventually got to be about the mobile plant engineer, I was the top man and I took over locos, I had ten locos, five of them were diesel, Rolls Royce driven diesels and the rest were odd jobs, bulldozers, excavators, dump trucks, er, anything with diesel or petrol in was mine and I loved it. [laughs]
AM: You sound like you’ve had a great life?
FL: I’ve had a lovely life, nobody could ever have had a more satisfying life. And what’s been the most satisfying life about it I married the right lady.
AM: I was going to say where did you meet your wife?
FL: Sixty-three years we’ve been married.
Other: Yeah.
FL: And we are as happy today as we were then, I still do as I’m told. [laughs]
AM: That’s the key to it.
FL: The doctor asked me that you know, because she’s spent her whole life doing charity work. She’s got a gold, a diamond pin for presented, well it’s on there down there on that photograph, presented a diamond pin for all her charity work sixty odd years.
AM: I’ll have a look in a minute.
FL: And the doctor was here one day and she was talking to the doctor and he said to me, ‘Now then Fred whilst she’s been doing all this charity work?’ He said, ‘How have you coped, you know, how have you got on?’ I said, ‘Well the truth is doctor, we had an understanding when we got married.’ I said, ‘There’s absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do for my wife.’ And I said, ‘There’s nothing that she wouldn’t do for me, and that’s how we’ve got through our married life doing nothing for each other.’ [laughs]
AM: On that note I’m going to switch the tape off.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Fred Logan
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-27
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALoganF150827
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.
Format
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00:22:42 audio recording
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
Sally Coulter
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--Cambridgeshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
Description
An account of the resource
Fred joined the Royal Air Force in Sheffield on 4th December 1940 and was accepted as a direct entry fitter. He went to the training school in Hednesford, where he was taught about engines, and was then posted on Stirlings to 7 Squadron. From RAF Oakington, he went to RAF Waterbeach where they flew Stirlings with the 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit. Fred’s role was on the engines which were subject to a series of inspections. He loved his work on engines. Fred then went to RAF Stradishall, followed by RAF North Luffenham. He applied to be an aeronautical inspector and passed his examinations at RAF Filton. Fred was posted to Tura-el-Asmant in Egypt where he inspected many engines. He describes the inspection work, which took place in the caves, and the camp.
After the war, Fred returned to the colliery, eventually becoming mobile plant engineer.
1651 HCU
7 Squadron
fitter engine
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
RAF Filton
RAF Hednesford
RAF Waterbeach
Stirling
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/609/8878/AMcNamara150722.1.mp3
d96debe0280ffed1ce08c4e80939bcf2
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
McNamara, Len
L McNamara
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McNamara, L
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Len McNamara (1924 - 2020, 1814123, 185344 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 10 and 75 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-22
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok,so, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody, and the interviewee is Len McNamara. And the interview is taking place at Len McNamara's home, in Southport, on the twenty second of July two thousand and fifteen. So Len, if you would just tell me a little bit about your childhood, background, and then how you came to join the RAF.
LM: I was born in Bristol in nineteen twenty four. My father was a chef, or cook as they called them in those days, and he worked at Fishponds, Bristol Mental Hospital, which is at Fishponds, on a very huge estate there, and my mother was a mental nurse. I was the eldest of three boys, I had a normal Elementary School education, went to night school, and when I was, left school at fourteen I was an apprentice plumber. Joined, as most lads I was associated with, joined the Air Training Corps, which had a very strong following in Bristol, and after going through, suffering, seeing the bombing of my home town, Bristol, I decided, if I could, I would like to join the Air Force, and be a member of the bomber squadrons. In December nineteen forty three I volunteered for air crew, and I went down to Euston House in London on a three day selection board, and was selected for air crew, and was told I would be called up later. Um, in March nineteen forty three, on the twenty first, the day I was exactly eighteen and a half years old, I reported to Lords Cricket Ground ACR-
AM: (interrupting) Nineteen forty four.
LM: Nineteen forty three.
AM: Forty three or forty four?
LM: Forty three.
AM: Ok.
LM: Um, after spending about three weeks in London, Earls Court Road, being kitted out and doing elementary field programmes, I went up to Bridlington to Air Gunners ITW. The course up there lasted approximately six weeks, and from there I went down to (pause) um, Elementary Gunnery School which was at Bridgenorth. Actually, did nothing at all there, cos they were just setting it all up and it was just hangers. From there I went to number one ATS at Pembrey, in Wales, did my gunnery course, and we were flying on, doing the gunnery on Blenheims, with Lysanders towing the drogues.
AM: So you, you were shooting at drogues.
LM: Yes, shooting at drogues. I passed out and was presented with merit honours in August of forty three, and from there I went to 10 OTU at Abingdon. At Abingdon it was crewed up, the skipper being Pete Catterswife, who was a Canyan, navigator was a-, from Taunton, and the wireless operator air gunner was an Australian, Bob Wright, and I can't think of anybody else who was crew at that time.
AM: How did you get together? Who approached who?
LM: We just all went into just a big room, and all I remember is being introduced to the crew. I don't know whether it was the navigator, or what, because (unclear), and he was West country, from Taunton. It could have been that. Anyhow, we crewed up there, that's right, navigator (pause), oh, and the bomb aimer, who was an ex Glasgow policeman, Bob McLuer. And I think we spent about two to three weeks at Abingdon, flying on Whitleys, and once the crew, skipper was solo on the Whitleys, we then went out to the satellite airfield at Stanton air, air, Stanton Harcourt. On completion of the OTU we then went up to Marston Moor, and did our conversion on to Halifax. Then they were flying Haliax ll's, which weren't all that clever, but nevertheless, the Halifax was a very well built aircraft, and more crew comfort than some of the others. On completion of the course at Marston Moor, we then went to Driffield on an escape and evasion course. I think it was about two weeks there, doing all sorts of things, getting over barbed wire, crawling through ditches, you name it, and we finished up with an escape and evasion exercise where we were dropped off in pairs on the North Yorkshire Moors, and then had to find our way back to Driffield. One, two of the Australians had a good experience, they got as far as (pause) oh, seaside town. Scarborough.
AM: Scarborough.
LM: And they found an army vehicle which was unattended, and drove back in that. I think the outcome was that it was some army Major's transport. Anyhow, they did that. And we, some of us got to Norton. We jumped on the train there, and when it got, not to Driffield station, to one of the minor stations before, we got out the wrong side and back in to Driffield without being stopped or caught. Um, after doing this escape and evasion, we were posted to the Shiny Ten Squadron in January nineteen forty four at Melbourne, just outside York. There were several crews went there, and we did two mine laying operations from Melbourne. On one of them the aircraft was shot up a bit by ack-ack, but the only comment was 'several holes in the aircraft, no member of crew hurt' (chuckles). From there, one five eight at Lissett were converting to the Halifax lll's, and also they'd lost one flight, C Flight, which went to Leconfield to form another squadron. So there were four of us, new crews of us at Shiny Ten who were then posted to Lissett. And we went there, and were on B Flight. Lissett was a very happy station. Everybody was very sociable, and a good atmosphere all round. While there I was having sinus problems, so I went up to the hospital at North Allerton, and had to go and have a minor sinus operation. As a result of that I was limited to flying below ten thousand feet. At that time I, with my own crew, had completed seven ops, and because of my sinus problems I was grounded from flying on operations, so they had a spare gunner in my place. On one of those trips to Tournai on (unclear) they got shot down. Three of the crew bailed out, the navigator and the flight engineer became prisoners of war. The rear gunner who had taken my place as a spare, he bailed out, but his chute failed to open, and he was found in a lady's, in France, in a lady's back garden, and his chute pack with him unopened. So it was quite a shock for the lady concerned. I have visited where the crew crashed, and also where everybody was found. I went with my son, er two of my sons and a grandson, and we found the local mayor was very cooperative, and showed us everything they could. The crew, the other ones who didn't survive, are buried in a small plot by the War Graves Commission in Meharicourt, and I have made a few visits there. There are quite a few members of 158 buried there, also the famous air gunner VC, Jan Mynarwski is buried there. From then I spent the rest of my time at Lissett as a spare gunner. Fortunately I was in the position of, I did fly with some crews for quite a period. One was Ted Strange. His air gunner, rear gunner had appendicitis, so I flew with them on their last seven ops, and they were a very fine crew, and I got on very well. I then was crewed up with Sam Weller, B Flight commander. Trips with him were few and far between, but I did, I then was crewed up with another Australian crew, and I did their last six ops with them. I did a couple of odd spare trips, and, but very quiet time really. I did fly with one crew, Canadian crew, which I wasn't happy with, and when I got back I said to the (unclear) that I didn't wish to fly with them any more because there was too much talking, and not enough attention paid to the job in hand. He assured me I wouldn't fly with them any more, and I didn't, and tragically, they did lose their lives on an operation not long after. In the October of, correction, in September of forty four I was then crewed up with a Canadian crew, and I flew with them for my last trips, my remaining trips of (unclear). I did, I think it was five or six with them, and then one day we came back form a daylight raid on Cologne, on thirtieth October, that was, and the Wing Commander, Wing Commander Dobson, came out to meet me, and said, 'congratulations, you've finished your tour now, and your commission is through'. The crew only had about three more ops to do to finish their tour, and I said, 'oh, I'll stay with you if you want', and the Wing Commander said, 'you've had enough, done enough. You've had nine months continuous operational flying, you've done your share, you're going to have a rest'.
AM: So that was that.
LM: From then I was posted to Langar, just outside Nottingham, as an instructor. Wasn't enjoying that very much , and a call went out for two second tour gunners, and Tony Dunster was an ex 4 Group gunner like myself, on Halifax's, we were posted, he volunteered, and we went down to Wolfarts Lodge to crew up, and we crewed up, the crew we crewed up with, the skipper was on his second tour, he was a New Zealander, and the rest of the crew, the wireless operator, the bomb aimer and the navigator, and flight engineer, had all been together on their first tour, flying Stirlings, as had the captain. And, I must admit, none of us were very enthusiastic about the Lancaster. Those of us on Halifax's said that the Lanc was a Woolworth's effort, and the Halifax was the Marks and Spencers, In all honesty, the Halifax was more favourable to the crews. It was easier to get around in, and easier to get out of in an emergency. Neither the Stirling boys, nor Tony and I liked the Lancasters at all. One incident we had with the Lancaster, was we were down at, way down in, er, Germany, I can't remember the target at the moment, this conversation, but it was way down, oh, Magdeberg, it was, and we were just doing the run in on the target, and we had an engine go up in flames. Nothing to do with any enemy action, it's just we had a glycol leak which caused a fire in the engine, and the engine couldn't be, it wouldn't feather, so we went all the way back to base with an engine, a prop just windmilling, and got back an hour after everybody else.
AM: Safely, though.
LM: Safely. One of the best jobs we ever did was the Manna Operations to Holland, dropping food. We loaded our crews ourselves, they had like a hammock in the bomb bay, and we loaded everything there, then we went over and dropped the food. And that was the most, the best thing we ever did.
AM: How many drops did you do on Operation Manna?
LM: Two.
AM: You did two.
LM: Yes
AM: How low were you flying?
LM: Oh, practically ground level. It was amazing because (pause)
AM: Could you actually see the people?
LM: Oh yes. As you were flying over there were people in their boats, and that, waving like mad to you, and some of them waving that enthusiastically they could tip over, but it was really fantastic to see it, and doing it.
AM: As a contrast to what you were doing before.
LM: Oh yes. Before, I mean before it was a question of destruction, but this question was saving lives. So, and (pause)
AM: Going back to the destruction, if you like, what, what, what did it actually feel like for you, there in the, as a, you were a rear gunner?
LM: Yeah, rear gunner. Well, actually it's amazing because being the rear gunner you never saw what you were going in to, you only saw it as you were coming out of it. And I was one of the gunners, there was loads of us, we never looked for trouble. Some, you had some people were gung-ho, drawing attention to themselves, but I was always taught, and others did, never draw attention to yourself. Just sit there quietly watching, and keeping your eyes open.
AM: Did you actually ever use the gun?
LM: Never.
AM: Never?
LM: No. I seen them, but you, just you sit there quietly, keeping an eye on what-
AM: But you could have done if you'd had to.
LM: Oh yeah.
AM: And what was it like in the suit, when you were all plugged in? Were you always warm, because it was really cold, wasn't it?
LM: Yes, but I really enjoyed it in the rear turret. You were in a world of your own there, you were your own companion. The only thing, it did get very cold, but then we had electric suits, and something we could never understand, ICW at Bridlington, you had to strip a Browning down, blindfolded. It's all laughable when you think of it, because in the turret it was minus forty, if you'd touched any metal you'd have frostbite, so why did we have to do all that?
AM: But you could, if you had to? With gloves on.
LM: Yes, if you had to. (laughs) But that was er-
AM: What, what do you think about the bombing now? You know, in retrospect.
LM: Well, it's more accurate, isn't it. I mean, you've got all the aids.
AM: No, sorry. I mean about when, when you were actually doing the bombing, dropping the bombs , what, what do you think about that now, in thinking about-
LM: I, I've still no regrets about it at all. Having lived and seen my own city destroyed, with no problems at all. And all I can say, it's like people are on about it all, what all the fuss and bother's about. There has been a book written since then, which I have. Written, I forget the name of the author, but he had, once the Communists had gone from Eastern Germany, and all the records came out, there was a lot going on there, all the equipment for submarines being manufactured there, it was a big staging post for the Eastern Front. There was loads of military there, and we were quite justified. I don't know what, all this outcry afterwards. It's easy to be wise after the event.
AM: And you got the DFC?
LM: Yeah, yeah.
AM: For the number of tours.
LM: Gary has got a letter that shows-
AM: Has he?
LM: Yeah. But there were, I mean, I had, I know I flew with numerous crews, but with the exception of the odd one or two, I was fortunate, I flew with very good, well experienced crews, and some of them had had an horrendous time. In fact, er, can we have just a (unclear).
AM: Yes, of course. (rustling noises)
LM: When Douggie Bancroft, Flying Officer Bancroft, who I did quite a few, they, they got badly shot up, and they landed at Hurn Airport, in, er, outside Bournemouth, and nobody ever understood how they managed to get the aircraft back there. In fact the instrument panel is in Canberra, in a museum in Australia, from that aircraft, and obviously the crew that survived, er two of the crew, they never found, never found their bodies. They reckon they must have fallen through the hole in the aircraft where it was badly burnt. And they all got immediate awards, DFMs and DFCs. They thoroughly deserved it. But they were a fantastic crew that I had the privilege to fly with for the remainder, the rest of their tour.
AM: Yes. So, I'm looking at all the different ones. So you had a Kenyan pilot, Canadian pilots, Australian pilots, New Zealand pilots, English pilot. You went through the lot.
LM: Yes, yes. I was lucky.
AM: Any difference? What were the differences of the nationalities? Other than the obvious ones about language.
LM: Yeah, there isn't no difference at all. They were all first class captains. Very happy crews, and, you can't explain the comradeship with your crew. You were closer than you were with your own brothers. I suppose the reason, you depended on each other for your lives. We had a good social life together, and that's it.
AM: Did you get down to Bridlington, from Lissett?
LM: Yeah, yeah. I've walked back from there many a time.
AM: You've walked? From Bridlington to Lissett?
LM: (laughs)
AM: How far's that?
LM: About eight miles. Eight, ten miles. Yep. Come back many a night in the crew bus, not on the seat, but on the floor (laughs).
AM: You enjoyed it, then?
LM: Oh yes. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
AM: And then, as, after that, you ended up with 75 squadron?
LM: Yeah.
AM: And then, I'm just looking at a sheet of paper here than Len has given me with all his pilots on. So, 75 New Zealand squadron, you were there 'til the end of the European war.
LM: Yes. Yes.
AM: So what was it like at the end, then? What was your last tour? Were they Operation Manna? Er, not tour, sorry, your last operation.
LM: I don't know.
AM: Because the Operation Manna ones would have been, May forty four?
LM: They were May time, weren't they. Because the war finished, I think it was in May. It was May, wasn't it?
AM: Yeah.
LM: I know because everything went mad on seven five squadron at Mepal, but (pause) that was fantastic, because when we come back off leave from seventy five New Zealand, all of us crew, we all used to come back, meet up in London, before coming back to Mepal, and have a night in London. But we used to go to Mepal village. Lovely, all the Kiwis getting to do their war dance in the bar. It was great.
AM: So what was it like at the end, then? What, how did it, for you, how did it end?
LM: It was just like a, really a bit of a let down. I thought we weren't treated very good. I know the New Zealanders were going to go out on, I forget what they call it, they were going to go out to India, and that. They went to Scampton, all the Kiwis, and all the English people, we were shipped up to Snaith, in Yorkshire, just to be selected to ground jobs, and I finished up at Ringway, on the parachute school, to initially, to be instructor. But I thought, 'no thank you'.
AM: No? You hadn't enjoyed it the first time round.
LM: So that was that.
AM: So what did you do.
LM: I can't, I'm trying to think, 'what did I do?' (Pause) Oh, yeah. I finished up, from there I went out to India, that's right, went out to Karachi, and we did nothing. Christmas, it was. Christmas of forty four, that's right. Arrived in Karachi, and there's four of us in a tent there, and we were just doing nothing. We used to go in to Kara-, it was Mauripur Airport. We used to go in to Karachi, and there was a club there, and that. We used to go in gharrys as they called them, the horse drawn taxi there, and we were told not to say anything as they went through some areas, let the driver sort I out, and that was that. But-
AM: How long were you there for? Was that forty four or forty five?
LM: That was forty four.
AM: Forty four. So that was before the Operation Manna, then?
LM: No, it was after everything.
AM: Oh, ok.
LM: Let's see. (pause) The war finished, I finished my tour and ops in October forty four, no, this was forty five, of course it was.
AM: So it was forty five.
LM: Forty five.
AM: I'm just trying to get my chronology right.
LM: No, forty five, it was. We went out to there, and then from there we went across to Ceylon, and then we went up to Kandy.
AM: What were you actually doing?
LM: Nothing!
AM: Oh, right.
LM: We were just shipped out the way. And we finished up at Kandy with a few more bomber, ex Bomber Command people, and then they decided to give us a three months Officers admin course. (chuckles) And then at the end of that we were shipped out to Singapore, we went on the Cape Town Castle, it was. Yeah. From Ceylon to Singapore, and I finished up on the embarkation unit there, working. But my sinus problems came out again, and I went in the hospital there. And the hospital was at Changi, which used to be, as I understand it, was a mental hospital, and of course all the Japanese were in (unclear) all around the beds, cleaning and that. And then I was sent home from there, repatriated.
AM: How did you get home?
LM: They flew me home.
AM: On what?
LM: A York. Flew me home, in stages, you know staging all the way through. Landed at Lyneham. Where did I go after that? Oh, then, (pause) that's right when I got back (pause), I missed that out, yeah, we went through Compton Bassett, and we did a code and cypher course, and we were all told when we went there, irrespective of what happens, you will pass the course, and we weren't, we were allowed to go to the Officer's Mess to collect our mail, and we had to pay the Officer's Mess bill, but all they did, they curtained part of the airman's dining hall off, and gave us that as a lounge with a field telephone to the Officer's Mess if you wanted any drinks. Obviously we never bothered, we always used to go into the local (unclear) and that. I'd forgotten about that, it'd all gone.
AM: I'm dragging it all back out.
LM: Yeah, I forgot all about that. 'Cos we, we went there before we went out to Ceylon, er, out to Karachi, and that.
AM: To go to Ceylon, and Karachi, and Singapore, to do nothing, just-. How many of you?
LM: Oh, there must have been hundreds of us. We were treated like dirt, at the end of the war, irrespective of your rank. We were just shipped out there out the road, out the way. The Navy got rid of all their surplus air crew. The RAF hung on to all of us.
AM: Why do you think they did?
LM: I don't know. I mean, I, because I'm a number, a (unclear) a number, I wasn't demobbed until forty seven. May forty seven.
AM: Could you have been, if you'd have wanted to go earlier?
LM: No. We weren't given the choice. We were all just shipped out, well we all thought personally we were just pushed out the way. They didn't know what to do with us.
AM: Was that RAF in general, or just Bomber Command?
LM: Well, I don't know, it was RAF, to do with RAF, not Bomber Command.
AM: They were still paying you?
LM: Oh yeah, yeah, but it was disgusting. That's right, I forgot about that. Yeah, that's right, I went-
AM: Seems a long way to go to do nothing.
LM: Well, it was, I mean, finished up at, in fact, the Officers Mess, embarkation Officer's Mess was out, Karikal House it was, and it was out by number ten dock gate, and in a beautiful big house and grounds. And a Japanese Admiral died there earlier, he's buried in the grounds of this big Karikal House, beautiful, and huge grounds. But, er, but, it's like the food we had there, it was all dehydrated stuff. And chicken, we used to see them coming in crates.
AM: And then they had to sort of wet it to cook it?
LM: Oh yeah. But, it was horrible.
AM: So what happened when you were eventually demobbed?
LM: I went, I was, we went up, I forget where it was, it was up Lancashire way somewhere, and just went up. A nights stop there. And just give the uniform in, and the suit, and that was it. It's a big laugh, because, because of the weather back here, there was a shortage of vegetables, and that, no potatoes, and all that jazz, but, I can't even remember the name of the camp where we were, when we were demobbed. Somewhere in the Lancashire area, I don't know where it was.
AM: What did you do afterwards, Len?
LM: I went back to finish my apprenticeship. I went back to finish my apprenticeship in plumbing. What happened, you went back and finished it, and you got full tradesman's rate, but the firm was compensated by the government for that. Got my indentures, and that was that. And then, I got fed up. I wished I hadn't of come out. The reason I come out was we were going to get married, and my wife wasn't keen on the service life, as she thought. So, I come out, and I thought, 'I'm fed up with this, I want to go back in'. So I went and they said, 'oh, you'll have to come back in as an airman, because your commission’s gone'. And I thought alright, I'll come back in the air traffic control branch.
AM: So this was after you'd finished your plumbing apprenticeship.
LM: Oh, yes. I was working as a tradesman.
AM: So you worked as a plumber?
LM: Yes, but I was getting fed up with it, and I was missing service life, and I wanted to get back into it. And the pity of it is, once I got back in, with the travel you did, and that, my wife thoroughly enjoyed it.
AM: Where did you meet your wife?
LM: Oh, I met, during the war we were at Bristol, we went out to Bath in the building business, working on bomb damage repairs, and we were doing work, just at the bottom of the road (unclear), and we were working on it, and that's how I come to meet her. She was fifteen and I was seventeen then.
AM: So that was before the RAF, even? You met her before you joined?
LM: Oh, yeah, oh yeah.
AM: And when did you get married? What year did you get married?
LM: Got married in forty seven, June forty seven. We were engaged, and that was that. Well, after I come out, I come out in May forty seven, and we got married in the June.
AM: When you went back in, then, so you did your plumbing, and then you went back in to the RAF, what did you do? What sort of things did you do?
LM: Air traffic control.
AM: You were in air traffic control.
LM: Yeah, air traffic control, straight on. And it was fantastic. Everybody was so kind to me. Don't matter what rank, station commanders, it was just what ribbons I had, and I was better treated then than we were at the end of the war, at Compton Bassett, and places like that. Because they were all wingless wonders there.
AM: So how long were you in air traffic control for? (pause) Ish.
LM: Oh, from fifty three to seventy one.
AM: Oh, right through.
LM: Yeah, I enjoyed it. Lovely. Yes, I trained on GC, ground control approach as a director, what they call a director, on that, and then became a local controller.
AM: Which airport were you based at?
LM: I was at, down at (pause) down at (pause), oh I can't think, it's where all the helicopters are down south, Chinooks and all that, I'll soon tell you.
AM: It's gone.
LM: Odiham! I was just going to pick the tankard up, because when I left there they presented me with a tankard. I was at Odiham, and, oh, that's right, because while we were at Odiham we had a mobile x-ray that come round, and they found Renee had TB. So she went into a sanatorium that way, and they transferred her to one outside Bath. Of course, we had young children, and mother, not, two of my sister in laws lived in Bath, one had the two girls, we had two girls then, and then there was two boys, and mother had the two boys in Bath. So I was then posted to, I'd been at Chivenor, that's right, I'd gone from Chivenor up to Colerne outside Bath, so that's it, they moved me to Colerne on compassionate grounds, because my children were in Bath, and they did that. And then from Colerne, when everything was, my wife was back and that, went up to Dishforth. Dishforth, Dishforth out to Germany, Wildenrath in Germany. So that was that. That's where I, and then I come home from Wildenrath in Germany, and, where did I go? Trying to think. (long pause). Oh God, no, I can't remember where I was when I came home.
AM: Oh well, it doesn't matter. What was it like being back in Germany?
LM: It was lovely. I was at Wildenrath, and the Dutch people we used to go on a roam on, and the German people were alright. In fact, on Wildenrath they had what they called GSO, German Service, and oh they were using what they had, huts and that, as married quarters. It was great. I enjoyed it. I can't think where I was. Oh, of course I was, I was down at Halton when I finished. Yeah, that's right, I went to Halton. I was the sole, all they had a Halton was a grass airfield, and Chipmonks for air experience for the cadets, you know, the apprentices, and I was the sole controller there. It was lovely. Had a fantastic time there.
AM: Brilliant. Well, thank you very much. That was really interesting.
LM: Sorry I couldn't remember names going through.
AM: Oh, don't you worry about that.
LM: But they're all down there, and Gary's got a copy of the recommendation for the DFC.
AM: Thanks, Len. I'll make sure we take a copy of that, then.
LM: Oh, I think I've got another spare copy.
AM: We'll find one. 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 Len McNamara
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-22
Format
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00:40:20 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMcNamara150722
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 Australian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Len McNamara was born in Bristol in 1924. An apprentice plumber, he joined the Air Training Corps and volunteered for aircrew. Discusses his initial training at various stations, the gunnery course he passed with merit and honours, an escape and evasion course he attended, and crewing up with Pete Catterswife, a Kenyan. He flew Whitleys and then then converting to Halifaxes. Len was posted to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. He discusses mine laying and bombing operations, aircraft damage, social and service life at RAF Lisset, military ethos and the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross. After sinus problems, he was a reserve gunner going on operations with various aircrews. Len was posted to RAf Langar as an instructor, but volunteered as second tour gunners and was posted to RAF Woolfox Lodge to crew up with a New Zealand pilot on Lancasters. Discusses engine problems, Kenyan, Canadian Australian, New Zealand and English pilots, talks about Operation Manna and discusses 75 New Zealand Squadron. At the end of the war he finished up at RAF Ringway as parachute instructor.
Len was then posted to various locations abroad, did a code and cipher course and was demobilised. He went back to his plumbing apprenticeship, got married, settled in Bath but wanted to get back to service life. He started back as an airman and went into the air traffic control branch serving at different stations in Great Britain and Germany until he retired in 1971. Len was into post war meetings and memorial visits.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Germany
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Cheshire
England--Rutland
Sri Lanka
Singapore
Temporal Coverage
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1945
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
10 OTU
10 Squadron
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Cross
escaping
evading
final resting place
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Langar
RAF Lissett
RAF Melbourne
RAF Ringway
RAF Woolfox Lodge
recruitment
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/634/8904/PRobinsonD1601.1.jpg
6f5724486c610bd863a402940f8cc060
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/634/8904/ARobinsonD160911.2.mp3
4f37bc0e490f864de3f1ed0ae6cedfbd
Dublin Core
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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Robinson, Douglas
D Robinson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Robinson, D
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Douglas Robinson (1922 - 2017 1215638, 170413 Royal Air Force) and five photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 158 Squadron and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Douglas Robinson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-09-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DR: Unfortunately, when I came to Oundle people started calling me Dougie and if I, if there’s one thing -
GR: You don’t like. Yeah.
AM: Right. We won’t do that. Right. Here goes then. So, my name’s Annie Moody and I’m a volunteer with the International Bomber Command Centre and today we’re in Oundle and it’s the 11th of September 2016 and I’m with Flight Lieutenant Douglas Robinson and he’s going to tell us his story. So I’m going to start off, if I may, just asking what your date of birth was.
DR: Date of birth.
AM: Yeah.
DR: 27th of July 1922.
AM: ’22. Right. And where were you born Doug?
DR: Where?
AM: Where were you born?
DR: I was born in Skegness.
AM: Skeggy. And what, what did you parents do? What was your family background? What was your family like?
DR: Well my father was a retired warrant officer from the Indian army and that’s, that was it. He was retired. He did a job as Registrar of births and deaths for the district around there. Well the, not the district. Skegness and one or two surrounding villages.
AM: Yeah. Did you have brothers and sisters or -
DR: Sorry?
AM: Did you have brothers and sisters?
DR: Yes. I had three of each. Three brothers. Three sisters.
AM: Right.
DR: My eldest brother also went in to the Indian army but he, not until during the war and he was commissioned into the Indian army. Had to come out I’m afraid when they gave India independence.
AM: Right. And what about schooling? What was your schooling like?
DR: Skegness Grammar School.
AM: Yeah. Did you enjoy it?
DR: Well. I didn’t dislike it. Didn’t really enjoy it.
AM: No.
DR: It was alright at times.
AM: How old were you when you left? Sixteen.
DR: Sixteen.
AM: Sixteen. So you would be, that would have been 1938.
DR: Yes. 1938. Around there.
AM: So what did you do when you left school?
DR: I went into a bank. The, have you heard of the TSB? I started as a junior clerk in the TSB and it was strange actually because it was a brand new office. They built it and you know there was no business there and there was the manager and me. The manager was only in his early twenties. He lost his life in the navy during the war.
AM: Right.
DR: I don’t know whether you’ve heard about it but there was a [terrible buzzing noise from interference on microphone -] [a ship, a naval ship escorting the Queen Mary from the [?] across the Atlantic bringing American troops and I think it was the Mary was a lot faster than the cruiser that he was on and so it zigzagged to keep the -] And one day bright sunshine as it is today, middle of the afternoon the ships came together and neither of them gave way and the Mary went straight through it, total loss of life. He was on that. His widow, she was, she’s dead now, she got a pension from Cunard as a result of that.
AM: Blimey.
DR: [?]
AM: So there you were though, a bank clerk with your, with your young manager.
DR: Yeah.
AM: And along came the war.
DR: [not then?] What made you join, what made you join the RAF?
DR: I don’t really, I don’t really know. I did a year in “dad’s army,” The local defence volunteers and then I don’t know I began to think I ought to be doing a bit more -
AM: Ok.
DR: For the war than this.
AM: What were you actually doing in the defence, in “dad’s army” then?
DR: Well we used to guard things that didn’t need guarding. The electricity power station, power thing and the gas works and the funny one was the telephone exchange because they’d built a new post office at Skegness and the telephone exchange was on the top floor so you’d be defending the telephone exchange but people would be coming for posting letters anyway[laughs] I mean.
AM: When you say defending it, defending it with what?
DR: Rifles.
AM: Oh you actually had rifles.
DR: For a year I had a 303 rifle and, I think it was fifty rounds of ammunition in my bedroom every night.
AM: Did you ever, did you ever use it in anger?
DR: No. No. We practiced firing but we never used it in anger.
AM: Yeah. So -
DR: There was -
AM: Sorry. Go on.
DR: There was a scare, a national sort of scare about September of 1940 that the invasion was about to start and we were called out with one of the local, one of the army units that was stationed locally and went out in to the country and spent a cold night out there. Came back next day when it was all cancelled.
AM: But I interrupted you ‘cause I asked you how come you joined the RAF.
DR: Well as I say I felt I ought to do a bit more and I think, oh what really eventually did it. One of my jobs at work was to go to the post office and I went in one day and they’d got a leaflet there which was in sort of three sections and the first one it was about pilots joining and they got twelve and six pence per day I think it was and the next one was navigators and they also got twelve and six pence a day and the third one was gunner eight and sixpence a day so I thought well I can’t fly, well I’ll never be able to fly and I’d done reasonably well in my school certificate maths so I thought well navigator must involve mathematics so I went. I sent this form off to become a navigator and I went to Lincoln for an interview. I’m not sure whether it was at Lincoln or if it was somewhere else but anyway there was a board of three officers. I think it was a group captain and he said, ‘Why do you want to become a navigator?’ And I told him and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you want to be a pilot?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think I could, could do that,’ so he said, ‘Well, I think you could. Would you be guided by me?’ And so I said, I said in my ignorance, I said, ‘Well if I went on a pilot’s course and failed it could I then become a navigator?’ ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘You’ve my assurance on that.’ It shows how green I was. But anyway I agreed to become a pilot and that was it.
AM: And that was that. So, so talk me through it then. What happened? So they’ve decided you’re going to do pilot training,
DR: Yes.
AM: How did that all start? Where did you go first for -
DR: Well first of all I went down to a place near Torquay. Babbacombe near Torquay and I got in a flight there of about thirty five of us and it was my first experience of RAF jiggery pokery because the NCO in charge of the flight said, ‘I know the postings clerk and for,’ I think it was, ‘sixpence a head I can get you posted where you want to go,’ you see so we all wanted to go to the same place. So I paid my sixpence and all the rest of it and we paraded in the little theatre they’d got there on a Saturday for the posting and of course they posted the wrong Robinson. He, he went on my sixpence. So I had to sort of stay there. I stayed the next week and went along for the posting things and I wasn’t on that one. Then on the next week I found out the, I found the NCO who I’d paid my money to and I said, ‘Look I’m fed up being here. Get me posted this week or else.’ And I got posted but instead of going where the others had gone to Torquay I was posted up to Scarborough and I did my initial training at Scarborough and from there I went to Southern Rhodesia.
AM: Right.
DR: To do my flying training.
AM: How did you get to southern Rhodesia?
DR: By troop ship. Really packed with troops. They were going to -
AM: Where did it sail from?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Where did it sail from? Can you remember?
DR: It actually sailed from Glasgow. We were, we were in West Kirby in the Wirral for a few days and then they took us up to Glasgow and we sailed from the Clyde in a convoy, a big convoy. Called at Freetown on the way and then around to Durban.
AM: How long did it take? Ish.
DR: It seemed forever but -
AM: Yeah.
DR: We were in Freetown for several days whilst they refuelled and one thing and another and then as I say went around to Durban.
AM: Were there any scares while you were on the boat?
DR: Not going out. No.
AM: No.
DR: No. We were all at, we had a big convoy. We had, I was trying to think of the battleship that was with us. It was in Freetown near us. It went on from there to the Far East and when they sank the Prince of Wales it was sunk at the same time. I can’t thing which one it was now.
GR: Was that the Repulse?
DR: Repulse.
GR: Repulse. Yeah.
DR: Yes. Repulse I remember sailing past it as we went out of Freetown. Went. Yeah.
AM: So there you are a boy from Skegness.
DR: Sorry?
AM: So here you are a boy from Skegness.
DR: Yes [laughs]
AM: In Rhodesia.
DR: Yes. Yes.
AM: So what was that like? What?
DR: Well it was, it wasn’t bad at all really. We, there was a transit camp we went to first which was the old, it was a showground really and we were in the cattle shed, cattle, where they used to display the cows and so on, had the things on the floor we sat on but it was alright. That was just near Bulawayo. Then we went up to what was then, well now Harare anyway and that’s when I started my flying training. Initial training.
AM: So what was the training like? How did you -
DR: Training on Tiger Moths. And I had a very nice Australian instructor. Very good with me otherwise I wouldn’t have passed but –
AM: How, how did they go about teaching you to fly?
DR: Well he sat in the front cockpit and I sat in the back and communicated by tubes but, but he, he told you what you do and you would do a movement with him and then he’d tell you to do it on your own. It wasn’t really all that difficult.
AM: Could you drive a car at the time?
DR: No. No.
AM: No.
DR: I learned to fly eleven years before I learned to drive a car.
AM: The reason I ask that is because it’s pretty much the same I guess. Somebody’s showing you how to do it and then you do it.
DR: Yeah.
AM: And how long was that training? Were there any alarms and scares in that?
DR: That, that initial training we started at the beginning of November and finished at Christmas.
AM: Right.
DR: And then –
AM: So quite quick.
DR: Moved back down towards Bulawayo for the service training which there were two lots of stations, for service training. One for single engine aircraft by and large expected to go on to fighters and the other for twin engine so we went on the twin engines, the old Oxfords.
AM: How did they decide which you were going to be?
DR: Well you were asked your preference but you didn’t necessarily get it but they obviously had a certain number to post to each place and they made up the number if, but I went on the one I wanted to do actually. The twin engine one. And -
AM: So what did you go on to then then as a twin engine -?
DR: That was the Oxford. It was a –
AM: Right
DR: Wooden aircraft actually. It was designed, it was a nice little aircraft actually.
AM: Yeah. Tell me a bit more about the training then. Any alarms and scares or did it all go smoothly?
DR: Well, yeah, I had a, had a little prang on night flying. The airfield there, it had, it was strange ‘cause it was a grass airfield but there was a concrete thing across one end which we taxied on. You’d land and get on there and beyond that there was a lot of wasteland which was sort of elephant grass you know and that, this night I took off. I think it was my first night solo and I took off but didn’t do it very well and I finished off skidding along the ground in this elephant grass. So I got out and started to walk back and I met the crash thing coming. He said, ‘Have you seen the pilot of that aircraft?’ And I said, ‘Well I am the pilot.’ [laughs] So that was it. But that was all. That wasn’t much. It wasn’t very scary. I mean, just slid along the ground.
AM: Just skidded. It was like a skid.
DR: It was just, I mean, you know, people weren’t overjoyed with you [laughs].
AM: I was going to say, well that was going to be my question. What happened? How much damage did you do to it?
DR: Oh I -
AM: And what happened as a result?
DR: I imagine, I don’t know really what they did. Whether it was written off or not. It probably was. I don’t know. But no. We, we got away with it.
AM: And what happened as a result? Did you just get a telling off or just -
DR: Yeah I got a bit of a telling off and that was about it, about it but the funny thing was they immediately rush you to sick quarters because they think you know there must be some [laughs] you must have some injury, internal if not, but I was in sick quarters overnight I think. That’s all. And then I had to go down to the flight and went with an instructor around, around the low flying area. Supposed to get over your nerves or something.
AM: Climb back on the bike.
DR: Yeah.
AM: So to speak.
DR: Yeah. So that wasn’t really much though.
AM: So what next? You’ve -
DR: Well when we eventually passed out from there and got our wings and so on we went on a train down to Cape Town and then we got on a troop ship that was coming back to this country, almost, there were a few people on but there was about a hundred of us from Rhodesia and there were also some people who had been on air crew training in South Africa. I’ve got a book by one of them in there. Coming back we got on this ship in Cape Town, the Oronsay which was, there was a line called the Orient Line and they only had about four or five ships and they all started with the letters OR Orient, Orion, Orontes and so on and we’d been on our way to Free, going to go to Freetown on the way back, on our way and then in the early morning when it was still dark there was a horrible bang [laughs] and a torpedo came in. I heard the torpedo hit, hit the ship, I heard it hit the things, heard the in-rush of water and I heard the torpedo go bang and I thought it’s time to get up so we got out. There wasn’t, there was no panic. People went quite quickly but quietly upstairs. Unfortunately when we got on deck, well I suppose we knew it before we got on deck but my boat station was on the port side but it had developed a great list to starboard which was where the torpedo had gone in. So all the boats on the starboard er on the port side couldn’t be lowered so which, so went around to the starboard side and there didn’t seem to be any. They’d all either gone or, so I went, I went back to the port side and they had several rafts there and I let one of these rafts go and it went down into the darkness and I thought well there’s not much point in following that. I didn’t know where it had gone so when I went back around and where, oh there was a boat about to go, the last boat. I met a friend of mine actually on the way around and so we went to get on this boat and the chap standing in the thing said, ‘Just room for one more,’ and my friend got on first. He said, ‘Room for one more.’ My friend said, ‘Can’t you get my friend on? There’s room for,’ ‘No, only room for one.’ So he got on and I didn’t [laughs].
AM: So then what happened?
DR: Well there were, this ship, I think with it being a converted ship, you know it was a peacetime liner and they’d converted it for a troop ship and they’d got it so that they’d got one boat inside another. Both used the same lowering gear, what do they call them? Davits or whatever and somehow they’d managed to lower this one right on top of the other and it was across it.
AM: Right.
DR: And so quite a number, well half a dozen people had gone down and were trying to get the top one off so I thought well I might as well go and have a go with that so I went down the ropes and having a go, put my shoulder to it and all the rest of it. You couldn’t budge it at all. It was [?]. We saw the captain’s boat go down, the captain get in and his officers and they started to go away and we thought well, you know, this is a bit odd but anyway he came back for us.
AM: Right.
DR: So we got off in his boat although after a while he transferred us to other boats to even the load out. So that was it.
AM: So where did you all get? So you’re all there in the lifeboats. Where did you get to?
DR: Well -
AM: And had it, had the main the ship sunk by this time?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Or –
DR: Well we, no it was, we were all in these lifeboats. I think there were about sixteen lifeboats successfully launched and we’re all sort of around the ship and the captain decided that it wasn’t going to sink so he started calling for volunteers among his crew to go back and sail the thing and I thought, anyway he’d no sooner done that then there was another great bang and another one, another torpedo went in. I think, I think they fired another three and eventually the thing instead of being listing it righted itself but then it gradually went down, the stern went down and the -
AM: Yeah.
DR: Nose came up and then down she went.
AM: That was it. So what happened to the lifeboats? How did you -
DR: Lifeboats.
AM: How did you come ashore then?
DR: Well we rowed for eight days.
AM: Eight days.
DR: Eight days yeah. Actually the first night it rained and rained and I had the misfortune to sit or probably, probably the good fortune to sit near the pump and it were only a little diddly thing you did this with. I was doing that all night, pumping but everybody else was baling so probably I had the easy job but we, we had to pump a few times and then after about, as I say eight days, we tied up actually, we tied nine boats in a row. It was the captain’s idea we’d stay together. I think we had nine boats in our row and there was six in the other I think. Six or seven. And after the first night we never saw the others again. They sort of disappeared but our nine stayed together. On the eighth day the, a lot of the crew were getting a bit restless. They said it would be better to be separate. We’d make more progress if we were separated and in the early afternoon the captain said, ‘Alright. Separate.’ We all separated and we’d no sooner separated than somebody spotted a Sunderland Flying Boat. It was only a little dot miles away. I mean people started sending up flares and I wondered what was happening and then I realised what it was. This Sunderland came over and circled us and dropped a few things with food in and he was in touch with the CO in Freetown and they said they’d be sending a destroyer out to us at midnight. So we sat patiently in the boat until midnight and then this destroyer appeared and we thankfully went up the scramble nets and we just sort of -
[machine pause]
GR: Life boats.
DR: I think so. I think so.
GR: Yeah.
DR: I’m not, I wouldn’t be certain.
GR: And did all the lifeboats make it to the dest -?
DR: Well some of, there were different stories. You see our nine, our nine stayed together and we were all picked up, I think, at that time, taken in.
GR: By the destroyer. Yeah.
DR: By the destroyer. Taken into Freetown but of the others some, some were adrift for about twelve days I think.
GR: God.
DR: And some were picked up by the Vichy French.
GR: Yes. Of course.
DR: Taken in to Dakar
GR: Yeah.
DR: And they were interned there for some time and there were quite a few ladies actually. Well half dozen or more. I think they were nurses. I know there was a squadron leader and his wife. Well, time expired and coming back and his wife -
GR: Yes.
DR: And what happened to her I’m not sure but apparently when they interned these blokes in Dakar they took these ladies to the border with, I forget what the British territory was but whatever it was.
AM: I can’t think.
DR: And they just set them loose and they were quite a few days trekking to the nearest place.
GR: And you never saw anything of the U-boat, the U-boat didn’t come after the survivors or –
FR: For years I thought it was a U-boat and people said that it had.
GR: You’d better record that.
DR: People had said it had surfaced and the captain -
GR: No.
DR: But it actually wasn’t a U-boat. It was an Italian ship, Italian submarine.
GR: Submarine. Right.
DR: Called the, I forget what it, I’ve got a book, a little book there.
GR: Yeah.
DR: But it was written by one of the chaps who was trained in Southern Rhodesia, er in South Africa and he actually became, he was, he’d been a foreign officer clerk and he went back to the foreign office and he became ambassador in Norway I think and somewhere else and is now sir somebody.
GR: Sir Archie Lamb.
DR: Archie Lamb. That’s right.
AM: Goodness me. That came as a, all of that came as a surprise because I don’t think you knew that did you?
GR: No.
AM: No.
GR: No. No.
AM: So you all finally get back, I mean I’ve got loads of questions I could ask like what did you eat and drink on the boat?
CR: I was going to say –
AM: Were there provisions on the boat?
DR: Sort of you know emergency rations. Small biscuits. Probably two or three of those a day. Horlicks tablets. You remember Horlicks tablets? Well we had those. They were nice. The funny thing was there was a lad from Spalding. I think he was a member of the crew, I think he was a steward or something and he was in the lifeboat with me and he didn’t like Horlicks tablets so I got all his Horlicks tablets [laughs] and then we had some water and they had a thing like a test tube. They used to bring it up about and you’d half full of that and you’d watch everybody drinking ‘cause you were making it last as long as you can you know swilling it around.
AM: Was anybody in charge on the boats or –
DR: Yes.
AM: Making sure that -
DR: Yes. One of the crew was in charge of it.
AM: Right.
DR: I forget what they called him now. I don’t know whether, whether it was his position on the ship or whether it was just, bosun. They called him bosun. Whether it was ship’s bosun or if it was just his title for being in charge of the lifeboat I never knew.
AM: But you all got back so -
DR: Yes. We got, we got back.
AM: So you all got back then. How did you all get back to Britain from there?
DR: Well we, the destroyer took us into Freetown and we didn’t get, we even get ashore in Freetown. They ferried us across to another troop ship which was actually a Greek, had been a Greek ship the Nea Hellas and we were on that coming back. There was apparently a bit of scare that it was being shadowed by a, but anyway we never, never got worried by it. It was never. We got back to England alright.
AM: So that was that. So then what happened? So you’re now a qualified pilot.
DR: Oh yes I was a qualified pilot. Well we landed at Glasgow. As the air force would arrange these things they put us in a train and took us down to Bournemouth. And the Bournemouth was run by, it was a receiving place for the Canadians mainly and it was run by the Canadians and there was a Canadian group captain there. Oh, whilst we were on the boats the merchant navy blokes had said to us, ‘When you get home you’ll get twenty eight days leave. Survivors leave. We all get it,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it.’ So when we got back we asked for this survivors leave and do you know what we got? They said you get twenty eight days. We got seven days. And that is the, that is how I got the title of my book. We had a, paraded in a cinema in Bournemouth and a group captain came on because he was welcoming the Canadians to this country and so on and he said something about, ‘Welcoming you to this country.’ He said, ‘Some of you have had great experiences in getting to this country but then life is a great experience. Adventure. Life is a great adventure.’ So I thought when I wanted a title for my book I thought that’s it. The group captain’s given it to me.
AM: So you’re in Bournemouth.
DR: Hmmn?
AM: Then I’m just trying to think chronologically of what happens next. Do you carry on with your training but go to Heavy Conversion Unit? What? I can’t remember what order things come after that.
DR: Yes, yeah from I’m not sure where, we went first to Operational Training Unit.
AM: Yes.
DR: To get crewed up.
AM: Right.
DR: Started at a place called Wymeswold and finished at Castle Donington which now of course is East Midlands Airport.
AM: Yes.
DR: And that was on Wellingtons and from there we went to Marston Moor which I’ve already told you about. Meeting Cheshire. And from there to 158 squadron.
AM: Ok. Do you want to tell me the Leonard Cheshire story again for the recording? Tell me the Leonard Cheshire story again for the recording.
DR: Well the night after we got to Marston Moor we decided we’d go in to York and three of us went to get on the bus but the bus had gone so we went out on to the road and decided to thumb a lift which sergeants weren’t supposed to do and we were, it was quite a long road. We could see a car approaching and we stood there thumbing and suddenly realised it was an RAF car and as it got nearer we could see it was an officer driving and when he pulled up we could see that he’d got four rings on his sleeve and he was a group captain. And he said, ‘Alright. Get in.’ So the other two jumped in the back and I had to get in, open the front passenger, well I opened the front passenger door and his cap was on the seat and so momentarily, momentarily you don’t know what to do. So do I, I can’t touch his cap, I can’t sit on the seat while it’s there but anyway eventually he said, ‘Don’t sit on my bloody hat.’ So I picked the thing up, put it over the back and got in.
AM: And he took you to York and dropped you off at –
DR: Bettys Bar. Yes. You’ll finish up there anyway.
AM: So, anyway, so back to the chronological order. You’ve crewed up. How did they crewing up go? Who chose who?
DR: Crewing up well yes it was, it was reasonably good. I was in a hut and I got to know ‘cause they bring in, I mean if they’re making say twenty crews they bring in twenty pilots, twenty navigators, twenty bomb aimers and so on and I was in this hut with quite a number of other people of various trades, and I got to know a number of the wireless operators and I met them actually in a pub in Loughborough as well and they’d got an air gunner with them so the four of us seemed to go out quite a lot together. I had to make a decision which wireless operator I had. I could only have one of them and so I selected one and so that was my wireless operator and my rear gunner. I needed a navigator and a bomb aimer. There was a navigator we’d got quite friendly with and I asked him to be my navigator and he said he’d already agreed to be somebody else’s but he would find me somebody who was, and he found me a navigator. A very nice bloke and a good navigator and the navigator found me a bomb aimer. It was funny actually because all the bomb aimers, bomb aiming had only just, bomb aimer as a, as a trade had only just been introduced and they were trying to popularise it I think and so they commissioned most of them. I think of the twenty, twenty five that we had there were only three who were non- commissioned.
AM: Right.
DR: So nobody wanted the non-commissioned ones. They thought there must be something wrong with them if they [laughs] so I got a commissioned one and that was the initial crew until we went to -
GR: Heavy Conversion Unit.
DR: Heavy Conversion Unit on to Halifaxes when we got another gunner and a flight engineer.
AM: And a flight engineer yeah.
DR: And they were just detailed to me so I didn’t get a chance to -
AM: Ok. But you got the full gang.
DR: So I got the full gang but didn’t always keep them I’m afraid. The rear gunner I had, we were very friendly together but one night he refused to fly. Well, he didn’t refuse to fly. We, we were going to Berlin actually and we taxied around, do you know Lissett?
GR: Lissett, yes. Yeah.
DR: Well normally we could approach the runways on either way. This particular night as it happened we were all coming from one direction and it was very fortunate because I got the green light and as I got the green light to go on to the runway this gunner said to me, ‘I don’t think I ought to go.’ I said, ‘What did you say?’ He said, ‘I don’t think I ought to go.’ And I thought well I can’t go anywhere. What do I do? I can’t, can’t call up the flight control because of the radio silence but as I say with the other side being vacant I just taxied straight over and parked on the, on the taxi -
GR: On the side. Yeah.
DR: The, the other side and I thought well air traffic control are going to see me there. They’re going to think well what the heck’s he doing? And they’ll find out and fair, true enough, after a little while the officer in charge of night flying was Brian Quinlan. I don’t know if you knew Brian. He came out on his motorbike and I said to my, my temper by this time was a little frayed and I said to this gunner, ‘You’d better get out and tell this officer what you’ve just told me.’ So he got out and within a few minutes Brian Quinlan appeared in the cockpit and he said, ‘Taxi back. Taxi to the next intersection, you know, where the runway came in, turn and come back again and wait here.’ Which, which I did. And when he got, when I’d no sooner got back there then he appeared on the runway on his motorbike with a spare gunner on the pillion and this poor bloke got in, got in the rear turret and that was it. We went away.
AM: And what happened to the other one? Just disappeared.
DR: Yeah. Well yeah.
AM: Lack of moral fibre.
DR: He was court martialled and it was a sad old time really. I had to go as a witness. I don’t know who I was witnessing for but I mean I, but it was, I felt sorry for him in a way because he looked so dejected and you know he’d been a nice enough bloke.
GR: How many operations had you flown by then?
DR: I don’t know. I should think probably about eight or something like that.
GR: About eight. Yeah. Ok.
DR: What, what he, I think what probably happened the one the previous one we’d done was Milan and it was over nine hours and it was in, coming back anyway, it was in bright daylight and he, I think he was a bit nervy all the way. He kept saying, ‘What’s that on the port starboard, on the port bow Paddy?’ Paddy, being the mid upper and Paddy in a broad Irish accent, ‘Och it’s only, only a bit of cloud,’ you know, and this sort of thing but you could tell really. I mean at the time I never thought anything of it but afterwards, after the refusal to fly and so on it struck me that his nerve had gone by that time I think.
GR: Because when you flew back from Milan it was complete, you flew back over France didn’t you?
DR: Over Switzerland.
GR: Over Switzerland.
DR: And France.
GR: And France yeah. In daylight.
DR: Yeah.
AM: What, what, so when he was court martialled what did they actually do with him?
DR: Well. Well he was court martialled. The funny thing was they questioned, when they questioned me it was strange they wanted to see was he actually ordered to fly. Well I mean they didn’t order for a standing place, ‘You’ll fly tonight’. ‘You’ll fly tonight.’ I mean it wasn’t like that. Just a board went up and the names of the pilot was on and -
GR: Yeah.
DR: You took that crew went and that was it but he was actually as I say court martialled. Ordered to be reduced to the ranks and to serve eighty four days detention but the AOC didn’t confirm it so he got away with it.
AM: Right.
DR: He got off and Calder I don’t know whether he rang me, or spoke to me one day and said, ‘As he wasn’t found guilty he’s still on the strength of the squadron and I don’t suppose you want him back do you?’ I said, ‘You’re right there.’ [laughs]
AM: That’s a no then. Yeah. So what did they do with him? Did he stay or -
DR: I don’t know what happened to him eventually.
AM: As ground crew or -
DR: I don’t know what happened to him eventually.
AM: Yeah.
DR: He would be posted away I think somewhere.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
DR: But it was, I don’t know, a pity, you know how Group Captain Pickard was at -
GR: Yeah.
DR: He wasn’t there in my time. He was there before I got there but he had a couple of horses at a farm there and our dispersal we lived on was one field away and this gunner was a real horsey type so he used to go and look after these horses. Groom them and one thing or another and then we [laughs] we used to ride them down to the pub [laughs]. Well we used to get on and they knew the way to the pub and so we’d go. There were three of us. One would ride a bike and the other two would go on a horse and we’d tie them up outside the pub and have a drink or two and then they’d know their own way home and of course we lost all that when he went but –
AM: We’ve jumped a little bit because we’ve gone from the Heavy Conversion Unit. What we didn’t say was that you were posted to 158 squadron at Lissett.
DR: Yeah that’s right.
AM: So I’m just. So you’re on 158 squadron now.
DR: Yes.
AM: So the stray bod that you got did you keep him or did you get another?
DR: No. No. He, I got another one.
AM: Right.
DR: I got a Canadian.
AM: And kept him.
DR: Yes. I kept him. I was with his, one of his sons and two daughters last week at 158.
AM: Wonderful.
DR: They come over every year.
AM: I’m going to jump again now then. So I know that you’ve done a number of operations now and I know that you either have done or are going to do Berlin.
DR: Yes.
AM: So tell me about Berlin and what happened.
DR: Well this night of course with having this kerfuffle with the, we were about fifteen, twenty minutes late taking off so I tried to make that up as best I could but it could, got to Berlin and nearly everybody else had gone so we had the whole Berlin defences to ourselves and it’s a long way across Berlin and it was very, very well very, very lonely flying across it. We think there was a fighter had a good, started to attack but I’ve an idea that it was a Mosquito was around and chased him I think so we didn’t get attacked. We got over quite safely that time.
AM: That time.
GR: Yeah.
AM: So tell me about -
GR: How many times did you go to Berlin?
DR: Three.
GR: Three.
AM: Three.
GR: Yeah.
DR: It was -
AM: So, on the third one -
DR: On the third one we were, we’d just dropped the bombs, the bombs had gone and there was an almighty bang. It really was. I’m sure it was a direct hit and the nose of the aircraft just started going up, straight up in the air which isn’t very healthy, I mean it could go into a stall in no time but I just could not seem to get it to stop and I said, ‘Prepare to bale out,’ because I thought we’ve had it and I realised the moment I’d said that the intercom was dead so I thought I’ve got to do something about this. I got a chap, you know we used to take a, when a crew came to the squadron he usually did an operation with an experienced crew.
AM: Yes.
DR: Well, and I’d got this chap, second pilot. I got him to put his leg across my legs and push on the control column. I was, I’d got it under my knees like that and he was pushing with his leg and we flew I think for over two hours, two and a half hours like that and the nose was trying to come up all the time and it was just above stalling I think. And I flew along. The Baltic was on the right and I thought to myself, shall we go to Sweden? And I thought, incidentally, we were all supposed to be on leave, we should have gone on leave that night. It was an incentive to get back but I was thinking about Sweden and of course I knew nothing about Sweden. With my boyhood knowledge I thought it was very mountainous so you know how could we flying in to mountains trying to get, so I decided I wouldn’t go to Sweden. We’d try and get home so we kept on and weeventually got to the Dutch coast and we were there at the time we were supposed to have been back at Lissett. We’d got winds against us of very nearly a hundred miles an hour. The aircraft was only just above stalling speed and I thought well I’m not going to go, I couldn’t risk going across the North Sea. We wouldn’t have got, we wouldn’t have got any more than half way across. If that. So I thought, and by this time we were down to five or six thousand feet. I can’t really remember but there was a light flak battery firing at us and doing a bit of damage so I thought well the only thing is we’re over a friendly country. Bale out and we might get in with the underground and you know so I baled them out.
AM: If the intercoms had gone how did they know to bale out?
DR: The only way, actually, the flight engineer. I told him to go around and tell everybody to bale out which he did. He, and then he came back and I said, ‘Have they all gone?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Well you’d better go then’. Of course we stowed his chute and my chute together and he was supposed to get the chute, two out, bring me mine, put his on and go. He came back and he said, ‘One of them was damaged.’ ‘So I said, ‘Well you’d better take the other one then.’ ‘No. No. I can’t. I can’t leave you.’ I said, ‘No you get in. Take, put that on. Get out.’ And he argued and I’m not going to argue and told him three times to get out so I said, ‘Well if you’re going to stay you’d better get back in to the rest position and brace for,’ I didn’t know, you know I realised I’d got to somehow get the thing down and I flew along looking for a decent, a good field and eventually, well it wasn’t long actually before I saw a field I thought I could do it -
AM: Was it daylight by now?
DR: No. It was -
AM: ‘Or dawn?
DR: Yes in-between sort of thing. Yes. It was sevenish in the morning. Something like that. And it was, I think it was lighter looking down than when you actually got on the ground. Anyway, we got down and skidded to a stop and got out and had a, well the funny thing was I thought I’d better go back and see if he’s alright and this is [laughs] this is the truth I walked back to him and instead of being braced he was standing up and he said, ‘Are we down?’ ‘Who the heck’s flying this thing?’ [laughs]. You know.
GR: Well that’s a compliment to the pilot.
DR: It was. Yeah. Anyway we got out the escape hatch and then we were having, I thought we’d have a quick look at the damage and we were having a look and as you say it was half-light or not quite half-light and he said, suddenly said to me, ‘There’s somebody the other side of the aircraft.’ And so I went around. I thought the only thing to do, whoever it is, oh and he said, ‘He’s got a gun.’ I thought well the only thing you could do is confront the chap so I walked around and didn’t need any confront, he was friendly. He said something about, I don’t remember whether he said, ‘Have you had a meal?’ Or, ‘Would you like a meal?’ And I thought, I was thinking I want to get away from this aircraft as far as I can as quickly as I can so I refused it and we walked. We left the thing and we walked on. We walked out through a village and up a country road and there was a bend in the road and there was a farmhouse there and the farmer outside so we went to him and asked if he could give us a drink of water or something and we had a drink of water and I asked him where we were and he brought out a little school atlas and, ‘There.’ And there just about covered the Netherlands. [laughs]. I thought well I was a little bit clued up about –
AM: Yeah.
DR: Which country it was. Anyway, we went in his house and to get to his house you went through a cowshed. I noticed there was a sort of hay loft sort of thing you know so I asked him if he, if we could get up there and he said, you know shook his head and talked about the Germans you know, shoot him and so on. I can understand his point of view.
AM: Yeah.
DR: So we decided, well I decided we wouldn’t stay and we got out of the house and two Dutch policemen came around the bend on bikes and they came to us. One was a young bloke and the other was a bit older and they, I don’t know for certain but it seemed to me that the young chap wanted to turn us in and the older one wasn’t very happy. He looked as if he was a bit tearful actually but anyway they, he had to go along with what the younger one wanted to do so they took us back to the village we’d come through and telephoned the Germans. And that was it.
AM: And for you the war is over.
DR: Hmmn?
AM: For you the war is over.
DR: Yes. Well, that, that was the greeting yes. For you the war is over.
AM: So what year are we in now? Is this -
DR: That was January ’44.
AM: ’44.
DR: January the 29th ‘44.
AM: So when the Germans came and got you where, then what?
DR: Well they took us to what was obviously a house which they’d taken over as a sort of place for their troops to live in and we were there most, so funny actually because they made us turn our pockets out and all this sort of thing and Lofty the engineer he’d taken an orange out of the, that we had in the flying rations and of course he’d got this orange and he put it on [laughs] and it was so funny ‘cause there were Germans coming in and poking it. You know. They’d never seen an orange before [laughs] But we were there most of the day and then they took us down to the station, local station and we went by passenger train up to Leeuwarden. I don’t know whether that’s the pronunciation L E E W A R D E N. And there was an NCO in charge of us and two other blokes and the NCO, he walked in front with a drawn pistol and one of the others walked at the side of us and the bloke with a submachine gun walked behind us and I thought well if you let off with that you’re going to get your mate in front here as well but anyway they paraded us through a long street in Leeuwarden and it was so funny I mean there were people walking past victory signs, thumbs up and there was a tram car came along and it just kept pace with us and you could see all the passengers in there doing this -
AM: Thumbs up and -
GR: Victory signs.
AM: V for victory to you.
DR: And we were sort of, yes. Acknowledging it all. I mean, it was, it was so funny really because it wasn’t what they were intending but they were showing off to the Dutch that they’d got the, you know -
AM: They’d captured you.
DR: Yeah. They got the terror fliegers and all the rest of it and anyway they took us along in to a big compound. Well a sort of parade area. It was a naval barracks and they opened a cell door and pushed us, well didn’t really push us, made us go in and there was all my crew there except one. They’d picked them all up except one.
AM: All of you. The whole lot. Did they know that they were your crew?
DR: I don’t know. I imagine so. I imagine so. And he, actually he, the one that was missing wasn’t really one of my crew, my mid upper gunner was a Southern Irishman and we were all supposed to go on leave that night. Well he used to get a couple of days extra for travelling to Southern Ireland and he’d already gone so this chap that was with me, this Canadian standing in and of course they hadn’t got him and he was the only one who did make it to the underground.
AM: Right.
DR: Apparently some farmers found him. They’d got the little pens out for the sheep to go in, supposed to be lambing or something and they found him hiding in one of these and so they took him in and looked after him for a time and I don’t really know the full story but he was eventually picked up with the underground in Antwerp or somewhere so he they’d got him quite a way away but he were betrayed and that was it. He was finished in another prison camp. I never met him again. He didn’t get, I did meet him again in a reunion after the war but I didn’t during the war. We thought he was dead. I thought he must have had an accident baling out and you know and that’s it. And -
AM: We, we spoke to someone else who exactly the same thing happened and I think the escape line, the escape line was the KLM line.
DR: Yeah.
AM: That he’d been, and exactly the same. Captured at Antwerp.
DR: Yes.
AM: So the whole lot of you there minus one. And where did they take you from there?
DR: From, yeah, they took us, the same night I think they took us to a Luftwaffe station. Actually it was a Dutch station it was about the biggest or only sort of regular air force station. I can’t remember its name. And we were in the cells there for the best part of a week I suppose. They tried to interrogate us and so on and then from there they took us to Amsterdam and we were incarcerated in Amsterdam jail for a week or so. Yeah.
AM: Where did you end up? Which prison camp did you end up in?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Which prison camp did you end up in?
DR: Well, from, after we go into the interrogation place we went to, or I went to, some of us went to Stalag Luft 6 which was up on the borders of East Prussia and Lithuania. We were there until July of ‘44 when the Russians were pushing the Germans back. The Germans had got right in to Russia.
AM: Yeah.
DR: And the Russians pushed them back and we could actually hear the artillery fire and we were beginning to get a bit worried about what might happen if we were liberated by the Russians but anyway they then took us, not all of us but I was one that was taken, they took us to, in the cattle trucks down to Memel which was in the port of Lithuania. I don’t know what it is now. I couldn’t pronounce its name now but it was called Memel. We were put in a little tramp, in the hold of a tramp ship which was filthy and we were about, I think we were about four days from there to, oh dear, I forget the name of the port now.
GR: Don’t matter.
AM: No. It don’t matter.
GR: Don’t matter.
DR: A German port in
GR: Yeah
DR: Sort of [?] When we got off into cattle trucks again and we had, I think, one night. Oh they, as we got off that, the boat they handcuffed us in pairs. I thought I was being clever and I asked if anybody was left handed so we had could have one left hand and one right but we didn’t. I got this Canadian but apparently he was right handed too but he had his right hand handcuffed to my left and we were, officially we were handcuffed together for about three or four days but we soon learned how to take them off actually.
AM: Oh good.
DR: So people were taking them off.
AM: I’m just thinking when you’re doing the necessary -
DR: Yeah.
AM: Ablutions and things like that you don’t necessarily want to be handcuffed –
DR: That’s right.
AM: To someone.
DR: No. We, people soon learned the key of a corned beef tin came handy with that. It used to be out -
AM: But where did you get the key of a corned beef tin from?
DR: Off the corned beef tin. Red Cross parcels.
GR: Red Cross Parcels.
DR: Red Cross parcels.
AM: Oh so that was your rations. Right. Ok.
DR: Anyway, we and then we got to Stalag Luft 4 and we had a very rough reception there. We got, we got to the station, or the siding, very early in the morning and it was a really hot day and they kept us in the cattle wagons ‘til about two in the afternoon and we got, got out and of course to try and carry all your, what belongings you had, I mean, for example I had a greatcoat. We were wearing greatcoats. It was the easiest way to carry them and it was really hot. And anyway about 3 o’clock they got us out of the things and we lined up and there was a German officer got up, and he, he’d got, he’d got an immaculate white tunic on. Oh really. And instantly, instantly became known as the ice cream man. But he was obviously in charge and they marched us out on to the, on to the road, lined up and there was a lot of cadets, naval cadets that came and they were all armed, all, and he ordered them to fix bayonets which wasn’t a very friendly thing to do and we started walking along, or marching along this road and they started saying –
GR: Thank you.
DR: They started saying, ‘Quicker. Quicker. Quicker’ and we were getting, until eventually we were sort of running and then we were in a wooded thing then suddenly they turned left and there was steep hill and we were going up this hill and they then tried, they were then aiming to jam you in your backside with these bayonets and of course people were throwing all their stuff away to lighten the load. I’d got a haversack thing on my back which I couldn’t take the stuff out so the Canadian who was running with me he got it open. He was throwing stuff out and we ran up this road and you could see people with blood coming down them, and I passed one poor lad I knew. I don’t, I can’t remember his name but I knew and the chap he was with had obviously passed out and he was there -
AM: And he’s still handcuffed.
DR: Handcuffed to him. Couldn’t move. You could see he was absolutely terrified the poor lad. He was only a very young lad I think. And then we got to the, eventually got to the top of the hill and turned and about a half a mile away was the prison camp and we, we got there. I hadn’t been touched actually until I got there and then one of them got his rifle up and started having a go at my ribs but he didn’t really do anything hard. He tried and didn’t. And then they called them off and we went into the vorlager, sort of first place. Not right in to the camp and we were there all night.
AM: When you said, you said they were cadets so were they just, were they teenagers or young. Young.
DR: Well I suppose they were, no I suppose they were eighteen year olds.
AM: Right.
DR: Sixteen, eighteen year olds. Yeah. But, they’d, all the other guards of their own but a lot of them, but it was, it’s always been known as, ‘the run up the road.’
AM: Yeah. So how long were you in there for then? Where are we now? July did you say? July 44?
DR: July then until February of the next, of the next year when we started on the Long March.
AM: So you did the Long March.
DR: Three months of that.
AM: And what was the worst bit of that?
DR: Sorry?
AM: What was the worst bit of that?
DR: The weather. It was so cold. Snow and ice and sleeping out at, some nights, we did sleep outside some nights. Most nights they found a barn or something like that more or less but we had one or two nights out. But one night we went to a farm and there were three large farm buildings in a row with thatched roofs and I think they put some of their own transport in one. In the end one. We were pushed in the centre one and some army prisoners in the left hand one and we were tight in this thing. When we, they’d got straw in the floor and when we laid down at night we were head to toe in a row and touching each one. It was as close as that and during the night we heard an aircraft flying over and we could hear it approach and it dropped a bomb on the, and it hit the thing where they’d put all their stuff and it flew away again. Came around machine gunning and I was lying down there. I could see tracer bullets coming through the straw you know and he hit the wall on the side and before there was a little ring of fire and it just spread like mad and it was, the whole lot was going and people just sort of got up and walked out and that’s it. They didn’t really run.
AM: No.
DR: But um -
AM: Did you, did you see it? Was it an allied?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Was it a British plane or a German?
DR: Oh we take it that it was probably a Mosquito. We’ve always called it the Mossie raid. I mean we were just guessing at that. We sort of -
AM: Yeah.
DR: I think it would be an allied one.
AM: Then when –
DR: I think there were, there were three or four of our blokes were killed.
GR: And then towards the end of the long march I presume you walked into allied hands.
DR: Well yes. We were very, it was a great day to remember. We, we were stopped in a village and we sort of spent the night in a barn and this, and I got up to make the coffee and there was Americans with us as well and I suddenly heard an American voice shouting, ‘The limeys are here. The limeys are here.’ And looked and it was the 6th Airborne Division coming through the village.
GR: Brilliant.
AM: Yeah.
DR: What a day that was.
GR: What a day that was.
DR: And they were throwing tins of their rations to us you know and we didn’t eat half of them, more than we, actually it was, everybody was just having a good time.
AM: What condition were you in by then?
DR: Well -
CR: He looked a bit thin on the photographs.
DR: Yeah I was very thin and I think I got frostbitten feet. They were always cold. We was lousy. [laughs].
AM: Yeah.
DR: But apart from that we weren’t too bad.
AM: So how did you get back home then from that, that stage?
DR: Well, they, the 6th Airborne asked us to stay there that day because they were bringing all their stuff through and then we get up to, oh what was the name of the place, what was the place where Montgomery took the -
GR: Luneburg Heath.
DR: Yes.
GR: Luneburg Heath. Yeah.
DR: Well that was the town.
GR: Yeah.
DR: And we had to get up there the next day and it was quite a thing because people were pinching bikes and cars and all sorts of things to get up there and we were a bit slow off the mark. We couldn’t find anything but we found a bloke who was going out in a pony and trap thing so we got on board there and I sat, jiggling mind you it was a beautiful sunny day. It was quite a nice ride, trip and we eventually we got to a village and we stopped for a drink. Went in the pub and demanded a drink and of course when we got out the pony had gone but one of the Canadians, our Canadians came along driving a bus so we piled on to this bus and it was so funny ‘cause there were Germans were walking back on the side of the road and everybody was trying to get a good hat.
GR: Souvenir.
DR: If you could see an officer with a nice smart hat. Boom. [laughs] No. It was. I got a sword.
CR: Yes you got a sword didn’t you?
DR: Going through a village, a great big pile of swords so I got out and had a look and picked one I liked and still got it.
AM: Wonderful. Might have to have a photo of that.
DR: Sorry?
AM: We might have to -
GR: Have a photograph of that.
AM: Take a photo of that. How did you eventually get back though to England?
DR: Well, we, we were flown back. RAF Dakota.
GR: Dakota. And back to England was you? Was you demobbed straight away?
DR: No. No. Actually I stayed in the air force for three years after the war.
GR: Oh.
AM: You were probably deloused first weren’t you?
DR: Hmmn?
AM: They deloused you first.
CR: They deloused you.
DR: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CR: You were lousy when you came back.
DR: They more or less did that when we landed. We landed at a place called Wing. I don’t know.
AM: Yes. Yeah.
DR: And I was posted to Wing.
GR: Yeah. We know Wing.
DR: Soon after but they arranged it quite well actually. They sort of deloused you and they set it out like a restaurant or café and the ladies would bring you tea and coffee and then the buses took us into Aylesbury and put us on a train up to Cosford.
GR: Yeah.
DR: And then I went on leave from Cosford.
AM: Had you been able to tell your parents? Did your parents know that you were alive?
DR: Yes. Yes. Actually, yeah, I think the Red Cross had told them that I was.
AM: Right. Ok.
DR: And the night we got back the RAF gave us forms that we could send telegrams. So we got telegrams to say we were back.
AM: Yeah.
DR: But -
AM: And that was that but you stayed in for another three years.
DR: Yes. What happened was that when I was shot down I was a flight sergeant but had been interviewed for a commission and the commission came through backdated about a month before I was [laughs] before I was shot down. So I came, when I came back I was actually a flying officer and it rather appealed to me. I thought well here I am, a flying officer, I’ve never been in an officers mess in my life and I was when I got back though and I thought, they gave us interviews to see what we wanted to do and I said, ‘Well I would like, I want to stay on flying.’ And, ‘Oh well, you know everybody wants to do that who wants to stay in.’ People who, others just want to get out. And I applied for a permanent commission and when they put me on flying I thought that’s it I’m getting my permanent commission but it wasn’t so. I extended my service for two years and towards the end of the two years I extended another year. At the end of that time I had a letter telling me that the king thanked me for my services but he didn’t want me anymore. [laughs] So that was that.
AM: Thank you and goodbye.
GR: Yeah.
AM: In the, in that three years though you were flying. Where? Whereabouts? What -
DR: I flew Lancasters then instead of Halifaxes.
AM: Yeah.
DR: Yeah I flew. I was in, well, we had to more or less had to go, start our training again. What happened you see there people there who’d been POWs four or five years so they had, obviously had to have a refresher course if they wanted to go on and so they didn’t really just make a refresher course for us they stuck us on the course that the new entrants was doing, you know, people doing for the first time which was alright. We went back on to Oxfords and I did Oxfords and then on to Wellingtons and then on to the Lancaster Conversion Unit and then from there I went to the central signals establishment which was at, we did about, I think I did a bit over a year there and Cicely and I lived out. It was just after we got married actually I went there and -
GR: ’Cause that’s the one question we’ve never asked. Did you two know each other during the war?
DR: No.
CR: No.
GR: No.
CR: I didn’t even know him.
GR: Right.
DR: Yeah it was quite an interesting job on central signals. We used to, well we got various things. There were two squadrons, one calibration squadron their job was to go around calibrating the approach landings. I forget what they were called it now. The blind flying approach.
GR: Yeah.
DR: That was their main job. We were the development squadron. We were supposed to develop, test fly new things but of course we were test flying things that had been used during the war [laughs] and, but we had other things to do. We used to test the Gee coverage over France and Holland and so on and over Wales and Ireland and so on. We used to have a route to fly and pinpoints to go over and it had two cameras in the aircraft which took pictures simultaneously. One of the ground and one of the set so that they could be compare the -
AM: Right.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
DR: But invariably one of them went wrong so they’d say, ‘Let’s do it again.’ But it was quite interesting. We also had to, people that were doing the calibrating and what not in Germany we used to have to take them over with all their equipment and fetch them back and so on. That was a bit of bind but one of the funniest, probably the funniest thing in my career was when I went to fetch a load back once and they weren’t ready. I went on the Friday and they weren’t ready. They was going to be ready on the Saturday morning so I said, ‘Well I want to be off by 8 o’clock at the latest,’ And they got to get all their equipment there and so on. But anyway when we eventually got them in the aircraft it was the COs monthly parade on the airfield. Lutzendorf I think it was and they’d no parade ground, they used to parade on the runway. So I was about to taxi out and the parade was getting on, forming up on thing there and my temper was getting a little frayed to say the least so I had words with air traffic control and then after a few minutes they came back and said, ‘Well the parade’s going to march off the runway onto the overshoot area until you’ve gone so you’re alright to go along there, turn and take off.’ So I, ‘Fair enough. I can do that.’ And they all marched off and I got along there and I turned, as I turned I opened up the throttle up. All the caps went. [laughs]
AM: Wonderful.
DR: Didn’t stop to see them sorting them out.
AM: And off you went into the wide blue yonder. What did you do after the, after you’d left the RAF?
DR: Sorry?
AM: What did you do after you’d left the RAF?
DR: I went back to the bank.
AM: To the bank.
DR: Yeah. Eventually. Yeah.
AM: At Skegness?
CR: He did one flight in a Lanc over Biggin Hill didn’t you? The first Biggin Hill.
DR: Yeah. Well yes just before I came out. It was the first time they’d done this Battle of Britain day thing you know and all the stations wanted a Lancaster. They all wanted a Lancaster and -
CR: Winston Churchill was there.
DR: And I think our people agreed to supply about four or five or something. Well I wasn’t going to do it on this Saturday. I know they didn’t put my name down for it anyway and then my boss, the squadron leader, said to me, he said, ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ he said, ‘I’m going down to Biggin Hill. We’ll have a day out’. So I said, ‘Alright.’ So that was on the Monday. On the Tuesday he went off on leave. He said, ‘I’ll see you on Saturday morning.’ ‘Alright.’ On the Friday afternoon air traffic got on to me to say Biggin Hill had been on the phone and they would like the Lancaster to go down today for obvious reasons. They’d only got a short runway and if you make a mess of it they can clear the mess up before the crowds come in tomorrow. I mean that was obvious what it was. So, you know they said Duchy is on leave. You’ll have to bring it so I thought fair enough. I took it down and -
GR: Sorry to interrupt you but when you do flights like that -
DR: Yeah.
GR: How many crew did you have? Did you have like a flight engineer with you, a radio operator?
DR: I think I had a navigator, a radio operator and, an engineer, I think.
GR: Yeah. So the four of you.
DR: I don’t think we needed any more than that.
GR: Yeah. Sorry.
DR: I had a lot of odd bods who wanted to get away for the weekend you know. Poured out when I said that.
AM: But you didn’t really need a rear gunner.
GR: No [laughs]
DR: But no it was funny actually and of course it was a big display.
GR: Yeah.
DR: The guest of honour was Winston Churchill.
GR: It was the first Biggin Hill Air Show.
DR: Yes. The first Biggin. Yeah. Winston Churchill was and the funny thing was that, you see nearly all the other things were fighters and doing aerobatics and so on and the CO of the squadron came to me and he said, ‘Would you do three engine flying?’ So I said, ‘Yes. I can do three engine flying. I’ll do two engine flying.’ ‘Oh that would be nice,’ he said. Afterwards I thought I’m an idiot because we were supposed to practice three and two engine flying but the maximum height, rather the minimum you weren’t, I think for two engine flying you weren’t supposed to come below five thousand feet. So I thought well five thousand feet they won’t see me. So Winston Churchill’s going to be down there. What the heck do I do? I think eventually I compromised a bit but I didn’t, I didn’t go the full hog down to a thousand feet or anything like that. We went down a bit below what we were supposed to do. I did the two and two on one side look spectacular.
GR: What you flew with two -
DR: Two on one side.
AM: So both on one side.
DR: Yeah.
GR: And both -
AM: Going and the other one’s not.
DR: Yeah.
AM: Does that not make you –
GR: Yeah.
DR: No.
AM: Swing around.
DR: You hold it alright and the -
AM: Ok.
DR: But the big shock, the only trouble you get is if, if they cool down to much and you can’t get the flaming things started [laughs]
GR: I’m sure you were alright.
DR: Yeah but -
CR: Would you like a cup of tea or anything?
AM: I think we’re done. I think we’re done actually.
GR: Yeah.
AM: I’m going to switch off now.
[machine paused]
GR: It wasn’t Len McNamara was it?
DR: Sorry?
GR: It wasn’t Len McNamara.
DR: No I don’t think so. I don’t think it was McNamara. No.
GR: Because Len had rear gunners.
AM: The one question I would have asked as well was just, so you flew the Halifax operationally but then the Lancaster after so which -
DR: Yeah.
AM: Was your favourite and what are the pros and cons of the two?
DR: Well I’m still a Lanc, er a Halifax man.
GR: Halifax.
DR: I think it’s nicer to handle. Certainly nicer to get in and out of and you know there was not a lot to choose between them I think but it’s on things like that that I would judge it.
GR: And to be fair everybody who we’ve asked the question of who -
AM: Prefers Halifax.
GR: Served on Lancs and Halifax they all said the Halifax.
DR: Halifax. Yeah.
GR: They said, ‘Alright the Lanc -
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Douglas Robinson
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-09-11
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ARobinsonD160911
PRobinsonD1601
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:33:56 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Lithuania
Zimbabwe
Germany--Berlin
Lithuania--Šilutė
Great Britain
Lithuania--Klaipėda
Mediterranean Sea
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-09
1944
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas was in the Local Defence Volunteers before joining the Royal Air Force as a pilot. After Babbacombe, he did initial training at Scarborough and then in Rhodesia. Initial flight training in Harare on Tiger Moths was followed by service training on Oxfords at Bulawayo. Douglas had an eventful passage home when his troop ship, the Oronsay, was torpedoed by Italian submarine Archimede and he spent eight days in a lifeboat.
After returning to the UK, Douglas went to an Operational Training Unit to get crewed up, initially at RAF Wymeswold and then RAF Castle Donington on Wellingtons. He went to RAF Marston Moor and on to 158 Squadron at RAF Lissett on Halifaxes where he describes an encounter with Group Captain Leonard Cheshire. Douglas relates how a rear gunner refused to fly and was court martialled.
Douglas flew three operations to Berlin and on the third took a direct hit. After most of the crew baled, he managed to land in the Netherlands before being taken prisoner. Stalag Luft VI, on the border of East Prussia and Lithuania, was followed by Stalag Luft IV after the Russians approached. For three months Douglas was part of the Long March before being rescued by the 6th Airborne Division and flown back home.
Douglas stayed on for three years after the war. He was posted to RAF Wing and went up to Cosford as a flying officer. He attended a Lancaster Conversion Unit and flew Lancasters. He finished at a development squadron at the Central Signals Establishment. He recalls flying a Lancaster at the first Biggin Hill Air Show in front of Winston Churchill.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
158 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
forced landing
Gee
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
promotion
RAF Lissett
RAF Marston Moor
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
submarine
Sunderland
the long march
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/289/9665/LLarmerLO430037v1.1.pdf
ab62da7bcc4b6cb26a31883a47285725
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Larmer, Lawrence
Lawrence Larmer
Laurie Larmer
L O Larmer
L Larmer
Description
An account of the resource
17 items concerning Flying Officer Laurence O'Hara Larmer (1920 - 2023, 430037 Royal Australian Air Force). Lawrence Larmer volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force and trained in Australia and Canada. He flew operations as a pilot flying Halifax with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith. The collection consists of one oral history interview with him, wartime photographs of aircraft, aircrews and targets, his logbook, route maps, and an official certificate.
The collection was donated by Laurence Larmer and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-12
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Larmer, LO
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Laurence Larmer's Royal Australian Air Force flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Australian Air Force flying log book for Laurence Larmer covering the period from 7 April 1943 to 3 August 1945. Detailing flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAAF Benalla, RCAF Dauphin, RAF Fair Oaks, RAF Banff, RAF Dallachy, RAF Lichfield, RAF Riccall, RAF Snaith and RAF Driffield. Aircraft flown were, DH-82, Cessna Crane, Oxford, Anson, Wellington and Halifax. He flew a total of 4 night and 5 daylight operations with 51 squadron. Targets were, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Homberg, Hagen, Travemunde, Bayreuth, Boizenburg, Heligoland and Wangerooge. He flew as a second pilot on operations with Flying Officer Chatting. In July 1945 he flew a number of Cook's Tours flights, described as European cross-country.
Creator
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Australia. Royal Australian Air Force
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Mike Connock
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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One booklet
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
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LLarmerLO430037v1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Staffordshire
England--Surrey
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Bayreuth
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Lübeck
Germany--Wuppertal
Manitoba--Dauphin
Scotland--Banff
Scotland--Moray
Victoria--Benalla
Germany--Wangerooge Island
Victoria
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Boizenburg
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1945-03-12
1945-03-13
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-11
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-18
1945-04-25
1945-07-04
1945-07-09
1945-07-30
1945-08-03
1658 HCU
27 OTU
466 Squadron
51 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Banff
RAF Dallachy
RAF Driffield
RAF Lichfield
RAF Riccall
RAF Snaith
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/514/11307/BGoodmanLSGoodmanLSv1.1.pdf
95e2e091735c5cb46cad20f313332cb3
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Goodman, Benny
Lawrence Seymour Goodman
L S Goodman
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Goodman, LS
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Squadron Leader Lawrence 'Benny' Goodman (1920 - 2021, 1382530, 123893 Royal Air Force) and a memoir covering his activities from 1939 to 1945. He flew 30 operations as a pilot with 617 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Benny Goodman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
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2016-04-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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BY BENNY GOODMAN
It was September 1939. A few of us were sitting around the wireless waiting for the Prime Minister to make an announcement. He did so and told us we were now at war with Germany. I was a student, in digs, and a long way from my home in London. I decided to telephone my parents and talk things over with my father. My first instinct was to leave my studies – not a hardship really! – go home and join up. Eventually, my father agreed, much to my mother’s consternation. I discovered later. He had served four years in the 1st World War. There was no doubt in my mind I was going to join up. However, I did not want to join the navy or the army and it was only then I realised I wanted to become a pilot.
I was almost nineteen and had no idea what was entailed, but with the ignorance and cheek of youth I presented myself at the RAF recruiting office and told the officer who interviewed me what I wanted to do. He didn’t say a word, finished filling in the form he had in front of him and told me I would be hearing about my application very soon. Not long afterwards I went for a general medical and when I passed this I was sent to an RAF medical for a more involved air crew medical. Everything went well except when it came to the eye test. My eyesight had never been top class so I went to the back of the queue and learnt the two or three lines each candidate was being asked to read. I passed! After attestation, I went home to await call up. It came a few weeks later and I reported to RAF Cardington, where I was issued with a uniform and all the accoutrements for an AC 2. This is it, I thought. I shall be a pilot in a couple of weeks and will save the world!
Things didn’t quite turn out like that. After about 10 days at Cardington, we were told to pack our kitbags and were marched off to the local railway station. Rumours were rife! And if you listened to everyone, your posting was to anywhere in the world. In fact, we went to RAF Bridgenorth for six weeks square bashing and all that went with it. ‘Bull’ was the order of the day – the camp had four parade grounds) Then I and another chap were posted to RAF Abingdon. When we got there nobody had any idea we were coming and so the Orderly Room Sergeant asked us our trade. We both said ‘U.T. Pilot’ and consequently we were sent the aircrew quarters, which were in fact the married quarters on the station. Abingdon was a straight through course for Whitleys and so, with much justification, we thought we would be on the next course.
However, there was a war on! It was decided that the Whitley course running at the time would be the last one and again, no one knew what to do with us. The next day we were moved from our relatively comfortable billet to a remote part of the airfield. There was a Nissen hut with six beds, no sheets, no pillowcases and a Fairey Battle packing case as a so-called recreation room. The latrines were self-dug, but permanent. We were to be ground gunners!
It was explained to us that this was a temporary move but as such we had to learn, amongst other things, how to strip and re-assemble the C.O.W. gun and the water-cooled Lewis gun. Duties were 4 hours on / 2 hours off in the gun pit. We patrolled the airfield at night and challenged anyone on it for the password of the day. You can imagine the sort of answers we got from aircraft technicians with their bags of tools in the pitch black trying to find the Whitley they were to work on. At dawn every morning we had to march around the perimeter track with our gas masks on in case of a German paratroop invasion from the air.
Our food was brought out to us in hay boxes and so was never very warm! We used to try and sneak in once a week or so to the airmen’s quarters to see if we could get a bath, but if we were caught the airmen billeted there showed no mercy! In our off-duty time, we were sent to the coal dump to load coal bags and to carry out various other domestic duties on the camp. One of these included cleaning out the grate in the Officers’ mess before they came down for breakfast. On many occasions I did this and always had to finish by black-leading the grate and all the surrounds. Some years later I went back to Abingdon as the Adjutant of the Overseas
[page break]
2
Ferry Unit. When I went into the mess, I looked at the grate and the few officers sitting around it in armchairs and thought to myself: “If only you chaps knew how many times I cleaned this thing!”
A posting came through eventually to start pilot training and I was sent to Stratford-upon-Avon, which was a Reception Centre. As I walked into the Orderly Room to report my arrival, a voice shouted “Airman, you’re on a charge”. I looked around and saw no one else -I had the horrible feeling that I was already in trouble, and this was the case. Having spent some months as a ground gunner and living in my uniform it was, to say the least, scruffy, as was the cap. Not very politely I was told I was a disgrace to the service because of the state of my uniform. All the other chaps, of course, were wearing brand new uniforms and I stood out like a sore thumb. I tried to point this out to the Sergeant but he wasn’t interested. Next morning, I appeared before the O.C. unit who was sympathetic but clearly felt he had to back up his Orderly Room Sergeant. Seven days jankers was my reward.
A posting duly came along to Initial Training Wing (I.T.W.) and there we did six weeks of ground school prior to E.F.T.S. Just about everyone passed and I was sent to 17 E.F.T.S. Peterborough for ab initio training on Tiger Moths. The course was about 48-50 hours and to the horror of another chap and myself, we were posted to RAF Woodley for an instructors course. Both of us could just about manage to fly the Tiger Moth and so to be told we were going to be instructors frightened us considerably. Following this, after a couple of weeks at Clyffe Pypard a holding unit, and a spell at a Manchester park, awaiting posting, we were sent to Canada to do a S.F.T.S. on Ansons. Boy! This was living. A twin engine aircraft with retractable undercarriage, even though we had to wind it up! The course included night flying, the first time I had experienced this, and I can truly say that on my so-called first circuit I varied between 600 ft and 1,500 ft AGL and lost site of the airfield completely. I hadn’t got a clue. To my surprise, my instructor didn’t seem at all phased and by the end of the detail I had at least got the circuit and the heights more or less sorted out. What a brave man he was! After another night sortie, I was passed fit to do a solo circuit and I truly believed I was just about to die! However, all went well and I was then sent to Kingston, Ontario, to – believe it or not – instructing on Harvards. This aircraft is still in use to this day.
The thought of flying this monster, let alone instructing on it, made me feel quite sick. Kingston Ontario was an RAF station dedicated to the training of Fleet Air Arm pilots “is everybody mad?” I thought. The other instructors, all of whom had done an operational tour (and one was Fleet Air Arm) readily accepted me – the sprog in every way. The Flight Commander took me up and put me through my paces on the Harvard and pronounced me fit to start instruction. However, he showed me and tested me one lesson at a time, so that I could take up an acting leading naval airman and show him the particular procedure. Nobody else had a clue how inexperienced I was, except the other instructors in the flight who thought it was a great joke. So, I started with one lesson at a time and over a few weeks built up to the whole syllabus. I have to say the Harvard was a wonderful and responsive aircraft to fly and, despite the tales of woe and misery about ground looping, I never saw one instance of it … and that includes me!
By this time I was a Pilot Officer and because there was no room in the Mess I had digs in the town and even bought myself a Chevrolet with a dicky seat. My Canadian driving test consisted of reversing the car about 2 feet, and being told to ‘stop and get out, come into the office’ … and I was presented with my Canadian driving licence. In a short time, I had come from cleaning the grate in the Officers Mess as an AC 2 to a Pilot Officer Instructor, with a car and living in digs! Was I dreaming?
All good things come to an end and I was posted back to the U.K. to prepare to go on ops. We set sail on the Awatea from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and of course nothing ever goes well for long. Twenty-four hours later in the Atlantic, we were torpedoed. Fortunately for us, a US Navy destroyer intercepted the torpedo and took most (90%) of the subsequent explosion and sank, leaving us damaged. We had no rudder and there were several other things wrong with the ship; we went round in circles for some time. Rough repairs were made and we went back to Halifax. We kicked our heels there for a while and then were put on a train journey which lasted for several days, to New York. There we transferred immediately to the Queen Mary. There were huge numbers of American troops and O.C. Troops was an American Officer. He called all the officers together before sailing to tell us that, if we were torpedoed
[page break]
3
We must remember that the officers were last to leave the ship. Bearing in mind our recent experience, this didn’t exactly cheer us up. We did arrive safely in the U.K. and I found myself flying Martinets for a time, carrying out simulated air attacks on Wimpeys and for their air gunners to cine-gun their replies.
At last a posting came through to an O.T.U. at Silverstone. By this time I had already met Tony Hayward, who wore an Observers brevet, and we became good friends. We went to the O.T.U. together and there we picked up our full crew. Crews selected each other in what seemed a very haphazard manner, by talking to those we thought would be suitable, but I can’t remember ever meeting any crew member who was subsequently dissatisfied and wanted to leave his original crew. In the end, everyone was crewed up.
From Silverstone we went to the Heavy Bomber Conversion Unit at Swinderby flying Stirlings, and then to the Lancaster finishing school at Syerston. At the end of my course, the Flight Commander sent for me and my crew said: “What the hell have you done, Benny?” I protested my innocence but everybody laughed. When I entered the Flight Commander’s office I felt sure I had done something terribly wrong because there, facing me, were the Flight Commander, O.C. Flying and two or three other officers. My heart sank into my boots and the only thing I could think of was a ‘court martial’. I felt slightly cheered when the Flight Commander seemed quite friendly as he spoke to me and one or two of the other officers questioned me about my flying and the practise bombing results that we had obtained. I felt further heartened and, knowing the results, couldn’t believe that was what I was being called in about. After a couple more questions, one of the officers said to me: “How would you like to join 617 Squadron?” I truly didn’t believe that I had heard correctly and said: “Excuse me, sir. Did you say 617 Squadron?” He answered: “Yes”. I felt a heavy weight suddenly had been lifted from my shoulders and said that I and my crew would be delighted to do so.’ At that time the only other crew which had been invited to join the squadron had come and had come directly from training was headed by Tony Iveson, and he had been a Battle of Britain pilot. He had been on the Lancaster course immediately before me.
I was told that we had been selected for 617 and to report for duty within 48 hours. When I got back to the crew and told them the news, at first they didn’t believe me. Eventually, I convinced them and we all packed up and got transport to Woodhall Spa.
On arrival and after checking in at the Mess and going through the usual procedures, I reported to the Squadron Adjutant. I waited a few minutes and was ushered into Wing Commander Tait’s office, who was O.C 617 Squadron. We had a chat, or more accurately – he spoke to me and allocated me to a flight. I reported to the Flight Commander Jonny Cockshott. He welcomed me and told me that the crew would have to go on a short training course devised by the squadron and, importantly, to get used to the S.A.B.S. bombsight and to obtain bombing results within the limits prescribed by 617 Squadron. We did this and found ourselves accepted as fully operational on the squadron.
My first trip was with Flight Lieutenant Bob Knights … without my crew but with his. I sat in the dicky seat where the Flight Engineer usually sat. I couldn’t have been luckier in the choice of captain I was to fly with. Not only was Bob an extremely nice chap but he was most helpful as well. To give you an idea of his value, he was a Flight Lieutenant with a D.S.O. and I think you know there aren’t many of those to the pound.
I did a full tour of thirty trips with the Squadron. The first trip as a crew was to Brest and, of course, being a sprog crew things had to happen, didn’t they? Over the sea, I suddenly found the cockpit full of smoke and the wireless operator telling me his radios were on fire. He and the navigator were trying to make sure the fire didn’t spread. Just the sort of confidence booster you need on your first sortie on a new squadron! I opened the D.V. panel and fortunately the combined efforts of the wireless operator and navigator dealt with the fire … we carried on. One thing was certain: none of us could have faced a return to the squadron without completing the trip saying: “We couldn’t do it. We had a fire on board.” How’s that for luck?
Some of the trips we did were quite well known. There was the Tirpitz trip (13 1/4 hours) and a 9 hour 25 minute night trip to Politz-Stettin. That was the first time I could truthfully say that, at 18,000 ft with
[page break]
4
oxygen masks on, I can remember smelling cordite from the flak that was thrown at us. That may sound like a line shoot, but it certainly wasn’t at the time. A further notable op was against the Arnsberg viaduct, when we were selected to drop the 22,000 lb Grand Slam on the viaduct.
We received Grand Slam in March 1945. To carry this a number of modifications were made to the Lancaster – a Lincoln undercarriage was fitted to allow for the increase in weight; mid-upper and front turret were removed, along with the wireless operator’s equipment and the W/Op himself. Other armour plate was taken out and the ammunition load reduced, all to save weight. The bomb doors were removed and replaced by fairings and a chain link strop with electro-mechanical release was fitted to hold Grand Slam in place.
As I recall it I was number three to release a Grand Slam, Jock Calder was the first, and Johnny Cockshott the second. This was in March – yes we are still in March, and Arnsberg Viaduct was the target. On release I remember the aircraft went up vertically about 100 – 200 feet. My flight engineer recalls hearing a loud bang at the same time, as the release slip parted.
In all 617 dropped 41 Grand Slams before the end of the war in Europe. I like to think Grand Slam punched its weight. We were the only squadron to have this bomb.
Another op that had high squitter value was against Hamburg. We had the misfortune to have a hang-up and the bomb dropped a few seconds late, which meant that it didn’t fall on the target but into the residential area beyond the target. We didn’t feel good about this, but there was nothing we could do. We set course for home. About fifteen minutes later my flight engineer nudged me and nodded his head toward what I thought was the instrument panel. I looked but could see nothing wrong, so went on flying. He nudged me even harder and moved his head rather more urgently towards the starboard side. I looked out and to my horror saw the latest German twin engine jet fighter, a Messerschmitt Me262, in formation with us on our starboard wing. I thought I must be dreaming but I knew very well I wasn’t, and thought: “This is it.” It seemed to me that if I tried a 5 Group corkscrew we wouldn’t have a chance against the German aircraft. We had no mid-upper turret and clearly the rear gunner was completely unable to train his guns on him. So, there we were at the mercy of the Luftwaffe. The flight engineer and I looked at each other again and then I looked at the German pilot, but there was no friendly wave from him – so much for fellowship of the air! Suddenly the Me262 disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and I wondered if we had all been smoking opium the night before! It was only some years later when I was talking to Air Commodore John Langston, who at the time was a Flying Officer navigator, that what appeared to be the same aircraft had attacked and shot at John’s aircraft. The German pilot must have just left training school because, although he clearly used all his ammo on John’s aircraft, he hadn’t shot him down. I thought later how fortunate we both were.
Three more incidents out of a number of lucky escapes makes one ask the question. Did Lady Luck really play a part?
On one raid during the bombing run the nose section of the fuselage was hit. Everyone seemed okay, but after landing back at base the bomb aimer discovered that both heels of his flying boots were pitted with shrapnel. An inch or two either way?
On another raid the wireless operator was tuning his radio and leaned a little closer to the set. As he did so, a large projectile or piece of flak entered one side of the fuselage and exited the other. After we landed, the wireless operator sat normally in his seat and we measured the two holes and the position of his head. If he had been sitting in this position at the time of the attack, the projectile/flak would have pierced one side of his head and exited the other. An inch or two either way?
There were three Tirpitz sorties. The first trip involved a direct flight from the U.K. to Yagodnik, Russia, land there, refuel and stay the night. From thereon the next day, the first Tirpitz attack was attempted. This was a hazardous plan as it included flying over Europe both ways and in the end the attack was not successful. However, we unfortunately lost one aircraft.
[page break]
5
For the second and third Tirpitz trips, amongst the modifications, two large fuel tanks were fitted inside the fuselage. Health and safety, eat your heart out! The flight engineers had to master the new fuel system very quickly, and indeed they did. Both these trips were made from an advanced base at Lossiemouth. On both occasions the squadron flew up to Lossiemouth with Tallboys already on board, refuelled and attended final briefing. On the second trip, at midnight, we lined up around the perimeter track, taking off in turn at a green signal from the control tower. The weather was unkind – low cloud and rain – just the job for a night low level trip across the sea! Our turn was approaching and I was having a last look around the cockpit when the flight engineer poked me in the ribs, pointing at the canopy. I looked up and saw a massive pair of main undercarriage wheels heading straight for us. There was nothing I could do as there were aircraft either side of me. We both sat there, like rabbits caught in the headlights, and waited for the inevitable. At the last moment, the wheels cleared our canopy and all was normal again. Just the sort of experience you need before take-off on a foul night!
Later we discovered the errant aircraft was flown by Tony Iveson. He had suffered engine surge on the point of leaving the ground. By a masterful piece of crew co-operation and training he and his flight engineer finally kept the aircraft straight and it just cleared the top of our canopy. But we were all young and I suppose took it in our stride. Now, I’d have the vapours. Lady Luck again.
Due to cloud and an efficient smokescreen, it was not possible to bomb the Tirpitz with any accuracy and we returned to Lossiemouth. However, on the third trip – a replica of the second – 617 Squadron finally sank the Tirpitz.
My last trip was to Berchtesgaden, the Eagle’s Nest, and I understand we were followed by Main Force. We, 617, certainly made a mess of the Waffen SS barracks. This was my last trip with the squadron although we were already made aware of a possible raid, I believe to Denmark. However, a truce was declared before this. After the war, I went into Transport Command but everything seemed so tame after 617 Squadron.
Finally, but certainly not least, I pay tribute to the ground crews. Working out in all weathers, often in wind snow and rain-swept dispersals they were always there to ensure the serviceability of our aircraft. Despite working long hours, they were always there to see us depart, and waited in uncertainty, eager to witness our return… …and woe betide us if we damaged [underlined]their [/underlined] aircraft! For 365 days and nights they made it possible for us to do our job. All of us who flew knew their worth, but why were they never publicly recognised? We would have been wingless wonders without them.
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Title
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Service History of Benny Goodman
Description
An account of the resource
Begins with his decision to cease his studies and join the Royal Air Force. Covers recruitment activities and life during initial training including employment as ground gunner while waiting for flying training. Describes basic training on Tiger Moth at 17 E.F.T.S. followed by Anson and Harvard in Canada. Relates being torpedoed on return voyage home and subsequent return to Halifax, train to New York and return to United Kingdom on the Queen Mary. Tells of flying Martinet as targets for air gunners course, crewing up at O.T.U and subsequent training on Stirling at Heavy Bomber Conversion Unit and eventually Lancaster finishing school. Describes selection to go to 617 Squadron and his arrival there. Mentions that he did 30 operations with the squadron and describes some in detail including first sortie to Brest as well as against Tirpitz, one of which involved landing in Russia. Mentions Grand Slam operations as well as one to Hamburg and another where they were formated on by an Me 262. States that his last trip was to the Eagles Nest at Berchtesgaden.
Creator
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B Goodman
Format
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Seven page printed document
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BGoodmanLSGoodmanLSv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Shropshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Peterborough
England--Berkshire
England--Woodley (Wokingham)
Canada
Ontario--Kingston
Nova Scotia--Halifax
United States
New York (State)--New York
Germany
Germany--Hamburg
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
France--Brest
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Russia (Federation)
Russia (Federation)--Arkhangelʹskai︠a︡ oblastʹ
France
New York (State)
Ontario
Nova Scotia
Russia (Federation)
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
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Ashley Jacobs
David Bloomfield
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
617 Squadron
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Flying Training School
fuelling
Grand Slam
ground crew
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Martinet
Me 262
military discipline
military living conditions
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Cardington
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Silverstone
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Woodhall Spa
sanitation
Stirling
Tallboy
Tiger Moth
Tirpitz
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/317/3474/APorteousB161102.1.mp3
80867f55350bb6d512266a1b71d81dc6
Dublin Core
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Title
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Porteous, Bob
Bryson Porteous
B Porteous
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Bryson "Bob" Porteous (441356 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-02
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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Porteous, B
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BG: OK, so I’ll introduce us just the way they suggest. Which is, this Interview is, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Bob Porteous and the interviewer, interviewee is myself Barry Green and its taking place at Bob’s home, Meadow Springs Estate in Mandurah. So, first of all Bob, um, you, you’ve signed the agreement?
BP: Yep.
BG: And so the mainly the focus of this is your experience in Bomber Command but if, to set the background, [clock chime] where did you grow up?
BP: Born in Kalgoorlie, grew up in, er, William Street in Perth, Customs House in William Street in Perth. Then, er, my mother divorced the old man because he was infe— infidelity and then she married a Lawrence Povey of Povey’s Furniture Manufacturers and we lived in North Perth. And I did all my schooling in North Perth School, state school, and then Perth Boys’ School and, because the old man was an abusive drunk, I went bush. Did a few things in the, er, bush, came back and he — first thing that Seth [?] asked me what was I doing after a couple of years in the bush? And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ll go and enlist or something or other on Monday.’ Of course that was on the Thursday and I said, he said to me, ‘What about tomorrow?’ Being a Friday. So, I said, ‘OK.’ And Friday morning I went into the A and A [?] House I think it was then and enlisted, and I was the last person on my course, and we went to England.
BG: What, what year was that?
BP: It was 1942 and, er, luckily he unknowingly gave me a good, good thing, because everyone who enlisted on the Monday they went to Rhodesia to train and then they went up to the desert and they are either still in the desert or they became POWs in France, in Italy. So, his words about when I should enlist actually served a good purpose.
BG: Right. So, what happened from there?
BP: Trained at Cloncar [?]. I have a friend here. He’s in the next room. He’s an ex-padre and we always have fun and games over the fact that he’s a padre and I tell him that I spent more time in chapel than he did. And he wanted to know why. And I said we were billeted in, in a chapel. So I sent three months in a chapel. [laugh]
BG: So, this is when you were training as a navigator?
BP: As a navi— no, I was just training as an airman then and we were then sent to Mount Gambier. That was a navigation school and, er, gave, given the choice of going Point — to other places, Evans Head and all the rest of it, and we had a lot of air cadets fresh, fresh out of school, who all wanted to go to Port Pirie because it was nearer to Perth, but we being a few old heads we said, ‘No. We’ll go to Evans Head.’ So, according to the Air Services and all the rest of it, we, well I, went to Port Pirie and all the other boys went to Evans Head. They went up to the islands and they’re still up there.
BG: So, from there you were — at what stage did you first get into an aircraft?
BP: A trainer or a real one?
BG: Well, the trainer, yep.
BP: The trainer was, oh, about three or four months after I enlisted and we had great fun and games because three of us were training as navigators and we had three, er, navs and a pilot to train in an old Anson and they drew straws as to who was going into the first leg of this triangular course and I lost, and consequently I drew the nav table, and I opened the nav drawer to put my charts in it and found that the chap who had it before had been sick in it [laugh] so consequently the pilot, when we returned, he complained to — and the chap they found out who had been the person who had been sick and he had the job for the next couple of weeks of examining all aircraft every morning before they took off to find out that they were fit, besides his ordinary work. [laugh]
BG: So, how long did you spend there before getting into, er, operations?
BP: It took three, five, six months of actual training before we were graduated as navigators and got a weeks’ leave and then we went to Melbourne and we were billeted in the embassy. Gee, a cold bloody hole that was [laugh] and then came the day we were issued with our, um, woolly flying gear, which was no indication we were going to England but that was no indication in the Services of the gear that they issued you, er, meant that you went there because I have known people being sent to the tropics with their woolly flying gear. Any rate, we were on this boat and we were told we were going to Vancouver because we had some EA air cadets, EATS cadets, who were to be trained in Calgary. So, after twenty-odd days on the ship we pulled into Panama. The next thing we know we go through the canal and we land in Boston. And, er the OC troops on the ship says, ‘We want volunteers to take these air cadets to Calgary.’ So they numbered us all off and he said, ‘Alright, everyone on — with a two in their number is a volunteer.’ So, I had a free trip according to the CPR railways to Calgary with these four hundred-odd cadets. Consequently when I got back to Fort Hamilton in New York all the rest of the chaps who’d travelled on the boat from Melbourne they, had been shipped to England. Unfortunately that ship was torpedoed and they were lost in the North Atlantic. So twenty-two of us had an extra couple of weeks in New York where I was fortunate enough to be billeted with a millionaire. [cough] His name was Mendenhall which was a — not an excuse — was a bit of a blow because the final drome that we had in England was Mildenhall so I had to think to whom I was talking and what about I was talking as to what was the name of the place, whether it was Mendenhall or Mildenhall. [laugh] Any rate, we, er, oh —
BG: So, how did you find New York? How long were you there for?
BP: A couple of weeks. They knew absolutely nothing. They were dead bloody hopeless. My opinion of the Yanks and their learning ability is zero from what they knew. Lofty and I were walking down Fifth Avenue dressed in our RAAF uniforms and a couple of cops pulled us up, thought that we were Austrians [emphasis]. They couldn’t bloody well read.
BG: Yep.
BP: ‘You come from Australia?’ They had said, ‘I thought, oh, that’s a little island in San Francisco Bay?’ Alcatraz. And things like that they were bloody hopeless [emphasis] as far as geography and things like that were concerned and the more I learned about them during the war the, the less I thought about them. [clears throat]
BG: Right, so from New York ship across the —
BP: Ah, as there were only twenty-two of us we were put on the Queen Mary, QM1. We had seventeen thousand Yankees, a regiment of them, on the boat going over and they — everyone had to do a job. So they said, ‘Twenty-two Australians. What on earth will we to do with you?’ So they gave us submarine watch on the bridge. It took — we were two hours on, one hour off. It — where we were billeted down on the boat I was Blue C4. It took twenty minutes to — from there up to the bridge, you spent two hours on bridge watch, then twenty minutes back, which gave you twenty minutes time to go to the toilet and that and you had twenty minutes to come back again so we told the first officer, ‘What’s the use of giving us an hour off to go and do that? We might as well stay up on the bridge.’ So, he agreed the thing. So the first officer and Captain Bisset (he was the captain of the Mary at the time) — so we used to do navigation exercises so I’ve navigated the Queen Mary. [laugh]
BG: Right. You’d more time to think about that.
BP: Yeah. Well, so, er, navigation exercises for five days. The twenty-two of us we navigated the Mary across to Greenock in Scotland.
BG: Right. Go on.
BP: Got, got to Scotland and we were then sent down to, mm, Padgate. That was a PDRC outside Warrington, and of course mum had always told us if you go anywhere do see as much as you can of the place. So, one thing and another, the first thing we did was when we put our gear down and all the rest of it, ‘What’s the time? Let’s go into town.’ We wanted to see town so during every spare moment my friend and I we visited whatever we could. So, over the whole of my tour in England, I visited most of England in one time and another. Any rate, we went to Warrington. We used to go in there and come down to the coffee shop, which was opposite the railway station, have our tea in there. Actually it wasn’t coffee. It was a bun, sticky bun and tea, and so when the train pulled up we hopped, raced across the road and hopped into the train because we didn’t have to pay for it, being servicemen, Australian ex-servicemen, Australian servicemen. Only this happened to be — we did that on the Wednesday and the Thursday. On the Friday we did the same thing only the train happened to be special train going to Manchester. So, the first time I went to Manchester was by mistake. [laugh]
BG: So your first operational unit when you got to the UK —
BP: [cough] It all depends what you call operations because when we were on, um, at Bruntingthorpe we were on Wellingtons at the time and we were given the job of annoying, under Operation Annoy, and annoy the German air flak gunners on the Friesian Islands and all up and down the coast. It was our job to fly up and down just out of range, toss window out the chute and all the rest of it, and annoy the German gunners. So, they didn’t call that operational but we were two crews still hut [?] we flew H-Howard and another crew flew, Bert’s flew M-Mike and we, er, did the first twelve trips alright and came the thirteenth one and we got down to the briefing room and found out that the silly looking operations officer there had made a balls up of the things and we were listed to fly M-Mike and Bert and his boys flew H-Howard. So when we came back after the raid they told us that it was OK to land but beware of the burning plane in the funnels. That was Bert and his crew in our plane. So that was my first experience of Bomber Command and their misdeeds.
BG: So, you, you were up in the, you went up in the wrong plane basically but as it turned out the best plane to be in?
BP: Yes.
BG: And this — what squadron was that?
BP: That was on Heavy Conversion Unit, HCU, before we even got on the squadron so we thought to ourselves if we can do things like that before we got on the squadron what do we do when we get on the squadron and we went to — I was posted — actually, I went to the ablutions hut one morning and had a shower and a shave and all the rest of it and someone stole my navigation watch. So the crew was delayed a couple of days while we faced a court of enquiry as to how and why and where I’d lost my watch. When we got on the squadron we found out that the crew that had taken our place were, um, had been in this particular hall and we were delayed on entering because they were cleaning the, their gear out. They had, er, taken off the previous night and hadn’t come back. So, could have been us.
BG: Yep.
BP: Any rate I was on 622 up at Mildenhall and being a base drome, three other aerodromes around the place, and a couple of [unclear] squadrons on the drome we got the dirty work. Why should they go out to one of the satellite dromes and give their information and all their rest of it to someone else. So, being new chums on the drome we got the, er dirty work of doing things around the place. So as far as operations work my work on operations was very limited and — [cough]
BG: So, getting back to your — this was your first operations and your, your log books. Tell us more about that.
BP: The things that we did with the odd jobs around the place and my six [unclear] for instance, they got us on a special trip. We supposedly flew an admiral and a commodore with their aides. In actual fact was all they wanted was a Lancaster to fly to Gibraltar because the officer, secret service officer down there said, ‘Alright, we’ll do a trip over to Tangier.’ And when we went to Tangier we had a chappie there who was another, er, secret officer, who gave us a tour of the town whilst they left, whilst we had left the plane on the drome, which we were not supposed to do but he, being a wing commander — alright, he says, ‘Leave the plane there and go into town.’ You don’t disobey the wing commander so we did. When we came to take off we found out the plane was heavy. We had flown from England to Gib, taken off and flown into Tangier. By then we should have only had, oh, probably a half a petrol load. But that plane was fully loaded. We found out of course when we landed at Gib we were heavy in the landing and of course you don’t land a heavy Lancaster the same way as you do one that’s half empty, so they had to tell us we had a full load on board, but they didn’t tell us what the load was. Turned out to be seven tons of gold [clears throat] so in actual fact it had been a gold smuggle. They wanted the gold that had accumulated from Africa into Fez and Tangier and then taken to Gibraltar to pay for he lend lease of the British war effort so it’s one of those little things and yet it’s not in my log book. When I have been to Canberra to talk to my old veterans over there I found out that their log books do not agree actually with what they did. One chap has had twenty trips written into his log book that he never did. I mean, he said twenty-five trips, you know, he actually did but he’s listed as forty-five trips. The other twenty-five, where did they come from? The same as my log book. I do not have it to be able to verify it, but I have seen a copy of the records and the records that, that have been obtained from the — Canberra and all the rest of it do not agree with my memory of the log books. So, knowing a few things that have happened during the war and that, the log, the record keeping of the Air Force or Air Ministry and that is up the balls up.
BG: So were you mostly flying as the one crew or was the crew —
BP: We — a chap Quinn and crew, the same crew all the time and, er, luckily we kept it al— always. They were mainly things that, um, other crews around the place — we were very disappointed over the fact that we didn’t do more trips, operations, than the, that the others but we were listed as the “bunnies” round the place doing the odd jobs. So, they put us on things like, um, gardening and Operation Manna, Operation Exodus bringing back ex- ex-POWs from France, from Juvencourt and that and we had the job of Operation Python, bringing back, taking people out to Italy and bringing them back from there. So, shall we say I was not a fully operational man. I did my work with 622 but the thing was after the VE Day they wanted people to fly with Operation — what was it? Out to Australia, out to Okinawa — I can’t think of it.
BG: The, the nuclear thing or —
BP: Yeah. They wanted us to go out to, um, Okina— join up with a crew, not that crew, but to join up with 460 Squadron to go to Okinawa and fly and bomb Japan and — what’s the hell name of that?
BG: Do you mind if I keep going because, you know this will be edited? So, I’m trying to think the name of the place.
BP: I’m trying to think of the name of the thing that we all joined. [clears throat]
BG: As in a —
BP: Well, it’s a well-known thing that all the Australians in England were given the opportunity of joining 460 Squadron to come out here and we trained for a couple of months, low level work, heavy loads and things like that to fly out to Okinawa and bomb Japan.
BG: Right. So this was after —
BP: After VE Day.
BG: After VE day, right.
BP: When VJ Day came along the — we had a Wing Commander Swan. We were being briefed to take off the next morning when the chappie came in with the wireless thing and showed him and said Japan had surrendered. He said [slight laugh] — he threw the message down on the table and he said, ‘I don’t know what you buggers are going to do but I’m going in the mess and get drunk.’ He said, ‘Anyone who wants to go into town go and see the adjutant.’ [laugh] So we all shot through to London for V, VJ Day.
BG: So how long were you in England?
BG: ’45.
BP: ’45. And we got on board this ship, the Orion, SS Orion, which set out to reclaim its record to Australia but had broke down in the Bay of Biscay and unfortunately the, er, one of the insurer’s representatives had found us at Southampton and as we had surplus Sterling money on us got us to insure our kit bags and that and, er, I said OK and I had a couple of pounds so I insured my kitbag. Any rate we went back to Southampton and they sent us on a train up to Millom [?] in Scotland. They reopened an old drome at Millom and instead of sending us on leave as they should have done. So we stayed at Millom for about a fortnight and they promptly found out that we were causing too much damage to their turkey flocks because, being Australian and that, we were very expert of killing sheep and skinning them and also ringing turkey necks so consequently they sent us on leave in London and we finally left England on the Durban Castle and then —
BG: This is after VE Day?
BP: After VJ Day.
BG: After VJ Day.
BP: And it was not until I arrived back in Australia that I learned that my flying kit bag had gone missing for which actually I had insured and got forty pound, yeah, Australia was still in the Sterling bracket, I got forty pounds insurance money for the kit bag, but the thing was I lost my log book.
BG: Ah, right back then.
BP: Yeah. So that’s where it is.
BG: So any, any particular missions that you went on? You’ve mentioned a few. Any others that sort of come to mind?
BP: Actually no because we just did — we dropped people over in France and things like that so we didn’t do actually bombing missions or mine a harbour or two or something like that but the war was nearly over by the time we had so all my actual war experience was on 622 but I still, we still had to fly.
BG: So you were flying over, over enemy territory in Europe?
BP: All the time, yeah. We, even though they had, the Air Force had a lot of planes and crews doing nothing they put on tourist trips where we had to fly people, ground crew and interested parties on the drome, we flew them to places like Normandy and the, um, the bomb sites and things like that, and also up and down the Rhine to see how the bridges that we, that had been bombed and things like that. So, er, I cannot claim to have done very much bombing experience.
BG: So, you said you did some mining, mine laying. What, what was involved in that?
BP: Oh, that was on Hamburg Harbour and, um, one place we did bomb was Hamburg but that was just a mass raid and everything like that because, er, later on the experience that the padre (he is an ex-serviceman padre) and when I told him when I was examining the window and told him, you know, it looks nice and bright this scene of a burning town and told him that it looked like Hamburg and that and he said, we bombed that and he said, ‘Yes. I had a job of clearing it up afterwards.’ They sent him over as a padre in that place so he and I don’t exactly get on well together. [laugh]
BG: Right.
BP: I’m trying to think of that name [beep sound] and I forget what the American, New Zealand squadron was to represent them.
BG: Yep. I’m just trying to get the name. I can’t help you there. I’ll put that in the back and it might pop out a bit later. So did you cop much — had any mechanical problems on your flights?
BP: I don’t know about mechanical problems, the only time we got shot at properly we were on supposedly on a safe [emphasis] trip dropping food to the Dutch. We were to fly in over a racecourse, I think it was this first time, and drop food. Lancasters had all the food up in the bomb bays in the open top coffins. And, er, sometimes the drop bars would come high up and the food would drop and sometimes the whole of the assembly would drop, and you could see a, an incendiary container hit a cow, or something like that and everyone had cow meat for lunch. And when we came back the ground crew they said we were very lucky. They counted we had ninety-seven bullet holes in our plane and luckily underneath the navigator’s seat was one of these incendiary containers that hadn’t fallen off, and in the bottom of it was half a dozen dents from bullets, where the bullets had struck. So the worst raid that we had was supposed to have been the safest because we had four of those. [clock starts chiming] We got shot up the first time. The second time I think we had a couple of bullet holes in the wings but nothing as near as bad as that so, um, that did count as one of our operations.
BG: Right. So how many was in the crew?
BP: Seven.
BG: Do you remember them all? Do you remember names? Do you want to mention names or not?
BP: Oh, Frank Quinn. He got married over there. A chap, Nobby Clarke, was the bomb aimer, and we had Bill Day as the tail gunner, Chick [?] Anderson as mid upper gunner and — I forget the name of the wireless operator. That was one of the things that as, er, Bert and his boys, before he bought it the — I was in the crew, I was in his crew and when they had a pretty good night in the mess his navigator got too, too well liquored up and he cycled across the paddock instead of going down the roadway and went, went over a creek, which was by then was frozen and the ice broke and he went into the water, and he went into the hut and other than getting dry or anything, he went to bed as he was and he got pneumonia and died. So the replacement chap was a friend of the other crew so we changed crews so the crew that had Bert and his crew, which I was originally on, was the crew that bought it. So the new crew was Frank. So, I outlived that one all right. [clears throat]
BG: A cat of nine lives.
BP: And a few more. [laugh] [clears throat]
BG: So, the mechanics of the aircraft. Pretty reliable? You didn’t have too many —
BP: They were very, very good. We lost, um, two motors one night on doing something or other and they gave us — they said they were no good, that they — we’d have to get another plane because they had no engines to fix it up so they sent us to, the duty crew, took us to Lindholme and Lindholme had a, a warehouse and alongside the warehouse had been a hut site for two dozen huts with their concrete floors and the air strip. And so went in and, er, signed for the new aircraft and the chap said, ‘Oh. That one there,’ he says, ‘You can have that one.’ So, okeydoke, and when we took it, when we looked at where we had to go to get to the strip, it was over these concrete bases, and he said — we complained or Frank complained that every time we went over a bump the wings, you know, fluttered and all the rest of it, and he rang up on the radio and said that it was a horrible bloody ride, and the chap said, ‘The wings stayed on,’ he said, ‘That’s part of the test.’ So, okeydoke, so we had a new aircraft we had to take up and test out so, um, apart from that, the loss of two motors things, otherwise things were OK. The only accident that we saw occur was one where we were doing low level flying around two hundred feet in Britain in dusk. That is not recognised as being very healthy and, er, this particular time I, being a pretty good navigator, I was in the lead and the others had to follow. We had our tail plane, er, painted so that they recognised who was the lead navigator. And so I was in front and the rest were following me and the chap at the rear, his, one of his motors caught alight and he said, ‘Bail out.’ And at two hundred feet bailing out at that height it’s a no-no and they couldn’t find out where he landed and it was a week later they found out that he had landed in a farmer’s silage pit, so he drowned in a load of shit.
BG: Not nice.
BP: Not nice. [clears throat]
BG: So, tell us more about the navigation. What, what you had to work with. So, were you good at maths at school is that why you went down that path or —
BP: Actually, I was colour blind and I did, when I was at ITS, I had to go into town once a week or twice a week and that, and see a Dr Rardon [?] and have my eyes tested, and all the other things that he did, and I found out when I got back to navigation school that all our maps were orange not red. So, consequently, being red colour blind didn’t affect me. So all the lines on our radar maps were either black or orange so as you — they were big, not semi-circles, eclipses [emphasis] with the radar stations that were bases in England so you had, er, diverging lines going out over the continent, so you had to do your cross, T-crosses, where they crossed and so it was the further you went from England the worse it got. There was no such thing as accurate map reading. The only thing it was that we had a new invention. They called in H2S. It was a radar dome in the bottom of the aircraft which gave you an excellent view of things like rivers or lakes or, um, coastlines and things like that. The only catch was that the Germans knew when you operated that they could trace the signal so if you turned your H2S on you were liable to be to be shot at. And of course they had just developed the German night fighter with up firing guns so consequently they lost a lot. So they did not like you using H2S too frequently. The only other time that we had trouble, one place we were at, that they had, um, war-time huts. They were ordinary, just about cardboard, you know, hard cardboard and that —
BG: Right.
BP: [cough] And a couple of the chaps had been to the mess this night and they’d come in the rear door and they had left the, er, outside door open because they had a door, you know, a light lock on the two doors at each end and, er, they’d hear this plane buzzing round the place and this silly little chap went down and opened both doors and stood in the door way. ‘What’s going on?’ Of course, the chap came down and shot him. [slight laugh]So, we — there were twenty of us in the hut and we had to claim baggage insurance on the baggage insurance, go down to the warehouse and claim new baggage.
BG: So, in terms of your navigation, did you use D-Beam, inter-directional beacon? Did you track on VHF transmitters or anything like that?
BP: No. Dead reckoning all the way because they were just — you were so, so scarce on navigation aids it was dead reckoning. Unless you were good you’d had it. [clears throat]
BG: So, I mentioned I worked on the Becker navigation which I understand came out of Loran. Did you have any experience with that?
BP: No. We didn’t on that. The Pathfinder Force boys were the ones that got Loran. They wanted, everybody in Pathfinders wanted it, and they were busy making Pathfinder Force a regular thing, so we just did not get it because it wasn’t available.
BG: Right. Right. So, do you want to perhaps describe your, your job from — so prior to the, um, mission you’d be — tell, tell us what you’d be given and the process you’d go through. You’d have some time to plan your course before you went out or what?
BP: We didn’t have much time. They’d take you down to briefing around about 4 o’clock and you’d be given what, where you were going that night and they’d tell you what routes you had too and they would say what the expected winds were. And never rely on the Met men. They were bloody hopeless. They were worse, they were worse than the people we have at present. And they would tell you it would be a nice fine night and of course there’s be 10/10 dense bloody cloud and then you’d have the opposite. So, you know, you’re going to have a bumpy ride tonight and it would be a clear, clear fighter moon night. So you just didn’t know what was going.
BG: So, on the overcast nights, um, your dead reckoning’s pretty challenging I would think?
BP: Yes. Oh, you had to, you had to be on the ball, what you were, and of course the thing was that if it was a clear night you could actually see [emphasis] people. Of course the odd person didn’t switch their lights off and things like that. They were bloody hopeless. You were supposed to go with no navigation lights, nothing, and yet you could see half a dozen lights around the place. You knew, you knew that you were somewhere right because you had someone following you. Whether you were in the wrong place you had half a dozen people in the wrong place.
BG: So the missions that you were on were mostly not bombing missions so you were a lone aircraft. You weren’t part of —
BP: Part of three or four people, planes that went out.
BG: Right, so in most cases there would be, you wouldn’t be a single aircraft going out?
BP: No. Very rarely were we ever single.
BG: So you kept in visual contact with the other aircraft or —
BP: Tried not to. [laugh]
BG: Tried not to. Right.
BP: Because of the reason, the fact of the enemy could see the other aircraft and have a go at him and they could also, also see us so it was a case of beware, get out.
BG: Yep. Did you encounter German fighters much or
BP: No. We were lucky in that regard that we didn’t. We, once we had a few stray shells come. Where from, we hadn’t clue. We were flying, you know, I wouldn’t say it was dense cloud. It was very misty, foggy and things like that a couple of stray bullets came up through the — well, they weren’t bullets. They were blody fifty millimeter shells or something like that. Yeah, they tore holes in the fuselage sort of thing. But uneventful.
BG: Do you want to have your cuppa?
BP: Oh, yeah. You can shut it off for a while.
BG: At the end of the war, did you come back by ship?
BP: Yep. We came back by the Durban Castle. That was the ship that the, after the war, the steward murdered someone, some girl, and pushed her out the port hole.
BG: Life was cheap in those days. [laugh]
BP: Yeah. We had an ENSA party on board and, er, we were coming down the Red Sea. Nice clear night, nice and smooth, the moon was out and things like that, and the ENSA party was on the front deck. They were, um, doing Service songs and Service skits and things like that. The Dominion Monarch pulled up alongside of us. They had the, er, Maori Battalion on board. So there they are, the two ships, within ten yards of each other, doing twenty-odd knots down the Red Sea and the ENSA party having a whale of a time and come midnight [coughing]. You talk too much and you get a tickle in your throat.
BG: Right. [pause] So, do you want to call it quits with that? Have you had enough?
BP: No. I’m just going to finish off there. [pause] So, it was on New Year’s Eve, this New Year’s Eve party, and it came to the end of the party at midnight and there was a hoot on the hooter from both the ships and the Maori battalion gave us the haka. It’s a sound that you, a scene that, I’ll never forget. The two ships, the moonlight and where we were in the Red Sea and the haka being — one of those, one of those things that you would never ever forget. And that’s the thing that war always reminds me of, the finish of the war.
BG: Yep, yep. Then you came back to Perth?
BP: Yes. The old man was still alive. So, I told mum, ‘Alright. He’s alive.’ So I went and joined 37 Squadron, where we used to fly up and down to Japan and, er, we served BCOF in Japan where there was a few points to the Philippines and that and we used to fly up to New Guinea, New Britain, [unclear] round Australia. Even flew politicians around from bloody Canberra to Melbourne or Sydney and back. Don’t ask me about that.
BG: So, how long were you in the Air Force after the war?
BP: Three years. [clears throat] And one of those things, I met a girl. Her husband used to work for the manager. He was where they had a B and B up in Noarlunga and he used to be manager of CSR in Fiji and he had this B and B and they were looking for someone to make up a four for bridge. They used to hold a bridge night each Tuesday night. So they found Norma and her husband had been up in New Guinea during the war. He got killed. So, er, I finally met her. So the four, two of us lived for four years. She suddenly dropped [clears throat] dead one day. She was the second fiancée of mine to die. The first one was by a flying bomb in England. We used to — it’s a funny thing. I was on the, on the squadron and all the rest of it. Bomber squadron. We used to go on leave to Croydon which was the middle of flying bomb alley. Over the road from us on the thirteenth green from us was a flak battery. They used to fire across the roof of the house at the bombs as they came up the Thames valley and Faye and I used to go to the local pub two hundred yards down the road. Been to an English pub?
BG: No.
BP: Smoke, smoke and more bloody smoke and all the rest of it and of course one thing is I don’t smoke. So, I said, ‘Better get out of here. You know, too much smoke and all the rest of it. Come for a walk down the road.’ ‘I want to talk to the girls.’ ‘Talk to the girls, alright.’ So I went down the road and I only got a hundred yards down the road when a flying bomb flattened the pub. So instead of going on leave I went to a burial party.
BG: Bad lot.
BP: One of those things yeah.
BG: So you got back to Western Australia. So, you said you sent the rest of your life in Western Australia?
BP: Yeah. Oh, sent a few years in Sydney. Then, er, mum wanted me to come home and I said I wouldn’t come home until Seth [?] died. Of course he died on the operation table from something or other. So, I managed to get through uni and that ultimo and came over here and I joined the BP refinery and they were wanting people to manage the place so they sent a few of us over to Grangemouth to learn how to run a refinery. You should have heard mum, ‘You’re away for fifteen bloody years and all the rest of it. You come home for a fortnight and you go to London for six months.’ [laugh] She was not amused.
BG: So I guess your engineering experience through the Air Force would have been invaluable in your later life?
BP: [clears throat] Well, I was their emergency controller. By day I did nothing. All, all the time I did nothing but if the siren went and there was an emergency I was in charge of the place. So people had to do what I told them. I didn’t have to know names. All I knew was what people could do, so I said, ‘You do it.’ And of course they couldn’t argue about it because I could tell them what to do.
BG: Yep. So getting back to your time — so you were always RAF crews. They didn’t mix crews up of Air Forces?
BP: Well, we had a Scottish engineer. He was from Glasgow. His family were in, er, Coventry when it got bombed. That was the reason why he was a very good — he joined the Air, he joined the RAF. When we used to go to France on Operation Exodus and other such things, rather than wear the RAF uniform, we used to outfit him with the blue RAAF uniform. We were WOs at the time so we also gave him a WO badge. He was only a sergeant, flight sergeant, in the RAF but he was a WO in the RAAF. [laugh]
BG: Right. So in the week typically how many missions during the —
BP: Two, three but of course during the off times, in the summer time, they used to send all the spare bods out to the farmers to pick peas and dig potatoes and you name it and we were veg— I wouldn’t say we were vegetarians, we were gardeners. [laugh]
BG: Right. So that was part of the job.
BP: Part of the job. I’ve got some photos if you were here long enough to show of me doing things like that.
BP: Recreation. Now, that’s censorable. [laugh] No. I knew Faye but I was a good boy. For recreation we used to go to London. Of course, thing was we used to be paid what? Thirty bob a day then. And we had an odds incidental form, Form 1257. You got paid three pence for a bloody hair cut or three pence a week because you didn’t — a hard living allowance or you didn’t have a batman or things like that, so every three months we used to get this sheet which was about another thirty pound. So, every month we had about forty pound to spend and every third month we had about sixty and so we used to go to London and spend it.
BG: So, it wasn’t a bad life if you survived.
BP: If you survived it was a good life because I used to go to wherever I was. I’ve seen more places in England than a lot of English people purely because they iss— as we were RAAF people we were allowed a rail pass to anywhere in Britain.
BG: Right, right.
BP: The RAF or the English people could only go to their home town. We went to anywhere so go down to the pay clerk and say you were on leave, for your leave warrant, and coupons and that. ‘Where are you going this week?’ We had a map. ‘Oh we’ll go there.’ [laugh] Been over cotton mills and steel works, you name it, and all the rest of it. I’ve been from Plymouth up to Lossiemouth and things like this. We had bags of fun.
BG: Well, it’s been great talking to you Bob and I really appreciate you taking the time.
BP: Well, if you had a couple more days to talk I’d tell you what I really did. [laugh]
Dublin Core
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APorteousB161102
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Interview with Bob Porteous
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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00:52:20 audio recording
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Pending review
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Barry Green
Date
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2016-11-02
Description
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Flight Sergeant Bob Porteous grew up in Australia and after spending time in the bush he joined the Royal Australian Air Force. After training and spending time in the United States, he travelled to Scotland on the Queen Mary. He flew operations as a navigator with 622 Squadron from RAF Mildenhall. On one occasion he describes a secret operation to Gibraltar and Tangier on a Lancaster that brought back gold. He also explains his role as navigator and equipment such as H2S.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
Morocco
United States
Gibraltar
England--Leicestershire
England--Suffolk
Morocco--Tangier
North Africa
Temporal Coverage
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1942
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Christine Kavanagh
622 Squadron
aircrew
Cook’s tour
entertainment
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Mildenhall
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/201/10044/BBaileyJDBaileyJDv1.1.pdf
3a146f510c94f18f8643a8ac43ad6772
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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Bailey, John Derek
John Derek Bailey
Bill Bailey
John D Bailey
John Bailey
J D Bailey
J Bailey
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Derek "Bill" Bailey (b. 1924, 1583184 and 198592 Royal Air Force) service material, nine photographs, a memoir and his log book. He flew a tour of operations as a bomb aimer with 103 and 166 Squadrons from RAF Elsham Wolds and RAF Kirmington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Bailey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-12-07
2017-01-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Bailey, JD
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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[centred] “WAS IT ALL A DREAM” [/centred]
[centred] The Memories of a Wartime Bomb Aimer Bill Bailey with No. 1 Group Bomber Command February 1942 to April 1947
These things really happened. I now have difficulty in remembering what I did yesterday but happenings of Fifty-odd years ago seem crystal clear, or
Was it all a dream? [/centred]
[page break]
Chapter 1. Enlistment – Royal Air Force Training Command.
The story begins on 2 February, 1942, my 18th. Birthday, when I rushed off to the recruiting office in Leicester and enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as potential aircrew. Being a founder member cadet (No. 6) of 1461 Squadron Air Training Corps was a help. I passed the various medicals, etc[sic] and was sent to the aircrew attestation centre in Birmingham for the various tests for acceptance as aircrew. Like most others I wanted to be a pilot but on the day I attended I think they had that day’s quota of pilots. It was said my eyesight was not up to pilot standard but I could be a navigator. I was said to have a ‘convergency’ problem and would probably try to land an aircraft about ten feet off the deck.. I was duly accepted for Navigator training. The procedure was then to be sent home, attend ATC parades regularly and await further instructions. This was known as ‘deferred service’ and with it came a letter of welcome to the Royal Air Force, from the Secretary of State for Air, at that time Sir Archibald Sinclair, and the privilege of wearing a white flash in my ATC cadet’s forage cap which denoted the wearer was u/t (under training) aircrew.
So it was that on the 27 July 1942 I was commanded to report for service at the Aircrew Reception Centre at Lords Cricket Ground, St. Johns Wood, London. I was now 1583184 AC2 Bailey, J.D., rate of pay two shillings and sixpence per day. We were billeted in blocks of flats adjacent to Regents Park and fed in a vary[sic] large underground car park at one of the blocks or in the restaurant at London Zoo. Talk about feeding time at the Zoo!! A hectic three weeks followed, issue of uniforms and equipment, dental treatment, numerous jabs, endless square bashing - the ATC training helped. Lectures on this, that and everything including the dreaded effects of
[page break]
VD, the latter shown in glorious Technicolor at the Odeon Cinema, Swiss Cottage. Not that this was of much consequence at that time because we were reliably informed that plenty of bromide was put in the tea.
One day on first parade I and one other lad from my Flight were called out by the Flight Corporal, a sadistic sod, who informed us we had volunteered to give a pint of blood. Apparently we had an unusual blood group and some was required for what purpose I have never really understood.
Having completed the aforementioned necessities it was a question of what to do with us next.
The next stage of training was to be ITW (Initial Training Wing). but there was congestion in the supply line from ACRC to the ITW’s so a “holding unit” (this term will crop up from time to time) had been established at Ludlow and it was to there that we went.
Ludlow consisted of three Wings in tented accommodation and was progressively developed into a more permanent establishment by the cadets passing through, using their civilian life skills. We were allowed (officially) one night in three off camp so as not to flood the pubs, of which there were many, with RAF bods, and cause mayhem in the town.
Four weeks were spent at Ludlow. It was said to be a toughening up course and it was certainly that.
Next stop from Ludlow was to an ITW. Most ITW’s were located in seaside towns with the sea front hotels having been requisitioned by the Air Ministry. In my case I was posted to No.4 ITW at Paignton, Devon where I was to spend the next twelve weeks living in the Hydro Hotel, right on the seafront near the harbour.
Twelve weeks of intensive ground training. At the end of this period I was at the peak
[handwritten in margin] followed (needs a verb[?]) [/handwritten in margin]
[page break]
of fitness and having passed my exams was promoted LAC – pay rise to seven shillings a day.
One of the subjects covered at ITW was the Browning .303 machine gun and I well remember the first lecture on this weapon when a Corporal Armourer giving the lecture delivered his party piece which went as follows: “This is the Browning .303 machine gun which works by recoil action. When the gun is fired the bullet nips smartly up the barrel, hotley [sic] pursued by the gases …”. Applause please!
Another subject learned was the Morse Code and here again the training in the ATC stood me in good stead.
The next phase would be flying training, but when and where?
On New Years[sic] Day 1943 we were posted from Paignton to yet another ‘holding unit’ at Brighton. The move from the English Riviera to Brighton was like going to the North Pole. At Brighton we were billeted in the Metropole Hotel. More lectures, square bashing and boredom, until, after about three weeks, on morning parade it was announced that a new aircrew category of Airbomber had been created and any u/t Navigators who volunteered would be guaranteed a quick posting and off to Canada for training.
Needless to say, yours truly stepped forward and within a week had been posted to Heaton Park, Manchester which was an enormous transit camp for u/t aircrew leaving the UK for Canada, Rhodesia or America for training.
They used to say it always rains in Manchester and it certainly did continuously whilst I was there. Anyone who has seen the film “Journey Together” will have seen a departure parade at Heaton Park in pouring rain. I am told that on the day that film was shot it was fine and the fire service had to make the rain. Sods Law I suppose!
[page break]
Chapter II. Canada – The Empire Air Training Scheme.
Next, after a farewell meal of egg and chips (In 1943 a delicacy), and a few words from the C in C Training Command, it was off to Glasgow to board the “Andes” for our trip to Canada.
The ‘Andes’ was said to be jinx ship in port. She didn’t let us down. In the Clyde she dropped anchor to swing the compass and when she tried to up anchor a submarine cable was wrapped around it. After a couple of days we finally left the Clyde and I endured six days of seasickness before arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia and then to yet another enormous transit camp at Moncton, New Brunswick where we enjoyed food that we had not seen in the UK since the start of food rationing. It was in a restaurant in Moncton that I had my very first ‘T’ Bone steak.
The first task at Moncton was issue of cold weather kit to cope with the Canadian winter and Khaki Drill to cope with the very hot Canadian summer. We were at this time in the middle of the winter and colder than I had ever experienced before.. The next stop should have been to a Bombing & Gunnery School but before that there had to be the inevitable ‘holding unit’. So it was off to Carberry, Manitoba, five or six days on a troop train, days spent seeing nothing but trees, frozen lakes, the occasional trace of habitation and the odd trappers cabin. At intervals on the journey across Canada, people were taken off the train suffering from Scarlet Fever. It was believed that this disease came from the troopships.
As we passed through Winnipeg on our journey, for the first time we were allowed off the train and as we went from the platform to the station concourse we were greeted with bands playing a huge welcome from the good people of Winnipeg. They had in Winnipeg the “Airmens Club” and an invitation to visit if there on leave. They
[page break]
had a wonderful system of people who would welcome RAF chaps into their homes for a few days or a weekend when on leave. This was to stand me in good stead as you will hear later.
Shortly after arrival at Carberry I fell victim to Scarlet Fever and spent five weeks in isolation hospital at Brandon after which I and a fellow sufferer by the name of Peter Caldwell had two weeks sick leave in Winnipeg and the Airmens Club arranged for us to stay with an English family. Wonderful hospitality. The Canadians were wonderful hosts to the Royal Air Force.
Carberry and Brandon were, of course, on the Canadian Prairies and whilst in hospital at Brandon, one night and day there was a terrible dust storm and despite the usual Canadian double glazing, everywhere inside the hospital was covered in black dust. This is probably of little interest but to me at the time was an amazing phenomenom.
Now it was back to reality and a posting to 31 Bombing & Gunnery School at Picton, Ontario. A two day journey by train around the North Shore of Lake Superior to Toronto and Belleville and then twenty plus miles down a dirt road to Picton. The airfield still exists, on high ground, overlooking the town on the shores of Lake Ontario. The bombing targets were moored out in the lake and air gunnery practice took place out over the lake.
The weather during this spell was very hot and flying was limited to a period from very early morning until midday. Canadian built Ansons were used for bombing practice and Bolingbrokes, which were Canadian built Blenheims, were used for air to air gunnery practice. The target drogues were towed by Lysanders.
Nothing outstanding took place at Picton except perhaps for our passing out party which we held in Belleville. In my case, being full of Canadian rye whisky of the
[page break]
bootleg variety I literally passed out and for many years afterwards could not even stand the smell of strong spirits.
Having recovered from the passing out the next stop was No. 33 Air Navigation School, RAF Mount Hope, Hamilton. Ontario. Mount Hope is now Hamilton Airport. Navigation training in Ansons was fairly uneventful and ended with us receiving our Sergeants stripes and the coveted “O” brevet. (Known to all as the flying arsehole) The “O” brevet was soon to be replaced with brevets more appropriate to the trade of the wearer, ie “B” for Airbombers, “N” for Navigators, etc. Next it was back to Moncton for the return to the UK.
The return voyage was on the ‘Mauritania’ where there were only 50 sergeant aircrew who were to act as guards on the ship which was transporting a large number of American troops. O/c. Troops on the ship was a Royal Air Force Squadron Leader. To our amazement when the Americans boarded the ship they had no idea where they were going. Most seemed to think they were going to Iceland and when we told them Liverpool was our destination they could not believe it. We were asked where we picked up the convoy and when we told them we did not go in convoy this caused a great deal of consternation. All the troopships going back and forth between the UK and North America were too fast to be in convoys and fast zig zag runs were made across the Atlantic. It was very long odds against the likelihood of encountering a U Boat..
Having safely arrived in Liverpool our next temporary home was yet another ‘holding unit’.
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Chapter III. Flying Training Command.
This time it was the Grand Hotel in Harrogate overlooking the famous Valley Gardens.
The RAF had taken over both the Grand and Majestic Hotels. Sadly the Grand has now gone. I rcall our CO at the Grand was Squadron Leader L E G Ames the England cricketer. Time at Harrogate awaiting posting was filled by swimming, drill, the usual time filling lectures, etc. We did, of course, get what was known as disembarkation leave. I went home and whilst there my granddad, with whom I had always had a very close relationship, took ill and died at the age of 85 and I was very grateful that I had been able to talk to him and to attend the funeral.
Christmas was spent at Harrogate, there being a ban on service travel during the Christmas period. On, I believe, Boxing Day, Maxie Booth and myself were in Harrogate, fed up and far from home, when we were approached by a chap who asked if we were doing anything that night, to which we replied “No”. He then said he was having a small party at home that night and had two Air Ministry girls billeted wit6h his family and would we like to join them. We readily accepted and when we arrived at the party we found that one of the girls was Maxie’s cousin. Small world! Still at Harrogate on my birthday 2 February, now at the ripe old age of 20. My room mates contrived to get me very drunk. I will spare you the details.
After a short time we were posted to Kirkham, Lancs to yet another holding unit, for a couple of weeks and then onward to Penrhos, North Wales, 9(O) Advanced Flying Unit for bombing practice. We were using Ansons and 10lb practice bombs. In Canada the Ansons had hydraulic undercarriages but at Penrhos they were Mk1 Ansons and it was the Bombaimers job to wind up the undercarriage by hand. A hell
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of a lot of turns on the handle – not much fun.
Next move was to Llandwrog, Nr. Caernarvon for the Navigation part of the Course. Same aircraft flying on exercises mainly over the Irish Sea, N. Ireland, Isle of Man, etc. Llandwrog is now Caernarvon airport with an interesting small museum. [handwritten in margin] museum since closed [handwritten in margin]. Llandwrog was unusual in that the airfield and our living site were below sea level, a dyke between us and the Irish Sea. Because of this there was no piped water or drainage on our site and it was necessary to carry a ‘small pack’ and do our ablutions at the main domestic site which was above sea level. I, and a pal or two went into Caernarvon for a weekend in the Prince of Wales Hotel to get a bit of a civilised existence for a change. However our stay at Llandwrog was quite brief.
The 1st. March 1944 was very significant in that it marked the move from Flying Training Command to Bomber Command. 83 Operational Training Unit at Peplow in Shropshire. Never heard of Peplow? Neither had I, it is a few miles North of Wellington. [handwritten in margin] Peplow was formerly Childs Ercall – renamed to avoid conflict with High Ercall airfield, nearby, I understood. [handwritten in margin] We arrived by train at Peplow, in the dark, station ‘lit’ by semi blacked out gas lamps. Arriving at Peplow were Pilots, Navigators, Bombaimers, Wireless Operators and Gunners from different training establishments.
Somehow, the next day, we sorted ourselves out into crews of six, Pilot, Nav, Bombaimer, W/Op and two gunners and were ready to start the business of Operational flying as a bomber crew.. We had never met each other before but were to spend the next few months living together, flying together and relying on each other, and developing a unique comradeship..
Peplow was notable for several things. From our living site, the nearest Pub was five miles in any direction. Having twice walked in different directions to prove the
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mileage we quickly acquired pushbikes. At that time there were no sign posts. One night doing ‘circuits and bumps’ in a Wellington we were in the ’funnel’ on the approach to the runway, skipper put the flaps down and the aircraft started to make a turn to port which he could not control. He ordered me to pull up the flaps and he then regained control. We then climbed to a respectable height and skip asked me to lower the flaps. The same thing happened again, an uncontrollable turn to port and quickly losing height. Flaps pulled up and normal service resumed. Skip then got permission from Air Traffic to make a flapless landing which he managed without running out of runway. We taxied back to dispersal and on inspection found that when the flaps were lowered only the port side flaps came down. Apparently a tie rod between port and starboard must have come apart. Could have been nasty!
On a lighter note, when cycling back to camp from Wellington one night I had a problem with the lights on my bike and was stopped by P.C Plod and booked for riding a bike without lights. Fined 10 shillings.
Another incident clearly imprinted on my mind was one day in class we were being given a lecture on the dinghy radio. I had heard all about the dinghy radio so many times I could almost recite it. I was sitting on the back row in class and I put my head back against the wall and must have dropped off. Suddenly a piece of chalk hit the wall at the side of my head. I awoke with a start and the guy giving the lecture (A Flying Officer) said, “I suppose Sergeant, you know all about dinghy radio”. To which I foolishly replied “Yes Sir”. He then said “In that case you can come out and continue the lecture”. Even more foolishly I did.
When finished I was asked to stay behind to receive an almighty bollocking for being a smartarse.
Finally whilst at Peplow a young lady I met in Wellington gave me a red scarf for
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luck and after that my crew would never let me fly without it.
We were now getting down to the serious business of preparing for actual operations and on the 24.5.44 we were despatched on an actual operation which was known as a ‘nickel’ raid, leaflet dropping over France, a place called ‘Criel’. 4 hours 35 minutes airborne in a Wellington bomber.
[Where is chapter IV?]
Chapter V. No. 1 Group Bomber Command.
On the 26th. June we were on the move again, ever nearer to being on an operational Squadron in Bomber Command. This was to 1667 Conversion Unit at Sandtoft where we were to convert to four engine aircraft ‘Halifaxes’. These were Halifax II & V which were underpowered and notoriously unreliable and had been withdrawn from front line service. In fact Sandtoft was affectionately known as ‘Prangtoft’ because of the large number of flying accidents. One of my pals from Harrogate days, Harry Fryer, got the chop in a Halifax that crashed near Crowle.
So that I do not give any wrong ideas, let me say, the Halifax III with radial engines was a superb aircraft and equipped No. 4 Goup.
It was here at Sandtoft that we acquired the seventh member of our crew, a Flight Engineer, straight from RAF St. Athan and never having been airborne.
We obviously survived ‘Prangtoft’ and then moved on the 22 July to LFS (Lancaster Finishing School) at Hemswell, which supplied crews to No. 1 Group, Bomber Command, which was the largest main force group flying Lancasters. We were only two weeks at Hemswell, the sole object being to familiaise[sic] with the
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Queen of the skies, the LANCASTER. A beautiful aeroplane, very reliable, able to fly easily with two dead engines on one side, and to withstand considerable battle damage and still remain airborne.
Chapter VI. The Tour of Operations. 103 Squadron.
Now for the real thing. On the 10th August we joined 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds, in North Lincolnshire.
At this point I should like to introduce our crew:
P/O George Knott. Pilot & Skipper.
F/Sgt. Ron Archer. Navigator.
F/Sgt. Bill Bailey. Bombaimer.
F/Sgt. Gus Leigh. Wireless Opeator.
F/Sgt. Wally Williams. Flight Engineer.
F/Sgt. Jock Greig. Midupper Gunner.
F/Sgt. Paddy Anderson. Rear Gunner.
After a bit more training we eventually embarked on our first operation on the 29th,. August. I now propose to go through our complete tour of Operations as recorded in my flying log book and other documents.
Before doing that perhaps I should give an insight into Squadron procedure. We were accommodated in nissen huts on dispersed sites in the vicinity of the airfield, two Crews to a hut. The huts were sleeping quarters only and were heated by a solid fuel stove in the centre. Bloody cold in the bleak Lincolnshire winter. The messes were on the main domestic site. Every morning (provided there was no call out in the night)
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it was to the mess for breakfast, check if there was an Order of Battle and if you were on it. If not, we made our way to the flight offices and section leaders. I would go to the Bombing Leader’s office where we would review the previous operation and look at target photographs. Releasing the bombs over the target also activated a camera which took line overlap pictures from the release point to impact on the ground.. We would then return to the mess to await the next orders or perhaps take an aircraft on air test, although after ‘D’ day this practice was discontinued because the aircraft were kept bombed up in a state readiness. Temporarily at least Bomber Command was being used in a close support role to assist the Armies in France.
When a Battle Order was issued, the nominated crews assembled in the briefing room at the appointed time and when everyone was present the doors were closed and guarded. On a large wall map of Europe in front of us was a red tape snaking across the map from Base to the designated target. The length of the tape dictated the reaction of the assembled company.
Pilots, Navigators and Bombaimers did their pre-flight planning prepared maps and charts ready to go. Each crew member received a small white bag into which he emptied his pockets of everything. The seven bags were then put into one larger bag and handed to the intelligence office until our return. We, in turn, were given our ‘escape kits’ and flying rations. The escape kit was for use in the event of being shot down and trying to evade capture and return to England. We also carried passport size photographs which might enable resistance workers in occupied countries to get us fake identity documents. Phrase cards, compass, maps and currency notes were also included. The flying rations issued were mainly chocolate bars (very valuable at that time) also ‘wakey wakey pills’, caffeine tablets to be taken on the skipper’s orders. All ready to go. Collect parachutes, get into the crew buses and be ferried out to the
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Dispersals A visual check round the aircraft and then climb aboard. Start engines when ordered, close bomb doors, complete preflight checks and taxi to the end of the runway. The airfield controller’s cabin was located at the side of the runway and on a green lamp from him, open the throttles and roll. We were on our way. The Lancaster had an all up weight for take-off of 66000 lbs and needed the full runway, into wind, for a safe take-off. The maximum bomb load on a standard Lancaster was 7 tons but operating at maximum range the bomb load would be reduced to about 5 tons to accommodate a maximum fuel load.
On return from operations, after landing and returning to dispersal, shut down engines, climb down and await transport back to the briefing room for interrogation by intelligence officers. Hot drinks and tot of rum available and back to the mess for the customary egg, bacon and chips..
At this time were confined to camp because of the possibility of being of being[sic] called for short notice operations.
THE TOUR OF OPERATIONS.
No. 1 29.8.44 Target – STETTIN.
Checked Battle Order to find our crew allocated to PM-N.
Briefing for night attack on the Baltic Port of Stettin. Bomb load mainly incendieries.[sic] The route took us across the North Sea, over Northern Denmark, S.W. Sweden and then due South into the target, bomb and turn West to cross Denmark and the North Sea back to base. The force consisted of 402 Lancasters and 1 Mosquito of 1,3,6,& 8 Groups. It was a very successful attack and 23 Lancasters were lost. We suffered no damage from anti-aircraft fire and saw no fighters. Whilst crossing Sweden there was
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a certain amount of what was called friendly flak, shells bursting at about 10,000 ft whilst we were flying at 18000 ft
This was my first sight of a target and something I shall never forget, smoke, flames, bombbursts, searchlights, anti-aircraft fire. It was also very tiring having been airborne for 9 hours 25 minutes and flown some 2000 miles.
Used full quota of ‘wakey wakey’ pills.
No. 2. 31.8.44. Target .Flying Bomb launch site. AGENVILLE France.
Daylight attack, Master Bomber controlled This was one of several targets to be attacked in Northern France. Seemed like a piece of cake after the long trip to Stettin. Not so! We were briefed to bomb from 10,000 ft on the Master Bomber’s instructions. On approaching the target area there was 10/10 cloud and the call from the Master Bomber went like this: “Main Force – descent to 8,000ft and bomb on red TI’s (Target indicators). – no opposition” We descended to 8,000ft and immediately we broke cloud there were shells bursting around us, Fortunately dead ahead was the target and I called for bomb doors open and started the bombing run.. At the appropriate point I pressed the bomb release and nothing happened. A quick look revealed no lights on the bombing panel. Whilst I was checking the main fuse the rear gunner was calling “We are on fire Skip – there is smoke streaming past me” The ‘smoke’ proved to be hydraulic fluid which was vaporising. We climbed back into cloud and assessed the situation. Whilst in cloud we experienced severe icing and with the pitot head frozen we lost instruments which meant skip had no way of knowing the attitude[?] of the aircraft and for the one and only time in my flying career, we were ordered to prepare to abandon aircraft and I put on my parachute pack. However we emerged from cloud and normal service was resumed. We had no
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electrics, no hydraulics, bomb doors open and a full load of bombs still on board Skip decided to head for base via a North Sea designated dropping zone where I could jettison the bombs safely. This was accompanied by going back along the fuselage and using a highly technical piece of kit, a piece of wire with a hook on the end, pushing it down through a hole about each bomb carrier and tripping the release mechanism.
Having got rid of the bombs it was back to base, crossing the coast at a spot where we should not have been and risking being shot at by friendly Ack Ack gunners. We arrived back at base some one and a half hours late. Now for the tricky bit. The undercarriage, in the absence of hydraulic fluid, had to be blown down by compressed air. This was an emergency procedure and could only be tried once, a now or never situation. Now we have to make a flapless landing and hope that the landing gear is locked down and does not collapse when we land. Not being able to use flaps means the landing speed is greater than normal and then we have no brakes. Skip made a super landing but once on the runway could only throttle back and wait for the aircraft to roll to a stop. This it did right at the end of the runway.
On inspection after return to dispersal it appeared that a shell or shells had burst very near to the bomb bay and shrapnel had severed hydraulic pipes and electric cables in the bomb bay. I should think we were very close to having been blown to bits. This trip was a little bit sobering to say the least. The aircraft resembled a pepper pot but luckily no one was injured.
No. 3 3.9.44 Target Eindhoven Airfield, Holland. Daylight Operation.
Allocated to PM-X (N having been severely damaged on our last sortie)
A straight forward attack on the airfield, one of six airfields in Southern Holland
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attacked by.675 aircraft a mixture of 348 Lancasters and 315 Halifaxes and 12 Mosquitoes, all very successful raids and only one Halifax lost.
This was my first experience of the ‘Oboe’ target marking system now used by Pathfinders flying Mosquitoes.. A very accurate system – the markers were right in the middle of the runway intersections. Very impressive.
No.4 5.9.44. Target – Defensive positions around LE HAVRE.
Aircraft allocated PM-W. Bomb load 15,000 lbs High Explosives. Daylight operation.
This attack was in support of Canadian troops who were demanding the surrender of the German garrison. The first phase of Lancasters orbited the target awaiting the outcome. This was negative and the attack took place. In clear visibility our riming point was 2000 yards in front of the Canadian troops and the area around the aiming point was completely destroyed.
No.5 10.9.44 Target – LE HAVRE again. Daylight operation.
Aircraft allocated PM-E Bomb load 15000 lbs High Explosive. Daylight operation. 992 aircraft attacked 8 difference German strongpoints only yards in front of Canadian troops. All were bombed accurately. No aircraft were lost.
No.6 12.9.44. Target FRANKFURT. Night operation.
Aircraft allocated PM-G. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
This was an unusual operation in that we were one of several crews who were briefed to bomb 5 minutes ahead of main force, identifying the aiming point ourselves. The
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object was to occupy the defences whilst the pathfinders went in low to mark the aiming point for main force. Our route to target took us South into France, near Strasbourg and then a turn North East towards Frankfurt. Our navigator Ron at some point realised we were well off track because he was getting wrong positions due to distortion of the ‘Gee chain’, wither by jamming or almost out of range.
As well as being bombaimer I was also the H2S radar operator and so I switched this on to try to verify our position I managed to identify Mannheim on the screen and was then able, with Ron, to fix a course to the target. As we approached the target there were hundreds of searchlights but instead of combing the sky they were laid along the ground in the direction of our track. It took a few minutes to realise that what they were doing was putting a carpet of light on the ground so that any fighters above us would have us silhouetted against the light. Gunners be extra vigilant! I dropped the bombs and we headed for base without incident. Intelligence reports said it was a very successful attack.
No. 7 17.9.44 Target Ammunition Dump at THE HAGUE, Holland Daylight.
Aircraft allocated PM-B, Bomb load 15000lbs Gen. Purpose bombs.
This attack by 27 Lancasters of 103 Squadron only and was carried out without loss.
No. 8 24.9.44. Target CALAIS. Close support for the Army. Daylight.
Allocated aircraft PM-B Bomb load 15000 lbs GP Bombs.
103 & 576 Squadrons were chosen to attack this target, gun emplacements, at low level (2000 ft) in the interests of accuracy. The weather was atrocious, almost as soon as we got off the runway we were in cloud. However we set course for Calais flying
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at around 1000 ft so as to keep the ground in view. As we approached the Channel the cloud lifted a bit and we were able to climb to 2000 ft but as we approached the target the cloud base lowered again and we had to descend again to 1000 ft for the bombing run. A we approached the aiming point, I was lying in the nose and could see everything on the ground. And being in the best position to see what was going on. could see where I thought the worst of the anti-aircraft fire, and indeed small arms fire was coming from.. I therefore ‘suggested’ to skip that when I say “bombs gone” you put her over hard to port and get down on the deck. Bugger the target photograph, we’ll have a picture of the sky! George did this and where we would have been if we had gone straight on whilst the camera operated, were shell bursts. We got out of that unscathed. Of the 27 aircraft that started that attack, one was lost, 8 landed away with various degrees of battle damage and of the remainder only 3 aircraft returned to base undamaged. “B” was one of them. As Ron recorded in his notes “Oppositions – everything”.
No. 9 26.9.44. Target Gunsites at Cap Gris Nez Daylight.
Allocated aircraft PM-B Bomb load 15000 lbs GP Bombs.
This was a highly concentrated and successful attack with very little opposition. Obtained a very good aiming point photograph.
No. 10 27,9,44.
We were briefed to bomb in the Calais area again on 27th. Sept but this operation was aborted due to the bombsight being unserviceable.
This ended our operational career at 103 Squadron. Only two of our operations had been at night.
Ourselves and one other crew from ‘A’ flight were transferred to 166 Squadron at
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Kirmington, one of the three stations forming 13 Base, to form a new ‘A’ flight at 166.Squadron.
As a matter of interest, Kirmington is now South Humberside Airport. Before moving on to the next phase I should explain that operational aircrew were given six days leave every six weeks which will explain some of the gaps in the story.
Chapter VII. The Tour of Operations. 166 Squadron.
166 Squadron, Kirmington, Lincs.
When we arrived at Kirmington we were allocated a hut on a dispersed site in Brocklesby Wood, about as far as could be from the airfield. Primitive living arrangements, but not too far from the Sergeants Mess.
By now we were no longer confined to camp and “liberty buses” were run from camp to Grimsby and Scunthorpe. Most of us used to go to ‘Sunny Scunny’ where there was a cinema two well known pubs, The Bluebell and The Oswald, the latter became known as 1 Group Headquarters. This establishment had a large function room with a
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minutes after other aircraft had set course. We took part on second aiming point and catching up 20 minutes on round trip landed No.3 back at base.
No. 14 28.10.44 Target COLOGNE
Allocated aircraft AS-D Bomb Load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
Daylight operation. 733 aircraft despatched to devastate residential areas in NW of the City There was heavy flak opposition and our aircraft suffered some minor damage A piece of shrapnel came through the Perspex dome in front of me whilst I was crouched over the bombsight It hit me on the shoulder on my parachute harness but did me no harm.
This was a very good operation as ordered.
No. 15 29.10.44. Target Gunsites at DOMBURG. Walcheren Island, Holland. Allocated aircraft AS-M Bomb Load 15000 lbs HE. Daylight attack. 6 aircraft from 166 squadron together with 19 others attacked 4 aiming points. All were accurately bombed. There was no opposition.
No. 16 30.10.44. Target COLOGNE, Night operation.
Allocated aircraft AS-K Bomb Load 1x4000lb Cookie plus 9000 lbs HE.
No. 1 Group was assigned to attack aiming point which was not successfully attacked on 28th. October. Over the target there was clear visibility, moderate flak opposition. This was considered to have been a very good attack.
It was on this operation, whilst we were on the bombing run an aircraft exploded ahead of us. At least I believe it was an aircraft although the Germans used a device which we called a “scarecrow”. This was a pyrotechnic device which exploded to
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simulate an exploding aircraft. Presumable meant to put the frighteners on us!
On the 31,.10.44 we were again briefed to attack Cologne but having climbed to operating height a crew check by the Skipper revealed that Paddy our rear gunner was unconscious in his turret. Gus, wireless op went back and pulled him from the turret and onto the rest bed in the centre of the aircraft. He fitted him up with a portable oxygen bottle and skip made the decision to abort and return to base where an ambulance was waiting to whisk paddy[sic] off to sick bay. Apparently the problem had been a trapped oxygen pipe in the turret. We had been airborne for 2hrs 15 mins.
To depart for the moment from the tour of operations, it was about this time when I developed at[sic] rash on my face which turned to a weeping eczema which meant that I could not shave and I had to report sick. The Doc took a look and said, “OK You’re grounded”. I replied “You can’t do that Doc, my crew will have to take a spare bombaimer and I shall have to complete my tour with other crews”. After pleading my case Doc agreed to allow me to continue flying provided each time before flying I reported to Sick Quarters and had a dressing put on my face so that I could wear my oxygen mask. The Doc was treating me with various creams which had little or no effect until one day the WAAF medical orderly who applied the treatment said to the Doc “Why don’t we try a starch poultice”. The Doc suggested that was an old wives remedy. However as nothing else had worked he agreed to let the Waaf[sic] give it a try. I know not where this young lady learned her skills because I gathered she was a hairdresser in civvie street, in Leicester, my home town. She applied the said poultice and the next day I reported back to sick quarters where she removed the poultice and whatever was clinging to it. I went back to our hut and very carefully shaved. The starch poultice had done the trick. I thought frostbite had probably caused the
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problem in the first place but I was to learn some months later the real cause which I shall reveal later in the story.
No. 17. 2.11.44. Target DUSSELDORF. Night operation.
Aircraft allocated AS-C. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie and 9000 lbs HE.
“C” Charlie was now to become our regular aircraft, for which we developed a great affection and a very special relationship with the ground crew.
992 aircraft attacked Dusseldorf of which 11 Halifaxes and 8 Lancasters were lost. It was a very heavy and concentrated attack with extensive damage and loss of life. This was the last major Bomber Command raid of the war on Dusseldorf.
At about his [this] time friendships were struck up. In my case I was returning from leave and whilst waiting for my train at Lincoln Station to Barnetby (where I had left my bike) I met a Waaf, also returning from leave and who was, surprise, surprise stationed at Kirmington. I asked how she was getting from Barnetby to Kirmington and she said she was walking. No prizes for guessing that she got back to Kirmington on the crossbar of my bike. (No it was not a ladies bike). We became good friends and she along with others, would be standing alongside the airfield controllers cabin at the end of the runway to wave us off on operations.
Also at about his [this] time George and Gus acquired friends from the Waaf personnel, one of whom was a telephonist and the other a R/T operator in the control tower. When returning from operations George would call up base as soon as he was able, to get instructions to join the circuit. First to call would get the 1000’ slot and first to land. The procedure then was to make a circuit of the airfield around the ‘drem’ system of lights, report on the downwind leg and again when turning into the funnels on the
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approach to the runway. We would then be given the OK to land or if there was a runway obstruction, go round again. I understand that word was passed to those who wished to know that “Knott’s crew were in the circuit.”
No. 18. 4.11.44. Target BOCHUM. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000lbs HE.
749 aircraft attacked this target. Unusually Halifaxes of 4 Group slightly out numbered Lancasters. 23 Halifaxes and 5 Lancasters were lost. No. 346 (Free French) Squadron, based at Elvington, lost 5 out of its 16 Halifaxes on the raid. Severe damage was caused to the centre of Bochum, particularly the important steelworks.
This was the last major raid by Bomber Command on this target
It was about at this on return from an operation, I felt the need of a stimulant and so, instead of giving my tot of rum to Jock, I put it into my ovaltine, which curdled and I ended up with something resembling soup and a chastising from Jock for wasting ‘valuable rum’.
No. 19. 11.11.44. Target DORTMUND Oil Plant. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load, 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000lb HE.
.209 Lancasters, all 1 Group, plus 19 Mosquitoes from 8 Group (Pathfinders) attacked this target. The aiming point was a synthetic oil plant. A local report confirmed that the plant was severely damaged. No aircraft were lost.
No. 20 21.11.44. Minelaying Operations in OSLO FJORD Norway.
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Aircraft AS-E. Bomb load 6 x 1800 lb Accoustic[sic] and Magnetic Mines.
Six Lancasters from 166 Squadron and 6 from 103 Squadron detailed to plant ‘vegetables’ in Oslo Fjord. AS-E to mine a channel half a mile wide, between an island and the mainland. This was to catch U Boats based in the harbour at MANNS. The attack was carried out at low level and required a very accurate bombing run.. It was a major sin to drop mines on land as they were classified Secret This was a highly successful operation with no opposition and no aircraft lost. Time airborne 6hrs 45mins
No. 21. 27.11.44. Target “FREIBURG” S.W. Germany. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
Freiburg was not an industrial town and had not been bombed by the RAF before. However. No. 1 Group 341 Lancasters, which was maximum effort for the Group, plus 10 Mosquitoes from 8 Group, were called upon to support the French Army in the Strasbourg sector. It is believed the Freiburg was full of German troops. The target was accurately marked using the ‘OBOE’ technique from caravans based in France. 1900 tons of bombs were dropped on the target from 12000 ft in the space of 25 minutes. Casualties on the ground were extremely high. There was little opposition and only one aircraft was lost…
On this operation we carried a second pilot as a prelude to his first operation. He Was Charles Martin, a New Zealander and he and his crew were to claim “C” Charlie as their own when Knott’s crew had finished their tour. Martin’s wireless operator was Jim Wright, who now runs 166 Squadron Association and is the author of “On Wings of War”, the history of 166 Squadron.
This crew completed their tour on “C” Charlie and the aircraft survived the war.
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No. 22. 29.11.44. Target DORTMUND. Daylight operation,
“C” Charlie. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000 lbs HE.
This was no ordinary operation, 294 Lancasters from 1 Group plus the usual quota of Mosquitoes from 8 Group. At briefing we were told that as Bomber Command had been venturing into Germany and particularly Happy Valley in daylight, and, unlike the Americans, had not been attacked by large numbers of fighters, there was concern that because of our techniques in Bomber Command, each aircraft making its own way to the target in the Bomber stream, we might be very vulnerable to fighter attack. We could not possibly adopt the American system of flying in mass formations and do some boffin somewhere had come up with the ‘brilliant’ idea that we should indulge in gaggle flying. No practice, mind, just – this what you do chaps – get on with it.. The idea was that 3 Lancasters would have their tail fins painted bright yellow and would be the leading ‘Vic’ formation. All other aircraft would take off, find another squadron aircraft and formate on it. Each pair would then pack in together behind the leading ‘vic’ and the lead Navigator would do the navigating with the rest of the force following. The route on the flight plan took us across Belgium crossed the Rhine between Duisburg and Dusseldorf then passing Wuppertal and North East into the target area. All went well until we were approaching the Rhine when the lead navigator realised we were two minutes early. It was important not to be early or we would arrive on target before the pathfinders had done their job. The technique for losing two minutes was to do a two minute ‘dog-leg’. When ordered by the lead nav, this involved doing a 45 degrees starboard turn, two minutes flying, 90 degree port turn, 2 minutes flying, 45 degree starboard turn and we were then back on track.
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Unfortunately the apex of the dog-leg took us directly over Dusseldorf, a town which was very heavily defended. All the flak in the world came up, especially among the three lead aircraft and suddenly there were Lancs going in all directions. I actually saw a collision between two aircraft which both spiralled earthwards. Once clear of this shambles we found we were now in the lead and so we continued to the target and there being no markers down, apparently due to bad weather, I followed standard instructions and bombed what I could see. We had suffered slight flak damage but nothing to affect “C” Charlies[sic] flying capabilities and we arrived back at base 5 hours 35 mins after take-off. Six Lancasters were lost.
This was our one and only experience of ‘gaggle flying’.
No. 23. 4.12.44. Target KARLSRUHE. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
The railway marshalling yards were attacked by 535 aircraft. Marking and bombing were accurate and severe damage was caused. A machine tool factory was also destroyed. 1 Lancaster and 1 Mosquito were lost.
No. 24. 6.12.44. Target Synthetic Oil Plants “MERSEBERG LEUNA” Nr. Leipzig.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie 6000 lbs mixed HE.
475 Lancasters and 12 Mosquitoes were called upon to destroy Germany’s largest synthetic oil plant following numerous ineffective raids by the U.S. Air Force. This was the first major attack on an oil target in Eastern Germany and was some 500 miles from the bomber bases in England. “C” Charlie and crew were detailed to support pathfinder force (We were now considered to be an experienced crew). This meant we were to attack six minutes before main force. Weather conditions were
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very poor and marking was scarce and it was thought the attack was not very effective. However, post raid photographs showed that considerable damage had been caused to the synthetic oil plant and it was later revealed that the plant manager reported that the attack put the plant out of action and the second attack on 14.1.45 was not really necessary. 5 Lancasters were lost.
No.25. 12.12.44. Target ESSEN. Night attack.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie 10000 lbs HE bombs.
This was the last heavy night raid on Essen by 540 aircraft of Bomber Command. Even the Germans paid tribute to the accuracy of the bomb pattern on this raid which was thanks to “OBOE” marking by pathfinder Mosquitoes.
6 Lancasters lost.
No. 26. 13.12.44. Target Seamining [?] KATTEGAT. Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load. 6 x 1800 lbs mines.
6 aircraft from 166 Squadron and 6 from 103 Squadron were detailed to lay mines in the Kattegat. This force took off in poor visibility but over the dropping zone the weather was good. On this occasion the mines were to be dropped using the blind bombing technique. I was to use the H2S radar which was a ground mapping radar. The dropping point was a bearing and distance from an identifiable point on the coast which gave a good return on the radar. On reaching the dropping point the pilot had to steer a pre-determined course and I had to release the mines at say, one minute intervals. The H2S screen was photographed so that the intelligence bods back at base could check that the mi8nes had been put down in the right place. In this case – spot on!! We then received a signal from base informing that the weather had
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clamped and we were diverted to Lossiemouth. We landed at Lossie having been airborne for 5 hrs 45 mins. At Lossie we were given beds and of course food, with the intention of returning to Kirmington the following morning.
The next morning we were given the Ok to return to Kirmington and went out to the aircraft. One engine failed to start and a faulty starter motor was diagnosed. A replacement was to be flown up from Kirmington. There we were dressed in flying kit with no money or toilet requisites and not knowing when the aircraft would be serviceable It certainly would not be today. We managed to secure a bit of cash from accounts and towels, etc from stores. That night Jock and I decided to go out on the town breaking all the rules about being out in public improperly dressed. However we got away with it. On the 17yth. “C” Charlie was serviceable and we were permitted to return to Kirmington. When we joined the circuit we could see Flying Fortresses on our dispersals having been diverted in the day before. The weather was certainly bad in the winter of 44/45.. The Americans crews allowed us to look over their Fortresses and we in turn invited them to look at our Lancaster. Their main interest centred on the Lancaster’s enormous bomb bay compared with their own.
21/12/44/ Seamining BALTIC Night operation.
Aircraft AS-H. Bomb load. 5 x 1800 lb mines.
This operation was aborted shortly after take-off due to the unserviceability of the H2S which was essential for the accurate laying of the mines. The visibility at base was very poor and we were given permission for one attempt at landing and if unsuccessful we were to divert to Carnaby in Yorkshire which was one of three diversion airfields with very long runways and overshoot facilities. We therefore
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jettisoned fuel to reduce the landing weight and made the approach. The airfield controller was firing white Very lights into the air over the end of the runway to guide us. We crept in over trees in Brocklesby Wood, trees which had claimed other Lancasters coming in too low, and made a perfect wheeled landing. It does not bear thinking about what would have happened if the undercarriage had collapsed, we were sitting on top of 9000 lbs of High Explosive. Good work skipper! Did not count as an operation.
The Squadron had a stand down at Christmas and on Christmas Day there was much merriment and a fair amount of booze put away and we went to bed a bit the worse for wear. It was therefore a bit upsetting to be got out of bed at 3am on Boxing Day morning, sent for an Ops meal and told to report for briefing at some unearthly hour. So to operation No. 27.
No. 27.. 26.12.44. Target “ST-VITH” Daylight operation.
Aircraft ‘B’. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie and 10000lbs HE.
“The Battle of the Bulge”, the German offensive in the Ardennes was in progress. A large force from Bomber Command was called upon to support the American 1st. Army trying to stem the German advances in the Ardennes. The attack was concentrated on the town of St. Vith where the Germans were unloading panzers to join the battle.
The whole of Lincolnshire was blanketed in fog with ground visibility of only a few yards. After briefing we went out to the aircraft, climbed aboard and waited for the time to start engines. Just before time there were white Very Cartridges fired from the
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control tower which indicated the operation was scrubbed. We returned to the mess and were given a new time to go out to the aircraft. Another flying meal.
We went out to the aircraft again and had a repeat performance. Third time lucky, we sat in the aircraft and although there was still dense fog, time came to start engines. This time no scrub. A marshall appeared in front of the aircraft with tow torches signalling us to start taxying and we were guided to the end of the runway. A glimmer of a green from the airfield controller and we turned onto the runway, lined up, set the gyro compass and we roared off down the runway at 1.15pm. Airborne and climbing we came out of the fog at about 200 ft and it was just like flying above cloud. We set course according to our flight plan and visibility across France and Belgium was first class. No cloud and snow on the ground. We did not really need navigation aids, I was able to map read all the way to the target. Approaching the target area there were a few anti aircraft shell bursts and it was apparent the Germans had advanced quite a long way. We bombed from 10000ft and the bombing was very concentrated and accurate. In fact it was reported that 80% of the attacking aircraft obtained aiming point photographs.
It was now time to concern ourselves with the return to Kirmington. The fog was still there and the only 1 Group airfield open was Binbrook, high up on the Lincolnshire Wolds, which stuck out of the fog like an island. The whole of 1 Group landed at Binbrook. There were Lancasters parked everywhere. Whilst we were in the circuit awaiting our turn to land, I was looking out of the window and noticed a hole in the wing between the two starboard engines. When we had landed and shut down the engines, we went to look at the hole. On top of the wing it was very neat but on the underside there was jagged aluminium hanging down around the hole. Obviously a shell had gone up and passed through the wing on its way down, without exploding.
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An airframe fitter looked at the damage and said the aircraft was grounded. This meant that after interrogation we were allowed to return to Kirmington by bus and proceed on leave.
Our next operation was not until 5.1.45 but some of us returned early from leave to attend a New Year party in the WAAF mess which was actually situated in Kirmington Village.
No.28. 5.1.45. Target HANOVER Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries.
325 Aircraft of Nos. 1 and 5 Groups were briefed for the second of a two pronged attack on Hanover.
Nos. 4 and 6 Groups had bombed the target two hours earlier with bomb loads of mainly incendiaries. When we crossed the Dutch coast, the fires could be seem[sic] from at least 100 miles away. Our track took us towards Bremen and was meant to mislead the enemy into believing that was our target. However we did a starboard turn short of Bremen and ran into Hanover from the North. The target was well bombed and rail yards put out of action. I don’t know what we did right but “C” Charlie arrived back at base 4 minutes before anyone else.
No. 29. 6.1.45. Seamining. STETTIN Bay. Night operation.
Aircraft AS-D. Bomb Load 6 x 1500lb Mines.
Knott and crew started their third and final gardening trip (As seamining was known) 48 aircraft of Bomber Command were detailed to plant ‘vegetables’ in the entrance to Stettin Harbour and other local areas. The enemy was able to pick up the force 100 miles North East of Cromer because bad weather condition forced us to fly at 15000
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ft to the target instead of the usual 2000ft,. As a result of this early warning enemy fighters were waiting and the target area was well illuminated by fighter flares. It was believed that the enemy thought this was a major attack on Berlin developing. Knott and crew dropped their vegetables in the allotted area, securing a good H2S photograph and again returned to base first.
No. 30. 14.1.45. Target MERSEBERG LEUNA (Again) Night operation.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie plus 5500 lbs HE.
200 Aircraft attacked this target to finish off the job started on 6th December. A very successful attack.
No. 31. 16.1.45. Target Oil refinery ZEITZ Nr. Leipzig.
“C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 6000 lbs GP Bombs.
This was the one we had been waiting for, our last operation. We went into briefing and were told by the intelligence officer that although we were being briefed the operation might be cancelled because a large force of Amercan[sic] Fortresses and Liberators had been to the target earlier in the day and a photo recce Mosquito had gone out to photograph the target and assess the results. Before the end of briefing it was confirmed that that[sic] the Americans had missed and our operation was on. At 1720 on the 16th January we took off on this operation. Over the target there were hundreds of searchlights, the markers were in the right place and we completed our bombing run. The target was well ablaze and there were massive explosions. At one point Paddy called out “We’re coned skip” meaning we were caught by searchlights.
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It was briefly very light in the cabin but the light was caused, not by searchlights but by the explosions from the target.
Of the 328 Lancasters that attacked the target, 10 were lost.
When we returned to base all of our ground crew, including one guy who had returned early from leave, were there to welcome us and join in a little celebration.
George Knott was awarded an immediate Distinguished Flying Cross, said to be a crew award for completing a tour of operations.
All seven of us were posted from Kirmington, on indefinite leave to await our next assignments.
Apart from activities in the Officers and Sergeants Messes, and trips into Scunthorpe where the “Oswald” was the central drinking point, the main point of activity was the pub in Kirmington village. The “Marrow Bone & Cleaver” or the “Chopper” as it was known, was the meeting place for all ranks. The pub is now a shrine to the Squadron, there is a memorial in the village, lovingly cared for by the villagers’ and memorial plaques in the terminal building at Humberside Airport.
There is also a stained glass window in Kirmington Church.
I have mentioned our off base activities but, of course, a lot of time was spent in the Mess and the radio was our main contact with the outside world. I think the most popular program was the AFN (American Forces Network). They had a program which I believe was called the “dufflebag program”. Glen Miller and all the big [inserted in margin] this sentence needs a verb! [/inserted in margin] bands of the day. The song “I’ll walk alone” was very popular and was recorded by several singers. The British one was Anne Shelton, an American whose name escapes me and another American called Lily Ann Carroll (Not sure about the spelling of that name). This girl had a peculiar voice but it had something about it.
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Since the war I have not been able to find anyone who ever heard of her but I did hear the record placed on one of the archives programs on BBC, two or three years ago. If anyone knows of Lily Ann Carroll I would love to know.
I can’t remember where it was but on one occasion when we were out together as a crew, someone asked what the “B” meant on my brevet. Quick as a flash Paddy jumped in “It means Big Bill Bailey the bastard Bombaimer”.
The completion of our tour of operations was of special relief to Gus Leigh, our wireless operator who incidentally had a few weeks earlier had[sic] been commissioned as Pilot Officer. Gus was married and his wife Enid was pregnant and lived in Kent. George our skipper had relatives who lived near Thorne which was quite near to Sandtoft and not really too far from Elsham and Kirmington so it was arranged that Enid would come to stay with George’s relatives and Gus would be able to see her fairly regularly. As we approached the end of our tour you can appreciate the tension. I was to hear later that after we had left Kirmington, Enid had a son and then suffered a massive haemorrhage and died. What irony, a baby that so easily could have been fatherless was now motherless.
Before leaving the scene of operations, so to speak, I would like to clear up one or two points.
I have often been asked the question, were you frightened? I can only speak for myself and maybe my crew. I don’t think ‘frightened’ was the right word, apprehensive, maybe but except for a very few, I believe all aircrew believed in their own immortality. It was always going to be the other guy who got the chop, never yourself. Had this not been the case then we would never have got into a Lancaster.
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Ron Archer used to tell me he thought we were the luckiest crew in Bomber Command.
There were, of course, a very few aircrew who lost their nerve and refused to fly. All aircrew were volunteers and could not be compelled to fly but if that became the case then they would be sent LMF (Lack of moral fibre) and would lose their flying badge and be reduced to the ranks.
Much has been said and written in recent years about the activities of Bomber Command and in particular our Commander in Chief, “Bomber” Harris. I believed then, and still believe that what was done was right. I did not bomb Dresden, but had I been ordered to do so, I would not have given it a second thought.
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Chapter VIII. Lossiemouth.
I was at home in Wigston, Leicestershire and my 21st birthday, the 2nd February was fast approaching. Parents and friends were trying to organise a party, meagre rations, permitting. They need not have worried because I received instructions to proceed immediately to 20 OUT Lossiemouth, At 9.30 pm the eve of my birthday I caught a train from South Wigston station to Rugby and then onto a train bound for Scotland. I arrived at Lossiemouth at 11pm and following day. What a way to spend a 21st birthday!
The next day having completed arrival procedures I duly reported to the Bombing Leader for duty. At the same time I discovered that George Knott had also been posted to Lossiemouth as a screened pilot. I flew with him ocassionally[sic] when he needed some ballast in the rear turret when doing an air test.
The role of 20 OUT was to train Free French Aircrew, again flying Wellingtons and my job was to fly with them on bombing exercises to check that they were using correct procedures. I used to say, “Patter in English please”, which was alright until they got a bit excited and lapsed into French. Bombing took place on Kingston Bombing Range, on the coast East of Lossiemouth. One of my other jobs was to plot the bombs on a chart using co-ordinates given by observers at quadrant points on the
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range. These were phoned through to the bomb plotting office. The student bombaimer then came to the office to see the results of his aiming efforts. 10 lb smoke bo9mbs were used for daylight bombing and 10 lb flash bombs for night bombing. In the summer at Lossie, night flying was almost impossible due to the short night in those Northern parts. It was quite common to take off after sunset and then see the sun set again.
After a few weeks I was attached from 20 OUT to 91 Group Airbomber instructors school at Moreton in Marsh for 3 weeks before becoming an official instructor. I returned to 20 OUT and shortly afterwards was again sent off on a course, this time to the Bomber Command Analysis School at Worksop. Here I became an alleged expert on the Mark XIV Bomsight.[sic] This was a gyro stabilised bombsight [sic] which was a tactical bombsight [sic] rather than a precision bombsight.[sic] It consisted of a computor[sic] box and a sighting head and obtained information of airspeed, height, temperature and course from aircraft instruments plus one or two manual settings and converted this information into a sighting angle. The only piece of vital information to be added was the wind speed and direction which had to be calculated by the Navigator. The bombaimer was then able to do a bombing run without the necessity of flying straight and level.. It took account of climbing, a shallow dive and banking. The sequence of events when bombing was, when the bomb release (hereafter called the ‘tit’ [)]was pressed several things happened, the bombs started to be released in the order set on the automatic bomb distributor, so that they were dropped in a ‘stick’. The photoflash was released, the camera started to operate and as the bombs reached the point of impact almost immediately beneath the aircraft, the photographs were taken. Having used this equipment for the whole of my tour of operations I can vouch for its performance. The Americans had their much vaunted Norden and Sperry Bombsights [sic]
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which were claimed to be very accurate but required the aircraft to maintain a straight and level flight path for an unacceptable time against heavily defended targets. The Mk XIV was so good that the Americans adopted it for their own aircraft and called it the T1 Bombsight. Many T1’s were used by the RAF in lieu of the MkXIV. A matter of production I guess.
On my return from Worksop, with glowing reports from my two courses, the Bombing Leader said “OK Flight Sergeant you had better apply for a commission.” This I did and after going through all the procedures was commissioned in the rank of Pilot Officer (198592) on the 5th June, 1945.
Of course ‘VE’ Day took place on the 5th May after which it was only a matter of time before the OTU’s were run down and in the case of Lossiemouth this was to be sooner rather than later. The Wellingtons were all flown down to Hawarden in Cheshire for eventual disposal, I must record one tragic incident which happened whilst I was at Lossiemouth. One Sunday morning a Wellington took off on air test and lost an engine on take-off and the pilot was obviously trying to make a crash landing on the beach to the East of Seatown. He didn’t make it and crashed on top of a small block of maisonettes killing most of the inhabitants who were still in bed. A tragic accident!
The question now arose as to where next we would all go. We were given the option of being made redundant aircrew, going to another OTU or going back to an operational Squadron. My problem was solved for me, ‘Johnnie’ Johnson, ‘A’ Flight Commander, came into the plotting office and said “I’m going back on ops, I want a bombaimer”. Thus I joined his crew and other instructors made up a full crew with the exception of a flight engineer, all having done a first tour. Johnnie had to revert
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from his Squadron Leader rank to Flight Lieutenant. All the other members of the crew were officers.
Chapter IX Tiger Force.
On the 6th. July we went to 1654 Conversion Unit at Wigsley, were not wanted there and were sent to 1660 Conversion Unit at Swinderby. It was necessary to do a conversion course becaused[sic] Johnnie had done his first tour on Halifaxes and needed to convert to Lancasters. We also picked up a Flight Engineer who was actually a newly trained pilot, who had also done a flight engineers course, there now being a surplus of pilots. He happened to be a lad I knew from my ATC days.
We were now part of “Tiger Force” which was 5 Group renamed and we were to fly the Lancasters out to Okinawa to join in the attack on Japan. The Lancasters would shortly be replaced by the new Lincoln bombers which were bigger, more powerful and had a longer range.
We commenced our training, for my part I had to familiarise myself with ‘Loran’ which was a long range Gee for use in the Pacific. I did say earlier in the story that I would tell you about my ‘rash’. At Swinderby I had a recurrence and immediately reported sick. The Doc took a look at me and said “Oh! We know what that is, it is oxygen mask dermatitis, when you sweat your skin is allergic to rubber. We will make you a fabric mask. Problem solved. The new mask was not needed, however,
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because the war ended and with it my flying career.
VJ Day was a wild affair, In the “Halfway House” pub at Swinderby my brand new officer’s cap was filled with beer when I left it on a stool.
In a final salute to the mighty Lancaster, Swinderby had an open day to celebrate the end of the war and the Chief Flying Instructor, the second on three, the third on two and finally the fourth on one engine. What an aeroplane! What a pilot!
Chapter X The last chapter.
There followed a strange period. First to Acaster Malbis, nr York where all redundant Aircrew handed in their flying kit. Then to Blyton, Nr. Gainsborough where we were given a choice of alternative traded. Seldom did anyone get their first choice and I was chosen to become an Equipment Officer and after a brief spell at Wickenby was posted to the Equipment Officers School at RAF Bicester. A four week course and I was meant to be a fully qualified equipment officer. I was posted to Scampton but not needed there and so was posted on to RAF Cosford where I was put in charge of the technical stores. The Chief Equipment Officer was fairly elderly Wing Commander who took me under his wing and kept a fatherly eye on me. The Royal Air Force was beginning to return to peacetime status and Wingco[sic] warned me that it was probably not a good idea to fraternize with my ex Aircrew NCO’s in the “Shrewsbury Arms”. If you must, get on your bikes and go further afield, was his advice.
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One Monday morning I was called up to the WingCo’s office to be asked “Where is F/Sgt. Brown (Not his real name) this morning”. “I don’t know sir” I replied. “Well I will tell you” he said. “He is under arrest at Shifnal Police Station”
This particular ex Aircrew NCO lived in a village quite near to Cosford and had permission to ‘live out’. It transpired that almost everyone in his village had new curtains made from RAF bunting and quite a few people were wearing RAF or Waaf shoes. I was ordered to do a stock check on my section and for his part he was charged by the Civil Police and at Shifnal Magistrates Court received little more than a slap on the wrist. No doubt his war service stood him in good stead. Because he had been dealt with by the Civil Courts he could not be charged and Court Martialled by the RAF and all that happened was that he was posted away from Cosford and released early into civvie street.
At the time, lots of POW’s were passing through Cosford on their way from POW Camps in Europe to their homes.
Monthly “Dining In” nights were also resumed in the Officers Mess. Due to officers leaving the station or being demobbed, at every “Dining In” we were “Dining Out” those departing., always ending in a wild party. I remember one night which was extremely boisterous ending with Bar Rugby, footprints on the ceiling, the lot. I had better leave to the imagination how the footprints on the ceiling were achieved. That night I went to bed at about 3 am and when I went in to breakfast the following morning the mess was immaculate. The staff had obviously been up all night cleaning up.
On the 4th. November 1946 I received my final posting from Cosford to Headquarters Technical Training Command, at Brampton Nr. Huntingdon to be Unit Equipment
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Officer. The Headquarters Unit consisted of a Squadron Leader C.O., a Flight Lieutenant Accountant Officer, a Flight Lt. Equipment Officer and their staffs. I had a hairy old Sergeant Equipment Assistant who I believe was a regular airman and probably looked upon me as not a real Equipment Officer. However, his knowledge and experience were invaluable.
I enquired as to the whereabouts of my predecessor to be told that he had already gone having been posted abroad. There was, therefore, no handover of inventories. The next surprise was even greater, I was told that I also had RAF Kimbolton to finish closing down. I took myself to Kimbolton to find a ‘care and maintenance party’ of three airmen and one Waaf. Two were out on the airfield shooting rabbits and the other two were dealing with some paperwork. The entire camp had been almost cleared, barrack equipment to a storage/disposal site, fuel to other sites and/or the homes of the local population. Legend had it that a grand piano from the Sergeants Mess had gone astray. One day a Provost Squadron Leader came into my office and said: “Bailey, I want you to come with me to St. Neots Police Station to identify some rolls of linoleum which they have recovered from a farmer”. We went to St. Neots and a police sergeant showed us several rolls of obvious Air Ministry linoleum standing in a cell. I examined the rolls and could find no AM marks so I told the Provost that I could say the rolls ere exactly similar to AM Lino but I could not positively identify them as AM property. The provost told the police sergeant to give the lino back to the farmer. Heaven only knows how many houses had their floors covered in Air Ministry lino in the Kimbolton area. No doubt this sort of thing was happening all over the country. The politicians were so anxious to get servicemen back into civvies street that establishments were seriously undermanned.
When I, a mere Flying Officer, did the final paperwork for RAF Kimbolton I raised a
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write off document well in excess of £1 million at 1947 prices and this only involved equipment known to be missing.
With regard to Brampton itself, the winter of 46/47 was extremely severe with heavy snowfalls. Even the rail line between Huntingdon and Kettering was blocked. When the snow thawed there was severe flooding. One weekend I went home and returned to Camp on Sunday afternoon to find that the previous night there had been a severe storm with gale force winds and Brampton was a scene of devastation. Trees had been blown down crushing nissen huts. The camp was flooded and the sewage system was completely useless. The following morning I located a stock of portable loos (Thunder boxes so called). A four wheel drive vehicle was despatched through the flood waters surrounding Huntingdon, to RAF Upwood to collect these things. Things gradually returned to something like normal but it was a terrible time. The Officers Mess at Brampton was in the large house in Brampton Park and the Headquarters Staff from the C in C Technical Training Command down, were housed in Offices adjacent to Brampton Grange. There were far more senior officers at Brampton than junior officers because of the very nature of the place.
The PMC of the mess was a Group Captain and one day he came to me and said “Bailey, we are going to have a Dining In and I thought it would be nice if we could have some proper RAF crested crockery and cutlery”. I informed the PMC that these items were not on issue whereupon he suggested that I use my initiative.
It just so happened that whilst I was a[sic] Cosford I learned that in the Barrack Stores the very things I was being asked to get were in store, having been there throughout the War. I spoke with the Wing Commander, my former boss, who
agreed to release a quantity of crockery, etc. I informed the PMC of my success and he arranged for a De Havilland Rapide aircraft from our communications flight at nearby Wyton to take
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me to Cosford to collect the two heavy chests of crocks. I am sure the Rapide was overloaded on the flight back to Wyton but the mission was accomplished and the PMC was able to show off his ‘posh’ tableware at the next Dining In.
I was shortly to have to make a major decision, the date was fast approaching for my release back into civilian life, I had agreed to serve six months beyond my release date and had made an application for an extended service commission which would have kept me in the Royal Air Force for at least another six years. However my civilian employers became aware that I had done the extra six months and were not amused. I, despite having access to ‘P’ staff at Brampton could not get a decision from Air Ministry and I made the decision to leave the service.
On 1st. April, how significant a date, I headed off to Kirkham in Lancashire to collect my demob suit. A very sad day.
This is the end of the ‘dream’ but not quite the end of my love affair with the Royal Air Force. But that, as they say, is another story ……
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Two photographs in RAF uniform; one in 1942 aged 18 and the other in 1945 aged 21.
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Was it all a Dream
The memoirs of Wartime Bomb Aimer Bill Bailey
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Bailey's wartime memoirs, from enlistment, training in UK and Canada and detail of each of 31 operation in Bomber Command. After completion of his tour he was transferred to Lossiemouth to train Free French aircrew. After successful progress he was offered a commission. Later he trained for Tiger Force ops at RAF Wigsley and Swinderby. When the Force was cancelled he became an Equipment Officer at Bicester then Cosford, Brampton and Kimbolton.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bill Bailey
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
45 typewritten sheets and two b/w photographs
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BBaileyJDBaileyJDv1
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
United States Army Air Force
Free French Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Norway
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
England--Birmingham
England--Devon
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Yorkshire
France--Domléger-Longvillers
France--Ardennes
France--Calais
France--Cap Gris Nez
France--Le Havre
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Leipzig
Manitoba--Carberry
Netherlands--Domburg
Netherlands--Eindhoven
New Brunswick--Moncton
Norway--Oslo
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Ontario--Hamilton
Ontario--Picton
Poland--Szczecin
Netherlands--Hague
France
Ontario
New Brunswick
Nova Scotia
Netherlands
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Warwickshire
Manitoba
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
David Bloomfield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1 Group
103 Squadron
166 Squadron
1660 HCU
1667 HCU
4 Group
5 Group
576 Squadron
8 Group
83 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
B-17
Bolingbroke
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
flight engineer
Gee
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
Lysander
Master Bomber
medical officer
memorial
mid-air collision
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Mosquito
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
promotion
RAF Acaster Malbis
RAF Bicester
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1568/35500/BFreemanWFreemanWv1.2.pdf
3f3caa442d86d0abdb3348aa0c6b5c21
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Freeman, Bill
William Freeman
W Freeman
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-12-07
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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
Freeman, W
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. The collection concerns Bill Freeman (1806695 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book memoir and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 550 and 300 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Monica Snowball and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] 1 [/underlined]
5TH APRIL 1943 SAW ME LEAVE TWICKENHAM to REPORT FOR SERVICE IN THE ROYAL AIR FORCE. MOST OF MY FRIENDS HAD ALREADY BEEN CALLED UP, SO IT WAS A RELIEF TO BE JOINING THEM AT LAST. EVEN SO IT WAS A WRENCH TO BE LEAVING HOME. I MADE MY WAY TO LORDS CRICKET GROUND NEAR REGENTS PARK IN LONDON, UPON REPORTING TOGETHER WITH MANY MORE, WE FILLED IN MASSES OF PAPER WORK & WERE KITTED OUT. FIRST A MASSIVE KIT BAG & EVERYTHING ELSE WAS JUST SHOVED IN. IT WEIGHED A TON. AFTER LUNCH WE WERE PARADED IN SOME SORT OF ORDER & MARCHED TO VICEROY COURT. A RECENTLY BUILT LUXURY BLOCK OF FLATS, WITHOUT ANY LUXURIES. THE FLOORS WERE PLAIN CONCRETE, THE ROOMS CONTAINED 1 BED AND 1 CUPBOARD PER BODY, OF WHICH THERE WERE ABOUT 1 DOZEN PER ROOM. WE WERE INSTRUCTED TO UNPACK OUR KIT, CHECK EVERYTHING FOR SIZE. ANYTHING NOT FITTING WAS TO BE EXCHANGED THE FOLLOWING DAY. PARADE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, IN UNIFORM WAS AT 8 AM, BREAKFAST WAS AT 7 AM BED HAD TO BE MADE UP IN ARMY FASHION, READY FOR OFFICER’S INSPECTION. A DRILL SERGEANT WAS ASSIGNED TO INSTRUCT US AND INFORM US ABOUT WHAT WAS TO BE EXPECTED, THERE WAS ABOUT 20 OF US IN OUR FLIGHT. OUR FIRST DAY WAS TO BE TAKEN UP WITH MEDICAL & INJECTIONS. SO OFF WE WERE MARCHED TO SOMEWHERE NEAR THE ZOO. WE WERE A RAGGED LOT, BUT HAVING DONE TRAINING & DRILL WITH THE HOME GUARD IT WAS EASY FOR ME TO FIT IN. THE MEDICALS & INJECTIONS & LUNCH TOOK ALL MORNING QUITE A FEW OF THE LADS WERE OVERCOME & LAID OUT ON BENCHES. THE SERGEANT WASN’T TOO PLEASED AT THIS, HE [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
THAN THE OTHERS, COULD YOU FIND YOUR WAY BACK TO VICEROY COURT?” I SAID “YES SERGEANT” HE SAID “VERY WELL, MARCH THOSE THAT CAN WALK BACK, I WILL HAVE TO GET A WAGON TO TAKE THE OTHER SHOWER BACK”. STAY IN YOUR BILLET UNTIL I COME BACK” I TOLD THE OTHER LADS WHAT WAS GOING ON & THEY ACCEPTED THAT IT WAS BETTER THAN HANGING AROUND FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS. SO OFF WE WENT AND IN 15 MINUTES WERE BACK AT VICEROY COURT. THE LADS WERE GLAD TO LAY ON THEIR BEDS FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON, I MANAGED TO SEE THE SERGEANT IN THE KITCHEN AND SCROUNGED TEA & BISCUITS, WHICH WENT DOWN WELL. THE DRILL SERGEANT WAS QUITE HAPPY ON HIS RETURN TO SEE ALL HIS FLIGHT WAS ACCOUNTED FOR & DISMISSED US UNTIL 8 AM PARADE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, BUT WE HAD TO REMAIN IN QUARTERS, NO TRIPS INTO TOWN. THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS TAKEN UP WITH CLASSROOM WORK ON AIRFORCE PROCEDURE & WORKING. AFTERNOON FREE TO GET OVER THE EFFECTS OF THE INOCCULATIONS. THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS TAKEN UP WITH DRILL & MARCHING, AFTER A WHILE THE SERGEANT PULLED ME OUT & TOLD ME TO TAKE OVER. HIS WORDS WERE “LETS SEE JUST WHAT YOU DO KNOW”. SO THE HOME GUARD TRAINING WAS COMING IN USEFUL & ALL WENT WELL. IT WENT SO WELL THAT FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK I WAS GIVEN THE JOB OF DRILLING THE OTHERS WHENEVER THE NEED AROSE. TO MY ASTONISHMENT THE LADS TOOK IT WELL – WE HAD NO TROUBLE. MAINLY BECAUSE AT THE END OF THE DRILL SESSION WE WERE ALWAYS FIRST IN THE QUEUE FOR MEALS. WE WERE POSTED to [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
of THE WEEK. BEFOR [sic] WE LEFT, THE DRILL SERGEANT SAID “GOOD LUCK, YOU’VE HAD A GOOD REPORT ON YOUR RECORD, THIS WEEK HAS BEEN AN EASY ONE FOR ME.” BRIDLINGTON OUR BILLET WAS A HOUSE IN RICHMOND ROAD. THE COURSE WORK WAS AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION MORSE CODE SIGNALLING & GENERAL DRILLING ETC. THIS LASTED 6 WEEKS. THOSE THAT PASSED THE TEST WERE POSTED TO BRIDGENORTH IN SHROPSHIRE. HERE WE WERE INSTRUCTED IN THE WORKINGS OF THE FRAZER NASH TURRET & THE BROWNING 303 MACHINE GUN, AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION WAS AGAIN A MUST. ALL WAS CLASSROOM WORK WITH A MAJOR EXAM AT THE END OF A FUTHER [sic] 6 WEEKS, THEN OFF TO STORMY DOWNS IN SOUTH WALES. STORMY DOWNS WAS APTLY NAMED. THE DROME WAS ON THE HILLS CLOSE TO THE SEA & THE AIRCRAFT WERE AVRO ANSONS WITH A GUN TURRET MIDWAY ALONG THE FUSELAGE. THE PILOTS WERE THOSE BEING RESTED AFTER A TOUR OF OPPERATIONS. [sic] ALL OF US CADETS HAD NOT FLOWN BEFOR [sic] & THE PILOTS TOOK GREAT DELIGHT IN THROWING THE AIRCRAFT ABOUT TO SEE IF THEY COULD MAKE US AIRSICK. FORTUNATELY I STOOD UP TO IT PRETTY WELL, AND WHILST FEELING A BIT SQUEEZY AT TIMES, MANAGED TO KEEP THINGS UNDER CONTROL. HERE WE DID AIR TO AIR FIREING [sic] & PRACTICE CINE CAMERA GUNNERY, WITH OTHER AIRCRAFT ATTACKING. HAVING AT LAST GOT THE RUDIMENTS OF WHAT AIR GUNNERY WAS ABOUT, WE WERE EXAMINED & PASSED OUT AS AIR GUNNERS, GIVEN 3 STRIPES & THE RANK OF SERGEANT AND SENT ON 7 DAYS LEAVE. I [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
AIR GUNNER, ALL IN A MATTER OF 5 MONTHS OF JOINING. THE LEAVE WENT QUICKLY & I HAD BEEN NOTIFIED THAT I WAS TO REPORT TO HIXON IN STAFFORDSHIRE, TO BE CREWED UP, & SO IT WAS AT THE END OF AUGUST ’43 THAT I WAS TO MEET THE CHAPS I WAS TO FLY WITH. IT WAS A QUEER MEETING. WE STOOD AROUND IN OUR VARIOUS GROUPS WIRELESS OPS, BOMB AIMERS, NAVIGATORS, & AIR GUNNERS THE PILOTS THEN APPROACHED EACH GROUP AND ASKED INDIVIDUALS IF THEY WOULD LIKE TO JOIN HIS CREW. BY THE TIME HE CAME TO THE GUNNERS HE HAD ALREADY GOT THE OTHERS TOGETHER. HIS OPENING LINE AS HE CAME UP TO ME WAS “CREWED UP YET GUNNER?” I LOOKED UP TO SEE A CHAP OF MY OWN AGE, FAIR HAIRED & WITH A BIG SMILE AND A TWINKLE IN HIS EYES, AND A SERGEANTS STRIPES ON HIS ARM. WHY I ASKED MYSELF WAS HE ONLY A SERGEANT. MOST PILOTS WERE OFFICER RANK. I REPLIED THAT I WASN’T CREWED UP, HIS NEXT WORDS WERE OFF PUTTING “HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BECOMING A HERO & WINNING MEDALS” HE SAID. “NO THANKS” I REPLIED “THE ONLY MEDAL I WANT IS THE LONG SERVICE ONE” HE LAUGHED AND SAID “YOU’LL DO, COME AND MEET THE OTHERS” WITH THAT WE INTRODUCED OURSELVES. THE PILOT WAS RON JONES FROM BRIGHTON. HE HAD BEEN PUT BACK TO SERGEANT PILOT BECAUSE HE HAD UPSET too MANY “BIG WIGS” THE NAVIGATOR WAS ART CRICHE CANADIAN FARMER. THE BOMB AIMER ANOTHER CANADIAN DAVE BREMNER A YOUNG COLLEGE BOY FULL OF FUN THE WIRELESS OPERATOR WAS KEN SMITH, SHORT, TUBBY FROM DEWSBURY & A COMIC. SO [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 5 [/underlined]
GET THEMSELVES INTO A TEAM, FOR THE ESSENCE OF A BOMBER CREW WAS EACH TO HAVE THE CONFIDENCE OF THE OTHERS. HIXON WAS AN OPPERATIONAL [sic] TRAINING UNIT. FLYING WELLINGTON TWIN ENGINE BOMBERS, OR WIMPYS AS WE LOVINGLY CALLED THEM. WE FLEW AS A CREW MAINLY. PRACTISING TAKE OFFS & LANDINGS. HIGH & LOW LEVEL BOMBING CROSS COUNTRY NAVIGATIONAL TRIPS OF 4 TO 5 hours AND GUNNERY EXERCISES. I ALSO HAD TO GO ON A SPECIAL GUNNERY COURSE & RECOGNITION COURSE AT THIS TIME MY SHOOTING WAS NOT VERY BRILLIANT, BUT THANKFULLY IMPORVED BEFOR [sic] IT WAS NEEDED. GRADUALLY IN THE WEEKS AHEAD, WE BECAME RELIANT ON EACH OTHER, WE WORKED HARD TO BECOME A TEAM, UNTIL WE ALMOST KNEW WHAT THE OTHERS WERE THINKING. SOCIALLY WE HAD VERY LITTLE CONTACT WITH EACH OTHER, BUT ONCE A WEEK WE HAD A CREW MEAL IN A LOCAL PUB, THE 2 CANADIANS BEING OFFICERS, PAID FOR THE MEAL & THE SERGEANTS PAID FOR THE DRINKS. OUR OTHER CONTACT WAS ONLY DURING FLYING TRAINING, WHICH WE ALL TOOK SERIOUSLY AND IT PAID OFF LATER ON. MY SPARE TIME, MOSTLY EVENINGS WAS SPENT IN STAFFORD, DARTS SNOOKER & DRINKING IN THE LOCALS. I HAD MADE FRIENDS WITH ANOTHER GUNNER NAMED TONY. HE WAS ABOUT THE SAME AGE AS MYSELF. A BLONDE, BLUE EYED, HANDSOME FELLOW. AN ONLY CHILD OF DOTING PARENTS & VERY SHY. I DONT THINK HE HAD EVER HAD A DRINK BEFORE JOINING THE AIRFORCE. MANY TIMES I HAD TO TAKE HIM BACK TO CAMP WORSE FOR WEAR. DURING ONE OF OUR EVENINGS [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 6 [/underlined]
GIRL FRIEND, WE USED TO GET THE LORRY TO TAKE US IN TO STAFFORD, THE [sic] INTO THE PUB FOR DRINKING DANCING. HE WOULD GO OFF WITH HIS GIRL & I WOULD PLAY DARTS OR SNOOKER, UNTIL IT WAS TIME TO GO BACK TO CAMP. ALL OUR MATES WOULD PILE INTO THE LORRY, IN VARIOUS STATES OF INEBRIATION ESPECIALLY TONY, TOWARD THE END OF OCTOBER ’43 OUR CREW HAD BEEN ON A CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT OF ABOUT 5 hours AND WERE READY TO LAND, WHEN WE SAW THAT THERE WAS A PLANE ON THE GROUND ON FIRE. WE WERE ALLOWED TO LAND & IN THE FLIGHT OFFICE WERE TOLD THAT THE CREW WAS TONY’S & THAT THEY MANAGED TO GET OUT, EXCEPT TONY IN THE REAR TURRET BEING TONY’S MATE I HAD THE TASK OF COLLECTING HIS PERSONAL BELONGINGS AND PRESENTING THEM TO HIS PARENTS WHEN THEY CAME TO CAMP. I VOWED THEN THAT I WOULD NOT GET INVOLVED IN ANY CLOSE FRIENDSHIP WHILST FLYING AGAIN & NEVER DID. THE EVENING AFTER THE ACCIDENT I WENT INTO STAFFORD, INTO THE PUB WHERE I KNEW HIS GIRL FRIEND WOULD BE. AS SOON AS SHE SAW ME ON MY OWN SHE KNEW THAT SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED. THERE WERE NO TEARS AS I TOLD HER. WE FINNISHED [sic] OUR DRINKS AND SHE JUST SAID “THANKS BILL” & OFF SHE WENT WITH HER CROWD. SHE HAD SEEN IT HAPPEN BEFOR [sic] & NO DOUBT WOULD SEE IT HAPPEN AGAIN, AS WE ALL DID. A WEEK LATER WE HAD OUR LAST FLIGHT AT THE OTU it was TO BE A TRIP OVER SOUTHERN FRANCE. WE WERE LOADED UP WITH [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 7 [/underlined]
DETAILING ALL THE NEWS OF THE PROGRESS OF THE WAR. ALSO WE HAD BUNDLES OF FOIL STRIPS WHICH WERE TO BE RELEASED AT A GIVEN TIME AT A GIVEN PLACE, THESE FOIL STRIPS REFLECTED THE SIGNALS OF GERMAN RADAR & GAVE THE APPEARANCE OF A HUGE FORMATION OF BOMBERS, IT ACTED AS A DECOY & DREW FIGHTER AIRCRAFT AWAY FROM THE TRUE BOMBER FORCE. WE ACCOMPLISHED THIS MISSION WITHOUT MISHAP & WERE THRILLED THAT AT LAST WE HAD BEEN PART OF A RAID. THEN IT WAS A 14 DAY LEAVE. IT WAS DURING THIS LEAVE THAT I CELEBRATED MY 21ST BIRTHDAY ALBEIT, A LITTLE EARLY, BUT AFTER FLYING IT SEEMED QUEER NOT TO HEAR THE ROAR OF AIRCRAFT ENGINES. ALSO THE FLYING ROUTINE WAS MISSING, SO WHILST IN [sic] WAS NICE TO BE HOME WITH THE FAMILY I WAS NOT SORRY TO BE GOING BACK. THERE WAS MORE TRAINING TO BE DONE & I HAD TO GO FOR A WEEKS GUNNERY COURSE TO BINBROOK. THIS WAS AN AUSTRALIAN BOMBER STATION, VERY OPPERATIONAL [sic] & THEIR LOSSES WERE HIGH. THE FIRST PERSON THAT I MET AT BINBROOK WAS A CHAP I HAD DONE MY INITIAL TRAINING WITH AT STORMY DOWNS. A WELSHMAN FROM TREDEGAR & AN EX POLICEMAN NAMED VICTOR JONES. VIC & I HAD BEEN PUT FORWARD FOR OFFICER SELECTION AS WE HAD TOPPED THE COURSE TABLES. THERE WAS ONE OFFICER PLACE PER COURSE. I WAS NOT OVERKEEN & THOUGHT THAT ONLY 5 MONTHS DID NOT JUSTIFY BEING MADE AN OFFICER. THE BENEFITS [sic] OF BEING AN [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 8 [/underlined]
WHEN SHOT DOWN YOU WOULD BE ENTITLED TO BETTER TREATMENT. VIC GOT THE OFFICERSHIP, MUCH TO MY RELIEF. AFTER THE DAY’S GUNNERY PRACTICE, I USED TO MEET UP WITH VIC, BORROW HIS SPARE UNIFORM & WE WOULD HAVE A DRINK OR TWO IN THE OFFICERS MESS, WHICH WAS VERY ENJOYABLE. AFTER A WEEK I LEFT BINBROOK THANKFULLY MY SHOOTING HAD IMPROVED & I WAS MORE CONFIDENT IN MY JOB. SADLY I HEARD A FEW MONTHS LATER THAT VIC HAD BEEN SHOT DOWN I REJOINED MY CREW AT BLYTON 1662 CONVESION [sic] UNIT. WE WERE TO FLY HALIFAXES. ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS AND CONTRARY AIRCRAFT AND SO EASY FOR INEXPERIENCED PILOTS TO CRASH. HOWEVER, RON, OUR PILOT MASTERED THE BRUTE & WE COMPLETED 10 DAYS THERE. DURING THIS TIME OUR CREW INCREASED BY 2. THE FLIGHT ENGINEER CALLED GEORGE, I NEVER DID KNOW HIS SURNAME. HE WAS A LONDONER & HAD WON HIMSELF THE GEORGE CROSS MEDAL FOR HIS PART IN THE BLITZ. OUR PILOT TOOK AN INSTANT DISLIKE TO HIM & ALWAYS FELT THAT GEORGE WAS ONLY WAITING TO WIN MORE MEDALS, WHICH WAS AGAINST OUR CREWS WAY OF THINKING. WE ALWAYS SAID THAT OUR JOB WAS TO REACH THE TARGET DROP THE BOMBS & GET HOME IN ONE PIECE. HOWEVER GEORGE WAS GOOD AT HIS JOB & WAS NEVER GIVEN THE CHANCE TO PLAY THE HERO. – MUCH TO HIS DISGUST - . THE OTHER MEMBER WAS THE MID-UPPER GUNNER JOHNNY JOHNSON, SHORT & [missing words]
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[underlined] 9 [/underlined]
HIMSELF TO HIMSELF & CAME FROM NORTHAMPTON OUR ORIGINAL 5 NEVER REALLY GOT USED TO BECOMING 7. BUT WE ALL DID OUR JOBS AND MADE A DECENT CREW. WE TRANSFERED [sic] (MUCH TO OUR RELIEF) to LANCASTERS AT HEMSWELL FOR A WEEK AT ELSHAM WOLDS AFTER A COUPLE OF FLIGHTS IT WAS FINALLY ONTO 550 SQUADRON AT NORTH KILLINGHOLME NEAR GRIMSBY, OUR FIRST TASTE OF OPPERATIONAL [sic] LIFE. IT WAS NOW MARCH 1944. KILLINGHOLME KILLINGHOLME [sic] HAD ONLY JUST OPENED UP IN JAN 44 & THE FACILITIES WERE VERY SPARTAN & WE HAD TO ROUGH IT FOR SOME TIME. SLEEPING ACCOMODATION [sic] WAS A NISSEN HUT, STRAW MATTRESSES ON IRON BEDS & TWO COKE STOVES FOR HEATING, BUT AS THE C/O SAID “YOU’LL BE PLENTY WARM ENOUGH, FLYING.” WE SETTLED IN WELL TO SQUADRON LIFE. WE STILL HAD TO TRAIN DURING THE DAY. WE WORKED WELL TOGETHER & DEVISED A SYSTEM SO THAT WE WERE AS EFFICIENT AS WE COULD BE. THEN ON THE 10TH APRIL 1944 OUR PILOTS NAME APPEARED ON THE FLIGHT LIST. THE ROUTINE THEN & IN FUTURE TO BE REPEATED OFTEN, WAS, 10 AM IN THE MORNING, CREW BUS TO THE AIRCRAFT WE WERE TO USE. Q-QUEENIE, EACH OF US CHECKED & RECHECKED HIS PART. THE ENGINES WERE RUN UP & THE PILOT CHECKED EACH ENGINE SEPERATELY. [sic] ANYTHING HE DIDN’T LIKE WAS ATTENDED TO & CHECKED AGAIN THE WIRELESS OP. CHECKED HIS EQUIPMENT. WE [missing words]
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[underlined] 10 [/underlined]
HAD TO CHECK MY GUNS WERE IN WORKING ORDER AMMUNITION RAN SMOOTHLY INTO THE GUN. THE AMMUNITION BELT WAS FOLDED INSIDE THE FUSELAGE & RAN IN TRACKS INTO THE TURRET. COULD NOT AFFORD A JAMMED BULLET, IF NEED AROSE, TO MESS THINGS UP. THE TURRET HAD TO WORK SMOOTHLY THE HYDRAULICS FREE FROM LEAKS & AIRLOCKS THE ELECTRIC HEATING FOR MY FLYING SUIT HAD TO BE WORKING, FROZEN FINGERS AT A CRUSIAL [sic] MOMENT to BE AVOIDED. THE INSIDE PERSPEX WAS CLEANED so THAT VISION WAS CLEAR. EVERYTHING CHECKED & RECHECKED, THEN & ONLY THEN THE PILOT WAS ADVISED THAT EVERYTHING WAS O.K – THE BOOK SIGNED. WE HAD A FIRST CLASS GROUND CREW & RARELY FOUND A FAULT, WHEN WE DID, IT WAS PUT RIGHT. BY FINDING OUT HOW MUCH PETROL WAS BEING PUT IN & THE WEIGHT AND TYPE OF BOMBS WE COULD WORK OUT THE DISTANCE AND TYPE OF TARGET of the opperation. [sic] ALL WAS TO BE REVEALED AT THE BRIEFING ABOUT 2 hours BEFOR [sic] TAKE OFF NO ONE WAS ALLOWED OUT OF CAMP UNTIL TAKE OFF. AT THE BRIEFING it WOULD BE DISCLOSED THE TARGET, THE COURSE to BE SET TIME OF TAKE OFF, TIME OVER TARGET & TIME BACK. WE WERE ISSUED WITH AN ESCAPE KIT IN CASE WE HAD TO BALE OUT & CHOCOLATE & CANNED DRINK FOR THE JOURNEY. ALL RELEVANT INFORMATION WAS GIVEN & DIJESTED. [sic] THE NAVIGATOR THEN HAD TO WORK OUT HIS FLIGHT PLAN. OUR NAVIGATOR WAS SLOW & METHODICAL. I NEVER KNEW HIM TO [missing words]
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[underlined] 11 [/underlined]
ON, TOO SOON OR TOO LATE MEANT THAT YOU WERE ON YOUR OWN & EASILY PICKED UP BY RADAR, SEARCHLIGHTS or FIGHTERS, SO THEN TO TAKE OFF. OUR TARGET ON THAT FIRST TRIP WAS MARSHALLING YARDS AT AULNOYE. TAKE OFF 23.35 time over TARGET 02.25 WE PILED INTO THE CREW BUS WITH 2 OTHER CREWS & WERE TAKEN OUT TO OUR AIRCRAFT THERE WAS A BIT OF LAUGHING & JOKING & AS EACH CREW LEFT, IT WAS “CHEERIO, SEE YOU AT BREAKFAST”. WHEN OUR AIRCRAFT WAS REACHED, WE ALIGHTED, SAID “CHEERIO” to the GROUND CREW & CLIMBED ABOARD, THE JOKES STOPPED & WE WERE EACH LEFT TO OUR OWN THOUGHTS “HOW WOULD WE COPE UNDER FIRE” WE SHOOK EACH OTHERS HAND, PATTED THE SIDE OF THE AIRCRAFT & MADE OUR WAY TO OUR POSTS. MINE WAS A LONG WALK TO THE REAR, STOWING MY PARACHUTE OUTSIDE THE TURRET I SWUNG MYSELF IN, PLUGGED IN MY ELECTIC [sic] HEATER, CHECKED IT & SWITCHED OFF, RUNNING THROUGH ALL THE CHECKS I REPORTED OVER THE INTERCOM THAT ALL WAS O.K. EACH MEMBER IN TURN REPORTED AND ALL WAS SET. AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME THE ENGINES WERE STARTED & CHOCKS AWAY WE WERE MOVING TO THE END OF THE RUNWAY. GIVING THE THUMBS UP SIGN FROM THE GROUND CREW SERGEANT. ONE PLANE AFTER THE OTHER WERE SIGNALLED OFF & SOON WE WERE AIRBOURNE [sic] & REACHING 20,000 FT [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 12 [/underlined]
LIKE A TRAINING EXERCISE. SOON IT WAS OVER THE FRENCH COAST & COURSE SET FOR TARGET TARGET [sic] REACHED SPOT ON TIME. FEW SEARCHLIGHTS AND A BIT OF “ACK-ACK” GUNFIRE. THE BOMB AIMER LINED UP HIS TARGET & GAVE THE PILOT DIRECTIONS. I FELT THE AIRCRAFT RISE AS HE REPORTED “BOMBS GONE SKIPPER” THE PILOT REPLIED “THANK YOU BOMB AIMER, LETS GO HOME” & AS WE PASSED OVER THE TARGET I COULD SEE A SERIES OF EXPLOSIONS, FIRES BURNING & SEARCHLIGHTS TRYING TO PICK US UP, VERY LITTLE “FLACK” SUGGESTING THAT THERE WERE A NUMBER OF NIGHT FIGHTERS ABOUT. I REPORTED THIS TO THE SKIPPER. HE SAID “KEEP YOUR EYES WELL PEELED GUNNERS. THE WORST IS BEHIND US.” WE HAD A QUIET JOURNEY BACK. LANDED. REPORTED IN & WENT TO BREAKFAST. ALL OUR CREWS WERE BACK SAFELY AFTER WHAT WAS A RELATIVELY EASY TRIP. BUT AS ONE OLD CREW SAID IT DOESNT HAPPEN OFTEN, COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS BREAKFAST WAS A GOOD FRY UP AND SUDDENLY I WAS TIRED & SURPRISED TO SEE IT GETTING LIGHTER IT WAS 6 AM THE TRIP HAD TAKEN 5 hours NO REPORTING UNTIL 12 NOON AND SO TO SLEEP. AS IT HAPPENED WE WERE NOT OPPERATIONAL [sic] AGAIN FOR OVER A WEEK, BUT THERE WAS NO SLACKING, WE STILL HAD TO PRACTICE AND WERE ALWAYS KEPT INFORMED OF DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES BEING USED. IF WE WEREN’T REQUIRED FOR FLYING WE COULD GO INTO GRIMSBY FOR CINEMA, PUBS & ENTERTAIN [missing words]
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[underlined] 13 [/underlined]
WHICH WAS USED BY THE RAF, AND NICKNAMED THE “MUCKY DUCK,” NOISEY & SMOKEY. IT WAS THERE THAT I FIRST MET UP WITH THE “YANKS”. WE GOT ON REASONABLY WELL ONCE WE WERE USED TO THEIR WAYS, BUT COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND WHY THE WHITES WOULD INSIST ON BLACKS BEING FORCED TO DRINK ELSE WHERE, AND ANY TROUBLE USUALLY AROSE BETWEEN THE TWO. BACK IN CAMP WE KEPT LOOKING AT THE OPPERATIONS [sic] BOARD AND AT LAST ON THE 18TH APRIL WE WERE DETAILED. OUR ROUTINE CHECKS OF THE AIRCRAFT WERE DONE AND ABOUT 8 pm WE HAD BRIEFING. THE TARGET WAS ROUEN. THE DOCKS & MARSHALLING YARDS. AGAIN EVERY THING WENT WELL. WE STAYED OUT OF TROUBLE, DID THE JOB AND CAME BACK TO BASE. TWO NIGHTS LATER WE WERE FLYING AGAIN, THIS TIME TO COLOGNE IN THE RHUR. THE HOT SPOT OF GERMANY. THE LARGE MUNITIONS FACTORIES OF KRUPPS & STEEL WORKS WERE ALL ALLONG [sic] THE RHUR. WELL DEFENDED. THIS TIME IT WAS NO JOY RIDE. WE SAW IT ALL. SEARCHLIGHTS “FLACK” AND THE AIRCRAFT TOSSED ABOUT BY NEAR SHELL BURSTS. NO DAMAGE TO WORRY ABOUT. WE SAW OTHER AIRCRAFT BEING ATTACKED BY NIGHT FIGHTERS & GO DOWN IN FLAMES. THE TARGET WAS ONE MASS OF FIRES & BOMB BURSTS. IT SEEMED ENDLESS. BUT EVENTUALLY WE WERE THROUGH, BOMBS DROPPED & TARGET BEHIND US. THE SKIPPER CHECKED EVERY ONE WAS O.K. APPOLOGISED [sic] FOR THE BUMPY RIDE & SAID “I’LL BUY YOU ALL A BEER WHEN WE GET BACK”[missing words]
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[underlined] 14 [/underlined]
A COUPLE OF SCARES FROM NIGHT FIGHTERS, BUT MANAGED TO EVADE THEM AND LOSE OURSELVES INTO THE DARK NIGHT SKY. THE C/O HAD BEEN RIGHT, IT HAD BEEN PRETTY WARM FLYING NO NEED FOR COKE FIRES. TWO NIGHTS LATER WE WERE IN THE RHUR AGAIN TO DUSSELDORF. MUCH THE SAME HAPPENED, BUT WE RETURNED O.K. NO DAMAGE. THEN KARLSRUHE A COUPLE OF NIGHTS LATER, WE HAD A BIT OF DAMAGE, BUT MADE IT HOME, BUT THAT WAS A LONG TRIP AND TOOK 6 1/2 hours. MOST OF IT TRYING TO KEEP OUT OF TROUBLE, WE HAD TO PICK UP ANOTHER AIRCRAFT FOR OUR NEXT FLIGHT TO ESSEN ON THE 26TH APRIL. BY NOW WE HAD EXPERIENCED IT ALL. EVERYTHING THAT COULD HAPPEN AND THOUGHT WE WERE BEING LUCKY TO GET AWAY WITH IT. WE HAD DEVELOPED A GOOD WORKING SYSTEM BETWEEN US GUNNERS WHICH KEPT US OUT OF THE WORST OF IT. THE REST OF THE CREW ALWAYS CAME AND SAID THANKS ON LANDING GEORGE WOULD HAVE PREFERED MORE ACTION. ON THE 27TH WE WERE BRIEFED FOR FRIEDRICHAFEN AFTER ABOUT 30 MINUTES ONE ENGINE BEGAN SIEZING UP AND HAD TO BE CUT, THE SKIPPER SAID WE WOULD HAVE TO GO BACK. GEORGE WANTED TO CARRY ON ON [sic] THREE ENGINES BUT RON WAS AGAINST IT & TO GEORGES DISGUST TURNED THE PLANE ROUND AND HEADED HOME. RON RADIOD [sic] BASE & WAS TOLD TO JETTISON THE BOMB LOAD OVER THE NORTH SEA. THIS WAS DONE AND WE [missing words]
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[underlined] 15 [/underlined]
ENGINE WAS PLAYING UP, SO IT WAS A RELIEF TO PUT FOOT ON LAND. ON THE 30TH APRIL WE WERE BRIEFED FOR A TRIP TO MAINTENON MARSHALLING YARDS IN FRANCE THIS TIME A NEW TECHNIQUE WAS TO BE USED. WE WERE INSTRUCTED TO ARRIVE AT THE TARGET AREA AT A GIVEN TIME. TARGET INDICATORS WERE BEING DROPPED (YELLOW FLARES) AND WE WERE TO CIRCLE UNTIL ORDERED TO OUR SPECIAL TARGET (GREEN FLARES) OTHER AIRCRAFT WERE GIVEN (BLUE FLARES OR RED FLARES TO BOMB ON. EVERYTHING WENT ACCORDING TO PLAN AND THIS WAS THE BEGINING [sic] ON THE PATHFINDER TECHNIQUE AND PROVED A GREAT SUCCESS FOR PINPOINT BOMBING. THE AIRCRAFT USED WERE THE MOSQUITO’S WITH A 2 MAN CREW THEY WERE FANTASTIC. THERE WAS, HOWEVER, TO BE A SERIOUS SET BACK A FEW DAYS LATER A PERIOD OF FULL MOON HAD JUST BEGUN, AND USUALLY THAT MEANT A STAND DOWN. WE WERE THEREFOR [sic] SUPRISED [sic] ON THE 3RD MAY TO SEE THE ROSTA UP FOR EVENING OPS. AND OUR CREW DETAILED. WE DID OUR USUAL CHECKS IN THE MORNING. EVERYTHING O.K AND THEN BRIEFING ABOUT 8 PM. WE WERE INFORMED THAT THE TARGET WAS MAILLY-LE-CAMP IN FRANCE JUST SOUTH OF PARIS. THIS WAS A GERMAN PANZER TANK TRAINING CAMP AND WITH THE IMPENDING INVASION WAS BETTER DESTROYED. THERE WAS TO BE TWO TARGETS. WITH OUR NEIGHBOUGHS, [sic] GROUP 5 TAKING THE FIRST. OUR GROUP [missing words]
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[underlined] 16 [/underlined]
TO DROP TARGET INDICATORS AND EACH GROUP TOLD WHEN TO ATTACK AND WHAT COLOUR FLARE TO BOMB ON. GROUP 5 ARRIVED AND CIRCLED ON YELLOW MARKERS UNTIL GIVEN THE ORDER TO BOMB. THIS THEY DID SUCCESSFULLY. GROUP I (OUR GROUP) ARRIVED, SOME A LITTLE EARLY AND WERE INSTRUCTED TO CIRCLE OVER THE YELLOW MARKERS UNTIL GIVEN THE ORDER TO BOMB. IN THE MEANWHILE GERMAN FIGHTERS HAD ARRIVED AND GIVEN BRIGHT MOONLIGHT AND LANCASTERS FLYING AROUND IN CIRCLES, HAD EASY PREY. THE PATHFINDERS ORDERED THE PLANES TO KEEP THEIR POSITION AND THE AIR WAS BLUE WITH PILOTS REMONSTRATING, IT WAS PANDEMONIUM. OUR PLANE WAS APPROACHING THE AREA AT THE CORRECT TIME AND THE PILOT DECIDED TO CIRCLE SOME WAY AWAY FROM THE ACTION UNTIL WE HAD THE ORDER TO BOMB ON THE RED FLARE. THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH DUE HASTE AND ACCURACY. ONCE THROUGH THE TARGET WE WERE CONTINUALLY HARRASSED BY GERMAN FIGHTERS. ONE IN PARTICULAR CAME FROM AFAR AND I COULD SEE HIS TRACER BULLETS GOING OVER THE TOP OF US. AS HE GOT WITHIN RANGE I OPENED FIRE AND HE PEELED OFF. I KNOW SOME OF MY SHOT HIT HIM. HE WHEELED ROUND AND CAME IN AGAIN, WELL OUT OF MY RANGE. BUT AGAIN HIS TRACERS WERE HIGH AND I SAT THERE FULLY EXPECTING TO GET THE FULL IMPACT. OUR PILOT WAS TWISTING AND TURNING [missing words]
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[underlined] 17 [/underlined]
SUDDENLY HIS FIRING CEASED AND ROUND HE WENT AGAIN. THIS TIME HE JUST SAT OUT OF RANGE, WAGGLED HIS WINGS AND FLEW OFF. – WHY? – EITHER HE HAD RUN OUT OF AMMUNITION, OR HIS GUNS HAD JAMMED, EITHER WAY, IT WAS A RELIEF AND I SAID A FEW WORDS OF THANKS TO OUR GARDIAN [sic] ANGEL WE HAD OTHER ENCOUNTERS AFTER THAT BUT ARRIVED BACK WITH ONLY A FEW GASHES. ALL OUR OTHER CREWS ARRIVED BACK TO BASE AS WELL, AND HAD FARED [sic] IN THE SAME MANNER. OUR GROUPS LOSSES WERE 28 AIRCRAFT AND GROUP 5 LOST 14. WE WERE LUCKY BUT NONE OF US WOULD EVER EXPERIENCE ANYTHING LIKE IT AGAIN – OR FORGET IT – THE PATHFINDERS NEVER AGAIN MADE SUCH A MESS OF THINGS AND WENT ON TO BECOME A GREAT SUCCESS. THERE WAS A STORY THAT WENT AROUND SOME TIME AFTER. THE SPECIAL DUTIES FLIGHT AT BINBROOK UNDER COMMAND OF SQUADRON LEADER BILL BREAKSPEAR HAD BEEN AGAINST THE RAID BECAUSE OF THE BRIGHT MOON AND CLEAR SKY AND HAD SAID SO TO HARRIS, BUT HAD BEEN OVER RULED. AT THEIR NEXT MEETING BREAKSPEAR STORMED OUT OF THE ROOM WITHOUT SALUTING, HARRIS CALLED HIM BACK AND SAID “DON’T YOU SALUTE AIR CHIEF MARSHALLS” BREAKSPEAR REPLIED “NOT STUPID ONES – SIR,” HARRIS WAS NOT NAMED THE BUTCHER FOR NOTHING AND APPEARED NOT TO CARE ABOUT LOSSES OF MEN. AFTER MAILLY WE HAD A REST FOR A [missing words]
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[underlined] 18 [/underlined]
WHICH BY NOW WAS BECOMING A WAY OF LIFE RENNES (FRANCE) DIEPPE (FRANCE) ORLEANS (FRANCE DORTMUND, AACHEN (GERMANY) TWICE ACHERES (FRANCE THIS WAS ON THE 6TH JUNE (D. DAY). WE TOOK OFF JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT AND RETURNED 5 1/2 hrs LATER TO BE TOLD THAT BRITISH & ALLIED TROOPS HAD MADE A SUCCESSFUL LANDING IN FRANCE. ALL OPERATIONS AFTER THAT WERE TO FULLY SUPPORT GROUND TROOPS FLEURS (FRANCE) ON THE 9TH ACHERES (FRANCE) 10TH THEN ON THE 13TH JUNE CAME THE SHOCK. WE WERE TO BE POSTED TO 300 (POLISH) SQUADRON TOGETHER WITH 5 OTHER EXPERIENCED CREWS IT SEEMED THAT 300 SQUADRON WERE LOSING A LOT OF AIRCRAFT AND WAS UNDER STRENGTH NO ONE WANTED TO LEAVE KILLINGHOLME WE HAD BUILT UP A GOOD REPUTATION LOSSES WERE LOW MISSIONS WERE ACCOMPLISHED AND WEIGHT OF BOMBS PER AIRCRAFT WERE THE HIGHEST IN THE GROUP. HOWEVER, ORDERS WERE ORDERS AND WITH MUCH MISGIVINGS WE WENT TO FALDINGWORTH NEAR LINCOLN. WE ARRIVED AND WERE SHOWN OUR QUARTERS, SAME NISSEN HUTS SAME TYPE OF BEDS NO OTHER COMFORTS THEN TAKEN TO THE MESS FOR A MEAL. TO PUT IT MILDLY POLISH FOOD HAD LITTLE ATTRACTION FOR US AND WE SETTLED FOR A GOOD FRY UP OF EGGS AND BACON. WE MANAGED TO INSIST ON AN ENGLISH MENUE. [sic] THE AIRCRAFT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO FLY WERE A DISGRACE AND FALLING TO PIECES [missing words]
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[underlined] 19 [/underlined]
to FLY THEM AND OUR C/O BACKED US UP. WITHIN 2 DAYS WE HAD NEW LANCASTERS DELIVERED AND ON THE 14TH DID OUR FIRST OPERATION FOR 300 SQUADRON TO LE HAVRE. THE STATE OF THE OTHER AIRCRAFT THE POLES WERE FLYING GAVE US A GOOD IDEA WHY THEIR LOSSES WERE SO HIGH. BUT WITH OUR SUPPORT THINGS WERE TO CHANGE AND NEW AIRCRAFT ARRIVED ALMOST DAILY. THE POLES WERE A FRIENDLY LOT. VERY QUICK TO BUY A DRINK FOR THEIR ENGLISH FRIENDS, WE HAD BEEN WARNED NOT TO DISCUSS POLITICS, AS PART OF POLAND HAD BEEN HANDED OVER TO RUSSIA IN A DEAL BETWEEN ROOSEVELT CHURCHILL & STALIN. WE SETTLED IN VERY UNEASILY TO OUR NEW SQUADRON. MORE THOROUGH CHECKS ON EVERY NUT AND BOLT. WE DID OPPERATIONS [sic] TO AULNOYE (FRANCE) RHEIMS (FRANCE) AT THIS TIME LONDON WAS BEGINING [sic] TO GET ROCKET ATTACKS AND WE WERE SENT OUT WITH PATHFINDERS MARKING TARGETS, TO THE ROCKET SITES, THESE WERE MAINLY IN WOODLANDS HIDDEN BY TREES AND HEAVILY CAMAFLAGED [sic] WE STARTED DAILIGHT [sic] BOMBING. SOMETHING NEW FOR US. WE WERE USED TO BEING ON OUR OWN, NOT FLYING IN FORMATION. WHICH WAS FOR US, DOWNRIGHT DANGEROUS & DISPENSED WITH RIGHT FROM THE START. THE “YANKS” HAD OUR ADMIRATION FOR THE WAY THEY FLEW IN FORMATION AND IT WAS LAUGHABLE WHEN, AS [missing words]
[page break]
[underlined] 20 [/underlined]
IN PRETTY PATTERNS AND OUR STRAGGLY LOT ALL OVER THE PLACE. IT WAS ABOUT THIS TIME I WAS PROMOTED TO FLIGHT SERGEANT THIS MEANT A LITTLE EXTRA CASH AND WAS MOST WELCOME, AS VERY OFTEN WE HAD TO VISIT A RESTAURANT IN LINCOLN TO GET A DECENT MEAL. I BECAME QUITE A REGULAR CUSTOMER AT MRS HOLDEN’S FOR HER DELICIOUS CHICKEN LUNCH, AFTER WHICH AN EVENING IN THE SARACENS HEAD. OR AS IT WAS AFFECTIONALLY KNOWN “THE SNAKE PIT”. BY NOW THE 2ND FRONT WAS GETTING ESTABLISHED AND WE WERE ATTACKING TARGETS SUCH AS AULNOYE (MARSHALLING YARDS) RHEIMS (TROOP PLACEMENTS) SIRACOURT (ROCKETS) VIERZON (TROOPS) ORLEANS ROCKET LAUNCHERS IN DAYLIGHT, ALMOST EVERY DAY AND NIGHT WE WERE OUT. SOMETIMES RUNNING INTO FIGHTER AIRCRAFT, SOMETIMES HEAVY GUNFIRE BUT WE STEERED CLEAR OF TROUBLE. THEN CAME CAEN ON THE NORMANDY FRONT. THE BRITISH TROOPS WERE BEING HELD UP IN THEIR ADVANCE AND THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR US, WERE TO BOMB A VERY HEAVILY DEFENDED TOWN AND PANZER DIVISION. THE PATHFINDERS WERE TO GO IN FIRST AND DROP THEIR FLARES AND GIVE US INSTRUCTIONS ON WHICH COLOUR TO BOMB WE TOOK OFF AT 8 PM AND STILL VERY LIGHT WE COULD SEE ALL OUR OTHER LANCASTERS MAKING THEIR WAY TO DIFFERENT TARGETS, THERE WOULD BE 20-30 PLANES ON 1 COLOUR FLARE [missing words]
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[underlined] 21 [/underlined]
WAS STILL LIGHT. OUR USUAL BOMBING HEIGHT WAS 20,000 FT FOR THIS ONE WE STARTED OFF AT 10,000 FT. BUT BECAUSE OF CLOUD HAD TO DECEND UNTIL WE COULD SEE OUR FLARE. BOMBING HAD TO BE SPOT ON BECAUSE OF THE NEARNESS OF BRITISH TROOPS ON THE GROUND. WE COULD SEE THE HOUSES, TROOPS, EVERYTHING – ESPECIALLY OTHER AIRCRAFT CONVERGING ON THE SAME TARGET SOME LOWER SOME HIGHER, THOSE THAT WERE HIGHER WERE OPENING THEIR BOMB BAYS RIGHT OVER HEAD OF US, AND AS I HEARD OUR BOMB AIMER SAY “BOMBS GONE” I COULD SEE ABOUT 3 OTHERS HIGHER, RELEASING THEIRS. I JUST SAT THERE AND PRAYED. THE BOMBS WERE FALLING ONE AFTER THE OTHER AND THANKFULLY MISSED THE TAIL, BY HOW MUCH I DONT KNOW BUT IT LOOKED PRETTY CLOSE. OUR LOSSES DURING THAT TRIP WERE PUT DOWN TO OUR OWN. WE WERE TO DO A COUPLE MORE TRIPS LIKE THAT. ON ONE WE EVEN GOT DOWN TO 1500 FT WHICH WAS VERY, VERY LOW. THEN ON THE 31ST JULY WE WERE TO DO OUR 30TH TRIP AND THE LAST ONE OF OUR FIRST TOUR. THEN ON TO 14 DAYS LEAVE. WE TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT UNTIL WE HAD OUT FOOT ON ENGLISH SOIL AGAIN, THIS TIME A ROCKET SITE. NO HASSEL. [sic] NO FLACK. NO FIGHTERS ONLY ON THE RETURN DID AN ENGINE PACK IN, AND WE HAD TO LAND AT A DIFFERENT BASE. WE WERE DEBRIEFED, AND WHEN THEY HEARD IT WAS OUR [missing words]
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[underlined] 22 [/underlined]
THE AIRCREWS CAME OUT. IT WAS ABOUT 3 AM IN THE MORNING. WE HAD A BIT OF A PARTY BUT WE WERE LOOKED UPON LIKE FREAKS THE QUESTIONS WE WERE ASKED, IT WAS ALL A BIT OVERPOWERING. NEXT MORNING WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO FLY BACK TO BASE THEY SENT A CAR TO TRANSPORT US AND A FRESH CREW TO TAKE OUR PLANE. ON ARRIVAL BACK AT FALDINGWORTH WE WERE DROPPED OFF AT THE C/O’S OFFICE TAKEN IN HAD A SHOT OF WHISKEY WITH HIM, SHOOK HANDS AND TOLD THAT ON THE FOLLOWING DAY WE WERE TO START OUR LEAVE. GET EVERY THING PACKED. THAT EVENING WE MET UP AS A CREW FOR THE LAST TIME. HAD A DRINK OR TWO AND SAID OUR CHEERIO’S. THE FOLLOWING MORNING RON, OUR PILOT & I WENT TO LINCOLN STATION CHANGED TRAINS AT PETERBOROUGH AND HENCE TO LONDON. THERE HE WENT OFF TO BRIGHTON & I TO TWICKENHAM.
JOB DONE, - NONE OF US MET UP AGAIN.
[page break]
TAILENDERS END TALES.
[circled 1] IT WAS DURING OCTOBER 43 THAN [sic] OUR PILOT CALLED A CREW MEETING. HIS OPENING WORDS WERE “WE HAVE BEEN TOGETHER LONG ENOUGH, I TAKE IT THAT WE ARE HAPPY WITH THE WAY WE OPPERATE [sic] TOGETHER”. WE ALL AGREED. HE CARRIED ON. “AS I SEE IT. I AM JUST THE DRIVER. ART (NAVIGATOR) GIVES ME THE COURSE. I FLY IT OVER THE TARGET. DAVE (BOMAIMER) [sic] GIVES ME DIRECTIONS. – I FLY IT -. KEN. [deleted] YOU [/deleted] I RELY ON YOU TO GIVE ME CORRECT MESSAGES THAT COME OVER THE RADIO. AND I ACT ON IT. BILL. – AS GUNNER, YOU ARE OUR EYES. ANY TIME YOU SEE WE ARE BEING ATTACKED, YOU GIVE ME DIRECTIONS FOR EVASIVE ACTION. – STRAIGHT AWAY. ALL OF YOU, TELL ME, I WILL FOLLOW YOUR ORDERS WITHOUT QUESTION OR HESITATION. – ANY QUESTIONS NOW.” DURING PRACTICE RON & I EVOLVED A SERIES OF MANOEVERS [sic] FOR EVASIVE ACTION. THAT THEY WORKED WAS ONLY DUE TO THE WAY THE LANCASTER WAS BUILT.
[circled 2] ONE NIGHT WHILST ON A TRAINING FLIGHT WE RAN INTO AN ELECTRICAL STORM. LIGHTENING FLASHED AND THE AIRCRAFT WAS TOSSED ABOUT BUT WHAT WAS MOST FRIGHTENING WAS THE WAY SPARKS WERE LEAPING FROM ONE METAL OBJECT TO ANOTHER. RUNNING THE LENGTH OF THE GUN BARRELL AND ALL ROUND THE TURRET I WAS GLAD WHEN WE WERE OUT OF IT.
[circled 3] ON SQUADRON THE GROUND CREW WERE FANTASTIC
[page break]
THE SERGEANT WAS THERE IN THE MORNINGS AND THERE WHEN WE TOOK OFF AT NIGHT. – AND THERE AGAIN ON OUR RETURN, WHEN HE SLEPT I DONT KNOW. BUT THEY WERE DEDICATED TO GIVING US THE BEST SERVICE.
[circled 4] OUR SQUADRON BASE AT KILLINGHOLME WAS CLOSE TO THE HUMBER RIVER. THE PORT OF HULL ONE SIDE AND GRIMSBY THE OTHER. VERY OFTEN BOTH PLACES WERE SUBJECTED TO HEAVY BOMBING BY THE GERMAN AIR FORCE. QUITE OFTEN THESE RAIDS CO-INCIDED WITH OUR TAKE OFF TIME, SO THAT BOTH AIRFORCES WERE IN THE AIR OVER GRIMSBY AT THE SAME TIME AND WE WERE OFTEN CAUGHT UP IN OUR OWN SEARCHLIGHTS. WITH THE NEXT GROUP OF SEARCHLIGHTS HOLDING A GERMAN BOMBER IN ITS BEAMS. WE HAD TO SIGNAL IN MORSE TO THE GROUND FOR THEM TO SWITCH OFF.
[circled 5] DURING THE TRIP ON AACHEN AT THE END OF MAY, ART, OUR NAVIGATOR ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS ALWAYS SO BUSY PLOTTING THE NEXT COURSE AFTER THE TARGET, THAT HE HAD NEVER THE CHANCE TO SEE THE TARGET. THE NAVIGATORS CUBBY HOLE WAS ALL SHUT IN BECAUSE HE HAD TO HAVE LIGHT TO WORK BY. ON THIS TRIP HE DECLARED HE WOULD GIVE THE PILOT THE COURSE TO FOLLOW BEFORE HAND. SWITCH HIS LIGHTS OUT AND SEE WHAT WENT ON. THIS HE DID. IT HAPPENED THAT IT WAS A HECTIC NIGHT. AND THE FIREWORK DISPLAY WAS BRILLIANT. WE HEARD ART GASP. [missing words]
[page break]
I WOULDN’T HAVE COME.” I DONT THINK HE PEEKED OUT AGAIN.
[circled 6] 3RD MAY. THE PERIOD OF FULL MOON. WE TOOK OFF CLIMBED THROUGH BILLOWING WHITE CLOUD AT 10,000 FT INTO FULL MOONLIGHT. THE SIGHT WAS BREATHTAKING THE MOON SHONE ON THE CLOUDS LIKE DRIFTS OF SNOW. YOU COULD SEE FOR MILES, LANCASTERS ALL OVER THE SKY. OUR PILOT WAS SO CARRIED AWAY AT THE BEAUTY OF IT, HE FLEW THE AIRCRAFT LIKE A SLEIGH, SKIMMING THE TOPS OF THE CLOUDS AND WHOOPING LIKE A COWBOY. IT WAS INDEED A GRAND SIGHT. PITY IT WAS GOING TO BE SPOILT LATER THAT NIGHT.
[circled 7] AFTER WE HAD FINISHED OUR TOUR AND THE CREW HAD GONE OUR DIFFERENT WAYS, I WAS TO BE POSTED TO BRIDGENORTH AS INSTRUCTOR. IT WAS THERE THAT I WAS INFORMED THAT I WAS ELIGIBLE FOR 2 SERVICE MEDALS. THE 1939/45 STAR. AND THE AIRCREW EUROPE STAR AND CLASP. MY THOUGHTS IMMEDIATELY WENT TO GEORGE. HE MUST HAVE LAUGHED HIS SOCKS OFF.
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Title
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Bill Freeman's Service Career
Description
An account of the resource
A detailed account of Bill's time in the RAF, starting with drill at Lords, training at Bridlington and Bridgnorth then RAF Stormy Down. He passed the course and after seven days leave reported to Hixon for crewing up. He discusses training and his social life. He then transferred to Binbrook then Blyton, Hemswell, Elsham Wolds and N Killingholme.
He describes individual operations in detail. He and his crew were transferred to Faldingworth where the condition of their aircraft was poor. These were quickly replaced with new aircraft. His crew were successful and survived their 30 operations never to meet up again.
He concludes his memoir with seven tailender tales.
Creator
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Bill Freeman
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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25 handwritten sheets
Identifier
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BFreemanWFreemanWv1
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--London
England--Brighton
England--Dewsbury
Canada
England--Stafford
Wales--Tredegar
England--Northampton
England--Grimsby
France--Rouen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Karlsruhe
Denmark--Frederikshavn
France--Maintenon
France--Mailly-le-Camp
France--Rennes
France--Dieppe
France--Orléans
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Aachen
France--Paris
England--Lincoln
France--Le Havre
Poland
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Caen
France--Vierzon
France
Germany
Denmark
France--Reims
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Northamptonshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Sussex
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Tricia Marshall
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-04-05
1944-03
1944-04-10
1 Group
1662 HCU
300 Squadron
5 Group
550 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944)
briefing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
entertainment
flight engineer
George Cross
ground crew
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
navigator
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Binbrook
RAF Blyton
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Hemswell
RAF Hixon
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Stormy Down
searchlight
Stalin, Joseph (1878-1953)
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
training
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/119/2485/MThomasWH152984-150721-01.1.pdf
6e05ffb1f503d2bba606b04b23c36c98
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
WILLIAM HEDLEY THOMAS (AGE 93)
My first interest in the RAF came in 1938 while I was a pupil at Redruth Grammar School in Cornwall, when a flight of the Air Defence Cadet Corps was formed there and I became a member. I am sure its formation occurred because Mr Weatherall our Headmaster had been a fighter pilot in the First World War which really instIlled interest in those of us aged 16 and above. I remained a member of ADCC until August 1939 when I left school for employment.
When the Air Training Corps was formed in 1941 I joined the flight which was formed in Redruth where we had the usual instruction in Morse code, and navigation, shooting and of course drill (dreaded drill). We were fortunate to have visits to RAF Portreath aerodrome and that is where I had my first flight, in a Miles Magister. It was great!
I volunteered and was accepted for aircrew training in August 1941 and placed on deferred service and continued as a member of the ATC, reaching for the dizzy height of Sergeant! While awaiting my call-up to the RAF I had to register for National Service but informed the officials that I was already a member of the RAF and gave them my service number. Two or three weeks later I had call-up papers from the Army! I called the registration office and they said no problem we will sort it. However after another week I had a forceful letter from the Army telling me to report to depot or other, by such and such a date or they come and fetch me! Panic!
Fortunately we had a family friend who was an Army officer in the First World War and he contacted the Army on the phone using language I was not then used to and I heard no more!
So eventually, in February 1942 I was called up by the RAF and went to the aircrew reception centre in London. I reported, as so many had done, to Lord’s cricket ground for registration. We were provided with a uniform (which was tailored to fit) and received the first batch of injections. We were billeted in what had been serviced apartments in Prince Albert Road, quite close to Regents Park zoo. Here we had various lectures, a lot of drill and endured an extremely cold London.
Then came our posting to Initial Training Wing at a very much warmer Aberystwyth in West Wales. Here we received training in navigation, Morse code and RAF Law besides large doses of more drill, physical training and sports.
I enjoyed the course at ITW very much, especially as I knew it was the beginning of flying training. As I said earlier the weather at Aberystwth was warm and we rarely needed to wear greatcoats (which we did in London) and by June, when the course ended, it was a really warm summer. I learned that I had passed the course ended, it was a really warm summer. I learned that I had passed the course and was promoted to the exalted rank of L A C (more pay too!).
I was then posted to Sywell in Northamptonshire to begin training as a pilot. Unfortunately I failed the course because my landings were deemed dangerous and I was unable to go solo. Mind you, I did not get on very well with my instructor who was over 6 feet tall, as against my 5 foot six and as he sat in the front cockpit what chance had I of seeing straight ahead? No contest!
From Sywell I was posted in July 1942 to Heaton Park, Manchester, which was a holding unit for potential aircrew awaiting the decision as to my future training, along with quite a number of others. We were then sent to Hastings, another holding unit, where we were billeted in a large block of flats (Marine Court) right on the seafront. We were only at Hastings for about three weeks because one afternoon at about 4 PM on our return from the sports afternoon, a German aircraft on a hit-and run sortie dropped a smallish bomb on one end of the building. Fortunately no-one was injured, however it caused perhaps the fastest reaction I have ever experienced. By 4 AM the next morning
[page break]
we were getting on a train (with a day’s dry rations) and we were taken to Harrogate to yet another holding unit!!
I enjoyed Harrogate very much where we received the usual few lectures and drill and bags and bags of sport. Harrogate was a great posting, especially as there were lots of young ladies there who were the clerical staff of the General Post Office who had been evacuated there from London!
I was eventually brought out of my reverie by a posting back to Heaton Park with a few dozen other bods, where we were informed as to our future training which for me was as a navigator/bomb aimer. This we were given to understand, would not be in Great Britain but overseas, as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme.
It was in late November 1942 that King George the Sixth sent me to Canada, aboard the Queen Elizabeth, to train as a navigator/bomb aimer, thus enabling the rest of the country to get on with the war. To my delight, I was informed that I would not have to pay my own fare.
The memories of that voyage are still with me. I remember approaching the liner on a small tender and being showered with toilet rolls which were thrown by the disembarking aircrew who had returned to the UK sporting their wings. Not to be outdone, we advised them to hang on to the toilet rolls, as there was a shortage of that commodity in our war-torn homeland.
Once aboard, I was given a job as a kind of security guard (along with 20 or 30 others) to prevent smoking in any place other than the cabins. I remember pointing out to Edward G Robinson that such a rule existed, when I spotted him and a large cigar waiting for the Lift. He promptly took a deep puff on the cigar, stepped into the lift and said with a smile, “Is that so. Bud?”
We had quite a large number of well-known people (including Douglas Fairbanks) on board and to our delight, they provided several evenings of entertainment for us during the crossing. The meals were very good and it was a special treat for us to be served with white bread after eating since 1939, the sandy brown standard wartime loaf.
We took several days on the voyage since we were sailing unaccompanied a long way south before turning and travelling up the Eastern seaboard of the United States. We were informed that the detour had taken place because a U-boat pack had been detected in mid Atlantic. Good intelligence and communication obviously saved us and I understand that Lord Haw-Haw had reported us as sunk on two occasions. We sailed into New York harbour and docked adjacent to the Queen Mary and the Ile-de-France, the latter lying on her side after suffering a major fire some time earlier.
Whilst most of those on board were allowed to disembark, I found myself appointed as a member of the baggage party. About 30 of we unfortunates were given the task of unloading the rest of the RAF contingent kit bags. As a result, at the end of the day we were still aboard but were delights that that evening to be served with the most terrific meal which we considered to be a just reward for our hard labours as baggage handlers.
The next morning we disembarked and after being transported by coach to Grand Central Station, we caught a train that would transport us to Moncton in Canada. But all did not go smoothly, because en route, we were involved in a train crash. The crash was on the Gaspie Peninsula, at the mouth of the St Lawrence River when a freight train, with a huge cargo of logs crashed into us while we were waiting at a small country station. Fortunately we, the RAF contingent, only sustained a few cuts and bruises.
[page break]
Mainly because of the steel constructions of the trains in Canada we were lucky indeed. Further luck for four of us who got invited by the daughters of a nearby farming family to have some breakfast. We accepted and trudged across two large snowbound fields to the farmhouse. Just as we finished, breakfast, we were told that a relief train had arrived at the station to take us on to our destination Moncton. We missed it! However we boarded the next train and we were met in Moncton by an NCO, a sergeant I think, who told us off and then we boarded transport to the camp. It was pointed out to us that the rest of the party had to march there so we were lucky again!
Moncton, on the eastern seaboard of Canada, was another holding unit where we awaited posting to the start of our real training. However we were at Moncton for Christmas 1942 and also over the New Year in Arctic like whether with plenty of snow. A case of infectious disease, scarlet fever I think, caused member of the hut I was in to be in quarantine for some weeks until finally our posting arrived.
In February 1943 I was posted to number six bombing and gunnery school at Mountain View, Ontario where we practiced gunnery in Bolingbrokes, the Canadian version of the Blenheim, as well as on the gunnery range. We then turned out attention to flying in Ansons and practised dropping practice bombs. This seems to have taken quite a while really because it was the end of March 1943 before we left Mountain View for Number 8 Air Observer School at Ancienne Lorette, Quebec, to begin navigational training.
The navigation course at number eight air observer school at Ancienne Lorette, lasted from early April 1943 to early August 1943 and as well as air day and night navigation trips averaging around three hours each, we did a lot of classroom work including a navigation exercises, meteorology, signalling, aircraft recognition and armament together with a lot of practice work in the air and on the ground on astro-navigation.
At the end of the course I learned that I had passed and took my place on the passing out parade to receive my Observer brevet and also I was delighted to find out that I had been granted a commission.
We were then, after three weeks leave which I spent with my uncle and his family in Toronto, posted to Number 1 General Reconnaissance School at Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St Lawrence River, where for three weeks we were to carry out navigation trips over the sea using what is termed dead reckoning navigation, by star or sun shots, taking bearings from radio transmissions to find our position. We learned how to identify all the naval ships of the world, quite a task. I found this course both challenging and interesting and I was glad to hear that I had received a pass which I hoped would lead me to be a navigator on coastal command when I returned to the UK.
At the end of the course at the beginning of October 1943 we were posted again to Moncton to wait before being shipped back to Great Britain. This did not happen until December 1943 when I returned on the Aquitainia, quite a nice ship but not so well appointed as the Queen Elizabeth. We landed back at Gourock and travelled down to Harrogate.
Harrogate was still a holding unit and there was quite a large number of aircrew gathering there from training in Canada and South Africa, eagerly awaiting postings to operational training units. In my case along with others from course in Canada, it was to be another three months before we got such a posting. I, of course, wanted to be sent to Coastal Command, which is what our extended training had been for, but it was not until early in April 1944 that we were told that we were to go to Wigtown in Scotland. On enquiry we were told that this was an advanced training unit for bomb aimers. We tried to argue that
[page break]
surely all the training in Canada that we had received ought to be for carrying out duties as navigators in one of the RAF commands. We were told that there no chance whatsoever of this and off to Wigtown we went. You can imagine there was quite a lot of disgruntled bods there but we decided that we must grin and bear it. We were told to remove our coveted and hard earner observer brevet and replace them with the B brevet and this produced a lot of very upset and in disgruntled people; so much so that caused a visit from an officer from HQ in London (an Air Commodore I think) to come up to Wigtown to meet us. He informed us that our C.O. had told him that we were refusing to fly, which in fact was totally untrue as we were continuing with our flights. As a result, the Air Commodore contacted London and an official ruling was made and we were told we could continue to wear (with pride I might say) our Observer Brevets. So, we completed the course and were granted 2 to 3 weeks leave and were instructed to report from there to number eight operational training unit at Castle Donington {which is now East Midlands Airport).
We arrived at the O.T.U. late in May 1944 and were crewed up, not being directed as to who would fly with who, but quietly talking to each other and trying to decide who you thought would be someone to trust your life with. I think I was fortunate in my choice as we all seem to get on from the start and it proved to the case when we continued to fly together later in the operations. However before we became members of the squadron there was more training to be done. First of all by the crew of six (there was no flight engineer in the crew at OTU) flying in the Vickers Wellington, learning all about our duties in an operational bomber. We were at Castle Donington from 27 May 1944 until 14 July 1944 and then we transferred to 1667 heavy conversion unit at RAF Sandtoft, learning the skills needed for coping in a four engine aircraft – in this case the Handley Page Halifax and there we were joined by the seventh member of our crew, the flight engineer.
We left RAF Sandtoft on 1 September 1944 and moved to number one Lancaster finishing school at RAF Hemswell. This proved quite a short course of about three weeks and we were then posted to join 166 squadron at RAF Kimmington on 26 September 1944, as members of C flight. This flight was being assembled to be made into another squadron, 153. This was duly achieved and some four operations were flown by the squadron from Kimmington before, on 15 October 1944, 153 squadron moved to RAF Scampton, in Lincolnshire, flying their acquired 18 aircraft there, while the ground staff travelled in a fleet of buses accompanied by a group of 3 ton lorries loaded with personal baggage. Our crew had the pleasure of being in the first of the 153 squadron aircraft to land at Scampton from Kimmington [sic] and had an unusual sight of an empty aerodrome: that is no aircraft on the ground, with a small number of ground crews standing by at dispersals to receive the aircraft.
Scampton was a station that was built before World War II and accommodation was in solid built buildings with tarmac laid roads and pavements; no mud to squelch through. Bruce Potter (the pilot) and I were allocated a room within the officers mess itself, but some of the others had to live in the previous married quarters which meant a shortish walk to the mess for meals and so forth.
On 19 October 1944, 153 squadron carried out its first operation from Scampton – 15 aircraft attacking Stuttgart. Our crew’s operations did not start until 31 October 1944 against Cologne. We carried on operations against various targets including the much written about town of Dresden on 13 February 1945, until 8 March 1945, we on takeoff for Kassel, our skipper Bruce Potter fainted at the controls. We were well down the runway with our tail up and it was the first rate action of our flight engineer Gordon Woolley, who managed to haul the control column back; cut the engines and bring the aircraft to a halt after it had executed a flat spin. The skipper was taken off to sickbay and the rest of us gathered outside the aircraft where the squadron commander, Wing Commander Powley, invited us to fly that night with another pilot. We firmly
[page break]
declined his invitation. We were then sent home on three weeks leave and on our return found that our skipper had left the station. He had gone to hospital I think. He never returned.
The remainder of the crew (six of us), completed the remaining three operations to complete our 29 operations with another pilot. Flight Lieutenant Williams, an Australian. Our last operation was on 9 April 1945 and on 10 April that same year we were sent home on leave, never again to meet up as a crew.
There is a list of our targets at the end of this article, together with the duration of each and I must say that we were a very lucky crew. Perhaps it was due to a little black cat which I wore pinned to my battledress. It was sent to me by an “anonymous admirer”. During all our trips we never experienced a single attack from an enemy fighter or received any substantial flak from German anti-aircraft fire. Jack Boyle was a first-class and diligent navigator and kept us on track and on time for every trip. We did have to abort on a trip to Politz on 8 February 1945 when one engine packed up and then another started losing power, but we were able to return safely to base. Another time, on 18 November 1944 while returning from bombing Wanne Eicline, our instruments packed up. It was a filthy night of wind and rain and there was a diversion for us to land at another aerodrome as RAF Scampton was fogbound. The crew decided that it would not be a good thing to try and land at strange aerodrome and we therefore diverted to the special diversion aerodrome at Woodbridge in Suffolk, where the runways were extremely long and wide. Bruce our skipper and Gordon the flight engineer were able to effect a temporary repair the next morning and we were then able to return to Scampton.
My leave on completion of the tour of operations was quite extensive as the great Western Railway managed to lose my kit bag with all my flying kit during my return to Scampton. I was sent home to recover it, something I was unable to do and so eventually, in July 1945 (after being home nearly 3 months) I was recalled to Scampton. I was informed that I was to train as an equipment officer and sent for training to RAF Bicester. This course lasted about six weeks and I was then posted as a fully fledged equipment officer to 35 maintenance unit at Heywood near Manchester. Within a week I was sent to RAF Strubby in Lincolnshire which no longer an operational station, to arrange to clear it of all its equipment. There was only a skeleton staff there and these were gradually posted away, leaving only about 30 other ranks (mainly equipment personnel) and myself, together with another ex-aircrew equipment (Flying Officer Frank Wilkes) who had been sent from Heywood to assist me.
It was a massive task of transferring the wanted equipment to appropriate maintenance units throughout the UK, however I never saw the end of the task and neither did Flying Officer Wilkes, as our times for release from the RAF occurred at the same time and so in July 1946 we left for Civvy Street and I returned to my job with the Cornwall County Council.
I lost contact with the crew but many years later through a letter which I had published in the RAFA magazine I made contact with Jack Boyle our navigator who was at that time living in Blackpool. However, Jack was in rather poor health. We were able to swap phone calls and letters for about 12 months before sadly, he died. Some years later I was fortunate enough to make contact with Harry Hambrook our rear gunner who lives in Harrogate. I’m glad to say that we keep in contact and are able to meet up each year at our squadron reunions.
I moved to Morpeth in Northumberland 20 years ago and on joining the Northumbria branch of the Aircrew Association, I met Mr Bill Foote from Alnmouth who had been a pilot flying Halifaxes with 77 squadron in Yorkshire. It was some little
[page break]
while before Bill and I discovered that we were both on the Queen Elizabeth voyage to Canada in November 1942. Now we both meet up with two or three others on a regular basis for lunch.
Another coincidence occurred after I joined the 153 Squadron Association about 12 years ago and met two associate member who had uncles in the crew of Pilot Officer Gibbins, the pilot in 153 Squadron at Scampton who shared a room with my skipper Bruce Potter and I. “Gibby” and I became great friends and were companions on sorties to Lincoln on days when we were on stand down from flying duties, to carry out “beer testing” in Lincoln’s many pubs! Unfortunately “Gibby’s” aircraft was lost on a daylight raid on Essen on 11 March 1945. Sad to say there were no survivors. These two members of the Squadron Association have been to Germany and visited Reichswald Forest war cemetery in Kleve, where their uncles are buried. I meet up each year with those two members, Ernie and Dave at our Squadron Association reunion which is held in Lincoln.
I must confess that I was quite disappointed at not being able to fly as a pilot (in a Spitfire in fighter command of course!) However, completing our tour of operations on bomber command and being one of “Bomber” Harris’s Boys was something I look back on with pride. I also give thanks for not being wounded or being one of the 55,573 airmen who were killed in action.
Much has been written by historians who have decried the efforts of bomber command and have called its head “Butcher Bomber Harris”, saying that he was targeting the civilian population of German cities. I can in no way agree with them as there was always some industry in each of the cities targeted. Dresden is often referred to as being a civilian target; not so, because it had armament factories including Zeiss Ikon, which provided a supply of precision instruments to the German forces. It was also an important communication centre with considerable concentration of troops within the city.
Our crew took part in the Dresden raid on the 13th and 14 February 1945, unloading our bomb load of a 4000lb “cookie” and lots of incendiaries on the city when I pressed the bomb key. Should I count myself as a murderer for doing that? Some people in this country seem to think so but most of them were not alive at the time and so did not have to endure the bombing of our cities by the German air force.
[underlined] W.H. Thomas [/underlined]
Bill Thomas
11/07/15
I AGREE WITH THE INTERVIEW
[page break]
LIST OF OPERATIONS
DATE DESTINATION DURATION
11/10/44 Fort Frederick Heindrik 3.20
31/10/44 Cologne 5.20
02/11/44 Dusseldorf 5.20
04/11/44 Bochum 5.20
09/11/44 Wanne Eicline 4.55
16/11/44 Duren 4.30
18/11/44 Wanne Eicline 5.35
04/12/44 Karlsrhue [sic] 4.30
13/12/44 Essen 6.05
17/12/44 Ulm 7.50
28/12/44 Bonn 5.40
29/12/44 Buer 6.20
31/12/44 Osterfeld 5.50
02/01/45 Nurnberg 8.40
05/01/45 Royan 7.30
07/01/45 Munich 9.25
14/01/45 Merseburg (Leuna) 8.35
28/01/45 Zuffenhausen 7.15
03/02/45 Bottrop 6.10
04/02/45 Gardening – Heligo Bight 4.45
08/02/45 Aborted – Politz 2.50
13/02/45 Dresden 10.20
14/02/45 Gardening – Keil Bay 6.15
[page break]
20/02/45 Dortmund 6.25
22/02/45 Duisberg 5.50
23/02/45 Phorzheim 8.05
07/03/45 Dessau 10.00
08/03/45 Ground Loop – Kassel
03/04/45 Nordhausen 6.30
04/04/45 Lutzkendorf 8.10
09/04/45 Keil 5.55
Total Hours Night 185.45
Day 19.25
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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Bill Thomas memoir
Identifier
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MThomasWH152984-150721-01
Creator
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Bill Thomas
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-11
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.
Format
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Eight typewritten pages
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Scotland
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dresden
Wales--Aberystwyth
New Brunswick--Moncton
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
New Brunswick
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Ontario
Ontario--Belleville
Description
An account of the resource
He describes his first interest in the RAF, in 1938. He joined the Air Defence Cadet Corps, and later in 1941 the Air Training Corps. He was called up by the RAF in February 1942, and proceeded through initial training and the Initial Training Wing at Aberystwyth. Here he was promoted to leading aircraftsman. Having failed his pilots course, he was subsequently sent to Moncton Canada in late November 1942. Following a number of postings including bombing and gunnery school and navigation he was shipped home on the Aquitania back to the UK in December 1943. In early 1944 he was posted to Wigtown to train as a bomb aimer. He reported to 28 Operational Training Unit in late May 1944 where he crewed up. After flying in Wellingtons he passed through the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Sandtoft and the Lancaster Fininshing School at RAF Hemswell. He joined 166 Squadron, his flight forming 153 Squadron, which moved to Scampton, and on 31st October 1944 carried out his first operation on Cologne. He continued on operations including the attack on Dresden on 13th February 1945. On completion of his tour he trained as an equipment officer. He was released by the RAF in July 1946 and returned to his job with Cornwall County Council, He eventually moved to Morpeth in Northumberland and maintained his links with the 153 Squadron Association.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Karl Williams
David Bloomfield
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
153 Squadron
166 Squadron
1667 HCU
28 OTU
aircrew
Anson
Bolingbroke
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kirmington
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Scampton
RAF Strubby
RAF Wigtown
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1122/19947/BSharrockRSharockRv1.2.pdf
f5e83a6a82a0bba9867d936091a72c7f
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
Sharrock, Bob
Robert Sharrock
R Sharrock
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Bob Sharrock (1924 - 2019, 2210141 Royal Air Force), his log book, a photograph and documents. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 428 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Sharrock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
2018-03-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sharrock, R
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Bob Sharrock June 1943- Feb 1946 (A brief career in the RAF)
l joined the Air Force in June 1943, aged 18, and reported to the Lords Cricket Ground in London. We were billeted in blocks of flats nearby. Here we were issued with uniform, given numerous inoculation pbs,. initiated into drill exercises and introduced to canteen food. Not a bit like home cooking
About 2 weeks later we were posted to Torquay for Initial Training Here we endured physical training, some theoretical training into navigation, drill, Morse code, even skeet shooting on Daddy Hole Plain. When we moved from one site to another it was either running or at a marching pace faster than the army used. This lasted for about six weeks and we were fortunate to have good hot weather Most of the time it was very enjoyable
The next posting was to St Athan in South Wales Here we started our technical training Most of us were allocated the Halifax bomber, others the Stirling, the Lancaster and a few to Sunderland flying boats. I was disappointed not to be one of the latter. All these were four engined aircraft and it was only these that had a Flight Engineer.
Most of the time was spent in lecture groups and my notebooks give an idea of the type of information we were given. We also had drill, P.T., swimming and other recreational activities
It was about this time that when on leave, I went to a dance at the Parish Rooms at Prescot and met Dorothy Marsden.
The following March (1944) l was posted to 1664 Heavy Conversion Unit at Dishforth. This was where we met up with aircrews that had trained on two-engined aircraft and were moving on to heavy bombers. ln this case they were Halifax bombers. We had further practical training and were attached to a crew. They were all Canadian with a pilot by the name of Willard MacKeracher. The unit was in 6 Group, operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force, which occupied the area of North Yorkshire.
We did six exercises of Circuits and Landings. These were a series of take off, fly round the airfield and land. They were mainly to familiarise the pilot and engineer with handling the aircraft. This took about 10 hours A further hour was spent doing three engined landings Three further trips were made to give the Gunners and the Bomb Aimer some practice but it was on this third trip that we crashed on landing. It was apparent and subsequently reported that we had suffered an engine failure which slewed us over to miss the runway.
It was a miracle that not one of the crew was killed. All I remember is being knocked about and then opening my eyes to see that I was a few yards in front of the nose of the aircraft. The first person to reach me was an Italian prisoner of war who helped me to get out my parachute harness. Help soon arrived and four of us were taken by ambulance to Northallerton hospital.
Examination showed that I had a compressed fracture of the vertebrae in the lumbar region. A plaster of paris jacket was applied which extended from the groin to the neck I had a few days in bed while the jacket hardened and dried and then I was able to walk about fairly normally. The only difficulty was that J could not bend down. I was then given a couple of week's leave, which I spent at home.
I was then posted to a convalescent home in Hoylake on the Wirral This was called The Leas and was previously a girl's school. It was provided to recuperate injured aircrew and there were a number of chaps wearing plaster jackets similar to mine
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
Bob Sharrock June 1943 - Feb 1946
A brief career in the RAF
Description
An account of the resource
Bob's memoirs in the RAF. His training started at Lords cricket ground then Torquay. Technical training was at St Athan. At this time he met Dorothy. In March 1944 he was posted to Dishforth where his aircraft crashed damaging his spine.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Sharrock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One typed sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BSharrockRSharockRv1
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 Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Torquay
Wales--South Glamorgan
England--Merseyside
England--Yorkshire
England--Devon
England--Lancashire
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
1664 HCU
6 Group
aircrew
crash
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
love and romance
RAF Dishforth
RAF St Athan
RAF Torquay
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1122/19948/BSharrockRSharockRv2.1.pdf
1f7f1c8901c36dd903c87e4757a4c783
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
Sharrock, Bob
Robert Sharrock
R Sharrock
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Bob Sharrock (1924 - 2019, 2210141 Royal Air Force), his log book, a photograph and documents. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 428 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Sharrock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sharrock, R
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Memories and Reminiscences of Bob Sharrock
I was born in 1925 at a small village called Digmoor in Upholland near Wigan. My father, Joshua, known as Jos, was a coal miner working at a coal mine in Bickerstaffe.
Mother, Alice worked hard looking after the house and the children.
I had an older brother called Eric and a younger brother called William or Billy who died when only three years old. I went to school at the age of five.
We lived in a small terraced cottage in Spencers Lane, which had two bedrooms, a parlour (front room), a living kitchen and a back kitchen. It had a back yard in which Daddy had a wooden hut in which he carried out his hobby of fretwork and other woodwork. The living kitchen had a coal-fired range, which had an oven on one side and water heater on the other. Alongside the fireplace was a brick built boiler for washing clothes. The back kitchen had a slopstone and a cold water tap. All hot water came from a kettle, which was permanently on the fire or from the wash boiler, which was only used on washdays.
Daddy would come home from work covered in coal dust and would wash all over in a galvanised bath in front of the fire or, if the weather was warm, in the backyard.
Sundays were spent going to chapel and Sunday school. We had no transport and Daddy went to work on his bike having to go over a fairly large area called the Moss. He fitted a seat on the crossbar of his bike and would take me for rides on it.
Times became hard when the Bickerstaffe pit closed and father was out of work. He and some other miners went to work in Kent but the conditions were so difficult that they came back to Lancashire. In 1935 he got a job at Cronton colliery and the family moved to Whiston, renting an end terrace house in Brook Street.
I went to a primary school in Prescot, in the final year class.
At the age of 11 I went to Whiston Central School until Easter 1939
1
[page break]
when I left school at the age of 14. I then started work as an errand boy at the Rainhill branch of the Whiston Co-op Society. I earned 11 shillings per week and gave my mother 10 of these and had one shilling as spending money. I could get to a cinema show for 9 pence.
War broke out on the 3rd Sept 1939, and we were then living in a small semi-detached house 121 Dragon Lane. Whiston, from there, over ensuing months, we could see the effects of air raids on Liverpool, about 9 miles away. A few stray bombs fell on Rainhill but did no significant damage.
Some communal air raid shelters were built in the streets but as they were brick built and had concrete roofs it was doubtful if they would have been very effective. We were issued with an Anderson shelter, which Dad installed, in our back garden. He dug a pit about 3 feet deep, installed the corrugated shelter in it and covered it with the displaced earth. We only spent time in it when the air raid sirens went off. It was cold, damp and cramped.
Men were getting called up to the forces and as a result I changed to milk delivering. This meant being up at 5-30 a.m. 7 days a week. Loading a handcart with half a ton of milk bottles and pulling it around Rainhill. It was hard work but I think it did me some good physically. Eventually I was equipped with a pony and milk float, which made the job easier.
One day I met an old school acquaintance who was working for the local Gas Company. He told me that they were short-handed and it may be worthwhile making enquiries about a job. I followed this up and called at the office. The Manager interviewed me, asking a few questions on maths and general knowledge and then asked if I would like to start as a laboratory assistant. I accepted willingly and was soon involved in doing routine lab tests on calorific value, flue gas analysis, retort temperatures and other similar jobs. I started night school classes on maths, physics and chemistry, which lasted for two years until it was time to join the armed forces.
With a war going on these early teenage years didn't give much
2
[page break]
opportunity for normal teenage activities. In addition to my three nights a week at nightschool time was taken up by joining, with my friends, the Air Training Corps and the Police Auxiliary Messenger Service and it was the A.T.C. that stimulated my interested in flying.
3
[page break]
The A.T.C. took up one night per week when we did aircraft recognition, elementary navigation and drill. There were two occasions when we went on a week's camp, once to Blackpool airport and once to Crosby on Eden. One day at Crosby I was hanging around aircraft that were being serviced when a pilot told me that he was taking a Beaufighter on a test flight and did I want to join him. I sat in the observer's seat and we flew over the Lake District, I was thrilled.
When it came the time for registering for the armed forces. I made it clear that I wanted to join the RAF as a flier. I was eventually called for interview at the Aircrew Selection Board at Padgate, Burtonwood, near Warrington. I was asked what job did I want to do in aircrew and I said PNB or Flight Engineer.
PNB stood for Pilot, Navigator, Bomb Aimer. They all started their training together, the latter part of this in Canada or Rhodesia. As they went through their training selection was made. The best continued as Pilots, the next Navigators and the rest Bomb aimers.
When I mentioned Flight Engineer there was little further discussion. I was told I could train for this job. Whether it was because of my vaguely engineering background or because they were desperately short I don't know.
I joined the Air Force in June 1943, aged 18, and reported to the Lord's Cricket Ground in London. We were billeted in blocks of flats nearby. Here we were issued with uniform, given numerous inoculation jabs, initiated into drill exercises and introduced to canteen food. Not a bit like home cooking.
About 2 weeks later we were posted to Torquay for Initial Training. Here we endured physical training, some theoretical training into navigation, drill, Morse Code, even skeet shooting on Daddy Hole Plain. When we moved from one site to another it was either running or at a marching pace faster than the army used. This lasted for about six weeks and we were fortunate to have good hot weather Most of the time it was very enjoyable.
4
[page break]
The next posting was to St Athan in South Wales. Here we started our technical training. Most of us were allocated the Halifax bomber, others the Stirling, the Lancaster and a few to Sunderland flying boats. I was disappointed not to be one of the latter. All these were four engined aircraft and it was only these that had a Flight Engineer. Most of the time was spent in lecture groups and my notebooks give an idea of the type of information we were given. We also had drill, P.T. swimming and other recreational activities
It was about this time that, when on leave, I went to a dance at the Parish Rooms at Prescot and met Dorothy Marsden.
The following March (1944) I was posted to 1664 Heavy Conversion Unit at Dishforth. This was where we met up with aircrews that had trained on two-engined aircraft and were moving on to heavy bombers. In this case they were Halifax bombers. We had further practical training and were attached to a crew. They were all Canadian with a pilot by the name of Willard MacKeracher. The unit was in 6 Group, operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force, which occupied the area of North Yorkshire.
We did six exercises of Circuits and Landings. These were a series of take off, fly round the airfield and land. They were mainly to familiarise the pilot and engineer with handling the aircraft. This took about 10 hours. A further hour was spent doing three engined landings. Three further trips were made to give the Gunners and the Bomb Aimer some practice but it was on this third trip that we crashed on landing. It was apparent and subsequently reported that we had suffered an engine failure which slewed us over to miss the runway.
It was a miracle that not one of the crew was killed. All I remember is being knocked about and then opening my eyes to see that I was a few yards in front of the nose of the aircraft.. [sic] The first person to reach me was an Italian prisoner of war who helped me to get out my parachute harness. Help soon arrived and four of us were taken by ambulance to Northallerton hospital.
5
[page break]
Examination showed that I had a compressed fracture of the vertebrae in the lumbar region. A plaster of Paris jacket was applied which extended from the groin to the neck. I had a few days in bed while the jacket hardened and dried and then I was able to walk about fairly normally. The only difficulty was that I could not bend down. I was then given a couple of week's leave, which I spent at home.
I was then posted to a convalescent home in Hoylake on the Wirral. This was called The Leas and was previously a girl's school. It was provided to recuperate injured aircrew and there were a number of chaps wearing plaster jackets similar to mine.
We were made to keep quite active and spent most of the time doing exercises, playing games such as softball, (an easy version of baseball), tug'o war, football, cycling, etc. I was there for just short of three months. I was fortunate in that in weekends off it was quite easy to get home.
Whilst I was there the Normandy invasions took place.
In August 44 I was posted back to Dishforth and joined another crew. The skipper was R. Anderson. We knew him as Andy.
Over a period of about four weeks we did 98 hours of flying time in Halifax Bombers.
Then we were told that future flying would be in Lancasters so, after a few lectures and 10 hours flying time in three days we were considered to be fully trained.
The next posting was in October to 428 Squadron based at Middleton St George, which was where we were to do our operational flying. In the 6 months that we were operational I did 28 ops and was “screened” on the 17th April 45, some three weeks before VE Day.
My flying logbook lists every flight that I made, including training flights and operational trips. The operational flights were mainly at nighttime, bombing German cities. We were fortunate to evade being attacked by night fighters and being hit by flak. Only on one occasion did I find, on
6
[page break]
returning, a piece of shrapnel embedded in the fuselage.
With the war in Europe ending in May 45 and operational flying finished it was apparent that the authorities had to find something for aircrew to do before demob and I was posted, along with other Flight Engineers, To Credenhill, near Hereford and put on a Flight Mechanic’s course. After that I was posted to Kinloss where we spent time inhibiting engines on bombers in case they were needed again.
Whilst I was there the manager of Prescot Gas Company applied for my release from the R A F and I was demobbed on the 1st Feb 46 on a “B”class release. I had served 2years 8months.
Some time later I learned that the Institute of Gas Engineers had arranged some courses for employees who had their technical education interrupted by war service and I made application.
I went to Aston Technical College for 6 months to get my Ordinary Grade Certificate in Gas Engineering (Supply), then to Liverpool Gas Company for 6 months practical training followed by a further 6 months at Birmingham Central Technical College to get my Higher Grade Certificate.
On 19th July 1947 Dorothy and I were married.
Soon after finishing the course and going back to Prescott Gas I got an invitation to apply to Liverpool Gas Co. for a job in their Industrial Sales Department. This I did and started with the company later in 48. The job involved visiting manufacturing firms and getting them to use gas for their heating processes. These included space heating, water heating and various manufacturing processes such as furnaces, tank heating etc.
From getting married we lived in shared accommodation in various places, usually the homes of widows and consisted of a bedroom, a ground room and shared kitchen and bathroom. Whilst working at Liverpool we bought a small semi in Cable Road, Whiston. This cost
7
[page break]
£900 and we lived there for about a year until we moved to Burnley.
The Gas Industry at that time was formed from towns having a gasworks run either as private companies or mainly as Departments of local councils.
In 1951 the Industry was nationalised and these undertakings, apart from bigger towns like Manchester and Liverpool, were formed into small groups. This gave the opportunity to create special departments specialising in a particular activity. One of these was sale of gas to Industrial and Commercial premises. One of the Groups was known as the Burnley / Colne Group and I got the job of Industrial Engineer, starting in June 51. This also coincided with the arrival of Robert, our firstborn.
We bought a house in Sycamore Avenue, Burnley. Finances were tight but we managed. It was here, in 1953, that John was born.
My job involved selling gas to Industrial and Commercial customers and I had to get around in a small van but after a while I got my first car, a Ford Prefect.
In 1954 The North West Gas Board reorganized and larger Groups were formed. One of these was The Northern Group which took in Lancaster, Morecambe, Kendal, Barrow-in Furness and other smaller undertakings in the Lake District and as far away as Millom. Harry Robinson, the Manager of the Burnley/Colne Group was made Manager of the Northern group and I got the job of Industrial Gas Sales Engineer. Among the customers that I had dealings with were Jas. Williamsons and Storey Bros. of Lancaster, K Shoes of Kendal, Vickers Armstrong, Barrow Steel, Barrow Iron works and Millom Iron works.
The Gas Board bought a house, which I rented, in Beaufort Road, Morecambe and I got a decent increase in pay. Life was comfortable.
Whilst living in Morecambe Jeremy and David arrived and I got involved in various activities including the Masons, Round Table and Scouts. Also whilst there I bought a second hand dinghy, a GP 14, called
8
[page break]
William Younger with the sail number 347. I joined the Morecambe and Heysham Yacht Club and took part in races with Dorothy as crew. This lasted some time and the boys also took part. John and I sailed together at the Southport 24hr race as part of the MHYC team a couple of times, one year using our boat as the team boat. One year we took part in the Race Across the Bay to Gibraltar (the one near Jenny Brown's Point) and managed to come last as our launching trolley had broken the previous day so we were loaded down with the canvas cover and all sorts of other heavy gear. John was the keenest sailor and eventually he decided I was too slow to act as his crew so he got various girls to crew for him, including Dorothy's niece, Patricia. His main crew was Rosemary Cole with whom he won many trophies. We did do some work on the boat, when we first got it it had a jib and mainsail in white cotton, this was changed for red terylene sails including a genoa.
I joined the RNLI as crew on the inshore lifeboat and acted as survivor on more than one occasion to give the holidaymakers a thrill.
We spent several holiday [sic] at Fell Foot Park a National Trust site on Lake Windermere. We would travel towing the boat with all the camping gear in it and two canoes perched on top of it. We had a wonderful French six berth frame tent which seemed the size of a small marquee.
I also had a go at gliding with a club near Tebay. This didn't last very long though. Dorothy, Robert and John used to hang around whilst I was doing circuits.
I tried all sorts of activities golf, various musical instruments and even started to build a hovercraft, up to the point where I needed an engine.
The church of the Ascension in Torrisholme had a well-organised rambling club. Every month they had a day in the Lake District, travelling by coach, and splitting into three groups. Hard, Medium and Easy. Dorothy and I enjoyed these outings.
I was very keen on walking and kitted myself up with light weight camping gear and did a few long distance walks.
9
[page break]
After living in the house in Morecambe for 12 years I realised that to be financially secure we ought to own our own property so, in 1963, we bought a house in Bolton-le-Sands. This was an old stone built semi-detached in St. Michael's Lane named Thistlebrake. I spent about 6 months getting it into reasonable shape for living in. I rewired the electrics, and with help installed central heating and got a contractor to install a water closet and drains to a soakaway in the rather big garden. Each bedroom had a sink and there was an upstairs bathroom and a downstairs toilet in the utility room. For a few years we retained the copper under which you could light a fire to do the washing. We put in a solid fuel rayburn which heated the water and did the cooking and it was wonderful producing the most wonderful food, Dorothy helped of course.
Robert went to Lancaster Road Primary School as did John. For John's final year we were living in Bolton-le-sands so he was taken there every day. Jeremy and David both went to Bolton-le-sands Primary School. Unusually John and David went to Lancaster Royal Grammar School whilst Robert and Jeremy went to Morecambe Grammar, no-one can remember why this was the case.
It would be about 1972 that further reorganisation took place and the Northern Group expanded to take in the Blackpool and Preston areas. The headquarters was based at Blackpool and I was put in charge of a sales department dealing with Industrial and Commercial customers. I was given the title of Technical Sales Manager.
I was given the opportunity to be provided with finance for removal expenses but to avoid disruption of the education of the boys I decided to stay ay Bolton-le-Sands and commute. This meant doing about 50 miles a day in the car. It was during this period that Robert, John and Jeremy left to go to university.
It would be about 1975 that Dorothy got a job at Preston Hospital as a phlebotomist so we were both commuting, in two cars. We needed to move nearer to our jobs but it would have upset David's way of life so
10
[page break]
we continued to live there until he went to university.
We moved to Garstang in 1982.
At some time in the eighties some of my colleagues invited me to join them on a sailing holiday on a thirty-five foot sailing yacht owned by the British Gas Sailing Association.
We set sail from a port on the south coast in the evening for an overnight passage to Cherbourg. The weather deteriorated and progressed into a storm. We sailed under heavily reefed sails, secured ourselves with harnesses and tielines and suffered seasickness. We eventually reached France, about a hundred miles east of Cherbourg, and found a sheltered port where we sorted ourselves out. The rest of the week was in good weather and we visited the Channel Islands. There were many more trips. Later we sailed around the Western Isles of Scotland. I was enthusiastic and attended evening classes at the Fleetwood Nautical College to learn navigation. These sailing trips went on until the Sailing Association folded on privatisation of the industry.
In 1986 the Gas Industry was privatised and I was made redundant. I got redundancy pay and could also be paid my pension. Dorothy continued to work for a couple of years.
I was not very involved in politics but had voted for the Liberal party. I got to know a few people in Garstang and learned that there was a particularly active Liberal group so I went to their meetings and in 1987 put my name forward for election in the town and borough elections. Five of us gained seats in the Wyre Borough Council and I was elected to Garstang Town Council. The following year, 1988 I was made Mayor of Garstang. Elections were held every four years and I was re-elected on the next two. In the last year, 1998/99, I was Mayor of the Borough of Wyre and with Dorothy, who was Mayoress, had a wonderful time, being entertained by many organisations and making many friends. May 99 saw the end of my time in local politics and, at the age of 74, just as well.
11
[page break]
In June of that year Dorothy and I celebrated by taking a lovely holiday doing an Alaskan Cruise.
Some three months later I was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach and had a gastrechtomy [sic] at Chorley Hospital. Recovery from this was slow but with great care from my dear wife I made gradual progress.
In August 2005 Dorothy died of cancer of the pancreas.
The commemoratory address given at her funeral by her sons gives a better record of her life than I can give
“Dorothy did many things throughout her life and looking back it seems that nearly all of them carried a sense of public or private duty and that in doing them she gave real pleasure to those around her.
She was, perhaps above all, a mother and a wife. She somehow found time even during the busiest years, when she was raising four sons, to channel her energies into other activities.
But she never lost sight of a belief that her primary responsibility was to her family. I suppose that everybody believes that they have the world's best mum: and I am no different.
Dorothy was born eighty years ago in February 1925, not far from here, in Longridge. She trained as a confectioner – which probably accounts for the fantastic scones which we will all now miss so badly – but with the outbreak of the war she moved into war work.
She used to tell us great stories about those times, some of them involving a dashing Lancaster Bomber flight engineer called Bob. She met this young man at a dance in the Parish hall in Prescot while he was on leave from the RAF.
They married shortly after the end of the war and, with Dad making his way in his new career as a gas engineer, there began a peripatetic
12
[page break]
period during which they lived in Birmingham, Whiston, Burnley, Morecambe and Bolton-le-Sands.
Dorothy gave birth to four sons, the first in 1951 and the last in 1962. It's true to say – because she did and why not, she was proud of the fact – that she taught each of us to read and write BEFORE we started primary school.
I think that says it all about her determination to give her children the very best start in life, in which she succeeded. Thanks mum. She gave us all a well-rounded view of life and the world and she did it with a real enthusiasm, which was truly infectious.
We were all inveterate hillwalkers, often even before we had taken our first steps! Mum must have walked every fell in the Lake District ... and run back down every one of them as well. She was still walking her beloved mountains well into her seventies – and giving her fours [sic] sons, six grandchildren and three great grandchildren a run for their money.
But she was also active in other areas, dinghy sailing and scouts among them as well as working as a volunteer with the Citizens Advice Bureau in Lancaster.
As her boys grew up and learned to fend for themselves, Dorothy decided she wanted to resume her working career. She trained as a phlebotomist and worked in hospitals in Lancaster, Morecambe and Preston. I think that she got a lot of satisfaction out of this valuable service – especially when she was mistaken in the hospital wards and corridors for a doctor because of her white coat!
In the mid-70s Bob and Dorothy moved to Garstang, nearer to Dad's job in Blackpool, and her job in Preston, and a new era began in their lives, now that their sons had all left home for university. David refused to move from Bolton-le-Sands until he went to University so the move to Garstang was delayed. I suppose you might call this their “Golden Age”, because they have had such a wonderful time living here and making such good friends.
13
[page break]
She supported Dad in his political and civic roles, becoming Mayoress for Garstang and Wyre Borough Council. She also threw herself into a host of activities, including support for the Leonard Cheshire Home and the St John's Hospice and Meals on Wheels with Cabus WI.
Dorothy was active in the bowling club, she swam once a week and she continued to walk. She was fit and active right up until the end, her enthusiasm for life undimmed.
As we remember her this morning, the word, which most aptly comes to mind, is “selflessness”, because she always put the needs of others above and before her own needs. She was the least selfish person I know, she was always ready to help in any way that she could. She was – and is – our mum, Dorothy,”
That gives a summarised account of our lives, which, on the whole was a happy one. Good fortune, in many respects, came our way. My career started modestly as a youngster from an elementary education but a series of events led to me having a well-paid job and a comfortable retirement. Family life was pleasant, bringing up four boys who have done well in their careers and kept in close contact with us.
Another part of my life was my association with Scouting.
This started with Robert joining Cubs and me offering to assist with transporting the pack members to their various activities. The Scout Group was attached to Church of the Ascension at Torrisholme and I joined the Parent's Committee.
About 1964 the Senior Scout Unit needed some help so I took the necessary training and became the Senior Scout Leader, my scouting career was as follows.
March 65 Senior Scout Leader 16th Morecambe
Oct 67 Assistant District Commissioner (Venture Scouts)
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May 71 District Commissioner – Morecambe & Heysham District
April 74 District Commissioner – Lonsdale District
June 80 Assistant County Commissioner – West Lancashire
In 1984 and then living in Garstang, I had retired from the Lonsdale District and was appointed Assistant County Commissioner (Personnel) for the West Lancashire County Scout Council. The County had two full time campsite wardens and I made arrangements for improvements to their conditions of employment including salaries and pensions.
June 93 Assistant District Commissioner (Venture Scouts).
I took an active part in training these teenage lads in various outdoor activities such as Rock Climbing, Hill Walking, Orienteering, Sailing and Canoeing, some of them gaining the Duke of Edinburgh Award.
My scouting involvement was for about 28 years and I enjoyed it immensely.
ROBERT SHARROCK C.Eng .. M.I.Gas E.
D.O.B. 12 February 1925
Whiston Central School Left 1939 aged 14 years
Started work as an errand boy Whiston Co-op Society.
1941 Started work at Prescott Gas Co. Jumior [sic] on general duties in the laboratory, works and distribution Dept
June 1943 Joined R.A.F. Trained as Flight Engineer (Aircrew) complted [sic] one tour in Bomber Command. Attained rank of Flight Engineer then Flight Sargeant [sic]
March 1944 Crashed in Halifax Bomber on training flight and ended up with a broken back
Sept 1944 Resumed training
Posted to 428 Squadron (Canadian) Ghost Squadron at Middleton St George. Flew 28 operational flights
Feb 1946 Released from R.A.F. on a B Class Release. Returned to work at Prescot Gas Co. manager of gas works applied for Bob's release
Jan 1947 Started intensive course in Gas Engineering at Aston in Birmingham Technical College sponsored by Institute of Gas Engineers
Nov 1948 Joined Liverpool Gas Co.
15
[page break]
June 1951 Appointed Senior Industrial Engineer – Burnley following Nationalisation
June 1954 Appointed Group Industrial Gas Sales Engineer – NWGB North (Lancaster)
Feb 1971 Appointed Technical Sales Manager, West Lancs (Blackpool)
April 1986 Early Retirement due To impending privatisation of British Gas 42 years' service in Gas Industry
FAMILY
16
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Married to Dorothy 19th July 1947
Children – Robert Eden 16th June 1951
John James 18th May 1953
Jeremy Mason 1st June 1958
David William 19th Feb 1962
Stomach cancer Aug 1999 stomach removed
Moved to Abbeyfield House 2011
d:\sharrock family\dad bob documents\memories and [inserted] 17 [/inserted] reminiscences\memories and reminiscences of bob sharrock v5 31-8-14.doc
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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Memories and Reminiscences of Bob Sharrock
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Sharrock's story. He was born near Wigan, his father a coal miner. He worked locally until old enough to sign up. He trained at Lords cricket ground, Torquay then St Athan. Posted to Dishforth, he suffered a compressed spine during a Halifax crash. On recovery he returned to Dishforth, followed by Middleton St George. He completed 28 operations unscathed. After the war he continued at Credenhill then Kinloss as a flight mechanic.
He got his old job at the gas works back and married Dorothy. They had four boys and he spent a lot of time dinghy sailing.
Creator
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Bob Sharrock
Format
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17 typewritten sheets
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BSharrockRSharockRv2
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Wigan
England--Warrington
England--London
England--Torquay
England--Hoylake
England--Hereford
England--Liverpool
England--Burnley
England--Morecambe
England--Bolton-le-Sands
England--Garstang
England--Yorkshire
England--Cheshire
England--Devon
England--Herefordshire
England--Lancashire
England--Preston (Lancashire)
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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.
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Roger Dunsford
1664 HCU
428 Squadron
6 Group
aircrew
Beaufighter
crash
flight engineer
flight mechanic
ground crew
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
RAF Credenhill
RAF Dishforth
RAF Kinloss
RAF Middleton St George
RAF Padgate
RAF St Athan
RAF Torquay
recruitment
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45950/SSmithRW425992v10002-0001 copy.1.pdf
74eced5094f4453fae9af70a62c5299a
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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Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-03-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Smith, RW
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Title
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WW2 Service in the RAAF Robert Wylie Smith
Description
An account of the resource
Book No 2 Contents
Creator
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Bob Smith
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Brighton
England--Sidmouth
England--Desborough
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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One printed sheet
Identifier
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SSmithRW425992v10002-0001 copy
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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.
15 Squadron
1653 HCU
3 Group
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster Finishing School
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Desborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Stradishall
RAF West Freugh
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45951/SSmithRW425992v10002-0002 copy.1.pdf
12af6b6dff947f6f4e21b0dbbb02f12a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
2019-03-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
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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Bob Smith's Memoirs Book 2
Description
An account of the resource
23 pages of Bob's memoirs.
Covers his training.
Creator
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Bob Smith
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Brighton
England--Sidmouth
Scotland--Aberdeen
England--Salisbury
Scotland--Stranraer
Scotland--Ailsa Craig
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland--Paisley
Scotland--Glasgow
France
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
Australia
New South Wales--Sydney
Queensland--Bundaberg
Queensland--Brisbane
New South Wales--Cootamundra
United States
California--San Francisco
Canada
Alberta--Edmonton
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Scotland--Gourock
Victoria--Melbourne
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Ontario--Trenton
Ontario--London
France--Châlons-sur-Marne (Arrondissement)
France--Caen
Germany
Germany--Kiel
France--Gironde Estuary
Poland--Szczecin
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
France--Le Havre
Germany--Neuss
France--Calais
France--Pas-de-Calais
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leverkusen
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Netherlands--Veere
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Fulda
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Heinsberg (Heinsberg)
Nova Scotia
Manitoba
Poland
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Royal New Zealand Air Force
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SSmithRW425992v10002-0002
1653 HCU
3 Group
467 Squadron
5 Group
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
crash
crewing up
flight engineer
Gee
Hampden
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
mess
mine laying
navigator
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Normandy deception operations (5/6 June 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Andover
RAF Bishops Court
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RAF Feltwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Harrington
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Silloth
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tempsford
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
RAF White Waltham
RAF Wigtown
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/938/11295/AMacCormickA161126.1.mp3
cacd0abccd972fde8ad86476d6df8c78
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MacCormick, Anderson
A MacCormick
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An oral history interview with Anderson MacCormick (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-11-26
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MacCormick, A
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BJ: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Brenda Jones. The interviewee is Anderson MacCormick. The interview is taking place at Mr MacCormick’s home in Milngavie Glasgow on the 26th of November 2016. Thank you Anderson for agreeing to talk to me today. So could you tell me about your life before you joined the RAF?
AM: I don’t think there was anything especially particular about that. As compared to today for a young children I’d say that we had an awful lot more freedom. It’s a, it’s a comparatively small area where I was brought up in Alexandria. That’s in the Vale of Leven. And as children we were allowed to do, get out and play and go where we liked within that area without any fears. A bit different from what children have today. I worked. I went through junior school and then I went to the academy. And I started working as a part time boy with a firm when I was eleven year old. It was a reporter and press photographer. That was just delivering messages and doing work for him after school and at the weekends. That was quite interesting. It brought in the time at the beginning of the war and this particular freelance reporter he had, during the First World War put in a small paragraph in the local papers of all the men who were killed during that war. And he was trying to carry on doing the same thing in the Second World War. It meant going and asking questions around about. He would hear that someone had been killed. In particular at the period of Dunkirk. And he would normally get the information in but we had to query that and confirm it before he would put in his paragraph. So that was interesting. The [pause] the situation came that his main photographers was taken away. Were called up. And I wasn’t sufficiently qualified to continue working with the business and so I had to leave there. And from there I went to work with the Insurance Society and was working with them as a clerk in the office until such time as I went away to the air force. During that period from the start of the ATC I joined that and was a member of the ATC until I went into the air force itself. The [pause] I don’t think there was any great special things about my youth or that the, my memory of that time was the freedom that we had to do as we wanted to do. I remember a whole summer another lad and myself we spent going up to Pollok Park where motor, rowing boats were hired and we helped the people there and played about there. That was something which I don’t think many children would be allowed to do today. That was when we must have been nine or ten year old that we were doing that. So, as I say there was a tremendous amount of freedom in these days to get out and literally enjoy life. But there was nothing terribly spectacular.
BJ: So how did you come to join the RAF?
AM: Because my mother was in the WRAF in the First World War. And I had in fact intended applying to become a boy entrant in to the RAF prior to the war starting. I had the application papers all completed for that and, but that was cancelled at the start of the war. The boy entrants were cancelled at the start of the war. It did start up again I believe. But I think possibly because my mother having been in the service during the war and I wanted to go the same way. Always had a great interest in flying. And, but because the the boy entrant, the scheme was stopped that finished that idea. So the, it was a case of learning something about flying with being in the ATC. That again, nothing terribly spectacular about that. The only thing that came with that was that one of the officers in the squadron I was in had been a glider pilot and he had a, they had a glider there. I think, I think it was his glider, the officer that was there and we’d take that out. It would be taken out on a Saturday or a Sunday and erected in a field in Dumbarton. And we hauled it back and forward over the field and one or two of the lads, the older lads that were there were allowed to get in it and do what you would term a ground slide. And that gave me an attraction to the gliding. And that was carried on through the period I was in Germany. I’d done some gliding there and then joined the gliding school when I came back when I was, after I was demobbed. Joined the gliding school. The ATC Gliding School at what, it was Abbotsinch Airfield. Now Glasgow airport. That the connection there was always an attraction to be flying.
BJ: So when you joined the RAF tell me about your training.
AM: I don’t, there was nothing spectacular about the training. From we spent, I can remember my first meal in the RAF which was at Lord’s Cricket Ground. We did, I had of course travelled down overnight to London never having been there before. And of course there was the old story if you wanted to know anything you always asked a policeman. And when I arrived in London I did that. I asked a policeman both for the direction, directions to get to Lord’s Cricket Ground and also where I could buy some breakfast. The policeman, he lived up to their reputation and took me around to a cafe where all the railwaymen had their food. Their breakfast. And I got a real breakfast there I think at, what would you, how would you describe it? It had practically everything in it and it was all fried. That certainly was the — from getting that meal I got to Lord’s and at lunchtime there we were all queued up and given a bowl of soup and a hunk of bread. I couldn’t say it was a slice. It was just a, it was I think more like a [pause] the French roll of bread and just a piece torn off that was our, was my first meal with them. And then again [pause] the same as everybody else who went through the whole procedure in London of getting kitted out. Going and doing our, the [pause] the a swimming trial. And one of the things that turned out there was being told I’ve, I was at the front, on the front rank and getting dark in London in the January. We had to carry an Alladin lamp there. One at the front and one at the rear of the column. And I was given the job of carrying the Alladin lamp until they found that I was trying, I was walking fast, marching far too fast for any of the wee fellows at the back. And I was the lamp taken away and I was shoved up the back so that they didn’t have to march so fast as I was making it. But the few weeks we spent in London we went through various different lectures. The one thing I can remember we had PT every morning and it was like this kind of weather we have at the moment. And that was over at the zoo at the premier park [pause] I don’t know if I made a note in here for that. No. No. One of the big parks in London. It’s got a big pond in it. Where the zoo is in the park and I’ve, I’ve forgotten the name of it but we had our, we got our meals there, in there. And the dining room was over in the park itself and one of the things that did happen there was it was, we’d always to queue to get into the dining room and that queue was along the side of the monkey enclosure that was there. And very often the monkeys would be copying us inside and near the enclosure. We had to queue along the side of it to get into the dining room. Again that was something that was totally new to most of us. For a lot of us it was completely new being grouped together with a large number of strangers. A large number of people we didn’t know. The lads who’d been to boarding school had been used to living with other youngsters there. They could handle it an awful lot better. I think possibly being in the ATC and having done the various camps there did sort of bring me into it much better than if I was completely new to it because I’d done that before. But we went from London down to Newquay and had our ITW down at Newquay which was very pleasant. Very nice down there. That’s what you had to fill in there. The ITW at Newquay. And we were there at Newquay for what — six weeks. Again it was one of these things of getting to know very much the people who were around about you. Usually your first sort of introduction to them was who walked into what room and what bed you got in a room and the people who were there. But again out of it was usually an intake of somewhere about fifty people coming in. In time you got to know the others who were there. But that was again the usual drill, marching, shooting shotguns and or pistols. Learning Morse and doing a test for, to see whether you were capable of reading Morse. With that, on the Morse actually when they, when they were giving us a test for that the a lot of the intake I was with did not survive the test and we all complained that this was the person who was sending the Morse was the problem. He was up in the top room, up in a house and we were away out in a field. And we managed to overturn the decisions on that because we claimed that the way the Morse was sent wasn’t satisfactory. We probably were all a bit too lazy and didn’t learn it [laughs] but it wasn’t his fault, whoever was sending it. But these are the things that happened. The other things I remember at ITW was going out and going cross country running which a lot of us had probably never done before there. And in general it was a, a period of learning and learning quickly. That, that the whole course we moved off from there and then all met up and we went to various small stations to do some flying experience. And then we met up at Locking which was number, number — [pause] Number 7 S of TT. That’s the School of Technical Training we went to. And then we went from there to St Athan which was Number 4 School of Technical Training. And there we spent, what? It wasn’t ten months? [pause] Six months. Between the two stations. I think we were six weeks at Locking and then the rest of the period up to October we were out at St Athan. And that was then that when you got passing out and got your wings if you passed the exam. Again, a very interesting period. We were all I think at the same stage all learning something totally new there that, I’m coming on with that. I feel that just the things that happened, how circumstances worked out at the end of the period at St Athan they were, as I said before there was, there was a blockage in the line and too many people and not enough places to go to and we were sent on our leave after we’d finished the course. But instead of being posted direct to a Conversion Unit I was not in the half, my name was in the latter half of the alphabet and half the people who’d passed out at that time were delayed. I was sent — when I finished my leave and returned to St Athan they just sent me home again for another period. I can’t remember just how long it was and then I went to the aircrew school at Sturgate for two or three weeks before I was posted to a Con Unit. But that pushed me back, oh a month, six weeks. If I had have gone straight to the Con Unit from St Athan as a big part of that intake went I’d have been flying on ops over the winter of ’44 ’45 and that was a period where there was quite heavy losses. A rotten winter it was. Deep snow. I learned how to shovel snow off a runway at that period. But by not, by being held back over the winter I was actually doing the training in the Con Unit where others who’d been sent to a Con Unit right away would have been on to operations during that period. So I always have felt that that possibly saved my life. That a lot of these chaps there who were flying on ops during that period they, the one chap that I was very friendly with and kept up with until after the war he [pause] they’d done their Con Unit and then they went to a squadron and had done one or two ops. And then went to — they volunteered to go to PFF then and this stopped them. They had to do a further period of training before they could fly on ops there and Fred, they never, they’d never done any more ops after they went to PFF. It was just the time was spent training. But I’m sure a lot of the chaps who were on that same course as I was on would have been flying on ops during that period and a lot could have been lost. So I’ve always had this feeling that by that happening to me it possibly saved a life there. That particularly after going to Con Unit, finishing there we were posted to a squadron. And another crew joined the squadron on the same day and I got to know them because when we were sent on our first op, we were there for maybe possibly a fortnight after we got to the squadron. We went on our first operation and so did that other crew. They were sent on a gardening or a mine laying trip. We went to Duisburg on a bombing trip. We came back. They didn’t. So again the circumstances there it could have been us that went on the gardening trip just as they were, out of, we were the two new crews that were there. And something must have been looking after me at that time. But it’s amazing just how circumstances can change. Change the chances you have and change a life. And I’ve always felt that being held back however much you didn’t like it had been worthwhile as far as I was concerned.
BJ: Can you tell me what your job involved then?
AM: The job.
BJ: Yes.
AM: As a flight engineer.
BJ: Yes.
AM: Right. You, you [pause] you’re the member of the crew who had to know the aircraft and all the systems in it. And before a flight, before every flight you had to check quite a number of the systems. Checking the outside of the aircraft to see that everything was as it should be. The skipper usually had a walk around the aircraft as well. You had various systems to check inside before you went off. But these pre-flight checks had to be done and they then, whilst flying you were assisting the skipper, the pilot. You were in charge of the engines and setting of engines and the checking of the fuel that had been used and keeping a record of that. Keeping a record of the temperatures of the various, of the four engines there. The [pause] you were the one person in the crew who was always on your feet and could be up, around and doing something. You helped the pilot on take-off. He would start off and take the engines up so far and normally the engineer would take over and put the throttles through and lock them. You’d attend to adjusting the flaps. And in general that really was you, you were working with the skipper. Working with the engines. Trying to, if you could get them synchronised instead of being like the, I don’t know if you’d ever heard about the German engines of a German aircraft where they were mainly pulsating. A different sound entirely. We tried to get the sound of the engines all to be in sequence there. But there was not [pause] oh and just looking after the engines and the skipper. That was the job.
AM: So, can you tell me what it was like going on the missions?
BJ: Well, I would say for the first one it was an easy one. You didn’t know what you were going into. The skipper, usually he’d done what was termed a second dickie and he went to, on a trip with an experienced crew before he took his own crew on an operation. So he had some idea and I can remember once my skipper, he went to Dresden on his second dickie. And we all were all asking him what it was like there. My memory tells me he couldn’t give us an awfully satisfactory answer. But then when we were going and I certainly found and I think that the other members of the crew how it was, you trained for a long time to go there and you were literally looking forward to it. But you didn’t know what you were going into. So for that trip it wasn’t too bad. Subsequent trips you knew what you were going in to and if it happened to be quite a long trip you were going on you knew that the chances of you meeting up with a night fighter were greater the longer the trip that was there. And I can’t remember having any great anxiety on going off on a trip. Either at night or a day trip there. That it was just another operation you were going on. But again we were all young. Well, eight of us were all, six of us were all young. The rear gunner we had he was, I think he was, Nobby was thirty nine which was old for aircrew at that time. And the rest of us we were all between eighteen, and I’d say I was about twenty three and that was for the lot of us. Oh I’m forgetting the bomb aimer. We never did know which, what age Jim was. He was a Canadian and we never found out much about Jim but he was certainly, certainly an older person. But I would certainly say that the first op was no great hassle. Although where we went to was one of the heaviest defended towns in Germany. But it certainly, it must have had some effect on us. The fact that we knew we were going into and knew what we were going into and what we were going into in subsequent operations. And I only did thirteen actual bombing ops but they were thirteen times you could have been knocked down. And we were pretty lucky. We only were damaged once that I know of with flak. We had a hole in one wing when we came back. Some of the things that you saw there at the various different operations such as rockets being used. And you could watch them being fired from the ground, coming up, the light on them. The flaming from the rocket. You could watch them coming up. And being coned by searchlights. Quite a nasty experience. But you just took it and accepted that was what was going down at that time [pause] But the [pause] I don’t, I can’t remember any particular feelings. Glad to be back obviously once you got back home. We had one particular operation. It was a daylight and it was to Bremen. And we were not flying our normal aircraft that we usually had. We found it quite difficult to getting this aircraft to climb above about seventeen thousand feet. The bombing height for that op was somewhere about between twenty one and twenty three thousand feet depending where you were stepped up. So on that, the aircraft was very fast. We actually were able to fly up to the front of the stream, you know for a few minutes and have a look at the twenty two thousand pounders that were being carried by the leading aircraft. We flew up underneath them and had a look at them because they had just a fairing around the bomb where you could see it in the bomb bay. And then we allowed ourselves to get back down in to the stream again. Into about the middle of it. We flew up and beyond the target at Bremen. And then turned around and coming back in over the target but we were this two thousand feet at least below all the rest of the stream. The — coming in to the target the bomb bays were opened and looking up you could see the bombs and they were thousand pounder blast bombs in the bomb bays of the aircraft above us. We were right in the centre. When you looked into a bomb bay when it was sitting on the ground and the aircraft had bombed up they didn’t look all that terribly fierce things but when you looked up there and saw them there you knew that they were going to be getting dropped in seconds and that you were right underneath them and knowing the stories of aircraft that were knocked down by being hit by our own bombs from the aircraft above them it was not a very pleasant feeling. The bombs were eventually released and they dropped right in front of, I was looking out to the right hand side of the aircraft and they literally they dropped in front of the engines and then dropped between the main plane and the tailplane of the aircraft to. The seconds would have been, too see these bombs there, the bomb doors opened knowing they were going to be dropped and when they were actually dropped they were long seconds. Luckily the skipper knew what he was doing. He still flew straight and level. If he’d have tried to escape from these bombs dropping I’m sure we would have been knocked down but he just continued on straight and level. We didn’t get touched by any of the bomb but by God they were close. That certainly was quite an experience. Not nice. But one of the things we knew about was just after we’d joined the squadron there was one crew who’d had the, on a night raid the bombs from an aircraft above them had hit them. Had actually gone right through their wing there and luckily missed the fuel tanks that were in the wings and had gone right through the wing. Another one they had the incendiary bombs which had been dropped from above, gone into their wing and luckily none of them went on fire. Which they were very lucky with. But the thoughts that would have gone through head at the time I can’t remember them now but I know its one situation I will never forget. Just seeing what was there and knowing what was going to happen. That could have been a bad day that one but it wasn’t. And the, the, that really was the only time well not the only time when ops were a bit dicey. The one trip to Kiel which was where we saw the rockets being fired at us. And at that same trip we were coned by searchlights. And another aircraft from our squadron was flying alongside us and it was originally coned and the cone went off it, came on to us and luckily it moved on to another one and we went out of it before we’d even, the skipper had even started to try and take any evasive action at one two three. And we think, I think that the number three got hit. But this other aircraft that was beside us it had a name painted on it of a squadron and we knew it was one of the aircraft of our squadron with this name that was on it. It’s not nice during a, it’s as if it was in broad daylight, it was actually the middle of the night, with a cone of a searchlights hitting you. You could be blinded for a while. But that really is [cough] we had the situation on a couple of trips of coming back rather short of fuel. In fact in one of them one of the engines had cut out because of shortage of fuel just as we landed. Again quite lucky that then you had the situations that you get back after a long trip. Coming in to land, being given permission to land, coming in to land and suddenly an aircraft comes in underneath you. And we were a mixed squadron of Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders. I think there were a couple of Americans there. And the Australians particularly were prone to do things you didn’t fancy that we had that happen to us. Coming in on approach and an aircraft coming in slipped underneath us. They hadn’t been given permission to land. They just — in. That was it. Couldn’t care less who they pushed out the road as long as we had to go around again and go through the whole approach. That was always something that annoyed you. When somebody had done that. Other than that I can’t see there was any other things that disturbed us all that much more at the time. When you’re young you have a different way of looking at things. And of course coming on the end of the war, well before the end of the war we were, we’d done the trips to Holland. For Manna.
BJ: Oh yes. Tell me about that then.
AM: Well, that one wasn’t it? I reckon we were on first trip. On the Sunday. And that really was the only one that was any possible problem there. We didn’t know whether Jerry was going to keep to the — we’d been told at briefing that the truce had been made with Germany. In fact it hadn’t. We went on the Sunday. The truce wasn’t signed until the Monday morning. That the [pause] and initially we were called oh what, some time about 5 o’clock or something Sunday. Saturday night. And I assume, I cannot remember now but I assume we had been out on the town on the night before. On the Saturday. And the SPs came around and gave the usual shake and shout and wakened us up. Both crews that were in the Nissen hut that we were in there. So we were, they told us that there was a battle order. The war hadn’t finished then so it was still classed as a battle order and that the — obviously went through the procedure. Then up to our flying breakfast. Got to the briefing room and that’s where we learned that we were going to drop food to the people in Holland. We had, I’ll put this light on a minute. We had done a practice just before that with low level dropping of food at the, tut tut, was that tea a bit strong for you?
AM: No. It’s fine thanks.
BJ: You quite like it.
AM: Yes.
BJ: Ok. Right. The [pause] yes we were went through and got a briefing that we were going to Holland to drop food to the people there who really were starving. And the weather was atrocious. The, we were given a time for take-off. That passed. And I can’t just remember the times off hand but it was at, an hour or two passed for our time to take off for this because, we believed, the weather. Eventually at one point I think I can remember they wouldn’t send us because of the weather and then they came and told us we were going. And there was only two aircraft from our squadron and it was both the crews were in the one hut. We thought we obviously we had been picked on in some way that we were going for this trip. However, it was probably pretty much the worst weather flying over England that I’d ever flown in. Rain, low cloud and we were flying down to under a thousand feet at times. And flying over the North Sea we were certainly down to about five hundred feet because of the cloud. And then got so far and then it cleared. Coming up to the Dutch coast. Cleared. In we went. It was a lovely day over there. That would be possibly, what [pause] it would be the time of the day we would be there. What time did we actually go off? [click] oh , hit in the eyes.
[pause]
Where is it? That’s Rotterdam. Yeah. Oh yes. It was afterward. It was 12 o’clock and after 12 o’clock in the day by the time we got there. So it was coming up to the middle day and, but we continued because of what the job we were going to do we continued flying about the five hundred feet although we’d flown at that height across most of the North Sea. And dropped our food, came out and one of the things with that was we were we were actually I think about the fourth, the fourth aircraft to go in and drop our load at Leiden. And there were various different drop, drop zones. But flying over the villages there seeing the people because of the sound of the engines they were getting they were coming out the houses, standing in the middle of the street waving to us. Some of them still in their nightclothes coming out on to the street there. Again a four engine aircraft going over at about five hundred feet over the house you hear it. You know what it is. And to see the German troops in pairs on the street carrying their rifles over their shoulder. There was also light ack ack guns crew there who literally followed us around with the, their gun. Now they could have opened fire. We had no guns at all. All our guns were taken out of the aircraft. And the, the if someone had done the wrong thing we hadn’t an awful lot of hope at that height with the guns that they had there. It could have been nasty. As it turned out they didn’t fire on us. The [pause] after we’d dropped our food at, on the field at Leiden we turned and came straight out. Our instructions were you must stick to the definite passage that was agreed. We would come straight out over the coast. We turned out, coming over the coast we went over and there was the sand dunes there and then there was a jetty. A wooden jetty going into the North Sea. And on the end of the jetty a German soldier, his rifle on his shoulder, his tin hat in his hand and he was waving [laughs] That he obviously thought he was getting some of this and he was quite pleased that this is what was happening in the war because he was standing there waving with his tin helmet in his hand. Now, I’ve, at the moment I’ve been writing back and forward to a lad in Holland who is trying to write a book about the dropping of the food. And he’s been trying to identify where that actual jetty was. It’s the sort of thing you didn’t take any notice of at the time. But he might tell me one of these days he’s found it. But it, the [pause] having we’d just been told that the Dutch, the people in Holland were starving. Not had any great, great information about it. It was still felt an awful lot better and I made a note to that effect. It felt an awful lot better dropping food to them then dropping bombs. And certainly I subsequently went across to Holland in ’85 and we met a lot of the people there who had been the recipients of getting that food there. But that’s a different story. The actual truth about the truce that had been made — they had been, Air Commodore Geddes had been negotiating with the Germans for quite a wee while to get this truce completed for us to drop food to them. But the, why they had decided to go ahead on the Sunday to drop it, for us to go ahead, I don’t know but the [pause] I think the truce had been sort of made completely but it hadn’t been signed and it wasn’t signed until the Monday morning when the senior German officer Seyss-Inquart came to the school at [pause] oh gosh the name of it. Oh heck. I’ve forgotten the name of the wee school where they used it for the actual signing of this truce. But we were going there without any real cover when that truce hadn’t been signed. The Yanks didn’t go till the Monday. Until after the truce was signed. But the, out of the four trips I went on there was certainly a bit of, a wee bit of worry about going on the first one. Not only was the weather that bad but we just didn’t know what the Germans would do. And as I say if they had have opened fire on any of our aircraft it could have been quite nasty. But that certainly was the, quite a, shall I say a high moment of flying. The second day we went there having been there once and knowing that everything was ok we enjoyed a period of low flying. Which in Holland, in the flat country they have there it was very good. When the skipper’s got to shout for full power to get across a wee bridge [laughs] you’ve been really down on, on the deck and flying low. That, that the, it was quite good. We eventually [pause] we were issued with chocolate. The usual flying rations. Chocolate and what have you each time we flew. And after the first one and knowing what was happening they gave you a bit more information about it we were able to make up a wee parcel on a parachute and drop some of the sweets for the children there. And certainly having learned subsequently what these children went through at that time it certainly was needed there. They had a pretty rough time of it in the western Holland. In fact funnily enough I just got that wee booklet there given to me today. It’s come over from Canada. It’s a, it must be a Dutch. It might be a Dutchman who’s written this in Canada for Canadians. And that’s my son in law. His sister is just come over on holiday from Canada and she picked up this book in Canada. Haven’t even been through it to read it yet. And it’s about the hungry winter. But the, that’s going to interesting to get reading that. In fact funnily enough there must have been a book signing because it’s signed by the author. There. Really, going on from there the flying part we also brought back troops from, the POWs from Brussels. And then we went on to bring back some troops from Italy. Those were Exodus trips was from Brussels. They were POWs. And from Italy it was Dodge trips we’d done from there. Going in to, flying into just outside Naples. The airfield there. Pomigliano. But that was quite interesting.
BJ: What were, what were the POWs like from Brussels that you picked up?
AM: We didn’t get much contact with them but the [pause] the lot we brought back had all been issued with new uniforms so you hadn’t seen what they’d been like. But coming back there was one officer in the group and the skipper invited him to come up to the cockpit as we were coming up to the white cliffs of Dover. And I don’t know how long he had been in the camp but the emotion showed by that chap and he must have been there a year or two was something to see. Something to realise just what it, what that must have meant to him to see these white cliffs. That really, nothing said but just the actions itself showed how he was feeling that day. And following that it wasn’t long after that that our squadron was being disbanded and the, some of them were going to join another, another squadron and we, my crew went away out to the Middle East. And I was made redundant. So I spent chasing around the country doing various different jobs and stationed in various different places. I quite enjoyed life.
AM: Were you still in the RAF then?
BJ: Still in the RAF. Yes. They couldn’t demob everybody at the one time so you had to wait your turn and the, although a lot of people had asked to get retrained into another different ground job some managed it and some didn’t. Some wanted to continue flying. I would have liked to continue flying but I saw the way that they were giving some of the people who had said they would sign on for a period, and didn’t like what I saw. They, they got them to sign on, on the basis that they would continue flying and then given them a ground job and just kept them there. I had actually, and because of seeing this the various different jobs I was doing in different stations where I was moved around sort of indicated you would probably be on the ground and not getting back to flying at all although they had agreed that you would be flying. There was one station I was on there was a warrant officer navigator who’d completed a full tour and he was being used as a clerk for equipment. A clerk. He’d signed on for to stay in the air force and but on the basis that he would still continue flying. But he was being used as a clerk. One, one of the things, I met a chap I knew who had done, a gunner who’d done two tours. He’d signed on to stay in the air force and the last time I met him I met him going across the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle. I’d gone through there for a day. It was one of the places I used to go. To the castle. And I met him there. Now, I’d last met him in the air force and knowing when he was, when I met him there he was the messenger boy at the recruit centre in Edinburgh. No word about going back on flying or doing a flight although he had signed on, on the basis that he would continue flying. That was after I came out of the air force. The war had finished. But it was not very nice and I know that about a week or a fortnight after I was demobbed we had all been told if you were a flight sergeant you were back down to sergeant and you covered up your tapes during the day. You were just an AC1 and equivalent to them although you still got your sergeant’s pay. But the week after or a fortnight after I came out even the stripes were taken away and the pay was down to an AC1. The same as an AC1 was getting at that time. That, ok they had thousands of people in the services. The cost of paying them all and paying them at the rates they had been giving them must have been terrific. Quite a big job for a time too. But when they got you to sign on there and you’d done that and then they don’t carry out their side of the bargain it’s not, not very nice, not. So, I’d have liked to have stayed on in the service stay but better paid. I didn’t. You could have been lucky or very unlucky.
AM: So did you keep in touch with people after you got demobbed?
BJ: Well, I was into the gliding at that point. And again that was to a certain extent was keeping in touch with the air force in general. That was over a period of about twenty years that I was working at the gliding schools. So it was, in a way I kept on in touch but then going back to various, one or two different stations, active stations where they were doing gliding there. And they [pause] you were to a certain extent keeping in touch there but not to the extent of keeping in touch with the active air force itself. And again of course a lot of the people I was meeting through the gliding school, the instructor’s were all ex-RAF as well. And they always kept a contact with it. It was the [pause] many cases during the war and the comradeship you had was quite a nice life. But I don’t know how it would have been in peacetime. To be constantly there. As you can see I still keep [laughs] actually my son in law is in a job where he does a lot of night shifts and he buys all these magazines and I get them handed on to me to read and they’re still of interest.
AM: Could you tell me a bit about what it was like on the, on the base when you, during the wartime? What did you — what was the life like and what did you do when you weren’t on operations?
BJ: You mean on, on ops when what you were —
[pause]
BJ: Is that, what it would be like? Generally, squadron life?
AM: Yeah. Yes.
BJ: Literally you sort of lived from day to day. You could either be doing some training [pause] even between the operations you went on you might be sent off to do some air to ground, fighter affiliation flying there. Or bombing practice at the bombing range. And some days you would be sitting around doing nothing if you weren’t called on for, to go on ops. The, that the, that there certainly was one particularly cross country which we did but I think that was at Con Unit. I can’t just remember. I think it was when we were, before we finished Con Unit. It was a flight from the base I was at either — probably the Con Unit there. At Sandtoft. Where we actually flew up towards the Grampians in Scotland, turned out to the west and we were flying up. This was during December so it would be. Yeah it would be at the Con Unit. The ground there, it was quite a lot of snow during that particular year and we were flying somewhere around about the twenty thousand foot mark. The ground was covered in snow and all the mountains were covered in snow. And we, it must have been a full moon. Turned out to the west and we had a turning point on over one of the islands out in the west. As we flew out, and I would say as we flew over the coast that the cloud below us disappeared and what we were seeing there was islands that had snow on them. The sea was black. The islands sparkled like diamonds. With the full moon of course it was beaming up there and the sight of that I can still see that image of that now. But I wasn’t acquainted with the islands. I hadn’t spent any time on them in these days but this was absolutely marvellous. As we came out over the edge of the cloud you came to the, the cloud was if you were going over a cliff and you went over it and here were these islands out there glistening in the black sea. And that was a fantastic sight to see that. I’d love to see that again. I don’t think I ever could. And from there we flew down to Lands End. And then we were back up over the country again. It was quite a long cross country that. The [pause] but the navigator, the bomb aimer, they were doing a H2S [pause] exercise and they had to identify a town on, on the radar there. And the picture all went [laughs] and we were, we had a wee while chasing around and not knowing where we were. I’ve just forgotten which of the towns it was that they had to select and make a pinpoint. However, we finished up by going and doing a bombing, a high level bombing in the dark. And I think that trip took us somewhere about ten and a half hours which was a long, long trip for a cross country at home. It was exceptional but that sight of these islands I can never go to the islands without thinking about what they looked like seeing them from that height and these circumstances. I think it was quite — a memory keeps coming back of a thousand bomber raid where the, during the flight it would actually be over France at the time and going up to the astrodome and looked out and all I could see around — the sky was clear and right around the horizon as far as I could see was aircraft. There were so many aircraft all there that they were right to all the various horizons all the way around. And I can’t remember where we were going that night. It must have been southern Germany somewhere but certainly it was quite a sight. Again, something which occasionally comes back. Remembering that something I’ll never see again. But the, one of the bad things about it if I’d have had a camera it would have been worthwhile and there were a lot of our crews although cameras were prohibited. Supposed to be. A lot of the crews Canadians and Australians who could buy the cameras in their own country and could get film from there that could take. I’d have loved to have had a camera in those days. It would have been quite good.
AM: What was it like inside the aircraft?
BJ: Sometimes cold but it depends which aircraft you got. Some of the heating systems weren’t all that terribly good. But the — I certainly was in a position I could get up and move about there which probably helped me. The gunners, wireless operators, navigator they were all stuck in their seats where they were all the time. It could be very cold for the gunners at some times. But the, Nobby our rear gunner would tell us of how he could get an icycle going right from his oxygen mask right down to the floor. That [pause] some of the trips could be monotonous. Long trip. And then in the air I was certainly taking readings from the various stages and recording them but I think they were every twenty minutes or something. I cannot put it in my mind how often that they were. Half an hour or twenty minutes you had to take I these reading but the rest of the time it was a case of just looking out. Constantly looking. Always. Keep a sharp lookout for night fighters if they were anywhere there. Nothing has left any great impression on my mind as the feelings I was getting at that time. It was just ok. You were doing a job. Giving the skipper his cup of coffee at the [pause] a bit monotonous at times when it was dark. You were seeing nothing, and quite glad to get back home. Yeah. There was times. I remember on one trip when the Remagen bridge head had been, over the Rhine and the, and on that occasion we had been warned at briefing to stay well clear of it because the, both the Americans were on one side, I think it was the Yanks that were there. It could have been the British troops. And the other side was Jerry. Neither of them wanted the bridge destroyed. And their anti-aircraft fire would open up to aircraft at any height. Obviously the, I think our own troops and the Americans would not have normally fired on the aircraft above a certain height. But there they said if you got anywhere near it from either side they would go and we, that was on the road coming back, and somebody obviously did go near it. We saw this open up, the bombardment from the anti-aircraft guns and an aircraft went down. They’d obviously gone too near. But a bit of bad navigation on somebody’s part to do that. Part of the chances they were taken there but the long trips out, back and forward were a bit monotonous. If you, unless you were constantly occupied doing something and certainly other than just recording instrument readings that was it. Just a monotonous flight in a way although I could get up and move around and that probably helped.
AM: What did you do on your time off?
BJ: It was just [pause] I can’t really say. Just evenings you might have went to the NAAFI or to the club. They had, at Waltham there was a good club there. I don’t know who ran that one. The [pause] during the day I certainly at Elsham, I used to go with another engineer to the link trainer and see if there was any spare time there. That was supposed to be all the pilots that would go there but we used to go there and this was great to go and fly in a link trainer. Whether we could do that I can’t remember whether there was only certain days you could or whether you could go there every day. But on the, that there was many days I should think that we just had nothing to do and we used to sit around and sit in the aircrew room reading the paper and that was it. There was usually some flying at some time during the week. Some exercise of some type. If we weren’t flying possibly the, in the engineer’s section may have had a wee lecture there to fill it in. We weren’t pushed around all that much to do anything. But I’m trying to remember. It’s not something that’s ever [pause] I can’t really remember [laughs] That’s seventy years ago. During the period during the war certainly we probably had maybe a lecture or something to go to or as I say sit reading the paper. After the war then you probably had a job that kept you working all day depending on the job you were in. I can remember one place. I was down in London for a while. Another sergeant and I were in charge of the dining room of the unit down there and there I spent at least two hours most days out in the rowing boat in the park. Regent’s Park it was. And that was lovely. So much time there. Just nothing to do. The girls who served in the sergeant’s mess they would lay the tables and lay everything out and you just could go around and see if everything was ok and that was it. No problem. Other places, in one camp I was in one of the duties I had was working with redundant equipment. And I had the use of forklift truck that I’d go around this airfield and pick up crates. Mainly full of clocks. And I had a, one hut in the camp which was full of clocks of all different descriptions. I remember I used to go in there. I could spend a couple of hours winding all these clocks. But that, it was just a job to keep you occupied. The [pause] except once I went over to Germany. Over there we were we talked ourselves, quite a few of us talked ourself into going over there. We’d heard about a detachment that was going there with the Air Ministry Special Duty Flight and we went up to see them at their head office in London and talked ourselves into going over there. Supposedly we would be over just as AC1s. But in fact you still used the power. You lived in the sergeant’s mess and you still used the power of the sergeant’s stripes. And we had quite an interesting time over there working with the gas bombs that Jerry had stored there.
AM: Where was this?
BJ: In Germany. We were stationed at RAF Freiburg. I can’t remember the name of the place where the bomb dump was but it was very close to the Russian border to the — somewhere there. And that the Jerry had underground bunkers. They were actually on the surface but covered with soil and grass. Camouflaged concrete bunkers where they had these bombs stored in big wooden crates. And at the end of the war some of the people who had been there they had gone in to the bunkers and toppled. They were a bit, they were five high the boxes with these bombs in them. And they had toppled some of them over breaking the casing of some of the bombs releasing the gas that was in there. Which made it a wee bit on the dangerous side because the gas masks we had weren’t any use to protect us against what was there. But we were in charge of German, German troops as you called them [unclear] and they’d done the labouring part. So the lifting up of the bombs and working out and we had to take out the picric acid and the dynamite that was in them, in the bomb. Sometimes you were getting a bomb, take it out of its crate and you’d find that the casing had been cracked. If it’s one of them that had been toppled the casing might have been cracked and the gas was leaking. But one of the strange things it was a poison gas. It had the same properties as phosgene and mustard. But the chief scientists at the plant where they made the gas on one or two occasions he was brought over to check and tell us whether a bomb was cracked or otherwise. And he would go up to the crate and stick his nose in it and take a great big sniff. And he would say, ‘Right. That’s cracked.’ Or, ‘No. It was alright.’ But the fact that he would stick his nose right in to check it. He must have known what he was doing because he made the damned stuff. But again it was very interesting. I was quite interested there being able to talk to a lot of the young Germans who were employed there. Some of them could speak English. And it was interesting to, to hear their side of the story and what they had to go through in their own army. That [pause] in the main the most of them were very much like our own people. They [paused] I talked to quite a number of civilians as well as the chaps who were in the service about what the effect of the, oh what did they call it? The youth organisation in Germany. Hitler Youth. What they thought of that. And this was very interesting. But the mere fact of getting to talk to them was worthwhile.
AM: What did they think about the Hitler Youth?
BJ: They thought the Hitler Youth was excellent. And I think it probably was for the majority of them. It, it certainly was very much more, very much more militaristic than any of the organisations we had in this country. But that was the pattern there although they were controlled an awful lot more. But again for young people it took them out of their towns and out. Got them out. Took them away hiking and doing various different things. And to gymnastics and running and sports there which if it hadn’t had a militaristic end to it, it would have been very good. But I think the most of the ones the younger ones there they thought it was excellent. Never got around to talking about Hitler. That was a sort of conversation that was taboo. You didn’t want to get to that. But there wasn’t a great number of them could speak English but there was always one or two and they, they no matter when you spoke to some of the [unclear] that were there telling them what to do, what you wanted done there they’d always one would come up and he would want to translate for you. He was a boy who wanted to do, to make sure he got the jobs as time went on and being able to speak English when the English were controlling his country meant he could get the job as opposed to the others who didn’t know what they had been told. And there was always a few fly boys there. Again, interesting to see it. To see how it worked with them. And that’s an interesting period which I’m quite pleased that I even with the danger that was there with the gas bombs it was quite an interesting period at that time. But again just very much spending time waiting to get out.
AM: So what did you do when you left the RAF?
BJ: I came back to [pause] and joined the firm as a photographer. The chap I had known before I went in to the air force he had taken over the business which the old man I had worked with initially had and they, they had promised me a job when I went back there if I wanted to go there as a photographer. They really I wasn’t all that terribly qualified as a photographer. Although I had taken some [laughs] not classes but supposed to be getting some training from the air force as a photographer under the EVT system. The one day a week I got going to the photographic section to do something but really that wasn’t much use. But I was with them for oh what five or six months until the, I’d actually received an invitation for to go along to the Army Reserve. The unit. They asked me if I’d like to come along and see them and they’d handed the note in to the office where I was working but as soon as the bosses saw this they wanted me to take the camera along and start working there for them. This was a private invitation which I had had and when they knew what it was they wanted to get in there and start taking photographs there which I just did not want to do. Being invited along privately I knew some of the people who were running the Reserve. I can’t remember. Did I tell you? Something to do with the Territorial Army at that time and I didn’t think that was right so I had an argument with them and consequently decided to leave and I went back to the job I had given up was as a clerk in the insurance office but once I had started with the photographer people I had given that job up. And I went back to them and took a job as an agent. I purchased an insurance book there and started as an agent with them. And that’s where I spent the rest of my working life. With that insurance society. One of these things that you either think something’s right and you do it or no. And I wasn’t very happy there in the first place anyway. I didn’t feel I was really capable of handling the photography work. And they probably were quite glad to get rid of me. However, that was certainly a different story entirely. But the life in the services if you liked it was good. I liked it. It was quite a good life but you had to really like it and although I don’t know how it really would go for family life. Let’s say something if one was getting married your wife would have to be able to go along with that type of life and I don’t think it suits everybody. However, it is something if you like at and you’re good at doing your job with reasonable people then it could be a good life.
AM: So how do you think it affected you? Having your service in the RAF. How did it affect the rest of your life?
BJ: Oh, well it took a boy and made him a man very quickly. The [pause] the, most of the youngsters who were going there would be about eighteen years of age. Some might have been in jobs where they had a responsibility in the job and felt as a man a responsible person. But the majority of us were eighteen and nineteen year old. A lot were just on, just eighteen. And most of us I think were still sort of finding our way. The training I think was good. Although it could have been an awful lot better. As far as the engineer’s position was concerned I think it could have been better. The, as far as the other trades were concerned then I’m not so knowledgeable about them. I think the engineer’s training unless they were going to go on flying somewhere was the only one of any use to them in Civvy Street. And the, the [pause] with that you were then once you were trained you were in a position to make decisions which would affect other people and that sort of certainly made you have a different outlook I should think to what you went in as eighteen year olds. And certainly for myself made me always feel I wanted to be in a position of authority. Not being the one that was told to do things all the time but they were, you were the boss. And for most of my working life after that I was in a position of being the boss in a way. But it’s amazing how small things change life and it can change the whole of the rest of your life completely. But sometimes I regret not having stayed in the air force and other times I’m quite pleased I didn’t.
AM: Ok.
BJ: When I see some things that, and the way some people were treated I’m quite pleased I didn’t stay in. I don’t think I can tell you anymore.
AM: Ok. Well —
BJ: I don’t think there’s any more to tell.
AM: Well, Mr MacCormick thank you very much for sharing your experience with us.
BJ: I’m sorry I’ve taken —
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Anderson MacCormick
Creator
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Brenda Jones
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-26
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMacCormickA161126
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Pending review
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Pending OH summary
Format
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01:46:26 audio recording
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Anderson MacCormick grew up in Glasgow and joined the ATC while he waited to join the service. He trained as a flight engineer. He recalls the risks aircrew faced and some beautiful sight he saw in the air. On a flight as part of Operation Exodus an ex-prisoner of war was brought forward to the cockpit as they were approaching the coast and Anderson was struck by the emotion that this sight had on this returning airman.
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
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1945
aircrew
flight engineer
Grand Slam
Heavy Conversion Unit
military service conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Grimsby
RAF St Athan
training
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/PPayneG1701.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/APayneGA170528.1.mp3
4f2ec096b73aad4bee119f3e1be46588
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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Payne, Geoff
Geoffrey Albert Payne
G A Payne
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Geoff Payne (b. 1924, 1584931 Royal Air Force) and his memoir. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 115 and 514 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Geoff Payne and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Payne, G
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BJ: So, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Brenda Jones. The person being interviewed is Geoffrey Payne. The interview is taking place in Mr. Payne’s home in Cumbernauld on the 28th of May 2017. Mr. Payne, thank you for agreeing to talk to me today. Could you tell me about your life before you joined the RAF?
GP: Well, my life was a bit raggedy, I was an apprentice to Sheet Metal Work and worked in a company in the centre of Birmingham and we were manufacturing spats for Lysander aircraft and making fire pumps, things like that and more interested in sports than anything else [laughs].
BJ: And how did you come to join the RAF?
GP: Well, I joined the Air Training Corps, which I was one of the original members and it was the Air Training Corps was at Birmingham was the Austin Motor Company Squadron which was 480 and 479, there were two squadrons in the, ATC squadrons, and that’s why I started to get involved with the, with the Air Force, thinking a lot about the Air Force at the time. We went to camp to RAF Weeton, which was a Pathfinder Squadron, 7 Squadron, which were flying Stirlings and the most funniest part about us, we wanted to go into St Yves for the evening and we had to know a password to go out of the place because there was operations on that night and they said the password was WATER, which was this, I think they were pulling our legs or something like that, they said because the Germans can’t sound the w’s is wasser, so that was the sort of thing, that gave me a great interest in the Air Force.
BJ: OK. And when did you come to join the Air Force?
GP: I joined when I was seventeen and a half and I went to Vishyde Close in Birmingham to get assessed and I was assessed as a pilot and I was given a number and then sent back to work again because they wouldn’t call me up until I was eighteen but in the meantime I had a letter from them saying that it would possibly take far too long for me to become a pilot and that they’d had other vacancies in the Air Force which was an air gunner so I decided to do that.
BJ: And what year was this?
GP: 1943, yes.
BJ: And what happened when you started with the RAF?
GP: What happened?
BJ: Yes, what did your training involve?
GP: The training, we went to London, to Lord’s Cricket Ground and then we were put into high-rise flats and then we had our meals at the London zoo and used to march there every, for breakfast those [unclear] and tea and there’s one occasion there when there was a heavy air raid and at Lord’s Cricket Ground there’s the Regent’s Park and [unclear] anti-aircraft comes and we had to move out and go to another set of flats which was a hospital, which the RAF hospital, and carry all the patients down from the high floors cause they wouldn’t, couldn’t go down in the lifts and carry the, down in stretchers into the basement and back up then and then after that initial training, I went to Bridlington for ITW and that’s a nice seaside place, enjoyed it there and then off we went to Air Gunners School which was in the Isle of Man, just outside Ramsey, a place called Andreas and then, after three months of training, we were sent to an ITW, which was in Banbury where we were crewed up and flew in Wellingtons and from then we, we had to go to Heavy Conversion Unit which was a Stirling set-up, a place called Wratting Common in Cambridgeshire and we did that and then also we moved to, did an escape course at Feltwell and which was hilarious and then.
BJ: What did they teach you there about escaping?
GP: Unarmed combat and this sort of thing but it was, it just became a laugh actually [laughs] so, but we were there for the week and then we went back onto Wratting Common on Stirlings but at that time the Stirlings was being phased out from operations in the, for the main force in Bomber Command and we were transferred to, onto Lancasters which were radial engines Mark II, Hercules engines and from then we did a couple of weeks training there before we were put onto the squadron.
BJ: How did you find the Lancasters compared to the Stirlings?
GP: I didn’t like the Stirlings at all.
BJ: Ah!
GP: No, they frightened me because whilst I was converting onto Stirlings, I had to go to Newmarket to do a short gunnery course there and in the meantime my crew then crashed one of the Stirlings at [unclear] market so and but I, they phased these Stirlings out and that’s why I went on to Lancasters and then from Lancasters on Waterbeach we moved to a squadron which was RAF Witchford.
BJ: Ok. What happened when you got to Witchford?
GP: [laughs] We arrived at Witchford and then the following day we had to go round, signing in, which is a normal thing, you go to all the various sections and sign in and so forth like that and you get your billets and that and I went to the gunnery leaders office to sign in there and he says, ah yes, he says, you’re on tonight and that was the second day I was there [laughs] and I was, I said, what for? He says, well, there’s a rear gunner taken ill and you’ll have to, you’ll be flying with Lieutenant Speelenburg who was South African.
BJ: How did you feel about that?
GP: Terrible, it was, it was, to do a first op with a sprog crew which, the crew was a, they hadn’t done any operations before anyway and I hadn’t done any operations so they obviously bloodied with a new crew and that was one of the most horrendous air raids I’ve been on and that was to Augsburg, in southern Germany which was an eight hour journey, it was the most frightening experience I’ve ever had in my life so.
BJ: What happened on the mission?
GP: Oh, we got attacked over the target by a, by two Messerschmitt 109s, well, we got through that alright but it was, I never in my life would have expected to witness such a melee which was over the target, and I thought to myself I’m not coming out through this loss.
BJ: Do you remember what the target was?
GP: Augsburg.
BJ: Yes.
GP: It was the MAN works.
BJ: Ok.
GP: So that was, it was a night trip, eight-hour trip.
BJ: And did you stay with that crew then after?
GP: No, no.
BJ: No. So, how did you get assigned to a crew?
GP: I’d already got my crew,
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: From, from Banbury, from Chipping Warden. I’d already got my crew, my crew were there but they were doing cross country south. So that was me doing me first op and I thought, I’ll never gonna get through this. So, that was my first operation and in the morning I couldn’t get off to sleep so I decided to, I walked into Ely and the Oxford and Cambridge boat race was on there so that was the, because they didn’t have the boat races in London because of the bombings, so I saw the boat race there.
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: And came back, that’s it, so I said, no, that’s it, you can’t, you got to, maybe get through this alright but just forget about it and take it as it comes.
BJ: Ok. So, what, what was, can you tell me a bit more about some of the other missions you flew from Witchford?
GP: Well, I only did, I only did five operations from Witchford and I got frostbite, because we got attacked by a night fighter which destroyed all the communications and heating in the aircraft, but we managed to get back ok. So, that was alright and that was me put away from frostbite to Ely hospital for some time and then I was transferred to Waterbeach for recuperation and then I picked up another crew at Waterbeach which is Ted Cousins’s and I finished my tour of operations at Waterbeach with that crew.
BJ: What were you flying in at Waterbeach?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What planes were you flying in from Waterbeach?
GP: Lancaster IIs.
BJ: Lancaster IIs. Ok, right, and can you tell me as what it was like on the base there, day to day life?
GP: Base was good because Witchford was a wartime place and everything was so dispersed you could walk miles for meals and things like that. But Waterbeach was a pre-war station and everything was on tap and there were nice billets and cosy, not like the Nissen huts that we did have, so these were brick-built, brick-built buildings and quite comfortable in a way.
BJ: And what did you do in your time off?
GP: Just going home [laughs].
BJ: Really? Aha.
GP: If you could get home. [unclear] the time off just mainly drinking [laughs].
BJ: What was it like coming home after being on operations?
GP: It was very strange and it’s a funny thing, I haven’t been away from home until I went in the Air Force. It’s a very strange feeling when you come back home and see that, it was a good feeling, but it didn’t last long so I had to go back again and that was it.
BJ: And what did you tell your mum and dad about your life in the RAF?
GP: I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t think it was fair.
BJ: Ah.
GP: Because my brother, my brother was a navigator wireless operator on Mosquitoes, he was out in Burma so there’s both of us, there were three boys in the family and just my elder brother and myself were in the Air Force and the younger brother, he went in the army, just after the war. It was, it was quite strange because all your friends were away and we just had to nosy around, just going to the pictures or something like that. It wasn’t all that pleasant, it’s nice to see your family but as I say, it was quite boring.
BJ: And what sort of missions were you involved in, when you were at Waterbeach? Where were the targets?
GP: The targets, Witchford was, the targets were German targets, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg and one or two others. From Waterbeach there was quite a variety of targets which are sometimes daylight raids and night raids, sometimes were French targets, and then all of a sudden you’d be onto a German target at night, which is [unclear] sorted it out.
BJ: What did you have a preference for daytime or nighttime missions?
GP: I used to like to rather go at night time, I didn’t like daytime [laughs]. You could see too much.
BJ: Right. Were there any particularly memorable missions that you flew on?
GP: Actually, most of them were quite memorable, we did a raid to Beckdiames which was in Southern France and that was an eight hour trip and this was a daylight raid and we went out at under a thousand feet all the way and until we got to the target, the target was a port actually and we climbed up to the bombing height, bombed and dropped down to, under a thousand feet again because of the radar, that was the idea of it but it was a long trip, it was an eight hour trip and it was quite a dangerous trip because the Bay of Biscay it was the, the Junkers 88 used to wonder around there quite a lot, you know, so. And then, there was another one which was to Stettin which was in Poland and that was another long trip, under a thousand feet all the way, this was a night time raid and we flew over Denmark and we could see the lights of Sweden and the anti-aircraft fire was coming up from Sweden, things like that [laughs] and then we went to, got to Stettin which we got to the bombing height and came back down again and what [unclear], we just lost one, one squadron, one aircraft on that squadron. So, and there was, there’s quite a few things which, one of the most scary attacks that we had was my last operation really to Duisburg. And that was the, the squadron went out early to bomb Duisburg, there was over a thousand aircraft to do it, and then, as soon as we got back, over the target the air was black with flak and it was the most frightening experience, I was in daylight did not expect to go to a German target in daylight and then it gradually settled down then but when we got back, we were sent down to, the air gunners were sent down to the bomb disposal place to help to load bombs up again for the same target and then the following day the German, the Americans bombed the same place, that was a disastrous place, terrible. That was about it, you know, but most of the trips were rather scary cause you never knew what was gonna happen there [unclear], you could be attacked by fighters any time.
BJ: What was it like being up in the turret?
GP: Very cold. Very cold [unclear] with ice all the way down there because we didn’t have any Perspex in the turret, we had it taken out because you can just imagine if you are flying at night and you can get attacked by a fighter and if you get any dirt on your Perspex you wouldn’t, it would be a, you wouldn’t know whether you got a fighter coming through, you see but where I got frostbite was around about forty degrees below but you see, your oxygen mask you had a lot of breath dripping down you know, froze up and all that.
BJ: What were you wearing to keep warm then?
GP: Well, I had a heated suit actually, the first time was one of these urban jackets and trousers which were all [unclear] and things like that. Eventually they got full heated suits which you’d plug into your boots and plug into your gloves, they heated up all over so you, you weren’t so cumbersome in the turret so, so that wasn’t too bad. It was when, the one time I said when the, the heating got shot up but it was cold.
BJ: Ok. And anything else that you remember about your time in the two squadrons?
GP: I’m just trying to think about it now. I was involved in athletics with the squadron so I did [unclear] got plenty of time off, things like that, apart from my flying, I was excused duties because I was, I got involved in football and things like that, I didn’t have to do any guard duties and things like that so.
BJ: Ok. Did that involve you going around to other bases?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: Did you go to other bases doing that?
GP: It was just the odd at lib sort of things, you know, you compete against the Americans or something like that, you know and,
BJ: Ok, how did you get on?
GP: We weren’t as good as the Americans, I tell you.
BJ: [laughs]
GP: No, we weren’t as good as the Americans, no, they got far greater facilities and that sort of things like that, you know.
BJ: Ok, and what did you do at the end of the war? What, you know, how did you get demobbed and that sort of thing?
GP: Well, when the, as I finished mature, I was sent up to a place in Northern Scotland, place called Bracla and that was for time expired men, aircrew you see, had [unclear] virtually offices and things like that, and my, my flight commander was up there as well, Lord Mackie, he ended up as Lord Mackie and we just had to march about and things like that and then we were selected for ordinary jobs in the Air Force you see and I wanted to become a PTI which is a Physical Training Instructor because I would’ve had the opportunity to go through to Loughborough and take sports right the way through and then that’s what I wanted to go for but they put me down as a driver [laughs]. So I moved from there and went to driving school at Weeton in Blackpool which was quite good actually, it was quite enjoyable and then from then I was, I went to various camps in this country and then my final camp was in Germany where I was with a microfilm unit taking microfilm documents of all the machine tool drawings and things like that and that’s,
BJ: Where was that?
GP: That was at Frankfurt, Frankfurt but we wondered around Stuttgart and other places, went round all these factories and taking these microfilms of these documents and things like that, that was the, that was my end, I ended and came back to Weeton where I was demobbed.
BJ: So, what was it like being in Germany, down on the ground, this time?
GP: It was, it wasn’t too bad, we weren’t allowed to fraternise at all, you know, we did play football against the Germans and things like that and got thrushed.
BJ: Oh, alright [laughs]
GP: So, I played for the army when we were in Frankfurt and we played a game against the Germans, select team which is if we really got thrushed and that was the first time we realised what sort of football the continentals played as compared with our football but anyway that was, I enjoyed my time in Germany and I learned to speak German quite fluently and which stood me in good sted with my civilian job so that was good and
BJ: How did you learn to speak German?
GP: Well, I had to speak German [laughs].
BJ: Yeah?
GP: Well, I mean, if you were driving around and things like that and you lost your way, you had to talk and things like that so that’s how it went [unclear] I wish I had kept it up actually, which it would have been useful to me but it was useful anyway because I dealt with the Germans, a German company in me civilian life more so than anything and of course was a strange thing that the fellow that I dealt with in Germany, he was a Luftwaffe pilot [unclear] [laughs] and something I know quite well actually.
BJ: Did you tell him you’d been in the RAF?
GP: Yes, yeah. So, I mean it was no end to the, not at all, not with service people [unclear] so they got a job to do, we got a job to do and that was it but
BJ: So what did you do after you were demobbed then?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What did you do after the RAF? After you left?
GP: I went back to my old company and I gradually progressed there, we were manufacturing cars, Standard, the Triumph and the Triumph Spitfires and these sort of things, and but there was so much, so many problems down in the Midlands with the car industry of strikes and all that sort of thing and I just got married and we bought a new house and things like that, it’s becoming very difficult because we’re going on short time, even when you’re on staff you’re on short time so, I decided to make a move and come up here and that was that.
BJ: What did you do up here, in Scotland?
GP: I ended up as a production director at Carron company in Falkirk and but I set up a, came up and set up a plant for manufacturing steel bars and that sort of thing and then I did twenty-three years there and that’s it.
BJ: Ok, and how do you think being in Bomber Command affected the rest of your life?
GP: It did affect me because the, the people, the people that you met in Bomber Command, they were virtually like your brothers, a wonderful set up, it was great and as I say, it was still, we’re still getting involved with reunions and one of the addresses, the two addresses that I gave you, these are the people that I flew with, so, it was, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Really.
BJ: Ok. Alright, anything else you’d like to add, Mr. Payne?
GP: No, I don’t think so. I think that’s about all, that’s, I summarised quite a bit.
BJ: Alright. Thank you very much.
GP: Ok, thank you. [file continued] I’m trying to fill it all in you, you can’t.
US: I know you can’t [unclear], I just.
BJ: Right, this is the interview with Mr. Payne continuing.
GP: Right, one of the most horrendous trips that I did was to Frankfurt. And after the target, we were coming back, we were about half an hour away back from the target when I spotted a aircraft with about four hundred meters behind below and it turned out to be a Messerschmitt 109 and I wanted, I tried to warn the, I tried to warn the pilot but the intercom had frozen up, my mouthpiece had frozen up and I tried to Morse coding with the emergency light and the emergency light wasn’t working so that was it, there was actually nothing I could do about it and as the aircraft came closer to me, which was below at about a hundred meters, I opened fire on it and the guns jammed so therefore I was completely at a loss, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t warn the captain or anything about cause I’ve no intercom and no emergency lighting so I just had to hang on a bit and then after a minute the aircraft came underneath us and opened fire and blasted all the centre of the aircraft and the smell of cordite was amazing and then the aircraft started to manoeuvre all over the sky doing very violent evasive action or I thought that we were out of control, completely out of control so I got out of my turret and walked back and found that the main door was swinging open and then I got up to the mid upper turret and the mid upper gunner had gone, he’d bailed out and there was all cannon shell holes all around his turret there, so eventually I thought, that so quiet I thought the rest of the crew had gone, now I walked up, gradually I got through into the main cabin and found the rest of the crew were ok and so forth and that we went back to the sit in the turret, well, I couldn’t do anything anyway, so we were coming in to land, but we got back home ok, coming in to land and I started to smell cordite and I, I looked about at the back in the, in the ammunition panniers and there was a fire in there which must have got hit by an incendiary bullet and we had to land, emergency land and it was, it was an incendiary bullet, that was wedged in the bullets, so [laughs], that was that day but there was also another one, no, I don’t think I will talk about that, just [unclear].
BJ: Ok, 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 Geoff Payne
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brenda Jones
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APayneGA170528, PPayneG1702, PPayneG1701
Format
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00:32:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
United States Army Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff Payne has his first experience of the Royal Air Force with the Air Training Corps, at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, where he had one of his first experiences of military humour. He joined in 1943 at the age of 17 and a half hoping to become a pilot - he took the faster option because of his young age and trained as an air gunner.
Basic training was carried out at Lords Cricket ground in London. One clear memory is helping to carry patients down several flights of stairs from a nearby hospital during an air raid.
Time was spent at RAF Bridlington on Initial Training Wing before attending Air Gunnery School in the Isle of Man. Further training was undertaken at RAF Banbury where he was crewed up on Wellingtons, before moving to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Wratting Common to convert to Stirlings. During his time here he attended an escape course at RAF Feltwell and was instructed in unarmed combat, which he dismissed as pitiful.
He and his crew were posted to RAF Witchford, Cambridgeshire, where he flew his first operation in February 1944 replacing an ill air gunner. He later discovered this was an inexperienced crew. He remembers the target was around Osnabrück in Germany and it was a melee over the target where they were attacked by two Me 109s, which they successfully shook off. On his return, he remembers being unable to sleep and went for a walk into Ely. There he discovered the Oxford Cambridge boat race was being held and watched it
Target areas of Germany included Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg. On his 5th operation, the aircraft was attacked, and the aircraft lost its heating and communications. He suffered frostbite and spent several months recovering in Ely hospital.
On regaining fitness, he was transferred to RAF Waterbeach and was allocated to a crew led by Ted Cousins. Waterbeach was a pre-war airfield with comfortable facilities. Time off was spent competing in athletics and football along with drinking at the local public houses.
When time allowed, he went home, but found the experience boring: all his friends were serving away, and there was little to do except drink or go to the cinema. His elder brother was serving as a navigator in the Far East, and he felt it unfair to talk about his experiences with his family.
At RAF Waterbeach there was a greater variety of operations. Targets varied from Germany to Southern France. He also remembers one trip to Poland. This entailed flying over Denmark and they could see the lights from Sweden and anti-aircraft fire.
He has a clear memory of most of his operations but does not wish to dwell on some. On one occasion he spotted a Me 109, he tried to warn the pilot but his intercom had frozen and emergency light was inoperative. He tried to open fire but his guns jammed – the night fighter opened fire and hit the centre of the aircraft. The aircraft began violently manoeuvring and he wasn’t sure if this was deliberate evasive manoeuvres or if they were out of control. He made his way forward and discovered the aircraft door open and the mid upper gunner missing. There were cannon holes all around the centre of the aircraft. He still wasn’t sure if he was the only one on board until he reached the main cabin and found the rest of the crew in position. They made it back home where they realised an incendiary bullet was lodged in the ammunition pannier.
His last operation was one of the thousand-bomber operations in Germany, the air black with anti-aircraft fire. On his return, the air gunners went sent to the bomb dump to assist the armourers in preparing the bombs for the following days attack which was carried out by the United States Army Air Forces.
After completing his tour of operation, he was posted to RAF Brackla, hoping to be retained as physical training instructor, but ended up at RAF Weeton near Blackpool to be trained as a driver.
He served at several locations across Southern England before his final posting which was with a microfilm unit in Frankfurt. Fraternising with locals was not allowed, but he did manage to learn German. He played in a football match against a much better German select team.
After demob, he returned home and was involved in the manufacturing of cars at the Triumph factory. He married, and because of unrest and strikes in the car industry, he moved to Scotland and was employed at the Carron company in Falkirk as a production director manufacturing steel bars, where his ability to speak German became an advantage in his dealings with foreign companies. He met an ex Luftwaffe pilot and experiences were exchanged - there was no animosity whatsoever and it was accepted they both had been carrying out their duty.
Geoff looks back on his time in Bomber Command with great fondness. It was like a big family. He still has contact with surviving crew members, and still attends reunions.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Ely
England--Lancashire
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France
Germany
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Stuttgart
Denmark
Sweden
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland
Scotland--Falkirk
Scotland--Nairnshire
Scotland--Stirlingshire
Germany--Osnabrück
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
115 Squadron
514 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Me 109
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Brackla
RAF Bridlington
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Feltwell
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
RAF Wyton
sport
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/205/3340/ABatesP151009.1.mp3
f5fd2ef009e496cfc1da092a451f6c89
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
Bates, Philip
Philip Bates
P Bates
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Philip Bates (1307447 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 149 Squadron until his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bates, P
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Mr Philip Bates at home in Urmston, Greater Manchester on Friday 9th of October at 2pm. Mr Bates could you please confirm your full name?
PB: Yes. Phillip Bates.
BW: And your rank.
PB: Sergeant when I was shot down but warrant officer when I returned back from being a prisoner of war.
BW: Ok. And do you recall your service number at all?
PB: Yes 1307447.
BW: It’s surprising how that -
PB: And I can tell you my prisoner of war number as well
BW: Ok.
PB: 222803
BW: 222803
PB: Stalag 4b.
BW: Ok. And what squadron were you on, sir?
PB: 149 at Lakenheath.
BW: Ok. So if you could just give us an idea of what your life was like prior to joining the air force so where you grew up and any sort of significant movements before joining the RAF and what prompted you to join.
PB: Yeah. Well I’m a native of Burnley, Lancashire, a cotton weaving town, until I was employed as a junior clerk with a local manufacturer but once the war started I was keen to get in and immediately after the fall of France I volunteered for the air force. And -
BW: So this would be May 1940.
PB: This would be May 1940 and went to Blackpool for a fortnight square bashing.
BW: Ok.
PB: Those of us who were on that particular course were then posted to Cosford and -
BW: Ok.
PB: Nobody thought about anything in those days except the imminent invasion of Britain and we who’d been in the air force a fortnight were given the job of defending Cosford against German paratroopers which was the most farcical thing you could ever imagine so a friend and I very quickly sneaked away to the orderly room and volunteered for training as flight mechanics and we both -
BW: Ok.
PB: Trained as flight mechanics and then as fitter 2E’s and my friend was posted to 149 squadron where I met up with him in 1943. I went to 86 squadron, Coastal Command flying the Beaufort torpedo bombers and moved from there to Scotland and eventually I was sent to Sealand to a huge maintenance depot on a six month potential NCO course with the intention that when I returned back to my unit I’d be made a corporal but whilst I was at Sealand a Manchester landed and this was June 1942 and I went to look at this Manchester. I’d never seen anything bigger than a, than a Wellington before and this thing was stood there with its bomb doors open and this was a few months after Butch Harris had taken charge and I looked up into that bomb bay and I said to myself. ‘Bomber Command is no longer a joke. It’s big. It’s getting bigger. I’ve got to be part of it,’ and so the next day I volunteered for training as a flight engineer.
BW: Ok.
PB: And I trained early in 1943. Posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Waterbeach where I was crewed up with a crew who had just finished their OTU on Wellingtons and we went from there.
BW: And so just thinking back to your decision to join Bomber Command. You’d already had some technical training -
PB: Yes.
BW: At that stage.
PB: Yes.
BW: And so you wanted to further that as a flight engineer.
PB: Well the obvious job for a fitter 2E was to be, was to be a flight engineer.
BW: Ok.
PB: And it didn’t require a great deal of training to bridge the gap of course.
BW: And there were a number of guys who went through Halton. Did you do any training for flight engineering at Halton or not? With [?]
PB: No. St Athan.
BW: Right.
PB: St Athan.
BW: So you weren’t one of Trenchard’s brats or anything?
PB: Oh no I wasn’t a brat. I was too old to be a brat [laughs].
BW: And so it was the sight of the Manchester that prompted you to join.
PB: Yes.
BW: Properly Bomber Command.
PB: Yes, yes.
BW: Were you able, at that stage, to volunteer for flying duties or did that come later? Did you foresee that as being part of that trade as a flight engineer?
PB: Once I became a flight, once I became a flight engineer obviously I was going to go into Bomber Command.
BW: Ok. And -
PB: When I arrived at St Athan I was given choices I could train to be. I could train to be on Stirlings or Halifaxes or Lancasters or Sunderland Flying Boats or Catalina Flying Boats. Now, as a fitter I’d always worked on radial engines and so I chose this, I chose the Stirling for the reason that it was Bomber Command and it had radial engines. It perhaps wasn’t the wisest choice. I’d have been better off on Lancasters probably but I I I liked the radial engine so that’s why I chose Stirlings.
BW: Speaking as an engineer how did you find the radials then? Were there, were there particular properties about them that you liked?
PB: Yes. They, they, they were more powerful than the Merlin for starters and they were more dependable and they could take more, they could take more damage.
BW: That’s er that -
PB: When I when I was a boy very keen on aircraft now to me the inline liquid cooled engine was just a big motor car engine. The radial was a proper aeroplane engine.
BW: Ok.
PB: That’s what it was all about for me. The radial was a proper aeroplane engine. The other was just a big motor car engine.
BW: I’m sensing there there’s a difference between the aerial engine and flying. Did you have a wish to fly at an early age?
PB: Well as a fitter whenever I worked on an aircraft and a pilot came along to do a test flight I invariably asked if I could go up with him so I flew on, I flew on Lysanders, Blenheims and Oxfords as a passenger.
BW: And which of those was your favourite? Which was -
PB: Oh the Lysander.
BW: Really?
PB: Oh gorgeous. You’re going, you’re going along and there’s a slow, you heard a terrible creaking noise and the slots and slats worked and the flaps come down.
BW: Ahum.
PB: And you could practically stand still. Wonderful aeroplane. Wonderful.
BW: They used that -
PB: Aeroplane.
BW: On special duties -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Squadrons.
PB: Short take off, short landings.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But they were, they were a lovely aircraft to be a passenger in.
PB: Oh yes.
BW: Was it?
PB: It was a marvellous aeroplane was the Lysander. I loved it.
BW: Did you get many flights in those?
PB: Yes quite a few. Yes. I was on, I was on an ackack calibration unit. We worked in concert with the defences of Edinburgh the Forth Bridge and the Rosyth dockyard and I was once in a Lysander where we did dive bombing exercises on the Forth Bridge which was fantastic.
BW: Brilliant.
PB: Absolutely fantastic. It was like being in a JU87 almost.
BW: And this was just to calibrate the ackack guns as you say.
PB: Yes.
BW: To make sure they had the right sort of -
PB: Yes.
BW: Ranging or -
PB: Yes. Yes.
BW: Distance. There were no rounds fired in these -
PB: No. No. No just -
BW: Just to make sure.
PB: Calibration yeah.
BW: Right but either way the pilot imitated a dive bombing manoeuvre on a
PB: Yeah but we had a real clapped out aircraft.
BW: So having had some experience of Lysanders, a single engine aircraft and Oxfords the twin engine.
PB: Yeah.
BW: You then -
PB: All radial engines of course.
BW: And radial engines yeah you then opted while you were at St Athan to go forward for Stirlings.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And what was the course that lead you from St Athan to your squadron? How, how did you go about getting that?
PB: Well, we, we completed our course and we got our brevies and were posted to, to Waterbeach Heavy Conversion Unit and I was introduced to a pilot, a Pilot Officer Cotterill and he was my skipper and I then met the rest of the crew and we took it from there. Did our heavy conversion training.
BW: And how long did that take? Roughly.
PB: Not very long. Maybe about eight weeks I suppose. Something like that.
BW: And was most of that or all of it daylight sorties or were there night time -
PB: No.
BW: Ops involved as well?
PB: We did, we did two four hour sessions of daylight take offs and landings, circuits and bumps. Take of twenty minutes to take off and land for four hours. And having done eight hours of that in daytime we did another eight hours at night and then after that we did, we did cross country flights.
BW: And when you met your crew at this point did you stay together from the conversion unit through to, on operational squadron as the same crew or were the members interchanged?
PB: We lost two members. We lost two members shortly after we joined the squadron.
BW: And was there a reason behind that at all?
PB: Yes. Our first, our first navigator, Geoff was a regular soldier stationed in India when the war broke out. Browned off. To escape he volunteered for training as air crew. He had a stammer which didn’t help and he was a useless navigator and we knew he was useless and our first trip was a very simple mine laying in the North Sea and he flew us straight through the balloon barrage at Norwich coming back and the next day he packed his kit bags and left us.
BW: And was that his choice or -
PB: No. No, that was forced upon him.
BW: Right ok so it wasn’t something there like a moment of self-awareness. He decided to leave.
PB: No. No, he told, he told us he said, ‘They decided I’m not suitable for Bomber Command. I’m being posted to a Coastal Command station.’ Well I think that was just a face saver on his part. I can’t imagine what happened to him but he couldn’t navigate for toffee. Even, even, even with a Gee set he was useless.
BW: Ahum.
PB: And then we did two mine laying trips. We did a lot of fighter affiliation exercises and our mid upper gunner [Bolivar?] a Londoner was brilliant during, during fighter affiliation. Now, Len, Len the wireless operator was always sick. He spewed up everywhere and I sat there and think, ‘Why don’t you crash the bloody thing and get it over with.’ That’s how bad I felt and Bob was as happy as could be but we did two mine laying trips. One in the North Sea -
BW: Ahum.
PB: And one in the river estuary at Bordeaux and then our first target was the opening night of the Battle of Hamburg. 24th of July.
BW: This would be 24th of July 1943.
PB: Yeah. The next night we went to Essen. The next day our mid upper gunner reported sick with air sickness. Now, how he suddenly became air sick overnight I do not know but that was the end of him. So we had a new navigator and a new mid upper gunner.
BW: Sometimes after raids like that men would be removed if they were felt to perhaps have broken at some stage. Do you -
PB: Oh yes.
BW: Do you think that might have been an impact?
PB: Yes. He was still, he was still on the station when we were shot down and I’ve often wondered what he made of it that morning when he woke up and found five empty beds.
BW: And so if I can just touch again on the fighter affiliation. What kind of exercises were carried out there?
PB: Well either, either a Spitfire or a, or a Hurricane would make mock attacks on us and the gunners would give instructions to the skipper as to what evasive action to take and it was quite, it was quite, because our bomb aimer was a failed pilot who could fly, fly a Stirling perfectly well and the Stirling had dual controls so him and the pilot used to work together and we could really throw it about. Really throw it about. You could never have done that on a Lancaster what we did with a Stirling,
BW: No. There was only a single set of controls.
PB: Yeah. Oh it was a wonderful aircraft. Wonderful manoeuvrability aircraft. Couldn’t get very high but by George it could, it could manoeuvre.
BW: And so you mentioned about the raid on Hamburg. That was pretty close to being your first operational sortie.
PB: That was our first target yes after two mine laying trips.
BW: And what, what do you recall about that at all because it was Operation Gomorrah, the raid on Hamburg was pretty significant.
PB: It was operational. What, what, what was most fascinated me most was the colours. The colours of the lights. Reds, greens, yellows. Searchlights, blue searchlights, tracer shells, flak it was an incredible sight. An incredible sight and when you see, when you looked down and someone had just released a string of four pound incendiaries you’d get this brilliant white light like that and then it slowly turns red as the fire gets going. An incredible sight.
BW: So you’d see a sort of a line of white which would -
PB: Yes.
BW: Presumably be the magnesium -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In the incendiaries -
PB: Yes.
BW: Setting fire to the building which was then of course -
PB: Yes.
BW: Catch turn orange and burn.
PB: Yes it was quite remarkable.
BW: And did you only make the one raid on Hamburg or did you return because there was -
PB: We, we, we -
BW: Four days I think.
PB: In ten days this was our introduction to the target. In ten days we did four Hamburgs, an Essen and a [Remshite]
BW: Wow so you flew right through the raid on, or the operation against Hamburg -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In that case.
PB: And the second night of course. The night of the firestorm oh, deary deary me, that was terrible.
BW: Were you aware at all of what was, what was going on? It seems a lot of information has come out subsequently. What were you sort of aware of the damage at that time?
PB: Well where -
BW: While flying.
PB: On the second night when we were back over the sea I went up into the astrodome and looked back and there was only one fire in Hamburg that night. It looked to be about three miles across and it came straight up white, red and black smoke thousands of feet above us and I said over the intercom, ‘those poor bastards down there.’ I couldn’t help myself. It was a terrible, terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it on any other target.
BW: At once it’s a spectacular sight but it’s also when you see that sort of thing -
PB: We, we, we killed forty thousand people that night.
BW: When did that, when was that made aware to you? When did you become aware of that sort of statistic? Was it pretty soon after or was it -
PB: Well the newspapers reported it a couple of days later and gave the number of dead.
BW: Right.
PB: And quite honestly I was disappointed. I thought from I saw it must have killed more than that.
BW: It sounds like they might have underestimated.
PB: Yeah. But forty thousand people were killed that night.
BW: Ahum.
PB: Compare that to how many were killed in London in the entire period of the war. There was no comparison.
BW: No. It’s different isn’t it?
PB: But we never, we never, we never achieved anything like Hamburg again until Dresden of course and in Dresden it only killed twenty odd thousand.
BW: And so Hamburg has obviously made quite an impression for that reason.
PB: Hamburg, I think was undoubtedly Bomber Command’s greatest success of the war. I’ve just, I’ve just read a book by Adolf Galland who was in charge of the German night fighters and the things he says about what the consequences of Hamburg and what it meant to the High Command and the changes it was, it shattered them. Completely shattered them.
BW: So it had, it had certainly had ramifications on the ground but it had more ramifications for the Luftwaffe High Command is what you’re saying.
PB: Yes. Yes. It terrified the German fighter defence to pieces. Terrified them.
BW: And did you see many night fighters at this stage over Hamburg? Were they active?
PB: No because it was it was the first, it was just the introduction of Window and everything was at odds.
BW: And so Window was the anti-radar -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Jamming mechanism.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Where they chucked out strips of aluminium.
PB: But they recovered, they recovered from, from Window very very quickly and they got, they got a new form of defence which was more effective they forced it out before, before Window and I’ve read the German view that Window did more harm than good for Bomber Command in the long run because it completely organised their defences.
BW: But at least on that night or on those nights that you were flying over Hamburg the fighters were ineffective because -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Of the use of Window.
PB: The first night there were eight hundred aircraft and we lost twelve.
BW: Wow.
PB: And most of those were lost because they were off course. Separated away from the protection of Window.
BW: Were there any hits from the ackack below? German anti-aircraft fire was renowned as being very accurate. Did you feel that as you were flying over there?
PB: The one thing, the one thing that fascinated me about ackack was that the smell of cordite filled the aircraft. You were flying through clouds of the stuff but when we landed the bomb aimer and I always got our torches and we searched underneath the aircraft and if there was no damage we were disappointed. We expected to have been hit.
BW: So that, that, sort of, I suppose summarises or encompasses your first few trips on operations. What happened after Hamburg? What were the next -
PB: Well we flew on -
BW: Significant raids for you.
PB: We flew on the last two raids ever carried out on Northern Italy and we flew twice to Nuremberg which we always regarded as a particularly important Nazi target and we did a few other various towns in the Ruhr and then on the 31st of August we went to Berlin and that was something else. That was an absolute complete fiasco.
BW: And this was still 1943?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: In August ’43.
PB: Yeah. The raid on Berlin on the 31st of August. Well the trouble was we’d been, we’d been to Monchengladbach the night before and we quite often did two nights, two consecutive nights. Well, you do Monchengladbach you get very little sleep, you go for briefing and you’re told its Berlin. There were howls of rage from all the air crews and that manifested itself later because that night about eighty aircraft ditched their bombs in the North Sea and returned early. Biggest number ever ‘cause people weren’t prepared to go.
BW: That, that almost sounds a bit like a mutiny in a way doesn’t it?
PB: It’s not far off.
BW: Down tools.
PB: It’s not far off really but the raid was also badly planned. All the damage to Berlin had been in the west and it was intended that this raid should do damage in the east and so we were sent to a point south of Berlin. There was Berlin on our left. We expected to fly seventy miles east. Split-arsed turn, fly seventy miles back and approach Berlin from, from the east. Now, nobody did it. The pathfinders put their markers down two miles south of where they should have been and we all approached from the south so the creepback extended miles and miles and miles. We killed less than a hundred people in Berlin. We lost over two hundred airmen killed and over a hundred prisoners of war. It was a complete and utter fiasco.
BW: Wow and that simply stemmed from, as you say, the pathfinder markers being dropped two miles south.
PB: And we’re coming from the south.
BW: Yeah.
PB: You can imagine it, practically no bombs and the Germans that night for the first time put down these parachute flares. It was like driving down the Mall with all the lights on. It was an incredible sight and it’s such a big place to get through. It takes forever.
BW: And so the gunners clearly with those parachute flares they could have a clear sight presumably of the bomber stream.
PB: And you’ve got day fighters looking down.
BW: Wow.
PB: As well as the night fighters looking up and you’ve got the schragemusik by this time as well.
BW: Which are the cannons in the back of an ME110 to fire vertically underneath the bomber yeah.
PB: Yeah or a JU88.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Or a Messerschmitt 110.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Seventy degree angle, in between the inborn engine and the fuselage hit the main tanks. All you’d see is a great big flash in the sky and that’s it. It was gone.
BW: The crews often said they didn’t know they were there.
PB: No.
BW: Those who survived didn’t see them.
PB: You could see an aircraft flying peacefully and then the next second it’s a ball of fire and you’ll see no tracer and a myth arose and the myth was that the Germans were firing a new type of bomb, a new type of shell which we called a scarecrow and it was designed not to shoot aircraft down but to explode and give the impression of an aircraft blowing up and for months navigators would log these and they weren’t scarecrows. The Germans never had a scarecrow. They were aircraft blowing up.
BW: Actually the aircraft themselves.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And -
PB: And the irony of that is that in the First World War the British had upward firing guns to attack zeppelins.
BW: Ahum Yeah.
PB: [laughs] They never learn.
BW: Because they were difficult to shoot down as well. But so ok from, from there that’s two operations on the trot really. Monchengladbach and Berlin.
PB: Yeah.
BW: You mentioned those airmen killed. Were any of those from the squadron? Did you know any of those guys at all? Were there Stirlings in that lot that were shot down?
PB: Er we there was a raid on Berlin on the 24th of August as well but we were on leave but a crew that we trained with went missing that night and a friend of mine got shot down on the night we were on. A fella called Lew Parsons. He was shot down on the 31st .
BW: Luke Parsons?
PB: Yeah. L E W, short for Lewis.
BW: Oh I see. Lew Parsons.
PB: He was a flight engineer.
BW: And he was shot down on the 31st of August.
PB: Yeah. Yeah. But it, it was a dreadful night. Anyway, the next day our skipper and our navigator were commissioned officers and so the next day we met up with the skipper and he said Johnny’s reported sick and Johnny was our navigator. Flying Officer Johnny [Turton ]. A fantastic navigator. Absolutely fantastic and he’d gone sick and later in the day we were given a replacement. Another flying officer but a New Zealander by the name of McLean and he was the exact opposite from Johnny. Johnny was a big outgoing personality who radiated confidence. This chap had no, no, no personality whatsoever. He was with us five days. We scarcely ever saw him. We scarcely ever spoke to him. We never even learned his Christian name. And he got us shot down.
BW: And that was, of course then going to be your last -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Last flight.
PB: Yeah 5th 5th of September. Mannheim.
BW: Ok. I was just going to ask a question there and it’s just gone from my memory but I’ll probably come back to it. So, oh yes how far into your tour were you at that point? It sounds -
PB: That was our fifteenth trip.
BW: So exactly halfway through.
PB: Exactly halfway. We knew with Johnny we could do, we could do the tour because he was so brilliant but without him we were lost and he finished his tour. He joined another crew, finished his tour got his DFC, survived the war. He was brilliant.
BW: It’s strange how fate goes isn’t it?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Before we move on to your experience of being shot down I would just like to ask about what it was like for you as a flight engineer in the sort of preparation and flying out. What sort of things you would do? Perhaps if you could give us a sense of preparation you would go through to -
PB: Yes.
BW: To board the aircraft.
PB: Yes.
BW: What it was like to then go up in a Stirling.
PB: Well to begin with once we got out the aircraft there were a great many pre-flight checks to do. One of them was to go up onto the main plane with a member of the ground crew. Now, we had fourteen petrol tanks on a Stirling. Sometimes we only had the four main ones. Sometimes we had fourteen. Sometimes we had a mixture but my job was to go up on to the main plane with a member of the ground crew and he would open up the filler caps on all the tanks that were supposed to be full and I had to check visually that they were full to the, to the brim. Now, every night I’m stood on the leading edge of a Stirling. I’m twenty feet above the ground. I think when he moves to the next one and I follow, if I slip I’ll roll down the main plane I’ll fall fifteen feet to the tarmac and at the very least I’ll break an ankle and I’ll be alive tomorrow morning and I always, always considered that thought. I never did it of course. The thought was always there. It was in our own power to be alive tomorrow morning [laughs]. But once, once in the air my two main jobs was one to monitoring engine performance making sure the pressures, temperature etcetera were as they should be and that we were flying at the right airspeed and the right revs and the other was calculating every twenty minutes I had to calculate the amount of petrol used from whichever tank doing the past every twenty minutes recorded so that I always knew how much petrol remained in each tank because they weren’t over generous with their petrol allowance and people did run short very often. So that was, that was important, to keep, to know exactly how much petrol you had and where it was.
BW: So even though you’d done inspections and the ground crew had correctly filled the tanks presumably you could encounter unknown winds and like a headwind.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And use your fuel more quickly.
PB: As I understand it the calculation was made. This is your track. It’s so many miles. You’ve so much petrol. We’ll give you so much and we’ll give you another three hundred and twenty gallons as a, as a reserve.
BW: Reserve.
PB: But of course you get off track, winds are against you, anything can happen. You can’t hold height, you’ve got to get into rich mixture to climb again. All sorts of things could happen to make you use more fuel.
BW: And that would include of course having to take evasive action over the target or anything like that.
PB: Yes, evasive, any time when you had to open up the engines and go into full fuel. We were using a gallon a minute.
BW: That’s pretty significant and that’s just through one engine. A gallon a minute through an engine.
PB: No. It’s, that’s the aircraft.
BW: Oh, the aircraft. Ok.
PB: A gallon a mile through the aircraft.
BW: Oh right.
PB: A gallon a minute through each engine yes.
BW: And I think you said the Stirling was a, was a lovely aircraft to fly. What was your experience generally of the environment in which you were having to work? Was it cramped or was there enough room to do your job?
PB: I’ve only been in a Lancaster once and it horrified me. There’s no space to breathe. You could hold a dance in a Stirling. It was huge and because of the short wingspan it was so highly manoeuvrable. It was a beautiful aeroplane but it couldn’t get any height. Couldn’t get any height.
BW: A limited ceiling.
PB: We had to fight to fly at thirteen thousand. On the last night at Hamburg. The night of the big storm we did two runs over Hamburg at eight thousand feet with the bomb doors frozen up.
BW: Wow.
PB: That was a terrible night.
BW: Just out of interest the air supply gets pretty thin around ten thousand feet. Did you ever have to use oxygen?
PB: It goes on automatically at ten thousand feet.
BW: Right.
PB: Ten thousand feet, oxygen on and skipper charges into S gear.
BW: Into S gear.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And does that give you extra boost through the engines?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Ok and were you able, in some cases crews had to stow their parachutes. Were you able to move around with your parachutes on or did you stow it?
PB: No it was always stowed. Always stowed away.
BW: How did it feel when you were actually bombed and fuelled up ready to go and you’re at the threshold of the runway and you’d got the green light. Could you just talk us through that?
PB: Well -
BW: What you were feeling there and what you were doing?
PB: I experienced three feelings. Between briefing and going out to the aircraft, absolute terror. Once we delivered the bombs and the photoflash had gone off, wonderful. Once back eating bacon and eggs very, very satisfied. Those were the three emotions that I suffered.
BW: How did it feel when you were given that that green light? Presumably as a flight engineer you followed the pilot through on the throttles.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you feel this surge of power of the engines going.
PB: Yeah all all the while was concentrating on getting the thing up because the Stirling had a violent swing. It had this ridiculous undercarriage and because of the torque of the engines it swung to starboard and you had to correct that swing either on the throttles or the stick. Now, if you got a cross wind as well that swing could be quite dramatic and it went like that and then like that.
BW: So a violent swerve either way.
PB: The undercarriage just collapsed you don’t want an undercarriage collapsing when you’ve got a thousand -
BW: No.
PB: Incendiary bombs stuck in the belly [laughs].
BW: Were there any incidents where aircraft were unable to take off because of that? They perhaps didn’t control the swing or there was a cross wind.
PB: Oh yeah. The very first Stirling on its very first flight in the hands of a very skilled test pilot on its very first landing wrote its undercarriage off.
BW: Simply because of the swing due the power in the engines.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the imbalance.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And yet it looks from, as you say, the size of it -
PB: Yeah.
BW: It looks a very stable beast to fly.
PB: It’s incredibly strong that way. It’s not very strong that way.
BW: So longitudinally strength.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And laterally not so good.
PB: It was a very strong undercarriage but it’s so tall it [put a side strain on it] like that.
BW: Yeah.
PB: It goes. Time and time again.
BW: And of course these are pure manual controls. They’re not power assisted in any way.
PB: Oh no. No.
BW: So, but it was generally very smooth to fly and very easy to fly once you were airborne.
PB: Oh it was a beautiful aeroplane to fly. Beautiful. It really was. It was like a [? ] You could do anything with it.
BW: How many were, were in your crew? There were normally seven in a Lancaster.
PB: Seven yeah.
BW: The same in the Stirling.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you had initially for your first part of your tour you had Johnnie [Turton] as your navigator.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And your pilot. Who was your pilot?
PB: Pilot. When I joined him in May it was Pilot Officer Bernard Cotterell.
BW: That’s right.
PB: By the time we were shot down he was Acting Flight Lieutenant Bernard Cotterell.
BW: Is that C O T T E R -
PB: Yeah.
BW: I L L?
PB: Yeah. E L L.
BW: E L L. And so who are the, you mentioned your wireless op.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Um, who was Len -
PB: Len Smith. Bomb aimer was Alan Crowther.
BW: Alan Crowther.
PB: Yeah the rear gunner was John [Carp?] a Scotsman.
BW: John [Carp?]
PB: He was always known as Jock rather than John.
BW: Jock.
PB: And the new, the new mid upper gunner was a Newcastle lad called Ray Wall.
BW: Ray Wall.
PB: Yeah, Ray Wall. There were only five of us, as I say, left from the original crew and of those five I was the only survivor. The mid upper, the mid upper survived and this new navigator survived?
BW: And so from there we’ve looked at sort of the raids and the preparation for them. What sort of things would happen on the return to base? You’d obviously be debriefed but what form would that take?
PB: Well, we, we, we always flew at the recommended airspeeds which got you the most miles per gallon. A lot of people just simply flew back as fast as they could regardless of wasting petrol so we were invariably the last aircraft to land which meant we always had to queue up to wait to be de debriefed which was a nuisance but then of course it was the bacon and egg lark. Bacon and egg time and off to bed.
BW: And what, what was the accommodation like? You were all crewed up. Were they in nissen huts. Was there a crews either side or was it -
PB: We, we, we were in a nissen -
BW: Different.
PB: Hut and I think we shared it with two other crews and one morning, one morning you would find that half the beds are made up and all everything’s gone because they had disappeared but the thing is you never, you never associated with anybody outside your crew. There was no point to it.
BW: Really.
PB: No point to it at all. A crew was a very. very tight little, little group. We did everything together.
BW: And so even though there would be two other crews in the, in the nissen hut with you you would still socialise only with your own crew.
PB: Oh yeah we never bothered with anybody else. Very rarely spoke to anybody else even.
BW: And where did you go during your off-duty hours? Where did you socialise?
PB: Oh the village pub in Lakenheath.
BW: Do you recall the name?
PB: No, I don’t actually. No.
BW: Ah.
PB: But I do remember there was a Mrs Philips who used to provide us with suppers some times. Just across the road. She used to put on bacon and egg suppers. I don’t know where she got the bacon and eggs from but she used to put on bacon and egg suppers.
BW: Just as a special treat for you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the rest of the crew.
PB: But you know you sit in the village pub at night and you were surrounded by farmers and butchers and bakers and all the rest of it. People for whom the war was just something they read about in the newspapers and you were just so happy, you’re so happy. It’s wonderful. There’s nothing like a crew. Nothing. Incredible relationship. Incredible.
BW: And did you have opportunity to mix with other locals? Not just the, the tradesman there, if you like, the farmers and the bakers or whatever?
PB: No. The only time we went out, off the camp was to go in to the little pub. On the nights we weren’t flying. We were in there every night we weren’t flying.
BW: Were there station dances at all or anything like that?
PB: No. There was no station. You’d the airfield there, you’ve the mess here and your billet over there and something else over there. If you didn’t have a bicycle you couldn’t exist in Lakenheath.
BW: So quite a distance between -
PB: Distances are immense. And I’ve visited it since the war. It’s an American town now.
BW: Yeah. It’s, it’s a huge place.
PB: Oh it’s a big place and when I, when I was there talking to them they produced some information about the wartime use and they spelt Stirling as if, as if it was the bloody currency [laughs].
BW: Were there, just out of interest, were there other crews in the pub where you went or was it pretty much just you guys?
PB: Well no doubt there were.
BW: Right.
PB: But we just sat in our corner and nothing else existed.
BW: Right.
PB: Nothing else existed.
BW: So tucked away in your own -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In your own little world.
PB: And there my skipper named my first daughter.
BW: Right.
PB: My skipper. I don’t know how we got on, how the conversation got around to that actually but one evening for some reason the skipper said if my wife and I were to ever have a daughter we were going to call her Penelope. I never forgot that and so very many years later when my first daughter was born she simply had to be Penelope. I had no choice.
BW: Well. As you say it obviously comes from being a tight crew.
PB: Yes.
BW: And that connection.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Ok. You mention then about your trip to Mannheim and this New Zealand navigator.
PB: Yeah.
BW: About your, of your crew.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Who, who got you shot down?
PB: Yeah.
BW: Just talk us through that if you would, please.
PB: Well we had a full petrol load which means a minimum bomb load of course. We were briefed for Munich and when briefing had been completed the CO said there’s a Mosquito on its way to Munich at the moment because it’s feared the weather may break down there so we’re going brief you for a possible alternative for Mannheim. So we had a second briefing then. Now, we’d no idea where we were going which meant of course the navigators had two flight plans to prepare. They’d doubled the work in the limited amount of time so they were under stress from the start. So we, we, we retire to our aircraft. Do all our pre-flight checks and the CO comes around in his van and says Munich is scrubbed. You’re going to Mannheim. So off we go. Immediately we cross enemy coast we were hit by flack. Now this had never ever happened to us before. He’d taken us straight over a, straight over a gun batt. I was shocked and I thought I’m going to spend, I’m going to spend the next hour checking the fuel in the hope we were losing fuel and we could turn back. And I went and did a meticulous check on the fuel but we weren’t losing fuel of course. Now, the raid was cleverly designed. You’ve got Ludwigshafen, the Rhine, Mannheim. If you fly over Ludwigshafen into Mannheim a creepback occurs. You get two targets for the price of one. And so that was the way we were to enter. So, to make sure we got it right for each wave of the attack the pathfinders was putting down a red marker. Now if you turn on a red marker on to the right course you flew straight over Ludwigshafen straight to Mannheim. So as we, as we were approaching the point where we could expect to see the flare the navigator says, ‘Keep your eyes open now. You should be seeing a red flare any time now.’ And suddenly there’s a red flare there and another red flare over there.
BW: So one to your left and one to your right.
PB: Yeah. So which, which is, which is the correct one? Only the navigator knows which is the correct one. ‘That one,’ he says.
BW: On the left.
PB: Nearer to the target. We get to the target five minutes early. The skipper makes what I still think was the right decision. He said we’d been hit by a bomb once at Nuremberg so we knew that. You’re either the only one over the target or the bombs are coming down from Lancasters. The skipper did an orbit but unfortunately the radar picked us up and as soon as we start to go in a blue searchlight comes straight on.
BW: Which is the radar guided one.
PB: Yeah and then then the column builds up and we’re flying straight over with the bomb doors open. So we continued like that until the bomb aimer got a sight and then you let the lot go in one go and we didn’t wait for a photograph. And over a target I always went up in to the astrodome facing backwards to help the gunner search for fighters and I was up there [ and we slowly began to pull away? ] and there were only a couple of searchlights on us and I thought I’d better check on my engines cause they’re getting a terrible thrashing. You’re only allowed a few minutes on full power so I get down, I get down from the pyramid and have a very long, I have a very long lead on my intercom so I can, don’t have to keep plugging and unplugging and I get down and I’m just going over to the instrument panel and suddenly there’s a terrible screaming and Len, Len the wireless operator had been just behind the main spar pushing out pushing out the window came running up through the main spar screaming, tripped over the pyramid, fell across my lead, pulled it out so I lost all communication and he fell at my feet and then this huge fire broke out in the fuselage and I’m steeling myself to stand and step over Leonard’s body to get to the fire extinguisher and out of the corner of my eye I see the mid upper gunner get out and put his chute on. I turn around. The navigator’s already on his way down the steps so instead of going for the extinguisher I go for my parachute and follow the navigator. I get to the top of the steps, the hatch is open. The navigator’s gone. I slide down. I get my feet through. The bomb aimer had gone up in to the second pilot’s seat to help the skipper. He started to clamber down from the, from the seat as I go past. I get my legs through. I feel a pressure on my back. I turn. Alan’s got his knees pressing in my back, tap him on the knee and go and as I go I feel the aircraft break in two and Alan never got out. So the rear gunner and Len were killed by the fighter. The skipper was wounded by flak that also set the port inner on fire and the skipper and Alan never had a chance of getting out because the aircraft had broken in two. The tail unit with the rear gunner’s body in it landed a considerable distance away. The main wreck landed right on the German Grand Prix racing track at Hockenheim.
BW: Wow.
PB: I have the map. I have a map showing the exact position and I saw the fire. It was a huge. We’d over a thousand gallons of petrol on board. We had enough petrol for Munich and the three in the aircraft were completely destroyed. Only, only fragments of bone left. The air gunners body was complete and so in the cemetery now at [Bad Tolz?] there’s a, there’s the rear gunners grave there, then there’s a headstone for Len, a headstone for the skipper, a headstone for Alan but what bits of fragments of bone there were are all buried in front of the skipper I’m sure. It was just symbolic. Never, never let the relatives know that of course. Never mention fire to the relatives but those two graves were empty and what bits there were were in front of the skipper which is right and proper.
BW: And you, you must have been pretty close to the ground when you baled out yourself.
PB: No. Oh, no. I was about ten thousand feet.
BW: Oh right. It was, it was the sense I was getting that it was almost a last minute sort of thing where you were able to escape.
PB: No. No, the aircraft broke in two very quickly. It was a tremendous. What happened I think the JU88 killed the rear gunner and then from, there’s a pump on the starboard engine, and dual pipelines to the rear turret that power the turret. Now I think it hit those pipelines. You’ve got hydraulic oil pressure, high pressure, high temperature came out and that’s what caught fire. The fire then came underneath the mid upper gunner, hit Len when he was doing the window in and stopped before it reached me but it was, it was a terror, it certainly was a fire and although I didn’t know till much later virtually simultaneously flak knocked out the port engine and the port inner engine and wounded the skipper and Ray, Ray told me later that when the skipper gave the order to bail out he [signed to say] as if he was badly hurt.
BW: And then at that point, the stricken aircraft, it must be almost I guess vertical if it’s broken up at that point.
PB: It didn’t, it didn’t go like that when it hit the ground it was it just come straight down like that.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I dare say some of it is still there buried under that racetrack. Some of the engine. But later I had a friend in Germany who was, who was in Ludwigshafen. He lived in Ludwigshafen. He was a schoolboy in Ludwigshofen. He may well have been on the flak gun that night for all I know.
BW: That would have been a coincidence wouldn’t it?
PB: Well after, he worked for the postal service after the war and when he retired he set himself up as what he called an air historian and he excavated a lot of shot down bombers and he was very keen on Bomber Command and he provided me with a lot of information and he produced a woman who’d been a schoolgirl in Hockenheim and on the morning after we crashed, after we were shot down, a neighbouring woman knocked on her door and she had what they described as a Canadian airman with them. It was in fact a New Zealander and the girl’s mother gave him a drink of water and later in the day the girl’s interest was aroused and she and a girlfriend went out to look at the crash and she provided me with a map of the actual crash site just by the, so whenever the German Grand Prix comes on I always, always watch it for a few minutes. I don’t like grand prix racing but I always watch it for a few minutes.
BW: Just that particular one.
PB: Yeah. That’s where it crashed.
BW: And have you been back to Hockenheim at all?
PB: No. No, I’ve not. No, I’ve not.
BW: But the information’s come through to you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: As to what’s happened.
PB: Peter provided me with a lot of information.
BW: What’s the air historian’s name? Do you recall?
PB: Peter Mengas M E N Mengas G A S.
BW: G A S.
PB: Peter.
BW: And is he still around?
PB: I don’t know. I’ve not, I’ve not heard from him for a year or two now.
BW: So you’ve managed to get out of the aircraft yourself.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And this is night-time. About ten thousand feet over Germany.
PB: Yeah 1 o’clock. It was just about midnight on my watch. It was 1 o’clock in the morning German time.
BW: And you pulled the rip cord and -
PB: Well, no. This was the problem when I, when I first joined the squadron I got a harness which could be adjusted. Now, I moved about a lot in the Stirling. I’ve controls there, there, there and there.
BW: All around the -
PB: And I used to [bend down?] around number seven tank and the shoulder strap would fall off and I thought I’ll get this fixed but I never did of course so when I baled out I was terrified of falling out of my parachute so I daren’t open it until I got myself you know [? ] as I could.
BW: Sort of braced against the straps were they?
PB: And when I opened it and I felt oh that’s it but it wasn’t that was just the parachute pulling the pack off my chest and then bang.
BW: The snap of the canopy.
PB: And I took all the weight there. The shoulder straps were up here. I came down in agony. I don’t know why it didn’t castrate me.
BW: Because of the tight grip around the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Groin area where the -
PB: And then when I eventually I saw the ground rushing up and I rolled myself into a ball as I’d been taught and this buckle took two ribs with it.
BW: On the left hip.
PB: Yeah. Broke, broke two, broke two of my ribs and so I, it was, it was very painful. Very painful. And this is funny really by the next day my left side had seized up and I’m walking in a westerly direction trying to get to France [laughs] and, I don’t know and there was just one house which I had to pass and I thought, I thought a girl stood in the window had spotted me. I wasn’t certain but I thought she had. Anyway, I kept going and suddenly I hear a shout and I turn around and there’s this chappy running towards me and running behind him is a woman, presumably his wife and the two things I didn’t believe. I didn’t believe that fighting men put their hands above their heads like the baddies in the cowboy films and I didn’t believe the Germans went around saying. ‘Heil Hitler,’ to each other but as this chappy approached without any conscious effort on my part my hands went up. This one went up. This one wouldn’t.
BW: Your right one.
PB: He saw me like. He stopped running [?]and, ‘Heil Hitler.’
BW: So because you can’t raise your left arm you can only raise your right arm he thinks you’re doing the salute.
PB: He thought I was a Luftwaffe chappy. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said [laughs] Well, I just I was in a pretty perilous state by this time. I just collapsed in to hysterical laughter. I just stood there and laughed and laughed and laughed and his wife came along and she sized up the situation immediately. She put her arm around me, took my weight on her shoulder and led me towards the town and the very first house we came to she made a very, very cross old woman let me into her kitchen, sit me down and made me a cup of coffee. So this woman very unwillingly gave me a cup of coffee. I hadn’t drunk anything for twenty four hours and I took a sip and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I can’t drink this. It’s absolutely disgusting,’ and I thought, ‘Well if I don’t drink it it’s a great insult to this woman who’s been so incredibly kind to me,’ so I had to drink it. That was my introduction to the German diet oooph [laughs].
BW: And so you managed from a rough landing in a loose parachute in God knows where -
PB: Yeah.
BW: To get yourself together. You didn’t meet any of the other crew at this point because you obviously talked about -
PB: The -
BW: Yourself.
PB: The mid upper gunner landed right next to a railway signal box and was arrested within seconds. The navigator landed in a tree and had to be rescued. So they were captured very quickly. Both of them.
BW: So there was just you on your own at this point.
PB: I was on my own.
BW: Were you knocked unconscious or, or did it take some time to come around? I mean you’ve obviously had to get rid of your chute and -
PB: No I, I, I was shocked. I was shocked obviously and I was in pain from these ribs but I said I’ve a duty to the RAF and that was to get to Gibraltar. [Laughs] It’s a long way away.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I’d got the Rhine to cross for one thing. That’s not, that’s not easy. [laughs].
BW: And so the, the people that, that met you I mean you talk about heading west towards France and Mannheim is, is quite deep in western Germany.
PB: Yeah.
BW: So you’re actually being met by Germans at this point.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But they assist you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: So what then happened? Did they, they pass you on? Or -
PB: Well this couple took me to the police station where the other two were already held although I didn’t know it and we were kept there for about three days and a couple of Luftwaffe chappies arrived to take us up to Frankfurt to Dulag Luft interrogation camp and when we left we were given a bundle of the rear gunner’s clothing and his flying suit had hundreds of holes in it. The cannon shells must have hit the turret and exploded, it was absolutely riddled and his helmet and his, his oxygen mask was soaked in blood and there were the four guns from the rear turret as well. So we had that to carry. And we had, we had an adventurous journey. We couldn’t, it, this was the most successful raid on Mannheim Ludwigshafen at that time and it was complete chaos and we had to go by train in to a big detour so we travelled that day and went to a Luftwaffe camp and stayed the night in the guard room there and the next day we go back to the railway station and it was a, it’s a station something like Victoria in Manchester. A long corridor with steps going up to the various platforms. We were on the platform and what I call a typical Daily Express German came along, feather in his hat and oh he was furious he was furious and Hitler had issued an order to all military and police units that if civilians get hold of airmen before the authorities do the authorities were not to interfere. They must leave it to the discretion of the civilians what to do with them and this one was stark raving, oh he was angry. And in the air force there’s an offence known as silent contempt. You don’t do anything but you look at an officer who’s ticking you off and look at him and make it obvious you think he’s [lowly?] and it’s a serious crime in the air force. Well Ray and I were giving this chappy the silent cont and the navigator said, ‘Stop being a bloody fool.’ He was a good deal older than we were and eventually this chap storms off and we thought, ‘Oh that’s shown him.’ A few minutes later he’s back at the head, the head of a posse and they’re obviously, obviously intent on doing us serious bodily harm but fortunately there was, there was a train on the other side of the platform. Now, whether it was a troop train or not I don’t know but half a dozen soldiers got out and ranged themselves between us and the, and this crowd and our two Luftwaffe chappies whipped us down the stairs, along the corridor and up another platform and hid us in a room that was obviously used by guards full of red and green lamps and flags and so on and we hid in there until our train arrived and then ran back as fast as we could and got put on the train. But it was, when we thought about it later we were very nearly hanged or beaten to death or kicked to death or something very near but it was only, it was only those soldiers who saved us and that was contrary to Hitler’s orders.
BW: Because the RAF crews at this time presumably were being christened terror flieger.
PB: Yeah. Oh yeah.
BW: And so the civilians were -
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Properly against them.
PB: Well there were a hundred Bomber Command people were killed by Germans and more than two hundred Americans because Americans, there were a lot more Americans. They had ten to a crew.
BW: And at this point in a station as you mention they’ve reunited you with the navigator and -
PB: Yeah. Well they were in the police station. Unknown to me at the time.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I met them when we got out of the police station. But before I left they gave me a shave. A fierce little barber came in and then he got out this razor and I thought, ‘I hope to God the air raid sirens don’t go off.’ [laughs]
BW: Yeah ‘cause he might, he might stop shaving you and decide to use the razor for something else.
[laughs]That’s the only time I’ve been shaved with a cut throat razor. I don’t want to ever experience it again. [laughs]
BW: So they’ve tidied you up and reunited you as a crew.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Presumably they didn’t interrogate you at this point even though you were in a police station. The Luftwaffe officers took you over and put you in a transport. Is that right?
PB: Yeah. We were taken, we were taken to Dulag Luft at Frankfurt and there I was put in a cell there. Quite a big cell really. It had, it had, it had a very long radiator attached to one wall and there was a bed attached to the floor alongside a radiator and there was a table and two chairs and there’s a bucket in the corner and two windows with shutters on from outside and a very dim light. No ventilation and all I could do was lie flat on my back with these ribs and although it was mid-September the heat on the radiator was turned up full. So I lay there for three days getting hotter and dirtier and stickier and the air getting fouler and fouler and then suddenly somebody opened the shutters. A very smart Luftwaffe officer walked in with a couple of files under his arm, put them on the table opened the windows wide and motioned for me to join him, poured two cups of English tea, a plate of English biscuits, a packet of English cigarettes and then the interrogation started.
BW: And at this point is there just you and this Luftwaffe officer?
PB: Yeah.
BW: In this cell?
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so he’s expected you to get up from the floor to the chair to sit in front of him. Nobody has assisted you at this point?
PB: No. No. No.
BW: So presumably your body’s quite stiff as well.
PB: Very very stiff indeed. Very stiff. I never -
BW: Well -
PB: I never had any medical attention at all. Never. I’ve got a great knob of bone there that will never heal.
BW: And so the interrogation begins and presumably, from what you’re staying, this is daytime at this point.
PB: Yeah. When he put these files down on the table there were two of them and the top one said Royal Air Force Bomber Command 149 squadron. I thought, ‘How the hell does he know 149?’ I said, ‘I wonder if the others had been forced to talk,’ and I had pictures of Humphrey Bogart being tortured by [laughs] but it was obvious the rear part of the fuselage wasn’t burned and the letters OJ. So, he gave me, he have me a great deal of information. First, generally about the air force and then specifically about 149 squadron.
BW: And because the letters on the aircraft had not burned through.
PB: No the -
BW: So the squadron’s code OJ were still visible.
PB: OJ means 149. They knew that so as I understood it he was trying to do two things. He was giving me a lot of information most of it factual but some which he picked up and he hadn’t had checked yet [or someone had corrected] and from my reaction [he got?] and then he picked up bits from me that he could put. That was the whole purpose of it. I don’t know what did affect the war effort. I don’t think very much. Anyway, eventually he finished and this was the middle of September and he said, ‘Are there any questions you want to ask me?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘What’s been happening in the war in the last few days?’ He said, ‘Italy has surrendered.’ I said, ‘Oh good. One down, one to go.’ [laughs] Well he didn’t like that [laughs] so he picked up his files and he left.
BW: You weren’t tempted to salute him either.
PB: But when we, when we were being transferred by cattle truck from Dulag Luft to Saxony to Stalag 4b we were in these cattle trucks and we had a German guard in with us and we had with us at one stage the only German I ever felt sorry for. He’d been born in Germany and when he was a very small child his people had gone to America. He’d been brought up in Brooklyn. He had a tremendous Brooklyn accent and he’d, they’d never taken American nationality and early in ‘39 or late in ‘38 they’d come to Germany on holiday and he was immediately conscripted and there he was [laughs]. Oh dear. So I’d never known anybody feel as sorry for himself as that poor fella. He said, he described his comrades, he said, ‘Bloody mother f***ing, c**k s***ng krauts,’ and those were his comrades [laughs].
BW: And they didn’t speak American -
PB: Deary, deary me,
BW: So he got away with it.
PB: Oh he did feel sorry for himself. And I’ve often wondered what happened to him because when the Ardennes offensive took place Hitler put a lot of American speaking Germans into American uniforms and of course they were shot immediately if they were captured. He was an absolutely perfect candidate for that job.
BW: Yeah. Quite possible.
PB: So I don’t know what happened to him but oh deary me he did feel sorry for himself
BW: And so it seems a fairly, alright it’s uncomfortable but it seems a fairly civil interrogation from the Luftwaffe officer before you -
PB: Oh it was very friendly. Very friendly very friendly. I mean I’d been lying in there for three days thinking about Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and it was nothing like that [laughs]. No, he was charming. Really charming.
BW: And how soon after the interrogation ended and he stormed out did you then leave for er -
PB: Well I left the cell then went to the main part of the camp and stayed there for about a week until there was enough of us to make up a wagon load.
BW: And this was still at Dulag Luft.
PB: Yeah.
BW: In Frankfurt.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so you’re there a little while longer transferred to Saxony.
PB: Yeah and we were lucky and we were unlucky. We were unlucky in the fact that all the luft camps run by the Luftwaffe were full and so we were sent to the biggest prison camp in Germany which was run by the army. It contained about ten thousand permanently and it had scores of working parties attached to it so that prisoners used to come in and get recorded and then sent out to work in mines or factories or quarries or whatever so there was a regular turnover. There was about ten thousand of us there permanently but a tremendous lot of Frenchmen, a couple of thousand Russians who were starving to death and various other nationalities and of course the German army didn’t have the same relationship with us that the Luftwaffe personnel would have had. In fact they hated us.
BW: Was there any, any ill will directed towards you because you were air force?
PB: They didn’t like us. They told us, they said, ‘When Germany wins the war you’ll spend the rest of your lives building the cities that you’ve destroyed but if Germany lose the war you’re soon to be shot.’ That was their attitude.
BW: And even though this was an army camp they, it sounds as though they weren’t just, were they just military personnel? The ten thousand French and Russians were they soldiers that were captured?
PB: Well I don’t know what they were.
BW: So they could have been.
PB: They were dressed in civilian, some in civilian clothes,
BW: Yeah.
PB: Some in bits of clothes. Some were in military uniform but we were lucky too because this was September. Italy had retired from the war. The Germans had taken over the Italian prison camps and they set up two new compounds in 4b. An RAF compound and an army compound. Now, a couple of thousand Desert Rats who’d been prisoners in Italy came in just as we did. Now, without them we’d have been in a right mess because the Germans gave us nothing.
BW: So you were on low rations and you were, were you made to work at this stage as well?
PB: No. No. They couldn’t make us work. Not with our ranks.
BW: Right.
PB: But you know we were put into a hut which has three tier bunks to sleep a hundred and eighty men. They gave us a sack which contained something or other which was supposed to be a mattress, two pre- First World War blankets and that was, that was all they gave us. No knife, fork, spoon, no cup, no plate. Nothing. And yet the food comes up, a great big vat of soup and all you’ve got’s your bare hands. So the army helped us a lot there.
BW: Presumably because they were allowed or brought with them their kit and they shared it.
PB: They brought with all their kit, yeah. Yeah. I mean they’d been prisoners years some of them.
BW: So they knew, they knew how it worked.
PB: They knew the ropes so yeah they knew the ropes alright but the difference between the army and the air force was, was, was incredible. The army compound was run like a barracks. There was a sergeant major in charge of each hut. Total control. And each morning at 7 o’clock there was roll calls outside in decent weather. The roll call in the army compound took fifteen minutes. The roll call in the RAF compound could take two hours. That was the difference in our attitudes. The army would say, ‘We’ll show them what real soldiers look like.’ and we’d say, ‘We’ll cause them so much bloody trouble they’ll wish they’d never been born.’ Different attitude of mind altogether.
BW: And so this is the, the British army in their compound.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Organising themselves to do their roll calls -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Like that.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the RAF took the view well we’re there to -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Make a nuisance of ourselves.
PB: That’s it exactly. One day the Germans got so exasperated they brought the senior sergeant major and they stood him there and we’re all lined up in fives and he starts telling us we’re a disgrace to the bloody nation, we’re a disgrace to the air force and the replies he got. He’d never been spoken to like that in his life before. Never, ever, ever. He just went redder and redder and redder. Eventually, he turned on his heel and went and we never saw him again.
BW: Gave that one up as well.
PB: I know we really, we really did everything we could and we tamed the Germans eventually and it went whenever a German entered our hut whoever saw him first would shout, ‘Jerry up’ and whatever you were doing you could get away. At the end of the war the German would walk in to the hut, he’d stand at the door and shout, ‘Jerry up’ and wait two minutes before he walked in.
BW: It’s interesting you, you made a comment just before that although the Germans gave you nothing they didn’t make you work either because of your rank.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the thinking was in the, in the early days with the RAF aircrew was that if they were all sergeants they would be treated better in prisoner of war camps.
PB: Not treated better, just treated differently in that they didn’t work.
BW: Right. So it was a case of you’re not made to work you were just -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Well you were just there and you exist, sort of thing.
PB: Yeah and the food of course was disgusting. The flour was ten percent what the Germans optimistically called wood flour. Which was sawdust. We, we, we had soup at lunchtime. A great vat of soup. We had [minute?] soup which was disgusting. We had [mara?] soup which was even more disgusting and most disgusting of all we had a soup that apparently was made from what was left of sugar beet after the beet er after the sugar had been extracted and we got a handful of boiled potatoes, usually rotten. That was the midday meal and then in the late afternoon you got a piece of bread to be divided between five people and a blob of white stuff which was supposed to be butter, it was about ninety percent water, and a spoonful of jam apparently made from beetroot or swede or some such and you’d get this piece of bread and it’s not a big piece of bread and it’s got to be shared between five people and every, every one of the five pieces had to be absolutely identical with the other four so we picked the man with the best irons and steadiest hand and he cuts the bread up and he gets last choice and the five pieces and he gets the last choice.
BW: And it went on like that for days.
PB: But we had the Red Cross parcels fortunately.
BW: How often were they delivered? Were they regular?
PB: Every Monday we got a Red Cross parcel.
BW: And were they delivered intact or were they interfered and inspected by the Germans.
PB: They were delivered intact until it was decided that they were being used in escapes and so after that they were all opened and every tin was punctured so that it had a limited lifespan. You couldn’t, you couldn’t store it up.
BW: And you see in war films, popular war films, the sort of black market operating in a prison camp and trading and bartering. Does that, did that ever happen?
PB: Oh yes, it was all, with cigarettes you could buy anything. Now in the RAF compound we had two people. We had an English and an Italian name. A chappy called [Gargini]
BW: [Gargini]
PB: Now he was, he was a skilled technician in British, in BBC television and he was an absolute wizard with the electricity. He built at least two radio sets and he also made a succession of heaters, immersion heaters, which you could put in a cup of cold water and fire up in no time at all. And we had another chap who was in fact was a civilian. Terry Hunt his name was. He worked for British Movietone news or some similar company and if you went to the cinema in England during the war from time to time to time on the newsreel you’d see shots taken from the nose of a light bomber during attacks on France. Now Terry was one of the men who took those photographs. He was given a degree of training. He was given an RAF uniform, he was given a RAF number, an RAF rank just in case he was shot down and captured and he had a camera. He had it inside a hollowed out bible with a little hole in the spine through which he took his photographs. Two quite remarkable men there.
BW: And that, that bible with the camera in he used in the aircraft and he kept with him in the prison camp did he?
PB: No. He got it whilst he was in the prisoner.
BW: Oh made it in the prison right.
PB: How he got through well cigarettes you could get anything with cigarettes. You could buy a woman for three cigarettes but there were no women.
BW: And in that case there must have been some sort of interaction with the German guards at that point -
PB: Oh yes.
BW: To be able to bribe.
PB: You waited. You waited until after dark and then you went out and found a guard and said [?] ‘Yah yah yah,’ out it came from a bag in his gas mask case gave him this bit of bread ‘[?] cigarettes?’ ‘Nein. [?]Nein. Deutschland caput’ [laughs]
BW: A piece of bread for twenty cigarettes.
PB: But you could buy anything with cigarettes.
BW: And did you partake in that yourself, did you?
PB: Oh yeah I was out most nights if I had cigarettes buying bread. It was, it was much better bread than we had. It was rotten bread but it was much better bread than we had.
BW: And did you, did you feel able to strike up a rapport or even an element of trust with some of these guards. Were you always meeting the same one or did you have to interact with others?
PB: No, whoever happened to be walking around the compound at the time. Some relationships must have been, must have been formed because big items were bought and of course if there were ever workmen in the camp all their tools were raided. They soon [? ] their tools.
BW: So there were, there were guys in the camp who were raiding the Germans’ tool sets.
PB: Yeah you see we, we had, you know, you got hundreds of air crew. You’ve got a couple of thousand senior NCOs in the army. You’ve got every talent. You’ve got architects, musicians, dancers, journalists. You got all sorts of people and it was amazing what could be done.
BW: And I believe they had classes in the prisoner of war camps as well to keep the men occupied.
PB: Oh yes. We, we had a little library in each hut. Some of them manned by professional librarians, we had lecturers. We had, we had a theatre group and a radio theatre group. We had people who went around individually giving lectures. The most popular lecturer was a chappy, an army man, who’d worked for a very prestigious London undertaking firm and the stories he had. Oh deary me. Deary, deary me. He was a popular lecturer he was.
BW: And so was your days, were your days regulated in any sense? Was there a structure put to you?
PB: No. You had a roll call in the morning, a roll call in the evening. That was it. And then you had the food arriving at mid-day and again about tea time and other than that you were on your own.
BW: So would you have about two meals a day then? Your main midday meal and a meal in the evening?
PB: I don’t think we ever had a meal at all really [laughs].
BW: Well, yeah.
PB: But yeah that’s the way it worked.
BW: Yeah.
PB: On Fridays, on Fridays, Friday was a big day. On Friday you got pea soup and pea soup was so good we didn’t get any potatoes on Friday. Well pea soup was the only soup we ever really ate. The pea soup was quite good.
BW: And do you still like it to this day or does that remind you?
PB: I like pea soup. Yes.
BW: Yeah.
PB: But we Lancastrians had a Red Rose Society. The Yorkists had a White Rose Society and there was a motoring club for people interested in cars or motorbikes. There were all sorts, all sorts of things set up. Every hut was given the name of a British football team. My hut was Wolverhampton Wanderers and a league was set up and matches were played and points scored and then in the RAF compound we formed the rugby pitch as well, I played a lot of rugby.
BW: Even, even though you’d had a bad injury from parachuting you were still able to play rugby.
PB: Eventually. It took, it took, it took about six months until I felt really free but -
BW: Did you manage to get any medical treatment from the British -
PB: No.
BW: While you were in the camp?
PB: Never. Never. I never bothered the British. By then it was healing. They even, even tried to play cricket but that didn’t work. The ground was too soft.
BW: What sort of ground was it? Was it sandy?
PB: It was sort of sandy soil, yeah.
BW: So and we’ve probably all have an image here of Sagan and the Great Escape -
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the sandy -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Sort of soil
PB: Yeah.
BW: And it was pretty much like that was it?
PB: When I played rugby every time I I got a graze and there was any blood it always went, always went rotten. I always had to go and get it, get it drugged up always, always went rotten.
BW: And what sort of drugs could they give you? Was there penicillin?
PB: Red Cross. Red Cross I don’t know what they were but the Red Cross provided drugs and we had, we had certain medical. We had a couple of army doctors as well. We had an English woman in the camp.
BW: Do you recall her name at all?
PB: Well we knew her as Mrs Barrington. She was an English woman. I don’t know whether she was divorced or widowed but sometime in the 20s or very early 30s she had a son called Winston and they had a holiday in Switzerland and met a German who got on very well with and they went back again a few months later and she married him and she and her son went to live in Germany. And then when, when 1938, ‘39 came along and war was obviously imminent she sent her son back to England to live with her parents and in due course he joined the air force in Bomber Command, got shot down, wrote to her where she was living in Vienna and she wrote back and eventually she decided she wanted to be nearer to him then that so she left Vienna and went to live in Muhlburg which was about five kilometres from the camp.
BW: Muhlberg.
PB: Muhlberg yeah and by this time her husband was a very high ranking Luftwaffe officer and when she moved to Muhlberg her husband came with her and we know that he visited the camp and we know that he met the commandant but we don’t know what happened there of course. We don’t know whether some informal arrangement was agreed between them or whatever but it was a fact that airmen were never allowed outside the camp because they’d just disappear but Barrington got outside the camp with French working parties several times, met his mother in Muhlberg and by early 1945 she was getting worried about what her fate would be when the Russians arrived and he reported that to the, to the escape committee and they decided she should be brought into the camp and the next time he went out he took some spare clothes [and met her] she came in to the camp, put in to RAF battledress and was hidden away under the stage in the theatre and stayed there for a few weeks till the end of the war. Not only until the end of the war but until we got away from the Russians but it took us a month to get away from the Russians.
BW: So you mention there about hiding her under the stage in the theatre -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In RAF battle dress uniform.
PB: Yeah.
BW: How did the, the tide of war affect you because many prisoners were forced on the long march but presumably if you were in Saxony in sort of lower -
PB: Yeah.
BW: South eastern Germany. Were you part of that of that -
PB: No.
BW: To evacuate the camps.
PB: No we weren’t in Poland. We were in Germany. Now, by this time the air was full of British and American fighter bombers. Everything that moved was attacked and the commandant gave us the opportunity, ‘If you want to be marched west across the Elbe we’ll take you,’ and the Poles of course jumped at that chance. They didn’t want to be with the Russians. And we said, ‘No. We’ll stay where we are until our allies arrive.’ [Laughs] Our allies.
BW: So you all managed to stay in the camp without being evacuated.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so this Mrs Barrington stayed in the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Theatre at this time.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Under your protection.
PB: Yeah she kept hidden. Eventually, when the, when the Russians arrived they made no arrangements whatever for us and so all we could do was break down this perimeter fence and stream out into the countryside to search for food and that went on for about three days and then the Russians got themselves organised and clamped down on it. We came and got a bargaining counter. They held thousands of British and Americans and there were tens of hundreds of thousands of Russians in the west and the Russians wanted them back. Many, many of them even wore German uniforms and they knew if they went back they knew what their fate would be so they didn’t want to go back so there was a lot of bargaining and we were part of the Russians strong hand and then they marched us out of the camp, marched quite a considerable distance and they put us into what was obviously a big maintenance depot full of huge workshops and we were billeted there and still nothing was happening so we began to drift off in twos and threes and tried to make our way across the river on our own which eventually we did. We, we were relieved by the Russians on St George’s Day, the 23rd of April and I reached the American lines on my 24th birthday. The 23rd of May. Exactly one month later. And then it was like moving from hell in to heaven. I lived for a week on steak and ice cream.
BW: You didn’t, you’d been on such bad rations there was no problem moving to that sort of -
PB: No. No. Never had any -
BW: High protein diet.
PB: A lot of people spent a lot of time sat down with their trousers around their ankles [laughs]
BW: You obviously had a tougher constitution.
PB: Yeah -
BW: So it didn’t affect you.
PB: It didn’t affect me. But oh it was great with the Americans. Even went to the cinema. They had a mobile cinema. I saw a film about a book which I’d read whilst in Germany. And then, then we were flown by Dakota to Brussels and handed over to the British. We arrived in Brussels on a Saturday afternoon. The British gave us a ten shilling note and a handful of Belgian coins and turned us loose on Brussels for a Saturday night [laughs]. And the next day we climbed on board a Stirling and flew back to Kent and from Kent we went up to Cosford which was a receiving centre and Cosford had been my first station in 1940.
BW: So this was almost a reverse of your trip out there because you’d gone out on a Stirling.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then you were flown back from Brussels to Kent in a Stirling.
PB: In a Stirling.
BW: How did it feel to be back on your old sort of type of plane again?
PB: Oh it was funny really. About, about four Stirlings and one Lancaster landed and everybody but me and two other fellas ran for the one Lancaster. [laughs] I was more than happy to get into a Stirling.
BW: And that, that night in Brussels when you’d got a ten shilling note in your hand.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And a few Belgian pennies that must have been pretty memorable. How did it, how did it feel?
PB: I had a terrible emotional shock. There was a great big underground convenience and I was stood in there weeing away and in walked two women cleaners [laughs] and that rather set me back. I don’t remember much about what happened that night actually. I know I’d no money left at the end of it.
BW: Justifiably lost in celebration I think.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so you were only twenty four at that stage.
PB: I’d just had my twenty fourth birthday, yes.
BW: And you, I guess you got, in retrospect, you got back to the UK pretty quick. I mean the war had only been over sort of three weeks when you were then passed over to the, to the British.
PB: Yeah.
BW: In May.
PB: Yeah.
BW: ‘Cause obviously some guys in service had to wait a long time to be repatriated.
PB: Oh some didn’t get back until well after the September.
BW: And so when you get back to Cosford.
PB: Yeah.
BW: What happened then? Were you able to, I mean, were you still in touch with your other crewmates at this point in your -
PB: No. No. Long lost them somewhere along the way. We were, first of all we were made to give a written description of how we were shot down which seemed to me to be to be a waste of time and then we were medically examined and bathed and haircuts and kitted out with new uniform and then we were sent on six weeks leave on double rations and by this time of course I’d been, I’d been qualified long enough to have become a warrant officer. And I had a lot of back pay. Got paid all the time.
BW: And how, how did they pay you? ‘Cause now it goes straight into your bank account but then did they give you cash?
PB: Cash.
BW: Or did they give you a cheque?
PB: I can’t remember. I can’t remember. I didn’t have a bank account so I don’t, I don’t really know. I know I had a lot of money to come. Several hundred pounds. I’d earned it. [laughs]
BW: Absolutely.
PB: I’d done more damage to German morale as a prisoner than I ever did as - [laughs]
BW: If I can, if I can just hop back to a point you made in the camp. You said there was an escape committee.
PB: Yes.
BW: And as I say they’re sort of impressions of, of “The Great Escape” come to mind. Were there any escape attempts made there?
PB: Oh yes there were people escaping all the time.
BW: Successfully?
PB: A couple of hours, two days. Maybe a week if you were lucky.
BW: So there was quite an active escape -
PB: Oh yes, yes.
BW: Committee from the RAF there.
PB: Oh yes there was a lot of escaping. What, what, what was a popular thing from time to time a British soldiers would come through the camp to be registered and recorded and photographed etcetera and then sent out on working parties and some airmen got the idea it would be easier to escape from a working party then from the camp and so they exchanged identities and this in the end caused tremendous confusion to the Germans because there was a New Zealand soldier, a Desert Rat who’d been captured and held in prison in Italy and he’d escaped and got in with a with a group of partisans and as he was the only professional as it were amongst the partisans he soon became their leader and he carried out minor acts of sabotage and he became a sort of Robin Hood and rumours were circulated about this new Zealander who was doing this, that and the other and the Germans got to learn of this and eventually they captured him and they decided to send him to Germany for trial but it wasn’t known whether he was to go to Berlin or to Leipzig so as 4b was about halfway between the two he came to 4b and was locked up in the [straflagge] and there he made contact with French working parties. French used to work in there regularly and the French notified the British and it was known that if he went to either Berlin or Leipzig and was put on trial he’d be found guilty and he’d be shot and so they decided that he had to be rescued and a plot was formed and the French removed a window from the room where the showers were in the [straflagge] and put it back in a temporary position and he was briefed that when it was known that he was going to leave he was to insist upon having a shower and he was to go in to the shower room and escape from this window and be smuggled in to the camp and one day quite out of the blue we were all told to get over to the French compound as quickly as we could and to start a riot and we all got there and started fighting and jostling and messing and shouting and all the German cars were rushing to the French compound and this chappie escaped and he was hidden above a ceiling in a hut up in the dark, in the rafters and remained hidden until the end of the war. And the gestapo arrived and they made our lives hell for a week and they tore the camp to pieces and eventually we put about the rumour that he’d now left the camp and was on a train going to Switzerland so they all moved out to Switzerland [laughs] to the railway lines then and we were left in peace but he remained in the camp until the end of the war and eventually got back to New Zealand.
BW: Wow.
PB: Remarkable story.
BW: I mean yeah he was -
PB: I’ve got his name somewhere in a book but I can’t remember it off hand.
BW: It would be interesting to, to find his name and look him up.
PB: Well I can get it for you.
BW: Doesn’t, doesn’t need to be straightaway. We can get that afterwards.
PB: I can get it for you in a flash.
BW: Ok well just pause the recording for a moment.
PB: So we’re just looking at a book here called “Survival In Stalag Luft 4b”
BW: Yeah.
PB: And his name is Tony Hunt.
BW: Terry.
PB: Terry.
BW: Terry Hunt.
[pause]
PB: 136
[pause]
PB: Frederick William Ward he’s called.
BW: Frederick William Ward.
PB: Yeah. Born in February 1912. Captured in North Africa in July ‘42. [pause] That will tell you about him there.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Fred Ward and this is, this is in the book by Tony Vercoe um which I’ll look up.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Um it says that he, he was captured and then interrogated and then will go into more detail about the activities with the French workers as you say. There’s a description there.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then this lady you mentioned is called Florence Barrington.
PB: That’s right. Mrs Barrington.
BW: With a thirteen year old son, married a German photographer and that also gives us the correct name of, just so that I’ve got it right, Muhlberg M U H L B E R G so that helps identify -
PB: Yeah. Muhlberg.
BW: The camp.
PB: Muhlberg on the Elbe.
BW: Yeah. What I’ll do if you don’t mind I’ll have a look at this separately and sort of off air of the recording.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But that, that’s great that is good information.
PB: Yes. You’ve got the full story there.
BW: So we were talking just briefly before about some of the escape attempts and how you’d helped to rescue this New Zealander from, from being shot.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Were there any other memorable attempts at all?
PB: Yes. Yes, there was one other memorable one. I had a friend, Fred Heathfield, who was a Halifax pilot with 51 squadron. He’d been shot, he’d crashed landed a Halifax on three engines in the pitch dark in Belgium and lived to tell the tale and I think the only thing that kept him alive was that he had his parachute on his chest and that took the main force of the impact. He got two black eyes and a broken nose. He was eventually captured in an hotel in Paris but he was, he was a pilot. I was a flight engineer. There was a Luftwaffe field a few kilometres away from the camp and Fred and I decided that if we could steal a JU88 we could fly at low level to Sweden and we, we started to try to get some information about German aircraft but by this time the Germans had issued a warning to all prison camps saying that because of the seriousness of the war situation there were certain areas of Germany which could not be identified but which were of importance to the, to the safety of the country and anybody caught in such an area without authority would be shot out of hand so we decided not to bother and we gave what information we had to an Australian pilot. What was his name? I’ve got a book by him in there. Anyway, this Australian pilot had a Canadian bomb aimer in his crew and I think he’d been brought up in the French speaking part of Canada because he spoke French like a native and also had quite a good knowledge of German and they decided that they would put this plan into operation but instead of flying to Sweden they would fly east and land behind Russian lines and give themselves over which to me sounded like a suicide note. And they left the camp. They went they went out with a work, we agreed to provide cover for three days so for three days the Germans wouldn’t know they were missing and they went out with a working party and disappeared and it was the night of Dresden. The night they went out was the night of Dresden and they, they, they walked. They were stopped several times and were able to convince whoever stopped them that they were French volunteers who were being moved from one job to another job and were on their way there and they got to this airfield and they lay up in the woods surrounding the airfield to watch what was going on and a JU88 landed and it was refuelled and they thought that’s it. So they find a log of wood and they picked it up and put it on their shoulders and marched to the edge of the airfield, put it down, got inside the JU and, what was his name? Anyway, he sat in the cockpit looking at the instruments and the controls and sorting out what’s what and the ground crew come back and said, ‘What are you doing in here? Foreign workers aren’t allowed in German aircraft. Clear off.’ And they got out, they picked up their log of wood. They walked back to the camp and I remember it plainly I was stood at one end of the hut and the door was at the far end and suddenly, Geoff his name was, Geoff and his bomb aimer Smith come walking down the hut and the Germans never knew they’d been away. Never knew they’d been away. And they’d been sat in a JU88.
BW: And they’d nearly got away with it.
PB: If they’d landed. I mean the Russians didn’t ask questions. If you got out of a German aircraft they shot you.
BW: Yeah.
PB: It was the daftest idea I’ve ever come across in my life but that’s what they’d decided on. Geoff Taylor. He was, he was, he was a journalist in Australia and he wrote a book called “Piece of Cake” which had a forward by Butch Harris of all people. I’ve got a copy in there and that was the most audacious escape but of course like all other escapes it came to nothing in the end.
BW: And were there quite a few others who tried and -
PB: Oh yes. It was sport.
BW: Captured.
PB: It was sport. This notice that the Germans issued said escaping is no longer a sport but that’s what it had been. When you read about people who spend all their time organising an escape they’re just a bloody nuisance to everybody. They ruin life in the camp. Everybody has to give way to them. They’re not going anywhere. They might be out for a week but they’re back.
BW: And in the meantime everybody else is perhaps suffering.
PB: Everybody’s inconvenienced, yeah.
BW: Yeah but they’re getting more inspections presumably.
PB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To have a fella like Bader in your camp must have been hell. Absolute hell.
BW: That’s why they decided to put him in Colditz.
[pause]
BW: And you hadn’t been tempted to try yourself. You were making yourself a nuisance in the camp you made life -
PB: Only this -
BW: Miserable for the Germans.
PB: Mad plan we had to fly to Sweden which we gave up on. It was impossible. But we had an Australian pilot killed in the camp in a flying accident. This Luftwaffe camp was only a few kilometres away and once the airmen there realised that there were now airmen in 4b occasionally they’d come over and give us a bit of a, a bit of a thrill. They did and they’d come across in a JU86 which was an obsolete bomber based on a, on a civil aircraft. It was a bit like a Hudson it was and it were coming over the camp in a shallow dive right along the full length of the French compound which was the biggest and climb away and all the airmen in the compound would be going like this.
BW: Waving.
PB: And the army went mad. The army said, ‘You’re going to kill us all the way you’re going.’ You know, these lads know what they’re doing. Anyway, one came over one day and it wasn’t an 86 it was an 88 a powerful, big, powerful machine and he came perhaps a bit steeper than usual and when he pulled up his tail mushed in and his tail went into a wire fence and it dragged about twenty feet of wire and two or three fence posts with it. The tail plane hit this, hit this Canadian pilot who was walking around the compound. Killed him instantly. One of the posts hit his companion and badly injured him and I was in our own compound and I could see through the French huts and I saw this thing. It was no higher than that. I don’t know why the airstream wasn’t tucked in the ground and eventually it climbed away with all this wire streaming behind him and the Luftwaffe gave a splendid funeral to this Australian and we were told that the pilot had been stripped of his brevvy, stripped of his rank, and posted to the eastern front as a common foot soldier. I think, it think they just told us that to pacify us. I can’t believe for a moment that that’s what happened but that’s the story they gave us but to be killed in a flying accident walking around a prison compound it’s a bit much isn’t it?
BW: Yeah and as you say there’s got to be some for the tail wheel to be that close to the ground that there’s got to be the plane itself has got to be very, very low.
PB: It was no higher -
BW: Ten feet or less
PB: Than that. I don’t know why the airstream wasn’t hitting the ground.
BW: And that you’re indicating’s about two foot -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Three foot.
PB: Yeah I just saw it go I could see it between the huts.
BW: Wow.
PB: And then it just climbed away with all the stuff just trailing behind it. Beautiful piece of flying. Wonderful skilled bit of flying.
BW: Just unfortunate consequence.
PB: Yeah. So we did get excitement from time to time.
BW: How did it feel when the Russians came to liberate? I mean -
PB: Oh -
BW: You must have had a pretty limited amount of information getting through and an impression of what the Russian forces were like. How did it feel when they -
PB: Well -
BW: Came into the camp?
PB: Well the first thing on the newsreels I’d seen pictures of refugees in France and suddenly early in April we got German refugees going past the camp and it was, it was an incredible sightseeing German refugees like that and they were streaming past the camp to get over the Elbe. And then we could -
BW: The Elbe must have been quite close to the camp
PB: Oh it was only about five kilometres and then we heard gunfire and then on St George ’s day early in the morning someone rushed into our hut shouting, ‘The Cossacks are here,’ and we went out and on the main road there were four of the scruffiest most dreadful looking men I’ve ever seen in my life. On horseback. Oh they did, they looked murderous, every one and they were loaded down with sandbags full of food and ammunition and God knows what and they just sat there and later in the day the infantry arrived and they made no provision for us whatsoever. Nothing. So we just broke out of the camp to steal food and steal drink as well and steal women as well no doubt but the Russians clamped on that and then they started to register us and they were going to send us to a Black Sea port, Odessa or some sort of place, and sail us home from there they said. When the Americans are only five miles away. The other side of the river. And they started to register us and they had great big women, great big fat women, tables outside, taking the records, and they got some funny ones. There was a Micky Mouse and James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and it became chaotic and eventually we just said oh blow this and they packed it in and then they moved us, as I say, out of the camp and up into this maintenance depot.
BW: So they realised you were giving them some spoof names -
PB: Yeah.
BW: And not helping at all
PB: We sat in this maintenance depot about five of us who were all together and suddenly the most horrible screaming and I said the Russians have either got a woman or they’ve got a pig let’s go and to find out which it is. So we followed the noise and we came to a place and there were two Russians. There was one dead pig lying down and there’s another Russian with a pig like a cello with his hand way inside of it and the pig screaming away and we sit and we watch all this and we’re thinking they’ll give us something and we watch and we wait and eventually they killed it and they cut off the ears and gave us the ears. They took two pigs and gave us the bloody ears off one of pig.
BW: And kept the rest for themselves. And in general when they, as you put it, got their act together in terms of organising the camp presumably they re-erected the fence post that had been torn down.
PB: It became a far, far, far worse place than it had ever been.
BW: Yeah.
PB: They turned it into a punishment camp for German civilians. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Germans died in that camp over the next five years and so the natives at Muelburg are attached to us really. We both suffered in that camp. It was a dreadful place. What it must have been like when it was dreadful when we were there. What it must have been like.
BW: And they weren’t bringing the civilians in while you were there?
PB: No, no.
BW: They presumably -
PB: No. It was after, after they’d repaired it and repaired all the damage we’d done.
BW: Yeah.
PB: And I think it was about five years they had it as a punishment camp. Must have been hell on earth. Hell on earth. Hundreds if not thousands died and this was just because of complaining about some regulation or other that the Russians had imposed. Anything at all, straight in there. Shocking that.
BW: But they didn’t, did they impose a regime on you as RAF crew waiting to be repatriated during that sort of interim period of April, May.
PB: Well it was all chaos. It was all chaos. I had quite an experience on VE day. They had their VE day a day later than ours because apparently they weren’t satisfied with the arrangements that the west had made so they decided to have their own, their own VE day the next day and I was, I was walking in the German town. Why I was alone and not with any of my friends I don’t know but I was alone and I was walking through this town and suddenly two Russian officers grabbed me and took me to their mess and gave me a huge meal. All, all looted German property of course. Animals, vegetables. The lot. And a particular sweet which I learned later was made from sour milk and it was absolutely gorgeous and after the meal they took me to a public hall where there was to be an address by a general followed by a concert and it was full of full of Russian soldiers, men and women, in all sorts of different uniforms and this general came onto the stage and I got, I got an example of what it was it was like being in a totalitarian state. He made a speech and the only words I heard were Churchill and Roosevelt every now and again he’d pause and somewhere at the very back of the, of the gallery [clapping sound] and immediately everybody’s clapping and immediately they all stopped like that.
BW: As if somebody was coordinating it.
PB: Someone’s coordinating. The whole thing was coordinated and eventually the speech finishes and we had this concert and it was absolutely fantastic. Oh the music and the dancing and the singing unbelievable. Unbelievable concert. It was terrific. Now what happened when it finished I’ve no idea. I haven’t a clue what happened to me that night. Not a clue. Not the slightest idea. I know I joined up with my friends the next day but what happened that night I don’t, I’ve no idea but I’ve never seen anything like the performance that these women who seemed to just move like that.
BW: Gracefully across -
PB: No, no leg movement at all.
BW: The stage yeah.
PB: And the Cossacks down on their heels kicking. Oh it was a fantastic concert and the singing and the balalaika playing. A night to remember that was. And that was VE day. VE day Russian version.
BW: How had you managed to celebrate it in the camp at all? You mentioned it was quite different to our celebration were there any –
PB: Well we didn’t know. We didn’t know it was VE day.
BW: So the only indication you got was from the Russians when they -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Held their celebrations.
PB: And as I say by this time we weren’t in the camp and in fact we’d broken and were trying to get across to the Americans on our own.
BW: And you mention you were in the town at this stage in Muhlberg.
PB: Ahum.
BW: What, what was it like what was your sense of being in the town? Were there, firstly, was it damaged but also were there German civilians who might be hostile.
PB: No.
BW: To the RAF at all.
PB: The civilians couldn’t get us in to their houses fast enough. We were never we were never short of somewhere to sleep or somewhere to wash.
BW: Right.
PB: Because I think the theory was if ten drunken Russians hammered on the door at midnight looking for women we would go to the door and say it was under British occupation you’ll have to go next door. It never worked out in practice [thank God] but that was the theory I think. They couldn’t get us into their houses fast enough.
BW: So a bit I suppose a bit of a protection there for them if the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: If the Russians had seen western RAF aircrew in a house -
PB: Yeah.
BW: They would be less likely -
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: To interfere with it.
PB: And we slept we slept on a feather bed with a feather bed on top of us with a great big bed oh it was wonderful.
BW: And the Germans managed to put you up in the sense that they would feed you as well.
PB: Yes. Yes,
BW: Even though they would have probably been rationed at this stage and -
PB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they couldn’t do enough for us.
BW: And did you get to go back to Muhlberg in the intervening years?
PB: No, because I don’t know where we were. I don’t know where the Russians had moved us to.
BW: Right.
PB: The, the Stalag 4b Association organised trips to Muhlberg later and they became very popular because the Muhlberg people themselves were in the same boat but I never went. In fact they had a trip this year starting off in Berlin and moving down to Muhlberg.
BW: And when you came back to the UK we picked up the story at Cosford and we picked up the extra pay that you’d been awarded.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you were washed and brushed up. What then happened to you sort of post war from Cosford?
PB: Well I was given three options. I could come out immediately or I could go to oh what’s the Yorkshire town, the spa town?
BW: Harrogate.
PB: Harrogate. On a rehabilitation course and then come out or I could opt to stay in until my normal release date. Well I thought there was still a chance of getting back on flying and getting out east and bombing Japan so I opted to stay in and I got posted to a, to a Mosquito squadron near, near Newcastle and there, there I became in effect the squadron warrant officer. I sat in an office all day doing nothing but we had a very, very good rugby team. Our sports, our sports officer was a first class scrub half and we had a very good rugby team and we won the group cup without any difficulty and we got drawn in for the semi-final of the national cup and we got drawn away against Ringway and we came down to Ringway and we found that although paratroopers are army the people who trained them were airmen and practically every one of them was a rugby league professional. So, we turned out on a rugby pitch at Ringway about six hundred red cap paratroopers lying around the pitch cheering their side on. We were up against these great hulking fellas who were fit like butchers dogs. Oh they murdered us. Absolutely murdered us.
BW: And do you still retain an interest in rugby league despite that? Do you follow -
PB: Not rugby league. I don’t like rugby league but we were, they were playing rugby union but they were rugby league professionals.
BW: Right.
PB: But when we got back, when we got back to Acklington I thought that’s it. There’s nothing, nothing doing for me now so I asked to be released and I was released within days.
BW: And was that in 1945?
PB: That would, no, it would be 1946.
BW: ’46.
PB: Yeah.
BW: From Acklington and from then on what happened in your civilian life?
PB: Well, I couldn’t settle.
BW: Your post war life.
PB: I couldn’t settle. I got I got a job as a clerk with a, with a big chemical manufacturing company and I was in this office with about six other people who were as dull as ditchwater, been there forever and all I was doing was calculating lorry loads [eight car loads used to go there and six car loads to go there?] making up that and oh it was absolutely soul destroying. I stuck it I think for three months and then I thought I can’t, I can’t, I can’t settle to this so I then decided I thought the only way to get some companionship again, get some comradeship again was if I joined the police force so I went to, I went to the police station in Burnley and they said, ‘We’ve no, we’ve no vacancies but we can put you in touch with our central organisation.’ So they did and I was called for interview at Wallasey and got into the Wallasey force with three other people and when we went to the police training school we found that three people on the course were Burnley recruits. Burnley. But this gave me my first insight into the police they were recruiting people but they wouldn’t recruit Burnley people. They wouldn’t have anybody who lived in the town going into the police force. So that was the first lie from the police. I worked hard. I came out top of the class and we got to Wallasey and for the first fortnight I was sent out on patrol with another policeman who’d been on patrol for years and I learned how to, I learned which cafes you could sit in the back rooms of and drink coffee and I learned all sort of tricks that really you shouldn’t be doing and it was a complete and utter waste of time and in a small force like Wallasey the opportunity for promotion were very, very few and far between. You had people who had been pounding the beat for fifteen years. They’d passed their sergeants examinations, they passed their inspectors examinations and they were still pounding the beat and the only way you could get on was to curry favour. Start oozing up to some officers and telling tales. It was the exact opposite of comradeship. Everybody’s telling tales about everybody. I thought I can’t stick this so I resigned from that and I was playing rugby in Burnley then and one of the team was a cotton mill owner and he said, ‘If you ever want a proper job I’ll give you a job in a cotton mill,’ so I went to work in his cotton mill and that was no good. And all the time I’m in touch with my bomb aimer’s father. Had regular correspondence and I said to him, ‘I can’t settle I’m going to go back into the air force.’ And he said, ‘Well don’t do anything for the next fortnight,’ and I received a letter -
[interview transmission interrupted]
BW: Alright, so we’re only, we’re only a couple of minutes from the end and I was just asking Mr Phillip Bates that after the end of the war in conclusion he’d said that he’d had a good war but it had had its moments um that were not entirely enjoyable but that overall he’d enjoyed it, his service in the RAF but I was asking just about the commemorations and the national, now centre, at Lincoln and you mentioned that you’d been down to London for the unveiling of the memorial there.
PB: Yeah.
BW: At Green Park.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you got to meet Camilla as well did you say?
PB: Yes Camilla and the Prince of Wales. I got to shake both their hands. The Prince of Wales surprised me really. It was probably, it was probably the hottest day of the year and everybody had taken his blazer off and I was wearing my Raf Ex-Pow Association tie and the Prince of Wales came along and immediately recognised my tie which surprised me. And as he shook my hand he said, ‘Where did they keep you?’ I said, ‘Stalag 4b, sir.’ He said, ‘Were you a digger?’ I said, ‘Oh no I wasn’t a digger, sir. No. I left that to other people,’ and he was quite jovial and then of course he moved on and made his way down the line but I was amazed that he recognised my tie instantly.
BW: That’s a very nice point that, you know, he’s identified you by that.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And spoke to you particularly because of it.
PB: And part of the Royal Air Force. I’ve got photographs of it all.
BW: And how about now that there’s a centre for Bomber Command in Lincoln?
PB: Well yes he’s lost his football again. I was due to go there and a friend of mine, Dominic was taking me but when it came to it I wasn’t fit to go. I couldn’t have sat in a car for three hours. I just couldn’t. And then another three hours coming back. And Dominic also had a cold so we were ashamed to admit it and then again it’s Lincoln. It’s Lancasters. Bugger the Lancasters I say.
BW: Well perhaps it didn’t prove as reliable as the Stirling because it didn’t fly. They were trying to get the Lancaster flying for the Friday unveiling but they didn’t and I think it may have flown -
PB: Yeah.
BW: The day after but -
PB: What annoys me they chopped up every Stirling. Now, you think they could, it was the first four engine aircraft we had. You’d think they could have had two or three for museums wouldn’t you?
BW: Ahum.
PB: But no they chopped up the lot and that really does grieve me.
BW: And even now they’ve got a Halifax in Elvington.
PB: Oh I’ve seen that.
BW: Which is nicely renovated and so on.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Doesn’t fly.
PB: And it’s got, it’s got the Stirling’s engines in it as well. It hasn’t got Rolls Royce in it it’s got Hercules. It’s a mark iii. It’s that one. The mark iii.
BW: That’s the picture on the wall yeah. And there is a Halifax that they dug out or pulled out of a Norwegian fjord in 1973.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And that is in the Royal Air Force Museum in London.
PB: Yeah. Well for years we hoped that they’d would find a Stirling somewhere but er somewhere in Holland but they never did.
BW: Ahum ahum.
PB: A great shame because it was a beautiful aeroplane.
BW: Could take, from what you were saying, could take a fair bit of punishment and keep flying.
PB: Yeah it was a lot bigger than a Lancaster of course but it had some disadvantages you see. It couldn’t fly high and it couldn’t carry big bombs. It didn’t have a bomb bay. It had three separate ones which gave immense strength to the fuselage because you had these girders running the full length but you could only get a two thousand pound bomb in it so we mostly carried incendiaries.
BW: So just thinking in brief terms about the structure of a bomber formation in that case because you’d see that the pathfinders were going first to mark the target.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Presumably the Stirlings would then go in with the incendiaries.
PB: No. No, we were our main raid was either five or sometimes six waves.
BW: Right.
PB: And the Stirlings were always in the third wave. We got some protection from the first two waves going out and some protection from the last two waves coming back because we were a bit slower than they were. So we were always in the third wave.
BW: Right.
PB: Except, except Peenemunde. Now, that, that’s a terrible story. The night before Peenemunde we went to, we went to Turin and somewhere our radio packed in and we didn’t get the message telling us that East Anglia was fogged up and we had to land in Kent or Sussex. Wherever we could. We didn’t get that message so we arrived back at Lakenheath and asked for instructions to land and they said. ‘You can’t land here. It’s totally fogbound but if you get over to Oakington you might just get down.’ Well, we got over to Oakington, the other side of Cambridge and we just landed. They closed the, closed the airfield immediately we landed and they debriefed us and fed us and provided us with beds and in the early afternoon we went down to the airfield and the Lancasters of seven group were being bombed up and we knew we were on again that night and we were going on leave the so next day so we weren’t anxious to go bombing that night. Anyway, we’d no choice we started the port outer. Come to the port inner, nothing. The starter motor was dead. The starter motors they had in Oakington would fit a Lancaster, it wouldn’t have fit us so we rang Lakenheath to tell them. Eventually a lorry arrives with some fitters and a new starter motor and we landed at Lakenheath just as the squadron is taxiing out for take-off and we were very, very happy because we were going on leave the next day and then I discover we’d missed bloody Peenemunde and at Peenemunde the Stirlings went in first at five thousand feet in brilliant moonlight and all the fighters were circling in Berlin because Mosquitos were dropping target indicators on Berlin. The Germans got away scot free. Eventually the Germans twigged what was happening and got the fighters over and shoot down forty Lancasters and Halifaxes. Stirlings, scot free.
BW: And because you, they’d have been in the first wave.
PB: Yeah.
BW: They got away with it.
PB: There were three, there were three targets. The first one was at the very southern end was all the housing and the Stirlings destroyed that and then the next waves destroyed the science laboratories and then the assembly works and we missed it and it’s grieved me the rest of my life. I’d have given anything to have been on that raid and we were so happy that we weren’t. Oh, a friend of mine got shot down that night. No. I’d have loved to have been on Peenemunde.
BW: I mean that was, that was announced at fairly short notice. It was, you know sometimes a raid has to be planned quite well in advance.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But this was because of the intelligence about the weapons.
PB: Yeah.
BW: They were developing their short notice.
PB: The crews weren’t told, they were told that they were attacking an experimental place for new radar [and the better job of the radar they’d better defend themselves because they destroy all the latest airborne radar] that was the story that was given to aircrews.
BW: Interesting.
PB: Oh I’d have given anything to have been on that raid. Anything. Five thousand feet, brilliant moonlight and you were the first in.
BW: As you say it’s how fate goes isn’t it?
PB: Yeah.
BW: But -
PB: I’ve just been to the funeral of a friend of mine. George. He trained in Canada as a navigator. As a Mosquito navigator which is a specialised navigation job. He qualifies, he gets his brevvy, he’s ready to join the squadron and the war stops. They never even, he never even saw a Mosquito. Oh what a terrible thing to have happen to you. Terrible.
BW: Gone through all that. Well, I was reading in the prep really that they launched a raid on Peenemunde.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And just looking here at some of this um yeah it says here that 149 squadron took part in the early offensive against Germany.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And took part in the first thousand bomber raids with Stirlings.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Made a significant contribution to the battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Hamburg and the raid against the V weapons experimental station at Peenemunde.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then between February and July ‘44 and in addition to dropping high explosives on the enemy the squadron helped supply the French maquis with supplies, arms and ammunition by parachute.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Of course that would be after you’d been shot down.
PB: About eight weeks after we were shot down Stirlings were taken off German targets completely. Some of them converted to Lancasters. Those that kept their Stirlings were used to drop supplies in France and to do mine laying and later to tow, to tow gliders but they never went to Germany again. The loss rate was unsustainable. I’d been on raids where we lost one in every five Stirlings. You can’t, you can’t keep that up for very long.
BW: No. No. Not at all. Do you think there was a particular weakness perhaps in the Stirling that the losses were so high or was it just good -
PB: You couldn’t get any altitude.
BW: Just because they were restricted to -
PB: Yeah, yeah.
BW: Low ceiling.
PB: Altitude. I mean, I had friends who flew at twenty two thousand feet. On a good night we would get thirteen. On a poor night we would get eleven. Everything that was thrown up reached the Stirlings and everything that was coming down reached the Stirling as well [laughs].
BW: I think you mentioned at one point a bomb hit your aircraft. A bomb -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Dropped from the aircraft above.
PB: This was the Nuremberg. I think it must have been a thirty pound incendiary because it went straight through. If it had been a four pound I think it would have stayed in the wing and burned. If it had been [eighty] it would have taken the wing off. Left quite a sizable hole.
BW: I would just like to show you this. There’s a photo here of a Stirling crew of 149 squadron based at Lakenheath.
PB: Oh.
BW: And I just wonder whether you might recognise any of the names. It’s only a longshot.
PB: Oh.
BW: But there’s -
PB: As I say we never bothered with other crews really.
BW: No.
PB: Except the ones we trained with at -
BW: But it looks like it’s outside the mess at Lakenheath that picture.
PB: Yeah I don’t recognise the photograph. Crowe, that’s a familiar name, Crowe. Oh he was a POW that’s why I know him. Was he a flight engineer? I knew a Tweedy in prison but he was a soldier. I don’t recognise the faces at all. Don’t know why their wearing uniform instead of battledress but there we are. Battledress were far more comfortable. That’s interesting. 27th of September. Oh well they would have been newcomers on the squadron when we were there. The average life expectancy was only six weeks. I had two friends, both on Halifaxes -
BW: Thank you.
PB: Both shot down on their first trip and my friend who were in training, a flight engineer on 15 squadron did four operations and got shot down twice.
BW: Right. I think that sort of brings us to the end as I say unless there is anything else you want to say.
PB: Well I hope I haven’t bored you.
BW: Not at all sir. No not at all there’s plenty of information. Some really interesting and diverse experiences. It’s been very kind of you to share those with me.
PB: It’s a pleasure.
BW: So thank you very much -
PB: A pleasure.
BW: For your time um what I’ll do is I’ll come to the signing of the release form now and a couple of photos so I’ll end the recording there and we’ll sort out the paperwork.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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ABatesP151009
Title
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Interview with Philip Bates
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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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02:13:03 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary. Allocated S Coulter
Creator
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Brian Wright
Date
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2015-10-09
Description
An account of the resource
Philip Bates grew up in Lancashire and joined the Royal Air Force in 1940. He served as ground crew with Coastal Command before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 149 Squadron until his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Poland
England--Lancashire
England--Suffolk
Poland--Tychowo
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Nuremberg
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
149 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
displaced person
Dulag Luft
entertainment
fear
final resting place
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
home front
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lysander
Manchester
Me 110
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Nissen hut
prisoner of war
RAF Lakenheath
RAF St Athan
RAF Waterbeach
Resistance
Scarecrow
searchlight
shot down
Stirling
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/364/5756/PGreenCF1609.2.jpg
dc4dec751430f156e43302ca638dda54
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/364/5756/AGreenCF160329.1.mp3
e44cabbdd1b57ce2a07c3f72cabd3807
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Green, Charles Frederick
Charles Green
C F Green
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
2016-03-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Green, CF
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer Charles Frederick Green DFC (b. 1921, 178730 Royal Air Force). As a mid-upper gunner, he completed 34 operations with 429 Squadron at RAF Leeming and 75 Squadron at RAF Mepal.
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
BW: This is Brian Wright from International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Flying Officer Charles Green at 3.15pm on Tuesday the 29th of March 2016 at his home in Poulton, Lancashire. Start off with, Flying Officer Green, can you tell me where you were born and what your date of birth is please?
CG: My date of birth is 28 10 ‘21. I was born in Peckham, South East London.
BW: How many people were in your family? Did you have brothers and sisters?
CG: I’ve got two brothers. I did have a sister who passed away soon after she was born I’m afraid.
BW: And growing up, what sort of family life did you have?
CG: Oh great. Alright. Brilliant. Yes.
BW: I mean you were in sort of South East London actually in -
CG: Well I -
BW: The urban area weren’t you?
CG: That’s right but I was born in 1921 but in 1930 my parents wanted to move out of London which we did eventually and in 1930 we went to Dagenham in Essex.
BW: Right.
CG: Which was very countrified at that time. No buses, no trains or anything like that.
BW: And no large factories there like there are now.
CG: Sorry?
BW: No large factories there like there are now.
CG: No not now no. It’s different again now.
BW: And -
CG: Apparently -
BW: And, so what was your schooling like?
CG: What was what?
BW: Your schooling like. What sort of subjects did you do at school?
CG: Hist, oh dear, just the usual. Arithmetic, history, geography, things like that but we didn’t touch trigonometry and maths and all that until 1935. Halfway through 1935 [background noise] we went on to a bit of trigonometry and maths and all that but by that time it was a bit too late for me to pick it up.
BW: And so what, what, what year did you finish school? How old were you when you finished your schooling?
CG: I was fourteen. 1935. Christmas 1935 I left. Fourteen.
BW: And what happened after that? Where did you, where did go after that?
CG: After that I, my, my father got me in to the printing industry, Brown Knight and Truscott’s in London and I started to serve a seven-year apprenticeship in the machine room but there again the war came along and halfway through and put a stop to it. In which, first off I went on to the, when the war started I went on the ARP and then ran messages for the police. We all did. All half a dozen of us, of a gang of us and as I say we continued with the ARP at weekends and at night and then when 1941 came I was, I was nineteen then so I volunteered for the RAF which I went to the late, during '41 I went to the technical college to try and improve me grammar, education if you like and eventually I got called up. I got my RAF papers January 1942 and reported to the RAF at Lords Cricket Ground on the 26th of January 1942 and that was it. I was in the RAF.
BW: So just going back to the early part of the war because you’d gone in to the civilian -
CG: ARP.
BW: [unclear] forces as an ARP.
CG: Yeah the first off -
BW: And -
CG: Sorry?
BW: That’s alright and you must have, did you see much of the Blitz at that time because Dagenham isn’t that far from London?
CG: Oh yes. Going up to work it took us, it took my father and meself ages to get, a couple of hours to get to work because of the previous night’s bombing, the traffic was all haywire. Trains were, it was a case of getting on the underground so many stations, getting off, getting on a bus, two more, a couple of miles, to getting off again, getting back on the train into London and then walking from there to your firm where you worked with all the firefighters doing their work trying to clear up and knocking down buildings because, which was the, well you can imagine, pandemonium really. You were supposed to start work at eight, eight o’clock in the morning but we were getting there about half past ten like everybody else. Everybody else was the in the same boot you know it wasn’t just us.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Everybody [unclear]. And the same thing at night when you used to knock off at six and you didn’t get home 'till about eight or nine o’clock. Just a similar thing in reverse.
BW: And so you were working as an apprentice at this time.
CG: [unclear].
BW: But you doing your ARP in the evening and weekends.
CG: Yeah.
BW: So -
CG: Well I was doing it at night.
BW: Yeah.
CG: If you were on and then at weekends yeah but previous to that we used to run, we started running messages for the police ‘cause they didn’t have a, didn’t have a ruddy big police force at that time so that they asked for youths who weren’t in the forces who had a bike would they run messages for the police so we volunteered and then when they got the reserves, the police reserves, they didn’t want us obviously so we took up this air raid post. Yeah.
BW: Did you get to see any of the messages or know what the messages were about that you were running for the police?
CG: Oh no. I don’t know. No, we got, I took, I only took one or two if I remember.
BW: Right.
CG: Yeah no just had to go to someone else, knock on the door to give them a message. Nothing, nothing, well there was one for me, personal. Apparently somebody had been killed in London and we had to notify the parents. The police did but because they didn’t have anybody available they sent me but when I got there, weren’t anybody in. They were out. So eventually the police came looking for me to take me, yeah. That’s right that [laughs]. Oh dear.
BW: And how did it feel as an ARP seeing the bombers come over during a raid?
CG: Well it was at night. You didn’t see them actually. You heard them but yeah oh yeah and sometimes the odd one dropped a bomb too, accidentally or whatever and when they went back they had to perhaps get rid of one which was like we used to do.
BW: Yeah. Yeah.
CG: But yeah. Aye.
BW: And what drew you to the RAF? You mentioned that you volunteered and got your call-up papers in January ‘42 so you’d had a good long spell really.
CG: Oh twelve months.
BW: ’41. Twelve months as an ARP.
CG: Yeah. Twelve months. I volunteered in January ‘41 and they said it’ll be quite a while so that’s when I went, I went on to this technical college to try and improve my how’s your father grammar.
BW: Yeah.
CG: But oh education I suppose you might say. It’s a long time ago in it?
BW: What drew you to the RAF though as opposed to say to the army and navy?
CG: Sorry?
BW: What drew you to the RAF as opposed to the army or navy?
CG: Well I didn’t, I didn’t fancy the navy or the army to be honest. My prescription, prescription my conscription was coming up. I’d have to go in whatever happened but I wanted to choose what I wanted to go in if I could and I was leaning towards the RAF. Yes.
BW: And did you want to be air crew from the outset or did you prefer to go -
CG: Well that was -
BW: As ground crew?
CG: When in front of the selection board they said, ‘You’re wanting to be wireless operator / air gunner?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Well what’s wrong with, why don’t you want to be a pilot?’ So I was frank, I said, ‘Well, I don’t think I’ve got the education qualities.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We could teach you. You could go to classes.’ So I said, ‘That’s alright,’ so I went. That’s when the twelve months previous I went to try and improve but, and when I first went in the RAF they sent me down to Brighton for air crew, air crew but it was all, I couldn’t do it. Trigonometry, maths. I couldn’t do that then. No. No. I knew I couldn’t but I tried, but there you are.
BW: And so you went straight -
CG: So -
BW: In as wireless op / air gunner.
CG: Yeah. Yes, I went wireless operator / air gunner and I finished up as an air gunner. Yeah. There was a wireless course but it's so complicated it would take me ages to explain that.
BW: And so once you’d joined up and had your basic training and then went on to the air gunnery course -
CG: Yeah.
BW: You started flying Ansons. Is that right?
CG: Yes. That was the first thing. I went through the ordinary course, you know the normal, normal gunnery taking it, taking guns to bits and putting them together and target practice and all that business and then, and then we went to air to air firing and we tried it on, we flew Ansons. That’s it.
BW: And were you assessed at these stages as to your accuracy of -?
CG: At the end of it yes. Yeah. Firing at a moving drogue. It was a ruddy job, we didn’t get very good results. Nobody did. And then from there oh dear Ansons yeah. From there -
BW: You said you went -
CG: That was -
BW: On to Whitleys.
CG: That was, where was it now? Ansons. No it wasn’t. I went to, oh I went oh that was ITW [?]. Went to Dalcross. Dalcross, oh I can’t see it. Oh Dalcross was the gunnery school. We finished up there. Oh dear.
BW: So looking at your logbook here it says 2 Air Gunnery School.
CG: Yeah but -
BW: Ansons.
CG: That’s right. Ansons. Yeah. And then we went to Honeybourne. Whitleys.
BW: Okay.
CG: It should be.
BW: Yeah. 24 OTU flying Whitleys.
CG: Whitleys. That’s right. Then from there we went to Croft. Halifaxes to start training. Start operations. Is that right? Should be.
BW: That’s right. Now this says 1664 Conversion Unit.
CG: Conversion Unit. Yeah that’s it. That was from the Whitley to the Halifax. Four, the Halifax, the four engine, similar to the -
BW: Yeah.
CG: Similar to the Lanc.
BW: How did you find that? What was that like when you started flying in those?
CG: Oh well the only thing it was a different kind of turret. You see on the Halifax, when you were on the Halifax it was electrically operated. In fact when you got in the turret you had a little joystick to move, move it around, with a button on top to press to fire your guns but on a Lancaster it was oil controlled and you had kind of a motorbike effect so when you held it you held it like a motorbike and if you depressed, depressed your hands that would move the turret and your fingers were in a guard and if you, the triggers were in the guard and if you squeezed the triggers it fired the guns.
BW: And so this is completely different from normal firing where people would look -
CG: Oh yeah.
BW: Through the fore sight and the rear sight.
CG: Oh yeah.
BW: And have the butt of the rifle in the shoulder. This is -
CG: Oh yeah, no, nothing yeah.
BW: Sort of using the guns to the side. Yeah.
CG: They were machine guns, yeah and then when I went — when I went on the Lancaster at the end I went underneath a point five and that was the nearest I can tell you about that is that that’s what the Yanks use in their Fortresses as near enough and you only had the one but they used to fire seven hundred and fifty a minute and you just sat, sat down there just in case somebody, you know, enemy came underneath ‘cause that’s what they were doing. The Messerschmitts, the Germans had the Messerschmitt 109, I think it was the 109 and they had an upper upward pointing gun and they used to fly under the bombers, point the gun and just fire.
BW: These would be the Messerschmitt 110s would they?
CG: 109.
BW: Well the 109 was a single engine fighter wasn’t it?
CG: That’s right yeah.
BW: But the, the 110 was a twin engine fighter.
CG: Yes. Yeah.
BW: With the cockpit and the cannon in the rear.
CG: Twin booms I think. Yeah.
BW: Yeah.
CG: But then they were a long time, long time doing that, bringing that underneath gun. They should have had it before. Anyway they brought that out and that’s how after I’d finished my first tour of ops when they recalled me again to my second one and that was to man the underneath gun. And that was at Mepal. 75 Squadron.
BW: Just coming back to your time on 429 Squadron you’ve gone through -
CG: 429 Canadian.
BW: That’s right. You’d gone through your conversion unit.
CG: That’s right.
BW: And you’ve now been posted to Leeming.
CG: That’s right again.
BW: 429 Squadron. It’s unusual perhaps that RAF crews serve with a Canadian unit as mixed. You would expect perhaps Canadian -
CG: Yeah.
BW: Crews complete. Were you a mixed crew?
CG: Yeah. Oh yes. The, in fact the navigator was a, was a Russian. His name, they called him Corkie. His parents had escaped from Russia at the revolution, Russian revolution. Bannoff his name was.
BW: Bannoff.
CG: Yeah.
BW: B A N O V?
CG: Bannoff I think it was. Bannoff. Yes that’s right. He was.
BW: And on this first crew do you remember who your pilot was?
CG: Oh yeah. Mitchell. He was a great bloke.
BW: And what, were they all NCOs? Was he an NCO as well?
CG: At the beginning yes but he was the first one to get commissioned.
BW: And do you recall his first name?
CG: I can. I ought to. We always called him Mitch. Leonard. Leonard. I think I’m right there. Leonard. Yeah. Don’t suppose it matters a lot though really but -
BW: And so with a Halifax you had a crew of five.
CG: No. No. Seven.
BW: Seven.
CG: Yeah. Oh yeah.
BW: Okay.
CG: Very good.
BW: Do you recall the others? The wireless operator.
CG: Yes. Yes just give me a minute then.
BW: That’s okay.
CG: The engineer was Bill Lawrence [pause]. The navigator was Corkie Bannoff [pause]. The wireless operator was Jamie Jameson.
BW: Jamie Jameson.
CG: Yeah. Used to call him Jamie. James, yeah, that’s it. Jameson. Yeah. Who else is there? Bannoff. How many have you got there?
BW: Including yourself that’s five. So there’s two gunners.
CG: Two more.
BW: There’s a rear gunner.
CG: Oh rear gunner.
BW: And mid up.
CG: Hunter. Eugene. Gene Hunter. Oh and the bomb aimer. The bomb aimer was, oh I can’t remember him now. Bomb aimer. Thompson. Tommy Thompson [pause]
BW: So he was the bomb aimer.
CG: That’s it. Yeah. You should have seven now.
BW: And the rear gunner was Gene Hunter.
CG: Gene Hunter yeah.
BW: Which left you as the mid upper.
CG: Seven.
BW: And that and you yourself would be -
CG: I was the mid upper.
BW: Yeah.
CG: At 429. It was 75 when I went the other one and I can’t tell you the crews on that one because they were all different crews every time. More or less.
BW: And how did you crew up with your Halifax guys? How did you meet and form as a crew?
CG: Oh yes it was after the, after the gunnery course. Then we went to this station, I think, it wasn’t Honeybourne. It was another station. We were all mixed. Pilots, navigators and everything and then this chap came around to me and, ‘We need a mid-upper. How about it?’ I said, ‘Yes. Okay.’ And that was it and I was, I was a member of Mitch’s crew. And I stayed. Luckily enough we stayed together all the time until we finished the tour.
BW: Did you socialise together at all?
CG: Sorry?
BW: Did you socialise together at all as a crew?
CG: Sorry again.
BW: Did you socialise together at all as a crew? Did you go out for drinks and dances -
CG: On occasions. On occasion -
BW: And things with each other?
CG: But to be, they had the money. We had, I forget whether it was thirty, no it was thirty bob when I was training. No don’t quote that I’m not sure. We didn’t get the money they got. I mean Bill Lawrence, we used to come down, we were upstairs in a room. When we came down they used to sit round here, all the other five, Canadians. They were alright. They were great. All around. A bundle of notes, back, you know, betting.
BW: Just used to throw them down on the floor to bet on the game.
CG: Oh Jeez and we had thirty bob. What could you do?
BW: Yeah.
CG: I mean they went out obviously and say, ‘Come on.’ ‘No. No.’ I couldn’t have, couldn’t sponge on people all the time like that.
BW: So who, who were the Canadians in your crew? You mentioned the Russian. Corkie. And you yourself were the Brit.
CG: Yeah.
BW: So the other five then of the seven must have all been Canadians.
CG: Except for Bill Lawrence the navigator, er engineer. He was English. Newcastle lad.
BW: So two Brits, four Canadians.
CG: Five Canadians.
BW: Five Canadians.
CG: Two Brits, five Canadians. Is that right? Should be. Yeah.
BW: And what were facilities like on the base for you?
CG: Oh alright. Yeah. Well it was a Canadian squadron. I mean we were sponsored by CPR, Canadian Pacific Railways. And we were told that if we went over there we would get free rides, free train rides. No trouble. And the other squadron 427, there were two squadrons on the station 427, they were sponsored by MGM. Metro Goldwyn Mayer and they got free, free films anywhere they were.
BW: Did you give your aircraft a name?
CG: U-Uncle, first one.
BW: U-Uncle.
CG: And then we had to have another one because we came on leave and while we were away another crew took it and it went in. It went down in the channel. So we lost that one. We got Q for Queenie I think. It should tell you in me book. Me logbook. What the name of the, what the name of the aircraft was.
BW: I’ll just have a look here. You started, it says you started flying in Z-Zulu. By -
CG: Was that training?
BW: The look of it. Those would be your first missions in December.
CG: Well it could have been yeah. Z- Zebra was it? Yeah. Q-Queenie mainly I thought but of course I might be a bit, I might be a bit rusty now.
BW: That’s alright. And you were in B flight?
CG: Yeah. Well, I can’t tell you. I wouldn’t say that. I don’t know without looking at that. Now when I was at Mepal 75 I was on one, one plane only. Every time it flew I flew. L for London that one. Funny wasn’t it, but when that flew I flew and left and when I left the station, I was finished it was still there so-
BW: Right.
CG: It was alright yeah.
BW: So while you were based at Leeming with 429 did your crew share the same barracks?
CG: Oh yes we had a house like this.
BW: Right.
CG: Yeah.
BW: Sort of a detached house in the, was it off base or was it on base?
CG: On base yeah.
BW: Right. It was a block. A block. Yeah it was. Not a, not a long block, it was a short block of houses if I remember. They called them married quarters but they weren’t then of course and Bill Lawrence and me we shared the upstairs bedroom, two beds. The other room which had three beds was the navigator, wireless operator and bomb aimer. No the bomb aimer was downstairs with Mitch. The pilot.
[pause]
BW: So you’re starting to fly operations now and you mentioned earlier that your first one was mine laying.
CG: That’s right.
BW: And it says Christmas Eve 1943.
CG: That’s right.
BW: That was your trip out.
CG: Yeah.
BW: To -
CG: Kiel Canal.
BW: Kiel Canal.
CG: Yeah and we were told later that the Admiral Scheer had been sunk so whether that was a bit of propaganda I don’t know. You had to take everything with a pinch of salt if you could.
BW: And before -
CG: We were followed back one day early on one of the trips if you want to know it might be there, I don’t know, by a Focke Wulf 190.
BW: Right. It’s not, just looking at this it’s not listed.
CG: That’s with 429 Squadron.
BW: Yeah. And what happened? How –
CG: He picked us up after we left the target and both Gene and me said, ‘Mitch a ruddy fighter behind us.’ ‘What is it?' he said, he asked. ‘190.’ ‘Well how far?’ ‘Oh its way back. Out of range. No good firing.’ So he said, ‘Well keep an eye on it all the time.’ Oh I can ruddy, it’s amazing how you can put out some of these and I don’t know whether I’ve had the cup of tea or not. ‘Keep an eye on it,’ he says, ‘but don’t forget the other sides of the plane because he might be a decoy,’. ‘Cause they used to do that you see or they’d put one over there on the port side and the other one would come in on the starboard. Something like that. Which we did. Kept an eye on him. All the time. A Focke Wulf 190 and you could always tell a Focke Wolf, reckon it was just like an ordinary, like a carrot, you see an ordinary carrot how it take, yeah that was it and he followed us right back to the Channel 'till we got to the French coast to come home and he banked off and went. Now why, never know. Never know that. Whether it was his first trip or whether he was trying to waste time I don’t know. But we never, 'cause we couldn’t find out but he followed us all the way back to the coast. French coast, 'till we crossed over to the Channel.
BW: But he picked you out as an individual bomber.
CG: Yeah. I don’t know.
BW: And you weren’t in a stream at that point. Were you not?
CG: What us?
BW: Yeah.
CG: Oh no we, when you got over there you just went in. You didn’t, you just followed, followed your target, your course and went in. Yeah. By the time you got in there was flak and fighters you just, searchlights, so you just had to do what you could. Yeah.
BW: And thinking about the mine laying operation.
CG: Yeah.
BW: I believe they were carried out at pretty low level, about three hundred feet at night. Is that right?
CG: Oh I can’t remember now, that. No. I can’t remember that one. I remember is our first trip you said? Yeah that’s right. We were all on edge looking out for ruddy fighters. Yeah we got, no I can’t. I remember we got over the canal, Kiel Canal wasn’t it? That’s it. And Mitch said, ‘Let it go,’ and the bloody plane went up because it does with the weight and he said, ‘Right. Let’s get off back.’ And that was it, I can’t remember much more about that.
BW: And when you prepared yourselves for a typical mission did you have any mascots or lucky charms or rituals or anything like that you went through?
CG: Oh yes I did. Well I could have brought it. I’ve got it upstairs. I should have brought it. Well it’s in there. I can show you. I’ve got a metal thing like a -
BW: Like a little plaque.
CG: For shaving -
BW: Oh I see.
CG: What they did in the First World War. Now my grandmother, my father’s mother gave it to him at the beginning of 1914 war and said to him, ‘Carry this in your pocket throughout the war,’. ‘Cause I wasn’t born then obviously which he did and on the night before I went into the RAF, we were playing monopoly and that. When we finished my mum and dad said, ‘Now take this son' and he explained what it was and I said, ‘Well what is it?’ He said he carried that. So my mother and father were asking me to carry it which I put in my pocket and I carried that throughout the war and I’ve still got it now.
BW: And that was in, that was in your left breast pocket was it?
CG: That’s it.
BW: On your battledress -
CG: Yeah.
BW: Jacket.
CG: Any my mum, my mother said take one of those Mon, what, Monopoly? What was I saying, no, what was that race game you used to run. Yeah. Was it Monopoly? No it wasn’t a race game was it? I had a little silver shoe.
BW: Yes. That, that was the one. They used it. There was a car, there was an iron and a little shoe, the boot.
CG: That’s it.
BW: That was Monopoly.
CG: I always used to have that when we played.
BW: Right.
CG: I’ll take, I said I’ll take the shoe and I pinned it down and I kept it on my jacket right near the end of the war.
BW: Right up on the left collar.
CG: Yeah. I get up. It’s on there. And I was at a peacetime, the war was over and they asked me to play for football, football game. I said yeah, I quite like football. So I took my jacket off for a goalpost and I lost my ruddy thing.
BW: Ah.
CG: I always curse that I lost it but I’ll show you my dad’s thing if you want.
BW: Ok.
CG: If they had time to shave they wouldn't have the ruddy time to shave.
BW: I see. It’s like a steel mirror.
CG: Yeah. That’s right. Of course you can’t see -
BW: It comes in a little -
CG: You can’t see it now.
BW: Leather case. And it has an inscription on the top, ‘Good luck from mum’. And it has been well used but like you say.
CG: My grandmother must have done that. Not, I didn’t, my mum didn’t.
BW: That feels actually quite heavy. Almost as though -
CG: Yeah.
BW: As if it would stop a bullet.
CG: Well I don’t know. Thank goodness I didn’t have to.
BW: That’s great and you’ve still got that –
CG: Yeah.
BW: After all these years.
CG: Yeah.
[pause]
BW: So there’s a few sort of keepsakes here. You’ve just mentioned -
CG: It was only a bit bobs. Yeah.
BW: Your whistle which you used for coming down in the sea.
CG: That’s the first, that’s the first grenade I threw. What was left of it?
BW: Right. Pin off a grenade. Where did you throw that?
CG: Pulled the pin out.
BW: Yeah.
CG: When I was practicing, when you first go in more or less.
[pause]
CG: All the identity discs.
BW: I see.
[pause]
BW: Yeah. Original dog tags.
CG: Sorry?
BW: Original dog tags.
CG: Yeah. That’s empty. That’s the, well that’s that haven’t you?
BW: That’s your DFC box yeah.
[pause]
CG: I’m forgetting what some of these are now.
BW: They look like medal ribbons.
CG: Oh aye, they’re my brevet.
BW: Yeah.
CG: My brevet.
BW: Air gunner’s brevet.
CG: These are all my ’39-‘45 star. And -
BW: Oh yeah.
CG: Well you don’t want to see all these do you? Really. Them, you know what you, ribbons.
BW: Yes. Yes.
CG: Yeah. You’ve seen them.
BW: Ribbons to go on the uniform.
CG: I’ll have a full time job putting these in again. Anyway, that’s about it I think. Oh that’s what I was given I think. Prayer book. Oh no that’s what my wife was given because she, she helped with the Trinity Hospice.
BW: Right. This is a millennium medal. And your wife was in the, it looks like she was -
CG: She was in the WAAF.
BW: In the WAAF.
xxxxxx
So just coming back to your time on 429 Squadron we were talking initially about rituals and mascots which led us to look at your, some of your, some of your memorabilia. What I wanted to ask you there was a pilot on the squadron called Jim Brown who came up with a, a description and I wonder whether this might sound familiar to you but not necessarily about your aircraft. But –
CG: No.
BW: He said the procedure for boarding the aircraft for an operation was a cigarette and a silent prayer I suppose each in his own way and then you’d go out and piss on the tail wheel for good luck. The only guy to complain was a tail gunner who said, ‘How would you like me to piss on the cockpit?’ [laughs] That’s Canadian humour I suppose.
CG: Yeah.
BW: But there was -
CG: I must tell you about 429 then. We had the wireless operator’s aunt or relation sent him a mascot. Pocahontas. Have you heard of her?
BW: Yes.
CG: We had it. So Mitch said, ‘we don’t want a ruddy Pocahontas.’ So he said, ‘yeah we do.’ Anyway, we took it and this first trip we had a bit of a dicey do so Mitch said, ‘we’ll throw that ruddy Pocahontas over the side. Open the door. Open the window,’ and that. So the wireless operator said, ‘no. No. We’re keeping it.’ So he said, so Mitch said, ‘right I’ll put it to the vote. All those that want it thrown out. All those who want to keep.’ We all decided to keep it and we did and his wife’s got it now.
BW: Right.
CG: Pocahontas. His wife’s got it.
BW: And was it like a little stuffed doll?
CG: Indian squaw. Indian squaw. It was about that big.
BW: Yeah. Oh.
CG: Doll.
BW: About twelve inch high. Yeah. Twelve inch high doll.
CG: Yeah.
BW: And he kept it in the, on board with him during the flight did he?
CG: I’ve got a photo of it. No, you’re going to be here all ruddy night.
BW: That’s alright.
CG: I’ve got a photo of it upstairs somewhere. Yeah.
BW: Right.
CG: Pocahontas.
BW: But you didn’t yourself smoke during those days did you?
CG: No. Well no not really.
BW: What was the, what would you say the attitude of the crew was during your tour of operations? Some have described it as being if you get through three they, the command think you’ve paid off your training and your life expectancy was eleven missions and this guy, this pilot Brown who I mentioned before he said if you, it gives you a kind of fatalistic attitude of eat, drink and be merry because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Did you feel that sort of attitude -
CG: We did at times.
BW: Within the squadron?
CG: Yeah. We did. You just kept, you know hoping everything would turn out alright. It was only one, one trip I knew. Munster. I didn’t want to go on that for some reason. Didn’t want to, but we went anyway but that was when, yeah, that was Munster yeah but we went on it but it was just one of those things, that’s all. Not much.
BW: And so -
CG: Some people did. Some crew, not our crew but some other crews they didn’t want to do this or didn’t want to fly there. In fact there was one, we were at briefing when we came back and we were sat there waiting to go in for our briefing and used to get questions you know, you know that? Not briefing. You get questions. You know that. Not briefing. It was interrogation afterwards. Interrogation.
BW: Yes when you landed -
CG: That’s it.
BW: And you were debriefed. Yeah.
CG: Yeah and this chap, this air gunner came in and he was ruddy crying. Absolutely crying. A bloke. You know. And he was trembling all over and he was saying, ‘never again. I’m not going never again. Never again.’ And I ushered him out quick. Oh I can see him now that lad. Irish I think he was. In fact, so they say, I don’t know how true it was or whether the rest of his crew had said it but they’d been hose-piped. He’d been in the turret and hose-piped. That means he was sat in the turret and he had had two fighters coming in and he’d be going like that with his gun you see.
BW: So he’d be moving the turret from side to side trying -
CG: Yeah.
BW: To hit both aircraft.
CG: Yeah trying to shoot, just shooting, firing at will sort of thing.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Now, that’s all I knew about it. Everybody was talking about it but. And then we then one day we were called out on parade. All of them. The whole station called out on parade. Everybody on the parade ground. Everybody. And they marched this lad out, air gunner, and stripped him of his, stripped him off of his, he’d been court martialled ‘cause he wouldn’t, wouldn’t fly again. And they stripped his tapes off and his brevet off and everything. And he was just an ordinary airmen then which I think is shocking that. I mean if a bloke can’t do it he can’t do it can he? I mean hell. Bloody hell fire. We had one or two more trips but like Karlsruhe that was ruddy electric storms from the time we went in 'till we left the French coast and they lost a hell of a lot then because planes were coming out all over the place and they blamed, they said it was the Met trouble, Met men, Met men, they always got the blame. Oh dear anyway that’s going back a long way now. All that.
BW: And this same Irish air gunner was demoted to airman. Did he stay on the base or did you hear of him again?
CG: I didn’t hear about him again. Maybe he was, I guess he would have been posted somewhere. Yeah. He wouldn’t stay, I don’t think he would stay on the station. They wouldn’t allow that I don’t think unless they were that ruddy cruel but I know they marched him off and that was it. Yeah.
BW: And as a gunner did you see many aircraft or em flak shells come your way at all? I mean were there –
CG: Oh we got –
BW: Instances where you were let’s say fully occupied in your job.
CG: We got shrapnel marks when we got back. Yeah. We got caught in searchlights on one but Mitch did a ruddy quick dive and we got out of that but there was always ruddy flak going up all over the place and you had to keep your eyes open for ruddy fighters. But I don’t know whether to tell you, I don’t know, on our third or fourth trip we’d done our bombing and Mitch says to Corkie, the navigator, ‘right, Corkie, give us a course for home now. We want to get back quick,’ So, Corkie, the navigator said, he said, ‘I’m sorry Mitch,’ he said, ‘I’ve lost, I’ve lost track.’ ‘Sodding hell,’ he said, Mitch said, ‘well find it as soon as you can.’ So, well he said, ‘keep going. Look out for any landmarks you might see.’ This is pitch black. Landmarks. We went on for about two or three minutes. All of a sudden the bomb aimer, who was sat in the front, he said, ‘hey Mitch, what’s all those lights in front?’ So of course I moved my turret to have a look and it was bloody lights. Electric. So Corkie the navigator said, ‘oh I’ve got it now,’ he said, ‘the lights. They’re good.’ He said, ‘that’s Switzerland.’ So Mitch said, ‘that’s what?' He said, ‘that’s Switzerland. We can take, we can take a plot from there.’ So Mitch said, ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, ‘that’s Switzerland. We can land there and get interned for the rest of the war. What do you think lads?’ He said, ‘I’ll put it to the vote. We can, if you want we can go down, get interned, finished for the war or we can get back, try and get back. What do you want to do?’ And we all said, ‘let’s try and get back Mitch.’ And that was it. Yeah. The lights. I remember turning my turret to look. I thought bloody hell where’s that then I thought, didn’t think it was ruddy Switzerland. Yeah. And then we had a job getting back then because of the ruddy petrol. By the time we got back Mitch gave us the object that, ‘do you want to bail out? I don’t know whether we’re going to make the Channel.’ ‘No we’re staying’ and just before we got to the Channel he said, ‘I’m telling you now we may have to ditch and get into a dinghy. So I’m giving you the option to bail out or stay in.’ ‘Oh we’ll stay in Mitch.’ We got across and as we got, as we crossed the coast Mitch told the wireless operator to call up on the wireless the nearest ‘drome. We’ve got to land. Emergency. Must land right away which we did and we got a call, oh I can’t remember that now, we got a call and we came in. We landed and when we got in the chap who took us in at the end he came and told us afterwards, he said, ‘you didn’t have much petrol left lads,’ he said. Yeah.
BW: That was a good decision though.
CG: Yeah. They all come back. It all comes back don’t it?
BW: Yeah.
CG: Bloody hell. You’ll never get, I’ll have to give you bed and breakfast the way we’re going.
BW: And so coming, coming out over the coast you’d obviously had the -
CG: [?] trips.
BW: The double hazard of flak ships and -
CG: The what?
BW: Coastal batteries. Coming out over the coast of France you’d have the double hazard because you’d have the coastal batteries.
CG: Oh yeah that were oh they were there.
BW: The flak ships and the channel.
CG: Yeah they were still following yeah. Yeah. By the way I didn’t mention that me Legion of, not Legion of honour. Me, what do they call it when you get from the king and queen from the king, signed it. The citation.
BW: Yes.
CG: My citation for my DFC. Have you seen it?
BW: No.
CG: Well it’s there if you want to see it.
BW: Okay. We’ll have, we’ll have a look in a, in a minute or two.
CG: Yeah.
BW: If that’s okay.
CG: Yeah. Carry on. Sorry.
BW: That’s alright. So this would now have been early ‘44 when you were part way through your tour. And -
CG: I finished my tour then, ’44.
BW: And so were you involved in missions in the run up to D-Day? There was a -
CG: Oh yes we did D-Day.
BW: Change, change in Bomber Command tactics there.
CG: Went over on D-Day because as we were coming back you could see them going across, the lads, the ships. The navy, the, whatever they were navy, navy, the boarding ships, you know.
BW: Yeah landing, landing, landing craft.
CG: They were going across as we were coming back.
BW: And so was that early morning? Very early morning.
CG: Well it tells you what time. What time did we land? Or take off and land. It gives –
BW: Ok. Let’s have a look just further through it’s -
CG: June ‘44 wasn’t it?
BW: Yes.
CG: That would be 429 Squadron.
BW: Quite a few night ops in the Ruhr Valley and then -
CG: 429 Squadron it would be.
BW: That’s right. Now this is interesting because you, it says here on the 5th of June.
CG: June, that’s it.
BW: A night operation taking off at 22.34.
CG: That’s it.
BW: In U-Uncle and your operation was to Merville Franceville, it says here.
CG: That would have been one of the, one of the places just, just over past over the beach I should think. I don’t know. I can’t remember now.
BW: Yeah that that sounds about right. They were quite common to be hitting targets just inland.
CG: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Of where the beachhead was supposed to be. Did you, were you told in advance that this was in support of D-Day? Did you know the invasion -
CG: Oh no we were just going. Yeah. Nobody said anything about that. We just, not as far as I can remember anyway. No. No. It mean it was over seventy years ago.
BW: Sometimes you might -
CG: Yeah they do, they stick.
BW: Crews might have -
CG: Yeah they do.
BW: Might have had an inkling that this was for the invasion.
CG: Yeah we did.
BW: Sometimes.
CG: Because when we were coming back like I say Mitch, Mitch made some remark about, ‘hey lads, there’s the lads going across. The invasion.’ So they must have said something. Oh I don’t know. I can’t remember now. Not to be honest but you could see all the ships, all the barges going across yeah. Could look down, we could see them going down as you looked down.
BW: And when you realised that was the invasion -
CG: Yeah.
BW: How did that feel?
CG: Yeah and when we got back of course we knew. Everybody knew then.
BW: How did that feel? To look down on the armada.
CG: Yeah I thought oh hell the lads, you know, going across there. I mean they went through a hell of a lot didn’t they? Landed in France first off. We’d been over obviously I think to, to soften some of the targets up beyond. Yeah [pause] no.
BW: And then moving on to mid ’44. When did you finish your first tour? It looks, looks like it was -
CG: It would have been just after D-Day was it?
BW: July.
CG: ‘44
BW: Let’s have a look.
CG: D-Day was ‘44. Yeah.
BW: That’s right. Completion of tour July 9th ‘44 and you’d flown 34 trips.
CG: That’s it. That’s when we -
BW: Thirty four ops.
CG: Finished. End of tour ‘cause we did thirty and we thought we’d finished and when Mitch went to report back, he came back, he said ‘they want us to carry on ‘cause they’re short of crews.’ So we thought oh hell ‘cause we thought we’d finished the thirty. Thirty was a tour. So anyway we did go on. We said, ‘alright.’ Carried on. We did four more and then we got back he was called back in again. He said, ‘you’re finished. That’s it.’ And that was it. Until they called me up again. They sent for me end of ‘44 wasn’t it? That’s it. End of ’44.
BW: And so did you, did Mitch ask the crew to vote again whether they wanted to continue with the other four trips or was it just -
CG: Oh no. As far as I remember now we were waiting by the, by the aircraft waiting for Mitch to come back because he had to report, they had to report and he came back. He said, ‘sorry,’ something about, ‘oh lads. They’re short of crews and they want us to carry on for a bit. Just a few.’ So, well everybody said, ‘yeah, alright.’ So we did four more and then when we got from there we, you got, he had to go back and he came back and he said, ‘that’s it lads. We’ve, end of tour.’ Yay. End of the tour. That was it.
BW: Did you go out and celebrate?
CG: I think we did yeah. At that time oh blimey yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then from then I was just playing, mucking about on the station doing anything, you know. Going in the mess, having a cup of coffee and all that until they sent me on my indefinite leave and I was home, oh weeks of indefinite leave. I was home. Great. And then towards the end of ‘44 I got this telegram. Oh that’s only a thing. A telegram saying, ‘go to your local police station. Pick up a railway warrant for RAF Feltwell.’ And I remember saying to my dad, I said to me dad, ‘where the hell is Feltwell, dad? He said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘we’ll go, I’ll come with you. We’ll go to the police station.’ So we went down one evening down the police station oh yeah, looked up some books. It’s, it’s where it is. I don’t know where it is now. Is it Cambridgeshire or something, is it?
BW: Yes.
CG: Yes. So I said, he said, ‘well what’s on there then?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘I’ve just got to report,’ I said, thinking it was a ground job but when I got there it was this. It was about, I don’t know it was a hell of a lot. About twenty I think. All in the same boat and we’d all, everybody had done one tour and when it came out that they wanted us to man a point five gun in, in a plane, in the Lanc 'cause we were all up in arms what about all these people, bloody people, all these blokes teaching everything. Gunnery leaders. No they want somebody who’s done a tour. All that bloody rubbish you know. So we had to go on a course. We went on a course. I don’t know how long it was. Two or three weeks. Something like that. So had somebody showing us how to take the point five because it was a bigger, bigger gun. Taking it on. Seven hundred and fifty rounds a minute it fired. How to take it together, how to put it up together you know they showed us all that and we never had to do any armouring with it but then they came around after, looking for, oh no we’d had our leave, and they said, on the Tuesday they came and said, ‘right you’re going to your squadrons today lads,’ and there was two to a squadron. This fella, the funny fluke the same fella I knew at 429. Him and I went to 75 Squadron. I went on one flight and he went on the other flight and there were only us two who were going on this but the others went to other squadrons of course. Yeah, and that was it and we had to carry on.
BW: Just out of interest you mentioned before when you were in the Halifax you were on 303 guns.
CG: On what, sorry?
BW: When you were on the Halifax you were on flying and using 303 Brownings and then in the Lancaster you used just two, point five inch -
CG: Oh yeah on a on a -
BW: Heavy machine guns.
CG: On a Halifax I had four 303s. One thousand one hundred and fifty rounds a minute. And then I went, when I went on [79] I just had the one. The big one though.
BW: Yeah. Faster. Yeah.
CG: Like the American things.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Similar to that. Seven hundred and fifty a minute.
BW: How did you find them in terms of using them?
CG: Oh different altogether.
BW: Were they more powerful and -
CG: Oh yes stronger. The, what’s its name?
BW: Point five.
CG: The small one had a range of three hundred yards. I can’t remember now on the big one but it had a ruddy big bullet like that.
BW: Yeah. About twelve inch long.
CG: Yeah.
BW: And -
CG: But –
BW: Sorry go on.
CG: All I, all I had was a hole in the floor, you know. I had a chair if I wanted but I’m not being ruddy brave but you couldn’t see much. I had to get down. I should get down and look. Look. Look like that see.
BW: Lean forward.
CG: See if anybody was there. Coming off the seat now. I couldn’t do it now.
BW: Now this is interesting because I’ve seen the term and you’ve used it yourself as a mid under gunner on a Lancaster and can you just describe what that entailed?
CG: What a mid under gunner?
BW: Mid under gunner yeah because we normally think of Lancasters as just having the front, rear and mid upper.
CG: No.
BW: But this is a position actually on the underside the aircraft.
CG: Originally it was what they called the H2S, it was the navigation thing. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of it and it helped the navigator and bomb aimer. It was, it was underneath, in between, do you know where it is? Was?
BW: Yes. Yes.
CG: Well they took that out, took all that and just put the gun in. That’s all and I was sat there by the hole with a point five.
BW: Just a single point five calibre -
CG: Yes.
BW: Gun.
CG: Just one. You could swing it around, you could move it of course.
BW: Okay.
CG: Yeah oh yeah. Nothing else. Yeah.
BW: So this wasn’t like the ball turret on a Flying Fortress where you were actually belted in to it and able to swivel.
CG: Oh no I wasn’t belted in. No.
BW: You were just sat around the -
CG: I sat on the chair.
BW: Turret with a hole yeah.
CG: Yeah.
BW: And pointing the gun underneath.
CG: That’s it.
BW: But you had -
CG: Just looking at -
BW: You had to crouch forward to look -
CG: I did, yeah.
BW: Through the hole.
CG: Yeah I did because -
BW: To see the target.
CG: I was sat like that. They was like that but I preferred to get down and get, I know it’s self-preservation but really you get down by the, I used to look like this. Yeah. I was plugged in.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Electric suit and all that.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Thank goodness. And yeah you could see it back like that. You can imagine a hole.
BW: Yeah.
CG: You get down you can see better can’t you?
BW: Sort of probably leaning forward.
CG: Yeah.
BW: You didn’t lie down. You perhaps knelt or crouched.
CG: Sorry?
BW: You didn’t lie down in the, in the Lancaster.
CG: Well I knelt down mainly.
BW: Yeah.
CG: But I leaned across.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Knelt down and leaned to look at one side.
BW: Yeah.
CG: And whatever, whichever I wanted to keep an eye out.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Keep a lookout.
BW: That’s interesting. That is interesting.
CG: I mean, I suppose every gunner had a, did what they wanted but that was the best way I could think of because I could hold the guns at the same time and swing it round look down, get down, then bring it down. See. Point the gun at where ever I was looking at so if I did see anybody I could, there you are.
BW: And that must have been quite an uncomfortable position I suppose.
CG: It was really yeah it was yeah. I mean you had all your flying kit on. Mae West and all the, all the harness, you know, for your chute and your chute by the side of you. Yeah it was really but if I was, there again self-preservation you do what you can can’t you? Everybody was doing their bit sort of thing. The rear gunner was there. Mid upper. So we had eight in a crew then.
BW: I was just going to say because -
CG: Yeah.
BW: The normal compliment as -
CG: Yeah.
BW: You said is seven.
CG: That’s right.
BW: And with the mid under you were the eighth.
CG: Yeah but I know it sounded you had to do. You had two choices put the seat there like this. Then you had the, you would have to bend down and look down and then.
BW: Yeah.
CG: And look like that.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Bloody bloke could be there before you knew where you were.
BW: Yeah.
CG: So -
BW: You couldn’t see properly.
CG: No. You couldn’t.
BW: When you were sat on the little seat.
CG: You couldn’t see much. You could only see -
BW: Yeah.
CG: So far but when I got down on my knees if you like.
BW: Yeah.
CG: And stretched you could see right back.
BW: Yeah.
CG: You could see if anybody was coming. ‘Cause I mean it would be in and out in no time. A fighter. A Messerschmitt or Focke Wulf.
BW: And did any of them try it?
CG: Sorry?
BW: Did any of them try it?
CG: No. Thank goodness. Oh bloody hell, thank goodness. Oh no. Oh dear.
BW: And I believe you flew the first three missions with 75 Squadron with Bill Mallon.
CG: Come again.
BW: I believe you flew your first three operations with a pilot called Bill Mallon.
CG: Oh I couldn’t, I can’t remember now. I had different pilots every time at Mepal. Yeah. You see, I was on L for London. That was the one. When that flew I flew but if it wasn’t on that night I wasn’t on. It was as easy that. So whichever crew came out, it was, well I didn’t have far to go. Only across the road to the runway from where I was, where the mess was and I was lucky. All I had to do was walk from here across the road and I was there. So -
BW: Literally less than a hundred yards presumably.
CG: Yeah. Near. I never knew unless I went in to, well I did go in to briefing but I never knew who the crew was because there were so many and there’d be seven and they’d always sit together and I was kind of odd man out if you like because I didn’t have a proper crew so I went out to the plane and when I went out I watched to see who was walking towards L for London and I thought well that’s them.
BW: And was that because there were relatively few aircraft with an under gun?
CG: Yeah. Only two on our squadron. Now there was other squadrons because when we went out that morning to go to our various squadrons there was only two that got off for Mepal. That was me and Taffy. Taffy Duggan. Now the others were left, others stayed in, stayed in the van and they went off to whatever squadrons they were going to in the group I should think as far as I know. If I can remember as well. There’s only two got on our squadron. One, one for each flight.
BW: And was Taffy with you on 429?
CG: Sorry?
BW: Was Taffy with you on 429?
CG: Well, he was, he was with another crew.
BW: I see.
CG: He was in –
BW: Okay.
CG: 429, yeah 429 squadron but he had another crew.
BW: Yes.
CG: Flew with another crew. Yeah.
BW: And so there were just the two of you taken from 429, posted to 75.
CG: Well we weren’t taken from it we -
BW: Sorry you completed your tour. Yes.
CG: We finished our tour there so we were.
BW: Yes. Yeah.
CG: Written off then. Finished.
BW: Yeah.
CG: But he must have got the telegram same time as I got mine to report to Feltwell.
BW: Yes.
CG: And all that, yeah.
BW: Yeah. Sorry that was my misuse of words I said taken but obviously you’d finished your tour and went to 75.
CG: Yeah and when we went we got detailed for Mepal. Both of us. But as I say he went on one flight. I can’t remember the flight now. A or B and I went on the other one. And his was, mine was L for London and his was M for Mother.
BW: And you’d flown previously with a Canadian Squadron and 75 Squadron was actually a New Zealand squadron.
CG: New Zealand. That’s right. Yeah.
BW: So you never really flew -
CG: Quite a few like that.
BW: With an RAF Squadron did you?
CG: Yeah, yeah different, different ones, you know. South Africans I think and as far as I know. I don’t know about that though.
BW: So by this time in late ‘44 and early ‘45 what were your missions like at this time? Were there more daylight missions as opposed to night?
CG: Well, it tells you in the book. Nights and days. If, whatever, whatever is in red is night. Whatever is in blue or black is daylight.
BW: Okay. So -
CG: If it says DNO, DNC duty carried out. Or if it’s DNCO duty not carried out. There must have been something wrong. We got a bit of bother or something.
BW: Okay. And so -
CG: But all in red was night trips. All in other colours blue or whatever, black, is daylight.
BW: Yeah. So you got a couple of night raids here. One Hohenasperg [?]
CG: Where?
BW: Hernburg.
CG: Oh I can’t see I can’t see sorry.
BW: At the top there. It looks like H O E N
CG: OPS. Ops to oh I don’t know. I can’t pronounce that myself. It took four and a half, five hours near enough. It doesn’t say what it was does it? Oh Zinzan, I remember him. Yeah, I do remember that name. Ops to, it would be, it would be Belgium somewhere Dutch I think. I don’t know. Sorry I can't.
BW: That’s okay. No problem.
CG: I don’t know where that is.
BW: But there’s a few into Germany in, in February and most of them moving in to March and exactly seventy one years ago there are towns like Salzbergen, [?], Gelsenkirchen, Essen, Munster, Ham. They’re all daylight raids.
CG: Were they? I can’t remember now. Yeah, if they’re in, if it says DNCO, it’s in red.
BW: Yeah.
CG: It’s a night trip. Any other colour it’s a day trip.
BW: Yeah, that’s right.
CG: 429 we did mainly nights. At 75 mainly days I think. Yeah.
BW: That’s right. Did you sense the war was coming to an end at this point?
CG: Well we knew the lads were doing well but we didn’t know. No, didn’t. You know, well I didn’t know. No. I mean they were advancing well and the Russians, the Russians were doing their bit so it was getting towards that way yeah. Must have thought that. Yeah. Must have done.
BW: And you mentioned that your Lanc had done quite a number of missions. Did you get, did it get to a hundred?
CG: What the plane? Oh I don’t know. We, when I left it was still, still working. Yeah. But the war was over then when I left. Oh yeah. The war was over when I left wasn’t it? Near enough. I left in er -
BW: Can you describe how it, how you heard about the end of the war and what it felt like?
CG: Oh yeah.
BW: And how it felt like.
CG: Because we were in a big group when I got back from a trip we were in a big group talking and they said the war’s nearly over, almost over. Nearly over. And the gunnery, I got a message, ‘the gunnery leader wants to see you Chas.’ And I thought, ‘Oh ruddy hell what’s happened. I haven’t done anything.’ First thing on my mind. And when I went in he said, ‘you’re finished. I’ve just got, I’ve got a message from Group,’ he said from here. Here you are, he said, ‘you’re finished.’ I said, ‘What do you mean finished?’ ‘No more. No more. You’re finished. In fact, I want, there’s only one trip to do. Wingco is going to deliver food to The Hague but don’t forget it’s not been signed yet,’ that was it. Yeah. ‘It’s not been signed yet and - ‘
BW: So -
CG: ‘So don’t, so keep your guns on safe.’ I remember this, ‘keep your guns on safe but keep an eye out because there might still be some Nazis still flying around ‘cause the treaty’s not been signed. The war’s still on.’ So I said, ‘right.’ And that’s the only, I disobeyed him then because I thought if there’s going to be some ruddy stupid Nazi walking, running about I’m having my guns ready. So I turned them on ready. Blow that game I thought and then when we got over to The Hague and they were all waving I just lifted my guns up like that to get out of the way just in case but no. Nobody came and then when we got back within a few days, three or four days, a week perhaps war finished hadn’t it? War finished on June the 5th was it?
BW: May 8th.
CG: Something like that.
BW: Yeah.
CG: It will tell you there when, the date of my last trip. It took, what day was my last trip? It would be that Hague thing yeah.
BW: Just having a look here. So, yes, now this is the 7th of May.
CG: Yeah that’s it.
BW: In Lancaster R.
CG: R?
BW: And -
CG: What? At Mepal?
BW: Yes. It’s got Lancaster R on the -
CG: Can I have a look?
BW: Yes. Certainly.
[pause]
CG: Oh yes, the wing commander. That’s it. Yeah. That was that. Yeah. Just before I finished. About a month before the war finished. Before the war finished wasn’t it. And Tugwell called me in, he said ‘will you do one more trip'. That’s when he said about me finishing. I said, ‘what is it?’ He said, ‘the Wingco’s going to drop some food over The Hague.’ That’s when he told me to keep watch, watch for the Germans coming around and he, yeah, that’s it. So the war finished about a month after wasn’t it?
BW: It would be a day after.
CG: Oh day after.
BW: Yeah.
CG: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
BW: But this was Operation Manna I believe which was dropping food to the starving Dutch.
CG: Come again.
BW: I said this would be Operation Manna which was dropping food supplies to the Dutch.
CG: Yeah that’s right. Dropping food for The Hague.
BW: Yeah.
CG: What date was that? That was just before the war finished.
BW: Yeah 7th of May -
CG: That’s it.
BW: You’ve got there.
CG: That’s what I thought that’s made my 50th trip [pause]. Then that was it then I think. No more.
MW: Yeah. It says here completion of tour, second tour June 10th 1945 and you’d done fifteen and a third trips it says.
CG: When did I finish?
BW: 10th of June 1945.
CG: Yeah. June. That would be it then. That’s what. Yeah.
BW: What was the wing commander’s name? It’s spelt B A I G E N T . How do you pronounce it? Is it Baigent?
CG: Oh I remember him yeah. Baigent I think it was. Baigent. Wing Commander Baigent. B A I G E N T. That’s it.
BW: And you could see, on that trip you could see all the people.
CG: On the top waving. Waving.
BW: Waving.
CG: ‘Cause we were dropping food. Yeah. And the whole country was a mass of water. The Germans had opened the dams and flooded the country. Yeah. I could see that. It was just like the ruddy ocean it was. Full of water. I thought bloody hell and they were on top of this building. The Hague I think it was. Going ruddy mad waving. Dropped food for them. Bloody hell. Aye a long time now and they’re still ruddy arguing, fighting somewhere or other aren’t they? Ruddy hell.
BW: But the Dutch really appreciated that from you know from all records the Dutch really appreciated-
CG: Oh the Dutch did.
BW: The food.
CG: We keep on hearing about that yeah. Yeah, the Dutch, yeah they did. Oh they were great.
BW: Do you keep in touch with any of your former crewmates?
CG: Well I used to write to them and everything. Speak to them. But unfortunately they’ve all, all died but I still, I still keep in touch with the pilot, Mitch, his wife because she, she’d, they married in Dagenham. Ilford, Essex and we went to their wedding and believe it or not the bloody doodlebug came over. Went on though thank goodness. But she went back with him to Canada but we still keep in touch but he passed away I’m afraid. And I used to keep in touch with Bill Lawrence’s wife but I haven’t heard from her from ages so I don’t know.
BW: You mentioned a guy called Zinzan.
CG: Who?
BW: Zinzan. The New Zealander.
CG: Oh he was a pilot. Yeah. The name came back to me then. Zinzan yeah.
BW: What do you recall about him?
CG: Just he was a pilot that’s all. But I have, I have heard of another interesting thing but with all this was going on I didn’t intend this it’s only because where I go of a morning for a coffee there’s a bloke there who was in the army and he had one of these things. I don’t know. Not a tape recorder. Not -
BW: A smartphone.
CG: It could be, it could pick up anything anywhere and anything. He said to me one morning, ‘you were in the RAF Charles weren’t you? I said, ‘yeah.’ He said, ‘what squadron were you in?’ I said, ‘429, 75.’ He said, ‘do you ever get newsletters?’ I said, ‘no they wouldn’t have, they wouldn’t have a news place over here.’ I said, ‘they would have one in Canada and New Zealand.’ Anyway, he fiddled with this. He came back five minutes later. He said, ‘they have one in Scampton.’ So I said, ‘oh bloody hell.’ He said, ‘anyway, I’ve asked them to send you one in time.’ So I said, ‘right. Oh very good.’ So what was we on about first off? It’s gone.
BW: We were talking about Zinzan. The pilot that you knew. Zinzan.
CG: Oh yes.
BW: And you were keeping in touch with Mitch and –
CG: Another chap got on the phone to me. I said, ‘who is it?’ He said he lives in Sheffield. I said, ‘well what about it?’ He said, ‘well he’s telling me', I said, ‘what do you mean he’s telling you?’ ‘On this,’ he said. ‘He’s telling me that, he’s got your name down in his father’s logbook.’ I said, ‘come on, you’re having me on somewhere here.’ He said, ‘no,’ he said. Anyway to cut a long story short he said, ‘can I give you his name?’ I said, ‘yes.’ He said, ‘he wants to be in touch.’ Which he did. He’s writing a book and he wanted to have a word with me about, can I mention my name in his book he said because his father was an engineer on one of the planes that I was ‘cause it’s in his logbook.
BW: That’s right. His name’s Bob Jay.
CG: Who?
BW: Bob Jay.
CG: Oh well sod me. And do you know where he lives?
BW: I don’t know where he lives but I have -
CG: You ain’t got his address?
BW: I can, I can probably get it but he has a website up for 75 Squadron.
CG: Oh has he, has he been in touch with you then?
BW: Well no that, we haven’t been in touch but I found his website.
CG: Oh I don’t know about them. Yeah.
BW: Which is basically -
CG: Yeah I’ll leave it to you.
BW: A site for where all these experiences are logged and he mentions -
CG: Yeah.
BW: Exactly like you say his father is the flight engineer called Bob Jay and you flew your first three trips with that crew.
[doorbell rings]
CG: Oh there’s somebody at the ruddy door. Just a second.
BW: Alright.
CG: I thought I saw somebody walking up there.
BW: I’ll just pause the recording while we’re doing that.
CG: Oh dear me.
[recorder pause]
BW: What I’m just going to show you here is a list of the crew which were in your first aircraft for your first three trips and this is the pilot Bill Mallon.
CG: Where? Oh -
BW: On the top here.
CG: Is that him there?
BW: That’s him there.
CG: Oh blow me.
BW: And that is Bob Jay the flight engineer you mentioned, that picture there.
CG: Oh sod, blow me.
BW: And that is, that is his description.
CG: Where?
BW: This line here.
CG: Sergeant Robert ‘Bob’ Alfred Jay. Yeah. Mid upper gunner. Who was the mid upper gunner then? Sergeant Doug Cook. Flying officer, oh dear. He got me wrong number down hasn’t he. He’s got 187. No. 178730 that’s right. Sorry. Flew first three ops with, yeah, oh blow me. Yes.
BW: So -
CG: He got on to me on the 'phone and he said could he, could he do this and write and I said yeah.
BW: There’s quite a lot of information about 75 Squadron.
CG: Yeah.
BW: On the internet where this relative of Bob’s has put all the information. Where he’s put his website.
CG: Yeah.
BW: There’s a lot of information about 75 squadron and so that’s where your name appears as well as part of the crew list.
CG: Yeah. Blow me. It’s funny that.
BW: So -
CG: Yeah oh we had a chat ‘cause he had one or two things ‘cause he was writing a book but he’s got, he’s got my marriage wrong. I married in ‘49 not ‘47. He got me number wrong.
BW: Right.
CG: And he got my rank wrong so I want to get, so can you give me his 'phone number then?
BW: I don’t have it with me.
CG: Oh.
BW: But what I’ll do I’ll have a look over the next few days at the website.
CG: Yes.
BW: And I’ll get in touch with him. If I can’t see his phone number or contact details on the internet I will get in touch with him and I’ll ask him to contact you.
CG: Yeah.
BW: If that’s alright.
CG: Okay then. Please.
BW: So it’ll take a few days but I’ll ask him to get in touch with you.
CG: Oh yeah. Yeah. I appreciate what you’re doing.
BW: That’s okay.
CG: Yeah.
BW: And, and that should sort him out for you really. So apart from that we’ve now got to the end of your second tour and you’ve finished at the end of the war.
CG: Yeah.
BW: What then happened after that? Were you waiting to be demobbed?
CG: No.
BW: Or –
CG: No. Let me think now. 1945 wasn’t it? No, I went to, I went on, no I went to Hereford, admin course and that’s where I learned, a chap came up to me a mate what was there said, ‘hey you got a gong.’ I said, ‘what do you mean I got a gong?’ That’s when I, he said, oh no it wasn’t that mate. No, no I got a letter from my parents, that’s it. No. He said, ‘come on.’ he said, ‘you live in Dagenham don’t you?’ I said, ‘yeah.’ He said, ‘I live in Chadwell Heath.’ He said, ‘I’m going home for a couple of days now we’ve, do you want a lift?’ I said, ‘brilliant.’ So I put the letter in my pocket and when I got in the car going home, opened the letter, it said, ‘you’ve got the DFC.’ It was in the local paper and I didn’t know anything about it. I thought 'oh sod me what have I got that for', blah blah you think to yourself and that was it. Then ‘cause we had the Christmas off I think it was, something like that. And we went, he picked me up in Dagenham again, went back to the course and that’s where I finished up going on ground duties. Adjutant, assistant adjutant and all that business and I finished up at Padgate as a flight commander training recruits that was the main thing. The adjutant thing was only a couple of weeks to give someone leave but other than that I was knocking about leave and all that and then they sent me to, I was at Coningsby wasn’t I? At Coningsby interviewing these army, navy whatever about medals. I had a long list of what you, what you’re entitled to and what not. Did that. I went to Padgate, well I told that. Where I used to meet then Marge yeah and then training recruits and that’s where I finished up. Got demobbed then. Eventually.
BW: And when you left the RAF what happened then?
CG: Well I went, I lived I lived in London, Essex and Marge lived in Sheffield and I thought shame ‘cause we were both getting on well together. So she said, ‘you can come and live here if you want.’ She said for, nothing like that what you’re thinking.
BW: No. No. No. No.
CG: Nothing like that.
BW: No. I know what you mean.
CG: So, they only had a small cottage that was falling to bits. To cut a long story short they boarded it upstairs so separate rooms and parents and all of us so we lived like that for a while. So, depending on a date was the 20th, 30th no 31st of April 19....., April that was it 31st of April 1949 and we got, we got married then.
BW: And what happened to you career wise after that? Where did you work?
CG: I got a job at that, that was another piece of luck, have you got time? Well I thought when I got there I was at Sheffield I thought sodding hell what am I going to, I’m halfway through an apprenticeship, wartime. So I went down to see me parents my father, me parents and he said, ‘well,‘ he said, ‘I don’t know what you'll do.’ He said, ‘you’re tied. Tied to Dennis Truscott. He’s opened the, I know the firm got bombed but he opened a small one now’. So he said, ‘go and have a word with him.’ So I went down, went to London to Dennis Truscott, explained it all, ‘well,’ he said, ‘Well if you want to break the apprenticeship you can. Wartime,’ he said. 'Wartime'. 'Being wartime'. He said, ‘you’d have been finished by now.’ So he said, ‘yes. if you get, get somebody to, where you’re going to live to take it on.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘right.’ So I did that. So I went back, told Marge. So that was great. So I said yes. I’ve got to find somewhere now here to take me on printing. So he said, so I went to the, I went to the employment exchange as it was then and the chap said, ‘well there is an interrupted apprenticeship scheme.’ So I said, ‘oh can I go into that?’ He said 'yes.' Anyway to cut a long story short he put me on to the union, he got me to the, on to the union. He put me down, put me down for interrupted apprenticeship scheme. It was on the war thing, it was, carried on after the war for so many years. He put me on to the name of the union official so I went to see him. So I explained it all to him. He said, ‘oh blow me. I don’t know. I don’t know who could take you on.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, I’ll ring up so and so. He’s the runs the newspaper, The Star, The Sheffield Star which he did. So he said, ‘yes, he’ll have a word with you.’ So I went down to see, Mr Bloomfield, it was, manager, and when I went into his office he had a RAF tie on. I thought cracker. So he said, ‘yeah I think we can,’ and I got my interrupted apprenticeship scheme and got it there so I started at The Star and then but about twelve months later they said they were going to move. They were going to Stockport and I thought 'oh no.' Well I went home and said to Marge, ‘Marge they’re going to Stockport.’ ‘Oh I don’t want to go there.’ So I went back. While I was there I was general print then. General print. So I thought I wonder if I’d get into other newspapers, so I asked for permission, asked to see one of the other managers of other newspapers so he said funny thing, he said, ‘we want someone, yeah.’ And that was it I got into newspapers and The Star at Sheffield.
BW: How long were you there?
CG: From 1960 when we moved across to, no, hang on a minute. No, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry. Oh dear. War finished. It would have January or something 1949 wouldn’t it? I was demobbed in 1949 wasn't I. No I can’t remember. I was married in ‘49. I was demobbed in ‘47 wasn’t it? ‘47. Went all through that, got the job at The Star. We came here on holiday, got fixed up with a house.
BW: And this is Poulton.
CG: Yeah.
BW: Where you came on holiday.
CG: We got fixed up with the house and I remember saying to Marge, ‘there’s only one other thing Marge.’ She said, ‘what’s that?’ What’s that? ‘I’ve got to get a job.’ That was it. Yeah. ‘I’ve got to get a job.’ She said, ‘oh hell.’ I said, ‘I’ll go to the local paper. There must be a local paper here.’ I said, ‘I’ll see if they’ve got any vacancies.’ So I went in, in to the local paper but he was, the manager was off for lunch so I went back out again for a coffee and went back again about two o’clock and I remember this, it sticks with you, he said yes lad what, not lad, ‘what can I do for you? What do you want to know?' Something. ‘Well I just called in to see you want any, have you got any vacancies?’ So he said, ‘well what, what do you do?’ I said, ‘I’m a rotary printer.’ ‘Blow me,’ he said, like that. He said, ‘you must be psychic.’ I said, ‘how do you, what do you mean?’ ‘We’re advertising for one. Come with me downstairs,’ so we went downstairs. The machines were running, picked a paper off the thing, opened it up, ‘wanted: newspaper printer’. He said, ‘we’ll go upstairs, we’ll have a chat, if we’re in agreement the job’s yours,’ he said but I said, ‘wait a minute. I’m on holiday.’ I said, ‘I can’t stay.’ ‘Don’t worry about that. Whatever you’re doing now, job, you’ll have to give notice.’ I said, ‘yes. A fortnight.’ He said, ‘well don’t worry. Doesn’t matter about that. If you want the job it’s yours.’ We had a chat, money and all that and he said, ‘yes the job’s yours.’ He said, ‘all I want you to do now is go home, write me a letter, apply for the job but don’t worry about it, it’s yours, I’m promising it to you. It’s yours,’ he said, ‘apply for it and I return it, the jobs yours and that’s it.’ He said, ‘you tell me what date you’ll be able to start.' So that was it.
BW: Brilliant.
CG: Went back to Sheffield, told Marge. Bloody hell. I couldn’t have, I couldn’t planned it like that.
BW: Yeah just landed lucky.
CG: Just happened like that. Just happened and I went back and in the month, went to the removal people and everything like that, got it all lined up and we came here on her birthday 24th of July.
BW: Wow.
CG: 1960 and when we came in I said, ‘here you are Marge. Birthday present [laugh]. Bloody hell. Honestly, the way it happened. Just like a great big bloody jigsaw falling into place, I got a job.
BW: Yeah.
CG: And everything.
BW: And so -
CG: Amazing.
BW: What was the local paper called here?
CG: Star. No. The Evening Gazette.
BW: The Evening Gazette.
CG: Yeah.
BW: And how long were them for on the prints. The printers.
CG: Oh I was there for 1960 until I retired in ‘84, 1984 yeah. At the time my wife had lost her mum and dad and I thought, ‘84 I was due to retire in ‘86 I think it was and there was a scheme on if you remember because people were out, wanted work or something that you could, you could retire on a full pension and if not it could be made up by the government. I did lose. So I took two years earlier so I could retired at 64 at ’84.
BW: Brilliant.
CG: Everything worked out. It’s funny how it worked out though.
BW: Yeah.
CG: I couldn’t have done it if I'd planned it by bloody blueprint.
BW: But that’s great that’s -
CG: We often spoke about that yeah.
BW: Yeah. Well that’s just what you need isn’t it?
CG: And when we went out the house we went to several. They were ruddy rubbish, you know, toilets in the kitchen, all that sort of thing and then we came up here, ‘oh great, Marge.’ Well that was it then.
BW: And you’ve been here ever since.
CG: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: How have you kept in touch with Bomber Command? How do you feel about the sort of commemorations?
CG: Well I belonged to the air crew ACRC, was it? Air crew.
BW: AC.
CG: You know, the club. Air crew club.
BW: Air crew association.
CG: And the bomber, Air Gunners Society. I used to have that. I belonged to that mainly but they went defunct. They must have done because I haven’t heard anything. Must be getting on I guess and that would be about it.
BW: How do you, how do you rate the sort of recent commemorations of Bomber Command effort looking back at it?
CG: Well I, I never kept in touch. I should have done. I would have like to have done when the aircrew thing went I thought well that must not be going then but I never got any, I never heard any, never had any gen, information about it. Only the air gunners I used to get a journal every, every couple of months. Kept in touch. And for a while we belonged to a club. Yeah we used to go, belong to the air crew club. Used to go along to the hotels on Blackpool every so often. I bought a ticket for a raffle and what did I buy, what did I win? A bloody big picture like that of a Lancaster. Bloody hellfire. It’s up in the spare room now on the wall. Oh dear.
BW: Are you, are you pleased that Bomber Command is being commemorated and remembered these days?
CG: Have I been to any? Oh no.
BW: Are you pleased that Bomber Command is being remembered these days?
CG: I’m sorry I didn’t get it again.
BW: Are you pleased that Bomber Command is being remembered these days?
CG: Oh yes. Oh definitely yes they should. Bomber leader Harris did a good job I think. Yeah, I know what people say but he was only working on orders from Mr Churchill and all that business because Churchill went to see the Russian leader if you, I don’t know whether you know and Russia he was telling Churchill about not doing something and Churchill said we’ll bomb this and bomb that which we did and came back and yet there was all that trouble over Dresden. All they had to do was call it an open city and they wouldn’t have got bombed would it? And we heard there was, read since that they were passing troops through there and there were POWs working there as well. So it wasn’t an open city as such but if they’d have called it an open city it would never have been bombed and Harris was only doing what he was told. Bomb these ruddy cities. I didn’t go on it anyway. I went -
BW: I was going to say you weren’t on that raid.
CG: I was on the other one. Chemnitz. It was close on nearby. There were two big ones that day. Chemnitz and Dresden but I was on the Chemnitz one. A long trip that if I remember.
BW: Have you been to the memorial at Green Park?
CG: No I haven’t yet, I’d like to go sometime but no. I don’t, I think. Yeah.
BW: But from your point of view you’re glad that Bomber Command is being recognised.
CG: Oh yeah blimey they should have been. Yeah. More so. You know what? Bomber Command. The chap in charge, Harris. He was the only number one leader of all the, of all of them that didn’t get recognised by Churchill and it was wrong that. It was absolutely wrong. What Harris did he was only carrying out orders.
BW: Have you had the opportunity to go to the memorial site that the Bomber Command Centre has begun at Lincoln? At Canwick Hill.
CG: Would I go?
BW: Have you been?
CG: Oh I haven’t. No.
BW: It was unveiled in October last year.
CG: Yeah it would be a great thing that. No. I’ve got, I’ve got two brothers down south. I don’t very often see them now but I can’t see properly and I can’t walk properly. You’re a, you’re a lag on somebody aren’t you when you go? Somebody having to look after you or push you or whatever.
BW: I know what you mean.
CG: No. I generally go, like last year I went down to the memorial in Poulton. Laid a wreath with another chap. We both did it together ‘cause he was in the army on D-Day landings and all that and he got the medal, Croix de Guerre whatever you call it. Yeah.
BW: Yeah because you’ve been awarded that yourself as well. You got the Croix de Guerre and that’s, that’s quite a high honour -
CG: Oh yeah.
BW: From France, you know. So very good. I think that that’s all the questions that I have for you.
CG: Well I haven’t minded. I don’t mind.
BW: So -
CG: Anything I answered, I’ve never answered, anybody answered me I said yes, so and so and that was it. I didn’t think it was going to be all this. I don’t think I would have -
BW: Well that’s alright.
CG: No it’s alright but yeah.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
CG: No that’s okay I don’t mind. It’s alright. It’s a great but you’re welcome.
BW: So we’ll, we’ll leave it there so thank you very much for again Flying Officer Green for your time and -
CG: Any time if you, yeah.
BW: Your memories for the Bomber Command Centre.
CG: Yeah.
BW: 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 Charles Frederick Green
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brian Wright
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
2016-03-29
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Janet and Peter McGreevy
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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01:37:24 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGreenCF160329
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Charles Frederick Green was born in Peckham, London, in 1921. On leaving school he began an apprenticeship with a printing company, acting part-time as a police courier, before becoming an Air Raid Precaution warden. He then volunteered for the Royal Air Force and was accepted for gunnery training in January 1941. He began at Number 2 Gunnery School at RAF Dalcross. He crewed up at 24 Operational Training Unit at RAF Honeybourne, joining a predominantly Canadian crew. After a time at 1664 Heavy Conversion Unit, he was posted to 429 Squadron at RAF Leeming. He began operations at the end of 1943 and completed thirty four operations with 429 Squadron, most to German targets. He was in the crew which had a famous mascot, a Pocahontas doll. After a period of leave, he joined 75 Squadron at RAF Mepal, acting as a mid under gunner in specially-adapted Lancasters. He took part in operations to support the D-Day landings and later in Operation Manna. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After two tours, he performed ground crew duties at RAF Padgate. After the war he became a printer for a newspaper company in Sheffield. He discusses the matter of lucky charms and superstitions, as well as veterans’ feelings after the war.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cheshire
England--London
England--Worcestershire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Kiel Canal
1664 HCU
24 OTU
429 Squadron
75 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
Air Raid Precautions
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
civil defence
coping mechanism
Distinguished Flying Cross
H2S
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Croft
RAF Dalcross
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Leeming
RAF Mepal
RAF Padgate
superstition
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/566/8834/PEvansE1602.1.jpg
70edd28e823fd9b3701eb02ab8fcb037
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/566/8834/AEvansE160331.1.mp3
0f5ef1aaf69856347003131f4e77cce5
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
Evans, Eric
E Evans
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Evans, E
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Eric Evans (1923 - 2017, 2211558 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron but also served as a Captain in the Royal Tank Regiment. Also includes a letter from prisoner of war senior British Officer to Russian authorities.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Eric Evans catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright, I am interviewing with Sergeant Eric Evans of 463 Squadron, who served in the RAF, initially as sergeant, then warrant officer and finished as captain in the Royal Tank Regiment. It’s taking place at his home in Liverpool on Thursday the 31st of March 2016 at 10.30. So, would you like me to call you Eric or Mr Evans?
EE: Eric.
BW: Eric. If err, you wouldn’t mind just starting us off please Eric, could you confirm your service number and your date of birth please?
EE: The 31st of the first 1923 and my service number was double two, double one, double five, eight.
BW: OK, thank you. And you were born in Liverpool, is that right?
EE: I was.
BW: And, along with your parents, did you have any other brothers and sisters?
EE: I had two brothers.
BW: Ok. And how was it in your early life growing up? What was your family life like?
EE: It was very pleasant. A good middle-class family.
BW: A good middle class family.
EE: My father was a major in the Army.
BW: Right.
EE: My two brothers were err, both commissioned, one in the Navy and one in the, one in aircrew.
BW: Right, and were you the middle brother?
EE: I was the youngest.
BW: The youngest.
EE: I was sixteen when the war broke out.
BW: And you had a brother in the Navy. Was he the elder or the middle?
EE: The elder.
BW: The eldest brother was in the Navy, and so, your next eldest would have been in the RAF. Did he go straight in as an officer or did he go in —
EE: He went on training, to Canada.
BW: I see.
EE: And he flew as a navigator.
BW: Right. And what happened to him —
EE: He just got through the war.
BW: He came through OK?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, at that time it was common for people to leave school at fourteen. Is that what happened to you?
EE: No, I stayed at school until I was sixteen. I went to a private school.
BW: I see.
EE: We were all privately educated.
BW: All privately educated, right. And whereabouts did you go to school?
EE: Quarrybank
BW: I see.
EE: A local school.
BW: And what was it like there? Was it pretty strict or was it a good school?
EE: It was a good school. I didn’t like school very much it was very strict but it was a good school.
BW: And then, when you were sixteen, you say the war broke out.
EE: That’s right. My father arranged for me to do an apprenticeship. He got me a position as an indentured apprentice marine engineer.
BW: An indentured apprentice marine engineer. I see.
EE: Yes.
BW: I see.
EE: With a fee of fifty pounds.
BW: And whereabouts was that? That must have been in Liverpool as well?
EE: In the docks.
BW: Right.
EE: Liverpool docks. It was a firm called Grace and Rollo and Clover Docks Limited.
BW: Grace and -
EE: Rollo
BW: Rollo
EE: And Clover Docks.
BW: And Clover Docks. I see.
EE: Limited.
BW: Right, and how long were you there? A year or two or less?
EE: A couple of years, and then I tried to get in the Army but I couldn’t get out because I was in a reserved occupation.
BW: I see.
EE: So, eventually they announced, if you joined aircrew, you could, you could leave.
BW: All right.
EE: So, I joined.
BW: (laughs).
EE: I joined aircrew.
BW: And what drew you to the RAF? Why them and, obviously, you said —
EE: Well, it was the only one I could get into –
BW: Yeah, I see, of course.
EE: The Army wouldn’t take me.
BW: Yeah.
EE: I joined the Army twice.
BW: Any you didn’t fancy the Navy?
EE: Well, I couldn’t get in the Navy.
BW: Same, same rule applied? They wouldn’t take you from a reserved occupation?
EE: Only aircrew.
BW: And, did you err, intend to fly or did you —
EE: I intended to fly, of course, there again, I could only go into a flying branch —
BW: Right
EE: Or they wouldn’t release me.
BW: So, if you had wanted to go in as a fitter or mechanic, you, you—
EE: No, I couldn’t have done.
BW: I see, so it sounds a pretty important job you had at, in the Docks.
EE: Well, they considered it to be so.
BW: What sort of things were you doing there as a —
EE: I was just an apprenticeship, with ship repair. We did the, we did the Campbeltown, the one that did the dockade at St Nazaire.
BW: Yeah.
EE: We worked on the Campbletown.
BW: Right, and was that re-fitting the Cambletown for that raid, or —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Really?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And was the purpose of fitting Campbletown out at the time known to you, or was it just given to you as a —
EE: No, we didn’t know. It was just filled with concrete all the bows were filled up with concrete.
BW: Right.
EE: [unclear].
BW: So, were you involved in filling the bows with concrete or —?
EE: No, no.
BW: It was just part of the fitting.
EE: It was part of the fitting.
BW: Right and so, when the raid took place on St Nazaire, that must have been, I’m assuming the only time you knew that was what the purpose of that ship was?
EE: She was an ex American destroyer.
BW: Right, that’s fascinating. So, when did you join the RAF?
EE: Err 1943.
BW: Ok. When about was it roughly?
EE: I don’t know.
BW: Okay. That’s all right, there’s no, we don’t need an exact date. All right, so, we’ve just had a look at your RAF service and release book and it confirms your date of service from 13th September 1943 to the 5th February 1947.
EE: I joined six months before that —
BW: You joined six months before?
EE: I waited six months to get in.
BW: I see.
EE: I went to Padgate for all my exams.
BW: So, you did your exams at Padgate, and that’s at Warrington, that’s one of the recruitment centres, isn’t it?
EE: That’s right.
BW: Err.
EE: Six months before.
BW: Right, and once you’d done your basic training, where did you then go?
EE: I went to err oh, [pause] from Padgate to Bridgnorth.
BW: Bridgnorth.
EE: And then I did all my square bashing at Bridgnorth.
BW: Right.
EE: And then I went to um Yorkshire, Bridlington.
BW: Bridlington.
EE: And I went from Bridlington to err, gunnery school in Northern Ireland. Bishops Court.
BW: Bishops?
EE: Bishops Court.
BW: Bishops Court in Northern Ireland was a gunnery school. I see.
EE: We went from gunnery school to [pause] —
BW: And this is your log book we’re looking at now?
EE: Yeah, [pause]. Let’s see, start on my log book.
BW: OK.
EE: It was gunnery school, a continuation of gunnery school.
BW: And so, this starts in January 7th of January 1944, and you’re flying Ansons at this time.
EE: That’s right. That’s at gunnery school at Bishops Court.
BW: Uh-huh.
EE: And you turn over.
BW: This is just details, the number of rounds that you fired in practice on, on targets.
EE: That’s right.
BW: I see, and that confirms you flying twenty-one hours and ten minutes at 12 Air Gunnery School, Bishops Court.
EE: What’s this?
BW: And then a move to 14 OTU Bosworth.
EE: That’s it. And Wellingtons.
BW: Flying Wellington mark tens. This is April ‘44, so this is very nearly err, seventy-two years, almost seventy-two years to the day actually, since you started —
EE: Yes.
BW: How did you find flying in Ansons and target practice compared to flying in Wellingtons?
EE: It was all right. It was just normal [indistinct] you just gave, you just took what they gave you.
BW: And were you given much instruction about the arms, the guns that you were firing?
EE: Oh yes. [unclear] blindfold and all that kind of thing.
BW: Right. You had to take them apart in a certain time and do it blindfold.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And how did you find that? Was it—
EE: It was easy enough.
BW: Ok. And what was your, I mean, these detail your different sorties, how did you find your um, accuracy on the guns?
EE: Reasonable. I think I was average.
BW: Mm-hmm.
EE: I didn’t expect to be more than average. But err, you just went out and did what you had to do, to the best of your ability.
BW: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm So, looking at this you’ve had, you were flying pretty much every day almost, maybe the odd day or two in between and that lasted up until May, the end of May ‘44. But there’s a mark here, where you’ve got bullseye.
EE: Yeah. [pause] That’s it.
BW: I see. And some of these are marked on duty as cine, is that right so were they filming you, is, that right?
EE: We had cine instead of bullets —
BW: I see —
EE: They had cine film on. I think err, what kind of aircraft, oh no [unclear].
BW: I see
EE: We used to fly against Spits and things —
BW: And this was what they called fighter affiliation then —
EE: That’s right.
BW: So, the Spitfires would be flying dummy attacks —
EE: That’s right, and we would film them.
BW: There’s a description here, fifteen minutes, I think that will be fighter affiliation, infra-red, what does that entail?
EE: I don’t know, don’t remember, oh night time, night time I think.
BW: Right.
EE: End of 14 OTU. Operations Unit.
BW: So, same type of aircraft here now. This is the 8th of May ‘44 err, where you have moved to 14 OTU at Market Harborough —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Still flying Wellingtons, and [pause] it’s a mix of live ammunition and cine film. Were the bombers flying straight and level or were they taking part in manoeuvres?
EE: Oh no, they were doing corkscrews and things. All the manoeuvres one would normally do.
BW: And so, while the pilot is putting the aircraft into a corkscrew manoeuvre, you are still having to fire at a —
EE: That’s right
BW: At a target approaching.
EE: Yes.
BW: And I’m looking here there’s about the same time, equal time, spent day and night.
EE: Yeah. [pause].
BW: I see. And then from there, you had presumably a couple of months leave between May and July. This is when your heavy conversion unit training starts.
EE: Yeah, Stirling, horrible aircraft.
BW: What didn’t you like about the Stirling?
EE: Big and ugly. Big, awkward thing.
BW: Some crew found it quite spacious, did you -
EE: Too big.
BW: Too big?
EE: it was like a bus.
BW: [laughs]. Did it feel like it handled like a bus?
EE: Yeah, didn’t like the Stirling at all. Never felt safe in the Stirling.
BW: And that was simply because of the amount of space around you?
EE: Just a big ugly —
BW: Right
EE: Big ugly thing.
BW: And so, you’ve done between the 14th of July 44 and the 11th of August ‘44 at 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley, you’ve done um, best part probably of six weeks training thereabouts, maybe a month’s training?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, were you, um, placed as a rear gunner or in different positions?
EE: A rear gunner the whole time. Never changed, or I wouldn’t, stayed as, never took any other position.
BW: And is that a role that you asked for, to be a rear gunner?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And was your preference for that? What drew you to that?
EE: I dunno.
BW: And then, moving on from err, the conversion unit, this is Number Five LFS,
EE: Lancaster Flying School.
BW: Lancaster Flying School, at Syerston in Nottinghamshire, and 27th of August 1944, this presumably was your first flight in a Lancaster?
EE: Yeah.
BW: How did that feel after being in Stirlings and Wellingtons?
EE: Good, but they were all clapped out old aircraft. They lost ten percent of all crews in training. Ten percent, it’s outrageous.
BW: Right.
EE: Because they were all clapped out old aircraft.
BW: Gosh.
EE: They weren’t fit for squadron use.
BW: And, did you know any guys on your courses who were lost as a result of —
EE: Oh yes, I don’t remember their names now.
BW: But there were guys who —
EE: Oh yes, ten percent.
BW: Right
EE: One out of every ten.
BW: Mm. So, you’ve not long, really, you’ve probably, only literally a few days, maybe a week at a Lancaster School thereabouts, and then you join —
EE: 463 Squadron.
BW: 463 Squadron, RAAF at Waddington. How did it feel to finally get on your squadron?
EE: Well, it was, what it was all building up towards. It was quite a, quite a do. First trip was to France.
BW: And do you recall what the target was in France?
EE: Yes, troop concentrations, it’s written down.
DW: Ah ha
EE: It’s written down there
BW: And then same again, troop concentrations around Boulogne? And this is after the invasion.
EE: Yes.
BW: Was there a sense of having missed out on what they call the big show, the invasion?
EE: No, it wasn’t a big show for the RAF. We did all the bombing for it. For the Legions of Honour. For those two trips.
BW: I see, so because you took part in raids over France, you became eligible for the Legion D’Honneur.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And did you take up the offer from the French government for that?
EE: I’ve taken it up, but I’ve not heard from them yet.
BW: I see.
EE: Very long winded.
BW: Well, I hope it comes through soon. There’s a note in your book here and it looks like you were flying in the group captain, group captain’s Lancaster, Group Captain—
EE: Bonham-Carter
BW: Bonham-Carter, over Germany?
EE: Yeah, right.
BW: And then a note about Guy Gibson.
EE: Well, he was missing. He [unclear]. He went missing on that trip.
BW: And what was he fulfilling?
EE: Master bomber.
BW: Master Bomber?
EE: Yes.
BW: Did you hear anything about what happened to him?
EE: No, they kept it quiet for about three weeks.
BW: I think he was killed in a Mosquito.
EE: He was. I’ve been to his grave.
BW: Have you?
EE: Yeah, in Holland.
BW: Presumably you never met Guy Gibson, just heard of him.
EE: No, I never met him.
BW: What was the err, I suppose the legend about him, how was it at the time—
EE: Nobody liked him.
BW: Nobody liked him?
EE: No, he was an arrogant bugger.
BW: And then, from October ’44, you are flying still Lancasters with 463. You had a regular aircraft it looks like, Q —
EE: Yes, you eventually got your own. Queenie.
BW: Queenie?
EE: That’s right.
BW: And do you recall the names of your other crewmen?
EE: Oh yes.
BW: There was a chap called Sunderland.
EE: Yeah, he was my pal.
BW: Was he?
EE: The navigator, Stanley.
BW: There was a Stanley Harding.
EE: He was a mid-upper.
BW: And —
EE: He was killed.
BW: Now your mate Sunderland, what was his first name?
EE: Cecil.
BW: Cecil? And so, Cecil Sunderland is navigator, Stanley Harding is the mid-upper, and, there was a chap called Lynch.
EE: We were pals.
BW: What was his first name, can you recall?
EE: Joe.
BW: Joe?
EE: Yeah.
BW: His first initial was a C but he must have gone —
EE: C J Lynch.
BW: And your bomb aimer was a chap called Rogers.
EE: Was a chap called?
BW: Rogers.
EE: Yes, that’s right.
BW: Do you recall his first name? It was R C Rogers, couldn’t -
EE: Can’t recall it.
BW: No problem. The flight engineer was Sergeant Haywood.
EE: Yes.
BW: And what was his first name.
EE: Don’t know.
BW: And there was a chap, he was an Aussie, the wireless operator called Woolmer.
EE: Eric.
BW: Eric. So, there were two Erics on your crew.
EE: I saved his life.
BW: Say again?
EE: I saved his life, I got him out.
BW: Really.
EE: It was in the write up. You read the write up.
BW: I ’ll ask you about that in a little while, um, do you recall any particularly memorable raids out of this lot?
EE: Yes, this one. That one.
BW: This is to Nuremburg.
EE: I could never have done that again. I’d have gone LMF I think.
BW: And, what was it that you particularly recall about that raid?
EE: Well, we flew in to a mile squared of predicted flak. A mile square of predicted, imagine what that was like.
BW: A mile square of predicted flak. So, it’s -
EE: We had to fly though that to get to the target. It was impossible, but we got through.
BW: And so, you could see, the rest of the crew could see this? You were obviously in the rear turret.
EE: We cut all our Perspex out. We cut all ours out, from the top to the bottom so there was better sight.
BW: I am just going to temporarily pause the recording because there is some background noise.
BW: So, were you briefed about this particular flak hazard at Nuremburg, did you know about it beforehand.
EE: No. They told us very little about this kind of thing. They didn’t tell us about the upward firing guns.
BW: Schräge Musik
EE: Never told us. There was a plane shot down in 1943 with complete, seventy-degree guns fitted, they didn’t tell us about it.
BW: And, in terms of um, general preparation for a raid, just talk us through what, what would happen, from the base, from your point of view. You would attend a, a briefing about a raid, what, what sort of things went on? How did you —
EE: Well, there were maps all over the wall. Loads of maps, you knew where you were going, and you just prepared for wherever it was [laughs]. Everybody moaned.
BW: So, were there particular trips that everybody moaned about, particular targets that were notorious?
EE: All the Ruhr targets. My three COs were killed on the one I was shot down on. Three COs killed there.
BW: On the same raid?
EE: Different raids.
BW: Different raids, but same target?
EE: Yes. Most heavily defended target in Germany.
BW: Gosh. And why was that? What was significant about —
EE: Dortmund-Ems Canal.
BW: I see. You obviously knew your crew pretty well. How did you get to meet them? How did you crew up in the first place?
EE: Just in the hall. Just crewed up. Found the pilot and found the navigator and we just crewed up.
BW: Just got talking and liked the look of each other. There were only a couple of Aussies on your crew and yet it was an Australian squadron.
EE: We were lucky. Best squadron of them all. No bullshit whatsoever. Superb squadron. Had the biggest losses of the war, my squadron.
BW: I read that, yeah, the Australians and your particular squadron had the highest loss rate, probably because you had such heavy targets to go against.
EE: Well, that’s it. We were 5 Group, which was one of the top groups. All the dirty work was done by us.
BW: All the dirty work was done by 5 Group. Did they have a reputation amongst the air force separate from the other groups?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what was that?
EE: They were a bit gung-ho.
BW: And was that, do you think, because of the mix of I don’t know, let’s say, colonial crew and squadrons —
EE: I don’t know, I don’t know why.
BW: What sort of preparations would you make before actually getting on board the aircraft and taking off? What, what kind of things would you do? Were there any mascots that you took, or rituals you had as a crew?
EE: No, no. Just got on board and got on with it.
BW: So, you weren’t a superstitious bunch at all?
EE: No. Not that I knew of. I didn’t take anything.
BW: And did you socialise as a crew on base as well?
EE: Oh, always. I used to go out with my navigator.
BW: And so, whereabouts did you go into?
EE: Into Lincoln. All the pubs in Lincoln.
BW: And what was that like? Were you treated well in the pubs?
EE: Yeah, except in Yorkshire. They didn’t like us in York.
BW: And why was that?
EE: I don’t know [unclear].
BW: Mm.
EE: But Lincoln was a stinking place.
BW: Did you meet any of them before you joined the squadron, or did you meet the all at —
EE: Met them all there, met them when, when we became a crew.
BW: And what was your pilot, Joe, like?
EE: Nice fellow. He was a year younger than I was, he was only twenty.
BW: You were all young and Stanley was only nineteen at the time as well. So, you were all in your late teens, early twenties.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what were you wearing as a rear gunner? There were electrically heated suits, did you have one?
EE: Yeah. It was a silk suit, on your sort of skin and then underwear and a pullover and pants, and a denim overall, and an electric suit. The electric suits were useless. Used to short out and you’d get a red-hot leg and a cold one. Bloody useless. They never checked.
BW: And how did you find your position in the, a rear turret of the Lancaster? They said they were made to get in to and not out of. Was it fairly cramped?
EE: Yes, yeah. Very cramped, but there was space to do everything, except if you get a bad stoppage.
BW: And did that ever happen?
EE: Yeah. I had a separated case.
BW: And how did you manage to clear the guns when you had the stoppage?
EE: Well, you couldn’t, just isolate it. Stop the feed.
BW: And the guns you were using at the time were the 303s, is that right?
EE: 303’s, they were just being converted to the point fives when they got shot down.
BW: Did you ever get the chance to use your guns in anger?
EE: Yeah, I shot down a 110.
BW: Really.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Talk us through that. What happened?
EE: Well, he suddenly appeared about a hundred yards behind me. I say I shot him down, but I don’t know if I ever did, how can you tell at night? Anyway, he got a full, full load in the face. I got two that night, I hit two that night. I don’t know how many, I don’t know what happened to them. I never claimed them.
BW: That’s interesting, that you managed to hit two separate aircraft and didn’t claim them. Why did you not go through the —
EE: Well, how could I claim them, I just fired at them.
BW: So, they didn’t go down in flames but they stopped their attack.
EE: I don’t know, they could’ve done, you don’t wait around, do you?
BW: No.
EE: They’re both down there [pause], Brunswick.
BW: Okay, op number eight over Brunswick. Two fighters, so actually on the same raid —
EE: Yeah. One, I’m certain I got him. He was only about a hundred yards behind me. Hit him full on. I could see the pilot.
BW: And, that’s a really close range for them to, to be attacking you. They’ve obviously come in to a very short distance before attacking, were there —
EE: They didn’t realise. One night we were flying along a fighter between our tail plane. Flying along with us. Main partner tail plane, we suddenly looked and we both peeled off.
BW: And so, because it’s at night, even, even so it was very difficult, so you were lucky in that case that you didn’t have a mid-air collision.
EE: Yeah.
BW: With a fighter between your tail plane [laughs]. Were there any other raids that were particularly eventful or memorable? For you.
EE: All the Ruhr raids.
BW: All of them on the Ruhr?
EE: And when we got lost.
BW: Wilhelmshaven?
EE: We went to Bremerhaven by ourselves and then turned back and went to Wilhelmshaven by ourselves. Nearly got sent to Sheffield. You know about Sheffield, do you?
BW: Not in detail, tell me about —
EE: You don’t know Sheffield?
BW: I know of the city but —
EE: Nobody seemed to know about Sheffield. It was a punishment camp for aircrew.
BW: I see.
EE: An RAF punishment camp.
BW: And this, presumably, was a result of you flying to um Bremen, instead of Wilhelmshaven, but you didn’t drop your bombs on the —
EE: We did eventually.
BW: But only on Wilhelmshaven.
EE: No, we were going to Wilhelmshaven but we went to Bremerhaven.
BW: Bremerhaven.
EE: We turned around, we saw the fires so we turned back. Went to Wilhelmshaven and dropped them.
BW: And, as a result of that, you were then sent to Sheffield which was a punishment —
EE: We weren’t sent —
BW: I see.
EE: We were threatened with it.
BW: You were threatened with the punishment camp?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And would that have applied to all the crew? Or just —
EE: The whole crew.
BW: Gosh.
EE: People don’t know about Sheffield. It was, it was, an Army camp like a glass house. You got about a couple of weeks or a couple of months of strict discipline, then sent back to the squadron. But the Argies wouldn’t stand any of that nonsense. They had their own, no Argie was ever punished by the British.
BW: I read somewhere that they were paid by their own government, not by the British.
EE: They got twice the pay that we got.
BW: So, did your pilot buy the rounds in the pub [laughs].
EE: No [laughs].
BW: [Pause]. And then, on your last mission, this was November 6th, 1944, and this was significant for a couple of reasons. Clearly this was going to be your last trip in a Lancaster, but you mentioned as well that you saved the wireless operators life, and there is a description in the book, or the memoir that you have put together. Would you just talk us through what happened on that, on that night?
EE: It’s all written up there, yeah.
BW: So, this is fairly early on. This is a target at the Dortmund-Ems canal system at Gravenhorst, and then you were hit by a night fighter, and this was just as you were on target, and it says that you were flying straight and level with a bomb load of fourteen, one thousand-pound bombs of high explosive, and the impact was just behind, your, your turret.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And so, can you describe what was happening at that particular point, did you see the fighter?
EE: No, he was underneath. He was way, far away, he would be under, under the main bar.
BW: And so, you didn’t see the fighter because it came underneath, behind your turret, and —
EE: We didn’t start firing until they were seventy degrees, so if you took an aircraft and you were firing here, and I was here — [background noise].
BW: OK. I’m just going to pause the recording for a moment briefly, partly ‘cos of background noise but just to have a quick look through the description too. So, there are bullets coming through the fuselage behind you, and your turret is partly rotated to the beam position you said. Can you describe what you recall next?
EE: We were trying to get out through one door, with the seat back, I got out and didn’t touch the sides, went out like a ‘rat up a spout’, into the fuselage and found the wireless operator. The mid upper came down and he told us to grab the—
BW: And the mid upper got hit in the second attack by the —
EE: Yeah, cut him in two, right through the middle we stepped over to the osam position. Obviously, they had all gone on the first attack, apparently everybody had gone. I don’t blame them for going, we were still there.
BW: I’m just going to pause this one moment, we’ll just continue, there was some background noise. And at this point in the raid, you said there were a number of others that had already got out and you didn’t blame them. There was you and the wireless operator left in the aircraft, is that right?
EE: And the mid upper.
BW: And the mid upper? And you describe in your account how you got him out, with the aid of a foot in the back?
EE: Yeah. I got him on the step. He passed out on the floor and I dragged him to the step and kicked him out, a hand and a leg over the step and pushed him out. I never told him.
BW: He survived the bail out, but he was unconscious when you pushed him out.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Was the aircraft still straight and level or was it going down gently?
EE: I don’t remember, she was going down. Then suddenly she banked and caught me. I got trapped.
BW: And you were pinned against the fuselage by the seat by G force.
EE: That’s right, he’d gone.
BW: And there was nobody else in the aircraft at this point.
EE: I was the last one. Had a minute and a half to go according to records, before she hit the deck.
BW: And so, the aircraft is in a steep dive, your pinned to the roof of the fuselage—
EE: Right opposite, I could see the door below me.
BW: And, at a critical point, the aircraft banked—
EE: She banked, let go of me and away I went. Hit the tail plane going down [laughs].
BW: And at that point, the aircraft banked, did you go straight through the door, or did you have to crawl to it and get out?
EE: I don’t know. I don’t remember. And then I hit the tail plane.
BW: And you were lucky, in the sense that you had a seat pack parachute —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Most gunners, fitted their chute to the side of the aircraft.
EE: Yeah
BW: Did you have choice to have a seat pack?
EE: No. Just issue. Very lucky, been lucky all my life. Very lucky man.
BW: And it saved your life in that respect.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, the hit against the tail plane didn’t knock you out. Did it injure you?
EE: No, I hit it with my back. I remember I was crouched up, and I straightened me up and skidded over the top of it, and after that I don’t remember much.
BW: You managed to pull the chute.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Did you see any of the other crew in their chutes?
EE: No, no.
BW: There were two other aircraft lost on that raid, that same night.
EE: Four altogether.
BW: Four altogether?
EE: We were the only ones that survived.
BW: So, the others went down and the crews were all killed?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, were you given an order to bail out by the pilot?
EE: No, no, they’d gone.
BW: So, there was no order, they sensed the attack because of the bullets hitting the aircraft and they just took their own decision to go.
EE: Yeah. They may have got an order to go, but I didn’t get one. They probably did, I don’t know.
BW: Do you know roughly what height it was when you bailed out?
EE: No. No idea.
BW: How long do you think you were in the chute before you landed?
EE: No idea. I can’t remember now, too long ago. Not very long [pause].
BW: You then landed on your backside, it says here.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And I think you had another lucky escape, where you landed.
EE: I did.
BW: Just, can you explain why that was?
EE: Just sheer luck. Sheer good luck.
BW: Were there sharpened spikes in the field?
EE: Yeah, they had trees sharpened, planted in the field.
BW: Trees, planted in the field, that were sharpened, specifically to stop guys like you landing there.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And, out of all of that, you missed all of them.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: So, you’re now down, and safe, in the sense that you have survived, but you are in Germany.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What did you do next?
EE: Started looking for somewhere to hide.
BW: And, you describe here that you started to run, but you ended up in a bog.
EE: Yeah, lost me boots.
BW: Both boots?
EE: One boot.
BW: One boot. And, you tried to shelter in a, in a wood.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Can you recall, how it felt at this point?
EE: I didn’t believe I was in Germany. I just hoped I was somewhere else, but obviously was in Germany, but you just hope against hope you’re not.
BW: Did you find any of the escape kit that you were given useful?
EE: Oh, yes, I ate the Horlicks tablet and the chocolate.
BW: And, at this point, you were on your own, you didn’t run into any of the other crewmen.
EE: No.
BW: And you were trying to avoid Germans and dogs.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And you ended up by a jet fighter base?
EE: Yeah.
BW: What was going through your mind at this point, do you think?
EE: To get away from the jet fighter base as quick as possible.
BW: And shortly after that you were —
EE: I’d been attacked by a jet over [unclear], 262’s, over Brunswick.
BW: Over Brunswick?
EE: Yeah, over Brunswick.
BW: And was that a daylight raid at the time?
EE: No, night.
BW: Night?
EE: It was over Bremen, Bremen. Five fighters [pause]. Went to Bergen in Norway as well.
BW: So, there’s a possibility, perhaps, that when those five fighters had intercepted you at night, and those jets that you had seen attacking you —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Possibly were from that base that you were now sat in front of.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What prompted your decision to approach a farmhouse?
EE: Well, I had been three days out, absolutely soaked, would have died of the cold, never stopped raining. So, I had to approach somebody, I would have died of exposure otherwise.
BW: Can you recall the moment that you knocked on the door?
EE: Yes, old lady came to the door and an old guy, they were obviously the mother and father of the farmer. I saw a picture of Hitler on the wall. I knew they were German and that was it.
BW: And how did they treat you?
EE: Okay. They were a bit frightened of me. They were worried about me, as one would be.
BW: Were you able to communicate with them at all?
EE: No. I said I was an Englishfleger
BW: You said simply that you were an Englishfleger
EE: That’s right.
BW: And from your account, they must have called somebody who then came to arrest you.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Can you talk us through that period?
EE: Well, this guy, this fella came through in a very resplendent uniform, he was a forest warden. And err, he took me off to the pub, dragged me through the wood, which I’ve since then I’ve followed my route, I’ve been back to Germany. Followed my route, and he dragged me through the woods and then he took me in to the pub to show me off to his pals, and then the Luftwaffe came for me.
BW: And were you still in the pub when the Luftwaffe turned up?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what happened?
EE: Well, they put me in a cell and then eventually I finished up on the Dortmund, on one of the canals.
BW: So, were you imprisoned at this, at this point?
EE: Not really. It was a guard house.
BW: It was a guard house by the canal?
EE: That’s right.
BW: That you actually been attacking near the canal, you said it was the Dortmund-elms canal.
EE: I don’t think it was the Dortmund.
BW: Was it not? And you mentioned that there was an American pilot brought in.
EE: No, he was already in there.
BW: He was already there.
EE: Yeah, all his face was bandaged and his hand.
BW: And an American thunderbolt pilot joined you as well.
EE: Yeah, he was okay, he wasn’t injured at all. He would just curse.
BW: How did he take to being captured?
EE: Very badly, very badly [laughs].
BW: And then you were taken by train to Frankfurt —
EE: To Oberusal and to Dulagluft.
BW: And put straight in an air raid shelter, ‘cos there was an air raid going on.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What did that feel like, being under an allied air raid, that only a few days before you would have been —
EE: Whilst I was in, I was bombed by the Americans, the Russians, the British and the Germans during my full-time service.
BW: So, at this stage then, you are in Dulagluft and you have been ordered to fill out information, and it seems they weren’t quite convinced you were RAF, is that right?
EE: Well, they always do this [unclear], tried to frighten you.
BW: Did it work?
EE: Yeah.
BW: There were um, rules about information you were able to give —
EE: Name, rank and number.
BW: And how effective were those rules do you think.
EE: God, I just told them my name rank and number, that’s it.
BW: And you weren’t mistreated because of holding to that?
EE: No.
BW: But you were put in a cell with a radiator at the end of it —
EE: That’s right.
BW: That, that was turned hot and then cold.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Seems pretty grim.
EE: Wasn’t too bad. There was a lot worse.
BW: ‘cause you had met people who had been injured —
EE: Yeah.
BW: And then been captured.
EE: Yeah
BW: And the food was not much to go by, was it?
EE: Oh God, no.
BW: Can you describe what they fed you?
EE: Yeah, two pieces of black bread and some watery soup, that was it.
BW: And this was very thin bread.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And nothing to look forward to there for a meal each day? And somebody lent you a book while you were in there.
EE: Yes, the fellow opposite. They opened the door and this bloke pushed a book across, it was Zane Gray, western.
BW: Zane Gray, western. Did the guard do anything, did they see it?
EE: They didn’t notice, just the door opened and he pushed it across.
BW: And was that the first contact you’d had with anybody?
EE: Yeah. Anybody from England. I don’t know who the guy was.
BW: And how did it feel? Did it give you a bit of hope knowing there was some others in there?
EE: Well, I suppose so.
BW: At, at this point, you snuck a shave when you shouldn’t have done apparently.
EE: Yeah [laughs], I went down the [unclear], waved my book and he sent me down to the library at the end, saw these, these blokes shaving so I joined them, and had a good wash and shave.
BW: And apparently having a wash and a shave was only a privilege not a —
EE: You had to, had to chat with them.
BW: And the colonel who was in charge of holding you, was not very impressed with that was he?
EE: He wasn’t. He went berserk.
BW: And then then there’s an interesting incident here, where a German officer told you that you were going to be shipped out to a POW camp, asked you to swear an oath that you would not escape.
EE: Yeah, he got shouted down and that, it was a stupid thing to say to us.
BW: And were you all taken out and lined up at this point?
EE: We were in a group, in a big room.
BW: And am I right in thinking that this was must have been the first time you had seen all the other prisoners together?
EE: Oh yeah, Americans and British and Canadians, Aussies and everybody, all mixed up.
BW: How did it feel, being, you know, in a larger group of your —
EE: Very impressed, hearing English spoken again.
BW: You were then taken by train and packed into trucks um, and then during the trip, you stopped at some marshalling yards at Ham. What happened there?
EE: We got bombed by the Americans.
BW: Your guards deserted you, didn’t they?
EE: Oh yes, they locked the carriage and buggered off.
BW: And so. You’re all trapped in the railway carts while —
EE: And they were all jumping off the bloody rails. The damn thing was jumping off.
BW: Because of the concussion of the explosion?
EE: Yeah.
BW: So eventually, after the best part of a week, five days and six nights you say here, you arrived at Stalagluft 7 —
EE: That’s it.
BW: At Bankau, and you managed to get some boots and a great coat.
EE: A polish hat. A new American great coat, new boots, and a Polish hat and that was it, oh, and a pipe.
BW: A pipe as well? And you’ve still got it.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this looks just like a regular pipe but it’s got the inscription —
EE: I put that on, carved it with a razor blade.
BW: And you carved an air gunners brevet, into the bulb of the pipe, with 463 squadron on it.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Do you still smoke it?
EE: No.
BW: Did you still smoke it after you came out of service?
EE: No.
BW: Just kept it as a souvenir?
EE: Yeah
BW: It’s wonderful. And how did you manage to find boots that fit you?
EE: Well, they, they made sure they fitted. We got underwear as well, we got underwear and socks and things.
BW: So, the Germans issued you this or was it —.
EE: Oh, yes, it was all American.
BW: Was there any indication where they got it from?
EE: The Americans. Obviously, it was all American, new American army. Boots saved my bloody life.
BW: So, you were issued with underwear, socks, shirts, towels, comb, toothbrush, razor, razor blades and the pipe which you’ve shown that you still have, and this that your showing —
EE: A dog tag.
BW: Is a dog tag, which is about two inch long by one-inch wide, and it’s numbered one, two, four, zero, and German initials, which presumably are standing for Krieg —
EE: Fangelager.
BW: Kriegsgefangenenlager. D —
EE: Number seven.
BW: D dot, LW, dot number seven. And it’s inscribed top and bottom —
EE: I broke it in half. If you died, they broke it in half and buried one half with you and the other went to records.
BW: I see. So, there’s, there’s a hole in each corner, apart from one, and there are serrations in the middle, and so the inscription is top and bottom of this and, as you say, is used if the prisoner happens to die, then they separate the two halves and send one half back and bury the other with you. Fortunately, they never had to use that.
EE: No, now here’s my —
BW: And, now this is your Caterpillar Club card. Name, Flight Sergeant E Evans. Am I right in thinking that you had to return your chute handle to get one of those?
EE: No.
BW: No?
EE: [Unclear] as a squadron, says here. Letter’s in here.
BW: Okay, and a bit of luck I suppose, in the sense that you arrived at your prison camp just before Christmas.
EE: [Laughs] yeah.
BW: You describe getting Red Cross parcels.
EE: Yeah, the only one we ever got.
BW: And was that, do you think, because the Germans were intercepting them, or they were just no —
EE: Well, when we left, we left ten thousand in a place nearby, ten thousand parcels we should have had.
BW: And it sounds as though, from what you’re saying, that the Germans kept them and just used them for themselves and didn’t distribute them [Pause]. And there was a brew made for Christmas with raisins and prunes.
EE: I don’t know who made it. Some of the old lags.
BW: And it sounds pretty potent.
EE: [Laughs], it was, make you go blind.
BW: How would you describe life in the prison camp at that point?
EE: Boring.
BW: What did you do to relieve the boredom?
EE: Nothing. Nothing, bloody boring. Just walked round and round and round the perimeter by the trip wire.
BW: When you mention the trip wire, what springs to mind perhaps, is a scene in the Great Escape where there’s sort of a trip wire in front of the fence, was it accurate what they portrayed?
EE: Yeah, you just didn’t go over the trip wire. Got shot by the guards. One fella did get shot.
BW: And do you think that was because he’d had enough or was he trying to escape or —
EE: He’d had enough.
BW: And by this stage the war is coming to a close. We know this retrospectively, but at this time —
EE: Well, there was another six months to go.
BW: And the Russians were advancing.
EE: Through the Vistula. Always the Vistula. We were jammed between the Russians and the Oder and the Vistula. We were trapped in the middle, so they had to get us over the Oder before the Russians got us.
BW: And just describe, if you can, that period where, where, the Germans decide to evacuate the camp.
EE: Well, what can you do? You’ve got to go, you’ve no choice.
BW: Did they tell you what was happening?
EE: No. We thought we were going to be shot. We thought they were going to take us to us a wood somewhere and shoot us.
BW: Did they order you out of the huts in to the —
EE: Yeah, in to the main compound. Told us we would be leaving in half an hour. The previous night we had been bombed by the Russians, the camp was bombed.
BW: Were there any hits in the camp or was it just around —
EE: No. No.
BW: And, so, you start walking, and you mentioned previously that it was about a three-week trip. Can you describe the conditions with the sort of weather or the terrain or —
EE: Well, it was the worst weather for fifty years in Germany. Twenty below and we were living out. They were rushing to get us over the Oder before they blew the bridges. We were the last people over the Oder, they blew the bridges after we got over.
BW: And you joined a long line of columns, you mentioned people fleeing the Russians.
EE: They didn’t get over the Oder. They were turned left, just turned the off and then blew the bridges. We were the last people over the Oder.
BW: So you were given preference over the civilians to cross the river.
EE: Well, they wanted to get us away from the Russians. Civilians, they didn’t give a damn about them.
BW: And you pitched up at a brick works and it seems like a bit of black humour here, where there was German aircraft attacking and —
EE: Yeah. We saw the columns, and we used to look up and [laughs] there were black crosses on them and they were one of ours.
BW: By this stage you were saying, ‘it’s one of ours’, and on the 8th of Feb you arrived at StalagLuft 3-A Luckenwalde near Potsdam, and the Germans were looking for volunteers, is that right, to join their forces?
EE: No, that was previous, that was at the first camp.
BW: Oh, I see.
EE: Oh, at Luckenwalde, that’s right, they were. They were, that’s right yes [unclear]. I’d forgotten.
BW: And there were Russian prisoners there too, but they were badly treated.
EE: Yeah, different compound. There were thirty thousand when we camped.
BW: And again, harsh conditions in that there was no bunk or beds to sleep on, just straw, and no food as such, no medicine.
EE: And they brought the prisoners in from the Ardennes, the Americans came in and they had new accommodation for them, put them under canvas. There’s a picture of them in here [taps].
BW: Let’s have look. There’s a picture in the scrap book that you’ve got [pause].
EE: They’re there.
BW: I see, so these are large, I suppose, marquee style tents —
EE: Yeah.
BW: There would be several dozen to a tent. And the pictures show prisoners just sat around on the ground around fires, trying to keep warm and cook food. There looks to be clothes hung on the fence as well on the —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Where did you get the photograph from?
EE: A bloke took them, and he, I gave him my address and he sent them to me after the war.
BW: There’s a photograph of a football match going on too.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And a picture of Russian soldiers. And I think you describe, when the Russians turned up, that Zhukov’s forces were pretty professional and disciplined.
EE: Oh, they were, it was all the ‘rag, tag and bobtail’ that came in afterwards. They wanted to jump on the tanks and go to Berlin with them. We were the last camp to be liberated and we were passaged to Berlin, about twenty miles away. We just had to ‘bugger off’.
BW: And so they left you for their err, second line, or reserve forces to pick up.
EE: Yeah.
BW: But you felt they were much more poorly disciplined.
EE: They were just ‘rag, tag and bobtail’. No rations. No official rations.
BW: And then there’s a letter here, ‘senior British officer communicating the following in writing to the Russian authorities today the 7th of May’ —
EE: We were held hostage for a month by the Russians, that’s why I escaped.
BW: And so, the Russians took over the camp, and, and this is at the point that Zhukov had arrived and you stood right beside —.
EE: Marshall Zhukov.
BW: What, what, did he look like, can you describe him?
EE: Not really, one of the guys had trouble firing his gun, so he jumped down and fired it for him.
BW: So, the firing of the gun was presumably to, was it to keep people back or was it just a celebration?
EE: No, it was a firing of the salute to the [unclear].
BW: I see. Were you able to communicate in any way, with the Russians at all?
EE: No. they were savages.
BW: And was that through their temperaments or their —
EE: They were peasants.
BW: So, these weren’t the professional soldiers that you’d seen, these were the ‘rag, tag’ ones you mentioned.
EE: Yeah, millions of them.
BW: And, on the 21sth of April 1945, there was a battle nearby, and you were watching dog fights between American Air Cobras, Russian Yaks, and Stormaviks, a German fighter. That sounds quite a melee, completely disorganised.
EE: [laughs] Yeah.
BW: And you were lucky not to be hit by the shell fire and tanks, and fighters strafing the camp.
EE: Well, the bombers were coming over at night as well. They were dropping on Berlin. There was a short fall of twenty mile [unclear], so we used to dig in. I was a month late getting home from Germany, I was held by the Russians.
BW: And what was, what was happening during that time?
EE: Well, they were just ignoring the fact that we were prisoners of war.
BW: And the point you mentioned, the Russian troops were trying to persuade you to join them, you refused and they fired over your head.
EE: Well, that was when we were, the Americans sent the trucks to enter the camp.
BW: And it was at this point or thereabouts, that you, and a Canadian and two other Brits decided to make a run for it.
EE: We did. Let ourselves out of the camp, and took off. The most dangerous thing I ever did. Stupid really. We just got fed up being amongst the, we thought we were going back home through Russia, God knows what would have happened then, I would never have been seen again.
BW: So, it was a real fear that you were going to be held properly captive by the Russians —
EE: Oh yeah.
BW: Not just temporarily.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And you picked up err, or rather, you describe a man coming towards you on a bike, it turns out he was a British soldier.
EE: Yeah. He’s still in Germany, took over a farm [laughs].
BW: And he met a girl and was quite keen on living in Germany still.
EE: Yeah. There were a few of them.
BW: And then, trying to cross the river Mulde, you were at a ferry point and a sort of KGB type officer appeared and persuaded the ferryman to take you across.
EE: Yeah [unclear] we were just wondering whether to throw him in the water, the German, we had no need to.
BW: You ended up in an abandoned inn and met some Russians there, who insisted on feeding you, and, plying you with beer.
EE: Schnapps, schnapps, there was no beer.
BW: Just schnapps. The atmosphere seems to have changed a lot.
EE: Well, they were just Russian troops, they were quite friendly [laughs]. Told them we were American.
BW: And, so, these must have been the regular professional soldiers perhaps?
EE: Well, I don’t know [unclear].
BW: And what was the town major like that you met?
EE: Well, she was ok, a woman, a middle aged, sort of, no, late thirties I would say.
BW: And she had a few grenades with her, didn’t she?
EE: A belt full of ammunition. A belt with grenades, very fearsome looking.
BW: A fearsome looking woman with a belt full of grenades.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this is pretty close to the full end of the war now and you are um, moved on, and given bicycles, and you met a young German girl. What happened there?
EE: Yeah. Well, she was obviously going to be raped by the Russians, so we took her with us, took her to the Russian, err, American lines. Got her through in the American sector. Very lucky, you couldn’t get, once you got to the Americans, the Russian wouldn’t let anybody across, people, one fella swam and got drowned, trying to get across. We just walked across with our bicycle.
BW: There was no bridge at this point I think you said, because—
EE: The bridge was down.
BW: And so, when you say “walk across”, what —
EE: We climbed up, rope ladder —
BW: And were there remnants of the bridge, perhaps rails or whatever —
EE: It was just collapsed. Huge iron bridge, huge metal bridge.
BW: And so, you clambered across the steel structure across the river, is that right?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, even though you had to push through the, or pass, the guards at this point, from your description, is that right?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And you weren’t stopped. So, you managed to get this girl across —
EE: They didn’t stop us, threw her bike in the air and we were on our way. Someone took a film of it, an American took a film of it so somewhere there’s a film of it.
BW: And what sort of welcome did you get on the other side?
EE: Oh, wonderful. Food and drink and cigarettes, as much as you want.
BW: And how did the girl feel when she got across?
EE: Well, we handed her over to the Americans, they took her to a DP Camp.
BW: A displaced person’s camp, a DP camp.
EE: Yeah, and she was safe.
BW: And so, you, you were obviously well treated by the Americans —
EE: Oh, very well.
BW: Well stocked, and then you flew out of Germany on Dakotas, landed in Brussels you say, and you were talking with an old soldier, but what was your view?
EE: I want to get home, as quick as possible. He was left for weeks, you’d get ten pounds a day.
BW: And you just wanted to get home.
EE: Wanted to get home.
BW: How did you manage that?
EE: Well, just queued up the next morning, shouted my name, and away I went.
BW: And you, you arrived back by Dakota into the UK.
EE: Yeah.
BW: How did that feel after all that you had been through?
EE: Can’t remember now, felt good obviously.
BW: And, so, you’re, you’re back in the UK, what, what happened from that point up to being demobbed?
EE: I wasn’t demobbed then.
BW: Not at that point, but between arriving back in the UK —
EE: I took over prison camps. I ran prison camps.
BW: And, so, you had a long leave and returned to run two camps for German POW’s, one at Woodvale which is not that far from here, near Southport and the second one was a maintenance unit at Bramcote in Warwickshire.
EE: That’s right.
BW: You mentioned before, and it says here that you joined afterwards the 40th Kings Royal Tank Regiment and served for six years as a troop commander.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What, what led you to join the Army at that point?
EE: Because of the rotten treatment I had from the RAF.
BW: And —
EE: All my thanks were, a couple of weeks before I left the RAF, I was stripped down to a sergeant.
BW: Really?
EE: Yeah, and that was my thanks.
BW: And what was that for?
EE: Oh, God knows.
BW: So, you’d been through all that, and been a, I think you were a flight sergeant, you weren’t commissioned during your service, were you?
EE: No.
BW: So, you had been a senior NCO and promoted up to warrant officer, and then the thanks you got from the RAF, as you put it, was to be then stripped down to sergeant.
EE: That was it, no thanks.
BW: And they didn’t give you a reason for that?
EE: No.
BW: Understandably, that must have been pretty galling.
EE: It was. Of course, it was only a couple of weeks before I left the service, so I was a warrant officer for about a year. Best rank in the service.
BW: And what, what gives you the view of it being the best rank do you have?
EE: Well, you’re neither “fish nor fowl”.
BW: [Laughs].
EE: All aircrew should have been commissioned. It would have given us better rights under the Geneva Convention and a decent pension in the very likely event of your demise on ops. We were all doing the same job. Do you know seventy five percent, twenty five percent of air crew were commissioned, seventy five percent weren’t? Of the gallantry medals, seventy five percent went to the commissioned, twenty five percent went to us. Seventy five percent. That’s how fair it was.
BW: And in general, the rule was that, the reason airmen were given the rank of sergeant when the joined aircrew, was to at least guarantee them better treatment as prisoners.
EE: Yeah, but we were all doing the same job. Why commissioned?
BW: Yeah, and there were even, on your crew, there was a mix, one of them, I think the pilot, was a flying officer, and the rest were all NCO’s weren’t they?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And the rule has changed in the post war years, that all aircrew now have to be —
EE: That’s not the rule.
BW: Have to be officers.
EE: I have something else to write.
BW: So, you decided to join the Army.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Did you experience a better appreciation of you as an individual in the Army?
EE: Yeah, yeah. The Army was an established service with proper ranks. Proper rules and regulations, good background.
BW: And you didn’t have to go through any other training, did you? Apart from trade training as a tank commander.
EE: I went to the War Office Selection Board to enlist.
BW: And they put you forward and you became —
EE: To be a lieutenant, and then a captain, a substantive captain.
BW: And where were you based during that time?
EE: Bootle, near here, it was a TA regiment.
BW: At Bootle?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And how did you find the um, your colleagues, your Army mates, how were they? Officers’ final dinner. This is a —
EE: Well, we were disbanded.
BW: Right. Monty’s Foxhounds, your troops called. What sort of tanks did you use? Lieutenant E Evans yeah? Presentation of the colour on the 11th of April 1954, this is a sort of service, an order of parade document. Did Montgomery, as Commandant of the regiment, did he attend this parade at all?
EE: No. Err, Err, Lord Whatsername did it. Can’t think of his name, a Liverpool man.
BW: Just pause the recording there for the background noise. I say, I’m looking here for the official who attended the parade when you were at Bootle. Presentation of the colours.
EE: We had to learn sword drill for this.
BW: You had to learn how to salute with a sword, there’s a way of doing it isn’t there?
EE: Yeah, the new colours.
BW: Uh- huh.
EE: Can’t think who it was.
BW: And what do you recall of your time with the troop? Was it all home service? You weren’t sent abroad anywhere?
EE: No, we used to go to camps every year, firing camps and tactical camps. It was good, Comets and Centurions.
BW: Comets and Centurions.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And did you enjoy that?
EE: Great, yeah, I would still have been there but they disbanded that regiment. That was the final dinner.
BW: Hmmm. And what happened after you then left the Army in 1956?
EE: I was working for my father, in his business. I was a sales manager.
BW: You were working for your father, and what was his business?
EE: A motor business.
BW: I see, selling motor cars?
EE: Yes, and a workshop. Quite a big business actually.
BW: And how long did you stick at that?
EE: About ten years. Then we fell out and I started my own company. Had four businesses, I finished up with four.
BW: Right. And what were they?
EE: [Unclear], ship repair business, hydraulic business and workshop, machine shop.
BW: Right, that’s quite a broad base of business to have. Four business in com, in pretty different sectors, so, and you had all those four companies, for twenty, thirty years maybe?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And through all that time, you were presumably married, there’s a lot of family photos in your house.
EE: Yeah, three girls.
BW: Three girls?
EE: My wife died about ten years ago.
BW: Uh-huh.
EE: All three daughters are still alive. I’ve got nine great grandchildren now.
BW: (laughs) And do you see them regularly?
EE: Oh yes, my daughter will be here very shortly.
BW: So, how have you err, heard about the commemorations of Bomber Command, and what do you think of the activities to now try and restore a bit of err, pride or honour to Bomber Command?
EE: Well, the RAF ignored them after the war. Totally. He and Churchill, they turned their backs on us. No doubt about that, everybody said ‘shouldn’t you mention Bomber Command’ and they all came up with the bloody target in Germany. I was very sick of it.
BW: How do you feel about the recent recognition in —
EE: Well, it’s about time, fifty-five thousand of us died. Biggest loss of the war.
BW: Mm.
EE: Much bigger than the first world war even.
BW: And its err, at least commemorating you and your comrades and what, what you did. Have you seen, you went to the unveiling last year. How was that?
EE: Yes.
BW: How did you feel about that?
EE: It was okay.
BW: Yeah, it doesn’t seem fair does it, that there’s, there was only a clasp awarded for it?
EE: It was ridiculous, a bloody insult.
BW: Well, I think Eric, that is all the questions I have for you.
EE: Do you want to look through there?
BW: I will have a look through your, your scrap book, I will just pause the recording. Now this is an interesting telegram, it’s, is that from Liverpool to British Army staff at Washington DC, or is it that other way around?
EE: Not it’s from my mother —
BW: From your mum?
EE: In Liverpool, to tell my father.
BW: And your mum was Madge?
EE: That’s it.
BW: And you father was abroad at the time, was he?
EE: He was on the British Army staff in Washington [unclear].
BW: So, you mentioned he’d been a major in the Army, was he still in the Army all the way through the war.
EE: Yes. You can see a photograph of him later on.
BW: There’s a photograph of him?
EE: My mother and my eldest brother.
BW: That’s it, mother and eldest brother, who was in the Navy. Now this is a, this is quite a service family photograph, there’s five of you, including, your, well there’s three sons in the family and your father and mother.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Your father’s in his Army uniform, there’s you and your middle brother in your RAF uniform and your older brother in the middle of both of you, stood in the middle of both of you, in his Navy uniform. What rank was he in the Navy?
EE: Lieutenant.
BW: And your other brother is wearing an observers brevet.
EE: That’s right.
BW: What did he get up to in the —
EE: Navigator.
BW: Navigator.
EE: On the squadron at Waterbeach. That’s the guy that saved his life.
BW: Yourself and the wireless operator, taken, taken on D Day.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And that looks like he’s wearing the Australian uniform.
EE: It’s a bit dark.
BW: It’s a bit darker than the RAF one,
EE: Better quality.
BW: And did you keep in touch with him after the war?
EE: No.
BW: Do you know what’s happened to him since, not heard a thing or anything through associations or —
EE: No. That was a TA, he became a general. General Sir Richard Lawson.
BW: Sir Richard Lawson! And he sat across a table from you?
EE: Yeah, he was my adjutant, Dicky Lawson.
BW: [Laughs].
EE: He did very well.
BW: So, he must have transferred regiment then, presumably, if your unit had been —
EE: He was a regular adjutant.
BW: He was a regular adjutant, I see, so you were in the TA branch.
EE: [Unclear]
BW: Then there’s pictures here of a V1,
EE: Yeah, a piloted one.
BW: A piloted one.
EE: Yeah. I saw a V2 launch.
BW: Where did you see that?
EE: In Poland
BW: In Poland?
EE: Yeah.
BW: So, was this —
EE: On the march.
BW: Actually during the march?
EE: Yeah. We got to Sargan and we saw it launch. It went crazy.
BW: So, when we see the archive footage of these rockets going off, and there’s a few that do spin off and crash into the ground, and this was one that did, was it? It was lucky it didn’t come over your way and —
EE: We were a few miles away.
BW: I bet you could hear the bang from where you were.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this photo is of May Schmeling.
EE: That’s Max Schmeling.
BW: Max Schmeling.
EE: He was a world championship boxer.
BW: Who visited at Stalag 3-A Luckenwalde in the uniform of a paratrooper, 3rd March 1945. Did you get to speak to him?
EE: Yeah, he gave me his autograph.
BW: What was your impression of him?
EE: He was all right, very broad.
BW: That must be your wife.
EE: Yes [laughs].
BW: I’m just going to pause the recording. I was just going to say, this is a —
EE: An AVM
BW: An Air Vice Marshall who has his own sort of service medals, stood with you, and where was the unveiling?
EE: At Green Park.
BW: At Green Park, so this would be in 2012 in London.
EE: Yeah.
BW: There are, it looks like, these, these must be the, the Germans there are some names here —
EE: I took a trip back. Went to the Dortmund Ems canal.
BW: I’ll just pause that again. May I just briefly ask you, the scrap book contains details of your visit to Germany. How did it feel, going back, and re-tracing your route?
EE: Very interesting actually, because there was. This is a telegram.
BW: Yeah. And you actually met the pilot of the—
EE: No, I didn’t meet him, I didn’t want to.
BW: I see, I was just seeing a photo of a German pilot there.
EE: I didn’t meet him.
BW: You didn’t. I see. Was it, did he happen to be at an event that you were also at
EE: This is an escape photograph.
BW: I see.
EE: Have you seen those?
BW: These are your escape photos. ‘Escape photos, issued to air crew, and the only personal things taken on ops’, it says here under description, ‘the photographs were to be used on forged identity documents etc, in the event of an escape or invasion. It was always difficult to obtain photos for this purpose, there were extra copies left at base, usually only two were carried. Note: unshaven appearance to add authenticity to photos’.
EE: [unclear] typical.
BW: And so, these were actually taken in civilian clothes because of course, then they can be used on forged documents, but it never came to that though, did it?
EE: No.
BW: And you went back and visited the graves of Sandy who’s your navigator, and Stan, the mid upper gunner, in Germany, seems you’ve been back a couple of times, is that right?
EE: I only went back once.
BW: You only went back once? And the barn demolished, it shows here, by the impact of the Lancaster when it came down. And they’ve managed to recover a prop, or a prop blade.
EE: Yeah. And a wheel.
BW: And a wheel. Wonderful, well, as I say, thank you very much for your time, Eric. If there is anything else you would like to add, by all means, but I shall end the recording there if its ok with you. There’s a picture of, there’s a coloured drawing of a camp.
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 Eric Evans
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-31
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AEvansE160331, PEvansE1602
Conforms To
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
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01:53:53 audio recording
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Eric Evans was born in 1923 in Liverpool and was just 16 years of age when war broke out. He served in the Royal Air Force, and serving with 463 RAAF Squadron, going from the rank of sergeant and leaving the service as a warrant officer, before joining the Royal Tank Regiment, rising to the rank of captain.
At the age of 16, Eric had an apprenticeship as an indentured apprentice marine engineer at Liverpool docks, however wanted to serve, however he was classed as being in a reserved occupation, so therefore could only volunteer as aircrew.
Eric flew Avro Ansons, Vickers Wellingtons, before moving on to Short Stirlings with 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley where he trained as a rear gunner. He then flew Avro Lancasters with 463 RAAF Squadron at Waddington.
He flew missions to France, Nuremburg, Dortmund-Ems canal, Brunswick and targets in the Ruhr. Eric was shot down on 6 November 1944 and was taken prisoner of war, and he tells of his escape from the camp when it was liberated by the Russian forces.
After returning to the United Kingdom, Eric ran the Prisoner of War Camps, before leaving the Royal Air Force and joining the 40th Kings Royal Tank Regiment, and served 6 years as a Troop Commander.
Eric left the Army in 1956 and worked for his father as a salesman in the motor car industry. He started his own business and by the rime he retired, he had built up four businesses which he ran for approximately 30 years.
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Vivienne Tincombe
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Great Britain
England--Merseyside
England--Cheshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
England--Liverpool
France
Germany
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
14 OTU
1654 HCU
463 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bale out
Caterpillar Club
Dulag Luft
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Me 110
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Padgate
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
the long march
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/604/8873/PMarlowR1601.1.jpg
de4cfb427a0d5ccc2eefc2c8776a90c3
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/604/8873/AMarlowR160422.1.mp3
7b39c99798f2fb3bc68968136aaa9aff
Dublin Core
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Title
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Marlow, Ronald
R Marlow
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Marlow, R
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Ron Marlow (1924 - 2019, 1592700 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He trained as a wireless operator / air gunner and flew operations as rear gunner with 50 Squadron and as a mid-upper gunner with 466 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2016-04-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Warrant Officer Ronald Marlow at quarter to two on Friday 22nd of April 2016 at his residence in Lytham, Lancashire. With me as well this afternoon are his daughter Pat Darby, her husband Frank Darby, Ron’s son in law, and great grandson James Foster. So, Ron, if you’d like to start us off please just if you would like to confirm your service number and your date of birth for the record please.
RM: Yes. Well my service number is 1592700. My date of birth was 10 11 24 and I was born at Middleton, Leeds and brought up there at the time of meeting my future wife Pat.
BW: And how large was your family? How many brothers and sisters did you have?
RM: I hadn’t any. Well I had one brother which he was born and then died before I arrived so there was nobody I knew. So there was just my mother, father and my father who was an invalid. He’d, for some reason, I never knew how or why but he’d lost the use of his arms and used to just sit there like that day in day out which I didn’t know any background to.
BW: So you didn’t know whether he was in the army or anything during the First World War.
RM: No.
BW: Industrial accident.
RM: There was nothing ever mentioned at all about him and future forces or anything that could have possibly caused it. Yeah.
BW: So you were pretty much raised as an only child then weren’t you?
RM: I was. Yes. Yeah. As I say my father as long as I can remember from my school days and he was just sat in a chair. Used to just sit there day in day out. My mother obviously had to do everything for him which of course things like that I didn’t fully understand. I was a bit too young for that kind of thing but she had to do everything for him and his actual date of losing him. That I don’t know. Or my mother. But that was just the way it went. That was my life. As I say I was the only one and brought up, schooling and I started work.
BW: How, how did you find school? What was it like?
RM: Well it was Middleton Council School which of course we only ever played rugby. We didn’t play football or any other sport. We just played Rugby League so of course if you was in the team you were top of the tops. And I mean I played rugby with the school and they played cricket in the summer time and that was it. But it was, as a school it was just an average sort of a school. It was a council school which of course indicated that there wasn’t many people went from there to higher education and there was not many people could afford higher education because we were all working class people. So that was school as it was. Yeah.
BW: And did you leave at fourteen like everybody?
RM: I left at fourteen and started work at, was it Forgrove Engineering in Dewsbury Road. Forgrove. F O R G R O V E. Forgrove Engineering and I fully think some, some names. Mr Thompson was the boss. And all I was doing was we had machines that packed buttons on to strips of wire for the tailoring trade which of course Leeds was a big tailoring department and we used to just stand there and watch the buttons going down onto these, take them off, put new ones on. I mean not very exciting but that was it. I mean I suppose in a way at Middleton where I was born there was no industry. Just, you know a few shops. So I was lucky to get a job at Dewsbury Road there and I was there for quite a while until what, well yes until more or less my working days. Pardon me. Separated lifetime days because it was then that I eventually met Pat who, her parents, well they had a grocery and off licence business so I’d obviously got an eye in the right department. You know, I thought, well if they serve, that one day I met even get behind the bar which of course I did. You know, I used to eventually gave up and went and worked behind the bar when Pat lost her father and Mrs Finon was running the business which of course with being grocery and off licence it was open at 7 o’clock in the morning because a lot of the men used to get their Woodbines on their way to the pit and of course the bar closed at 10 o’clock at night. So, you know, I mean it was a full day and she was on herself with one of her neighbours helping and I eventually decided to, that with Pat in mind I would doing better for myself going into the business. I didn’t know whether it would one day become part of my life but at least it was a start.
BW: And so you met your future wife at a pretty young age then haven’t you?
RM: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean Pat and I, we both, I mean she of course with her parents being in business she went to Cockburn High School which of course you paid for which of course my parents couldn’t afford and she used to go to Cockburn High school. I used to go to Middleton Council School which it sounded very class. Middleton Council. But anyway it served its purpose. It got me that I could read and write. [laughs]
BW: And where you were working it wasn’t an apprenticeship by the sound of it. It was a regular full time job was it?
RM: It was a little engineering company and they just, I was lucky really to get in because they had this division where Mr Thompson ran these machines which just put the buttons on the threads ready to go to tailoring so I mean while there were tailors wanted buttons on these threads we were in business.
BW: Right.
RM: And of course I stayed there until such time as I eventually started giving Mrs Finon as she was, a hand in the shop and then eventually worked around towards going in the shop.
BW: And so where were, where were you when war broke out? What do you recall of war starting?
RM: I was at the shop. Yes. I was at the shop and I lived at home. Pat lived with her mother ‘cause I mean Pat used to go to, you know Torquay and places like that for her holidays. I used to go to Scarborough with my suitcase. [laughs] I think things were, they were all within your means you know. You couldn’t afford any more so you didn’t look to do any more. You lived and enjoyed what you’d got.
BW: And did you have workmates or school friends who joined up?
RM: Well funny thing was when I eventually joined up a good, I was more or less like on my own going into the RAF. None of the workmates or people I knew went and of course I was just like one off, one on my own and off I went into the RAF and that started my training.
BW: And when did you decide to join?
RM: Oh crikey. Now then. This is –
BW: Was it something that you felt you wanted to do straight away?
RM: Well no. I think the thing it was, it was inevitable I was going to be called up for the forces so I thought well the thing was you either get in first with what you want or you wait ‘til you’re called up and put where they want you and I thought well, you know, the idea of flying was, by crikey it was way way way. I mean in those days. So I just volunteered for the RAF, for the cadets and I was in the aircrew cadets for, for a while before I actually got into the RAF but I learned quite a bit there.
BW: So when you say the aircrew cadets was this the Air Training Corps?
RM: Yeah.
BW: So this would be around about 1941/42 because the air cadets were formed in ’41 weren’t they?
RM: Yeah. Well it was a bit later than that.
BW: Yeah.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Yeah. And what was it that motivated you to join the RAF? What, what did you like about it? Did you want to fly? Did you want to be a pilot?
RM: Well I think the first and foremost I knew that my education would limit me on what position I could undertake in aircrew and I thought well pilots, navigators. Then you come down a bit engineers and bomb aimers you know. They’re, they’re all just a little bit, and I thought well there’s one thing about it. As an air gunner you only learn to fire a 303 and once you can fire it that’s it and I mean the four guns were all linked up together. You pulled a trigger and they all went off and just a case of making sure you aimed in the right direction [laughs]. Oh dear.
BW: So, you, you’ve joined up and they’ve sent you for training. Did you fly on Ansons and Whitleys at first or do you recall?
RM: Wimpies.
BW: Wimpies.
RM: Yeah. Wellingtons. Yeah.
BW: The Wellingtons. Yeah.
RM: Yes ‘cause we went to London first of all. We were called up to London and the first flying we did was in Wellingtons. Well of course that was an advancement. I mean Wellingtons. Twin engine bombers. I mean ‘cause they were in service at the time. And it was just the fact that they had, you know, a rear turret, which they hadn’t a mid-upper, they’d a rear turret which of course suited what we were learning to, well wanted to be. So the two went together.
BW: And at this stage you, did you volunteer for rear turret? Or –
RM: I volunteered, I volunteered for aircrew and of course there was only really when you got down to the lower limits of aircrew you started with air gunners and worked your way up. Well of course I mean a lot of the training in air crew was much longer than air gunners because I mean air gunners if you could, as I say, if you could fire from a turret you was in. But of course I mean navigators, bomb aimers they all had an extended training period so I thought well if I’m going to be in it I might as well be in it as soon as possible as later.
BW: Were you specifically attracted to flying as a gunner in the rear turret?
RM: Well no it wasn’t really that. I think what it was it was just a case of, well I wanted to be in aircrew and then you know when things got whittled down as to what were available in air crew you realised well if I want to fly I can only fly with the capabilities I’ve got and that’s start at the back end and work forward [laughs]. Which of course they were all at the nose and you were stuck at the back end [laughs].
BW: Can you recall what it, what it was like the first time you fired your guns from a turret. Even in training?
RM: Well yes I mean it wasn’t a case I don’t think as I can recall that I was aiming at anything. I think it was a case of I thought I’d seen something and of course I mean you always thought you saw something because you were looking for them and it was bound to be out there somewhere and I think it was just a case of, ‘Was that?’ Let it go just to be, I thought well if it is I shall shift him and leave us.
BW: So, you, you passed out your training and were made sergeant which was standard for gunners.
RM: Yeah. St Johns Wood was where we, we were trained up and brought up and got into our basics of gunnery school and then of course we went on to flying duties, learning flying duties and then getting crewed up and I think, you know at the beginning you thought well I hope they pick me, I don’t have to pick them and I think they did. They more or less just got a crew together and you got to know each other and you worked together and developed. Yeah.
BW: Where was it that you met the crew? Was it at a conversion unit?
RM: At St Johns wood because St Johns Wood was the recruiting centre for aircrew so we went to St Johns Wood and there was you know the different schools and you learned your basics there and then you were more or less drafted through schooling into meeting up with other crew members. Higher educated, well, educated yeah and you know you eventually got to the point where the skipper selected his crew. Well, I mean, you thought you’d been selected. I’m in. I mean it wasn’t a case of you was just the same as anybody else but, and then we got crewed up. More or less met up, introduced to each other. This is who I am. This is who you are. This is what you will be. And we formed a crew and then started you know I mean we started first of all without flight engineers because you didn’t really need them on the early training but once you got established as a crew then you got together and got a crew membership of the seven people and all developed together. Yeah.
BW: And then from there you were posted to 50 squadron at Skellingthorpe.
RM: Skellingthorpe. Yes. Yeah.
BW: And did you pick up your flight engineer there when you got there? Or did you meet him before?
RM: Yeah. The flight engineer was the last one that we picked up because I mean they were, you know, trained separately but we did some flying together just prior to going to the squadron so we did know everybody in the crew. Yeah.
BW: And presumably this is at a Heavy Conversion Unit for Lancasters ‘cause that’s where you were first on wasn’t it?
RM: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Oh yes. I mean once you, once you were going to be up there on the squadrons it was Lancasters and that was it until you either got the chop or you got through. Yeah.
BW: And how was it when you were told you were going on Lancasters? Were you made up about that? Were, were you quite happy with that?
RM: Well I think it was a bit of a false reaction. You thought this is it. I’ve made it and I thought, flipping heck. Where are we going? You know and you made your first trip and it probably a quiet night, a silent night. Nothing ever happened. Nobody attacked you. I mean a lot depended on the target. If it was a place that was heavily defended you could expect anything. Ack ack or even attacked by aircraft. If it was a small place which a lot of them were small I mean to us there wasn’t, you know it was a target and that’s what you were going for and that’s what we went for and of course it wasn’t heavily defended so there was no real defences. Just sat there and you know, ‘How long are we going to be before we go back?’ It went very well any rate. I mean, it was, it was a little bit novel to start with. You thought well if this is it it’s not bad. We’ll get through. Then of course bigger targets came and more defensive and offensive and you learned your ways. Yeah.
BW: So I guess at this stage it’s now 1943 maybe in to 1944. Is that right?
RM: Yeah.
BW: When you start on ops.
RM: Yeah.
BW: And do you recall where your first op was? Where?
RM: Well it’s all in the book there ‘cause I’ve got that it starts the full tour.
BW: Right.
RM: But then it also starts where I did the five trips, five trips on Halifaxes with a wing commander.
BW: So you start in mid-May 1944.
RM: Yeah.
BW: And it looks like you’ve really, with a couple of exceptions where you’ve changed aircraft you’ve stuck with the same one.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Which was B. Did you have a nickname for it?
RM: Baker.
BW: Baker
RM: Well yeah B for Baker. B for Bravo. I mean it was just a bit versatile. Of course one of the trips I remember was the fact Pat’s mum was in hospital, your mum was in hospital and they didn’t know just how she was going to come out of it and they scrubbed me off that trip and gave me a twenty four hour pass to go and see her which was very kind of them. Can you manage there?
BW: Yes, thank you.
RM: So you can see by that we didn’t waste a lot time by doing a trip and then having nights and nights and nights doing nothing.
BW: Yeah. And your early sorties are mostly in France aren’t they?
RM: Yeah. Oh yes. Yeah.
BW: ‘Cause this was working up to D-Day.
RM: ‘Cause when you’re thinking from Lincolnshire, straight down to the coast, across the channel it didn’t take long to get in to France, to some of the French targets. Places we’d never even heard of. So obviously from information there was something there. Something that was earmarked to the bomb aimers and pilots. The target is such, you know. That, that’s what you’ll go for and we used to go, get rid of them and let’s get out of here kind of thing. Yeah.
BW: And as gunner did you attend those briefings with the other crew members as well? Were you all briefed together? Or –
RM: Yeah. We were all briefed to go and then of course when we, when the trip was over we came back. There was a briefing but then if there was anything more in material that needed to be recorded for future trips then of course the crew just went to the briefing. That was it.
BW: And so when it was revealed what your targets were going to be what was the reaction generally? Were you –
RM: Well you see with a lot of them I mean some names you thought, oh my God. Flipping hell I don’t fancy going there. You know there were names that hit you straight away. There was obviously something there to be going for so we’d better look out. Some of the places which, if you look in there, some of the French targets we could have been in somebody’s back yard for what it was you know. There was I mean it didn’t mean anything to us at all. I mean the briefing was that there was probably some ammunition dump or some light ack ack there or some barracks or something. There was always something that they told us we were going for but never a lot of detail as to what it was. So it was just a case of well saturate bombing and hope you got rid of them.
BW: And what happened during the preparations for the mission itself? Can you talk us through what you might do having had the briefing what would you then do to get to and then get on board the aircraft and sort your guns out?
RM: Oh the thing was once you knew where you were going and what you were going for then that was pretty secret and that was a case of they told us and we didn’t tell anybody because somebody could have been listening that shouldn’t have been. So it was not a case of tell you and then you know you’d go for your tea about three or four hours later. Just a case of well you’d go for your meal, come back, briefing and more or less straight to the aircraft or within a reasonable time to the aircraft. So you couldn’t really, if you wanted to, you couldn’t really discuss it with people. It was pretty quiet.
BW: And would you get changed? Would you get in to your flying suit before you go out?
RM: Well you see the thing was your normal uniform. Then you ‘d to go to your crew room where you’re flying suit was which of course with us was flying suit and the mask and your mask and your harness and so forth which of course we took longer because I mean the crew at the front end they were, apart from a Mae West and that they had virtually nothing on where we of course had to put on a flying suit on, flying boots on, fasten it all up and harness round here and you know I mean when you walked you could hear it clunk clunk. [laughs].
BW: And did you, did you have a seat pack parachute or a carry carry on parachute?
RM: Well the parachute. At the rear turret when you opened the outer doors you used to swing into the turret but you left your parachute there. Got in to the turret.
BW: Inside.
RM: And shut the turret doors. So if you did have to bail out you’d got to be quick enough to open the doors to get your parachute, bring it in and turn the turret and go out backwards.
BW: Obviously never happened to you, that.
RM: It never happened. No. Thank goodness. No. We were never got to that situation. Thank goodness. In reality, I mean we did a full tour and there was never any real time when we, ‘Be prepared we may have to bail out.’ We could if anything. We were very lucky. We were very very lucky in the fact that we completed a tour and we never had any calamitous happening where, ‘Get ready to bail out,’ you know. We were very lucky. We were.
BW: And when you had got all your flying kit on and your suit and things did you take any mascots with you or have any good luck charms or anything? Had Pat given you anything to –?
RM: Oh some of them did you know. I mean some of them had little bits and pieces. Oh I must, I must remember to take this, and I must take. At, I think we had, I think we.
JF: Picture of grandma.
[pause]
BW: Oh right. That’s oh right this is a picture of Pat with an aircrew hat on and did you take that, did you take that with you?
RM: Yeah.
BW: Did you take the picture on board?
RM: No.
PD: Oh he did.
JF: You did.
RM: No. We didn’t carry anything with us in the turret because it was always a thought that if you did you’d want to get out as quick as possible and where have I put this, and have I got that? So we just left these in the billet.
BW: Oh.
RM: And got out as quickly as possible if we had to [laughs]. Tell you. So all in all I was one of the lucky ones.
BW: Do you recall what you had to do when you, when you had got yourself in to your turret did you have certain checks to do on the guns or anything like that? What can you tell us about that?
RM: Well the thing is you know your elevation and traverse, you know.
BW: Yeah.
RM: That they could go up and down and traverse and the turret was working. Obviously you couldn’t do anything with the guns but the fact was the turret was working. You could rotate the turrets, up and down the guns, everything was as it should be. It was just a case of would it be right at the time if necessary? So, you know you thought oh well everything’s working. Just sit there and keep looking around.
BW: And did you have 303s on this particular turret?
RM: Yeah. Browning 303s. Yeah. Four 303s. Yeah. [laughs]. And of course the, the change the bullets went down in front of you down underneath the turret into the fuselage. They don’t, they wouldn’t have lasted long if you’d have got four guns going but anyway we never had that requirement, thank goodness.
BW: And I understand some gunners took out the Perspex panels because it made it easier to see. Did you ever do that on your turret at all?
RM: No. I always left it in because I don’t know it was just one of those things that some did, some didn’t. And you believed that it was there for a purpose and you left it in. Yeah. I mean the thing was you could find that if there was bad weather and there was any rain or anything about it could, you know, look a bit obscure looking through it. Whereas you used to think, well I used to think well best left alone. Yeah.
BW: You mentioned before the crew that you’d met and teamed up with and aside from yourself your pilot was Pilot Officer Pethick.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Do you recall the names and roles of the other crew members?
RM: Now that I don’t. Pethick.
BW: Was there a Philips?
RM: Oh I must be honest I –
BW: Flying Officer Philips.
RM: I’m completely struggled when it comes to crew members. ‘Cause you see those that were officers you met them in the aircraft or any training but apart from that you didn’t see much of them because they were officers. You were NCOs. But in respect of other crew members [pause] I just can’t think.
BW: Ok.
RM: I’m sorry.
BW: That’s alright. Did you, do you recall being a fairly tight crew? I mean you mentioned about socialising with other, I suppose ranks or whatever. Did you, did you stick together as a crew?
RM: Oh you did if you were out and so forth but when you were on the station when it was practical I mean obviously it was a bit difficult, officers meeting up with NCOs, even though you were crew members. That was possible at times but generally speaking it was a case of them and us but I mean you’ve got to keep rank you know. I mean no matter what they were officers, you were NCOs and you could meet up when it was necessary as crew members training etcetera etcetera but you didn’t meet up socially completely. Yeah.
BW: And when you were in the aircraft were you on first name terms?
RM: Oh yeah.
BW: With each other.
RM: Yes. But I mean the thing was there wasn’t a lot of communication in the aircraft because the skipper would check on everybody. If you were in, in your position, in your situation, ‘Everything alright? Any problems let us know before we take off rather than later,’ and once everything had been checked throughout the aircraft with the skipper then you were on first name terms. Yeah.
BW: And so when you, when you took off were you pretty much in silence unless you had to talk?
RM: Oh you was. Yes, because there was no need to be talking. I mean you got to the end of the runway and you got the light and you turned on to the runway. The skipper said, ‘We’re going to take off,’ and that was the last words that were spoken when you went down the runway and climbed up, took off and you’d hear the skipper say, ‘Wheels up,’ and the engineer would get the wheels up and you would then be airborne and you were as a crew flying together. Yeah.
BW: And naturally as a rear gunner you were first in the air technically weren’t you?
RM: Oh yeah.
BW: ‘Cause the tail would come up first.
RM: When that tail lifted I was airborne. I mean I got more flying hours in than the others. Not that it was recorded as such. And I mean there was the occasion of course sometimes you know when you were glad to be back and he put the aircraft down and the tail wheel went down a bit heavy. You got a bit of a shudder. I’d think never mind we’re down. [laughs]. Oh dear.
BW: And it’s on your list of ops that you flew on D-Day itself as well.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Regarding that were you aware during your briefings and operations prior to that that the invasion was forthcoming. Was it suspected or were you told.
RM: It was indicated to us that this was a distinct possibility. That, you know, D-Day was very very imminent and that we would of course be more than likely to be called upon in or on D-Day so of course the last minute, if you will, last minute, ‘Well this looks like it lads. This is where we go.’ And nobody was, said this is D-Day but it was given to you well and truly to you that we were on the move. You, you know, you make your own decisions from here.
BW: And yours was actually a night-time flight wasn’t it on D-Day?
RM: Yeah. Was it? Yeah.
BW: It wasn’t early in the morning. It was.
RM: No.
BW: Late at night.
RM: Yeah. Oh dear.
BW: I don’t suppose you got to see any of the forces going over to France on that day did you?
RM: No, because as I say you see I was always looking back. I was looking at what had happened earlier. If there was anything left still going over that’s what I would see. The main force of course was ahead of me [laughs]. Still, never mind.
BW: And on the, on these operations how would you describe your view out of the turret? Could you see any of the other bombers in the main force at all?
RM: You could. Yes. I mean the thing is from a turret, either mid upper or the rear, you had a good out vision all the way around. I mean the thing is when you think of it while you were there you needed it. There was no good saying I could see you but I couldn’t see there or there could be somebody behind that. You’d got to be able to see all the way around through the, you know, the Perspex so really you’d a good view all the way around and you made sure that there was no little patches where you couldn’t see clearly. You know you got around. You got around. Yeah.
BW: And was it pretty cold in the back?
RM: Oh it could be. Yes. It could be. ‘Cause I mean the thing is there was no real heating on. I mean you’d your oxygen mask and your flying suit and all the rest of it. You were all connected up but I mean when you think the heat from the front end never really got to the back end to the extent that, ‘Oh it’s better now.’ You know it, I mean it was cold. I mean naturally you had to think it was cold because of where you were. You were at the tail end of the aircraft. There was not much coming through from there but anyway I mean you got used to these things after two or three times in the turret you just accepted what it was for what it was. You were there and hopefully with the grace of God you’d get through and finish a tour and hope that you didn’t get shot down before.
BW: And were your gloves adequate? It was pretty cold obviously, as you say, in the turret.
RM: Oh yes your gloves were electrically heated.
BW: Nice.
RM: Yeah. Clipped together and you know kept your hands because I mean well you can imagine back there I mean with your hands on triggers all the time because it was like a bicycle handlebars if you will. Small. But for operating both sets so you had to have your fingers free to be able to move them. Yeah.
BW: How did you elevate and move the turret? Elevate the guns and move the turret?
RM: You just –
BW: Sort of twist your wrists.
RM: That’s right. You twist the wrists to up, twist the wrists to down and then if you wanted to turn it you just tilted the handlebars and it moved the turret around.
BW: I see,
RM: Yeah.
BW: So as you say it’s I guess like a motorbike handlebars.
RM: You needed all your activities in your fingers. Your hands. Yeah.
BW: And I believe that you got to warrant officer at one stage but then something happened. They decided you weren’t –
RM: Yes.
BW: Going to stay at warrant officer. What happened?
RM: I’m trying to think. There was something that –
JF: You got drunk. You went through the officer’s gate when you were drunk.
RM: Pardon?
JF: You went through the officer’s gate when you were drunk.
RM: I can’t hear you.
JF: You went through the officer’s gate when you were drunk
RM: Oh that was it wasn’t it. Yeah. Went through the officer’s gate.
BW: Went through the officer’s gate.
RM: Which was not, was a case of non-entry to, to us.
BW: So as an NCO you ended up –
RM: I thought I was more than what I was. [laughs].
BW: But the reason was you’d had, you’d had a few drinks had you?
RM: Well I suppose that could have been the main reason [laughs] Dear oh dear. Yes, you, I mean the thing was in those days it wasn’t so much that you could consume. It was just a case of a couple of pints and oh I mean you couldn’t afford more but by Jove you enjoyed it.
BW: And so how were, how were you found out about this? Did somebody see? See you and –
RM: Well you were walking through the gate
BW: Report you?
RM: And somebody said, ‘Where are you going airman?’ I said, ‘Airman?’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘This is not for you. This is the officer’s gate.’ So it was about turn and what number, rank and name. Yeah. I think there was about two or three of us got hobbled on that sin.
BW: And did you have to go before the CO?
RM: Well no it was just a case of you shouldn’t have been coming through that gate. It’s a non-entry to any other crew –
JF: Gramps. You did. You went in front of the CO which was your pilot.
RM: Did I?
JF: Yeah. And he gave you a rollicking.
RM: Oh my God, make it worse wouldn’t it? I tell you a lot of things are, you’ve brought a lot back to me but oh through my own skipper. Coming in through our gate.
JF: It was at Driffield.
RM: Pardon?
JF: It was at Driffield. It was Hollings.
RM: Yeah.
JF: And he was the base commander and your pilot and he was the one that gave you the rollicking.
RM: That’s it now. Wing Commander Hollings because as I remember now, thank you. I’m thinking about the other one first. He said, ‘You do realise that I’d put,’ ‘cause they were all officers apart from me, he said, ‘You do realise,’ he said, ‘I’d put you forward for your commission,’ he said, ‘but you’ve had that now.’ That was the end of that.
BW: So this is when, this is when you’d finished with your first squadron and had transferred to 466 at Driffield.
RM: This is when I’d gone on to Yorkshire.
BW: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. Yeah. I just I can’t think of any reason why I would want to go back on a second tour when I’d done a tour but I suppose I was stupid.
BW: Well you, you’d done a good number of ops.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Already and you’d completed your first, first tour.
RM: First tour completely. Yes. I was, I was on instructing.
BW: And looking at your list of ops you mentioned when we were talking earlier your longest one being over eight hours this one is is there is one of nine but most of them are on average probably about four or five.
RM: Four or five hours. Yeah.
BW: ‘Cause they were French targets.
RM: Yeah.
BW: But there’s one or two here that are long trips and I suppose most of these would be in, be in Germany. There’s [Wiesbaden?] and Stuttgart.
RM: Yes. Yes
BW: What was Stuttgart like? Was it that a notoriously difficult target?
RM: Well, some of them, it was surprising in a way. You could be over the target or approaching the target area and there was very little air defensive but there was a lot of, you know, ground attack like ack ack and so forth but fortunately I suppose from our point of view there was very little of like, you know we put up Bomber Command and they’d put up Bomber Command and we used to put Fighter Command up in opposition. There was very little from them so I suppose in a way we were very lucky. Yeah.
BW: And you saw the flak and the –
RM: Oh you could see the flak.
BW: The ack ack coming up.
RM: Yeah but I mean the thing was, you know they at the front could see it before obviously we did and they used to say, ‘Oh there’s flak ahead,’ and you’d think oh flipping heck here we go. [laughs]
BW: It was notoriously accurate as well. Did, did you find that to be the case?
RM: Oh yeah. I mean it was, you could many a time come back with little holes, you know, in the aircraft where small, nothing big, heavy but small anti-aircraft had exploded and done a bit of damage. I mean it could have in the right area but if it just damaged the wing or the fuselage it didn’t make a lot of difference thank goodness. [laughs]
BW: And could you hear it when it hit the aircraft?
RM: Oh yeah, you could hear a bang on the fuselage and you’d think, oh my God what had, what’s gone? And then you’d hear a bang, a bump and then it would be quiet. And it was gone. You’d missed it.
BW: But they never caused significant damage on your aircraft. You didn’t lose –
RM: No we were -
BW: Engines and things like that.
RM: Fortunately we were never damaged to the extent where we had to consider whether we would need to bale out or not. We’d, you know, I mean damage could have been just a couple of small little shell holes that they used to just stick a bit of paper over and go again. So we were lucky. We were very lucky. I mean you could see aircraft go down. You know, there would be some ack ack and there would just be a flash and that would have been one aircraft been hit, probably in the bomb bay when the bomb bays were open. Could have been hit there and that was it he was gone. But we were lucky as I say. Lucky.
BW: And presumably over a target where there’s searchlights and things going you could, if you weren’t able to see the other bombers in the formation you could see them then.
RM: Yeah. Yeah well I mean that was one of the big dangers. They used to say don’t look at the searchlights because obviously you know the searchlights, the brightness could affect your eyes and for a while afterwards you couldn’t see anything clear. So if there were searchlights about you were to keep away from them. It was all –
BW: Did you ever get caught in a searchlight?
RM: Fortunately no. We were very very lucky. I mean a little bit of slight damage but nothing of a serious nature that would have caused or could have caused, you know, serious thinking by the skipper. Do we need to get out? I mean the engines were still turning and bomb doors were opening and closing. Let’s get out of here kind of thing.
BW: What was it like when you could feel the bombs had gone? You could hear the bomb aimer’s voice.
RM: You could feel the aircraft lift. You know. You’d be going along and you’d say to the bomb aimer, you know, ‘When you’re ready,’ and he’d say, ‘Right. Right. Steady. Left. left a bit. Steady. Steady. Bombs gone.’ And you could feel the aircraft lift. Yeah. You used to think to ourselves thank goodness they’ve gone. Be glad of them out of the way. Oh dear.
BW: And the Germans used blue searchlights as well. Did you ever see any of those? They used radar –
RM: No.
BW: Guided.
RM: Not that I can think. No. I mean they used the, you know, the normal searchlights but I can’t think of any blue ones. What was the purpose of that?
BW: I was just curious because they used the blue, the blue ones were radar guided and so they could lock on to a bomber.
RM: Yeah. Lock on. Yeah.
BW: And the other yellow or white ones.
RM: The others were manually operated. Yeah. No. Not that I can think. No. Mind you I wouldn’t be looking for searchlights. I’d be looking the other way.
BW: And you didn’t happen to see any night fighters around at all either?
RM: No.
BW: You’d be looking for those.
RM: No, I, again I say we were very very lucky. Now whether there wasn’t sufficient up or whether they were going for other aircraft and not us but never at any time can I recall seeing a German night fighter which was a blessing. It was.
BW: So I suppose it might be fair to say you didn’t actually fire your guns in anger.
RM: No. No. I mean my guns were cocked. They had to be obviously but never at any time did I have to fire at anything on a trip so –
BW: So I presume the only times you would fire them would be when you tested them over the channel on the way in.
RM: Oh yes. Just give your guns, the skipper used to say, ‘Right. Give your guns a burst. See if they’re alright.’ And that was it. Yeah.
BW: One of your targets here is Caen and that was in mid-July and that was at a time when they were really trying to push the D-Day forces on from the beach head.
RM: Well probably. I mean getting rid of some of the defensive situations on the beaches would be a good idea wouldn’t it?
BW: And of course at that, at that time at night you wouldn’t see anything of the city or anything like that so.
RM: No. I mean the thing is –
BW: No indication.
RM: From where we were you could not look straight down. You could look out at the sides and the skipper used to say, ‘Don’t look down. That’s the bomb aimer’s job.’ But of course the bomb aimer used to be laid in the nose and telling the skipper, ‘Left a bit. Right a bit. Steady. Steady. Steady. Bombs gone.’ And as I say when you felt it lift you’d think thank goodness they’re out of the way.
BW: And there was, there was one sortie where you were recalled. That was in June but it was presumably one where you were going to go to a target in France but you were recalled. Do you recall?
RM: Yeah.
BW: What, what that was. Was it a case of the target couldn’t be seen or something or –
RM: Well I don’t know because they just used to say that the target has been cancelled. Return to base. Don’t take off or anything but there was no reason given. Whether it was, you know incorrectly or whether it was something had happened at the other side or what but it was just cancelled and that was it.
BW: And so you’ve come through three months really. Almost three months to the day since you started on the 11th of May through to the 9th of August 1944.
RM: Yeah.
BW: You’ve had pretty consistent flying and presumably about thirty ops. I’ve not counted all these but there’d be about thirty ops. One, two, three –
JF: Thirty two.
BW: Thirty two.
JF: From memory I think, thirty two.
BW: And then you went on to gunnery instruction.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Was that something that your CO decided for you or did you volunteer for it or –?
RM: Well you see the thing is they had to find somewhere for you. I mean you’d finished your tour so what was you going to do? Just be kicking around at some station waiting till you were called again or what? So you volunteered to go to a gunnery school and get linked up with, you know gunners that were coming through. It helped. Well it was something for you to do if that’s a way of putting it but it was something for you to do and rather than just being kicking around at a gunnery school doing nothing. Yeah.
BW: And do you recall where that was? Do you know where you were posted to?
JF: Market Harborough I think it was called.
RM: Was it? It could have been. Thank you.
JF: I think that’s right.
BW: Market Harborough.
RM: Market Harborough [laughs].
JF: It was 14 OTU I think. Number 14. Yeah. Market Harborough.
BW: So do you recall anything from from that time of being an instructor? Can you recall what sort of things you would tell the other students to do?
PD: You crashed.
BW: Did you have a crash in a Wellington bomber at one point?
PD: When you’d been training [do you mean]
RM: Sorry but can you speak up a bit ‘cause I mean –
JF: You crashed.
RM: I’ve got a hearing aid in one ear which doesn’t work.
JF: Wellington.
PD: Landed in a Wellington in the woods and it split open didn’t it?
RM: Oh yeah.
PD: When you were training.
RM: Yeah. Sorry. Can you just give that out? Yeah. A Wimpy that we came down in. Didn’t do us a lot of good but fortunately we were not injured or incapacitated in any way. It just came, I don’t know what it was.
JF: You were, you remember, you told that skipper that you heard somebody on the radio saying that they were in trouble and they were going to go down?
RM: Thank you.
JF: And the skipper said, ‘Yes it’s us.’
RM: [laughs] Oh well. That’s being at the back end you see. You couldn’t hear things properly [laughs]. Oh dear. You’ll have to forgive me as I say. It’s a long time ago. I’ve done very well considering.
BW: That’s absolutely fine. So you were on a, you were on a training mission.
RM: Yeah.
BW: In a Wellington and some problem or other developed.
RM: Something. Obviously. Yeah.
BW: And the pilot told you that you were going to have to crash land.
RM: I mean the thing is when you look at it realistically I’m at the back end looking that way. They’re up there looking the other way to where the aircraft is going. What could I have possibly seen that was going to decide –
BW: Yeah.
RM: What the aircraft was going to do?
BW: Yeah. So all, so all you knew was it was going down and -
RM: Exactly, you know, am I going with it?
BW: The pilot says, ‘It’s us.’ And so do recall this crash in the woods? Do you?
RM: Well obviously it was nothing of the serious nature that anybody got seriously injured but the aircraft was obviously damaged wasn’t it? Yeah. Split open. Yeah. Split open. No.
BW: So –
RM: I mean when you think for what time I was in that wasn’t bad was it?
BW: Yeah. To go through all of that over enemy territory and then to –
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Have to crash in your own country.
RM: I mean the thing is you know I mean when you think of all those trips I did. What a hundred and twenty nine. To never be seriously damaged from enemy action that was very lucky. Yeah. You know, to be damaged by ack ack or enemy fighters which as I say to think if I ever saw one or two was the most. Yeah. ‘Cause you see I mean if there was ack ack fire going up they wouldn’t want the night fighters up ‘cause they could have been caught with that.
BW: And you never found out what caused the Wellington to go down?
RM: No. No. No it was probably some stupid idea that we’d got that something was going wrong. Probably an engine spluttered or could have been something and I mean we never went back to ask. You know. Crikey. Could happen again. Don’t find out. Never mind.
BW: Were you near the base at all? Were you near your home airfield or was it some distance away?
RM: It can’t have been that far away because I mean when you were ever doing any training flights in Wimpies you never did big long distance ones. You know they usually were within an area around the base so must have been pretty close.
BW: And then from there you went to 466 squadron at Driffield.
RM: Yes.
BW: An Australian squadron.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Did you, did you meet a lot of Aussies? I mean this particular unit wasn’t fully –
RM: Oh yeah.
BW: Occupied with Aussies until later in the war but –.
RM: Yes. Yeah. A lot of Aussies yeah. I mean as an Australian squadron it was basically Australian crew. Yeah. But as they, as they reminded me I slipped up with the going through the long gate, wrong gate. Thank you.
BW: And your pilot was actually the wing commander.
RM: He was the station CO. Yeah.
BW: Station CO as well.
RM: Yeah. Wing Commander Hollings. Station CO.
BW: This is Wing Commander Albert Hollings.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Who had, who had a DFC but he was an Aussie.
RM: Yes. Yeah.
BW: What was he like to fly with?
RM: Well I mean you couldn’t deny the fact that he was a wing commander which was way way way above me so I mean we only met when we had to do a crew training or crew instructions or anything like that. I mean other than that I mean when I’d, on the charge I was just marched in to the room. He was behind the desk, said what he had to say and said what he had to do and that was it. Me finished. Oh well.
BW: And when he did that were you demoted from warrant officer?
RM: Well I was. I was as I was. I stayed as I was.
BW: Right.
RM: I didn’t alter. I was going to go up but –
BW: And this was where he said you were going to be put forward for your commission but because –
RM: Yeah. He said, ‘I was putting you forward for your commission,’ he said, ‘But you’ve had that now.’
BW: Simply because you walked through the wrong gate.
RM: I walked through the wrong gate. Yeah.
BW: That’s harsh.
RM: I mean the thing is apart from anything I was a foreigner. I wasn’t Australian. Oh dear.
BW: And the aircraft you were flying this time were the Halifax Mark 3s.
RM: Halifaxes. Yeah.
BW: And you’d transferred from being a rear turret gunner.
RM: Yeah.
BW: To being a mid-upper.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Was that on the CO’s direction or was that just because there was a slot going? You wanted it?
RM: No just to make up, as they wanted the crew as we got the position ‘cause as I say used to sit on the top there. I thought flipping heck. You’re completely exposed. You know, you’ve no protection around you up here. Anyway, that was all by the by.
BW: Do you recall what your armament was? Were they, were they the half inch machine guns?
RM: Two 303s, two 303 Brownings. Yeah.
BW: On that version as well.
RM: Yeah.
BW: And did you meet or get to know the rest of the crew at all on this on this particular time.
RM: Well with the Aussies of course I mean they more or less kept together and the Aussie officers, the Aussie officers stayed together and you just didn’t mix unless it was anything that required you all to be together. Anything like that you were but other than that it was a case of you go that way and I’ll go this way. Anyway.
BW: So even, even though you’d been on a crew before where you might have mixed with a couple of the guys because you were the same rank. On this occasion there was even more segregation because –
RM: Oh yeah.
BW: The Aussies didn’t mix with you.
RM: Well you see being the station CO and the squadron commander I mean he’d got a group of Australian officers with him. I mean I suppose in a way I was lucky to have got on the crew. Well never mind.
BW: And how, how did you find flying in a Halifax compared to a Lancaster?
RM: Well, to a gunner there wasn’t a lot of difference. You were sat. I mean from rear turret to mid-upper turret you were just sat there. Sat upright. You could rotate fully. You’d two guns that would go up and down so there wasn’t a lot of change. You know you were just in a turret same as you would have been with the others in a Lancaster. Yeah.
BW: Did you feel there was more room though in a Halifax or a -?
RM: No. Well I think, I think you felt safer this way. I mean you could unclip your seat and drop out whereas with the rear turret you had to undo your back door, back door open that out then slide out into the fuselage so it was a bit more difficult. Yeah.
BW: And getting in and out of the aircraft in general did you feel it was a bit more roomy?
RM: Yeah ‘cause –
BW: Or easier?
RM: ‘Cause the door was in the aircraft side. Little short steps you know. You just, everybody climbed up those and went either front or rear. Oh yes. No, no problem.
BW: And was it, was it still as cold as before or was it a little bit warmer because you were nearer the nav?
RM: Oh it was warmer because you weren’t right down at the back end you know. I mean it was bound to be warmer. I mean I suppose in a way you looked at these things but you used to think well I’ve got my clobber on, I’ve got my coat on, I’ve got my uniform on, leave it at that. Yeah.
BW: And the difference this time is that it’s early 1945 now.
RM: Yeah.
BW: When you’re, where you’re on this part.
RM: Yeah. On the Aussies. Yeah
BW: And although your targets are still Germany was there still much opposition at the time? Were they still as active as you felt they had been before?
RM: Well I mean one of the things was obviously that the opposition, that’s really, real opposition was much deeper into enemy territory. I mean you crossed on to France and it was pretty quiet you know. It had receded. So it was a bit safer in that respect. Yeah.
BW: Were you aware of the war coming to an end? That it would end imminently.
RM: I don’t think so. I don’t think you really looked at it like that respect. You know you just looked at it well I’m in aircrew and we’ll keep flying ’til and told not to. [laughs]
BW: Just keeping going ‘til the end until they tell you to stop.
RM: That’s it. Yes.
BW: And so you’re on this, by this record there’s only five trips that were done between 12th March and 18th of April so that’s really only a month on this before you then stopped flying over, over Germany altogether.
RM: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
BW: Were you involved in other, let’s say humanitarian ops like bringing prisoners of war back or dropping food?
RM: No.
BW: To the Dutch.
RM: No. No. As we finished flying operationally we more or less finished flying and we were just on different stations with, you know, routine jobs. You know you’d still got your rank and you’d got your, whatever you were but you were not doing that anymore. You were just more or less filling time in with being with the services until it was your time to be demobbed.
BW: And so when the announcement came that the war had ended and that you know and that was the end of operations what then happened? Did you celebrate the news and move on or -?
RM: Yeah. Well of course I got my demob. Came home. Got back in to the shop and got that more or less sorted out. Yeah. I might have had a pint or two to celebrate. I mean it was on tap.
[Voices in the background.]
BW: I would imagine the Aussies had quite a big celebration.
RM: Well I mean the thing is when you think Aussies in Cambridge I mean, er Canadians, they could go home. I mean we were home. I mean train, bus or something and you were home. They had a long way to go so it didn’t take long to celebrate.
BW: And in some cases I believe the Australians and Canadians went home sooner or were demobbed much more earlier than the, than the British.
RM: Well I mean the thing was if you look at it from a realistic point of view why not get them home. They’d further to go. Much further to go. Get them away. We were on the doorstep. We could go home at weekends. Go home for seven days leave. I mean they couldn’t so it was practical to get them, you know on the move as quick as anything. Yeah.
BW: And to be honest you weren’t yourself that far from home. I mean if you were at Driffield in North Yorkshire.
RM: Crikey no. I mean.
BW: Back to Leeds. It’s not that far at all is it?
RM: No. No trouble at all. No. No I could get home very easily.
BW: And during all that time did you manage to get to see Pat during the time.
RM: Oh we got leave. Yeah.
PD: Can I say something?
BW: Yeah. Yeah. Go on.
PD: You used to get a penny platform ticket, get on the train [unclear] with your penny platform ticket.
RM: You’re not supposed to talk about that [laughs]
BW: So you used to get a ticket just for the platform and jump on the train instead. [laughs]
RM: [laughs]. Well we hadn’t much money you see had we?
BW: You had to economise. So even in between ops and I guess with not having that tight a crew where you’d socialise together I guess most of your opportunity to take time off you went home and spent, spent with Pat.
RM: Well that’s it you see I mean the thing is you either went out with the lads which are all more or less equal rank, you know, Sergeant, flight sergeant and so forth or if you were in the upper half you went with the boys so of course we just more or less as you say me being on home territory I could, if necessary, at times, get home. Yeah.
BW: And where, where were your favourite haunts? Did you go in to Leeds or any of the nearby towns?
RM: No, because Leeds was probably too near home to be, you know. [laughter in the background] Shut up. I mean the thing was if we were in you know, the other places like Lincoln well I mean Lincoln was farther away but I mean you know if they said, ‘Right there’s no ops tonight,’ Well we all just you know have a mass exodus down to the nearest pub.
PD: Drink chug a lug.
RM: Yeah. Get around a table and drink chug a lug. Drink chug a lug. Drink chug a lug.
BW: And you mentioned when we were talking before you mentioned that sight of Lincoln Cathedral when you were going out.
RM: Yeah.
BW: And seeing it on the way back.
RM: Yeah.
BW: So that seems pretty prominent in your memory.
RM: Well as I say we used to say well where you are in the rear turret it’s the last thing you see. I mean everybody’s looking forward apart from the mid-upper and I mean he’s probably just thinking where the heck are we going? We were looking behind us and the last thing was the two towers and then when we landed just before the tail wheel went down was to see the two towers again. We used to say, you know, ‘Thank goodness we’re home.’ [laughs]
BW: So that for your personally was quite significant wasn’t it?
RM: Those two towers meant an awful lot to us.
BW: And so I guess just jumping forward a bit that where the Memorial is now at Canwick Hill the Bomber Command Spire and it overlooks the valley to the Lincoln Cathedral. That’s quite appropriate isn’t it?
RM: Yeah. Are you digging in your basket again?
JF: You see, you’re distracting him now.
PD: I’m just looking at some photos.
RM: Oh sorry.
BW: So you finished your second tour, you’ve been demobbed, you’re back home at the fruit and veg shop.
RM: Off licence.
BW: Off licence.
RM: Yeah. Fruit and veg didn’t come into it.
BW: Oh. I beg your pardon.
PD: Groceries.
RM: And then we decided that, you see, Pat didn’t want the business. The wife didn’t want the business at all. She wasn’t going to go into it so it was a case of me and I would have had to take staff on so Mrs Finon would have been living off the business, we’d have been living off the business and there would have been staff. So that’s when we decided that we would come to St Anne’s and we moved to St Anne’s just by the railway station. St Anne’s. And that was a complete turnaround then of our family away from Leeds. Yeah.
BW: And so even immediately post war and this was would be 1945/46 presumably. So you’ve moved out this way to Lancashire.
RM: Yeah to to St Anne’s and then in to Lytham and oh two or three places anyway.
PD: Blackpool and –
RM: Yeah.
BW: So you’ve been in this part of the world for the best part of seventy years.
RM: Oh yes. Yes. Yeah. Much, much more. Yeah. Yes it’s been, it’s been most of the time here hasn’t it? Yeah. [pause] Well I hope we’ve helped you.
BW: I’m sure you have. You have. Yeah. You’ve given a lot of, a lot of good information. And when you went to the Memorial last year was that the first time you’d seen a Memorial to the men of Bomber Command or had you been to London?
RM: No. We’d been before hadn’t we? No.
PD: No that was the first time.
RM: That was the first time. Yeah.
FD: You also went to Skellingthorpe
PD: While we were down we went.
FD: No before then. We went to the Skellingthorpe Memorial.
PD: With you.
FD: When they, when they commemorated it.
JF: Was that in ’89?
PD: Yeah.
FD: Something like that. Yeah.
PD: Yeah. That was when he went last year it was a beautiful day.
BW: Yeah. Yeah. It was great wasn’t it?
PD: And James as I say arranged that. [pause] That’s his. That’s his original photo.
BW: Right.
That was my grandma’s. It’s still in its original frame.
BW: Yeah and that’s the same as the photo album.
PD: ’Cause they used to paint the colours on then.
BW: Yeah.
PD: Because they were black and white so that’s –
BW: Yeah.
PD: So that’s the original. The frame’s falling to pieces a bit I’m afraid. Who’s that young man?
BW: That’s [a sergeant?]
RM: This old man. This old man.
PD: My dad is only seventeen years older than me.
BW: Right.
PD: Aren’t you?
RM: Yes.
PD: When I take him to hospital they called me Mrs Marlow. I say, ‘No. I’m his daughter.’ And James.
JF: Yeah.
PD: That bit about dad’s dad. He was in.
JF: He was in the Flying Corps.
PD: He was in the Royal Flying Corps his dad. He was in the army and went into the Royal Flying Corps.
BW: Right.
PD: Do you remember you had his Royal Flying Corps cap badge?
RM: Yeah.
PD: In your RAF cap and you lost it didn’t you?
RM: Yeah. I did.
PD: You lost it. Yeah.
BW: So your dad used to be in the Royal Flying Corps.
RM: That’s probably where the feeling really came from of being, you know, airborne, if you will. Oh dear.
BW: So your dad was in the Royal Flying Corps.
RM: Yeah. I don’t know what he was but –
PD: He was in the army wasn’t he? And then he went in the royal flying.
RM: Yeah. But he never talked about it. Well I mean bless him he just sat there for day in day out. Never talked about anything. I suppose in a way he felt that there wasn’t much for him to talk about. I mean I don’t know. I know when he came out he was a tailor’s presser. Now whether the big operating steam presses that they had any effect upon him I’ll never know.
PD: And I have a sister as well. There’s two of us.
BW: So you had a son and two daughters.
PD: No. Just two daughters.
BW: Sorry. Two daughters.
PD: Two daughters. Yeah. My sister’s five years younger.
RM: Yeah.
PD: Yeah. I’d have liked a brother but it never happened.
BW: And so I guess you’re quite chuffed that there is a Memorial going up to the Bomber Command crews in Lincoln.
RM: Oh I mean as far as I’m concerned they’ve earned it. I mean it says down there how many were, how many were lost. Where is it?
JF: Fifty five thousand [unclear].
BW: Yeah.
RM: A heck of a lot were lost.
PD: And they didn’t get the recognition did they?
RM: No.
PD: They never got the recognition.
RM: No.
BW: You’ve got your medals and Bomber Command clasp as well.
RM: Yeah.
BW: And –
PD: He had to buy that one.
BW: Which is this?
PD: That’s, that’s one they had to buy.
BW: Right.
PD: It’s not. I don’t think recognised as a –
BW: Yeah. It’s not formal issue Bomber Command medal.
PD: No. No. There are his formal issue ones.
BW: Yeah.
PD: So –
BW: Ah. Thank you.
PD: And that was the, that was the recognition one he got.
BW: Yes.
PD: Which I think is rubbish to be honest. I think it should have been a proper medal but there we go.
BW: Yeah. There hasn’t, there hasn’t been recognition for –
RM: For air force, aircrew. No.
PD: For Bomber Command.
RM: No.
BW: But hopefully the, this Memorial and the Centre will go some way to it.
RM: It will mean a lot. It will mean a lot to people. Yes.
BW: Did you say there’s guys on there that you knew? Are there, are there any names of guys on there that you knew on the Memorial walls?
RM: Well there’s always a possibility.
BW: Or not.
JF: There’s one in Edinburgh Castle.
PD: Yes. There’s one lad. His name’s in the book in Edinburgh Castle.
JF: If it’s 5 Group isn’t it?
PD: What was his name?
JF: [just a minute?] Taylor
PD: ‘Cause you told me to have a look in the book.
JF: Taylor.
PD: Is it Taylor?
RM: Could be. I forget love.
PD: [unclear]
JF: [unclear]
PD: You know when the crews split up wasn’t it because of the night vision.
JF: Yeah.
PD: They all went with different crews and a lot were missing presumed killed and he was killed.
JF: Yeah.
PD: And he’s in the book in Edinburgh Castle.
JF: Yeah before he had, his first crew was obviously Pethick at Skellingthorpe. Before Pethick he had another crew but the pilot’s night vision had gone a bit iffy so it says in the, that the pilot was sent to London for re-evaluation so the rest of their crew was all spilt up and gramps was the only one of that crew that actually survived the war. The others all throughout the period of the war were shot down and killed. We’re unsure of the pilot. We could never find out what happened to the pilot.
PD: No.
BW: And so these guys on this picture. The crew. The pilot there you say was Pethick.
PD: Yeah.
RM: Yes.
JF: All that crew stayed there together didn’t they?
PD: And Tom’s there. After the war.
RM: Yeah. That’s Tom. Yeah.
PD: Tom was the one that died a couple of years ago. My dad was at Lincoln with Frank.
BW: Right.
PD: And he used to whistle all day long and he was whistling. This gentleman said, ‘I know that whistle anywhere,’ and they met up again. They’ve all gone now apart from dad.
RM: Yeah. Oh dear.
BW: And so those were the guys from –
JF: 50 squadron.
BW: 50 squadron.
RM: That flew with 50 squadron. Yeah.
PD: Sad isn’t it but people grow old don’t they?
BW: But as you say at least they all came through the war. They all survived it.
RM: Oh yes. We all, we all came through together. Yeah.
PD: Pethick came over from Canada twice to see you didn’t he?
RM: He did. Yeah.
PD: But of course he’s not now but yeah he came over.
RM: Well of course I mean skippers of course they were older weren’t they?
PD: Yes. Well you were the youngest one. You were only eighteen.
RM: Yeah.
FD: And after 50 squadron well after you’d done your tour Pethick then went on to Fighter Command didn’t he flying fighters.
RM: He probably did Frank. You probably remember more.
FD: Yes he did. Yeah. He went on to Hurricanes.
RM: Yeah.
FD: Yeah. Hurricanes.
PD: But dad was eighteen when he volunteered so he was quite young really. Married with a family and –
BW: Yeah. That’s quite a lot of responsibility at a young age. [pause] Ok. Very good. Well I think that’s all the questions I have for you Ron.
RM: Well I’m very pleased. I hope it satisfies what you’ve been looking for. Some background to –
BW: Yeah.
RM: The likes of me. Yeah.
BW: It does. It’s been very good. It’s been very good to talk to you. So –
RM: Thank you.
BW: On behalf of the Bomber Command team.
RM: Yeah.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
RM: Thank you. My pleasure. Yeah. Very nice to meet you.
BW: Thank you.
FD: Have you ever heard of a Peter Lonk.
BW: A Peter.
FD: Lonk.
PD: No. He’s from Belgium.
FD: He’s a Belgian. Well, he’s in America now isn’t he?
PD: Yeah. He used to find wreckages of aircraft and –
BW: Right.
PD: He used to keep in touch with you didn’t he?
RM: Yeah.
PD: Where am I? My dad is Mr November in the calendar. [laughs]. British Legion calendar.
BW: British Legion calendar, yeah.
PD: Yeah. You look a bit pickled there dad.
JF: He probably was.
RM: What day was that on I wonder?
PD: I don’t know. It’s got different ones in.
FD: Alright there James?
JF: Yeah.
PD: From different. They came and asked could they take his photo.
BW: So this is the British Legion.
PD: I think it’s the British legion. I’m not sure to be honest. I think it is.
BW: Very good. So you’ve made it to November.
PD: Yes. Mr November. One of the calendar boys. Yes.
BW: Brilliant. 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 Ronald Marlow
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brian Wright
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-22
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMarlowR160422, PMarlowR1601
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:21:28 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Marlow went to Middleton Council School, then worked at Forgrove Engineering. He joined the Air Training Corps, volunteered for the Royal Air Force training in London at St Johns Wood. He became an air gunner ad flew Wellingtons, followed by a post to Heavy Conversion Unit. Ronald was sent to 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe where he flew Lancasters on night and daytime operations in France during the Normandy campaign. After 32 operations as a rear gunner he was sent to gunnery instruction, crashing with a Wellington into woods near RAF Market Harborough. At RAF Driffield (466 Squadron) he served with Albert Hollings flying in Halifaxes Mk 3 as a mid-upper gunner. He carried out operations in Germany to Wiesbaden and Stuttgart. When demobbed he moved to Lytham St. Anne's and Blackpool. Ronald discusses operation cancellations with return to base, flights and preparation, reasons for joining, volunteering, crewing up, service and off-duty life, secrecy, mascots, rank structure, military service condition (temperature at high altitude and heated gloves), military discipline, anti-aircraft guns, aircraft damage during operations, searchlights, memorials, decorations, Bomber Command recognition and reunions.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lancashire
England--Leicestershire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Lytham St. Anne's
England--Blackpool
Germany
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Stuttgart
France
France--Caen
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
14 OTU
466 Squadron
50 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crash
crewing up
demobilisation
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
memorial
military discipline
military ethos
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Driffield
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Skellingthorpe
searchlight
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/845/10839/AGreenWG150911.1.mp3
ba6635496652503178b42beb5d3131ea
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
Green, Geoff
William Geoffrey Green
W G Green
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Geoffrey Green DFC and bar (176170 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner and gunnery leader with 100 and 625 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Green, WG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AGreenWG150911
BW: Right. This is Brian Wright. I'm interviewing Squadron Leader Green at […], and it's Friday the eleventh of September, twenty fifteen, at two thirty. So, Squadron Leader Green, I understand you were a rear gunner in a Lancaster.
WG: Yes, Gunnery Leader. Yes, I was in the rear turret, yes.
BW: Could we just start with your full name and your rank at the time you were doing these operations.
WG: Yes, it's William, do you want the [pause] name, when you say name, full name.
BW: Yes please, yes.
WG: What's the word I want for the Christian, ah, Christian names you want, do you?
BW: That's right.
WG: William Geoffrey Green. That's, er, Geoffrey is G E O double F R E Y.
BW: OK. And what rank were you at the time, when you joined the squadron?
WG: I was a Sergeant.
BW: Sergeant.
WG: I passed out as a Sergeant, yes.
BW: OK. And, if you would, just describe for me, please, what your life was like prior to you joining the RAF. Where did you live, and what prompted you to join the RAF?
WG: Yes. Well, I was born in Kings Lynn, Norfolk. [pause]
BW: And how long were you living there before you joined up?
WG: I joined up when I was seventeen and a half, officially, but as far as they were concerned, I was eighteen, because you had to be eighteen then. Yes, anyway, that's right, I joined up and then from there, I went to, oh dear, it's a long time ago [pause]. Well, I was being trained, you know, in various places; OTU's.
BW: Yes
WG: Operational Training Units, and all those sorts of things. The usual, the usual drill, you know, for a new boy, if you follow me. And, er
BW: Did you come from a large family?
WG: No, I had one sister.. [pause], I had one sister, was she in the WAAF? I don't think she was. Oh, it was you in the WAAF, oh no it wasn't?
Laura: No. Mother.
WG: Oh, your mother. Yes, that's right and then, oh, I've lost my train of thought now.
BW: And what prompted you to join the RAF? There was obviously a war going on at the time. Why the RAF and not the other services?
WG: Yes there was. I had a silly though that if I didn't [pause], if I didn't join the Air Force to fly, there was no point in joining it. That was the main reason. I didn't, I had no, all my friends at home, school friends and what-not were in the Army, and I hadn't anything, hadn't any keenness to join the Army. I always, I think I always wanted to fly, until I did, and then of course, I didn't want to [laughs]. My father used to say, 'I can't understand why you want to fly'. And of course, I thought that over, and I thought, 'you're dead right’. I don't know why I wanted to fly, because as soon as I started I was, not terrified, but bordering [laughs]. No, it's a bit of a line, that. I was pleased to fly. I realised I wasn't a Navy type, and I don't suppose they would have accepted me, anyway, because they were, the people they, the people that went into the Navy who I knew were all sort of special types, they'd got something to really offer that service. Well, I had nothing at all to offer the Air Force, but I just wanted to, I just thought it would be just nice to come home on leave, and walk up and down the High Street in my uniform. [laughs]. Oh dear.
BW: And did the thought of becoming a pilot attract you, or was it something that you thought, I’d rather be in a crew?
WG: Yes, it was. I got accepted, I was accepted under the PNB scheme, which stood for Pilot, Navigator, Bomb Aimer. In other words, if you failed as a pilot, they tried to train you then as a Navigator, and if you failed at that, you were trained as a bomb aimer. And if you failed at that, you were out [laughs], so I should have got out in the first place to save all that trouble.
BW: So how did you end up, then, as a gunner? Because if you were on that scheme, and as you said, if you weren't successful in one of those categories, you were out. What then led you to be a gunner?
WG: Well, that was the last thing I could be before I was out.
BW: I see.
WG: That was the lowest form of animal life, I suppose, and if you failed at being an air gunner, well they didn't want you. You can't blame them, I suppose but fortunately, I didn't fail. I often thought I would, but I wasn't good at maths and that sort of thing, you know. I did think of, I was mustering to train as a navigator, and then I realised that I would need a higher standard of maths than I could offer, so I just had to let them sort of guide me through the Air Force, sort of thing, without volunteering for anything.
BW: And what were the tests like, that you had to sit during your training? Do you remember those?
WG: Err, well yes, there were partly navigation, but very, very junior navigation stuff. Nothing complicated, because if it was, I wouldn't have got it but -. What else was it, oh, it's a long time ago. Err, aircraft recognition, that sort of thing, signals, and that's about all, you know. And then I, and then I was transferred on to do an instructors course, and I joined an instructors team to train the lads coming in, sort of thing, you know. But it didn't last very long because I, well, oh for about, maybe about six months, because I was not really the type to train people. I was too short tempered, I suppose. If they didn't, er, if they didn't sort of pick it up the first time, I didn't want to know, and I didn't give a second chance. I had many a second chance, but I didn't, I didn’t agree with that. Oh, I don't know. So there you are.
BW: And what was life like on the base? You went through the training and the Operational Training Units, and you got to base. What was the accommodation like? What were the facilities like on the base at the time?
WG: Excellent. You mean living accommodation and food, that sort of thing? Oh yes. Yes, in those days, aircrew had, aircrew had, er, they didn't eat with the non-aircrew type, if you follow me. You didn't actually have special food, I suppose, though I don't really know, but it was jolly good food, and you were built up a bit that way. I was a bit of a weedy lad when I was young, younger, so I was built up really, I suppose.
BW: So you were well fed?
WG: Well fed, yes, oh yes.
BW: Your training and lifestyle really made a man of you in that respect
WG: Oh yes, yes, and of course, when you'd finished in the daytime, you were really on the town at night, you know. The SP's were chasing you, or you were chasing the SP's [laughs], and being rude to people, I expect. Oh dear.
BW: So where did you socialise when you went off base, where were the local towns that you would visit?
WG: Oh, Grimsby. Grimsby, er, oh dear, I should have got the log book, I could show you my log book, if you wanted to see it, if it would be any use to you, would it?
BW: If you have it, and it's not inconvenient, yes, that would help.
WG: It's in the drawer, Laura dear, would you mind. That's very kind of you. Yes, what was I talking about?
BW: Visiting Grimsby?
WG: Log book, oh I remember, yes, I'm very forgetful nowadays, you've obviously noticed.
BW: You were talking about Grimsby, and visiting towns.
WG: Oh yes, Grimsby, Grimsby, Lincoln, er. Yes, I did a tour from Grimsby, I did a tour from Grimsby at a place called Waltham. Was it? Yes, Waltham. And then I thought, 'well that's that, I've finished my flying'. But I hadn't. Instead of being transferred to instructing, I think they realised I was no good at it, because I was interviewed, instead of being, er, what did I do then? I went to, I went to, I stayed on at Grimsby instructing, for a while, and then I went to two or three other stations in Lincolnshire, instructing, you know. And not only instructing, but giving talks on what it was like, if you follow me, you know. I suppose line-shooting, you know.
BW: And was this with a view to encouraging new recruits to join the Air Force?
WG: Beg pardon?
BW: Was this with a view to encouraging new recruits to join the Air Force?
WG: It was, yes. It was going round instructing to recruits, yes. I went round to one or two stations. Bircham Newton and Finningley, all in the Lincolnshire area, you know and then I, then I was screened, as they called it, taken off, and I thought, 'well that's that, I've finished the dicey part of flying'. But of course, I hadn't. I should think it would only be about six to eight months, and I was sent back again, which rather shook me, because I thought I'd done with all that nonsense. And I thought, ' well, this is tempting suicide', but it wasn't. I completed a second tour then and then I went back on to instructing again. And what happened then? It was getting towards the end of the war, I suppose. And it's difficult trying to remember what I did then. I stayed in Lincolnshire, I know. Mainly, I was always flying anyway as well as instructing, well, with instructing, you were flying as well. The new recruits, the new aircrew people and then I suppose the war ended. Well, no, it couldn't have done because I did a second, I was going back on a third tour. Voluntary, actually. Other blokes, er, I was no good at instructing, and I was interviewed for another instructors job, but I asked to go back on a third tour, but fortunately [chuckles] the war ended. So I didn't do a third tour. That's why I'm here, I suppose.
BW: And so, you were doing the instructing in between your tours? You did your first tour, then had the instructor posts you were talking about.
WG: That's it.
BW:Then second tour.
WG: Second tour
BW: Followed by another post as instructor.
WG: Well yes, but it didn't come off, the second, the second instructing bit
BW: Right. So, just take us back, then, to that point when you met your crew. How did you join up as a crew, how did you meet and crew-up?
WG: We went to, I can't remember the station, but it, as I say, it'll be in my log book, which is out there. Oh, Laura's got it. Thank you very much. I, er, oh dear. Excuse me. Here we go. Oh, there's a five pound note there, Laura. Is it yours?
Laura: No.
WG: That's something, isn't it? I'm glad you came [laughs]. Would you like to look at this yourself?
BW: Yes, we can have a look through. I'll just put the recorder on pause while we pick out one or two points in the log books.
WG: Alright. This is 'Results of Ammunition Courses and Remarks'. That's the one, that's it. There you are, there's a good write up here [laughs], though my mother wouldn't agree, 'could have done much better had he tried harder' [laughs]. That's what the school people used to say. 'Over confident, needs watching'. One signed by a Squadron Leader, here it is, 'could have done much better had he tried harder'. 'Over confident, needs watching'. That's that bit. And then here, [paper rustling] oh dear, oh dear, here we are. Here we come to the nitty-gritty stuff. These are all the, this is Seventeen Air-gunners School, Stormy Down, Bridgend, Glamorganshire, South Wales. I was a trainee here. Here I was training on Whitley's, Defiants. Whitley's and Defiants, yes, and that was headquarters training with number 17 AGS. And then in nineteen forty three, I was on number 28 OTU, Wymeswold, Leicestershire. Er, circuits and landings, and what-not. Cross countries, landings, formation flying, air test, cross country, bombing, exercise, and all that business. What's all this? Oh, exercises, bombing exercises, circuits and landings, circuits and landings, at night, circuits and landings, cross countries, cross countries, bombing, that was all night flying. [unclear] Then I went to heavy conversion unit, Number 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit, Lindholme, Yorkshire, where I flew on Halifaxes, Lancasters. Circuits and landings, cross countries, oh dear, they were a bind.
BW: What did you think of flying in the Halifaxes and Lancasters? You'd previously flown in, say, Whitleys, how did that?
WG: Well, it was really, really nice to be on them, because it was a step up, if you follow me. Halifaxes, I didn't like Halifaxes, except that there was plenty of room down in the rear turret. You could move about a bit, you know. In fact, they seemed to me to be too big, quite honestly but they were much better, in my opinion, they were much better than the Lancaster. The Lancaster, you were a bit cooped up, you know, it was a bit difficult to move. They were hard to get into. To get into, you got in the back door and then you lifted up onto a sort of a table, a long table, then you had to get, you had to hang on with your hands at the back, and get your feet on to this table, and push yourself forward until you got to the doors of the rear turret. And then you got into the rear turret and closed your doors, and you really felt trapped in, sort of thing, but once you started flying, you, I overcame that. I don't know about others but I overcame it.
BW: Is it correct you had to leave your 'chute outside of the turret? You had to put it on the side?
WG: Yes, on the left hand side. In a clip. You couldn't, with the Lancaster, you couldn't get your, that was a snag, you couldn't get your parachute actually in with you. If you had to bale out, you had to centralise the turret, turn it to starboard, open the door, open the doors, and you really were, as you opened the doors there, you were outside in the thin air, you know. But with the, that was with the Lancaster, but with the Halifax, it was a bit different, to a point anyway, but it was all a bit, it was all a bit nerve-wracking to begin with. And then you suddenly got used to it, and you got used to people saying, 'well, you shouldn't have joined', sort of thing, you know [chuckles], which of course was very true. But too late. [laughs]. I was looking back, well it's different looking back, but at the time I used to think to myself, 'I'll be glad when this is over', but when it was over, I was rather pleased that I could think back on those days, and the people I knew. They all seemed different from the, this is, shouldn't really say it but they seemed different from your ground crew friends, you know. Different type. As if when you were being selected for flying, that they were looking for something. Which they found [laughs]. Oh dear, yes.
BW: And how did you feel being a rear gunner, when there were other gunners on board. I mean, being a tail gunner is perhaps traditionally thought of as, er, a job a lot of people wouldn't want.
WG: Very true, yes. I felt safe in the rear turret because it was, in my opinion, I think, when I got in and got the door shut in the training, I thought, well, at least if anything happens, I've only got to turn this to port or starboard, half turn, and do that, or do that, and the doors automatically opened, and you go out backwards. Once you got your parachute clipped on, you know. Er, yes. What was that question you asked me?
BW: Originally, how did you crew up, how did you meet? At the Conversion Unit.
WG: Oh yes, that's it. We went to an Operational Training Unit, and they said, 'right, you're going to, there are either seven or nine crews of you'. In other words, there were either, there were seven to a crew, so there were either forty nine of us, which was seven to a crew, oh, I forget. I can't forget how many there were in the other lot. And then we were put into, we were put into an operations room, and said, 'right, well there are seven aircrew positions amongst you, and each, each aircraft has seven men', seven different types, gunners, signallers, all that nonsense, and we were told to pick our crew. And you sort of looked round at people, and I found myself with another bloke, just stuck. Nobody seemed to want us, we were just standing there. Everybody else had got, had been picked, as a crew, you know. Which I suppose is rather fortunate, because I, that's how I met Ron Clarke, who I've kept in touch with ever since. But he's dead. He died suddenly. He and his wife died. But we, and then there were six of us who were there that, later on, on my second tour, were picked for going up to Air Ministry for being decorated. And [chuckles], yes, that's right yes, we went up to Air Ministry, and so many of us got a DSO, I got a DFC. And then, let's see, after that I was posted to Bircham Newton, I think it was, training staff, training aircrew, you know, which was a bit of a bind, so I volunteered for a third tour, but it never came off because the, it was quite obvious that the war was ending, and it did, and I didn't do a third tour. Which perhaps was a good thing. That's why I'm here, I expect [laughs].
BW: You mentioned going up to the Air Ministry to get a Distinguished Flying Cross, and they were only awarded to officers at that particular time-
WG: I beg your pardon?
BW: They were only awarded to officers at that particular time, a DFC. Do you recall what the event was that led you to be decorated?
WG: Er, oh yes. Yes. It was, there were several air, several air, several Lancasters were lost, and it was, all I could really say was, it was a very dodgy period. It was, well in my case you were frightened. Quite often. You didn't just think you were frightened, I was frightened, but you overcame that, I overcame that to the point where, I wasn't pleased to go on Op's, but I used to wake up in the morning thinking, 'well, if we're on Op's tonight, is it going to happen?' That's how it got me in the end, and I used to wonder if I would lose my life, you know. Which I didn't, of course, but there you are. And then after my first tour, as I say, I went on instructing, and I was going on for a third instruction course, but I was selected for another tour of Op's, and I took rather a dim view of that, because I thought to myself,' you could go on too long', you know. There's a limit to it. Lots of blokes, I knew several people, several blokes who were, who had done two or three tours, but it was a bit dodgy, you know. So fortunately, I went back on to instructing, went on to instructing, oh, and then I went round, then I went round to schools, in the Lincolnshire area, I suppose, in other words telling them how brave you were [laughs]. And they seemed to believe it [chuckles]. Yes. And after that I was taken off flying. I think I got a bit 'flak happy', as they called it. If you'd done too much operational flying, you were getting a bit round the bend, you know, and you were doing silly things, and taking too many risks, I suppose. And then, yes after the instructing, I suppose the war ended. I don't know when it did end.
BW: You mentioned about, er, thinking about whether you were going to be on Op's the next night, and so on, and it was popular for crews to take mascots, or lucky charms, or have certain rituals. Did you have any of those?
WG: No. I had no faith in lucky charms.
BW: Did any of the crew that you flew with have anything?
WG: Yes, they used to take things that, usually belonged to their wives. My navigator had a, what was it, oh, a little paper, not paper, a little doll about as big as that, that she'd had as a kid. And I suppose they thought, 'well, if I take this, I shan't get killed', sort of thing. That's how you thought of it in those days, you know. You thought, I half expected, I didn't think I would get through, quite honestly. I never thought I'd get through a second tour, and when I was half way through my first tour, I said, 'well, if I get through my first tour, I'm not going to volunteer for a second tour'. But I did. I volunteered to stay on [laughs].
BW: And it was usual, for pilots certainly, who had completed thirty operations to be awarded the DFC? What did you get your DFC for?
WG: No, it wasn't [pause], you're right in saying up to a point, but my skipper was awarded a DFC, but not for doing a second tour. There were, there were, I did know one or two blokes who got them for doing a second tour, but nobody ever seemed to know why. We took a dim view that you joined, you went as aircrew, and that was your job. So of course, of course, you were flying on op's, and bombing Germany and all that sort of thing, but to be decorated just for becoming aircrew, I thought was all wrong. But that was all besides the point, I suppose.
BW: And was yours awarded because you'd completed a number of operations, or was it for a single action?
WG: No, I shot down- oh dear, what did I shoot down? An ME109, I think. I've got it in here somewhere. I've got it in here somewhere. Yeah, I shot down [pause], I don't know if I'm boring you?
BW: No, no. Not at all.
WG: Kelstern to form. Oh yes, I went to Kelstern then, to help form a new squadron. 625 Squadron, with two other aircrews. And we went on another, we went on, we went on to, we formed 625 Squadron, at Kelstern there, and then I got an immediate award. I've got it here in red ink. See previous page. 'Doug Wheeler badly wounded'. He was the bomb aimer, he was badly wounded. And I went up onto the [coughs], there was a bed in the aircraft, just before you get into the pilot's area, and the navigator's, the front part, and he was badly wounded, and they took him up onto the aircrew bed, and I sat with him and [coughs], that’s right. and Warrant Officer Clarke was the pilot, and he was awarded the DFM as well, and the flight engineer was as well. The three of them were awarded the DFM, because they were all NCO's then. And that's about all there.
BW: Your bomb aimer was badly wounded, and you went up.
WG: The bomb aimer was badly wounded, that's right, yes. The bomb aimer was badly wounded, and he lost quite a lot of blood. And it was thought, not by me, but it was thought by, I think it was the bomb aimer, er, I think it was the wireless operator relieved me sitting with him, and he seemed to think that he was losing too much blood, so he couldn't last much longer. But he did, of course. And he and I left together, and I remember, I remember walking down to Grimsby railway station, and our kit was already there. We were being posted. I was going home, home on leave, and he was going home on leave, and it was on the railway station, that's right, both of us on the railway station, and we both said goodbye as our various trains, as our trains came in, and that was that. I kept in touch with him, we kept in touch with each other, but I did not see him again. I went to his home town in, I went to his home town and I met his mother, his father was dead, and I think I met his brother, who had already been accepted for aircrew, but was still a civilian. And then from there I went somewhere else instructing, so I thought, well, I couldn't keep on with this instructing business, because I was never good at it really. I was the wrong temperament. And I volunteered for a third, I volunteered for a third tour. But it was quite obvious the war was ending, and I was never called back to do a third tour. And that was that, I went on a further instruction course, and I was going to join, I was going to be transferred to the er, transferred to the American Air Force, with others but, who were stationed in Lincolnshire, but it never materialised, fortunately. I went to, oh I forget where I went then.
Laura: You went to India.
WG: Oh, I went touring. Touring round various stations, Army and Navy, no, not Navy, but Army and Air Force stations telling them what it was like on operations, sort of thing, you know. You shot a line [chuckles].
BW: Now, you mentioned on that particular instance when you were looking in your log book, that the pilot and the flight engineer were also awarded medals. The pilot got a DFC and the navigator got a DFM. Was your DFC awarded on the same raid, because they got those medals as a result of their actions over Mannheim.
WG: No, I got mine, yes, Mannheim, wasn't it, I got mine after I'd left them. I was on my second tour then. I think I'd started my third tour, quite honestly. But I don't really, it'll be in the log book here. Yes, yeah, I can't remember really.
BW: Ok, do you recall that night when you flew over Mannheim. It was a particularly notable instance, but what were your recollections?
WG: It was, sorry?
BW: It was a notable raid that night.
WG: It was indeed, yes.
BW: What were your recollections of it?
WG: Er, perhaps being more frightened than I normally was. Yes, when you're running up to, the bomb aimer, as you obviously know, was right in the front, I mean, the bomb aimer's nose was there, and there was the fresh air, there, sort of thing, you know. And when you're up the front there, I suppose I was more frightened, but it did pass off, you know. Because I thought, well, if I'm going to frightened like this, I'm going to be no good to the aircrew. They won't want me. That's when he was taken down to the bed, and I went down there with him as another member of the aircrew. Immediate award of the DFC to Warrant Officer Clarke, and the DFM to flight engineer. Warrant Officers and Officers, if they were decorated, got a DFM, and, oh yes [unclear], oh I don't remember, but it's not important.
BW: You mentioned that you'd shot down a ME109.
WG: Yes.
BW: And was that while you were over Mannheim? Or was that on a separate raid?
WG: No, it wasn't when we were over Mannheim, no. Everybody thought Mannheim was going to be a killer, sort of thing, but it wasn't, so it must have been another. No, it wasn't Mannheim. [reading]. 'Immediate award of the DFC, immediate award of the DFC.' Oh yes it was, it was Mannheim. It was Mannheim that we got it, the three of us. We were badly shot up by night-fighters. We were coned, we were coned in searchlights. The searchlights, when you're coned in a searchlight, it switches on twice, a certain searchlight. You see the searchlight in the distance, or I would see them at the back of me, being in the rear turret, creeping up at you on the back, and they would switch on and switch off, twice, and the third time when they switched on, they'd got you. And it was just like this in the turrets, daylight, you know. And of course, that's when the fighters see you and they come in to attack. But we weren't attacked, but we were coned, and it was, it was just like daylight. [Reading] 'Night-fighter, night-fighters, coned in searchlights', that's right. And, that's right, yes, that's it, we were hit there because it says here that we were, 'coned in searchlights and riddled with flak. Upon landing aircraft broke in two', oh yes, and on landing our aircraft broke it's back. And we went, I think Clarke took it into a hedge, because we were still going pretty fast down the runway, having just landed, and we went off the runway, dead ahead, and into that hedge, sort of thing. Which obviously stopped us, and nobody, no sound and nobody moved, it was just as though the whole lot of us were dead [laughs]. It wasn't until we crawled out, feeling very sorry for ourselves [laughs].
BW: And you were saying about the flak on that, on that mission, that it was accurate, and it was at the height that you were at, and it sounded like hail on the side
WG: That's it, the flak, the flak, the flak that was coming up from the ground to the fighters, was coming down onto our aircraft as well, and we could feel it. It shook, it shook the aircraft a bit. That was particularly frightening, I suppose, but only for a while. I'm convinced that, I'm convinced that many times, I never spoke about it, to see if others witnessed it, but many times I was so, so frightened to a point where I was frightened back to normality. I used to think to myself, 'Christ, I'm frightened. This is no good.' And then suddenly, it was suddenly clear, and I would be quite happy to be sitting there, waiting for it to happen. It was as simple as that, you know. You were so frightened, you would be glad to be hit, and shot down. That was the truth, I suppose. Up until then, up until then, when you knew Op's were on, and you were getting up and shaving and what not, you thought, 'well, what's going to happen, I wonder, today.' And, 'tonight', rather, and so often nothing happened. We were only attacked twice, I think. I did fifty five, I did, yes I did fifty five bombing raids on Germany, nine on Berlin, and that was pretty frightening. I was frightened going over Berlin, because they really were a crack lot, the German, the German fighters. I mean, once they'd got you in their sights you could imagine them saying to themselves, 'I've got him this time’. And they would, you see, you'd see others being shot down, of your own type. I saw quite a lot.
BW: You saw quite a lot?
WG: Well, I say quite a lot, less than a dozen, but you know, if you look across at somebody by your side, you see maybe a mile away, and then you see a ball of light on this aircraft, and it gets bigger and bigger, and then suddenly it blows, and that's frightening, you think, 'well, it could happen to me, this’. But, it didn't. But it was frightening to see somebody else, some of your own people shot down. And, I suppose, to see others, the enemy shot down, because you think, well they've all got mothers and fathers. What are they going to say when they get home, you know.
BW: Some veterans talk about it being relatively isolated in the formation, in other words, they would fly a mission and not see other aircraft, perhaps until they were over the target. Was that something you saw as well?
WG: Sorry?
BW: Some veterans say that they didn't see other aircraft in the formation until they were perhaps over the target. Do you, was that something you experienced as well, or were you aware you were in a formation all the time you were on the mission, or did you only see them over the target?
WG: No, we weren't so much together, in a heap, going over. You didn't see any of your own aircraft, seldom saw. The only time you saw other aircraft, or I saw other aircraft, was when German aircraft were firing at our aircraft, in the sky somewhere, but not actually firing at ourselves. So rightly or wrongly, I thought, 'well, thank god they're firing at them and not us’, sort of thing. You know. I didn't feel sorry for the others, I was just pleased for myself [chuckles].
BW: Were you able to pick out enemy night fighters at the time?
WG: Yes. Not so much fighters, but Heinkels. Bombers. We flew alongside, they flew alongside us, or we flew alongside them, same thing, for quite a while and you didn't open fire, I didn't at least, the other two gunners in our aircraft and myself didn't open fire, because you thought, well they're not firing at us so they haven't seen us, so if we fire at them, they're going to see the light from our shots going out, you know.
BW: The muzzle flash and the tracers.
WG: Pardon?
BW: They would see the muzzle flash and the tracers.
WG: Exactly, yes. You'd be giving your position away. And you just called up the pilot, and he would usually do a power dive, which could be quite dicey because you never knew if you really would pull out of a power dive. Especially if you'd still got your bombs on board. So the practice was for the bomb aimer to jettison his bombs, no matter where he was, where we were, but to jettison the bombs to lighten your load and increase your speed a bit, in a dive, you know. We'd been down as much as below a thousand feet, which is a bit of a bind, in a way. You get away from them, but you've got the bind of the slow climb up where they could see you, they could see your engines lit up, you know [pause], yes, they could see you more clearly then.
BW: And I believe you flew a couple of raids over Italy as well.
WG: Oh yes, that's right. Oh yes, so I did. I flew over [reading] Munich, Stuttgart, Hanover, Berlin, Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, Mannheim, er, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Milan. There you are, Milan. Peennemunde, Leverkusen, Berlin, Nuremberg. Oh yes. Did not complete operation. One of the engines was hit. It started a fire, we thought, but it didn't. And Berlin again, then Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, Mannheim. Mannheim was a bad place to bomb. They were very good there, with their night fighters. Hagen, Munich , Stuttgart, Hanover. Oh dear, so it goes on, so it goes on. Stettin, er Russelsheim, Stettin again. Oh, yes, then we went on to the V2 sights. They were in daylight, which was particularly bad. Frankfurt, Danzig, mining. mining Danzig Bay, that was a long trip, that was nine hours there and back. Westkapelle, daylight, Calais, daylight, Cap Brunet, daylight, three hours fifteen, oh dear, oh dear, Westkapelle, damn-busting, daylight. Saarbruken, Stuttgart, six hours fifty five minutes, Essen, five hours thirty, Cologne, oh dear, oh dear, I didn't know I'd done all this [chuckles].
BW: This must have been in nineteen forty four.
WG: Yes it was, November. November forty four. Gelsenkirchen, Van Ickel, that was in the Ruhr, Dortmund, er Maasberg, wherever that was, I don't know. That was on the second tour. Er, Marseilles. Yes, that's about it. The rest of it's all Transport Command stuff. Getting toward the end of the war then. And, er, and, that was it. Calcutta. Delhi and Calcutta, Delhi and Calcutta, Bangalore, Yellow Hanker.
BW: What were you flying there, in Transport Command? In India.
WG: Er, Lancasters. I was always on Lancasters. Except in training, when I was on Lancasters, and oh, what do you call the bloody things? [unclear] I've forgotten what they're called. [pause]. They're all Lancasters there. They're all Lancasters.
BW: You spent a lot of time. obviously, over the Ruhr. So your aircraft, when you were at 100 Squadron, the Phantom of the Ruhr, was appropriately named, wasn't it?
WG: Yes, yes. Sorry?
BW: I say your aircraft, the Lancaster, was called the Phantom of the Ruhr.
WG: That's right, yes.
BW: It was appropriately named, you spent so much time over it.
WG: Yes, the navigator, no, not the navigator, the bloke next to the pilot, the flight engineer, did a very good etching of the scene. What was it was called?
BW: Phantom of the Ruhr.
WG: Oh, that's right, yes. He did, he actually drew a phantom, the head, you know, of a phantom, then underneath he wrote, ' Phantom of the Ruhr'. Yes, I had a photograph of that, I don't know what happened to it. I've lost lots of things I wish I'd kept. Um. Yes [pause]. Yes, there were good and bad days, you know, good and bad days. I often thought, many times, I should never have volunteered, and then I thought, well, if I don't volunteer for flying, there's not much point in volunteering for the Air Force. And I couldn't volunteer for that, I couldn't be an Army bloke. I couldn't have been in the Army. I wouldn't have wanted to be a soldier.
BW: I have a photograph here of the nose-art of the aircraft.
WG: Oh, that's it. The engineer did that.
BW: I think this was after your time on the aircraft, it went on to fly over a hundred sorties.
WG: Yes, that's right.
BW: I think the crew pictured here, unless you recognise any of them, are from the end of the tour, because there's quite a number of –
WG: I don’t think I’ve seen this. Yes, here you are.
BW: - bomb markers on the side, there, to indicate the number of sorties.
WG: May I just show this to Laura? You can come over, it's all right. That's, our flight engineer drew that, and I stood, er, I stood, this is the front of the aircraft, as you'll appreciate and I stood beneath the aircraft here. I stood on a [slight pause], what do you have with Scotch to drink?
Laura: Tonic?
WG: Tonic. I stood on a Schweppes, an empty Schweppes tonic box and held the paint, held the point, no, the pint, held the paint up like this, while he dipped it in and drew that.
Laura: Very clever, wasn't it?
WG: Yes. He was standing about here, and I was over on this side, and, yes, well, that's nice, that. And then he would, and then I held the thing, whatever he wanted, his paint, when he painted the first half of those, they were all the bombs we dropped. And then our aircraft, we were taken off, and our aircraft went on to another crew, and that was their bit that they did.
Laura: My word.
WG: Yes. Now what was in there, oh nothing. There was something in there I was going to show you. But it's not important. Sorry about that.
BW: That's alright. There's another photograph here of your skipper, stood at the back of the aircraft, which has damage to the starboard elevator plane.
WG: That’s it.
BW: And there's your turret at the back, with a hood over it. It shows some of the damage that was received to the aircraft on that particular raid over Mannheim. The holes that the shells caused.
WG: Oh yes. That's it, yes. Oh yes. Yes, that's it. That's dear old Ron Clarke. He was a Warrant Officer then. There's his Warrant Officer's rank badge, there.
BW: Yes, on his right sleeve.
WG: Pardon.
BW: On his right sleeve.
WG: That's it, yes. And of course there're the holes in the aircraft that the flak caused, that shot up at us. And that was covered up, that was covered over for some reason or other. They were usually covered over, turrets, if they bought somebody back dead, you know. They were taken down to a special hanger for any repairs to be done, and for whoever was in the turret to be taken out, and then they'd, as a mark of respect, they covered it over. Thank you. Yes. [Pause]
BW: Do you have any other information in the log book, at all? Do you have any other photos or descriptions, that you particularly recall?
WG: Oh, I don't know [unclear[ [pause]. No, all I've got is a letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Air, presents his compliments [chuckles], and by command of the Air Council, has the honour to transmit the enclosed awards granted for service during the war of nineteen thirty nine, forty five. That was that. I don't know what this is. This is, Squadron Leader in correspondence from reserve [unclear], oh, The Council, the Air Council desires me to convey to you their warm thanks for the services you have rendered to the Royal Air Force, which they greatly appreciated. They have granted you permission to retain the rank of Flight Lieutenant under the terms of paragraph three oh two of Queens Regulations and Air Council Instructions, but this grant of rank does not confer the right to any emoluments. Your attention is drawn to the attached memorandum, and also to the enclosed extract from Queens Regulations regarding the occasion on which officers who have been permitted to retain their rank, wear uniform and the badges of that rank. So I always keep that in case. I used to, I used to go on parades when I was still in the service, um, on uniform parades, but you couldn't do that unless you'd actually got permission to actually do that. Thank you. Well, sorry about all this, this is a non-issue.
BW: That's alright. That's no problem. You mentioned that you joined as a sergeant, and at some point you've obviously been commissioned.
WG: Yes.
BW: Do you recall when and how that happened?
WG: Well, I didn't actually join as a sergeant. I joined, I joined. War was declared on the Saturday. I was in the kitchen, helping my mother with getting the food ready, and war was declared at eleven o' clock on that Saturday, and I asked mother if she could lend me some money to get a ticket to go to Lincoln to volunteer for aircrew. And she, yes she did, she gave me the money. She wasn't, and of course my father was very, well, not very annoyed. He said, 'I can't understand it’, he said, ‘why don't you wait until you're called up?' [laughs] I said, 'if I wait, if I wait until I'm called up, I've been advised that they will put you anywhere in the crew, but if you volunteer, you can more or less choose if you want to be a rear gunner, or a signaller, or navigator', though I hadn't got the brains for that, navigator. But if you volunteered, you could choose more or less where you were going to fly, but if you didn't, you were put anywhere in the aircraft, where they wanted a spare bod, I mean. A Lanc would come back with, maybe with somebody killed in a turret, so they'd whip him out and stick you in, sort of thing. Filling in space, you see, that sort of thing, so that was the reason I volunteered, so that I could volunteer – I felt very happy in the rear turret. I never felt, I don't think I felt really frightened, once I got up in the air. But waking up in the morning, knowing that that night we were going on operations, I did feel a bit dodgy, but it wore off once I got on to the squadron, sort of thing. But until then I did feel a bit, I thought, well it could happen, and that sort of thing, and what's mother going to do, you know.
BW: What was your social life like on the squadron? You mentioned, you wouldn't be on op's every night.
WG: Oh no, no, The amount of flights I did, it's in the log book. Most op's was four nights in seven, following on. You see, you go on op's, and you might be on again tonight, and you were on again tonight, and you'd say, 'well, we can't be on tomorrow night'. But of course, when you woke up you found you were on, you know, I used to, even though I was not commissioned then, we did have a batman who used to look after us and keep our buttons clean, usual thing, you know, and they would do various things for you. I've forgotten what I was going to say, never mind, it doesn't matter.
BW: And did you get time to socialise? You mentioned going out to Grimsby and places, did you socialise in the mess, the Sergeants Mess?
WG: Oh yes. If you'd got a bit of money in your pocket, you would go out of the mess, into town, where'd you'd girlfriends, and that sort of thing, you know. But if you'd, if you hadn't got money, you would stay in the mess and use the facilities there, the bar, they usually specialised in supplying you with a good bar. I mean you paid for it, you had to buy the stuff, but there was a bar in every mess, and if you hadn't got much dough you would go into the bar in the mess because you could book it. And you didn't have to pay until the end of the month, when you got your money. Until then, you had to pay for it there and then.
BW: And did you socialise really with your crew? Did you go out together, or did you socialise with your other friends, who were gunners on other aircraft?
WG: Very seldom. If I socialised with anybody, which I did, it would be with those of my rank and air-crew calling. You know, air gunners would go with air gunners, and navigators with navigators, and that sort of thing. Occasionally I would go out with Clarke, my pilot. Quite often, I suppose really. He was an extremely nice bloke. And we used to go, er, we used to go, I suppose boozing. But not to get violently drunk, you know. Because it was too expensive, anyway [chuckles]. Otherwise we would never have been sober.
BW: And I believe you liked doing crosswords, as well, is that right?
WG: I beg your pardon.
BW: I believe you like doing crosswords.
WG: Yes, I used to do a crossword in the turret coming back quite often. It was advised not to in case we were followed back, and we were seen by whoever was following us back that we weren't really, that the turret wasn't moving. So that once you got up, once you left the shores of the country, you never kept your turret still. You always went backwards and forwards, up and down. So that if you were seen by enemy aircraft, they would see that you weren't asleep, you were alert, sort of thing, you know. That was the idea.
BW: And I believe that on the way back from a raid on Mannheim, when you had actually been shot up, and the searchlights were still on you, and following you away from the target, you joked that you had enough time to finish the crossword, because there was a light in the turret.
WG: No, at night time it isn't that dark. When you're flying, when you're up in the air at night, even if you're the only aircraft in the sky, the sky's still light. Not like this, but you know, you can be seen.
[Noises off as someone knocks to come in]
BW: Yes, I'll just pause the recording here for a moment.
BW: So, we're just looking through one or two things in the log book at the moment. Would you mind if I read a couple of extracts from it? Would that be alright?
WG: Say what? To read it out? Oh yes, yes.
BW: There's, [pause] firstly there is a description here for seventeenth of August nineteen forty three, a night mission to Peenemunde, codenamed Hydra. And the description underneath, which you've indicated, reads, 'six hundred aircraft, Lancasters, dropped sixteen hundred tons of high explosives. This prevented the stockpiling of five thousand V2's, which Hitler intended to be dropped on London simultaneously, in one day’. And there's a quote in a short section from the Daily Telegraph magazine which indicates that in general, the raid, Bomber Command's raid was an outstanding success, and a shattering attack on Peenemunde research and radio location factory, Germans biggest development centre for air defences. In a message to Sir Arthur Harris, Chief of Bomber Command, the Air Minister says, 'photographs prove the outstanding success of your attack’, and goes on to say, 'the accuracy of the bombing, in spite of a smokescreen, and of fierce fighting over the target, testifies to the skill and determination of your crews, and to the effectiveness of your planning and tactical methods’. And that was dated the fifth of June nineteen forty three. So that was obviously a very well defended target, but notable because of what was achieved as a result, in hitting the V2 sights. The other description in here comes from, erm, the forth of November nineteen forty four, which I think must be your second tour.
WG: Yes, yes it was the second tour, forty three, forty four.
BW: When you went on to 625 Squadron, based at Kelstern.
WG: Yes. We formed there, I think.
BW: And, I believe it was C Flight from 100 Squadron that formed 625.
WG: That's right. Yes.
BW: The description here says that it was a raid on Bokum, and that, in brackets, a jet aircraft, ME262 confirmed, and the description goes on to say, 'awarded the DFC. This was their fastest and latest fighter, and the first to be shot down at night by Bomber Command, and confirmed’.
WG: Yes, that's right. I shot it down, yes.
BW: That's particularly notable because firstly, it was a jet aircraft, and secondly, it was at night.
WG: Yes.
BW: Do you recall how you recognised the aircraft? Did it appear to be a jet, were you able to recognise it? Or was it just another target for you?
WG: Well, when I was on then, on both tours, the only [pause] if it hadn't got four engines, which were easy to pick out, even at night, because it's not as dark as all that up there at night. But it is dark, of course, but if it hadn't got four engines, you had a go at it. Because it shouldn't have been up there, sort of thing, so it must have been an enemy. Must be an enemy. You didn't recognise it perhaps as an enemy, except that it had only got two engines. Otherwise, it would have four. Which meant it was one of your own.
BW: And who saw who first? Do you think.
WG: Well exactly, yes.
BW: Who saw who first on that occasion? Did you see him?
WG: That I can't remember. I don't, I only remember being attacked maybe a couple of times, but that was in the early part of the war [pause]. It's difficult [pause]. Yes it’s, you could pick them out, quickly. But even if you didn't, you still fired at them, because you couldn't take the risk. If you didn't fire at them and they were enemy, they fired at you, it would be too late because they might hit you. But it was better to take a chance, and sometimes a wrong chance. On occasions your own being shot down. That has happened. I don't know how it was proven, but it all comes out at, it all comes out when you come back, and you're interrogated. And you really are interrogated, I mean, you don't stand a chance, even if you want to, to shoot a line or tell a load of lies, because they'd soon find out, the way they interrogate you. They aren't aircrew themselves, they're ground crew, and really, really trained for that job of sorting out the truth from the shooting a line business.
BW: And so when you landed, how soon after landing would you be debriefed?
WG: Straight away. You'd be taken in transport straight away. You wouldn't even speak to your ground crew, be allowed to speak to your ground crew. The, er, as soon as you landed, the first people you spoke to were the ground crew, the ground crew, er, oh dear, questioning you, interrogating you [pause].
BW: And were you debriefed as a crew together? Or were you debriefed individually?
WG: You were all put in the debriefing room, and each aircrew department were briefed by their own people. And then you were together briefed as a crew. And it was there to make sure there was no line-shooting, you know. Well, I suppose it was, that's what it was done for. They could easily say, well you're telling us this story, but your mate is telling us this story. That sort of idea, you know.
BW: By line-shooting, you mean telling them something inaccurate.
WG: Telling lies. Yes, telling lies and lies that could never happen, you know. You were boosting up your bravery perhaps, I suppose. If that's the word, yes. I don't know if you could say that many of us were brave. It was just one of those things. You'd volunteered to do it and you were there, so you'd got to do it, but I don't think that I looked upon it as bravery, I looked upon it as being a bloody idiot for being there [laughs].
BW: What I'd just like to do now, is just to show you a list of the crew, and you've talked about Ron Clarke, and there's your name at the bottom, this is when you were on 100 Squadron.
WG: Oh yeah. That's right.
BW: Yeah? And there's one or two other names you've briefly mentioned. Are there any particular instances or things you would remember about each of those men that you flew with?
WG: There's Ron Clarke. I think Clarke got a second DFC, but I'm not sure. Bennett got a DFM, that's right. Flight Engineer. Sidell, Jim Sidell. Well, Jim Sidell was killed, the navigator, so he got nothing. Wheeler, the bomb aimer, didn't get anything. Easby, the wireless operator, didn't get anything. Simpson didn't get anything. And then there's myself, yes. No, that was the crew. And er, what was the question, what did you ask me?
BW: Do you remember anything other about the other members of the crew, anything else about them? What sort of chaps they were?
WG: No, we didn't. I don't remember any of us really teaming up when we weren't flying, and going out together. We used to sort of go on our todd, so if we got up to something we didn't want too many people to know [laughs]. Which was my idea, anyway. I don't know about Clarke, But no, Clarke didn't, he’d be doing something. He'd be studying, I expect. He was a studing type [unclear]. Easby's very ill now. I don't know if he's still living. I intend to phone up and speak to his wife, but-
BW: Do you know if Harry Bennett is still alive?
WG: Bennett, Bennett. Where's Bennett's name here? Bennett, yes, Flight Engineer. No I don't actually. I don't even know, I don't even know where Bennett came from.
BW: I believe he came from Preston. In Lancashire.
WG: Now that's a point, yes. Somewhere up North. Yes, he was a north country chap. The Flight Engineer. He was a good bloke. He could, if something went wrong, he would get out of his seat up front, next door to the pilot, and walk down the aircraft with his tool kit, and if anything was wrong, and he could do something there, he would stay down there and mend it, and do all that sort of thing. He was a very brave bloke [coughs].
BW: Do you recall how he got his DFM?
WG: Who?
BW: Bennett.
WG: Bennett. No, no I can't. No.
BW: There's a description that when you were over Mannheim one night, and because you were heavily hit by the flak, it severed the flying controls to the ailerons.
WG: Oh yes, so it did.
BW: And there was a lot of vibration going through the flying controls, which meant the pilot couldn't handle the aircraft properly.
WG: That's right. That's it.
BW: And the story goes that Bennett took out his penknife, and bearing in mind you were probably at five thousand feet at night over Germany and France at the time, apparently he took out his penknife and severed the starboard trim control cables.
WG: That's right, he trimmed the controls, that's right. I don't know if it was his penknife, but he did sever controls, yes, which steadied the aircraft, and it was, well everybody was, we all were scared when this, when the aircraft was really shaking, you know. And then it suddenly stopped, and after, we realised that dear old Bennett had done that. He'd gone down and put his, put his breathing apparatus thing on, and stopped the vibrating.
BW: That's quite a thing to have done.
WG: Well, yes.
BW: Firstly, to know what to do, and then to be able to see it and cut it.
WG: Yes, yes. Yes. It doesn't say anything there, but I think Bennett was decorated as well. There were, there were, there were three of us decorated to my knowledge, I think he could have been the fourth one, but I'm not really sure. But three of us were decorated, and as I say, I think he was the fourth one, but actually, getting down and stopping the vibration, which it was thought could have prevented the aircraft being flown properly [coughs] or safely. Safely was the word, not properly. Same thing.
BW: And the other description that I just wanted to read on the back of the log book that you've got here; on the tenth of January nineteen forty five there's a description in here from a Squadron Leader, which looks like a Flight Commander of 626, in relation to your proficiency and assessment says, 'this', oh.
WG: This officer?
BW: 'This officer [pause] that knows his job, which he does well, this officer that knows his job, which he does well, put up a splendid show whilst on this', I can't make out the last word, but it says underneath, 'awarded the DFC'. Does that description-
WG: Which bit? Oh, 'whilst on the squadron'. Whilst on the squadron, yes. What does it say there, then?
BW: It says, 'Our officer, that knows his job, which he does well, puts up a splendid show whilst on this squadron. Awarded DFC'.
WG: Oh, I see. Yes.
BW: That would be your second one.
WG: That's right, yes.
[Pause}
Laura: You’ve not drunk your tea, Pops.
WG: Pardon?
Laura: Your tea
WG: Pardon?
Laura: Your cup of tea?
WG: Oh yes, my cup of tea. Oh there's a cup of tea, look.
BW: From these tours, then, what happened after, towards the end.
WG: Sorry?
BW: From, after completing these two tours, or three tours, because you completed a hundred operations, didn't you?
WG: Yes, I think so. Something like that. Yeah, well two and a half tours.
BW: And what happened after that? When you, when the war ended, and you stayed in service, but you went out to India and the Far East.
WG: Oh yes, I did, yes, Yes, I went out to, I went out to Delhi, and Calcutta, and Bangalore. Erm. I wasn't instructing. I can't think what I was doing. I wasn't lecturing. Well, I was lecturing in Bangalore, but not for very long. I asked to be taken off because I wasn't any good at it. I was, you know, if the blokes you were instructing weren't sort of, didn't cotton on, I used to get bad tempered, so it was no good [long pause]. Yes, looking back, they were good days. When you're there, they're not, really. You wonder, why did I do it? [pause]
BW: And when the war ended, and you'd been in India, what then happened? You came back and you left the Air Force at some stage, did you?
WG: Yes. I came back from India. I was, where was I, I think I was in Calcutta then. Oh yes, that's what annoyed me, was that when I went out there, I flew out there and was there a fortnight, and when I came back, I didn't come back quickly in an aircraft, I came back on a boat, and that took about three to four weeks to get back to the country, which I thought was rather bad. Because they flew me out there quickly, and then it took a long time to get me back home.
BW: They wanted you out there quickly, but didn't want you back home so fast [chuckles]. And did you come home to get married, and raise a family after that?
WG: Yes, I came home and, I don't know, yes, I came home, what did I do [pause], I don't know where I met Betty. Oh, we met, yes, I was with a group of blokes somewhere, and we saw a group of WAAFs, and we teamed up with these WAAFs, and I went off with mine. I don't know what happened to the others, but I never met them again, but I went off. I forget where we went, and we stayed together for some time. She was , she was a plotter. She used to plot enemy aircraft, and that sort of thing. In Bomber Command. And, I went to Bomber Command for a while, and asked to be taken away, but until then, that was where we met each other [Pause].
BW: And when did you get married?
WG: That's a point [pause].
BW: Was it soon after the war? Or was it a few years after?
WG: No, the war was still on, I think. Is my log book here? Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know if it tells me in here. I don't know, I must, I don't know when I got married [pause and paper rustling]. 'Slightly above average', and, 'above average'. That's slightly above. No, I don't know. [More paper rustling]. What was I looking for? 'Screen, after twenty sorties, second tour.'
Laura: Pops. I think you got married on the thirteenth of April, it was a Friday, and I think it was nineteen forty five. Would it be?
WG: Oh, nineteen forty five.
Laura: I think. It was forty four or forty five, I think. Before you went to India.
WG: Oh, that's right, before I went to India, wasn't it.
Laura: Yes
WG: Yes [pause]. November forty four, Bokum. Oh yes. Oh, I don't know [pause].
BW: When you left the service, what did you go on to do then?
WG; Well I, er, before the war I joined the firm that my father was the secretary for, at Kings Lynn. A timber importing firm, Patrick and Thompson’s. And I was going out to, I was going out to India. We had a branch in India. In, where was it, Bangalore, no, not Bangalore, oh I don't remember now. And I don't quite know what I did. I didn't do what I expected to do, or what they said I was going to do and I think that the way the war was going, it was felt that soon it going to end, so it was a pretty cushy time for us all. Because we weren't, there wasn't very much to do really, and I didn't know whether to stay in or not, and I wasn't keen on going back to my father, to the firm where my father was, so I stayed in. And I was going to get, I hadn't got a permanent commission then. I was on, not a part-time commission, I forget what the word was for it, but it wasn't a regular commission, and I thought, well, if I'm going to stay in the service, I must get a regular commission, or else they can get me out any time. But with a regular commission, provided I'm playing it straight, I haven't got to bother about a job, because I'd got a job. And it was quite well paid. I was a Flight Lieutenant then. And when I went to Bangalore, I was promoted to Squadron Leader, and then when I came back, when I came back, I was demoted to my previous regular engagement commission. It wasn’t an active one. But then I decided that with how things were going, I wasn't very keen. I was getting into spots of bother, and that sort of thing. I was made a personal assistant to an Air Vice Marshall, which was a bit of a bind because you're always on duty, you know. You could suddenly be in bed, and your batman would come in, and give you a shake, and say,' the old man wants you’, and you could get up at any time of the day. Yes, at any time of the day and night. Because if you'd been flying at night, you'd be asleep during the day, and you'd have to go down to see what he wanted, and all that sort of thing. And his wife would, many times when I was in their house, she would come in and say, 'Geoffrey, just nip down to the butchers will you, and get so and so’, that sort of thing, you know. That wasn't my cup of tea, really, not what I'd joined to do [laughs]. Walking back with strings of sausages round me neck [laughs].
BW: Well, I think you've been very open, and it's been a great pleasure to listen to you, sir, and to all your experiences, so I want to thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre for doing that, and it's probably an appropriate place to leave your reminiscences, with a string of sausages round your neck [laughs]
WG: Thank you very much indeed.
BW: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Geoff Green
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-11
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AGreenWG150911
Format
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01:34:43 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
An account of the resource
William Green was born in Kings Lynn in Norfolk and joined the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of war, when he was 17 and a half, becoming a rear gunner on Lancasters and eventually rising to the rank of squadron leader. He tells about going to help form 625 Squadron at RAF Kelstern and his training for rear gunner, which included some navigation and aircraft recognition. William tells of how he was sent on an instructor course to train new recruits however he admits he did not have the temperament to do this for very long. In 1944 he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for shooting down the first Me 262 aircraft, whilst coming home from an operation to Mannheim. It was the first confirmed shooting down of this particular aircraft and it was during a night operation. William tells about a particularly bad operation to Mannheim, when he helped with a badly injured bomb aimer, being coned by searchlights and coping with anti-aircraft fire. He also recalls a flight where the aircraft was hit and flying controls to the ailerons were severed, meaning the pilot had trouble controlling the aircraft. The flight engineer picked up a toolbox and acted on the starboard trim control cables with a penknife, allowing the pilot to land. William completed two full tours with Bomber Command, flying over 100 operations, including 55 bombing operations on Germany alone, and his aircraft was nicknamed ‘Phantom of the Ruhr’. He tells the story of how he helped with the painting of the nose art. Towards the end of war, William was in India with Transport Command, particularly in Delhi and Calcutta.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany
Germany--Mannheim
India
India--Kolkata
India--New Delhi
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
100 Squadron
1656 HCU
28 OTU
625 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
coping mechanism
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 262
military service conditions
nose art
Operational Training Unit
operations room
pilot
RAF Kelstern
searchlight
superstition
training
Whitley